{
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"title" : "I give up. Repeal everything.",
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"content" : "<p><p>Robert Samuelson has an apparently serious <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-of-internet-threats-and-cyberattacks/2013/06/30/df7bd42e-e1a9-11e2-a11e-c2ea876a8f30_story.html?hpid=z2\">op-ed</a> in the Washington Post arguing that we should “repeal the Internet.”</p>\n<p>He says:</p>\n<blockquote><p>If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the instant access to vast amounts of information, the pleasures of YouTube and iTunes, the convenience of GPS and much more. But the Internet’s benefits are relatively modest compared with previous transformative technologies, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: cyberwar. Amid the controversy over leaks from the National Security Agency, this looms as an even bigger downside.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Excellent idea! Really well-argued! In fact, why stop there?</p>\n<blockquote><p>If I could, I would repeal the First Amendment. It is the governmental marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the TV talking heads, the bumperstickers, the op-eds that have to overstate their case to get published, and much more. But First Amendment’s benefits are relatively modest compared with previous speech rights, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: free thinking. Amid the controversy over leaks from the National Security Agency, this looms as an even bigger downside.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Indeed,</p>\n<blockquote><p>If I could, I would repeal oxygen. It is the chemical marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. I grant its astonishing capabilities: the way it’s used by cigarette lighters, the buoyancy of kiddie swim fins, the infomercials that entertain us with how it helps remove cranberry juice from table cloths. But oxygen’s benefits are relatively modest compared with previous chemicals, and it brings with it a terrifying danger: life on Earth Amid the controversy over leaks from the National Security Agency, this looms as an even bigger downside.</p></blockquote>\n<p> </p>\n<hr width=\"100px\">\n<p>Here’s the <a href=\"http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2013/07/01/repeal-the-internet-the-madlibs-version/\">MadLibs version</a> of the paragraph. Create your own!</p></p>"
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"title" : "NEW CONTENDER FOR “WORST LP COVER” TITLE?",
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"title" : "TOM SHARPE: THE MOST RIOTOUS ASSEMBLY",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2czF2Ybazs/UbB4vCNEyqI/AAAAAAAAEgM/V3D8zEY_IfE/s1600/sharpe1.jpeg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"></a><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-he5r5_kTu1o/UbB601rMymI/AAAAAAAAEgs/LBosIPtJ8lQ/s1600/sharpe1.jpeg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"></a>I<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-he5r5_kTu1o/UbB601rMymI/AAAAAAAAEgs/LBosIPtJ8lQ/s1600/sharpe1.jpeg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-he5r5_kTu1o/UbB601rMymI/AAAAAAAAEgs/LBosIPtJ8lQ/s1600/sharpe1.jpeg\"></a>t was with some sadness and some bittersweet nostalgia I heard the news of Tom Sharpe's death, and I wonder now why more isn't be made of the career of this great comic novelist.<br><br>Looking back, I suppose I might have been foreshadowing my own life, but when I lived in Montreal in 1975-76, I was addicted to Tom Sharpe novels. I can't remember now if I discovered them there, perhaps through my English girlfriend, or if I had already been reading them, but I do know I found quite a few of them in The Word bookstore, the Pan editions whose covers were as chaotically attractive as the books, and I do know they were laugh-aloud funny, especially in the middle of French Canada. But one thing for certain, is that I came to Britain from Montreal half-expecting it to be a comic paradise reflecting Sharpe's writing, and finding myself only barely half wrong.<br><br>Once in the green and blessed land, however, my attachement to Sharpe soon faded. Some of it was his own losing some edge--after all, the underlying savagery of the satire in the early books was always going to be diffifcult to draw upon--and some of it was my realising the the reality of living in this country was almost as satirical as satire itself. Sharp often adopted a Colonel Blimpish persona, but when in the writing you begin to feel the hand of Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, you might well turn elsewhere.<br><br>As if to illustrate the point, it always intrigued me that <i>Riotous Assembly</i> and <i>Indecent Exposure</i>, his first two books, both of which were set in South Africa, weren't anywhere near as respected in this country as, say, <i>Wilt</i>, <i>Blott On The Landscape</i>, or <a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-waT9kKBN9O8/UbB4wl6LSeI/AAAAAAAAEgU/pBZe39V8m58/s1600/sharpe+port.jpeg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-waT9kKBN9O8/UbB4wl6LSeI/AAAAAAAAEgU/pBZe39V8m58/s200/sharpe+port.jpeg\" width=\"140\"></a><i>Porterhouse Blue</i> (not to diminish either of those books, which deserve their comparisons with Wodehouse and Waugh). But the South African books have a much more cutting satire behind them, as befits Sharpe's own experience in the country (and indeed as the child of a British fascist father and a South African mother).<br><br>I think, however, that he was hugely influential. I don't think Malcolm Bradbury's academic satires would be half as funny without Sharpe's influence, for example. Bradbury did the adaptation for the excellent TV version of <i>Porterhouse Blue</i>, and you can see the Ian Richardson<i> House Of Cards</i> set-up taking place right before your eyes. Sharpe was anarcghic, and could write slapstick, which is a very hard thing to do well--you have to create characters who are both real and absurd, and you have to maintain enoughh sympathy for the the audience to anticipate<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qrzh8GdUU0Q/UbB4zFLAF9I/AAAAAAAAEgc/tXaN0M5c9xM/s1600/sharpe.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"></a> what's coming, and regret it as well as laugh at it. He was a master of that.<br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qrzh8GdUU0Q/UbB4zFLAF9I/AAAAAAAAEgc/tXaN0M5c9xM/s1600/sharpe.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qrzh8GdUU0Q/UbB4zFLAF9I/AAAAAAAAEgc/tXaN0M5c9xM/s200/sharpe.jpg\" width=\"144\"></a> <br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qrzh8GdUU0Q/UbB4zFLAF9I/AAAAAAAAEgc/tXaN0M5c9xM/s1600/sharpe.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"></a>Trying to think of who has come along since Sharpe, I can't really come up with an equivalent, though in sf both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchet might be considered in the vein. I wonder if it's because self-satire has become too facile a vein to mine--or perhaps because there's so much of it about. Sharpe's best work, to an outsider, cut to the bone. But to the Brits themselves, it simply reinforced the sense of a pleasant eccentricity, which in the end would ensure everything continued as it always had. So Sharpe became a sort of 'national treasure' as the modern term goes. But at his peak, I think Tom Sharpe suggested something different--and the power of his humour came from that.<br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-c2czF2Ybazs/UbB4vCNEyqI/AAAAAAAAEgM/V3D8zEY_IfE/s1600/sharpe1.jpeg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><br></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-waT9kKBN9O8/UbB4wl6LSeI/AAAAAAAAEgU/pBZe39V8m58/s1600/sharpe+port.jpeg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><br></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qrzh8GdUU0Q/UbB4zFLAF9I/AAAAAAAAEgc/tXaN0M5c9xM/s1600/sharpe.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><br></a></div><br><br><br>"
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"title" : "We are shocked, shocked…",
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"content" : "Is it just me or does the entire news media — as well as all the agitators and self-righteous bloviators on both sides of the aisle — not understand even the rudiments of electronic intercepts and the manner in which law enforcement actually uses such intercepts? It would seem so. Because the national eruption over [...]"
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"title" : "The “Nigger Wake-Up Call”",
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"content" : "The great political comedian Paul Mooney made his bones by laying in the cut between American democratic ideals and American behavior. A mentor and inspiration to his friend Richard Pryor, Mooney’s stock-in-trade is a canny ability to thread the truth between ongoing and established hypocrisies — to make us see the pathologies that are still [...]"
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"title" : "In London",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9153141478/\" title=\"Royal Mail by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7396/9153141478_66348c2c4c_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"Royal Mail\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, every day is a red letter day, and the sky is rarely anything but white.<br>\n<span></span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9153155964/\" title=\"heads by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2828/9153155964_7b461e2173.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"heads\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, as in most cities, it’s best not to look strangers in the eye. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9105049546/\" title=\"Wimbledon pig by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3684/9105049546_74df8d0254.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Wimbledon pig\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, green pigs fly with tennis rackets for wings. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9105063564/\" title=\"Victoria by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5517/9105063564_2c0c8108d0_z.jpg\" width=\"528\" height=\"640\" alt=\"Victoria\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, Queen Victoria is not amused by her new subjects with their uncouth cameras and foreign tongues. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9105067374/\" title=\"tourism by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3795/9105067374_847dcfc399_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"tourism\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, the statues stick their heads in the ground to avoid being identified by the ubiquitous security cameras.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9153196610/\" title=\"canal egret 3 by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7423/9153196610_bdd3ae3875_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"canal egret 3\"></a></p>\n<p>In London, even herons and moorhens get chips with their fish.</p>"
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"title" : "Waste Management in Ghana: It Takes Two",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>When things aren’t right in a country, the people often blame the government and the government often blames the people. The same goes for waste management in Ghana, ranked second dirtiest country in West Africa by the UN and the World Health Organization. However, as this project illustrates, there are two sides to the story.</p>\n<p>On the one hand, corruption, poor management and red tape impede the government from providing adequate sanitation and waste disposal for many. The local government in Kumasi, for instance, does not provide latrines to many slum dwellers because they are “illegal residents.” While these residents wait for a solution to the red tape, they will continue to defecate in the open.</p>\n<p>On the flipside, decades of public littering, open defecation and a resistance to change prevent many Ghanaians from benefiting from the initiatives that the government does carry out. For instance, when the government provides trash bins for people to throw their litter into, often they are stolen.</p>\n<p>Here Diksha Bali examines trash disposal in Ghana – from the storm drains in crowded Aboabo to the government waste management offices –– as she looks for solutions to unsanitary conditions and poor management.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Stolen Trash Bins Contribute to Malaria, Flooding",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Diksha Bali, for the Pulitzer Center</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>There are no public trash bins to be seen in most areas in Ghana. Yet, equally surprisingly, there is little trash to be seen on its streets.</p>\n<p>The gutters, however, are a different issue. </p>\n<p>Although local governments in Ghana employ private waste management companies to sweep the streets and clean the gutters, there are a number of gutters that the private companies are not mandated to clean — stagnant gutters that serve as a breeding ground for pestilence. </p>\n<p>The effects of clogged gutters are “very, very significant,” according to Ben Anhwere, an administrative officer at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly’s (KMA) Waste Management Department in Kumasi, the capital city of Ghana’s Ashanti region.</p>\n<p>“These drains become breeding grounds for mosquitoes,” he said, shaking his head. When clogged, they create stagnant pools of water, providing an ideal haven for these pests, he added. Malaria is currently one of the leading causes of death in Ghana.</p>\n<p>These drains were originally designed as storm drains to collect rainwater and prevent flooding, Anhwere said. “If these open drains get choked when it rains, it becomes an issue,” increasing the threat of floods.
</p>\n<p>But residents complain that they have no viable outlets other the streets and drains for their trash.</p>\n<p>“When you drink water, you don’t even have a place to put it,” said resident Jones Amakye, gesturing to one of the many plastic water sachets that are used for drinking water. “You just hold it or throw it somewhere.” </p>\n<p>
According to Amakye, the solution is simple. “We are not able to [dispose of litter] because there are no bins in town,” he said. So bins should be provided, he said, and those who do not use them should be fined.</p>\n<p>Although Amakye’s solution is simple, the problem is not so easily solved. </p>\n<p>KMA Waste Management officer Tina Boateng said that a few years back Kumasi used to have trash bins lining the street at every 100 meters. However, authorities quickly discovered their trash bins were being stolen at an alarming rate. </p>\n<p>What is more, Boateng said, when the bins were not being stolen, many people used to fill them with household waste. This made waste collection extremely difficult, as the trucks the KMA had deployed could not handle the amount and weight of waste being collected. It also meant that people often didn’t find a place to put their trash even if they chose to use the litter bins, she said. Once the trash bins were stolen or broke down, the KMA “simply stopped replacing them,” she said.
</p>\n<p>There are two steps the KMA needs to take to prevent littering and its consequences, Boateng said. First, people need to be educated on the unsavory consequences of litter. Next, people need to have viable outlets for their trash. </p>\n<p>“Our educational efforts [don’t] free us from the responsibility of placing bins. We have to educate and do our part of the bargain by placing bins at vantage points,” Boateng said.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Precolonial Experiences and Economic Development of Ethnic Groups in Colonial Africa",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/slave_exports.png\"><img alt=\"Slave Exports by Ethnic Groups in Nigeria and Ghana\" src=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/slave_exports.png\" width=\"450\" height=\"268\"></a></p>\n<p><em>I recently completed my dissertation and thought to share the highlights of it. If anyone is interested in reading the full dissertation please send me an email at nobikil1 [at] Binghamton.edu. A very brief summary is posted below.</em></p>\n<p>In economic development, Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world for many decades, certainly since the early 1960s, when most of today’s African states became independent of European colonial powers. Recent research suggests one reason for Africa’s slow development is its unique experience of the intercontinental slave trade from the fifteenth century through the 1800s, prior to the era of European colonization.</p>\n<p>Nunn (2008) examines the relation between GDP per capita of modern African states and the slave trade experience of the ethnic groups now living in the state. He finds that an African country has lower GDP per capita today if the ethnic groups within the country suffered higher slave export intensity – that is, number of slaves exported relative to population – in the precolonial era. He speculates that this is because the production of slaves, which occurred through domestic warfare, raiding and kidnapping, impeded the formation of broader ethnic groups. This may have led to ethnic fractionalization and the weakening and underdevelopment of political structures which hindered the development of postcolonial states. Whatley and Gillezeau (2011) show that, within Africa, areas where demand for slaves was highest are indeed characterized by higher ethnic fractionalization today. Easterly and Levine (1997) show that across countries outside as well as inside Africa, higher ethnic fractionalization is associated with “low schooling, underdeveloped financial systems, distorted foreign exchange markets, and insufficient infrastructure,”(1997, p. 1241) which are in turn associated with low output per worker, at the national level. Easterly and Levine argue this supports “theories that interest group polarization leads to rent-seeking behavior and reduces the consensus for public goods, creating long-run growth tragedies”(1997, p. 1241), and can account for much of Africa’s uniquely poor development. Nunn and Wantchekon (2011) show that Africans belonging to ethnic groups that suffered higher slave export intensity express less trust in relatives, neighbors and local governments today, and suggest this mistrust has damaged modern Africa’s political institutions. All of these studies rely on data from the current era of independent African states. All appear to suggest a channel from pre-colonial slave export intensity to modern-day poverty running mainly through the effect of inter-ethnic group conflict on the quality of post-independence states.</p>\n<p>In this dissertation I explore the possibility that the historical experience of the slave trade has reduced per capita GDP in Africa today by retarding the development of human capital through education, specifically the development of literacy. Many studies show that, within Africa and outside Africa, literacy is positively associated with real GDP and other indicators of economic development. Economic theory as well as empirical evidence suggest the relation is at least partly causal, as literacy is an element of human capital. Across countries, differences in average levels of education account for a substantial portion of variations in GDP per worker (Lucas, 1988; Mankiw, Romer and Weil, 1992; Hall and Jones, 1999). Across African countries today, literacy rates are negatively correlated with exposure to the slave trade. Indeed including literacy rates as an explanatory variable in Nunn’s baseline regressions reduces the magnitude and significance of the effect of the slave trade.</p>\n<p>Of course, the correlations in the cross country data do not show the direction of causality. If the slave trade damaged Africa’s economic development through any channel, one would expect to see the negative correlation; poor countries cannot provide good schooling. Even if the relationship is causal, it would not be surprising given the common argument that the slave trade damaged African development through the quality of post-independent states. Dysfunctional states also cannot provide good schooling.</p>\n<p>My evidence, however, is from the era of European colonization of Africa, after the end of the slave trades but prior to the independence of modern African states. I rely on data from censuses carried out by the British government from the 1920s through the 1950s in the colonies that have become the modern states of Nigeria and Ghana. These colonies contained many different ethnic groups, which had widely differing degrees of exposure to the pre-colonial slave trade. I find that ethnic groups with higher slave trade intensity had lower literacy rates during the colonial era. Using data from recent years, I find that the relation between slave trade intensity and ethnic groups’ literacy persists in contemporary Nigeria. The relationship holds controlling for many confounding factors such as the presence of missionaries, religion, disease environment, the nature of the ethnic groups’ socio political institutions in the precolonial era, and indicators of groups’ economic development in the colonial era. The relation is not related to inter-group conflict in any obvious way, as it holds across small geographic areas that were each dominated by a single ethnic group.</p>\n<p>My evidence suggests that the relation between slave-trade history and literacy in Africa today is indeed at least partly causal. Perhaps more importantly, it shows that the slave trades affected current economic development through channels distinct from inter-ethnic group conflict or the quality of formal state institutions. Within British colonial Nigeria and Ghana, the quality of formal state-level institutions was the same for all ethnic groups. The relation between precolonial slave intensity and colonial literacy must reflect something more basic, operating at the level of families or the informal institutions of villages and towns.</p>\n<p>I speculate that the relation can be explained by a hypothesis that experience of the slave trade undermined the development of social capital within ethnic groups. Social capital is defined by Putman (1993, pg. 167) as “the features of social organization, such as trust, norms and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society.” Coleman (1988), Knack and Keefer (1997), and Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) show that higher levels of social capital are associated with higher levels of human capital. I examine this hypothesis in chapter 2. Using data on expenditure of cocoa farmers in Western Nigeria from 1952, I show that farmers in townships with higher social spending individually spend more on education. The relationship holds after controlling for various characteristics of the farmers and the townships. This suggests that it is possible that the slave trade affects human capital through its destructive effect on social capital.</p>\n<p>Finally I examine the effect of the slave trade on political fragmentation within ethnic groups. Using descriptions of local politics of ethnic groups from Murdock’s 1959 ethnographic atlas, I find that ethnic groups with a higher slave export intensity are more politically fragmented.</p>"
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"title" : "Your Rendezvous with the African Middle Class – By Bright Simons",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-11901\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2013/06/25/your-rendezvous-with-the-african-middle-class-%e2%80%93-by-bright-simons/bright_simons-2/\"><img title=\"Bright_Simons\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Bright_Simons.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"219\" height=\"328\"></a>If you are in business and Africa has been on your radar I am very sure it is partly because of boiling enthusiasm about the “African Middle Class” and how they are dying to buy your stuff.</p><p>This being business, and numbers being supreme, you’ve probably been keeping a keen eye on the growth in population of these middle-class folks, as reported in the quality press day in and day out.</p><p>You of course cannot help but also notice that the numbers game can get complicated pretty quickly, especially as no one seems to have done any substantial work on the social characteristics of this oft-hailed Middle Class. In place of such in-depth research we have the all-powerful notion of the “all-purpose middle-class African consumer (AMAC)” that behaves somewhat homogenously regardless of which country they are in in Africa, and what their backgrounds are.</p><p>The most popular view, supported by the likes of the New York Times and the World Bank, all powerful influencers of how the world thinks about Africa, puts the number of AMACs at more than 300 million, a diverse basket that includes all sorts: cattle-ranchers, road-side food vendors, taxi drivers, railway pensioners etc.</p><p>But this view <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18094180\">has its critics</a>, and though they are not as often heard, they shout when they get the opportunity, saying things like: only 5% of African consumers qualify for the ‘middle-class’ tag. If that position was valid, it would mean the AMAC class has suddenly shrunk from 300 million-plus all the way down to about 40 million or 50 million people (bearing in mind that even the exact population in Africa is debatable due to weak census data in many African countries).</p><p>But that is not even the most disconcerting view. <a href=\"http://www.bdlive.co.za/africa/africanbusiness/2013/05/08/economist-challenges-existence-of-middle-class-in-africa\">Someone has actually said</a> that there is basically no middle class consumer segment worthy of any serious analysis in Africa at all. Mind you, he is not just some party-pooper who just walked in from the street; he is a serious finance professional who only happens to hold the view that Africa has only two super-classes: the uber-rich and a large sprawl of poor people who nevertheless are inclined towards consumption (perhaps in just the same way that Asians are seen as inclined towards saving). You can of course choose to interpret that view to mean either that the celebrated AMACs are just poor people who have developed a habit of living above their means or that they are low-income earners with rapidly rising wages. But however you choose to spin it, the fact remains that your target consumer base has now shrunk to zero. From 300 million to zero, now that’s something.</p><p>In between these extremes are various moderates.</p><p>Another widely quoted economics commentator for a big global bank with a huge presence of Africa has pitched another camp in the debate: there are 120 million AMACs.</p><p>The OECD, the so-called Paris Club of rich nations, will only settle for a quarter of this compromise number, but top global consultancies Deloitte and McKinsey keep pulling in the opposite direction, which is that the number can’t be anything <a href=\"http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/picking_products_for_africas_growing_consumer_markets\">but double the 120 million</a> figure, at least.</p><p>And what about those with some ‘skin in the game’? Actual investors in the trenches struggling to raise capital for the kind of mega-projects that get press attention nowadays? Renaissance Capital seems happy to stay close to the ‘120 million AMACs’ proponents.</p><p>A nice spectrum we have here then: from zero to 300 million and everything in-between.</p><p>Except it doesn’t help you very much in the numbers spin. So what if we drop the numbers game altogether and abandon this notion of some generic middle class rising like dough from the yeast of consumerism?</p><p>What if we unpacked the AMAC concept itself?</p><p>For a start, Africa’s middle-class is <em>exceptionally</em> <em>heterogeneous. </em>It is that fact rather than the sheer number of middle class consumers or even the pace of growth in these numbers that can have the strongest effect on the economic role and business significance of Africa’s middle class.</p><p>The African Development Bank (AfDB), for instance, has fixed the range of income for middle class status in Africa between $2 and $20. For someone who lives in Luanda, Angola, a can of coke will require 3 days’ wages if he earns close to the lower limit of this range. For someone who earns at the higher bound of this income range ($20) and lives in Lagos, a day’s wage may be sufficient to grab a burger at a western-style chain. This complicates things for the analyst relying on income assessment to decipher what are complex sociological issues regarding ‘aspiration’, and economic issues relating to ‘purchasing power’, and how these differ from country to country in Africa and make a simple enumeration of the Middle Class technically problematic.</p><p>But there is more to be said about the ‘income’ matter. Across Africa, incomes are rising fastest among those engaged in brokering trade in goods and services across fragmented markets, using slowly improving but still patchy infrastructure. They leverage the very inefficiencies others complain about and information asymmetries that ward off foreign investors to sustain high margins.</p><p>These brokers bridge an internationally efficient production system in Asia, with local, less efficient, markets. These are the same folks who secure mining concessions and rent them out to the Chinese, thus linking cheap capital and labour from overseas with weak bureaucratic capacity to exploit natural resources. In sheer numbers these operators far dwarf the professionals and white-collar workers who, in other regions of the world, make up the bulk of the Middle Class. This is a reality easily borne out by economic statistics. According to the AfDB, the informal sector constitutes 55% of sub-Saharan GDP. This is easily corroborated by in-country data that shows that in large countries like Ghana, Nigeria and Tanzania the figure is 60%. Even in historically over-regulated South Africa, the sector has doubled in size over the last decade or so, according to work by such experts as Friedrich Schneider. In South Africa, trade and social services account for 60% of total activity in the informal sector and certainly more in terms of monetary value. In the rest of the continent, informal trade can account for up to 75% of total employment in the <em>whole </em>economy, as shown in studies on informal trade in sub-Saharan Africa prepared for the Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative, a Southern Africa regional platform. Given the importance of trading in the formal sector as well, the overall effect can only be preponderant.</p><p>The thing though is that these traders are rarely well-educated. They share few of the cultural traits seen elsewhere in the West and Asia as pre-requisite to a middle-class life. Many young and educated Africans, on the other hand, share few of the economic traits usually associated with middle-class status elsewhere. Lacking a sound income and strong social networks, and bereft of the professional grooming and mentorship opportunities available to true middle-class types, they have become a monument to an educational system increasingly at odds with the social and economic realities of the new Africa.</p><p>This amazing contradiction in most African societies, of an expanding educated underclass and an ‘uneducated’ rising economic class, sums up most of the reasons why the African economy is struggling to acquire the characteristics one would expect of an economy bursting with middle-class vibes. With the remarkable exception of South Africa, where unemployment among University graduates hovers around an astonishingly low of 5%, graduate joblessness is a trans-African tragedy.</p><p>Take Uganda, for instance, where an African Development Indicators report by the World Bank in 2012 put the unemployment rate among recent graduates at 83%. Or Cameroon, where a 2012 Economic Outlook report by the AfDB indicated an underemployment rate (earning less than the national minimal wage) of between 71% and 79% depending on whether the graduate was in an urban or rural region, respectively.</p><p>Simply put, even were the number of middle-class people expanding as dramatically as some observers claim, there is no guarantee that market and consumer behaviour would look anything like what emerged in other societies when their middle-class population begun to approach ‘critical mass’. In particular, the lack of ‘attitudinal solidarity’ among a middle-class population of such diverse economic characteristics, and the highly asynchronous relationship between the cultural and economic sub-categories of the same middle class, may seriously interfere with anticipated transitions in the political climate, the quality of the bureaucracy, the society’s appreciation of technical nuance, and the effectiveness of certain modes of psychological marketing.</p><p>With respect to the last point in the preceding paragraph, one may cite the oft-repeated anecdote of Unilever’s famous marketing effort for its OMO detergent brand in West Africa. In South Africa, the product had been branded as a ‘brightener’. The emphasis had been on ‘bright and sharp colours’. The Unilever marketers discovered quickly that in West Africa, the target consumer base behaved in unexpected ways. Middle Class people there tended to ‘revert’ to traditional African fabrics as their incomes grew. Completely opposite to the way the Middle Class in Southern Africa usually behaved. West African detergent buyers were thus more concerned about preserving the, usually, duskier and brooding hues of the fabric, instead of ‘brightening and sharpening’ the fabric’s tone. This turned out to be the critical marketing factor.</p><p>For you as a prospective investor, if dear reader happens to fall in that category, it is obvious then that <em>qualitative factors</em> should matter more than <em>quantitative factoids</em> in shaping your strategy in this regard. Because even were you to find consumers interested in your products, you may struggle to serve them because your assumptions about how cultural attitudes evolve with income, and about customer service skills in the local market, based perhaps on a notion of sophisticated consumers equal sophisticated workers, may turn up to be completely flawed. Your assumptions regarding how quickly you may be able to ‘educate’ your consumers to embrace certain attitudes, expectations, or user skills (for example using your web-based tool rather than coming over to your brick and mortar joint) may be far off the mark than your margin of error could ever have predicted.</p><p>The qualitative character of the middle class in your targeted African country has implications for your hiring and general human resource strategy, public relations, government relations, corporate responsibility and citizenship, reliance on local financial instruments, operational effectiveness, and the overall sustainability of your market advantages and position. You can take comfort in the fact that the quality not just the quantity of the African middle-class looks set to grow, as reforms begin to take root.</p><p>That is why it makes more sense for you to look out for the <strong><em>sociological foundation </em></strong>underlying the macro-economic factoids that catch your eye, and to concentrate your energies on the unique, contextual, situation of the middle classes in your chosen country of engagement in Africa than to turn yourself into an amateur census-taker.</p><p><strong>Bright Simons is a Social Entrepreneur and Public Interest Researcher. He invented the mPedigree anti-fake drugs system (<a href=\"http://www.mpedigree.net/\">www.mPedigree.Net</a>), and is a Fellow at IMANI, a think tank in Ghana.</strong></p><p>[Disclaimer: A previous version of this article was published elsewhere.]</p>"
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"title" : "After Mandela",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right;padding-left:7px;padding-right:7px;padding-bottom:7px\">\n\t\t<a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\">Tweet</a>\n\t</div>\n\t<p>I returned home to South Africa a few days before Nelson Mandela was readmitted to hospital. This is the fourth and longest period he has been under observation by doctors since last December, and many here are convinced this may be his final visit. Mandela has not been active in South African politics for at least a decade, but he remains a potent symbol of the promise of the “rainbow nation.” The anxiety is apparent—especially in the media: What will happen when Mandela goes? Andrew Mlangeni, who served more than two decades with Mandela on Robben Island prison, told a Sunday newspaper that South Africans had to release Mandela spiritually and let him go. Most ordinary South Africans have resigned themselves to that fact and are saying their goodbyes, though some wish he’d stay with us a bit longer. School children and clerics turn up at the hospital to pray for him and leave messages. Though some in the press wanted to turn the lack of detailed updates by government spokespeople on Mandela’s condition into a “press freedom” issue and a scandal, local TV and radio coverage is mostly somber.</p>\n<p>Even as the vigil continues, South Africans debate Mandela’s legacy and the history he so powerfully embodies. For example, despite Mandela’s lifelong membership in the governing African National Congress, these days an opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (a largely white political party which governs Cape Town and the surrounding province and commands only 20 percent of the national vote) claims it—and not the ANC—is Mandela’s true heir. It has even released advertisements with Mandela’s image and have been pilloried for inventing history (though the campaign seemed to have galvanized their supporters). President Jacob Zuma, who is also the leader of the ANC, corrected them: “The way he is being portrayed by the DA is as if Madiba was born in 1994—there was no life before.”</p>\n<p>But one can see why the DA cannot help but overreach. Mandela is the most recognizable figure in twentieth-century South African, and perhaps world, history. In the popular imagination, both at home and abroad, he is as close as our world gets to a saint. Mandela personifies the narrative of the righteous struggle against legal apartheid, as well as the supposed miracle of racial reconciliation at the twentieth century’s end. This is a tremendous story, and a good deal of it is true. South Africa today is dramatically different than the one Mandela re-entered from prison in 1990. It has a black government, a growing black middle class, vibrant media, stable and vital democratic freedoms (with three sets of free elections and counting) and a growing economy.</p>\n<p>Mandela can take credit for convincing white South Africans of the virtues of liberal democracy, thus ensuring the economy’s stability in the wake of 1994, if at the cost of preserving the white population’s disproportionate wealth and influence. Subsequent presidents have continued in this vein. Despite an initially heavily armed white population (and the persistence of racist views among some whites), today race makes little political turbulence. To be sure, some whites gripe about discrimination and “reverse racism” and organize themselves in “civil society organizations” (like the Afrikaner-led organizations Afriforum and Solidarity, which, among other things, oppose renaming streets and affirmative action). But in general white South Africans have never been more prosperous, mobile and free.</p>\n<p>A recent report by the South African Institute of Race Relations—a frequent critic of the ANC government—concluded that whites are <a href=\"http://www.citypress.co.za/columnists/whither-the-whites/\">actually doing way better than expected</a> [1] since the end of apartheid. A separate study revealed that the majority of <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/15824024?story_id=15824024\">CEOs and managers are still white</a> [2], and <a href=\"http://www.africacheck.org/reports/do-400-000-whites-live-in-squatter-camps-in-south-africa-the-answer-is-no/\">Africa Check</a> [3], a South African version of factcheck.org, corrected inflated statistics about white poverty (touted by Afrikaner interest groups): “The claim that 400,000 whites are living in squatter camps is grossly inaccurate. If that were the case, it would mean that roughly 10% of South Africa’s 4.59-million whites were living in abject poverty. Census figures suggest that only a tiny fraction of the white population—as little as 7,754 households—are affected.” So white South Africans are doing very well in post-Mandela South Africa, and many are therefore anxious about what will happen to them when Madiba passes.</p>\n<p>This anxiety is due in part to the realization that transformation has been slow to come to the vast majority of South Africans. Mandela excelled at the rhetoric of the rainbow and reconciliation that still pervades South African public discourse, but he presided over a disastrous economic policy for the country’s poor, black majority. The result is that South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world today by most measures. Inequality is still defined by race, despite the fact that inequality amongst blacks has also expanded. Since 1994, the number of South Africans living on less than a dollar a day has doubled, but so has the number of South African millionaires .</p>\n<p>Successive South African governments (starting with Mandela) have been reluctant to address South Africa’s fundamental historical inequalities, whether by implementing any meaningful land reform or tampering with racial residential patterns. Though the government should be credited for massive public housing construction, most new housing and suburbs are still built on land far away from city centers or constructed next to existing racially segregated townships. Almost 280,000 families countrywide lack basic sanitation. In Cape Town, where the opposition Democratic Alliance governs, some of the poor have desperately resorted to dumping feces at the doorsteps of the provincial parliament or on the bodies of public representatives.</p>\n<p>The ANC’s market-friendly policies began under Mandela, even though many associate such policies with Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki. It was Mandela who in mid-1996 presented the government’s neoliberal GEAR policy (Growth, Employment And Redistribution) as “non-negotiable.” Although there continues to be conflict over economic policy within the ANC, as well as with its alliance partners in the trade unions and the Communist Party, and there are traces of a “development state” (a national healthcare plan, social housing, massive AIDS roll-out since 2009 and welfare grants), government still prioritizes the interests of business.</p>\n<p>The poor know this, and though the majority of South Africans revere Mandela and the ANC for defeating apartheid, many are realizing that true citizenship means taking on the ANC. For many, the ANC has come to represent a callous government whose police evict them from already cramped and substandard housing, shut off their water, lock them up or murder them when they protest. In the most extreme case, in August last year, police shot thirty-four striking miners in the Northwest province; people here just say “Marikana” when they talk about the killings. One year earlier, in broad daylight, police murdered an activist, Andries Tatane, who had led protests over bad services in his small town in the Free State province.</p>\n<p>Dissatisfaction is not new. In the early 2000s, Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeki was the focus of frequent protests over service delivery, unemployment, poverty and inequality. ANC members and others worked successfully to unseat Mbeki, who was praised by business interests for his management of the economy. Instead they got Jacob Zuma, who although more personable than Mbeki, is hobbled by a messy private life and charges of corruption. Storms swirl around Zuma, but on a macroeconomic level, little changed under him too. For a while, Julius Malema, a bombastic and brash ANC youth leader, held center stage and threatened to bring economic inequality to the center of attention. Yet he fell out with Zuma and his support fizzled as stories emerged detailing his own problems with corruption and excess.</p>\n<p>Still, impatience with Zuma’s government is growing. Not all protests take an organized form or are sustained over time, but they are always there—one can’t miss the din of protest about housing and evictions, over water, electricity and education. These movements frequently invoke Mandela as a symbol, even as they chide his government’s legacy. He is both an obstacle and an inspiration. Many participants are very young—barely alive when Mandela came out of prison or when he was elected president. Take Abahlali baseMjondolo, a slumdwellers’ movement outside Durban that protested evictions at the hands of the ANC-led city council, as profiled in a new film <em>Dear Mandela.</em> In one scene, a teenage leader, Mazwi Nzimande, tries to fire up the crowd. Nzimande denounces people who discriminate against shack dwellers and criticizes political parties. When, however, he shouts: “Down with the ANC party, down!” he is greeted with silence. Mandela’s party still has a powerful hold over most black South Africans. For many, in spite of its failings, it is still seen as the only organization that will be able to fundamentally restructure South Africa’s political economy. In the film, Nzimande sits down, momentarily defeated.</p>\n<p>Nzimande’s colleague, Mnikelo Ndabankulu (in his early 20s), takes a different approach. Speaking after a fire that destroyed 200 shacks in his neighborhood, he responds to criticism by ANC and government supporters: “They say, ‘Why are these people marching because these times [of oppression] have gone. We are in a democracy. What are they marching for?’ [However] the real motive behind our struggle is this thing [pointing to conditions in his squatter community]. It’s not a matter of disrespecting the authorities. It’s being serious about life. This is not life.”</p>\n<p>Then, referring to Mandela’s steadfastness when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1964, Ndabankulu says: “You don’t need to be old to be wise. That is why we think we need to show our character while we are still young so that when your life ends, it must not be like a small obituary that said, ‘You were born, you ate, you go to school, you died.’ When you are dying you must die with credibility. People must talk about you saying good things, saying you were a man among men, not just an ordinary man.”</p>\n<p>Sunday, June 16, was National Youth Day, commemorating the day in 1976, when black students in Soweto rose up to resist forced instruction in Afrikaans, but also to protest conditions in their schools (at the time government spent R644 a year on a white child’s education, but only R42 on a black child). The movement spread countrywide and combatted the repressive political environment of the time (most were inspired by the Black Consciousness movement whose leader, Steve Biko, would be murdered by police the next year). Much has changed since then. Public education is now free in principle, government spending does not discriminate by race and no one is forced to learn Afrikaans. However, little has been done to improve black schools that are characterized by overcrowding, no electricity or water supply and dilapidated infrastructure.</p>\n<p>The next day (a public holiday), I joined a march by a few thousand school children to Parliament. Equal Education, a NGO that has taken the minister of education to court over the conditions of the schools that most black South Africans attend, organized the march. (Full disclosure: I have been sending groups of New School students to intern at Equal Education every summer since 2012.) At a rally in front of parliament, one of the Equal Education leaders reminded protesters that they were meeting on a solemn occasion “as Mandela, the father of our nation lay dying and as we commemorate the Soweto Uprising led by students.”</p>\n<p>It was inevitable that he would then make a direct connection between the march and Mandela, who in the wake of Soweto 1976 wrote from prison: “That verdict is loud and clear: apartheid has failed. Our people remain unequivocal in its rejection…. They are a generation whose whole education has been under the diabolical design of the racists to poison the minds and brainwash our children into docile subjects of apartheid rule. But after more than twenty years of Bantu Education the circle is closed and nothing demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of apartheid as the revolt of our youth.”</p>\n<p>I wondered what Mandela would make of these protesters for whom freedom has meant unequal education and who now see the government he was part of willing into being, as an obstacle to them enjoying their full rights in the new South Africa. Perhaps he would recognize himself in them.</p>\n<p>* An edited version of this post first appeared on the website of the American publication, <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">The Nation</a>, earlier this week.</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"content" : "<p>The genesis of the idea was simple and uncomplicated. I was looking for a recipe online and was generally disappointed with what I found. Many links were unnecessarily verbose, cluttered in structure or layout and displayed alarmingly poor imagery. At the end of the day, I could not remember what I was searching for and instead found myself watching videos of animated dinosaurs. It was frustrating. So I decided there and then that instead of getting annoyed about it, I would see what I could do. Thus in 2012, I started a project called <a href=\"http://www.africanfoodmap.com\">My African Food Map</a>.</p>\n<p>Like I mentioned earlier, this would be simple. I would make a website which would become a trusted reference point for popular African recipes. I thought, “The best way, of course, is to go directly to the source.” I would visit as many African countries as possible and find out what the four most popular dishes were. Then, I would take pictures of the finished meals and their ingredients, and post the <a href=\"http://www.africanfoodmap.com\">recipes</a> online.</p>\n<p>All of it would be free to the reading public and as easily accessible as possible. I also thought, “Well, I’d definitely be interested in knowing how to prepare the dishes and in seeing how each stage of the cooking process looks. So, how about including a <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXOmHo8lrjg\">video</a> for each featured recipe?” This is the process through which “My African Food Map” was conceived.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/B8s8rl62Mq0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>I could also break down the thought process of how I came to the idea of doing four dishes per country, with at least two months for featuring the details around the dishes; i.e. the country and the ingredients in their uncooked form, but I will not do that. We have only just been introduced and I do not want to geek out so early in our relationship.</p>\n<p>All of these thoughts took place in the space of about 30 minutes. And so, as usual, I had an idea but no money and no realistic possibility of making it happen. It was the middle of spring of 2012. With these constraints, the best solution was to start off in a country where my accommodation would not be a problem and where I would have a family to fall back on in case of any emergency. My father is from Ghana and my mother is from South Africa, so those were the two countries I could start. I chose Ghana – <a href=\"http://www.royalafricansociety.org/blog/culture-interview-tuleka-prah-director-my-african-foodmap\">another thought process referred to in an interview I did earlier this year</a>.</p>\n<p>In October of 2012, I put “My African Food Map” in the public domain for the first time. The period from then until the first video upload in January 2013 was a tough and exhausting period for me. I was using a camera I got a week before I left Europe for Africa, I paid for things using an overdraft I technically should not have had, and had to deal with the results of power cuts, internet problems and blown adapters from electrical surges. To top it all off, the individuals I wanted to interview to bring these dishes to life – the folks that would make the “my” part of My African Food Map – had very different ideas about keeping appointments, etc. Thinking about it now, I am amazed at the whole episode: Figuring out the camera, editing with a damaged computer – in the heat and with power cuts, and sticking to my film-edit-upload schedule; everything about this project has been a small miracle.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/pVSS1Vb7ARA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Now it is the beginning of summer 2013 and I am in awe of the fact that this idea now exists in “real life,” as well as at the growing and overwhelmingly positive support it has generated. Although I am very passionate about My African Food Map, the support I am receiving is the main reason I am motivated to continue. In many ways, I am still where I was last year this time: looking for funding or sponsorship and hatching plans to travel to the next country, with no idea of how this might happen. Determination and stubbornness obviously have a large majority in the parliament of my mind and so I know I will be in East Africa soon, learning and completing the next set of feature recipes.</p>\n<p>I love food. I love African food, which I suppose you do too. So it is a great pleasure and honor for me to be able to share this project with you, and I only hope I can continue to stimulate excitement and curiosity for African food through more featured recipes, in the foreseeable future.</p>\n<p>The sun is shining and my favourite park beckons, so I will end at this point. My next post here will be from Kenya.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9135449642/\" title=\"cows on the commons at Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3779/9135449642_8e832a809c.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"cows on the commons at Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>Under lowering skies, <a href=\"http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173564\">the lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea</a> in the village commons at Brill, Buckinghamshire. We were there to attend a big garden party with extended family, friends and assorted villagers, preparations for which gave us just enough time to wander around this extremely picturesque English village. <span></span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133240413/\" title=\"brick walls at Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7327/9133240413_38deb0f717_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"brick walls at Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>“Brill” is a conflation of two different words for “hill” in the ancient dialects of two native tribes, <em>breg</em> (Brythonic Celt) and <em>hyll</em> (Anglo Saxon). A local author named J.R.R. Tolkien is said to have based his fictional village of Bree on Brill. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133169103/\" title=\"view from Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2878/9133169103_7fda0b9161_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"view from Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>Brill is aply named. The view takes in all or part of three counties in the heart of England, a rolling countryside reminiscent of southeastern Pennsylvania, only with a lot less corn (maize) and a lot more sheep. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133221733/\" title=\"dovecote and garden at Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7316/9133221733_6aff24de87_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"dovecote and garden at Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>This was my first visit to rural England, and several things stood out for me. One was the English love of gardens, here demonstrated by a small corner of Rachel’s father’s garden bordering a 17th-century brick wall and dovecote. I’ve been impressed by this in London, too, but in Brill, it was easier to observe how gardened spaces transition into wild and agricultural spaces. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133202701/\" title=\"hart's-tongue fern by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7379/9133202701_80de22fef0.jpg\" width=\"444\" height=\"500\" alt=\"hart's-tongue fern\"></a></p>\n<p>Wild volunteers such as this hart’s-tongue fern seemed to be tolerated in many places. This wall, by the way, bordered a designated public footpath — something else that really impressed me. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9135414128/\" title=\"kissing gate by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3833/9135414128_46da7d8dee.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"kissing gate\"></a></p>\n<p>Where footpaths crossed pastures, they were outfitted with so-called kissing gates. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9135471824/\" title=\"baptising the new wellies by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7426/9135471824_6da1e44a1b_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"baptising the new wellies\"></a></p>\n<p>The Common turned out to be a good place to botanize — and also to baptize a new pair of wellies, which I bought in a farm-supply store in a neighboring village. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133181907/\" title=\"ragged robin by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7388/9133181907_d5a03f3754_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"ragged robin\"></a></p>\n<p>Brill is famous for its springs. This one harbored a small colony of <a href=\"http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/ragged-robin\">ragged robin</a>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133186285/\" title=\"orange-butt bee on orange hawkweed by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3714/9133186285_f358d716bd_z.jpg\" width=\"496\" height=\"640\" alt=\"orange-butt bee on orange hawkweed\"></a></p>\n<p>Nearer to the road, we watched a bumblebee with an orange abdomen visiting a stand of orange hawkweed,</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133177769/\" title=\"red campion by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2816/9133177769_65151bb84f_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"red campion\"></a></p>\n<p>and red campion thrust its blowsy blooms above the grass. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133154389/\" title=\"woodpigeon on chimney pots by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3708/9133154389_a817e955dc_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"woodpigeon on chimney pots\"></a></p>\n<p>The centuries of intensive land use seem to have selected for very human-tolerant species. We saw and heard numerous blackbirds — my favorite singers here so far, thrushes and woodpigeons (above). </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9135456774/\" title=\"common ash tree by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2848/9135456774_d1cfb0a408_z.jpg\" width=\"487\" height=\"640\" alt=\"common ash tree\"></a></p>\n<p>This stately ash is part of a fenced and pastured woodlot.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9135418592/\" title=\"jackdaws by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2820/9135418592_7e4d7beefa.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"jackdaws\"></a></p>\n<p>A pair of jackdaws posed beside a pair of chimneys. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133158059/\" title=\"windmill at Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7282/9133158059_ab993c390f_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"windmill at Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>The Brill windmill is “one of the earliest and best preserved examples of a post mill (the earliest type of European windmill) in the UK,” as the Wikipedia <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brill#Brill_windmill\">puts it</a>. It’s been preserved as a kind of town mascot. Apparently, a near-by landowner is exploring the possibility of installing a modern industrial wind turbine, which would rather dominate and diminish the local landscape, </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9133172557/\" title=\"red kite over Brill by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5521/9133172557_c04455bf5f_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"red kite over Brill\"></a></p>\n<p>and <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jan/25/energy.greenpolitics\">perhaps spell trouble for the red kites</a>, which swooped and hovered low over the rooftops of the town all afternoon. </p>"
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"content" : "<p><b><b>A mysterious <b>North Korean </b>train explosion, <b>dead Syrian missile scientists,</b> fake Canadian passports, a </b>poisoned Hamas terrorist, and t<b>he Israeli assassin: One</b><b> curious tale in the bloody global spy war behind the Middle East conflict</b></b></p>\n<p><b><i>An Israeli agent on a stolen Canadian passport spotted in Pyongyang raises eyebrows after Syrian weapons scientists are killed in a mysterious North Korean train explosion. </i></b></p>\n<p><b><i>At the time, he was fleeing New Zealand charged with trying to steal the identity of a cerebral palsy victim. He later resurfaced with a fake beard on a French passport in Dubai in a hotel where a Hamas leader is assassinated.</i></b></p>\n<p><b><i>Governments in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America all want to talk with the American born Zev Barkin. </i></b></p>\n<p><b><i>Canada has been looking for him for a decade…or were they?</i></b></p>\n<p><strong>See full story and related stories on North Korean-Syrian clandestine activities at NKNews.org</strong></p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/an-israel-spy-in-north-korea.jpg\"><img alt=\"Explosion aftermath in Ryongchon, North Korea that killed a dozen Syrian missile scientists. Israeli Mossad agent Zev Barkan, inset, who was reportedly in Pyongyang at the time\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/an-israel-spy-in-north-korea.jpg?w=490&h=255\" width=\"490\" height=\"255\"></a><p>Explosion aftermath in Ryongchon, North Korea that killed a dozen Syrian missile scientists. Israeli Mossad agent Zev Barkan, inset, who was reportedly in Pyongyang at the time</p></div>\n<p><b><i>BY NATE THAYER </i></b></p>\n<p><b><i>JUNE 20, 2013</i></b></p>\n<p><strong> NKNews.org</strong></p>\n<p><strong>See full story and related stories on North Korean-Syrian clandestine activities at NKNews.org</strong></p>\n<div> <b>WASHINGTON D.C.—</b>In the weeks after the mysterious Ryongchon train explosion that killed a dozen Syrian weapons scientists in North Korea on April 22, 2004, the Canadian Office of Foreign Affairs announced they were investigating reports that an Israeli Mossad spy travelling on a stolen Canadian passport was in North Korea at the time of the blast.</div>\n<p>Zev William Barkan was last seen in late April in Pyongyang, North Korea, after travelling there from Beijing using a Canadian passport issued under the name Kevin William Hunter, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail and other media reports. The Canadian passport of Kevin William Hunter was said to have been reported stolen in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on April 11, 2004—11 days before the massive blast, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, at Ryongchon.</p>\n<p><b><i>“Israel Mossad agent in North Korea?</i></b><b><i>”</i></b> read the headline in the August 4 Jerusalem Post. <b><i>“New Zealand passport scam takes Canadian twist.</i></b><b><i>”€ </i></b></p>\n<p>The Canadian Press reported that “Federal officials are investigating whether a suspected Israeli spy is travelling in Asia on a stolen Canadian passport.”€<i> </i></p>\n<p>It said “agencies are checking allegations that Zev William Barkan – embroiled in a New Zealand espionage caper – is using a Canadian passport issued under the name Kevin William Hunter.”€ </p>\n<p>“That part of the story’s being checked,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron. “All of that being put together, we should have a clearer picture.”€ </p>\n<p>He told Canadian CTV television that “We are checking the information. We know some of the answers but not all of them and we are determined to get to the bottom of this.”</p>\n<p>Governments on five continents have been seeking answers on the clandestine shenanigans of American born Mossad agent Zev Barkan for more than a decade.</p>\n<p><b>TINKER, SAILOR, TOLD’YA HE’S A SPY</b></p>\n<p>Barkan was at the time wanted by police in New Zealand in an espionage scandal that had erupted in the weeks before the North Korean train explosion.</p>\n<p>The rare public spy scandal captured New Zealand headlines on April 17, 2004 when two Israeli Mossad agents were charged with attempting to illegally obtain New Zealand passports for the use of the Mossad operative Zev Barkan. When two other Mossad operatives were arrested, Barkan, who was in New Zealand between March 3 and 20th, vanished.</p>\n<p>As part of the elaborate forged passport ring, Barkan attempted to assume the identity of a severely disabled New Zealand man with cerebral palsy. He obtained the man’s birth certificate and applied for a passport under the New Zealander’s name and submitting Barkan’s real photograph, but his American accent raised the suspicions of a New Zealand official which sparked authorities to investigate.</p>\n<div style=\"width:360px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/two-mossad-spies-jailed-in-new-zeal2.jpg\"><img alt=\"The two Israeli Mossad spies who were arrested and jailed in New Zealand for attempted to obtain a fraudulent passport for Barkan in 2004 appear in an Auckland court. Barkan vanished\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/two-mossad-spies-jailed-in-new-zeal2.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>The two Israeli Mossad spies who were arrested and jailed in New Zealand for attempted to obtain a fraudulent passport for Barkan in 2004 appear in an Auckland court. Barkan vanished</p></div>\n<p>New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff told New Zealand radio that Barkan was a former Israel Defense Force diver and Israeli agent assigned to Israeli embassies in Vienna and Brussels between 1993 and 2001.</p>\n<p>New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has said there was “no doubt whatsoever” that the men were spies.</p>\n<p>Secret cables from the American embassy in New Zealand confirmed that U.S. officials knew the arrested men were Mossad agents. “We have very strong grounds for believing these are Israeli intelligence agents,” the cable, released in 2009 by WikiLeaks, said. “While Prime Minister Helen Clark would not confirm which service employed the men, she noted that if one were to lay espionage charges then one would have to be prepared to offer the kind of evidence in court which our intelligence agencies do not like coming forward to display.”€ </p>\n<div style=\"width:124px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/zev_barkan.jpg\"><img alt=\"Zev William Barkan\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/zev_barkan.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Zev William Barkan</p></div>\n<p>One New Zealand news organization reported that “Barkan is being investigated by Macau and Chinese Immigration for his movements in April/May. The investigation includes his alleged use of the U.S. passport in the name of Zev Barkan and a second Canadian passport in the name of Kevin Hunter – which was stolen in Guangzhou China on April 11th.”€ </p>\n<p><b> </b><b>From New Zealand To Pyongyang</b></p>\n<p>The court arraignments on April 16 revealed the arrest of the two Israeli’s on charges of attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport, but Zev William Barkan had “fled the country and authorities concede they would not know where to find him.” </p>\n<p>But soon reports emerged which placed Barkan, now travelling on a stolen Canadian passport, in Pyongyang in late April, according to the Australian Sydney Morning Herald and other media.</p>\n<p>And in the ensuing weeks, months, and years, the unlikely saga only became more curious .</p>\n<p>New Zealand, Canadian, Israeli and Australian media reported that Mossad agent Zev William Barkan was reported seen in Pyongyang working as a security adviser for the North Korean government€ where he was negotiating a contract to build a security wall along the border with China with Israeli-manufactured motion detectors and night vision equipment.</p>\n<p>Unconfirmed accounts cited an “Asian-based NGO closely linked to New Zealand intelligence networks” at a conference in Japan on North Korean refugees saying Barkan and other Israeli agents had entered North Korea under the guise of security consultants in April.</p>\n<p>New Zealand news site scoop.com quoted “a senior NGO chief executive with Global-Protect All Children” as saying “Barkan is there negotiating details of an extensive contract for design and technical equipment to support a security wall project, including- but by no means limited to -Israeli produced motion sensors and night vision equipment.” </p>\n<p>“Barkan flew from Beijing to Pyongyang at the end of April. He was allegedly travelling on a Canadian passport issued in the name of Kevin Hunter, which had been reported stolen at the Canadian Consulate in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid-April.”€ </p>\n<p>The account said Israeli experts were conducting a “feasibility study on a security fence along the 1500 KM North Korea China border.” </p>\n<p>New Zealand believed Barkan “was trying to secure a ‘clean’ passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport, “ according to the Sydney Morning Herald.</p>\n<div style=\"width:154px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-3.jpg\"><img alt=\"Barkan was reported to have stolen the Canadian passport of Kevin William Hunter in Guangzhao, China and traveled to North Korea in April 2004\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-3.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Barkan was reported to have stolen the Canadian passport of Kevin William Hunter in Guangzhao, China and traveled to North Korea in April 2004</p></div>\n<p><b>ISRAELI-CANADIANS</b></p>\n<p>Canada was already sensitive to Israel’s spy services carrying out black espionage operations under the cover of fraudulent Canadian passports. The Canadian investigation of Barkan followed another investigation Canada carried out only the previous week to determine why one of the two Israeli’s convicted in the passport scandal had used a Canadian passport, rather than an Israeli one, to enter New Zealand in 1999.</p>\n<p>During his 2004 visit to New Zealand, he entered the country using his Israeli passport. Canadian authorities concluded that the arrested Mossad agent was a “legitimate citizen,” a dual Canadian-Israeli national, and that the Canadian passport he held was “genuine.”</p>\n<p>But seven years earlier, in 1997, Israel-Canadian relations were severely strained after two Mossad agents carrying Canadian passports were caught trying to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. Mashal was injected in the ear with a poisonous toxin. Jordan immediately seized two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists and surrounded another six who had fled to the Israeli embassy.</p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/khaled-meshaal-hamas.jpg\"><img alt=\"Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal survived a Mossad assassination attempt when two agents posing as Canadian tourists squirted poison in his ear on an Amman Jordan street in 1997\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/khaled-meshaal-hamas.jpg?w=490&h=275\" width=\"490\" height=\"275\"></a><p>Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal survived a Mossad assassination attempt when two agents posing as Canadian tourists squirted poison in his ear on an Amman Jordan street in 1997</p></div>\n<p>Under the threat of execution and an embarrassing public spectacle after being caught red handed, an Israeli doctor was dispatched by airplane to Amman with an antidote for the poison which was administered to the murder target Khaled Mashal, who survived. The deal forced Israel to release from prison Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin.</p>\n<p>After that diplomatic embarrassment, Israel promised Canada in 1997 that it would cease using Canadian passports.</p>\n<p>After the Canadian Foreign Ministry announced they were investigating reports that Barkan was travelling on a Canadian passport in North Korea, New Zealand’s foreign minister, Phil Goff, said: “I have read with interest the Canadians are following up allegations he may have traveled at some point on a stolen Canadian passport. When he came to New Zealand my understanding was he was travelling on a U.S. passport. Clearly there would be co-operation between police forces in different countries to try to get to the bottom of these things.”€ </p>\n<div style=\"width:460px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/train-afp-pic.jpg\"><img alt=\"A 72 meter crater at explosion site in North Korea that registered 3.6 on the Richter scale in April 2004. Remnants of a mobile phone wrapped in duct tape were found nearby by investigators\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/train-afp-pic.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>A 72 meter crater at explosion site in North Korea that registered 3.6 on the Richter scale in April 2004. Remnants of a mobile phone wrapped in duct tape were found nearby by investigators</p></div>\n<p>“The passports that Mossad agents tried to obtain illegally might have been reserved for an assassination operation in a third country, which would have caused irreparable damage to New Zealand,” Foreign Minister Phil Goff was also quoted speculating to the Israeli newspaper Haâaretz.</p>\n<p>In July 2004, a New Zealand media outlet reported a detailed, but unconfirmed account of how the fugitive Mossad agent, Barkan had fled New Zealand to North Korea. In an article headlined “NGOs Claim Wanted Israeli Agent Barkan In North Korea”, the report said “Zev Barkan, the suspected Israeli Mossad agent on the run from New Zealand Police, has been sighted in North Korea, according to an Asian-based NGO closely linked to New Zealand intelligence networks.”€ </p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ryongchon-train2.jpg\"><img alt=\"The train car in North Korea where 12 Syrian missile scientists were killed in bomb blast transporting weapons destined for Syria\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ryongchon-train2.jpg?w=490&h=367\" width=\"490\" height=\"367\"></a><p>The train car in North Korea where 12 Syrian missile scientists were killed in bomb blast transporting weapons destined for Syria</p></div>\n<p>The account went on to allege, “Zev William Barkan turned up in Pyongyang as an Israeli security adviser in April, within weeks of fleeing from New Zealand prior to a suspected Israeli spy ring being sprung for attempting to illegally acquire a New Zealand passport.”€ </p>\n<p>The reports of the pilfered Canadian passport in Guangzhou, the Chinese city near the North Korean border, was only 11 days before the blast at the Ryongchon train station.</p>\n<p>On April 22, 2004, a massive explosion tore through the train station in Ryongchon, North Korea, nine hours after North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il passed through returning from a trip to China. Wide speculation that the blast was a botched assassination attempt has lingered for years.</p>\n<p><b>BOOMTOWN</b></p>\n<p>A number of sources say that North Korean investigators had concluded the explosion was an attempt on the leader’s life, but more logical evidence points to sabotage directed at the cargo of sophisticated missile components destined for Israel’s enemies in Syria.</p>\n<p>The explosion destroyed 40 percent of the town and had the fingerprints of an Israeli intelligence operation. Within days, North Korean secret police from the Ministry of People’s Security, found that a rigged cell phone triggered the blast.</p>\n<p>The epicenter of the explosion was in railroad cars where a dozen Syrian missile technicians working for the Syrian Center for Scientific Research were accompanying missile and other components toward to port of Nampo to be shipped to Damascus. All the Syrian scientists were killed. The SSRC is the secret government agency in charge of Syria’s nuclear, missile and chemical weapons development program.</p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ryongchon_hdrc-echo_dscn01042.jpg\"><img alt=\"Scenes of the devastation April 2004, Ryongchon North Korea\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ryongchon_hdrc-echo_dscn01042.jpg?w=490&h=367\" width=\"490\" height=\"367\"></a><p>Scenes of the devastation April 2004, Ryongchon North Korea</p></div>\n<p>On May 24, 2004, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo reported that a North Korean official visiting China said the North Korean National Security Agency had “concluded that rebellious forces had plotted the explosions.”€ The paper quoted North Korean sources saying security agencies had determined that a cell phone had been used to detonate the explosion and reported to the North Korean leader that “the use of cell phones should be banned for the sake of the leader’s safety.”</p>\n<p>Indeed, five days earlier, on May 19th, North Korea abruptly halted the entire nationwide mobile phone service and confiscated all the 10,000 cell phones in the country. Mobile phone service was not resumed for another five years.</p>\n<p>Reports emerged in the following days that North Korean investigators had found a damaged cell phone wrapped in duct tape near the site of the blast. Speculation among intelligence agencies and North Korean investigators was that Kim Jong-il, whose personal train had passed through the station nine hours earlier returning form a visit to China, was the target. Still widely unknown were the deaths of the Syrian weapons scientists and the destruction of their illicit cargo in the blast.</p>\n<div style=\"width:250px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-4.jpg\"><img alt=\"Israeli citizens Eli Cara (left) and Uriel Zoshe Kelman were sentenced to six months' jail for attempting to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. Photo New Zealand Herald\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-4.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Israeli citizens Eli Cara (left) and Uriel Zoshe Kelman were sentenced to six months’ jail for attempting to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. Photo New Zealand Herald</p></div>\n<p>In July, the two Israeli Mossad men in jail in Auckland were convicted in a New Zealand court of the Israeli intelligence passport acquiring scam and sentenced to six months imprisonment by the Auckland High Court. They were ordered to pay NZ $100,000 to a cerebral palsy charity.</p>\n<p>New Zealand High Court Judge Justice Judith Potter said: “It’s difficult to see why anyone would want a false New Zealand passport unless it was intended to be used in a way ancillary to some other offending (law).” She said: “That offending is likely to be serious or perhaps very serious.” </p>\n<p>The New Zealand judge may have been prescient.</p>\n<p>In 2005, the year after the New Zealand passport scandal and the train explosion in North Korea, Barkan was back in the news, accused of trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Southeast Asia and was said to operate a security business in Thailand. “He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports,” an aid worker told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports.”</p>\n<p>After disappearing from New Zealand, unsubstantiated media reports in Australia and New Zealand placed Barkan in Cambodia, accused of running a studio making snuff and porn movies in a town on the Mekong River North of the capital, Phnom Penh, where foreign students and tourists were lured by promises of movie stardom.</p>\n<div style=\"width:269px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-2.jpg\"><img alt=\"Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in a Dubai luxury hotel room in January 2010 by Mossad operatives using Australian, British, Irish, French and Dutch passports\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/download-2.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in a Dubai luxury hotel room in January 2010 by Mossad operatives using Australian, British, Irish, French and Dutch passports</p></div>\n<p>In January 2010, Zev Barkan was again fingered by authorities–this time the government of Dubai—when a team of 32 Mossad agents carried out the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room. Zev Barkan, using a forged French Passport under the name Eric Rissaneux, was caught on video wearing a fake beard, dressed in sports clothes and carrying a tennis racket, following the Hamas leader up the elevator and down the hallway to his room. Barkan then rented a room across the hall.</p>\n<p>Dubai police chief publicly named the man using a French passport under the name Eric Rissaneux and other Mossad agents from the Kidon unit of the spy agency, responsible for assassinations and other special operations, as the culprits. There photographs were published and Interpol issued warrants for their arrest for murder.</p>\n<div style=\"width:376px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/138750-eric-rassineux1.jpg\"><img alt=\"Israeli American Zev Barkan in disguise on his forged French passport using the name Eric Rassineux\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/138750-eric-rassineux1.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Israeli American Zev Barkan in disguise on his forged French passport using the name Eric Rassineux</p></div>\n<p>At the time, Zev Barkan still had an outstanding arrest warrant in New Zealand for the passport scandal six years earlier.</p>\n<p>The Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in a Dubai luxury hotel room in January 2010 by Mossad operatives using Australian, British, Irish, French and Dutch passports, many of them apparently surreptitiously copied from unsuspecting travelling tourists who now had warrants for their arrests for murder.</p>\n<p>The killers were all caught on hotel and other video cameras, some dressed in wigs, observed frequently changing clothes, some carrying tennis rackets as they stalked the guerrilla leader from the lobby to the elevators to the hallway outside his room. Hotel surveillance camera’s observed the agents using forged electronic room keys to enter the Hamas leader’s room shortly before he returned. He was found suffocated the next day, a paralyzing drug had been injected into his thigh.</p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/alg-surveillance-hamas-jpg.jpg\"><img alt=\"Hamas leader exiting hotel elevator in Dubai. Behind him is Mossad assassin Eric Rassineux\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/alg-surveillance-hamas-jpg.jpg?w=490&h=264\" width=\"490\" height=\"264\"></a><p>Hamas leader exiting hotel elevator in Dubai. Behind him is Mossad assassin Eric Rassineux</p></div>\n<p>But the Israeli team was long gone, all 32 having departed Dubai airport for different cities in Europe within an hour of the assassination the previous evening.</p>\n<p>In August 2010, Dubai police chief Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamimut announced that an unnamed “non-European country” had told Dubai in July they had arrested a Mossad suspect in June for the January assassination, but Lt-Gen Tamimut complained the Country had since refused to cooperate or provide details.</p>\n<p>But then in October, Lt-Gen Tamimut, unhappy with the delay, named Canada as the “non-European country.”</p>\n<p>“A senior Canadian security official here told me in July that they have made an arrest of one of the suspects,” Lt-Gen Tamimut told The Globe and Mail.</p>\n<div style=\"width:124px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/zev_barkan.jpg\"><img alt=\"Zev William Barkan in the photo he gave New Zealand authorities to obtain fraudulent passport in 2004\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/zev_barkan.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Zev William Barkan in the photo he gave New Zealand authorities to obtain fraudulent passport in 2004</p></div>\n<div style=\"width:154px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/getpicture-54031393.jpg\"><img alt=\"The photo used by Barkan for his fraudulent French passport used on 2010 mission to assassinate Hamas leader in Dubai\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/getpicture-54031393.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>The photo used by Barkan for his fraudulent French passport used on 2010 mission to assassinate Hamas leader in Dubai</p></div>\n<div style=\"width:410px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/superimposed1.jpg\"><img alt=\"Superimposed photo of Eric Rassineux from Dubai police over photo of Barkan from New Zealand authorities. His facial features are identical\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/superimposed1.jpg?w=490\"></a><p>Superimposed photo of Eric Rassineux from Dubai police over photo of Barkan from New Zealand authorities. His facial features are identical</p></div>\n<p>“We want clarity on this issue. We want the Canadian authorities to tell us exactly what the details are — the thing that is discomfiting is the lack of transparency on this,” he told Reuters. “The person informed me then that this information was not to be released in the media and was only for the police. Since then we have not heard any more information and I don’t understand the secrecy.”</p>\n<p>Shortly thereafter, the Al Ittihad Arabic daily reported the suspect was one of the two people shown on the hotel’s surveillance cameras wearing tennis outfits and carrying rackets as they followed the Hamas leader to his room up the elevator in the Bustan Rotana Hotel.</p>\n<p>Later that month in October that year Israeli TV reported that the Mossad agent under arrest in Canada was the assassin using the alias Eric Rassineux.</p>\n<p>The Israeli Mossad agent Zev Barkin, who fled New Zealand for attempting to obtain a fraudulent passport and was then reported to be in Pyongyang when the mysterious explosion killed Syrian scientists attempting to return home with a cargo of sophisticated weaponry, has since been identified as the man who used the alias Eric Rassineux to murder the Hamas leader in Dubai.</p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/israel-tennis-tweet.jpg\"><img alt=\"Message tweeted by Israeli embassy in London the day Israeli ambassador was summoned to explain why 6 U.K. citizens had their passports used in the Dubai assassination. Barkan was dressed in a sports outfit carrying a tennis racket during the mission\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/israel-tennis-tweet.jpg?w=490&h=257\" width=\"490\" height=\"257\"></a><p>Message tweeted by Israeli embassy in London the day Israeli ambassador was summoned to explain why 6 U.K. citizens had their passports used in the Dubai assassination. Barkan was dressed in a sports outfit carrying a tennis racket during the mission</p></div>\n<p>But Canada soon refuted the allegations they had anyone in custody related to the Dubai murder, calling the assertion “baseless.”</p>\n<p>Lt.-Gen. Tamimut also told The Globe that one of the suspects had entered the UAE on a fake Canadian passport.</p>\n<p>“We have nothing to say at this point,” said Sergeant Greg Cox, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.</p>\n<p>“Tamimut said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t,” Canadian embassy officials in Dubai told the Globe and Mail.</p>\n<p>During the height of the dispute between Canada and Dubai in October, the UAE refused Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay’s airplane, which was returning from a visit to Afghanistan, permission to fly over Dubai airspace, forcing him to take a circuitous route over Europe.</p>\n<div style=\"width:500px\"><a href=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/hancocks-dubai-image-cnn-640x360.jpg\"><img alt=\"Interpol mugshots of Mossad assassins in Dubai wanted for murder. Barkan is on the far left, third from top\" src=\"http://natethayer.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/hancocks-dubai-image-cnn-640x360.jpg?w=490&h=275\" width=\"490\" height=\"275\"></a><p>Interpol mugshots of Mossad assassins in Dubai wanted for murder. Barkan is on the far left, third from top</p></div>\n<p><b>ZEV, ZE’EV, LEV</b></p>\n<p>“Former Israeli diplomat to New Zealand Zev William Barkan leads a life akin to that of novelist Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal, emerging from the shadows only to be named by authorities in connection with various crimes before again disappearing,” wrote New Zealand’s Fairfax Media in July 2011.</p>\n<p>Zev Barkan was born Zev Bruckenstein in 1967 in Washington D.C, where his family owned a “doors and windows business” and his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue. He holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship after his family moved to Israel in the 1970’s.</p>\n<p>Barkan entered New Zealand on a U.S. passport and had an American accent, according to New Zealand officials.</p>\n<p>Other aliases he has used include Zev William Barkan, Ze’ev William Barkan, and Lev Bruckenstein. He told acquaintances in New Zealand that he was American and his name was Jay.</p>\n<p>Dubai officials believe he was travelling on a fraudulent French passport using the name Eric Rassineux and Canadian officials were investigating him using the stolen passport of Canadian Kevin William Hunter.</p>\n<p>New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that “The passports that Mossad agents tried to obtain illegally might have been reserved for an assassination operation in a third country, which would have caused irreparable damage to New Zealand.”€ </p>\n<p>New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said “the New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law. The Israeli agents attempted to demean the integrity of the New Zealand passport system and could have created considerable difficulties for New Zealanders presenting their passports overseas in future.” </p>\n<p>She added: “The Israel government was asked for an explanation and an apology three months ago. Neither has been received.”€ </p>\n<p>When reporters for the New Zealand Herald tracked down Ze’ev Barkan’s family in October 2004, they were not well received. In the village of Shoham, 15 miles from Tel Aviv, Ze’ev Barkan wife, Irit, answered the reporter’s phone call but claimed she did not know a Ze’ev.</p>\n<p>His father, Yossef Barkan was more direct. “Stop calling here, you hear me. I’ve nothing to do with this business. Goodbye.”</p>\n<p><em><strong>See full story and related stories on North Korean-Syrian clandestine activities at NKNews.org</strong></em></p>\n<div></div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/natethayer.wordpress.com/1280/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/natethayer.wordpress.com/1280/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=natethayer.wordpress.com&blog=39978322&post=1280&subd=natethayer&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Kensal Green Cemetery: being dead in style",
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"content" : "<p><a title=\"eternal insomnia by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9076008521/\"><img alt=\"eternal insomnia\" src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7373/9076008521_070f95b814_z.jpg\" width=\"509\" height=\"640\"></a></p>\n<p>Just down the road from where I’m staying in north London, the <a href=\"http://www.kensalgreencemetery.com/\">Kensal Green Cemetery</a> houses the mortal remains of many eminent Victorians. Like Highgate Cemetery, which I <a href=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/2011/06/highgate-cemetery/\">visited in 2011</a>, it’s one of the “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Seven,_London\">magnificent seven</a>” garden-style cemeteries in London. And just as at Highgate, the groundskeepers’ gardening style is permissive in the extreme, favoring unpruned trees and shrubs and rampant ivy. <span></span></p>\n<p><a title=\"breast-feeling angel by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9076102497/\"><img alt=\"breast-feeling angel\" src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3812/9076102497_8f56363c6c_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\"></a></p>\n<p>It’s a great place to meditate on the ephemerality of all things. Many of the graves and mausoleums are in a state of near-collapse, and 100-year-old sculptures and stonework have eroded in alarming ways.</p>\n<p><a title=\"goofy roof by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075995891/\"><img alt=\"goofy roof\" src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3788/9075995891_244fff0b91_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\"></a></p>\n<p>One of the interesting things that happens with age is that the worst sort of kitsch comes to appear almost graceful.</p>\n<p><a title=\"Guadelupe by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075990709/\"><img alt=\"Guadelupe\" src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5542/9075990709_0e0542f147_z.jpg\" width=\"436\" height=\"640\"></a></p>\n<p>Even in just a decade or two, genteel decay can transform a brightly painted, mass-produced Virgin of Guadelupe statue into a unique, almost transcendent work of art.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075927613/\" title=\"leprous angels by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3824/9075927613_6859341fa7_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"leprous angels\"></a></p>\n<p>One tomb appeared to be guarded by the angels of leprosy, </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075907873/\" title=\"sightless angel by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5517/9075907873_0dbb6b209e_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"sightless angel\"></a></p>\n<p>while other guardian figures had apparently gone blind from staring at the sun </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075948771/\" title=\"ivy headache by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3725/9075948771_1aecfc16bd_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"ivy headache\"></a></p>\n<p>or green with grief. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9075900953/\" title=\"Sir Casement by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2863/9075900953_602fcd742b.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Sir Casement\"></a></p>\n<p>Nature has not been equally unkind to all. Sir William Casement’s sarcophagus with its retinue of four servile telamons supporting an absurd entablature still seems to be in fine shape. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9078140392/\" title=\"royal engineers by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7360/9078140392_9599232814_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"royal engineers\"></a></p>\n<p>Nor is nature the only inflicter of indignities upon this cemetery’s many and varied memorials. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9078181732/\" title=\"ivy ghosts by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5328/9078181732_d0c2a83e07_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"ivy ghosts\"></a></p>\n<p>Even the struggles of groundskeepers to preserve some stones from the ravages of ivy leave a mark in the form of ivy ghosts,</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9078148478/\" title=\"newcomer by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5457/9078148478_b01fd28e7b_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"newcomer\"></a></p>\n<p>and other upkeep efforts provide unintentionally ironic commentaries on the whole memorializing business. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9076002757/\" title=\"George etcetera by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7399/9076002757_6e32480939.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"352\" alt=\"George etcetera\"></a></p>\n<p>A few of the cemetery’s older inhabitants appear not to have required much embellishment beyond their bare names,</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9076094585/\" title=\"cemetery blackbird by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2834/9076094585_7f74601dd4_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"cemetery blackbird\"></a></p>\n<p>though it seems narrow-minded of them not to have at least provided a perch for birds. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/89056025@N00/9076013455/\" title=\"death's door by Dave Bonta, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2844/9076013455_a501e255a0_z.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" alt=\"death's door\"></a></p>\n<p>In the end, the profusion of maimed angels and architectural mash-ups didn’t really manage to distract us from the bald fact of the sealed door beyond which no living thing can pass.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>I became a father shortly after Inauguration Day. My wife and I are truly blessed beyond measure. It was not long ago that I got married and obviously my life changed forever. The life of father and husband can be very challenging to say the least, but it is an awesome responsibility that I embrace with an open mind and abundant exuberance. <br></p><p>Clearly I do not have all the answers and I do not know what lies behind the proverbial "Door #1", as Monte Hall used to say. Nonetheless, I press on with wonderment and anticipation. Our son completes the cipher for me in a number of ways. The coined phrase, "Paying it Forward" comes to mind often. Those of you know me well, understand that I was adopted at a young age. My pops was in his late 30's when he gave me the gift of protection, love and a permanent home. Now that I am +40, I know and understand that raising a child is an awesome responsibility. Coming home after a long day at the office now offers more meaning and now I am _pops_ the caregiver and protector. Truth be told, I cannot wait until he is old enough to catch a football, basketball or baseball. Then we can bond even further and share everlasting memories. There are some memories that only a father can enjoy with his son. <br></p><p>So, if you see me and I appear different there is a tangible reason for the change. Some will say it is sleep deprivation, but I believe it is much more. I am a proud pops who is excited about his new found responsibilities and the ability to shape and mold the life a very impressionable infant. I am looking forward to the wonder years and beyond. <br></p><p><br></p>\n \n <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?i=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?i=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?i=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?i=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?a=xPGhVyZIHZA:BlganAU9Z-U:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/bkaeg?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bkaeg/~4/xPGhVyZIHZA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Persuading David Simon",
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"content" : "<p style=\"color:#a22\">[June 19 update: David Simon has <a href=\"http://davidsimon.com/the-nigger-wake-up-call/\">been kind enough to respond at length here</a>. He points out that I falsely stated that collecting call records requires a warrant; I have corrected that statement in the post below.]</p>\n\n<p>I read with interest David Simon's <a href=\"http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/\">recent blog post</a> in which he responds to revelations that the NSA has been collecting the call records of all American mobile phone users.\n\n<p>David Simon, of course, created the Wire, a television series where institutions take on lives of their own and defy attempts by well-meaning people to reform them from within. So it came as a real shock to find Simon criticizing pundits who have objected to the extent of NSA surveillance, and accusing them of wilful ignorance about the nature of police work.\n\n<p>Mr. Simon pointed out that law enforcement agencies have been allowed to capture call records for decades, including in cases where the information harvested includes calls from people who are not under suspicion. In other words, there's nothing new going on to get worked up about.\n\n<blockquote>\nHaving labored as a police reporter in the days before the Patriot Act, I can assure all there has always been a stage before the wiretap, a preliminary process involving the capture, retention and analysis of raw data. It has been so for decades now in this country. The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the FBI and NSA are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. But the legal and moral principles? Same old stuff.\n </blockquote>\n \n<p>Seeing no difference in principle, only a difference in degree, in the NSA's surveillance program, Simon expresses annoyance with Americans who demand total protection from terrorism and then purport to be shocked when their government takes their requests seriously.\n \n\n<p>Mr. Simon cites the specific example of an investigation he covered as a police reporter in Baltimore in the 1980's. Criminals were using pay phones and pagers to evade detection, and tracking them down required indiscriminately recording numbers dialed from those pay phones, with the goal of sifting through the data later to find the pager numbers. \n\n<p>He argues that this kind of investigation, which targeted pay phones, was in some ways more invasive than the kind of tracking the NSA is accused of, since people expect to be anonymous when using a pay phone in a way that doesn't apply when they're calling from their own cell.\n\n<blockquote>\nThere is certainly a public expectation of privacy when you pick up a pay phone on the streets of Baltimore, is there not? And certainly, the detectives knew that many, many Baltimoreans were using those pay phones for legitimate telephonic communication. Yet, a city judge had no problem allowing them to place dialed-number recorders on as many pay phones as they felt the need to monitor, knowing that every single number dialed to or from those phones would be captured. So authorized, detectives gleaned the numbers of digital pagers and they began monitoring the incoming digitized numbers on those pagers — even though they had yet to learn to whom those pagers belonged. The judges were okay with that, too, and signed another order allowing the suspect pagers to be “cloned” by detectives, even though in some cases the suspect in possession of the pager was not yet positively identified.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think Simon's fundamental argument, “same old stuff”, is mistaken in a number of important ways, and that some of this reflects our failure as technologists to communicate what modern surveillance can do.\n\n<p>First, there is the scope of the order. The Baltimore operation, and others like it, were limited to a specific criminal investigation. They were obtained <s style=\"color:#c11\">under a warrant</s> under a subpoena setting limits on what would be collected, and for how long. \n\n<p>The NSA program is universal and appears to be open-ended. Information is collected in aggregate. The program operates under the authority of secret court order, not a warrant. It is not clear whether the Administration even believes this type of surveillance requires a court order.\n\n<p>Second is the nature of the body carrying out the surveillance. In Simon's example, this was a municipal police force, overseen by a local court.\n\n<p>In our case, it's the NSA, a Federal agency whose job has traditionally been to collect foreign signals intelligence <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_1\" name=\"simon_1_text\">①</a>. The operation is overseen by a secret court system called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court\">FISC</a>.\n\n<p>Third is the nature of the data being collected. When the Baltimore investigation took place, it collected a simple list of telephone numbers dialed from the monitored phones.\n\n\n<p>Modern call records contain much more data, reflecting the fact that almost all of us carry cell phones. A call record now includes unique device identifiers, routing information, cell tower IDs, and a wealth of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record\">additional information</a> about the circumstances and location of the call. The location data is particularly powerful, turning mobile phones into <i>de facto</i> tracking devices whenever they are turned on.\n\n\n<p>Fourth is the question of oversight. The evidence used in the Balitmore case was collected by municipal police and presented (I'm assuming) in open court. Those against whom it was used had the chance to mount a defense, appeal the verdict to state and Federal courts, and enjoyed the presumption of innocence guaranteed to them by the Constitution. \n\n\n<p>The NSA call data is collected and used in secret. The agency is overseen as part of the very large national security establishment by a small, overworked group of legislators and senior government officials who have the requisite security clearance. \n\n<p>So I contend that the parallel Simon makes is false. The NSA is not a law enforcement organization, and intuitions from police reporting don't carry over. \n \n<p>But even if we grant the analogy, I think there's a more dangerous argument in Simon's essay, which is the contention that two programs that differ only in degree are necessarily \"the same old thing\". I believe this is not a safe assumption to make when talking about computers and their use in domestic surveillance.\n\n<p>In the portion of his essay that excited the most comment, Simon appears to express disbelief that the NSA can make broad use of the data it gathers:\n\n\n<blockquote>\nWhen the government grabs every single fucking telephone call made from the United States over a period of months and years, it is not a prelude to monitoring anything in particular. Why not? Because that is tens of billions of phone calls and for the love of god, how many agents do you think the FBI has? How many computer-runs do you think the NSA can do — and then specifically analyze and assess each result?\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, of course, the answer is \"you would not believe how many 'computer-runs' the NSA can do\". I believe this part of the essay especially caught tech people's attention, since it suggested that Simon might be naive about the capabilities of a modern datacenter. It's certainly the part <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/david-simon-wrong-nsa-capabilities\">Clay Shirky pounced on</a> in his rebuttal. \n\n<p>But Simon is not a fogey who doesn't understand how powerful computers have become (though I feel that there are such people in positions of oversight in the House and Senate). I believe his error is in assuming that the <i>analysis</i> of these 'computer-runs' is any kind of bottleneck. There are powerful techniques for surfacing interesting features in any comprehensive list of interactions between human beings. I've written in the past about <a href=\"http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/\">my distaste for the 'social graph'</a> and the perverse worldview it imposes on our projects, but part of the appeal of that worldview is the real power of mathematics applied to exactly this kind of data. The analysis can be automated, and no good comes of it.\n\n<p> In a <a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/\">beautiful worked example</a>, Kieran Healey has shown how a precocious British intelligence service could have identified Paul Revere as a person of particular interest based only on a set of membership lists of organizations he belonged to. \n\n<p>The point is, you don't need human investigators to find leads, you can have the algorithms do it. They will find people of interest, assemble the watch lists, and flag whomever you like for further tracking. And since the number of actual terrorists is very, very, very small, the output of these algorithms will consist overwhelmingly of false positives. \n\n<p>It's at this point that Simon's logic starts to work in the other direction. Given a long list of potential leads, investigators are going to focus on vetting the most likely, rather than taking any steps to clear false positives out of system. The penalty for missing a real terrorist is catastrophic, while the penalty for falsely accusing someone (when not only the accusation, but the very existence of the program, is secret) is nonexistent, even if the secret accusation ends up doing real harm. Limits on manpower won't constrain the investigation; they will only reduce its overall quality.\n\n<p>This isn't an abstract argument. We are all familiar with the tenebrous <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_list\">no fly list</a>, a document that prevents several thousand people from traveling by air, and condemns thousands more to intrusive security measures each time they want to get on a plane. After 2001, this list rapidly expanded to thousands of names, with no avenues of appeal and no way to even check whether your name appeared in the document, to the point where the government finally had to improvise a 'redress' policy for travelers who found themselves living out a Kafka novel. \n\n<p>Characteristically, proposals for fixing the no-fly list and similar watch lists now call for collecting even <i>more</i> information, to help disambiguate people who share a name but not a date of birth with someone on the watch list. The basic problem—that lists of suspects are generated without accountability, without oversight, and with no incentive to avoid mistakes—persists. \n\n\n\n<p>There's also a more dangerous institutional problem to consider. When a system like this exists, it creates pressure for its own use. What is the point, after all, of having a very elaborate, extremely expensive <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_2\" name=\"simon_2_text\">②</a> database if you are only ever going to use it in exceptional cases? It is the nature of law enforcement to want to go after bad guys with all available tools. We saw a vivid demonstration of this in the years after the 2001 attacks, when the administration <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-321433.html\">attempted to blur the lines</a> between the 'War on Drugs' and the 'War on Terror', arguing that the proceeds from narcotics sales paid for terrorism. \n\n<p>Consider, too, <a href=\"http://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-please-shut-up/\">a technique that has become standard in Federal investigations</a>. It is a felony to make false statements to a Federal agent, and investigators routinely make use of this fact to gain leverage over a witness or suspect. People tend to be nervous when they talk to police, and unless they know better are liable to give inconsistent answers during questioning. Good interrogators can convert each of these inconsistencies into a felony count. Imagine how much more potent this tactic becomes when investigators can gain access to a database of your movements and contacts for the past decade.\n\n<p>The security state operates as a ratchet. Once you click in a new level of surveillance or intrusiveness, it becomes the new baseline. What was unthinkable yesterday becomes permissible in exceptional cases today, and routine tomorrow. The people who run the American security apparatus are in the overwhelming majority diligent people with a deep concern for civil liberties. But their job is to find creative ways to collect information. And they work within an institution that, because of its secrecy, is fundamentally inimical to democracy and to a free society. \n\n\n<p>I can't believe that David Simon, of all people, doesn't see the danger inherent in a permanent domestic surveillance program. I doubt that he would support a government initiative for all Americans to wear tracking devices in the name of fighting terrorism. Yet the NSA data collection program, whose output is functionally identical, seems not to trip the same alarm bells with him. \n\n<p>-:-</p>\n\n\n<p>In public statements, the NSA director has defended domestic surveillance as a vital tool in preventing terrorism.\n\n<p>The term 'terrorism' is a magic word, unlocking government powers we normally associate with wartime. The current and previous Administration have, at various times, asserted the right of the government to conduct invasive and open-ended surveillance on people it suspects of terrorism, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012#Controversy_over_indefinite_detention\">detain suspects in terrorism cases indefinitely without trial</a>, 'render' them to countries for interrogation and torture, kill people it considers terrorists, <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/us-acknowledges-killing-4-americans-in-drone-strikes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0\">including American citizens</a>, with giant flying robots, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_force_feeding#Practice\">keep such people alive against their own will</a>.\n\n<p>This is total power over human life. The authorities assure us that numerous checks exist to prevent abuses of this power, but of course the checks are also classified. The government is promising that the secret police won't put innocent people in the secret prisons because the secret courts would never allow it.\n\n<p>This system puts enormous pressure on a small group of fallible human beings. For the secrecy to work, the number of people in on the secret must be small <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_3\" name=\"simon_3_text\">③</a>. But this group is all part of the same hierarchy, subject to the same pressures, and unable to communicate its concerns outside the same closed circle. \n\n\n<p>Talk of secret prisons, indefinite detention, and force-feeding can sound tendentious (though it's all uncontested public record!). Americans have a deep faith in the rule of law and have not proven receptive to the argument that truly innocent people will find themselves placed in the \"terrorist\" category by accident.\n\n<p>There is a tendency among those who grew up under the rule of law to treat it like the Rock of Ages, an immovable substrate in which all the institutions of the state are forever anchored. And so even ordinarily skeptical people tend to assume that the government obeys its own laws when no one is looking. To an astonishing extent, and to the great credit of American civic life, this is actually true.\n\n<p>But I think a better metaphor for the rule of law is that it is the soil in which democratic institutions take root. Like the soil, it can be depleted. And once depleted, it is not easily replenished.\n\n<p>Secrecy erodes the rule of law because it makes democratic accountability impossible. Secrets can't be held too broadly, so secrecy concentrates responsibility and asks too much of human nature. That is why every intelligence agency, unless given rigorous outside oversight, commits terrible excesses.\n\n<p>I think Simon agrees about the perniciousness of this secrecy. In <a href=\"http://davidsimon.com/counter-arguments-gathered-and-answered/\">a later rebuttal</a> he's called for a modern-day version of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee\">Church Committee</a>, a group of people from outside the security establishment with top-secret access and the power to compel testimony.\n\n<p>And I agree with Simon that the current state of affairs is the \"inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed.\" \n\n<p>American politics since the Cold War has operated under the conceit that national security must transcend partisan differences. And so we have seen large bipartisan majorities voting for pre-emptive war and domestic surveillance even though both of those policies were highly controversial outside Congress. \n\n<p>This tradition has created a vast space beyond political accountability. When both political parties pursue a nearly identical policy, there are no electoral consequences when the policy proves disastrously wrong. Who do you vote against?\n\n<p>People have good intuitions about the danger of indiscriminate collection and retention of their data. They're not being hysterical. For the last decade, we've been concentrating on how to regulate the way this data gets used in the private sector. But now that the coercive power of the state has entered the picture, the stakes are much higher, and we have an opportunity to politicize the debate. David Simon tells us to resign ourselves to the consequences of technological change:\n\n<blockquote>\n \"The question is not should the resulting data exist. It does. And it forever will, to a greater and greater extent.\"\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>But I think that is wrong. Whether the data should exist, and for how long, is exactly the question. The answer is not a technological inevitability, but a political choice.\n\n<p>I believe a world in which everything is recorded and persists forever carries the seeds of something monstrous <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_4\" name=\"simon_4_text\">④</a>. It is in the nature of computer systems to remember things indefinitely, but there's nothing difficult about programming machines to forget. It just requires laws to do it. We can't treat it as a technical problem. And to get the laws passed, we need to politicize the issue. \n \n\n<p>Still, these barricades are going to seem awfully lonely if we can't even get David Simon up there with us. The man should be a natural ally, and the fact that he sounds so exasperated troubles me. The fact that he seems resigned to a future of total information retention troubles me. The fact that we are talking past each other troubles me most of all. \n\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_1\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_1_text\">①</a> Simon also mentions the FBI, but it's unclear to me that this agency has anything to do with the accusations of widespread call monitoring.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_2\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_2_text\">②</a> The expensive part is keeping everything secret, and staffing it with people cleared for such access. The database itself is likely quite modest in size.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_3\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_3_text\">③</a> The Washington Post has <a href=\"http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/\">estimated the number of people</a> with Top Secret clearance at 854,000. The number of people with full knowledge of all secret programs is much smaller, as this information is carefully compartmentalized.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_4\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_4_text\">④</a> Except Pinboard archives. Those are great!</p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Copyright AfricaDemos Forum</p>\n<h2><a href=\"http://africaplus.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/the-china-africa-convergence-can-america-catch-up/\" rel=\"bookmark\">The China-Africa Convergence: Can America Catch Up?</a></h2>\n\n<div>Posted on <a title=\"10:24 am\" href=\"http://africaplus.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/the-china-africa-convergence-can-america-catch-up/\" rel=\"bookmark\">June 16, 2013</a>by <a title=\"View all posts by africaplus\" href=\"http://africaplus.wordpress.com/author/africaplus/\" rel=\"author\">africaplus</a></div>\n\n<div>\n\n<h4>By Howard W. French</h4>\n\n<address>Howard French, a leading American journalist on Africa for four decades, returned to the continent after stints as <i>New York Times</i> correspondent in Tokyo and Shanghai. He discovered a resurgent continent increasingly wedded to Chinese growth and expansion. The deep penetration of Africa by Chinese firms and citizens has coincided with an era of sustained African economic growth. On the eve of President Obama’s visit to three democratic nations – Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania – French’s essay initiates an Africa Demos series on the China-Africa Convergence and their implications for the United States and other countries.</address>\n\n<address> </address>\n\n<address> </address>\n<p><a href=\"http://africaplus.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/angolan-chinese-engineers1.jpg\" rel=\"lightbox[2832]\" title=\"The China-Africa Convergence: Can America Catch Up?\"><img alt=\"Credit: Russian International Affairs Council\" src=\"http://africaplus.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/angolan-chinese-engineers1.jpg?w=640&h=430\" width=\"640\" height=\"430\"></a><br>\n<br>\nCredit: Russian International Affairs Council<br>\n<br>\nFor the last three years, I have traveled extensively in sub-Saharan Africa, after an unaccustomed absence. My recent experiences, which have ranged through every region of the subcontinent, tell me two essential things: Africa is caught up in intense and rapid change, and American policy toward the continent is not adjusting fast enough.<br>\n<br>\nA trickle of articles in the American press has belatedly recognized Africa’s strong run of economic growth. Some of them have touted the expansion of a new African middle- or consumer-class, which by some measures is larger than that of India. Others have focused on the continent’s overall economic growth, drawing on data and forecasts from the International Monetary Fund and other sources. These suggest that over the next several years, Africa will grow faster than any other continent, including Asia.<br>\n<br>\n<b><i>The Demographic Transformation</i></b><br>\n<br>\nThe bullish economic data do not fully capture the feeling on the ground. In places like Lagos, Accra, Lusaka, Dar es Salaam and Maputo, a vast region of the world is on the move. To comprehend the scale of the changes underway, and the special nature of this moment, it must be seen that demographic trends are as important as GDP statistics. Two insufficiently appreciated facts stand out.<br>\n<br>\nAfrica’s population is growing faster now than ever in history, and this growth is accelerating. This development can be understood as a belated recovery from the depredations of the centuries-long slave trades. Together with the prevalence of tropical diseases, especially in the long era before the introduction of modern medicine, the continent’s human development was sharply suppressed. Africa’s current population momentum is so great, though, that by mid-century it is expected to double in size, reaching two billion according to U.N. estimates.<br>\n<br>\nTwo other trends of surpassing importance flow from the strong population growth. Africa has entered what experts call a demographic “sweet spot.” For the next few decades, the distribution of people by age will be sharply skewed toward the young, who are energetic, eager to work and maximally productive. The countries that are making the smartest investments in education will put themselves in a good position to compete in the vitally important global manufacturing and service sectors, especially as labor costs in China, whose population is rapidly aging, rise.<b><i> </i></b><br>\n<br>\n<b><i>Scenarios of Extraordinary Opportunity</i></b><br>\n<br>\nSub-Saharan Africa overall is already investing heavily in education, surpassing many other parts of the world in terms of the percentage of national spending devoted to school and job training. But even against this positive backdrop, the continent needs to do much more, and so does the United States, which is ideally suited to help in this area. With almost no fanfare, this country has played a huge role in improving African health, most notably through the Pepfar program, which has made extraordinary inroads against HIV in many countries.<br>\n<br>\nIt is time to turn American energies toward similar big impact goals in education, including drastically reducing illiteracy, which especially affects girls and persists at intolerable levels in regions like the Sahel. Another challenge ideally tailored to America’s strengths would be helping dramatically reinvigorate African universities and integrate them more closely into the global knowledge grid.<br>\n<br>\nThe final piece of the demographic puzzle relates to the explosive growth of Africa’s cities. The continent is urbanizing at rates unsurpassed in human history. The number of cities is exploding, and with it the number of mega-cities. This creates scenarios of extraordinary opportunity for countries that are forward thinking and dynamic.<br>\n<br>\nCities are arguably humankind’s greatest invention; they dramatically accelerate the velocity of economic exchange and the communication of ideas, and they can hugely expand opportunity for their residents, along with economic productivity. The creation of new cities on the present scale in Africa offers a chance that populations in older countries can only dream of: to innovate in urban design and create maximally efficient, human-friendly living and working environments. The United States has a big potential role to play in helping African nations think through issues of urban creation, renewal and planning, as well as the development of better systems of sanitation, power, transportation and housing. These need not be driven solely by aid. Rather, the United States and American companies should step up to this challenge as investors and builders.<br>\n<br>\n<b><i>Chinese vs. American Perceptions of Africa</i></b><br>\n<br>\nPerceiving opportunities like these and many others, however, will first require a revolution in American thinking about Africa. I have spent the last few years working on a book about China’s relationship with the continent, and could not have been more struck by the differences in attitude in the United States and China toward Africa. More than a million Chinese have moved to Africa in the last decade, largely because they see the continent as an arena of almost limitless opportunity. This holds true from big company executives to mom and pop entrepreneurs from China’s inland, second tier cities.<br>\n<br>\nAmericans, meanwhile, despite their far deeper historical associations with the continent, including 13 percent of the population that traces its ancestry to Africa, cling to deeply engrained attitudes toward this part of the world, as a place of war, of misery, of strife, etc. For this reason, and because we cannot get over a long-running sense of Africa as a place to be aided, we are ill equipped to see or appreciate the opportunities that Africa offers.<b><i> </i></b><br>\n<br>\nThe American press perpetuates old patterns of coverage even as Africa rapidly grows and changes. The work of Jeffrey Gettleman of the <i>New York Times</i>, a recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the most prominent and arguably influential example of this tendency. In a 2012 <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/africas-dirty-wars/?pagination=false&printpage=true\">essay</a> in the <i>New York Review of Books</i> that broadly reflects the focus of his work as East Africa bureau chief for the <i>Times</i>, he wrote: “What we are seeing is the decline of the classic wars by freedom fighters and the proliferation of something else—something wilder, messier, more predatory, and harder to define… Today the continent is plagued by countless nasty little wars, which in many ways aren’t really wars at all. There are no front lines, no battlefields, no clear conflict zones, and no distinctions between combatants and civilians.”<br>\n<br>\nWhat the facts tell us about Africa is quite the contrary. As Jonathan Berman wrote in a recent Harvard Business Review blog <a href=\"http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/africa_is_more_stable_than_you.html\">post</a>, titled “Africa is more stable than you’ve been led to think,” which drew its data from the <i>Economist</i>: “Across Africa, successful coups are rare and getting rarer. This Economist Intelligence Unit has tracked the trend since 1960, shortly after colonial withdrawal began. Given the preconceived impression of Africa as coup crazy, many lose sight of the decline of coups… Africa’s governments aren’t just becoming more stable. They’re becoming more representative, albeit in an irregular pattern, as befits a continent with 54 countries. The Polity IV Project measures political regimes on a spectrum from fully institutionalized autocracies (low scores) to fully institutionalized democracies (high scores)… The trend since 1990, across all of Africa, has been towards more democracy.”<br>\n<br>\nNo one expects the press to abandon conflict as a topic, but the American media are long overdue for a re-set in terms of the ways they habitually frame African coverage. This should start with a repudiation of the way that African events are denied specificity. Things are routinely said to take place “in Africa,” or “across Africa” instead of in actual countries or places with real names. The eternal pretext is to “make it easier” for the reader, who can’t be bothered with too many unfamiliar names. This kind of factual looseness, though, is not practiced toward any other part of the world, and bespeaks a casual and persistent ghettoization of Africa.<br>\n<br>\nAnother example of this is the fact that virtually no American news organization offers business coverage of Africa. Return on investment in Africa is among the highest in the world. Trade with each region of the continent is booming. And recently, big U.S. companies like Walmart, IBM and Google, to name the most prominent examples, have been expanding their presence in Africa. But because the media speaks mainly in terms of conflict and aid, the general public has no perception of the growing opportunities on the continent, unlike the large numbers of Chinese newcomers.<br>\n<br>\n<b><i>Will Obama Energize U.S.-Africa Engagement?</i></b><b><i> </i></b><br>\n<br>\nThis, finally, points the way to what is needed from America’s political leaders during the remainder of the Obama Administration and beyond. Putting an end to the ghettoization of Africa will require concerted effort at the top. Senior officials must, as Chinese leaders have been doing for years, visit the continent frequently. We must also put an end to the belittling, small ball ritual whereby African leaders are invited to Washington in groups of three or four (as if an African country by definition didn’t merit a one-on-one discussion), offered a quick photo opportunity, a few homilies about democracy and governance and then sent on their way.<br>\n<br>\nThe administration needs to be much more energetic and resourceful in encouraging American businesses to seek out opportunities in Africa. The profit motive is the best cure for the deep-seated strain of paternalism that runs through our relations with the continent. During my book research travels, I was surprised to learn in country after country that construction projects, worth as much as $200 million that are American financed through the Millennium Development Corporation, drew no bids from American companies. China was gobbling up this work until Congress passed a law saying that funding from the MDC could not be given to state owned companies.<br>\n<br>\nIn one capital city after another, I noticed that American embassies had shuttered their “commercial sections,” which historically have researched African economies and provided helpful information and contacts to American businesses looking for opportunities. In most of those cities, the Chinese have recently opened shop with their own commercial offices, usually not tucked away in an embassy, but housed in a well-appointed building of its own.<br>\n<br>\nTo avoid misunderstanding, it must be emphasized that Washington’s biggest problem with Chinese inroads in Africa has nothing to do with China. The real problem is that the United States has walked away from Africa, leaving the playing floor virtually empty, and it will take years of concerted political leadership, and not gimmicky laws, to get back in the game.<br>\n<br>\nFinally, it must be said bluntly that President Obama’s mere two visits in five years have been a big disappointment. It is a tremendously positive thing that his second visit to the continent consists solely of democracies. For decades, Washington’s closest ties on the continent have been with a series of authoritarian states. This administration’s generally low profile in Africa, however, has squandered the immense opportunity that the election of a politician of African heritage had for resetting and reinvigorating America’s relationships on the continent. Yes, we live in a big and busy world, but the changing dynamics of Africa deserve much more of our attention, and offer prospects of outsized rewards for both America and for Africa.<br>\n<br>\n<i>Howard W. French is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He is the author of “A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa,” and of the forthcoming “China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa,” to be published by Knopf in May 2014.</i><br>\n<br>\n———————————<br>\n<br>\nAfrica Demos Forum is inspired by the <em>Africa Demos </em>quarterly published by Emory University and the Carter Center, 1990-1995: <a href=\"http://books.northwestern.edu/viewer.html?id=inu:inu-mntb-0006443104-bk\">http://books.northwestern.edu/viewer.html?id=inu:inu-mntb-0006443104-bk</a><br>\n<br>\n</p></div>"
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"title" : "Persuading David Simon",
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"content" : "<p>I read with interest David Simon's <a href=\"http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/\">recent blog post</a> in which he responds to revelations that the NSA has been collecting the call records of all American mobile phone users.\n\n<p>David Simon, of course, created the Wire, a television series where institutions take on lives of their own and defy attempts by well-meaning people to reform them from within. So it came as a real shock to find Simon criticizing pundits who have objected to the extent of NSA surveillance, and accusing them of wilful ignorance about the nature of police work.\n\n<p>Mr. Simon pointed out that law enforcement agencies have been allowed to capture call records for decades, including in cases where the information harvested includes calls from people who are not under suspicion. In other words, there's nothing new going on to get worked up about.\n\n<blockquote>\nHaving labored as a police reporter in the days before the Patriot Act, I can assure all there has always been a stage before the wiretap, a preliminary process involving the capture, retention and analysis of raw data. It has been so for decades now in this country. The only thing new here, from a legal standpoint, is the scale on which the FBI and NSA are apparently attempting to cull anti-terrorism leads from that data. But the legal and moral principles? Same old stuff.\n </blockquote>\n \n<p>Seeing no difference in principle, only a difference in degree, in the NSA's surveillance program, Simon expresses annoyance with Americans who demand total protection from terrorism and then purport to be shocked when their government takes their requests seriously.\n \n\n<p>Mr. Simon cites the specific example of an investigation he covered as a police reporter in Baltimore in the 1980's. Criminals were using pay phones and pagers to evade detection, and tracking them down required indiscriminately recording numbers dialed from those pay phones, with the goal of sifting through the data later to find the pager numbers. \n\n<p>He argues that this kind of investigation, which targeted pay phones, was in some ways more invasive than the kind of tracking the NSA is accused of, since people expect to be anonymous when using a pay phone in a way that doesn't apply when they're calling from their own cell.\n\n<blockquote>\nThere is certainly a public expectation of privacy when you pick up a pay phone on the streets of Baltimore, is there not? And certainly, the detectives knew that many, many Baltimoreans were using those pay phones for legitimate telephonic communication. Yet, a city judge had no problem allowing them to place dialed-number recorders on as many pay phones as they felt the need to monitor, knowing that every single number dialed to or from those phones would be captured. So authorized, detectives gleaned the numbers of digital pagers and they began monitoring the incoming digitized numbers on those pagers — even though they had yet to learn to whom those pagers belonged. The judges were okay with that, too, and signed another order allowing the suspect pagers to be “cloned” by detectives, even though in some cases the suspect in possession of the pager was not yet positively identified.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think Simon's fundamental argument, “same old stuff”, is mistaken in a number of important ways, and that some of this reflects our failure as technologists to communicate what modern surveillance can do.\n\n<p>First, there is the scope of the order. The Baltimore operation, and others like it, were limited to a specific criminal investigation. They were obtained under a warrant setting limits on what would be collected, and for how long. \n\n<p>The NSA program is universal and appears to be open-ended. Information is collected in aggregate. The program operates under the authority of secret court order, not a warrant. It is not clear whether the Administration even believes this type of surveillance requires a court order.\n\n<p>Second is the nature of the body carrying out the surveillance. In Simon's example, this was a municipal police force, overseen by a local court.\n\n<p>In our case, it's the NSA, a Federal agency whose job has traditionally been to collect foreign signals intelligence <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_1\" name=\"simon_1_text\">①</a>. The operation is overseen by a secret court system called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court\">FISC</a>.\n\n<p>Third is the nature of the data being collected. When the Baltimore investigation took place, it collected a simple list of telephone numbers dialed from the monitored phones.\n\n\n<p>Modern call records contain much more data, reflecting the fact that almost all of us carry cell phones. A call record now includes unique device identifiers, routing information, cell tower IDs, and a wealth of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record\">additional information</a> about the circumstances and location of the call. The location data is particularly powerful, turning mobile phones into <i>de facto</i> tracking devices whenever they are turned on.\n\n\n<p>Fourth is the question of oversight. The evidence used in the Balitmore case was collected by municipal police and presented (I'm assuming) in open court. Those against whom it was used had the chance to mount a defense, appeal the verdict to state and Federal courts, and enjoyed the presumption of innocence guaranteed to them by the Constitution. \n\n\n<p>The NSA call data is collected and used in secret. The agency is overseen as part of the very large national security establishment by a small, overworked group of legislators and senior government officials who have the requisite security clearance. \n\n<p>So I contend that the parallel Simon makes is false. The NSA is not a law enforcement organization, and intuitions from police reporting don't carry over. \n \n<p>But even if we grant the analogy, I think there's a more dangerous argument in Simon's essay, which is the contention that two programs that differ only in degree are necessarily \"the same old thing\". I believe this is not a safe assumption to make when talking about computers and their use in domestic surveillance.\n\n<p>In the portion of his essay that excited the most comment, Simon appears to express disbelief that the NSA can make broad use of the data it gathers:\n\n\n<blockquote>\nWhen the government grabs every single fucking telephone call made from the United States over a period of months and years, it is not a prelude to monitoring anything in particular. Why not? Because that is tens of billions of phone calls and for the love of god, how many agents do you think the FBI has? How many computer-runs do you think the NSA can do — and then specifically analyze and assess each result?\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, of course, the answer is \"you would not believe how many 'computer-runs' the NSA can do\". I believe this part of the essay especially caught tech people's attention, since it suggested that Simon might be naive about the capabilities of a modern datacenter. It's certainly the part <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/david-simon-wrong-nsa-capabilities\">Clay Shirky pounced on</a> in his rebuttal. \n\n<p>But Simon is not a fogey who doesn't understand how powerful computers have become (though I feel that there are such people in positions of oversight in the House and Senate). I believe his error is in assuming that the <i>analysis</i> of these 'computer-runs' is any kind of bottleneck. There are powerful techniques for surfacing interesting features in any comprehensive list of interactions between human beings. I've written in the past about <a href=\"http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/\">my distaste for the 'social graph'</a> and the perverse worldview it imposes on our projects, but part of the appeal of that worldview is the real power of mathematics applied to exactly this kind of data. The analysis can be automated, and no good comes of it.\n\n<p> In a <a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/\">beautiful worked example</a>, Kieran Healey has shown how a precocious British intelligence service could have identified Paul Revere as a person of particular interest based only on a set of membership lists of organizations he belonged to. \n\n<p>The point is, you don't need human investigators to find leads, you can have the algorithms do it. They will find people of interest, assemble the watch lists, and flag whomever you like for further tracking. And since the number of actual terrorists is very, very, very small, the output of these algorithms will consist overwhelmingly of false positives. \n\n<p>It's at this point that Simon's logic starts to work in the other direction. Given a long list of potential leads, investigators are going to focus on vetting the most likely, rather than taking any steps to clear false positives out of system. The penalty for missing a real terrorist is catastrophic, while the penalty for falsely accusing someone (when not only the accusation, but the very existence of the program, is secret) is nonexistent, even if the secret accusation ends up doing real harm. Limits on manpower won't constrain the investigation; they will only reduce its overall quality.\n\n<p>This isn't an abstract argument. We are all familiar with the tenebrous <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_list\">no fly list</a>, a document that prevents several thousand people from traveling by air, and condemns thousands more to intrusive security measures each time they want to get on a plane. After 2001, this list rapidly expanded to thousands of names, with no avenues of appeal and no way to even check whether your name appeared in the document, to the point where the government finally had to improvise a 'redress' policy for travelers who found themselves living out a Kafka novel. \n\n<p>Characteristically, proposals for fixing the no-fly list and similar watch lists now call for collecting even <i>more</i> information, to help disambiguate people who share a name but not a date of birth with someone on the watch list. The basic problem—that lists of suspects are generated without accountability, without oversight, and with no incentive to avoid mistakes—persists. \n\n\n\n<p>There's also a more dangerous institutional problem to consider. When a system like this exists, it creates pressure for its own use. What is the point, after all, of having a very elaborate, extremely expensive <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_2\" name=\"simon_2_text\">②</a> database if you are only ever going to use it in exceptional cases? It is the nature of law enforcement to want to go after bad guys with all available tools. We saw a vivid demonstration of this in the years after the 2001 attacks, when the administration <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-250_162-321433.html\">attempted to blur the lines</a> between the 'War on Drugs' and the 'War on Terror', arguing that the proceeds from narcotics sales paid for terrorism. \n\n<p>Consider, too, <a href=\"http://www.popehat.com/2011/12/01/reminder-oh-wont-you-please-shut-up/\">a technique that has become standard in Federal investigations</a>. It is a felony to make false statements to a Federal agent, and investigators routinely make use of this fact to gain leverage over a witness or suspect. People tend to be nervous when they talk to police, and unless they know better are liable to give inconsistent answers during questioning. Good interrogators can convert each of these inconsistencies into a felony count. Imagine how much more potent this tactic becomes when investigators can gain access to a database of your movements and contacts for the past decade.\n\n<p>The security state operates as a ratchet. Once you click in a new level of surveillance or intrusiveness, it becomes the new baseline. What was unthinkable yesterday becomes permissible in exceptional cases today, and routine tomorrow. The people who run the American security apparatus are in the overwhelming majority diligent people with a deep concern for civil liberties. But their job is to find creative ways to collect information. And they work within an institution that, because of its secrecy, is fundamentally inimical to democracy and to a free society. \n\n\n<p>I can't believe that David Simon, of all people, doesn't see the danger inherent in a permanent domestic surveillance program. I doubt that he would support a government initiative for all Americans to wear tracking devices in the name of fighting terrorism. Yet the NSA data collection program, whose output is functionally identical, seems not to trip the same alarm bells with him. \n\n<p>-:-</p>\n\n\n<p>In public statements, the NSA director has defended domestic surveillance as a vital tool in preventing terrorism.\n\n<p>The term 'terrorism' is a magic word, unlocking government powers we normally associate with wartime. The current and previous Administration have, at various times, asserted the right of the government to conduct invasive and open-ended surveillance on people it suspects of terrorism, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2012#Controversy_over_indefinite_detention\">detain suspects in terrorism cases indefinitely without trial</a>, 'render' them to countries for interrogation and torture, kill people it considers terrorists, <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/us-acknowledges-killing-4-americans-in-drone-strikes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0\">including American citizens</a>, with giant flying robots, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_force_feeding#Practice\">keep such people alive against their own will</a>.\n\n<p>This is total power over human life. The authorities assure us that numerous checks exist to prevent abuses of this power, but of course the checks are also classified. The government is promising that the secret police won't put innocent people in the secret prisons because the secret courts would never allow it.\n\n<p>This system puts enormous pressure on a small group of fallible human beings. For the secrecy to work, the number of people in on the secret must be small <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_3\" name=\"simon_3_text\">③</a>. But this group is all part of the same hierarchy, subject to the same pressures, and unable to communicate its concerns outside the same closed circle. \n\n\n<p>Talk of secret prisons, indefinite detention, and force-feeding can sound tendentious (though it's all uncontested public record!). Americans have a deep faith in the rule of law and have not proven receptive to the argument that truly innocent people will find themselves placed in the \"terrorist\" category by accident.\n\n<p>There is a tendency among those who grew up under the rule of law to treat it like the Rock of Ages, an immovable substrate in which all the institutions of the state are forever anchored. And so even ordinarily skeptical people tend to assume that the government obeys its own laws when no one is looking. To an astonishing extent, and to the great credit of American civic life, this is actually true.\n\n<p>But I think a better metaphor for the rule of law is that it is the soil in which democratic institutions take root. Like the soil, it can be depleted. And once depleted, it is not easily replenished.\n\n<p>Secrecy erodes the rule of law because it makes democratic accountability impossible. Secrets can't be held too broadly, so secrecy concentrates responsibility and asks too much of human nature. That is why every intelligence agency, unless given rigorous outside oversight, commits terrible excesses.\n\n<p>I think Simon agrees about the perniciousness of this secrecy. In <a href=\"http://davidsimon.com/counter-arguments-gathered-and-answered/\">a later rebuttal</a> he's called for a modern-day version of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee\">Church Committee</a>, a group of people from outside the security establishment with top-secret access and the power to compel testimony.\n\n<p>And I agree with Simon that the current state of affairs is the \"inevitable consequence of legislation that we drafted and passed.\" \n\n<p>American politics since the Cold War has operated under the conceit that national security must transcend partisan differences. And so we have seen large bipartisan majorities voting for pre-emptive war and domestic surveillance even though both of those policies were highly controversial outside Congress. \n\n<p>This tradition has created a vast space beyond political accountability. When both political parties pursue a nearly identical policy, there are no electoral consequences when the policy proves disastrously wrong. Who do you vote against?\n\n<p>People have good intuitions about the danger of indiscriminate collection and retention of their data. They're not being hysterical. For the last decade, we've been concentrating on how to regulate the way this data gets used in the private sector. But now that the coercive power of the state has entered the picture, the stakes are much higher, and we have an opportunity to politicize the debate. David Simon tells us to resign ourselves to the consequences of technological change:\n\n<blockquote>\n \"The question is not should the resulting data exist. It does. And it forever will, to a greater and greater extent.\"\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>But I think that is wrong. Whether the data should exist, and for how long, is exactly the question. The answer is not a technological inevitability, but a political choice.\n\n<p>I believe a world in which everything is recorded and persists forever carries the seeds of something monstrous <a href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_4\" name=\"simon_4_text\">④</a>. It is in the nature of computer systems to remember things indefinitely, but there's nothing difficult about programming machines to forget. It just requires laws to do it. We can't treat it as a technical problem. And to get the laws passed, we need to politicize the issue. \n \n\n<p>Still, these barricades are going to seem awfully lonely if we can't even get David Simon up there with us. The man should be a natural ally, and the fact that he sounds so exasperated troubles me. The fact that he seems resigned to a future of total information retention troubles me. The fact that we are talking past each other troubles me most of all. \n\n\n<hr>\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_1\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_1_text\">①</a> Simon also mentions the FBI, but it's unclear to me that this agency has anything to do with the accusations of widespread call monitoring.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_2\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_2_text\">②</a> The expensive part is keeping everything secret, and staffing it with people cleared for such access. The database itself is likely quite modest in size.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_3\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_3_text\">③</a> The Washington Post has <a href=\"http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/\">estimated the number of people</a> with Top Secret clearance at 854,000. The number of people with full knowledge of all secret programs is much smaller, as this information is carefully compartmentalized.\n\n<p><a name=\"simon_4\" href=\"https://pinboard.in/#simon_4_text\">④</a> Except Pinboard archives. Those are great!</p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "REFLECTIONS ON WOOLWICH",
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"title" : "South Africa has a “Pro” Twerk Team",
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"content" : "<p>Welcome to AIAC’s (first?) NSFW post. South Africa has a <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Protwerkers\">“pro” twerk team</a>. In what could have been an amazing Pan-African exchange, they came up short and better called themselves professionals. Full stop as I reluctantly throw them a dark haze of shade.</p>\n<p>I guess everyone outside the southern United States just discovered what twerking/freak dancing/winding is. (All different, but bear with me.) I’m not hating on the SA Twerk team because they are twerking. I have been twerkin’ for nearly all my life, and it’s a time honored pastime for me and several of my close friends. Better, this seemed like a great opportunity to see twerking from a new, non-American perspective.</p>\n<p>Nope, I’m disappointed because this twerk team is NOT TWERKING. Which is unfortunate, because the origins of twerking, like most great things, lie in Africa. My homie and twerk extraordinaire, Sawdayah, pointed out some quick references are Makossa or Makassi (Cameroon), Mapouka (Cote d’Ivoire), Kwasa Kwasa (DRC).</p>\n<p>Twerking is not simply dizzying butt movements meant to arouse any guy watching. It’s not tight camera shots that make you feel like you’re at an awkward strip club. It for damn sure isn’t absent of technique, rhythm and continuous movement and energy. And that’s not what the Pro-Twerkers are giving the camera <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/65845073\">here</a>.</p>\n<p>I’d like to give you, the reader, and y’all, the SA “Pro” Twerkers a quick primer on how to ride the beat.</p>\n<p>First, here’s the very talented Atlanta Twerk Team.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ve1tW_TGNIw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>To be able to twerk effectively, what you’re doing is pulling in all the techniques learned from a variety of dance forms, and being able to manipulate your hips to create a façade of impossible moves. It is serious and actually requires years of practice and talent. Gymnastics, belly dancing, salsa can all be incorporated, thus, allowing you to recognize a pro when you see one.</p>\n<p>If you grew up in the American south, you’ve probably been twerking all your life. At family reunions as a 6-year old. At middle school dances outside the glance of the chaperone. It’s not about someone else projecting their own sexual issues onto you. Here are some classics to practice with. I’ll start with Juvenile:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"735\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/WL2txMU50CI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Next up Project Pat:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"735\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/EH3AECIX_tc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The lyrics are gross, but thank you Three 6 Mafia, UGK, and Bun B for your bass lines. Then, you know how to play with the layers of rhythms. Ciara in “Ride” is fantastic.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/Lp6W4aK1sbs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Can you do that? Yes? You are talented. One of the members of the SA Pro Twerkers immediately complains that they get a lot of haters who dismiss them as simply doing sexual dancing. Another goes on to say that they have all types of different techniques and rhythms they throw on their hips. First, girls, your haters have a point and second, <em>just</em> no. You are not professionals. What you are giving is a sexual shock factor, not real twerking talent. If you want it to be an authentic, Southern style twerk, elevate above the basic “just-found-out-I-got-a booty” spastic gyrating and become one with the beat. Learn the basics, as seen below:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"980\" height=\"551\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/pKGJ_Lvpxf8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Improvise and earn the professional title. Until then, please <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6VUH5wYRco\">practice</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Abderrahmane Sissako is a Mauritanian-born, Mali-raised filmmaker who completed cinematic training at Moscow’s Federal State Film Institute during the 1980s. The program concluded with his first film, the 23-minute short <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1810677/\">Le Jeu</a> [The Game], which he shot in Turkmenistan to double for Mauritania. His next film was the 37-minute <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0835494/\">October</a>, shot around Moscow and following the relationship of an interracial couple. Sissako followed these with a series of films shot around Africa. These included the 1997 documentary <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0176104/\">Rostov-Luanda</a>, about his journey to Angola to search for an old friend from film school, and <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814666/\">Bamako</a> (2006), which centers on a court trial in the capital city of Mali. The trial serves to judge the impact of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank\">World Bank</a> and the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund\">International Monetary Fund</a> on the country’s people, and Sissako cast real judges and lawyers for the film’s court. For the role of “Le procureur”, Sissako tried to recruit influential Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, who turned him down, and the following year Sembène passed away. But in April of 2013, Sissako visited New York City to attend the 20th New York African Film Festival at Film Society of Lincoln Center, where two of his films (<a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157160/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2\">Life on Earth</a> and October) were shown — as were two of Sembène’s (<a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060183/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1\">Borom Sarret</a> and <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104373/\">Guelwaar</a>), whom the festival honored as the “father of African Cinema”. I sat down with Sissako during his visit to New York, and discussed the production of his early films, Le Jeu and October, his thoughts on Sembène and the conflict in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_%282012%E2%80%93present%29\">Northern Mali</a>.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p><strong>Do you think language is a barrier to your films being more widely appreciated?</strong></p>\n<p>For me, cinema is interesting and special, because it’s the language of the image. And when I think about a movie, I really think about images. For me, it means every subject of drama is universal. For example, before I got back from Russia, where I lived for more than 10 years, of course I thought in Russian for the construction of ideas. But then I lived in Paris, of course I thought in French. But it was just <i>how</i> to communicate. The language of cinema or any drama is universal for me.</p>\n<p><strong>Why did you decide to go to Russia to study film?</strong></p>\n<p>First, not only in this time but also now, the big problem for young Africans was we didn’t have the opportunity to choose something — not where to travel, or where to study. If we got an opportunity, <em>any</em> opportunity, to do something different or to go somewhere… for me, is the most important thing for a human being. When I was 19, I got the opportunity to go to Moscow to learn cinema, and only the Soviet Union gave me this opportunity. And sometimes people think, “It was because you are a Communist.” No. Any young guy is a Communist in some way. And that is not a problem, to have the concept of sharing what we have. That is important for me, this vision. But I got this opportunity to go to Moscow to learn, and it was a big chance for me.</p>\n<p>Cinema, or to make movies, or any act of creation, is the research of yourself. It’s really important to start with what you know, what you have experienced, and to go somewhere. ‘October’ is like this. Of course I used my own experience with ambition to tell something universal. That is ambition. And also, that is a most difficult thing.</p>\n<p>In film school, the most important thing, and the most difficult, is to have big enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is not always a good thing. And in this school, they killed the pretence. It’s really interesting when you stop pretending that art is easy. “I just need a camera to make my movie.” No. In this school they tried to explain to me, “Go slowly.” That was interesting for me. But also interesting was when I came to this school — and like today — I wasn’t very interested in seeing movies. I’m not a cinephile. I’m not this guy. When I came to Moscow, to the school, I saw maybe three or four movies in my life. And It’s a different thing to like movies, and to make films. That’s a completely different thing. And for this reason, when I discovered the world cinema — when I saw in school <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cassavetes\">Cassavetes</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ford\">John Ford</a>, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_Antonioni\">Antonioni</a>, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman\">Bergman</a>, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tarkovsky\">Tarkovsky</a> — that was for me, a young guy who wanted to be a filmmaker, watching their movies on a great big screen in a big theater, that was <em>important</em>.</p>\n<div style=\"width:660px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/2884_full_Abderrahmane_Sissako_berlinale_de.jpg\"><img alt=\"Abderrahmane Sissako\" src=\"http://africasacountry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/2884_full_Abderrahmane_Sissako_berlinale_de.jpg\" width=\"650\" height=\"318\"></a><p>Abderrahmane Sissako</p></div>\n<p><strong>Do you think Turkmenistan doubled well for Mauritania in Le Jeu?</strong></p>\n<p>Yes, because it was desert, and deserts are similar. Maybe with some changes. But if you shoot a movie in the desert, you don’t need to <i>show</i> desert. As a filmmaker, you need to cut that, <i>not</i> to show desert. Because it’s not interesting in the cinema. And it’s also the most difficult thing, to shoot a movie in the desert. And I knew that before, and for me it was normal. The most important thing was to tell a story in the place where the most important thing will be my character. That is one. The second thing, the place, was also important, because I didn’t get the opportunity to shoot my movie in Mauritania. And Turkmenistan was the <i>only</i> opportunity to do that. And also, the people from there <i>look</i> like Mauritanians, because they are desert people. And it was interesting, but it was my first movie.</p>\n<p><strong>What was your approach to filming October, and creating its interracial dynamic?</strong></p>\n<p>When I finished Le Jeu, it was my school movie. I was surprised, because when I showed this movie, it was in Cannes in 1991, and also it was bought by the French TV company, Canal J. I was very surprised. The movie went to different places, and different festivals. And I got the opportunity, and also money, to do another thing where I would have control. I decided to do that, and I decided to make October. Because the story of October is the story of many many people. Not only African people who studied in Russia, in the Soviet Union, but it’s the story of any couple. When you think the love story is not possible for this reason, love doesn’t need a reason. But if the reason exists, it will kill something inside of the people. So, if it’s because she’s not really close to my country — if she comes from Texas and I’m from Africa — something always happens in the human being. But most important in this time was the only reason for me to leave this country [Russia] where I spent more than 10 years: I know I’m not accepted in this society. It’s sometimes hard to say that. It’s not like if you live in New York, where everybody can be a New Yorker if you decide to be that. Not in Moscow for an African guy. And to live in this place where everyday I have the feeling, “It’s not my place. I need to leave, to go somewhere to make cinema to make it.” For that, I decided to make a movie. And after I finished this movie, I remember my editor who cut my film, she was a very nice woman — the kind of woman who exists in Russia: simple, beautiful, “like Momma” kind of woman — and also, very cinematographic. When we finished, we edited, and we put some music in to see how the movie would look. At the first screening, she was there with me. Also my DP, who was Tarkovsky’s DP, Georgi Rerberg. He was a very close friend. When we saw the movie, she told me, “Abderrahmane, I don’t know what happened. But only now do I really understand that maybe your life was really hard in this place.” She hugged me, and she cried. It’s really, really interesting. I learned a lot in Russia. It was hard, but I like the people.</p>\n<p><strong>What was your relationship with Ousmane Sembène?</strong></p>\n<p>I met him in 1991. It was in Burkina Faso. I was of course very young, and I came from Moscow with Le Jeu. I’d go every night with my friend to the nightclub. We left the nightclub around 5-6 o’clock in the morning, and I came back to the hotel at 7 o’clock. Before I sleep, I prefer to go for breakfast. And Sembène was there early with Tahar Cheriaa, who was the big critic from Tunisia. So I came up to him to say hello, and he was there with 3-4 people. He said, “This guy is really interesting. He woke up very early.” He thought I just woke up. And he said, “I’m sure this guy can go very far.” But he never knew that I just came from the nightclub. That was really funny. And he heard about Le jeu, but he didn’t see it. But he was very interested in me because I studied in Russia, and he also went to Russia. And before this moment, I was accepted at <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panafrican_Film_and_Television_Festival_of_Ouagadougou\">FESPACO</a> at Sembène’s table, where the next youngest person was maybe 60 years old. But I was one of the young filmmakers who Sembène accepted. You can come to say, “Hello”, and he tells you, “Please have a seat.” Of course I would say, “No, no. Thank you, Sembène.” If he insists, you can sit. And it was very interesting, but he played the role of the father. It means he doesn’t need to tell you your movie’s good, or this movie’s not good. No. If you are a young filmmaker, he accepts the art of every young filmmaker. That was the very strong character of Sembène. And the last really important meeting I had with him was when I prepared Bamako. I decided to have Sembène play the role of the “Le procureur.” I called him in Senegal, and on the phone I said, “Sembène, I need to talk with you. How can I meet you?”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://camerainthesun.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/ASis-11.jpg\" width=\"293\" height=\"342\"></p>\n<p>He said, “The only possibility is to take a plane to come to me in Dakar.” It was Friday. I said, “I can take the plane Tuesday.” He said, “OK, please come.” And I went. But before, I sent the script to Clarence Delgado, who was Sembène’s assistant. He’s a fantastic guy, a very good person, and a good first assistant. So I sent my script to Clarence to give to Sembène before I came. And I came, and I went to Sembène’s office with Clarence. I said hello to Sembène, and he said hello. He said, “Please have a seat. And Clarence, go out.” And he said, “Clarence tells me you want me to play the role of ‘Le procureur’ in a movie.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “No, it’s not possible. I never act in the movie. But if you want, I can propose a different actor.” And I said, “Yes, of course, Sembène. You can propose it. But I’m not sure if I will take another actor.” It was finished, but we talked, and I went back the next day to Bamako. The role was played by a Malian actor [Magma Gabriel Konaté], and it had very few words. But the figure of Sembène, especially in this movie, for me was very important. Just to <i>see </i>Sembène, and listen what happens, the Sembène figure… it was sad.</p>\n<p><strong>What’s your take on the conflict in Mali?</strong></p>\n<p>That is a big question. What happened in the North of Mali, before the war when France came, was really something terrible. Not only for Mali, but for the whole region. The reality was for me not <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20432639\">six French people</a> who were kidnapped and were somewhere. No. The kidnapped were more than 300-400,000 people from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombouctou_Region\">Timbuktu</a>, from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Region\">Gao</a>, from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidal_Region\">Kidal</a> they were kidnapping with the system, the vision of the war — the fanatics who say, “You cannot play music. You cannot play football.” If you steal an old bicycle, because you are poor, they can cut off your hand or your foot. That is for a human being today the most terrible thing. Maybe for this reason, my next movie is called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu\">“Timbuktu.”</a> The situation in Mali between North and South is a development question with poverty, of course. If you don’t have the strong political vision on independence day to change something in all parts of the country — if you don’t put in education, if you don’t construct roads — something will happen anywhere. It’s not only the situation that it’s a little White, and a little Dark. No. It’s more complex than that for me.</p>\n<p>* Christian Niedan blogs at <a href=\"http://camerainthesun.com/\">Camera in the Sun</a>; you can read more of his writing on African cinema <a href=\"http://camerainthesun.com/?p=23368\">here</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Cicadas",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:160px\"><a href=\"http://cdn-enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/EP-130509471-1-1.jpg\"><img alt=\"EP-130509471 (1) (1)\" src=\"http://cdn-enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/EP-130509471-1-1-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"></a><p>See <a href=\"http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/05/2013-cicada-swarm-guide/65101/\">More</a></p></div>\n<p>The New Yorker has a <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/05/why-cicadas-love-prime-numbers.html\">short essay</a> about long reproductive cycle of the Cicadas. Cicadas emerge every 13, or 17 years; this year’s appear every 17 part of the largest “brood.” 13 and 17 are prime numbers. The theory for why that is is that this helps them remain out of synch with the reproductive cycles of their predators.</p>\n<p>This all reminded me of the mast years. You’ll recall that mast years are apparently random events were in a given species of tree across a region will produce a vast number of seeds. Animals that eat those seeds are overwhelmed so some of the seeds survive. But also the animals suffer a population bubble, and the the following year they starve. There is <a href=\"http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JD09Df01.html\">an amazing story</a> about the ripple effects of a mast year in Bamboo. In that story the rat population exploded, and the next year the rats moved onto eating people’s grain stores; which lead to a revolution.</p>\n<p>Which got me wondering what are the ripple effects around the Circada’s emergence. T<a href=\"http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0524_040524_cicadaterminator.html\">his essay</a> provides a bit of of that. The Circada laval eat tree roots – trees have very long reproduction cycles – and you can see the signature of the prime number cycles in the tree rings. Moles thrive in the year before the emergence as they feast on the soon to emerge population. Presumably next year will be a lousy time to be a mole.</p>\n<p>That article also talks about wasps and bacteria. Settling into a reproductive cycle based on a prime number is only gone to help you avoid predators who’s reproductive cycles are multiples of years. Moles, rats, and wasps for example. But it’s no help against the bacteria. They can ramp up their population fast. Which leads to a curiosity that older trees have a resident population of bacteria that loves to eat Circada; and the Circada tend to emerge around younger trees.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile there is a cool example of crowd sourced science over at <a title=\"magicicada.org\" href=\"http://magicicada.org/\">MagiCicada.org</a>, where you can see where they are emerging. See also <a href=\"http://www.cicadamania.com/\">www.cicadamania.com</a>. Sadly they aren’t common here in Boston.</p>"
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"title" : "China in Africa: Mine Control",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Alexis Okeowo</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>It happened in Zambia like it could happen elsewhere in Africa. Chinese investors made deals with the government to mine its natural resources, filling federal coffers with billions of dollars. Chinese immigrants moved into cities and rural towns. They started construction companies; opened copper, coal, and gem mines; and built hotels and restaurants, all providing new jobs. They set up schools and hospitals. But then instances of corruption, labor abuse, and criminal coverups began to set the relationship between the Chinese and the Africans aflame.</p>\n<p>The Chinese have managed to accomplish at least one impressive thing in Africa—they have made everyone else uncomfortable. The Americans are uneasy, worried about (and perhaps jealous of) China’s rapid and profitable investments throughout the continent, and the developmental assistance that it has started to provide in some areas. Europeans have only to look at trade figures: the share of Africa’s exports that China receives has shot from one to fifteen per cent over the past decade, while the European Union’s share fell from thirty-six to twenty-three per cent. China is now Africa’s largest trading partner.</p>\n<p>Some Africans have become resentful, though, unhappy with unbalanced relationships in which China has taken proprietorship of African natural resources using Chinese labor and equipment without transferring skills and technology. “China takes our primary goods and sells us manufactured ones. This was also the essence of colonialism,” Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, wrote in the <em>Financial Times</em> earlier this year.</p>\n<p>The threat (whether real or imagined) of a looming Chinese imperialist presence in Africa has given way to what has been called “resource nationalism,” in which countries aim to take control of the exploitation of their natural resources. But this idea potentially fails to address the fact that the Chinese in Africa are people, and not just part of a faceless imperialist mass. I’ve spoken to Chinese investors in Zambia who appear to genuinely want to not just make money but integrate into Zambian communities and run responsible companies. One complained about how immoral businessmen ruin the efforts of others who want to pay fair wages and keep their workers safe.</p>\n<p>In Zambia, a copper-rich country in southern Africa and the beneficiary of the continent’s third-highest level of Chinese investment, persistent unemployment and poverty have left Zambians wondering where exactly the fruits of their government’s lucrative deals with the Chinese have gone. President Michael Sata won election in 2011 partly thanks to anti-Chinese sentiment (he likened work at Chinese mines to slave labor and said he would deport any abusive investors), but immediately forged close ties with Chinese leaders. Still, his government has tried, at least on the surface, to even its playing field with China by launching criminal proceedings against former government officials who made corrupt deals with the Chinese, and by reforming the way foreign investors have to do business in Zambia. It is likely that the country will be only the first of many to do so.</p>\n<p>“The people of Zambia have been complaining,” the country’s finance ministry said last month, “about lack of reliable and accurate information on the resources that are generated in the country or which come from foreign sources, to develop Zambia.” Under a new law, the Bank of Zambia will create an “electronic reporting and monitoring system” tasked with overseeing the collection of royalties and taxes from foreign investors. Those same investors—who, the legislation notes, are benefiting from numerous business incentives—are now required to open and keep active taxable foreign-currency bank accounts. If they export their goods, as the Chinese owners of copper, coal, and gemstone mines do, they must deposit their profits in Zambia within two months of the date the goods are shipped abroad. The ministry added, “This is the way to go for a country that is so richly endowed with resources but whose capacity to unroll development to higher echelons has been hampered by poor transparency and accountability practices.”</p>\n<p>Chinese owners of copper mines in Zambia regularly violate the rights of their employees by not providing adequate protective gear and insuring safe working conditions, according to a Human Rights Watch report. When Zambian employees of the Chinese-owned Collum Coal Mine protested these poor conditions three years ago, their Chinese managers, who said they feared for their lives, fired gunshots at the miners, injuring thirteen of them. After Chinese business interests put pressure on the then-government in Lusaka, the director of public prosecutions suddenly dropped its criminal case against the managers. Last year, renewed protests at Collum led to hundreds of miners pushing a mine trolley into a Chinese manager. They killed him, and injured two other Chinese supervisors.</p>\n<p>In the murky aftermath of the violence, the current government finally wrested control of the mine from the Chinese brothers who ran it and promised never to let such incidents happen again, partially resulting in this new legislation. Zambia, along with all of its copper and gems, had been especially attractive to China because it had let investors take their profits abroad. That policy has become too expensive, both financially and politically. (Tax avoidance by foreign investors is reportedly costing Zambia close to two billion dollars a year.)</p>\n<p>“There will be a big fight with the mines,” Mooya Lumamba, Zambia’s director of mines, told me in May. The government has had battles with the mines before. Despite fears of scaring off investors, leaders, then recently elected, doubled the mine royalty rate nearly two years ago. Investors, including the Chinese, stuck around and even increased their direct inflows. This time, Lumamba didn’t seem worried.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "And so we add Syria to the long list of nations fortunate enough to benefit from our glorious military largesse.<br><br>As if from nowhere, it appears that our leaders have decided that while eighty thousand deaths were an acceptable expense, ninety thousand is now intolerable. In a matter of days, evidence of chemical weapons use that was once sketchy and unreliable has miraculously engorged itself to convincing solidity.<br><br>We might ask ourselves - what changed? A vicious, barbarous civil war remains vicious and barbarous; its participants remain murderous and its victims terrorised and pitiable.<br><br>In reality, only one aspect has changed, but it's a biggie - the side that we like least from two terrible options has begun to rack up some clear victories.<br><br>So you'll pardon me if I don't join in the chorus of We Can't Sit Back And Do Nothing when plainly, sitting back and doing nothing has suited our leaders just fine, provided that it was our favoured faction that was in the ascendency. You'll notice that William Hague's outrage has waxed and waned with the rebels' military gains and losses, much as Vladimir Putin's has in equal and opposite terms.<br><br>After all, what does President Obama intend to achieve by shoving more and better rifles into the hands of the losing side? <br><br>Not victory for the rebels, since he himself has repeatedly told us that handing out guns to one side in a sectarian bloodbath will only ratchet up the bodycount without winning the war.<br><br>Not a negotiated peace, since President Obama has repeatedly told us that peace is only acceptable to him if it's made on terms that are unacceptable to the regime.<br><br>What can arming the rebels achieve, then? Reader, let me lay this on you - arming the rebels will <i>keep the war going</i>; it will grind down the enemy factions gratifyingly and, as a highly regrettable yet entirely foreseeable consequence, it'll also keep that pile of dead civvies growing indefinitely.<br><br>But hey, we've all got to go some time, right?<br><br>This is the heart and soul of it. It's not the murdering or the bombing that we find intolerable, it's the <i>losing</i>... And by appearances, it seems like we're willing to fight Assad and his allies right down to the last Syrian.<br><br>If this strikes you as ultra-cynical then I have to ask you - what was it in our leaders' recent behaviour that led you to believe that they regard anything at all in Syria as \"intolerable\"?<br><br>Certainly not sectarian slaughter, since some of the worst Iraqi death squads ended their war on the American payroll. Not ethnic cleansing or executions, since we spent the Libyan war providing air cover for the persecution of that unhappy nation's black African populace.<br><br>We plainly don't object to massive bombardments of basically incarcerated populations, since ourselves and our allies have played that game enthusiastically for the last decade, from North Africa to the Tigris.<br><br>We're clearly fine with all of the enormities of modern warfare, to the extent that we have entire PR departments, publications and a cottage industry of thinktanks dedicated to finessing the politics of our own democratically-inclined destruction.<br><br>And these are the people we're to trust with another "humanitarian intervention" in the Middle East? These theoretically-reluctant bombers with their eternal outbursts of supposedly-accidental mayhem and chaos?<br><br>Unless we're using the term \"humanitarian\" in the same way that we'd talk about a vegetarian intervention at the salad bar, I suspect the results might belie the moniker.<br><br>Anyway. All of this must seem alien and insane to many, but if I can offer one piece of advice on this situation, it'd go like this...<br><br>Every major political actor involved in this godawful catastrophe is lying about their intentions, be they dictator or democrat, and not one of them fears inflating the horror more than they fear backing the losing side... And every single one of them is willing to get people killed in large numbers to get what they want.<br><br>Ah, needless and super-destructive Cold War proxy conflicts. How I've missed you, and the gibbering cavalcade of outrageous, offensively obvious horseshit explosions you proliferate in every direction.<br><br>"
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"title" : "The Metropolitan Trilogy",
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"content" : "<div><p>by <a href=\"http://bit.ly/PVukJN\" title=\"James McGirk's website\">James McGirk</a></p>\r\n<p>\r\n<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01901d36e210970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Blackdahlia_08\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01901d36e210970b-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Blackdahlia_08\"></a>After writing a spate of reasonably successful—and very autobiographical—novels,\r\nJames Ellroy and Martin Amis took the cities surrounding them and used them as\r\ntest beds, experimenting with new voices and forms and populating this familiar\r\nterrain with doppelgangers and villains and foils and sexual obsessions. Amis\r\nwrote three novels devoted to northwest London (and the chicer parts of\r\nManhattan) known colloquially as “the London Trilogy”, while Ellroy revisited\r\nthe Los Angeles neighborhoods he had prowled as a burglar to write his “L.A.\r\nQuartet.” Both used cities to refine distinctive writing styles. Yet despite\r\ntheir precocity, these immense literary efforts remain tethered to a biological\r\nfact in each of the author’s lives. A fact that pulses through the work and\r\nkeeps it vital and exciting despite the fact that the novelists have\r\nessentially written the same novel over and over again. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>James Ellroy’s mother was raped and brutally murdered when\r\nhe was only ten years old, and the murder remains unsolved. At the time he was\r\nabout as estranged from his mother as a ten-year-old could possibly be, and\r\nclaims to have been delighted that she died because he was sent off to live\r\nwith his father, an indulgent lowlife who passed away not long after. His dad\r\ngave him a copy of Jack Webb’s <em>The Badge</em>,\r\nand Ellroy became obsessed with a chapter about the murder of Elizabeth Short,\r\nbetter known as The Black Dahlia, a beautiful woman whose unsolved, grisly\r\nmurder haunted Los Angeles ten years before Ellory’s mother was killed. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Ellroy began his quartet by reconstructing Betty Short’s\r\nmurder. <em>The Black Dahlia </em>is told from\r\nthe point of view of a policeman as he investigates Short’s murder. After that Ellroy’s\r\nnovels become much more ambitious. The second in the series, <em>The Big Nowhere</em>, is narrated by a\r\ngod-like omniscience, following three characters as they get sucked into a\r\nseries of strange murders and political intrigue. The third novel, <em>L.A. Confidential </em>traverses eight years\r\nof Los Angeles history, ending on approximately the same day that Ellroy’s\r\nmother was killed. (Geneva Ellory died June 22, 1958. The last chapter of <em>L.A. Confidential</em> is date-less but occurs\r\nafter a series of scenes set in April and is titled “After You’ve Gone”). Along\r\nthe way, Ellroy experiments with techniques to compress information without\r\nsacrificing the velocity of his story (i.e. the pie crust), introducing\r\ndocuments, police reports, and newspaper clippings into his story. The final novel\r\nin the quartet, <em>White Jazz</em>, abandons\r\ntraditional narrative completely. It’s impossibly dense with detail and takes\r\nthe form of a reconstructed file, animated with clipped recollections, and ends\r\nwith an epilogue that takes his enormous cast of characters and traces their\r\nlives back up to the present day. \r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<p>The prose changes from: “I never knew her in life. She\r\nexists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them” (The\r\nfirst words of <em>The Black Dahlia</em>) to\r\n“All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams—I wake up\r\nreaching, afraid I’ll forget. Pictures keep the woman young. L.A., fall 1958.\r\nNewsprint: link the dots. Names, events—so brutal they beg to be connected.\r\nYears down—the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell.”\r\n(First words of <em>White Jazz</em>) The books\r\nare so similar: young men obsessed, assembling files, while an unknown killer\r\ndoes horrible things to beautiful women who sometimes live and often die, while\r\nthe men around them do ugly, conflicted, heroic things. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Taken in one fat dose, the quartet reads as if Ellroy wanted\r\nto take Betty Short’s death, take the shock of it, and capture its reverberations\r\nthrough the corrupt police departments, chintzy Hollywood glitz, and lush\r\nunderworld of the Los Angeles of his youth. Take all of it in, digest it and\r\nunderstand why—why his own life was jangled forever by his mother’s killing. (After\r\n<em>White Jazz </em>he went on to write two\r\nmemoirs about his mother’s killing, <em>My\r\nDark Places </em>and <em>The Hilliker Curse:\r\nMy Pursuit of Women</em>.) \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Martin Amis’ life was marred by tragedy, too. His cousin,\r\nLucy Partington, vanished in 1973 (her remains were discovered in 1994, in a serial\r\nkiller’s basement). And Amis dedicated several of his novels to his sister\r\nSally, who lived a short and troubled life. But if there had to be a single biological\r\nidiosyncrasy underpinning the London Trilogy, it would to be Amis coming to\r\nterms with being a writer. His father, Kingsley Amis, was, at the time, probably\r\nthe most important British novelist alive when Martin wrote the London Trilogy.\r\nWhy else would he spread the apocryphal story about his father refusing to read\r\nhis early novels? Or tell interviewers Kinglsey hurled the first novel is his\r\nunofficial trilogy, <em>Money</em>, across the\r\nroom the moment a character named Martin Amis was introduced, in other words,\r\nthe very instant Martin broke away from his father’s high modernist legacy and\r\nbecome postmodern… (Mark O’Connell’s superb essay, “The Arcades Project: Martin\r\nAmis’ guide to Classic Video Games,” makes a convincing case for a second biological\r\nfact: an addiction to Space Invaders might be lurking beneath the\r\nexperimentation in the London Trilogy.) \r\n</p>\r\n<p>While Ellroy compresses more and more information as the\r\nquartet evolves, as if panning the silt stirred up by the Dahlia’s murder for\r\nnews of his mother, Amis seems to be at war with the very idea of being a\r\nwriter. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Like <em>The Black </em>Dahlia,\r\n<em>Money</em> is narrated by its protagonist,\r\na film director aptly named John Self who (after a prologue by <em>M.A.</em>) tells us: “As my cab pulled off\r\nFDR Drive, somewhere in the early Hundreds, a low-slung Tomahawk full of black\r\nguys came sharking out of lane and sloped in fast right across our bows.” The\r\nstory is relatively straightforward: Self spends obscene amounts of investors’\r\nmoney and consumes grotesque amounts of food and alcohol trying to make a\r\nmovie, as the entire earth—and even his own body—seem to revolt against his\r\nappetites. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Maybe the story about Kingsley throwing <em>Money</em> was true. The language is so florid it is neon purple, so the\r\nopposite of the flinty prose preferred in the 1980s and 1990s, that entire book\r\nwas such a contrarian gesture, such a slap in the face, that even if Amis\r\nSenior didn’t actually throw the book, perhaps he should have. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Martin Amis expands his scope in <em>London Fields</em>. “This is a true story but I can’t believe it’s\r\nreally happening. It’s a murder story, too. I can’t believe my luck. And a love\r\nstory (I think), of all strange things, so late in the century, so late in the\r\ngoddamned day.” The narrating voice is now a writer, who is self-consciously\r\nwriting (and even attempting to sell) the novel as the story unfolds,\r\nparticipating in events and gathering information, incorporating four distinct\r\ncharacters and an approaching apocalypse. His sentences remain florid, and the\r\nLondon neighborhood and even some of the characters are nearly the same but the\r\nstructure is so much more complicated. It is as if the story is being seen in\r\ncross-section, refracted in a box of mirrors. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>And then in the last book of the trilogy, <em>The Information</em>, Amis abandons the\r\noutward gimmickry of postmodernism and borrows a trick from <em>Moby Dick</em>. “Cities at night, I feel,\r\ncontain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s nothing. Just sad\r\ndreams. Or something like that… Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear\r\nscans and your sob probes, and you would mark them.” There is a presence\r\nnarrating the story, an I, but it is pushed far into the background. Instead of\r\nintervening directly, the narrator cuts in squibs of information about\r\nastronomy (the way Herman Melville used chapters connecting whaling to every\r\ninstant of human history). Amis expands the scope of his novel to the\r\nastrological infinite, which, when refracted against the plot of his story (and\r\nwriting itself) reveals the one and only insight of postmodernism: that a\r\ndiscrete chunk of information can only describe relationships between other\r\nchunks of information. That information says “Nothing.” \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Tom McCarthy’s (2007) <em>Remainder</em>\r\nwas about a traumatized, wealthy amnesiac who remembers nothing of his life\r\nbefore, except for a tiny hairline fracture on a wall. He hires hundreds of\r\npeople to rebuild his memory from that fracture but can’t quite do it, and the\r\nentire production spins apart in the end. Amis and Ellroy skipped the\r\nproduction company. They used familiar locations and reoccurring plots and\r\ncharacter types to create an adventure playground, a safe, familiar, but\r\nchallenging space where they could experiment with painful fragments of their\r\nmemories, pick them up and examine every frightening facet, and then put them\r\naside. \r\n</p>\r\n<p>Ellroy would go on to write a memoir and then tackle a\r\nnational counter-history propelled by the Kennedy assassination (his <em>American Tabloid </em>trilogy). Amis wrote a\r\ndetective novel called <em>Night Train</em>\r\nand then spent a decade writing non-fiction. These novels belong to a category\r\nbeyond a sophomore novel. They scour the prose of the authors’ intimately\r\nfamiliar innards and leave behind a machine capable of writing tackling\r\nsomething universal. </p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=_E1IpW1J5ZY:0cLR5M7s_J8:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/_E1IpW1J5ZY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "“What is the most pointless job in existence?”",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fvdc7/what_is_the_most_pointless_job_in_existence/\">A reddit thread</a>. Some of my favorites:</p>\n<blockquote><p>I stood underneath a conveyer belt dropping gravel out of a rock crusher and picked out chunks of odd-colored rock for 10 hours a day without a break. At the rate the gravel was being poured, I may have possibly extracted .001% of the river rock, as i was picking it up by hand, one piece at a time.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>I’m an aviation meteorologist at a location without planes.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>I once worked a job where I would receive forms that were scanned into a machine that put them into some software. But since the scanner wasn’t perfect, I would have to manually type the mistakes into the machine. It was actually faster to not look for mistakes and just retype the entirety of the forms. We would then shred the forms. I was like the backup to a machine who wasn’t very good at its job.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>So my friend has a job walking around a building making sure it isn’t on fire. It is an old building and is no longer up to fire code. So untill the building gets renovated in 2-3 years 3 people have to walk the halls and make sure it isn’t on fire.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The post <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/2013/06/13/what-is-the-most-pointless-job-in-existence/\">“What is the most pointless job in existence?”</a> appeared first on <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com\">Chris Blattman</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Clay Shirky guest-bleg: How do you describe bad economics reporting?",
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"content" : "<p>This is a guest-bleg, inspired by Quiggin’s Zombie Economics project.</p>\n\n\t<p>I teach in <span>NYU</span>’s Journalism department, where we have strong concentrations in both business and science reporting. I’m looking for some way to label and describe a particular flavor of bad economics reporting, so as to make the students more alert to it, as consumers and possible producers of such reporting.</p>\n\n\t<p>Here’s the backstory. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Tamar Gendler introduced me to the the problem of easy knowledge, the notion that if you believe a particular assertion, you can produce inductive chains that lead to overstated conclusions. “I own this bike” can be seen as an assertion that the person you bought it from was its previous owner.</p>\n\n\t<p>But of course you don’t know if that guy in the alley had the right to sell it, so an assertion that you own the bike can generate easy knowledge about whether he did. Instead, “I own this bike” should be seen as shorthand for “<i>If</i> the guy in the alley was the previous rightful owner, <i>then</i> I am its current rightful owner.” (Oddly, this also describes the question of the Elder Wand in <i>Harry Potter</i> Vol. 7, pp 741 ff. Tom Riddle died of easy knowledge.)</p>\n\n\t<p>I was reminded of easy knowledge while reading Thomas Edsall’s <a href=\"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/why-cant-america-be-sweden/\" title=\"\"><span>NY </span>Times column</a> on<br>\n<i><a href=\"http://economics.mit.edu/files/8172\">Can’t We All Be More Like Nordics? Asymmetric Growth and Institutions in an Interdependent World</a></i>, a paper by the economists Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson and Thierry Verdier. (Acemoglu goes on to discuss this work in a post titled <i><a href=\"http://www.voxeu.org/article/cuddly-or-cut-throat-capitalism-choosing-models-globalised-world\">Choosing your own capitalism in a globalised world?</a></i>.)<span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>In their paper, Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier model a technologically interdependent world where countries can chose either cutthroat or cuddly capitalism (the US and Sweden being the usual avatars) <i>and</i> each country can be a technological leader or follower <i>but</i> those choices are not orthogonal.</p>\n\n\t<p>They then examine this model, and discover that:<br>\n<blockquote><br>\n…interpreting the empirical patterns in light of our theoretical framework, one may claim (with all the usual caveats of course) that the more harmonious and egalitarian Scandinavian societies are made possible because they are able to benefit from and free-ride on the knowledge externalities created by the cutthroat American equilibrium.<br>\n</blockquote><br>\nNot just the US but indeed the whole world would be worse off if we had public health care, because we have to treat poor people badly if Larry Page is to get rich, so that the Swedes can copy us. Because innovation.</p>\n\n\t<p>Now there’s nothing too surprising in this sentiment—the headline “Neo-Liberalism Woven into Fabric of Universe, say Economists” could have run unaltered in every year since 1977. What is surprising—or at least what Tamar made me see with new eyes—is that the entire exercise is a machine for smuggling easy knowledge into public discourse.</p>\n\n\t<p>Imagine I decide to model multiplying a number by itself, but, to simplify the calculations, I make the simplifying assumption that integers in the range [0,1] can stand in for all numbers. After running exhaustive tests, I confirm that X*X = X. I can now publish a paper that says “Interpreting the empirical patterns in light of my theoretical framework, one may claim (with all the usual caveats of course) that multiplying a number by itself creates no change in its value.”</p>\n\n\t<p>And that’s true, right? As long as you accept my theoretical framework (with all the usual caveats), you also have to accept that X<sup>2</sup> = X. After publication, the press can then report that teaching children “squaring”, as liberal school districts so often do, is a waste of tax dollars.</p>\n\n\t<p>The only difference between my research into self-multiplication and <i>Can’t We All Be More Like Nordics?</i> is that it’s obvious what I’m up to, but the form is identical: Start with some assumptions, then test them, where the result is never anything other than foregone. Then claim that because the expected conclusion turned out as expected, belief in the assumptions is strengthened. (This is a generalized case of Daniel Davies’ <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/19/the-correct-way-to-argue-with-milton-friedman/\">rule for debating Milton Friedman</a>.)</p>\n\n\t<p>In <i>Can’t We All Be More Like Nordics</i>, as in all great intellectual smuggling, <a href=\"http://star.psy.ohio-state.edu/coglab/Miracle.html\">the miracle occurs in Step 2</a>:<br>\n<blockquote><br>\nSecond, we consider that effort in innovative activities requires incentives which come as a result of differential rewards to this effort. As a consequence, a greater gap in income between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs increases entrepreneurial effort and thus a country’s contribution to the world technology frontier.<br>\n</blockquote><br>\n<i>If</i> we assume that innovation requires income inequality, <i>then</i> we can conclude that innovation requires income inequality. <span>QED</span>.</p>\n\n\t<p>This presented as fairly self-evident—“the well-known incentive-insurance trade-off … implies greater inequality and greater poverty (and a weaker safety net) for a society encouraging innovation”—even though a moment’s reflection is enough to bring up a host of questions:</p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain post-war innovation in the US against the background of a 90% tax<br>\nbracket?</li></p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain Bell Labs inventing, <i>inter alia</i>, the transistor and the laser, without offering the scientists profit-sharing arrangements?</li></p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain income inequality correlating more closely with poor worker protections and financialization of an economy than with periods of innovation?</li></p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain the creation of the internet, by people who didn’t and couldn’t commercialize it?</li></p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, and the ways that creative people are often driven by a desire for autonomy or appreciation, not just money?</li></p>\n\n\t<p><li> How to explain the differing motivations and behaviors between inventors, like Steve Wozniak, who created Apple’s computers, and entrepreneurs, like Steve Jobs, who created Apple Computer. (Woz famously cried on hearing that <a href=\"http://m.ibtimes.com/steve-wozniak-cried-jobs-kept-atari-bonus-267711.html\">Jobs tricked him into writing a game for Atari in just four days</a>, then pocketing a majority of the fee.)</li></p>\n\n\t<p>One could go on and on.</p>\n\n\t<p>The danger of papers like <i>Can’t We All Be More Like Nordics?</i> is not that there are sloppy assumptions; academic work is supposed to be self-correcting over the long haul. It’s dangerous because the press presents these papers as if they are scientific experiments, where prior assumptions were vetted and where the outcome was in doubt.</p>\n\n\t<p>But neither of those things is true. The only thing Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier show is that math continues to work as expected. They neither checked nor tested their initial assumptions in the design or outcome of the model.</p>\n\n\t<p>This misdirection worked perfectly. When discussing the paper, Thomas Edsall (who I generally like) describes <i>Can’t We All Be More Like Nordics?</i> and its detractors, but then, when he gets to the part where he would grade the competing assertions, he throws his hands up:<br>\n<blockquote><br>\nFor self-evident reasons, it is difficult for a political columnist to adjudicate these warring claims. Why? Here is Acemoglu, Robinson and Verdier’s first assumption:<br>\n<a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screen-Shot-2013-06-13-at-1.19.28-PM.png\"><img src=\"http://crookedtimber.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Screen-Shot-2013-06-13-at-1.19.28-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2013-06-13 at 1.19.28 PM\" width=\"100%\" height=\"100%\"></a><br>\n</blockquote><br>\nThat sure is a lot of math symbol things right there! This so frightens the ordinarily incisive Edsall that he forgets that if the assumptions are wrong, all the math in the world won’t produce a useful conclusion.</p>\n\n\t<p>Now a lot of this is commonplace—economics has loopy and unsupportable views of human nature, economic modeling often <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow\">assumes spherical cows</a>, and so on—but what I need is something a bit more scalpel-like, a word or phrase or short description that captures the danger of thinking that self-consistent economic conclusions should lead us to believe in the real-world applicability of the assumptions.</p>\n\n\t<p>I want something that reminds students “Don’t just look at the conclusions, which can be as mechanistic as a wind-up toy. Look at the assumptions.” Any ideas? (I don’t think ‘easy knowledge’ is it, as it isn’t self-explanatory, though instant comprehension may be an unreachable goal.) Is there any label for this habit of camouflaging suspect assumptions while emphasizing obvious conclusions?<br>\n</p>"
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"title" : "staggering statistics on Africa's food deficit",
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"content" : "courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/News/Africa-s-food-imports-on-the-rise\">This is Africa</a>:<br><br><blockquote>The value of agricultural exports from Thailand, which has less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population, <a href=\"http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2013/03/12/000425962_20130312103050/Rendered/PDF/756630v10REPLA0frica0pub03011013web.pdf\">is now greater than for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa</a>.<br><br>No country better exemplifies Africa's agricultural decline than Nigeria. In the 1960s, before the oil bonanza, this was one of the most promising food producers in the world, beating the likes of Malaysia and Indonesia in palm oil, and the US and Argentina in groundnuts. It provided 18 percent of global cocoa production, a figure down to 8 percent today. And while it produces 65 percent of tomatoes in western central Africa, it is now the largest importer of tomato paste (from China and Italy).<br><br>In an interview with This is Africa at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town last week, the minister for agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, reeled off these statistics with regret. "Nigeria has transited from being a self-sufficient country in food to being a net importing country, spending $11bn importing rice and fish and sugar and so on. It just makes absolutely no sense to me at all”.<br>While Nigeria is second in the world in citrus production and Africa’s biggest pineapple producer, its supermarkets are stocked with concentrated, imported products of both. “The only local content is water from Nigeria,” the minister complains. Multinationals testify to the challenges of agricultural import-dependence in their local operations. “We have thirteen factories in Africa that use products like soft oils, tomatoes or starch-based compounds on a daily basis, but much of this is imported, wasting foreign exchange and increasing our carbon footprint,” says Marc Engel, chief procurement officer at Unilever. The company owns the largest soap factory in Africa, but have to import palm oil from Asia to keep it running, and they import sorbitol from China for their local oral care products, when cassava would do the job.</blockquote><br>"
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"title" : "The case for an African customs union",
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"content" : "<p><i>Introduction</i></p>\n<p>I will first explain what I mean by saying that the informal economy, a concept I was associated with coining in the early 1970s, has taken over the world, largely as a result of neoliberal deregulation over the last three decades (pp. 1-3). After a brief account of my own early exposure to West Africa (pp. 3-5), I turn to the question of how and why Africa has long been a symbol of global inequality. Even after independence, Africans are still waiting from emancipation (pp. 5-10). Even so Africa’s development prospects in the 21st century are brighter than for a long time (pp. 10-12). In the course of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, regional differences in the forms of African political economy converged on the model of agrarian civilization that was once known as the Old Regime. The antidote to the Old Regime is a liberal revolution (pp. 12-15). Accordingly I next consider the role played by free trade and protection in the revolutions that made modern France, the United States, Italy and Germany, with particular reference to the latter’s <i>Zollverein</i> (customs union) in the 19<sup>th</sup> century (pp. 15-16). Turning to the Southern African example, which includes the oldest extant customs union in the world, I examine the organization of international trade there (pp. 16-18). In conclusion I review the prospects for greater integration of trade regimes in Africa. Is an African customs union possible or desirable? How might it come about? (pp. 18-19). <span></span></p>\n<p><i>How the informal economy took over the world<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn1\"><b>[1]</b></a></i></p>\n<p>Soon after the millennium I learned of an illegal trade that had grown up in the southern French cities of Marseilles and Montpellier. It supplied stolen cars and car parts to Africa and was staffed mainly by North Africans. Some of them dreamed of reclaiming the Mediterranean for Islam and they all ignored official paperwork, relying on word-of-mouth agreements, mainly within a religious brotherhood. This traffic grew so big that elements in the French car industry were drawn South to meet a demand of which there is no trace in the official record. An army of policemen, customs and tax officials were allegedly part of this remarkable machine. Russian and Latin American mafias became involved and the gang added Brussels and Hamburg as bases for their world strategy.</p>\n<p>Nor is mainstream French politics without its criminal side. President Mitterand’s office apparently ran a slush fund supplied by petrol companies and licenced distributors in Africa from which, among other things, he transferred election funds to his friend, Helmut Kohl in Germany. President Chirac’s corruption charge from his days in the Paris mayor’s office is still going through the courts. Now there are more scandals involving wholesale tax evasion by the controller of the government budget and allegations of corruption by the head of the IMF when she was Minister of Finance. Meanwhile the Tuareg tradition of smuggling everything from smartphones to bazookas across the Sahara on camels has been interrupted by a French army invasion to save the Mali government in the name of the ‘war on terror’. All of this pales into insignificance next to the City of London which converted a failed colonial empire into a network of tax havens that would probably surpass in scope Swiss private banking, if either could be measured.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn2\">[2]</a> At the other end of the world, a major Japanese information technology corporation, NEC, discovered not long ago a parallel criminal company using the same name, accountancy methods, suppliers and customers, but with the advantage of paying no tax because it was entirely off the books.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn3\">[3]</a> This is known as brand-jacking.</p>\n<p>Informality has come a long way since I provided an ethnographic account of income opportunities available to the urban poor in Ghana four decades ago.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn4\">[4]</a> Then I was interested in revealing unrecorded activities that existed between the cracks of the state-made economy. It never occurred to me that these added up to much, but I thought they might be relevant to current debates concerning rampant unemployment in Third World cities. These people were working, but often for meagre and erratic rewards. I was careful to distinguish between legal and illegal activities, but this was often blurred. I have since identified three ways that the formal and informal may be combined. What I have been talking about so far reflects the first of these: <i>negation</i>, breaking the rules, crime; and we are reminded that this takes place at every level of the economy. Second, informality is built into abstract rule systems as unspecified <strong><i>content</i></strong>. Workable solutions to problems of administration invariably contain processes that are invisible to the formal order. For example, employees sometimes ‘work to rule’. They follow their job descriptions to the letter without any of the informal practices that allow these abstractions to function. Everything grinds to a halt. Third, some activities exist in parallel, as <strong><i>residue</i></strong>. They are just separate from the bureaucracy. The logic of the formal/informal pair is stretched to include peasant economy, traditional payments and domestic life as being somehow ‘informal’. Yet these social forms often shape informal economic practices and <em>vice versa</em>. Is society just one thing – one state with its rule of law – or can some spheres of social life be left by bureaucracy to their own devices?</p>\n<p>The idea of an informal economy arose at a turning point in world history in the early 1970s. At that time it was universally assumed that only the state could engineer significant development on behalf of its citizens. The United States’ losing war in Vietnam, however, provoked a global financial crisis which led to the dollar being depegged from gold in 1971. The next year money futures were invented in Chicago in response to wild currency fluctuations and the world of derivatives was launched; the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates unravelled. The formation of OPEC and the energy crisis of 1973 brought about a world depression, the consequences of which we are still living with. By the end of the decade neoliberal conservatives were installed in power throughout the West and the post-war Keynesian experiment in regulated public economies was over. The seeds of the current crisis were sown then.</p>\n<p>The informal economy’s improbable rise to global dominance is a result of the mania for deregulation in the following three decades. This was linked of course to the wholesale privatization of public goods and services and to the capture of politics by high finance. Deregulation provided a fig leaf for corruption, rent-seeking, tax evasion and public irresponsibility. Nowhere was this more evident than in the culture of the Wall Street banks from the 1980s. This was no secret at the time. Each major bank spawned a tell-all book written by undercover reporters or disillusioned former employees.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn5\">[5]</a> The removal of official restraints on financial practices generated a culture of personal excess from the trading floor to boardroom politics; moral responsibility towards clients was replaced by predation. Yet, during the credit boom, celebration of unending prosperity drowned criticism. Even after the bust, the political ascendancy of finance has hardly been challenged.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn6\">[6]</a></p>\n<p>Apart from the main financial houses, the shadow banking system — hedge funds, money market funds and structured investment vehicles that lie beyond state regulation – is literally out of control. Tax evasion is now an international industry that dwarfs national budgets. The Silicon Valley giants that now dominate world economy – Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook – pay next to no taxes. The Cambridge economist, Sir James Mirrlees, won a Nobel Prize for proving that you can’t force the rich to pay more than they are willing to.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn7\">[7]</a> None of this touches on the blatant criminal behaviour of transnational corporations who now outnumber countries by 2 to 1 in the top 100 economic entities on the planet.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn8\">[8]</a> Where to stop? The drug cartels from Mexico and Colombia to Russia, the illegal armaments industry, the global war over intellectual property (“piracy”), fake luxury goods, the invasion and looting of Iraq, 4 million dead in the East Congo scramble for minerals. The informal economy was always a way of labelling the unknowable, but the scale of all this goes beyond comprehension. Yet we often talk about the international rule system as if we were all still living in the regulated national economies of 1970. And what can it possibly mean to assert – as is often the case – that Africa’s economies are 70-90% ‘informal’? The ubiquity of the informal economy today is a powerful symptom of the endemic causes of and failure to address the world economic crisis.</p>\n<p><i>An old man’s prayers</i></p>\n<p>It is hard to recall what I was really thinking about when I set out for Accra in 1965 to do field research towards a PhD in social anthropology. Audrey Richards wrote to my supervisor, Jack Goody, who was already there: “God knows what Keith is going to do when he arrives, but he doesn’t”. My plan was to study the politics of independence by investigating how migrants from the savannah interior learned how to be citizens through voluntary associations, political parties, broadcasting and the like. Ghana was a police state at the time and I soon found that no-one wanted to discuss politics with me. So I turned instead to the street economy of the slum where I lived. The rest is history, as they say. I became dissatisfied with the idea that the state was the only vehicle for development and, as I have said, drew attention to informal economic practices in the cracks of the state-made economy. This ethnographic intervention made visible what had largely been invisible before. I did not anticipate that a concept would be coined to define these multifarious activities<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn9\">[9]</a> or that deregulation would eventually render all levels of the world economy substantially informal.</p>\n<p>Although I was an apprentice career academic at the time, I was influenced by the <i>Zeitgeist</i> of the 1960s. Western youth rejected the authority of our parents’ generation – unwisely as it turned out. We chanted the names of the heroes of the anti-colonial revolution – Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung and the rest – and believed that the defeat of colonial empire had major implications for humanity as a whole (civil rights, the women’s movement, the anti-nuclear campaign, even world politics). In the course of the 1970s, we saw this dream unravel. By the end of that decade I wrote a book on West Africa<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn10\">[10]</a> that sought to explain why post-colonial state formation had failed in societies that were still predominantly rural. It was an angry book, perhaps because I took the failure personally. I argued that modern states had been erected on the basis of backward agriculture. Either some sectors of the economy had to raise productivity levels by adopting machine methods or the state would devolve to a level compatible with that of production. I called this “Haitianization”, after C.L.R. James’s great account of the slave revolution in San Domingo.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn11\">[11]</a> This recognized the role of foreign financial pressures; and it was prophetic, since the 1980s saw the Bretton Woods institutions pull the rug out from under African governments and before long failed states became commonplace in the region. At much the same time, I joined James himself and began a belated education in Panafricanism.</p>\n<p>As Hegel said, an old man repeats the same prayers he learned as a child, but they are now coloured by the experience of a lifetime. This lecture might be an attempt to prove that my youthful aspirations were not misguided. Or, to put it another way, we need to ask now whether the international and national bureaucracies that regulate the movement of people, goods and money around the world, within and beyond the African continent, serve the interests of the vast majority or just the powerful few who can hold the rules of democratic states in contempt.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn12\">[12]</a> Hernando De Soto is a controversial figure; but he has a point when he argues that, whereas developing countries like Peru were once stuck in a colonial mercantile system, they are now constrained by an international bureaucracy that works only for the developed countries (and their corporations) who would never have developed in the first place, if their infant capitalist economies had been saddled with similar encumbrances.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn13\">[13]</a> The imposition of customs duties and other taxes on the profits of international trade goes to the heart of this crisis for democracy today. Politics is still mainly national, but the economy has gone global and is both over- and under-regulated at the same time. Nowhere is this problem more urgent than in Africa.</p>\n<p><i>Waiting for emancipation in an unequal world</i></p>\n<p>We live in a racist world. Despite the collapse of European empire and the formal adoption of a façade of international bureaucracy, the vast majority of black Africans are still waiting for meaningful emancipation from their perceived social inferiority. The idea that humanity consists of a racial hierarchy with blacks at the bottom is an old one. But the Caribbean economist, W. Arthur Lewis, made a strong case that the formation of a world economy divided between rich manufacturing exporters and poor raw material exporters belongs to the decades before the First World War, when Africa was carved up by the imperial powers.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn14\">[14]</a> That bipolar economic order has been shifting for some time now, largely as a result of the emergence of Japan and then China and India as engines of capitalist growth.</p>\n<p>Now there is talk, much of it overheated, of economic growth in Africa. In the present decade, 7 out of the 10 fastest-growing economies (as conventionally measured) are African.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn15\">[15]</a> In 1900 Africa was the world’s least densely populated and urbanized continent with 7.5% of the total. Today it is double that, with an urban share fast approaching the global average. According to UN projections, Africa will contain 24% of all the people alive in 2050, 35% in 2100. This is because its annual population growth rate is 2.5% at a time when the rest of the world is ageing. The Asian manufacturing countries already recognize that Africa is the fastest-growing market in the world. This could provide a long delayed opportunity for Africans to raise their collective profile in international negotiations. If they succeed, it will be a world revolution, the death knell for a racist world order, no less. And that is a prize for us all to wish for.</p>\n<p>For centuries Africa was a source of slaves shipped across the Atlantic, but also to the Indian Ocean and Arab worlds. The movement to abolish slavery was officially completed in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century. But emancipation is rarely as simple as that. In West Africa, abolition was a disaster. The internal drive to capture slaves continued apace and, despite a shift to their use in domestic production, supply soon exceeded demand and the price of slaves fell drastically, leading to their widespread abuse. Colonial empires were subsequently justified by the mayhem in West Africa and by the drive to abolish the Arab slave trade in East Africa. But colonial regimes still relied on indigenous slave masters in several places. Much later, when these regimes fell, Africans were offered emancipation once more, this time through national independence. This was followed by the regression of most African economies for a half-century. Ghana had an economy bigger than Indonesia’s in 1960 and per capita income on a par with South Korea’s. Now, despite Ghana’s recent partial economic recovery, for both indicators the Asian countries are more than twenty times larger than Ghana’s. Apartheid was defeated in South Africa, but two decades later the country is more unequal and unemployment is massive, while the government shoots its own people if they complain. Writers coin metaphors for misrule throughout the continent: “The Postcolony”, “Politics of the Belly”, “Architects of Poverty”.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn16\">[16]</a> Africans are still waiting for a freedom that would secure them equal membership of world society. But they have never encountered more favourable conditions than now. When Africa had only 2% of global purchasing power, the whole continent could be dismissed as irrelevant to the world economy. That is no longer the case and rapidly becoming less so.</p>\n<p>For too long Africa has stood as the world’s most vivid symbol of inequality, one reinforced by most of its inhabitants being identifiable by the colour of their skin. ‘Africa’ is either a continental territory separated from the Eurasian landmass by the Mediterranean and Red Seas or the place that black people (and for that matter the human species) come from. But “the land of the blacks” is hard to pin down and “Subsaharan Africa” may make sense from a European perspective looking South, but not if you focus on the Northeast region, where the Nile links Egypt to Sudan, Ethiopia and the Lakes further South. The African continent is divided into three disparate regions — North, South and Middle (West, Central and East Africa); but a measure of convergence between them is now taking place. A preoccupation with Africa’s post-colonial failure to ‘develop’ – or to ‘take-off’ — has obscured what really happened there in the twentieth century. The rise of cities has been accompanied by the formation of weak and venal states, locked into dependency on foreign powers and leaving the urban masses largely to their own devices. These have generated spontaneous markets to meet their own needs which have come to be understood as an “informal economy”.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn17\">[17]</a></p>\n<p>For some four decades now, Jack Goody has tried to explain why the institutions of Africa South of the Sahara diverged so strongly from the Old World civilizations of Eurasia and North Africa, turning later to refute the idea of Europe being exceptional in relation to Asia.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn18\">[18]</a> He based his explanation of Africa’s divergence on low population density, so that people were scarcer than land there, intensification of production was weak and the property foundations of a class society were never developed, as they were in Eurasia. But Goody did not investigate whether and how this was changing in the modern period. In order to make sense of the extraordinary transformation of this highly variegated continent, I distinguish between three broad types of social formation: “egalitarian societies” based on kinship; “agrarian civilization” in which urban elites control the mass of rural labour by means of the state and class power; and “national capitalism”, where markets and capital accumulation are regulated by central bureaucracies in the interest of citizens as a whole. These oversimplified categories allow me to indicate some broad historical trends.</p>\n<p>In 1900, Africa had less than 2% of its inhabitants living in cities. By 2000, a population explosion saw the urban share rise to between a third and a half, compressing into one century what took much longer elsewhere. This urban revolution does not just consist in the unprecedented proliferation of cities, but also in the installation of the whole package of pre-industrial class society: states, new urban elites, intensification of agriculture and a political economy based on the extraction of rural surpluses and the city bazaar.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn19\">[19]</a> Africa has a more complex history than is captured by my typology; but its dominant institutions before the modern period may be understood in terms of the classless type based on kinship in the main. The second type, agrarian civilization, covered most of Europe, Asia and North Africa for the last few millennia. National capitalism has only taken root so far in South Africa, until recently for the benefit of whites only. Middle Africa has made a belated transition to the Old Regime of agrarian civilization in the course of the twentieth century, while Europe and North America, followed by Asia, embraced national capitalism. This brought North and Middle Africa closer together as pre-industrial class societies, while South Africa has drawn closer to the rest of Africa in its political form since the coming of majority rule. At the same time, the fastest-growing economies are from West, Central, East and Southern Africa, not from the North (where popular insurgency has now taken hold) or South Africa (which currently shares the economic weakness of the metropolitan economies of Europe and North America).</p>\n<p>The anti-colonial revolution unleashed extravagant hopes for the transformation of an unequal world. These have not yet been realized for most Africans. But the model of development they were expected to adopt was ‘national capitalism’. Development in this sense never had a chance to take root across Africa. For the first half of the twentieth century, African peoples were shackled by colonial empire and in the second, their new nations struggled to keep afloat in a world economy organized by and for the major powers, then engaged in the Cold War. Africa’s new national leaders thought they were building modern economies, but in reality they were erecting fragile states based on the same backward agriculture as before.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn20\">[20]</a> This weakness inexorably led them to exchange the democratic legitimacy of the independence struggle for dependence on foreign powers. These ruling elites first relied on revenues from agricultural exports, then on loans contracted under dubious circumstances, finally on the financial monopoly that came from being licensed to supervise their country’s relations with global capitalism. But this bonanza was switched off in the early 1980s, when foreign capital felt that it could dispense with the mediation of local state powers and concentrated on collecting debts from them. Many governments were made bankrupt and some countries collapsed into civil war.</p>\n<p>Concentration of political power at the centre led to primate urbanization, as economic demand became synonymous with the expenditures of a presidential ‘kleptocracy’. The growth of cities should normally lead to enhanced rural-urban exchange, as farmers supply food to city-dwellers and in turn buy the latter’s manufactures and services.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn21\">[21]</a> But this progressive division of labour requires a measure of protection from the world market at first and it was stifled at birth in post-colonial Africa by the dumping of subsidized food from North America and Europe and of cheap manufactures from Asia. For ‘structural adjustment’ meant that Africa’s fledgling national economies had no protection from the strong winds of world trade. A peasantry subjected to violence and political extraction was forced to choose between stagnation at home and migration to the main cities or abroad. Somehow the cities survived on the basis of markets that emerged to meet the population’s needs and to recycle the money concentrated at the top. These markets are the key to understanding the economic potential of Africa’s urban revolution.</p>\n<p>Africa’s urban informal economy everywhere supplies food, housing and transport; education, health and other basic services; mining, manufactures and engineering; and trade at every level, including transnational commerce and foreign exchange. But its scope varies. In West/Central Africa, where white settlement was minimal, the cities were substantially an indigenous creation and their markets were always unregulated. Foreign middlemen like Lebanese traders flourished outside colonial administrative controls. The great ports of the Atlantic seaboard enjoy a degree of mercantile freedom that now underwrites their contribution to Africa’s commercial growth. Today Angolan women jump on planes heading for London, Paris, Dubai and Rio, where they stock up on luxury goods for resale in the streets of Luanda. In Southern Africa, however, cities were built by a white settler class who imposed strict controls on the indigenous population’s movements. South Africa’s informal economy today is hedged in as a result by rules designed to promote modern industry. Elsewhere, in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Kenya, the state has long played a more controlling role than would be considered normal today in Lagos or Dakar.</p>\n<p>African nation-states have learned the hard way that they are not free to choose their own forms of political economy. When the world was divided by the Cold War, state ownership of production and control of distribution seemed to offer the best chance of defending the national interest against colonial and neo-colonial predators. From the 80s, the mania for privatization often led to ownership being ceded to foreign corporations. Structural adjustment forced governments to abandon public services, lay off many workers and allow the free circulation of money. In the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia, Chad, Liberia, Sierra Leone and now Mali, failed states and civil wars encouraged informal mining and trade, concentrating wealth and power in the hands of warlords and their followers. The restoration of peace sometimes restored limited bureaucratic controls over distribution. The situation is highly dynamic and variable.</p>\n<p>Tax collection in Africa never attained the regularity it has long achieved in Europe and Asia; and governments still rely on whatever resources they can extract from mineral royalties and the import-export trade. The new urban classes control and live off these revenues, usually under a patrimonial regime propped up by foreign powers. This constitutes an Old Regime ripe for liberal revolution; and the Arab Spring that began in North Africa during 2011 carries great significance for the continent as a whole.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn22\">[22]</a> The new states and class structures of Africa’s urban revolution are entangled in kinship systems that remain indispensable to the informal economy as a means of social organization. The middle classes pass off exploitation of cheap domestic labour as an egalitarian model of African kinship; while ‘family business’ has never lost favour and child labour is still acceptable. Formal bureaucracy, on the other hand, is hostile to kinship, where it is normally viewed as corruption. In the absence of a welfare state, Africans must rely on kinship to see them through the life cycle of birth, marriage, childrearing, old age and death; and this reinforces the power of rural elders who control access to the land in the face of emigration by the youth and women.</p>\n<p>The prospect of rapid economic improvement soon in Africa seems counter-intuitive to many, especially given Africa’s symbolic role as the negation of ‘white’ superiority. Black people have long been the stigmatized underclass of an unequal world society organized along racial lines; but the shift of global economic power from West to East makes this situation highly dynamic now. Rather than face up to a decline in their economic fortunes, the North Atlantic societies prefer to dwell on the misfortunes of black people and on what they imagine is Africa’s permanent exclusion from modern prosperity. Failed politicians and ageing rock stars announce their mission to ‘save’ Africa from its presumed ills. The western media represent Africa as the benighted battleground of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine and death. It all goes to reassure a decadent West that at least some people are a lot worse off than themselves.</p>\n<p><i>Africa’s development prospects in the 21st century</i></p>\n<p>Every person of African descent, whatever their actual history and experience – they could be Barack Obama, for example — suffers the practical consequences of being stigmatized by colour in a world society built on racial difference. This situation will only be ended when Africans are economically ‘developed’ to a level that guarantees them political and cultural equality in our world. The Victorians called it ‘evolution’, but ‘development’ is much the same thing, even if many citizens of the rich countries believe that growth is no longer a priority and should be reversed. So what does development mean in the African context and how is it to be achieved in the century to come?</p>\n<p>In 1800 the world’s population was around one billion. At that time less than 3% lived in cities. The rest lived by extracting a livelihood from the land. Animals and plants were responsible for almost all the energy produced and consumed by human beings. <i> </i>A little more than two centuries later, world population has reached 7 billion. The proportion living in cities is about a half. Inanimate energy sources converted by machines now account for the bulk of production and consumption. For most of this period, the human population has been growing at an average annual rate of 1.5%; cities at 2% a year; and energy production at around 3% a year. Many people now live longer, work less and spend more as a result. But the distribution of all this extra energy has been grossly unequal. A third of humanity still works in the fields with their hands. Americans each consume 400 times more energy than the average Ugandan, for example.</p>\n<p>‘Development’ thus refers in the first instance to this hectic dash of humanity from the village to the city. It is widely assumed that the engine driving this economic growth and the inequality it entails is “capitalism”. Development then means trying to understand both how capitalist growth is generated and how to make good the damage capitalism causes in repeated cycles of creation and destruction. A third meaning refers to the <i>developmental state</i> of the mid-twentieth century, the idea that governments are best placed to engineer sustained economic growth with redistribution. Pioneered by Fascist and Communist states, this model took root in the late colonial empires around the Second World War, was adopted after the war in the leading Western industrial societies and became the norm for developed and newly independent countries afterwards until the 1970s.</p>\n<p>The most common usage of ‘development’ over the last half-century, however, refers to the commitment of rich countries to help poor countries become richer. In the wake of the anti-colonial revolution, such a commitment was real enough, even if the recipes chosen were often flawed. But after the watershed of the 1970s, this commitment has faded. If, in the 1950s and 60s, the rapid growth of the world economy encouraged a belief that poor countries could embark on their own enrichment, from the 80s onwards ‘development’ has more often meant freeing up global monetary flows and applying sticking plaster to the wounds inflicted by this system. Development has thus been the label for political relations between rich and poor countries after colonial empire, for some decades defined by “aid”, but the preferred term nowadays is “partnership”.</p>\n<p>There are massive regional discrepancies in development since the collapse of the European empires. After the anti-colonial revolution, many Asian countries installed successful capitalist economies, with and without western help, eventually bringing about an eastward shift in the balance of global economic power. But other regions, especially Africa, the Middle East and much of Latin America, stagnated or declined since the 1970s – a pattern from which Africa now seems to be rebounding. These divergent paths have led to the circulation of a variety of development models, with an Asian emphasis on authoritarian states being opposed to Western liberalism and radical political alternatives coming out of Latin America.</p>\n<p>There are two pressing features of our world: the unprecedented expansion of markets since the Second World War and massive economic inequality between (and within) rich and poor nations. Becoming closer and more unequal at the same time is an explosive combination. <i>Forbes</i> magazine reported in March 2009 that the top ten richest individuals had a net worth between them of $250 billion, roughly the annual income of Finland (population 5 million) or of middle-ranking regional powers such as Venezuela (28 million), South Africa (49 million) and Iran (72 million). The same sum of a quarter trillion dollars equals the annual income of 26 Sub-Saharan African countries with a combined population of almost half a billion. Providing adequate food, clean water and basic education for the world’s poorest people could be achieved for less than the West spends annually on makeup, ice cream and pet food. Car ownership in developed countries is 400 per thousand persons, while in the developing countries it is below 20. The rich pollute the world fifty times more than the poor; but the latter are more likely to die from the pollution. A report published just before the millennium claimed that world consumption increased six times in the previous two decades; but the richest 20% accounted for 86% of private expenditure, the poorest 20% for only 1.3%. Africa, with a seventh of the world’s population, then had 2% of global purchasing power.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn23\">[23]</a></p>\n<p>Africa’s advantage in the current crisis is its weak attachment to the status quo. The world economy is precarious in the extreme, but Africans have less to lose; and the old Stalinist ‘law of unequal development’ reminds us that, under such circumstances, winners and losers can easily change places.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn24\">[24]</a> To speak of a possible economic upturn begs the question of what Africa’s new urban populations could produce as a means of bringing about their own economic development. So far, African countries have relied on exporting raw materials, when they could. Minerals clearly have a promising future owing to scarce supplies and escalating demand; but the world market for food and other agricultural products is skewed by western farm subsidies and prices are further depressed by the large number of poor farmers seeking entry. Conventionally, African governments have aspired to manufacturing exports as an alternative, but here they face intense competition from Asia. It would be more fruitful for African countries to argue collectively in the councils of world trade for some protection from international dumping, so that their farmers and infant industries might at least get a chance to supply their own populations first.</p>\n<p>The evolving rural-urban division of labour which I identified earlier as the mainspring of development was frustrated in the case of post-colonial Africa. Fragmentation of sovereignty leaves Africa’s 54 countries in a poor bargaining position when it comes to negotiating mineral revenues, for example; and any appeal for great protection would have to be backed up by serious political coordination of a kind that is hardly visible at present. The world market for services is booming, however, and perhaps greater opportunities for supplying national, regional and global markets exist there. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is the production of culture: entertainment, education, media, software and a wide range of information services. The future of the human economy, once certain material requirements are satisfied, lies in the infinite scope for us to do things for each other — singing songs or telling stories — that need not take a tangible form. The largest global television audiences are for sporting events like the World Cup or the Olympic Games. Any move to enter this market will confront transnational corporations and the governments who support them. Nevertheless, there is a lot more to play for here and the terrain is less rigidly mapped out than in agriculture and manufactures. It is also one where Africans are well-placed to compete because of the proven preference of global audiences for their music and plastic arts.</p>\n<p><i>Classes for and against a liberal revolution</i></p>\n<p>The liberal revolutions that launched modern western society between the 17<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries were sustained by three ideas: that freedom and economic progress require increased movement of people, goods and money in the <i>market</i>; that the political framework most compatible with this is <i>democracy</i>, putting power in the hands of the people; and that social progress depends on <i>science</i>, the drive to know objectively how things work that leads to enlightenment. For over a century now an anti-liberal tendency has disparaged this great emancipatory movement as a form of oppression and exploitation in disguise; and this is partially true, as with many social revolutions. Africa today must escape soon from varieties of Old Regime that owe a lot to the legacy of slavery, colonialism and apartheid; but conditions there can no longer be attributed just to these ancient causes. The peasant and worker revolutions of the 20<sup>th</sup> century – and the ideologies that sustained them – are less relevant to Africa’s current circumstances than classical liberalism, reinforced by endogenous developments in economy, technology, religion and the arts.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn25\">[25]</a> These would have to be built on the conditions and energies generated by Africa’s urban revolution in the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</p>\n<p>We all know that power is distributed very unequally in our world and any new movement would soon run up against entrenched privilege. In fact, world society today resembles quite closely the Old Regime of agrarian civilization, as in eighteenth century France, with isolated elites enjoying a lifestyle wildly beyond the reach of masses with almost nothing. It is not just in post-colonial Africa where the institutions of agrarian civilization rule today.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn26\">[26]</a> Since the millennium, the United States, whose own liberal revolution once overcame the Old Regime of King George and the East India Company, is now a rent-seeking plutocracy and regressed under George W. Bush to presidential despotism in the service of corporations like Halliburton. It is no longer the case that immense riches are principally acquired through selling products cheaper than ones competitors; access to rents secured by political privilege — such as the patents awarded to Big Pharma, monopoly rents from movie DVDs and music CDs or the use of tax revenues to bail out the Wall Street banks — now guarantee much greater profits and more reliably.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn27\">[27]</a></p>\n<p>In <i>The Wretched of the Earth</i>,<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn28\">[28]</a> Frantz Fanon provided an excellent blueprint of how to go about analysing the class structure of decadent societies that are ripe for revolution, in his case the anti-colonial revolution. He pointed out that political parties and unions were weak and conservative in late colonial Africa because they represented a tiny part of the population: the industrial workers, civil servants, intellectuals and shopkeepers of the town, a class unwilling to jeopardize its own privileges. They were hostile to and suspicious of the mass of country people. The latter were governed by customary chiefs supervised in turn by the military and administrative officials of the occupying power. A nationalist middle class of professionals and traders ran up against the superstition and feudalism of the traditional authorities. Landless peasants moved to the town where they formed a <i>lumpenproletariat</i>. Eventually colonial repression forced the nationalists to flee the towns and take refuge with the peasantry. Only then, with the rural-urban split temporarily healed by crisis, did a mass nationalist movement take off. This compressed summary offers one model of how to analyse the potential for another African revolution now.</p>\n<p>The African states brought into being by independence likewise rely on chiefs to keep the rural areas insulated from the more unruly currents of world society. Where the state’s writ has been fatally undermined, warlords take their place. Since the ‘structural adjustment’ policies of the 1980s, international agencies have systematically preferred to approach rural populations through NGOs, the missionaries of our age, rather than the departments of national government. World trade is organized by and for an alliance of the strongest governments and corporations. Some of the latter, especially in remote extractive industries, operate as independent states with the state. The cities, although massively expanded in size, still sustain a very small industrial workforce, since mechanized production is poorly developed in post-colonial Africa. The civil servants have been ravaged as a class by neoliberal pressure to cut public expenditures. This leaves us with the informal economy of unregulated urban commerce, a phenomenon that is not best summarized by the pejorative term, <i>lumpenproletariat</i>. Clearly, trade and finance are not organized, in Africa or the world at large, with a view to liberating the potential of these classes. It is not likely, therefore, that a liberal revolution could succeed by relying solely on a popular economic movement from below. There are larger players on the scene and their influence too must surely be felt. If Africans want to have a say in what happens to them next, they will have to tap old and new social forces to develop their own capacity for transnational association, in the face of the huge coalitions of neo-imperial power mobilizing to deny them that opportunity for self-expression.</p>\n<p>Panafricanism gave way to aspirations for national capitalism half a century ago because world society was not organized then to accommodate it. When the anti-apartheid movement led to African independence in South Africa, global thinking took second place to the non-racial nationalism that the ANC had always espoused. But, as a result of neoliberal globalization, one of the strongest political movements today is the formation of large regional trading blocs: the EU, NAFTA, ASEAN, Mercosur. This is a good time for Africans to renew the movement towards greater continental unity, at first in economic affairs and as a complement to, not replacement for national governments, since the rest of the world is doing the same thing and they will inevitably lose out again if they fail to do so. If we needed any reminder of the contemporary salience of Panafricanism, we have only to note the USA’s recent establishment of a unified African military command, with the aim of controlling access to mineral resources there in competition with China and Europe.</p>\n<p>It was never the case that a national framework for development made sense in Africa and it makes even less sense today. The coming African revolution could leapfrog many of the obstacles in its path, but it will not do so by remaining tied to the national straitjacket worn by African societies since they won independence from colonial rule. Perhaps comparative history might open up fresh perspectives on this question.</p>\n<p><i>Freedom and protection in the early modern revolutions<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn29\"><b>[29]</b></a></i></p>\n<p>In 1793, the French revolution turned to the Terror, a campaign whose main target was the <i>Girondins</i>, a moderate faction whose base was in the Atlantic region, notably Bordeaux. At the same time, the Bretons raised a ‘Royal and Catholic Army’, supported from the sea by Britain, against which the Republic sent out an army of its own to fight in what became known as the War of Vendée.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn30\">[30]</a> The port city of Nantes, at the mouth of the Loire, was France’s largest and was heavily involved in slavery and trade with the Caribbean. It stood out for the Republic and was besieged by the Royalist army. The battle that led to its relief was considered decisive for the revolution, as was the shippers’ financial support for the Republican army. In the same period, some 4,000 Catholics and presumed Royalists were publicly executed by drowning inside the city, an episode that came to be known as ‘the national bathtub’. The obvious question is why the Nantes bourgeoisie risked so much for the revolution. One reason undoubtedly is that France, although centrally administered by the monarchy, was then a patchwork of local fief-holders, each of whom exacted what they could from people and goods moving through their territory. The republic promised to end all that. It was after all a liberal revolution whose main premise was to abolish restrictions on freedom of movement. The Nantes shippers had an interest in reducing the costs of moving their trade goods inland and so they allied themselves with anti-monarchist forces.</p>\n<p>What the American, French and Italian revolutions had in common was mass insurgency linked to an extended period of warfare over attempts to remove fragmented sovereignty, unfair taxes and restrictions placed on movement and trade. Apart from their initial resistance to British imposition of an East India Company tea monopoly and of taxes to pay for the crown’s military costs, the American revolutionary government faced more than one rebellion of its own as a result of imposing excise duties on alcohol production. The Italian <i>Risorgimento</i> too was backed financially by the industrialists of Milan and Turin who wanted to replace Austrian protectionism and control of a jumble of territories with a unified national home market and unrestricted access to world trade. In all three cases, the power of merchant and manufacturing capital played a decisive part in the revolution, whatever else animated the overthrow of the Old Regime.</p>\n<p>Perhaps the most notable example of a customs union that served as a precursor to political unification – before our own post-war European Common Market — was the Prussian <i>Zollverein</i>, launched in 1818, culminating five decades later in the German Empire. This started out piecemeal as a way of harmonising tariffs, measures and economic policy in scattered territories controlled by the Prussian ruling family. In the aftermath of Napoleonic conquest and British commercial expansion, the Germans felt vulnerable because of their extreme political fragmentation. Prussia’s main aim was to expand a protected zone of internal free trade and to exclude the Austrians. By the 1860s, most of what subsequently became Germany had joined the customs union. Some middle-sized states tried to break away to form their own union because of Prussia’s dominance, but they failed. The process was informed by the arguments of their leading economist of the day, Friedrich List, whose ‘national system’ of political economy was designed to prevent Germans from becoming just “drawers of water and hewers of wood for Britain”.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn31\">[31]</a> List emphasized the scope for innovation within an expanded free trade area protected from the cold winds of the world market. Americans such as Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay were highly susceptible to such arguments.</p>\n<p><i>The Southern African example</i></p>\n<p>The Union of South Africa was founded in 1910. Like other British dominions, its structure was federal, bringing together provinces with highly disparate histories, geography and populations, as well as being linked to a patchwork of territories under British rule within and beyond its boundaries. As part of the aspiration to coordinate and rationalize this patchwork, a South African customs union (SACU) was formed in 1889, the oldest of its kind extant, involving eventually what became Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia and South Africa itself.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn32\">[32]</a> This union was tightly controlled from Pretoria; but, as part of President Mbeki’s push to make relations with South Africa’s neighbours more equal, democratic and consensual, SACU headquarters were moved to Namibia in 2004 and members were granted more independence in their dealings with other countries. This arrangement is now in disarray since the smaller countries have signed separate agreements with the European Union which in effect allow them to act of ports of trade for European goods, subverting South Africa’s attempts to control their entry and draw revenues from their importation. Now relations within SACU are at a low, proof, if any were needed, that moves towards greater regional integration will have to acknowledge South Africa’s unequal weight.</p>\n<p>At the same time, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has been expanded since the fall of apartheid to include Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This makes SADC potentially the largest regional economy in Africa, one that is again naturally dominated by South Africa. But the reality within the region at present is a maze of national restrictions on the movement of people, goods and money, crosscut by bilateral deals of bewildering variety. Under the ANC, South Africa has increased, rather than reduced a sense of division between its own citizens and the many Africans who come there to live and work. Nevertheless, SADC remains the best chance for South Africa to coordinate economic policy with its neighbours. This would mean breaking with ‘capitalism in one country’ and its plethora of confusing and contradictory bilateral deals. In fact, under President Mbeki, nothing much happened at the level of SADC, since his attention was firmly focused on reforming regional cooperation at the continental level.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn33\">[33]</a></p>\n<p>Thabo Mbeki’s idea of an ‘African renaissance’ expressed the reasonable belief that a black majority government in South Africa might be a leading catalyst for an African economic revival based on greater political coordination between what have been, since independence, isolated nation-states that constituted easy pickings for the world’s great powers. His diplomatic energy was unstinted and, as a result, the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa was reconstituted as the African Union (AU), with the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as its economic arm based in Johannesburg and as its political arm the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). A Pan African Parliament (PAP), composed of representatives nominated by member states, also sits in Johannesburg. The principal measures anticipated were a single currency for Africa as a whole, a continental central bank and trade harmonization.</p>\n<p>South Africa’s economic relations with the rest of Africa now are not so different from what they were under the apartheid regime, which was not as isolated as it seemed at the time.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn34\">[34]</a> The main innovation has been an increased emphasis on a bilateral alliance with Africa’s other great power, Nigeria, mainly an exchange of oil supplies for manufactures and services. South African investment has diversified in the last two decades, especially in East Africa, where communications, hotels, retail, security and minerals have been the main sectors. Although names like MTN and Shop Rite are now familiar in East, West and Central Africa, most outward investment is still within the expanded SADC. Half of South Africa’s African investments are in Mozambique, with Mauritius next, mostly at the expense of Zimbabwe. Exchange controls on South African firms have been relaxed for African investments. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is now linked to Nairobi. South African banks now finance oil exploration in the DRC, Nigeria, Angola and Gabon. Some firms have been active in the DRC, notably the huge energy project of the Inga Dam led by the power utility, Eskom.</p>\n<p>Finally, India, Brazil and South Africa have formed a South-South alliance (IBSA) aimed at increasing trade and investment between them and perhaps influencing world economic councils. This was followed by South Africa’s admission to the BRICS. Such initiatives are inconsistent with regional integration and African unity; and South Africa’s economic policies have been haphazard as a result. Above all, Thabo Mbeki’s leadership was aimed exclusively at the very political class that has failed Africa so often since independence and he did not factor the forces of civil society into his plans.</p>\n<p><i>Towards greater integration of African trade </i></p>\n<p>As Daniel Bell once said, “The national state has become too small for the big problems in life and too big for the small problems”.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn35\">[35]</a> One answer is to rely more on <i>subsidiarity</i>. This is one of the features of federalism, whereby sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units (like states or provinces). The principal of devolving power to the lowest effective authority is one condition for wider political association among previously sovereign entities. Federalism has been around for as long as the nation-state, if not longer; but the assumption of a national monopoly over political economy is deeply rooted in contemporary civilization. Most of the largest countries are federal in constitution, but this has not prevented them from behaving like nation-states of late.</p>\n<p>Africa currently suffers from a labyrinthine confusion of regional associations which do little to strengthen their members’ bargaining power in world markets. The situation on the ground is rather different, where African peoples have for centuries developed patterns of trans-border movement and exchange which persist despite their rulers’ attempts to force economy and society into national cages. This is one major reason why so much of the African economy is held to be ‘informal’: state regulations are routinely ignored, with the result that half the population and most economic activity are criminalized and an absurd proportion of governmental effort is wasted on trying to apply unenforceable rules. The answer to this chaos is classical liberalism, the drive to establish the widest area possible of free trade and movement with minimal regulation by the authorities. Unfortunately, the last three decades of neoliberal globalization have done much to discredit this recipe; but the boundaries of free commerce <i>and</i> of state intervention, for South Africa’s sake and that of its smaller African neighbours, should be pushed beyond the limits of existing sovereignties.</p>\n<p>The first step should not be to seek economic coordination at the most inclusive level of the African continent as a whole. A single currency and central bank are inappropriate to this stage of Africa’s development, given the disparities between member states. The global economic crisis has shown up vividly the limitations of such institutions for the Eurozone.<a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_edn36\">[36]</a> The existing pattern of regional associations needs to be rationalized with the aim of simplifying administration and abolishing conflict between rules at different levels. In South Africa’s case, this should probably mean abandoning SACU in order to concentrate on building up SADC as a customs union with one set of rules for all members. At present visas are still required for travel between many SADC countries and a maze of bilateral deals and tariff barriers make a mockery of the idea of an ‘economic community’. A new model of integration within the Southern African region (eventually extending to East Africa) would have to break with the historical constraints imposed by existing bodies. Selective tariffs need urgently to be reduced within SADC, but this would not prevent protectionist measures being introduced at the regional level, where necessary. A consistent policy of trade liberalisation would free up the movement of people, goods and capital within the region and allow existing informal practices to conform more closely to economic rules. Only then does it make sense to reach out to other African regions such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The political elites can’t be kept out of all this, but the driving force for regional integration on this scale would have to be a broad-based social movement. My emphasis here differs from Thabo Mbeki’s.</p>\n<p>‘Africa’ is still a significant category in world affairs and these piece-meal steps towards regional integration would benefit from a revival of the Panafrican impulse that President Mbeki tried to kindle. The AU and especially its economic arm, NEPAD, might try to persuade the rest of the world that Africa’s poverty is a drag on the growth of the global economy. If the continent’s infant agricultural, manufacturing and service industries are to have a chance to develop, there must be agreement at the level of multilateral institutions such as the WTO that Africa deserves special protection, at least for a period. Such arguments are unlikely to be persuasive coming from an Africa as irrationally divided as at present. The continental and regional strategies need to be pursued side by side. This lecture has pointed towards an African Customs Union as one possible vehicle for a more integrated trade policy. I have only hinted by analogy about how that might develop; but for Africa’s and the world’s sake, I hope that something along these lines starts soon.</p>\n<p>Keynote address for a World Customs Organization/World Bank conference on ‘Informality, international trade and customs’, Brussels, 3-4 June 2013</p>\n<p> </p>\n<div><br>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\">\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref1\">[1]</a> ‘How the informal economy took over the world’, keynote lecture for the 24th Conference of the Societa’ Italiana di Economia Pubblica: “Informal economy, tax evasion and corruption”, Pavia, 24-25 September 2012: <a href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/10/17/the-informalization-of-the-world-economy/\">http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/10/17/the-informalization-of-the-world-economy/</a>.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref2\">[2]</a> Nicholas Shaxson <em>Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world, </em>London: Bodley Head (2011).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref3\">[3]</a> Adrian Johns <em>Piracy: The intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates</em>, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2009).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref4\">[4]</a> ‘Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana’, <em>Journal of Modern African Studies </em>11.3: 61-89 (1973).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref5\">[5]</a> For example, Michael Lewis <em>Liar’s Poker</em>, New York: Norton (1989); Frank Partnoy <em>F.I.A.S.C.O.: The inside story of a Wall Street trader</em>, New York: Penguin (1999).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref6\">[6]</a> Keith Hart Why the euro crisis matters to us all, <i>Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy</i> 04 (2013) <a href=\"http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/04/04_Hart_WhyTheEuroCrisisMatters.pdf\">http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/04/04_Hart_WhyTheEuroCrisisMatters.pdf</a>.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref7\">[7]</a> This is a loose translation of his use of the principles of “moral hazard” and “optimal income taxation”.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref8\">[8]</a> John Perkins <em>Confessions of an Economic Hit Man</em>, New York: Plume (2004).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref9\">[9]</a> This is a murky story involving International Labour Office <em>Incomes, Employment and Equality in Kenya</em>, Geneva: ILO (1972). See Keith Hart Bureaucratic form and the informal economy, in B. Guha-Khasnobis, R. Kanbur and E. Ostrom (eds) <em>Linking the Formal and Informal Economies</em>, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 21-35 (2006); The informal economy, in Hart, Laville and Cattani (eds) <i>The Human Economy: A citizen’s guide</i>, Cambridge: Polity, 142-153 (2010).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref10\">[10]</a> <i>The Political Economy of West African Agriculture </i>(Cambridge, 1982).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref11\">[11]</a> <i>The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution</i> (London, 1938).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref12\">[12]</a> Joseph Stiglitz Globalization isn’t just about profits. It’s about taxes too, <i>The Guardian</i>, 27th May (2013) <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/globalisation-is-about-taxes-too\">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/globalisation-is-about-taxes-too</a>.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref13\">[13]</a> <i>The Other Path: The economic answer to terrorism</i>, New York: Basic Books (1989); <i>The Mystery of Capital: Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else</i>, London: Bantam (2000).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref14\">[14]</a> <i>The Evolution of the International Economic Order</i> (Princeton, 1978).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref15\">[15]</a> According to <i>The Economist</i> (6<sup>th</sup> January 2011), Africa had six of the top ten fastest-growing economies in 2001-2010 and is expected to have seven in 2011-2015. The latter consist of Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Congo, Ghana, Zambia and Nigeria in that order; the other three are China, India and Vietnam.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref16\">[16]</a> Achille Mbembe <i>On the Postcolony</i> (London 2001); Jean-François Bayart <i>The State in Africa: Politics of the Belly</i> (Cambridge, 2009); Moeletse Mbeki <i>Architects of Poverty: Why African capitalism needs changing</i> (Johannesburg, 2009).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref17\">[17]</a> Keith Hart Africa’s urban revolution and the informal economy, in V. Padayachee (ed) <em>The Political Economy of Africa</em>, Routledge: London, 371-388. See also Note 10.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref18\">[18]</a> The first volume of a score of books was <i>Production and Reproduction: A comparative study of the domestic domain</i> (Cambridge, 1976). See the first Goody lecture of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle: Jack Goody’s vision of world history and Africa’s development today, 1st June 2011 <a href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/01/10/jack-goodys-vision-of-history-and-african-development-today/\">http://thememorybank.co.uk/2012/01/10/jack-goodys-vision-of-history-and-african-development-today/</a>.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref19\">[19]</a> Childe’s ‘urban revolution’: V. Gordon Childe <i>What Happened in History</i> (London, 1954).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref20\">[20]</a> See Note 11.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref21\">[21]</a> This focus was advocated by Sir James Steuart <i>Principles of Political Economy</i>, Edinburgh: Cadell (1767); but he was soon upstaged by Adam Smith’s free trade arguments.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref22\">[22]</a> See a prescient study of the Ben Ali regime’s techniques of domination, Beatrice Hibou <i>The Force of Obedience: The political economy of repression in Tunisia</i>, Cambridge: Polity (2011).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref23\">[23]</a> United Nations Development Program <i>Human Development Report </i>(1998).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref24\">[24]</a> Neil Smith <i>Uneven Development: Nature, capital and the production of space</i> (Athens GA, 1984).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref25\">[25]</a> A fuller treatment of these and related issues may be found in ‘Two lectures on African development’ (2007) <a href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/2007/05/16/two-lectures-on-african-development/\">http://thememorybank.co.uk/2007/05/16/two-lectures-on-african-development/</a>.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref26\">[26]</a> The classical source is Alexis de Tocqueville (F. Furet and F. Mélonio eds) <i>The Old Regime and the Revolution</i> (Chicago, [1856] 1998).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref27\">[27]</a> Dean Baker <i>The End of Loser Liberalism: Making markets progressive</i> (Washington DC, 2011).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref28\">[28]</a> Frantz Fanon <i>The Wretched of the Earth</i> (New York, [1961] 1970], chapter 2 ‘Grandeur and weakness of spontaneity’.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref29\">[29]</a> This section to be annotated more fully at a later stage.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref30\">[30]</a> Victor Hugo’s last novel, <i>Ninety-three</i> (1974), reconstructs these events.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref31\">[31]</a> Friedrich List <i>National System of Political Economy: Volume 1 History </i>(New York, [1841], 2005).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref32\">[32]</a> Keith Hart and Vishnu Padayachee South Africa in Africa: from national capitalism to regional integration, in V. Padayachee (ed) <i>The Political Economy of Africa</i> (London, 2010), Chapter 22. I am grateful to Professor Padayachee for permission to draw on this chapter substantially in the last two sections of this lecture.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref33\">[33]</a> Christopher Clapham, G. Mills, A. Morner and E. Sidiropoulos <i>Regional Integration in Southern Africa</i> (Johannesburg,2001).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref34\">[34]</a> John Daniel, V. Naidoo and S. Naidu The South Africans have arrived: post-apartheid corporate expansion into Africa, in J. Daniel, A. Habib and R. Southall (eds) <i>The State of the Nation, 2003-2004</i> (Cape Town, 2003).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref35\">[35]</a> <i>The Winding Passage: Sociological essays and journeys</i> (New Brunswick, 1992:225).</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a title=\"\" href=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/#_ednref36\">[36]</a> Why the euro crisis matters to us all <a href=\"http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/04/04_Hart_WhyTheEuroCrisisMatters.pdf\">http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/docs/04/04_Hart_WhyTheEuroCrisisMatters.pdf</a></p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+case+for+an+African+customs+union+http%3A%2F%2Fis.gd%2FcGJIkw\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+case+for+an+African+customs+union+http%3A%2F%2Fis.gd%2FcGJIkw\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"title" : "Update on Pooh, Tigger, and the 2 Presidents: Art Recreates Life, not Vice Versa",
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"content" : "Last night <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/06/life-recreates-art-sunnylands-division/276738/\">I posted</a> the wonderful Weibo-viral-hit matchup of Xi Jinping walking with Barack Obama, and Winnie the Pooh walking with Tigger. In case you've forgotten:<div><br></div><div><a href=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2013/06/WeiboObamaXi.jpg-jpg-thumb-620x859-124110.jpg\"><img alt=\"Thumbnail image for WeiboObamaXi.jpg-jpg\" src=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2013/06/WeiboObamaXi.jpg-jpg-thumb-620x859-124110-thumb-500x692-124111.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"692\"></a></div><div><br></div><div>Many readers have written in to underscore a point that was clear pretty early on. This is almost certainly a case of <i>art recreating life</i>, rather than vice versa. The Pooh/Tigger pose is <i>too</i> perfect a match for the shot of the two presidents. Shadows, gait, proportions, background, placement, expressions. Also, through the magic of Google Image Search, there don't seem to be any examples of the Pooh/Tigger scene before the Sunnylands meeting. <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZitr5_1CD_1iyxW-h9g0fCxFIrsrEjpmBM1d7VXcRRM3yuzYEB-TCQtiGvWQgaExFXYnQ7-OsIl8CiVCVHtICbVyEipmZZMm_1ZE4WVydAyxdJGXhlvFQXKyEaqmL3CjsjeyAScsUDtcHZmZ7fU-GWp18fl4tfGmaQZDVrWF0AnYr4vebHL0LSVQW6CPzzoBfbxFXNyGLs07VAzhNyWHEdyikjxF0zNkoNwDVAtpEbVtD0DMGOFNfj4VYCRBgQIOsVYoX0rexnKc8wCkj0D9oTq1ye9r0-S3sKIV4-47smhaDIERWWLglgP0G_18yYsZCqTZkRXSIRN-14N6anE_1rca3eDeAT8VvQYvk6yueI7CiFVwKHBXOxWEdezMlljC98F6f0rMN_1tR1NmORb-QjXK-EEZVo92AyQILgmGSDDaig5XnKZefx9GCcu_15xS7WyZ_1KUf-DM2i5bZ7RFESN1JauOPYO6JM85njg1X1dHpcaYGL9wSm8WhWg-07jzKkK0j0BqHn7s0-MvzTVd3ULpy_1slTX8ZarPxJjR3_1KXOGJzKxc5bbKYm5CZla_1bSJi3MTmOItAIgnsRnuoPW1YF2zjq7y17yQ0fcDfGvaL5qFZly6DR9iEVFE8JolbKFpbn2y61K3yyz9JohZJgNkHgdmFfoMIfwg6t2a3Q4P7Ndv5rsEcoDmBCQkqI09vV57KG0oSJW2T1K1pvgNVfME7Jt95W_1tthrroVoFJkfYSvdlzq-TqVgaLPQ4IUayi9WecHDLkt5I5Ofwf0Ve2VkfxDYv1t1WbKAhsJJHRl6cpz7-Vm463pRxMqNGxe2it4gvJ-DQNUFn9G8RwBn2XmplLhSyoN6vV1XsSL6l63z2-voWBy3XMg00Ohfcc0De-RAc6c2NcSJg8EDQeQpTtAd21Q5fK5noRjPpKkKxT-a57oRtrf4sg4h1Q0PxlY0FbYcoPWU4nGvYOXtbVst-G8tOpSveioIKlGP-4zZoTcBd3pT-HLfH8Yy0zkPGWsMqR7VSFNDcHm785E17vw14R0A0apPIY9Nuy2CsI-8p_1_1K93U_1ktloefvsVqWDWEDREt_1s3p8Pds3UUsj12DO1YNgkR4WLRcrG-i1J8SUkdUFxlJmg2ryznj5fHPZrRqhSvTvGazxx2L_1BO19zcknglMO7KxdOYg0uVQr57L9IvGDtb016Py92Nb0lIf9AiznqeLKwuJ7baw7U6LCWJxv1pe3Eb3z7TXiGw4-afI2vvE9kFTzhNQUvCcxfnIePie8Wz65S-OCRAkHYEpxwpW0UQze4XuouTNyXqFIjXOH4GVJzIzcfAuyyHZ0h4Tnvrug&safe=off&hl=en&biw=2224&bih=1127&site=imghp&sa=X&ei=EuG3Ua6RIIrk0QHAwIGwCQ&ved=0CFAQ9Q8oAA\">Try it</a> yourself.</div><div><br></div><div>This doesn't bother me at all. After all, any depiction of Pooh and Tigger is imaginary. So I credit whatever (yet) unidentified artist came up with the idea, and executed it. But for the record, the artistry seems to have been with whoever put together the Pooh/Tigger image, rather than a person who noticed a similarity. </div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://Theatlantic.feedsportal.com/c/34375/f/625833/s/2d29f3e0/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><div><table border=\"0\"><tr><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/share/twitter/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fchina%2Farchive%2F2013%2F06%2Fupdate-on-pooh-tigger-and-the-2-presidents-art-recreates-life-not-vice-versa%2F276782%2F&t=Update+on+Pooh%2C+Tigger%2C+and+the+2+Presidents%3A+Art+Recreates+Life%2C+not+Vice+Versa\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/social/twitter.png\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/share/facebook/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fchina%2Farchive%2F2013%2F06%2Fupdate-on-pooh-tigger-and-the-2-presidents-art-recreates-life-not-vice-versa%2F276782%2F&t=Update+on+Pooh%2C+Tigger%2C+and+the+2+Presidents%3A+Art+Recreates+Life%2C+not+Vice+Versa\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/social/facebook.png\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/share/linkedin/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fchina%2Farchive%2F2013%2F06%2Fupdate-on-pooh-tigger-and-the-2-presidents-art-recreates-life-not-vice-versa%2F276782%2F&t=Update+on+Pooh%2C+Tigger%2C+and+the+2+Presidents%3A+Art+Recreates+Life%2C+not+Vice+Versa\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/social/linkedin.png\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/share/gplus/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fchina%2Farchive%2F2013%2F06%2Fupdate-on-pooh-tigger-and-the-2-presidents-art-recreates-life-not-vice-versa%2F276782%2F&t=Update+on+Pooh%2C+Tigger%2C+and+the+2+Presidents%3A+Art+Recreates+Life%2C+not+Vice+Versa\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/social/googleplus.png\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/share/email/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fchina%2Farchive%2F2013%2F06%2Fupdate-on-pooh-tigger-and-the-2-presidents-art-recreates-life-not-vice-versa%2F276782%2F&t=Update+on+Pooh%2C+Tigger%2C+and+the+2+Presidents%3A+Art+Recreates+Life%2C+not+Vice+Versa\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/social/email.png\" border=\"0\"></a></td><td valign=\"middle\"></td></tr></table></div><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/165665080047/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/2d29f3e0/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/165665080047/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/2d29f3e0/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/165665080047/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/2d29f3e0/a2t.img\" border=\"0\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?a=R4i6eLTS4uA:Ev74HlWc59g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesFallows/~4/R4i6eLTS4uA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "From The Big Ear To The Universal Ear",
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"content" : "In 1958 a radio silence zone was created in eastern West Virginia around the Green Bank radio telescope. During the next few years it was thought there might be a way of monitoring of Soviet military/intel communications by catching them bouncing off the moon. A project was initiated to do just that, the "Big Ear," with a site selected at Sugar Grove, West VA, about 30 miles from Green Bank and within its radio silence zone, which would make it easier to pick up the signals. For a variety of reasons this project was discontinued in 1962, but the materials and equipment were in place at Sugar Grove, just over the Shenandoah Mountain range from the central Shenandoah Valley, and became attractive to other customers for other communications purposes.<br>\n<br>\nSo it was that the Sugar Grove Naval Station opened in 1969, although with minimal publicity, under the oversight of the Naval Informations Operations Command (NAVIOCOM). To the few who became aware of this station in the area it was let out that it was involved in long wave communications with submarines, which apparently was a function that it did. Over time, a variety of obvious pieces of equipment appeared there that could carry out such activities, eventually three large dishes (each much smaller than the originally planned Big Ear), as well as some large circular arrays, all of this readily visible from nearby mountaintops, particularly Reddish Knob on the Shenandoah range, a high point where a James Madison University, Norlyn Bodkin, would find a previously unknown species of plant left over from the ice age, along with a parking lot, where students and many locals would regularly repair for picnics and wild parties, with all those very visible communications devices down below providing fodder for all kinds of amusing speculations.<br>\n<br>\nAnd then in 1982 James Bamford published a book about an agency whose existence had previously been officially classified, although its existence had surfaced briefly during the 1975 Church committee on abuses by US intelligence agencies. One upshot of those hearings related to this agency whose existence was still classified was a 1978 act establishing a secret court to determine when this agency (and any others) could listen to telephone calls by US citizens. The agency was the National Security Agency (NSA), whose initials had long been claimed jokingly to stand for "Never Say Anything," <br>\n<br>\nAmong the more important secrets revealed about the NSA in Bamford's book was about the Sugar Grove Naval Station. Not only did it communicate with submarines, it also was the top listening post for the NSA on the US East Coast, able to listen to all long distance telephone calls, the technology of that time being that such calls were transmitted by shortwaves, with local calls sticking to cables. While all such calls could be listened to, at that time only ones using key words and with foreigners were supposedly listened to, but the potential was clear for what could be done, particularly in connection with the NSA being the regular first customer for whatever was the latest Cray supercomputer to roll out of the barns in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which could be programmed to direct such mass targeting of long distance telephone calls.<br>\n<br>\nWell, time and technology have moved on. The importance of Sugar Grove began to decline in the 1990s as long distance calls increasingly were transmitted via fiber optic cables rather than shortwave transmissions, hence not readily picked up by the ears at Sugar Grove (not to mention that some attention got focused on the even more secret spy satellite operater NRO, whose existence had continued to be classified until then: how widely are they watching people?), although reportedly there was quite a bit of construction there during 2000-04. I do not know how NSA sweeps up those calls now, but obviously they have the tech, and the computer tech has only massively increased. <br>\n<br>\nLast year in Wired magazine, Bamford reported that NSA was building a massive new data center in Utah, able to "intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks," as quoted in an article by the superknowledgeable Walter Pincus in today's Washington Post. Not many paid much attention, any more than many had paid attention in 2006 when USA Today, of all sources, according to Pincus, had reported that NSA "has been secretly collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth." However, this did trigger some reaction with President Bush defending the program in terms reminiscent of those now defending PRISM, with NSA's ability to do this expanded with the 2008 FISA.<br>\n<br>\nAs for Sugar Grove, ironically the announcement of the end came just before Edward Snowden publicly revealed PRISM and related activities by the NSA, amounting to a Universal Ear picking up all telephone calls, not to mention a whole lot emails and other communications. On April 23 of this year, NAVIOCOM sent an order moving the naval command at Sugar Grove to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. I have no idea what, if anything, will still happen at Sugar Grove, but I suspect that those dishes and circular arrays will still be around for some time for the picnickers and partiers from around where I live in the central Shenandoah Valley to look at and speculate about while they do their things on top of Reddish Knob.<br>\n<br>\nBarkley Rosser<br>\n<br>"
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"title" : "The network is reliable",
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"content" : "\n\n<p><em>I’ve been discussing <a href=\"http://aphyr.com/tags/jepsen\">Jepsen</a> and partition tolerance\nwith <a href=\"https://twitter.com/pbailis/\">Peter Bailis</a> over the past few\nweeks, and I’m honored to present this post as a collaboration between the two\nof us. We’d also like to extend our sincere appreciation to everyone who\ncontributed their research and experience to this piece.</em></p>\n\n<p>Network partitions are a contentious subject. Some claim that modern\nnetworks are reliable and that we are too concerned with designing for\n<em>theoretical</em> failure modes. They often accept that single-node failures are\ncommon but argue that we can <a href=\"http://blog.voltdb.com/clarifications-cap-theorem-and-data-related-errors/\">reliably\ndetect and handle them</a>. Conversely, others <a href=\"http://www.rgoarchitects.com/files/fallacies.pdf\">subscribe</a> to Peter\nDeutsch’s <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/resource/Fallacies.html\">Fallacies of\nDistributed Computing</a> and disagree. They attest that partitions do occur\nin their systems, and that, as James Hamilton of Amazon Web Services <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/04/07/StonebrakerOnCAPTheoremAndDatabases.aspx\">neatly\nsummarizes</a>,\n“network partitions should be rare but net gear continues to cause more issues\nthan it should.” The answer to this debate <a href=\"http://henryr.github.io/cap-faq/\">radically affects</a> the design of\ndistributed databases, queues, and applications. So who’s right?</p>\n\n<p>A key challenge in this dispute is the lack of evidence. We have few normalized\nbases for comparing network and application reliability–and even less data.\nWe can track link availability and estimate packet loss, but understanding the\nend-to-end effect on <em>applications</em> is more difficult. The scant evidence we\nhave is difficult to generalize: it is often deployment-specific and closely\ntied to particular vendors, topologies, and application designs. Worse, even\nwhen an organization has clear picture of their network’s behavior, they rarely\nshare specifics. Finally, distributed systems are designed to resist failure,\nwhich means <em>noticeable</em> outages often depend on complex interactions of\nfailure modes. Many applications silently degrade when the network fails, and\nresulting problems may not be understood for some time–if they are understood\nat all.</p>\n\n<p>As a result, much of what we know about the failure modes of real-world\ndistributed systems is founded on guesswork and rumor. Sysadmins and developers\nwill swap stories over beers, but detailed, public postmortems and\ncomprehensive surveys of network availability are few and far between. In this\npost, we’d like to bring a few of these stories together. We believe this is a\nfirst step towards a more open and honest discussion of real-world partition\nbehavior, and, ultimately, more robust distributed systems design.</p>\n\n<h2>Rumblings from large deployments</h2>\n\n<p>To start off, let’s consider evidence from big players in distributed systems:\ncompanies running globally distributed infrastructure with hundreds of\nthousands of nodes. Of all of the data we have collected, these reports best\nsummarize operation in the large, distilling the experience of operating what\nare likely the biggest distributed systems ever deployed. Their publications\n(unlike many of the case studies we will examine later) often capture aggregate\nsystem behavior and large-scale statistical trends, and indicate (often\nobliquely) that partitions are a significant concern in their deployments.</p>\n\n<h3>The Microsoft Datacenter Study</h3>\n\n<p>A team from the University of Toronto and Microsoft Research <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/navendu/papers/sigcomm11netwiser.pdf\">studied\nthe behavior</a> of network failures in several of Microsoft’s datacenters. They\nfound an average failure rate of 5.2 devices per day and 40.8 links per day\nwith a median time to repair of approximately five minutes (and up to one\nweek). While the researchers note that correlating link failures and\ncommunication partitions is challenging, they estimate a median packet loss of\n59,000 packets per failure. Perhaps more concerning is their finding that\nnetwork redundancy improves median traffic by only 43%; that is, network\nredundancy does not eliminate many common causes of network failure.</p>\n\n<h3>HP Enterprise Managed Networks</h3>\n\n<p>A joint study between researchers at University of California, San Diego and HP\nLabs <a href=\"http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2012/HPL-2012-101.pdf\">examined</a> the\ncauses and severity of network failures in HP’s managed networks by analyzing\nsupport ticket data. “Connectivity”-related tickets accounted for 11.4% of\nsupport tickets (14% of which were of the highest priority level), with a\nmedian incident duration of 2 hours and 45 minutes for the highest priority\ntickets and and a median duration of 4 hours 18 minutes for all priorities.</p>\n\n<h3>Google Chubby</h3>\n\n<p>Google’s <a href=\"http://research.google.com/archive/chubby-osdi06.pdf\">paper</a>\ndescribing the design and operation of Chubby, their distributed lock manager,\noutlines the root causes of 61 outages over 700 days of operation across\nseveral clusters. Of the nine outages that lasted greater than 30 seconds, four\nwere caused by network maintenance and two were caused by “suspected network\nconnectivity problems.”</p>\n\n<h3>Google’s Design Lessons from Distributed Systems</h3>\n\n<p>In <a href=\"http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/talks/dean-keynote-ladis2009.pdf\">Design\nLessons and Advice from Building Large Scale Distributed Systems</a>, Jeff Dean\nsuggests that a typical first year for a new Google cluster involves:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>5 racks going wonky (40-80 machines seeing 50% packet loss)</li>\n<li>8 network maintenances (4 might cause ~30-minute random connectivity losses)</li>\n<li>3 router failures (have to immediately pull traffic for an hour)</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>While Google doesn’t tell us much about the application-level consequences of\ntheir network partitions, “Lessons From Distributed Systems” suggests they\nare a significant concern, citing the challenge of “[e]asy-to-use abstractions\nfor resolving conflicting updates to multiple versions of a piece of state” as\nuseful in “reconciling replicated state in different data centers after\nrepairing a network partition.”</p>\n\n<h3>Amazon Dynamo</h3>\n\n<p>Amazon’s <a href=\"http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/files/amazon-dynamo-sosp2007.pdf\">Dynamo\npaper</a> frequently cites the incidence of partitions as a driving design\nconsideration. Specifically, the authors note that they rejected designs from\n“traditional replicated relational database systems” because they “are not\ncapable of handling network partitions.”</p>\n\n<h3>Yahoo! PNUTS/Sherpa</h3>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mpi-sws.org/~druschel/courses/ds/papers/cooper-pnuts.pdf\">Yahoo!\nPNUTS/Sherpa</a> was designed as a distributed database operating out of\nmultiple, geographically distinct sites. Originally, PNUTS supported a strongly\nconsistent “timeline consistency” operation, with one master per data item.\nHowever, the developers <a href=\"http://developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/sherpa-7992.html#4\">noted that</a>,\nin the event of “network partitioning or server failures,” this design decision\nwas too restrictive for many applications:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The first deployment of Sherpa supported the timeline-consistency model —\nnamely, all replicas of a record apply all updates in the same order — and\nhas API-level features to enable applications to cope with asynchronous\nreplication. Strict adherence leads to difficult situations under network\npartitioning or server failures. These can be partially addressed with\noverride procedures and local data replication, but in many circumstances,\napplications need a relaxed approach.“</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Application-level failures</h2>\n\n<p>Not all partitions originate in the physical network. Sometimes dropped or\ndelayed messages are a consequence of crashes, race conditions, OS scheduler\nlatency, or overloaded processes. The following studies highlight the fact that\npartitions–wherein the system delays or drops messages–can occur at any layer\nof the software stack.</p>\n\n<h3>CPU use and service contention</h3>\n\n<p>Bonsai.io <a href=\"http://www.bonsai.io/blog/2013/03/05/outage-post-mortem\">discovered</a>\nhigh CPU and memory use on an ElasticSearch node combined with difficulty\nconnecting to various cluster components, likely a consequence of an\n"excessively high number of expensive requests being allowed through to the\ncluster.”</p>\n\n<p>They restarted the cluster, but on restarting the cluster partitioned itself\ninto two independent components. A subsequent cluster restart resolved the\npartition, but customers complained they were unable to delete or create\nindices. The logs revealed that servers were repeatedly trying to recover\nunassigned indices, which “poisoned the cluster’s attempt to service normal\ntraffic which changes the cluster state.” The failure led to 20 minutes of\nunavailability and six hours of degraded service.</p>\n\n<p>Bonsai concludes by noting that large-scale ElasticSearch clusters should use\ndedicated nodes which handle routing and leader election without serving normal\nrequests for data, to prevent partitions under heavy load. They also emphasize\nthe importance of request throttling and setting proper quorum values. </p>\n\n<h3>Long GC pauses</h3>\n\n<p>Stop-the-world garbage collection can force application latencies on the order\nof seconds to minutes. As Searchbox.io <a href=\"http://blog.searchbox.io/blog/2013/03/03/january-postmortem\">observed</a>,\nGC pressure in an ElasticSearch cluster can cause secondary nodes to declare a\nprimary dead and to attempt a new election. Because their configuration used a\nlow value of <code>zen.minimum_master_nodes</code>, ElasticSearch was able to elect two\nsimultaneous primaries, leading to inconsistency and downtime.</p>\n\n<h3>MySQL overload and a Pacemaker segfault</h3>\n\n<p>Github relies heavily on Pacemaker and Heartbeat: programs which coordinate\ncluster resources between nodes. They use Percona Replication Manager, a\nresource agent for Pacemaker, to replicate their MySQL database between three\nnodes.</p>\n\n<p>On September 10th, 2012, <a href=\"https://github.com/blog/1261-github-availability-this-week\">a routine database migration caused unexpectedly high\nload on the MySQL primary</a>. Percona Replication Manager, unable to perform\nhealth checks against the busy MySQL instance, decided the primary was down and\npromoted a secondary. The secondary had a cold cache and performed poorly.\nNormal query load on the node caused it to slow down, and Percona failed <em>back</em>\nto the original primary. The operations team put Pacemaker into\nmaintenance-mode, temporarily halting automatic failover. The site appeared to\nrecover.</p>\n\n<p>The next morning, the operations team discovered that the standby MySQL node\nwas no longer replicating changes from the primary. Operations decided to\ndisable Pacemaker’s maintenance mode to allow the replication manager to fix\nthe problem.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Upon attempting to disable maintenance-mode, a Pacemaker segfault occurred\nthat resulted in a cluster state partition. After this update, two nodes\n(I’ll call them ‘a’ and ‘b’) rejected most messages from the third node\n(‘c’), while the third node rejected most messages from the other two.\nDespite having configured the cluster to require a majority of machines to\nagree on the state of the cluster before taking action, two simultaneous\nmaster election decisions were attempted without proper coordination. In the\nfirst cluster, master election was interrupted by messages from the second\ncluster and MySQL was stopped.</p>\n\n<p>In the second, single-node cluster, node ‘c’ was elected at 8:19 AM, and any\nsubsequent messages from the other two-node cluster were discarded. As luck\nwould have it, the ‘c’ node was the node that our operations team previously\ndetermined to be out of date. We detected this fact and powered off this\nout-of-date node at 8:26 AM to end the partition and prevent further data\ndrift, taking down all production database access and thus all access to\ngithub.com.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The partition caused inconsistency in the MySQL database–both between the\nsecondary and primary, and between MySQL and other data stores like Redis.\nBecause foreign key relationships were not consistent, Github showed private\nrepositories to the wrong users' dashboards and incorrectly routed some newly\ncreated repos.</p>\n\n<p>Github thought carefully about their infrastructure design, and were still\nsurprised by a complex interaction of partial failures and software bugs. As\nthey note in the postmortem:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>… if any member of our operations team had been asked if the failover\nshould have been performed, the answer would have been a resounding\n<b>no</b>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Distributed systems are <em>hard</em>.</p>\n\n<h2>NICs and drivers</h2>\n\n<h3>BCM5709 and friends</h3>\n\n<p>Unreliable NIC hardware or drivers are implicated in a broad array of\npartitions. <a href=\"http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg210485.html\">Marc\nDonges and Michael Chan</a> bring us a thrilling report of the popular Broadcom\nBCM5709 chipset abruptly dropping inbound <em>but not outbound</em> packets to a\nmachine. Because the NIC dropped inbound packets, the node was unable to\nservice requests. However, because it could still <em>send</em> heartbeats to its hot\nspare via keepalived, the spare considered the primary alive and refused to\ntake over. The service was unavailable for five hours and did not recover\nwithout a reboot.</p>\n\n<p>Sven Ulland <a href=\"http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg210491.html\">followed up</a>,\nreporting the same symptoms with the BCM5709S chipset on Linux\n2.6.32-41squeeze2. Despite pulling commits from mainline which supposedly fixed\na similar set of issues with the bnx2 driver, they were unable to resolve the\nissue until version 2.6.38.</p>\n\n<p>Since Dell shipped a large number of servers with the BCM5709, the impact of\nthese firmware bugs was widely observed. For instance, the 5709 and some\nchips had a bug in their <a href=\"http://monolight.cc/2011/08/flow-control-flaw-in-broadcom-bcm5709-nics-and-bcm56xxx-switches/\">802.3x\nflow control code</a> causing them to spew PAUSE frames when the chipset\ncrashed or its buffer filled up. This problem was magnified by the BCM56314\nand BCM56820 switch-on-a-chip devices (a component in a number of Dell’s\ntop-of-rack switches), which, by default, spewed PAUSE frames at <em>every</em>\ninterface trying to communicate with the offending 5709 NIC. This led to\ncascading failures on entire switches or networks.</p>\n\n<p>The bnx2 driver could also cause transient or flapping network failures, as\ndescribed in this <a href=\"http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/Cluster-Split-Brain-td3333510.html\">ElasticSearch\nsplit brain report</a>. Meanwhile, the the Broadcom 57711 was notorious for\ncausing <a href=\"http://communities.vmware.com/thread/284628?start=0&tstart=0\">extremely\nhigh latencies under load with jumbo frames</a>, a particularly thorny issue\nfor ESX users with iSCSI-backed storage.</p>\n\n<h3>A GlusterFS partition caused by a driver bug</h3>\n\n<p>After a scheduled upgrade, <a href=\"https://www.citycloud.eu/cloud-computing/post-mortem/\">CityCloud noticed\nunexpected network failures</a> in two distinct GlusterFS pairs, followed\nby a third. Suspecting link aggregation, CityCloud disabled the feature on\ntheir switches and allowed self-healing operations to proceed.</p>\n\n<p>Roughly 12 hours later, the network failures returned on one node. CityCloud\nidentified the cause as a driver issue and updated the downed node, returning\nservice. However, the outage resulted in data inconsistency between GlusterFS\npairs:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>As the servers lost storage abruptly there were certain types of Gluster\nissues where files did not match each other on the two nodes in each storage\npair. There were also some cases of data corruption in the VMs filesystems\ndue to VMs going down in an uncontrolled way.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<h2>Datacenter network failures</h2>\n\n<p>Individual network interfaces can fail, but they typically appear as single-node\noutages. Failures located in the physical network are often more nefarious. Switches are subject to power failure, misconfiguration, firmware\nbugs, topology changes, cable damage, and malicious traffic. Their failure\nmodes are accordingly diverse:</p>\n\n<h3>Power failure on both redundant switches</h3>\n\n<p>As Microsoft’s SIGCOMM paper suggests, redundancy doesn’t always prevent link\nfailure. <a href=\"http://status.fogcreek.com/2011/06/postmortem.html\">When a\npower distribution unit failed</a> and took down one of two redundant\ntop-of-rack switches, Fog Creek lost service for a subset of customers on that\nrack but remained consistent and available for most users. However, the\nother switch in that rack <em>also</em> lost power for undetermined reasons.\nThat failure isolated the two neighboring racks from one another, taking\ndown all On Demand services.</p>\n\n<h3>Switch split-brain caused by BPDU flood</h3>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://status.fogcreek.com/2012/05/may-5-6-network-maintenance-post-mortem.html\">During\na planned network reconfiguration to improve reliability</a>, Fog Creek\nsuddenly lost access to their network.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>A network loop had formed between several switches.</p>\n\n<p>The gateways controlling access to the switch management network were\nisolated from each other, generating a split-brain scenario. Neither were\naccessible due to a sudden traffic flood. </p>\n\n<p>The flood was the result of a multi-switch BPDU (bridge protocol data unit)\nflood, indicating a spanning-tree flap. This is most likely what was changing\nthe loop domain.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>According to the BPDU standard, the flood <em>shouldn’t have happened</em>. But it\ndid, and this deviation from the system’s assumptions resulted in two hours of\ntotal service unavailability.</p>\n\n<h3>Bridge loops, misconfiguration, broken MAC caches</h3>\n\n<p>In an effort to address high latencies caused by a daisy-chained network\ntopology, Github <a href=\"https://github.com/blog/1346-network-problems-last-friday\">installed a\nset of aggregation switches</a> in their datacenter. Despite a redundant\nnetwork, the installation process resulted in bridge loops, and switches\ndisabled links to prevent failure. This problem was quickly resolved, but later\ninvestigation revealed that many interfaces were still pegged at 100% capacity.</p>\n\n<p>While investigating that problem, a misconfigured switch triggered aberrant\nautomatic fault detection behavior: when one link was disabled, the fault\ndetector disabled <em>all</em> links. This caused 18 minutes of hard downtime. The\nproblem was later traced to a firmware bug preventing switches from updating\ntheir MAC address caches correctly, which forced them to broadcast most packets\nto every interface. </p>\n\n<h3>Mystery RabbitMQ partitions</h3>\n\n<p>Sometimes, nobody knows why a system partitions. This <a href=\"http://serverfault.com/questions/497308/rabbitmq-network-partition-error\">RabbitMQ\nfailure</a> seems like one of those cases: few retransmits, no large gaps\nbetween messages, and no clear loss of connectivity between nodes. Upping the\npartition detection timeout to 2 minutes reduced the frequency of partitions\nbut didn’t prevent them altogether. </p>\n\n<h3>DRBD split-brain</h3>\n\n<p>When a two-node cluster partitions, there are no cases in which a node can\nreliably declare itself to be the primary. When this happens to a DRBD filesystem, <a href=\"http://serverfault.com/questions/485545/dual-primary-ocfs2-drbd-encountered-split-brain-is-recovery-always-going-to-be\">as one user reported</a>, both nodes can remain online and accept writes, leading\nto divergent filesystem-level changes. The only realistic option for resolving\nthese kinds of conflicts is to discard all writes not made to a selected\ncomponent of the cluster.</p>\n\n<h3>A NetWare split-brain</h3>\n\n<p>Short-lived failures can lead to long outages. In this <a href=\"http://novell.support.cluster-services.free-usenet.eu/Split-Brain-Condition_T31677168_S1\">Usenet\npost to novell.support.cluster-services</a>, an admin reports their two-node\nfailover cluster running Novell NetWare experienced transient network outages.\nThe secondary node eventually killed itself, and the primary (though still\nrunning) was no longer reachable by other hosts on the network. The post goes\non to detail a series of network partition events correlated with backup jobs!</p>\n\n<h3>MLAG, Spanning Tree, and STONITH</h3>\n\n<p>Github writes great postmortems, and this one is no exception. On <a href=\"https://github.com/blog/1364-downtime-last-saturday\">December 22nd,\n2012</a>, a planned software update on an aggregation switch caused some mild\ninstability during the maintenance window. In order to collect diagnostic\ninformation about the instability, the network vendor killed a particular\nsoftware agent running on one of the aggregation switches.</p>\n\n<p>Github’s aggregation switches are clustered in pairs using a feature called\nMLAG, which presents two physical switches as a single layer 2 device. The MLAG\nfailure detection protocol relies on <em>both</em> ethernet link state <em>and</em> a logical\nheartbeat message exchanged between nodes. When the switch agent was killed, it\nwas <em>unable</em> to shut down the ethernet link. Unlucky timing confused the MLAG\ntakeover, preventing the still-healthy agg switch from handling link\naggregation, spanning-tree, and other L2 protocols as normal. This forced a\nspanning-tree leader election and reconvergence for all links, <em>blocking all\ntraffic between access switches for 90 seconds</em>.</p>\n\n<p>The 90-second network partition caused fileservers using Pacemaker and DRBD for\nHA failover to declare each other dead, and to issue STONITH (Shoot The Other\nNode In The Head) messages to one another. The network partition delayed\ndelivery of those messages, causing some fileserver pairs to believe they were\n<em>both</em> active. When the network recovered, both nodes shot each other at the\nsame time. With both nodes dead, files belonging to the pair were unavailable.</p>\n\n<p>To prevent filesystem corruption, DRBD requires that administrators ensure the\noriginal primary node is still the primary node before resuming replication.\nFor pairs where both nodes were primary, the ops team had to examine log files\nor bring the node online in isolation to determine its state. Recovering\nthose downed fileserver pairs took five hours, during which Github service was\nsignificantly degraded.</p>\n\n<h2>Hosting providers</h2>\n\n<p>Running your own datacenter can be cheaper and more reliable than using public\ncloud infrastructure, but it also means you have to be a network and server\nadministrator. What about hosting providers, which rent dedicated or\nvirtualized hardware to users and often take care of the network and hardware\nsetup for you?</p>\n\n<h3>An undetected GlusterFS split-brain</h3>\n\n<p>Freistil IT hosts their servers with a colocation/managed-hosting provider.\nTheir monitoring system <a href=\"http://www.freistil.it/2013/02/post-mortem-network-issues-last-week/\">alerted\nFreistil</a> to 50–100% packet loss localized to a specific datacenter. The\nnetwork failure, caused by a router firmware bug, returned the next day.\nElevated packet loss caused the GlusterFS distributed filesystem to enter\nsplit-brain undetected:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately, the malfunctioning network had caused additional problems\nwhich we became aware of in the afternoon when a customer called our support\nhotline because their website failed to deliver certain image files. We found\nthat this was caused by a split-brain situation on the storage cluster\n“stor02″ where changes made on node “stor02b” weren’t reflected on “stor02a”\nand the self-heal algorithm built into the Gluster filesystem was not able to\nresolve this inconsistency between the two data sets.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Repairing that inconsistency led to a “brief overload of the web nodes because\nof a short surge in network traffic.”</p>\n\n<h3>An anonymous hosting provider</h3>\n\n<p>From what we can gather informally, <em>all</em> the major managed hosting providers\nexperience regular network failures. One company running 100-200 nodes on a\nmajor hosting provider reported that in a 90-day period the provider’s network\nwent through five distinct periods of partitions. Some partitions disabled\nconnectivity between the provider’s cloud network and the public internet, and\nothers separated the cloud network from the provider’s internal managed-hosting\nnetwork. The failures caused unavailability, but because this company wasn’t\nrunning any significant distributed systems <em>across</em> those partitioned\nnetworks, there was no observed inconsistency or data loss.</p>\n\n<h3>Pacemaker/Heartbeat split-brain</h3>\n\n<p>A post to Linux-HA <a href=\"http://readlist.com/lists/lists.linux-ha.org/linux-ha/6/31964.html\">details\na long-running partition between a Heartbeat pair</a>, in which two Linode VMs\neach declared the other dead and claimed a shared IP for themselves. Successive\nposts suggest further network problems: emails failed to dispatch due to DNS\nresolution failure, and nodes reported “network unreachable.” In this case, the\nimpact appears to have been minimal–in part because the partitioned\napplication was just a proxy.</p>\n\n<h2>Cloud networks</h2>\n\n<p>Large-scale virtualized environments are notorious for transient latency,\ndropped packets, and full-blown network partitions, often affecting a\nparticular software version or availability zone. Sometimes the failures occur\nbetween specific subsections of the provider’s datacenter, revealing planes of\ncleavage in the underlying hardware topology.</p>\n\n<h3>An isolated MongoDB primary on EC2</h3>\n\n<p>In a comment on <a href=\"http://aphyr.com/posts/284-call-me-maybe-mongodb\">Call\nme maybe: MongoDB</a>, Scott Bessler observed exactly the same failure mode\nKyle demonstrated in the Jepsen post:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>“Prescient. The w=safe scenario you show (including extra fails during\nrollback/re-election) happened to us today when EC2 West region had network\nissues that caused a network partition that separated PRIMARY from its 2\nSECONDARIES in a 3 node replset. 2 hours later the old primary rejoined and\nrolled back everything on the new primary. Our bad for not using w=majority.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This partition caused <b>two hours of write loss</b>. From our conversations\nwith large-scale MongoDB users, we gather that network events causing failover\non EC2 are common. Simultaneous primaries accepting writes for <em>multiple days</em>\nare not unknown. </p>\n\n<h3>Mnesia split-brain on EC2</h3>\n\n<p>EC2 outages can leave two nodes connected to the internet but unable to see\neach other. This type of partition is especially dangerous, as writes to both\nsides of a partitioned cluster can cause inconsistency and lost data. That’s\nexactly what happened to <a href=\"http://dukesoferl.blogspot.com/2008/03/network-partition-oops.html?m=1\">this\nMnesia cluster</a>, which diverged overnight. Their state wasn’t critical, so\nthe operations team simply nuked one side of the cluster. They conclude: “the\nexperience has convinced us that we need to prioritize up our network partition\nrecovery strategy”.</p>\n\n<h3>EC2 instability causing MongoDB and ElasticSearch unavailability</h3>\n\n<p>Network disruptions in EC2 can affect only certain groups of nodes.\nFor instance, <a href=\"https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=454155\">this report\nof a total partition between the frontend and backend stacks</a> states that\ntheir the web servers lose their connections to all backend instances for a few\nseconds, several times a month. Even though the disruptions were short, cluster\nconvergence resulted in 30-45 minute outages and a corrupted index for\nElasticSearch. As problems escalated, the outages occurred “2 to 4 times a\nday.”</p>\n\n<h3>VoltDB split-brain on EC2</h3>\n\n<p>One VoltDB user reports <a href=\"https://forum.voltdb.com/showthread.php?552-Nodes-stop-talking-to-each-other-and-form-independent-clusters\">regular\nnetwork failures causing replica divergence</a> but also indicates that\ntheir network logs included no dropped packets. Because this cluster had not\nenabled split-brain detection, both nodes ran as isolated primaries,\ncausing significant data loss. </p>\n\n<h3>ElasticSearch discovery failure on EC2</h3>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://elasticsearch-users.115913.n3.nabble.com/EC2-discovery-leads-to-two-masters-td3239318.html\">Another\nEC2 split-brain</a>: a two-node cluster failed to converge on “roughly 1 out of\n10 startups” when discovery messages took longer than three seconds to\nexchange. As a result, both nodes would start as primaries with the same cluster\nname. Since ElasticSearch doesn’t demote primaries automatically, split-brain\npersisted until administrators intervened. Upping the discovery timeout to 15\nseconds resolved the issue.</p>\n\n<h3>RabbitMQ and ElasticSearch on Windows Azure</h3>\n\n<p>There are a few <a href=\"http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/WAVirtualMachinesforWindows/thread/b261e1aa-5ec4-42fc-80ef-5b50a0a00618\">scattered\nreports of Windows Azure partitions</a>, such as <a href=\"http://rabbitmq.1065348.n5.nabble.com/Instable-HA-cluster-td24690.html\">this\naccount</a> of a RabbitMQ cluster which entered split-brain on a weekly basis.\nThere’s also this report of <a href=\"https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/elasticsearch/muZtKij3nUw\">an\nElasticSearch split-brain</a>, but since Azure is a relative newcomer compared\nto EC2, descriptions of its network reliability are limited.</p>\n\n<h3>AWS EBS outage</h3>\n\n<p>On April 21st, 2011, Amazon Web Services <a href=\"http://aws.amazon.com/message/65648/\">went down for over 12 hours</a>,\ncausing hundreds of high-profile web sites to go offline. As a part of normal\nAWS scaling activities, Amazon engineers shifted traffic away from a router in\nthe Elastic Block Store (EBS) network in a single US-East Availability Zone\n(AZ).</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The traffic shift was executed incorrectly and rather than routing the\ntraffic to the other router on the primary network, the traffic was routed\nonto the lower capacity redundant EBS network. For a portion of the EBS\ncluster in the affected Availability Zone, this meant that they did not have\na functioning primary or secondary network because traffic was purposely\nshifted away from the primary network and the secondary network couldn’t\nhandle the traffic level it was receiving. As a result, many EBS nodes in the\naffected Availability Zone were completely isolated from other EBS nodes in\nits cluster. Unlike a normal network interruption, this change disconnected\nboth the primary and secondary network simultaneously, leaving the affected\nnodes completely isolated from one another.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The partition coupled with aggressive failure-recovery code caused a mirroring\nstorm, which led to network congestion and triggered a previously unknown race\ncondition in EBS. EC2 was unavailable for roughly 12 hours, and EBS was\nunavailable or degraded for over 80 hours.</p>\n\n<p>The EBS failure also caused an outage in Amazon’s Relational Database Service.\nWhen one AZ fails, RDS is designed to fail over to a different AZ. However,\n2.5% of multi-AZ databases in US-East failed to fail over due to “stuck” IO.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The primary cause was that the rapid succession of network interruption\n(which partitioned the primary from the secondary) and “stuck” I/O on the\nprimary replica triggered a previously un-encountered bug. This bug left the\nprimary replica in an isolated state where it was not safe for our monitoring\nagent to automatically fail over to the secondary replica without risking\ndata loss, and manual intervention was required.“</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This correlated failure caused widespread outages for clients relying\non AWS. For example, <a href=\"https://status.heroku.com/incidents/151\">Heroku\nreported</a> between 16 and 60 hours of unavailability for their users'\ndatabases.</p>\n\n<h2>WAN links</h2>\n\n<p>While we have largely focused on failures over local area networks (or\nnear-local networks), wide area network (WAN) failures are also common–if less\nfrequently documented. These failures are particularly interesting because\nthere are often fewer redundant WAN routes and because systems guaranteeing\nhigh availability (and disaster recovery) often require distribution across multiple datacenters. Accordingly, graceful degradation under partitions or increased latency is especially important for geographically widespread services.</p>\n\n<h3>PagerDuty</h3>\n\n<p>PagerDuty designed their system to remain available in the face of node,\ndatacenter, or even <em>provider</em> failure; their services are replicated between\ntwo EC2 regions and a datacenter hosted by Linode. On April 13, 2013, <a href=\"http://blog.pagerduty.com/2013/04/outage-post-mortem-april-13-2013/\">an\nAWS peering point in northern California degraded</a>, causing connectivity\nissues for one of PagerDuty’s EC2 nodes. As latencies between AWS availability\nzones rose, the notification dispatch system lost quorum and stopped\ndispatching messages entirely.</p>\n\n<p>Even though PagerDuty’s infrastructure was designed with partition tolerance in\nmind, correlated failures due to a shared peering point between two datacenters\ncaused 18 minutes of unavailability, dropping inbound API requests and delaying\nqueued pages until quorum was re-established.</p>\n\n<h3>CENIC Study</h3>\n\n<p>Researchers at the University of California, San Diego <a href=\"http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~snoeren/papers/cenic-sigcomm10.pdf\">quantitatively\nanalyzed</a> five years of operation in the CENIC wide-area network, which\ncontains over two hundred routers across California. By cross-correlating link\nfailures and additional external BGP and traceroute data, they discovered over\n508 "isolating network partitions” that caused connectivity problems between\nhosts. Average partition duration ranged from 6 minutes for software-related\nfailures to over 8.2 hours for hardware-related failures (median 2.7 and 32\nminutes; 95th percentile of 19.9 minutes and 3.7 days, respectively).</p>\n\n<h2>Global routing failures</h2>\n\n<p>Despite the high level of redundancy in internet systems, some network failures\ntake place on a globally distributed scale. </p>\n\n<h3>Cloudflare</h3>\n\n<p>CloudFlare runs 23 datacenters with redundant network paths and anycast\nfailover. <a href=\"http://blog.cloudflare.com/todays-outage-post-mortem-82515\">In response\nto a DDoS attack against one of their customers</a>, their operations team\ndeployed a new firewall rule to drop packets of a specific size. Juniper’s\nFlowSpec protocol propagated that rule to all CloudFlare edge routers–but then:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>What should have happened is that no packet should have matched that rule\nbecause no packet was actually that large. What happened instead is that the\nrouters encountered the rule and then proceeded to consume all their RAM\nuntil they crashed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Recovering from the failure was complicated by routers which failed to reboot\nautomatically, and inaccessible management ports.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>Even though some data centers came back online initially, they fell back over\nagain because all the traffic across our entire network hit them and\noverloaded their resources.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>CloudFlare monitors their network carefully and the ops team had immediate\nvisibility into the failure. However, coordinating globally distributed systems\nis complex, and calling on-site engineers to find and reboot routers by\nhand takes time. Recovery began after 30 minutes, and was complete after an\nhour of unavailability.</p>\n\n<h3>Juniper routing bug</h3>\n\n<p>A firmware bug introduced as a part of an upgrade in Juniper Networks’s routers\n<a href=\"http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Bug-in-Juniper-Router-Firmware-Update-Causes-Massive-Internet-Outage-709180/\">caused\noutages</a> in Level 3 Communications’s networking backbone. This subsequently\nknocked services like Time Warner Cable, RIM BlackBerry, and several UK\ninternet service providers offline.</p>\n\n<h3>Global BGP outages</h3>\n\n<p>There have been several global Internet outages related to BGP\nmisconfiguration. Notably, in 2008, Pakistan Telecom, responding to a\ngovernment edict to block YouTube.com, incorrectly advertised its (blocked)\nroute to other provides, which hijacked traffic from the site and <a href=\"http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9878655-7.html\">briefly rendered it\nunreachable</a>. In 2010, a group of Duke University researchers achieved a\nsimilar effect by <a href=\"http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg11505.html\">testing</a> an\nexperimental flag in the BGP protocol. Similar incidents occurred <a href=\"http://www.renesys.com/2006/01/coned-steals-the-net/\">in 2006</a>\n(knocking sites like Martha Stewart Living and The New York Times offline), <a href=\"http://www.renesys.com/2005/12/internetwide-nearcatastrophela/\">in\n2005</a> (where a misconfiguration in Turkey attempted in a redirect for the\n<em>entire internet</em>), and <a href=\"http://merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/1997-04/msg00380.html\">in 1997</a>.</p>\n\n<h2>Where do we go from here?</h2>\n\n<p>This post is meant as a reference point–to illustrate that, according to a\nwide range of accounts, partitions occur in many real-world environments.\nProcesses, servers, NICs, switches, local and wide area networks can all fail,\nand the resulting economic consequences are real. Network outages can suddenly arise in systems that are stable for months at a time, during routine upgrades, or as a result of emergency maintenance. The consequences of these outages range from increased latency and temporary unavailability to inconsistency, corruption, and data loss. Split-brain is not an academic concern: it happens to all kinds of systems–sometimes for <em>days on end</em>. Partitions deserve serious consideration.</p>\n\n<p>On the other hand, some networks really <em>are</em> reliable. Engineers at major\nfinancial firms report that despite putting serious effort into designing\nsystems that gracefully tolerate partitions, their networks rarely, if ever,\nexhibit partition behavior. Cautious engineering (and lots of money) can\nprevent outages.</p>\n\n<p>However, not all organizations can afford the cost or operational complexity of\nhighly reliable networks. From Google and Amazon (who operate commodity\nand/or low-cost hardware due to sheer scale) to one-man startups built on\nshoestring budgets, communication-isolating network failures are a real risk.</p>\n\n<p>It’s important to consider this risk <em>before</em> a partition occurs–because it’s\nmuch easier to make decisions about partition tolerance on a whiteboard than to\nredesign, re-engineer, and upgrade a complex system in a production\nenvironment–especially when it’s throwing errors at your users. For some\napplications, failure <em>is</em> an option–but you should characterize and explicitly account for it as a part of your design.</p>\n\n<p><em>We invite you to contribute your own experiences with or without network\npartitions. Open a pull request on <a href=\"https://github.com/aphyr/partitions-post\">https://github.com/aphyr/partitions-post</a>,\nleave a comment, write a blog post, or release a post-mortem. Data will inform\nthis conversation, future designs, and, ultimately, the availability of the\nsystems you depend on.</em></p>"
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"content" : "\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplification\">Amplification</a> is the fundamental process of addition. Life is not either/or; it is both/and.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/ghanamakers/\">Ghana Makers</a> is a social network, right now on fb. <a href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YddPhljsknt8RGMFyBFcH-KPQgPYmrsF4bF1gUXD7Oc/pub\">AMP</a> to date is a makerspace project that lowdo, <a href=\"http://neo-nomad.net/\">Yasmine Abbas</a> and my <a href=\"http://aqueousol.blogspot.com/\">father</a> have been plotting. We used the Rockefeller <a href=\"http://challenge.rockefellerfoundation.org/\">informal round</a> as an excuse to conceptualize it. Proposal is for a locally-fabricated modular, scalable, coupled digital and physical infrastructure for open-source design and making in Africa+</p>\n<p>More and more, people ask for more information or express an interest in collaborative production. And it can be hard to explain to them what we are doing. For most people it's slightly too complicated for them to conceptualize fully.</p>\n<p>In August, we want to run a limited startup phase to work with a select number of architects, programmers, artists, systems thinkers and makers in any field to jointly develop a more coherent model for visualizing and communicating the project. More details soon. (Builds off this working theorem on design innovation *<a href=\"http://afrch.blogspot.com/search/label/stellate\">stellation</a>*)</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1%202.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1%203.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1%204.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1%205.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/users/dk/brekship1%206.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"358\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>images are brekship1 from <a href=\"http://lowdo.net/berekuso-hill-station\">Brekuso Hill Station</a>, where building off the <a href=\"http://lowdo.net/lowdo-blog/bamboo-bot-updates\">bamboo robots</a> line we are planning toward kinematic and aeronautic roofing. Yes, that means roof structures that (eventually - this will be years of research) can fly. This is 20 ft container; we are starting with much smaller 10 ft. version</p>\n<p>Also: Check out what <a href=\"http://wlab.weebly.com/\">Wɔɛlab</a> is working on in Togo: <a href=\"http://spaceappschallenge.org/project/wafate-to-mars/\">W.AFATE to MARS</a>!</p>\n<p>Don't know what a \"makerspace\" is? Read <a href=\"http://afrch.blogspot.com/2013/03/5-notes-on-maker-future.html\">this</a>.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Intro Text </div>\n <div>\n <div>Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform: toward a locally-fabricated modular, scalable, coupled digital and physical infrastructure for open-source design and making in Africa+</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Featured Post </div>\n <div>\n <div>Yes</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Preview Image </div>\n <div>\n <div><img src=\"http://www.lowdo.net/sites/default/files/brekship1_wh.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" alt=\"\"></div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Tags </div>\n <div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/tags/amp\">amp</a></div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/tags/makerspace\">makerspace</a></div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Blog Category </div>\n <div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/blog-category/community\">Community</a></div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/blog-category/construction\">Construction</a></div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/blog-category/culture\">Culture</a></div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/blog-category/design\">Design</a></div>\n <div><a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/blog-category/news\">News</a></div>\n </div>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n <div>Related Projects </div>\n <div>\n <div>Berekuso Hill Station</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "A Guide: Six Steps for Writing a Scholarly Article or Paper in Grad School",
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"content" : "<div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Although I enjoy writing, I still find it a challenge and I’m often curious about how other writers work as they’re producing scholarship. My own technique is something that I developed in graduate school and continue tweaking even now as I’m a professor. The Six Steps I’ve listed below are the steps <i>I</i> go through in order to produce a draft of an article or paper—I realize that others do things differently and<b style=\"color:black\"> the key principle is to figure out and go with what works for you. You’re not doing it wrong if you’re doing it. </b></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">It feels a bit vulnerable to reveal the unfinished product, but because graduate school can be so grueling, I thought it’d be worth it to put my process out there. All the disclaimers apply: I'm an anthropologist and this is me writing ethnography, disciplinary conventions from humanities, STEM, and even other social sciences are very different. There are other sites (<a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/10-Tips-on-How-to-Write-Less/124268/\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.insidehighered.com/advice\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://theprofessorisin.com/pearlsofwisdom/\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://backupminds.wordpress.com/\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/10-Tips-on-How-to-Write-Less/124268/\">here</a>) that also give great advice on the doing of graduate school and the work we're to produce.</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">You’ll notice two things from the start:<b><span style=\"color:black\"> </span></b><br><b><span style=\"color:black\">1) I do a lot of pre-writing.</span></b><br>(I call this “writing.”)<span style=\"color:black\"><b> </b></span><br><span style=\"color:black\"><b>2) I do a lot of it by hand.</b> </span><br>(Writing by hand does something different for my brain as I’m trying to work through ideas or pushing through a moment of “writer’s block.” Also, typing on the computer makes it oh-so-tempting to start reading my email or fret about the <a href=\"http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/health/france-coronavirus-death/index.html\">WHO news on the coronavirus</a>.)</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><b style=\"color:black\">The goal here is to produce a draft (not a perfect final version) and this takes time</b>. Interspersed with all these steps are coffee, eating, sleeping, grading, lecturing, commuting, bathing, jogging, interacting with human beings who are not my students. These steps won’t work very well the night before something is due.</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><u><b>STEP ONE: Initial Brainstorming [by hand!]</b></u></span></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\">Main Question: What’s interesting?</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">To come up with an idea for a paper (or article), start with the question “What’s interesting?” What’s the data puzzle that caught you eye? What’s the question or confusion that you find intriguing?</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">2 examples from my own writing:</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><b><br></b></div><ul style=\"text-align:justify\"><li><b>Why didn’t yerba mate catch on during European colonialism in the same way that coffee and tea did, since they’re all non-European products and all have a bitter taste? (This led to an article I placed with <i>Comparative Studies in Society and History</i> <a href=\"http://www.academia.edu/2780114/Stimulating_Consumption_Yerba_Mate_Myths_Markets_and_Meanings_from_Conquest_to_Present\">here</a>.)</b></li></ul><ul style=\"text-align:justify\"><li><b>Something I noticed in my ethnographic field work was that there are different versions of the “origin stories” for the massive Itaipú dam construction debt (and whether it was being repaid) and these versions seem to coincide with the political and social position of the individual. Note: images I’ve included in this post are the real notes for this paper. </b></li></ul><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">I actually write down questions like this in a notebook or on a pad of paper. And then I try to figure out the “why” and the “so what.”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><u><b><span style=\"font-size:large\">STEP TWO: The Basics [by hand!]</span></b></u></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\">Main Question: What’s going on? Why does it matter?</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">On a piece of paper (usually legal paper turned sideways), I’ll label four sections entitled:</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><ul style=\"text-align:justify\"><li><b>The Issue</b></li><li><b>The Data</b></li><li><b>Theory</b></li><li><b>So What?</b></li></ul><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">And then I’ll jot down bullet points (sometimes entire sentences) underneath each and answer the following questions:</div><br><ul><li><b>The Issue: What is the issue, the main idea of this paper?</b></li></ul><ul><li><b>The Data: What data, what evidence do I have that connects to the issue? (specific documents, interviews, participant-observation)</b></li></ul><ul><li><b>Theory: What theories help explain what I’m seeing in my data?</b></li></ul><ul><li><b>So What?: Why does this matter? What can we learn from this?</b></li></ul><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">In this and the next step, I’ll read new articles and books that connect with the issue and the data. I annotate as I read (and even jot down imaginary conversations with the authors): How does W account for what she has uncovered? How is X challenging the accepted way of thinking about this? What would Y ask about my findings? What would Z point out is missing from my assertions? </div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit\"><br><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><u><span style=\"font-size:large\"><b>STEP THREE: The Set Pieces [by hand!]</b></span></u></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\">Main Question: What are the major set pieces, the major components of this article?</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DN_5i29Urhg/UaednZSw6tI/AAAAAAAABSM/ZF5PxqKuMxU/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013180.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"307\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DN_5i29Urhg/UaednZSw6tI/AAAAAAAABSM/ZF5PxqKuMxU/s400/SKMBT_C360-13053013180.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qhv4q7vC3aM/UaednhKeD0I/AAAAAAAABSU/w7NUzcFcmKs/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013161.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"307\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qhv4q7vC3aM/UaednhKeD0I/AAAAAAAABSU/w7NUzcFcmKs/s400/SKMBT_C360-13053013161.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br><br><table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bWkMrKbwC0A/UaednGU8FzI/AAAAAAAABSI/l7Jf86YnIyE/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013181.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"307\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bWkMrKbwC0A/UaednGU8FzI/AAAAAAAABSI/l7Jf86YnIyE/s400/SKMBT_C360-13053013181.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">I began in pencil, with the boxes around what I thought might be the \"major set pieces\" of the article, then I drew connecting arrows and annotations to my various bullet points. On another day, I used the blue pen and then, at the end, went back to pencil to try to figure out the logical flow of various sections.</td></tr></tbody></table><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">On another piece of paper (see the accompanying images), write out five sections that will help you figure out what the main set pieces of the article will be. You can see that I mark up this document repeatedly… I don’t start out with Roman numerals or any kind of order. You’ll see marginalia, arrows, and different colored ink. This is me iterating through ideas and connections. I’m very opposed to starting out with a pre-determined order or hierarchy of information. In fact, that’s one of the very questions that this step is supposed to help me work out. I certainly don’t know it from the start. </div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Under each of the section headings I’ll write out bullet points and even entire sentences and sometimes I’ll realize that one section actually has three main components. I usually draw boxes around the section headings (you can see it on the yellow paper):<br><br><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit\"></div></div><br><b>Introduction: </b><br><ul><li><b>All articles need them.</b></li></ul><br><b>Background/History/Primer: </b><br><ul><li><b>What background does the reader need to know to be able to understand what’s interesting about the data?</b></li></ul><br><b>The Data: </b><br><ul><li><b>In this case, since these are notes about Itaipú dam and the construction debt, my data seemed to fall into two areas: a) How the debt grew in the first place; b) How different groups interpret that story.</b></li></ul><br><b>Theory/Literature: </b><br><ul><li><b>Writers and key bodies of literature and approaches that connect to the data. </b></li><li><b>For the paper I was sketching out, the two main debates were: a) literature on hydroelectric dams; b) literature on credit/debt. I ended up focusing on the latter.</b></li></ul><br><b>Effects/Findings/Outcomes: </b><br><ul><li><b>What has happened as a result of the data?</b></li><li><b>What are my major conclusions, major interpretations of the data and the theory? </b></li><li><b>What is my argument for why we’re seeing the data we’re seeing? </b></li><li><b>Why does this matter?</b></li></ul><ul style=\"color:black\"> </ul><div style=\"font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">You can see that this step is several pages long and not everything that I write here ends up in the final article. Some of it ends up as fodder for other papers, because one of the main goals of this step is to really focus on the heart of this article. The question is “What is this article about? What is the story that I’m telling? What are the main components necessary to tell that story?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Stare and stare at these set pieces and create a logical flow through them (notice the labeling of I, Ib, II, III, IIIb, IV, V).<span> </span>I do this only after writing down and detailing all the components. For me, the order arises from my ideas and the data. It’s not some formula that I begin with and then fill out. </div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><u><b>STEP FOUR: Outline [typed!]</b></u></span></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LTIP2eTQH7M/Uaec_lV1flI/AAAAAAAABRQ/MzyvEmrmOuE/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013191.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"640\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LTIP2eTQH7M/Uaec_lV1flI/AAAAAAAABRQ/MzyvEmrmOuE/s640/SKMBT_C360-13053013191.jpg\" width=\"494\"></a></div><br><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Type up the work you’ve done, using the logical flow order and using bullet points (and complete sentences… anecdotes, formulations of the argument) for the various subsections of each. I aim for complete sentences (just because it helps me start linking ideas), but this isn’t absolutely necessary.</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit\"><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><u><b><span style=\"font-size:large\">STEP FIVE: Iterating the Outline [by hand and typed!]</span></b></u></div></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5hRw2PFjq_c/UaedAO4d83I/AAAAAAAABRg/3GfErD3Ifok/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013200.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5hRw2PFjq_c/UaedAO4d83I/AAAAAAAABRg/3GfErD3Ifok/s320/SKMBT_C360-13053013200.jpg\" width=\"247\"></a></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br><br><table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OI4rInN6iU0/UaedARD8f3I/AAAAAAAABRk/Il_1qemCbYY/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013202.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OI4rInN6iU0/UaedARD8f3I/AAAAAAAABRk/Il_1qemCbYY/s320/SKMBT_C360-13053013202.jpg\" width=\"247\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">This is the back of one of these pages, where I wanted more space and was trying to think through the way different constituencies were gathering data and making their claims about the debt from Itaipú dam.</td></tr></tbody></table>Format the narrative outline with wide margins for notes and, by hand, comment and annotate on what you’ve written. Ask:</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br>“So what?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“What else needs to go here?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“What are the steps?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“How does theory connect?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“What’s significant?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“Why?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">“What’s missing here? What are the gaps?”</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">You might retype the outline with the added commentary, print it out, and do this process again. The aim is to get to a place where you’ve commented as much as you possibly can and gotten to the point where there’s little more brainstorming that you can do to help focus the article and interpret the data. </div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><b>This isn’t the moment for exciting rabbit trails into other areas of research or articles.</b></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><br></div></div><div style=\"color:black;font-family:inherit;text-align:center\"><u><b><span style=\"font-size:large\">STEP SIX: Drafting [typed!]</span></b></u></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br><br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ESjOvG88IGs/UaedBKvCqDI/AAAAAAAABR4/OJv-h_QtgAI/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013211.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ESjOvG88IGs/UaedBKvCqDI/AAAAAAAABR4/OJv-h_QtgAI/s320/SKMBT_C360-13053013211.jpg\" width=\"247\"></a> <a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rk7v-L86xCQ/UaedAy8I82I/AAAAAAAABRw/Psxq4OKxDfY/s1600/SKMBT_C360-13053013210.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rk7v-L86xCQ/UaedAy8I82I/AAAAAAAABRw/Psxq4OKxDfY/s320/SKMBT_C360-13053013210.jpg\" width=\"247\"></a><br><br><br>After a few days of iterating through the outline, it’s time to write. I’d suggest starting at the beginning of your outline and just write the information into paragraphs. My writing goal is a minimum of 300 words a day, but when I’ve commented and iterated through the outline, I can do triple that in a few hours.</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">When you feel stuck or tired with writing, print it out and write additional paragraphs by hand on the back sides of the pages. Part of the reason for printing it out is sheer paranoia—in case the computer dies, I have a hard copy.</div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Do only minimal editing on what’s already been written because the goal is to finish an entire draft, not to perfectly polish the first three paragraphs over and over. </div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#444444;font-family:inherit;text-align:justify\">Once the full draft is done, you can go and ask, again “What’s missing?” “What’s out of order?” “What’s too thin?”<br><br><div style=\"color:#444444\">That's my process. Your suggestions? <span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"><span style=\"color:white\">How to write tips Ph.D. advice academic journal article publishing publication journal peer-reviewed academic writing anthropology ethnography academia author tenure \"publish or perish\" peer-review doctoral program edit revise faculty</span></span></div><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"><span style=\"color:#444444\"><span style=\"color:white\"> </span> </span><span style=\"color:white\">\"writing culture\" \"How I write\"</span></span></div>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-resource-action.html\">Koranteng's Toli: A Resource Action</a>: <p>It’s rare on the Internet for writing to engage me for a good long time. Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah’s writing draws me in and I frequently find myself spending a long time and always feel wowed.</p>\n<p>This is a hyper-linked poem. The links sometimes made me smile, and because I have read some of his own posts he points to there was a trace that brought new meaning to the poem and to the pieces themselves.</p>"
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"content" : "Case in point: Stephen Gordon writes today, at Maclean's <a href=\"http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/06/03/intro-to-productivity-that-thing-canadians-are-apparently-so-bad-at/\">Econowatch</a>:\n<br>\n<blockquote>\nAnother popular misconception is that increased productivity means higher unemployment. If the same amount of output can be produced by fewer people, then what happens to those excess workers? This is the “lump of labour” argument, the notion that the quantity of work to be done is a fixed constant. It is also a well-known fallacy: higher productivity increases the demand for labour, because more productive workers are more valuable to employers. Although higher productivity in a given industry may reduce employment in that sector, the increase in total output and income across the economy will create new, better-paying, employment opportunities elsewhere.</blockquote>\nThus Professor Gordon performs the academically-sanctioned equivalent of the thimblerig or the pigeon drop. He will no doubt pull off his swindle with impunity, as have hundreds of economists and economists-manque before him, however much Jonathan Chait may inveigh in vain against debating straw men: \"If you’re arguing against an idea, you need to accurately describe the people who hold them [sic]. If at all possible, link to them and quote their argument. This is a discipline that forces opinion writers to prove that they’re debating an idea somebody actually holds.\"<br>\n<br>\nIn his 1891 article, \"Why Working Men Dislike Piece Work,\" David F. Schloss, reported a conversation with a laborer making washers on piece work. \"<i>I know I am doing wrong,</i>\" Schloss quotes him. \"<i>I am taking away the work of another man.</i> But I have permission from the Society.\" It was to those italicized passages that Schloss assigned the name, \"the Theory of the Lump of Labour.\"<br>\n<br>\nThe remarkable thing about the laborer referred to by Schloss is that he was working <i>in violation of</i>, not in conformity to, the dictates of his supposed theory. Furthermore, he had permission from his union to do so.<br>\n<br>\nThis unnamed washer-boring workman has the distinction of being one of the very few individuals whose spoken words (whether authentic or apocryphal) have <i>ever</i> been cited in evidence of a belief in the alleged lump-of-labour theory. By contrast, for example, the prominent agitator for the eight-hour day, Tom Mann, \"looked for the absorption of the unemployed by the distribution of work; <i>while disclaiming the fallacy that there is only a fixed amount of work to be done</i>.\"<br>\n<br>\nIn fact, <i>disclaiming</i> the alleged fallacy had been honed to a fine edge decades before Schloss coined the quaint 'lump-of-labour' sobriquet. The transactions of a miners' conference held at Leeds in 1863 contained an introductory report that astutely mocked the hypocrisy of political economists and employers who, on the one hand, decried the \"ignorance and folly\" of those who would attempt to regulate grievously long hours, which were supposedly the \"infallible and inevitable result of demand and supply\" while \"constantly telling the men that wages must be reduced in consequence of over-supply [of labor].\" Meanwhile, the coal-owners themselves maintained restrictions on the production of coal -- known as \"the limitation of the vend\" -- from 1771 to 1845.<br>\n<br>\n\"Unvarying\" is the supposed quantity of labor to be performed, allegedly assumed by the typically anonymous offender against the fallacy taboo. <br>\n<blockquote>\nAt the bottom of these contrivances for artificially increasing the amount of employment, there seems to lurk the fallacy of supposing that <b>the labour required to be done in any department of trade, or in the country generally, is a fixed quantity</b>; therefore, in order to secure an aliquot portion of it to the greatest number, the labour must be spread out thin. The teaching of sound Political Economy is directly the reverse of this.</blockquote>\nwrote the author of an article on Trades Unions in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> of 1867.<br>\n<blockquote>\nThe League is only an offshoot of the Unions... <b>Their theory is that the amount of work to be done is a fixed quantity</b>, and that in the interest of the operatives, it is necessary to spread it thin in order to make it go far.</blockquote>\nwrote the London correspondent to the <i>New York Times</i> in 1871.<br>\n<blockquote>\nThe root of the mania which has had such a disastrous effect on the material prosperity of the country, and, above all, of the working classes, is <b>the idea that the amount of work to be done is a fixed quantity</b>, quite independent of any efforts which may be made to encourage and stimulate demand, and that, therefore, the best course is to spread it thin in order to make it go as far as possible.</blockquote>\nis how the author of an article in <i>The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art</i> put it in 1876.<br>\n<br>\nI have a database of over 540 entries, from 1871 to 2011, most of which invoke some variation on the lump-of-labour fallacy claim. A precious few refute the fallacy claim and there are perhaps a dozen or so duplications. With very few exceptions, these parroters of the claim do not cite any actual person who holds the fallacious idea.<br>\n<br>\n\"These people think that the amount of work to be done is a fixed quantity.\"<br>\n<br>\n\"If we are to proceed on the assumption that the amount of work to be done is a fixed quantity...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"The theory of the Lump of Labour will be seen to rest upon the utterly untenable supposition that a fixed amount of work exists.\"<br>\n<br>\n\"But there is not, as this argument assumes, a fixed Work-Fund, a certain amount of work which has to be done, whatever the price of labour.\"<br>\n<br>\n\"The Leaders of the Federation said that there was a certain amount of work to be done in Atlantis...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"The notion is that there is exactly so much labor predetermined to be done; therefore, if machines are introduced, there is that much less for men to do...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"This means, roughly speaking, that there is a certain total number of hours of work to be done each week.\"<br>\n<br>\n\"This view -- that the amount of work to be done is fixed -- is called the lump-of-labor fallacy.\"<br>\n<br>\n\"Very similar to the general overproduction fallacy is the erroneous belief that there is only a certain amount of work in the community to be done...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"At the bottom of these contrivances...\" <br>\n<br>\n\"We have touched the fallacy which lies at the bottom of this whole system...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"The real question which lies at the bottom of the dispute...\"<br>\n<br>\n\"The root of the mania...\"<br>\n<br>\nAnd on... and on... and on... and on...<br>\n<br>\nGetting to the <b>bottom</b> of the fallacy claim took 15 years of patient, persistent inquiry. The economists who pedantically recite the fallacy claim and insist upon its authority know nothing of its origins (or, for that matter, its subsequent career)! The lump-of-labour label was a late Victorian addendum that alluded impishly to the colloquial term for a kind of labor sub-contracting, \"lump work,\" which explicitly specified the amount of work to be done as a fixed quantity. Henry Mayhew chronicled the practice in his mid-century reportage on \"London Labour and the London Poor\": <br>\n<blockquote>\nIt is this contract or lump work which constitutes the great evil of the carpenter's, as well as of many other trades; and as in those crafts, so in this, we find that the lower the wages are reduced the greater becomes the number of trading operatives or middlemen...<br>\n<br>\n\"Lump\" work, \"piece\" work, work by \"the job,\" are all portions of the contract system. The principle is the same. \"Here is this work to be done, what will you undertake to do it for?\"</blockquote>\nSo, if lump work was <i>by definition</i> \"a fixed amount of work to be done\" from whence does the \"fallacy\" arise? The lump-of-labour and its antecedent, lump work, turn out to be blind alleys. The origin of the fallacy claim had to do with the introduction of machinery rather than with piece-work or working time (not to mention immigration or early retirement). Dorning Rasbotham, a magistrate in the county of Lancashire, England, published a pamphlet, \"Thoughts on the Use of Machines in the Cotton Manufacture,\" in 1780 in response to rioting that had occurred the previous year near Blackburn. In it, on page 18, occurs what appears to be the seminal instance of the fallacy claim, expressed in words unmistakably paraphrased by the now standard \"fixed amount of work to be done\":<br>\n<blockquote>\n<table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:left;margin-right:1em;text-align:left\"><tbody>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4MjzUNZ9n1U/UA7tTEwjeVI/AAAAAAAAAnY/dY9uGe38_SI/s1600/rastamp.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4MjzUNZ9n1U/UA7tTEwjeVI/AAAAAAAAAnY/dY9uGe38_SI/s400/rastamp.JPG\" height=\"292\" width=\"241\"></a></td></tr>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">Dorning Rasbotham, Esq.</td></tr>\n</tbody></table>\n\"There is, say they, <b><i>a certain quantity</i> of labour to be performed</b>. This used to be performed by <i>hands</i>, without machines, or with very little help from them. But if now machines perform a <i>larger share</i> than before, suppose one <i>fourth part, so many hands</i> as are necessary to work that fourth part, will be <i>thrown out of work</i>, or suffer in their wages. <b>The principle itself is <i>false</i>. There is not a precise limited <i>quantity</i> of labour, <i>beyond</i> which there is no demand.</b> Trade is not hemmed in by <i>great walls</i>, beyond which it cannot go. By bringing our goods <i>cheaper</i> and <i>better</i> to market, we open <i>new markets</i>, we get <i>new customers</i>, we encrease the quantity of labour necessary to supply these, and thus we are encouraged to push on, in hope of <i>still new</i> advantages. <i>A cheap market will always be full of customers.</i> Men will cross land and sea to go thither.\"</blockquote>\nAlthough virtually forgotten today, Rasbotham's pamphlet was well-enough known in the early 19th century for his views to have been cited with admiration by John R. M'Culloch in an 1827 <i>Edinburgh Review</i> article on the cotton industry:<br>\n<blockquote>\nDorning Rasbotham, Esq., a magistrate near Bolton, printed some time about the period referred to, a sensible address to the weavers and spinners, in which he endeavoured to convince them that it was for their interest to encourage inventions for abridging labour. The result has shown the soundness of Mr Rasbotham's opinion.... There is, in fact, no idea so groundless and absurd, as that which supposes that an increased facility of production can under any circumstances be injurious to the labourers.</blockquote>\nUnlike David Schloss's account, more than a century later, of a conversation with a workman who subscribed to the Theory of the Lump of Labour, Rasbotham's pamphlet presented no indication of who \"they\" were who allegedly said there was \"<i>a certain quantity</i> of labour to be performed.\" But it would be rash to judge his argument solely on this singular lack of evidence. Indeed, a careful reading of the pamphlet reveals this supposedly \"sensible address to the weavers and spinners\" to be a smug, patronizing exercise in diminishing the actual grievances of the working population while extolling the abstract virtues of trade and technology detached from the circumstances of their employment by the rich. The author who on the first page styles himself \"from the bottom of my heart, <i>a Friend to the Poor</i>,\" concludes his peroration berating his erstwhile \"friends\" for their improvidence and their propensity to \"carry their money to the Alehouse\" rather than seize the burgeoning opportunities for self improvement. The real core of Squire Rasbotham's argument, though, occurs in the fourth of seven enumerated principles: <br>\n<blockquote>\nIt is the use of <i>Machines</i>, which chiefly distinguishes men in <i>society</i> from men in a <i>savage state</i>. Some have thought it no bad description of a human being, that he is a <i>tool-making</i>, or a <i>machine-making</i> animal. What are the most <i>common instruments</i> or <i>furniture</i> of our houses, but <i>machines to shorten labour?</i> What is an <i>ax</i>, a <i>hammer</i>, a <i>saw</i>, a <i>pair of bellows</i>, but <i>machines</i> for this end? [...] If we must go upon the principle of having <i>no machines</i>, we must <i>pull them all down</i>, and bruise our corn in <i>Mortars</i>. -- What do I say? The <i>Mortar and Pestle</i> are <i>machines</i> for shortening labour. We mull crush our corn <i>between two stones</i>, or beat out the flour with <i>sticks</i>. </blockquote>\nIt is just such a disquisition as this Marx had in mind in the section in volume one of <i>Capital</i> titled, \"The Theory of Compensation as Regards the Workpeople Displaced by Machinery,\" where he presented his parody of Bill Sikes, the villain from <i>Oliver Twist</i>, addressing the jury:<br>\n<blockquote>\nGentlemen of the jury, no doubt the throat of this commercial traveler has been cut. But that is not my fault; it is the fault of the knife! Must we, for such a temporary inconvenience, abolish the use of the knife? Only consider! Where would agriculture and trade be without the knife? Is it not as beneficial in surgery as it is in anatomy? And in addition a willing help at the festive table? If you abolish the knife — you hurl us back into the depths of barbarism.</blockquote>\nMarx's point, of course, was that it was not the machines that threw people out of work, any more than it was the knife that cut the throat of the traveling salesman. It was how the machines were used by those who owned them that threw people out of work. Similarly, the argument advanced by M'Culloch, James Mill, Robert Torrens, Nassau Senior and John Stuart Mill -- that \"all machinery that displaces workmen, simultaneously and necessarily sets free an amount of capital adequate to employ the same identical workmen\" -- was groundless. Instead,<br>\n<blockquote>\nThe labourers that are thrown out of work in any branch of industry, can no doubt seek for employment in some other branch. If they find it, and thus renew the bond between them and the means of subsistence, this takes place only by the intermediary of a new and additional capital that is seeking investment; not at all by the intermediary of the capital that formerly employed them and was afterwards converted into machinery.</blockquote>\nNote that Marx's specification of the necessity of \"new and additional capital\" is not at all the same thing as assuming that there is a fixed amount of work to be done. There is more work to be done; but whether or not it <i>is</i> done depends on additional investment. As Keynes phrased it some 60 years later, the economic system is not \"self-adjusting\" as assumed by \"almost the whole body of organized economic thinking and doctrine of the last hundred years.\"<br>\n<br>\nThis self-adjusting, automatically-compensating for displacement doctrine made a notable appearance in William Stanley Jevons's speculations regarding <i>The Coal Question</i> and thus has implications for contemporary debates about energy consumption, conservation and climate change. Jevons maintained that, \"<i>It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth</i> [emphasis in original].\" He went on to explain:<br>\n<blockquote>\n<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:1em;text-align:right\"><tbody>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L-_FolL2r3U/UA8tSFcE1_I/AAAAAAAAAno/zwuULSeIfHk/s1600/william_stanley_jevons2.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L-_FolL2r3U/UA8tSFcE1_I/AAAAAAAAAno/zwuULSeIfHk/s400/william_stanley_jevons2.jpg\" height=\"340\" width=\"241\"></a></td></tr>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">William Stanley Jevons</td></tr>\n</tbody></table>\nAs a rule, new modes of economy will lead to an increase of consumption according to a principle recognised in many parallel instances. The economy of labour effected by the introduction of new machinery throws labourers out of employment for the moment. But such is the increased demand for the cheapened products, that eventually the sphere of employment is greatly widened. Often the very labourers whose labour is saved find their more efficient labour more demanded than before.</blockquote>\nIf we subscribe to Marx's and Keynes's refutation of the self-adjusting, compensation principle, the 'good news' is that increasing energy efficiency doesn't necessarily lead to increased consumption, as the Jevons Paradox or 'rebound effect' implies.<br>\n<br>\nThe bad news, though, is that to whatever extent the self-adjusting principle doesn't apply to fuel, it also doesn't apply to employment. Meanwhile employment, as conventionally defined, is deeply entangled with energy consumption. Whatever we might do to expand aggregate employment will likely increase the consumption of energy if past performance is any indicator.<br>\n<br>\nBut of one thing we can be certain: a cheap market will always be full of cheap hustlers."
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"title" : "Resentment against Erdogan explodes",
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"content" : "<p><div><img src=\"http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2013/06/blogs/charlemagne/turkey590_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"336\"></div></p><p>IT ALL began with a grove of sycamores. For months a tight band of environmentalists had been protesting against a government-backed project to chop the trees down in order to make room for a mall and residential complex in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. Last week they organised a peaceful sit in, camping, singing and dancing by the threatened trees.</p><p></p><p>On May 31st, in a predawn raid, riot police moved in. They set fire to the demonstrators’ tents and doused them with pressurised water and tear gas. Images depicting police brutality spread like wildfire across social media. Within hours thousands of outraged citizens began streaming towards Taksim Square. Backed by armoured personnel carriers and water cannons, police retaliated with even more brutish force. Tidal waves of pepper spray sent protestors reeling and gasping for air. Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested, and scores of others injured, in the clashes that ensued. Copycat demonstrations erupted in Ankara, the Turkish capital, and elsewhere across the country. Turkey’s “Tree Revolution” had begun.</p><p>In fact the mass protests that are sweeping the country are not just about the trees, nor do they constitute a revolution. They are the expression of the long-stifled resentment felt by nearly half of the electorate who did not vote for the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party in the June 2011 parliamentary elections. These swept Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minster, to power for a third consecutive term.</p><p>The wave of unrest was completely unexpected. The protestors cut across ideological, religious and class lines. Many are strikingly young. But there are plenty of older Turks, many of them secular-minded, some overtly pious. There are gays, Armenians, anarchists and atheists. There are also members of Turkey’s Alevi Muslim minority. What joins them is the common sentiment that an increasingly autocratic Mr Erdogan is determined to impose his worldview. The secularists point to a raft of <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21578657-mildly-islamist-government-brings-tough-alcohol-restrictions-not-so-good-you\">restrictions on booze</a>; liberals to the number of journalists in jail (there are more journalists in prison than in any other country in the world). Thousands of activists of varying stripes (mainly Kurds), convicted under Turkey’s vaguely worded anti-terror laws, are also behind bars. Then there are those incensed by mega urban-development projects, including a third bridge over the Bosphorus, which will entail felling thousands of trees. Scenting the public mood, retailers announced that they had pulled out of the planned arcade in Taksim Square. “This is not about secularists versus Islamists—it’s about pluralism versus authoritarianism,” commented a foreign diplomat.</p><p>Mr Erdogan wants to be elected president when the post comes free in August 2014. And he has made no secret of his desire to boost the powers of the presidency “a la Turca” as he put it, spurring accusations that what Erdogan really wants is to become a “Sultan”.</p><p>“Tayyip [Erdogan] <em>istifa</em>”, a call for the prime minister to resign, was the slogan most commonly chanted by the protestors. Not that most Turks would have known. Media bosses fearful of jeopardising their other business interests shunned coverage of the protests for nearly two days, opting instead to screen programmes about breast-reduction surgery and gourmet cooking. Faced with a public outcry, the main news channels began broadcasting live from Taksim Square. But pro-government papers continue to point the finger of blame at provocateurs and “foreign powers” bent on undermining Turkey. It seems an odd description of the thousands of housewives leaning over their balconies clanging their pots.</p><p>Meanwhile, Turkey’s main opposition, the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), is scrambling to woo the protestors. “Erdogan is a dictator—it's time for him to resign,” insisted Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the CHP leader. Yet Mr Erdogan was elected in free and fair elections and remains the most popular leader in modern Turkish history.</p><p>For all its recent setbacks, the AK party would probably win again if elections were held today. Like most people, Turks tend to vote with their pockets. A decade of AK rule has brought unprecedented prosperity. Per-capita income has trebled, exports have increased nearly tenfold and Turkish banks are in good health. Mr Erdogan’s bold initiative to end decades of conflict with the country’s Kurds is making good progress. The opposition parties (save the Kurds) remain weak and divided.</p><p>Mr Erdogan has grown overconfident, alienating his liberal supporters, and seems increasingly out of touch. The protests are a wake-up call and there are hopeful signs that Mr Erdogan is paying heed. On the second day of the protests he ordered the police to pull out of Taksim Square, admitted that police had overdone it with tear gas and allowed tens of thousands of demonstrators to gather peacefully. And though Mr Erdogan insists that the Taksim project will proceed, he also said that the building might house a “modern museum” rather than a shopping mall.</p><p>Above all, the protests suggest that Turkey’s democracy is maturing and that civil society has taken root. The protesters are determined not to allow their movement to be hijacked by mischief-makers. They shun violence, clear the litter after each rally, and have set up hotlines for the injured—cats and dogs included. Restaurants and hotels have thrown open their doors. Pro-secularists seem to have cast off their dependency on the army. A sense of solidarity and confidence prevails. EU-inspired reforms that were rammed through by the AK party helped pave the way. Mr Erdogan may well be wondering whether he is the victim of his own success.</p><p>(Photo credit: AFP)</p><div></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/03/21/08-50345.pdf\">This</a>, by Judge Kozinski, is from a Federal court ruling about false statements and First Amendment protection</p>\n\n<blockquote>Saints may always tell the truth, but for mortals living means lying. We lie to protect our privacy (\"No, I don't live around here\"); to avoid hurt feelings (\"Friday is my study night\"); to make others feel better (\"Gee you've gotten skinny\"); to avoid recriminations (\"I only lost $10 at poker\"); to prevent grief (\"The doc says you're getting better\"); to maintain domestic tranquility (\"She’s just a friend\"); to avoid social stigma (\"I just haven't met the right woman\"); for career advancement (\"I'm sooo lucky to have a smart boss like you\"); to avoid being lonely (\"I love opera\"); to eliminate a rival (\"He has a boyfriend\"); to achieve an objective (\"But I love you so much\"); to defeat an objective (\"I'm allergic to latex\"); to make an exit (\"It's not you, it's me\"); to delay the inevitable (\"The check is in the mail\"); to communicate displeasure (\"There's nothing wrong\"); to get someone off your back (\"I'll call you about lunch\"); to escape a nudnik (\"My mother's on the other line\"); to namedrop (\"We go way back\"); to set up a surprise party (\"I need help moving the piano\"); to buy time (\"I'm on my way\"); to keep up appearances (\"We're not talking divorce\"); to avoid taking out the trash (\"My back hurts\"); to duck an obligation (\"I've got a headache\"); to maintain a public image (\"I go to church every Sunday\"); to make a point (\"<i>Ich bin ein Berliner</i>\"); to save face (\"I had too much to drink\"); to humor (\"Correct as usual, King Friday\"); to avoid embarrassment (\"That wasn't me\"); to curry favor (\"I've read all your books\"); to get a clerkship (\"You're the greatest living jurist\"); to save a dollar (\"I gave at the office\"); or to maintain innocence (\"There are eight tiny reindeer on the rooftop\")….\n\n<p>An important aspect of personal autonomy is the right to shape one’s public and private persona by choosing when to tell the truth about oneself, when to conceal, and when to deceive. Of course, lies are often disbelieved or discovered, and that, too, is part of the push and pull of social intercourse. But it’s critical to leave such interactions in private hands, so that we can make choices about who we are. How can you develop a reputation as a straight shooter if lying is not an option?</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Two books on the evolutionary psychology of lying are related: David Livingstone Smith's <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008BJ05WK/?tag=counterpane\"><i>Why We Lie</i></a>, and Dan Ariely's <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006IYFCIM/?tag=counterpane\"><i>The Honest Truth about Dishonesty</i></a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Soap Operas versus the Population Bomb?",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_112517477.jpg\"><img alt=\"shutterstock_112517477\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_112517477.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\"></a>It’s early morning in a Mumbai train station. The <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eAP-BoxVkg\">video</a> is grainy, but you can clearly make out a dense swarm of humanity along the platform. By my count, the crowd stands at least ten or twelve people deep, males for the most part, many dressed in light short-sleeved shirts, the kind you’d wear in an office. As the train rumbles into the station, the men surge forward as if one. It’s the first stop along the route, and in seconds the train is sardine-can full.</p>\n<p>Local observers say that if you want to understand just how congested Indian cities are today, try squeezing into one of Mumbai’s commuter trains. And indeed such Indian scenes of teeming humanity have become enduring memes for the problem of human overpopulation. In 1960s, for example, Stanford University ecologist Paul Erhlich and population biologist Anne Ehrlich gazed from a car in growing horror as they wound through the streets of New Delhi. <span></span> <a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_129277118.jpg\"><img alt=\"shutterstock_129277118\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_129277118.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\"></a>Everywhere they looked, the Ehrlichs saw “people eating, people washing, people sleeping,” as they later noted in <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Population-Bomb-Paul-Ehrlich/dp/B000EI3XOS\"><i>The Population Bomb</i></a>. For the Ehrlichs, the teeming streets were a bellwether of disaster: famine, they concluded, was inevitable. The only possible solution for India was sterilization—forced sterilization if need be.</p>\n<p>I read <i>The Population Bomb</i> as a university student, and was deeply impressed by its message, as were so many of my generation. But today few of the Erhlichs’ dire predictions of global famine have come to pass. And while India did indeed impose a mass sterilization campaign in the mid-1970s—denying food rations and other key government programs to the unsterilized—poor Indians rioted in the streets, forcing officials to jettison the campaign.</p>\n<p>But then a strange thing happened to India’s fertility rate. Instead of soaring dramatically, it declined. And it has dropped steadily since. Today, according to the <a href=\"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook//rankorder/2127rank.html\">World Factbook</a>, India boasts a Total Fertility Rate of 2.55—a little more than the United States, whose rate is 2.1, but much lower than Guatemala at 3.92, Afghanistan at 5.54 or Uganda at 6.06. (The Total Fertility Rate is the average number of children women would have if they lived to menopause and bore children at a given fertility rate.)</p>\n<p>So what accounts for this surprising decline? Historical geographer <a href=\"http://www.stanford.edu/~mwlewis/\">Martin Lewis</a> at Stanford University recently wrestled with this question in a lengthy <a href=\"http://geocurrents.info/population-geography/indias-plummeting-birthrate-a-television-induced-transformation\">post</a> on one of my favorite blogs, <a href=\"http://geocurrents.info/\">GeoCurrents</a>. Lewis noted, first off, that India’s total fertility rate didn’t fall in a uniform way across the subcontinent: that, of course, would be far too simple. Instead, provinces in the south and in the far north and far north east had rates in 2012 of 1.9: those in the heartland were as high as 3.5.</p>\n<p>Demographers and geographers had previously proposed several possible explanations for India’s overall fertility decline—increased rates of female education; economic development; urbanization; and technological innovation. So Lewis mapped geographic data for each of these variables in India. Then he compared each of the resulting maps to India’s fertility rate map. The geographic distribution of female education and economic development compared quite well with low fertility rates. But what Lewis discovered is that the geographic pattern of one variable—television ownership—looked an awful lot like that of the fertility rates. Where television ownership is common in India, fertility rates are generally low.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_130604639.jpg\"><img alt=\"shutterstock_130604639\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/shutterstock_130604639-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"></a>Lewis concedes that these correlations don’t constitute causation. But he suggests that television-viewing likely exposes women to middle-class values and modern ideas about small families. And not just any television-viewing: soap operas are particularly influential. In Brazil, for example, economist Eliana La Ferrara and her colleagues found a strong geographic correlation between lower fertility rates and the spread of the television signal of Redo Globo, a network famous for its exceptionally popular soap operas, or <i>novelas</i>. These programs idealize small families—something not lost on poor women.</p>\n<p>The “presence of the Globo signal,” concluded La Ferrara and her colleagues in a 2008 <a href=\"http://www.iadb.org/res/publications/pubfiles/pubWP-633.pdf\">paper</a>, “leads to significantly lower fertility. This effect is stronger for women of low socioeconomic status, as measured by education or durable goods ownership. The effect is also stronger for women who are in the middle and late phases of their child-bearing life, suggesting that television contributed more to stopping behavior than to delayed first births, consistent with demographic patterns documented for Brazil.”</p>\n<p>I confess that I was taken aback by all these findings. Like many other feminists of my generation, I’ve long slagged shows like <i>Days of Our Lives</i> and <i>The Young and the Restless</i>. But it turns out that soaps may be a potent force for the good in the developing world. Lewis now suggests that the best way to lower fertility rates in countries like Uganda may involve working on three fronts: educating girls; promoting economic development; and bringing electricity, televisions and soap operas to poor communities.</p>\n<p>Who would have thought?</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><i>On a personal note, this is my last post as a regular LWONer. It’s been a great ride, and you’ve been wonderful readers – perceptive, discerning, informed, and generous with your comments. When LWON was born, we could never have foreseen such an engaged and engaging community of readers. Thank you for everything. I’m off now to get serious about writing a new book. I hope to return from time to time as a guest writer. I hate the word goodbye. </i></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><i>Photos: <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Mumbai Train Station</a>, <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Children in the Slums of New Delhi</a>, and I<a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">ndian rural house with satellite antenna</a>, all courtesy Shutterstock<br>\n</i></p>"
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"content" : "<p>I’ve just finished a new paper with a clunky title (the kind that economics referees hopefully love), <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2268552\">Credit Constraints, Occupational Choice, and the Process of Development: Long Run Evidence from Cash Transfers in Uganda</a>. It’s with Nathan Fiala and Sebastian Martinez, run along with <a href=\"http://www.poverty-action.org/project/0189\">Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA)</a>.</p>\n<p>We tackle one of the big questions in development: How to create jobs and speed up the shift from agriculture to industry in developing countries? We look for answers not at the macro level, but with a field experiment and micro-level data in Uganda.</p>\n<p>Countries like Uganda have mostly young, poor, populations. No one is unemployed. If you have no income, you’re in trouble. So you scrape by doing odd jobs and low return activities. The real problems are underemployment (not enough hours) and low productivity employment (low return, low wage work).</p>\n<p>So how do you create “good” jobs and productive work? Another way of asking this question is “what is holding young people back?” or “what constrains them?”</p>\n<p>Every government or NGO program has an answer to this question, even when they don’t know it. From the vast, vast number of training programs–financial literacy, trade skills, life skills–the default answer seems to be “skills”. If you think these programs are worth doing, presumably it’s because you think (1) youth lack these skills, (2) they can’t otherwise get them, and (3) giving them these skills will produce high returns.</p>\n<p>Development economics has a slightly different answer. The evidence is pretty pessimistic about job training programs and financial literacy in poor countries. It’s more optimistic about returns to primary and secondary school in poor countries–wages go up maybe 10-15% with every extra year of schooling. Given how much time and money school takes, though, that’s not always the best return.</p>\n<p>More and more, economists think that the real constraint is capital. Studies show that the poor, on average, have high-earning opportunities if they get a little cash or equipment. Studies with existing farmers or businesspeople have seen returns of 40 to 80% a year on cash grants.</p>\n<p>This gels with economic theory, which says that infusions of capital should expand people’s choice of occupations, self-employment, and earnings. People can’t get access to that capital through loans because credit markets are so broken and expensive. This can be a development trap, or at the very least a drag on growth.</p>\n<p>The studies we have, however, overstate what we know. Most of it comes from Asia. Most of it looks at existing businesspeople and farmers only. So we don’t know a lot about giving cash to the very poor and unemployed, or how to help people shift from agriculture to cottage industry–the structural change so fundamental to modern economic growth.</p>\n<p>Enter our study. We look at a large, randomized, relatively unconditional cash transfer program in Uganda, one the government designed to stimulate this kind of job growth and structural change.</p>\n<p>The Ugandan government did what dozens of African governments are doing under the guise of “Social Action Funds” and “Community Driven Development”: they sent $10,000 to a group of 20 or so young people who applied for it. This is about $400 a person, equal to their annual incomes.</p>\n<p>To many people, this sounds like a crazy development strategy. We don’t trust the poor (let alone a bunch of rural 25-year olds) to spend that kind of money responsibly. We want to tie their hands, or make the decisions for them, or at least make them dig useless ditches for three months in exchange for cash.</p>\n<p>We wanted to know. So we worked with the government and World Bank to randomize the grants, and followed nearly 2500 people two and four years afterwards.</p>\n<p>Here’s the “surprise”: Most start new skilled trades like metalworking or tailoring. They increase their employment hours about 17%. Those new hours are spent in high-return activities, and so earnings rise nearly 50%, especially women’s.</p>\n<p>The people who do the best are those who had the least capital and credit to begin with–consistent with the idea that credit constraints are holding back youth. The more tightly coiled the spring, the bigger the bounce on release.</p>\n<p>What’s more, credit constraints seem to be less binding on men, since men in the control group start to catch up over time. Female controls do not, partly because they have worse access to starting capital. With the grant they take off, further even than men. Without it, they stagnate, even more so than men.</p>\n<p>This is not a unique result. Two weeks ago <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/02/invest-in-women/\">I put out a report with IPA</a> on a different program in Uganda, with poor women only. their incomes doubled after getting small grants.</p>\n<p>Last, we go beyond economic returns and look for broader social effects. Why? The other belief many people hold dearly: Poor, unemployed men are more likely to fight, riot or rebel.</p>\n<p>Because of this, governments and aid agencies routinely justify their employment programs on reducing social instability, or promoting cohesion. Indeed, that was the express goal of the Ugandan program.</p>\n<p>Even though we see huge economic effects, we see almost no impact on cohesion, aggression, and collective action (peaceful or violent). If that’s true more broadly, we probably can’t justify all this public spending on the grounds of social stability. But the impacts on poverty and structural change alone probably justify big public investment.</p>\n<p>So is it time to stop giving people skills? Not entirely. Part of the reason these Ugandan youth did well is that they invested some of their grants–maybe a third–in skills training. But mostly they invested the grant in tools and inventory and inputs. It was their choice.</p>\n<p>I used to think skills and capital were like right and left shoes: one’s not so useful without the other. Now I think of capital like the shoes and skills like the laces: if I have capital, i can jog a good pace, but I can’t really run unless I have the skills. But first I need the shoes. (And cash can buy me both.)</p>\n<p>The problem is: too many programs just hand out laces. Old, ratty laces that don’t even fit people’s shoes. I don’t know why we do that. Maybe because we academics and NGO workers and elite government officials all live in a world where we ourselves invest in skills because there are things out there called firms and bureaucracies that have capital, and will pay us to use it.</p>\n<p>The poorest don’t have firms ready to hire them. Perhaps we need to stop projecting our own labor markets and biases and low opinions of our own self-control onto the poor, and show them the money.</p>\n<p>Read the full paper, which has some of the backup for my claims and references above, <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2268552\">here</a>. See the project summary and policy brief <a href=\"http://www.poverty-action.org/project/0189\">on the IPA site</a>.</p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/23/dear-governments-want-to-help-the-poor-and-transform-your-economy-give-people-cash/\">Dear governments: Want to help the poor and transform your economy? Give people cash.</a> appeared first on <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com\">Chris Blattman</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Carrying home the evolutionary advantage",
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"content" : "<p><div><img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2013/05/blogs/babbage/20130525_stp501.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"></div></p><p>A GENTLE pat on the back and a short walk can put a crying baby to sleep. Four-legged newborns, too, calm down when their mothers hold them by the nape of their necks to carry them. Precisely why, though, has remained a mystery. Kumi Kuroda, of RIKEN Brain Science Institute, in Japan, and her colleagues decided to find out.</p><p>The researchers monitored the heart rates of twelve human infants aged between one to six months under three conditions: while they lay by themselves in a crib, immediately after they were picked by their mothers, and while they were carried around. Specifically, they measure the heart rate variability (HRV), or the tiny differences in the interval between successive heart beats, since previous research showed that lower HRV is tied to higher stress.</p><p></p><p>As the researchers report in <em>Current Biology</em>, true to stereotype, the babies' HRV increased significantly when they were carried, suggesting less stress. The results persisted when controlled for things like crying, which can increase the heart rate considerably and skew HRV readings. Given the ethical constraints on experiments involving human babies, Dr Kuroda and her team then turned to mice. </p><p>After ascertaining that murine newborns, too, show the same physiological response to carrying as human infants do, they examined the sensory mechanisms which might give rise to the phenomenon. First, they used a local anaesthetic to numb the skin on back of the mice’s neck. This blocked the neural signals that are produced by touch. Anesthetised mice were more fidgety while carried than those that were not.</p><p>Next, Dr Kuroda gave the mice a large dose of vitamin B6, to strip them of the ability to judge the relative position of their body parts, or proprioception, as it is known in the argot. Mice plied with the vitamin were also friskier than those that weren't, judged both by observed behaviour and physiological measures such as HRV.</p><p>Finally, the researchers used a drug to suppress the mice's parasympathetic nervous system. This is responsible for unconscious "rest-and-digest" or "feed-and-breed" activities like sexual arousal, salivation or urination, that occur when the body is at rest. When parasympathetic nerves were impaired, the carrying-induced, stress-lowering spike in the HRV was not seen, suggesting that the cardiac effect resulting from carrying did indeed stem from the parasympathetic nerve.</p><p>Crucially, the nervousness caused by pups' impaired senses meant that murine mothers took longer to carry them to part of the enclosure considered safe. Because the young often squirm when sensing danger, such impairment would make whisking them away from potential threats harder. The calming mechanism, then, appears to have evolved to facilitate such extraction. Although human offsrping are not exposed to as many existential threats as their murine counterparts, their parents will no doubt be grateful anyway.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "Difference Engine: Circle of life",
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"content" : "<p><div><img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2013/05/blogs/babbage/20130518_stp502.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"></div></p><p>THE fire season has come much earlier than usual to southern California—and with a vengeance fuelled by one of the driest winters on record. So far this year, the region has received only a quarter of its normal rainfall. Making matters worse, the only serious rains of the season occurred during four days in late January, just as much of the vegetation was awakening from its dormant phase. Had the rains come a week or two earlier, or even several weeks later, their effect would have been minimal. But their coming when they did soon made the hills knee-high in a bumper crop of grass and brush. Baked by the sun, this is now one more load of tinder waiting to catch fire.<br><br>Even the hot, dry Santa Ana winds have come whistling out of the desert and through the canyons months before they are normally expected. Temperatures have soared as a result, to over 40ºC, causing spontaneous wildfires to race across the Santa Monica mountains and down to the sea. In one conflagration, 11,200 hectares (28,000 acres) of Ventura county were blackened within a day or so (see photo above). This past week, wildfires have raged in several locations less than an hour from downtown Los Angeles.<br><br>Fire is no stranger to California. Thanks to its Mediterranean climate of hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters, the region is home to one of the largest chaparral biomes in the world. These dense scrublands owe their existence to cool, moist air from the ocean colliding with an unusually warm land mass. The result is ground cover comprising mainly small oaks, manzanitas, lilacs, sumacs, buckwheat and sagebrush. Chaparral covers most of the southern part of coastal California and northern Mexico.<br><br>With precipitation ranging from 30 to 100cm (12 to 40 inches) a year, the chaparral’s native plants rely on small, waxy, evergreen leaves to conserve water by limiting transpiration. Unfortunately, the same waxy leaves that help those plants survive the baking summers make them especially vulnerable to fire.<br><br>Fire can strike the same stretches of chaparral as often as once a decade, or as infrequently as once in half a century. Sooner or later, though, the chaparral will burn—whether as a result of lightning strikes or human action. For centuries, the local Chumash people torched large swathes of chaparral in Babbage’s neighbourhood to replenish the vegetation and provide better hunting. Spanish settlers continued the practice. With its resinous foliage, woody stems and accumulated leaf litter, the chaparral always has been, and always will be, a tinderbox in search of a flint.<br><br>Even so, Babbage remains impressed by how quickly the chaparral’s scorched earth recovers after a fire. Some species—the native cacti, in particular—are natural survivors. The paddle or prickly-pear cactus have pads containing water that help them withstand the ravages of wildfire. Most plants, though, are not so lucky. Fortunately, when the first rains arrive after a fire, the lack of shade that would otherwise hinder the growth of new plants allows the hills to bloom with a profusion of native wildflowers—including orange poppies, golden lilies, purple snapdragons, blue hyacinths, crimson campions and pink wild onions. <br><br>The success of these “fire followers” depends on their seeds being retained dormant in the soil for decades, ready to germinate with the heat shock of a passing wildfire, aided by chemicals precipitating from the subsequent smoke. The colourful annuals die back during long, dry periods, only to be replaced as the woody, underground stumps (basal burls) of charred chamise, manzanita and other shrubs send up fresh shoots through the nutrient-rich, ashy soil to recolonise the hillsides. Within a few short years, the wildfire’s passage can barely be detected.<br><br>The age-old puzzle of how, after a wildfire, long-dormant seeds in the soil get a wake-up call has finally been pieced together by a team at the Salk Institute and nearby University of California, San Diego. As trees and shrubs burn, chemicals known as karrikins are created in the smoke. When molecules of one particular karrikin come in contact with dormant seeds, they attach themselves to receptor sites on the protein responsible for germination. In doing so, the karrikin changes the protein’s shape, causing it to signal to other proteins to activate the genetic pathway regulating germination.<br><br>This finding answers one of the most important “circle of life” questions in plant ecology. It could also provide useful clues to help scientists develop plant varieties capable of restoring and maintaining other important ecosystems. Personally, Babbage is fascinated by the idea of dying plants sending messages to subsequent generations, telling them it is time to sprout and get on with life.<br><br>With fire having been a recurring feature of the chaparral for thousands of years, only plants that have adapted successfully to being able to recover from flames have persisted. As a result, many plants rely on either the fire itself or the environmental conditions that follow a blaze to reproduce. But that does not mean the chaparral needs to burn as frequently as it does.<br><br>As housing developments have pushed ever further into the wilderness, human carelessness means wildfires have increased dramatically. Many contend that fire suppression—with firefighters rushing to snuff out every blaze for fear that property may be lost and people might die—has caused an unnatural accumulation of old brush (ie, “fuel”) that encourages fires to spread and become more dangerous. In their view, suppression should be curtailed. Besides, they say, the chaparral needs to burn for its own good.<br><br>But letting wildfires run their course—especially at the frequency they occur nowadays—can render the chaparral vulnerable to invasive, non-native species. More to the point, there is no evidence that the age of the fuel load affects the probability of fire. When the hot Santa Ana winds blow and a downed power-line arcs, fire sweeps through all chaparral stands irrespective of their age. If anything, the balance of informed opinion has swung back in favour of fire suppression. At least, it has led to fewer, larger fires in the chaparral.</p><p>This may be an even smarter move than ever, now climate change has to be taken into account as well. According to an index developed by the United States Geological Survey, coastal land in southern California has either a “high” or “very high” vulnerability to climate change. Habitats from San Luis Obispo to the Mexican border are among the most threatened in the world.<br><br>What bothers Babbage is the thought that a changing climate could alter the chaparral in irreversible ways. For instance, southern varieties of Californian sagebrush, a fragrant grey-green shrub found on coastal hillsides, are expected to adjust to climate change better than many other plants. As a resident of the chaparral biome, sagebrush could come to dominate the habitat. While he would not object to the smell (sagebrush is not called “cowboy cologne” for nothing), he would genuinely miss the present palette that colours the Californian landscape. All the more so when the occasional wildfire prompts such a bright profusion of wildflowers.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "NIMA: The Street Food Edition",
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"content" : "<p>By <a href=\"https://twitter.com/NanaSirOsei\">Nana Osei Kwadwo</a></p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-07-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"The Street Food Culture\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-07-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><p>The Street Food Culture</p></div>\n<p>Street food is a way of life in Accra. In fact, it’s the only <i>fast food</i> you’ll find in town. Easy and convenient, affordable and ready to eat, street food for many Accra city people is the way to do it.</p>\n<p><span></span>Street food is for the occasional cook or those on the move in the city – battling traffic on the way to work or back home – and you can’t resist the lingering smells of kelewele, red red or fried fish all around. Or maybe your light dey off [chale, Ghana dey be!]. Street food is everyone’s friend – it won’t break the poor man or rich man’s pocket.</p>\n<p>Nima is a great place to sample a smorgasbord of Accra’s finest street food. Warm your taste buds and check out this enticing photo stroll of our favorite eats on the go.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-02-strolling-goats-march-2013-e1368647759278.jpg\"><img alt=\"Gari and Bean in the Making\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-02-strolling-goats-march-2013-e1368647759278.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Gari and Beans in the Making</p></div>\n<p><b>GARI AND BEANS—-</b></p>\n<p>Gari is the West African name for roasted cassava shavings. It is mixed with cooked beans, pepper and palm oil and served with <i>kokorr</i> – an Akan name for fried ripe plantain.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-04-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Food is almost ready\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-04-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-03-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-20132-e1368648653183.jpg\"><img alt=\"Some Korkorr to go with our Gari and Beans\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-03-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-20132-e1368648653183.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-05-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Yummy!\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-05-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a></p>\n<p><b>WAAKYE—– </b></p>\n<p>This popular meal is made of rice and beans mixed together. The fresh waakye leaves cooked with the rice and beans gives the meal it’s distinctive brown color. Waakye is mostly eaten with shito (black pepper), meat or fish. For those who like to get down, you can add pasta, a boiled egg or gari. For extra zest, add some fried plantain.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-22-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Serve Us Waakye!\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-22-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Serve Us Waakye!</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-23-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Waakye in Fresh Leaves\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-23-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-24-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Waakye is good for everybody\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-24-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a></p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-25-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Add some meat and shito\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-25-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><p>Add some meat and shito</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-27-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"We want our Waakye wrapped\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-27-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a></p>\n<p><b>KOOSE—–</b></p>\n<p>Koose refers to beans, vegetables and pepper fried together in vegetable oil. It is used to eat <i>Hausa Koko</i> – a sweet brown porridge made from millet cereal. This is a breakfast meal for folks on the go.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-14-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"The Koose preparations have begun!\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-14-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><p>The Koose preparations have begun!</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-15-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"The Koose preparations have begun!\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-15-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-21-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 21 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-21-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a> <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-10-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 10 - Strolling Goats - March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-10-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a></p>\n<p><b>HAUSA KOKO—-</b></p>\n<p>This addictive porridge is made from millet cereal and mixed with local spices, pepper and sugar. This is a standard breakfast meal for many communities across Ghana.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-77-strolling-goats-in-accra-march-2013-photo-by-accra-dot-alt.jpeg\"><img alt=\"Ante up for some Hausa Koko\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-77-strolling-goats-in-accra-march-2013-photo-by-accra-dot-alt.jpeg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><p>Ante up for some Hausa Koko</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-16-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 16 - Strolling Goats - March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-16-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a> <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-17-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 17 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-17-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a> <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-20-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 20 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-20-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><b>FANTE KENKEY—-</b></p>\n<p>This delectable dish is made of fermented corn dough cooked in dry plantain leaves and shaped into a textured cornball. Kenkey is eaten with chilli sauce, fish, vegetables or soup.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-12-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Hot Fante Kenkey coming up\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-12-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Hot Fante Kenkey coming up</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food – Strolling Goats – March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-e28093-strolling-goats-e28093-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><b>WAA GASHI—-</b></p>\n<p>Waa Gashi is the Hausa word for delicious, fried milk. The snack tastes quite similar to thick slices of cheese pizza. Waa Gashi is mostly eaten with rice & peas and an assortment of meat and fish. It is best served piping hot and with barbecue pepper.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-37-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Fresh Cow Milk\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-37-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Fresh Cow Milk</p></div>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-36-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 36 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-36-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Leaves placed on top gives the Waa Gashi this bright red color</p></div>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-26-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Yummy Waa Gashi served with Waakye\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-26-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a><p>Yummy Waa Gashi served with Waakye</p></div>\n<p><b>TÒÒGBεε—-</b></p>\n<p>This scrumptious doughnut ball is made of flour, nutmeg and sugar and fried in vegetable oil. Lightly sweet fried goodness! For breakfast on the run, pair with koko, marmalade or honey. TÒÒGBεε is Ga for “goat’s balls” which looks quite similar to the delicacy eaten throughout Ghana.<b> </b>Also popularly referred to as <em>Boflot</em>.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-52-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Chale....\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-52-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a><p>Chale….</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-53-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 53 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-53-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-55-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 55 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-55-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=389\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\"></a> <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-50-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg\"><img alt=\"Nima Street Food 50 – Strolling Goats- March 2013\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nima-street-food-50-e28093-strolling-goats-march-2013.jpg?w=584&h=876\" width=\"584\" height=\"876\"></a></p>\n<p>Stay tuned for more street food chronicles right here.</p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/barrestaurant/\">Bar/Restaurant</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/cultural-workshops/\">Cultural Workshops</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/feature-story/\">Feature Story</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/food/\">Food</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/ghana/\">Ghana</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/category/street-style/\">Street Style</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/african-street-food/\">African street food</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/boflot/\">boflot</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/fante-kenkey/\">fante kenkey</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/gari-and-beans/\">gari and beans</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/hausa-koko/\">hausa koko</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/kokorr/\">kokorr</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/koose/\">koose</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/nima/\">Nima</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/porridge/\">porridge</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/shito/\">shito</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/street-food/\">street food</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/waa-gashi/\">waa gashi</a>, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/tag/waakye/\">waakye</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/3176/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=accradotalttours.wordpress.com&blog=22576869&post=3176&subd=accradotalttours&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Indicating Problems in HTTP APIs",
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"content" : "<p>A common part of HTTP-based APIs is telling the client that something has gone wrong. Most APIs do this in some fashion, whether they call it a “Fault” (very SOAP-y), “Error” or whatever.</p>\n<p>Most of them define a new format for just this purpose; for examples, see <a href=\"http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/APIReference/api-error-codes.html#api-Example-Error\">Amazon’s</a>, <a href=\"http://docs.openstack.org/api/openstack-compute/2/content/Synchronous_Faults-d1e1729.html\">OpenStack’s</a>, <a href=\"https://dev.twitter.com/docs/error-codes-responses\">Twitter’s</a>, <a href=\"https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/errors/\">Facebook’s</a>, and <a href=\"http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/api_rest/index.htm\">SalesForce’s</a>. Twitter's is fairly representative: </p>\n<pre>{\"errors\":[{\"message\":\"Sorry, that page does not exist\",\"code\":34}]}</pre>\n<p>Here, they associate a human-readable message and an error code with the error. That’s a good start, but how is it related to the HTTP status code? And, how am I supposed to know how to find that code?</p>\n<p>Good HTTP APIs don’t make developers hunt through documentation to find things like this; self-documenting formats give is a way to communicate these kinds of details in a way that’s easy to find.</p>\n<p>Good HTTP APIs also use media types to indicate the format of the content, for similar reasons; however, most of these don’t, and as a result developers and tools again need to understand that they’re working with a particular API, rather than just examining the message.</p>\n<p>Of course, there’s a good reason these formats are so casually defined; doing it the “right” way can be onerous, with a trip through <a href=\"http://www.iana.org/cgi-bin/mediatypes.pl\">IANA</a> and the <a href=\"https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-types\">media type review list</a>. Who wants to bother - especially when you have enough market power to force your users to suck it up?</p>\n<p>I think we can do better. Clients shouldn’t have to pick through 30 slightly different formats and implement parsers specific to each one; it’s a waste of energy. People creating APIs shouldn’t have to guess what a good format looks like, only running into problems down the road. And they certainly shouldn’t have to register new media types for “Fault” formats of every API they create.</p>\n<p>So, a while back I decided to come up with a generic format for indicating the details of a problem encountered in using an HTTP-based API. The <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-problem\">current draft</a> has an example:</p>\n<pre> HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden\n Content-Type: application/api-problem+json\n Content-Language: en\n\n {\n \"problemType\": \"http://example.com/probs/out-of-credit\",\n \"title\": \"You do not have enough credit.\",\n \"detail\": \"Your current balance is 30, but that costs 50.\",\n \"problemInstance\": \"http://example.net/account/12345/msgs/abc\",\n \"balance\": 30,\n \"accounts\": [\"http://example.net/account/12345\",\n \"http://example.net/account/67890\"]\n }\n</pre>\n<p>Notice that there’s a firm association between the problem type and the HTTP status code it’s conveyed within; that the problem type is identified with a URL, allowing folks to look it up, reference it unambiguously, and even reuse it in other APIs. Also, see how the format is extensible, so that you can convey machine-readable details of a problem. The optional “problemInstance” property even gives a unique identifier for <strong>this</strong> occurrence of the problem, to allow your support folks to figure out what’s going on.</p>\n<p>Current APIs can introduce this format in a backwards-compatible fashion using content negotiation; if the client includes “Accept: application/api-problem+json” in the request, you know that they understand the format. Likewise, client tools can now abstract out problems into a common interface, rather than forcing developers to dig through the format.</p>\n<p>There’s also a healthy dose of advice about how to use HTTP well (“RESTfully”, if you must), and <a href=\"http://dret.net/netdret/\">Erik Wilde</a> has also included an XML-based format whose canonical data model is the JSON, for those APIs that still choose to use XML.</p>\n<p>To be clear - this isn’t going to solve world hunger, but I do think that APIs that choose to adopt it will avoid a few headaches, and their users will appreciate not having quite so many API-specific special cases to deal with. After all, the whole point of using HTTP for APIs is to get as much leverage as we can out of shared code and concepts.</p>\n<p>Please have a read through <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-problem\">the draft</a>; lots of folks have reviewed it, and I think it’s nearly ready, but I’d still love any feedback you have. I’m going to be pushing for its use in IETF HTTP-based APIs, as well as others I come into contact with.</p>\n\n\n"
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"title" : "Africa Confidential on Ibrahim Bah and a ridiculous Italian businessman",
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"content" : "<p>Africa Confidential turns its focus this week to Ibrahim Bah, who was a key financial conduit between the RUF and Charles Taylor during the Liberian and Sierra Leonean wars [the articles are gated]. Despite being under a UN travel ban and asset freeze, Bah travels in and out of Sierra Leone frequently and conducts business unencumbered in Freetown. In 2008 he had a gold and diamond trading company based out of an office very close to a police station in Freetown. He is also involved in a mercenary firm that has tried unsuccessfully to engage in recent conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire and Libya. Sierra Leonean officials turn a blind eye to all of this.</p>\n<p>The highlight of the Bah articles, however, is the connection between Bah and an Italian businessman named Vittorio Narciso Ruello. Bah appears to have screwed over Ruello repeatedly, taking hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy diamonds but never delivering the diamonds.</p>\n<blockquote><p>In a statement to the police, Bah claimed he was not defrauding Ruello but suffering from the ups and downs of an uncertain business.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The best part, though, is that Ruello paid Bah to make him a Sierra Leonean honorary consul to Guinea Bissau (a la <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2048877/\">The Ambassador</a>). This is even more outrageous than the Central African Republic attempt as you can’t even be a Sierra Leonean <em>citizen</em> unless you are of “Negro African descent” (for more on this see <a href=\"http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?docid=3ae6b50610\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.sierra-leone.org/Laws/2006-11.pdf\">here</a>). Anyways, Bah didn’t come through; it didn’t work. So Ruello went to the Sierra Leonean police to complain of being cheated!</p>\n<a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fshelbygrossman.com%2F2013%2F05%2Fafrica-confidential-on-ibrahim-bah-and-a-ridiculous-italian-businessman%2F&linkname=Africa%20Confidential%20on%20Ibrahim%20Bah%20and%20a%20ridiculous%20Italian%20businessman\"><img src=\"http://shelbygrossman.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share/Bookmark\"></a>"
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"title" : "The Day Those Mothas Ruined Mother’s Day for New Orleans",
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"content" : "<p>I won’t address yesterday’s Mother’s Day massacre because it’s not unlike the violence that is pervasive in our city’s streets any other day of the week. Clearly, many of you don’t want to address it either. I’ve read so many tweets about not letting the shootings destroy our love for a good ol’ second line. Man, mothafuck a second line. That’s the problem with this city. That’s the problem with America. Everyone’s always so concerned with returning to a state of normalcy as not to let the “terrorists” win, that the root of violence gets ignored.</p>\n<p>. . . And mothafuck this <em>laissez-faire</em> attitude that sweeps corruption under the rug.</p>\n<p>I recently read a quote from this city’s administration about the long-standing problem with violence in The Big Easy. Well, if some of you don’t recall, we were on the upswing about 15 years ago. The Morial administration lowered NOLA crime rates successfully with Chief Richard Pennington. Don’t think it’s impossible, it’s very fucking possible. Click the pic, if you need proof:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/17/us/new-orleans-mayor-thrives-on-lower-crime-and-lifted-spirit.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm\"><img alt=\"penningtonmorial31210jpg-0d07b5fd3106e0b9_medium\" src=\"http://nicholaspayton.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/penningtonmorial31210jpg-0d07b5fd3106e0b9_medium.jpg?w=640\"></a></p>\n<p>So contrary to what some of our city’s administrators seem to think, a quick turnaround for this city can happen long before 2018. And all of us don’t have to decide to do something about it for the senseless violence to cease. But, what do you expect when you live in a city that trains prisoners to be more skillful criminals inside than they were on the outside? I’ve heard solutions like maybe we need a stronger military presence like we had post-flood of 2005. Really? More guns is the answer? I have a solution that’s simple, safe, and attainable: Let’s clean up the dirty politics and prioritize education and employment.</p>\n<p>So what do we do? Pray and leave it in God’s hands? Hope that the faulty system miraculously gets better? Should citizens who’ve done well for themselves go into the communities and counsel at-risk youth? I think the regular folks — no matter how earnest in their attempts — will hit a wall trying to offer encouragement and support on a personal basis. For even if you can change a child’s outlook, they still have to deal with this cold, cruel world. It’s not the caring citizens that created the problem, so I think it’s futile for them to try to resolve it. It’s damn near impossible for the “good” folk of the community to eradicate a construct they haven’t erected. So I suggest you don’t fall prey to feeling guilted into thinking there is something more you can do. Martyrdom is not the answer. Most martyrs reach the same end and the world continues to be a fucked up place. Why sacrifice your peace and sanity for a hopeless cause? That’s not to say don’t help others, but focus your energies in tangible ways that can affect change. Put pressure on the Big Boys to take care of the Big Problems. We must hold our leaders accountable.</p>\n<p>What we see every day on the streets of New Orleans is a microcosm of what’s both beautiful and ugly about America. It has been said that New Orleans is the soul of the United States. I find that to be true in many ways —geographically, spiritually, and otherwise. By the mouth of the Delta, we feed this country through our tributaries of tradition and contradiction. The Crescent City is the cradle of birth and death. But because we celebrate life and its passing does not mean we must overindulge in decadence to the point of our demise. As long as we continue to pacify our sins in the roux of the Mighty Mississippi, we will find ourselves gridlocked between the trinity of lust, shame, and abstinence. We say “New Orleans,” but it might as well be called “Old Orleans” because most people who live here are content with repeating the same shit. You can’t be new unless you are willing to do away with old patterns. You can’t realize a better version of yourself until you are fearless enough to shed the dead skin.</p>\n<p>Yeah, we celebrate death until it is our time to die so that we may reach our highest potential. To our detriment, we’re killing all the good shit and letting the bad stuff survive. That’s not New Orleans, that’s Old Orleans — afraid to be the best it can be.</p>\n<p>I wish I had a better ending to the story, but that depends on you mothafuckas.</p>\n<p><strong>#MFCOMN</strong></p>\n<p>- Nicholas Payton aka The Savior of Archaic Pop</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4841/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4841/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nicholaspayton.wordpress.com&blog=4110628&post=4841&subd=nicholaspayton&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p>"
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"content" : "This post is mostly intended to draw your attention to this remarkable video posted on YouTube by <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/ngoniba?feature=watch\">Ngoniba</a>:<br><iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/OPVoTo4xNtY\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br><br>And if, like me, you can't get enough of these videos, please look around for more on Ngoniba's Youtube channel. <a href=\"http://youtu.be/rEmxN-2hznA\">Here</a> is one to help you on your way.<br><br>The principle star of these videos is, of course, <b>Mariam Bagayogo</b>. You may remember the <a href=\"http://wrldsrv.blogspot.nl/2009/10/balafon-dancing.html\">video</a> I posted a few years ago. As I mentioned then, besides the singing and the balafons accompanying her I was particularly fascinated by the dancing. And, having watched Ngoniba's videos a few times, I am again fascinated by the intricate dancing in these videos.<br><br>It is no secret that dance is at the core of a lot of (if not most) music in Africa. When I first started interviewing Malian artists in the 1980s I was struck by the frequent use of the word \"rythme\" when they were talking about songs. It soon became clear to me that this was not accidental, but that rhythm and music are the same thing, or part of the same thing. And that rhythm also meant dance. Talking to <b>Daouda 'Flani' Sangaré</b> and <b>Alou Fané</b>, who had both been dancers with the Ballet National du Mali, I learnt that all the dances have a meaning, as does the rhythm. A dance can carry a message, like \"I fancy you\" or \"I respect you\", or can - for example - be used to underline the dancers' identity as part of a group, family, caste etcetera.<br><br>When it comes to dances there still are many misconceptions with the 'general public' in the western world. \"African dances\" often are seen as very exhuberant, with arms and legs flapping all over the place, and - preferably - with loud djembe drumming. Fortunately, most dances are not like this, and are actually very controlled and wonderfully subtle. I remind you of that fantastic dancer in the Oumou Sangaré video I <a href=\"http://wrldsrv.blogspot.nl/2008/10/moussolou.html\">posted</a> earlier, or Alou Fané's delightfully understated dancing in <a href=\"http://youtu.be/2iTyQSmjuOU\">this video</a>. <br>The movements of the dances by Mariam Bagayogo also do not conform with the general idea of \"african dances\". Look at this video by Mariam from 1986 for example (another one from Ngoniba):<br><iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/18KtzbZBupo\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br>The flexing of the knees, the step: dance and music are one.<br><br>EDIT May 12, 2013: Ngoniba has sent me a link to a recent and <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/musique/2013/04/24/article,141715.html\">very interesting article</a> on Maliweb about Mariam Bagayoko. In this article she talks about her career and about her situation at the age of 70. Apparently she has taken over the care of the 17 children and 4 wives of two of her brothers who have passed away. Her message to Malian readers is that they should follow in the footsteps of their elders, i.e. respect the traditions. <br><br><br><br>"
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"title" : "The arithmetic of interstellar travel",
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"content" : "<p>There's been a lot of excitement about the discovery of two Earth-like[^1] planets, <a href=\"http://www.examiner.com/list/earth-like-planets-found-perfect-habitable-zone-1-200-light-years-distant\">a mere 1200 light years away</a>. Pretty soon, I guess, we'll be thinking about sending colonists. So, I thought it might be worthwhile to a little bit of arithmetic on the exercise.</p>\n\n<p>I'm going to assume (generously, I think) that the minimum size for a successful colony is 10 000. The only experience we have is the Apollo program, which transported 12 astronauts to the Moon (a distance of 1 light second) at a cost of $100 billion or so (current values). So, assuming linear scaling (again, very generously, given the need to accelerate to near lightspeed), that's a cost of around $100 trillion per light-second for 10 000 people. 1200 light-years is around 30 billion light-seconds, so the total cost comes out roughly equal to the value of current world GDP accumulated over the life of the universe.</p>\n\n<p>Even supposing that technological advances made travel possible over such distances possible, why would we bother. By hypothesis, that would require the ability to live in interstellar space for thousands of years. A civilisation with that ability would have no need of planets.</p>\n\n<p>On behalf of my fellow Australians, I'm going to make a counter-offer. For a mere $10 trillion, we can find you an area of land larger than a typical European country, almost certainly more habitable than the new planets, and much closer. We'll do all the work of supplying water and air, build 10 000 mansions for the inhabitants and guarantee a lifetime supply of food. I'm hoping for a spotters fee of 0.01 per cent.</p>\n\n<p>On a related point, what should we be wishing for here? The fact that no-one has sent a detectable signal in our direction suggests that intelligent life forms similar to humans are very rare. If habitable planets are very rare, then this is unsurprising - interstellar distances preclude both travel and any kind of two-way communication. If on the other hand, the emergence of intelligent life is common, then the evidence suggests that its disappearance, through processes like nuclear war, must also be common.</p>\n\n<p>[^1] Where Earth-like means somewhere between Venus-like and Mars-like.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/04/yogurt-panna-cotta-with-walnuts-and-honey/\" title=\"yogurt panna cotta with walnuts and honey\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8400/8682467912_efaa762c89.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" alt=\"yogurt panna cotta with walnuts and honey\"></a></p>\nGuys, I just discovered the ultimate weekend brunch treat/decadent dessert that still contains a whiff of moderation/<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/smitten/8681658077/in/photostream\">preschooler</a> snack. The ingredient list is so short, and the cooking process is so simple that you’ll have the recipe memorized by the time you make it the second time. And you will make it a second time, maybe even within a week. It looks pretty, tastes luxurious and… well, most of you probably discovered panna cotta a decade ago.\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/smitten/8682466230/\" title=\"lemon, gelatin, sugar, milk/cream, yogurt\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8395/8682466230_9e19d63848.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" alt=\"lemon, gelatin, sugar, milk/cream, yogurt\"></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/smitten/8682466352/\" title=\"thick greek yogurt\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8262/8682466352_5a3120eb08.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" alt=\"thick greek yogurt\"></a></p>\n<p>I’m sorry, I’m just slow. For example, this week I started reading <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594483299/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1594483299&linkCode=as2&tag=smitten-20\">this new book</a> that everyone was talking about in September … 2007. And that’s just the beginning. Gallery wall? Skinny jeans? Arrested Development? Quinoa? People, I am <i>on it</i>. True to sluggish form, it’s been a full four years since my friend Nicole gushed to me about the wonders of yogurt panna cotta. I put it on my cooking to-do list, blinked, and that about brings us up to last week when I saw it on my list and thought, “right, wasn’t I going to make that a few days ago?”</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/smitten/8681355169/\" title=\"yogurt whisked with milk or cream\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8522/8681355169_9657d4a377.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" alt=\"yogurt whisked with milk or cream\"></a></p>\n<p><b>... Read the rest of <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/04/yogurt-panna-cotta-with-walnuts-and-honey/\">yogurt panna cotta with walnuts and honey</a> on <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com\">smittenkitchen.com</a></b></p>\n<hr>\n<p><small>© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. |\n<a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/04/yogurt-panna-cotta-with-walnuts-and-honey/\">permalink to <b>yogurt panna cotta with walnuts and honey</b></a> | <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/04/yogurt-panna-cotta-with-walnuts-and-honey/#comments\">230 comments</a> to date | see more: <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/category/breakfast/\" title=\"View all posts in Breakfast\" rel=\"category tag\">Breakfast</a>, <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/category/gluten-free/\" title=\"View all posts in Gluten-Free\" rel=\"category tag\">Gluten-Free</a>, <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/category/photo/\" title=\"View all posts in Photo\" rel=\"category tag\">Photo</a>, <a href=\"http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/category/pudding/\" title=\"View all posts in Pudding\" rel=\"category tag\">Pudding</a>\n</small></p>"
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"title" : "DUST IT OFF: Prince’s “Lovesexy”…25 Years Later",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://s1039.photobucket.com/user/johmbolaya/media/covers/Prince_Lovesexy_zpsa22849de.jpg.html\"><img src=\"http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a474/johmbolaya/covers/Prince_Lovesexy_zpsa22849de.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Prince photo Prince_Lovesexy_zpsa22849de.jpg\"></a><br>\nAs a Prince fan, I had been waiting to find out what his follow-up to <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i> would be. <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i> was an album that had to grow on me in the first month I was listening to it, perhaps because his previous album (1986′s <i>Parade</i>) was one I got into completely. There was a lot of territory covered on <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i> that I had to, as he says in “Slow Love”, take my time in listening to things. Up to the rlease of <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i>, there was a lot of coverage in <i>Rolling Stone</i> magazine about the album he was working on, and how that was scrapped and turned into the record we now know. When the singers were released and Prince was ready to try something new, more news in <i>Rolling Stone</i> surfaced that he was working on a grittier, dirtier, and raunchy album, perhaps even more filthy than his earlier works, or at least it was compared to the Prince of yesteryear, before he was embraced by the mainstream post-<i>Purple Rain</i>. I was highly looking forward to this new dose of dirty music, but as time moved on in the early spring of 1988, there was word that Prince was not happy, that he allegedly rejected this submitted album, almost as in a way to say “if I were to die, I don’t want this to be my last statement”. However, review copies of <i>The Black Album</i> were sent to journalists and that became the hot item to have. Except most people didn’t have it or couldn’t obtain it, at least not yet. Eventually, Warner Bros. Records revealed that Prince would be releasing something that would be more acceptable/accessible to the public. No black cover, no raunchy songs, and with the exception of one song, no trace of anything that was on <i>The Black Album</i>.</p>\n<p>When <i>Lovesexy</i> was released on May 10, 1988, “Alphabet St.” was the first single from it, promoted by a video that looked like it was shot on a public access cable show with the cheapy graphics to match. The song was incredibly funky with a nice pop shine, but due to how irresistible it was, fans loved it enough to help get it into the Top 10 of Billboard’s Singles chart. As with most first singles, this was the entry way into an album that, in effect, represented <i>The Black Album</i>‘s replacement album, but people seemed to be taken aback by him sitting nude with a photograph of a flower behind him. Some had felt the flower featured a phallic component that represented its penis, which made things worse for stores who refused to sell the album. In some cities, the album cover was censored while other stores would sell them behind the counter, the old school practice way of selling something to the public that was considered offensive. In some cases, the album would not be stocked which resulted in lower-than-expected sales, which is sad considering how good <i>Lovesexy</i> is.</p>\n<p>The album was supported by three singles: the aforementioned “Alphabet St.”, “Glam Slam”, and “I Wish U Heaven”. “Glam Slam” was one of Prince’s great efforts at making pop, right alongside “Raspberry Beret”, and the video featured him and his group performing at the warehouse in Chanhassen, Minnesota that was his rehearsal space at Paisley Park studios. The song is meant to be a representation of love and beauty in the way Prince does it best, but it did not do as well as a single as “Alphabet St.”, at least in the U.S. The third and final single was the short and sweet “I Wish U Heaven”, another pop gem that seemed to be influenced by everyone from Sly Stone to Larry Graham to Curtis Mayfield, with nice gospel overtones heard in Prince’s own multi tracked background vocals. As quirky as the song was, with its 1960′s pop single length of 2:43, it seemed to be pure perfection. While Prince was a master of releasing extended performances of his songs, a song like “I Wish U Heaven” very much showed that there was someone who was very much the king of pop in his own right, when he could be.</p>\n<p>Even in the seven months following the release of <i>Lovesexy</i>, I always wondered if Prince made the right choices in singles. While “Glam Slam” is a decent song, “Anna Stesia” is far more incredible although perhaps the spiritual overtones of the second half may have been considered a threat to pop radio, even though I’d like to think it would have been a massive hit on the black charts. It’s a song where he proudly finds a love he can’t get enough of:<br>\n“<i>Anna Stesia come to me<br>\nTalk to me, ravish me<br>\nLiberate my mind</i></p>\n<p>Tell me what you think of me<br>\nPraise me, craze me<br>\nOut this space and time”</p>\n<p>The second half of the song almost seems like a much lighter version of “Temptation” from <i>Around The World In A Day</i>, but again, not released as a single. Nonetheless, it was a moving way to end Side 1, and the opening song on Side 2 should have been released as a single too. “Dance On” was irresistible from the moment he yells “PICK IT UP”, but at a time when R&B music was not this deep in the pocket, it may have been too much. The only song from <i>The Black Album</i> that survived on <i>Lovesexy</i> was “When 2 R in Love”, a beautiful ballad that might have thrown off some fans, who knew this was from the raunchy album but outside of talking about things that shouldn’t be forbidden and taboo, it seemed fairly safe for a Prince song. A video was made for it, but like the album it was originally meant for, it consisted of nothing but black.</p>\n<p><i>Lovesexy</i> ends with “Positivity”, with the line “have you had your plus sign today?” a part of its chorus. It seemed to be the antithesis to what <i>The Black Album</i> was supposed to represent, a bit of Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, a Prince with two personalities, one feeling completely guilty of the other. For the time being, no one had heard <i>The Black Album</i> and had nothing to compare it to. However, by the summer of 1988, cassette copies were being circulated by fans, some of which were sold in stores as the real thing. For many, <i>The Black Album</i> was the real thing, or at least better than the “thing” that fans felt was <i>Lovesexy</i>, the untouchable album that few wanted to hear, yet alone hold in their hands. The speed of distribution and bootleg sales were so strong, it moved a group of anonymous British musicians to perform <i>The Black Album</i> note for note and pass it off as being a dub of the album. The most noticeable differences is when you hear British men say “2 Nigs United 4 West Compton” with a British accent. Did underground sales and distribution of <i>The Black Album</i> do better than <i>Lovesexy</i>? Some will say yes, but it didn’t stop Warner Bros. from finally releasing the album six years later.</p>\n<p>Looking back at “Alphabet St.” and its success, would “Anna Stesia” and “Dance On” have been more successful than “Glam Slam” and “I Wish U Heaven”? No one would ever think “If I Was Your Girlfriend” and “U Got The Look” (from <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i>) would become hits in their own right, but they were. <i>Lovesexy</i> should not be looked at as the replacement album, because now that we do have <i>The Black Album</i> available, it can be placed between <i>Sign ‘O’ The Times</i> and <i>Lovesexy</i>. Or just like countless hip-hop artists, consider it his street album, which is exactly what it is. Prince may love being uptown, but <i>The Black Album</i> was his downtown release. <i>Lovesexy</i> holds up quite well despite the flaws I may have felt upon first listen, and is arguably the last bit of glory in the 1980′s before he released <i>Batman</i> and <i>Graffiti Bridge</i> in 1990. Was this the start of Prince running out of ideas or coming up with great songs? It’s easy to debate about it, but Prince would eventually come up with tracks like “Joy In Repetition”, “Scandalous”, “Thieves In The Temple”, “Money Don’t Matter 2 Nite”, “Diamonds & Pearls”, “Strollin’”, “Live 4 Love”, “The Morning Papers”, “Blue Light”, “Come”, “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”, “Dolphin”, and “Had U”, and these songs barely skim the surface of what Prince has done in the 25 years since <i>Lovesexy</i>. If one is to look at Prince’s discography, you can either love the hits and only the hits, or take him on for the duration. Prince has tested the limits of not only his fans, but very much himself, and <i>Lovesexy</i> is barely an album that people should complain about it. We’re still talking about its music 25 years later, and he should be proud of that fact. Yet most likely, he spends less time talking about what was and continuing on with what will come next. Maybe Prince himself.</p>\n<p></p>"
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"title" : ""Hundalasiliah!": The Story of Lovesexy and Why It's One of the Most Underrated Prince Albums",
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"content" : "<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:left;margin-right:1em;text-align:left\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_sK7U4twRtg/UYfvh0f4DBI/AAAAAAAAAOc/ni-IVPs-YQ0/s1600/prince-lovesexy-j2334c.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_sK7U4twRtg/UYfvh0f4DBI/AAAAAAAAAOc/ni-IVPs-YQ0/s200/prince-lovesexy-j2334c.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">Prince - <i>Lovesexy</i> (1988)</td></tr></tbody></table><blockquote><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif;font-size:large\"><b><i>\"The feeling you get when you fall in love, not with a girl or boy, but with the heavens above.\" - </i>Prince</b></span></blockquote><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">What better time to discuss why <i>Lovesexy</i> is one of the most overlooked albums in Prince's career than the 25th anniversary? But, first off, for those of you that don't know, keep reading for a history of the album.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">In order to properly discuss the history of <i>Lovesexy</i>, one must also include the story behind \"The Black Album\" from the end of the previous year. Feel free to skip past this if it's old news for you!</span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><br><table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:1em;text-align:right\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9p5vbkEhK0Y/UYe96aJ86QI/AAAAAAAAAOM/hU9sAY_dZrg/s1600/prince_the_black_album.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9p5vbkEhK0Y/UYe96aJ86QI/AAAAAAAAAOM/hU9sAY_dZrg/s200/prince_the_black_album.jpg\" width=\"200\"></span></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">Original planned release of <i>\"The Black Album\"<br> </i>(1987)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif;font-size:large\"><b>The Legend of The Funk Bible</b></span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">Prince himself has never really talked much about \"The Black Album,\" other than the Prince-terminology explanation of its pull from release in the Lovesexy Tour booklet, which we'll get to later. Despite this, many close Prince associates have discussed the many rumors that surround the album, and that have helped give it the legendary status that it has today (anything that Prince didn't say himself is considered a rumor in my eyes)</span><span style=\"font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif\">.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">\"The Black Album\" is said to have started off as a series of songs composed for a birthday party that Prince threw for Sheila E., a long-time collaborator, singer, and drummer for him. Among these tracks were \"Le Grind,\" \"Bob George,\" and the wild instrumental \"2 Nigs United 4 West Compton\" (I'd like to hope that the lyrics to \"Bob George\" were not written yet). Prince then took some pre-recorded songs including \"Superfunkycalifragisexy\", the rap parody \"Dead on It,\" ode to supermodel Cindy Crawford \"Cindy C.,\" and \"Rockhard in a Funky Place\" (originally planned for the unreleased <i><a href=\"http://princevault.com/index.php/Album:_Camille\">Camille</a></i> album) from different periods in 1986 and compiled them together. He finally recorded "When 2 R in Love" in October of 1987, making it the final track recorded for the album. </span><br><br><span>The physical release of the album (both LP and CD) was to be in a plain black sleeve with no printed artist, album title or track listing on the outside, but a track listing on the actual disc (albeit still no artist or album title). On the spine of the release, the catalog number (originally 25677) could be found. However, there was no other indication of an artist or album title. Due to the nature of the release, fans just simply called it \"The Black Album\" (the more prominent title) or \"The Funk Bible\" (due to the spoken word intro to the first song, \"Le Grind\").</span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif;line-height:19.1875px\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif\">\"The Black Album\" was created in response to music critics and fans that had begun to say that Prince's music was too \"pop-oriented\" and that he had abandoned his black audience. Prince compiled the album quickly out of spite and possibly a bit of anger to respond to these critics. Warner Bros. were also not fans of the idea of releasing the album so soon after <i>Sign \"☮\" the Times</i>, released earlier in the year. Let's be honest, when did Warner ever support Prince's ideas? But that's a story for a different time. Despite this, the shelving of the album was completely Prince's decision. He grew to believe the album was evil, and powered by \"Spooky Electric\" (the Devil). Close associates (specifically sound engineer Susan Rogers) have attributed this feeling to an ecstasy trip that Prince encountered after completion of the album. As a result, a week before the album's release, he pulled all 500,000 pressed copies from release. He later explained this decision in a way that only he could, describing the battle between \"Camille\" and \"Spooky Electric\" in the 1988 Lovesexy Tour program. Here's an excerpt (taken from <a href=\"http://theblackalbum.info/\">theblackalbum.info</a>):</span><br><blockquote style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">“Camille set out to silence his critics. No longer daring - his enemies laughed. No longer glam, his funk is half-assed...<br>Tuesday came. Blue Tuesday. His canvas full, and lying on the table, Camille mustered all the hate that he was able. Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his game. Hate 4 the ones who ever doubted his name.<br>Tis nobody funkier -- let the Black Album fly. Spooky Electric was talking, Camille started 2 cry. Tricked.<br>A fool he had been. In the lowest utmostest. He had allowed the dark side of him 2 create something evil.<br>2 Nigs United 4 West Compton. Camille and his ego. Bob George. Why? Spooky Electric must die.”</span></blockquote><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\">Prince even included a hidden message in the music video for "Alphabet St." (1988) saying, "Don't buy The Black Album, I'm sorry." The album would later be released in 1994 as an effort to fulfill Prince's contract at Warner Bros., which he was desperately trying to end. At the time, it is said that he was still not in favor of the album spiritually. Therefore, it was released as a limited edition with very little promotion. After the shelving of "The Black Album" and Prince's spiritual rebirth, he returned to the studio for seven weeks, recording new tracks. He used 8 of these new songs along with The Black Album-penned "When 2 R in Love", and <i>Lovesexy</i> was born.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif;font-size:large\"><b>The Words of Lovesexy: Spirituality and Sexuality</b></span><br><table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:left;margin-right:1em\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uh-qntxw2Aw/UYe666psC6I/AAAAAAAAAOA/wzdJQ_v-FyI/s1600/Lovesexy.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uh-qntxw2Aw/UYe666psC6I/AAAAAAAAAOA/wzdJQ_v-FyI/s200/Lovesexy.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">Prince - <i>Lovesexy</i> (1988)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style=\"font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif\">Released on May 10, 1988, <i>Lovesexy</i> became the 10th studio album by Prince. The cover art has become infamous in itself, bearing a completely nude Prince. Initially, some record stores displayed this album in a black outer sleeve due to the content. Upon actually hearing the record, however, it becomes evident that it makes perfect sense for him to be nude on the cover. It symbolizes purity and rebirth, which are two of the main recurring themes throughout the album. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><i>Lovesexy</i> was an album that was the complete opposite of The Black Album. Though both albums share \"When 2 R in Love,\" they are totally different in concept and theme. It is interesting how well \"When 2 R in Love\" fits on <i>Lovesexy</i>, communicating yet another message of love versus being in the middle of the somewhat-chaotic Black Album. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,'Times New Roman',serif\">\"The Black Album\" showed Prince's \"darker\" side. However, it also included comical themes as well with gangsta-rap parodies like \"Dead on It\" and \"Bob George\". It serves as Prince's ultimate in-your-face backlash to the black audiences that had criticized him. It's sort of like he was saying: \"You want 'black' music, well here it is.\" Though it is one of the most recognized underground albums, and has since become the most bootlegged album in music history, it seems as though it was just thrown together and almost can't be taken seriously.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><br></span><span style=\"font-family:Times,Times New Roman,serif\"><i>Lovesexy</i>, on the other hand, is full of much more light, spiritually-oriented music that's sexual at the same time. Both lyrically and musically complex, this album is the best representation of Prince's ability to unite his spirituality and sexuality as one. One of the best examples of this comes out of track 3 on the album, \"Glam Slam\":</span><br><blockquote><i>This thing we got-it's alive!<br>It seems 2 transcend the physical<br>One touch and I'm satisfied<br>Must be a dream, it's so magical</i></blockquote>The interesting thing about these lyrics is that, knowing Prince's nature, they can most definitely be attributed to lust. However, they also have another meaning. When you think about it, these same lyrics could be applied to God as well. Though the chorus says \"Glam slam, thank you ma'am,\" the meaning of the song still has a double context. Prince is possibly even implying here that God could be female.<br><br>He does the same thing again in the lyrics of the title song:<br><blockquote><i>This feeling's so good in every single way<br>I want it morning, noon, and night of every day<br>And if by chance I cannot have it-I can't say<br>But with it \"eye\" no heaven's just a kiss away</i></blockquote>Coming out of the darkness, one must reach the state of \"lovesexy,\" uniting spirituality and sexuality. This concept in itself is genius. Many critics and even some fans of Prince fail to acknowledge his extraordinary lyricism in certain aspects. Religious imagery can be found in his music as early as <i>Controversy</i>. However, it becomes much more prominent in <i>Lovesexy</i>.<br><br>In the lead (and only major hit) single from the album, \"Alphabet St.,\" we see Prince put forth a message on the power of words in rapping to a girl in the beginning of the song, and by the end, speaking on cruelty in the world. The album is filled with positive and uplifting messages in addition to the spirituality. Other examples include the socially conscious \"Dance On\" and a song that personally has gotten me through some very tough times, \"Positivity.\" In the latter song, Prince asks the questions, \"Have U had yo plus sign 2day? Do we mark U present, or do we mark U late?\" The word \"YES\" is constantly repeated despite \"NO\" being more a part of the other parts of the album. It is interesting that Prince constantly uses the word \"no\" in place of \"know\" in the lyric booklet. Yet, by the end of the work in \"Positivity\", all you hear is \"yes\". The message that can be inferred here, from the way the lyrics are worded, is NO to Spooky Electric, and YES to God. In the first track, \"'Eye' No\", Prince says:<br><blockquote><i>No! Is what Spooky Electric say, it's not ok<br>But \"Eye\" no love is the only way 'til my dying day</i></blockquote>In essence, he's saying <i>no</i> to the devil, and at the same time, saying he <i>knows </i>the way to God. <i>Lovesexy</i> tells sort of a non-chronological story. It is the closest thing to a concept album Prince has ever created. Ultimately, it speaks of a lost soul that eventually finds its way to God and positivity.<br><br><span style=\"font-size:large\"><b>\"Love is God, God is Love\"</b></span><br>\"Anna Stesia,\" track 4 and closer of side 1 of the record, can be considered one of the most complex songs Prince has ever composed, when it comes to both musicality and lyricism. An entire different post could be made here on the song itself, but I'll try to sum up the remarkableness of it in just a few paragraphs.<br><br>The keyword here is \"try.\"<br><br>\"Anna Stesia\" tells a story of realization, rebirth, and resurrection. The title likely comes from the name \"Anastasia,\" with Greek origins meaning resurrection. It has also been said that the title could be derived from \"anesthesia.\" Could it be both? Or neither? Only Prince truly knows. However, with the chorus of the song stating, \"Anna Stesia come 2 me, talk 2 me, ravish me, liberate my mind,\" it makes more sense for it to be attributed to resurrection rather than an allusion to being put under.<br><br>The song begins with about four seconds of silence, followed by single notes on a piano creeping in. The sound is almost <i>haunting</i>. Prince asks two questions in the first verse:<br><blockquote><i>Have U ever been so lonely that U felt like U were the only one in this world?<br>Have U ever wanted 2 play with someone so much, U'd take anyone boy or girl?</i></blockquote>Then, the second verse goes further in depth to what can be interpreted as battles that Prince had with himself before he truly discovered God, and how he discovered Him.<br><blockquote><i>Between white and black, night and day<br>Black night seemed like the only way... So I danced<br>Music late, nothing great, no way 2 differentiate<br>I took a chance...<br>Gregory looks just like a ghost<br>And then a beautiful girl, the most, wets her lips 2 say,<br>\"We could live 4 a little while, if U could just learn 2 smile, U and I could fly away.\"</i></blockquote>It seems as though he is specifically speaking about \"The Black Album\" in this verse. The darkness that he felt at the time seemed like the only way to go to silence the critics, so he obliged. Gregory looks just like a ghost? Finding that the name \"Gregory\" has Greek origins in meaning \"watchful\" or \"alert\", could Gregory be his conscience watching what he was doing? Or did he just see Greg Brooks and think he was a ghost? Next, Anna Stesia (or resurrection) comes to him, implying that he can rise above all the darkness. He then sings in the bridge:<br><blockquote><i>Maybe, I could learn 2 love, the right way, the only way.<br>Perhaps U could show me, baby.<br>Maybe I could learn 2 love, if I was just closer to somethin'<br>Closer 2 my higher self, closer to heaven... closer 2 God (repeats 2x)</i></blockquote><div>He then proceeds to pour his heart out to Jesus, claiming he'd been a fool not to see his power and that now he understands. The song then closes out with the chant (likely the voices of Cat Glover and Sheila E.), \"Love is God, God is love, girls and boys love God above.\"</div><div><iframe align=\"right\" frameborder=\"5\" height=\"240\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xdryfe\" width=\"320\"></iframe></div><div><br></div><div>\"Anna Stesia\" was a genius way of Prince explaining his way of capturing where he had been led astray, and how he got back on the right track. In the live performance of the song from the 1988 Lovesexy Tour concert in Dortmund, Germany (found at the right), this becomes even more evident. The amount of emotion and passion that was put into this performance is unlike any other performance from the show, and is arguably the highlight of the entire concert. The mini 'sermon' that he preaches along with the music near the end of the performance only adds to the notion that he found the right way to love and the right way to God. The song was performed as the last song of Act I of the show or the \"darker\" half where a couple of songs from The Black Album were also performed. Even with the tour shows, Prince still told a story of this period of darkness and how he has changed since then. Act II of the show was then heavily bombarded with other, more uplifting and spiritual material from <i>Lovesexy</i> and some other hits. "Anna Stesia" served as the ultimate transition between the darkness and the light. Thus, further proving his new-found glory.</div><div><br></div><div><b><span style=\"font-size:large\">And That Says What?</span></b></div><div>So, all this deep analysis to say what? Well, for starters, in the United States, <i>Lovesexy</i> did not fare very well commercially, while it did excellent overseas. Could it be that America was not smart enough to see the message that Prince was communicating at the time? There's no way to tell for sure, but in recent years, reviews of <i>Lovesexy</i> have been much more favoring. Some even discussed some of the messages behind the music as well. The point of all this is to say that still, <i>Lovesexy</i> is certainly not the only underrated Prince album, but the messages and double connotations that reside in the lyrics, and the overall musicality of the work make it one of the more prominent ones. The average person that has heard this album may not realize all that happened in regards to the creation of the album, and what the album has to say. Judging by popular culture, "Alphabet St." is really the only song that has remained a part of Prince's legacy from this album. Nonetheless, concept albums like Pink Floyd's classic <i>The Dark Side of the Moon</i> (1973) has been greatly praised for musical and lyrical greatness, which it absolutely deserves. In sum, <i>Lovesexy</i> is right up there with the other great musical masterpieces.</div><div><br></div><div>From a personal standpoint, <i>Lovesexy</i> is not my favorite Prince album of all time. However, if it were at all possible to make a top five, I am positive that it would be included. In essence, this album is a perfect example of what Prince does best: musical diversity, lyrical genius, and of course great instrumentation. Everything about this album is perfection, from the arrangements during the instrumental section of "Glam Slam", even down to the funky version of the word "hallelujah!" that is shouted in "'Eye' No" as "hundalasiliah!" A bit of his controversial side even showed with the third and final single from the album "I Wish You Heaven," being paired with the other-end-of-the-spectrum B-side "Scarlet Pussy." In contrast to The Black Album, <i>Lovesexy</i> is very much, but not limited to a \"pop\" sort of effort. This, however, should not be a surprise to any follower of Prince's career because he has played different musical styles since the very beginning. His music is not \"black\" or \"white\". Prince does what Prince wants. And we love him all the same for it. Happy 25th anniversary to <i>Lovesexy</i>, one of the greatest albums in Prince's near 4-decade career.</div><div><br></div><div>Until next time, Peace & B Wild.</div><div><br></div><div>Further reading:</div><div><a href=\"http://theblackalbum.info/\">The Black Album Info Site</a></div><div><a href=\"http://princevault.com/index.php/Album:_Lovesexy\">Lovesexy</a> at <a href=\"http://princevault.com/\">PrinceVault</a></div><div><a href=\"http://princevault.com/index.php/Album:_The_Black_Album\">The Black Album</a> at PrinceVault</div>"
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"content" : "<p>Standing on a railway platform and a high-speed express train comes through. 250 tons of steel hurtles along at 125 mph, safely and predictably. And I’m thinking: this is the kind of unimaginable feat that good engineering makes possible. But when my friend Tim Minshall was thinking about this the only mention of “engineering” he could find in connection with railways were notices of travel delays “due to engineering work”. The result: an entire country which associates engineering only with trouble.</p>"
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"content" : "<p> </p>\n<h2></h2>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>THE BIRTH OF THE OAU </b></span></h1>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>By CAMERON DUODU</b></span></h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>To us in Ghana, the conference that was held in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to give birth to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was as exciting as an international football match.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Lined up on one side of the “pitch” was a group of African states known as the ‘Monrovia Group’. Most of its members were drawn from an earlier group called the ‘Brazzaville Group’ formed in 1960 by mainly French-speaking countries that had gained their independence that year. (Initially, the group was a gathering of the ‘French African Community’ countries and was known as the “Afro-Malagasy Union” or “UAM”). </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>The countries in this ‘Brazzaville Group were Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’lvoire, Dahomey (now Benin), Gabon, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, the Central African Republic, Senegal and Chad. Later, the Group was expanded to include Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, Tunisia and Congo (Kinshasa). In “journalistic shorthand”, especially in the Western media, they were usually described as “conservative” or “pro-western”. Yet ‘pro-Western’ Tunisia was given enormous assistance to the Algerians in their fight for independence against France! So much for accuracy in the reporting of Africa by the world media!, especially, the Western media.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>On the other side of the imaginary ‘football pitch’ were the “Casablanca Group”. This Group emerged in 1961 and comprised seven countries: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mali, and Morocco. They were regarded as “radical” or at the very least, adherents of ‘positive neutrality’ or ‘non-alignment’. But this description, again, begged many questions. The Governments of both Morocco and Libya, for instance, were both feudal monarchies. How could they be described as “radical”, then? Morocco was a close ally of France, and to some extent, the US (the Voice of America had installed a powerful radio transmitter in Tangier to broadcast American propaganda to Africa and the Middle East!) Yet, because it belonged to the Casablanca Group — indeed, the Group was named after the Moroccan city where it was born – Morocco was somehow linked with “anti-Western” sentiment in Africa. Libya, for its part, was practically an American ‘business enclave’ in North Africa. So the ‘omniscience’ of Western journalists who engaged in labelling African countries, for convenience, needed to be called into question.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Now, one of the most vociferous advocates of African unity at the time was Ghana’s President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. He made countless speeches about African unity and published an excellent and most informative book entitled </b></span><em><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Africa Must Unite</b></span></em><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>. Nkrumah possessed a sharp analytical mind and he realised clearly that there were too many contradictions in the groupings that existed in Africa, including the Casablanca Group, to which his own country, Ghana, belonged. But he was pragmatic enough to accept that he could not isolate Ghana altogether from both of them. He was, however, tremendously disheartened by the existence of the two Groups, which only served to advertise the divided nature of Africa and undermined Africa’s voice at international forums, such as the United Nations. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>President Sekou Toure of Guinea (a member of the Casablanca Group) was also unhappy with the political division prevalent in Africa, and he linked up with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia to try and organise a conference of the foreign ministers of the two Groups, preparatory to a summit of their heads state. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>When Dr Nkrumah heard of this, he was irritated that his former ally, Sekou Toure, seemed to be tying to steal Nkrumah’s thunder as the unacknowledged ‘father of African unity.’ Wasn’t it Nkrumah who had saved Guinea from collapse when it declared itself independent after voting “Non” in the referendum organised by France in 1958 and the French left Guinea precipitately, leaving the country penniless? Hadn’t Nkrumah come to the aid of Guinea with a “loan” (a grant, actually) of £10 million — probably worth about $200 million in today’s money)? Hadn’t Ghana and Guinea formed a ‘Union’, to serve as a practical example of ‘African unity’, which had seemed so desirable that Mali had also acceded to it and turned it into the ‘Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union’? Hadn’t Nkrumah also given Mali £5m — probably worth about $100m US today – to help it in its own development? </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Now Sekou Toure was ‘organising ‘African unity’ behind Nkrumah’s back? Nkrumah immediately set his own secret diplomatic moves in motion to try and get the Monrovia and Casablanca Groups to merge and form a single continental organisation. He dispatched one of his most trusted aides, Kwesi Armah (better known as Ghana’s High Commissioner in London), to Liberia to see President William Tubman, who was widely respected as one of the ‘old wise men’ of Africa. Tubman had won this respect, despite his country’s extremely close ties to America. (Nkrumah had a high regard for Tubman personally: Liberia was the first country in Africa that Nkrumah visited officially, shortly after Ghana became independent in 1957. Tubman, in fact, played a prominent role, behind the scenes, in helping Nkrumah to organise a “Conference of Independent African States” in Accra in April 1958 — the first Conference of its kind ever to be held in Africa. It was attended by Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.)</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Nkrumah’s message was warmly received by Tubman, who set out to convince his fellow members of the Monrovia Group that the pressing issues facing the world and Africa – disarmament, the Cold War, non-alignment, economic co-operation with each other and with other nations, and, above all, how to safeguard the independence recently won by African and Asian nations – could best be addressed in unison. After all, there was the Organisation of American States (OAS) which united North and South America; the Middle East had its Arab League; the Western Powers were bound together in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO); while the Soviet Bloc had its Warsaw Pact. Why should Africa not emulate them by forming an organisation that spoke with one voice?</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>To his great credit, Tubman was able to persuade Emperor Haile Selassie — his old friend from the days when there were only two independent African States in the comity of nations — to work with him to get the Foreign Ministers of both Groups to meet at Sanniquelle in Liberia, to express an interest, through the “Sanniquelle Declaration”, in coming together in a common continental organisation.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>But even as Dr Kwame Nkrumah was trying to sort out the diplomatic challenges in which he was embroiled on the continent of Africa, a new development occurred closer to home that was disastrous in the message it conveyed to the rest of Africa about himself. On 13 January 1963, one of Nkrumah’s bêtes noires in Africa, the President of neighbouring Togo, Mr Sylvanus Olympio, was assassinated in a military coup and his Government overthrown. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Many ‘political observers’ and journalists specialising in writing about Africa immediately concluded that Nkrumah was ‘behind’ this coup. This was because antagonism had existed between Nkrumah and Olympio as far back as the early 1950s, when the Gold Coast was about to achieve its independence and become Ghana. Part of the Gold Coast – Trans/Volta Togoland — had once been part of Togo, which was then a German colony. But after the defeat of Germany in World War One (1914-18), Togo was divided into two by the League of Nations (the World Organisation that was later to be replaced by the United Nations). One part was given to France to administer as a separate colony under a League of Nations “mandate”, while the other part was given to Britain to administer under the same “mandate” conditions. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>But typically, the British did not accept the simple method of administering Trans/Volta Togoland as a separate territory (as the French had done), but instead, chose the fat more complex method of attaching Trans/Volta to its old colony next door, the Gold Coast. The British didn’t, of course, bother to ask the inhabitants of the two territories that were to be brought together in a ‘shotgun’ wedding, what their own views of the British plan were.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Had the British bothered to ask, they would no doubt have been told that the plan was a diabolical one. For it would segregate forcibly behind separate borders, ethnic groups that had traditionally lived as single entities before the European colonisers came. The Ewe people in particular, were deeply resentful of this division that was imposed on them, which separated many families from one another and thus placed tremendous social hardships on them. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Fast-forward to the mid-1950s. The British are now happily preparing their “model colony” in West Africa, the Gold Coast, for independence, to show the world that the ‘enlightened imperialism; the British had exhibited by granting full independence to India and Burma, had not ended in Asia but would be extended to Africa. However, the question of Trans/Volta Togoland then rears its head: what is to be done with it? </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>The ‘trusteeship’ arrangement with the United Nations that had replaced the League of Nations ‘mandate’ (after Word War Two) made it obligatory to ascertain the wishes of the people of any ‘trust territory’ — as endorsed by the United Nations – before any change could be effected in the status of the territory. The Gold Coast was to become the independent nation of Ghana. Fine. What was to become of the Trans/Volta ‘appendage’ of the Gold Coast? Was it to be allowed to achieve independence with the Gold Coast, or to secede and unite, instead, with the territory of which it had once formed part — now called ‘French Togoland’ and also envisaged, by France, to achieve independence soon, under the name of Togo?</b></span></p>\n<p>‘<span style=\"font-size:xx-large\">T</span><strong><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\">he politicians who ruled in the Gold Coast, led by Dr Kwame Nkrumah (whose undeclared ‘deputy’ was a prominent Ewe, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah) wanted Trans/Volta to stay with the Gold Coast and become part of Ghana. But Ewe politicians in French Togoland and their Ewe allies in the Gold Coast — mainly the Anlos – wanted “</span></strong><em><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\">Ablode”</span></em><strong><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\">: that is the unification of Trans/Volta Togoland with French Togoland. That, they said, was the only just way to bring together again, the ethnic groups who had been forcibly separated from their kith and kin by the British and French colonialists.</span></strong></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>In line with its ‘trusteeship’ policy, the United Nations decided to hold a ‘plebiscite’ in 1956 to allow the people of both parts of Togoland to decide on their own future. In the plebiscite, however, the majority of the people of Trans/Volta Togoland decided that they wanted to stay as part of Ghana. Sylvanus Olympio and his Ewe allies in Ghana were enraged. They never accepted that decision, and when Togo, in it s turn, became independent in 1960, it became a haven for opposition politicians who had fled from Nkrumah’s Ghana. Nkrumah returned the favour and Togolese opponents of Olympio were equally welcomed in Ghana. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Indeed, on the day of the coup in Togo, Radio Ghana made the mystifying announcement that a man called Antoine Meachi was leaving Accra for Togo! The clear implication was that Meachi would become one of the leaders of the new Togolese Government, or probably, even its leader. And he was an Nkrumah protégée of sorts. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>In fact, the architects of the coup did ‘entrust’ the presidency of Togo to Meachi for a brief period, but the French, upon whom the Togolese ex-soldiers led by Emmanuel Bodjollé and Gnassingbe Eyadema (who had overthrown Olympio, were depending for money) manoeuvred to get Meachi replaced with their own nominee, Nicholas Grunitzky.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Of course, the Togolese affair played into the hands of all those who suspected Nkrumah of seeking to dominate the African scene by subverting the regimes of other African states, especially, his immediate neighbours. So his overtures to other African states in relation to African unity were received with a pinch of salt. However, Emperor Haile Selassie and President Tubman, among others, deduced that even if Nkrumah harboured ambitions to replace some African leaders with his own henchmen, Nkrumah would be much easier to control if he was inside the same organisational “tent” with them, than if he was left outside in isolation, to “piss into the tent”.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>With the psychological preparation done at the Sanniquelle Conference, a series of follow-up meetings were held to harmonise views on how to proceed. It was agreed that the foreign ministers of Africa should meet in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to prepare an agenda for an African summit conference at the same venue immediately afterwards. Despite the well-known disagreement over whether a continental government should be formed immediately or step-by-step, a compromise agreement was hatched on a Charter which set out the articles of a body to be known as the Organisation of African unity (OA). The Charter was signed on 25 May 1963. That date has become known as “Africa Day” </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Of course, the Charter, being the product of compromise did not fully meet everyone’s expectations, but was adopted as a document that would be improved by future generations. And indeed, the organisation that was formed in 1963, keeps changing. Several new Articles — and organisational bodies — have been added to those that were denominated in the original Charter of 1963, and the apex organisation itself has undergone a transformation in name, and is now called the ‘African Union ‘. And its chief official is now called its “Chair” instead of its “Secretary-General”. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>It is left to new generations of Africans yet unborn to scrutinise it and reshape it in the light of their current realities, until it comes as close as possible to meeting the aspirations of the African people as a whole. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>For Africans do deserve to be able, like, say, their European counterparts, to come and go across their own continent without visas, as was the case before the Europeans came and divided up the continent among themselves in their “Scramble for Africa”; to work where they like, within their own continent; and expect to be treated as if they were “home” – despite being far away, geographically speaking, from the territorial limits which they were originally born into. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Africans also want to be able to trade with one another without paying customs duty on the goods they export or import; to be able to buy and sell goods everywhere in Africa without needing to change currency. Above all, they want a supra-national body to be able to intervene </b></span><em><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>effectively</b></span></em><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b> on behalf of any group of African people who are oppressed or discriminated against by their own Government, or are denied their human rights by a totalitarian Government.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-large\"><b>Those were the dreams of our fathers. And it must be the goal of all of us to ensure that the dreams become a reality. In our lifetime.</b></span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcameronduodu.com%2Funcategorized%2Fthe-birth-of-the-oau-2&title=THE%20BIRTH%20OF%20THE%20OAU\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Metering, discriminatory pricing, subscriptions … Adobe.",
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"content" : "<p>Pricing is a mess. On the one hand you can argue that things should cost exactly what they cost to produce (including, of course, a pleasant lifestyle for their producers). On the other hand you can argue that they should cost exactly whatever value their users extract from the product. Surplus is the term of art. If you charge less than the value extracted the consumer is left to capture the surplus value.</p>\n<p>More than a decade ago I had a bit of fun at the expense of my employeer arguing that we should switch all our pricing to subscription, just as Adobe has just recently decided to. My suggestion was greeted with an abundance eye rolling and head shaking.</p>\n<p>Leaving surplus value on the table can be very risky for the producer. It’s not just about how pleasant a lifestyle he get’s (aka greed). Businesses are multi-round games; what you can invest in the next round of the game depends on how much of the surplus value you capture v.s. your competitors. But also businesses with large market share and large volumes gain scale advantages that drive down costs, establish standards, and generally create positive feedback loops. (That leads to the perverse tendency for the largest vendor to be the best and the cheapest.) Which brings us to discriminatory pricing, aka value pricing.</p>\n<p>The demand side network effects depend on the scale of your installed base. Discounting lets you reach users that you wouldn’t otherwise. If you can segment your market then you can enlarge it. There is a standard text book illustration for this.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://cdn-enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/priceing.png\"><img alt=\"priceing\" src=\"http://cdn-enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/priceing.png\" width=\"360\" height=\"292\"></a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">That chart shows the number of buyers your product will have if you charge various prices, or looking at it another way it’s showing you how much value users think they will get from your product. If you’d like a lot of users you should charge the green price. Your total revenue is, of course, the volume of the rectangle. Why not both? Why stop there? <span style=\"line-height:1.714285714;font-size:1rem\"> As a vendor, what you’d love charge everybody exactly what they are willing to pay. You could have both the maximum number of users and all the volume (revenue) under that curve.</span></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Subscription pricing gives you a tool, because it lets’ you meter usage, that can stand in as a proxy for the value the users are getting from the product.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">I was surprised by Adobe’s subscription pricing, not because it’s expensive and draconian. No, I was surprised because it appears to have no metering. My insta-theory for why? Well I think what we are seeing at this stage is the classic: e.g. “list price.” That they will start offering various discounted variations on the service. It would be odd if they don’t. Because, otherwise, they are leaving two things on the table. They are shunning a huge pool of users, missing out on all the demand side network effects they create, and encouraging competitors to fill into that abandoned market segment. And, they are leaving money on the table.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">I’ve no idea what they will meter, but I’d be surprised if they don’t.</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"content" : "<p>\nby Dayna Tortorici\n</p>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<img src=\"http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/image.php?width=450&quality=95&image=http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/1034.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n<p><span>Image: </span>Jemima Kirke as Jessa on <i>Girls</i>.</p>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div>\n\n<p>Paris was the first to wear the fedora in the way of my thinking, but feels, as founders of a line sometimes do, like a decoy. Her adoption of the men’s hat wasn’t a bellwether so much as an accident, something she happened upon in her personal experiments with costume. Every day was Halloween for Paris. She was literal about social uniforms, and knew how to sexify them according to the rules of her own personal drag: sexy navy, sexy newsboy, sexy farmer, sexy cowboy. Familiar dress was cropped, ripped up, bedazzled, and always topped off with the attendant hat. On Paris, the fedora was sexy Fred Astaire, with a touch of Michael Jackson—something about how the brim offset the narrow slope of her nose, or how she managed to look like a wax replica of herself without appearing dead, as Michael, even while living, looked embalmed. Paris was literal, but the way a dream is literal: a walking wish fulfillment swathed in symbols so obvious they’re comic. All unconscious, she carried the therelessness of Los Angeles in her strut. It took someone with as little nuance as Paris Hilton to bring back the men’s hat as a symbol of modern female sexuality and confused morals. A subtler person would have chosen something else.</p>\n<p>Lindsay’s hat was not this way—and to me, the hat began with Lindsay. I would like to know which Hollywood stylist put a fedora on Lindsay Lohan’s head because I think that person is a genius. Lindsay first began to appear in hats after the first cycle of her eating disorder, post-rehab, during her lesbian relationship with Samantha Ronson. It was Lindsay’s funny way of saying that she was the femme—because of course Ronson, a DJ with a UK skater-boy thing, would always out-butch her: tight pants, big shoes, greasy hair tucked back, vampiric dark circles. In photos Samantha was always snarling like a tough orphan, though under the soot and freckles you knew she had nice parents. Instead of just wearing lipstick to imitate a woman, Lindsay wore a fedora to imitate a man imitating a woman—imitating, more specifically, a sort of closeted ’50s homosexual whose excessive display of formal masculinity revealed how much of life was costume. On Lindsay the hat said: Yes, I am experimenting, but not in the way you think. Also: leave me alone. This is an essential quality of hats: they announce one’s desire to be unannounced. A hat is an advertisement for a disguise.</p>\n<p>Lindsay courted the paparazzi with her hats, padding around West Hollywood like Carmen Sandiego on house arrest—her skin spray-tan orange with brown creases behind her knees and in the palms of her hands, arms covered in an anorexic down, silky scarves streaming behind her. In my memory they are always at the gas station, Lindsay and Samantha, arguing on the heels of a coke binge, in a car they’re about to drive in the wrong direction on the 110 freeway. Always in men’s hats.</p>\n<p>In fact, if not feeling, it was not exactly like this. In old photos I see that Samantha wore a fedora most of the time, though they both would, together, and sometimes, when Sam wasn’t around, Lindsay would alone. Lindsay never wore a hat around Samantha if Samantha was not also wearing a hat. This made it seem like a prosthetic they passed back and forth, like a toy. There was precedent for this: Madonna wore the men’s hat like a strap-on. Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, and other Hollywood stars of the 20th century retrospectively accused of lesbianism had more style. They were gentlemen in tails, the ringleaders of a gender circus where they themselves were the lions to tame, so they straddled the chair backwards in victory. In photos, their grin is the grin of a flasher, the smirk of a pervert, of a cannibal licking his fingers. Men had good reason to fear them.</p>\n<p>On Samantha—and Lindsay, too—the hat wasn’t so scary. Hepburn, majestic, was a lion; Ronson snarled because she was just a cub. But the hat nevertheless made her comprehensible as a bad influence from the UK, since we already had Pete Doherty in soiled evening dress destroying Kate Moss. The hat was like a cold sore we got from the British sometime around 2005. We still have flare-ups: teetering away from dinner with her lawyers in stilettos, beating back the misdemeanors of her past, Lindsay still wears a fedora, stuck in the year everything went wrong for her.</p>\n<p>Because culture is racist, a fedora on anyone “ethnic” signals dirty money and the shame of not knowing how to spend it well. Hats are for organized criminals, pimps and mafia dons, zoot-suiters and the Warren G. “Regulate” video. When Janet Jackson wears a fedora with a short yellow feather stitched into it, the fashion magazine calls it “Lady Mobster.” The fedora peaked, in popularity, with prohibition; on Lindsay it peaked with probation. Lindsay, not only white, was also the most disorganized criminal. She had not a single ally. The hat’s suggestion that there was a gang to which she could belong only called more attention to the loneliness of her brushes with the law. </p>\n<p>Power, queerness, privilege, trash, camp, celebrity, anachronism, and crime—the expert coupling of showiness and shame: this is why the fedora belonged to Lindsay.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>A brief interlude for hats in life:</p>\n<p>One rainy morning in March, a tall man steps onto the train wearing, on his head, a stiff cherry-red fedora wrapped in clear plastic. His shirt is soaked through, beads of water tremble on the plastic around this magnificent, impervious hat, and it’s amazing—like he’s playing with the action figure still in the packaging. To me it confirms that the hat is no longer an accessory in the sense of a tool (say, for keeping a head dry) but an accessory in the sense of a co-conspirator: hats are everywhere producing bafflement, everywhere punking everyone.</p>\n<p>The last Sunday of the month, the barista at the coffee shop is wearing a black felt and beribboned hat for which there is a name. An editor told it to me once, asking if this word was common parlance or just another example of the female writer’s tendency toward over-specificity. He said: Do you know what a “borsalino” is, without using Google? I didn’t. The barista in the borsalino is tall, limby, wearing plum-brown lipstick and adult braces. Taking orders, I can hear that she is either on her way in or out of an English accent. This seems key. On her, the hat works—she pulls it off. There is such thing as hat realness, in the drag sense.</p>\n<p>On both of these strangers the absurdity of the hat has an underlying aggression I cannot place. It recalls the murderous dandyism of Malcolm McDowell in <em>A Clockwork Orange</em>. Freddy Kruger, too, wore a fedora.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>Fedoras are “for men.” When a woman wears one, it’s meant to be an aberration. The winking transgression—however innocent or innocuous—that’s the whole point. </p>\n<p>This seems somewhat defeated when we learn that the first fedora was a woman’s. It was named after the heroine of a 19th-century play—<em>Fédora</em>—who screwed up her love life while happening to wear a hat. Like the contemporary woman, Princess Fédora Romazoff is “passionate and self reliant.” As of the beginning of the play, she has had a disappointing love life, but trusts the man she is about to marry. Naturally, he cheats on her with another man’s wife. When this other man, Loris Japonoff, finds out, he kills Fédora’s fiancé and flees to France. Fédora decides to follow Loris, seduce him, and then kill him. Little does she know that Loris has actually saved her—“saved her from becoming the wife of a miscreant,” in the playwright’s words. This at least is the logic of <em>Fédora</em>. The details—moral, chronological—are ambiguous.</p>\n<p>Princess Fédora falls for Loris, but “stifles her love” for the sake of manners, principles, and the rascal she’d hoped to marry. Even in a hat, a woman follows rules where a man does not. Loris addresses Fédora in cryptic doublespeak, suggesting, too subtly, that he has killed her fiancé because he loves her. Not the best reader, Fédora brings tragedy upon herself. She turns Loris in before he has a chance to confess his love. He’s dragged off by French cops; she kills herself “in expiation.”</p>\n<p>Female celebrities possess a superhuman ability to set trends, and as Princess Fédora, Sarah Bernhardt—“the most famous actress in the world”—convinced French women to take up the fedora. One wonders if these women also took on some kind of curse. <em>Fédora</em>, the play, with its presumed history of failed loves, its conception of seduction as revenge, its miscommunications and missed connections, is a play about the horrors of dating. The fedora—on television, in the pages of the <em>New York Times</em> style section—is now a universal signifier of women’s romantic troubles. Perhaps it always has been.</p>\n<p>Not so long ago the <em>Times</em> ran a story called “The End of Courtship?” Beneath it was a photo. “Denise Hewett says hanging out has replaced dating,” said the caption. Jennifer S. Altman for the <em>New York Times</em> had photographed Denise on a velvety mustard couch in a hotel lobby, wearing a tan fedora with a mustard ribbon for trim. The mustard ribbon matched the mustard couch matched the mustard highlights of Denise’s impeccable blowout. Denise was looking at her phone, texting with two hands, as if handling a Gameboy. She was waiting for her OKCupid date. </p>\n<p>Hanna Rosin, corporate psychic, foreseer of the end of men, was brought in for expert opinion. “Many young men these days have no experience in formal dating and feel the need to be faintly ironic about the process,” she told the <em>Times</em>, “to ‘date’ in quotation marks”—because they are “worried that they might offend women by dating in an old-fashioned way.”</p>\n<p>In other words, dating is like wearing a hat, available only through irony. Stylists and art directors know this. The image of a young woman wearing a hat signals to the reader: <em>Manners have become so confused—this woman is wearing a hat! There are no mates for her</em>. The fedora is not Monica Lewinsky’s sex-guerrilla beret made sweet with a bow, taking no prisoners with an infantile feminine twist. Nor is it Mary Tyler Moore throwing her beret to the sky—<em>You’re gonna make it after all</em>. We are not sure whether we’re going to make it, in a fedora.</p>\n<p>But why a fedora? Princess Fédora does not deserve so much credit. One can only imagine that the women who wear fedoras are acting out a deeper cultural melancholia. Not sadness, but melancholia, in the sense Freud defined in <em>Mourning and Melancholia</em>, as a mechanism for dealing with loss. Without decent romantic prospects, the straight woman suffers an ungrieved loss. She has not lost any actual man—there are still plenty of those—but rather the fantasy of an ideal man, which her sisters have wisely told her is pointless to indulge. This fantasy has meant more than said partner, manifest, ever could, but now it’s a bad look; it’s another era’s out-of-fashion false consciousness, not to be worn. Denied the right to atavistically yearn for letters and sodas, the woman in the hat retains the fantasy of wanting a Perfect Man—a dominant man who will carry her across the threshold, call her on the phone and not text “sup” after eleven—by adopting his characteristics. By adopting his hat. </p>\n<p>In order to preserve him, she must become him. This may or may not have been what Gloria Steinem had in mind when she said, “We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” But the signal is complicated. This woman does not wear a fedora to say that she wants Don Draper. She wears a fedora to say, I want a man who is like a woman in a hat. That is, the best of both men and women; I want Feminist Ryan Gosling. She sustains the dime-store, midcentury masculine hero by taking on his dress as her own, but idealizes it all the more by feminizing it—since the problem with those men all along, the men in fedoras, was that they were nothing <em>but</em> money, manners, and chivalry. Their precise appeal rested on their chauvinism, a chauvinism that a woman today, wearing the hat and the pants, no longer accepts. This is where the hapless men who think they can trick women into finding them sexy or desirable by wearing a fedora make a serious misstep. Perceiving a vacuum in the market, this OKCupid subset acts the part of Lothario by posting fedora selfies with captions like “as a side note . . . I <em>do</em> own a toy collection to use on another for their delight.” This is the worst kind of man—fronting, opportunistic. The kind of man who picks you up at a funeral. Little do they realize: the funeral is their own.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>Is the young woman in a fedora like princess Fédora, unhappy in love and yet naively hopeful for its future, seeking revenge—or is she like Lindsay, wearing a hat for confusion, fun, disguise, experiment? Is she drawn to the miscreant on OKCupid and incapable of seeing the truly loyal man whose principles keep him from rakishily, untowardly, taking what he wants for his own—or is she just trying on girls for a while? The woman in a hat does waste time on a detective game, in her Private Investigator outfit, hunting revenge for some past hurt and applying her interpretive skills to the wrong text. There is something tragic about her, and certainly about Lindsay. Stuck in the sun-in past of her child-star potential, when she was promised everything and it was all in front of her, she is an amnesiac, still paying old dues—going on dates, getting fired from bad movies. Lindsay still wears hats, but has gone on to date men. Men much worse for her than Samantha.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n \n<div>\n\n<div>\n\n<span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:#b82500\"><a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/products/print-and-digital-subscription\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Subscribe</span></a> to <i>n+1</i>.</span>\n\n</span></div>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/\">Purchase print issue »</a></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=DZncgnxp5C0:oea2a6a4Oss:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=DZncgnxp5C0:oea2a6a4Oss:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nplusonemag_main/~4/DZncgnxp5C0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div></div>"
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"title" : "The madness of crowds: Thatcher’s funeral",
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"content" : "<p>At the time of Diana Spencer’s funeral in 1997, I remember writing this: “When the corpse of a 36-year-old woman is dragged around town on a cart you have to acknowledge something strange is going on . . .” My concern was to consider the death-drag as an example of how London acted as a stage set upon which collective fantasies of intimacy with power were being played out. Sixteen years on, the sentence requires only minor adaptation to establish the necessary degree of anthropological estrangement from the funeral of Margaret Thatcher.</p>\n<p>With Spencer’s funeral, the cortège travelled in a complete revolution – Kensington Palace to Westminster Abbey, via Trafalgar Square, before heading north for her island interment at Althorp. This death-drag allowed for her corpse symbolically to visit sites of pleasure (the Royal Parks) and power (the Palace of Westminster), while its circular form symbolised her feminine mystique. With Thatcher the death-drag was linear – even phallic – a straightforward spear-chuck from the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the bowels of parliament to St Paul’s.</p>\n<p>Thus Thatcher’s corpse took the journey made by living English monarchs when, upon accession, they were required to meet with the aldermen of the City of London and renew its charter. It was decanted into St Clement Danes, before being hauled on by a fresh team of warriors. I say “warriors” advisedly: the key thing about Thatcher’s death-drag was that while it connected temporal power (parliament), with Mammon (the City), and this connection was sanctified by men wearing dresses (the high priests), the set-dressing projected an image of a fallen warrior queen (think Boudicca). Thatcher was said to have sanctioned this route, which allowed her body to draw sustenance for the afterlife from the bronze imago of Churchill and the stone one of Nelson. The crowds who turned out to line the route of the death-drag were – compared with those who witnessed the Spencer charade – sparse. But in both cases the numbers were far lower than the intense pre-mediatisation of the event would’ve led one to expect. In part this has to be a function of the positive feedback loop embodied in mass behaviour: a crowd increasingly stays away the more it is told that greater numbers are anticipated. But the failure of people to turn up for Thatcher’s funeral also betokens – or so I like to think – a certain credulousness about the event itself. Intuitively, people grasped that Thatcher’s interment had very little to do with Thatcher or her “legacy”, and everything to do with the parlous state of representative democracy.</p>\n<p>Those who did line the route and who applauded – and even cheered – the removal of the boxed corpse from the Temple of the Sky God (an astonishingly infra dig performance for such ardent Churchillians, many of whom, surely, would’ve been aware of the universal hush that attended his death-drag), were as deluded as those who turned their backs on the procession. Their madness was to take the spectacle at face value; in Freudian terms, they saw only its manifest content and were blind to its latent meaning. I would go further – but then I always do – Thatcherites and anti-Thatcherites were co-opted into a fantasy of historical agency, in which their support or lack of it was integral to the sanctifying of the state’s monopoly on violence.</p>\n<p>Thatcher’s mystique – contra that of Diana – rested entirely on her deployment, when in office, of internal repression – directed against NUM picket lines, the IRA, poll tax rioters etc – and external violence – primarily enacted in the form of the murders of 323 Argentine sailors (mostly young conscripts). The military honours accorded Thatcher were the recognition by the current holders of the monopoly – the coalition government – of her perceived effectiveness in maintaining this, and their ardent desire that the crowd should see them, by association, as similarly effective monopolists. All so-called opposition MPs who colluded in the death-drag were complicit in this mass-hypnosis.</p>\n<p>The truth is, of course, that Thatcher died a long time ago. She died when she left office. Then, when the Alzheimer’s began to cobweb her synapses, she died again. This triple-death of Thatcher underscores the dialectic that now achieves a new synthesis. The death-drag passed off without too much trouble, overseen by men (and the odd woman) armed with fully automatic rifles capable of firing 600 rounds a minute.</p>"
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"content" : "<h1><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>THE BIRTH OF THE OAU </b></span></h1>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>By CAMERON DUODU</b></span></h1>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>To us in Ghana, the conference that was held in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to give birth to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was as exciting as an international football match.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Lined up on one side of the “pitch” was a group of African states known as the ‘Monrovia Group’. Most of it members were drawn from an earlier group called the ‘Brazzaville Group’ formed in 1960 by mainly French-speaking countries. (Initially, the group was known as the “Afro-Malagasy Union”) </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>The countries in this ‘Brazzaville Group were Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’lvoire, Dahomey (Benin), Gabon, Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Madagascar, Mauritania, Niger, the Central African Republic, Senegal and Chad. Later, the Group was expanded to include Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Togo, Tunisia and Congo (Kinshasa). In “journalistic shorthand”, especially in the Western media, they were usually dubbed as “conservative” or “pro-west”.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>On the other side of the pitch were the “Casablanca Group”, This Casablanca Group emerged in 1961 and comprised seven countries: Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mali, and Morocco. They were regarde4dv as “radical” or at the very least, </b></span><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>adherents of positive neutralism. </b></span><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>But this begged many questions. To take but one example: Morocco’s government was a feudal monarchy. How could it be described as “radical”? Again, Morocco was a close ally of France, and to some extent, the US (the Voice of America had installed a powerful radio transmitter in Tangier to broadcast American propaganda to Africa and the Middle East!) Yet, because it belonged to the Casablanca Group — indeed, the Group was named after a Moroccan city — Morocco was somehow linked with “anti-Western” sentiment in Africa. So much for the ‘omniscience’ of journalists, especially Western ones.</b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>The greatest advocate of African unity at the time was Ghana’s President, Dr Kwame Nkrumah. He possessed enough analytical powers to realise that there were too many contradictions in the groupings that existed in Africa, especially the Casablancsa Group, to which Ghana belonged. But he could not isolate Ghana altogether from both of them. He was, however, tremendously disheartened by the existence of the two Groups, which only served to advertise the divided nature of Africa and undermined Africa’s voice at international forums, such as the United Nations. </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b> President Sekou Toure of Guinea (a member of the Casablanca Group) was also unhappy with the political division prevalent in Africa, and he linked up with Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia to try and organise a conference of the foreign ministers of the two Groups, preparatory to a summit of their heads state. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>When Dr Nkrumah heard of this, he was irritated that his former ally, Sekou Toure, seemed to be tying to steal Nkrumah’s thunder as the unacknowledged ‘father of African unity.’ Wasn’t it Nkrumah who saved Guinea from collapse when it declared itself independent after voting “Non” in the referendum organised by France in 1958 and the French left Guniea precipitately, leaving the country penniless? Hadn’t Nkrumah come to the sauid of Guinea with a “loan” (a grant, actually) of £10 million — about $200 million nin today’s money)? Hadn’t Ghana and Guinea formed a ‘Union’, to which Mali had later acceded? Hadn’t Nkrumahalso given Mali £5m to help in its development? </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Now Sekou Toure was ‘organising ‘African unity’ behind </b></span><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Nkrumah’s back? No way! So Nkrumah set his own secret diplomatic moves in motion to get the Monrovia and Casablanca Groups to merge and form a common organisation. He dispatched one of his most trusted aides, Kwesi Armah (better known as Ghana’s High Commissioner in London), to Liberia to see President William Tubman, who was widely respected as one of the ‘old wise men’ of Africa. Tubman had won this respect despite his country’s extremely close ties to America. (Nkrumah respected Tubman greatly: Liberia was the first country Nkrumah visited shortly after Ghana became independent in 1957. Tubman, in fact, played a prominent role, behind the scenes, in helping Nkrumah to organise a “Conference of Independent African States” in Accra in April 1958 — the first Conference of its kind ever to be held in Africa. It was attended by Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia.)</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Nkrumah’s message spurred Tubman to convince his fellow members of the Monrovia Group that the pressing issues facing the world and Africa – disarmament, the Cold War, non-alignment, economic co-operation with each other and with other nations, and, above all, how to safeguard the independence recently won by African and Asian nations – could best be addressed in unison. After all, there was the Organisation of American States (OAS) which united North and South America; the Middle East had its Arab League; the Western Powers were bound together in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO); while the Soviet Bloc had its Warsaw Pact. Why should Africa not emulate them by forming an organisation that spoke with one voice? To his credit, Tubman was able to get the Foreign Ministers of both Groups to meet at Sanniquelle in Liberia, to express an interest in coming together in a common continental organisation.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>But even as Nkrumah was trying to sort out the diplomatic challenges he saw in Africa, a new development occurred close to home that was disastrous in the message it conveyed to the rest of Africa. On 13 January 1963, one of Nkrumah’s bêtes noires in Africa, the President of neighbouring Togo, Mr Sylvanus Olympio, was assassinated in a coup and his Government overthrown. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Many ‘political observers’ and journalists writing about Africa believed that Nkrumah was ‘behind’ this coup. This was because antagonism had existed between Nkrumah and Olympio as far back as the early 1950s, when the Gold Coast was about to achieve its independence and become Ghana. Part of the Gold Coast – Trans/Volta Togoland — had once been part of Togo, which was then a German colony. But after the defeat of Germany in World War One (1914-18), Togo was divided into two by the League of Nations (the World Organisation that was later to be replaced by the United Nations). One part was given to France to administer as a separate colony under a League of Nations “mandate”, while the other part was given to Britain to administer under the same “mandate” conditions. But typically, the British did not accept the simple method of administering Trans/Volta Togoland as a separate territory (as the French had done), but instead, chose the complex method of attaching Trans/Volta to its colony next door, the Gold Coast. The British didn’t, of course, bother to ask the inhabitants of the two territories that were to be brought together in a ‘shotgun’ marriage, what their own views of the British plan were.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Had the British asked, they would no doubt have been told that the plan was a diabolical one. For it would segregate forcibly behind separate borders, ethnic groups that had traditionally lived as single entities before the European colonisers came. The Ewe people in particular, were deeply resentful of this division that was imposed on them, which separated many families from one another and thus placed tremendous social hardships on them. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Fast-forward to the mid-1950s. The British are now busy preparing their “model colony” in West Africa, the Gold Coast, for independence. But the question of Trans/Volta Togoland has reared its head. What is to be done with it? The ‘trusteeship’ arrangement with the United Nations that had replaced the League of Nations ‘mandate’ (after Word War Two) made it obligatory to ascertain the wishes of the people of any ‘trust territory’ before a change could be effected in the status of the territory. The Gold Coast was to become the independent nation of Ghana. What was to become of the Trans/Volta section of the Gold Coast? Was it to be allowed to achieve independence with the Gold Coast, or to secede and unite, instead, with the territory of which it had once formed part — ‘French Togoland’?</b></span></p>\n<p>‘<span style=\"font-size:x-large\">T<strong>he politicians who ruled in the Gold Coast, led by Dr Kwame Nkrumah (whose undeclared ‘deputy’ was a prominent Ewe, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah) wanted Trans/Volta to stay with the Gold Coast and become part of Ghana. But Ewe politicians in French Togoland and their Ewe allies in the Gold Coast, wanted “<em>Ablode”</em> : that is the unification of Trans/Volta Togoland with French Togoland. That, they said, was the only just thing to do, as it would bring together again, the ethnic groups that had been forcibly separated from their kith and kin.</strong></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>The United Nations decided to hold a ‘plebiscite’ in 1956 to allow the people of both parts of Togoland to decide on their own future. In the plebiscite, however, the people of Trans/Volta Togoland decided that they wanted to stay as part of Ghana. Sylvanus Olympio and his allies in Ghana were enraged. They never accepted that decision, and when Togo, in it s turn, became independent in 1960, it became a haven for opposition politicians from Ghana who had fled from Nkrumah’s Ghana. Nkrumah returned the favour and Togolese opponents of Olympio were equally welcomed in Ghana. Indeed, on the day of the coup in Togo, Radio Ghana made the mystifying announcement stating that a man called Antoine Meachi was leaving Accra for Togo! The clear implication was that Meachi would become one of the leaders of the new Togolese Government, or probably, even its leader.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b> In fact, the architects of the coup entrusted the presidency of Togo to Meachi for a brief period, but the French, upon whom the Togolese ex-soldiers led by Emmanuel Bodjollé and Gnassingbe Eyadema (who had overthrown Olympio, were depending for money) got Meachi replaced with their own candidate, Mr Nicholas Grunitzky.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Of course, the Togolese affair played into the hands of all those who suspected Nkrumah of seeking to dominate the African scene by subverting the regimes of other African states, especially, his immediate neighbours. So his overtures to other African states in relation to African unity were received with a pinch of salt. However, Emperor Haile Selassie and President Tubman, among others, deduced that even if Nkrumah harboured ambitions to replace some African leaders with his own henchmen, Nkrumah would be much easier to control if he was inside the same organisational “tent” with them, than if he was left outside in isolation, to “piss into the tent”.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>With the psychological preparation done at the Sanniquelle Conference, a series of followup meetings were held to harmonise views on how to proceed. It was agreed that the foreign ministers of Africa should meet in Addis Ababa in May 1963 to prepare an agenda for an African summit conference at the same venue immediately afterwards. Despite the well-known disagreement over whether a continental government should be formed immediately or step-by-step, agreement was reached on a Charter which set out the articles of a body to be known as the Organisation of African unity (OA). The Charter was signed on 25 May 1963. That date has become known as “Africa Day” </b></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>If course, the Charter did not meet everyone’s expectations, but was adopted as a document that would be improved by future generations. And indeed, the organisation that was formed in 1963, keeps changing. Several new Articles — and organisational bodies — have been added to those that were denominated in the original Charter and the organisation itself has undergone a transformation in name, It is now called the ‘African Union’. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>It is left to generations of Africans yet unborn to scrutinise it and reshape it until it comes as close as possible to meeting the aspirations of the African people as a whole. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>For Africans do deserve to be able, like, say, their European counterparts, to come and go across the continent without visas; to work where they like, within their continent; and expect to be treated as if they were “home” – despite being far away, geographically speaking, from the territorial limits into which they were originally born. Africans also want to be able to trade with one another without paying customs duty on the goods they export or import; to be able to buy and sell goods everywhere in Africa without needing to change currrency. </b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Those were the dreams of our fathers. And it must be the goal of all of us to ensure that the dreams become a reality. In our lifetime.</b></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcameronduodu.com%2Funcategorized%2Fthe-birth-of-the-oau&title=THE%20BIRTH%20OF%20THE%20OAU\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"content" : "<br>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\">\n<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OOcbtaKbvYw/UYbTvSieCDI/AAAAAAAAJZE/41jjFIrWG_4/s1600/four+campfires.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"240\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OOcbtaKbvYw/UYbTvSieCDI/AAAAAAAAJZE/41jjFIrWG_4/s400/four+campfires.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><br></span></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">There's an\nold saying about your children keeping you young, and for the past week, I've\nseen the wisdom of that adage. My children love comics and frequently send me\nlinks to interesting stories about superhero movies or TED talks. One TED talk\nthat caught my attention was <a href=\"http://www.ted.com/talks/scott_mccloud_on_comics.html\"><span style=\"color:black\">Scott</span><span style=\"color:black\"> McCloud</span><span style=\"color:black\"> on Comics.</span></a></span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">In his TED\ntalk, McCloud developed a theory about comics and artists based on Jung's theory\nof the four basic functions of the psyche: <b><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_type\"><span style=\"color:black\">sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling.</span></a></b></span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:67.5pt\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">According\nto Jung, the psyche is an apparatus for adaptation and orientation, and\nconsists of a number of different psychic functions. Among these he distinguishes\nfour basic functions:</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Sensation—perception\nby means of the sense organs</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Intuition—perceiving\nin unconscious way or perception of unconscious contents</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Thinking—function\nof intellectual cognition; the forming of logical conclusions</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Feeling—function\nof subjective estimation</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">From these\nfour types, McCloud has extrapolated four types of artists, <b>Classicists, Animists, Formalists, and Iconoclasts,</b>\nwhich he divided into four quadrants representing different attitudes toward\nbeauty and truth; life and art; content and style; tradition and revolution.</span></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><br></span></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><a href=\"http://thinkinggrounds.blogspot.com/2010/07/arts-four-campfires.html\"><span style=\"color:black\">Thinking Ground has a remarkable summary:</span></a></span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\n<b>Classicists</b> admire craftsmanship and\nmastery of the art form. Their goals include creating lasting works of art\nwhich adhere to traditional aesthetic principles. Perfection is impossible, but\nthat doesn't mean they can't try for it. According to McCloud, their catch-word\nis <b>beauty,</b> and they are an extension\nof Jung's<b> sensation</b> archetype.</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\n<b>Animists </b>are interested in <b>content.</b> They aim for the clearest\npresentation of their story or ideas. To some extent the medium must always\ninterfere with the message, but the animist's focus on the content means they\ntry to make the form as transparent as they possibly can. Their catch-word is\ncontent, and McCloud considers them an extension of Jung's <b>intuition </b>archetype.</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\n<b>Formalists </b>are fascinated with their\nchosen medium's form. They create their art to explore its boundaries and\ncontours, to learn what it can be capable of and how it works internally. Their\nworks of art incorporate experiments, and they often double as analytical\ncritics. Their catch-word is <b>form, </b>and\nin McCloud's scheme they correspond to Jung's <b>thinking</b> archetype.</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\n<b>Iconoclasts</b> value truth and\nexperience in art. To them art must be authentic, must show life as it is. They\ntake aim at artistic conventions that gloss over the imperfections and\ndisappointments at life. Artists who speak of \"honesty\" or \"rawness\"\nare voicing iconoclastic ideas. Their catch-word is <b>truth,</b> and they are Jung's <b>feeling</b>\narchetype.</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><a href=\"http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2009/02/scott-mcclouds-unifying-quadrants.html\"><span style=\"color:black\">As Jon Aquino states</span></a>, \"playing\naround with this, it's interesting to deduce that\":</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Tradition\n= Sensation + Intuition</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Revolution\n= Thinking + Feeling</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Art\n= Sensation + Thinking</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Life\n= Intuition + Feeling</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Revolution\n+ Art = Form</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Tradition\n+ Life = Content</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Art\n+ Tradition = Beauty</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Life\n+ Revolution = Truth</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><a href=\"http://tbgloops.blogspot.com/2008/01/scott-mccloud-observation.html\"><span style=\"color:black\">As Mr. Trombley notes</span></a>:\n\"Each of these have specific reservations about the mediocre works of\nother three:</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">1.\nThe <b>Classicist </b>accuses the animist\nof simplicity, the formalist of meaninglessness, and the iconoclast of ugliness</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">2.\nThe <b>Animist </b>accuses the classicist\nof pointless overdrawing, the formalist of unnecessary density, and the\niconoclast of pretentiousness</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">3.\nThe <b>Formalist</b> accuses the classicist\nof artistic conservatism, the animist of pointlessness, and the iconoclast of\nself-absorption</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">4.\nThe <b>Iconoclast </b>accuses the\nclassicist of soullessness, the animist of dullness, and the formalist of\nmeaningless abstraction</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/aug/26/thetribesofart\"><span style=\"color:black\">Damien G Walter</span></a> continues\nwith his observations:</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Animists </span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">are the first artists, the shamen\ndancing around the tribal fire who drag raw emotion from their soul and give it\nto the audience. They are the instinctual artists, concerned above all with\ncontent. </span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Classicists </span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">worship at the altar of beauty, and\nyearn to create art that achieves greatness. They believe in objective\nstandards of good and bad, and establish the canon of great artists who embody\nthose ideals. </span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Iconoclasts</span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"> are either the first against the\nwall when the revolution comes, or at the front leading the charge. They use\nart as a means of personal and political expression, and when asked will say\nthat they value truth over all else. </span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Formalists </span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">love talking about art almost as\nmuch as they enjoy creating it. They are the experimenters of any given art,\nobsessing about details of style and technique in their own work and the work\nof others. </span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\nreal fun begins when you start to look at synergies and conflicts that exist\nbetween the tribes. Between the Classicists and Animists is the shared belief\nthat tradition is important, a belief which both the Formalists and Iconoclasts\ngive the finger to in favour of revolution and change. However, the Formalists\nand Classicists both believe first and foremost in the value of art, whereas\nAnimists and Iconoclasts both make art secondary to life.</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">These\nmight seem fairly arbitrary distinctions, until you relate them to those\nunending arguments in the arts, which start to look like ongoing territorial\nsquabbles between competing tribes. What is the age-old debate between truth\nand beauty, if not a fight between the Classicists and the Iconoclasts? Who is\nmore passionate about style v content than Formalists and Animists?</span></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<br></div>\n<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">But\nevery tribe has weaknesses to balance their strengths. For all their ability to\nmove an audience, Animists are often the most colloquial and narrow-minded\nartists. Classicists might know what is great, but in constantly repeating it\ncan easily become boring. While style-conscious Formalists can be so concerned\nwith experimentation that their creations lack heart and soul. And the\nIconoclasts, determined to change the world, risk making art consumed by\nnegativity and anger.</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">From\nMcCloud's formulations, I've realized that many Anglophone Caribbean poets fall\ninto these quadrants:</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Classicists:</span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"> John Figueroa, Louis Simpson, Ralph\nThompson</span></div>\n<div>\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Animists:</span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\"> Jean Binta Breeze, Mutabaruka,\nMalachi Smith, Linton Kwesi Johnson</span></div>\n<div>\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Formalists</span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">: Derek Walcott, Edward Baugh,\nMervyn Morris, Dennis Scott</span></div>\n<div>\n<b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Iconoclasts</span></b><span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">: Kamau Brathwaite, Lorna Goodison,\nTony McNeill</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">One of the\nstartling revelations of this typology is that both Walcott and Brathwaite are\nrevolutionaries, but in different ways. Walcott, \"the mulatto of\nstyle\" has shown a preference for art over the raw details of life. And as\nfar as race and ethnicity are concerned, it wasn't that Walcott didn't think\nthat he was black, he simply didn't have a form to express the horrors of the\nAtlantic Holocaust. It took him over thirty years to realize a form that could encompass\nhis vision. The result was his magnificent work, <i>Omeros.</i></span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">The\nclassification also helped me to see why many formalists are not viewed as\n\"authentic\" Caribbean writers. Caribbean literature and publishing is\ndominated by the <b>Animists</b>. In the\npopular mind, dub poetry and the \"raw\" stories of Caribbean life\n(content over form; truth over beauty) have become the <i>de facto</i> definitions of Caribbean literature.</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">Finally,\nI've also come to appreciate the catholic tastes of Jeremy Poynting and Peepal\nTree Press, who have been publishing writers from all four tribes--an\nachievement that not many publishers, main stream and independent have been\nable to accomplish.</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<span style=\"font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"\">It will be\ninteresting to see how far down the rabbit hole I will be heading with these\nnew insights. But then, again, what did you expect from a <a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-magpies-wisdom.html\"><span style=\"color:black\">magpie</span></a>?</span></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div>\n<br></div>\n<div><br>\n<br>\n<center>\"Set the captives free...\"\n<br>\n<br>\n<b> Geoffrey Philp, author of <a href=\"http://amzn.to/jffTOL\">Marcus and the Amazons</a></b>\n<br>\nContact: geoffreyphilp101 [at] gmail.com\n\n\n<a href=\"http://www.linkwithin.com/\"><img src=\"http://www.linkwithin.com/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts.\" style=\"border:0\"></a>\n<br>\n<br>\n</center></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?i=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:m_dHZg_EWUA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=m_dHZg_EWUA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:KBC2T5LBHXo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=KBC2T5LBHXo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=uucT6w76O2c:ihF25GtSeDI:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/EVfd/~4/uucT6w76O2c\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Building the BRCK: A backup generator for the internet",
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"content" : "<p>Why do we rely on equipment made for the Berlin, Orlando and Tokyo when the conditions we have in Nairobi, Lagos or New Delhi are completely different?</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-backup-generator-for-the-internet\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/brck-in-car-in-town-600x450.jpg\" alt=\"The BRCK is Africa's answer to internet connectivity\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></a></p>\n<p>Today we’re announcing the <a href=\"http://brck.com\">BRCK</a>: The easiest, most reliable way to connect to the internet, anywhere in the world, even when you don’t have electricity. </p>\n<p><strong>We have a <a href=\"http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1776324009/brck-your-backup-generator-for-the-internet\">BRCK Kickstarter</a> going, where we’re asking for your on taking it from prototype to production.</strong></p>\n<p>The BRCK is a simple, and it came from us asking:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“How would we design a redundant internet device for Africa?”</p></blockquote>\n<p>It would need to do the following:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>A router for 20 people</li>\n<li>With 8+ hours of battery for when the power goes out</li>\n<li>That fails over to 3g when the Internet goes out</li>\n<li>That travels, so you become a mobile hotspot</li>\n<li>With cloud-based backend that supports every country</li>\n<li>On device with both a software and hardware API</li>\n</ul>\n<p>As a web company, being connected to the internet when you need it is a big deal, small outages cause lag that ripple through the organization. Even in Nairobi with it’s 4 undersea cables and growing tech scene, we still have power and connectivity problems. Could we do something to scratch this itch of ours that would help others too?</p>\n<p>Since we travel a lot, we decided that it needed to work in every country. The BRCK had to work when the power was off for a full day (8 hours), had to fail over to 3g internet when the ethernet didn’t work, it also had to work in any country we were in, by just changing the SIM card. At the same time we wanted it to be accessible for both software and hardware extensions by others.</p>\n<p>Having a BRCK cloud means that you can login to your device from anywhere in the world, load apps and services on to it, such as a VPN, Dropbox or other services and also control sensors and other devices connected to the hardware. <strong>We think that the BRCK model of both a software and hardware API represents the glue that will make the internet of things work.</strong></p>\n<p>As Ushahidi we’ve always used simple technology to create tools and platforms that work for us in Africa, and which is also useful globally. This holds true for the BRCK too. We’re redesigning technology that’s been around for years, but making it work for our needs in Kenya. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BRCK-header.png\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BRCK-header-600x228.png\" alt=\"BRCK-header\" width=\"600\" height=\"228\"></a></p>\n<h3>Some History</h3>\n<p>A year ago I jumped on a plane from South Africa back to Kenya without my book and my phone battery almost dead. Funny enough, these happenstances which leave me bored and with nothing to do but think have lead to my most interesting ideas (<em>I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere…</em>). I subsequently broke out my notebook and started sketching out what I thought would be a fun hardware side-project for Ushahidi’s core team that would give us something to work on, when we were too fatigued with the normal coding/work.</p>\n<p>We live in possibly the most interesting time for technology in history, where we’ve created this incredible thing called the internet, connecting us globally while at the same time getting to the point where the people who can code software can also “do” hardware. An era where analog and digital are democratized and the making of both attainable by anyone with a computer.</p>\n<p>Making things is hard. It’s harder in Africa. I can’t overnight an order of processors, boards or 3d printing filament here. There aren’t an over abundance of local fabrication facilities or tools, and the milling machine you find might be in disrepair and take you two days to calibrate. We’ve got our work cut out to create the right spaces for prototyping and small-scale fabrication on the continent. </p>\n<p>We actually started with Jon Shuler doing a lot of the early builds being done by him at his home in California. I’d bring these builds back to Brian Muita and team in Kenya where he was hacking on the firmware to make the system work. All the while hoping that air travel security would let me through with what to all appearances looked like a remote detonation device… </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BRCKv-fablab-nairobi.jpg\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/BRCKv-fablab-nairobi-600x447.jpg\" alt=\"The BRCK being built at the University of Nairobi FabLab\" width=\"600\" height=\"447\"></a></p>\n<p>By prototype version 5 we were in Nairobi with a bunch of plastic, using the University of Nairobi’s <a href=\"http://fablab.uonbi.or.ke/\">FabLab</a> to mill the body. There was a fair bit of repair and adjustment needed on the machines to make it work. Like most things in Africa, you either fix what you have or you don’t do it, because there isn’t another option. After a couple days we got it within close enough allowances that we could do it. It still wasn’t pretty, but we knew it would work by then. </p>\n<p>That was all just the hardware bit. Concurrently we wireframed the software side, ensuring that this device was much more useful than just a MiFi on steroids. The BRCK Cloud falls directly in Ushahidi’s software development wheelhouse, so we set about creating a simple responsive interface that would work on both phones and big screens. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mobile-brck5.png\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/mobile-brck5-297x600.png\" alt=\"BRCK setup - mobile web\" width=\"200\"></a></p>\n<p>The software side does three things:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <strong>simple setup</strong> interface with only 3 form fields. Router setup is scary and hard, so we’re trying to take the pain out of it.\n</li>\n<li>A <strong>dashboard</strong>, so you can see if your BRCK is running on backup or primary power, how fast your current internet connection is, your provider, and how all of these have done over the last hour, day, week and month.\n</li>\n<li>A <strong>marketplace</strong> for free apps and services, as well as the place for others to offer up their own creations to the rest of the BRCK users around the world.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>While having a device that was remotely programmable and that could run its own apps and service is important, we realized this was only half of the equation. We would need to create a similar interface for hardware creators and users. This means we needed the device to have hardware ports for everything to connect to, from temperature sensors to Raspberry Pi’s (<em>as an aside, I want to get a Raspberry Pi hooked into the BRCK, thereby making a small, working server</em>). We also decided to put special hex nuts at the top that would allow you to pop the top and get into the guts easily to do your own re-jigging.</p>\n<p>The plan for the future is that you’ll be able to stack components under the BRCK like Legos, so that if you need an additional battery pack, a temperature sensor, solar charger, or other product you could do so with ease. </p>\n<p>For a full rundown of the all that the BRCK can do, check out the Kickstarter. If you want to get into the real details, see the <a href=\"http://brck.com/specs\">spec sheet</a>.</p>\n<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>\n<p>This week I’m in Berlin to speak at re:publica – and as this post goes live I’m finalizing my talk. I find myself driven to tell the story of Africa’s great potential and growth, tempered by my experience building companies, communities and products here. I see the other entrepreneurs, hungry to create new products and driven by the same powers that are seen in their European and American counterparts. Here, it’s a harder road to hoe in many ways, it takes more grit, more determination and more belief in a future that is not yet realized to do it. </p>\n<p>I look at the success we’ve had as Ushahidi and what this new hardware product means to us, and I’m humbled that we have the luxury to self-fund the R&D to get it to this stage, while so many my peers are struggling to take great concepts to even the prototype stage. The opportunities afforded us by our international awareness, the advantage of attracting and hand-picking the top talent that come through the iHub, the ability to have funds that we can risk on a half-baked original idea, a Board who believes in us and trusts our decisions – these are what I’m grateful for.</p>\n<p>For this same reason, we’re committed to making a difference for our friends and peers in Nairobi. We’re going to build a makerspace through the iHub that allows others to start from a better position. A place that will give hardware hackers and entrepreneurs a chance to get trained on tools and machines, meet their peers and take risks on their own crazy half-baked hardware ideas. We’re calling this Gearbox. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/gearbox2.jpg\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/gearbox2-600x187.jpg\" alt=\"Gearbox - an iHub Nairobi initiative for makers\" width=\"600\" height=\"187\"></a></p>\n<p>We’re looking for corporate, academic and other partners right now to make it a reality. I’ll write about it more at another time (as this post is already too long). 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"title" : "The Secret of the Weak Recovery: We Had a F***ing Housing Bubble",
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"content" : "<p>The problem with economics is not that it's too complicated; the problem is that it's too damn simple. This problem is amply demonstrated by all the heroic efforts made by economists to explain the weakness of the current recovery.</p>\n<p>We've had economists tell us that the problem is that we are now a <a href=\"http://behl.berkeley.edu/files/2013/02/BEHLWP2013-04_olneypacitti_2-26-13.pdf\">service sector economy</a> rather than a manufacturing economy. The story is that inventory fluctuations explain much of the cycle. Since we don't inventory services, we will have a slower bounceback in terms of production and employment. (There is a simple problem, since we don't inventory services, the downturn should also be less severe in a service dominated economy. How does this story fit with the worst downturn since the Great Depression?)</p>\n<p>We've also been told that <a href=\"http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/amir.sufi/MianRaoSufi_EconomicSlump_Nov2011.pdf\">the problem is underwater homeowners</a> who can't spend like the good old days because they are underwater in their mortgages. The problem with this one is that we <em>only</em> have around 10 million underwater homeowners, the vast majority of whom have relatively modest incomes. The emphasis is on \"only\" because, while 10 million is a lot of people to be underwater, it is not a lot of people to move the economy.</p>\n<p>The median income for homeowners is $70,000. (Median is probably appropriate here rather than average, since it is unlikely that many wealthy people are underwater.) Suppose that being above water would increase consumption by each of these homeowners by $5,000 a year. This is a huge jump in consumption for people with income of $70k. (Do we think these homeowners are saving an average of $5,000 a year now?) This would lead to an increase in annual consumption of $50 billion a year or less than 0.3 percent of GDP. This would be a nice boost to output, but it would not qualitatively change the nature of the recovery.</p>\n\n<p>Today we have Robert Samuelson telling us that <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/employers-lack-confidence-not-skilled-labor/2013/05/05/757340c8-b411-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html?wprss=rss_opinions\">the reason employers are not hiring is uncertainty</a>:</p>\n<p>\"Businesses have become more risk-averse. They’re more reluctant to hire. They’ve raised standards. For many reasons, they’ve become more demanding and discriminating. These reasons could include (a) doubts about the recovery; (b) government policies raising labor costs (example: the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandates); (c) unwillingness to pay for training; and (d) fear of squeezed profits.\"</p>\n<p>Hmmm, they're worried about squeezed profits when the profit share of income is at its highest level in more than 60 years? The story of the Affordable Care Act raising costs could at best only explain the behavior of a small group of businesses (firms with close to 50 employees who do not currently provide health care insurance).</p>\n<p>But there is a simple way to test the idea that firms would otherwise be hiring but are deterred due to uncertainty about the future: look at the length of workweeks. The logic is simple; increasing hours per worker and hiring more workers are alternative ways to meeting increased demand for labor. Adding work hours involves none of the commitments that apply to hiring addtional workers. If uncertainty, as opposed to lack of demand, is keeping businesses from hiring, then we should be seeing a big increase in the length of the average workweek.</p>\n<p>We don't. The length of the average workweek fell by 0.2 hours to 34.4 hours in April. This compares to an average of more than 34.5 hours in the 2006 and 2007. In short there is no evidence that employers are seeing the sort of demand that would justify increasing the size of the workforce but are being kept from doing so because of the concerns raised by Samuelson.</p>\n<p>If none of these stories, or any of the others that economists develop to stay employed, explain the length of the downturn, what does? Well, it's pretty damn simple, we had a housing bubble driving the economy before the collapse and there is nothing to fill the gap created. The bubble led residential construction to soar to more than 6.0 percent of GDP at the peak of the boom in 2005. It is now a bit over 2 percent of GDP implying a loss in annual demand of more than $600 billion. The $8 trillion in housing wealth created by the bubble led the saving rate to fall to almost zero due to the housing wealth effect (people increase annual spending by 5-7 cents for each dollar in housing wealth). With the saving rate hovering near 4 percent, we have lost close to $400 billion in annual consumption demand. </p>\n<p>The cumulative loss of annual demand is more than $1 trillion. What did we think would replace this demand? Investment in equipment and software is actually close to its pre-recession level measured as a share of GDP. Furthermore, this component of investment has never been a much larger share of GDP, even in the Internet bubble years. Why would anyone expect it to expand rapidly at a time when many firms still have large amounts of excess capacity? (Structure investment is depressed because there was a bubble in non-residential construction as well, leading to large amounts of excess capacity in most areas of non-residential construction.)</p>\n<p>Do we somehow think that consumers will spend at the same rate after they have lost $8 trillion in housing wealth as when they had this wealth? Why? Net exports could fill the gap, but the dollar has to fall. Net exports could fill the gap, but the dollar has to fall. (I repeated that one in case any economists are reading.) The value of the dollar is the main determinant of our trade deficit, if we want a lower deficit then we will need a sharp decline in the dollar, which has not happened.</p>\n<p>This only leaves the government sector to fill the gap with deficits, which our Serious People types have demanded that we hold down. So, based on the good old intro econo that tens of millions have been subjected to, we know that this recovery will be slow and weak. We simply lack a component of demand to fill the gap created by the housing bubble.</p>\n<p>If it seems absurd that economists can't see something this simple, readers should realize that this is a common problem. Just last Friday Robert Samuelson had a useful <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-europe-has-no-exit/2013/05/02/6bf609b8-b34e-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html\">column</a> that pointed out the huge imbalances that persist in the euro zone and pointed out that the region's crisis is far from over. While he is exactly right, the amazing part of the story is that competent economists somehow did not see these imbalances developing.</p>\n<p>As<a href=\"http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-european-central-bank-good-paying-jobs-for-people-without-skills\"> I pointed out</a>, several of the current crisis countries already had incredible trade deficits long before the crash as the world's leading economists were celebrating the "Great Moderation." </p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>Current Account Balance as a Percent of GDP</strong></p>\n<table align=\"center\" border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr><th>Country</th><th align=\"right\">2003</th><th align=\"right\">2004</th><th align=\"right\">2005</th><th align=\"right\">2006</th><th align=\"right\">2007</th><th align=\"right\">2008</th></tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Greece</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-6.533</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-5.785</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-7.637</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-11.388</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-14.609</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-14.922</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Portugal</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-6.433</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-8.327</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-10.323</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-10.685</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-10.102</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-12.638</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Spain</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-3.508</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-5.248</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-7.353</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-8.961</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-9.995</td>\n<td align=\"right\">-9.623</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n<p> Source: <a href=\"http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=57&pr.y=17&sy=2003&ey=2008&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=182%2C174%2C184&s=BCA_NGDPD&grp=0&a=\">International Monetary Fund</a>.</p>\n<p>How did the folks at the European Central Bank think that these deficits would fall to a sustainable level without some sort of disastrous crisis? This one should have been simple, but the world's leading economists all missed it.</p>\n<p>I recall back in the 1990s and the last decade when both Republican and Democratic economists wanted to invest Social Security funds in the stock market. (Democrats generally wanted to invest the fund collectively rather through individual accounts.) I tried to <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEsQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fold.tcf.org%2Fpublications%2F1999%2F3%2Fpb336&ei=gYGHUaW2NbfG4AO4zYCgBA&usg=AFQjCNEFXJQxYgWF8PnBsN3Jjg3zqqpY-g&sig2=Wm2wzNn0R5L-LZ-ucMRtfA&bvm=bv.45960087,d.dmg\">point out</a> that both were assuming impossible rates of return given the fact that the stock market was at price to earnings ratios that were far higher than historic averages.</p>\n<p>When this issue was highlighted in the debate over President Bush's privatization plan (see the <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEEQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cepr.net%2Fdocuments%2Fpublications%2Fnoeconleftbehind_2004_11.pdf&ei=5oGHUd6BMsvj4AP7pIGIDw&usg=AFQjCNH6AOdoVsg8I8BnRrmax65AjTo1Rg&sig2=k_lQR1HAB8ANy8nTnQFc9g&bvm=bv.45960087,d.dmg\">No Economist Left Behind</a> test) Brad DeLong suggested that we do a paper on it for a Brookings conference. I didn't think that this simple arithmetic could warrant a Brookings paper, even though the issue was hugely important. To get it in Brad (along with Paul Krugman) added <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CEgQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fordham.edu%2Feconomics%2Fmcleod%2FBakerDeLongKrugmanBPEA2005.pdf&ei=wIKHUeqSELGx0AGLzICQAg&usg=AFQjCNGwhNtXrtb6bRhN6MQlSbajc4Er1g&sig2=F_6IijpI2hOGXXRuptCjZg&bvm=bv.45960087,d.dmg&cad=rja\">a model of optimal consumption paths</a> given a declining rate of labor force growth. While the model was fine, it had nothing to do with the basic issue that the stock market was over-valued at the time that people were thinking of investing workers' Social Security money in it. The model did add sufficient complexity so that we got the Brookings crew to take the simple argument seriously.</p>\n<p>The same story held during the housing bubble years. I had many people ask me why I didn't publish anything in journals on the bubble in the years 2002-2007 when I was writing for CEPR's website and popular publications. The reason is that it was too simple a story for any serious journal.</p>\n<p>The basic story was that house prices had diverged sharply from their long-term trend and there was no plausible story rooted in the fundamentals of the housing market that could explain this divergence. While this was certainly compelling in my view, the American Economic Review is not going to publish an article that shows house prices just keeping pace with inflation for 100 years and then suddenly rising by 70 percent in real terms from 1996-2006. It would be necessary to somehow make the story complicated to get economists to take it seriously.</p>\n<p>To my view this is the fundamental problem of economics. There is a need to find ways to make economic issues complex even when they can be explained by the simple economics that we teach in econ 101. This is not a pretty picture.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>Note:</p>\n<p>Aaron Pacitti, the co-author of the paper I referenced that attributes the slow pace of recovery to the increasing importance of the service sector, called my attention to the fact that the paper does not address the question of the severity of the downturn. The point is that given the severity of the recession, we should expect a slower recovery in an economy with a relatively larger service sector. </p>\n<p> </p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?a=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?a=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?i=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?a=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?a=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beat_the_press?i=3WrZewbP6jU:81vfWtS5Ltk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/beat_the_press/~4/3WrZewbP6jU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p></p><p><a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/apache-map-large.png\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/apache-map.png\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\"></a></p>\n<p>So, what do we have here? This is a graph of Apache projects and how they are related, by one definition of “related” in any case. Click on the image for a larger PNG version, or<a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/apache-map.svg\"> here if you would like an SVG</a>.</p>\n<p>Each labeled circle (node) in the graph represents one project at Apache. Or to be specific it represents the membership of a single Project Management Committee (PMC), the leadership committee that each Apache project has. The size of the node is proportionate to the size of the PMC. You can see that the largest PMCs are Apache Axis (56 members), Httpd (55 members), Subversion (42 members), WS (41 members) and Geronimo (also 41 members).</p>\n<p>The edges between the PMC nodes represent the ties between the PMCs as revealed by overlapping membership. So PMCs that have a larger number of members in common have a thicker line connecting them. I used the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8rensen%E2%80%93Dice_coefficient\">Sørensen–Dice coefficient</a> to express the overlap. This is a simple calculation that looks at the overlap in membership of two sets, scaled by the size of the individual sets. It varies from 0 to 1, with 0 meaning no overlap at all and 1 meaning total overlap. An example: Look at the bottom of the graph at the thick line connecting Apache Flume and Sqoop. The Flume PMC has 20 members and the Sqoop PMC has 13. They have 6 members in common, so the Dice coefficient is (2*6)/(20+13) = 0.36. The highest weight edge in the graph is that between Apache Httpd and the Apache Portable Runtime (APR), with a coefficient of 0.52.</p>\n<p>(Observant Apache participants will note that the chart is missing some PMCs. I omitted Apache Labs, Incubator and Attic since they are umbrella projects representing parts of a project lifecycle. They don’t have a specific technical orientation and the commonality in membership would not mean anything. I left out Comdev as well, for the similar reasons.)</p>\n<p>The color for each node was determined by a community-detection algorithm (modularity) which finds projects that have a high degree of interconnection. This has brought out some of the larger trends within Apache, such as the grouping of cloud-related projects, big data related ones, content management, enterprise middleware, etc. What is interesting is that this graph was created without knowing anything at all about the technology within each project. The graph is based on PMC membership data only. So individual volunteers, by their choice of what projects they work, is the motive force behind these groupings.</p>\n<p>Some other interesting facts:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The PMCs with connections to the most other PMCs are Commons (34), WS (32), DirectMemory (31), Aries (28) and Geronimo (28).</li>\n<li>If you look at the most connections to other PMCs (subtly different from the above since it is possible to have more than one member in another PMCs) the top projects are: DirectMemory, Karaf, Servicemix, BVal and Geronimo.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betweenness_centrality\">Betweeness centrality</a> looks at the importance of a node with respect to helping connect other nodes. It looks at the shortest path between all pairs of nodes, and which specific nodes are most often the ones that are passed through on these shortest paths. If we were looking at a graph of air traffic routes, the hub cities would be the ones with the highest centrality. If we were looking at how to communicate an idea, influence opinion, or to spread an infectious disease (all the same thing, really), these central nodes are ones to look at. The PMCs at Apache with the highest betweeness are: Commons, DirectMemory, WS, Httpd and Portals.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So how did I do this?</p>\n<p>The core data I got from scraping this page, which lists <a href=\"http://people.apache.org/committer-index.html\">all Apache committers</a>. I did this in Python using BeautifulSoup, building up the PMC membership in a dictionary. Then Python’s set operations made calculating the Dice coefficient a simple task:</p>\n<div>\n<pre> intersect = SetA.intersection(SetB)\n\n dice = (2.0*len(intersect)/(len(SetA)+len(SetB)))</pre>\n</div>\n<p>The script then wrote out the graph data, include node size and edge weight into a Gexf-format XML file, which I then processed using <a href=\"https://gephi.org/\">Gephi</a>. Here’s <a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/attachments/apache.gexf\">the data file I used</a> if you want to play with the data yourself.</p>\n<p>In Part II of this series, I’ll take a look at finer-grained data, at <a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/2013/05/mapping-the-asf-part-ii.html\">the social network graph of Apache Software Foundation participants at the individual level</a>.</p>\n<div>\n<p>Related posts:<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/2013/05/mapping-the-asf-part-ii.html\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Mapping the ASF, Part II\">Mapping the ASF, Part II</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/06/apache-openoffice-how-to-get-involved.html\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Apache OpenOffice: How to Get Involved\">Apache OpenOffice: How to Get Involved</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/2012/01/apache-odf-toolkit-release.html\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"First release of the Apache ODF Toolkit\">First release of the Apache ODF Toolkit</a></li>\n</ol></p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=DFRp7_Izmao:T25Jm14C8yM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~4/DFRp7_Izmao\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Upcoming is downgoing, Elm City is ongoing",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://jonudell.net/KeeneEventsSpring05/index.html\" title=\"upcoming events in Keene, NH\"><img style=\"float:right;height:200px;margin:10px\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/KeeneEventsSpring05/thumbs/Jerry%20Holland%20%7C%20Nelson%20Town%20Hall%20%7C%20March%2026.JPG\" vspace=\"6\" width=\"144\"></a></p>\n<p>\nHere’s Andy Baio’s <a href=\"http://waxy.org/2013/04/the_death_of_upcomingorg/\">farewell</a> to Upcoming, a service I’ve been involved with for a decade. In a <a href=\"http://jonudell.net/udell/2005-03-21-upcoming-events-in-keene-nh.html\">March 2005 blog post</a> I wrote about what I hoped Upcoming would become, in my town and elsewhere, and offered some suggestions to help it along. One was a request for an API which Upcoming then lacked. Andy soon responded with an API. It was one of the pillars of my Elm City project for a long while until, as Andy notes in his farewell post, it degraded and became useless.\n</p>\n<p>\nToday I pulled the plug and decoupled Upcoming from all the Elm City hubs.\n</p>\n<p>\nIn 2009 Andy and I both spoke at a conference in London. Andy was there to announce a new project that would help people crowdsource funding for creative projects. I was there to announce a project that would help people crowdsource public calendars. Now, of course, Kickstarter is a thing. The Elm City project not so much. But I’m pretty sure I’m on the right track, I’m lucky to be in a position to keep pursuing the idea, and although it’s taking longer than I ever imagined I’m making progress. Success, if it comes, won’t look like Upcoming did in its heyday, but it will be a solution to the same problem that Upcoming addressed — a problem we’ve yet to solve.\n</p>\n<p>\nThat same <a href=\"http://jonudell.net/udell/2005-03-21-upcoming-events-in-keene-nh.html\">March 2005 blog post</a> resonates with me for another reason. That was the day I walked around my town photographing event flyers on shop windows and kiosks. When I give presentations about the Elm City project I still show a montage of those images. They’re beautiful, and they’re dense with information that isn’t otherwise accessible.\n</p>\n<p>\nEvent flyers outperform web calendars, to this day, because they empower groups and organizations to be the authoritative sources for information about their public events, and to bring those events to the attention of the public. The web doesn’t meet that need yet but it can, and I’m doing my best to see that it does.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3555/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3555/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.jonudell.net&blog=109309&post=3555&subd=jonudell&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Big Data vs. Big Streaming",
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"content" : "<p>Although the shop I’m at now handles a lot of data, we don’t qualify as a big data shop. That’s because we’re running constant analyses of big feeds coming in to our system. Once we’ve handled the data, we’re done with it. Keeping it around just costs money and brings no benefit.</p>\n<p>Now, we could pour all that data into a big, open-ended datastore like Hadoop, and crunch it there. But the fact is, once we’ve analysed the data, we don’t really care about it anymore. We’ve got it characterized and encoded, and from that point forward, that’s what we really care about.</p>\n<p>So the Big Data label doesn’t suit us. Instead, we fit the model of Big Streaming.</p>\n<p>Just as there are a bunch of surprising discoveries you find with Big Data, there are a lot of surprising discoveries with Big Streaming. Some of them are:</p>\n<p><strong>Deleting Data is Hard</strong></p>\n<p>Because we don’t want to accumulate a bunch of documents the way we would in a Big Data solution, we want to receive a document, process it, then after some time get rid of it to free up the space. Big static datastores are powerful and wonderful, but they are also very expensive and slow. Extremely slow — when I was working with Hadoop a while back, a simple “hello world” map-reduce could take over a minute to run.</p>\n<p>We need data that drops into a fast datastore, we pull it out in batches for processing, we may keep it a while to refer back to in the UI, but then we want to get rid of it.</p>\n<p>We’re using Mongo. The consequence we had in our first go at it was that we had as much contention from deletes as we did from inserts — in a steady state, we were constantly deleting records from the collections as fast as we were inserting them. There was a brief and painful attempt to use ttl indexes to time the records out, but in each case the insert/delete load on the collection was so high that the ttl fell behind. At one point, a 3-day collection was holding 10 days’ worth of data, and losing ground. Ack!</p>\n<p>That led to a couple of scrambles where we had to implement a new solution in place as the flames grew — there was so much contention that any attempt to delete data just added more contention and made things worse. Fortunately, we pulled out of it each time.</p>\n<p>We could have moved to a capped collection, but because of the difficulty estimating the size of collection we’d need, we didn’t go down that path. Which is too bad, because capped collections in Mongo are completely awesome.</p>\n<p>We needed a batch delete option, and ended up settling on a scheme where we elimiate entire collections at a time, wiping away hours worth of data in a single stroke.</p>\n<p>The upshot: if you’re going Big Streaming, you need a way to wipe out a lot of data fast.</p>\n<p><strong>Inserting Data is Hard</strong></p>\n<p>The other aspect that we struggle with is just getting all the data from the different sources into the system. After a while, all that insert activity does start to create write contention.</p>\n<p>So far, we’ve been lucky with this one, and we’re still able to use a naive solution of pouring it all into a big collection. But we’re going to hit the wall on that in the next few months as our data stream grows.</p>\n<p><strong>Backing up Data is … Interesting</strong></p>\n<p>Backing up transitory data becomes an interesting problem. Even if we did push the data onto some more permanent medium, if we ever needed to restore it, it would be hugely outdated.</p>\n<p>So, instead of relying on backups, we just use replication (in our case, provided by Mongo) to make sure we always have a moving copy of the information we’re getting. We back up some of the results of the analysis, but that wouldn’t be appropriate for the transitory data that we want to get, process, then get rid of.</p>\n<p><strong>Batch Processing Works OK</strong></p>\n<p>Right now the system that I walked into uses a process of saving the data down to a datastore, then pulling it out in batches for the different processing steps. Each of the batch processes is (fortunately) designed to scale horizontally, so that each processes plays nice and does things like create pessimistic lock artifacts, and create shared batch documents. So the system is coded for the kind of distributed processing that Hadoop generalizes with map-reduce.</p>\n<p>I think, however, that in the long run that approach is going to hit a limit. My hope is that we’ll be able to shift to a sort of pipeline processing, where inputs come in through a bank of homogenous processing boxes, and then come out the other side along with any trimming, characterzing, and analysis along the way.</p>\n<p><strong>Think Write-Once</strong></p>\n<p>Just like in the Big Data world, where Write Once / Read Many is a central paradigm, that model helps in the Big Streaming world. Updates are hard, slow, and expensive. So it works out well to write temporary artifacts as read-only artifacts, then pull them out for processing, and delete them (in broad strokes) when they’re not useful any more.</p>\n<p>Particularly in Mongo, inserts are fast and can be done in batch, whereas updates specific to a document require a write lock, a lookup, and a write — even if you take advantage of Mongo’s update mechanisms to speed things up.</p>\n<p><strong>Everything is a Time Interval</strong></p>\n<p>When data like this pours in, it’s all about breaking the data into time intervals, and handling the intervals in the right way. So there’s a lot of date math involved. Also deciding what “now” means at any given moment in the processing can be tricky.</p>\n<p><strong>Latency and Capacity Rule</strong></p>\n<p>The upshot of the whole thing is that working on a Big Streaming system makes you really aware of the clock, and whether your processing is keeping pace with your inputs. The ideas of *latency* and *capacity* suddenly jump to the forefront, because that’s what determines if you can handle more, or if you’re falling behind, even more than the traditional “processing time”.</p>\n<p>It’s really fun, though. Standing in front of a firehose of data and running analysis on the data is exhilarating — when it works.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/795/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/795/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=looselyconnected.wordpress.com&blog=12380808&post=795&subd=looselyconnected&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "On Monday, July 6, 2009, two engineers from Nevada?s Gaming Control Board showed up at the Silverton Casino Lodge. The off-the-strip South Las Vegas casino is best known for its mermaid aquarium, but the GCB geek squad wasn?t there to see swimmers in bikini tops and zip-on fish tails. They?d come to examine machine 50102, a Game King video poker unit on the casino floor that had been waiting for them, taped off like a crime scene, all weekend.<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired/index/~4/NjHTSjmMay4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "In Search of the “African Middle Class”",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:559px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/antoine__tennis_instructor__club_saoti__libreville__gabon-original.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67254\"><img alt=\"The Other Africa. Image by Philippe Sibelly\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/antoine__tennis_instructor__club_saoti__libreville__gabon-original.jpg?w=549&h=365\" width=\"549\" height=\"365\"></a><p>“The Other Africa.” Image by <a href=\"http://www.sibellimages.eu/projects.htm\">Philippe Sibelly</a></p></div>\n<p>“Africa Rising” stories have become old news in English-speaking media, so much so that <a style=\"font-size:13px;line-height:19px\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/11/26/time-magazine-and-the-africa-is-rising-meme/\">Africa is a Country</a> called them a meme not long ago. But only a few have run in French news outlets, and <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2013/04/02/l-afrique-est-bien-partie_3151910_3234.html\">one such op-ed</a> [fr] recently made it to the pages of the well-respected daily newspaper <em>Le Monde</em>. The piece has a specific flavor for a couple of reasons: a condescending and prescriptive tone, also known as the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7afrique\">Françafrique</a> touch, as its title trumpeting that “Africa is on the right tracks” (<em>L’Afrique est bien partie</em>) makes clear; an emphasis on the rise of the “African middle class”, portrayed as the cornerstone of the “African economic revolution”, whose origins are to be found in “diversifying and emancipating economies”, enabling “endogenous growth” that is free of the “dependency on raw materials exports” because it is “driven by consumption”. Such a nice Cinderella story! Who would guess that a little over a decade ago Africa was mostly described as <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/2000-05-13\">“the hopeless continent”</a>?<span></span></p>\n<p><strong>Cape of Good Hope</strong></p>\n<p>This rosy picture can be traced back to the strategic briefs and equity research notes published from 2010 onwards by <a href=\"http://www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-49363\">Boston Consulting Group</a>, <a href=\"http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/economic_studies/whats_driving_africas_growth\">McKinsey</a>, <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/download/resource/main/main/idatcs/00031978:a218704b4806a5136c18f03d75a4529c.pdf\">Goldman Sachs</a> (pdf) or <a href=\"https://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-SouthAfrica/Local%20Assets/Documents/rise_and_rise.pdf\">Deloitte</a> (pdf), advertising “the new African consumer”, finally in a position to spend some cash in brand new supermarkets. In a time when growth rates of industrialized countries stutter and when the Chinese and Indian engines of the global economy are somewhat slowing down, financial analysts and investment consultants can’t get enough of the one thing that they have dismissed for so long: Africa.</p>\n<div style=\"width:546px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/glez-africarising.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67244\"><img alt=\"White man holding Global North's GDP: "You Africans, you're so lucky with your 5% growth rate..." / Black man holding Global South's GDP: "5% of... this much!" Cartoon by Glez published in Jeune Afrique\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/glez-africarising.png?w=536&h=307\" width=\"536\" height=\"307\"></a><p>White man holding Global North’s GDP: “You Africans, you’re so lucky with your 5% growth rate…” / Black man holding Global South’s GDP: “5% of… this much!” Cartoon by <a href=\"http://www.glez.org/\">Glez</a> <a href=\"http://www.jeuneafrique.com/oeil-de-glez-ARTJAWEB20130404095225.html\">published in Jeune Afrique</a></p></div>\n<p>“That’s where the flavor is,” <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21575769-strategies-putting-money-work-fast-growing-continent-hottest\">said Thabo Ncalo recently</a>, manager of the Africa Fund for Johannesburg-based Stanlib, “the frontier markets,” like Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria or Rwanda. Close your eyes and let your imagination do the rest: hundreds of millions of purses loosening their strings…</p>\n<p>Of course it’s difficult to sell such a vision if “Africa” remains associated with deadly conflicts, food crises and looming poverty. Thus baiting scaredy-cat investors and lobbying the media with the “African middle class” is downright genius: there’s enough actual change taking place all over the continent to make the notion look respectable, and it remains vague enough to accommodate any expectation and get traction across the board. This is where development organizations, in their quest for better aid efficiency and alternatives to aid, join forces with investors. But despite the evidence piling up of how misleading it can be, change in African countries continues to be examined through its reflection in Western mirrors rather than for itself – and “the rise and rise of the African middle class,” as Deloitte called it, is no exception.</p>\n<p>In April 2011 The African Development Bank (AfDB) released a market brief on <a href=\"http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf\">“The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the African Middle Class”</a> (pdf). Since then the estimated number of middle class Africans has been arbitrarily set at 350 million, sometimes delivered as the more dramatic soundbite “one in three Africans”. The AfBD goes on to explain that, given their higher revenues from salaried jobs or small business ownership, and the ensuing economic security, “Africa’s emerging consumers are likely to assume the traditional role of the US and European middle classes as global consumers”.</p>\n<p>The chief economist and vice president of the AfDB at the time, Mthuli Ncube, <a href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/05/20/middle.class.africa/index.html\">gave it straight to CNN</a>: “it’s a call to say ‘look, please invest in Africa’”. Sure enough, if the new is made to look like the old, it gains the reassuring quality of being just the same. In that respect, the “African middle class” is a means to an end, a programmatic concept: rationalize to normalize, normalize to legitimize.</p>\n<p><strong>“Growing pains”</strong></p>\n<p>To call such a construct fragile is an understatement. The AfDB defines “middle class” as those spending between $2 and $20 per day. By its own admission though, about 60% of those only spend between $2 and $4 per day and remain in what the bank calls a “floating class,” a vulnerable position “barely out of the poor category” with “the constant possibility of dropping back in the event of any exogenous shocks”. It seems indeed that trying to recognize the American “service class” or the European <em>petite bourgeoisie</em> in today’s African societies only goes so far.</p>\n<p>This prompted <a title=\"Thandika Mkandawire\" href=\"https://twitter.com/tmkandawire\">Thandika Mkandawire</a>, professor of African development at the London School of Economics, to label the AfDB’s version of a middle class a “<a href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/05/20/middle.class.africa/index.html\">stretch concept</a>“. Also sobering is the geographical dispersion of AfDB’s middle class: most of the African upper middle class (spending $10-$20 per day) lives in North Africa, which does not bode well with all the talk of frontier markets stimulated by a new white collar generation south of the Sahara.</p>\n<div style=\"width:559px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/deloitte-africarising.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67250\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/deloitte-africarising.png?w=549&h=537\" width=\"549\" height=\"537\"></a><p>Map from Deloitte’s report <a href=\"https://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-SouthAfrica/Local%20Assets/Documents/rise_and_rise.pdf\">The rise and rise of the African middle class</a></p></div>\n<p>The interesting thing about the sub-classes is their evolution and what that says about socio-economic dynamics. A growing number of Africans are indeed lifting themselves out of economic poverty but, contrary to the African economic revolution narrative, this is not happening overnight and is still largely ongoing. 61% of Africans still live below the $2 poverty line according to the AfDB. Equally important is the fact that very few seem to transition from the “floating class” to actual middle class territory. In fact the share of the three top brackets has remained almost identical over the last four decades.</p>\n<div style=\"width:559px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/afbd-africarising.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67246\"><img alt=\"Afbd-AfricaRising\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/afbd-africarising.png?w=549&h=294\" width=\"549\" height=\"294\"></a><p>Graph from Afbd’s market brief <a href=\"http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Publications/The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid_The%20Middle%20of%20the%20Pyramid.pdf\">The middle of the pyramid</a></p></div>\n<p>This is crucial to discussing African middle classes: the gap between the floating class and the lower middle class is much wider than it looks on paper. In December 2011, the Agence Française de Développement <a href=\"http://www.afd.fr/webdav/site/afd/shared/PUBLICATIONS/RECHERCHE/Scientifiques/Documents-de-travail/118-document-travail.pdf\">released the results of several country-level studies on middle class(es) in Africa</a> [fr] (pdf). “I place myself in the middle,” said a respondent in Kenya, “but there is a big gap between us and the rich… We can consider ourselves as members of the middle class, we are strugglers, because we have to manage to get what we want.”</p>\n<p>Sure, six of the ten fastest growing economies are African, but <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality\">seven of the ten most unequal countries in terms of income distribution</a> are also African. Among them, the still-number-one economy of the continent: South Africa, where the unemployment rate is close to 25%. Poster boy Nigeria is not that different: hailed for its top growth and diversifying economy – the latter in no small part due to billionaire Aliko Dangote’s growing empire – it is also fast becoming <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/23/africa-super-rich-luxury-cars\">the country where the super-rich fly out their lunch</a> while the rest of the Nigerians are stuck in slow-motion traffic.</p>\n<p>In Angola, where dazzling economic growth is making investors weak at the knees after three decades of an on-and-off civil war, the China International Trust and Investment Company built an entire city 30 km outside of Luanda specifically aimed at the middle class. <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243\">750 eight-storey apartment blocks intended to house 500,000 people</a>, and yet, as Louise Redvers reported last year, only a few thousands live there: the development is too expensive for the vast majority of Angolans, but not nearly enough for the minority who can actually afford it.</p>\n<div style=\"width:559px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kilamba-africarising.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67247\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/kilamba-africarising.jpg?w=549&h=411\" width=\"549\" height=\"411\"></a><p>The ghost town of Kilamba, Angola (May 2011) – <a href=\"http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kilamba_Kiaxi_-_May_2011_(3).jpg\">Picture by Santa Martha under Creative Commons BY-SA License</a></p></div>\n<p>As <a href=\"http://www.compareafrique.com/africa-is-rising-most-africans-are-not/\">Jumoke Balogun from CompareAfrica bluntly put it</a>, the view from the ground is that Africa is rising and Africans are not.</p>\n<p><strong>Middle of the road</strong></p>\n<p>The World Bank has put together its own concept of “global middle class,” academics have offered alternative income brackets to better represent the middle class of developing countries and insightful comparisons have been made with the Chinese notion of “little prosperity” (<em>xiaokang</em>). Andy Sumner, <a href=\"http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/news/the-new-bottom-billion\">economist made famous by his New Bottom Billion charge against Paul Collier</a>, has also put forward <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/may/06/africans-middle-class-poverty-reduction\">the interesting concept of “catalyst class”</a>. Yet few seem in a hurry of answering what “African middle class” means beyond fine-tuning its mathematical formula.</p>\n<p>That middle class has become this development-approved equivalent of middle-income group dismissed the socio-political discussion of class almost entirely. By which I do not mean the faith inherited from Tocqueville that a burgeoning middle class will necessarily put African societies on to the path of democracy – according to the 80′s mantra, was that not the job of the “elites”?; in the 90′s, that of the “civil society”? – but instead the ever-evolving process of its own formation. But fixated on wealth, the discussion on middle classes in Africa misses out on the other two pillars of social stratification: social status and political power.</p>\n<p>As soon as those two are factored in, discussing the “African middle class” as a homogenous entity seems absurd, and so it should. Thinking that what separates the senior civil servant from the street hawker or the country head of an MNC from the shop owner is a matter of daily expenditure amounts to looking at their reality through the wrong end of the telescope: the bigger picture is that they live in different worlds. And similar daily expenditure of middle class Ghanaians and middle class South Africans do not guarantee that they long for the same things either.</p>\n<p>For here lies the rub: the material culture that the notion of “middle class” posits as shared consciousness is articulated to a strong sense of individualism, which is borderline contradictory with the idea of class. All the more reasons for the analysis to consider the representations which members have of themselves as a group and the historical context in which such groups are being shaped.</p>\n<p>The infamous South African “Black Diamonds” are a testament to this prerequisite. Emerging from the ANC’s affirmative action policy of Black Economic Empowerment in post-apartheid South Africa, they initially, if briefly, represented success and hope for Black people formerly oppressed as an underclass. Yet the name, acquired through their involvement in gold and diamond mining, has since then become a symbol of personal greed in the eye of most South Africans and a derogatory term after it became associated with the new ruling class.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/05/01/in-search-of-the-african-middle-class/bee-africarising/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67248\"><img alt=\"BEE-AfricaRising\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bee-africarising.gif?w=610\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>Out with the old, in with the new</strong></p>\n<p>Freed from its prescriptive shackles, the middle class framework could however prove beneficial to cut through some of the more polarized categories of analysis: formal and informal sectors, legal and illegal activities or public and private sectors. Many of the “neither-poor-nor-rich” Africans work multiple jobs across those categories. Local NGO staffers in Dakar have sheep on the terrace of their houses to fatten and sell. Shop owners in Conakry and Ouagadougou own small plots of land outside the city that they farm in their spare time. Primary school teachers in Nairobi give as much private lessons outside school as they teach inside their classroom.</p>\n<p>They have cellphones and email addresses but many can’t afford health insurance. They own a car but sometimes need to save for weeks before getting it fixed. They speak multiple languages but fear they won’t be able to pay for their children’s education. They want a better life but don’t know that it will come to pass. Whatever bracket they fall into, those represent the bulk of African middle classes and their worry is not a trip to the mall on Sundays, their gaze is fixed on the horizon: the next year and beyond.</p>\n<p>Another assumption obscures our vision of African middle classes. Because the notion of class is so intertwined in Western national trajectories, little efforts are made to discuss today’s African middle classes past the nation-state framework, as if all middle class Cameroonians lived in Cameroon for example. But they are coming of age in a context of greater international connectedness, and evidence shows that the people most susceptible to be international migrants are neither the poorest – economic and human capital are a prerequisite – nor the richest – who have already “made it” – but those in between.</p>\n<div style=\"width:559px\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/migrationhump-africarising.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-67249\"><img alt=\"Left: Graph from Hein de Haas (2010) / Right: Graph from the HDI 2009 Report\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/migrationhump-africarising.png?w=549&h=212\" width=\"549\" height=\"212\"></a><p>Left: Graph from <a href=\"http://www.heindehaas.com/Publications/Hein%20de%20Haas%20-%20Migration%20transitions%20-%20WP%2024.pdf\">Hein de Haas</a> (2010) / Right: Graph from the <a href=\"http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf\">HDI 2009 Report</a></p></div>\n<p>Contrary to popular opinion, the number one destination of African international migrants are the 53 other African countries beside their own, not the Western world. Can it be said that African middle classes are born, to some extent, through migration journeys?</p>\n<p>Think of the Burkinabe plantation workers in Côte d’Ivoire, whose capital on return is as much the money they saved as the fancy music they bring back, and whose prestige of “having done the Côte” (<em>avoir fait la Côte</em>) establishes them in a stratum of their own, the <em>diaspos</em>. Or of the Congolese studying in Dakar and Saint Louis universities, where they rely on small jobs and family support to make ends meet; later learning the rope of their trade in Morocco and earning their first paychecks; and finally returning to Brazzaville to get the rare well-paid jobs that their migratory credentials insure and enjoy the recognition and envy of their fellow Congolese.</p>\n<p>Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is of course the symbol of such middle class success story through step migration: from the agricultural town of Jalaqasi to Mogadishu, to Bhopal, India for education, back to Somalia where he worked for NGOs and UN organizations, ultimately co-founding the Peace and Development Party in 2011 before being elected President in September 2012.</p>\n<p>That’s not to mention the tens of thousands of teachers, nurses and entrepreneurs hidden among the millions of refugees across the continent: are they still middle class Africans? Will they ever be again? What do they consider themselves in the mean time? Then there are those living outside the continent, involving themselves in their homeland’s economic and political affairs, either individually or as diasporas: should the economic position, social status and political engagement of their members be assessed in the eye of their host country, their home country or both? And what about non-African immigrants: <a href=\"http://geopolis.francetvinfo.fr/pour-fuir-la-crise-des-retraites-francais-choisissent-le-maroc-10177\">the senior French citizens retiring in Morocco and Tunisia</a> [fr], <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22025864\">the Portuguese fleeing unemployment in Angola and Mozambique</a> or <a href=\"http://thinkafricapress.com/lesotho/setting-shop-lesotho-how-chinese-made-it\">the Chinese setting up shop in Lesotho</a>, are those new kinds of middle classes in Africa too?</p>\n<p>Many more questions like these remain to be asked and so many of those deserve better answers than “the African middle class” wrapped in a bow and delivered to our doorstep courtesy of norm entrepreneurs and Money Incorporated. At the bottom of the pyramid are those on whom narratives are imposed and who have limited means to resist; at the top are those who have decided on their narrative and are writing their memoirs already; and in between is where the action is, where narratives overlap, clash or fuse because Africans are playing the field unencumbered by the nay-sayers or the yay-sayers. There is much to be learned about that life; and who better to tell these stories of in-betweenness than members of the middle classes themselves, African journalists, artists, bloggers and academics?</p>\n<p><em>* Jacques Enaudeau is a geographer and freelance cartographer. He has worked in Burkina Faso and Senegal and is currently researching conflict and migration in Casamance, Senegal as part of his PhD. He is also part of the team of translators at Global Voices Français. You can follow Jacques on Twitter as <a href=\"http://twitter.com/jacksometer\">@jacksometer</a>.</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/67241/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/67241/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=67241&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>Vijay Prashad in <em>CounterPunch</em>:</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">On Wednesday, April 24, a day after Bangladeshi authorities asked the owners to evacuate their garment factory that employed almost three thousand workers, the building collapsed. The building, Rana Plaza, located in the Dhaka suburb of Savar, produced garments for the commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia through Bangladesh’s machines and workers to the retail houses in the Atlantic world. Famous name brands were stitched here, as are clothes that hang on the satanic shelves of Wal-Mart. Rescue workers were able to save two thousand people as of this writing, with confirmation that over three hundred are dead. The numbers for the latter are fated to rise. It is well worth mentioning that the death toll in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City of 1911 was one hundred and forty six. The death toll here is already twice that. This “accident” comes five months (November 24, 2012) after the Tazreen garment factory fire that killed at least one hundred and twelve workers.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">The list of “accidents” is long and painful. In April 2005, a garment factory in Savar collapsed, killing seventy-five workers. In February 2006, another factory collapsed in Dhaka, killing eighteen. In June 2010, a building collapsed in Dhaka, killing twenty-five. These are the “factories” of twenty-first century globalization – poorly built shelters for a production process geared toward long working days, third rate machines, and workers whose own lives are submitted to the imperatives of just-in-time production.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/26/the-terror-of-capitalism/\">here</a>.</p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=ZBfnv6zqTeQ:afd9_b3r_uY:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/ZBfnv6zqTeQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Where are you from? Or, how I became a Pakistani?",
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"content" : "<p></p><p>“What is your nationality?”<br>\n“Canadian.”<br>\n“You are Canadian?”<br>\n“My passport says so.”<br>\n“But where are you <strong>really</strong> from?”<br>\n“You mean, where do I <strong>live</strong>?”<br>\n“You don’t live in Canada?”<br>\n“No.”<br>\n“Oh, so where do you live?”<br>\n“Dhahran.”<br>\n“Tehran? You’re from Iran?”<br>\n“No, DHA-<strong>HA</strong>-RAN.”<br>\n“Where is that?”<br>\n“In Saudi Arabia.”<br>\n“Oh, you are Saudi Arabian?”<br>\n“No, I live there.”<br>\n“If you are not Saudi, so, where are you really from? I mean, <strong>originally</strong>.”<br>\n“You mean, where was I born?”<br>\n“Yes.”<br>\n“I was born in Calgary, Canada.”<br>\n“No, I mean, where is your family from? Where were they born?”<br>\n“They are from Hyderabad.”<br>\n“Where is that?”<br>\n“India.”<br>\n“Oh, you are Indian! So, <em>why do you speak English with no accent</em>?”<br>\n“What do you mean?”<br>\n“You speak American English.”<br>\n“I have gone to American schools.”<br>\n“In India?”<br>\n“No, in Saudi Arabia.”<br>\n“But you are Indian?”<br>\n“Yes, my family is from India.”<br>\n“India!<strong> I love India!</strong> The Hindus are such a beautiful religion of peace! But why do you have a Christian name, Sarah? Are you Christian?”<br>\n“No. Sarah is also a Muslim name.”<br>\n“Oh. You are Muslim? I thought you said you are Indian?”<br>\n“There are Muslims in India.”<br>\n“But you don’t<strong> look like</strong> a Muslim!”<br>\n“What does a Muslim look like?”<br>\n“I don’t know. Like an Arab?”<br>\n“Not all Muslims are Arab. Most Muslims aren’t Arab.”<br>\n“But you live in Saudi Arabia?”<br>\n“Yes.”<br>\n“Do you speak Arabic?”<br>\n“No.”<br>\n“Why not? I thought you said you live in Saudi Arabia.”<br>\n“We don’t live with Saudis in Saudi Arabia. It is not permitted by the Company my father works for. And, the American school in Saudi Arabia I go to—it doesn’t allow for Arabic to be taught there.”<br>\n“What language do you speak at home?”<br>\n“Urdu.”<br>\n“But Urdu is the language of Pakistan, not India.”<br>\n“Urdu is spoken in India.”<br>\n“Yes, yes, but if you are Urdu speaking that means you really belong to Pakistan.”<br>\n“But, my relatives live in India.”<br>\n“Did any of your parents live in Pakistan?”<br>\n“Yes. My father did, for a few years.”<br>\n“Then, that means you are Pakistani.”<br>\n“But I’ve never lived in Pakistan. I’ve only been there once.”<br>\n“That doesn’t matter. You are not Indian. <strong>You should say you are Pakistani</strong>.”</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BikDUVT-2TY:kMIp8zj-ExQ:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/BikDUVT-2TY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Larry C. Price</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p><em><strong><a href=\"http://www.philly.com/philly/gallery/20130428_Childhoods_lost_in_the_gold_mines.html?viewGallery=y\">See the gallery of Larry Price's images from Burkina Faso on Philly.com</a> </strong></em></p>\n<p><strong>View a PDF of the article as it appeared on the <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a01.pdf\">front page</a> of <em>The Philadelphia Inquirer</em> on Sunday, April 28, continued over an additional two pages (<a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a18.pdf\">I</a> / <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a19.pdf\">II</a>) inside. </strong></p>\n<p>TIÉBÉLÉ, Burkina Faso - On the rocky ground outside the Kollo mining village near the border between Burkina Faso and Ghana, about 100 people are working, 30 or so of them children. They smash boulders into pebbles and pebbles into grit with primitive hammers and sticks. They haul buckets of well water up the hillside and, pouring this water into shallow pans filled with rock and dirt, they swirl the muddy mix, looking in the silt for tiny flecks of gold.</p>\n<p>Nearby, a small hill rises from this barren gold field, and atop this hill are hand-dug shafts that plunge 150 feet into the ground. Joseph, 15, and Germain, 12, lead the way down into the mine, gripping knotted ropes, finding footholds and squeezing past support timbers in the yard-wide pits. They get to the bottom after 20 minutes and silently begin to fill buckets of ore to be hauled up by rope.</p>\n<p>The shaft ends in a cramped, pitch-dark pit. The bottom widens a bit to reveal a tiny, wedge-shaped crevice. In the darkness, sitting cross-legged with a flashlight strapped to his head, is a small boy. He chinks at the rock walls with a handmade pickax and scoops the shards into a large green bucket. His hands never stop moving - scooping and chipping, chipping and scooping. The older boys call him Théophile. They say he is 7 years old.</p>\n<p>The United Nations' International Labor Organization estimates that as many as a million children between ages 5 and 17 work in the small-scale gold mines of Africa for as little as $2 a day. In the African Sahel, a semiarid region that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea across parts of Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Niger, 30 percent to 50 percent of small-scale mine workers are children, according to ILO estimates. Child labor is against the law in Burkina Faso, where last year the government announced a plan to significantly reduce the numbers of exploited children by 2015. But enforcement is lacking.</p>\n<p>The U.S. Department of Labor also is funding a four-year, $5 million project in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest nations, to reduce child labor in cotton farming and gold mining. The grant will be used to help raise awareness about child labor laws and build government capacity to monitor and enforce the laws, said Eric Biel, acting associate deputy undersecretary for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs.</p>\n<p>The project aims to help 1,000 households and 10,000 children avoid \"exploitative child labor\" by offering schooling, financing, and alternative employment.</p>\n<p>Child labor in the gold mines here is so prevalent - and so obvious - that the U.S. government prohibits its agencies and contractors from buying the gold directly from Burkina Faso. The prohibition, however, does not extend to private dealers.</p>\n<p>Observers say porous borders, which facilitate black-market trades, and the very nature of the world gold supply chain make tracking gold mined in Burkina Faso almost impossible. Furthermore, federal purchases of gold from legitimate international sellers do not necessarily preclude some of the gold originating here.</p>\n<p>The Canada-based Artisanal Gold Council, which is working to implement tracking systems and promote fair-trade policies, says there are no hard data to pinpoint whether gold mined by children in Burkina Faso reaches the United States or ends up in jewelry purchased by Americans. Anthony Persaud, a policy and field operations coordinator for the council, says it is \"unlikely\" but not out of the question.</p>\n<p>Burkina Faso does not refine its gold but sells it through exporters to refiners in Dubai and Europe, he says. From there the gold enters the world supply chain.</p>\n<p>\"The thing about gold, you can fit $50,000 of it in your pocket without anybody noticing,\" says Persaud. \"It's quite easy to move across borders like that.\"</p>\n<p>Juliane Kippenberg, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the group's 2011 report on child labor at small-scale mines persuaded one gold refiner to suspend purchases from Mali.</p>\n<p>\"We are not calling upon companies to boycott gold that has been mined by children,\" Kippenberg said, \"but to remediate the situation if they find child labor in their supply chain - by engaging the relevant government, their suppliers, and demanding progress to get these children out of the mines and into school.\"</p>\n<p>Gold production in Burkina Faso has more than doubled in recent years, reaching 32 metric tons in 2012, according to the World Bank. (Unlike its neighbors Mali and Ghana, ancient gold kingdoms and major producers today, Burkina Faso is a relative newcomer to the market.) The return of international mining companies, banned for a time in the 1990s, has boosted production. Still, much of the gold comes from small-scale mines.</p>\n<p>Small-scale gold mining began here in earnest in the 1980s as droughts and famines forced families from farms and into mines to earn a living. It remains a family affair.</p>\n<p>\"You cannot eliminate child labor in a community when the income of the family is so low,\" said Alexandre Soho, senior program officer for the International Program for the Elimination of Child Labor of the ILO. \"You need to tackle the issue of the livelihoods for the parents.\"</p>\n<p>The U.S. Labor Department and the ILO consider mining one of the worst forms of child labor because of the risks of injury and death and the long-term health consequences from constant exposure to dust, toxic chemicals, and heavy manual labor. The list of documented ills includes permanent lung damage caused by inhaling pulverized minerals, muscular and skeletal injuries, hearing loss, accidental blinding, and mercury poisoning with its attendant neurological damage. And then there is the fact that when children are working, they are not in school.</p>\n<p>In Tiébélé, near the Kollo mine, Daouda Ganno, general secretary of the mayor's office, says local communities are trying to establish a prefect near each village to enforce school attendance. When a child is absent, he said, \"the prefect will go out and find the parent and ask, 'Where is your child?' and then they will find the child and bring him to school.\" This is Ganno's plan, but for now, he says, it is still only a plan.</p>\n<p>The nature of the mining makes enforcement difficult. Often the mines are illegal and hastily dug on private property. A claim is worked and then abandoned and the miners move on. The government collects taxes from miners who work or prospect on public land and has made efforts to regulate the small mines, but with an estimated 200 mining sites, most of them very remote, the task is overwhelming, authorities say.</p>\n<p>At a new mining site in the Bilbalé region 12 miles west of Diébougou, about 200 people show up overnight, drawn by the rumor of gold. About 50 children are in the crowd and even the tiniest will work. In hours, the men and older boys have cleared the ground of scrub trees and sparse grass and the digging begins at a frantic pace.</p>\n<p>Little children, some naked, squat on the ground to claw dirt and rocks into shallow bowls. The families fill as many vessels with raw dirt and rock as possible. This rock and dirt is weighed and becomes their share of the \"take\" from the mine. If gold is found, all the miners will get a little money. If there is no gold at this site, the miners move to the next place where gold is rumored to be.</p>\n<p>Miners earn little for their work - children even less. ILO surveys found children often were paid no more than $2 a day or only received food for filling buckets with gravel, Soho said. An entire family might make $5 at an undeveloped site. At established mines, such as Kollo, workers say they can earn about $40 a day.</p>\n<p>If the yield at a field is good, word gets out and a boomtown springs up with shanties, supply huts, and cafes among the plastic-covered huts where miners live. Such is the case at Kollo, now home to 3,000 people.</p>\n<p>With the established mines and villages also come the ore-processing centers where miners take large sacks or rocks and pebbles to be ground into powder. This powder will be processed, usually with mercury, and further refined into gold nuggets at another location.</p>\n<p>The ore-crushing machines are makeshift contraptions cobbled together with pulleys, belts, grinding plates, and smoke-belching diesel engines. And while it takes the strength of a man to empty the bags of rock into the crushers, children do most of the other work. They sharpen metal grinding wheels without eye protection; scoop and bag fine powder without dust masks; and fetch and carry just inches from pulleys, belts, and spinning motors with the power to rip and shred anything caught in their works.</p>\n<p>The pounding and clanking of the crushers are deafening. The machines spew constant clouds of dust, which coats the children from their heads to their bare feet. Water is scarce, so the children use the bilge water from the machines to wash their faces and brush their teeth. When the children are not working, they lie down near the machines and sleep, oblivious to the noise. Their coughing is constant.</p>\n<p>At the Kouékowéra camp near Gaoua, Karim Sawadogo works with his uncle. The boy says he thinks he is 9 years old, but he isn't sure. He has been to school, but only a little. Before the gold field, he was a goatherd near his home in northern Burkina Faso. In the camp, he cooks, fetches water. In the mine, Karim works barefoot and shirtless, his feet thickly callused, his muscles flexing as he chips ore and fills buckets.</p>\n<p>Speaking in his native dialect, Karim smiles when he is asked what he wants to do with his life. \"I came here to make money,\" he says. \"My dream is to make enough money so I don't have to do this anymore.\"</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><table>\n <thead><tr><th>Attachment</th><th>Size</th> </tr></thead>\n<tbody>\n <tr><td><span><img alt=\"\" title=\"application/pdf\" src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/modules/file/icons/application-pdf.png\"> <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a01.pdf\">a01.pdf</a></span></td><td>2.66 MB</td> </tr>\n <tr><td><span><img alt=\"\" title=\"application/pdf\" src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/modules/file/icons/application-pdf.png\"> <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a18.pdf\">a18.pdf</a></span></td><td>2.62 MB</td> </tr>\n <tr><td><span><img alt=\"\" title=\"application/pdf\" src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/modules/file/icons/application-pdf.png\"> <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/05-01-13/a19.pdf\">a19.pdf</a></span></td><td>2.38 MB</td> </tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p>(Because it is!) I should probably do more French politics blogging, I think. A couple of themes lately:</p>\n<p><em>Cahuzac x Sarkozy</em>.</p>\n<p>There’s been a major scandal around the budget minister Jérome Cahuzac, spearhead of a campaign against tax-evasion, who turned out to have hidden his own multi-million euro fortune in Switzerland and had to resign. As a result, the president announced a campaign to “moralise politics” and legislation to force politicians to declare their financial interests. Ministers were ordered to go first and set an example.</p>\n<p>Cahuzac is a weird character, a cardiologist who turned expert in cosmetic hair transplants to make money, and whose wealth was managed by a veteran of the extreme-right student movement, a long-standing member of Cahuzac’s circle of friends, a group of men with a surprising tilt to the far Right. Marine Le Pen’s spokesman was strangely calm about the whole affair, describing it as “anodyne”. This may suggest that the FN’s tax affairs are not entirely in order. Allegedly, some of his patients paid in cash so he could ship the money straight to Reyl & Cie of Geneva.</p>\n<p>This even overshadowed the news that the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is under police investigation over his campaign finances. The story goes back to the great Bettencourt affair; at the time, certain daring voices (like this blog) suggested that Liliane Bettencourt’s envelopes of cash had reached the president himself. It’s probably most interesting that the issue has been officially recognised – it’s no longer something for intrepid journalists and radical bloggers. It’s also interesting, though, that the investigators are treating the case as one in which Sarkozy manipulated the old lady into handing over her money, rather than, say, the richest person in France and owner of one of its biggest companies pouring untraceable cash into the political system. Clearly, there is a limit to how far anyone is willing to recognise the issue. </p>\n<p>That said, Cahuzac’s bank is going to be the object of more inquiries, and it apparently served many other politicians, so you should certainly look out for more revelations.</p>\n<p><em>Salon de thé</em></p>\n<p>Is that a tea party in French? <a href=\"http://ump.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/04/24/mariage-gay-la-ligne-cope-vivement-critiquee-a-lump/\">Here’s an interesting blog post</a> on the French conservatives. You may recall that they couldn’t elect a leader after losing the elections, and fell to fighting among themselves. They eventually agreed to try again in a year’s time, which is coming up fast. Lately, would-be leader Jean-Francois Copé, the man once voted the most annoying politician in France, has been suggesting that perhaps they could forget about the election and it’s all better now. Unsurprisingly, would-be leader 2, Francois Fillon, isn’t having that.</p>\n<p>And then the government began passing the gay marriage legislation, and the Right put aside the row in order to mobilise against it. Or, as the link argues, they mobilised against it in order to put off the row until later, in a more-or-less conscious imitation of US Republican tactics. They didn’t have the votes to stop it, and it’s popular, but they could agree on putting down 700 amendments to the text, staging demonstrations, and generally going to the mattresses, and so that’s what they did.</p>\n<p>Everyone was surprised about the capacity for mobilisation of the rightist and Catholic network, and the whole thing took on its own momentum, ending up with members of parliament coming to blows and thugs attacking gay bars. Now, the law is on the statute book, and although another demo is planned for the 26th of May, you wonder what the point is…other than putting off the evil day when they have to pick a leader.</p>\n<p>Also, if you think Cahuzac is a slightly unlikely figure what with the hair transplants and the fascist mates and the socialism, check out <a href=\"http://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigide_Barjot\">the anti-gay marriage campaign’s leader</a>.</p>\n<p><em>In general…</em></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://artgoldhammer.blogspot.com/2013/04/is-there-political-crisis-in-france.html?showComment=1366818591982#c2258995464907582606\">Bernard G.</a>‘s comment here is recommended.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=Tv_3E4RsiVQ:RyNoQT8-86Q:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=Tv_3E4RsiVQ:RyNoQT8-86Q:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=Tv_3E4RsiVQ:RyNoQT8-86Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=Tv_3E4RsiVQ:RyNoQT8-86Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=Tv_3E4RsiVQ:RyNoQT8-86Q:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">Bored<br><span style=\"color:#ffffff\">.</span></span><br>All those times I was bored<br>out of my mind. Holding the log<br>while he sawed it. Holding<br>the string while he measured, boards,<br>distances between things, or pounded<br>stakes into the ground for rows and rows<br>of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)<br>weeded. Or sat in the back<br>of the car, or sat still in boats,<br>sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel<br>he drove, steered, paddled. It<br>wasn't even boredom, it was looking,<br>looking hard and up close at the small<br>details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,<br>the intricate twill of the seat<br>cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular<br>pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans<br>of dry moss, the blackish and then the greying<br>bristles on the back of his neck.<br>Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes<br>I would. The boring rhythm of doing<br>things over and over, carrying<br>the wood, drying<br>the dishes. Such minutiae. It's what<br>the animals spend most of their time at,<br>ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels,<br>shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed<br>such things out, and I would look<br>at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under<br>the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier<br>all the time then, although it more often<br>rained, and more birdsong?<br>I could hardly wait to get<br>the hell out of there to<br>anywhere else. Perhaps though<br>boredom is happier. It is for dogs or<br>groundhogs. Now I wouldn't be bored.<br>Now I would know too much.<br>Now I would know.\r\n<br><span style=\"color:#ffffff\">.</span>\r\n<p><em>by Margaret Atwood</em><br><em>from <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Morning in the Burned House<br></span>Houghton Mifflin, 1996</em> </p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=AJdPyzCYOBk:ZalRHjhFllo:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/AJdPyzCYOBk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Destructo Salon: Does Matthew Yglesias Enjoy Murder?",
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"content" : "Matthew Yglesias—a Norelco marketing experiment to see if a hand-drawn Sharpie beard on a peeled potato could sell men's earrings—wrote a morally and intellectually odious article at his second job yesterday. His Slate column, "Different Places Have Different Safety Rules and That's OK," addressed the deaths of 161 workers in a factory collapse in Bangladesh with the tone they so richly deserved:"
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"title" : "Open Letters: An Open Letter to My Toddler Regarding His Use of My iPhone by Lauren Apfel",
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"content" : "<p>Dear Son/Future Apple Employee,</p>\n<p>I’ll admit it: things might have been different if you were a first child. But, alas, that wasn’t your lot. Technically speaking—and the emphasis is definitely on “technical” here—you are my fourth kid and in the interim of raising your older brothers I have learned a thing or two. Like, for instance, the existence of boundaries. It’s been all well and good for me, this newfound sense of entitlement: to five minutes’ peace when I want it, to the entirety of my own breakfast, to arms free from the weight of your body at certain moments of the day. But for you, I’m afraid, there is only loss. Because you see this 2.31 by 4.5 inch rectangle with a picture of the forbidden fruit on its back? You know, the one you pine for endlessly? Well, it’s mine. Mine, mine, mine.</p>\n<p>We’ve been having this conversation for a long time, haven’t we? “Phone” was one of your first words, except that you pronounced it “shoe.” And in your pulpy hands, everything became one. I have a vivid memory of you strutting around the room at 15 months old, bellowing “Hiya!” into a piece of plastic bacon. That was cute. It was also cute when you graduated to saying “iShoe” after your Auntie G came to visit and rocked your world with access to an “iShoe” <em>and</em> an “i-Pap.”</p>\n<p>Things became less cute after that. My phone was kept out of sight and out of reach, except when I had the audacity to use it myself and, trust me, I thought long and hard about what constituted a necessity in those instances. But as you got older, I wasn’t the only tech support on offer anymore. You started suckering other people into a little “shoe” action, anyone, it seemed, who walked through the door. One by one your relatives, my friends, the nanny, even the cleaner fell victim to your charms. I tried to explain to you that it is customary to greet someone with a platitude like “Hello, how are you?” before demanding their electronic device, but your manners have never been as finely developed as your icon recognition. You made big eyes instead, a cherub jonesing for a smartphone, and they handed it over faster than you could swipe open the lock screen (well, not <em>that</em> fast). It all seemed so innocent until you deleted their favorite apps.</p>\n<p>At 20 months you learned two things that moved us into a crisis zone: how to disable the firewall of airplane mode and how to string words together in order to specifically identify <em>whose</em> phone it was you were angling for. This is what turned your father, in the end, whose resolve crumbled in the face of the relentless moaning for “Daddy’s phone, Daddy’s phone, Daddy’s phone, Daddy’s phone, Daddy’s phone.” He gives it to you sometimes now, but it’s unpredictable and you don’t like that. You don’t like the “no calls,” “no emails,” “no texts” price of admission either, though you will dutifully repeat the rules back to him after that time you “accidentally” Skyped his boss.</p>\n<p>This makes me the last withholder. Okay, okay, fair enough: I’ve caved on occasion too, let’s not make a big deal out of it. I’m only human and about 92% resistant to your pleas. Sure there was that time at the doctor’s office when it was the only way I could keep you quiet while the otoscope searched out the perforation in your ear drum. Remember that? You posted “Drf” on Auntie G’s Facebook wall. I’m pretty sure it was a coincidence.</p>\n<p>The question is: how much longer can I still stand? Your obsession is such that more than one person has offered to buy you an iPod Touch for your second birthday so that the “interest” (euphemism) might fizzle out on its own. I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud. And I certainly shouldn’t admit that, for a few terrifying minutes, I actually considered it even though my seven-year-old has been denied one for years. Because we’ve tried to placate you with the toy versions, over and over again. You scoff at each new incarnation. And the MobiGo and the Leapster Explorer you’ve borrowed from your brothers. They are fine for a quick “play” but, ultimately, the technology is not to your satisfaction. I can see the point you’re making.</p>\n<p>And so for now we’ve arrived at an impasse. I sat down today to write a serious treatise on the complexities of “screen time” and the toddler, in the hopes of stumbling upon a little clarity to usher us through this glitch in our relationship. But I ended up with a letter instead. Other Mommies seem convinced that posting an epistle is an effective way to communicate with their small children, so I felt it was worth a shot. The more I think about it, though, the more I realize I’m probably better off attaching my words here as a <span>PDF</span> and emailing it to your father. You can pick up the message the next time you are using his phone.</p>\n<p>Love,<br>\nMom</p>"
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"title" : "Bush and the American Right Wing: Top Ten Ways they are Like the Children of an Alcoholic",
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"content" : "<p>It is a well-known syndrome in alcoholic and/or abusive families that the child runs to the abusive parent, and makes excuses for him or her. In fact there <a href=\"http://voices.yahoo.com/adult-children-alcoholics-acoa-13-characteristics-5654488.html\"> are a whole set of syndromes afflicting the poor adults</a> who lived through that horror as children. </p>\n<p>The fawning interviews attending the opening of the <a href=\"http://youtu.be/5UNW3GO86Xc\"> George W. Bush presidential library</a>, for the least bookish of all our presidents, struck me as having a lot of resemblance to those syndromes. America has a problem holding its high elected officials to account. A republic as the founding generation envisaged it is a collective of equals. We have no king, no one who is above the law. Some of us serve the public through elective office for a while. If we do it honorably we get thanks. If we do it dishonorably, we should be tried for our crimes or at the very least suffer opprobrium in polite society. The emergence of the imperial presidency in the twentieth century and until now is an affront to those republican values, a descent into empire and monarchy and lack of accountability. For ex-presidents everything is forgiven over time. We named the airport in our national capital for a man who sold weapons stolen from Pentagon warehouses to Ayatollah Khomeini at at time the latter was on a terror watch list, and used the black money thus gained to support right wing death squads in Central America. We let a war criminal pronounce himself comfortable with his crimes against humanity.</p>\n<p>1. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth. They have to constantly make excuses for the criminal behavior of their ex-president. For instance, it is often alleged that all international intelligence agencies agreed with the Bush administration that Iraq had ‘weapons mass destruction.’ But the French did not, and the Germans had serious questions. It is not true, just a lie that we are forced to tell in order to protect an war-addicted president. Likewise, they often maintain that WMD actually was found in Iraq (wrong) or that it was moved to Syria (not true) or that Saddam Hussein was tied to al-Qaeda (false). Or they may downplay the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the illegal US invasion. Or they may say that waterboarding and stress positions are not torture and that ‘the US does not torture.’</p>\n<p>2. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents are super responsible or super irresponsible.</p>\n<p>Some supporters of a criminal ex-president become controlling and need everything to be in order all the time, suffering from anxiety and perfectionism. They have a compulsion to bust unions to prevent strikes, and to send troops to places like Iran and Syria, to put them in order, or to insist on enormous military budgets several times larger than any other country in the world.</p>\n<p>Others become highly irresponsible party animals, insisting that the rich be exempted from taxes, opposing all gun control, arguing for further deregulation of banks, spoiling the environment, abusing minorities, and becoming addicted to Fox Cable News.</p>\n<p>3. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents are supremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.</p>\n<p>They are used to dealing with a habitual offender. They take care of him, and are told ‘it wasn’t his fault’ or ‘he didn’t really mean it.’ They have such lowered expectations for their politicians that they will vote for the Tea Party or Michelle Bachmann. They often end up in an unhealthy relationship with another abusive politician.</p>\n<p>4. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents have difficulty completing political projects. They were used to being interrupted constantly by the abuser during his administration. They might have been balancing the budget in 1999 but when the abuser showed up they’d have to cut taxes so deeply on the rich and devote so many trillions to foreign military adventures that they’d just forget about the health of the budget. Afterward, they might take up gun registration reform but then just abandon it in the middle. Since they weren’t accustomed to successful follow-through, they became chronically flaky.</p>\n<p>5. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents have difficulty with intimate political relationships. Since their previous president constantly lied to them in order to trick them into supporting illegal wars, they develop a deep distrust of others. Having learned that politicians are not trustworthy, they think a subsequent president wasn’t really born in America, or that universal health care involves death panels, or that scientists are lying about global warming or that the United Nations is not really a collective seeking world peace but a sinister conspiracy with Blackhawk helicopters positioned in Montana.</p>\n<p>6. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents have to guess at what normal behavior is. Having been lied to, sent to war under false pretexts, and told that regulating banks or polluting industries is wrong, they do not have any idea what normal political life is like. They occasionally get glimpses of it on MSNBC on television, or when they visit their friends (if they have any) who vote for the Democratic Party, or just by guessing at what normal politics might be like.</p>\n<p>7. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents have difficulty having fun. Having been constantly traumatized by being told they are in a war on terror, a war on drugs, and several actual wars, adult followers of abusive ex-presidents don’t know how to enjoy life. They don’t know how to look forward to the prospect that by 2015 the US will not be at war for the first time in 14 years. They cannot enjoy video games, which they blame for gun violence, or television, which they see as immoral and basically gay, or Comedy Central shows like the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, which they see as part of a liberal conspiracy.</p>\n<p>8. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents take themselves very seriously. Because they were told that other people hate their values and they are the indispensable nation that must intervene everywhere in the world, they cannot ever lighten up. They are holding up the world, which if left to the effeminate Europeans, dictatorial Chinese or violent Muslims, would go to hell in a hand basket.</p>\n<p>9. Adult constituents of abusive ex-presidents overreact to changes over which they have no control. They obsess 24/7 over any act of terrorism not committed by white supremacists. They grew up with an unpredictable president who might invade a new country any time, producing anxiety. </p>\n<p>10. Adult constituents of abusive ex-president are impulsive. They tend to commit themselves to a course of action without giving serious consideration to other possibilities or to what might happen if they act this way. They’ll suddenly start maintaining that raped women cannot get pregnant or that the 17,000 women a year who become pregnant as a result of rape don’t exist or don’t matter. They cannot imagine that this stance might cause them to lose political elections. Then they beat themselves up for <a href=\"http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/02/12/16936794-so-much-for-shedding-the-stupid-party-label?lite\"> being the party</a> of stupid or <a href=\"http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/politics/130425/barbara-bush-jeb-bush-2016-run-we-ve-had-enough-bushes-video\"> they say “we’ve had enough Bushes’</a> because of their self-loathing.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-mS3TT5-QCnQ/UXpGIFqY62I/AAAAAAAALA0/jRJJqmt15vY/s1600-h/detail%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-R-iT6n_u5jE/UXpGJHK_w7I/AAAAAAAALA8/OjjEMtquY08/detail_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Weft-faced Ewe cloths, Ghana/Togo</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-SQVhk8IJBSE/UXpGLL5AjjI/AAAAAAAALBE/7EsaF-eLAMA/s1600-h/detail1%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail1\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail1\" src=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-aF3Gpr4mWt8/UXpGMMOBX8I/AAAAAAAALBM/yIXjPA9eZQ4/detail1_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Yoruba adire cloths, Nigeria</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-sK3PzfiRtXM/UXpGN4u2A6I/AAAAAAAALBU/US17kj1fAXg/s1600-h/detail2%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail2\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail2\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-oCauiM0nGhA/UXpGPFwowwI/AAAAAAAALBc/cWE50gnzOyo/detail2_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Indigo striped strip weaves, Ivory Coast.</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-tJUikCSckE8/UXpGQoIS52I/AAAAAAAALBk/_vwjcZ13QfA/s1600-h/detail3%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail3\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail3\" src=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-84wdPnaWdyM/UXpGR1e-iUI/AAAAAAAALBs/rDIa1jokqgo/detail3_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Mostly blankets from Mali.</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-8zM79LL8IqI/UXpGT5R-dtI/AAAAAAAALB0/GgM9pQH6e2U/s1600-h/detail4%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail4\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail4\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-8pZX2yiLttA/UXpGVBsMEwI/AAAAAAAALB8/AhwB9JGfdoQ/detail4_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Mossi indigo cloths, Burkina Faso.</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-9Bs4SvFAzYU/UXpGXCHM2UI/AAAAAAAALCE/0u6ZsBsxXgo/s1600-h/detail6%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail6\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail6\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-BF6aOlCV0oM/UXpGYNXqGHI/AAAAAAAALCM/harJ1BnruuU/detail6_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Yoruba indigo cloths, Nigeria.</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-JRHzbUpqfUY/UXpGaD_fEvI/AAAAAAAALCU/X840nyVgvI8/s1600-h/detail11%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail11\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail11\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-ic6_IhLUWxY/UXpGbYTa9aI/AAAAAAAALCc/c4jJ6BGLJoA/detail11_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Ewe men’s cloths, Ghana/Togo.</p> <p><a href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-DRDflMjzLcM/UXpGdZ1Gd6I/AAAAAAAALCk/AN37i89QgKQ/s1600-h/detail12%25255B4%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"detail12\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"detail12\" src=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-dD2s5xttlCU/UXpGehznIKI/AAAAAAAALCs/1x555G_Jh_M/detail12_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Dioula and Bondoukou men’s cloths, Ivory Coast.</p> <p>For other views of these cloths please visit our <a href=\"http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/afgallery.htm\">website</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<i>(Editor’s note: This is the 124th installment of <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/search/label/Books%20You%20Have%20to%20Read\">our\nongoing blog series</a> highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s installment comes from <b>Ayo Onatade</b>. In addition to being a London-based contributor\nto both the e-zine</i> <a href=\"http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/\">Shots</a> <i>and its companion <a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PK95D06iKRo/UXlk9pxbiwI/AAAAAAAAOso/2RH1J3_9TiA/s1600/A+Rage+in+Harlem.2.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;margin-top:1.5em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PK95D06iKRo/UXlk9pxbiwI/AAAAAAAAOso/2RH1J3_9TiA/s320/A+Rage+in+Harlem.2.jpg\" width=\"192\"></a>blog, <a href=\"http://wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com/\">Shotsmag Confidential</a>, she writes for</i> Crimespree Magazine<i>. Ayo also works for 12 Justices at the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and is a major fan of American football.)</i><br>\n<br>\nMy introduction to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester_Himes\">Chester Himes</a> goes back to what I refer to as my initial noir days. The period when I had finished reading the Golden Age classics and moved on to such authors as Raymond\nChandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain. Chester Himes’ <i>A Rage in Harlem</i> was initially titled <i>La Reine des Pommes</i> (<i>The Queen of Fools</i>) and was the opening entry in what would become known as his <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Detective\">Harlem Cycle</a>. When it was first published in the United States in 1957, the book was called <i>For the Love of Imabelle</i>. Himes actually\nwanted to call it <i>The Five-Cornered Square</i>. The novel went on to win the French crime-fiction prize, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, in 1958 in the international category.<br>\n<br>\n<i>A Rage in Harlem</i> is not a lengthy novel; it comes in at just around\n200 pages long and can be read in a single day, if you feel so inclined. It is\nalso Himes’ first book to feature black Harlem cops <a href=\"http://www.thrillingdetective.com/coffin.html\">Grave Digger Jones and\nCoffin Ed Johnson</a>. Compared with the later books in that series, both of\nthese characters feature a lot less in <i>A Rage in Harlem</i>. One wonders whether this was because Himes had not yet made the decision to use this pair of New York City cops in more than one book.<br>\n<br>\nThe novel begins with a guy named Jackson, who works (unofficially) for a local undertaker, borrowing money from his boss and then promptly losing it in a confidence trick set up by his beautiful but disloyal girlfriend, Imabelle, and her common-law husband, gang leader Slim, along with Slim’s cronies. Annoyed and upset by this turn of events, Jackson approaches his brother, who just happens to be a snitch for Jones and Johnson, to get his money back. Together, the police partners try to track down the swindlers and save Jackson.<br>\n<br>\nThere are a number of aspects to <i>A Rage in Harlem</i> that some modern readers might find uncomfortable; this book is certainly not for the prudish. Still, one has to remember that at the time Himes was working on his fiction, the way in which the New York police dealt with accused people and the victims of crime was not the <a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tTnccutT86g/UXlmOqeJBKI/AAAAAAAAOs8/p_pawCbs0Ks/s1600/For+Love+of+Imabelle,+1957+-+illus+Mitchell+Hooks.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;margin-top:1.5em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tTnccutT86g/UXlmOqeJBKI/AAAAAAAAOs8/p_pawCbs0Ks/s200/For+Love+of+Imabelle,+1957+-+illus+Mitchell+Hooks.jpg\" width=\"118\"></a>same way they would deal with them today. It would be extremely hard for us to grasp nowadays how appalling what he was writing about was for many people in the 1950s.<br>\n<br>\n<b><i>(Left)</i> Illustrator <a href=\"http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2013/03/oh-no-mitchell-hooks-is-gone.html\">Mitchell Hooks</a>’ 1957 American cover for Himes’ novel.</b><br>\n<br>\nThe level of violence portrayed in <i>A Rage in Harlem</i> is of varying degrees, most of it quite graphic but also some of it comedic in a dark way. For\nexample, at one point Coffin Ed has acid thrown in his face--an act that changes his behavior from then on out. Grave Digger’s response, when he realizes that he has one of Ed’s attackers at the police station, is to commit an act both brutal and savage. Elsewhere in the book, two other characters meet quite appalling deaths, one being shot through both eyes, whilst the other is hacked open with an axe.<br>\n<br>\nIt is not surprising that Himes had difficulty portraying the police as good; his own experiences with officers of the law left a lot to be desired and no doubt influenced his fiction. Neither Jones nor Johnson can be seen as gallant. They are not only deceitful, but unless they are the ones committing violence, they find it objectionable. Furthermore, their idea of justice is trivial.<br>\n<br>\nWhen one thinks of Chester Himes and the quality of his work, it is disappointing and sad to realize how disregarded he has become within American literary circles. His work was grimy and gritty, but also very well-written. His books offer a realistic portrayal of Harlem during a period when violence and social depravation went hand in hand. Himes was not afraid to deal with these issues in his fiction. It does occasionally make for uncomfortable reading; but one should not forget the entertainment value of his storytelling and also the socio-political energies that flow through a book such as this one.<br>\n<br>\n<i>A Rage in Harlem</i> is an urban police procedural like no other. It offers a high degree of violence. It delves into female sexuality in rather blatant fashion, which some readers might find unnerving. And gender roles are thrown into the plotting mix along with alcohol and drug abuse and the varying ethnicities of some of the characters. Why this novel is so frequently overlooked by today’s readers is a\nmystery. Could it be that Chester Himes has been somehow ostracized by the\nAmerican literati? One hopes not, because in <i>A Rage in Harlem</i> we are given a novel that is essentially a classic, a work of noir fiction that ranks with the best of them."
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"title" : "EMC and the 7 dwarves – part 1",
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"content" : "<p></p><p>EMC has been gaining marketshare over the last several years. The world’s largest data storage company is getting larger.</p>\n<p>Why?</p>\n<p><strong>IBM and the 7 dwarves</strong><br>\nBack when mainframes ruled the earth, IBM faced a hardy band of competitors that <strike>used its software – usually MVS – but ran it on less costly or more performant hardware.</strike> had their own processor architectures and operating systems. Originally known as the 7 dwarves – Burroughs, UNIVAC, Control Data, NCR, GE, RCA and Honeywell – these companies rode the computing boom with varying success until the early 70s. Then the mainframe business matured and started consolidating. <strike>By the late 80s the 7 dwarves were taking significant share from IBM thanks to its bloated prices and conservative hardware design.</strike> </p>\n<p><strike>After Lou Gerstner took over he lowered IBM’s pricing and reinvigorated its engineering to make life difficult for the dwarves.</strike> IBM now has a nice multi-billion dollar annuity mainframe business.</p>\n<p><strong>The same, only different</strong><br>\n<strike>EMC doesn’t control the OLTP large storage array business the way IBM drove plug compatible mainframes. But the pressure on competitors will no less intense.</strike></p>\n<p>EMC’s position is analogous to IBM’s in the 70s: EMC has the most successful scale-up OLTP arrays; offers better support; and keeps adding useful features.</p>\n<p>Because of its size and growing share, EMC’s Symmetrix VMAX business will out-invest their competitors, increasing their functional lead in features and performance. As once-reasonable competitors like HP’s EVA fall by the wayside there will fewer reasons to choose anything else for high-capacity OLTP.</p>\n<p><strong>The cloud onslaught</strong><br>\nWith the coming tidal wave of cloud-based storage options it is clear that the industry cannot support all the big iron array companies we currently have. There are several implications to EMC’s dominance in the traditional storage business.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Large storage arrays for OLTP are no longer a major pain points with customers. They have bigger problems now with massive amounts of file data, streaming data and scale of public and private cloud storage.\n</li>\n<li>Another is that customers are no longer looking solely to big iron arrays for high performance. DRAM and flash arrays are taking over the nose-bleed end of the storage performance envelope, leaving less latency-critical applications for traditional storage.</li>\n<li>As competition decreases, expect EMC to treat its flagship arrays as cash cows as it invests in newer technologies and companies.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>What changed?</strong><br>\nExpect to see a several of the dwarves leave the big iron storage array business. Let’s look at each of the competitors in turn.</p>\n<p><strong>Oracle/Sun</strong>. Sun’s storage business is the obvious weak sister among major vendors, as it has been for over 20 years. Oracle is having some success with its database optimized storage offerings, where it’s focus is on IBM. </p>\n<p>They’ve got a tin-wrapped software strategy. They aren’t seeking to challenge EMC and will remain a niche player closely aligned with the Oracle’s database business.</p>\n<p><strong>Hitachi Data Systems</strong> saw the writing on the wall several years ago with their acquisition of Archivas. They’ve been busy turning it into a credible cloud storage alternative. With their global distribution, quality reputation and OEM relationships, they have a better than even chance of making the transition to the brave new world of storage.</p>\n<p><strong>Dell</strong> is not in the big iron storage array business today but they’ve been working to build a significant business. Unfortunately their operations focused culture – and years of dependence on EMC – leaves them poorly prepared to enter the mainstream enterprise storage business. </p>\n<p>Dell is leveraging their low-cost supply chain to build a scale-out storage business. They’ll succeed with cloud service providers, but they’re unlikely to win in the enterprise. Providing reliable and low-cost hardware only gets you so far in the enterprise: support and a knowledgeable sales force mean even more.</p>\n<p><strong>NetApp</strong> has done a good job putting financial and marketing daylight between themselves and the other dwarves. But their one-size-fits-all strategy is bumping up against the reality that it doesn’t.</p>\n<p>Buying Bycast was a smart move, but like the Spinnaker acquisition they’ve been slow to capitalize on the little-known scale-out market leader. They’ll hang in there, but unless they adopt a more flexible strategy and product mix, their days of heady growth are behind them.</p>\n<p>They need to reinvigorate the company with a major cultural shift that enables them to market and sell multiple product lines, something some longtime senior execs – and a too-comfortable sales force – are dead set against. They don’t need to go as far afield as EMC has, but with their global sales and support they are well positioned to take a leaf from EMC’s technology publishing model.</p>\n<p><strong>Tomorrow: HP, IBM, the 7th dwarf and the StorageMojo take.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> As alert reader John Verity noted in the comments, my memory unit conflated the 7 dwarves with the PCM vendors – most famously Amdahl – in the first version of this post. Luckily correcting this makes the argument stronger. In the interest of transparency I struck out the wrong parts, but if it makes it unreadable I may just pull it. If I do, I’ll update this note. Sorry!</p>\n<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http://storagemojo.com/2013/04/25/emc-and-the-7-dwarves-part-1/&text=EMC%20and%20the%207%20dwarves%20-%20part%201\" title=\"Click here if you like this article.\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<img src=\"http://storagemojo.com/wp-content/plugins/twitter-plugin/images/twitt.gif\" alt=\"Twitt\">\n\t\t\t\t\t</a>\n\t\t\t\t</div>"
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"content" : "<p>by AIGERIM SAPAROVA</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-with-members-of-ghana-nat-folklore-board-i997-2.jpg\"><img alt=\"JOHN COLLINS with members of Ghana's National Folklore Board, 1997 via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-with-members-of-ghana-nat-folklore-board-i997-2.jpg?w=584&h=398\" width=\"584\" height=\"398\"></a><p>JOHN COLLINS with members of Ghana’s National Folklore Board, 1997 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This is part two of an interview with <strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JOHN COLLINS</span></strong> – professor, musician and historian of Ghanaian popular music for over forty years. Check out some of Prof. Collins’ essays <a href=\"http://www.scientific-african.org/scholars/jcollins/files\">here</a> – <strong>downloadable for free</strong> – after reading the interview below.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span></span></p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/front-of-bokoor-house-in-mid-1980s.jpg\"><img alt=\"BOKOOR HOUSE, mid-1980s via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/front-of-bokoor-house-in-mid-1980s.jpg?w=584&h=345\" width=\"584\" height=\"345\"></a><p>BOKOOR HOUSE, mid-1980s via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Was it difficult for you to be respected musically as a Caucasian rather than a Ghanaian? Did you feel you had to prove yourself?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">No. One of the things is that Ghanaians are fundamentally not racist. I mean, one of the reasons I had a problem at the university when I was young about them taking me seriously was that they knew I wasn’t playing with the prestigious dance bands or the urban bands, I was playing with these country bands and sleeping on the floor. They have a very bad reputation in the country, so it came off on me a bit as a guitarist or being a drunkard or whatever it was they thought. But in the end what happened was that I was just lucky that when I got to Ghana, nobody had written about highlife or concert parties…I was right in the middle of the Nigerian and the Ghanaian music scene, so by osmosis I collected all this information and ultimately ended up in a position of writing the history of highlife and the concert parties.</p>\n<p>I’m a Ghanaian any way by nationality.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/musiga-executives-in-1979-with-john-collins.jpg\"><img alt=\"JOHN COLLINS with MUSIGA execs, 1979 via BAPMAF \" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/musiga-executives-in-1979-with-john-collins.jpg?w=584&h=419\" width=\"584\" height=\"419\"></a><p>JOHN COLLINS with MUSIGA execs, 1979 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>You mentioned that there is a lot of space here for you to do what you want. When I think of the creative industry and the arts in Ghana, I feel like the space here is a bit stuffy, especially coming from the government. What do you think?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong></strong>Oh no, the government is the kiss of death. Absolutely – I mean, in terms of art, I mean there have been times in Ghana when Kwame Nkrumah did a certain amount, but basically, popular music is meant to have nothing to do with the government. Well, of course, what has happened today is because of taxation problems particularly in the music industry or the arts.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">To just give you an example, they have an entertainment tax. If you put on a live show, you have to buy the tickets from internal revenue before the show, and what happens if you get rained out? It’s this idea that you kill the goose that lays the golden egg. You wait for people to make money – a relaxed environment where people can make money –and then you tax people. This is why I’m involved with <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/www.musiga.org.gh/\">MUSIGA</a>, the union project – we’re trying to get the statistics on this to show the government how many people work in the industry and how much money is being generated.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-band-on-stage-1976-postcard-1.jpg\"><img alt=\"Bokoor Band, 1976\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-band-on-stage-1976-postcard-1.jpg?w=584&h=345\" width=\"584\" height=\"345\"></a><p>Bokoor Band jamming in 1976 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What’s your opinion on the new generation of musicians? How do they compare to earlier generations?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Well you see they have the disadvantage. All the new generation never had musical schooling, number one. Number two: all the live bands disappeared by the 80s, so they’ve never had role models of live music, so there’s heavy experimentation with recorded music. Although that is part of development in technology, I think for the whole youth practically in the popular music sector this has had a disastrous effect.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I mean this could be a generational thing but I think the whole point about music is that your relationship is between you and the musicians in your band – something like a family and between you and the band and the audience is your extended family. You have a personal relationship and that’s where the creativity is generated. If you create bands which don’t really exist as bands –they don’t even play together. One guy plays on Tuesday and another one on Thursday or it’s a studio band – and when you meet your audience, it’s mediated through lip-syncing or video or something like this. I personally can’t see where the creativity comes in. What then is the point of being a musician?</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ghanaba-john-collins-at-medie-in-1998.jpg\"><img alt=\"COLLINS with KOFI GHANABA at Medie, 1998 via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ghanaba-john-collins-at-medie-in-1998.jpg?w=584&h=390\" width=\"584\" height=\"390\"></a><p>COLLINS with KOFI GHANABA at Medie, 1998 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Then about ten years ago, things gradually started to change and they’ve gone back to live performance – not all of them but some of them. And then we had so many different things cooking on the pot in Ghana – we have traditional music, neo-traditional music, bands which are appealing to tourists, world music musicians, we have the salsa scene, the northern musicians for the first time making a mark on Ghanaian popular music, hiplife, disco, the burger highlife revival of old time highlife. All pots simmering on the stove.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-ebo-taylor-at-legon-in-2007.jpg\"><img alt=\"COLLINS with EBO TAYLOR at U-Legon, 2007 via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-ebo-taylor-at-legon-in-2007.jpg?w=584&h=438\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\"></a><p>COLLINS with EBO TAYLOR at U-Legon, 2007 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Do you think you can foresee what will happen musically in Ghana?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In a sense, it’s already happened – hiplife has gone back to singing , it’s not all rapping anymore –they call it contemporary highlife. So in a sense, they’ve reconnected with highlife again, but in a slightly different way. It’s very difficult to say which type of music, but I think the northern factor will play a very important role. If you look at some of the world music musicians from Ghana right now, they’re northerners and they’ve never played any role in Ghanaian popular music. Most certainly I think this experimentation in alienation, which is studio bands not having a real band, not having a real audience because you are not playing live – I think we’re coming out of that now.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-koo-nimo-playing.jpg\"><img alt=\"JOHN COLLINS plays with KOO NIMO via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-koo-nimo-playing.jpg?w=584&h=388\" width=\"584\" height=\"388\"></a><p>JOHN COLLINS plays with KOO NIMO via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>But what about electronic music?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Yes, even electronic music is sometimes influenced by polyrhythm or jungle beats. I mean, there are some links between electronic music and African music. The thing about electronic music is it’s basically escapist. You know, hard week’s work, you go somewhere, take some drugs and dance for two days, but the beats that you are dancing to are based on Black American music or even to some extent, reggae, Brazilian, African. I mean, it’s not coming from white culture, because white culture was rhythmically impoverished until Jazz came along and opened up the doors of rhythm again. Escapism is quite important in our modern society because our society is so grotesque.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-wearing-ewe-kente-smock-in-bokoor-studio.jpg\"><img alt=\"COLLINS in the Bookor Studio via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-wearing-ewe-kente-smock-in-bokoor-studio.jpg?w=584&h=416\" width=\"584\" height=\"416\"></a><p>COLLINS in the Bookor Studio via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What’s the state of your archives right now?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It’s in mothballs. The thing is, because I was lucky to open up [African Popular Music Studies] in Ghana – if I hadn’t been here, whole layers of knowledge would be gone. They could’ve never have gotten that information because the musicians who gave me the information are dead.</p>\n<div style=\"width:510px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tumblr_lthvx8k9tq1qcwj81.jpg\"><img alt=\"John Collins with musician LION outside Bokoor House via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/tumblr_lthvx8k9tq1qcwj81.jpg?w=584\"></a><p>John Collins with musician LION outside Bokoor House via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What would you need to restore it?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Money and a premises. That’s the main thing, premises, because the place I live now, it’s not suitable. Who is going to give me a premises in Accra? Everything is so expensive.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>To donate to Prof. Collins’ BAPMAF restoration, visit <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/www.bapmaf.com/\">here</a>.</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Read Part One of the John Collins interview <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/john-collins-digging-ghanas-sonic-gold-part-1/\">here</a>.</strong></p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><a title=\"Search DuckDuckGo\" href=\"http://duckduckgo.com/?q=here\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://ff.duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico\"></a><a title=\"Search Wikipedia\" href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=com&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky&q=here+wikipedia\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/image/png;base64,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\"></a></span><span><a title=\"Search Google\" href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=here\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://www.google.com/favicon.ico\"></a><a title=\"Search Surf Canyon\" href=\"http://search.surfcanyon.com/search?f=nrl1&q=here&partner=fastestfox\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/image/x-icon;base64,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%3D%3D\"></a></span></span></span></span></span><span style=\"margin-top:60px\"><span><span><span>Here</span><span>Here document – A here document (also called a here-document, a heredoc, a hereis, a here-string or a here-script) is a way of specifying a string literal in command line shells in… <a href=\"http://duckduckgo.com/?q=here\"><b>→</b></a></span></span></span></span></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2893/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2893/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=accradotalttours.wordpress.com&blog=22576869&post=2893&subd=accradotalttours&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>by AIGERIM SAPAROVA</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-new-1-e1365779317821.jpg\"><img alt=\"PROF. JOHN COLLINS at the University of Ghana-Legon, April 2013 | photo by Aigerim Saparova\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-new-1-e1365779317821.jpg?w=584&h=813\" width=\"584\" height=\"813\"></a><p>PROF. JOHN COLLINS at the University of Ghana-Legon, April 2013 | photo by Aigerim Saparova</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Growing up in England, <a href=\"http://www.ug.edu.gh/index1.php?linkid=850&sublinkid=1&sectionid=1174&page=2\"><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">Dr. John Collins</span></strong></a> felt like a black sheep. The other sheep were tightly packed with screws, bolts and a craving for the materialistic. To him, they’d been unknowingly brainwashed amidst a western hierarchical class system.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span></span></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Back and forth between England and Ghana beginning in 1952, Collins permanently migrated to Ghana to study archeology and sociology at the University of Legon in 1969. He notes a sort of mystical presence that he couldn’t find back home in England – a necessary human ingredient he felt was absent from western culture. He calls it “serendipity,” or the daily coincidences that make life more delightful. It’s an intricate thread of moments that open the window to opportunities releasing creative energy and the expectation of positive outcomes. To Collins, England was an empty hole in comparison.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-victor-uwaifo-in-1975-1.jpg\"><img alt=\"John Collins x Victor Uwaifo, 1975\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-and-victor-uwaifo-in-1975-1.jpg?w=584&h=431\" width=\"584\" height=\"431\"></a><p>John Collins x Victor Uwaifo, 1975 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">At this point, music was still a downtime hobby for Collins. Before coming to Ghana, he had dabbled in jazz, blues, and rock, but Ghana amplified his musical passions once he, out of spontaneity and pure luck, joined a guitar band while studying at Legon. Later on, Collins jammed with highlife and Afrobeat bands such as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._T._Mensah\">E.T. Mensah</a>, the Black Berets, the Jaguar Jokers, <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/www.felaproject.net/\">Fela Kuti,</a> <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/atongozimba.com/\">Atongo Zimba</a>, <a href=\"http://www.myspace.com/koonimomusic\">Koo Nimo</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Uwaifo\">Victor Uwaifo</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Kwaa+Mensah\">Kwaa Mensah</a>, among others. Little did Collins know that he would soon become a major player in the Ghanaian music circuit.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/burgerhighlifegeorgedarkohisgermanb.jpg\"><img alt=\"GEORGE DARKO + the BUS-STOP BAND, mid-80s via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/burgerhighlifegeorgedarkohisgermanb.jpg?w=584&h=438\" width=\"584\" height=\"438\"></a><p>GEORGE DARKO + the BUS-STOP BAND, mid-1980s via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">His active role as a participator and observer of Ghanaian music history has allowed him to collect an outstanding archive – and over 100 publications – that reveals how Ghanaian popular music has come to be today. Unfortunately, the present status of <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/www.bapmaf.com/\">Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation</a> (BAPMAF) is, as Collins puts it, <em>in mothballs</em> due to lack of funding.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">In a recent interview with <a href=\"http://www.scientific-african.org/scholars/jcollins\">JOHN COLLINS</a>, Professor at the Music Department at the University of Ghana at Legon, we discussed his experiences as a British musician in Ghana, his collaborations with Highlife’s biggest names, and his opinions on the current state of the Ghanaian music industry.</p>\n<div style=\"width:556px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/fela-and-john-collins-on-set-at-abeokuta-in-1977-for-the-blac-1.jpg\"><img alt=\"John Collins x Fela\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/fela-and-john-collins-on-set-at-abeokuta-in-1977-for-the-blac-1.jpg?w=584\"></a><p>KALAKUTA NOTES: John Collins x Fela Kuti on set for The Black President film, Abeokuta [1977]</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>What interested you in music initially?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My father was a violin player. My parents were Jazz fanatics. So I was raised on Louis Armstrong, Django Reinhardt and all this. When I was in England, I started to play the guitar and then I joined two jazz bands, a blues band, and later on a rock band. So by the time I got to Ghana in ’69, I had an electric guitar and I could play Jimi Hendrix or The Doors.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There was a competition at Achimota School- I call them <em>pop chains</em> like student groups – and they brought me in as an outsider in one of the groups called Deep Blues Feelings and so we did “Foxy Lady” [by Jimi Hendrix] and I played about two notes and the whole place went into uproar because they have never been able to get Hendrix’s sound because they didn’t have the technology of Hendrix and I had brought it with me. And so we won the competition, but of course it was a bit of a cheat because they brought me in from outside.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">My main interest in Ghana originally- I wasn’t really playing the student bands – I started because my father married an Akyem lady, I called her my Aunty Emma. So when I went to meet my stepmother – I always carried the guitar with me in those days – so one of the tenants was the leader of a guitar band concert party. They said, “Well, come with us,” so I did.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-king-bruce-at-bokoor-studio-in-1987.jpg\"><img alt=\"JOHN COLLINS x KING BRUCE at the Bokoor Studio, 1987 via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/john-collins-king-bruce-at-bokoor-studio-in-1987.jpg?w=584&h=461\" width=\"584\" height=\"461\"></a><p>JOHN COLLINS x KING BRUCE at the Bokoor Studio, 1987 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p><strong>Why’d you make the move to Ghanaian popular music?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">When I came to guitar bands – my own first band was a guitar band formed in the mid-70s –the trick with the guitars is that they do what African drums do. You know in African drumming you have the different types of drums but they are all equal. The beats in traditional drumming are very democratically organized. So, they did this with the guitar bands. You don’t really have a lead guitarist, you have a tenor guitarist, an alto guitarist, if I can put it like that. So they play off each other.</p>\n<p>I found this very liberating. I found it a relief to be in a type of music where you didn’t have to be a superstar. When I got to Ghana, I found that there is a type of music where you didn’t have to be a superstar which is traditional African drumming for instance –a virtuoso drummer doesn’t exist in traditional drumming, because if you are a big-headed, egoistic drummer you couldn’t play African music because you would never have a band. They would never stay with you, so I found it sort of a relief that I was in a more natural environment for me personally.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-with-traditional-drums-at-bokoor-house-in-1978.jpg\"><img alt=\"BOKOOR BAND with traditional drums, Bokoor House [1975] via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-with-traditional-drums-at-bokoor-house-in-1978.jpg?w=584&h=371\" width=\"584\" height=\"371\"></a><p>BOKOOR BAND with traditional drums, Bokoor House [1975] via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There’s a lot of space in African music –there’s a lot of gaps and silences…the main beat, nobody plays it. It’s in the dance steps and in the imagination of the players. There are hidden gaps in the music if I can put it that way. In the beginning, I just really liked the music but later on, I tried to work out why I liked it and I realized I like music with a lot of space in it.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But if you go to a European rock group or orchestra, there’s always the seniority in the conductor, the virtuoso, the superstar. Basically, I am an anarchist politically, and most European music is stratified music…Instinctively, I didn’t like that because I’m an anarchist and that’s what I realized.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-one-2nd-band-to-uhuru-sitting-at-atlantic-hotel-in-1972.jpg\"><img alt=\"BOKOOR BAND at Atlantic Hotel in Accra, 1972 via BAPMAF\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bokoor-band-one-2nd-band-to-uhuru-sitting-at-atlantic-hotel-in-1972.jpg?w=584&h=374\" width=\"584\" height=\"374\"></a><p>BOKOOR BAND at Atlantic Hotel in Accra, 1972 via BAPMAF</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Why didn’t you study music at Legon?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">After doing archeology and sociology, I wanted to do an MA in Highlife music in 1972 at Legon. I was forbidden because they said that it was a subject unworthy of academic pursuit and that was my luck because it forced me out of the University. So I was running bands, running a recording studio…but it forced me to learn things that I couldn’t have learned.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">So I went out of academia and started writing books and I was a journalist at one point. I got my PhD in Buffalo, NY and then I came back to Ghana. I was brought to Legon at about ’95 specifically to open up African Popular Music Studies. In fact, all the information I give in class – none of it is from books. It’s all people I’ve talked to and got the histories from.</p>\n<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/j-collins-dela-botri-atongo-zimba-juma-santos-legon-in-2001.jpg\"><img alt=\"John Collins with Dela Botri, Juma Santos and Atongo Zimba at U-Legon, 2001\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/j-collins-dela-botri-atongo-zimba-juma-santos-legon-in-2001.jpg?w=584&h=362\" width=\"584\" height=\"362\"></a><p>John Collins with Dela Botri, Atongo Zimba and Juma Santos at U-Legon, 2001</p></div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>After studying abroad in the States and occasionally visiting Europe, why did you decide to come back and stay in Ghana?</strong></p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">It always keeps you on your toes, there’s always a challenge. No security, you can’t be in a rut. [In Britain] they have a very good trick there of converting you into the victim. And they never stand back and realize that they are preaching a very distorted or limited view of human life. There’s just more space here to be yourself or to do things.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In Europe, it’s like a black hole – any creative energy you push out, it never comes back, it just dissipates and the only people that it really comes back to are the ruling classes because it’s a class system. But here, you come, and you find that things that you do, if it’s positive, it comes back to you in some way.</p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Read Part Two of the John Collins interview <a href=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/john-collins-digging-ghanas-sonic-gold-part-2/\">here</a>.</strong></p>\n<p><span><span><span><span><span><a title=\"Search DuckDuckGo\" href=\"http://duckduckgo.com/?q=here\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://ff.duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico\"></a><a title=\"Search Wikipedia\" href=\"http://www.google.com/search?hl=com&btnI=I'm+Feeling+Lucky&q=here+wikipedia\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/image/png;base64,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\"></a></span><span><a title=\"Search Google\" href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=here\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"https://www.google.com/favicon.ico\"></a><a title=\"Search Surf Canyon\" href=\"http://search.surfcanyon.com/search?f=nrl1&q=here&partner=fastestfox\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.wordpress.com/image/x-icon;base64,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%3D%3D\"></a></span></span></span></span></span><span style=\"margin-top:60px\"><span><span><span>Here</span><span>Here document – A here document (also called a here-document, a heredoc, a hereis, a here-string or a here-script) is a way of specifying a string literal in command line shells in… <a href=\"http://duckduckgo.com/?q=here\"><b>→</b></a></span></span></span></span></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2887/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/2887/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=accradotalttours.wordpress.com&blog=22576869&post=2887&subd=accradotalttours&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<h3>On Hilary Mantel</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>\nby Namara Smith\n</p>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<img src=\"http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/image.php?width=450&quality=95&image=http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/1024.png\" alt=\"\">\n<p><span>Image: </span>Hans Holbein the Younger, Thomas Cromwell, c. 1533.</p>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n<div>\n<br>Hilary Mantel. <i>Wolf Hall</i>. Henry Holt and Co., 2009.\n<br>Hilary Mantel. <i>Bring Up the Bodies</i>. Henry Holt and Co., 2012.\n</div>\n\n\n<div>\n\n<p>Near the beginning of Hilary Mantel’s <em>Eight Months on Ghazzah Street</em> (1988), the novel’s main character, a young English woman who has just arrived in Saudi Arabia, pauses as she joins her husband in the living room of their company-furnished apartment for the first time. She can’t decide where to sit; although the room is filled with chairs, none are placed so that two people can sit facing each other and talk. As she hesitates, wondering if dragging a seat into a better angle would seem “unreasonably portentous,” this detail expands threateningly, and behind the arrangement of furniture appears the outline of a broader social arrangement prohibiting equal conversation between spouses.</p>\n<p>Mantel’s novels take shape through the gradual accumulation of these moments of dissonance, moving outward from uncomfortable and unpleasant details to suggest larger patterns of menace and disorder. <em>Eight Months on Ghazzah Street</em>, partly drawn from Mantel’s experience during the Saudi oil boom of the early ’80s, begins with a precise description of the new construction fueled by the country’s rapid increase in wealth: “On every vacant lot in time appears the jumble of brownish brick, the metal spines of scaffolding, the sheets of plate glass; then last of all the marble, the most popular facing material, held on to the plain walls behind it with some sort of adhesive.” Inside these buildings, the hallways and staircases are also coated with marble, of the irregular flesh-colored shade “flecked with black and a fatty cream, revoltingly edible, like some kind of Polish sausage” popular among government officials of particularly corrupt regimes. </p>\n<p>Lured to the Persian Gulf by the quick profits promised by advisory consulting roles on government projects, Mantel’s English expatriates spend their allotted time haggling over gold-plated jewelry, brewing wine illegally in their bathtubs, and holding elaborate dinner parties with other English people whom they hate. After they drink too much, the men become casually racist and the women sneak into the kitchen to eat second and third helpings of dessert. Their faults can be neatly sorted into biblical categories of gluttony, lust, and vanity. Learning of her husband’s new salary, Frances, the main character is “cleanly stabbed by avarice, like a peach with a silver knife.” Mantel expands her condemnation of her characters into a condemnation of the city itself: “When the Jeddah earthquake comes—and it will come—all-seeing Allah will observe that the buildings are held together with glue; and he will peel the city apart like an onion.”</p>\n<p>To move from small details to this kind of distant, omniscient perspective, Mantel uses language that is both precise and compressed. Instead of resting on the middle distance, her sentences shift directly between events of different orders of magnitude. Her fifth novel, <em>A Change of Climate </em>(1994), begins, “One day when Kit was ten years old, a visitor cut her wrists in the kitchen. She was just beginning on this cold, difficult form of death when Kit came in to get a glass of milk.” Each line begins and ends with a neutral phrase—Kit’s age, her glass of milk, the kitchen, the bland “she was just beginning”—but the alternation between these mundane observations and the violent act at their center emphasizes the distance between them. </p>\n<p>Especially in Mantel’s early novels, this distinctness of expression constantly spills over into her figures of speech. One woman’s legs “[move] like scissors down the street”; another is permeated by other peoples’ words “like needles picking up the skin.” The frequency with which these violent movements of cutting, stabbing, and slicing are repeated reinforces the idea of Mantel’s language as a sharp, sterile blade. This violence is most overt in her first novel, an 800-page account of the French Revolution from the point of view of the Jacobins, which Mantel wrote while she was 23 and working in the women’s clothing section of a large department store.</p>\n<p>When she couldn’t sell this manuscript—it was eventually published in 1992 as <em>A Place of Greater Safety</em>—Mantel began writing much shorter books that contained an even greater intensity of tone. <em>Every Day Is Mother’s Day</em> (1985), the first novel she published, is set, like many of Mantel’s early books, in a small town in northern England. Its romantic leads, Isabel, a junior social worker, and Colin, a high school history teacher, meet in a night workshop called “Writing for Fun and Profit.” When the instructor tells them “there’s a book in each of us,” Isabel responds dourly, “I should like mine to be <em>Mansfield Park</em>.” Colin, unhappily married with several children, thinks, “I belong to the generation of Angry Young Men, although I was never angry until it was too late, oh, very late, and even now I am only mildly irritated.” Since they both hate everyone else in their writing workshop, they fall in love. Their affair is miserable almost before it begins: they spend most of it deciding whether to meet for warm gin and flat beer at a series of pubs “smelling of damp fake-furs and warming plastic” or to sit in their unheated car in the middle of a field. Eventually, the car shows signs of sinking into the mud, and they start driving to a highway service area instead. “This is ridiculous,” Colin says. “Nowhere to go. Like kids. Kids do this.”</p>\n<p>This note of unfocused, almost bemused aggression is struck by many of Mantel’s early narrators; it is as if they are irritated by so many things they have given up trying to distinguish between real and illusory sources of discomfort. Although they have subsided into nonthreatening social roles—teacher, housewife, ineffectual parish priest—they have vague, sweeping ambitions that lead to occasional quixotic attempts at self-improvement: night classes, daily journal entries, political meetings. But mostly their ambitions express themselves in negative form, through an uncompromising hatred of everything that seems false, pointless, and painful in their lives. The more this list is considered, the more it expands, magnifying small signals into conspiracies and inconveniences into traps. </p>\n<p>Increased perception, for these characters, seems to lead mostly to disgust with the world. Mantel dwells on this point at length in <em>An Experiment in Love </em>(1995), a campus novel set in the early 1970s, and the closest thing she has written to a bildungsroman. Its heroine, Carmel, is a scholarship student from a decaying mill town in northern England. She is educated, like Mantel herself, first at a convent school and then a selective London university. An aspiring revolutionary, Carmel joins the student socialist party, but is disappointed to find it dominated entirely by “men with bad teeth from obscure post-graduate specialties” who lecture on points of order, while “in Paris, the ashes of the évènements were hardly cool.” In London, the only apparent revolution is the sudden and decisive rout of the miniskirt in favor of belted trenches and maxi skirts—an aesthetic of the “poised, mysterious and difficult” where women apply lipstick in public and 26 is a more valued age than 16. Carmel, who can’t afford a new wardrobe, is caught barelegged on the wrong side of history. </p>\n<p>Like the cloistered nuns who share her name, Carmel moves further within herself as the novel progresses, as if into a walled medieval garden, but she is far from finding an inner principle of order or calm. Instead, she is increasingly unable to control her own thoughts. Stray facts, painful memories, and disjointed lines of verse circulate in her head like debris from a wreck. Even something as small as another girl stirring instant coffee causes Carmel to silently recite T.S. Eliot’s famous line about measuring out life with coffee spoons, before almost instantly chastising herself as too obvious. </p>\n<p>At the same time, she cuts her hair into a shingle bob, dyes it a lurid shade of red, and begins to knit a sweater that will locate her definitively as “poised, mysterious and difficult.” It is russet-brown, a reddish shade that clashes with Carmel’s new hair, and has a cowl neck; even the appliqué flowers, beads, and embroidery she adds cannot hide its resemblance to a monk’s habit. When completed, she wears her creation with a borrowed dark-green belt, “crushing and severe,” that compresses her ribcage into an almost triangular shape; by this point she is eating very little. Carmel intends the harsh material, restrictive shape, and sharp contrasts of this form to reflect her contempt for appearances, but they also reflect, unintentionally, her inner confusion and distress.</p>\n<p><em>An Experiment in Love</em> is partly an examination of Mantel’s own style, and the influences that have shaped her sentences. The structure of book consciously echoes <em>The Girls Of Slender Means</em>, Muriel Spark’s short novel about the residents of a women’s dormitory in the 1940s, but Carmel’s red hair, memento mori, and caustic intelligence seem to have more to do with Spark herself than with her characters. Similarly, the lines of poetry that run compulsively through Carmel’s mind suggest both the disembodied verses that interrupt Spark’s book and an episode from the writer’s own life, when, in 1955, overworked, starving, and dependent on the stimulant Dexedrine, Spark became convinced that T.S. Eliot was sending her coded messages in his writing, and suffered a nervous breakdown. </p>\n<p>This experience, which led to Spark’s recovery in a Carmelite convent and her conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, was also the basis for her first novel, <em>The Comforters</em>; she changed the visual hallucinations she had experienced into an unseen narrative voice that hounded her heroine and made her feel like a character in a novel. In a way, it seems only fair for Mantel to make Spark a character in her own novel, and, by placing these two sides of Spark’s life alongside each other, to suggest both the external form that Mantel has adopted and the private costs that have gone into creating this distant and sterile language.</p>\n<p><em>An Experiment In Love</em>’s main character also suffers a self-inflicted collapse but she recovers, at least partially. Carmel, who wanted to be the first female prime minister, ends the novel as a suburban housewife watching her more successful classmate on television. She seems to have found a kind of emotional balance, but a private one, unsanctioned by the world.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>By <em>Wolf Hall</em>, the first in her series of historical novels about Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell, Mantel’s prose has modulated into a new key. Her writing is still built on the careful accumulation of indirect observations, but the connective tissue of her sentences seems looser, and the sharp lines of her early novels have been replaced by a lavish, almost Elizabethan, vocabulary. </p>\n<p>Here are some of the words in Mantel’s Cromwell novels: <em>Guiles, argent, couchant. Estoc. Exsanguinates. Fuckeur</em>. There is hunting; there is jousting. There are sconces, velvet cushions, jellies in the shape of castles, and stuffed piglets. There are songs that can only be described as bawdy. Some descriptions—of the English winter, of court pageants—echo <em>Orlando</em>’s scenes on the frozen Thames. Although the language is not archaic, it is often luxurious: someone’s glance “slides…like silk upon a stone”; hawks fall from the sky “gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze.” </p>\n<p>Although they are Mantel’s most expansive books, <em>Wolf Hall</em> and <em>Bring Up the Bodies</em> are also her most tightly organized. Their pacing mimics that of an action novel: running through them are sentences with only two words, paragraphs with only two sentences, chapters with only two paragraphs. Imagery is repeated with small variations to set a different tone for each of her main characters: Anne Boleyn dresses in shades of gold and deep red, as if some internal fire made her dangerous to touch; she is taut and focused, her face reduced to its harsh angles, her teeth sharp and white. Her rival Jane Seymour is “a plain young woman with a silvery pallor” and a plump, discreetly dimpled face, who wears grays and pearls, and, after her marriage to Henry, a prim antique headdress. </p>\n<p>Minor characters—<em>Wolf Hall</em> and <em>Bring Up the Bodies</em> both have more than a hundred, laid out before each book in comprehensive charts and dramatis personae—are defined by one or two piercing details. The superficially imposing but extremely superstitious Duke of Norfolk “rattles a little as he moves, for his clothes conceal relics: in tiny jeweled cases he has shavings of skin and snippets of hair, and set into medallions he wears splinters of martyrs’ bones.” The much younger wife to an elderly diplomat “wears tawny silk, coral bracelets with gold hearts, and an expression of vigilant dissatisfaction, bordering on the peevish.” </p>\n<p>These observations are all filtered through the eyes of Mantel’s main character. When the future Archbishop of Canterbury, describing his past, pauses for a beat too long on the horse, bow, and hawk that his father gave him when he was a child, Cromwell notices quickly: “Dead, he thinks, the father long dead; still looking for his hand in the dark.” As the priest describes his schooling (harsh) and his duty to God (absolute), the successive authorities of his father, his education, and his religion delicately reinforce one another to suggest a comprehensive picture of his character. </p>\n<p>Mantel, who rarely boasts of her characters’ abilities, returns to Cromwell’s organizational excellence several times. She compares him to Simonides (“who invented the art of memory”), to a prototypical information-storing device under construction in Paris (“a memory machine”), and to an illustrated medieval breviary. While working as a hired soldier in Italy, Cromwell learned a “memory system,” a trick of joining events to mnemonic images: “Some of these images are flat, and you can walk on them. Some are clothed in skin and walk around a room. . . . He keeps them, in strict order, in the gallery of his mind’s eye.” The closest he comes to panic in <em>Wolf Hall</em> is while he watches his teenage son sort his papers: </p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What is Gregory doing? He is putting the documents into a stack. On what principle is he doing it? He can’t read them, they’re the wrong way up. He’s not filing them by subject. Is he filing them by date? For God’s sake, what is he doing?</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Later, once his son is gone, Cromwell returns to his office and files this stack of papers correctly. There is a historical basis for this characterization; the bulk of the English archives for the decade of Cromwell’s influence are composed of his extensive papers, which were seized by the state when he was arrested for treason in 1540. </p>\n<p>The eight years of Cromwell’s influence, from 1532 to 1540, coincided with Henry VIII’s divorce from his first wife and marriage to Anne Boleyn, the creation of the Church of England, the execution of Thomas More, the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s marriage to Jane Seymour, the printing of the first English bible, Jane Seymour’s death in childbirth, and Henry’s marriage to Anne of Cleves. Mantel looks at these familiar events and finds neither romantic drama nor historical spectacle, but human effort and ingenuity. Behind Henry’s divorces she sees the thousands of hours of careful justification necessary to prove that Henry’s marriage to Katherine was invalid, that Anne Boleyn herself had not engaged in a previous, secret marriage, that the Roman Church had no authority over Henry’s decision; then, later, to reverse the decision and prove that Henry’s marriage to Anne had been invalid all along. </p>\n<p>In telling the story of Henry VIII from this perspective, Mantel is inviting in several different groups of readers. Cromwell is the subject of at least two distinct conversations: one going on between historians and one between novelists, filmmakers, and the screenwriters of BBC costume dramas. Among the former group, there is a general agreement that administrative framework Cromwell put in place played a role in the creation of the modern English state. Geoffrey Elton, the historian who first advanced this theory claimed that Cromwell was “éminence grise of about 98 per cent” of the English commonwealth and the architect of the welfare state. Opposing views argue against the degree of Cromwell’s influence but do not challenge this essential premise. Even the recent biography <em>Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister</em> (2007) by popular historian Robert Hutchinson argued that Cromwell’s notoriety rested precisely in the centralized government processes he instituted, which Hutchinson saw as responsible for turning Tudor England into “what we would now recognize as a totalitarian, Stalinist state.”</p>\n<p>To fiction, however, Cromwell—whose movements are not well documented until he appeared in public view as a man in his late thirties—is a curious blank space. With the partial exception of Ford Madox Ford’s The Fifth Queen, Cromwell represents, at best, the cold and ambitious organ of impersonal authority responsible for putting Thomas More, Anne Boleyn and hundreds of Henry’s other opponents to trial; at worst, he is the actively malevolent “agent of Satan” portrayed in Robert Bolt’s 1960 play <em>A Man For All Seasons</em>. </p>\n<p>Bridging the gap that separates these views, Mantel moves fluently between the two different sides of Cromwell’s character. Her protagonist embodies the idea, which Mantel seems to share, that the only way to face the manifold trauma her books describe in such detail is through sustained and deliberate action. Writing on Robespierre in the <em>London Review of Books</em>, Mantel calls this principle <em>vertu</em>: the English word “virtue” is insufficient she thinks, as it sounds “pallid and Catholic.” <em>Vertu</em>, on the contrary, is neither self-righteousness nor individual sanctity, but “an active force that puts the public good before private interest.” </p>\n<p>Following Elton, Mantel finds Cromwell’s most important achievements in his efforts to give order and shape to the turbulent events taking place around him. As he writes Anne Boleyn’s indictment, Cromwell imagines that his role in history is to sort out the “entanglement of thighs and tongues” between Henry and Anne, “to take that mass of heaving flesh and smooth it on to white paper: as the body after the climax lies back on white linen.” She seems less convinced by the charges laid against Cromwell by opposing views. Asked in an interview about the morality of Cromwell’s execution of Anne Boleyn, she replied, “Oh no, she’d got to go.” But <em>Wolf Hall</em> and <em>Bring Up the Bodies</em> both try to show the ways that Cromwell’s public actions are formed by the events of his own life and the narratives that he has created to explain his actions to himself. The books’ most powerful moments are the ones that try to capture the two faces of these events—the public exterior and the private interior—side by side. </p>\n<p><em>Bring Up the Bodies</em> ends with Anne Boleyn’s execution. Cromwell, who is orchestrating the scene, is in command of every detail: a scaffold is set up in an old tournament field and sprinkled with sawdust; two hundred reservists are called up to lead a procession of London dignitaries; a special executioner, with a sword instead of an axe, is ordered from Calais. When Anne kneels, her attendants wrap her skirts around her feet, so that her body, when it falls, won’t be exposed. The one oversight—there is no coffin—is quickly corrected by emptying out a chest of arrows. </p>\n<p>Mantel describes the execution itself in two sentences: “There is a groan, one single sound from the whole crowd. Then a silence, and into that silence, a sharp sigh or a sound like a whistle through a keyhole: the body exsanguinates, and its flat little presence becomes a puddle of gore.” By the next line, she has moved on, and Cromwell is already listing the noblemen who refused to kneel and the ceremonial banners that need to be carried to the church.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/\">Purchase print issue »</a></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=nyd_CNeCNMY:SWV2YWhqI5s:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=nyd_CNeCNMY:SWV2YWhqI5s:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nplusonemag_main/~4/nyd_CNeCNMY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "NOT SELLING OUT, THAT’S A NEGATIVE",
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"content" : "<p>Question from Damien: “I was wondering today…who introduced the RnB/Soul side to the hip hop? The one we can hear in Mos Def’s or The Pharcyde’s tracks? Was there any tension about this at the time, some kind of opposition between the aggressive tone of some early 90′s releases and the smoothness of some others?”</p>\n<p>Answer: There’s two separate questions here so let me tackle the first. </p>\n<p>First, it’s a bit odd to try to talk about how R&B was “introduced” into hip-hop insofar as rap music’s roots come out of soul via funk via disco. I mean, “Rapper’s Delight” was riffing on Chic. The DNA of R&B lies in hip-hop too even if the latter certainly took pains to separate itself from the former, around the time Run DMC was decimating their old school forefathers. But R&B/hip-hop crossovers existed across the ’80s, even in that area, none better (in my opinion) than this:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/1XV5_WagxZg\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>And of course, one of LL Cool J’s first big songs was basically a rap/R&B hybrid even though there’s no actual singing in it. </p>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/NEUX-HYRtUA\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The point I’m making is that these lines were always intersecting, always blurred. There were, of course, songs that pushed this crossover point harder than others. I still remember people being madly disappointed by Nas’s “If I Ruled the World” (feat. Lauryn Hill) because they wanted “N.Y. State of Mind 2.0,” not some quasi-Fugees collabo. And that addresses your second question:</p>\n<p><i>Hell yeah there was opposition</i>.</p>\n<p>“Real heads”, then and now, hated R&B/hip-hop crossovers if they felt that they were being done as pure commercial pandering. Of course, what one defines as pandering isn’t always easy to define. For example, what really separates this:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/RmNYRuj8Ym0\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>…from this:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/UINbFfP-84E\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>…from this:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/VcP96KbFIIU\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>…from this:</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/7PK9-uIQyk0\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>For the record, I ride for half those songs, the other half can miss me. But is it obvious which ones? It’s taste dependent. </p>\n<p>To me, the key thing that happened by the early/mid 1990s was that hip-hop wasn’t trying to crossover into R&B but R&B, most certainly was trying to ride off of hip-hop’s success. That’s one reason why Mary J. Blige was embraced in a way that other, previous R&B singers did not; Blige sounded like she wanted to be down. Her and her team (lead by Puffy) understood how R&B could be made palatable to a hip-hop sensibility via the right production and the right collaborators. But the important point here is that it seemed like R&B was crossing over to hip-hop on <em>hip-hop’s terms</em> rather than songs that seemed more like hip-hop pandering to be down with R&B. </p>\n<hr>\nHave a question? <a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/ask-us-anything/\">Ask us</a>.\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?a=LHI3QBvwJ1U:IhVHKsFuh5o:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?a=LHI3QBvwJ1U:IhVHKsFuh5o:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "I’m not much on tabloid gossip as news content, but Reese Witherspoon’s encounter with an Atlanta police officer, in which she tried to prevent her husband’s arrest during a traffic stop by playing the celebrity card, brings to mind one of my favorite Baltimore police stories. I just gotta let fly. As to Ms. Witherspoon, [...]"
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"content" : "<p>The anger and embarrassment visible in the interviews given on Friday by the uncle and the aunt of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, are entirely understandable. </p>\n<p>But I see clues here to family dynamics that may be important in understanding what happened. In Ivan Turgenev’s 1862, novel, “Fathers and Sons,” the old man’s son, Arkady, comes back home after studies with a friend, Bazarov, after both had adopted the <a href=\"http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/415081/nihilism\"> radical philosophy of Nihilism</a>. Their radicalism roiled the family for a while, until Bazarov’s death. (Later, in 1881, Nihilists assassinated Tsar Alexander II).</p>\n<p>The key back in 2013, I think, is <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/04/19/maret_tsarnaeva_dzhokhar_tsarnaev_and_tamerlan_tsarnaev_s_aunt_still_not.html\"> Maret Tsarnaeva’s assertion</a> that the father, Anzor, ‘worked in the enforcement agencies’ <s>in Russian Chechnya. </s></p>\n<p>Update:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://mobile.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2013/04/20/boston-suspects-chechen-family-traveled-long-road\">It appears she meant he worked as an attorney for the prosecutor’s office in Soviet Kyrgyzstan,</a> i.e. for the Communist, Stalinist state.</p>\n<p>‘We were,’ she said, ‘lucky to get him out of Kyrgyzstan alive,’ presumably because radical Muslims were trying to track him down and take revenge on him there. </p>\n<p>Update: If he had been a Soviet era prosecutor, a lot of people in Kyrgyzstan would have had a grudge with him. Hence his abortive attempts to flee first to Chechnya in the early 90s and to Daghestan later.</p>\n<p> She also seems to imply that he was given asylum in the US easily, precisely because he had been an ‘enforcer’<s> in Grozny against the Muslim fundamentalist rebels,</s><s> and so there was no doubt that his life was in danger</s><s> from them.</s></p>\n<p><s>It is possible that she is saying that Anzor Tsarnaev was a soldier or security policeman for the pro-Russian Chechnyan government of Akhmet Kadyrov, established in 1999 in the course of the <a href=\"http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~queir20r/classweb/pages/thesecondchechenwar.html\"> Second Chechnya War</a> against the Islamic Peacekeeping Army, which had invaded Daghestan.<br>\n</s><br>\n<a href=\"http://www.juancole.com/images/2013/04/dagestan.gif\"><img src=\"http://www.juancole.com/images/2013/04/dagestan.gif\" alt=\"dagestan\" width=\"500\" height=\"428\"></a></p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.enstarz.com/articles/16581/20130419/ruslan-tsarni-video-uncle-boston-bombers-call-dzhokhar-tamerlan-tsarnaev-losers-full-transcript.htm\"> uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, </a> said that the bombings had nothing to do with religion, that that charge is a fraud, he said, because he knew the family and the boys as children (i.e. he knew them to have been raised as secularists). Someone, he said, ‘radicalized them.’ </p>\n<p>Most ex-Soviet Muslims are secular and many don’t believe in God or think religion is important. Their families lived under a Communist regime for some 70 years, with its campaigns of official atheism and anti-religious indoctrination in schools. In the ex-Soviet Muslim-heritage republics, there are huge struggles between those happy in their secularism and those who are attempting to recover a Muslim identity. That struggle has played out in Chechnya as well as in Uzbekistan.</p>\n<p>This is <a href=\"http://www.enstarz.com/articles/16581/20130419/ruslan-tsarni-video-uncle-boston-bombers-call-dzhokhar-tamerlan-tsarnaev-losers-full-transcript.htm\"> the transcript of Ruslan’s remarks</a></p>\n<blockquote><p> “I want to speak on behalf of Tsarnev. First, the only purpose here is just to deliver condolences and to share grief with the victims here. Those who were injured – this boy this Chinese girl, the young 29-year-old girl – I’ve been following this from day one.</p>\n<p>I can never imagine that somehow the children of my brother would be associated with that so it is atrocity. I don’t know this family . I don’t know how to share that grief with the real victims.</p>\n<p>They never lived here. The last time I saw them was December 2005.</p>\n<p>I never knew they had any ill will towards United States. Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves – these are the only reasons I can imagine why they did this. Anything else, religion, is a fraud. I’ve seen thm when they were kids.</p>\n<p>Somebody radicalized them but its not my brother who spent his life bringing bread to their table fixing cars. He didnt have time or chance, He’s been working.</p>\n<p>My family has nothing to do with that family.</p>\n<p>Of course we are ashamed! They are children of my family! Who had little influence of them. i just wanted my family to be away from them.</p>\n<p>Again I say what I think was behind it . BEING LOSERS! not being able to settle themselves. That they were hating everyone who did.</p>\n<p>They came early since 2003. They came to Cambridge when they moved to the States. They came to Cambridge. They immigrated. They received asylum. They LIVED there. My family had nothing to do with that family for a long time. Last time I spoke to them was 2009.</p>\n<p>I say I teach my children. I respect this country I love this country. This country which gives chance to everyone else to be treated as a human being .<br>\nThey never been in Checnya. They had nothing to do with Chechnya. They were not born there. One of them was born in neighboring country.</p>\n<p>I saw them only this morning when I was contacted at 7 a.m. with the orders. When they said have you seen the pictures I opened up internet and I saw a picture of [Dzhakhar].</p>\n<p>I said, ‘You’re alive! Turn yourself in and ask for forgiveneess. The victims from the injured and from those who died. Ask forgiveness from these people.” He put a SHAME on our family. He put a shame on the entire Chechnyan ethnicity cause now everyone blames Chechnyans. They shamed entire ethnicity. TURN yourself IN and put yourself in the discretion of these people.</p>\n<p>(Reporter asked: do you consider them terrorists) I would, I would. From now on, I ask you to respect our property. Again, with the families of those who suffered, we share the grief with them. I’m ready to bend in, we seek forgiveness. Thank you.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>I think what he was saying is that the Tsarnaevs were secular Chechens, as the majority of ex-Soviet Muslims are. That the family was not interested in religion or religious nationalism is supported by the reports that the two boys liked to party.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.enstarz.com/articles/16590/20130419/maret-tsarnaev-video-bombers-aunt-believes-tamerlan-dzhokhar-set-up.htm\"> In her interview, Maret Tsarnaev</a> seemed to me to say that the father of the two, Anzor Tsarnaev, had worked as an ‘enforcer’ for the Russian authorities,<s> I take it as a policeman or security official.</s> That was the reason, she said, that he had to flee to Kyrgyzstan. That is, far from being rooted in the Muslim fundamentalist wing of the Chechnya rebellion, as many are assuming, the family appears to have been part of the <s>Russian Kadyrov-Putin </s> Soviet and then secular Kyrgyz establishment and opposed to religious radicalism there.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/04/19/maret_tsarnaeva_dzhokhar_tsarnaev_and_tamerlan_tsarnaev_s_aunt_still_not.html\"> interview is here</a>:</p>\n<p></p>\n<p>She also said that the father had ridden Dzhokhar and Tamerlan very hard, and that the latter had dropped out of college and gotten married, and the father had not taken it well. Their mother also seems to have been troubled, <a href=\"http://www.ibtimes.com/tamerlan-dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-father-claims-sons-were-framed-chechen-leader-denies-any-link-his\"> having been busted a couple years after coming to the US for stealing $1600 worth of clothing</a>.</p>\n<p>So you have young men from a secular, ex-Soviet Muslim family that had <s>perhaps fought</s> opposed the Chechen fundamentalists. And you have young men who felt they had failed their father.</p>\n<p>And they had started praying five times a day and listening to radical sermons, and they finally commit suicide by terrorism (they seemed to be acting Thursday night as if they were ready to die), in a cause toward which their father had been unsympathetic. (It is even possible that he had to flee [again on briefly returning to Chechnya ] in 1999 because of his identification with the <s>Russian</s> secular side. In 1999 <a href=\"http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~queir20r/classweb/pages/thesecondchechenwar.html\"> a second war broke out in Chechnya just after the Tsarnaevs returned again from Kyrgyzstan, provoked by Muslim radicals instead of by nationalists</a>.)</p>\n<p>This sounds to me like a classic father-son struggle, and a tale of adolescent rebellion, in which radical Muslim vigilanteism appears mainly as a tool for the young men to get back to their father, and perhaps to wipe off the shame they had begun feeling about the family having been on the wrong side of the Chechnya fundamentalist uprising. They were playing the nihilists Arkady and Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. The shame of the secular uncle may have been mirrored from the other side in the shame of the newly religious-nationalist adolescents.</p>"
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"title" : "Twelve Simple Songs now also available as an iBook",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/twelve-simple-songs/id638777132?ls=1\"><img src=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/iBook-thumbnail.jpg\" title=\"iBook screenshot\" alt=\"iBook screenshot\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\"></a>Thanks entirely to <a href=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/\">Rachel</a>, for all you iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users, <em><a href=\"http://davebonta.com/twelve-simple-songs/\">Twelve Simple Songs</a></em> is <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/twelve-simple-songs/id638777132?ls=1\">now available as an iBook</a>! I’ve only seen PDF versions of it, since I don’t own any iGadgets, but I’m told there are clickable audio players with my readings on each double-page spread, and the <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/63079754\">videopoem</a> by Swoon with readings by Nic Sebastian is included at the end. </p>\n<p>Like the other versions, it’s free. But it did cost Rachel a certain amount of aggravation, including many hours of work, frustration at poor support docs, and a spilled beverage on her keyboard and adjacent electronic devices. So if you can, please <a href=\"http://davebonta.com/twelve-simple-songs/\">check it out</a> and give it a rating. Thanks.</p>\n<p>UPDATE: Rachel has blogged about <a href=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/2013/04/19/after-a-short-labour-its-a-book/\">the making of the iBook</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "There are a lot of stories about Keith’s nose",
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"content" : "<p>Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards once stayed awake for nine consecutive days – and then collapsed so quickly he broke his nose [<b><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22084671\">link</a></b>]</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/nsippets.wordpress.com/175933035/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/nsippets.wordpress.com/175933035/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nsippets.wordpress.com&blog=48120785&post=175933035&subd=nsippets&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The $12 Gongkai Phone",
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"content" : "<p>How cheap can you make a phone? </p>\n<p>Recently, I paid $12 at <a href=\"http://en.mt0755.com/index.html\">Mingtong Digital Mall</a> for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you’re going out and worried about getting your primary phone wet or stolen. </p>\n<p>Also, it would certainly find an appreciative audience in impoverished and developing nations.</p>\n<p><center><br>\n<a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_1.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_1_sm.jpg\" width=\"250\"></a></center> </p>\n<p>$12 is the price paid for a single quantity retail, contract-free, non-promotional, unlocked phone — in a box with charger, protective silicone sleeve, and cable. In other words, the production cost of this phone is somewhere below the retail price of $12. Rumors place it below $10.</p>\n<p>This is a really amazing price point. That’s about the price of a large Domino’s cheese pizza, or a decent glass of wine in a restaurant. Or, compared to an Arduino Uno (admittedly a little unfair, but humor me):</p>\n<p><center></center></p>\n<table border=\"1\">\n<tr>\n<th>Spec</th>\n<th>This phone</th>\n<th>Arduino Uno</th>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Price</td>\n<td>$12</td>\n<td><a href=\"http://www.makershed.com/New_Arduino_Uno_Revision_3_p/mksp11.htm\">$29</a></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>CPU speed</td>\n<td>260 MHz, 32-bit</td>\n<td>16 MHz, 8-bit</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>RAM</td>\n<td>8MiB</td>\n<td>2.5kiB</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Interfaces</td>\n<td>USB, microSD, SIM</td>\n<td>USB</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Wireless</td>\n<td>Quadband GSM, Bluetooth</td>\n<td>-</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Power</td>\n<td>Li-Poly battery, includes adapter</td>\n<td>External, no adapter</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Display</td>\n<td>Two-color OLED</td>\n<td>-</td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n<p></p>\n<p>How is this possible? I don’t have the answers, but it’s something I’m trying to learn. A teardown yields a few hints.</p>\n<p><center><br>\n<a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_4.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_4_sm.jpg\" width=\"250\"></a></center></p>\n<p>First, there are no screws. The whole case snaps together.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_5.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_5_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_6.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_6_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>Also, there are (almost) no connectors on the inside. Everything from the display to the battery is soldered directly to the board; for shipping and storage, you get to flip a switch to hard-disconnect the battery. And, as best as I can tell, the battery also has no secondary protection circuit.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_7.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_7_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>The Bluetooth antenna is nothing more than a small length of wire, seen on the lower left below.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_9.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_9_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>Still, the phone features accoutrements such as a back-lit keypad and decorative lights around the edge.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_8.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniefoo.com/ntw/dozendp_8_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>The electronics consists of just two major ICs: the Mediatek <a href=\"http://www.mediatek.com/_en/01_products/04_pro.php?sn=1062\">MT6250DA</a>, and a Vanchip <a href=\"https://chipworks.secure.force.com/catalog/ProductDetails?sku=VCT-VC5276&viewState=DetailView&cartID=&g=\">VC5276</a>. Of course, with price competition like this, Western firms are suing to protect ground: Vanchip is in <a href=\"http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/news/2012/08/29/rf-micro-files-suit-against-former.html\">a bit of a legal tussle</a> with RF Micro, and Mediatek has also been subject to a few lawsuits of its own.</p>\n<p>The MT6250 is rumored to sell in volume for under $2. I was able to anecdotally confirm the price by buying a couple of pieces on cut-tape from a retail broker for about $2.10 each. [<em>No, I will not broker these chips or this phone for you...</em>]<br>\n<center><br>\n<img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/dozendp_a.jpg\"></center><br>\nThat beats the best price I’ve ever been able to get on an ATMega of the types used in an Arduino.</p>\n<p>Of course, you can’t just call up Mediatek and buy these; and it’s extremely difficult to engage with them “going through the front door” to do a design. Don’t even bother; they won’t return your calls. </p>\n<p>However, if you know a bit of Chinese, and know the right websites to go to, you can download schematics, board layouts, and software utilities for something rather similar to this phone…”for free”. I could, in theory, at this point attempt to build a version of this phone for myself, with minimal cash investment. It feels like open-source, but it’s not: it’s a different kind of open ecosystem.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/dozendp_b.jpg\"></p>\n<p><strong>Introducing Gongkai</strong></p>\n<p>Welcome to the Galapagos of Chinese “open” source. I call it “gongkai” (公开). Gongkai is the transliteration of “open” as applied to “open source”. I feel it deserves a term of its own, as the phenomenon has grown beyond the so-called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanzhai\">“shanzhai”</a> (山寨) and is becoming a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem of its own. </p>\n<p>Just as the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_Islands\">Galapagos Islands</a> is a unique biological ecosystem evolved in the absence of continental species, gongkai is a unique innovation ecosystem evolved with little western influence, thanks to political, language, and cultural isolation.</p>\n<p>Of course, just as the Galapagos was seeded by hardy species that found their way to the islands, gongkai was also seeded by hardy ideas that came from the west. These ideas fell on the fertile minds of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta\">Pearl River delta</a>, took root, and are evolving. Significantly, gongkai isn’t a totally lawless free-for-all. It’s a network of ideas, spread peer-to-peer, with certain rules to enforce sharing and to prevent leeching. It’s very different from Western IP concepts, but I’m trying to have an open mind about it.</p>\n<p>I’m curious to study this new gongkai ecosystem. For sure, there will be critics who adhere to the tenets of Western IP law that will summarily reject the notion of alternate systems that can nourish innovation and entrepreneurship. On the other hand, it’s these tenets that lock open hardware into technology several generations old, as we wait for patents to expire and NDAs to lift before gaining access to the latest greatest technology. After all, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Term_of_patent_in_the_United_States\">20 years</a> is an eternity in high tech. </p>\n<p>I hope there will be a few open-minded individuals who can accept an exploration of the gongkai Galapagos. Perhaps someday we can understand — and maybe even learn from — the ecosystem that produced the miracle of the $12 gongkai phone.</p>"
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"title" : "Picture of the Day",
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"content" : "<p>I am presently in Ghana on a work/fun trip and took this picture in Nkwanta, a small town in the northern part of Volta Region. It is of a bookstore that also stocks caning sticks. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bookstore.jpeg\"><img alt=\"Image\" src=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/bookstore.jpeg?w=650\"></a></p>\n<p>My girlfriend tells me that corporal punishment is legal in Ghana and is regulated by the Ghana Education Services. Apparently teachers are supposed to keep all records of caning incidents, noting the name, age, and reason for caning a student as well as number of lashes given (which should not exceed six). No prizes for guessing if these regulations are ever followed by teachers.</p>\n<p>Article 13(2) of the Children’s Act (1998) allows for “justifiable” and “reasonable” correction of a child. In the Education Act (1961), the Ghana Education Code of Discipline for second cycle school provides for caning up to six strokes by a head teacher or person authorised by the head (<a href=\"http://www.endcorporalpunishment.org/pages/progress/reports/ghana.html\">source</a>).</p>\n<p>For a comparative take, corporal punishment has been illegal in Kenya for a while, but is weakly enforced. I was caned a couple of times as a student at Mang’u High School (once for being at the canteen during sports hour and again when my whole class – the (in)famous Form II South – was caned for misbehaving). No one thought it worth our time to report such incidents to our parents. </p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/category/africa/\">africa</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/caning-in-ghana/\">caning in Ghana</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/ghana-education-services/\">Ghana education services</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/ghana-schools/\">ghana schools</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/ho/\">Ho</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/hohoe/\">Hohoe</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/jss/\">JSS</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/kwe/\">Kwe</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/nkwanta/\">Nkwanta</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/sss/\">SSS</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.com/tag/volta-region/\">Volta Region</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/7303/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/7303/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kenopalo.com&blog=2271139&post=7303&subd=kenopalo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/rogoff-clippy.png\" alt=\"Clippy's Revenge\" width=\"400/\"></p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/researchers-finally-replicated-reinhart-rogoff-and-there-are-serious-problems\">You can see this point made in somewhat more detail here</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Yes, some Africans do remember Margaret Thatcher fondly",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/thatcherstatevisit.jpg?w=610\"><br>\nToday is Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, to which guests have been asked to “<a href=\"http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-funeral-top-gears-1824238\">wear full day ceremonial dress without swords</a>.” Remember when we blogged about Margaret Thatcher’s terrible legacy? Read it again <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/04/09/margaret-thatcher-est-morte/\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/04/09/no-africans-dont-remember-margaret-thatcher-fondly/\">here</a>. We were emphatic that “<a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/04/09/no-africans-dont-remember-margaret-thatcher-fondly/\">Africans don’t remember Margaret Thatcher fondly</a>.” Well, we were wrong. Some Africans do like Margaret Thatcher. Here’s a gallery of 10 of them, some of whose words have been repeated across Western media: <span></span></p>\n<p>* <strong>Ibrahim Babangida</strong>, the former “military president” of Nigeria for much of the 1980s, who in <a href=\"http://audioboo.fm/boos/1316065-nigeria-s-former-military-leader-babangida-on-margaret-thatcher-s-death?utm_campaign=detailpage&utm_content=retweet&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&ocid=socialflow_twitter_africa\">a radio interview </a> talked about taking advice from Thatcher (she visited the dictator in 1988, above) to have a policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa. On her advice he then invited the white South African ruler FW de Klerk to Nigeria. I can’t only imagine what they discussed.</p>\n<p>* Talk of <strong>FW de Klerk</strong>. He was one of the first people to RSVP for Mrs Thatcher’s funeral. He called her “<a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-08-thatchers-death-sparks-mixed-reaction-in-sa\">a friend</a>.” He <a href=\"http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2013/04/16/why-south-africa-owes-a-huge-debt-to-the-iron-lady\">can’t stop himself</a>. If you can remember, as late as 2012 de Klerk still publicly expressed his opinion (on CNN) that Apartheid was a good idea. He later came up with a half apology.</p>\n<p>* Then there’s <strong>Dambisa Moyo</strong>, Zambian former banker, who gave us the badly researched book “Dead Aid” and who frequently argues that <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/288cef92-50b3-11e1-8cdb-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F288cef92-50b3-11e1-8cdb-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3FqueryText%3DDambisa%2BMoyo%26ftsearchType%3Dtype_news#axzz1lqSRcDMR\">what Africa needs right now is more free market capitalism</a>. She <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dambisamoyo/status/321291234826153984\">tweeted</a> that Thatcher was a “leader and pioneer.” We’re not sure for what.</p>\n<blockquote><p>Sad news on the passing of Margaret <a href=\"https://twitter.com/search/%23Thatcher\">#Thatcher</a>.Leader and pioneer… <a href=\"https://twitter.com/search/%23IronLady\">#IronLady</a></p>\n<p>— Dambisa Moyo (@dambisamoyo) <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dambisamoyo/status/321291234826153984\">April 8, 2013</a></p></blockquote>\n<p>* <strong>Goodluck Jonathan</strong>–who has <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/03/21/65234/\">a record</a> himself of <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/01/09/occupy-nigeria/\">disregarding the wishes of his subjects</a>–said Thatcher was “<a href=\"http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/04/thatcher-one-of-worlds-greatest-leaders-jonathan/\">one of the greatest world leaders of our time</a>.” He also thanked her on behalf of all Nigerians and those “whose lives were positively touched by her dynamic and forward-looking policies.”</p>\n<p>* <strong>Daniel arap Moi</strong>, former Life President of Kenya and now also a noted feminist: Mrs Thatcher “<a href=\"http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Leaders-mourn-Margaret-Thatcher/-/1056/1742732/-/opgkwcz/-/index.html\">was a great role model for women who want to join politics</a>.” He continued: “<a href=\"http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Leaders-mourn-Margaret-Thatcher/-/1056/1742732/-/opgkwcz/-/index.html\">As the first British female Prime Minister and political party leader, Mrs Thatcher has inspired many women worldwide to venture into political leadership</a>.” Oh yeah? Go tell that to <a title=\"Glenda Jackson\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8\">Glenda Jackson</a>.</p>\n<p>* <strong>Uhuru Kenyatta</strong>, the new President of Kenya (and a man of peace) wanted to best Moi. Who once said the electoral choices in Kenya are between different rightwing variants? “Lady Thatcher was a decisive and firm leader who will be remembered across the world for the role she played in pushing for free market economic ideology. To everyone who knew Lady Thatcher and had the opportunity to work and interact with her, the former Prime Minister was well respected as an iron lady of outstanding ability.” Sounds like he just watched the Meryl Streep movie (him and <a title=\"everybody who reads\" href=\"http://lindaikeji.blogspot.com/2013/04/first-female-uk-prime-minister-margaret.html\">everybody who reads</a> Linda Ikeji’s blog).</p>\n<p>* A lot of other South African politicians made the cut. Apart from de Klerk there’s <strong>Mangosuthu Buthelezi</strong>, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, which fought a proxy war on behalf of the Apartheid dictatorship (disguised as “black on black” and “Zulu tribal war”) against opponents of Apartheid during the 1980s and early 1990s. Buthelezi will be in London today. Before he left, he mumbled on about two of them being “kindred spirits” and being committed to “<a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-15-buthelezi-to-attend-thatchers-funeral\">a non-communist outcome to the South African liberation</a>.”</p>\n<p>* The very populist leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance, <strong>Helen Zille</strong> (a self-styled <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/africasacountry.com/2011/02/22/the-uprising/\">‘Iron Lady”</a>) said: “[Mrs Thatcher] did not allow populist politics to define her position on anything.”</p>\n<p>* Commenters on South African news websites deserve their own special mention. See how the privileged readers of <em>Business Day</em> <a href=\"http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/04/11/thatchers-legacy-is-a-less-generous-uk-society\">reacted to a piece</a> by ANC intellectual Pallo Jordan on Thatcher’s legacy (just scroll down, but first read the piece).</p>\n<p>* Finally, there was <strong><a href=\"http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/ThoughtIdeas/Margaret-Thatcher-and-Amin/-/689844/1747496/-/51a9xez/-/index.html\">Idi Amin</a></strong>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66681/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66681/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=66681&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>This NYTimes <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/world/asia/china-mourns-the-death-of-student-in-boston-blast.html\">piece</a> about the Chinese student killed in the Boston Marathon bombing brings to mind this:</p>\n<p>The Diameter Of The Bomb </p>\n<p>by Yehuda Amichai</p>\n<p>The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters<br>and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,<br>with four dead and eleven wounded.<br>And around these, in a larger circle<br>of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered<br>and one graveyard. But the young woman<br>who was buried in the city she came from,<br>at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,<br>enlarges the circle considerably,<br>and the solitary man mourning her death<br>at the distant shores of a country far across the sea<br>includes the entire world in the circle.<br>And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans<br>that reaches up to the throne of God and<br>beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.</p></div>"
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"title" : "Can Tanzania achieve its Green Revolution?",
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"content" : "<div><div><div><p>\n<img align=\"left\" alt=\"\" height=\"148\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/agriculture.jpg\" width=\"240\"><span style=\"font-size:smaller\"><em><strong>Let's think together:</strong> Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with </em></span><a href=\"http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/\"><span style=\"font-size:smaller\"><em>The Citizen</em></span></a><span style=\"font-size:smaller\"><em> wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.</em></span></p>\n\n<p>\nAgriculture is the mainstay of Tanzania’s rural economy and the livelihood of most of the country’s poor. As a result, rural incomes and poverty reduction are closely linked to agricultural productivity. Yet, according to FAO, yields for important staple crops in Tanzania remain very low:<br>\n- With a maize yield of 1.3 metric tons per hectare (mt/ha) in 2011, Tanzania ranks behind Kenya and Ghana (1.6 mt/ha); and way behind Vietnam (4.3 mt/ha) or China (5.7 mt/ha).<br>\n- A similar pattern holds for rice (paddy), with Tanzania’s yield of 2.0 mt/ha in 2011 being comparable to only about half of Kenya’s (4.0 mt/ha), and less than one third of China’s (6.7 mt/ha) in that year.<br>\n- It is noteworthy too that there has been no general upward trend in yields over the past two decades, though there is considerable annual variation due to rainfall patterns.</p></div></div></div>"
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"content" : "<p>My introduction to Public Enemy came through the <i>Less Than Zero</i> soundtrack, released on November 6, 1987. I was a fan of rap music, but I was also a headbanger, saluting the almighty power of heavy metal. The soundtrack was promoted as featuring tracks by Aerosmith, Danzig, Poison, and Slayer, and it was the latter’s cover of Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” that made me want to buy it so I could play it on the high school radio station I was a DJ for. The format of the radio station was hard rock/heavy metal, along with classic rock. I’d play the songs by Aerosmith, Poison, and Slayer, and enjoyed doing so, being the only station in the area that played these songs.</p>\n<p>Then I decided to flip the record over to side 2.</p>\n<p>I had never heard of anything quite like “Bring The Noise”, the horns coming down like elephants running on a field, followed by a loud “YEAH BOYYEEE!” and a deep tone voice that said “BASS!” WHOA, what is this? I loved the force of the vocals, and I absolutely fell in love with the multi-layered sounds. Up until that point, a rap song had one primary sample and a scratch, maybe two primary samples but no more. This song felt like entering a vulgar room where everyone seemed to be speaking at once, or at least Chuck D.’s voice, Flavor Flav’s quick spits, and the samples going on all at once felt too much to take, but I wanted to take it. This lead to Flav feeling exactly what I was feeling when he said “I don’t understand what they’re saying<br>\nbut little do they know they can get a smack for that, man” and out came Chuck saying “never badder than dad cause the brother is madder than mad at the fact that’s corrupt as a senator”. HOLY SHIT! The wicked drums (courtesy James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”) pounded out doubles, and out came “soul on a roll, but you treat it like soap on a rope ’cause the beats in the lines are so dope”. Did I understand what he was saying at the time? Absolutely not, it would take months before I could figure it out, but what I also loved was that Chuck D. did each of the verses different from one another, the flows were not the same. The rhythmic patterns seemed complex, or at least hard to grasp upon first listen.</p>\n<p>Then it came to the third verse, and I about freaked out when someone in rap had mentioned Sonny Bono and Yoko Ono. As someone who always admired the underdog, it seemed Chuck D. was putting himself amongst these two underdogs. Not mentioning Cher, not mentioning John Lennon, but going for other. I loved it. I caught the references to Eric B. and LL, but then came the great line “wax is for Anthrax”. Hold up. HOLD THE FUCK UP. Did Flavor Flav just give a shout out to Anthrax, and did Chuck D. just say that they also could rock the bells. I loved Metallica, but I LOVED Anthrax and I know I put the needle back to make sure I heard things correctly. From that point on, I realized that this was a group that could do this, like Brutus, because they themselves always knew this. I must have played “Bring The Noise” over and over for a solid hour, and from that point on I avoided playing the rest of the album.</p>\n<li> When <i>Spin</i> magazine wrote a year-end rap up, one of the reviews touched on some new released on Def Jam. One of them was Original Concept’s <i>Straight From The Basement Of Kooley High</i>. The other was Public Enemy’s <i>Yo! Bum Rush The Show</i>. I was a Def Jam devotee, so I was freaked out when I learned Public Enemy had an album out. I bought both, loved both. When I first heard the “get down” in “Miuzi Weighs A Ton”, I initially thought it was a Joe Walsh/James Gang sample. I found out it was Flavor Flav, but I learned that later. I later read an article about the 12″ for “You’re Gonna Get Yours”, which people were buying because of its B-side, “Rebel Without A Pause”. I eventually found a copy of that, and I loved the song immediately. I loved the loop and how it seemed to keep on going and going and going, almost felt endless. It was meditative, it was mind blowing, it was mind numbing. When the scratches kicked in, it was heaven.\n<li> In March 1988, I had heard about the group releasing a new single off of their forthcoming album, but the way I interpreted the review, “Prophets Of Rage” was the A-side. When I bought the 12″ at Eli’s, I played and listened to it as such, and always played “Don’t Believe The Hype” as a bit of a sloppy B-side. (It wasn’t until later in 1988 that I learned the song was the A-side, after reading how the song was used as introduction for athletes.) I was two months away from ending my senior year in high school when I decided to play one of these songs on the radio station I was on. Keep in mind that it was a hard rock/heavy metal station, so the only way I could play it was on April Fool’s Day, as a “joke”. However, I had a different motive. When I played a rap song on the radio, it was never as a laugh, it was a way to play the music I also loved, to perhaps turn on fans to this group that I had only known from “Bring The Noise”, “Rebel Without A Pause”, and their first album. I’m glad to say that I may have been the first person to play “Prophets Of Rage” on a radio station in eastern Washington state.\n<p>Even if “Prophets Of Rage” and “Don’t Believe The Hype” were mere cues of what was to come, nothing could have ever prepared me for the reality of what would be.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://s1039.photobucket.com/user/johmbolaya/media/covers/PE2a_cover_zps0bc1160f.jpg.html\"><img src=\"http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a474/johmbolaya/covers/PE2a_cover_zps0bc1160f.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Public Enemy (1) photo PE2a_cover_zps0bc1160f.jpg\"></a></p>\n<li> I bought my copy of <i>It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back</i> on the week of the release date. My version of the cover was the yellow B-boy target with red outline and a green line between the words PUBLIC and ENEMY. Two men in a jail cell, looking bad ass, not afraid, always confident. The back cover featured a photo of Chuck, Flav, DJ Terminator X, Professor Griff and the S1W’s standing in a jail cell while stepping on the American flag. I enjoyed the social politics that John Lennon touched on in his music and life, and while I was far from an activist, I liked knowing about what some musicians would do to speak out on things that mattered to them, and things they were against. That photo was surrounded by shots of screenshots taken from a surveillance camera. This seemed serious, and it was time that I put the record on my turntable.\n<p>Still, I was not ready.</p>\n<p>“Hammersmith Odeon, are you ready for the Def Jam tour, let me hear you make some noise!<br>\nIn concert for BBC Television tonight and the fresh start of the week, let me hear you make some noise for PUBLIC ENEMY!</p>\n<p>The crowd goes nuts, and then it happens. The siren.</p>\n<p>“PEACE. ARMAGEDDON HAD BEEN IN EFFECT, GO GET A LATE PASS. STEP!<br>\nTHIS TIME AROUND, THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED. STEP!<br>\nLONDON, ENGLAND…<br>\nCONSIDER YOURSELVES… WARNED!”</p>\n<p>Then “Yo! Bum Rush The Show” from the first album starts, followed by Griff yelling out “alright, let’s make some fuckin’ noise! C’mon, let’s break this shit out and get busy!” before it fades. I still wasn’t ready.</p>\n<p>Malcolm X is then heard talking about how when it’s “too black”, it means it’s “too strong”. It is played a second time, slightly louder. Then “Bring The Noise” comes in. It’s the first full song on the album, and it hits things off beautifully. I know this song, and yet it fits perfectly as the starting point on this journey. I was slightly comfortable, but barely. This would lead to “Don’t Believe The Hype” and as an album cut, it fit quite nicely too. Chuck D. and Flavor Flav’s flows were quite nice bouncing back and forth when needed. This felt like a track of information, where one was able to listen to one page of their agenda, their manifesto. It was their way of saying that whatever you ear, don’t believe the bullshit, or cut through it and discover the facts for yourself. The one line from the song that remains very strong in my mind is “suckers, liars, get me a shovel”, and I’ll spring that out at any given them when necessary.</p>\n<p>The next track was a fun track, the first solo song by Flavor Flav, and after getting bombarded with serious information, it was time to get down and funky for a few minutes as he drops<br>\n“live lyrics from the bank of reality<br>\nI kick the flyest dope maneuver technicality<br>\nTo a dope track, you wanna hike get out your backpack<br>\nGet out the wack sack<br>\nI’m in my Flavmobile cole lampin<br>\nI took this G upstate go campin’<br>\nTo the Poconos, we call the hideaways<br>\nA pack of franks and a big bag of Frito-Lays”</p>\n<p>Did it matter what he was saying, and that he just seemed to be rattling off shit like crazy? No, but did it sound good? As the samples in the song said clearly, “YEAH!” This song was the first to truly establish Flavor Flav’s steez, and everyone fell in love with what William Drayton was all about.</p>\n<p>“Terminator X To The Edge” of panic was not the first song to present their DJ in music, but it was the first song where he was mentioned in the song title, and with a sample that was merely the sample source of “Rebel Without A Pause” flipped backwards, it just seemed that Public Enemy were wanting to pull in people into their world, in whatever way worked. “Who gives a fuck about a goddamn Grammy?” was a line that stood out like a pitchfork into the skull, pretty much stating that one does not need an award to achieve a level of success, or to complete a mission that involves making a statement.</p>\n<p>“Mind Terrorist” might seem like a minor interlude, but it seemed to present <i>It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back</i> as a concert performance, and this was a brief intermission before the next movement.</p>\n<p>“Louder Than A Bomb” opened up with a Kool & The Gang sample before Flav spoke on how Public Enemy are from hell, and if someone ever said he and the group would celebrate the 4th of July, it is very much a “worldwide lie”. Some of Chuck D.’s lyrics in this, including about his phone being tapped, pave the way for the next song, but until that is heard, Chuck is about telling the untold stories once and for all, and his messages are going to be offensively loud.</p>\n<p>The first Side ends with the incredible “Caught, Can We Get A Witness”, where Chuck talks about stealing a beat in the name of sampling, and how people are after people like him for taking music to create another song. 25 years later, hearing Flav talk about how no one can copyright beats seems a few world’s away, and yet this was the start of the industry and lawyers looking at the value of rap music not for its lyrics or messages, but as a means of violating copyright. By the end of Side 1, Public Enemy have accumulated enough ammunition for a battle, but again, I was not ready.</p>\n<hr>\n<li> Side 2 begins with another interlude, “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got”, which may be a way to re-introduce the listener to the program that is the album, but for listeners to come back from intermission, to let everyone know that with every side, there is a flip side, the B-side.\n<p>I loved when I first heard “She Watch Channel Zero?!”, as it starts with Flav’s message to his lady about watching garbage on television. Then the music begins and it’s a sample of Slayer’s “Angel Of Death”, flipping the original meaning of the song and showing that TV’s perceived angelic ways could slowly lead to a mental death. Kerry King’s and Jeff Hanneman’s guitar riffs, mixed in with the repetitious “she watch” looped vocal sample, was one way of entering the lure of the boob tube and trying to get out before one is fully trapped by the ways of the cathode ray. Everything about this song is excellent, a solid piece of genius where the music is a drone duplicating the ugliness of TV. Flav has a simple solution: “read a book or something, read about yourself, learn your culture.”</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"450\" height=\"337\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/fyR09SP9qdA\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br>\n“Night Of The Living Baseheads” touches on the evils of drugs, specifically the crack epidemic that was pulling in a lot of people in the mid to late 1980′s, specifically the black community in the inner cities of the United States and England. While it did reach the higher levels of corporate America, crack was hurting millions of people because this new cheap means of a high was pulling people down below the doldrums. The entire song is structured as a dialogue from the introduction of crack to its destruction, complete with Chuck D’s “how low can you go?” sample being scratched all over the place before Chuck himself answers his own question by looking at the faces of crack’s downfall.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"450\" height=\"254\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZM5_6js19eM\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br>\n“Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos” is one of the highlights of the album, where Chuck finds himself in prison because the government wanted him to join the U.S. Army, and he refused to enroll. Upon finding himself homeless in prison, he comes up with a plan to escape beyond the wall. It features metaphors that include the Underground Railroad, but one could also say that the United States itself is a prison and one must escape its ways in order to find a home and some sense of sanity. With each verse, Chuck covers his plan by step-by-step, bringing the listener in as if they are at one with he and the the “53 brothers on the run”. The moment when Chuck D. says “and we are gone” and Flav is cheering with passion, it’s easily one of the boldest statements ever made in hip-hop, because like the Native American in <i>One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest</i> and Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen in “Deacon Blues”, “this brother is free” and we’re all in support of someone obtaining the freedom many die trying to grasp.</p>\n<p>“Security of the First World” is another interlude, a temporary intermission that allows the group and listener to regroup after the blast of “Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos”, only to pave the way for the album’s three song finale.</p>\n<p>“Rebel Without A Pause” comes out of hiding from its presence as a non-LP B-side to becoming a solid album track, also adding to the pieces of the <i>It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back</i> puzzle. The bass is deafening, the saxophone is numbing, and the power of James Brown (and JB-related) samples is causing a mean ripple effect that is like you looking at yourself in a mirror looking at yourself, looking at yourself looking at yourself until its infinity is too much to bare. When Chuck D. says “we’re on a mission, y’all”, we then realize that we the listener are being exposed to the blueprint, and we’re close to finding where all of this will lead.</p>\n<p>“Prophets Of Rage” turns the corner, and every emotion that was built with “Rebel Without A Pause” continues with a revelation of who and what these songs are for:<br>\n“<i>With vice, I hold the mic device<br>\nWith force I keep it away, of course<br>\nAnd I’m keeping you from sleeping<br>\nAnd on the stagem, I rage and I’m rolling<br>\nTo the poor, I pour in on in metaphors<br>\nNot bluffing, it’s nothing that we ain’t did before<br>\nWe played, you stayed, the points made<br>\nYou consider it done by the prophets of rage</i>”</p>\n<p>Flav then tells Griff and the S1W’s to proceed with the completion of the mission by adjusting their coordinates, leading to the eventual proclamation of the master plan.</p>\n<p>“Party For Your Right To Fight” ends the album by revealing the master plan, the manifesto, the moral of the story. While hip-hop music may have originated as a party vibe, they turn the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” and turns it into something much more serious than just drinking and getting wasted for the hell of it. In the mind of Public Enemy, one should use their minds to turn the world into a better place for themselves and all. Both Chuck and Flav rap the entire song together, both rapping in their own styles and Flav dropping in a few ad-libs along the way. By combining Sly & The Family Stone, Bobby Byrd, and Bob Marley in the mix, they mention the origins of their commitment to the rights of themselves, and in turn, all. It is the third and final verse where Chuck and Flav mention what they are fighting for:</p>\n<p><i>To those that disagree, it causes static<br>\nFor the original Black Asiatic man<br>\nCream of the earth and was here first<br>\nAnd some devils prevent this from being known<br>\nBut you check out the books they own<br>\nEven masons they know it but refuse to show it, yo<br>\nBut it’s proven and fact<br>\nIt takes a nation of millions to hold us back</i></p>\n<p>It’s about fighting for recognition, for honor, for respect, for everything that someone else doesn’t want to provide, or will take away, from the other. If no one fights, the presence of a people and consciousness will disappear, or be re-interpreted by someone else, or perhaps completely disappear from existence.</p>\n<li> While I am not of African descent, I also listened to this album as a way to describe what it means to be Hawaiian. I looked myself as someone who now represents less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population, and while I am not a full-blooded Hawaiian, I like to think i remain an element of the land I came from and the people who made me who I am today. While my views may be different from those who are back home, I remain someone who wishes to be recognized for who I am and for what I do before I and my people no longer have a chance.\n<p>I wore a Public Enemy T-shirt during high school, and when catching the bus home, I was asked by the driver “so, you’re a public enemy?” I said, “yes, I am”. She gave me a small smile and I sat down. I was the only kid in my high school with that P.E. shirt, and I was looked at by everyone. No one understood me or where I was coming from, so in a very small way, I did feel like a public enemy, or at least an outcast. As a 17-year old high school student angry at the world, angry at my situation and fighting for a way to want and demand more, <i>It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back</i> was an album that showed that one can’t sit around and allow the world to pass you by. Sometimes we get stuck on a dead end street, but it’s never late to fight, even if that fight feels like a one-man battle. Throughout life, one learns that those fights are sometimes not good when done alone. Whether it’s a million, or ten-thousand, one hundred, or five, nothing can hold us back but ourselves. Whether it’s for Africa, for Jamaica, for Japan, for Germany, for Thailand, for Brazil, for Argentina, or for field workers throughout California, that “nation” once talked about by Chuck D. and Flavor Flav is very much a worldwide thing, a Marley style “one love” if we allow it to be. The fight discussed throughout the album may not have been my own, but I felt I could appreciate it as one that was very similar to mine. It was with this album that I learned about people that were not discussed during high school, including Louis Farrakhan and Assata Shakur, so to have these references flying out in lyric form was like hearing audio sidebars, so that I could remember them for future use.</p>\n<p>25 years later, <i>It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back</i> remains my favorite hip-hop album of all time because of its message, its musicality, its strength and power, and its inclusion into music creativity. For some of us, getting that late pass mentioned by Professor Griff was a passage way towards a door which lead to another message: “you want to know more, or keep your head in the ground?” There have been a number of hip-hop albums that have followed in the spirit of, but none will match the aftershocks that came after the siren made itself known on this record. It will forever be a benchmark, an album that should always be discussed as an important document in hip-hop.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://s1039.photobucket.com/user/johmbolaya/media/covers/PE2b_cover_zps4546475f.jpg.html\"><img src=\"http://i1039.photobucket.com/albums/a474/johmbolaya/covers/PE2b_cover_zps4546475f.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Public Enemy (2) photo PE2b_cover_zps4546475f.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p></p></li></li></li></li></li>"
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"content" : "<p>So if you haven’t heard already, <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html\">Google Reader is shutting down on July 1, 2013</a>. However, until then, you can <a href=\"https://goo.gl/zijsh\">take your data out using Google Takeout</a> and you’ll have all your subscriptions and starred, liked, and shared articles. The problem is that the article lists are JSON files with a custom schema that there aren’t (as far as I know) any user-friendly parsers for, so I made one.</p>\n \n <p><a href=\"http://stella.s.zeid.me/\">Stella</a> runs entirely in your modern, standards-compliant, <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/FileReader\">HTML5 FileReader API</a>-supporting Web browser (you are using <a href=\"https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/\">one</a>, right?) and lets you view any Google Reader article list in JSON format, including your starred, liked, shared, and notes lists, as well as any subscriptions you’ve exported in JSON format (more on that in a minute). All you have to do is click “Select JSON file”, select your file, and start reading!</p>\n \n <p>Stella also lets you save a static HTML page which you can view offline. The page will also contain an exact copy of the JSON file you selected (with HTML special characters escaped). (Clicking “Static page” will only give you a Save As screen in a few browsers, notably Chrome 14+ and Firefox 20+. Other browsers will show the static page in a new tab, and you’ll need to right-click the link or page and choose “Save Page/Link As” to save it. Also, saving static pages will only work at all in <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Blob#Browser_compatibility\">browsers that support the Blob API</a> (look under ”<code>Blob()</code> constructor”).)</p>\n \n <p>It’s worth noting that Google Reader JSON files <em>do</em> contain the full contents of each article, and Stella does let you view those.</p>\n \n <p><a href=\"http://code.s.zeid.me/stella\">The source code to Stella is available on Bitbucket</a> and is released under the X11 License. If you modify the JavaScript or CSS files, run <code>make</code> to regenerate the <code>stella.combined.{js,css}</code> files; otherwise, you won’t see your changes.</p>\n \n <h3>Exporting feeds (or folders) as JSON files</h3>\n \n <p><a href=\"http://s.zeid.me/blog/2013/03/18/fun-with-google-reader-json-files/#exporting-feeds-as-json-files\">(Permalink to this section)</a> Now, I mentioned earlier that you can export your subscriptions as JSON files as well. This also exports the article contents. <strong>This is insanely useful as Google Reader keeps an archive of <em>EVERY ARTICLE EVER POSTED IN THE FEED</em>, even if they were posted after you subscribed to the feed (but after at least one person has done so), even for feeds that have since been removed by their publishers.</strong> This is one thing that I’ve really loved about Google Reader, and I’m thrilled to learn that you can export every article ever posted in a feed that has been subscribed to in Google Reader. Oh, and it works for folders, too!</p>\n \n <p>To export a feed or folder as a Google Reader JSON file:</p>\n \n <ol>\n <li>\n <p>Open the subscription in Google Reader.</p>\n </li>\n \n <li>\n <p>In the URL in your browser’s location bar, replace ”<code>/view/#stream/</code>” with ”<code>/api/0/stream/contents/</code>”. So, for example,</p>\n \n <pre><code>https://www.google.com/reader/view/#stream/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2Frss.xml</code></pre>\n \n <p>would become</p>\n \n <pre><code>https://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/contents/feed%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2Frss.xml</code></pre>\n </li>\n \n <li>\n <p>Add <code>?n=999999999</code> to the end of the new URL. If you skip this step, it would only give you the first 20 or so articles in the feed, although it appears that there’s still a limit of one thousand articles. If your feed has more than 999,999,999 articles (which would be insanely unlikely), you would want to increase that number.</p>\n </li>\n \n <li>\n <p>Hit <code>Alt</code>+<code>Enter</code> to open the JSON file in a new tab. From here, you can right-click and choose “Save Page As” to save it, but be sure to give it a filename that ends in ”<code>.json</code>”.</p>\n </li>\n \n <li>\n <p>(Optional) Open the file in <a href=\"http://stella.s.zeid.me/\">Stella</a>!</p>\n </li>\n </ol>\n \n <p>I cannot stress enough that if you want to do this, and/or export your starred, saved, shared, and notes lists, <strong>you MUST do it before July 1, 2013</strong>, as that is the date that Google Reader shuts down.</p>"
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"title" : "Productivity: Saturday Twentieth Century Economic History Weblogging",
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"content" : "<div><p><img src=\"http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f080038834017c37ab0147970b-pi\" alt=\"Screenshot 3 14 13 9 14 AM\" title=\"Screenshot_3_14_13_9_14_AM.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"250\" style=\"float:right\"></p>\n\n<p>The twentieth century saw the material wealth of humankind explode beyond all previous imagining: we—at least those of us who belong to the upper middle class and live in the industrial core of the world economy—are now far richer than the writers of previous centuries’ utopias could imagine. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw, for the first time, productive capability outran population growth and natural resource scarcity. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average inhabitant of a leading economies—a Briton, a Belgian, a Dutchman, an American, a Canadian, or an Australian—had perhaps twice the material wealth and standard of living of the typical inhabitant of a pre-industrial economy. The standards of living of the bulk of the population underwent a substantial, sustained, and unreversed rise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for perhaps the first time in a thousand, if not in seven thousand years.</p>\n<p>There was substantial growth and technological progress before the industrial revolution, before the eighteenth and nineteenth century age of the spinning jenny, power loom, steam engine, coal mine, and iron works. The windmills, dikes, fields, crops, and animals of Holland in 1700 made the economy of its countryside very different indeed from the marshes of 700. The ships that docked at the Chinese port of Canton had much greater range and the commodities loaded on and off them had much greater value in 1700 than in 700. But pre-industrial technological progress led to little improvement in the standard of living of the average human: improvements in technology and productive power by and large did little but raise the numbers of the human race, not its material standard of living.</p>\n\n<p>But standards of living, having been little more than stagnant before, rose in the nineteenth, and exploded in the twentieth century. </p>\n\n<p>Here it is the twentieth century has been uniquely and profoundly different. On average, what took a worker in the North Atlantic in 1890 an hour to produce takes an a worker in a leading economy today only about seven minutes to produce. By this measure, which is very close to that reported by standard national account-based estimates of economic growth, we today who live in the advanced industrial economies have some eight times the material prosperity of our counterparts of a little more than a century ago. Such an amplification of material wealth has carried with it not just quantitative changes in what we consume but quantitative changes in how we live. Who today could find their way around a kitchen of a century ago? Before the coming of the electric current and the automatic washing machine, doing the laundry was not an annoying but minor chore but was instead a major part of the household’s—or rather the household’s women’s—week. A household a century ago that had the ability to purchase the same amount of that day’s consumption goods as the average household today was seen as extraordinarily affluent.</p>\n\n<p>However, our standard calculations substantially understate the boost to productivity and material prosperity that the past century has seen. We today are not just better at making the goods of a century ago. We today also have the new and powerful technological capability to make an enormously expanded range of goods and services: from videocassettes—which are now obsolete—and antibiotics to airplane flights and plastic bottles. We today would feel—we would be—enormously impoverished if by some mischance our money incomes and the prices of commodities remained the same, but if we were at the same time forbidden to use any commodity not produced in 1890. This expansion in the range of what we can produce is an enormous additional multiplier of material well-being. Are we sixteen? thirty-two? sixty-four times as rich in a material sense as our predecessors in today’s developed industrialized democracies were toward the end of the nineteenth century? The magnitude of the growth in material wealth has been so great as to make it nearly impossible to think about measuring.</p>\n\n<p>As far as its ability to produce material goods is concerned, in the twentieth century the human race has passed from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. It is no longer the case that providing basic food, clothing, and shelter took up the lion’s share of economic productive potential. Today only a small part of our collective production is made up of the necessities of survival. The lion’s share is taken up by conveniences and luxuries.</p>\n\n<p>Enabling and powering the enormous increase in material wealth—its essential prerequisite, in fact—has been the explosion in human technological knowledge, the creation of this explosion requiring not just scientists and engineers and means of communication, but also a market economy that made it worth people’s while to funnel resources to scientists and engineers so that they could do their jobs. We, however, have had not just technological breakthroughs, but a breakthrough in the creation of the research laboratory—a breakthrough in that we have now routinized the process of creating constant and successive technological breakthroughs. The consequences have been overwhelming.</p>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Our American Now",
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"content" : "<p>England was rolling moss and gathering buds and saving nines, Princess Di in a long dress, and First Aid English to fix our broken tongues. BBC Shakespeare with dowdy sets and James Bond the glamor of attachment. Pictures in an album, the silence we misread as enchantment. Now, the smiles seem a little sadder. Stiff upper lips.</p>\n<p>We are different now.</p>\n<p>Then: the excitement of speaking English properly. To be Eliza Doolittle. The strangeness of the U.S. accent. Exotic. Kiswahili by Lionel Richie. My father said no to the U.S., convinced it was still barbaric. No fit place to acquire an education. A country squire trapped in his peasant past.</p>\n<p>America offered amnesia, unending mobility, accumulation that was not unseemly.</p>\n<p>We are ruder now.</p>\n<p>Tavia Nyong’o has <a href=\"http://sfonline.barnard.edu/africana/nyongo_01.htm\">argued</a> that Barack Obama is the first postcolonial president in the U.S. Uhuru Kenyatta is the first U.S.-educated president of Kenya. If, as so many writers have argued, the U.S. is the great nation founded on forgetting, president Kenyatta’s U.S.-style inauguration following a U.S.-style Bush v. Gore court case has implications for Kenyan memory-work and historical reconstruction. This is not a matter of documentation or truth, but about the urgency and importance attached to memory-work in our ongoing state of crisis. (To be “under-developed” or “developing” or “third world” is to be in a perpetual state of crisis, one intensified by the “global war on terror.”)</p>\n<p>The almost ritual invocation of Bush v. Gore during the Supreme Court hearings on the presidential election suggests that we have entered a newly Americanized frame of reference. It marked, I think, a certain departure from the promiscuous cultural mixings we see in popular culture: the adoption of U.S. spelling by Kenyan publications, the presence of more U.S.-style eating establishments, even as our bookstores remain heavily British. Since 2003, when president Kibaki assumed office, many U.S.-trained professionals have “returned” to Kenya or have been instrumental in setting up and engaging with local institutions. One could argue this has been true since at least the late 1960s, but the invocation of Bush v. Gore during the televised Supreme Court hearing formalized a transition in how Kenya is to be thought. (We aspire to be “like” the U.S. as it has grown increasingly repressive, domestically and internationally; that requires a different writing occasion.)</p>\n<p>I’m interested in what it means to be “like” the U.S. for memory-work. James Baldwin is my guide here.</p>\n<p>Perhaps no country is as anxious about historical memory and memory-work as the U.S. History books are scrubbed clean, public memory denied, the thing happening at the moment described as not-happening, the known classified, the unknown classified, the previously known classified, and memory trained to anticipate the future. The now-here is to be forgotten for a tense predicated on an ever unfolding expansive future. Save room on your camera-phone for what will unfold. Erase the past if you need to. Memory is what is to happen. Memory is desire. </p>\n<p>In “Autobiographical Notes,” Baldwin writes, “About my interests: I don’t know if I have any, unless the morbid desire to own a sixteen-millimeter camera and make experimental movies can be so classified.” An interest predicated on a not-here, not-now, anchored in a desire to own something not yet describable, something “experimental.” How to read Baldwin’s desire in this early writing?</p>\n<p>Baldwin understands white America’s desire, a “we” he inhabits and makes thinkable and impossible:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Time has made some changes in the Negro face. Nothing has succeeded in making it exactly like our own, though the general desire seems to be to make it blank if one cannot make it white. When it has become blank, the past as thoroughly washed from the black face as it has been from ours, our guilt will be finished – at least it will have ceased to be visible, which we imagine to be much the same thing. (“Many Thousands Gone”)</p></blockquote>\n<p>Who is this writing “we”? What act of forgetting must be undertaken to blank it and accept it as “we”? I must struggle to remember the “I” who is writing the (im)possible we.</p>\n<p>He adds,</p>\n<blockquote><p>The making of an American begins at that point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land. This problem has been faced by all Americans throughout our history – in a way it <em>is</em> our history – and it baffles the immigrant and sets on edge the second generation until today. (“Many Thousands Gone”)</p></blockquote>\n<p>Kenya’s American Now is about a relationship to history and to memory and to feeling. It is present in Vision2030, a collective vision predicated on eliminating the unsightly and the unproductive from public view and collective memory; it is present in many shiny plans to develop an educational system predicated on producing appropriate “skills” for new industries that will transform us; it is present in the current attempts to depict the ICC as an imperial invader that took over a Kenyan process and marginalized Kenyan voices; it is present in (successful) attempts to criminalize IDPs, the “welfare mothers” of Kenya; it is present in the new accents on TV that erase traces of other pasts, other affiliations; it is present in the desire for forgettability; it is there in the enforcement of that forgettability.</p>\n<p>Kenya’s America Now is about desiring the memory of tomorrow: what is to be made and who we will be constantly overwrites the who and where we have been, those things that “hold us back in bondage.” Kenya’s America Now is being produced by our politicians, our religious leaders, our business leaders, our intellectuals, and our artists, all looking away from here-now and then-there, the Egypt we left and the desert we crossed. We are in a new land of free computes and free maternity care and free secondary education and it is bright and shiny and new and only fools would dare try to look back.</p>\n<p>Remember Lot’s Wife.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/gukira.wordpress.com/2517/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/gukira.wordpress.com/2517/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gukira.wordpress.com&blog=497705&post=2517&subd=gukira&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "New York's <a href=\"http://new.mta.info/mta\">Metropolitan Transportation Authority</a> has released some <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">new shots by photographer Patrick Cashin</a> of the so-called \"86th Street cavern,\" through which the future 2nd Avenue subway will someday travel. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TiwbTRuCQJA/UWbpHnGhxwI/AAAAAAAAKSg/fVlx06xwdKM/s1600/8640551886_66d82264d9_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Inside the \"86th Street cavern\"; photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>. <a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TiwbTRuCQJA/UWbpHnGhxwI/AAAAAAAAKSg/fVlx06xwdKM/s1600/8640551886_66d82264d9_b.jpg\">View larger</a>!]</small><br><br> The artificial caves are roughly 100 feet below street level. Quoting from a now-subscriber only article originally published back in 2009 in the trade journal <a href=\"http://www.nce.co.uk/fairytale-of-new-york-second-avenue-subway-takes-shape/1970428.article\"><i>New Civil Engineer</i></a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#cite_note-autogenerated1-33\">Wikipedia</a> offers a glimpse of the difficulties: \"Of the below-ground obstacles, Arup director of construction David Caiden says: 'It’s a spaghetti of tunnels, utilities, pipes and cables—I’ve never seen anything like it.' Additionally, the project must go over, or under, subway lines, Amtrak railway lines, and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel linking Manhattan and Queens.\" It's woven through the city like a carpet.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EXHZa0eME2Q/UWbpGrmiQAI/AAAAAAAAKSE/K2owD3MbzFs/s1600/8639448771_3e73a61cb0_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"803\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> It's extraordinary, though, to see how easy it is to forget that, when walking up and down stairs inside subway stations, you're actually walking around inside a series of relatively dark and irregular caverns—<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DQpXaIU-trA/UWbpHEEvfqI/AAAAAAAAKSM/yQJx8PzoSJI/s1600/8640551182_cb4ae0c750_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> —their walls and ceilings seemingly held in place only by an acupuncture of rock bolts, a monochrome world of uneven geologies smoothed over by shotcrete and disguised by tile. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hKfKnkcV9co/UWbpHbTe6zI/AAAAAAAAKSU/2hdWmLk_Ms8/s1600/8640551460_576b8df654_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2f8EOBT2TKw/UWbpGVh9PWI/AAAAAAAAKSI/uD7sbhe6Boc/s1600/8639449157_20dbbfabf5_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Photos by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> I bookmarked an old article that seems relevant here, especially in light of the next image, that <a href=\"http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/below-ground-blessing-a-fresh-tunnel-where-diggers-risk-their-lives/\">the tunnels had been \"blessed\"</a>—made holy—by a Catholic priest back in August 2012. In a short article written with suitably—if obvious—Dantean undertones, we read that \"the priest, Rev. Kazimierz Kowalski of the Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel on East 90th Street in Manhattan, stepped over rocks into a small clearing away from the shaft to be clear of falling objects. And there he began to pray, blessing the underground cavity where the Second Avenue subway tunnel is taking shape.\" <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QGfaVuwShL0/UXxsppLMlPI/AAAAAAAAKnY/ceY83TuIsx8/s1600/tunnels2.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> Fascinatingly, he then made architectural reference to the urban work of laying down this subterranean layer of the city: \"Reading from a letter of Paul to the Corinthians, he added, 'For no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is there, namely our Lord',\" something I quote not out of theological advocacy but for the interest of a possible religious connection between mining out \"a spaghetti of tunnels, utilities, pipes and cables\" beneath New York City and the establishment of a metaphoric \"foundation\" upon which a future city might sit. Tunneling, we might say in this specific and limited context, is God's work, the subway system secretly a consecrated labyrinth of artificial caves, its stations like chapels drilled into solid bedrock.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F-5SntY-_Hs/UXxspuHvkvI/AAAAAAAAKnc/05wA5tUWw0w/s1600/tunnels1.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> The priest then \"sprinkled holy water on the ground and invited the sandhogs to sing sometime for his parishioners.\"<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vICjNDJA1ss/UWbpGe0pJwI/AAAAAAAAKSA/wrYM2NAOn48/s1600/8639448439_3dc534385b_b.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"356\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/sets/72157633221706670/\">Patrick Cashin</a>].</small><br><br> In any case, I feel compelled briefly to revisit something in Jonathan Lethem's recent novel <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307277526/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0307277526\"><i>Chronic City</i></a>, in which we read about a tunneling machine that has gone \"a little out of control\" deep beneath the streets of New York, resurfacing at night like some terrestrial Leviathan to wreak havoc amongst the boroughs. From the book:<blockquote>\"I guess the thing got lonely—\"<br>\"That's why it destroys bodegas?\" asked Perkus.<br>\"At night sometimes it comes up from underneath and sort of, you know, ravages around.\"<br>\"You can't stop it?\" I asked. <br>\"Sure, we could stop it, Chase, it we wanted to. But this city's been waiting for a Second Avenue subway line for a long time, I'm sure you know. The thing's mostly doing a good job with the tunnel, so they've been stalling, and I guess trying to negotiate to keep it underground. The degree of damage is really exaggerated.\"</blockquote>Eventually the machine—known as the \"tiger\"—is spotted rooting around the city, sliding out of the subterranean worlds it helped create, weaving above and below, an autonomous underground object on the loose.<br><br> <small>(For a tiny bit more context on the Lethem novel, see this <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/subterranean-machine-resurrections.html\">earlier post on BLDGBLOG</a>, from which the final line of the current post is borrowed).</small>"
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"title" : "Yes, please",
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"content" : "<div>\n<p>A woman once told me pointedly something that has stayed with me to this day. We were kissing. Lying on the cold wood floor, my hand traveled across her stomach and she whispered, “I think we should take it slow.” I agreed immediately. Before moving in to kiss her again, I said, “Just tell me when to stop.”</p>\n<p>This, I thought, was considerate. Respectful. Sexy. But she quickly corrected my mistake. Pulling away from me, her face took on a serious expression and the words she spoke illuminated a misunderstanding I had long nurtured, even as I knew myself to be a thoughtful feminist with much respect for other women.</p>\n<p>In essence, what she said was, “Women are not given enough opportunities to say ‘yes.’” [<b><a href=\"http://queerguesscode.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/un-memorizing-the-silence-is-sexy-date-script/\">link</a></b>]</p>\n</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/nsippets.wordpress.com/175932883/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/nsippets.wordpress.com/175932883/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nsippets.wordpress.com&blog=48120785&post=175932883&subd=nsippets&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "RIDICULOUS CHURCH NAMES IN NIGERIA",
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"content" : "Here we go: -Jesus Of God Mission ( Imo State ) -God’s Mennonite Church -Guided Missiles Church -Jesus in the new global Ministry -Healing Has Begun Ministry -God’s Own Ministry -The True Assemblies of God Church -Jehovah Sharp Sharp (Festac, Lagos ) -Hurricane Miracle Ministry -Healing Tsunami Ministry -Satan in Trouble Ministry -Fire for Fire [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=mypenmypaper.wordpress.com&blog=699575&post=8039&subd=mypenmypaper&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Literal skeletons found in deposed president's closet (OK, garage)",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/165894851.jpg\"></div><p>\nLooters ransacking one of the deserted homes of former Central African Republic President François Bozizé apparently made an extremely unpleasant discovery last month after rebels <a href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/04/05/176334015/in-post-coup-central-african-republic-instability-remains\">overthrew the government</a>: two human skeletons stashed in two holes beneath the ousted leader's garage floor (see the picture above). <a href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iOL21gKDndir06ERMO7j3XpQzA7Q?docId=CNG.249577c9d4590c15820b6c2430834f40.321\">AFP</a> has more:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tAt the house in Sassara, on the outskirts of the capital Bangui, Colonel Ali\n\tGarba -- one of the Seleka rebels whose coalition toppled Bozize from power\n\tlast month -- gives a tour....\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tHe indicates the spot where the bodies were found, at the back of the\n\tgarage, stowed in two-metre deep recesses underneath square tiles. All that now\n\tremains in the space is a scrap of coloured fabric.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t"I saw them. They were bones with no flesh. The people had been dead\n\tfor a while, at least several months, maybe more," he says.... \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tAs he scoured the completely ransacked house, Garba says he also found the\n\tdead body of a presidential guard, apparently killed during clashes between\n\tBozize's supporters and rebels.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t"The Red Cross collected the body of the guard and the skeletons,"\n\tGarba says, a claim backed up by near neighbours.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe Red Cross could not however be contacted to find out where the skeletons\n\twere taken.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nAFP says authorities have yet to identify the bodies or determine whether the victims were opponents of Bozizé, who <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/world/africa/leader-of-central-african-republic-francois-bozize-is-in-cameroon.html\">fled</a> to Cameroon in late March. But the news agency floats one other possibility about the remains: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tRitual killings are a known phenomenon in Central Africa, designed to\n\tempower or bring good fortune to whoever orders the murder. Bones belonging to\n\tthose killed are sometimes also trafficked for use in witchcraft.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nIf it was good fortune the deposed leader was seeking, he seems to have come up short. \n</p>"
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"title" : "CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION.",
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"content" : "<p>A reader writes:<blockquote>My wife and I are both Americans and have been living in Germany for four years. I speak German well and my wife speaks it, well, reasonably well, though we speak English at home. </blockquote></p>\n\n<p>My son was born here 3 years ago. He goes to a German-only preschool and is fully bilingual. For some dumb reason, despite a strong (amateur) interest in linguistics I haven’t read anything at all on child language acquisition. We’re expecting our second child in September and I’d like to be better informed about what’s going on in my kids’ noggins and see what I can do to help them. </p>\n\n<p>I’d be very grateful for some help finding the best books/articles on child language acquisition (both general stuff and things relating specifically to bilingual kids). I can read English, German and French, and probably Spanish in this area, if that expands the field.That's an area I know nothing about (except for the practical experience of watching two grandsons acquiring language), so I thought I'd toss it out there and get some recommendations from people who know about this stuff.</p>"
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"title" : "No, Africans don’t remember Margaret Thatcher fondly",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/12694_458628807541341_1004797610_n.jpg?w=610&h=610\" width=\"610\" height=\"610\">Margaret Thatcher died yesterday. Or the day before maybe, I don’t know. At any rate, Thatcher died, and now the hagiographers and the demonizers can have their day. All by herself, apparently, Thatcher “<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/europe/former-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-of-britain-has-died.html\">reforged Britain</a>”, “<a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/margaret-thatcher-former-british-prime-minister-dead-at-87/2013/04/08/601465d4-c5dc-11df-94e1-c5afa35a9e59_story.html\">transfixed the United States</a>”, and was “<a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-dies-aged-87\">a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton</a>.” And how did England’s ‘Iron Lady’ engage with the African continent? <span></span></p>\n<p>While much attention will be paid, rightly, on Thatcher’s involvements with southern Africa, and in particular with the independence and liberation movements of <a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/20040496.pdf?acceptTC=true\">Zimbabwe</a> and <a href=\"http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ip/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/ip20138a.pdf\">Namibia</a> and the <a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902919975\">anti-apartheid</a> <a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902919991\">movements</a> of South Africa, it should be remembered that the country of Africa is more than its southern suburbs.</p>\n<p>On one hand, as <a href=\"http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1394&context=jiws\">noted by Onyango Oloo</a>, National Coordinator for the Kenyan Social Forum 2006 and member of the Nairobi Organizing Council for the World Social Forum Nairobi 2007, Thatcher was known as a strong woman who “had, at most, two women ministers appointed and who passed some of the most sexist policies which impacted the movement.” Her commitments, both domestically and globally, were to free market and security, not to women or any other popular, much less disenfranchised or struggling, group. As <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=0KPZ-yjvNWsC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=%22The+few+women+who+do+break+through,+such+as+Indira+Gandhi+and+Margaret+Thatcher,+do+so+by+their+exceptional+use+of+men%E2%80%99s+networks,+not+women%E2%80%99s%22&source=bl&ots=-WPLHxfIfW&sig=PxqoS9nArTSoQR8IeOQl3sDjfUY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=u_5iUariI4m70QGppIGYAg&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22The%20few%20women%20who%20do%20break%20through%2C%20such%20as%20Indira%20Gandhi%20and%20Margaret%20Thatcher%2C%20do%20so%20by%20their%20exceptional%20use%20of%20men%E2%80%99s%20networks%2C%20not%20women%E2%80%99s%22&f=false\">R. W. Connell commented</a>, “Public politics on almost any definition is men’s politics… Leaders are recruited to office through men’s networks. The few women who do break through, such as Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, do so by their exceptional use of men’s networks, not women’s.” The same is true for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “Africa’s Iron Lady”: <a href=\"http://www.newstatesman.com/node/152092\">It’s interesting</a> how many commentators remark of Johnson-Sirleaf — and it’s meant as a compliment — that the future president is ‘not really a woman’. Or, as her supporters shouted, “<a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15544771003697270\">Ellen, she’s our man</a>.”</p>\n<p>Other than the considerable accomplishment of breaking through a glass ceiling, Thatcher’s ascendancy didn’t mean a whole lot for women on the continent. Except in South Africa and the frontline states. There the story is worse.</p>\n<p>In South Africa, the response, such as it is, to Thatcher’s death is “<a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-08-thatchers-death-sparks-mixed-reaction-in-sa\">mixed</a>”. On one side (predictably), <a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-08-thatchers-death-sparks-mixed-reaction-in-sa\">de Klerk, the DA, and the Freedom Front Plus</a> are glowing in their tributes.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-08-thatchers-death-sparks-mixed-reaction-in-sa\">Lesiba Seshoka</a>, of the National Union of Mineworkers, has a different view: “She will be remembered as one of the harshest leaders the trade unions in Britain had to face, and many more in the formal colonial countries faced the wrath of her reign of terror.”</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/south-africa-margaret-thatcher-death\">Pallo Jordan</a>, who remembers the days when Thatcher insisted that the ANC was a terrorist organization, “I say good riddance. She was a staunch supporter of the apartheid regime. She was part of the rightwing alliance with Ronald Reagan that led to a lot of avoidable deaths. In the end I sat with her in her office with Nelson Mandela in 1991. She knew she had no choice. Although she called us a terrorist organization, she had to shake hands with a terrorist and sit down with a terrorist. So who won?”</p>\n<p>And <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/08/south-africa-margaret-thatcher-death\">Dali Tambo</a> (son of late ANC leader, Oliver) remembers the “terrorism”-charge as well: “My gut reaction now is what it was at the time when she said my father was the leader of a terrorist organisation. I don’t think she ever got it that every day she opposed sanctions, more people were dying, and that the best thing for the assets she wanted to protect was democracy.”</p>\n<p>Some have ‘credited’ Thatcher’s neoliberal policies, and policing, with contributing to the HIV-pandemic in Swaziland and elsewhere, in particular by forcing “<a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070.2012.699700\">cutting government spending on social services (such as public healthcare)</a>”. Others note that Thatcher’s energetic opposition to sanctions and support for right wing forces in what became <a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03057070902920007\">Zimbabwe</a> and <a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2706671\">Namibia</a> prolonged the state of violence across the breadth of southern Africa.</p>\n<p>Who then was Margaret Thatcher? Ask <a href=\"http://content.ebscohost.com/pdf23_24/pdf/2010/PCR/01Apr10/50653043.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=50653043&S=R&D=a9h&EbscoContent=dGJyMMvl7ESeprY4v%2BbwOLCmr0uep7FSs664S7aWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGut1C1pq9NuePfgeyx44Dt6fIA\">Fela Kuti</a>. Consider the above <a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3137486.pdf?acceptTC=true\">cover of his album, “Beasts of No Nation”</a> (1989). It featured a horrific tableau of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, P.W. Botha, and Mobutu Sese Seko, all with bloody rat’s teeth, dwarfed by Fela’s huge head. In the corner was a quote from Botha, the inspiration for the title track: “This uprising will bring out the beast in us!”</p>\n<p>Or consider <a href=\"http://www.maxilyrics.com/fela-kuti-beasts-of-no-nation-lyrics-8176.html\">the lyrics to “Beasts of No Nation”</a>, first released in 1978:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Dem call the place, the “United Nations”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Hear-oh another animal talk</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Wetin united inside “United Nations”?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Who & who unite, for “United Nations”?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">No be there Thatcher & Argentina dey</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">No be there Reagan & Lib-i-ya dey</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Is-i-rael versus Lebanon</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Iran-i-oh versus Iraq-i</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">East West Block versus West Block East</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">No be there dem dey oh- United Nations</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Dis “united” United Nations</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">One veto vote is equal to 92 [...or more or more]</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">What kind sense be dat, na animal sense</p>\n<p>What kind sense be dat? Dat be Thatcher sense, and it’s still very much alive. So, if you can, take a second and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRKd4CM6Flk\">catch up with Fela Kuti</a> … in honor of Margaret Thatcher.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66315/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66315/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=66315&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><em><em><b>Correction: </b></em>An article yesterday about a tiny force in quantum mechanics that could be used in future microscopic devices referred incorrectly in some copies to the size of the force measured when two metal plates were placed within one 40-thousandth of an inch of each other. It was one 300-millionth of an ounce, not one 300-thousandth.<strong> </strong></em><em><strong>—</strong></em>New York Times<em>, February 10, 2001</em></p>\n<p><img style=\"font-size:13px;line-height:19px\" alt=\"Screen shot 2013-02-08 at 10.33.54 AM\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Screen-shot-2013-02-08-at-10.33.54-AM-300x300.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\">I clipped this correction the day it appeared in the <i>Times</i> and pinned it to my cork bulletin board. This was a long time ago, so I can’t be sure what I was thinking. Most likely I found this assemblage of absurdly small numbers to be comical: the fastidious precision of science meeting its match in the finicky precision of the Paper of Record. What I do know for sure is that at the time I didn’t fully appreciate just how fastidious quantum mechanics is.<span></span></p>\n<p>The “tiny force” in question was the Casimir effect. In 1948, the Dutch physicist Hendrik B. G. Casimir published a paper predicting that if you placed two uncharged metal plates parallel to each other at a sufficiently small distance, quantum effects would finish the job and push the plates together. According to quantum theory, virtual particles are popping into and out of existence all the time. Between the two plates, however, the only particles that could pop into existence would be those with a wavelength shorter than the distance between the two surfaces. As <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/us/a-tiny-force-of-nature-is-stronger-than-thought.html\">the <i>Times</i> article</a> explained, “The greater density of virtual photons outside the plates would then push the plates together”—assuming that virtual photons really exist.</p>\n<p>When I read the correction, I already knew the importance of stretching science to farther and farther decimal places. And I knew that one generation’s unthinkable is the next generation’s norm—or, as the nineteenth century physicist Albert A. Michelson said, “Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” What I hadn’t yet learned was that the Planck length—named after the father of quantum physics, Max Planck, and according to uncertainty theory the smallest length we can hypothetically measure—must be looked for in the thirty-fifth places of decimals, or 1.61619926 × 10-35 meters, to be precise.</p>\n<p>Which you’d better be. Hence the need to distinguish between one 300-thousandth of an ounce and one 300-millionth of an ounce (a leap from the fifth decimal place to the eighth). If you don’t know the basics of quantum mechanics, as I did not at that point, getting the numbers wrong and needing to issue a correction were comical. If you do know the basics of quantum mechanics, getting the numbers wrong is still comical, but for other reasons (such as rendering the sentence senseless). Getting the numbers right, however, is serious business.</p>\n<p>Like the <em>Times</em>, I stand corrected.</p>\n<p>Where I don’t stand corrected, however, is the other part of my original assessment: These numbers are absurdly small. And I stand by that assessment because in my experience scientists share it. We can’t think that small, yet that’s where the universe works its greatest mysteries. As the mathematician Stephen A. Fulling <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=Zo5_3cmtFEUC&q=reverence#v=snippet&q=reverence&f=false\">wrote in 1989</a>, regarding the experiments that over the decades have demonstrated that the Casimir effect and therefore virtual particles are real, “No worker in the field of overlap of quantum theory and general relativity can fail to point this fact out in tones of awe and reverence.” Or as the Berkeley Lab physicist Saul Perlmutter once said to me, “It’s like there’s a beautiful carnival going on, and we’re sitting here, reading a newspaper.”</p>\n<p>With luck, it’s a newspaper that got the numbers right.</p>"
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"content" : "If you believed the Meryl Streep film, she died like she lived - in comfort, delivering rambling, fantastical homilies on personal responsibility to the uncomprehending and the indifferent. <br><br>I was a toddler when she was elected, but she must've hit Scotland like a thunderbolt. The nation never wanted any part of her lunatic revolution - we rejected it at the ballot box again and again, in fact - but by God, we got it good and hard anyway. Such was the wonder of free choice that we had that of others thrust down our throats by the fistful for a decade.<br><br>If you could've called forth Middle England's rampant id in all its virtuous pomposity and self-regard, it would don one of those fruity little dresses and wander around quietly lecturing the less fortunate on the value of thrift. She came from a sub-species of affluent, frustrated bores who thrill to imagine themselves menaced by the phantasm of some terrible, probably Bolshevik menace, from the safety of their own inviolate Hobbit-holes. <br><br>She was the perfect product of a system warped by a righteous belief in its own entitlement and a suspiciously convenient terror that somebody, somewhere, might be nibbling on a hunk of government cheese at its expense.<br><br>All of which is ironic really, since she resembled nobody more than that stock figure of Scottish letters - Miss Jean Brodie, resplendent in her Prime, sermonising to the class like Providence, like the God of Calvin.<br><br>She sold the UK on her little home-spun homilies about the path to prosperity but force-fed vast tracts of it grinding misery. That was the eighties for many of us: endless harangues on hard work and self-sufficiency, delivered by those who were striving daily to make the possibility of either ever more remote. <br><br>If she ever suffered a moment of doubt while entire towns were shuttered, she never showed it, certain that God was on her side whatever her course. So she experienced no difficulty or sense of hyprocrisy in stomping like a stormtrooper on those who resisted her, sending legions of militarised police to spread her message of personal freedom by force. <br><br>If our skyrocketing unemployment rate ever gave her a moment's pause, we never saw a flash of it. In all the broken marriages and deprived upbringings and jobless poor, she saw only more proof of the powerful correctness of her opinions, and redoubled her efforts to kick us all into a shape she found more pleasing. <br><br>All of our lives and livelihoods were secondary concerns in the great psychodrama of her personal battles. The atmosphere she created was like sitting in a classroom copying out lines from the Bible, with no toilet breaks, and the penalty for asking questions is caning.<br><br>Most of Scotland didn't hate her because it disagreed with her politics or her style. It didn't loathe her or the clique of privileged, over-educated sexual deviants around her simply because they might as well have been aliens with flourescent genitals, for all that they understood us or our lives.<br><br>We despised her because she made war on us gladly, with a song of joy in her heart, for our own good. She was certain she knew better what we needed than we did ourselves, and she never missed an opportunity to let us know that she could <i>make </i>us see it her way, any time she liked. <br><br>She loomed over our childhoods like a gorgon and bequeathed to us as adults possibly the most offensively cretinous politics ever to stain the tattered ideal of British democracy. In a more just world, her political legacy would be fit only for slapstick comedy and allegorical children's TV dramas. <br><br>She was a fantasist and a mentalist. She sent us all to fight for General Franco. Her passing comes far too late to offer any comfort to those upon whom she wreaked the worst of her harm, like the death of Stalin.<br><br>I'm not glad she's dead. <br><br>I'm sorry she entered politics, and I'm sorry we did such a shitty job of repudiating her that we became a nation that richly deserves to be ruled by her idiot offspring."
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"content" : "<div><p>TNC:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/04/some-thoughts-on-michael-kelly/274696/\">Some Thoughts on Michael Kelly - Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>: I didn't really know Michael Kelly…. He does not come off as the sort of guy to opine on TV comforted by the safety of reports from Brookings…. Over at Gawker, Tom Scocca published a very hard--and very fair--assessment of Kelly's role in the Iraq War. I hadn't read much of the work Scocca referenced, so I did myself a favor and looked up some of Kelly's columns in the days leading up to Iraq…. Kelly's columns are not pro-war, they are ferociously pro-Bush, and gleefully contemptuous of liberals who thought otherwise. </p>\n \n <p>It's the glee that burns. There's a kind of writer who gets his kicks writing bad reviews of music and books. You see that same spirit in Kelly's mocking of Paul Krugman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Janeane Garofalo, or in his attacks on the French by evoking the ghost of Pétain. That glee turned Kelly into a thin writer who spurned nuance in favor of hyperbole….</p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n <p>Kelly wrote that Bush...</p>\n \n <blockquote>\n <p>...presides over an administration that is unusually intelligent -- and also cunning -- unusually experienced, unusually disciplined and unusually bold.</p>\n </blockquote>\n \n <p>He continued:</p>\n \n <blockquote>\n <p>Democrats will howl...that the president is not competent, that his administration is not to be trusted, that Republican presidents and Republican policies are radical and dangerous and frightening and bad…. I suppose they will continue to believe this, and continue to say it, in voices growing ever more shrill and ever more loud, yet, oddly, ever more distant and faint.</p>\n </blockquote>\n \n <p>The president wasn't competent. Iraq and then Katrina proved that. And the voices did not grow more "distant and faint." They led to the election of Barack Obama. But again, it is not the simply the wrong-ness, it's the gleeful and casual dismissal. Here is Kelly writing after witnessing an antiwar march in early 2003:</p>\n \n <blockquote>\n <p>The debate is over. The left has hardened itself around the core value of a furious, permanent, reactionary opposition to the devil-state America, which stands as the paramount evil of the world and the paramount threat to the world, and whose aims must be thwarted even at the cost of supporting fascists and tyrants...</p>\n </blockquote>\n \n <p>After embedding with the military in Iraq, Kelly said of the war:</p>\n \n <blockquote>\n <p>It is remarkable enough that the United States is setting out to undertake the invasion of a nation, the destruction of a regime and the liberation of a people. But to do this with only one real military ally, with much of the world against it, with a war plan that is still, by necessity, in flux days before the advent, with an invasion force that contains only one fully deployed heavy armored division -- and to have, under these circumstances, the division's commander sleeping pretty good at night: Well, that is extraordinary. A victory on these terms will change the power dynamics of the world. And there will be a victory on these terms.</p>\n </blockquote>\n \n <p>A few weeks ago, my colleague Jim Fallows argued that "People in the media who were for the war have, with rare and admirable exceptions, avoided looking back." Reading through Kelly's file, you begin to understand why. Michael Kelly wasn't an outlier. He was one of the most important journalists of his generation. He was a National Magazine Award winner and the one-time editor of The Atlantic, The New Republic (he helped birth Stephen Glass) and The National Journal. Kelly was at the center of media power…. Michael Kelly is not publicly notable because of his personal fidelity but because of his professional work. Faced with a historic conflict, Kelly's professional work amounted to a gleeful embrace of what was wrong, and a gleeful assault on what was right.</p>\n \n <p>That too must be remembered.</p>\n</blockquote>\n</div>"
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"content" : "A multi-sided platform business has the following characteristic features.<br>\n<br>\n1. The platform serves two or more distinct categories of customer. For example, a credit card platform serves both cardholders and merchants. For example, a heterosexual dating agency serves both men and women.<br>\n<br>\n2. The platform provides a mechanism for connecting customers from \ndifferent categories. The credit card increases the potential \ninteraction between cardholders and merchants, as well as processing the\n transactions. And the dating agency brings men and women together. <br>\n<br>\n3. The value of the platform to one category of customers depends on the quantity and quality of the other categories. For example, the value of a credit card to the cardholder depends on the number of merchants that accept the card. Meanwhile, the value of the card to the merchant depends on the number of cardholders. <br>\n<br>\nUnder certain circumstances, it might be possible to build one side \nof the platform first. For example, if you had some brilliant idea for a\n entirely new kind of credit card, and had a lot of funding and a \npersuasive sales team, you might conceivably be able to recruit a large \nnumber of merchants into the scheme before you had any cardholders at \nall. Or imagine persuading a group of men to invest all their spare time for two \nyears building a nightclub that would (when finished) attract the hottest women in the \ncity. But this strategy requires a considerable degree of confidence and trust. So in practice it usually makes sense to build up both sides at the same time.<br>\n<br>\nThere are various strategies that can be used to create a multi-sided platform. Sometimes it is possible to start small. When Frank McNamara created Diners Club in 1950, he started in a small geographical area (Manhatten), with 14 merchants and a few hundred cardholders. Within a year, he had 300 merchants and 40,000 cardholders.<br>\n<br>\nWhen American Express wished to enter the market in 1958, it needed to create something quickly that could compete with Diners Club. One way to do this was to acquire and consolidate some existing schemes. But the key element to the American Express's success was a marquee strategy - recruiting the most desirable customers (e.g. business travellers on expense accounts) and the most desirable merchants (e.g. high status hotels, restaurants and stores).<br>\n<br>\nA marquee strategy depends on a degree of exclusivity, real or imagined. In a multi-sided market, you don't gain directly from the number of people on your own side, since they may be competing with you for the attention of the people on the other side.<br>\n<br>\nAmerican Express is now much larger than Diners Club. So much for first-mover advantage then. The most desirable customers are not necessarily the ones with the greatest willingness to experiment with a novel platform. Novel platforms tend to attract early adopters and low-value customers (AltaVista, MySpace, OnSale). Once the platform concept is understood, a new entrant may be more successful in recruiting the high-value and mainstream customers (Google, Facebook, eBay).<br>\n<br>\nAmong users of Facebook and Twitter, a gulf is emerging between celebrities and other users. Facebook is currently experimenting with charging a fee for ordinary users to send messages to celebrities. According to the Independent, Facebook plans to keep this money itself. Presumably the only benefit to the celebrity is helping to filter incoming messages. And of course many celebrities are now dependent on Facebook and Twitter for maintaining their public profile, so they are not able to walk away.<br>\n<br>\nThe growing distinction between different categories of user marks a transition from same-side network effects (which assume a single category of user) into a multi-sided platform. Linked-In is another platform that is making this transition. Linked-In gets much of its revenue from the recruitment business, so it is essentially a market-making platform. Whereas Facebook and Twitter remain largely audience-making platforms.<br>\n<br>\n(For the distinction between market-making and audience-making platforms, as well as a third category of demand-coordination platforms, see David S Evans.)<br>\n<br>\n<br>\nI shall be talking at the <a href=\"http://www.iasauk.org/day2\">IASA UK Architecture Summit</a> on 26th April on Architecting the Multi-Sided Business. There is more extensive coverage in my <a href=\"http://businessarchitecture.eventbrite.co.uk/#\">Business Architecture Workshop</a>. Please contact me if you have any practical challenges in this area.<br>\n<br>\n<hr>\n<br>\nPieter Ballon, <a href=\"http://www2.druid.dk/conferences/viewpaper.php?id=5952&cf=32\">Platform Types and Gatekeeper Roles: the Case of the Mobile Communications Industry</a> (2009)\n\n<br>\n<br>\nMark Bonchek and Sangeet Paul Choudary, <a href=\"http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/01/three_elements_of_a_successful_platform.html\">Three Elements of a Successful Platform Strategy</a> (HBR Blog Network Jan 2013)<br>\n<br>\nDavid S. Evans, <a href=\"http://www.strategy-business.com/article/03301?pg=all\">Managing the Maze of Multisided Markets</a> (Strategy+Business Fall 2003)<br>\n<br>\nDavid S. Evans, <a href=\"http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/hearings/single_firm/comments/219673_c.htm\">The Antitrust Economics of Multi-Sided Platform Markets</a> (Yale Journal on Regulation, 2003)<br>\n<br>\nDavid S. Evans and Richard Schmalensee, <a href=\"http://www.intertic.org/Conference/Schmalensee.pdf\">Failure to Launch: Critical Mass in Platform Businesses</a> (Sept 2010)<br>\n<br>\nThomas Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall W. Van Alstyne, <a href=\"http://hbr.org/2006/10/strategies-for-two-sided-markets/\">Strategies for Two-Sided Markets</a> (HBR October 2006)<br>\n<br>\nJames Legge, <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/facebook-now-charges-you-for-messages-sent-to-celebrities-and-people-you-arent-friends-with-8563299.html\">Facebook now charges you for messages sent to celebrities and people you aren't friends with</a> (Independent 7 April 2013)\n\n<br>\n<br>\nLisa O'Carroll, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/apr/08/facebook-charging-users-celebrities\">Facebook starts charging users up to £11 to contact celebrities</a> (Guardian 8 April 2013)<br>\n<br>\nGeoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne, <a href=\"http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/296_parker_vanalstyne_adigitalpostalplatformdefinitionsandaroadmap.pdf\">A Digital Postal Platform: Definitions and a Roadmap</a> (MIT Jan 2012)<br>\n<br>\nRichard Veryard, The Component-Based Business: Plug and Play (Springer 2001) <br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://bmimatters.com/2012/05/16/understanding-linkedin-business-model/\">Understanding LinkedIn Business Model</a> (BMI Matters May 2012) <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?i=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?i=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?i=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:I9og5sOYxJI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?d=I9og5sOYxJI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?a=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Soapbox?i=YLKj-w10rGk:nfIT44UC8_k:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Soapbox/~4/YLKj-w10rGk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Highest Money Transfer Fees in the World Are in Sub-Saharan Africa",
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"content" : "<p>Babylas Serge de Souza <a href=\"http://babylas25.mondoblog.org/2013/03/02/lapport-des-migrants-africains-a-leur-pays-dorigine/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mondoblog%2Fqfik+%28Mondoblog%29&utm_content=Yahoo!+Mail\">wrote</a> [fr] on his blog:</p>\n<blockquote><p> Sub-Saharan Africais the most expensive destination in the world for money transfer: the average cost of transfer from abroad reached 12.4% in 2012. The average cost of money transfers to Africa as a whole is around 12%, which is higher than the world average (8.96%), and almost two times higher than the cost of remittances to South Asia, which has the lowest rates in the world (6.54%).</p></blockquote>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/author/abdoulaye-bah/\" title=\"View all posts by Abdoulaye Bah\">Abdoulaye Bah</a></span> · <span>Translated by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/andrew-kowalczuk/\" title=\"View all posts by Andrew Kowalczuk\">Andrew Kowalczuk</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2013/03/09/140121/\" title=\"View original post [fr]\">View original post [fr]</a></span> · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2013/03/25/the-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (0) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&text=The+Highest+Money+Transfer+Fees+in+the+World+Are+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=The+Highest+Money+Transfer+Fees+in+the+World+Are+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=The+Highest+Money+Transfer+Fees+in+the+World+Are+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=The+Highest+Money+Transfer+Fees+in+the+World+Are+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2013%2F03%2F25%2Fthe-highest-money-transfer-fees-in-the-world-are-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=The+Highest+Money+Transfer+Fees+in+the+World+Are+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"title" : "Reading Gambetta and Clausewitz in an emerging low-trust society",
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"content" : "<p>So, I’ve been having a war with my exciting privatised energy vendor. Again. We had a chat about this <a href=\"http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2012/11/11/a-brief-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-consequences-of-think-of-a-number-pricing/\">in this post on think-of-a-number prices</a>, but another opportunity came around. The day before the monthly direct debit payment went out, a letter lands saying that they’ve just doubled, yes doubled, the amount. Thanks.</p>\n<p>Anyway, of course, I phone them up, hack through the call-centre thickets, hating life and probably humanity. They immediately say that the bill has gone up to £140, not £126 as on the paper bill. I challenge this and it goes away. Just like that. This is a tell – evidently, they’re simply trying it on. The £14/mo is just a return on being an arsehole. </p>\n<p>Think-of-a-number pricing is exactly what you’d expect from a low trust society. If you read Diego Gambetta’s <em>Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate</em>, you’ll also recognise an important phenomenon here. In a low-trust society, like the Polish jail he uses as a case study, there are three significant groups, predators, victims, and everyone else. There’s nothing particularly great about being a predator, in fact it comes with an increased chance of getting knifed, and the people in this group are basically self-selected for enjoying violence for its own sake.</p>\n<p>You really, really want to be in group three, because the predators preferentially prey on group two. The criteria of membership were not having been a cop, cadre, or informer, not being a nonce, and being willing to get in a fight with another member of group three. That wasn’t as bad as it sounds, as there was also a strong social norm against fights within group three escalating to the point of anyone being seriously hurt. Gambetta’s collaborator, whose fieldwork began while he was himself doing time as a dissident, reasoned that they served the social function of identifying group membership. (If this reminds you of school, don’t be surprised.)</p>\n<p>So, Npower (for it is they) wanted to treat me like a member of group two, but I cut up rough early, and they backed down. Eventually, with much persistence, and careful recording of everything said during the calls, it emerged that there was a bad reading, and they agreed to escalate the issue to complaints, and they finally accepted that I was right. However, they did manage to stall long enough that they got at least one increased payment. You can only expect so much justice in a low-trust society.</p>\n<p>A question, then. Gambetta or Clausewitz? Well, Clausewitz would have identified that we were in a state of limited conflict, rather than unlimited conflict. Neither party actually wants to overthrow and subjugate the other. Oh. Actually I kind of did, but I didn’t have the means to implement it, so this is beside the point. I had a clear politically-determined purpose (Zweck), to recover the money, and an aim (Ziel) which led to the purpose – to get the bill reissued. And I had to navigate the warlike element, whose friction would condition the relationship between the two, in this case, a call-centre PBX system. But this isn’t actually that interesting. Also, Clausewitz would have expected that the two parties would probably make a minimal effort at conflict in support of negotiating a solution, and not only did I put much more into it than that, Npower stuck to it far longer than was at all sensible.</p>\n<p>I found Gambetta’s insights much more useful. That said, Gambetta’s Polish convicts also had a secret organisation that served to mediate conflicts within group three, to provide a degree of deterrence towards group one, and sometimes to represent prisoners towards the screws. What I really needed, it struck me, was the mafia.</p>"
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"content" : "<br><br><table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8z7wXaKVBs/UWEzjfQ0D4I/AAAAAAAAC7Q/3g-QZ4q9Ib0/s1600/252px-Ghana_Cedi_banknotes.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u8z7wXaKVBs/UWEzjfQ0D4I/AAAAAAAAC7Q/3g-QZ4q9Ib0/s1600/252px-Ghana_Cedi_banknotes.jpg\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">Source: wikipedia.org</td></tr></tbody></table><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Ex gratia</b></span></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:22px\">: When a low-to-middle income country is completely befuddled and overwhelmed about how to provide water, electricity, jobs and access to health-care to its populace but has absolute clarity on how to dole out masses of money to relatively small numbers of politicians at the end of their tenure. </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:22px\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:22px\">Closely related words: Judgement debts, emoluments</span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Tahoma,Helvetica,FreeSans,sans-serif;font-size:22px\"> </span></div>"
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"title" : "Things Caches Do",
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"content" : "<p>There are <a href=\"http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#KINDS\">different kinds of HTTP caches</a> that are useful for different kinds of things. I want to talk about <a href=\"http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/#GATEWAY\"><em>gateway caches</em></a> -- or, \"reverse proxy caches\" -- and consider their effects on modern, dynamic web application design.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3284/3035462771_052296ac86_o.png\" alt=\"\" height=\"385\" width=\"636\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Draw an imaginary vertical line, situated between <em>Alice</em> and <em>Cache</em>,\nfrom the very top of the diagram to the very bottom. That line is your\npublic, internet facing interface. In other words, everything from\n<em>Cache</em> back is \"your site\" as far as <em>Alice</em> is concerned.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>Alice</em> is actually Alice's web browser, or perhaps some other kind of\nHTTP user-agent. There's also <em>Bob</em> and <em>Carol</em>. Gateway caches are\nprimarily interesting when you consider their effects across multiple\nclients.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>Cache</em> is an HTTP gateway cache, like <a href=\"http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/\">Varnish</a>, <a href=\"http://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/ReverseProxy\">Squid in reverse\nproxy mode</a>, <a href=\"http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/cache/\">Django's cache framework</a>, or my personal\nfavorite: <a href=\"http://tomayko.com/src/rack-cache/\">rack-cache</a>. In theory, this could also be a <acronym title=\"Content\nDelivery Network\">CDN</acronym>, like <a href=\"http://www.akamai.com/\">Akamai</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>And that brings us to <em>Backend</em>, a dynamic web application built with\nonly the most modern and sophisticated web framework. Interpreted\nlanguage, convenient routing, an ORM, slick template language, and\nvarious other crap -- all adding up to amazing developer productivity.\nIn other words, it's horribly slow and bloated... <em>and awesome</em>!\nThere's probably many of these processes, possibly running on multiple\nmachines.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>\n(One would typically have a separate <em>web server</em> -- like Nginx,\nApache or lighttpd -- and maybe a load balancer sitting in here as well\nbut that's largely irrelevant to this discussion and has been omitted\nfrom the diagrams.)\n</p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2>Expiration</h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Most people understand <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-13.2\" title=\"RFC 2616 - Expiration Model\">the expiration model</a> well enough. You\nspecify how long a response should be considered \"fresh\" by including\neither or both of the <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.9\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The Cache-Control Header\"><code>Cache-Control: max-age=N</code></a> or <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-13.2\" title=\"RFC 2616 - Expiration Model\"><code>Expires</code></a> headers. Caches that understand expiration will not make the same request until the cached version reaches its expiration time and becomes \"stale\".</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>A gateway cache dramatically increases the benefits of providing\nexpiration information in dynamically generated responses. To\nillustrate, let's suppose <em>Alice</em> requests a welcome page:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3050/3035498443_30c0215e59_o.png\" width=\"746\" height=\"431\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Since the cache has no previous knowledge of the welcome page, it\nforwards the request to the backend. The backend generates the\nresponse, including a <code>Cache-Control</code> header that indicates the\nresponse should be considered fresh for ten minutes. The cache then\nshoots the response back to <em>Alice</em> while storing a copy for itself.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Thirty seconds later, <em>Bob</em> comes along and requests the same welcome\npage:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3169/3035498489_d33d8e8847_o.png\" width=\"558\" height=\"355\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The cache recognizes the request, pulls up the stored response, sees\nthat it's still fresh, and sends the cached response back to <em>Bob</em>,\nignoring the backend entirely.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Note that we've experienced no significant bandwidth savings here --\nthe entire response was delivered to both <em>Alice</em> and <em>Bob</em>. We see\nsavings in CPU usage, database round trips, and the various other\nresources required to generate the response at the backend.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2>Validation</h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Expiration is ideal when you can get away with it. Unfortunately, there\nare many situations where it doesn't make sense, and this is especially\ntrue for heavily dynamic web apps where changes in resource state can\noccur frequently and unpredictably. <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-13.2\">The validation model</a> is\ndesigned to support these cases.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Again, we'll suppose <em>Alice</em> makes the initial request for the welcome\npage:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/3036333222_0db315592f_o.png\" width=\"742\" height=\"477\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.29\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The Last-Modified Header\"><code>Last-Modified</code></a> and <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.19\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The ETag Header\"><code>ETag</code></a> header values are called \"cache validators\" because they can be used by the cache on subsequent\nrequests to <em>validate</em> the freshness of the stored response without\nrequiring the backend to generate or transmit the response body. You\ndon't need both validators -- either one will do, though both have pros\nand cons, the details of which are outside the scope of this document.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>So <em>Bob</em> comes along at some point after <em>Alice</em> and requests the\nwelcome page:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3188/3036333272_bfcd6fd62a_o.png\" width=\"817\" height=\"454\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The cache sees that it has a copy of the welcome page but can't be sure\nof its freshness so it needs to pass the request to the backend. <em>But</em>,\nbefore doing so, the cache adds the <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.25\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The If-Modified-Since Header\"><code>If-Modified-Since</code></a> and\n<a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.26\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The If-None-Match Header\"><code>If-None-Match</code></a> headers to the request, setting them to the original response's <code>Last-Modified</code> and <code>ETag</code> values, respectively. These headers make the request conditional. Once the backend receives the request, it generates the current cache validators, checks them against the values provided in the request, and immediately shoots back a <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-10.3.5\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The 304 Not Modified Response\"><code>304 Not Modified</code></a> response <em>without generating the response body</em>. The cache, having validated the freshness of its copy, is now free to respond to <em>Bob</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>This requires a round-trip with the backend, but if the backend\ngenerates cache validators up front and in an efficient manner, it can\navoid generating the response body. This can be extremely significant.\nA backend that takes advantage of validation need not generate the same\nresponse twice.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2>Combining Expiration and Validation</h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p>The expiration and validation models form the basic foundation of HTTP\ncaching. A response may include expiration information, validation\ninformation, both, or neither. So far we've seen what each looks like\nindependently. It's also worth looking at how things work when they're\ncombined.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>Suppose, again, that <em>Alice</em> makes the initial request:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3180/3036333336_521bd9ce7c_o.png\" width=\"742\" height=\"477\" alt=\"\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The backend specifies that the response should be considered fresh\nfor sixty seconds and also includes the <code>Last-Modified</code> cache\nvalidator.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p><em>Bob</em> comes along thirty seconds later. Since the response is still\nfresh, validation is not required; he's served directly from cache:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/3035498713_eb51e8652e_o.png\" width=\"562\" height=\"378\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>But then <em>Carol</em> makes the same request, thirty seconds after <em>Bob</em>:</p>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin:2em 0\">\n<img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3165/3036333458_9b165aa5d0_o.png\" width=\"823\" height=\"454\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\">\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The cache relies on expiration if at all possible before falling back\non validation. Note also that the <code>304 Not Modified</code> response includes\nupdated expiration information, so the cache knows that it has another\nsixty seconds before it needs to perform another validation request.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<h2>More</h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p>The basic mechanisms shown here form the conceptual foundation of caching in HTTP -- not to mention the Cache architectural constraint <a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm#sec_5_1_4\">as defined by REST</a>. There's more to it, of course: a cache's behavior can be further constrained with additional <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.9\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The Cache-Control Header\"><code>Cache-Control</code></a> directives, and the <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-14.44\" title=\"RFC 2616 - The Vary Header\"><code>Vary</code></a> header narrows a response's cache suitability based on headers of subsequent requests.\nFor a more thorough look at HTTP caching, I suggest Mark Nottingham's excellent <a href=\"http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/\">Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters</a>. Paul James's <a href=\"http://www.peej.co.uk/articles/http-caching.html\">HTTP Caching</a> is also quite good and bit shorter. And, of course, the <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616#section-13\" title=\"RFC 2616: Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1\">relevant sections of RFC 2616</a> are highly recommended.</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>\n(Oh, and the diagrams were made using <a href=\"http://www.websequencediagrams.com/\">websequencediagrams.com</a>,\na very simple, text-based sequence diagram generating web service\nthingy.)\n</p>\n\n\n\n\n"
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"title" : "[from abenadove] allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Is Obama a Blackman? (Page 1 of 1)",
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"content" : "<p>another top hit on allafrica.com "I believe that African and Caucasian bloods have their respective strengths and weaknesses. And I am persuaded by the successes of former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, who transformed Ghana and Obama's to think that a mix of Caucasian and African blood removes or tones down greed. Raw, primitive greed is the fundamental cause of failed leadership in Africa. Rawlings's father is a Whiteman and I will tell his story I saw playout before my very eyes another time."</p>\n <span>\n <a href=\"http://delicious.com/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fallafrica.com%2Fstories%2F200811110421.html&title=allAfrica.com%3A%20Nigeria%3A%20Is%20Obama%20a%20Blackman%3F%20%28Page%201%20of%201%29&copyuser=abenadove&copytags=nigeria+race+miscegenation+news+obama&jump=yes&partner=delrss&src=feed_google\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"add this bookmark to your collection at http://delicious.com\"><img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/hr/img/delicious.small.gif\" alt=\"http://delicious.com\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" border=\"0\"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>\n - Saved by <a title=\"visit abenadove's bookmarks at Delicious\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove\">abenadove</a>\n to\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged nigeria\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove/nigeria\">nigeria</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged race\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove/race\">race</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged miscegenation\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove/miscegenation\">miscegenation</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged news\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove/news\">news</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged obama\" href=\"http://delicious.com/abenadove/obama\">obama</a>\n - <a rel=\"self\" title=\"view more details on this bookmark at Delicious\" href=\"http://delicious.com/url/28228f0e3d9832f4e1f42c6d94f806f0\">More about this bookmark</a>\n </span>"
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"title" : "The Meme Hustler",
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"content" : "<div><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef017c3851f194970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"B22_burke3_oreilly_308\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef017c3851f194970b-320wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"B22_burke3_oreilly_308\"></a>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://thebaffler.com/past/the_meme_hustler\">Evgeny Morozov</a> in The Baffler:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>While the brightest minds of Silicon Valley are “disrupting” whatever industry is too crippled to fend off their advances, something odd is happening to our language. Old, trusted words no longer mean what they used to mean; often, they don’t mean anything at all. Our language, much like everything these days, has been hacked. Fuzzy, contentious, and complex ideas have been stripped of their subversive connotations and replaced by cleaner, shinier, and emptier alternatives; long-running debates about politics, rights, and freedoms have been recast in the seemingly natural language of economics, innovation, and efficiency. Complexity, as it turns out, is not particularly viral.</p>\r\n<p>This is not to deny that many of our latest gadgets and apps are fantastic. But to fixate on technological innovation alone is to miss the more subtle—and more consequential—ways in which a clique of techno-entrepreneurs has hijacked our language and, with it, our reason. In the last decade or so, Silicon Valley has triggered its own wave of linguistic innovation, a wave so massive that a completely new way to analyze and describe the world—a silicon mentality of sorts—has emerged in its wake. The old language has been rendered useless; our pre-Internet vocabulary, we are told, needs an upgrade.</p>\r\n<p>Fortunately, Silicon Valley, that never-drying well of shoddy concepts and dubious paradigms—from wiki-everything to i-something, from e-nothing to open-anything—is ready to help. Like a good priest, it’s always there to console us with the promise of a better future, a glitzier roadmap, a sleeker vocabulary.</p>\r\n<p>Silicon Valley has always had a thing for priests; Steve Jobs was the cranky pope it deserved. Today, having mastered the art of four-hour workweeks and gluten-free lunches in outdoor cafeterias, our digital ministers are beginning to preach on subjects far beyond the funky world of drones, 3-D printers, and smart toothbrushes. That we would eventually be robbed of a meaningful language to discuss technology was entirely predictable. That the conceptual imperialism of Silicon Valley would also pollute the rest of our vocabulary wasn’t.</p>\r\n<p>The enduring emptiness of our technology debates has one main cause, and his name is Tim O’Reilly. </p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p> </p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1jMWg3k--rc:32IcVv73v0k:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/1jMWg3k--rc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"categories" : [ "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/read", "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/starred", "BOOKS", "HISTORY", "OPINION", "Africana Studies", "Ama Ata Aidoo", "Anthills of the Savannah", "Bard College", "Biafra", "Caryl Phillips", "Chinua Achebe", "Christie Achebe", "Emmanuel Dongala", "Ghana", "Heinemann", "Helon Habila", "James Baldwin", "Kofi Anyidoho", "Kwame Nkrumah", "Leon Botstein", "New York", "Nigeria", "Okonkwo", "pan-Africanism", "Things Fall Apart", "W.E.B. Du Bois" ],
"title" : "Chinua Achebe: A Poet of Global Encounters",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/afbeelding-1.png?w=610\"><br>\nThe first time I met Chinua Achebe I had just started teaching at Bard College, where I had been hired as Director of Africana Studies. I saw Chinua one evening at a campus event and nervously approached to introduce myself. I did not expect his humor or his humility. Instead of exchanging a quick word or two, he engaged me in a long conversation about the state of Africana studies and my research in Ghana. I tentatively began to seek out his company and realized that, while he was one of the most important living writers in the world, he was also lonely living in upstate New York. Over the next six years I spent as much time as I could at the house on the Bard campus where Chinua and his wife Christie lived. Sometimes I was invited but eventually I just started showing up; for food and conversation, to watch the news or bits of recent Nigerian films. Christie would tease me that I had a knack for arriving when the food was ready. <span></span></p>\n<p>I was writing about West African theatre, music, and political transformation and after trips to Ghana, I would come to discuss with Chinua the latest developments in West African politics, media, and arts. Even if he did not identify with the new Nigerian and Ghana video films and Hip-Hop that had become so popular, he loved the creative energy of young West African popular artists. He told me how he saw innovative rappers and video directors as part of the legacy of older generations of African writers. With each conversation I felt I was getting a master-tutorial as he talked of Yeats, from whose poem, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)\">“The Second Coming,”</a> he took the title of <em>Things Fall Apart</em>, or Fela Kuti, the Nigerian singer and activist, or Igbo language politics, or the origins of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, or a dozen other topics.</p>\n<p>In upstate New York some were in awe of him, some were ignorant of his importance, and still others who knew of his celebrity took a blasé New York attitude and left him alone. Most Americans do not welcome visitors, but in many parts of the world, including Nigeria, it is a sign of respect to visit someone. To be hospitable is normal. Chinua was grateful to Bard as an intellectual community and personally to its President Leon Botstein for supporting him after his 1990 road accident and he stayed there for almost two decades, perhaps because Bard’s culture of cosmopolitan and exiled intellectuals and artists from around the world suited his state of mind. After being confined to a wheelchair, going home to Nigeria posed problems because of his medical needs, but living in the US meant he was in a state of self-imposed exile and stasis. He was angry and disheartened at the structural condition of Nigerian and African politics in general, but was also deeply concerned with the addiction of the Western media to negative representations of Africa. He relished the privacy and the anonymity of his quiet house in Annandale, NY, but he was also saddened by it; he seemed unsure of where he might feel at home and so remained in limbo.</p>\n<p>Since Chinua did not like email, people around him helped filter correspondence and mediate the constant offers to give talks, receive honorary degrees, and write pieces. Over time, I came to help with this task. He was generous with his time and considered all offers, though he always sought ways to stay focused on his writing and on building a vision of African literature’s place in the world. Some afternoons I accompanied him as he made his way from his house slowly across the ill-paved, often frozen parking lot to teach or hold office hours. Bard students revered him, though they often did not understand the depth of analysis or historical tales he gave them. He taught various courses on African literature including one on African Women Writers, still a rare course anywhere. As I taught courses on African and diasporic politics and arts we would also exchange class visits. There is nothing like teaching <em>Things Fall Apart</em> and <em>Anthills of the Savannah</em> with the author next to you in the classroom. Often, we talked about Africana studies, its history and how to solidify its position outside of token courses in the curriculum at Bard and around the world. We discussed how to teach about Africa and its diasporas, to demonstrate their centrality to philosophy and education in general, to link various historical, geographic, and cultural strands that are still often seen as separated. While many know Chinua as a foundational figure of Nigerian and African literature, his thinking was embedded in a strong Pan-Africanist political and artistic sensibility. Our conversations often drew upon <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=%22Du+Bois%22\">W. E. B. Du Bois</a> as an historian of Africana and we discussed how conflict, violence, inequality, and movement have shaped Africa and its linkages to multiple diasporas. Out of our conversation we shaped a two-course sequence called “African Encounters” that I taught as the core of our Africana curriculum.</p>\n<p>Some days Chinua was tired and did not want to do his exercise routine. He hated having to use a special van to accommodate his wheelchair. He wanted to feel free and autonomous and instead was trapped and grounded. But he never showed his frustration or let it affect how he related to people he met. He was genuinely interested in talking and listening to people. But his daily routine was punctuated with grander and more joyous events. His engagements ranged from speaking at the United Nations to meeting with members of a visiting Ghanaian theatre troupe. It was amazing to watch how people of all sorts revered him and felt an intimate connection to him through his work and how genuinely he responded to the personal stories people would tell him.</p>\n<p>Sitting at the Achebes’ dining table one afternoon I listened as he explained his decision <a href=\"http://pmnewsnigeria.com/2011/11/13/again-chinua-achebe-rejects-nigerian-award/\">to reject a Nigerian national honor</a> in 2004, a consequence of his ethical concerns with the state of Nigeria. Reading his same words in the international press a few days later I was struck by how he was the same person sitting in private as on the global stage; the scalar shift of fame and celebrity must have been strange to live with: his words and choices, his winks and nods, carried a global weight.</p>\n<p>One day I raised my concern that there were few institutions that reflected his vision of history, Africa, and African arts. I thought we should formalize his legacy at the college that was his home and asked him what he thought of starting an institute that would ground Africana Studies by fostering young artists working in and around Africa. He liked the idea so we began to conceive of what became the Chinua Achebe Institute of Global Africana Arts. With Chinua’s guidance I wrote the institutional guidelines and funding proposals. Leon Botstein supported us and helped organize Ford Foundation support. Chinua was excited about the Achebe Institute and we set about arranging a series of events and residencies that would foster work by artists and intellectuals stemming in a broad way from Chinua’s vision. As an executive committee of two, we discussed the latest novelists and filmmakers and settled on Helon Habila as the first year-long residential Achebe Fellow. Though Chinua was most concerned with writers, he was also adamant that we include artists in other media as he recognized that the new directions of the younger generations were part of the same artistic-political continuum.</p>\n<p>One of the most energetic events we held in the early days of the Achebe Institute was a reading by <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ama_Ata_Aidoo\">Ama Ata Aidoo</a>. The two writers were so pleased to see each other. After not meeting for many years, Ama Ata Aidoo was effusive in alternately teasing and praising Chinua. Strangely, just before her talk, the power went out in the auditorium so we held her reading in the glass lobby with the capacity crowd squeezed onto the floor and steps. Chinua introduced Aidoo by pointing to her strength and her incisive voice, joking that when members of the African writers association had a problem they called on her to take care of it for them. She prefaced her reading of a selection from her unpublished post-apocalyptic Afro-futurist novel, by telling us about being a young writer traveling from Ghana to Nigeria many decades ago to meet Chinua. She reminded us how generations of African youth have gained inspiration from him.</p>\n<p>In 2005 I organized the first major panel sponsored by the Achebe Institute, “Writing Africa: Politics and Dialogues around the African Continent.” The event was meant to present our vision for the Insitute. The discussion revolved around the changing artistic influences and political connections between Africa and its diasporas. After my introductory comments there were papers by Caryl Phillips, Emmanuel Dongala, Kofi Anyidoho, and Helon Habila. Chinua was the final speaker of the evening.</p>\n<p>He began by saying “let me tell you about the first time I met <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=%22James+Baldwin%22\">James Baldwin</a>.” The capacity crowd of hundreds leaned in to listen to Chinua’s soft, commanding voice. He described how after several missed meetings the two of them were finally to share the stage in a public conversation as the inaugural event for <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5BOz8S5Ao\">the 1980 African Literature Association conference</a>, in Gainsville, Florida. Chinua recalled thinking hard about what to say at their auspicious introduction. Finally, as they were introduced on stage, Chinua turned to his fellow author and said “Mr. Baldwin, I presume.” The Gainville audience reverberated with excitement and then fell quiet to hear Baldwin’s response: “This is a brother I have not seen in four hundred years.” After pausing for exclamations from the audience he continued, “it was never intended that we should meet.” In this introduction both writers invoked the possibilities and traumas of the complex global history of African peoples that frame their achievements as literary pioneers. Habila had noted on the 2005 panel African writers of his generation sometimes take for granted the existence of modern African genres which Chinua’s generation called into existence. Two generations on, Chinua’s work has allowed modern African writers to work without having to constantly justify their existence. While Phillips’s paper had described a fictional meeting of Francophone African thinkers in pre-War Paris as a space of political and artistic blossoming, Habila argued that most young writers do not have the same idealistic hopes for the potential of literature as mid-century African artists and thinkers did. Overall, the panel brought to the fore various types of encounter, both creative and destructive, that surround Chinua’s work.</p>\n<p>After our panel discussion at Bard I asked Chinua to tell me more about his meeting with Baldwin. He showed me a video of the conversation between them, explaining it had taken a very strange and sinister turn. As Baldwin was speaking, a haunting voice could be heard on the P.A. system, insulting Baldwin in explicit racial terms. Members of the audience rushed to the doors to guard the group against possible attack. Baldwin replied calmly to the anonymous voice, saying “excuse me but your time has long past… white supremacy had its hour… it’s over. It is now our time. I am going to finish my remarks.” Chinua recalls Baldwin’s strenght and calm. Apparently, the authorities could not find the culprit but the voice disappeared and the writers were able to finish their conversation. I asked Chinua why he had not invoked the second part of this event at the panel discussion. He smiled and said, “the storyteller shapes his stories for a purpose.” Historical traumas remain close at hand but in the retelling of stories artists and intellectuals invoke new ways to live in the world and transform violence and distance into collaboration.</p>\n<p>Chinua told me several times that he saw himself as a poet who also wrote other things. Perhaps this was a feeling that grew in his later years with his renewed reflections on Biafra; but knowing he read politics and wrote novels as a poet, changed how I read his work. Nonetheless, he was proud of the role of <em>Things Fall Apart</em> in opening up the publishing of African writing and in his role in editing the first 100 Heinemann books in its groundbreaking African writers series. In 2008 around the 50th anniversary of the publication of <em>Things Fall Apart</em> there were numerous events, panels, and lectures, some big, some small. Chinua often joked privately and at talks about being known as a one book writer. To start off readings he would quip with a smile: you know I have written other books, don’t you? This jab was a way to gently provoke an audience to think more incisively about literature and politics rather than simply celebrating the work. Backstage after one of the panels I teased him if he wasn’t tired of talking about the same book for 50 years. He said: Well, yes and no, he always learned something new from how people read the book, how they talked to him about it and interpreted the characters. He recalled receiving a stack of letters from Korean school children and seeing that Okonkwo’s life, death, and choices resonated with them in ways he could never have imagined. He spent more than 50 years in dialogue with characters he created as a young man that remained imminent, complex, and relevant across the globe.</p>\n<p>The most common misreading of his first novel, as Chinua explained to me, was to understand it as an idealized recollection of precolonial African life. This was exacerbated by the fact it was often included in American and European syllabi as a representation or token of Africa or non-Western expression, a sign of Africa for outsiders to imagine an authentic vision of its peoples and cultures. But if you listen to Chinua this simplistic nostalgia dissipates. He recalled that he was writing <em>Things Fall Apart</em> as Ghana became independent from British rule in 1957. The Pan-Africanism of Ghana’s first leader Kwame Nkrumah was especially influential on Chinua: “They were ahead of us [in Nigeria] so we were looking to Ghana to see the path to independence. It was an inspiring moment.” This novel and his other tales are stories of multiple encounters of loss and impossibility, humor and survival that point to the future; they are meditations on the experience of time. <em>Things Fall Apart</em> presents Ibgo life from multiple angles simultaneously forcing consideration of the question of cultural stability and its representation; it is a reflexive mediation on the possibility of storytelling itself to encapsulate history, memory, and new ways of life; it is an extended proverb in content and form. Chinua is the poet of encounter, a primary trope of 20th century life.</p>\n<p>I have been thinking about the sparkle in Chinua’s eye and the subtle ways he used his hands when he talked. One of the brilliant things about Chinua was how he used silence both in writing and in person. He was a master of the pause and the unexpected proverb, of multiple meanings, of putting stories to good use while enjoying the process of the telling. His work was deceptively minimalist and immensely complex. He had brilliant comic timing; he could read a room and command it from the first words out of his mouth. He taught me that you can be fierce and respectful. You can talk softly while compelling people to listen to ideas and stories. He must have been a wise elder even as a young man, but as he grew older he never lost the mischievous dry wit of youth and the belief in redemption even for the most corrupt and lost. Chinua’s legacy is not fixed but rather about responding to change with energy and wit.</p>\n<p>After I left the Directorship of the Achebe Institute and then Chinua went to Brown University, Binyavanga Wainaina took up the post, renaming it the <a href=\"http://achebecenter.bard.edu/\">Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists</a> and transforming it in ways befitting Chinua’s legacy, through his own expansive, creative vision of African cosmopolitanism and cutting-edge media and literature.</p>\n<p>At my wedding Chinua’s gift was to read a poem. In a tent overlooking a hilltop farm in upstate New York, Chinua, removing the beret he usually wore, faced the congregation. Holding his book open ready to read, he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. He explained, deadpan, that he was only loaning me the poem he was about to read and that he expected something in return. Within a year, he said, I should write one myself and return this one to him. After the reading, as the ceremony ended, a huge thunderstorm filled the sky and almost demolished the tent. To my embarrassment, I have not repaid my debt to Chinua Achebe. But it is a small part of the far larger debt that so many writers and intellectuals owe him, that we can only repay by offering our best work in his memory.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66103/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/66103/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=66103&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Is <a href=\"http://www.nbcnews.com/id/8305836/#.UVyJgavuXIb\">this</a> the result of the lion lobby getting wind of our popular <a href=\"http://www.wrongingrights.com/category/africa-land-of-rape-and-lions\">post tag</a>, and making an effort distance “lions” from “rape”?</p>\n<p>From the AP, the story of an adolescent girl being saved from rape and forced marriage <em>by three Ethiopian lions</em>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“A 12-year-old girl who was abducted and beaten by men trying to force her into a marriage was found being guarded by three lions who apparently had chased off her captors, a policeman said Tuesday.</p>\n<p>The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted to force her to marry one of them, said Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet, about 350 miles southwest of Addis Ababa.</p>\n<p>She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said.</p>\n<p>“They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest,” Wondimu said.<br>\n“If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage,” he said.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>You heard it here first, folks. In the battle against sexual violence, lions are the new <a href=\"http://www.wrongingrights.com/category/things-we-are-deeply-confused-about/page/12\">camcorders</a>.</p>\n<p>(H/T <a href=\"http://melindataub.tumblr.com/\">Melinda</a>.)</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Like many developers I’ve been excited by the promise of <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/\">Asm.js</a>. Reading the recent news that <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">Asm.js is now in Firefox nightly</a> is what got my interest going. There’s also been a massive surge in interest after <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/03/27/mozilla-is-unlocking-the-power-of-the-web-as-a-platform-for-gaming/\">Mozilla and Epic announced</a> (<a href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/27/mozilla-and-epic-games-bring-unreal-engine-3-to-the-web-no-plugin-needed/\">mirror</a>) that they had ported Unreal Engine 3 to Asm.js – and that it ran really well.</p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/XsyogXtyU9o\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></center></p>\n<p>Getting a C++ game engine running in JavaScript, using WebGL for rendering, is a massive feat and is largely due to the toolchain that Mozilla has developed to make it all possible.</p>\n<p>Since the release of the Unreal Engine 3 port to Asm.js I’ve been watching the response on Twitter, blogs, and elsewhere and while some developers are grasping the interesting confluence of open technologies that’ve made this advancement happen I’ve also seen a lot of confusion: Is Asm.js a plugin? Does Asm.js make my regular JavaScript fast? Does this work in all browsers? I feel that Asm.js, and related technologies, are incredibly important and I want to try and explain the technology so that developers know what’s happened and how they will benefit. In addition to my brief exploration into this subject I’ve also asked <a href=\"http://calculist.org/\">David Herman</a> (Senior Researcher at Mozilla Research) a number of questions regarding Asm.js and how all the pieces fit together.</p>\n<h2>What is Asm.js?</h2>\n<p>In order to understand <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/\">Asm.js</a> and where it fits into the browser you need to know where it came from and why it exists.</p>\n<p>Asm.js comes from a new category of JavaScript application: C/C++ applications that’ve been compiled into JavaScript. It’s a whole new genre of JavaScript application that’s been spawned by <a href=\"https://github.com/kripken/emscripten\">Mozilla’s Emscripten project</a>.</p>\n<p>Emscripten takes in C/C++ code, passes it through LLVM, and converts the LLVM-generated bytecode into JavaScript (specifically, Asm.js, a subset of JavaScript).</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://i.imgur.com/1yoy1Fa.png\"><img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/1yoy1Fal.png\" style=\"max-width:560px\"></a></center></p>\n<p>If the compiled Asm.js code is doing some rendering then it is most likely being handled by WebGL (and rendered using OpenGL). In this way the entire pipeline is technically making use of JavaScript and the browser but is almost entirely skirting the actual, normal, code execution and rendering path that JavaScript-in-a-webpage takes.</p>\n<p>Asm.js is a subset of JavaScript that is heavily restricted in what it can do and how it can operate. This is done so that the compiled Asm.js code can run as fast as possible making as few assumptions as it can, converting the Asm.js code directly into assembly. It’s important to note that Asm.js is just JavaScript – there is no special browser plugin or feature needed in order to make it work (although a browser that is able to detect and optimize Asm.js code will certainly run faster). It’s a specialized subset of JavaScript that’s optimized for performance, especially for this use case of applications compiled to JavaScript.</p>\n<p>The best way to understand how Asm.js works, and its limitations, is to look at some Asm.js-compiled code. Let’s look at a function extracted from a real-world Asm.js-compiled module (from the <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread\">BananaBread demo</a>). I formatted this code so that it’d be a little bit saner to digest – it’s normally just a giant blob of heavily-minimized JavaScript:</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<p>Technically this is JavaScript code but we can already see that this looks nothing like most DOM-using JavaScript that we normally see. A few things we can notice just by looking at the code:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>This particular code only deals with numbers. In fact this is the case of all Asm.js code. Asm.js is only capable of handling a selection of different <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/#value-types\">number types</a> and no other data structure (this includes strings, booleans, or objects).</li>\n<li>All external data is stored and referenced from a single object, called the heap. Essentially this heap is a massive array (intended to be a <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Typed_arrays\">typed array</a>, which is highly optimized for performance). All data is stored within this array – effectively replacing global variables, data structures, closures, and any other forms of data storage.</li>\n<li>When accessing and setting variables the results are consistently coerced into a specific type. For example <code>f = e | 0;</code> sets the variable <code>f</code> to equal the value of <code>e</code> but it also ensures that the result will be an integer (<code>| 0</code> does this, converting an value into an integer). We also see this happening with floats – note the use of <code>0.0</code> and <code>g[...] = +(...);</code>.</li>\n<li>Looking at the values coming in and out of the data structures it appears as if the data structured represented by the variable <code>c</code> is an <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Typed_arrays/Int32Array\">Int32Array</a> (storing 32-bit integers, the values are always converted from or to an integer using <code>| 0</code>) and <code>g</code> is a <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Typed_arrays/Float32Array\">Float32Array</a> (storing 32-bit floats, the values always converted to a float by wrapping the value with <code>+(...)</code>).</li>\n</ul>\n<p>By doing this the result is highly optimized and can be converted directly from this Asm.js syntax directly into assembly without having to interpret it, as one would normally have to do with JavaScript. It effectively shaves off a whole bunch of things that can make a dynamic language, like JavaScript, slow: Like the need for garbage collection and dynamic types.</p>\n<p>As an example of some more-explanatory Asm.js code let’s take a look at an example from the <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/\">Asm.js specification</a>:</p>\n<pre><code>function DiagModule(stdlib, foreign, heap) {\n \"use asm\";\n\n // Variable Declarations\n var sqrt = stdlib.Math.sqrt;\n\n // Function Declarations\n function square(x) {\n x = +x;\n return +(x*x);\n }\n\n function diag(x, y) {\n x = +x;\n y = +y;\n return +sqrt(square(x) + square(y));\n }\n\n return { diag: diag };\n}\n</code></pre>\n<p>Looking at this module it seems downright understandable! Looking at this code we can better understand the structure of an Asm.js module. A module is contained within a function and starts with the <code>\"use asm\";</code> directive at the top. This gives the interpreter the hint that everything inside the function should be handled as Asm.js and be compiled to assembly directly.</p>\n<p>Note, at the top of the function, the three arguments: <code>stdlib</code>, <code>foreign</code>, and <code>heap</code>. The <code>stdlib</code> object contains references to a number of <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/#standard-library\">built-in math functions</a>. <code>foreign</code> provides access to custom user-defined functionality (such as drawing a shape in WebGL). And finally <code>heap</code> gives you an <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Typed_arrays/ArrayBuffer\">ArrayBuffer</a> which can be viewed through a <a href=\"http://asmjs.org/spec/latest/#heap-view-types\">number of different lenses</a>, such as Int32Array and Float32Array.</p>\n<p>The rest of the module is broken up into three parts: variable declarations, function declarations, and finally an object exporting the functions to expose to the user.</p>\n<p>The export is an especially important point to understand as it allows all of the code within the module to be handled as Asm.js but still be made usable to other, normal, JavaScript code. Thus you could, theoretically, have some code that looks like the following, using the above <code>DiagModule</code> code:</p>\n<pre><code>document.body.onclick = function() {\n function DiagModule(stdlib){\"use asm\"; ... return { ... };}\n\n var diag = DiagModule({ Math: Math }).diag;\n alert(diag(10, 100));\n};\n</code></pre>\n<p>This would result in an Asm.js DiagModule that’s handled special by the JavaScript interpreter but still made available to other JavaScript code (thus we could still access it and use it within a click handler, for example).</p>\n<h2>What is the performance like?</h2>\n<p>Right now the only implementation that exists is in <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">nightly versions of Firefox</a> (and even then, for only a couple platforms). That being said early numbers show the performance being <em>really, really</em> good. For complex applications (such as the above games) performance is only around 2x slower than normally-compiled C++ (which is comparable to other languages like Java or C#). This is substantially faster than current browser runtimes, yielding performance that’s about 4-10x faster than the latest Firefox and Chrome builds.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://kripken.github.com/mloc_emscripten_talk/#/28\"><img src=\"http://kripken.github.com/mloc_emscripten_talk/macro4b.png\" style=\"max-width:560px\"></a></p>\n<p>This is a substantial improvement over the current best case. Considering how early on in the development of Asm.js is it’s very likely that there could be even greater performance improvements coming.</p>\n<p>It is interesting to see such a large performance chasm appearing between Asm.js and the current engines in Firefox and Chrome. A 4-10x performance difference is substantial (this is in the realm of comparing these browsers to the performance of IE 6). Interestingly even with this performance difference many of these Asm.js demos are still usable on Chrome and Firefox, which is a good indicator for the current state of JavaScript engines. That being said their performance is simply not as good as the performance offered by a browser that is capable of optimizing Asm.js code.</p>\n<h2>Use Cases</h2>\n<p>It should be noted that almost all of the applications that are targeting Asm.js right now are C/C++ applications compiled to Asm.js using Emscripten. With that in mind the kind of applications that are going to target Asm.js, in the near future, are those that will benefit from the portability of running in a browser but which have a level of complexity in which a direct port to JavaScript would be infeasible.</p>\n<p>So far most of the use cases have centered around code bases where performance is of the utmost importance: Such as in running games, graphics, programming language interpreters, and libraries. A quick look through the <a href=\"https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki\">Emscripten project list</a> shows many projects which will be of instant use to many developers.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>A number of game engines have already been ported. A good demo of what is possible is the <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread\">BananaBread FPS Game</a> (<a href=\"https://github.com/kripken/BananaBread/\">Source Code</a>) which is playable directly in the browser and features multiplayer and bots.</li>\n<li>A port of LaTeX to JavaScript, <a href=\"http://manuels.github.com/texlive.js/website/\">called texlive.js</a>, using Emscripten, allowing you to compile PDFs completely within your browser.</li>\n<li>A port of <a href=\"https://github.com/kripken/sql.js\">SQLite to JavaScript</a> capable of running in Node.js.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://github.com/tonyg/js-nacl\">NaCL: A Networking and Cryptography Library</a></li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Asm.js Support</h2>\n<p>As mentioned before the <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">nightly version of Firefox</a> is currently the only browser that supports optimizing Asm.js code.</p>\n<p>However it’s important to emphasize that Asm.js-formatted JavaScript code is still just JavaScript code, albeit with an important set of restrictions. For this reason Asm.js-compiled code can still run in other browsers as normal JavaScript code, even if that browser doesn’t support it.</p>\n<p>The critical puzzle piece is the performance of that code: If a browser doesn’t support typed arrays or doesn’t specially-compile the Asm.js code then the performance is going to be much worse off. Of course this isn’t special to Asm.js, likely any browser that doesn’t have those features is also suffering in other ways.</p>\n<h2>Asm.js and Web Development</h2>\n<p>As you can probably see from the code above Asm.js isn’t designed to be written by hand. It’s going to require some sort of tooling to write and it’s going to require some rather drastic changes from how one would normally write JavaScript, in order to use. The most common use case for Asm.js right now is in applications complied from C/C++ to JavaScript. Almost none of these applications interact with the DOM in a meaningful way, beyond using WebGL and the like.</p>\n<p>In order for it to be usable by regular developers there are going to have to be some intermediary languages that are more user-accessible that can compile to Asm.js. The best candidate, at the moment, is <a href=\"http://mbebenita.github.com/LLJS/\">LLJS</a> in which work is starting to get it <a href=\"http://www.jlongster.com/Compiling-LLJS-to-asm.js,-Now-Available-\">compiling to Asm.js</a>. It should be noted that a language like LLJS is still going to be quite different from regular JavaScript and will likely confuse many JavaScript users. Even with a nice more-user-accessible language like LLJS it’s likely that it’ll still only be used by hardcore developers who want to optimize extremely complex pieces of code.</p>\n<p>Even with LLJS, or some other language, that could allow for more hand-written Asm.js code we still wouldn’t have an equally-optimized DOM to work with. The ideal environment would be one where we could compile LLJS code and the DOM together to create a single Asm.js blob which could be executed simultaneously. It’s not clear to me what the performance of that would look like but I would love to find out!</p>\n<h2>Q&A with David Herman</h2>\n<p>I sent some questions to <a href=\"http://calculist.org/\">David Herman</a> (Senior Researcher at Mozilla Research) to try and get some clarification on how all the pieces of Asm.js fit together and how they expect users to benefit from it. He graciously took the time to answer the questions in-depth and provided some excellent responses. I hope you find them to be as illuminating as I did.</p>\n<p><strong>What is the goal of Asm.js? Who do you see as the target audience for the project?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Our goal is to make the open web a compelling virtual machine, a target for compiling other languages and platforms. In this first release, we’re focused on compiling low-level code like C and C++. In the longer run we hope to add support for higher-level constructs like structured objects and garbage collection. So eventually we’d like to support applications from platforms like the JVM and .NET.</p>\n<p>Since asm.js is really about expanding the foundations of the web, there’s a wide range of potential audiences. One of the audiences we feel we can reach now is game programmers who want access to as much raw computational power as they can. But web developers are inventive and they always find ways to use all the tools at their disposal in ways no one predicts, so I have high hopes that asm.js will become an enabling technology for all sorts of innovative applications I can’t even imagine.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Does it make sense to create a more user-accessible version of Asm.js, like an updated version of LLJS? What about expanding the scope of the project beyond just a compiler target?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Absolutely. In fact, my colleague <a href=\"http://www.jlongster.com\">James Long</a> recently announced that he’s done an <a href=\"http://www.jlongster.com/Compiling-LLJS-to-asm.js,-Now-Available-\">initial fork of LLJS that compiles to asm.js</a>. My team at <a href=\"http://www.mozilla.org/research\">Mozilla Research</a> intends to incorporate James’s work and officially evolve LLJS to support asm.js.</p>\n<p>In my opinion, you generally only want to write asm.js by hand in a very narrow set of instances, like any assembly language. More often, you want to use more expressive languages that compile efficiently to it. Of course, when languages get extremely expressive like JavaScript, you lose predictability of performance. (My friend <a href=\"http://twitter.com/mraleph\">Slava Egorov</a> wrote a nice post describing the <a href=\"http://mrale.ph/blog/2011/11/05/the-trap-of-the-performance-sweet-spot.html\">challenges of writing high-performance code in high-level languages</a>.) LLJS aims for a middle ground — like a C to asm.js’s assembly — that’s easier to write than raw asm.js but has more predictable performance than regular JS. But unlike C, it still has smooth interoperability with regular JS. That way you can write most of your app in dynamic, flexible JS, and focus on only writing the hottest parts of your code in LLJS.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>There is talk of a renewed performance divide between browsers that support Asm.js and browsers that don’t, similar to what happened during the last JavaScript performance race in 2008/2009. Even though technically Asm.js code can run everywhere in reality the performance difference will simply be too crippling for many cases. Given this divide, and the highly restricted subset of JavaScript, why did you choose JavaScript as a compilation target? Why JavaScript instead of a custom language or plugin?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n First of all, I don’t think the divide is as stark as you’re characterizing it: we’ve built <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/falling-cubes\">impressive</a> <a href=\"https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread\">demos</a> that work well in existing browsers but will benefit from killer performance with asm.js.</p>\n<p>It’s certainly true that you can create applications that will depend on the increased performance of asm.js to be usable. At the same time, just like any new web platform capability, applications can decide whether to degrade gracefully with some less compute-intensive fallback behavior. There’s a difference in kind between an application that works with degraded performance and an application that doesn’t work at all.</p>\n<p>More broadly, keep in mind the browser performance race that started in the late 00′s was great for the web, and applications have evolved along with the browsers. I believe the same thing can and will happen with asm.js.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>How would you compare Asm.js with Google’s Native Client? They appear to have similar goals while Asm.js has the advantage of “just working” everywhere that has JavaScript. Have there been any performance comparisons?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Well, Native Client is a bit different, since it involves shipping platform-specific assembly code; I don’t believe Google has advocated for that as a web content technology (as opposed to making it available to Chrome Web Store content or Chrome extensions), or at least not recently.</p>\n<p>Portable Native Client (PNaCl) has a closer goal, using platform-independent LLVM bitcode instead of raw assembly. As you say, the first advantage of asm.js is compatibility with existing browsers. We also avoid having to create a system interface and repeat the full surface area of the web API’s as the <a href=\"https://developers.google.com/native-client/pepperc/\">Pepper API</a> does, since asm.js gets access to the existing API’s by calling directly into JavaScript. Finally, there’s the benefit of ease of implementability: <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke\">Luke Wagner</a> got our first implementation of <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">OdinMonkey</a> implemented and landed in Firefox in just a few months, working primarily by himself. Because asm.js doesn’t have a big set of syscalls and API’s, and because it’s built off of the JavaScript syntax, you can reuse a whole bunch of the machinery of an existing JavaScript engine and web runtime.</p>\n<p>We could do performance comparisons to PNaCl but it would take some work, and we’re more focused on closing the gap to raw native performance. We plan to set up some automated benchmarks so we can chart our progress compared with native C/C++ compilers.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Emscripten, another Mozilla project, appears to be the primary producer of Asm.js-compatible code. How much of Asm.js is being dictated by the needs of the Emscripten project? What benefits has Emscripten received now that improvements are being made at the engine level?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n We used Emscripten as our first test case for asm.js as a way to ensure that it’s got the right facilities to accommodate the needs of real native applications. And of course benefiting Emscripten benefits everyone who has native applications they want to port — such as <a href=\"http://epicgames.com/\">Epic Games</a>, who we teamed up with to <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/03/27/mozilla-is-unlocking-the-power-of-the-web-as-a-platform-for-gaming/\">port the Unreal Engine 3 to the web</a> in just a few days using Emscripten and asm.js.</p>\n<p>But asm.js can benefit anyone who wants to target a low-level subset of JavaScript. For example, we’ve spoken with the folks who build the <a href=\"http://www.mandreel.com/\">Mandreel</a> compiler, which works similarly to Emscripten. We believe they could benefit from targeting asm.js just as Emscripten has started doing.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://twitter.com/kripken\">Alon Zakai</a> has been compiling benchmarks that generally run around 2x slower than native, where we were previously seeing results anywhere from 5x to 10x or 20x of native. This is just in our initial release of <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">OdinMonkey</a>, the asm.js backend for Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine. I expect to see more improvements in coming months.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>How fluid is the Asm.js specification? Are you open to adding in additional features (such as more-advanced data structures) as more compiler authors being to target it?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n You bet. Luke Wagner has written up an <a href=\"https://wiki.mozilla.org/Javascript:SpiderMonkey:OdinMonkey\">asm.js and OdinMonkey roadmap</a> on the Mozilla wiki, which discusses some of our future plans — I should note that none of these are set in stone but they give you a sense of what we’re working on. I’m really excited about adding support for ES6 <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:binary_data\">structured objects</a>. This would provide garbage-collected but well-typed data structures, which would help compilers like <a href=\"http://jsil.org\">JSIL</a> that compile managed languages like C# and Java to JavaScript. We’re also hoping to use something like the proposed ES7 <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:value_objects\">value types</a> to provide support for 32-bit floats, 64-bit integers, and hopefully even fixed-length vectors for <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMD\">SIMD</a> support.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Is it possible, or even practical, to have a JavaScript-to-Asm.js transpiler?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Possible, yes, but practical? Unclear. Remember in <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/\">Inception</a> how every time you nested another dream-within-a-dream, time would slow down? The same will almost certainly happen every time you try to run a JS engine within itself. As a back-of-the-envelope calculation, if asm.js runs native code at half native speed, then running a JS engine in asm.js will execute JS code at half that engine’s normal speed.</p>\n<p>Of course, you could always try running one JS engine in a different engine, and who knows? Performance in reality is never as clear-cut as it is in theory. I welcome some enterprising hacker to try it! In fact, Stanford student <a href=\"http://tatiyants.com/introducing-js-js/\">Alex Tatiyants</a> has already <a href=\"https://github.com/jterrace/js.js/\">compiled Mozilla’s SpiderMonkey engine to JS</a> via Emscripten — all you’d have to do is use <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/luke/2013/03/21/asm-js-in-firefox-nightly/\">Emscripten’s compiler flags</a> to generate asm.js. Someone with more time on their hands than me should give it a try…\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>At the moment all DOM/browser-specific code is handled outside of Asm.js-land. What about creating an Emscripten-to-Asm.js-compiled version of the DOM (akin to DOM.js)?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n This is a neat idea. It may be a little tricky with the preliminary version of asm.js, which doesn’t have any support for objects at all. As we grow asm.js to include support for ES6 <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:binary_data\">typed objects</a>, something like this could become feasible and quite efficient!</p>\n<p>A cool application of this would be to see how much of the web platform could be <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting\">self-hosted</a> with good performance. One of the motivations behind DOM.js was to see if a pure JS implementation of the DOM could beat the traditional, expensive marshaling/unmarshaling and cross-heap memory management between the JS heap and the reference-counted C++ DOM objects. With asm.js support, DOM.js might get those performance wins <em>plus</em> the benefits of highly optimized data structures. It’s worth investigating.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Given that it’s fairly difficult to write Asm.js, compared with normal JavaScript, what sorts of tools would you like to have to help both developers and compiler authors?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n First and foremost we’ll need languages like LLJS, as you mentioned, to compile to asm.js. And we’ll have some of the usual challenges of compiling to the web, such as mapping generated code back to the original source in the browser developer tools, using technologies like <a href=\"http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/sourcemaps/\">source maps</a>. I’d love to see source maps developed further to be able to incorporate richer debugging information, although there’s probably a cost/benefit balance to be struck between the pretty minimal source location information of source maps and super-complex debugging metadata formats like <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWARF\">DWARF</a>.</p>\n<p>For asm.js, I think we’ll focus on LLJS in the near term, but I always welcome ideas from developers about how we can improve their experience.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>I assume that you are open to working with other browser vendors, what has collaboration or discussion been like thus far?</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\n Definitely. We’ve had a few informal discussions and they’ve been encouraging so far, and I’m sure we’ll have more. I’m optimistic that we can work with multiple vendors to get asm.js somewhere that we all feel we can realistically implement without too much effort or architectural changes. As I say, the fact that Luke was able to implement OdinMonkey in a matter of just a few months is very encouraging. And I’m happy to see a <a href=\"http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2599\">bug on file for asm.js support in V8</a>.</p>\n<p>More importantly, I hope that developers will check out asm.js and see what they think, and provide their feedback both to us and other browser vendors.\n</p></blockquote>\n<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JohnResig/~4/NpK4hncAn5o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Walter Johnson, <a href=\"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?hp\">in <i>The New York Times</i></a>:</div><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Every year, British merchant banks advanced millions of pounds to American planters in anticipation of the sale of the cotton crop. Planters then traded credit in pounds for the goods they needed to get through the year, many of them produced in the North. “From the rattle with which the nurse tickles the ear of the child born in the South, to the shroud that covers the cold form of the dead, everything comes to us from the North,” said one Southerner.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">As slaveholders supplied themselves (and, much more meanly, their slaves) with Northern goods, the credit originally advanced against cotton made its way north, into the hands of New York and New England merchants who used it to purchase British goods. Thus were Indian land, African-American labor, Atlantic finance and British industry synthesized into racial domination, profit and economic development on a national and a global scale.</div></blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">And so:</div><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism. Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined. Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness.</div></blockquote>"
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"content" : "<b>Your helpful charts 'o the day</b><br><b><br></b> by digby<br><br>These were compiled<a href=\"http://blog.ourfuture.org/20120318/Reagan_Revolution_Home_To_Roost_--_In_Charts\"> by Dave Johnson at Campaign for America's Future:</a><br><blockquote><strong style=\"background-color:transparent;border:0px;font-size:16px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\">In each of the charts below look for the year 1981, when Reagan took office.</strong> </blockquote><blockquote>Conservative policies <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_trade\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;color:#a80000;font-size:16px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">transformed</a> the United States from the largest <em style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\">creditor</em> nation to the largest <em style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\">debtor</em> nation in just a few years, and it has only gotten worse since then:<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4700723674_f1171437b0.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\" width=\"450\"></center>Working people’s <a href=\"http://www.angrybearblog.com/2009/10/labors-share.html\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;color:#a80000;font-size:16px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">share</a> of the benefits from increased productivity took a sudden turn down:<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4700012209_18276d0c46.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\" width=\"450\"></center>This resulted in intense <a href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/04/27/CongratulationstoEmmanuelSaez/\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;color:#a80000;font-size:16px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">concentration</a> of wealth at the top:<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img height=\"248\" src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4700060215_0477b289de.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></center>And forced working people to spend down savings to get by:<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4017/4700643546_80a3d84fef.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></center>Which forced working people to <a href=\"http://bonddad.blogspot.com/2009/05/bernankes-happy-talk.html\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;color:#a80000;font-size:16px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">go into</a> debt: (total household debt as percentage of<abbr style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border-bottom-style:dotted;border-width:0px 0px 1px;font-size:16px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\" title=\"Gross Domestic Product\">GDP</abbr> )<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4070/4700668450_970ffe0d65.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\" width=\"470\"></center>None of which has <a href=\"http://www.frontlinethoughts.com/article.asp?id=mwo061110\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;color:#a80000;font-size:16px;margin:0px;padding:0px;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">helped</a> economic growth much: (12-quarter rolling average nominal<abbr style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border-bottom-style:dotted;border-width:0px 0px 1px;font-size:16px;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\" title=\"Gross Domestic Product\">GDP</abbr> growth.)*<br><center style=\"background-color:white;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/4700714208_cc79961841.jpg\" style=\"background-color:transparent;background-repeat:initial initial;border:0px;font-size:16px;height:auto;margin:0px;max-width:100%;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></center></blockquote><div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,arial,serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px;margin-bottom:1em;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></div><div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,arial,serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px;margin-bottom:1em;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></div><div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,arial,serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px;margin-bottom:1em;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></div><div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,arial,serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px;margin-bottom:1em;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></div><div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:#444444;font-family:FrutigerNextW01-Regular,arial,serif;font-size:16px;line-height:23.59375px;margin-bottom:1em;outline:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"></div><br>There are, of course, many reasons for all this. But there is no doubt that we've been in the clutches of conservative economic orthodoxy since 1980 and this is the result. Whether it's the cause or whether it's because it has no capacity to react to external events properly doesn't matter. It has failed. And is still failing. #Austerity<br><br>."
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"title" : "Black Time",
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"content" : "<p>History does not disclose the name of the first black person dragged onto a slave ship, the first black person held in newly constructed prisons, or the first black person forcibly recruited to work on a colonial plantation. But black people have been arriving late ever since, hoping that the slavers have left, the ships traveled beyond the horizon, the whip silenced, the work done, the suffering gone.</p>\n<p>Black time—whether you call it colored people time (CPT) or African timing (AT) or the deliciousness of syncopation—black time is about delay, interruption, break: strategic lateness.</p>\n<p>Black time is long time, deep time, waiting time, excavated time, time around time. The not-here, the not-yet-there, the it-will-be-coming, the it-has-been-to-come, the it’s-not-wasn’t-yet, the it-was-just-here-yet-to-be-now. The fold, the crease, the wrinkle, the tick that does not tock. The tock that does not talk. The silence that does not break. The breaking that will not be broken. The.</p>\n<p>You-just-missed-it.</p>\n<p>Black time is hungry time. Ravenous time. Gluttonous time. Cannibal time.</p>\n<p>Black time is waiting time, time after the reservation, time after other people’s time, time cut by other people’s time, time as didn’t-see-you, time as can-you-wait, time as you-again, time as I-don’t-have-time-for-this-shit.</p>\n<p>Black time is dropped consonants, slipped sounds, skipped beats, don’t-wanna-ain’t-gonna-coz-it-don’t-make-no-difference time. Black time is learned time, doing time, time done, time-to-do, time-never-done, time-undone. Time-served, time-to-serve, time-serving, time-unserved, time-put-off, time-for-time, pipeline-time, skipping-time, cut-time, time-cut, cutting-time.</p>\n<p>I haven’t seen you for a minute.</p>\n<p>Sorry I’m posting this late. I was running behind.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/gukira.wordpress.com/2467/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/gukira.wordpress.com/2467/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gukira.wordpress.com&blog=497705&post=2467&subd=gukira&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Fashion Weekly: “Ghana Must Go” inspired couture on the catwalk",
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"content" : "It is good to see the allure of “Ghana Must Go” or GMGs as they are affectionately called still making appearances on catwalks. A couple of years ago we wrote about how “Ghana Must Go” was making waves at the New York Fashion Week and how Gary Harvey was advocating their use in his own show stopping couture gowns. The [...]"
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"title" : "Coming Home Without Moving Forward",
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"content" : "<h3>On Irvine Welsh</h3>\n\n\n\n<p>\nby James Camp\n</p>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<img src=\"http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/image.php?width=450&quality=95&image=http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/972.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n<p><span>Image: </span>Image copyright (c) 2013 by Marta K. </p>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n<div>\nIrvine Welsh. <i>Skagboys</i>. Random House, September 2012.\n</div>\n\n\n<div>\n\n<p>Irvine Welsh was born in 1951, 1958, or 1961; the biography on his official website doesn’t give a date, instead mentioning Welsh’s “selective memory at key points.” Coyness isn’t a quality often associated with Welsh, who once wrote a novel about pornography called <em>Porno</em>, yet it’s true that key points of his life story are iffy. <em>Trainspotting</em> is one of the great junkie books; but what did its author know of being a junkie? There were those who wondered if Welsh’s subject matter implied a more colorful past than he possessed. In a 1996 article called “Would the real Irvine Welsh shoot up?” the <em>Guardian</em> referenced Welsh’s baldness and “dumpy, featureless” looks. Perhaps he lacked the bone structure to be authentic. Either Welsh did a lot of heroin or just a little, or maybe he merely hung out in squats where junkies got high, and it’s even possible that he was pretty uncool, the sort of pub bore who yells at televisions. In any case, it was a phase. No one doubts that there were at least a few years when Welsh was bombed much of the time.</p>\n<p>Welsh grew up poor in a housing scheme on the margins of Edinburgh; in American terms, he came out of the projects. Scotland itself might be conceived of as a marginal project of the British Empire, and Welsh’s feeling that he is the accursed wallflower of world history (“fuckin failures in a country ay failures…The most wretched, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation”) can occasionally come through in his fiction. After renouncing his intended career as a television repairman (he was electrocuted), Welsh went to London in 1979. He lived on dole checks and discovered punk. There was a band called Pubic Lice in which he played guitar. “[I] failed at everything,” he has said of this period. The Road to Damascus moment came in the mid-eighties, when Welsh was arrested for vandalism and decided to end his flirtation with misrule. He became an office clerk. Then he became, or claims to have become (there are skeptics), a realtor in Tory London. This was definitely uncool and not a little cynical; some will recall Mark Renton’s closing soliloquy in Danny Boyle’s 1997 adaptation of <em>Trainspotting</em>—though nothing like it appeared at the end of the novel (Boyle could be selective at key points, too): “The truth is that I’m a bad person. But that’s going to change. I’m going to change.…Now I’m cleaning up and moving on, going straight and choosing life.”</p>\n<p>Boyle’s Renton goes on to itemize the joys of having things like an “indexed pension.” Welsh went on to work for the housing department in Edinburgh that had planned the “scheme,” or council housing project, that he grew up on, a fate whose ironies may have precluded much joy. Its realities were certainly at odds with pleasure. Edinburgh had become Europe’s “capital of AIDS.” Welsh spent his days engulfed by the logistics of being poor and fucked-up and possibly sick to death; as he tells it, much of the squalor of what he later wrote was more or less transcribed from his work experience during this period. It wasn’t until he earned an MBA and rose a pay grade, though, that Welsh grew “bored” enough to sit down and write.</p>\n<p>The question of the words themselves is tricky for Welsh, who is as likely to produce a flawed sentence as a fine one. His best effects are comic, and rely on sharp turns and a blasphemous finish: “Far be it fae me tae simplistically vilify an entire occupation, but all social workers are fucking cunts.” That’s about as complex as Welsh’s syntax gets. He likes to write in the present tense, and to sort striking from less striking details on the page; you run into a lot of unabridged meal-breakdowns, sets of walking directions, and playlists. Too much information, for better and worse, is his style. Sometimes writing without the usual filters enables unusual perceptions. Welsh can be brutishly aphoristic (“The rhetorical question, the stock-in-trade weapon ay burds and psychos”), and his use of dialect is surprisingly easy to adjust to. He is vulgar in a way that suggests that any novelist who was less vulgar would be lying. Sometimes he’s so vulgar that he makes himself nervous. There is an adolescent quality to these moments. When the hero of <em>Trainspotting</em> has sex with a pregnant woman, he worries about “stickin it in the foetus’s mouth.” </p>\n<p>Still, a devotion to smut and nonstandard spelling is (as with adolescence) no guarantee against sentimentality. “How well can anybody really know anybody else?” a character in <em>Trainspotting</em> wonders at a funeral. Thrillingly gauche at its best, Welsh’s writing gets more mannered when it falls off. The bad bits are as often hackneyed as crude: “the frozen wind blasting cruelly from the North sea,” “After what seemed like a lifetime.” Starting out, Welsh was clear-eyed about his amateurishness and made a quick success in spite of it. In the early 90s, his short stories began appearing in Scottish little magazines, including one in <em>West Coast</em>—a defunct Glaswegian triannual—that depicted junkies torpidly chitchatting while a baby lies dead in an adjoining room. A version of this story reappeared in <em>Trainspotting</em>, which was published in 1993. Welsh and his editor, the poet Robin Robertson, were sufficiently unconfident of the novel’s chances to plot a phony letter campaign to suppress it for obscenity. The idea was to get the bourgeois to at least notice Welsh’s <em>épater</em>, but in the end <em>Trainspotting</em> didn’t need a ruse to become the year’s controversial bestseller. </p>\n<p>People not notable for reading literary fiction, or for reading at all, bought <em>Trainspotting</em>, but it also received nominations for the Booker and Whitbread prizes and was buoyed by admiration in high places. Jenny Turner, in the <em>London Review of Books</em>, called it “a mind-opener.” There was much high-octane blurb-work. “The best book ever written by man or woman,” said Rebel, Inc. “It deserves to sell more copies than the Bible.” And indeed, with its episodic structure, inventive punctuation and story of a band of misfits undone by betrayal, <em>Trainspotting</em> did have its Biblical aspects, though in this instance Judas was the hero.</p>\n<p><em>Trainspotting</em> revolves around an underclass peer-group experimenting with heroin during the AIDS epidemic in ‘80s Edinburgh. Its cast has the faintly contrived diversity of a TV sitcom: There’s a playboy, a jock, a loser, a bully, and a mostly incoherent alcoholic called Second Prize (because he always loses the fights he picks), plus the ironic and ambivalent hero, Mark Renton. Nearly everyone has a nickname spawned from a shaming personal anecdote and a speech tic played up for laughs. The exception is Tommy (the jock), who just goes by Tommy; he’s “a fairly handsome cunt wi a tan” who’s the last of the friends to try heroin and soon after dies of AIDS. The book’s not so much plotted as harmonized, a series of monologues that add up to a mood, all composed in a key of mocking disaffection. (“Thir must be less tae life than this.”) Still, it ends dramatically, with “Rent Boy” double-crossing the gang and absconding with a lot of drug money to Amsterdam.</p>\n<p>The protagonists are young and their dissipation is appealing as well as sad. Yet <em>Trainspotting</em> is less notable for depictions of drug use than what happens to the bodies of the poor. I’ve never read a novel denser with descriptions of bad hygiene: not just the addict’s track marks and crenellated teeth but the less specialized unsanitariness of pimples, sweats, scurvy underwear, flowing toenails, the “helmet cheese” of uncircumcised penises. As befits this locker-room grotesquerie, <em>Trainspotting</em> is a book much preoccupied with male friendship, specifically how it destroys everything. “He really is a cunt ay the first order,” as Welsh has one character think. ‘“The problem is, he’s a mate n aw. Whit kin ye dae?” When I came across Welsh’s claim in an autobiographical article that Evelyn Waugh (“a toff”) was the first writer to inspire him to try, my first thought was that it must be a misprint. Yet Welsh is Waugh-like in the impression he gives of believing that friendship is just a subset of enmity; he is especially Waugh-like in his ability to write deftly about friendship all the same. He also shares Waugh’s relish for persiflage, if not his style of rendering it (“Fuck off, ya plukey-faced wee hing oot”). </p>\n<p>The result was a book that was astute about the sociology of bad behavior. Welsh has never forgotten that drug abuse can be funny as well as tragic, but when he wrote his first novel he still knew that the lifestyles involved could get boring. The voice of Mark Renton, the keynote of the chorus Welsh switches among, is deadpan with a telling catch in it; you can’t be sure if it’s world-weary or just weary of itself. Rent Boy is a junkie’s junkie; he likes heroin because it “strips away delusions”; he scorns cocaine as “yuppie shite.” But he is also a nonconformist’s nonconformist, allergic to groupthink even in a milieu as unconventional as his own. The question Welsh uses him to pose, or dramatize, is whether nonconforming with nonconformists inevitably leads to selling out. Rent Boy’s personal crisis is patterned after that of punk’s twilight; it is a microcosm of the self-devouring tendency of every counterculture. What happens when negativity turns on itself? Twenty years later, <em>Trainspotting</em> still succeeds as an outrage to middle-class proprieties, yet dead babies and needle-sharing aren’t the only troubling aspects of a coming-of-age-story that defined maturity as the courage to be a dick to your friends. Mark Renton is likeable precisely because he is so plausibly nasty, and by the end the reader is pleased that he has duped his so-called “best mates.” We are left with a parable about the virtues of selfishness, or the fallacies inherent in being loyal, or maybe just the futility of life outside the mainstream. </p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>After <em>Trainspotting</em>, Welsh discovered rave culture, notoriously giving an interview while high on ecstasy to a magazine called <em>Rebel, Inc</em>. But it’s not easy to stay shocking. It’s also not easy to be both a hero of hard living and a late-blooming author of literary fiction. The phenomenology of self-destruction is a subject generally left to young people, like Rimbaud or Jay McInerney, who can destroy themselves and then grow up to do other things, like trade slaves or write a wine column. When <em>Trainspotting</em> came out, however, Welsh may have been as old as 42. Malcolm Lowry published his great book on a comparable theme (alcoholism) at a comparable age (38). But success didn’t agree with him (from Lowry’s poem “After publication of Under the Volcano”: “Success is like some horrible disaster/Worse than your house burning”), and at 47 he was dead. </p>\n<p>Welsh didn’t die. He didn’t even stab his wife or do jail time. Instead, he remarried and acquired property in Miami Beach. As his act became more familiar—or perhaps, as his fiction came to resemble an act—Welsh’s reputation as a truth-teller suffered. A penchant for unsubtle titles (<em>Filth</em>, <em>Crime</em>, <em>Porno</em>) didn’t help him, though Welsh was never one to mislead critics about his priorities: It’s well-known that he curtailed editing on the manuscript of his novella collection <em>Ecstasy</em> so as to synchronize its release with that of the <em>Trainspotting</em> movie. He also appeared in the movie: Boyle cast him as “Mikey Forrester,” an “evil-looking bastard” who is the only character in <em>Trainspotting</em> to live in the same housing scheme, Muirhouse, that Welsh came from. Forrester sells an opium suppository to Rent Boy, who then makes him the subject of a famous retort: “For aw the good they’ve done ah might as well huv stuck thum up ma erse.” In the film, Ewan McGregor and Welsh maintain eye contact while McGregor’s hand inserts the suppository.</p>\n<p>Welsh still got good reviews in prestigious places, but the praise turned on flourishes rather than analysis: it’s always going to be fun for a reviewer of literary fiction to write about a guy who expresses wistfulness with the phrase “cunty baws.” Even the well-disposed, like the American academic Robert Morace, patronized him with observations like “Irvine Welsh is not a writer in the sense that, say, Martin Amis is. Rather, Welsh is a cultural phenomenon of sociological as well as aesthetic significance.”</p>\n<p>In 2002, Welsh wrote <em>Porno</em>, a sequel to <em>Trainspotting</em>. The cast of the original, swollen by additions from Welsh’s 2001 novel <em>Glue</em> (the title refers to fraternal bonds, not drug abuse), reunites to make an amateur porn film. A lot of lying, bacchanalia and filmed sex ensues, culminating in a group trip to the annual porn awards at Cannes. Then they disperse after another of Rent Boy’s double-crosses. Drugs seem to affect literary characters in more predictable ways than they affect human beings: Heroin etherealizes, LSD spiritualizes, MDMA romanticizes. <em>Porno</em>, however, is a cocaine novel. Sick Boy, the playboy of the original, has morphed under its effects into a megalomaniac with main character–status and a “Steven Segal”–like ponytail. His all-consuming purpose is vengeance on Rent Boy, who has gone straight: chucked heroin, taken up judo and opened a dance club in “the Dam.” Eventually, Rent Boy outwits Sick Boy and falls in love with the grad student Dianne, formerly the schoolgirl he statutorily raped in <em>Trainspotting</em>. This was disturbing to the authenticity police, who suspected that Welsh had been tippling too much Danny Boyle. (In the <em>Trainspotting</em> movie, Dianne is promoted from a one-night stand to Rent Boy’s love interest.) <em>Porno</em> had funny lines (“the only kind of fuck he ever gets, one of the head variety”) and the drawbacks of being nice were forcibly recapitulated (“Some people fuck up your masterplan. Usually it’s friends and lovers”). Still, the story was told inefficiently and Welsh’s heroes seemed shallower the second time round.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>Welsh once compared <em>Trainspotting</em> to a “bad curry after a few pints of lager. It keeps coming up.” Now Welsh has written <em>Skagboys</em>, a prequel—a regurgitation of less certain terms. All the old characters are back. It’s the view Welsh takes of them that’s changed. There has been a shift from the active to the passive, from the existential to the statistical. His characters used to pride themselves on the inexplicability of their attraction to sin. “Ah choose no tae choose life,” as Rent Boy famously put it in <em>Trainspotting</em>. The power of this statement stems from its unappeasability: Rent Boy, in every sense, doesn’t want anything. But in the prequel Welsh is determined to demystify this gesture of recalcitrance. The novel opens with a university-attending Mark Renton and his father scuffling with the police over a union strike in Yorkshire. “The politicos at the uni would be jealous as fuck that ah wis oan one ay the official National Union ay Mineworkers’ buses!” Renton thinks. </p>\n<p><em>Skagboys</em> is set during the recession of 1980, and its early chapters contain a montage of class-conscious hardships: layoffs, boarded-up buildings, medical costs and absentee fathers, all the cutbacks and overheads that excruciate the lives of the poor. Welsh even splices the narrative with mock news bulletins of the woes of life under Thatcher, though the effect is less than documentary. Spud (the loser of the group) gets fired and misses the </p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>excitement ah used tae feel when ah goat up fir work oan a good mornin at the<span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span><span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>furniture deliveries…Now thaire’s nowt like that, nae work fir the unskilled man like<span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span><span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>me….wi aw need that; wi aw need something tae dae n a tale tae tell.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Such an op-ed-ready vision of the inner life can make it difficult to find much meaning in the politics of <em>Skagboys</em>. Welsh is pro-labor, pro-people, pro-choice; anti-Thatcher, anti-villainy, anti-injustice. Like Spud, he soon turns to other sources of excitement, and as the novel proceeds its sociopolitical scaffolding falls away. </p>\n<p>Whereas <em>Trainspotting</em> began in media res with the gang already addicted, <em>Skagboys</em> begins in a healthy frame of their lives and then introduces them to heroin. The fall-from-grace setup requires Welsh to do about 150 pages of grace, which, it turns out, he can't do very well: “Ah’m suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that it feels great tae be me,” Rent Boy thinks; “a young, smart, working-class boy fae these beautiful islands. How blessed could a human being possibly be?” He recalls life at Aberdeen University, where he begins the novel enrolled: “Sitting in the brightly lit library, surrounded by books, in total silence, that was ma personal zenith.” Though Rent Boy has always been a clever hero, there’s little in <em>Trainspotting</em> or <em>Porno</em> from which to infer back this ardent bookishness; its function in the prequel seems to be the narrow one of letting Welsh have his say about books. He doesn’t hold back, dismissing criticism altogether (“Analysing novels meant ripping oot their soul”) and taking a swipe at J.M. Coetzee, whom he supposes people only read because he “won some poxy prize.”</p>\n<p>Still, Rent Boy’s not such a nerd that he won’t take speed on weekends. Like all Welsh’s stand-in heroes, he’s an attractively fucked-up smart guy. As well as Fitzgerald and Joyce, he likes “peeve,” punk, Joy Division, Premier Division, and LSD. He even wins a lunchtime contest for fecal shapeliness among his coworkers on a blue-collar summer job. He sums up his love life as “a series ay bitter, sly and exceptionally swift copulations in stairs, family bedrooms or under grubby duvets.” (Such lines are the reason to read Welsh.) This pattern lasts until Rent Boy gets a girlfriend on a train trip to Istanbul: Fiona, a good student who calls him “Mark” and sends his “heart…in[to] a perpetual, turbulent riot.” Welsh writes decently about sex, where his candor about fluids more or less assures an entertaining result, but love embarrasses him into preciosity. Few readers will regret Fiona’s departure when Rent Boy jilts her to get serious about drugs. </p>\n<p>Some junkies are born into it, some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. Rent Boy is the self-made type—the Horatio Alger of heroin. That’s basically how he puts it to Fiona, anyway, in a histrionic scene in a hotel barroom. (“You…you’re packin me in, cause you wanna spend more time doin fuckin heroin?”) Rent Boy tried the drug for the first time just before that trip to Istanbul. This is how Welsh describes it:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Ah smile at Johnny. Just as the thought forms: is that aw there is tae it? ah get a <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>sudden rush and a glow, then ma insides, body and brain, are like a fruit pastille, <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>melting in a huge mooth. Suddenly everything that was burning in ma heid, every fear <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>and doubt, just dissolves, ah can just feel them receding intae the distance.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Then Welsh writes “Aye” six times in increasingly large fonts. It’s typical of Welsh to describe being high on heroin in analgesic terms, as a suspension of suffering rather than an access of bliss. This might be because evoking heroin’s pleasures poses a technical challenge he isn’t up to, or because he doesn’t believe that pleasure is what heroin’s about. It might even be that Welsh, like “that Schopenhauer gadgie,” whom he playfully references a few times, is skeptical of pleasure in a radical way, that he thinks it’s just a breather from the horribleness of existing. By around page 200 there’s “a permanent swamp ay fire and scum around [Rent Boy’s] wedding tackle, erse and airmpits” and Welsh is back in the atmosphere that made him famous. </p>\n<p>The rest of <em>Skagboys</em> charts the peer group’s decline “towards the totally fucked”—i.e., where <em>Trainspotting</em> began. As always in Welsh’s fiction, there’s a fair bit of off-color brilliance (“sweatin’ lke a blind dyke in a fish-monger’s”), a dozen or so set pieces of team debauchery that are impossible not take pleasure in, and some terrible prose: “her thin, white shoulder the barest he’s ever seen, as if they would only ever need the night as a shawl.” There’s also, as usual, a lot of talk about “the courage tae be cruel,” of “finding the cuntishness ye need.” </p>\n<p>Few novelists have monopolized a verbal possibility the way Welsh has “cunt” and its permutations. Writing “cunt” used to get novelists sued, but for Welsh it is metronomic, the rhythm-giving pulse of his style. In <em>Skagboys</em>, he uses the word “cunt” 81 times, “cunts” 70 times and variations thereupon innumerably. Its modulations are also innumerable: Cunt is said in anger, in joy, in puzzlement, in pain, in sex, at sea, with syringes dangling from arms and teeth from their gums. In <em>Porno</em>, Sick Boy quotes a Nick Cave lyric that quotes a philosopher. The woman he’s talking to recognizes the provenance of the line: “I thought she called me a cunt,” Sick Boy later says. “I didn’t realize that she was referring to Kant.” Mostly, cunt means “gadge,” which is to say guy—to be exact, the kind of guy whom other guys can call “cunt” comfortably. Welsh isn’t a strikingly philosophical writer, but he might be the Kant of cuntishness. His profoundest literary creation, certainly, is an all-guys affair. Maybe it’s an all-boys affair: the relationship between Sick Boy and Rent Boy, a septic cocktail of loathing and envy additionally envenomed by drugs and crime. </p>\n<p><em>Skagboys</em> is most interesting as a comparative study of these characters—two cunts with different codes. As well as dumping a girl who loves him, Rent Boy squanders his place at university; pushes heroin on others; steals donations to an animal shelter; embarks on a sexual relationship with an imprisoned man’s wife; and persuades his friends to join him in an unfeasible crime that results in one getting arrested. The worst thing he does according to his own moral math is to cheat on Fiona with her good friend Joanne. That he has anal sex with Joanne seems to enlarge this banal lapse into something tragic for Welsh, who has always had a Mailer-esque esteem for sodomy. Sick Boy, on the other hand, abandons an old man to be beaten to death by a bartender; betrays his widow, whom he’s slept with, to the police for tax evasion; addicts their daughter to heroin, then sexually enslaves her with its aid; and impregnates and forsakes a devout Italian teenager. </p>\n<p>Near the end, they both end up in court-ordered rehab. Sick Boy recalls a conversation with a councilor:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>At my first session he told me he wanted candor. So I told him that I wanted tae fuck <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>just about every woman I met. Not only that, but I wanted to make them fucking well <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>beg for it. He said I was exploitative and sexually dysfunctional. I told him, ‘No mate, <span style=\"white-space:pre\"> </span>it’s called male sexuality. The rest is just denial.’ </p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Welsh seems to find this simultaneously funny, repulsive, and true, all attributes to which his prose has always aspired. If Sick Boy, unlike Rent Boy, is wicked, it’s not that Rent Boy’s any better disposed toward women. (He’s merely worse looking, and has a harder time being bad to them.) It’s that he taps into the redemptive power of self-expression. The prequel takes on shades of a behind-the-scenes look at the original as the rehab chapters deepen. Bored of “Joyce and jerking,” Rent Boy starts keeping a diary. He discovers his voice and likes the sound of it: “That is more like I sound in my head heid. Sometimes. Mair like. Sometimes. Why try tae sound different? Why the fuck be the same as every other cunt?” Rent Boy is a cunt who learns how to write cunt, whereas Sick Boy, tellingly, likes to consult his “trusty Collins dictionary” in search of doozy phraseology to lure in “burds.” </p>\n<p>The moral? Express yourselves, cunts. Get in touch with your inner gadge. “I’ve come to believe that everything you write,” Rent Boy writes, “no matter how shite and trivial, has some sort of meaning.” Yoking a call for literary blasphemy to a slogan of political correctness is a contradiction increasingly typical of Welsh’s career. Back in 1993, it looked like he might become the Henry Green of Edinburgh, a clever pagan laying siege to the novel with slang. Instead, he became something less threatening. He found a way to be obscene and consoling at the same time. Welsh wrote a great book about escaping the punk scene, but somewhere along the way he lost interest in larger ironies and became a writer of punk escapism. The world of his later fiction is as ageless and artificial as P.G. Wodehouse’s—an unfading rude land of benders and male bonding, where the dick jokes will never stale and anal sex is a mystical experience, where everyone’s a cunt with a scam. “It wis like auld times,” as Rent Boy thinks near the end of <em>Trainspotting</em>, “but in a sense, that only served tae remind us ay how much things hud changed.” So it is with this overweight novel, wishfully immature like a high-school reunion; Welsh came home without moving forward. Is <em>Skagboys</em> what it looks like for a novelist to regress? Perhaps, though I still wouldn’t mind if it outsold the Bible. </p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/\">Purchase print issue »</a></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=Mt5Fd9g2HN4:m0edbJkkd3E:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=Mt5Fd9g2HN4:m0edbJkkd3E:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nplusonemag_main/~4/Mt5Fd9g2HN4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Boris Berezovsky, 1946-2013",
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"content" : "<p>\nby Keith Gessen\n</p>\n\n\n\n<div>\n<img src=\"http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/image.php?width=450&quality=95&image=http://nplusonemag.com/images/txp/980.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n<p></p>\n\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div>\n\n<p>The oligarch Boris Berezovsky was found dead in his home outside of London over the weekend, either a suicide or a heart attack. He was depressed over losing a lawsuit to his old business associate, Roman Abramovich; had failed to secure what he thought was his rightful property after the death of another, much closer associate, Badri Patarkatsishvili; was losing a decade-long battle to his former protege, Vladimir Putin; and was also, on top of all that, apparently running out of money. With him he took many of the secrets, and insights, and schemes, that nearly destroyed Russia in the decade after the Soviet Union fell apart.</p>\n<p>Berezovsky wasn't just an oligarch: he was the first oligarch. He is sometimes referred to slightingly as a “former used car salesman”—this is a kind of joke. In fact Berezovsky was an accomplished mathematician, a corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with a specialization in game theory. In the late 1980s, as free enterprise began to be introduced in the USSR, piecemeal and with every possible loophole for corruption, the other future oligarchs began to go into “business”: Mikhail Prokhorov, future owner of Norilsk Nickel and then the New Jersey Nets, sold acid-washed jeans at the local market; Vladimir Gusinsky, future owner of Most-Bank and the country’s first independent television channel, NTV, became an event planner; Mikhail Khodorkovsky, future owner of the country’s largest oil company, now in prison for a decade, opened a cafe. </p>\n<p>Berezovsky, a generation older than these others, had an in at the Avtovaz factory in Togliatti, in central Russia; he had helped them set up their computer systems, and for years had been picking up hard-to-get auto parts there and reselling them in Moscow (so he was a bit of used car salesman—but they were new parts). As the USSR fell apart, Berezovsky saw that the country was moving from a barter economy to a cash economy. In Yuli Dubov’s quasi-fictional account of what happened next, Berezovsky manufactured thousands of straw brooms and traded these for thousands of Ladas—the Soviet car was not a good car, but it was still a car, and once the economy became a cash economy, people would pay good money for them. I haven't found any confirmation of the brooms-for-cars story in the real world; the story David Hoffman tells in <em>The Oligarchs</em> is that Berezovsky took advantage of hyper-inflation to buy the cars in 1991 and pay for them in devalued 1993 rubles. In this way he was able to gain a significant share of the Russian car market in a few short years, and was able pretty quickly to turn those cars into cash. </p>\n<p>The incredible success of Berezovsky—he would have become a multi-millionaire when he started moving hundreds of thousands of cars, and a billionaire, at least on paper, when he won the Sibneft oil conglomerate in the rigged loans-for-shares auctions of 1995—represented the colossal failure of his generation of Russian liberals. He may not have been the best of this generation, morally speaking, but he may well have been one of the brightest (for a Jew of that generation to have made it as far as he did in Soviet academia was a tremendous accomplishment), and in certain important ways he believed what they believed: that capitalism was virtuous; that because capitalism was virtuous, those who succeeded at capitalism were the elect, and those who failed at it were the damned; that, politically speaking, all that was required for the liberation of the Russian people, after three hundred years of oppression, was to open the windows and let the free market in. What all this led to, in fact, was the enrichment of a very few and the immiseration of the populace, the reduction of life expectancy for Russian males by nearly a decade, and, as of last year, nearly a million suicides. And now it seems possible that Berezovsky is one more.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>What was criminal capitalism in Russia actually <em>like</em>? On the most fundamental level it was a series of protection rackets. If you sold vegetables on the street corner, eventually you’d be approached by some guys in leather jackets who would demand protection money. If you didn’t pay, they upset your vegetable stand; next time, they beat you up. If you paid them, they protected you. They didn’t do this particularly well, but they would try; if some other group of guys in leather jackets came along and tried to shake you down, they'd tell them to lay off, and if they didn’t lay off, they'd fight them. There was a lot of fist-fighting in those days, and most of the guys in the protection rackets were boxers or karate or wrestling champions, including, occasionally, a former Olympian. There were knives, but, at this level anyway, there weren’t many guns. It wasn’t a great system but in the absence of any other kind of system—of an actually functioning law enforcement system—it mostly kept the violence confined to the battles between the gangs themselves, rather than the vegetable sellers. In the absence of a legal system, it was also a way of enforcing contracts, because eventually these shake-down gangs formed larger shake-down syndicates, or were crushed by them. The larger syndicates, without giving up their positions in vegetable stands, moved on to bigger game: shaking down, or “partnering with,” small businesses, and less small businesses, and small banks. In my understanding of this process—which is an imperfect understanding—there was a lot of mobility for the gangs themselves but maybe not within the gangs. If you were a foot soldier, you probably remained a foot soldier, and you suffered a foot soldier’s fate. If you were shaking down a vegetable stand in 1990, you are probably not in the State Duma in 2013. Chances are, you are probably dead.</p>\n<p>This was the visible manifestation of criminal capitalism in the 1990s. I never saw a vegetable seller get beat up, but I definitely saw tough guys in leather jackets talking to frightened women selling vegetables. And it was instructive to see this. But of course the real action of capitalism remained invisible.</p>\n<p>My father, a computer programmer who emigrated to the US in 1981, went into business in the 1990s with two of his old computer programmer friends who had remained in Russia. They did “import-export”—they brought things into Russia that were much cheaper to get abroad (the classic example of this was personal computers, which were nonexistent in Russia in 1991, though relatively plentiful in the West), and exported things that were cheaper to get in Russia than abroad, like timber. After a few good years, my father and his partners closed up shop when the Russian economy collapsed in 1998.</p>\n<p>But my father had a great time; I suppose it was especially fun since he spent most of it in Newton, Massachusetts. He liked telling the story of how his partners got shaken down by a criminal gang. By this point they were an established business; they owned a beautiful old mansion right next to the Belarusskaya train station. But one day two men marched into the mansion and demanded protection payments. My father’s partner, a former computer programmer, explained that they already made payments to someone (which was true). The two gentlemen didn’t seem to care. They said they’d be back in two days for their money.</p>\n<p>My father’s partner called the security firm that was supposed to be guarding him, otherwise known as his <em>krysha</em>, or “roof.” The krysha was run by a former police colonel. Other such groups were run by former KGB colonels. Others still were run by former (or current) gangsters. In any case they were now all in the same game. This former police colonel listened to the story and said he would make some inquiries. “If it’s the Georgians,” he said, “we can deal with it. And if it’s the Izmailovo group, we can talk to them. But if it’s the Chechens, we can’t help you.” This was not a great answer to receive from your security group, but that’s how things worked. The Chechens were considered more brutal than other gangs, and they were also, it seems, better-armed; this may have been due to the fact that Chechnya was in the process of arming itself for a war against the Russians that was to break out in 1994. A certain amount of weaponry found its way north. In the event, the police colonel made some phone calls, posted himself and some others at the office for a week, and the men never returned. Nonetheless this kind of thing scared the hell out of my father’s partner, who despite making very good money for that time refused to move out of his old Soviet apartment or replace his old Soviet car. He now lives, happier and more relaxed, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and my father has gone back to being a computer programmer.</p>\n<p>This is the world Berezovsky, who was a year younger than my father, came from. Professor Berezovsky never shook down a vegetable stand. Like my father and his partners, he had worked at a Soviet research institute—what were known as NIIs, like the knights who say “Ni.” This is where, in the absence of private companies, the Soviets put their many, many college graduates. The NIIs were often housed in giant buildings on the outskirts of big cities. Knowledge workers went there and tried to keep busy. Sometimes they worked on commissions from big industrial enterprises; sometimes they just passed the time. No one ever got fired. When the USSR fell apart, some of these people emigrated; some tried to hang on at the NIIs; some went into private enterprise; and some of the latter became Berezovskys.</p>\n<p>The best book I’ve read about the Russian 1990s is a roman a clef about Berezovsky by his close associate, Yuli Dubov. The book is called <em>Bolshaia Paika</em> and it describes a close-knit group of mathematician friends who, led by the brilliant and charismatic Platon, go into business together, take over the Lada factory, then move into even bigger and crazier schemes. Eventually they find themselves embroiled in a war with Moscow’s criminal gangs, and they win the war. The men are, for the most part, sweet-natured, honest, and highly intelligent. By the end of the book, through no one’s particular fault, the friends, with the exception of Platon, are all dead.</p>\n<p>Despite this, the moral universe of the novel is curiously good-natured. What is never visible in the frame of Dubov’s book is the human toll that the various machinations of the brilliant Berezovsky took on the country he was manipulating: the poverty; the humiliation; the deaths. There are individual deaths in the book, but they do not represent the massive social death that took place in Russia in the 1990s. As Kirill Medvedev wrote a few years ago: “For the past fifteen years, reality has been broken and stamped on; so many legal, moral, and human commandments have been violated; so many people were involved in so many hideous deeds (using their intellect, their power, their knowledge, or alternately their stupidity, their uselessness, their cynicism) that NOTHING GOOD CAN COME OF IT. And the longer the day of reckoning is delayed, the more devastating it will be when it arrives.”</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>In 1998 and 1999, Berezovsky’s position—at this point he was not only a rich man, but a frequent visitor to the Kremlin and adviser to Boris Yeltsin—became tenuous. Some portion of the country’s political elite, led by an old Party stalwart named Yeveny Primakov, had grown weary of the oligarchs and their antics. So had the country. Primakov, as prime minister, began to move to root them out of politics.</p>\n<p>Berezovsky saw this happening and came up with a plan. The mood of the country was nationalistic, even militaristic. The oligarchs (or liberals, as Berezovsky thought of them) needed their own nationalist candidate, and he found one in a short, unassuming former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. He convinced Yeltsin to replace Primakov with Putin. A month later, two large apartment buildings were blown up in Moscow. The explosions were blamed on Chechen terrorists; the second Chechen war began; and Vladimir Putin was assured election to the presidency even if he hadn’t been assigned to the office in a bizarre New Year’s Eve address by a Yeltsin.</p>\n<p>To his credit, Putin disappointed Berezovsky’s expectation almost as soon as he assumed the presidency. He tried to bring the oligarchs to heel. Whatever else he was wrong about—which was everything—in this at least he was right. These were men who had been handed immense industrial fortunes by a desperate government. They became billionaires overnight. But they had not built these companies. The companies had been built by Soviet workers over the course of decades—some of these workers believed that they were building Communism, some of them were prisoners of the Gulag. All of them worked for pennies. For the oligarchs to pretend like they had earned their fortunes was tremendously insulting to the millions of people who had built them in actual fact. The best and fairest thing to do would have been to nationalize the giant oil companies right then and there. But Putin is a bully and he tried to bully the oligarchs. He began police inspections of Gusinsky and Berezovsky, and soon they had both fled the country; Gusinsky quietly and forever, Berezovsky loudly and with a promise to return. The other oligarchs agreed to behave themselves. The exception was Khodorkovsky, who neither left nor agreed to behave himself. He ended up in prison.</p>\n\n<center>+ + +</center>\n\n<p>The old question in Soviet studies used to be: Was Stalinism a continuation of Leninism, or a betrayal of it? If you were on the right, you answered that it was a continuation; if you were on the left, a betrayal. The new question is whether Putinism is a continuation of Yeltsinism (such as it was), or a betrayal of it. If you are on the right (and in the US this includes most liberals and neoliberals), you believe that it’s a betrayal; if you are on the left, you believe that it’s a continuation. </p>\n<p>Certainly in his style, and in his self-conception, Putin is an anti-Yeltsin. And in many ways, both good and bad, he has undone the legacy of Yeltsin. But there is no denying the continuity, and it’s fitting that Boris Berezovsky should be one of the most vivid links between them. In recent years Berezovsky would often talk about how Putin was his biggest mistake—“I thought I knew people,” he would say, “but look at the mistake I made.” The implication being that if it weren’t for that one mistake, things would have turned out all right. But they had already not turned out all right, long before Putin. Berezovsky has been named as a suspect, implausibly in my opinion, in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya; he has also been named in connection with the murder of Paul Khlebnikov. That the former mathematician ordered hits on his implacable enemies, most of them criminals, even his novelistic biographer Dubov would not deny. That he was close to various Chechen rebels, who lived in a world where life and death were bought cheaply, is also a fact. After leaving Russia he became the most active proponent of the theory that the September 1999 apartment bombings were the work of Putin’s FSB—whether because he was involved in the planning, or because, for once, he wasn’t. We may never know whether he crossed the line and authorized the killing of innocent people. I don’t think it really matters. His undisputed role in the nastiness and brutality of Russian capitalism, and the ruin of many lives, should be more than enough.</p>\n<p>I know that it’s a turn-on for Westerners, left and right, to pretend that big bad Putin ordered Berezovsky killed. The likelier scenario is more tragic and more internal: the self-reckoning of a man who had been given a magnificent mind, and limitless energy, and who devoted these, primarily, to destruction, speculation, and manipulation. With humor, panache, extraordinary inventiveness—but still.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n \n<div>\n\n<div>\n\nDon't be a criminal capitalist. <a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/collections/print-subscriptions\">Subscribe</a>.\n\n</div>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http://shop.nplusonemag.com/\">Purchase print issue »</a></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=X6yDjHhy4ZI:G4f-Nbgu8gI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.nplusonemag.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?a=X6yDjHhy4ZI:G4f-Nbgu8gI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nplusonemag_main?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nplusonemag_main/~4/X6yDjHhy4ZI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div></div>"
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"title" : "The importance of serial media vs. sampled and Google Reader",
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"content" : "<p>The blogging world was stunned by the recent announcement by Google that it will be shutting down Google reader later this year. Due to my consulting relationship with Google I won’t comment too much on their reasoning, though I will note that I believe it’s possible the majority of regular readers of this blog, and many others, come via Google reader so this shutdown has a potential large effect here. Of particular note is Google’s statement that usage of Reader has been in decline, and that social media platforms have become the way to reach readers.</p>\n\n<p>The effectiveness of those platforms is strong. I have certainly noticed that when I make blog posts and put up updates about them on Google Plus and Facebook, it is common that more people will comment on the social network than comment here on the blog. It’s easy, and indeed more social. People tend to comment in the community in which they encounter an article, even though in theory the most visibility should be at the root article, where people go from all origins.</p>\n\n<p>However, I want to talk a bit about online publishing history, including USENET and RSS, and the importance of concepts within them. In 2004 I first commented on the idea of <a href=\"http://ideas.4brad.com/archives/000112.html\">serial vs. browsed</a> media, and later expanded this taxonomy to include <a href=\"http://ideas.4brad.com/do-you-get-twitter-sampled-medium-good-or-bad\">sampled media</a> such as Twitter and social media in the mix. I now identify the following important elements of an online medium:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>Is it browsed, serial or to be sampled?</li>\n<li>Is there a core concept of new messages vs. already-read messages?</li>\n<li>If serial or sampled, is it presented in chronological order or sorted by some metric of importance?</li>\n<li>Is it designed to make it easy to write and post or easy to read and consume?</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Online media began with E-mail and the mailing list in the 60s and 70s, with the 70s seeing the expansion to online message boards including Plato, BBSs, Compuserve and USENET. E-mail is a serial medium. In a serial medium, messages have a chronological order, and there is a concept of messages that are “read” and “unread.” A good serial reader, at a minimum, has a way to present only the unread messages, typically in chronological order. You can thus process messages as they came, and when you are done with them, they move out of your view.</p>\n\n<p>E-mail largely is used to read messages one-at-a-time, but the online message boards, notably USENET, advanced this with the idea of move messages from read to unread in bulk. A typical USENET reader presents the subject lines of all threads with new or unread messages. The user selects which ones to read — almost never all of them — and after this is done, all the messages, even those that were not actually read, are marked as read and not normally shown again. While it is generally expected that you will read all the messages in your personal inbox one by one, with message streams it is expected you will only read those of particular interest, though this depends on the volume.</p>\n\n<p>Echos of this can be found in older media. With the newspaper, almost nobody would read every story, though you would skim all the headlines. Once done, the newspaper was discarded, even the stories that were skipped over. Magazines were similar but being less frequent, more stories would be actually read.</p>\n\n<p>USENET newsreaders were the best at handling this mode of reading. The earliest ones had keyboard interfaces that allowed touch typists to process many thousands of new items in just a few minutes, glancing over headlines, picking stories and then reading them. My favourite was TRN, based on RN by Perl creator Larry Wall and enhanced by Wayne Davison (whom I hired at ClariNet in part because of his work on that.) To my great surprise, even as the USENET readers faded, no new tool emerged capable of handling a large volume of messages as quickly.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, the 1990s saw a switch for most to browsed media. Most web message boards were quite poor and slow to use, many did not even do the most fundamental thing of remembering what you had read and offering a “what’s new for <em>me</em>?” view. In reaction to the rise of browsed media, people wishing to publish serially developed RSS. RSS was a bit of a kludge, in that your reader had to regularly poll every site to see if something was new, but outside of mailing lists, it became the most usable way to track serial feeds. In time, people also learned to like doing this online, using tools like Bloglines (which became the leader and then foolishly shut down for a few months) and Google Reader (which also became the leader and now is shutting down.) Online feed readers allow you to roam from device to device and read your feeds, and people like that. <span><a href=\"http://ideas.4brad.com/importance-serial-media-vs-sampled-and-google-reader\"> read more »</a></span></p>"
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"title" : "Trust and Crime",
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"content" : "<p>The following framework for thinking about crime, or the breakdown of trust, is excellent:</p>\n<p>“Trust is what stands between individual actors and defection (as in the Prisoners’ Dilemma game); between civilisation and anarchy. Trust relates to the risks we must take and the relationships we must establish and maintain to promote sufficiently high rates of cooperation and low rates of defection or cheating for the society to hold together, whether a cycling club or the Roman Empire. Trust can be intimate – as within families – or impersonal, as where I trust the new contractor servicing my gas heating because I trust the certification and monitoring system that causes him to respect safety standards.</p>\n<p>The issues to which trust, cooperation and defection pertain are defined as societal dilemmas, pitting actors in conflicting, competing or collaborating relationships. These are often ‘wicked’ issues, and many universal (like the Tragedy of the Commons). Well thought-out examples pepper the book, from price-setting/fixing among sandwich makers or industrial cartels, to bank misbehaviour, overfishing, military desertion, littering, adultery and volume crimes like burglary. These are neatly and consistently presented as tables which (adapted from p131):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Identify the dilemma (e.g. Doping in professional sports)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Identify the society (All the athletes in the sport)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Identify the group interest (A safe and fair sport) and group norm (Don’t take performance-enhancing drugs)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Identify the competing interest (Winning and making money) and corresponding defection (Take performance-enhancing drugs)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The analysis continues by describing the trust mechanisms available to the society in question to encourage people and corporations to act in the wider group interest. These come under four categories comprising the fundamental and universal ways whereby societies hold themselves together. The example continues:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Moral (e.g. guilt at not winning fair-and-square; shame at failing as role model)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Reputational (e.g. keep fans and commercial advertising opportunities by maintaining reputation of a fair player)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Institutional (e.g. civil or criminal bans on performance-enhancing drugs)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n<li>\n<blockquote><p>Security (e.g. testing for specific drugs)</p></blockquote>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The Institutional approach lies at the heart of defining certain behaviours in response to certain societal dilemmas, as <em>criminal</em> rather than merely defecting.”</p>\n<p>That’s from <a href=\"http://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/liars_and_outliers.html\">a book review</a> of amusingly titled: “Liars and Outliers.” I guess i’ll need to read the book now; because that applies to a lot of situations.</p>"
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"title" : "Electronics Condensing on the Factory Floor",
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"content" : "\t<p>My paper today includes one of those typical business section PR placed pieces about a local company, in this case a robotics company.</p>\n\t<p>I think thier product is just too delightfully amusing.</p>\n\t<p>It’s a warehouse management system. You store all your junk shelving units, pretty much regular ones. These shelving units are then scattered around the warehouse. Want something? Send a robot to get it. This is when the silly magic happens. The robot doesn’t bring you the part your looking for. Instead it brings you the whole shelving unit.</p>\n\t<p>The robot runs out into the warehouse, slips under the shelving unit, lifts it up, and runs back to your desk with everything on it. In there spare time the robots can rearrange the shelving so popular items move toward the front of the warehouse and unpopular items are packed densely toward the back.</p>\n\t<p>While I think this idea is very amusing it has the added cuteness of being sufficently counter intuitive a that they certainly got some strong patents out of it. It’s a nice idea because all you need is a flat floor and a slight upgrade in your shelf units. The robots are very simpler than most because they work only in two dimensions.</p>\n\t<p>This is typical of a kind of general trend in automation. In olde factories humans wandered the factory floors, listening, gazing, pulling levers, turning valves, etc. In 20th century automated factories sensors and actuators were wrapped around component in the factory. Which made everything a lot more expensive because electronics was sprayed all over everything. We are seeing some condensation of that electronic - or to use the over blown terminology of the industry “the intellegence.” It’s becomming possible to build factories that have reasonably dumb components in the majority, like those shelving units, but slightly clever robotics that run around the factory like the workers of old. Instead of having valves that fit the hands of labor today’s valves fit the robot’s needs; down at floor level for example.</p>\n\t<p>Boy, are there some powerful network effects and platform buisness models that will play out in this industry!</p>\n\t<p>The company’s named <a href=\"http://www.kivasystems.com/\">Kiva Systems</a> and here’s <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/10/20/getting_by_with_some_help_from_their_robots/\">the article</a>.\n</p>\n"
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"title" : "Design Traps",
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"content" : "\t<p>I very much liked this list of design traps. It’s taken from the middle of a paper (<a href=\"http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/dl.html\">pdf</a>) by the always brilliant <a href=\"http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/\">Phil Agre</a>. In that context Phil is talking about the problem of designing a technology rich system that will presumably transform an existing large social institution, libraries. But it’s a really good list for all those situations where your designing a system that is expected to transform behaviors in an existing institution.</p>\n\t<p>The trap of …</p>\n\t<ul>\n\t<li>… presupossing standards\n</li>\n\t<li>… deriving political consequences\n</li>\n\t<li>… automation\n</li>\n\t<li>… assuming rapid change\n</li>\n\t<li>… command and control computing\n</li>\n\t<li>… inventing a new world\n</li>\n\t<li>… blaming resistance\n</li>\n\t<li>… assuming away intermediaries\n</li>\n\t<li>… technology\n</li>\n\t<li>… designing for a limited range of cases\n</li>\n\t<li>… presupossing transparency\n</li>\n</ul>\n\t<p>I want to chew on these a bit, so hopefully this posting will get revised over time. These are my restatement of what Phil writes, which is of course much better.</p>\n\t<p><b>Standards</b>: Never presume things are interoperable. Standards are hard work and only rarely emerge. Let’s repeat that, they rarely emerge. Most systems are heterogenous aggregations with much, if not most, of their substance in the glop that inter-connects their parts.</p>\n\t<p><b>Politics</b>: Never assume your technology leads to your desired political outcomes. This one’s facinating because consensus that the work at hand is creating a social good is always a constructive driver of large change. It maybe a near certainty that one will get piled on. But! Systems design is a thicket of unintended consequences. This one’s very entangled with the standards, hierarchy and intermediary traps.</p>\n\t<p><b>Automation</b>: Designs reshape roles, they don’t meerly automate existing chores. At first blush you may look at your system as lifting a burden off some actor in the old system; but it is useful to realize that in fact you are negotiating the nature of the work. This is often why system designers tend to automate other people’s work, not their own. This kind of negotation is politics; not in the big idea sense but the complex local politics of successfully integrating diverse points of view and need.</p>\n\t<p><b>Rate of Change</b>: Chips, communications, and network effects can grow amazingly fast; meanwhile social, physical, and economic systems are be very resilient, durible, and slow to change. System design takes place in the huge space between. Any assumption you make about real rate of change should be viewed with extreme suspicion. Note the irony in the standards trap mentioned earlier: assuming standards, and hence interoprablity, is the presumption that there is a stable durible social foundation you can build on.</p>\n\t<p><b>Hierarchy</b>: Phil’s argument here is that historically computer systems drew most of their funding from hierarchtical organizations both commercial and milatary and that has created a bias in our tool kits and mind sets. True. But that’s not the only reason why edge emphasising design patterns are so scarce.</p>\n\t<p>… more later</p>\n\t<p>Phil’s paragraphs on these are at the tail end of section two of the paper (<a href=\"http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/dl.html\">pdf</a>).</p>\n"
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"title" : "Where have all the good databases gone",
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"content" : "<p>About five years ago I started to notice an odd thing. The products that the database vendors were building had less and less to do with what the customers wanted. This is not just an artifact of talking to enterprise customers while at BEA. Google itself (and I'd bet a lot Yahoo too) have similar needs to the ones Federal Express or Morgan Stanley or Ford or others described, quite eloquently to me. So, what is this growing disconnect? </p>\n\n<p>It is this. Users of databases tend to ask for three very simple things:</p>\n\n<p>1) Dynamic schema so that as the business model/description of goods or services changes and evolves, this evolution can be handled seamlessly in a system running 24 by 7, 365 days a year. This means that Amazon can track new things about new goods without changing the running system. It means that Federal Express can add Federal Express Ground seamlessly to their running tracking system and so on. In short, the database should handle unlimited change.</p>\n\n<p>2) Dynamic partitioning of data across large dynamic numbers of machines. A lot people people track a lot of data these days. It is common to talk to customers tracking 100,000,000 items a day and having to maintain the information online for at least 180 days with 4K or more a pop and that adds (or multiplies) up to a 100 TB or so. Customers tell me that this is best served up to the 1MM users who may want it at any time by partioning the data because, in general, most of this data is highly partionable by customer or product or something. The only issue is that it needs to be dynamic so that as items are added or get \"busy\" the system dynamically load balances their data across the machines. In short, the database should handle unlimited scale with very low latency. It can do this because the vast majority of queries will be local to a product or a customer or something over which you can partion. It is, obviously, going to come at a cost for complex joins and predicates across entire data sets, but as it turns out, this isn't that normative for these sorts of data bases and an be slower as long as point 3 below is handled well. And a lot of them can be solved with some giant indices that cover the datasets that are routinely scanned across customers or products.</p>\n\n<p>3) Modern indexing. Google has spoiled the world. Everyone has learned that just typing in a few words should show the relevant results in a couple of hundred milliseconds. Everyone (whether an Amazon user or a customer looking up a check they wrote a month ago or a customer service rep looking up the history for someone calling in to complain) expects this. This indexing, of course, often has to include indexing through the \"blobs\" stored in the items such as PDF's and Spreadsheets and Powerpoints. This is actually hard to do across all data, but much of the need is within a partioned data set (e.g. I want to and should only see my checks, not yours or my airbill status not yours) and then it should be trivial.</p>\n\n<p>By the way, the inherent cost of the machines to do all this is relatively negligible. Assume 3 by 400GB cheap disks per machine mounted in racks of 60 and one rack would pretty much do it if there wasn't a need for redundancy and logs, say two racks to cover that. Companies are already coming out this year with highly redundant disk arrays for $1 per GB or $1200 / machine for the ones above (not counting the $1000 for the machine and memory itself). In short, for 120 such machines, it will probably cost less than $500K and that's less than 3-4 good programmers and it is one time a capital cost. But the cost to most people I've spoken to in terms of actual people to build and administer such systems is an order of magnitude more. For that matter, configure the 120 machines with 4GB each of memory and you could normally keep the current days work in memory and in many of these cases the data accessed will be the current days as people look for their waybills or flight statuses or check their Blog comments or whatever. </p>\n\n<p>Users of databases don't believe that they are getting any of these three. Salesforce, for example, has a lot of clever technology just to hack around the dynamic schema problem so that 13,000 customers can have 13,000 different views of what a prospect is.</p>\n\n<p>If the database vendors ARE solving these problems, then they aren't doing a good job of telling the rest of us. The customers I talk to who are using the traditional databases are esentially using them as very dumb row stores and trying very hard to move all the logic and searching out into arrays of machines with in memory caches. Oracle is doing some very clever high end things with streaming queries and the ability to see data as of some point in recent history (and even which updates affected the query within some date range) and with integrated pub/sub and queueing, but even Oracle seems to make systems too static and too ponderous to really meet the needs about and, oh yes, they seem to charge about ten times as much as one would expect for them. </p>\n\n<p>Indeed, in these days of open source, I wonder if the software itself, should cost at all? Open Source solutions would undoubtedly get hacked more quickly to be robust and truly scalable across nice simple software. It wouldn't be as pointwise fast, but the whole point is that these systems will scale linearly and are so cheap that it doesn't matter. The advantage of Open Source is that those folks really understand how to build scalable clouds of machines with a default assumption of failure and load balancing. It's called Apache. There are some other interesting problems that the database vendors are also ignoring but for now (like how do I ask for the set of complaints that are like the ones this customer has) but for now the three above seem like the big ones to me. My message is to the Open Source community that has, so ably, built LAMP (Linux, Apache and Tomcat and MySQL and PHP and PERL and Python). Please finish the job. Do for databases what you did for web servers. Give us dynamism and robustness. Give us systems that scale linearly, are flexible and dynamically reconfigurable and load balanced and easy to use. </p>\n\n<p>Light that LAMP for us please.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>I gave a talk yesterday at <a href=\"http://icsoc.dit.unitn.it/\">the ICSOC04</a>. It was essentially a reminder to a group of very smart people that their intelligence should be used to accomodate really simple user and programmer models, not to build really complex ones. Since I was preceded by Don Ferguson of IBM and followed the next day by Tim Berners-Lee, it seemed especially wise to stick to simple and basic ideas. Here is the talk</p>\n\n<p><hr></p>\n\n<p>Im sandwiched by smarter and more august speakers. Don Ferguson of IBM builds edifices of such sophistication and elaboration as to daunt the designers of the extraordinary archways of the Alhambra. Tim Berners Lee created the web as we know it today and preaches a sort of religion about the semantic web from his eerie at MIT that is totally over my head. These are very smart gentlemen. One would be foolish to try to appear smart when speaking between them. Accordingly, Im going to take the opposite tack. Im going to talk about the virtues of KISS which Ill conveniently describe as keeping it simple and sloppy and its effect on computing on the internet.</p>\n\n<p>There has been, of course, an eternal tension between that part of humanity which celebrates our diversity, imperfectability, and faults, as part of the rich tapestry of the human condition and that part which seeks to perfect itself, to control, to build complex codes and rules for conduct which if zealously adhered to, guarantee an orderly process. </p>\n\n<p>This talk is about this conflict as it relates to computing on the Internet. This talk is also a polemic in support of KISS. As such it is unfair, opinionated, and perhaps even unconscionable. Indeed, at times it will verge on a jeremiad.</p>\n\n<p>It is an ironic truth that those who seek to create systems which most assume the perfectibility of humans end up building the systems which are most soul destroying and most rigid, systems that rot from within until like great creaking rotten oak trees they collapse on top of themselves leaving a sour smell and decay. We saw it happen in 1989 with the astonishing fall of the USSR. Conversely, those systems which best take into account the complex, frail, brilliance of human nature and build in flexibility, checks and balances, and tolerance tend to survive beyond all hopes.</p>\n\n<p>So it goes with software. That software which is flexible, simple, sloppy, tolerant, and altogether forgiving of human foibles and weaknesses turns out to be actually the most steel cored, able to survive and grow while that software which is demanding, abstract, rich but systematized, turns out to collapse in on itself in a slow and grim implosion. </p>\n\n<p>Consider the spreadsheet. It is a protean, sloppy, plastic, flexible medium that is, ironically, the despair of all accountants and auditors because it is virtually impossible to reliably understand a truly complex and rich spreadsheet. Lotus corporation (now IBM), filled with Harvard MBAs and PhDs in CS from MIT, built Improv. Improv set out \"to fix all this\". It was an auditors dream. It provided rarified heights of abstraction, formalisms for rows and columns, and in short was truly comprehensible. It failed utterly, not because it failed in its ambitions but because it succeeded.</p>\n\n<p>Consider search. I remember the first clunky demos that Microsoft presented when Bill Gates first started to talk about Information at your fingertips with their complex screens for entering search criteria and their ability to handle Boolean logic. One of my own products, Access had the seemingly easier Query by Example. Yet, today half a billion people search every day and what do they use? Not Query by Example. Not Boolean logic. They use a solution of staggering simplicity and ambiguity, namely free text search. The engineering is hard, but the user model is simple and sloppy.</p>\n\n<p>Consider user interface. When HTML first came out it was unbelievably sloppy and forgiving, permissive and ambiguous. I remember listening many years ago to the head, then and now, of Microsoft Office, saying contemptuously in 1995 that HTML would never succeed because it was so primitive and that Word would win because Word documents were so rich and controlled in their layout. Of course, HTML is today the basic building block for huge swathes of human information. What is more, in one of the unintended ironies of software history, HTML was intended to be used as a way to provide a truly malleable plastic layout language which never would be bound by 2 dimensional limitations, ironic because hordes of CSS fanatics have been trying to bind it with straight jackets ever since, bad mouthing tables and generations of tools have been layering pixel precise 2 dimensional layout on top of it. And yet, ask any gifted web author, like Jon Udell, and they will tell you that they often use it in the lazy sloppy intuitive human way that it was designed to work. They just pour in content. In 1996 I was at some of the initial XML meetings. The participants anger at HTML for corrupting content with layout was intense. Some of the initial backers of XML were frustrated SGML folks who wanted a better cleaner world in which data was pristinely separated from presentation. In short, they disliked one of the great success stories of software history, one that succeeded because of its limitations, not despite them. I very much doubt that an HTML that had initially shipped as a clean layered set of content (XML, Layout rules - XSLT, and Formatting- CSS) would have had anything like the explosive uptake.</p>\n\n<p>Now as it turns out I backed XML back in 1996, but as it turns out, I backed it for exactly the opposite reason. I wanted a flexible relaxed sloppy human way to share data between programs and compared to the RPC's and DCOM's and IIOP's of that day, XML was an incredibly flexible plastic easy going medium. It still is. And because it is, not despite it, it has rapidly become the most widely used way to exchange data between programs in the world. And slowly, but surely, we have seen the other older systems, collapse, crumple, and descend towards irrelevance.</p>\n\n<p>Consider programming itself. There is an unacknowledged war that goes on every day in the world of programming. It is a war between the humans and the computer scientists. It is a war between those who want simple, sloppy, flexible, human ways to write code and those who want clean, crisp, clear, correct ways to write code. It is the war between PHP and C++/Java. It used to be the war between C and dBase. Programmers at the level of those who attend Columbia University, programmers at the level of those who have made it through the gauntlet that is Google recruiting, programmers at the level of this audience are all people who love precise tools, abstraction, serried ranks of orderly propositions, and deduction. But most people writing code are more like my son. Code is just a hammer they use to do the job. PHP is an ideal language for them. It is easy. It is productive. It is flexible. Associative arrays are the backbone of this language and, like XML, is therefore flexible and self describing. They can easily write code which dynamically adapts to the information passed in and easily produces XML or HTML. For them, the important issue is the content and the community, not the technology. How do they find the right RSS feeds? How do they enable a community to collaborate, appoint moderators, and dynamically decide whose posts can go through and whose should be reviewed? How do they filter information by reputation? These are the issues that they worry about, not the language. </p>\n\n<p>In the same way, I see two diametrically opposed tendencies in the model for exchanging information between programs today:</p>\n\n<p>On the one hand we have RSS 2.0 or Atom. The documents that are based on these formats are growing like a bay weed. Nobody really cares which one is used because they are largely interoperable. Both are essentially lists of links to content with interesting associated metadata. Both enable a model for capturing reputation, filtering, stand-off annotation, and so on. There was an abortive attempt to impose a rich abstract analytic formality on this community under the aegis of RDF and RSS 1.0. It failed. It failed because it was really too abstract, too formal, and altogether too hard to be useful to the shock troops just trying to get the job done. Instead RSS 2.0 and Atom have prevailed and are used these days to put together talk shows and play lists (podcasting) photo albums (Flickr), schedules for events, lists of interesting content, news, shopping specials, and so on. There is a killer app for it, Blogreaders/RSS Viewers. Anyone can play. It is becoming the easy sloppy lingua franca by which information flows over the web. As it flows, it is filtered, aggregated, extended, and even converted, like water flowing from streams to rivers down to great estuaries. It is something one can get directly using a URL over HTTP. It takes one line of code in most languages to fetch it. It is a world that Google and Yahoo are happily adjusting to, as media centric, as malleable, as flexible and chaotic, and as simple and consumer-focused as they are. </p>\n\n<p>On the other hand we have the world of SOAP and WSDL and XML SCHEMA and WS_ROUTING and WS_POLICY and WS_SECURITY and WS_EVENTING and WS_ADDRESSING and WS_RELIABLEMESSAGING and attempts to formalize rich conversation models. Each spec is thicker and far more complex than the initial XML one. It is a world with which the IT departments of the corporations are profoundly comfortable. It appears to represent ironclad control. It appears to be auditable. It appears to be controllable. If the world of RSS is streams and rivers and estuaries, laden with silt picked up along the way, this is a world of Locks, Concrete Channels, Dams and Pure Water Filters. It is a world for experts, arcane, complex, and esoteric. The code written to process these messages is so early bound that it is precompiled from the WSDLs and, as many have found, when it doesn't work, no human can figure out why. The difference between HTTP, with its small number of simple verbs, and this world with its innumerable layers which must be composed together in Byzantine complexity cannot be overstated. It is, in short, a world only IBM and MSFT could love. And they do. </p>\n\n<p>On the one hand we have Blogs and Photo Albums and Event Schedules and Favorites and Ratings and News Feeds. On the other we have CRM and ERP and BPO and all sorts of enterprise oriented 3 letter acronyms.</p>\n\n<p>As I said earlier, I remember listening many years ago to someone saying contemptuously that HTML would never succeed because it was so primitive. It succeeded, of course, precisely because it was so primitive. Today, I listen to the same people at the same companies say that XML over HTTP can never succeed because it is so primitive. Only with SOAP and SCHEMA and so on can it succeed. But the real magic in XML is that it is self-describing. The RDF guys never got this because they were looking for something that has never been delivered, namely universal truth. Saying that XML couldnt succeed because the semantics werent known is like saying that Relational Databases couldnt succeed because the semantics werent known or Text Search cannot succeed for the same reason. But there is a germ of truth in this assertion. It was and is hard to tell anything about the XML in a universal way. It is why Infopath has had to jump through so many contorted hoops to enable easy editing. By contrast, the RSS model is easy with an almost arbitrary set of <b>known</b> properties for an item in a list such as the name, the description, the link, and mime type and size if it is an enclosure. As with HTML, there is just enough information to be useful. Like HTML, it can be extended when necessary, but most people do it judiciously. Thus Blogreaders and aggregators can effortlessly show the content and understanding that the value is in the information. Oh yes, there is one other difference between Blogreaders and Infopath. They are free. They understand that the value is in the content, not the device. </p>\n\n<p>RSS embodies a very simple proposition that Tim Berners Lee has always held to be one of the most important and central tenets of his revolution, namely that every piece of content can be addressed by a URL. In the language of RSS we call these PermaLinks. This idea has profound value. Dave Sifry of Technorati pointed out to me recently that one of the most remarkable things about RSS and Web Logs (Blogs) is the manner in which they have started to solve one of the most tragic things about the web, namely the incivility of the discourse. The web, in many ways, today represents a textbook example of the tragedy of the commons. Because sending email is virtually free, we have spam. Because posting messages is virtually free and anonymous, we have groups where a small number of people can overwhelm the discussion with loud and senseless chatter. But one of the values of being able to reference every element is that now comments about elements can be distributed over the web. The web becomes something like a giant room in which people comment on other peoples thought via posts in their own Web Logs. In so doing they put their reputation on the line. These are hardly cheap and anonymous posts. They take up real estate in a place that is associated with your own point of view and reputation. And thus the comments tend to be measured, thoughtful, and judicious. Furthermore if they are not, either you can decide that it is OK or you can opt out. It is like dueling editorials in a pair of news papers. </p>\n\n<p>By contrast, the rigid abstract layers of web service plumbing are all anonymous, endless messages flowing through under the rubric of the same URL. Unless they are logged, there is no accountability. Because they are all different and since the spec that defines their grammar, XML Schema, is the marriage of a camel to an elephant to a giraffe, only an African naturalist could love these messages. They are far better, mind you, than the MOM messages that preceded them. Since they are self describing, it <b>is</b> possible to put dynamic filters in to reroute or reshape them using XPATH and XSLT and XML Query and even other languages all of which can easily detect whether the messages are relevant and if so, where the interesting parts are. This is goodness. It is 21st century. But the origination and termination points, wrapped in the Byzantine complexity of JAX RPC or .NET are still frozen in the early bound rigidity of the 20th.</p>\n\n<p>I would like to say that we are at a crossroads, but the truth is never so simple. The truth is that people use the tools that work for them. Just as for some programmers the right tool is PHP and for others the right tool is Java so it is true that for some programmers the right tool is RSS and for others it is WS-*. There is no clear winner here. What I am sure about is the volumes and the values. The value is in the information and its ability to be effortlessly aggregated, evaluated, filtered, and enhanced. </p>\n\n<p>What does this mean to you? Think of the radio. When it was a novelty, the real value was in the radio itself. There was relatively little content, but lots of people wanted the radio. At a certain point, however, radios got good enough and transmission got good enough and the value ineluctably swung to the content. This is why the DRM fights are so bitter, why PodCasting is so revolutionary, why Howard Stern was paid so much to play on a private radio model. Thats where the value is. We have arrived at the same point for computing. The value is neither in the computers nor in the software that runs on them. It is in the content and the softwares ability to find and filter content and in the softwares ability to enable people to collaborate and communicate about content (and each other). Who here really cares if Excel adds a new menu item unless it is one that lets you more easily discover information on the web, possibly update and interact with it or with others about it.</p>\n\n<p>What about mobile phones. What do they mean? Is it really interesting to have a spreadsheet or a power point on your mobile phone? Or is it more interesting to know where the nearest ATM is, where is the nearest Indian restaurant that your friends like, which are the CS books in the store for a given course, which course has the best section person and what its schedule is, or what the reviews of the books say. Is it really interesting to have an address book that is synced to your PC or is it more interesting to see the presence of the people who are involved in your class, your project, your party plans, and be able to coordinate and plan an event with them? And if it is the latter, then isnt the value really coming from the knowledge of with whom you are working, socializing, and studying; what they think about things you care about such as movies, classes, restaurants and news articles rather than the software on the device itself? Isnt the device really just a sort of n-way radio/classified? Soon as you deliver context and content and community and collaboration over the web, 2 billion people will be able to see and interact with your solutions. </p>\n\n<p>There is a lot of talk about Web 2.0. Many seem to assume that the second web will be about rich intelligent clients who share information across the web and deal with richer media (photos, sound, video). There is no doubt that this is happening. Whether it is Skype or our product Hello, or iTunes, people are increasingly plugging into the web as a way to collaborate and share media. But I posit that this isnt the important change. It is glitzy, fun, entertaining, useful, but at the end of the day, not profoundly new. </p>\n\n<p>What <i>has</i> been new is information overload. Email long ago became a curse. Blogreaders only exacerbate the problem. I cant even imagine the video or audio equivalent because it will be so much harder to filter through. What <i>will</i> be new is people coming together to rate, to review, to discuss, to analyze, and to provide 100,000 Zagats, models of trust for information, for goods, and for services. Who gives the best buzz cut in Flushing? We see it already in eBay. We see it in the importance of the number of deals and the ratings for people selling used books on Amazon. As I said in my blog, <br>\nMy mother never complains that she needs a better client for Amazon. Instead, her interest is in better community tools, better book lists, easier ways to see the book lists, more trust in the reviewers, librarian discussions since she is a librarian, and so on. <br>\nThis is what will be new. In fact it already is. You want to see the future. Dont look at Longhorn. Look at Slashdot. 500,000 nerds coming together everyday just to manage information overload. Look at BlogLines. What will be the big enabler? Will it be Attention.XML as Steve Gillmor and Dave Sifry hope? Or something else less formal and more organic? It doesnt matter. The currency of reputation and judgment is the answer to the tragedy of the commons and it will find a way. This is where the action will be. Learning Avalon or Swing isnt going to matter. Machine learning and inference and data mining will. For the first time since computers came along, AI is the mainstream.</p>\n\n<p>I find this deeply satisfying. It says that in the end the value is in our humanity, our diversity, our complexity, and our ability to learn to collaborate. It says that it is the human side, the flexible side, the organic side of the Web that is going to be important and not the dry and analytic and taxonomical side, not the systematized and rigid and stratified side that will matter. </p>\n\n<p>In the end, I am profoundly encouraged and hopeful that the growth on the web is one which is slowly improving the civility and tenor of discourse. Just as Porn seems to be an unpleasant leading user of technology, so does crude and vituperative communication seem to be a pattern for early adopters and it is a relief to see that forms of governance, trust and deliberation are now emerging.</p>\n\n<p>There are those who will say that all this is utopian. If Utopian means not being afraid to dream, then indeed it is. So was Tims initial vision of universal access to information. So is Googles mission. T.E Lawrence wrote in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, </p>\n\n<p>All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible</p>\n\n<p>I encourage all of you to act your dreams with open eyes. I encourage all of you to dream of an internet that enables people to work together, to communicate, to collaborate, and to discover. I encourage all of you to remember, that in the long run, we are all human and, as you add value, add it in ways that are simple, flexible, sloppy, and, in the end, everything that the Platonists in you abhor. </p>"
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"content" : "\t<p>There is a thread unfolding over <a href=\"http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/11/03/what_is_social.html\">here</a> about this one liner:</p>\n\t<blockquote><p>\n“The whole point of social software is to replace the social with software”\n</p></blockquote>\n\t<p>But the thread has decended into a who said exactly what discussion that avoids the provocative nature of the standalone statement.</p>\n\t<p>The statement is obviously true in for some situations.</p>\n\t<p>For example consider a bug database. These tools allows a group of people to engage in the work of resolving bugs more effectively by draining most of social interaction out of the work. They enable the bug to found by one actor and resolved by another without the two interaction socially at all. Much the same way that doctors can treat desease without engaging in any particularly social interaction with their patients.</p>\n\t<p>In a second example look at a problem that arises in source control systems. Two individuals are hacking away and their chanages happen to overlap. Mr. Speedy get’s his changes into the source control system first. Mr. Methodical shows up later and discovers that his changes conflict with Speedy’s. There is nothing more commonly used as an example of social than conflict resolution and here we have exactly that problem a tiny dishpan model. The conflict resolution that happens at this point might demand a social interaction, but we have discovered that in a surprisinly large number of cases it works out well to just dump the whole problem into Mr. Methodical’s lap and let him puzzle out a solution. In this case the software design has done exactly what the quote suggests; replaced the social with software.</p>\n\t<p>Or consider the wiki. I stuff some useful content into the wiki. Another actor dives in and rephrases it into grammatical english. A third actors repairs a date I got wrong. That process is hyper-effective because none of the actors need to engage in a social interactions. Each actor bears only the cost of his contribution, but none of use have to orchustrate a social relationship with each other. Most people’s initial reaction to wiki’s is bewilderment because they are so extremely a-social. It takes a while before you discovert that can be a positive.</p>\n\t<p>Social relationship creation and maintainance is costly. In numerous situations it is absolutely worth those costs. But that does not mean it should be automatically tacked onto every interaction. Fixing a bug, resolving a source code conflict, touching up a wiki entry, can be an oportunity to met new people and make new friends; but they do not need to be forced to serve that function.</p>\n\t<p>I was quite conscious of this when I added the “report a typo” link that appears below all my blog postings. I know that most people don’t complain about my many typos because to do creates a delicate social dynamic. The form found under that link there fore doesn’t even prompt for an email address. I made the choice that I was more likely to get useful typo reports without the social aspect and that was a better balance of design than improving my ablity to say thank you to people do provide typos.</p>\n\t<p>That tiny example shows the kind of tuning about social that systems of this kind enable.</p>\n\t<p>A more accurate statement might say:</p>\n\t<blockquote><p>\nOne exciting aspect of social software is the option of make removing social aspects from the interactions.\n</p></blockquote>\n\t<p>If you want to get all big picture-ish … the whole point of the scientific revolution was the discovery that you could making amazing progress on some problems if you discarded all the important stuff. That how fast an object falls not related to how much you love it; and the weather tommorrow is not related to your attitude about the rain gods. Autism can be surprisingly useful.</p>\n\t<p>One way to frame the problems social software is dealing with is label them as coordination problems. The bug fixing, wiki refining, and source control conflict resolution are all coordination problems at their core. They all run the risk of reaching bogus outcomes if you drain off the social elements entirely. The system failures that arise when that happens are well known. For example there are libraries full of books on what happens when product development becomes divorced from the end user’s needs and situations.</p>\n\t<p>What’s exciting about open source is that it lets you experiment with exactly how to set the knob on how much social you leave in the coordination scheme you deploy.</p>\n\t<hr><br>\nVia the typo link, this extremely insightful addition: “And social interactions often draw from a limited pool, so by removing the need for them with software, this pool can be conserved and applied to actions with a greater possible return.”\n\n"
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"content" : "\t<p><img src=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/images/newtoncradle.jpg\" alt=\"\" align=\"right\">Here’s a fine example of the tensions between an irresistable force v.s. an immovable object.</p>\n\t<p>At some point in my childhood my father, presumably in an attempt to keep me from wasting a summer in idle pleasures, got me an unpaid job working with a locksmith. I really enjoyed it, though I never did get the hang of picking locks. One thing I loved about the job was all the paraphenalia. One of the principle artifacts in every lock smiths tool kit is a box of pins. These pins are tiny bits of brass all of various lengths. They were color coded so you could put them back in the case.</p>\n\t<p>These pins are packed into the lock so that when the right key is slide in they align just right and the lock will turn. Sweet little springs push the pins back into place when the key is removed. Each spring sits in a hole and the hole has two pins whose length sum up to fill its column just right. A lock with a master key will have three pins in one or more of the columns.</p>\n\t<p>Locks of varing sophistication modify this design by having the columns oriented in various patterns. The typical lock just has the pin-columns in a straight line. If you look at your key ring you’ll probably find at least one key who’s bumpy bits are set up in some tricky way. Complex topology makes it harder to pick the lock; or at least that was the idea.</p>\n\t<p>The design patterns for key-and-pin locks form a the plaform for a huge installed base of locks and keys. So it’s a great standards story and like all standards used for security things get messy when a security flaw is revealed. The usual exemplar of that is Microsoft Windows, which was never really designed to be secure and now sustains the vast cyber crime industry (said to be larger than the drug trade).</p>\n\t<p>You can’t ‘just fix’ a system like this because the installed base is very slow to move. As Bill Gates is rumored to have said back in the 1990s, “My biggest competitors is old versions of Windows operating system.” Users don’t upgrade quickly.</p>\n\t<p>Over the last year or two knowledge of a huge security flaw in the key-and-pin lock design pattern has been revealed. There is a fun video (with subtitles) from a Dutch TV show you can watch (<a href=\"http://www.toool.nl/bumpkey-alert.wmv\">WMV</a>) and a paper about it (<a href=\"http://www.toool.nl/bumping.pdf\">pdf</a>).</p>\n\t<p>It’s easy to understand though. The common name for the technique is bump key. You make a key that bumps the pins. Well, actually, it taps the pins sharply. The sharp tap is then transmitted thru the stack of pins until it reaches the top most pin. That pin then floats up and way from the rest of the stack. At the moment the gap appears you turn the lock. All you need is a good bump key, a sharp tap, and to time the turn to the right moment.</p>\n\t<p>You have seen this dynamics in one of those executive desk top toys (these are known as Newton’s cradle) where a group of balls hang in a line and you drop one ball one end and ball on the other end floats up.</p>\n\t<p>Designing around this problem is, I presume not too hard. For example, since only the top most pin will float up when tapped you need to assure it’s movement won’t open the lock. That’s not too hard since you can arrange to have the top pin above point where the lock turns. In some cases you might even be able to repin an existing lock to prevent the problem. In other cases you probably have to redesign the locks.</p>\n\t<p>There are techniques for moving a large installed base. Firms, like Microsoft, that depend on upgrade revenue are very practiced at these. Moving an installed base can be very profitable. Rekeying the entire planet, changing every lock in every door, replacing the keys on everybody’s key ring - wow! The lock industry must be very excited about this. I bet there is quick a backlog of key-and-pin patents piling up at the patten office right now.</p>\n\t<p>Of course, the profits to be made from migrating the installed base are not the first thing most people think of when they hear this story. But then most people don’t tend to think of Microsoft’s security problems as an upgrade driver either.\n</p>\n"
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"content" : "<p>A naive model of actors in the economy treats them as a directed graph of buyers and sellers. Goods and services are exchanged for money along each link. In the primitive barter economy good and services flow both ways. In a barter economy it quickly becomes apparent that some goods and services can be exchanged more easily; that property is known as fungiblity. Chocolate is more fungible, bicycles made for two are less so.</p>\n\t<p>The whole point of a cash economy is that it, like other standards, eliminates from the negotiation between buyer and seller some one variable and allows the negotation/barter to proceed more quickly. It lowers friction. We don’t live in a purely cash economy there are lots of alternative payment schemes. I have yet to met a small auto repair shop that won’t give you a discount for paying by check rather than credit card. If you really want to make them happy ask about the discount for cash. Years and years ago Click and Clack - from the radio show - would only take cash.</p>\n\t<p>I hadn’t noticed before that the check clearing system can be viewed as a machine for converting checks which aren’t particularly fungible into bank deposits which are somewhat more fungible. In a sense the check clearing system is entirely powered by the differential between the fungiblity of the two systems.</p>\n\t<p><img src=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/images/CheckClearing.png\" alt=\"\" align=\"middle\"></p>\n\t<p>The check clearing system has five players: the buyer and the seller, their two banks, and the clearing house. Back in the day the bankers would close at 3pm and after a bit they’d adjour to the pub to do their clearing. Presumably ale lowered the friction. If you arrange these five players in a circle the checks flow around the circle one way and the bank deposits flow in the other.</p>\n\t<p>Of course all the other payment systems have an analagous infrastructure. We have assorted nouns for that infrastructure for example standard, platform, network each of which illuminates a different aspect of that structure. Because of the coordination required by the clearing house these systems tend to condense into powerlaw distributed systems with a few very powerful players.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Consistently following the advice to “Buy cheap, sell dear” requires that you know something the market doesn’t. Consider a very simple example. Two towns one has abundant amounts of oysters, so abundant that the local population is sick of them; meanwhile in the second town oysters are a delicacy. A trader can make a good living moving oysters between the two; but only so long as he can keep his sources secret. The lack of transparency enables the profit; or more generally the information asymmetries between the two towns. </p>\n\t<p>I was very amused by a story that appears in the early pages of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=cozy-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0805072675\">Frank Partnoy’s book Infectious Greed</a>. In this story a trader discovered way to trade between two markets; rather than moving oysters he moved information. The markets were currency markets; a private market and a public market. So in one market his actions were visible, i.e. they generated information, while in the second market they were largely invisible. </p>\n\t<p>While all commerce, markets, etc. are, to a degree, about risk it’s particularly helpful at this point to introduce a point about betting. If you wish to place a $100 bet on your home team there are an infinite number of ways you might do that. For example you might place a $300 dollar bet on the home team and a compensating $200 bet on the opposing team. That may seem like an odd choice but notice that it allows you, with nearly total honesty, to go around telling everybody you bet $200 dollars on the opposing team. It lets you signal the opposite of your true intentions. That creates an information asymmetry, one that you control.</p>\n\t<p>The public/private markets enable the same pattern. If you can trade in both a public and a private market for the same good; but only one of these trades will generate an signal about your intentions. If your trades are large enough you can move the market with that signal.</p>\n\t<p>In the story the trader played this game with the international currency markets. He actually had two pairs of markets he could play this game in. First he had the traditional currency market and the currency options markets which were at that time not well connected. Secondly he had public exchanges and private, so called over the counter, deals he could make. There is a short paragraph in the midst of the story about how his boss got a call from New Zealand’s central banker demanding that he stop toying with their currency. </p>\n\t<p>Because benefits can flow to market actors from information asymmetries most commercial dialog is permeated by a subtext of information hoarding. In some scenarios, like the one above, the appearance of an abundance of information might be a signal that information is scarce in an adjacent market. I think this is a rarely realized element of why open source appears so suspicious to some commercial observers.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Tree’s don’t get around much, but they still engage extremely syncrhronized behaviors. From time to time all the trees of a given species though out a region will decide to throw a party. These are known as <a href=\"http://www.hastingsreserve.org/OakStory/Acorns2.html\">mast year</a>s. In these years all the trees in the region will produce vastly more seeds than in other years. It’s an orgy! The distribution of seed production/year is highly skewed with the majority of seeds being produced in these mast years.</p>\n\t<p>I’ve been thinking about power failures, in particularly electrical power failures. Random failures in the power grid pop up all the time, but with surprising regularity large swaths of the power grid fail. I suspect that if you had a plot of the # of customers-days of various failures you’d get a highly skew’d distribution. We know a fair amount of why these grid failures happen. The grid isn’t a grid, it’s a scalefree network. If it were more like a grid then it would be more robust; but a grid is expensive compaired to a scale free network. The grid failures arise because a random failure hits some reasonably key component and then the rest of the grid fails as the problem cascades thru the network.</p>\n\t<p>For example last summer, or the summer before, we had a power grid failure across the megalopolis on the east coast of the North America. The network was running at capacity that hot day when something near Ohio failed. As the load shifted the safety triggers on other components decided that they should resign from the network - to protect themselves. Each resignation accelerated the cascade and soon a hundred million people were without power. I found that interesting at the time because it makes a link between the issues of pure go-it-alone self interested capitalism and the issues of collective good. We have been playing out a recent enthusiasm for handing public goods over to private actors here in the US. These private actors have trouble successfully coordinating the building of enough excess capacity and reliablity into their networks. As the network failures become more likely the individual actors, seeing that their capital equipment is more at risk, tend to shift their safety triggers down; or at least i presume they would.</p>\n\t<p>This year we had a example that’s worse, in it’s way, of a power grid failure. The grid in Queen’s New York failed. This time it appears the the safety triggers were set too high. Again during record load a component failed; but this time as the failures cascaded other components stayed loyal to the network with the result that rather than resign they committed sucide. Which is way bad because to reboot the system they have to pull new cables to replace the ones that burnt out.</p>\n\t<p>Both those models are, to be clear, entirely speculative. But I’d love to know if after the first failure the guys in Queens went around and readjusted thier safety triggers.</p>\n\t<p>The mass years, presumably, are information cascades thru some communication channel the species members have stumbled upon. I bet that when they figure it out they will discover that larger groves of trees play a role in triggering a successfull cascade.</p>\n\t<p>Trees, like other members of the ecology, are embedded in an web of inter-species relationships. Observers have noticed that the mass years throw quite a ripple thru that web. For example squirrel get fat when the oaks have a mass year and then they have lots of offspring - the orgy cascades. The following year though the resulting bubble of population starves. That pattern is actually good for the oaks. The mass year lots of their seeds get past the squirrels. The following year every acorn is found by some desperate squirrel. The third year though the squirrels have dies way back and the oak can again get a lot of acorns past those pests.</p>\n\t<p>I bet there are similar patterns in the supply chain web after each of these power failures. For example I bet there comes season a bit after a large grid failure when you can get a generator really cheap from a vendor who was fat and happy just a season ago.\n</p>"
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"content" : "<p>4/4 swing is the groove of all grooves. A rigid expression of elasticity. It remains in a perpetual state of both repetition and release. It is the logical conclusion of rhythmic circularity—the place where time dies and goes to heaven. 4/4 swing is neither old nor dated. Many today dismiss it as such, because of all grooves in the Black American aesthetic, it’s the hardest to make feel good.</p>\n<p>It’s scientifically and metrically perfect in its design. It is 1, 2, 3 and 4—all at the same time—on every beat, in any beat.</p>\n<p>It is the genesis of the syncopated quarter note. It can be forward moving and laid back at the same time. Every beat is a universe all on its own.</p>\n<p>4/4 swing is the rhythmic equivalent of a free fall.</p>\n<p>It is the morse code of modern mortality.</p>\n<p>It is the roots, the branches and the leaves.</p>\n<p>Swing is elusive. The harder you try to swing, the less you swing.</p>\n<p>4/4 swing is the will to wane. Its pulse personifies the determination to let go. A revolving door of opportunity. A conveyer belt to the blues. The benevolent bulldozer. The turnstile of truth.</p>\n<p>4/4 swing is a passenger jet that’s never overbooked or oversold.</p>\n<p>No matter how many going along for the ride, there’s always room for one more.</p>\n<p><strong>#BAM</strong></p>\n<p>- Nicholas Payton aka The Savior of Archaic Pop</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4692/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4692/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nicholaspayton.wordpress.com&blog=4110628&post=4692&subd=nicholaspayton&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "President Michel Djotodia?",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">When the Union des Forces Démocratiques pour le Rassemblement (UFDR) announced its presence by capturing CAR's northeasternmost town, Birao, at the end of October 2006, a few people starting working their sat phones, each declaring himself to be the leader. There was Abakar Sabone, formerly best known as a Chadian recruiter of men-in-arms who'd helped Bozize take power in 2003 but became disgruntled with his former ally over a perceived lack of proper payment for his services. There was Damane Zakaria, a counselor in Tiringoulou who was with the men on the ground. And there was Michel Djotodia, who few people knew much about at all.<br><br>Sabone and Djotodia were in Cotonou, Benin at the time, and they were locked up at Bozize's request. Though they were eventually released, they were both somewhat sidelined during the peace process, and for the next few years whenever anyone asked who was the leader of the UFDR, it was General Damane's name that was put forward.<br><br>It was Damane who I got to know while doing research among the UFDR in Tiringoulou in 2009-2010. Nevertheless, I was curious about this Djotodia fellow, so I frequently asked about him as well. Overall, the impression I got was of a polyglot, intelligent guy with outsize political ambitions. He made it into my dissertation, but only in the form of a long footnote:<br><br><br>\"People in Vakaga [prefecture] remember [Djotodia] as a prolific practitioner of extraversion. He went to the USSR to study and ended up living there ten years, marrying, and fathering two daughters, and<br>then finally returning to CAR with “ten diplomas” and fluency in a number of languages, which made him useful when it came to representing the UFDR to foreigners and media. People in Tiringoulou tell of one day, long before the rebellion, when a plane of Russian hunters unexpectedly arrived. Upon hearing Djotodia’s rendition of their language, declared him not Central African but Russian and brought him along for their tour of the country. He had political aspirations, and he pursued them fervently. Twice he tried to become a deputy, and twice he failed. The highest post he attained was Tax Director. He also worked to become close to the Sheikh Tidjani, spiritual leader for many in the buffer zone, who lives in South Darfur. At the time of the UFDR’s first attack, he, like Sabone, was in Benin, where he had friends from his Russia days. Like Sabone, he was jailed in Cotonou for his role in the insurgency. But then he becomes harder to track. He had a falling out with the Sheikh when he tried to convince the president’s son to name him consul to Sudan in the Sheikh’s place (though technically Sudanese himself, the Sheikh occupies this post as a result of the respect and legitimacy he enjoys throughout the region). The break in this relationship has made it harder for him to claim to represent people in the area. Damane said that he had pushed him out when Djotodia had attempted to make an alliance with Charles Massi, another sidelined politician aiming for power through the form of insurgency. Whatever the specifics of his fall, people described it as a function of his failure to properly negotiate alliances. This diplomatic capability is central to maintaining power in a place of plural authorities. People surmised that this “intellectual” is now trying his luck somewhere far away.\"<br><br>Well, now we know a bit more about what Djotodia was up to. He has been in Nyala, in South Darfur, cultivating working alliances with the remnants of Chadian rebel groups that have been hanging out in the area. It was these fighters from the Chad/Sudan/CAR borderlands who became the military backbone of the Seleka rebel coalition that first threatened the CAR capital, Bangui, in December. (The UFDR fighters I knew -- tough guys, but a bit ragtag, especially compared to their counterparts in places like Chad or Sudan -- could have put up a decent fight against the CAR armed forces on their own, but the \"Chadians\" were what made them so unstoppable.)<br><br>And through these alliances, Djotodia has come out on top. Hearing the stories of his ambition during my research, I almost felt embarrassed on his behalf -- he seemed like a Jamaican bobsledder convinced he'd win gold. And yet here he is, ten years after Bozize took power, getting ready to move into the presidential palace. Here's hoping he lives up to his intellectual reputation and does a better job than his predecessor. Goodness knows Central Africans have suffered far too much already.<br></div>"
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"content" : "<p><i>This is a guest post by Kris De Decker, founder and writer at Low-tech Magazine, an internet publication highlighting the need for elegant yet simple sustainable energy technologies. <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/03/the-mechanical-transmission-of-power-3-wire-ropes.html\">Read the article at Low Tech Magazine.</a></i> </p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef5fd9970b-700wi.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef5fd9970b-700wi.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>Picture: Wire rope transmission in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1896. Source: <a href=\"http://www.stadtarchiv-schaffhausen.ch/Bild-Schaffhausen.asp?startSequence=1&level1_ID=9&level2_ID=19&level3_ID=122&level4_ID=1643\">Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>You don't need electricity to send or receive power quickly. In the second half of the nineteenth century, we commonly used fast-moving ropes. These wire rope transmissions were more efficient than electricity for distances up to 5 kilometres. Even today, a nineteenth-century rope drive would be more efficient than electricity over relatively short distances. If we used modern materials for making ropes and pulleys, we could further improve this forgotten method.</p>\n<p>The rope drive is the culmination of a long history of mechanical power transmission. In the 1500s, mining engineers designed "<a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html\">Stangenkunsten</a>": a method to transmit power from distant water wheels to machinery at the mineshaft, using reciprocating wooden rods. This early predecessor of electricity was improved in the 1860s oil industry's "<a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/02/the-mechanical-transmission-of-power-jerker-line-systems.html\">Jerker line systems</a>", which used steel cables instead of wooden rods. </p>\n<p>The need for long-distance power transmission appeared first in the mining industry because mines could not be relocated to a nearby water power source. In the nineteenth century, the need for power transmission spread to other industries because the demand for power had grown considerably with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, and most available water power resources had already been put to use -- especially in Europe. A new form of power transmission was needed to make previously inaccessible sources of water power available. For instance, many powerful water sources in mountainous areas were idle because these sites were unsuitable for building factories. The development of steam engines also called for power distribution and transmission, especially in Great Britain and in the US, because smaller engines were uneconomical to operate.</p>\n<p>The pioneering power-transmission technology developed by the mining industry was not suited for most of these new demands. A Stangenkunst or jerker line system transmitted power using a reciprocating motion, while most industries required circular motion to drive machinery. Although these systems could be adapted to convert reciprocating motion into circular motion, this was possible only at low speeds and the expense of considerable energy loss [1]. Apart from this, the power that could be transmitted by a mere dead pull was limited. Enormous wooden rods or steel cables would have been needed to transmit the amount of power that could be harvested from mountain streams and waterfalls [2].</p>\n<p><strong>The Millwork</strong></p>\n<p>Around 1850, the only available technology for the transmission of fast, circular motion was the so-called \"millwork\". This combination of shafts, gears, belts and pulleys was aimed at the distribution (rather than long-distance transmission) of mechanical energy. It transferred power from a prime mover (a water turbine or a steam engine) to individual machines.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee8935903970d.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee8935903970d.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>A factory interior in Schaffhausen, Germany.</i></center></p>\n<p>While the nineteenth-century millwork was considerably more efficient than the <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html\">large wooden gears and shafts</a> in the pre-industrial wind- and watermills from which it evolved, it was not suited for longer distances. One engineer calculated that 75% of the power transmitted by a lineshaft would be absorbed by friction of the bearings at a distance of between 95 to 600 m [3]. Moreover, millwork required protection from the weather and so could not be operated outdoors.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d411f8182970c.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d411f8182970c.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>A factory interior in Schaffhausen, Germany. </i></center></p>\n<p>Even for short distances, nineteenth century millwork was rather inefficient. A major investigation in the early 1880s covering 55 industrial establishments, chiefly textile mills, revealed that the combined power losses in engines and millwork were on average 25%. For machine shops, the energy loss was on average 40 to 50% [4]. Line shafts were also hungry for space, costly to install, troublesome to maintain and adjust, hazardous in use, and inflexible in arrangement.</p>\n<p><strong>Wire Rope Power Transmission</strong></p>\n<p>Late nineteenth-century industry was in need of a more efficient and versatile method of power transmission for both short and long distances. Several alternatives were in the running: power could be transmitted by electricity, compressed air, hydraulics, steam, millwork, or ropes. While electricity eventually won the battle, a few others deserve more attention [5]. </p>\n<p>Rope transmission, the subject of this article, stands apart from all other power transmission technologies because it doesn't involve any conversion of energy. An endless rope drive transmits mechanical energy directly from a power source to machinery. As we will see, this makes rope transmission more efficient than any other alternative up to a distance of a few kilometres.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee88e922e970d-700wi.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee88e922e970d-700wi.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>Contrary to electricity and compressed air, the transmission of power by rope was not a radical departure from traditional methods. Conceptually, wire rope transmission simply extended the range of millwork by improving its efficiency and flexibility, and by making it weather-proof. Rope transmission started in the 1840s as an element of millwork, using fast-spinning fibrous ropes as an alternative to belts transmitting power from the prime mover to the line shafts [6]. When fibrous ropes were replaced by metallic ropes (or "wire ropes"), a long-distance power transmission was born.</p>\n<p><strong>Wire Rope</strong></p>\n<p>Interestingly, the wire rope itself can be traced back to the same region that invented the Stangenkunst in the 1500s: the Upper Harz mining region in Germany. In the 1830s, mining engineer Wilhelm Albert twisted together several strands of metal wire around a hempen core, resulting in a superior hoisting cable for use in vertical shafts. Compared to <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/06/lost-knowledge-ropes-and-knots.html\">a fibrous rope</a>, a wire rope is much stronger, despite being the same weight and diameter. Unlike fibrous rope, it keeps its strength when it is wet, and its length remains constant under all weather conditions.</p>\n<p>Metallic ropes were used throughout the global mining industry during the 1800s, replacing metal chains and fibrous cables for hoisting up ores and transporting miners up and down shafts. The wire rope also led to important uses outside the industry. It enabled the invention of the suspension bridge and came in handy as a means to carry other static loads such as smokestacks and masts. But its main applications involved moving passengers and goods, both vertically and horizontally. The wire rope gave birth to the elevator and made <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/03/history-of-human-powered-cranes.html\">cranes and hoisting machines</a> much more powerful. It introduced new transportation options on land (as in <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/09/water-powered-cable-trains.html\">cable trains</a>), on water (as in <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/12/trolley-canal-boats.html\">rope-powered canal boats</a>), and in the air (as in <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/01/aerial-ropeways-automatic-cargo-transport.html\">aerial ropeways</a>).</p>\n<p><strong>How did it Work?</strong></p>\n<p>Few know that wire rope was also used to transmit energy across land. A wire rope power transmission, or "telodynamic transmission" as it was initially called, was basically an aerial ropeway running without vehicles, at higher speeds. Both aerial ropeways and wire rope drives were sold by the same manufacturers. Wire rope transmissions used thin wire ropes (up to 2.5 cm in diameter) and large, cast-iron pulleys (up to 5 m in diameter), mounted on wooden, iron or masonry towers placed at maximum intervals of 90 to 150 m. The bottom of the pulley grooves was made of strips of leather to limit the wear of the rope. </p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef8b60970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef8b60970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>Detail of the wire rope transmission in <a href=\"http://www.industrieensemble.ch/\">Neuthal</a>, the only remaining wire rope transmission line in Europe. Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.egghof.com/weblog/seiltransmission.html\">Peter Christener</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>The fundamentals of the method were concisely described by Albert Stahl in his 1889 treatise <em>Transmission of Power by Wire Ropes</em>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The construction of the apparatus is very simple. A tolerably large iron wheel, having a V-shaped groove in its rim, is connected with the motor, and driven with a perimetral velocity of usually from 50 to 100 feet [per second]. Round this wheel is passed a thin wire rope, which is led away to almost any reasonable distance (the limit being measurable by miles), where it passes over a similar wheel, and then returns as an endless band to the wheel whence it started.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p>For longer wire rope transmissions, two configurations were possible. Either one, long continuous rope was used, supported at intervals by carrying sheaves, similar to those of an aerial ropeway. Usually, though, a wire rope power transmission used shorter ropes that extended between stations, instead of running the whole length of the transmission. Each tower then served as the driver for another by means of a double pulley arrangement, or a double grooved wheel.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d3fc4eac8970c.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d3fc4eac8970c.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>When using carrying sheaves to bridge larger spans, it was often sufficient to support only the slack side of the rope. The illustration above shows the different arrangements used for wire rope transmissions. When the rope drive had to change direction, or when the power had to be distributed to a number of consumers, this could be done by using either horizontal sheaves, or more frequently, bevel gearing/wheels. </p>\n<p><strong>Diffusion of the Technology</strong></p>\n<p>The use of wire rope for power transmission over long distances was invented by the Hirn brothers in 1850, while they were setting up a weaving factory in an abandoned textile works near Logelbach, Switzerland. The buildings were scattered over considerable distances and setting up multiple steam engines would have been too expensive. Following some initial problems (finding a suited material as a seating for the ropes proved to be one of the biggest) the Hirn Brothers set up power transmission lines between the buildings. The longest line reached 235 m, transmitting 50 horse power (hp).</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36eb6de9970b-700wi.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36eb6de9970b-700wi.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>After the initial success of the Hirn installation, the technology spread rapidly throughout the Alps, and beyond. W.C. Unwin gives a detailed overview of the initial diffusion of telodynamic transmissions in his 1894 book <em>On the Development and Transmission of Power from Central Stations</em>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>"Soon after the erection of the transmissions at Logelbach M. Henri Schlumberger transmitted the power of a turbine 86 yards to work agricultural machinery. In 1857, at Copenhagen, Captain Jagd transmitted 45 hp to saw-mills at a distance of more than 1,000 yards. In 1858, at Cornimont, in the Vosges, 50 hp was transmitted 1,251 yards. In 1859, at Oberursel, 100 hp was transmitted 1,076 yards; and at Emmendingen 60 hp was transmitted 1,372 yards. In 1862 Hirn stated that about 400 applications of the telodynamic system had been constructed by Messrs. Stein & Co., of Mulhouse, carrying an aggregate of 4,200 hp over distances amounting altogether to 80,000 yards."</p></blockquote>\n<p>These installations had an average capacity of about 10 hp and a transmission distance of about 180 m. By 1869, two years after Hirn's invention received an award at the Universal Exposition in Paris, about 2000 permanent installations had been constructed on the European Continent. Most were relatively small ropeways, but some were fairly large. The Hirn system was adopted in three of the earliest central power stations in Europe: Schaffhausen (1864) and Fribourg (1870) in Switzerland, and Bellegarde (1872) in France. These installations transmitted between 560 and 3150 hp by wire ropes, over distances up to 966 m.</p>\n<p><strong>The Schaffhausen Transmission</strong></p>\n<p>The Schaffhausen transmission is regarded as the most complex wire rope transmission ever built, using 1027 m of ropes, aggregating more than 600 hp. After a period of trade depression there was a revival of industry at Schaffhausen. The required energy was found in the immense volume of water passing down the rapids of the Rhine in front of the town. Since the steep rocky banks forbade the erection of any factories in the immediate neighbourhood, the power was transferred diagonally across the stream to the town, about a mile lower down, and there distributed, with certain rocks in the water being used to set up the intermediate stations.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef6431970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36ef6431970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>The Schaffhausen wire rope transmission in 1896. Source: <a href=\"http://www.stadtarchiv-schaffhausen.ch/Bild-Schaffhausen.asp?startSequence=1&level1_ID=9&level2_ID=19&level3_ID=122&level4_ID=1643\">Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>It is interesting to republish Unwin's full description of the Schaffhausen installation, because \"it is essential to learn how far wire-rope transmission can be adapted to complex situations where many consumers require power\":</p>\n<blockquote><p>\"A weir was constructed during favourable seasons in 1864-66, across the rocky bed of the river, which is about 500 feet wide. By placing the turbine-house in the river-bed near the weir and constructing a tunnel tailrace 620 feet in length, a fall was obtained which varies from 15.6 to 13.7 feet. The turbine house contains three turbines with vertical shafts of 200, 260, and 300 hp, or 760 hp altogether. They gear with a common horizontal shaft by means of bevil gears. About 150 hp is transmitted from one of the turbines to a factory on the hill above the turbine-house, by a steel shaft 550 feet in length. From the same shaft also about 22 hp is transmitted, by a small cable passing down the left bank of the river and then crossing it, to a pulp factory on the right bank.\"</p>\n<p>\"This leaves a maximum of about 570 hp to be dealt with by the main cable transmission, which crosses the river directly from the turbine-house, and then passes along the right bank to the factories. The turbines are connected to two principal rope pulleys of 14.75 feet in diameter. From these pulleys two cables cross the river in a single span of 385 feet to a pulley station in the river at the left bank, where the direction of the transmission is changed by bevil gearing, and thence the transmission passes up the left bank of the river. The gross power in the horizontal driving shaft in the turbine-house is about 350 hp or, allowing for friction, say 500 effective hp to be transmitted to the factories, or 250 hp for each rope. Either rope is capable of transmitting at any rate a large fraction of the whole power temporarily, if the other rope is broken. The power is delivered by the ropes at the change station on the left bank. At that station about 22 hp is taken off by prolonging the second shaft of the bevil gearing and a subsidiary rope transmission.\"</p>\n<p>\"The remaining 478 hp is transmitted along the left bank to the first intermediate pulley station at a distance of 370 feet by a pair of cables. Thence to the second intermediate station, distant 345 feet, by another pair of cables. At 455 feet further is a second change station, at which the direction is again changed by gearing. Thence the ropes pass to two other intermediate stations. From the second intermediate station an underground shaft carries about 27 hp to ten small workshops, and from the second change station, and the third and fourth intermediate stations, cables are carried back across the river to factories on the right bank. From the first shaft on the second change station about 110 hp are distributed, partial by a special rope gear, partly by vertical and underground shafting, to four factories, one of which is the large Mosersche Gebaude; and from the second shaft of this station a steel shaft transmits 200 hp to Scholler's wool factory.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p>The Schaffhausen installation was a greatly successful undertaking. The number of renters of power grew from 13 in 1867 to 23 in 1887, while the average total horse power supplied grew from 121 to 641. The total income from rental of power rose tenfold. </p>\n<p><strong>Other Examples</strong></p>\n<p>The wire rope transmission at Fribourg, where the ravine is not suitable for factories, was no less impressive. Here, a wire rope transmitted 300 hp to an industrial site 90 m above the river. Power was distributed via wire ropes to a sawmill, a foundry, a chemical factory, a rope tramway for carrying timber, and a railway carriage works. The total distance of the transmission amounted to more than 1500 m. Part of the line passed through a specially designed tunnel.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee89658d3970d.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee89658d3970d.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>At Bellegarde, which lies about 25 km from Geneva, 3150 hp was transmitted in different directions via wire ropes from the river Rhône to the plain above, where it was used to operate a phosphate works, a wood pulp factory, a paper mill, a copper refinery and a pumping station. The transmission lines reached a total length of more than 900 m.</p>\n<p>Most wire rope transmissions were built in France, Switzerland and Germany, but the technology was used all over the world. Following a serious explosion, an installation was put up at a gunpowder factory at Ochta near St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1867. A total of 274 hp was transmitted by more than 3000 m of wire rope to 34 widely scattered workshops and laboratories. The wire rope transmission was adopted to ensure that the buildings should be at a safe distance from each other were another explosion to occur. </p>\n<p>At Gokak, India, a large telodynamic transmission was set to work in 1887. A total of 750 hp was transmitted to a large cotton mill via three wire ropes (illustration below).</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c359d4892970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c359d4892970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>Numerous wire rope installations were built in the United States -- a total of 400 telodynamic systems were reported in 1874. Most prominent were those at Lockport (New York), Lawrence (Kansas), and near Great Falls (Montana) on the upper Missouri River [7]. However, none of them approached the size of the Schaffhausen plant in Switzerland. The technology seems not to have attained the popularity and importance that it did in the regions of its principal continental use, writes Louis Hunter, who adds that "this was no doubt owing to the greater abundance of water powers in the US in a wide range of capacities, and to the abundance of coal and the rapidly increasing acceptance of steam power from the 1850s." </p>\n<p><strong>Efficiency</strong></p>\n<p>It may seem that wire rope power transmissions running over hundreds and sometimes thousands of metres, could not be very efficient. However, a wire rope transmission was considerably more efficient (and cheaper) than electricity up to distances of about 5 km (3 miles). As with <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/02/the-mechanical-transmission-of-power-jerker-line-systems.html\">jerker line systems</a>, the efficiency advantage was due to the fact that in a telodynamic transmission mechanical energy can be transmitted without conversion losses. This was emphasised by W.C. Unwin in 1894:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The telodynamic system has the peculiar advantage that it transmits the mechanical energy developed by the prime mover directly, without any intermediate transformation. In electrical distribution a double transformation is necessary: a transformation into electrical energy by a dynamo, and retransformation back into mechanical energy by an electric motor. This double transformation involves waste of power and increase of capital expended.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p>On the other hand, a wire rope transmission introduces friction losses. The principal source of waste in rope transmission is the friction in the journals of the wheel shafts. The friction losses become larger as the distance increases, because more pulley stations have to be introduced, while the conversion losses of electric transmission are independent of distance. (There were transportation losses for electricity, too, but these were comparatively small). Beyond a certain distance, a wire rope transmission loses its advantage over electricity.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee895e6ff970d.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017ee895e6ff970d.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>Pulley wheel of the wire rope transmission in Neuthal, Switzerland. <a href=\"http://www.industrieensemble.ch/wasser.wasserkraft.html#apDiv9\">Picture credit</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>The efficiency of telodynamic transmission was carefully examined by Ziegler, one of the better known manufacturers. He made experiments at Oberursel, where 104 hp was transmitted over a distance of 963 m, in seven spans of about 122 m each. Ziegler's measurements showed that total loss of work over eight stations was 13.5 hp, which comes down to an efficiency of about 87%. The loss of energy was about 1.7 hp per pulley station.</p>\n<p>From this he calculated that the efficiency of a wire rope transmission was 97% for a single span (two pulley stations), 95% for two spans (three pulley stations), 93% for three spans (four pulley stations), and 90% for five spans (six pulley stations). For nine spans (ten pulley stations), efficiency went down to 85%.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d40d114e5970c.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017d40d114e5970c.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center></p>\n<p>Another investigation, published in 1886, showed that wire rope had an efficiency that was largely superior for distances up to 900 m (3,000 feet), compared to the main competing technologies (electric, hydraulic and pneumatic transmission). Telodynamic transmission retained this advantage up to a distance of about 4,600 m (15,000 feet), beyond which it was defeated by electricity. In other words, wire rope lost its advantage over electricity when more than 35 pulley stations were involved. Were a wire rope transmission to be used over a distance of 18 km (60,000 feet), efficiency would go down to 13%. [8]</p>\n<p>Note that the results are for a full load -- both electrical and wire rope transmission would have been much less efficient at partial loads. Also note that the results for wire rope transmission involve power transmission in a straight line -- every angle station would introduce additional losses. With regards to cost, Hunter notes that copper wire was 1.4 times more expensive than wire rope, and all nineteenth-century authors state that wire rope transmission was cheaper in construction and use than electricity, even though the ropes had to be replaced every two to five years. </p>\n<p><strong>How would a Present-day Wire Rope Transmission Compare to Electricity?</strong></p>\n<p>The advantages of rope transmission calculated in 1860 and 1886 still hold today. The only difference would be that a comparison of a rope drive and an electrical transmission would now show much better efficiencies for electricity at distances of 10 or 20 km (30,000 or 60,000 feet). In the 1880s, electricity was still transmitted by direct current (DC), which is much less efficient at longer distances than the alternate current (AC) that we use today. With AC, the losses are only 3% over a distance of 1,000 km [9].</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36eee2a2970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36eee2a2970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>A wire rope power transmission leaves a water power plant, heading for a paper factory in Heilbronn, Germany. The line, 90 m long, was constructed in 1888. <a href=\"http://www.stadtarchiv-heilbronn.de/stadtgeschichte/unterricht/bausteine/muehlen/arbeitsvorschlaege/grundlagen/\">Photo credit</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>However, the efficiency of electricity would still be lower than that of a wire rope transmission over a relatively short distance, because of the double energy conversion that is required to move mechanical energy using electricity. The combined energy losses in a modern electric motor and generator are about 15%, which makes the double energy conversion 85% efficient [10]. This is better than the 69% efficiency in the 1889 table shown above, but still inferior to the efficiency of a nineteenth century wire rope transmission up to a distance of at least 1 km (3,000 feet).</p>\n<p>Of course, it is not fair to compare a nineteenth-century wire rope transmission with a 21st-century electric transmission. With today's knowledge and materials, a rope transmission could be improved in two ways: by using stronger and/or lighter ropes, and by running them at higher speeds. The result would be that more power can be transmitted over longer distances with less friction loss. In 1894, Unwin noted that: </p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The amount of work transmitted by a cable is proportional to the product of the effective tension (difference of the tension in the tight and slack sides) and the speed. To transmit power by manageable cables, the strongest material must be used for the cables, and they must be run at the highest practicable speed.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Substituting Velocity for Mass</strong></p>\n<p>This brings us to the basic physics of rope power transmission: in executing mechanical work, force can be transformed into velocity and vice versa. In a rope drive, energy can be transmitted at considerable velocity and little force, while at the receiving station it can be delivered in the generally more useful form of large force and little velocity. Increasing the speed of the transmission has a similar effect as increasing the diameter of the rope.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f3f16c970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f3f16c970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>The Schaffhausen wire rope transmission in 1896. Source: <a href=\"http://www.stadtarchiv-schaffhausen.ch/Bild-Schaffhausen.asp?startSequence=1&level1_ID=9&level2_ID=19&level3_ID=122&level4_ID=1643\">Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>If a rope with a diameter of 2.5 cm (1 inch) can transmit 50 hp at a velocity of 20 feet per second (22 km/h), the same rope could transmit 250 hp at a velocity of 100 feet per second (110 km/h). Conversely, if a rope with a diameter of 2.5 cm can transmit 50 hp at a velocity of 20 feet per second, a rope of only half that diameter could deliver the same amount of power if it was running at twice the speed, and should run at a velocity of 200 feet per second (220 km/h) in order to transmit 250 hp. </p>\n<p>Theoretically, there are no limits to power transmission by rope. "To put an extreme illustration", wrote Albert Stahl in 1889, "we may conceive of a speed at which an iron wire as fine as a human hair would be able to transmit the same amount of work as the original one-inch [rope]". Conversely, we could argue that if we could learn how to run ropes fast enough, a ship hawser could transmit the power of an entire nuclear plant [11]. While this is far from reality at this point, we do have better ropes than 120 years ago, and we can run them faster.</p>\n<p>In the nineteenth century, the maximum power able to be transmitted over a single wire rope transmission was about 300 hp. Unwin explains that:</p>\n<blockquote><p>"The amount of power which is practically possible to transmit by a single cable is limited. It is not possible by increasing the size of the cable to transmit an indefinetely large amount of power. The cables become too heavy to be manageable, and the pulleys too large in diameter. (...). The peripheries of the driving wheels may have an anular velocity as great as convenient; the only limit, in fact, being that the speed shall not be so great as to involve any danger of destroying the wheels by centrifugal force. One hundred feet per second has been adopted as the greatest practicable speed."</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Running Stronger Ropes at Higher Speeds</strong></p>\n<p>Today we have ropes made of artificial fibres, which have a similar tensile strength to wire ropes, but at one fifth the weight. Such ropes make it possible to place pulley towers further apart, reducing the friction loss and improving the efficiency of a rope transmission over longer distances. We could also try to run thicker ropes if they are lighter, thereby converting an efficiency advantage into a higher power capacity.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f3fff2970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f3fff2970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>The Schaffhausen wire rope transmission in 1896. Source: <a href=\"http://www.stadtarchiv-schaffhausen.ch/Bild-Schaffhausen.asp?startSequence=1&level1_ID=9&level2_ID=19&level3_ID=122&level4_ID=1643\">Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>It's also possible to build sturdier pullies, allowing us to run these ropes faster. Higher speeds would allow more power to be transmitted at the same rope diameter, or further improve efficiency (because we can transmit a similar amount of power using lighter ropes). Albert Stahl already foresaw this possibility in 1889:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The wheels themselves are made as light as is consistent with strength, not only for the sake of reducing the friction on the journals of their shafts to a minimum, but for the equally important object of diminishing the resistance of the air. It can hardly be doubted that abandoning spokes entirely, and making the pulley a plain disk, would considerably improve the performance, could such discs be made at once strong enough to fulfill the required functions, and light enough not materially to increase friction.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>More Efficient for Small-scale, Decentralized Energy Production</strong></p>\n<p>Most telodynamic installations disappeared before the end of the nineteenth century, although some remained in use until the 1930s. Wire rope transmission lost the fight against electricity, mainly because the power network became ever more centralised -- ever larger power plants would send their power over ever larger distances, which could not be bridged efficiently by wire ropes. </p>\n<p>Furthermore, a wire rope transmission did not offer a solution for the \"last mile\" in power transmission. It couldn't be used to distribute power to a great number of individual machines in a factory, because a wire rope transmission was not useful under a distance of about 15 m. In such cases, a wire rope transmission could not operate without millwork. Although the use of fibrous ropes had improved the workings of millwork, in this regard telodynamic transmission could not compete with the alternatives. Electricity, compressed air and hydraulic transmission offered an overall solution for both short and long-distance power transmission.</p>\n<p>In spite of these drawbacks, power transmission by ropes might have a place in our energy systems. Today, there is a trend towards small-scale, decentralised power production, based on renewable energy sources. These solar panels, water turbines or wind turbines generate electricity, but whenever we need to produce mechanical energy, eliminating the step of generating electricity could result in a somewhat less practical, but more efficient use of energy.</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f32eda970b.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.theoildrum.com/files/6a00e0099229e88833017c36f32eda970b.jpg\" width=\"50%\"></a></center><br>\n<center><i>A wire rope transmission powered by a water wheel in an open-air museum in Switzerland. Source: <a href=\"http://www.mulin-schnaus.ch/\">Historische Werkstätte Gebrüder Giger Mulin, Schnaus</a>.</i></center></p>\n<p>For instance, it is more efficient to power a circular saw by mechanical energy produced by <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-windmills.html\">a modern version of an old-fashioned windmill</a> or waterwheel than to convert the mechanical energy generated by wind or water to electricity by a turbine, and then convert it back into mechanical energy for powering the sawing machine. If power transmission is required in such a scenario, a wire rope transmission would be the most efficient choice. </p>\n<p><strong>Long-distance Rope Drives</strong></p>\n<p>Another advantage of a wire rope transmission is that it can double as a transportation system, combined with an aerial ropeway for goods or passengers. As we have seen in <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/01/aerial-ropeways-automatic-cargo-transport.html\">the article on aerial ropeways</a>, it was not unusual to tap power from a gravity-powered aerial ropeway to power a crane or other machinery. The combination of a wire rope power transmission with an aerial ropeway only works at lower speeds, so that power transmission capacity is limited. (An aerial ropeway was generally five times slower than a rope power transmission). Still, this could offer interesting advantages for small-scale power production, especially in mountainous areas.</p>\n<p>It may be that the future of wire rope transmission lies in long distance power transmission after all, at least vertically. The only research field that dedicates itself to rope drive technology these days is that of high-altitude kite power. Kites could harvest large amounts of energy at high altitudes, where winds are stronger and steadier. Transmitting this energy to Earth is most advantageously done by mechanical power transmission, says researcher Dave Santos from <a href=\"http://www.kitelabgroup.com/\">KiteLab Group</a> in an interview:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\"Electric cables would be too heavy. With kites, power-to-mass-plus-aerodrag is critical, and the mechanical case wins by a large factor. Wire rope is not quite so amazing as our new materials, but good enough for a critical advantage over electrical. The main challenge is to learn how to drive ropes at speeds of hundreds-of-miles-an-hour.\"</p></blockquote>\n<p>Ultimately, the rope drive may turn out to be useful for the same reason it was originally designed: it could unlock the potential of awkwardly-situated sources of renewable energy.</p>\n<p>Kris De Decker (edited by <a href=\"http://www.theculturemuncher.wordpress.com/\">Deva Lee</a>)</p>\n<p><strong>Sources:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://archive.org/details/transmissionpow02stahgoog\">Transmission of power by wire ropes</a>\", Albert W. Stahl, 1889.</li>\n<li>\"A history of industrial power in the United States, 1780 - 1930. Vol 3: The transmission of power\", Louis C. Hunter and Lynwood Bryant, 1991.</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/wireropeanditsa00hipkgoog\">The wire rope and its applications</a>\", W.E. Hipkins, 1896</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/descriptionofnew00roebrich\">Description of a new method of transmitting power by means of wire ropes</a>\", W.A. Roebling, 1872.</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://archive.org/details/ropedrivingatre03flatgoog\">Rope driving: a treatise on the transmission of power by means of fibrous ropes</a>\", John J. Flather, 1900.</li>\n<li>\"Notice sur la transmission telodynamique / Short notice of the telodynamic transmission of motive power\", C.F. Hirn, 1862</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"https://archive.org/details/ondevelopmentan03unwigoog\">On the development and transmission of power from central stations</a>\", W.C. Unwin, 1894. (<a href=\"https://archive.org/details/ondevelopmentan01unwigoog\">alternative link</a>).</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://archive.org/details/derconstructeur00reulgoog\">Der Constructeur. Ein Handbuch zum Gebrauch beim Mashinen-Entwerfen. Für Mashinen- und Bau-Ingenieure, Fabrikanten und technische Lehranstalten</a>\", F. Reuleaux, 1869</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://dingler.culture.hu-berlin.de/search?q=%3DDrahtseil-Transmission\">Drahtseil Transmission</a>\", Polytechnischen Journals (multiple articles, 1850-1910)</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://dingler.culture.hu-berlin.de/search?q=drahtseil\">Drahtseil</a>\", Polytechnischen Journals (multiple articles, 1850-1910)</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://etcomp.pagesperso-orange.fr/bellegarde/en1877.htm\">Transmission des Forces Motrices des Turbine sur le Rhône de la Compagnie Générale à Bellegarde</a>", web page, retrieved February 2013. </li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://etcomp.pagesperso-orange.fr/bellegarde/telemca.htm\">La Télémécanique</a>\", web page, retrieved February 2013</li>\n<li>\"Turbinenanlage und Seiltransmission der Wasserwerkgesellschaft in Schaffhausen\", J.H. Kronauer, 1867.</li>\n<li>\"A trade catalog on the transmission of power by wire rope\", Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Technology and Culture, Vol.16, No.1, January 1975, pp 70-73.</li>\n<li>\"From shafts to wires\", in \"Journal of Economic History\", Michael Devine, 1983.</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://ia600307.us.archive.org/24/items/kritischevergle00berigoog/kritischevergle00berigoog.pdf\">Kritische Vergleichung der Elektrischen Kraftübertragung mit den gebräuchlichsten mechanischen Uebertragungssystemen</a>\", A. Beringer, 1883</li>\n<li>\"<a href=\"http://archive.org/stream/coursdemcanique09boulgoog#page/n253/mode/2up\">Cours de mécanique appliquée aux machines</a>\", J. Boulvin, 1891.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>Notes: </strong></p>\n<ol>\n<li>Stahl, 1889</li>\n<li>The Stangenkunst at the Lady Isabella wheel was the most powerful installation ever built, transmitting 150 hp using wooden rods. For pictures, see <a href=\"http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/01/mechanical-transmission-of-power-stangenkunst.html\">part one of this series</a></li>\n<li>Flather, 1900</li>\n<li>Hunter, 1991</li>\n<li>Pneumatic and hydraulic transmission will be discussed in a forthcoming article</li>\n<li>Flather, 1900</li>\n<li>Hunter, 1991</li>\n<li>Beringer, 1886 and Unwin, 1894</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/harting1/\">AC Transmission Line Losses</a>, Stanford University, fall 2010</li>\n<li>More powerful motors are generally more efficient, less powerful motors are less efficient. The figures given are for a 100 hp motor, similar to the power transmitted at Oberursel</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.kitelabgroup.com/\">Dave Santos</a>, personal communication, February 2013</li>\n</ol><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?a=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?i=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?a=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?a=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?a=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/theoildrum?i=e1Zq0qZoZbY:8MQlSx0IVOs:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/theoildrum/~4/e1Zq0qZoZbY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Give Us This Day Our Private Grief",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">I was at the <b>Salon du Livre</b> in Paris, meeting my wonderful new French publishers, <a href=\"http://plus.google.com/108501162678277794565\">+Editions Zulma</a>, speaking of the importance of integrity and consistency in the building of a literary career, when I missed a phone call from my agent's office in London. I called back to find that Chinua Achebe had died. I was incredibly sad to hear of the passing of Chinua, and – for a brief period – I regretted not being available in the UK to contribute to various news items covering his death. An hour later, having thought it through, I realised that it was a blessing that I was unavailable for comment.<br><br>The loss of a literary and political giant – especially one who embodied the very integrity and consistency I was discussing when I heard of his passing – is upsetting to us in ways that are hard to put into words, yet it also heralds a festival of agendas. The same public officials that Chinua Achebe lambasted in Nigeria will seek to claim him, taking out adverts in the national press to mourn his passing; the critics that defended Joseph Conrad when Achebe labelled him racist will seek to rehash the old argument, confident that he will not be around to rebut; news outlets will seek the most compelling way to extrapolate the significance of his death to embrace African issues of the day – whether it's corruption in Nigeria, religious killings, the current generation of writers from the continent or secession movements; various publishers will be quietly awaiting the post-death sales spike.<br><br>The one thing we the currently-domiciled-in-the-West can be certain of, when we lose such a giant, from a continent considered to be peripheral in the literary world, is that our authors – <i>African writers</i> – will suddenly be in demand by news outlets – for comment, for public display of their grief, to reinforce the accepted narrative of the greatness of the fallen. The problem is, when these outlets ask us for our opinions, for our sentiments, they tend to only be interested in our responses as relates to the narrative that they are constructing around the event. But our relationship to these icons is not always as simple as they would like. Yes, I am devastated by Achebe's death – in part because I think the recognition he got was always skewed towards one book, when his achievements were far greater than that – but Achebe was never my ultimate inspiration. Like him, the reason I started writing was the impulses I got from reading European writers – that is simply what we have inherited. The idea of writing for print was seeded by those European authors, who practised in that small sliver of the greater culture of storytelling. However, my love for stories came from my family (what would be labelled my extended family in the West), my activism for communities and for representation in history, from being raised in a collective culture. It is only later that my inclinations, my tendencies to document the margins, were given structure and guidance by the examples of pioneers like Achebe, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Kwame Nkrumah and Margaret Atwood. <br><br>But this is not the kind of tidy narrative that works for the media. I know from experience that if I said this on pre-recorded radio or television, it wouldn't make the final edit; for a newspaper, they might try to get me to edit to suit them until, realising my unwillingness to change, they would pay me for the content and not use it. How do I explain that in my home country, we do not only mourn, we eulogise and celebrate? I am no expert on Igbo culture, but I was so glad to see that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's response to Achebe's death was an elegy in Igbo. It may be considered too sentimental for the <i>New York Times</i>, but it is apt and heartfelt. It is the right kind of public grief – a private-public expression of loss on her own terms, something you can't fully translate to suit news headlines. <br><br>Yes, we are bereft. Achebe was a great writer, editor and mentor, a highly intelligent individual with incredible capacity for empathy and forgiveness (in my opinion, Biafra was a hard thing to forgive). He was also fearless; he went onto battlefields where few had dared tread and showed us what armour we would need for our future skirmishes. He bore a torch and raised it high so we wouldn't trip over our own feet. <br><br>But there is a bigger truth underlying Achebe's departure: we are at a point when many African countries are marking 50 or more years of post-European-colonial life – that means that many of our well-documented pioneers (I make the distinction because the notion of pioneers only existing after the European-colonial era is patently false), are in their late-70s and early 80s and we are likely to be mourning some more over the next few years. Sadly, we are still fighting some of the same battles Achebe fought, still trying to shift the image of Africa that Europe insists on perpetuating, still having to explain how and why our writing in English or French or Portuguese or Arabic is not a loss of self. And I guarantee, that in the next few weeks, you will see articles dedicated to seeking the 'successors' of Chinua Achebe in a way that no one sought the successors of Saul Bellow when he died. The articles will claim they are well-meaning, the contributors will be <i>Africa scholars</i> (or even <i>African writers</i>) but ultimately, I can't see how they can be anything but patronising; we are living our lives and developing our art, we don't need anyone to tell us where to look, thank you. <br><br>Oh, Chinua, thank you for the stories, for the guidance, for your clarity. Because of you, we can see how much work we still have to do. We mourn you, we mourn our sleep. Our writing lives are like the breaking of anthills – the ants rebuild if we ever dare to rest. This is our private grief.<b><br></b><b><br></b><b>what i'm reading/listening to</b><br><i>listening:</i><br><b><i>Conflict</i></b> by Ebo Taylor & Uhuru Yenzu - from <a href=\"http://plus.google.com/113536480846081521837\">+Mr Bongo Worldwide</a><br><img height=\"40px\" src=\"http://productimages.wehkamp.nl/is/image/Wehkamp/345491_pb_01/2012Square128/-ebo-taylor-conflict-(cd).jpg\" width=\"40px\"><br><i>reading:</i><br><b><i>Running the Dusk</i></b> by Christian Campbell + <b><i>The Full Indian Rope Trick</i></b> by Colette Bryce<br><img height=\"100px\" src=\"http://www.thebahamasweekly.com/uploads/7/CC-Running-the-dusk-front-cover-7.jpg\"><br><br></div>"
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border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-hfOjtDa08VE/UUw2x5_cXuI/AAAAAAAAK2c/ATY02sDxdFw/s1600-h/DSC085924.jpg\"><img title=\"DSC08592\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"DSC08592\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-0HqGtN_zMQs/UUw2ywHVnyI/AAAAAAAAK2g/CO5_DuSbS7U/DSC08592_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-2Sp2u9eGKqc/UUw20nA0QjI/AAAAAAAAK2s/xfdYk6Ij8lI/s1600-h/DSC085954.jpg\"><img title=\"DSC08595\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"DSC08595\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-YNwMCOBN2vw/UUw22PUKP2I/AAAAAAAAK20/-NsBBBPfHU4/DSC08595_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-4NZteMZ9h2Y/UUw25WQE9QI/AAAAAAAAK28/ohmmgWfF9DA/s1600-h/DSC085994.jpg\"><img title=\"DSC08599\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"DSC08599\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Sftu79GcIy8/UUw260TRddI/AAAAAAAAK3E/gq2lY_kwW7c/DSC08599_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-D1lLKKft3nM/UUw28QzwFOI/AAAAAAAAK3M/LhYLDbzxJCo/s1600-h/Dsc086033.jpg\"><img title=\"Dsc08603\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"457\" alt=\"Dsc08603\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-Tj5-x0svPxc/UUw2-M59ogI/AAAAAAAAK3U/WbJaKfwdusw/Dsc08603_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-KwxMhlYHkIo/UUw2_hyShKI/AAAAAAAAK3c/cD5QglF2Hjg/s1600-h/DSC086044.jpg\"><img title=\"DSC08604\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"259\" alt=\"DSC08604\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-w9n2hPvLYS0/UUw3BBtosqI/AAAAAAAAK3k/Q8aUFgK-4TI/DSC08604_thumb1.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>To view the complete flags please visit the newly updated gallery on our website <a href=\"http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/asafogallery.htm\">here</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Chinua Achebe and the Damnation of Faint Praise",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/chinua-achebe-and-the-damnation-of-faint-praise/chinua-achebe-young/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-36886\"><img title=\"Chinua-Achebe-young\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Chinua-Achebe-young-383x383.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"383\"></a></p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2008/01/in-retrospect-conversation-with-norman.html\">interview</a> a few years ago, Norman Rush was talking about the ways he was influenced by African writers, and he mentioned that “No non-African could do what Achebe has done.” And I get what he was saying. But there’s also a back-handedness to this compliment that makes me nervous. Here’s the thing: Achebe was just a great writer, full stop. I’m not sure <em>anyone </em>could do what he did. And while it may seem like a small point, like complaining that a genuine compliment just isn’t <em>enough </em>of a compliment, there’s an important point of which it’s in service, a larger issue of who gets to “know” what sorts of knowledges and why. It diminishes his achievement to pretend that white writers don’t write about the things he wrote about, because if Rush’s novels (or any post-war white novelist) had to be placed next to Achebe’s, we might have to acknowledge the uncomfortable fact that the best practitioner of English literature might be an African.</p>\n<p>I am certainly not suggesting we treat novel-writing like a foot race. But there are those who certainly do think of literature as a kind of olympic sport, and for “our” writers to share the same field with “their” writers would be as calamitous as for a black pitcher to throw to a white batter in baseball’s pre-Jackie Robinson era. He might strike him out, after all (or, more complexly, he might <em>not</em>). So, as a result, we get separate events for “race” or “cultural” writers, distinct and cordoned off from the more universal concerns of <em>real</em> writers. And, as widely read as Achebe is, it always irks me that people so rarely revere him in the way that I think he should be revered. I may seem to be making the banal request that people should revere him <em>more</em>, I’m not, not really; I’m saying we should revere him <em>better</em>, doing so for better reasons.</p>\n<p><em>Things Fall Apart</em>, for example, is a very deceptively simple book, and I suspect this apparent simplicity deceives the vast majority of his readers. Okonkwo may be a man who never let thinking get in the way of whatever he wanted to do, but his puppetmaster’s seemingly uncrafted and naïve narration is as tightly plotted and structured as the Greek dramaturgy it both tropes on and defies. It may seem to be the simple story of a man and his destiny, a simply redemptive vision of a romantic lifestyle wiped out by colonialism and a condemnation of the colonialists that did it, but part of its magnificence as a piece of writing is that it manages to be all of this without disturbing its ability to also be about the ways that culture gets politicized, the way that traditionalism manages to express (and, dare I say, <em>sublate</em>) deeper and less coherent political anxieties and desires, particularly different modes of gender practice. And it’s a novel which enacts these conflicting desires with a certain magnificent disdain for resolving them, or moralizing on them. So much of what Okonkwo does gets moralized upon in such spectacularly unsuccessful ways that one can (I would argue) <em>understand </em>Okonkwo only by deferring judgment of him, like a particle in a parable on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The plot hinges on why Okonkwo kills his stepson, but that act is also the novel’s black box; one can offer any number of explanations for Okonkwo’s act (and the consequences which it provokes in the style of Greek tragedy), but the novel does everything in its power to illustrate the ultimate unknowability of that origination, until one is left only to reflect on the ways that Okonkwo’s unknowability gets known, the ways that fictive truths take the place of a true truth eternally deferred. Precisely because the author refuses to authoritatively know Okonkwo, the novel has a profound and complex double-life, a narrative given shape by the absence at its center.</p>\n<p>The simple point is simply that Achebe is not anything but a peer of “great” writers. And of course Rush didn’t deny that. But there is, hidden in the nest of assumptions out of which his aside slithered, a particular claim for the proper spheres inhabited by white writers and the proper sphere inhabited by Africans: what an African knows, a white person cannot, and vice versa. To say that only an African could write what Achebe wrote is to excuse himself for not having done so, and to claim his own little piece of the rock, the white person novel.</p>\n<p>Who would waste their breath in asserting that only a white person could really understand what it means to be white? I think of the mystifications of the title character in Esk’ia Mphaphlele’s “Mrs. Plum” as an example of how the eyes of non-white characters (and authors) show us “whiteness” in all its glory. Sometimes those who live outside your world understand you in a way you don’t understand yourself, and this is as important a part of identity as the kind of claims made by a “race” writer. It is largely a <em>white </em>fiction that only Africans can understand Africa, and so too is Rush’s space-clearing gesture for himself a popular kind of white privilege within “African letters”: he is happy to be shielded from competition, to be awarded a tiny, but comfortable corner in which to sit. Rush is as much a race writer in this sense as Achebe. But while Achebe was canny enough to realize that white people were quick to extend him the benefit of the doubt with regards to his subject (being African, he must surely know Africans), he was also aware that he hardly deserved that credit, and made something powerful out of that realization. What, after all, did a Christian-educated Nigerian of the mid-twentieth century really know about the inner life of a late nineteenth century Igbo warrior, a man who never lived to hear the word Nigeria? And so, instead of eliding that knowledge, he built a magnificent literary edifice on top of it. Instead of donning the victory wreath he was awarded for a game he was too good to play, he proclaimed that the center was hollow, and would not hold.</p>\n<p>(originally posted on <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/chinua-achebe-and-the-damnation-of-faint-praise/\">zunguzungu</a>, 2008. Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013, RIP)</p>"
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"content" : "“Grievous bodily harm is being done to the web ecosystem. For a good decade, tools and infrastructure were built that wrangled the web with a view of feeds as an ideal medium for information dissemination and consumption. Google Reader’s role was crucial and necessary.”<br><br> - <em><p><em><a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2013/03/blues-of-omnivorous-reader.html\">Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah</a> at </em>Korantengs Toli<em>. </em><span>Blues of an Omnivorous Reader</span></p>\n<p><span>A </span><span>testament</span><span> to my poor organization skills is the fact that my largest category at Google Reader is titled: Bloglines Subscriptions. I haven’t figured out where, but an RSS aggregator is something I want. My computer isn’t powerful enough so I got really frustrated with a client side program.</span></p></em>"
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"title" : "What would you do: Part 2, the Island of Surpyc",
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"content" : "<p>Welcome! Once more, I’m trying to help people understand how policies get made from the inside, and how something that looks like a dumb idea can often be the best choice out of a bad decision set, in the context of the ongoing Euro crisis. The last one was pretty didactic, in that I was aiming to steer people down a path to the decisions I thought were being under-rated. This time, what strikes me about the Cyprus policy agenda is the sheer amount of uncertainty and ambiguity; nearly every idea could end up succeeding brilliantly or failing horribly. So this time round, I’m introducing a large element of chance.</p>\n\n\t<p>In this episode, <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/16/so-what-would-your-plan-for-greece-be/\">as in the last one</a> you are once again a representative of the Secret One World Government, and you have been temporarily flown in to pull the strings in the island of Surpyc, which is currently experiencing a bailout crisis…</p>\n\n\t<p><span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>In this game you will need two dice. At various points in the game, chance will govern the outcome. When instructed to roll the dice, you should follow the accepted methodology:</p>\n\n\t<p>1. Check both outcome to see which is the good one<br>\n2. Decide whether you really think you deserve a bit of good luck, whether I was wrong in setting the probabilities, in general whatever rationale for picking the good outcome you can think of<br>\n3. Go back later and see whether the bad outcome was really gruesome.</p>\n\n\t<p>Certainly, anyone trying to play it properly is going to cause me to doubt their sanity. I’ve tried to make the probabilities match up in a sort of broadly cardinal way, so that the really unlikely strategies are longshots, and the stuff that I think should probably work is about a two-to-one on. But really, assigning well-defined dice-roll probabilities to the outcomes of a complex and political process is usually a pretty bad idea unless you’re absolutely clear about what you’re doing, and that you’re in no danger of fooling yourself or anyone else that your probabilities have any basis at all in reality. Basically, I would live in fear of my signed copies of “Antifragility” and “The Black Swan” spontaneously combusting if I thought anyone was likely to take the probabilities implied below as anything other than a joke (albeit not a cheap joke, this took a whole bloody evening to do). On the other hand, there is a strong element of “Fooled by Randomness” in it, as there is literally no policy, however stupid, that can’t end up doing at least all right (and often better), and even the best ideas have a strong chance of ending up going to hell.</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>1.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Saturday evening</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“I didn’t expect to see you again”. There’s a somewhat awkward silence between you and the occupant of the room, who is sitting on the edge of a desk drinking tea. It’s Maynard. “We didn’t part on the best of terms”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“No, we didn’t”, he replies, guardedly. “And the fact that we’re back here working together shouldn’t be taken as a good sign. Either for our own careers, or for the problem itself. This situation has landed on our desks precisely because everyone with enough clout to wash their hands of it has done so.” He points to the tablet computer on the desktop, which is showing a spreadsheet:</p>\n\n\t<p><tt>Cost of bank bailout ….............................EUR10bn<br>\n<br>\nBudget deficit and debt rollover…..................EUR 7bn<br>\n<br>\n<b>Total…............................................EUR17bn</b></tt></p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard opens his legal pad and starts writing. “Nonetheless, bygones are bygones, I suppose. As before, I propose and you dispose. Remember that your first duty is to reach an adequate solution for Surpyc, but you will also be judged on the effect that your actions have on the wider global system. We are the One World Government, after all. As the spreadsheet shows, we need seventeen billion euro, or we’re looking at a disorderly default. First decision to make – when we get up in the morning tomorrow, are we going to negotiate with the Troika, or should we go it alone?</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“We negotiate with the Troika”. Go to 10.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“The Troika reliably make things worse. We go it alone”. Go to 28.</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>2.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning / afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>You and Maynard sit in the office, drinking tea and looking at the telephone.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Sooner or later, he’s going to crack”, you say.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Something’s going to give, sooner or later”, Maynard responds.</p>\n\n\t<p>Time passes.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Masterly inactivity. Don’t give him anything to push against”, you add. Maynard appears to be doodling.</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard looks like he is about to say something, when the phone rings. Both of you are almost too startled to pick it up.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up with a five or six, go to 42</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up any other number, go to 48</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>3.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday night/ Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>De Grieux acknowledges your call with politeness but nothing more. There is nothing to do but default and let the chips fall where they may. And the chips fall pretty much everywhere.</p>\n\n\t<p>The markets take Surpyc’s disorderly default very badly. The banking system is in collapse and the <span>ECB</span> has removed support. The island has become the first country to be expelled from the Euro. The immediate consequence of this has been a rapid liquidity crunch across Europe, as it becomes clear that the <span>ECB</span>’s doctrine of “Anything it takes” does not really mean “anything”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“You did what you could”, Maynard attempts to console you. “Sometimes it just isn’t meant to be. Nobody blames you”. But you have an email from your parents. They have seen you on the news, heading for the airport and they want you to know that your old room is always ready.</p>\n\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>4.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Alexi Ivanovich’s office is small and not exactly what you would expect to see from an organization capable of doing billion-euro deals. Maynard takes a look at his business card and his face falls; when you read it you can see why.</p>\n\n\t<p>He’s a fixer, agent middleman. He has no “organization”. He’s just trying to see if a deal can be talked into happening and to take a commission on it if it does.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Let’s leave quickly”, Maynard says, and you agree. Your departure is on the very threshold of politeness.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Where to?” the driver asks.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Back to the office. We need to make preparations for default” Go to 40.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“To De Grieux’ office. Looks like the troika is the only game in town”. Go to 7</p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>5.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“WHAT <span>WERE YOU THINKING</span>!!” Maynard has already packed and left the office. He is shouting at you over the phone, seemingly from an airport taxi.</p>\n\n\t<p>It is a disaster. Across Europe, lines have formed in front of bank branches. The precedent you have set seems to have spooked every bank depositor into believing that they could be the next ones to be expropriated. Meanwhile, the sudden loss of EUR30bn of offshore deposits has left the banking sector on its knees, requiring another bailout. You have received a curt memorandum informing you that your services will not be required to organize this one.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>6.</p>\n\n\t<p>“NOOOOO!” You are somewhat embarrassed at the volume of the howling noise that leaves your body. Maynard turns to pour some tea, rather sheepishly, but he is clearly shocked too.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Well”, he says. “We’re in the lap of the gods now”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Is there time to revise the plan? Can we call the troika back?” you ask, feverishly trying to come up with ideas.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Out of time, I’m afraid. Can’t keep having bank holidays forever.”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is two or three, go to 11.</p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is four or greater, go to 26.</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>7.</p>\n\n\t<p><b> Early Sunday evening</b></p>\n\n\t<p>De Grieux is visibly angry that you have kept him waiting so long. “Who have you been talking to?”, he demands. Out of professionalism, and embarrassment, you refuse to tell him.</p>\n\n\t<p>For the rest of the meeting De Grieux is obstinate. There is no more money forthcoming from the troika, and the <span>ECB</span> is wholly inflexible. As he explains it, the banking system of Surpyc has been living on borrowed time for far too long. You try to make some comment about the willingness of the German government to compromise in the past, but this turns out to be a big mistake.</p>\n\n\t<p>De Grieux is somewhat intimidating personally as he invades your personal space. “The internal politics of the troika are none of your business. You have a job to do and I suggest you do it. Make your budget, and make sure it passes the parliament. You have already wasted half a day for no obvious reason”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard smoothes things over, a little bit, and describes the problem. You can set one tax rate on uninsured deposits, and one on uninsured, but the total tax take must be EUR7bn. If you set the rate on insured deposits too high, you are going to create massive popular unrest; on the other hand, the lower the rate on small deposits, the higher the rate on uninsured deposits will have to be. If the rate on the large deposits is too big, you will effectively have closed down the financial services industry, and that too will predictably generate opposition in parliament. De Grieux makes a wholly unpleasant noise as he indicates that he would not be too sorry to see the offshore banks close forever.</p>\n\n\t<p>Back in your office, Maynard has done some rough figuring on his legal pad. “I think there’s two solutions worth considering”, he says. “Either we levy a charge of 15.7% on the uninsured assets and leave the insured deposits untaxed. Or we keep the tax on uninsured deposits in single digits – say 9% – and tag the small deposits at 6.7%”. What do you think?</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Option 1: only tax the large deposits”. Go to 46</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“Option 2: keep the top rate down and make the insured depositors pay at least something”. Go to 18</p>\n\n\t<p>“There’s always the nuclear option. Let’s take this to the brink of default and see if De Grieux is bluffing”. Go to 2</p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\n\t<p>8.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>You wake up wearily, with a bad head after staying up too late the previous night, smoking cigarettes and strategizing over brandy with Maynard. The news throughout Monday continued to be bad; global markets took the news from Surpyc badly, with the Dow off as much as 260 points at the lows. Obviously you were blamed, and spent most of the afternoon fending off inquiries from your superiors, all of whom seemed to have been got to be Alexei Ivanovich and his organization.</p>\n\n\t<p>And it didn’t even work. As soon as the banks opened after the Tuesday holiday, the lines snaked up and down the streets. The Surpyc depositors had no confidence that they would be spared second time round, and with the size of the banking sector deficit growing every day, it was increasingly obvious that there would be a second round. You still have the ticket stub from your journey home. You haven’t flown business class since that date.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>9.</p>\n\n\t<p>“We won!” Maynard actually hugs you. “Extraordinary! I’d have thought it impossible!”. Clearly, “fifty fifty” was his attempt to spare your feelings. The television is now switching to the scenes of the demonstrations. They are getting distinctly rowdier, although you wouldn’t call what you see an actual riot at this stage. You stagger back to your hotel room, open the minbar and call room service. Tomorrow will be spent by the swimming pool; there is nothing to do but wait until the banks open.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice:</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up even, go to 47</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up odd, go to 5</p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>10.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard is already at his desk by the time you arrive. He directs you to the tablet once again. “We have offers”, he observes, placidly. “There might be some possibility here after all. But the news is decidedly not all good. The troika are … well, read it for yourself”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Two documents have arrived on your secure email system. The first is from the troika representative. It is quite clearly bad news.</p>\n\n\t<p><tt>The <span>IMF</span> and <span>ESM</span> are together prepared to underwrite loans of EUR10bn. If a sustainable program with total funding EUR17bn can be agreed, the <span>ECB</span> is prepared to continue to extend Emergency Liquidity Assistance to your banking system. If the program cannot be so concluded, this lending will also be terminated, in which case you should make arrangements for the closure of your two largest banks.</tt></p>\n\n\t<p>We strongly recommend that you consider a one-off tax on deposits, to take advantage of the considerable offshore financial services industry. We would like to discuss this at your earliest convenience.</p>\n\n\t<p>Yours, &c &c</p>\n\n\t<p>M. De Grieux</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard sees the colour rise in your face and raises his eyebrows. “Had the same effect on me. Basically, requirements seventeen billion, resources, ten billion, result misery. I’ve got some provisional figures on the deposit system”. He pushes his legal pad across the desk:</p>\n\n\t<p><tt>Insured deposits…...........EUR45bn<br>\n<br>\nUninsured deposits….........EUR45bn<br>\n<br>\n<b>Total…......................EUR90bn</b></tt></p>\n\n\t<p>“Think on that. Write it down, you’ll need it. Meantime …”. He gestures back at your tablet. You start to read the second secure message, which is much shorter.</p>\n\n\t<p><tt>Mr Astley: Subject to agreement on minerals royalties and other commitments, my organization could be willing to advance EUR7bn on terms to be negotiated. Please contact me, <i>immediately and in strict confidence</i>. Best regards, Alexei Ivanovich</tt></p>\n\n\t<p>“So, a two way choice”, Maynard indicates. “I can set up one conference call this morning, and perhaps a second this afternoon. Who shall we speak to first?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“The troika”. Go to 25</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“The Russians”. Go to 35</p>\n\n\t<p>“Actually it’s a three way choice. We don’t have to talk to anyone. We’re going to default. No, I know that means leaving the Euro. My mind’s made up”. Go to 40</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>11.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>You wait for the earthquake, but the earthquake never comes. Deposits start to flood out of the country, but the <span>ECB</span> continues to provide the temporary loans to fund their exit. Shortly after the market open, you receive a visit in your office. M De Grieux and Alexei Ivanovich appear to have been communicating with each other independently of you. Between the two of them, they have been able to find the missing EUR7bn. The loan terms are onerous, but the show of commitment is impressive – the markets seem to be impressed that a new spirit is active in Europe, under which it can expect to see problems solved collaboratively and with much larger fiscal transfers.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Who’d have known it? He was bluffing all along”, you chirp to Maynard, as the two of you wait for the airport taxi.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I think we dodged a bullet there. Still, a win’s a win”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>12.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard swiftly and efficiently arranges a round-table meeting between you, Ivanovich and De Grieux. Talks go on for the whole afternoon, with the troika representative repeatedly leaving the room to talk on the telephone. Ivanovich never leaves the room; he clearly has authority to negotiate and sign off. He grows more and more amused as the afternoon wears on.</p>\n\n\t<p>By seven o’clock, there is an agreement. The troika will contribute EUR11bn, Ivanovich’s company will buy the resources rights for <span>EUR5</span>..5bn, and the <span>ECB</span> will tolerate the slippage in the plan, effectively kicking the can down the road.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Under the circumstances”, you say to Maynard, “I don’t see much benefit in us hanging around to see the market open”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“A deal’s a deal”, he agrees. The two of you hail an airport taxi as De Grieux starts his press conference.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>13.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday night</b></p>\n\n\t<p>It is hardly an hour before the phone starts ringing in response to your ultimatum. De Grieux greets you with surprising warmth. “Well”, he chuckles, “I suppose we need to open up the supposedly non-existent Plan B, then!”. The two of you work on details through the small hours, ready to draft a statement to be released before the markets open. The missing EUR7bn is back, or at least EUR5bn of it is, released from a variety of emergency budgets and bilateral loans.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your career has survived another knock. Everyone accepts that Surpyc was an impossible situation. All the officials loudly assert that it doesn’t set a precedent, but the world knows now – when it came to the crunch, Europe blinked.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\n\t<p>14.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“Sensible”, says Maynard. “We keep some kind of concept of moral hazard alive, and we stop ourselves from having to guess the reactions of a crowd. Thump the tax on the lowest elasticity, that’s what I say”. You cannot help thinking he sounds like he’s whistling past a graveyard.</p>\n\n\t<p>All afternoon, Maynard works with legislators on a bill for an emergency session to be held that evening, while you field increasingly intrusive and angry calls from Alexei Ivanovich. Someone is clearly leaking, and Ivanovich is equally clearly angry that you haven’t responded to his offer of a meeting. As the crucial vote draws near, you begin to worry that you have done the right thing.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If the total is nine or greater, go to 27.</p>\n\n\t<p>If the total is eight or less, go to 32.</p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>15.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday night/ Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Ivanovich never gets back to you. But as evening turns into night, De Grieux calls. The two of you work on details through the small hours, ready to draft a statement to be released before the markets open. The missing EUR7bn is back, or at least EUR5bn of it is, released from a variety of emergency budgets and bilateral loans.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your career has survived another knock. Everyone accepts that Surpyc was an impossible situation. All the officials loudly assert that it doesn’t set a precedent, but the world knows now – when it came to the crunch, Europe blinked.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>16.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Another day, another emergency session of the legislature. You are well rested, but Maynard has been up all night, fielding calls as international leaders step up pressure on the legislators. The failure of the first plan has unnerved markets somewhat, but you only need to win over eight waverers. Your hopes are reasonably high. You turn on the television and wait for the vote to be announced.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If the total score is five or greater, go to 29.</p>\n\n\t<p>If the total score is four or less, go to 6</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>17.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday night/ Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\n\t<p>After a brutal late night battle, your package is passed. You ring De Grieux at three in the morning, doing little to improve his temper, but confirming that the troika is prepared to proceed on the basis of EUR7bn raised from a tax on uninsured deposits.</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard yawns and heads for the hotel, saying “Well, now we see. The offshore depositors won’t like it, but we’ve got our money and the troika should play fair with us. Nothing to do until tomorrow morning”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Over breakfast, the two of you rapidly cheer up.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your Blackberry is still buzzing with angry messages from Alexei Ivanovich, who is calling you every name under the sun. But the financial press generally agrees that the final compromise was the best deal available, albeit after a lot of unnecessary drama. The people of Surpyc were pleasantly surprised to discover that, after all, their deposits were not to be confiscated; public feeling is still not exactly favourable and there are a number of hard cases of ordinary citizens who had the bad luck to have their house sale proceeds sitting in an account over the weekend. But the troika have paid up, and although the end of the tunnel is a long way away, crisis seems to have been averted. The principle that insured deposits are sacrosanct appears to have been strengthened, if anything, by your little adventure.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>18.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Having stayed up all night trying to draft your legislation and build a coalition, you are now in the lap of the gods. Alexei Ivanovich has proved to be surprisingly helpful; all manner of international financiers have called your office expressing support for your “measured” approach, and, somewhat more ominously, asking questions about future tax treaties.</p>\n\n\t<p>By late afternoon, Maynard is worried. Things have dragged on too late, and there will not be time to revise any plans if this does not pass the legislature first time. “We’re basically hoping that not too many of the coalition are bright enough to realize that this bill is electoral suicide. Let’s hope that they’re … sensitive to the concerns of the offshore lobby”, he informs you.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Delicately put, Maynard”, you reply.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up with a one, go to 21</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up a two or higher, go to 38</p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>19.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>You and Maynard are sipping glasses of champagne in the airport bar.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I think our sequencing was just right”, you say as you clink glasses.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Can’t go at these things like a bull at a gate”, Maynard agrees. “Got to prepare the ground”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your Blackberry is rapidly filling up with angry messages from Alexei Ivanovich, who is calling you every name under the sun. But the financial press generally agrees that the final compromise was the best deal available, albeit after a lot of unnecessary drama. The people of Surpyc were pleasantly surprised to discover that, after all, their deposits were not to be confiscated; public feeling is still not exactly favourable and there are a number of hard cases of ordinary citizens who had the bad luck to have their house sale proceeds sitting in an account over the weekend. But the troika have paid up, and although the end of the tunnel is a long way away, crisis seems to have been averted. The principle that insured deposits are sacrosanct appears to have been strengthened, if anything, by your little adventure.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Cheers”, you say, and drain your glass.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\n\n\t<p>20.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The markets open but the domestic banks don’t. According to your orders, the bank holiday has been extended to Wednesday, to allow for the printing of a new currency, into which all of the bank deposits and assets are redenominated. All of your external liabilities are in default. The world pauses for breath …</p>\n\n\t<p>Things go badly. Bank runs take off in Spain, Italy and even France. The <span>ECB</span> holds the line, eventually, but economic recovery has been set back by five years. The lost decade is a reality.</p>\n\n\t<p>In the context of a recession-bound Europe, Surpyc never stood a chance. The new currency was inflationary, leaving the island plagued by shortages of import commodities, which eventually even undermined the tourist industry. Political instability was rife, with successive short-lived civilian governments alternating with “caretaker” administrations. Under these conditions, the natural resources were never likely to be successfully developed under anything other than kleptocratic terms.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your career never recovered from the savaging that Maynard gave it in his report. Nobody can understand why you took such a crazy gamble. This was your last assignment.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>21.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday afternoon / Monday night / Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>You do your best not to think about the deals that went on, through the afternoon and late into the night. You particularly do your best not to think about what Alexei Ivanovich might have been doing, hanging around the legislature with a mobile phone glued to his ear. But, for better or worse, around three o’clock in the morning, your bill passed. M De Grieux stayed up to watch television at your office, the two of you having come to a grudging accommodation. He was able to confirm the troika passage on the basis of the EUR7bn raised, although the look he gave you as he signed the documents suggested that he did not approve of your methods.</p>\n\n\t<p>The small depositors of Surpyc were resigned to their fate; it seemed that years of recession and corruption had more or less conditioned them to accept the arbitrary seizure of their property. Importantly, there was no hint of contagion to the rest of Europe. You still worry for the people of Surpyc, but they can make their own destiny now, albeit under circumstances decidedly not of their choosing. Maynard is equally philosophical.</p>\n\n\t<p>“We didn’t take on the big interests, and we kind of squeezed the little guy. But we had to win this one. I think it was a judgement call; people could criticize us, but we were the ones there. Politics isn’t a game for squeamish people”.</p>\n\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>22.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday night/ Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>De Grieux greets you with surprising warmth. “Well”, he chuckles, “I suppose we need to open up the supposedly non-existent Plan B, then!”. The two of you work on details through the small hours, ready to draft a statement to be released before the markets open. The missing EUR7bn is back, or at least EUR5bn of it is, released from a variety of emergency budgets and bilateral loans.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your career has survived another knock. Everyone accepts that Surpyc was an impossible situation. All the officials loudly assert that it doesn’t set a precedent, but the world knows now – when it came to the crunch, Europe blinked.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>23.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard puts a call through to De Grieux’s office. It is not good news.</p>\n\n\t<p>You were prepared for a bit of pushback, but not for the storm of rage occasioned by the suggestion. Bringing outside private companies into the bailout deal is well beyond your remit.</p>\n\n\t<p>You are quickly left at the airport, with a printout of your e-ticket home, and without your Blackberry. The World Government will continue to handle this crisis, but your role is over.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>24.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday evening / Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The debate winds up early, at around five o’clock and the vote is not even really close. The President’s own party votes for your measure, but none of the opposition do. The evening news presenter is visibly embarrassed at the extent to which the legislature has decided to protect the offshore industry rather than domestic depositors. Maynard is almost physically shrinking away from you as you turn round from the television screen, embarrassed.</p>\n\n\t<p>You wake up wearily, with a bad head after staying up too late the previous night, smoking cigarettes and strategizing over brandy with Maynard. The morning papers were bad; global markets took the news from Surpyc badly, with the Dow off as much as 260 points at the lows. Obviously you were blamed, and spent most of the afternoon fending off inquiries from your superiors. You protest that “it is hardly my fault that the legislators wouldn’t vote in their people’s interests”, but everyone knows that it was your job to deal with the realities of local politics. And in any case, fault or not, you were the guy at the helm when the ship sailed into the iceberg.</p>\n\n\t<p>The package was EUR7bn short. This quickly turned into a EUR30bn shortfall, as the banking system collapsed. Contagion was contained, just barely, but Surpyc left the Euro, and the damage done looks like it will take years to repair. You are living in a rented flat, burning through your savings. You are trying to write a screenplay about your experiences but so far nobody wants to look at it.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>25.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Later, Sunday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>M. De Grieux is an affable enough European technocrat, but he is unwilling to give an inch. There is no more money forthcoming from the troika, and the <span>ECB</span> is wholly inflexible. As he explains it, the banking system of Surpyc has been living on borrowed time for far too long. His voice trails away half-way through his explanation, however – you shoot a quizzical gaze to Maynard. After the meeting, Maynard explains:</p>\n\n\t<p>“They’ve left it this long because they wanted to coincide with the bank holiday. They think that the deposit tax is a clever solution. I think they would rather like to use Surpyc as a testing ground; if creditors lose money here and the world doesn’t fall apart, then it sets a precedent which might be rather useful elsewhere.”</p>\n\n\t<p>It is hard not to take a little bit of offense at being manipulated so much, so you resolve to confront De Grieux over lunch. This proves to be something of a mistake, as it costs you a shirt front covered in crumbs and spittle.</p>\n\n\t<p>De Grieux is somewhat intimidating personally as he invades your personal space. “The internal politics of the troika are none of your business. You have a job to do and I suggest you do it. Make your budget, and make sure it passes the parliament”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard smoothes things over, a little bit, and describes the problem. You can set one tax rate on uninsured deposits, and one on uninsured, but the total tax take must be EUR7bn. If you set the rate on insured deposits too high, you are going to create massive popular unrest; on the other hand, the lower the rate on small deposits, the higher the rate on uninsured deposits will have to be. If the rate on the large deposits is too big, you will effectively have closed down the financial services industry, and that too will predictably generate opposition in parliament. De Grieux makes a wholly unpleasant noise as he indicates that he would not be too sorry to see the offshore banks close forever.</p>\n\n\t<p>Back in your office, Maynard has done some rough figuring on his legal pad. “I think there’s two solutions worth considering”, he says. “Either we levy a charge of 15.7% on the uninsured assets and leave the insured deposits untaxed. Or we keep the tax on uninsured deposits in single digits – say 9% – and tag the small deposits at 6.7%”. What do you think?</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Option 1: only tax the large deposits”. Go to 14</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“Option 2: keep the top rate down and make everyone pay at least something”. Go to 37</p>\n\n\t<p>“There’s always the nuclear option. Let’s take this to the brink of default and see if De Grieux is bluffing”. Go to 43</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>26.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>It is not good. The markets have taken Surpyc’s disorderly default very badly. The banking system is in collapse and the <span>ECB</span> has removed support. The island has become the first country to be expelled from the Euro. The immediate consequence of this has been a rapid liquidity crunch across Europe, as it becomes clear that the <span>ECB</span>’s doctrine of “Anything it takes” does not really mean “anything”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Pretty obvious who’s going to get the blame for this” Maynard mutters. “We are. He is trying to spare your feelings. He was just the advisor; you were taking the decisions. The failure to get a budget passed is going to end up at your door. You sigh, and dial for an airport taxi. You wonder about going back home and opening a restaurant serving deluxe hamburgers.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>27.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday evening</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The news begins to leak on Twitter about the whip-counts before the debate has even ended. Your measure is going nowhere. Somehow, all the populist legislators are melting away and the news bulletins are full of speeches about the future of the island’s financial services industry.</p>\n\n\t<p>Alexei Ivanovich calls you up to gloat. “You made a very bad mistake, not talking to me”, he says in clipped tones. “You have no understanding of this island. You don’t just show up here and order people around. There are businesses here, relationships …”</p>\n\n\t<p>You hang up on him. At this point, you don’t really care about being called unprofessional any more. There’s only one last chance. You signal to Maynard to get M De Grieux’s office on the line.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up six, go to 22</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up any other number, go to 3</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>28.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Unbelievable”. Maynard mutters. “Hasn’t learned a thing. OK, disorderly default it is then”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice</i></p>\n\n\t<p><i>If it they up a double one or double six, go to 31</i></p>\n\n\t<p><i>If they come up with any other numbers, go to 20</i></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>29.</p>\n\n\t<p>“YES!” You and Maynard jump up and down like sports fans.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Well, now we see. The offshore depositors won’t like it, but we’ve got our money and the troika should play fair with us. Nothing to do until tomorrow morning”.</p>\n\n\t<p>You suggest a celebratory dinner, but Maynard excuses himself, as he is tired.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it is a one or two, go to 34</p>\n\n\t<p>If it is a three or higher, go to 19</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>30.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your message has been taken. You are assured that Secretary Lew is taking a direct and personal interest.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go to 41</i></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>31. <b>Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The markets open but the domestic banks don’t. According to your orders, the bank holiday has been extended to Wednesday, to allow for the printing of a new currency, into which all of the bank deposits and assets are redenominated. All of your external liabilities are in default. The world pauses for breath …</p>\n\n\t<p>Europe survives. The <span>ECB</span> floods the market with liquidity and the banking system holds together. A quick sequence of new policies are agreed, putting together a true fiscal union, faster than anyone had previously believed possible.</p>\n\n\t<p>Surpyc itself responds well. The capital controls you have instituted hold, and the very rapid currency devaluation quickly attracts investment into the tourism industry, and to develop your natural resources. There are shortages and imports need to be rationed, but the people pull together and a new spirit of trust and democracy animates public life.</p>\n\n\t<p>The last time you see Maynard, he is shaking his head in disbelief. Nobody pays too much attention to the negative report he wrote about you. His career is still mired in crumpled-collar oblivion, but your star is ascendant. Nothing succeeds like success.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span>.</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>32.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday evening</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The news begins to leak on Twitter about the whip-counts before the debate has even ended. Your measure has passed. You can see a dozen missed calls from Alexei Ivanovich, but these have long since gone past the point of being productive. He has already accused you directly of unprofessionalism and promised to personally wreck your career. All that you can do now is relax and see what the markets bring.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up one or two, go to 8</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up three or higher, go to 36.</p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>33.</p>\n\n\t<p>The vote is not even really close. The President’s own party votes for your measure, but none of the opposition do. Maynard is almost physically shrinking away from you as you turn round, embarrassed.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Always seemed too aggressive to me”, he mutters, hypocritically. “But … we’ve got time for another vote. We can try the other option now, and leave the insured deposits untouched”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Plan B it is, then”. Go to 16</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“I think we’ve had our shot. Get the plans ready for a default”. Go to 44</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>34.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“Just sheer bad luck”, you mutter, as you and Maynard sip beer at the airport.</p>\n\n\t<p>“We should have insisted on the troika rethinking”, Maynard replies. “You can’t just go around confiscating deposits like that. We thought we were being clever, just clipping the offshore depositors.”</p>\n\n\t<p>All around the departure lounge, screens are tuned to financial channels showing the carnage in world markets. The deposit tax in Surpyc fell on nervous markets and has sent European debt spreads out past their highs. Emergency talks are taking place in Frankfurt but at present it looks unlikely that the Euro can be saved. Both Alexei Ivanovich and M De Grieux have sent messages to say that they hold you personally responsible.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Them’s the breaks”, you mutter to yourself, draining your glass. You wonder about going back to law school.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>35.</p>\n\n\t<p>Alexei Ivanovitch makes the appointment quickly and with a minimum of ceremony. He insists, however, that he is not willing to send details by electronic means, or to discuss anything beyond the broadest generalities over a telephone line. As you talk, you can see Maynard’s face screwing up in distaste.</p>\n\n\t<p>When you get off the line, he explains himself. “I’ve tended to find that situations like this attract an awful lot of chancers and Walter Mitty types. I’d say there’s no better than a one in ten chance this guy is any use at all.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“I must admit”, you add, glumly, “it’s not very encouraging that he won’t tell us who he’s meant to be representing”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is eleven or twelve, go to 49</p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is ten or less, go to 4</p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>36.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>A beautiful cloudless sky greets you, along with the news that Asian markets are up by as much as 3%. The rest of the morning is just as welcome, as you accept the congratulations of Maynard and M De Grieux; the Surpyc affair is generally judged to have been handled as well as it could been. The longer term economic picture is still bleak, but contagion to the rest of Europe has been handled, and the debt path now looks manageable. You head for the airport in triumph, a bottle of local brandy in one fist. Somehow, however, you know that you’ll never shake a slight concern over the rage in Alexei Ivanovich’s voice. Maybe it would be better to get out of this game, look for something in an <span>NGO</span> perhaps.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span>.</p>\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>37.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Your bill has been drafted and sent to an emergency session of the legislature.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Do you think we’re going to get it through?”, you ask Maynard.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Weeeellll”. He is affecting that languid public school drawl, but you can tell he is as excited as you are. And the furrow between his eyebrows suggests he is not totally approving. “Frankly, I think it’s no better than fifty fifty and potentially a bit worse. It is as controversial as hell to be taking so much from the uninsured depositors. I worry that the financial industry interest groups are not going to be strong enough to protect this legislation from some pretty heavy popular outrage.”</p>\n\n\t<p>The television screen confirms that this is not going to be an easy ride. Protestors surround both the presidential palace and the legislature. So far, nothing has turned violent though. Maynard turns the sound up, as the television channel switches to the announcement of the vote …</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it is a one or two, go to 9</p>\n\n\t<p>If it is a three or higher, go to 33</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>38.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday afternoon / Monday evening / Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The debate stretches on endlessly, as crowds of demonstrators form outside the legislative building waving placards and accusing the troika of stealing their savings. You, De Grieux and Maynard are beginning to lose patience with each other. It’s clear that the other two men regard your decision to hit small depositors as a clear error of judgement.</p>\n\n\t<p>Close to midnight, the motion fails. “What were you thinking?”, asks Maynard, plaintively. De Grieux echoes his question, having long since made it clear that the troika package cannot be signed on this basis. You are too tired and ashamed to stay around. Drafting a resignation letter and slipping it under Maynard’s door, you hail a local bus and head for the wilder beaches at the east of the island. Now that the currency is in free-fall, your hard currency savings will last a while, long enough for you to decide what you really want to do with your life.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span>.</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>39.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>It is not good. Nobody returned your calls The markets have taken Surpyc’s disorderly default very badly. The banking system is in collapse and the <span>ECB</span> has removed support. The island has become the first country to be expelled from the Euro. The immediate consequence of this has been a rapid liquidity crunch across Europe, as it becomes clear that the <span>ECB</span>’s doctrine of “Anything it takes” does not really mean “anything”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Pretty obvious who’s going to get the blame for this” Maynard mutters. “We are. He is trying to spare your feelings. He was just the advisor; you were taking the decisions. Nobody understands why you gave up so early, when there was plenty of time for another try at legislation. You sigh, and dial for an airport taxi. You consider starting a blog.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>40.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“Reckless, in my opinion. You didn’t even try to negotiate. I very much doubt that the depositors will thank you for saving them a ten percent tax by giving them a bankrupt bank and a soft currency asset. I suppose that we can now meet the deposit guarantee fund claims by printing pound notes, but it’s hardly a great start to our new economy. Let’s see how it turns out”. Maynard is scribbling rather agitatedly at something which looks ominously like your assessment form.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If you get a double four, double five or double six, go to 31</p>\n\n\t<p>Otherwise, go to 20</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>41.</p>\n\n\t<p>Your call is taken. You are reassured that President Bernanke is taking a direct and personal interest in this case.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go to 30</i></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>42.<br>\nThe fear is palpable in De Grieux’s voice.</p>\n\n\t<p>“My god, you are a cold fish”, he says. You smile, and flip him onto speakerphone. “I don’t understand how anyone can behave like that. Do you realize that there is an existential crisis for the Euro here?”</p>\n\n\t<p>You decide to continue to play it cool. “Don’t bring me problems”, you tell him. “Bring me a solution”. You can see that Maynard is gaining respect for you.</p>\n\n\t<p>Two hours later, De Grieux has revealed his “plan B”, and the two of you are drafting a press release. With a mixture of further lending, bilateral contributions and a small amount of presumption on the good nature of the <span>ECB</span>, the crisis is postponed, if not averted, and the banks can open on Tuesday.</p>\n\n\t<p>You head for the airport and the next plane home. You may have made a lifelong enemy or two, but you’ve done your reputation nothing but good. Anyone can bully a little island – it takes a real operator to bully a continent.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>43.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“I am not a fan of madman strategies”, Maynard remonstrates.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I am”, you reply, feet up on the desk. You can sense that you are driving Maynard crazy and rather enjoy it.</p>\n\n\t<p>“At least, I am not in favour of madman strategies when applied to our own side”, he pleads.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Who said De Grieux is on our side? Our side is for a sensible outcome to the crisis and as little contagion to global markets as possible”, you reply. “De Grieux represents the troika. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the enemy. Do it. Let’s play poker”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll two dice:</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is ten, eleven or twelve, go to 13.</p>\n\n\t<p>If the sum is nine or less, go to 45</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>44.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning and afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>“You might be right”, Maynard sighs. Suddenly, he is looking very old. “This legislature is not going to agree that the situation is serious. Let’s put in a call to the guys with the money, and tell them that this chance is done. At least we’ve left them time to call their principals”.</p>\n\n\t<p>You send him home to rest. Then you call the offices of M. De Grieux and Alexei Ivanovich, and have a long conversation with each. Then you wait.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it lands on a one or two, go to 15</p>\n\n\t<p>If it lands on a three or higher, go to 39</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>45.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday night/ Monday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>It is less than an hour before the phone starts ringing in response to your ultimatum. De Grieux is incensed and wastes few words in telling you that you have made a bad mistake. He instructs you not to waste time contacting the troika office any more. There is nothing to do but default and let the chips fall where they may. And the chips fall pretty much everywhere.</p>\n\n\t<p>The markets take Surpyc’s disorderly default very badly. The banking system is in collapse and the <span>ECB</span> has removed support. The island has become the first country to be expelled from the Euro. The immediate consequence of this has been a rapid liquidity crunch across Europe, as it becomes clear that the <span>ECB</span>’s doctrine of “Anything it takes” does not really mean “anything”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Everybody blames you”, Maynard says, as the two of you drive to the airport. “Nobody can understand why you went out of your way to annoy the only people who could help you”. The two of you stand at the departures terminal together, before what you know will be your last handshake. Maynard has some parting words.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I’m going to need you to give me that Blackberry back”</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span></p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>46.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Monday morning / afternoon</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Having stayed up all night trying to draft your legislation and build a coalition, you are now in the lap of the gods. Alexei Ivanovich has proved to be more of an irritation than you had believed possible, not only bombarding you with calls himself, but bringing down a horde of Russians who want to lobby you against the decision to hit large offshore depositors. Before long, your official Blackberry is practically useless as a communication device.</p>\n\n\t<p>By late afternoon, Maynard is worried. Things have dragged on too late, and there will not be time to revise any plans if this does not pass the legislature first time. “We’re basically hoping that not too many of the coalition are … sensitive to the interests of the offshore lobby”, he informs you.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Delicately put, Maynard”, you reply.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Roll a dice</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up with a one or two, go to 17</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up a three or higher, go to 24</p>\n\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\n\t<p>47.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Tuesday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>The demonstrations continued through most of Monday and you felt it prudent not to leave your hotel, but Tuesday morning came and went with something of a whimper. The banks were packed with angry customers, and the wire transfers sent something like EUR5bn of deposits offshore at the open of business, but the <span>ECB</span> was as good as its word and the majority of offshore deposits stayed put. Alexei Ivanovich sent you an email congratulating you on your handling and asking you to stay in touch.</p>\n\n\t<p>The small depositors of Surpyc were resigned to their fate; it seemed that years of recession and corruption had more or less conditioned them to accept the arbitrary seizure of their property. Importantly, there was no hint of contagion to the rest of Europe. You still worry for the people of Surpyc, but they can make their own destiny now, albeit under circumstances decidedly not of their choosing. Maynard is equally philosophical.</p>\n\n\t<p>“You can’t solve every problem all in one go”, he muses. “I think we took a lousy hand and played it pretty well, all considered. With a little bit of luck”.</p>\n\n\t<p>You share a taxi to the airport. You’re beginning to like each other.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE WON</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>48.</p>\n\n\t<p>It is De Grieux.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I am flabbergasted.”, he says. “You have done nothing. You have wasted all the time that you had here. I was waiting to hear your proposal, and you have done nothing. You have not even advanced a proposal to the legislature. There is nothing I can do now. This is all your fault. I hope you’re proud of yourself.” He hangs up.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I don’t think I can add much to that”, says Maynard. He starts packing up the office. When you wake up in the morning, you are alone in the hotel, and the <span>ATM</span> in the lobby is showing an out of order message. The riot gas has already started to blow around the streets.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>YOU HAVE LOST</span>.</p>\n\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>49.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Sunday morning</b></p>\n\n\t<p>Alexei Ivanovich’s office is well-appointed and clearly long established in the central business district. The mystery of his “organization” is solved as soon as he hands over a business card; he represents one of the world’s largest natural resources companies, with a long standing interest in Surpyc and with, unquestionably, the financial resources to finance the transaction he is proposing. But there are problems with price. Moscow are only willing to come up with EUR5bn, and their deal has some conditionality too, which he would be overjoyed to discuss. Maynard draws you to one side.</p>\n\n\t<p>“We’re taking a gamble here. This is a quid pro quo. If we take this guy’s money, we’re not going to be able to do a deposit tax of any kind. So we’ll have a package totaling EUR15bn, instead of EUR10bn. Do we think we can finesse that with the troika?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “No”, then politely break off negotiations and go to 25</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If you answer “Let’s give it a try”, then roll a dice.</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up even, go to 12</p>\n\n\t<p>If it comes up odd, go to 23</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">The report of the \"Post-Gadaffi Repercussions in the Sahel\" workshop I participated in at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra in June last year is available for download <a href=\"http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:609824\">here</a>.<br><br>One of the most stimulating presentations was by Prof Morten Bøås, who discussed \"escape routes\" between West Africa, the Sahel, and into the Sahara. Similarly to the ideas of non-centralized modes of power that I have developed, Morten talked about how governance in the region is in large part a question of \"organisation without organisations\". In other words, it is a matter of hubs (primarily geographic) and nodes (primarily people -- big men), which become the orienting points in dynamic, loose networks. Also fascinating was Christian Vium's research with nomads in Mauritania. The report blurb doesn't do justice to his project; Christian's stunning <a href=\"http://www.christianvium.com/\">photos here</a> at least make it come alive a bit more. </div>"
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"content" : "<p>\nLast month ago I wrote a column for Wired.com, <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/02/rebooting-web-comments-wire-them-to-personal-clouds/\">Rebooting web comments</a>, that attracted some <a href=\"http://jonudell.net/images/wired-twitter-feedback-march-2013.png\">unsavory feedback</a>. Had the flamers read beyond the second paragraph they might have seen that I wasn’t insisting everyone must use verifiable identities online. But they didn’t. So I wrote another column last week, <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/03/own-your-words-2/\">Own your words</a>, to clarify my position.\n</p>\n<p>\nMy first blogging tool, back in 2001, was Dave Winer’s Radio UserLand. One of Dave’s mantras was: “Own your words.” As the blogosphere became a conversational medium, I saw what that could mean. Radio UserLand didn’t support comments. That turned out to be a good constraint to embrace. When conversation emerged, as it always will in any system of communication, it was a cross-blog affair. I’d quote something from your blog on mine, and discuss it. You’d notice, and perhaps write something on your blog referring back to mine.\n</p>\n<p>\nThis cross-blog conversational mode had an interesting property: You owned your words. Everything you wrote went into your own online space, was bound to your identity, became part of your permanent record. As a result, discourse tended to be more civil than what often transpired in Usenet newsgroups or web forums. In those kinds of online spaces, your sense of identity is attenuated. You may or may not be pseudonymous, but either way the things you say don’t stick to you in the same way they do if you say them in your own permanent online space.\n</p>\n<p>\nLater blogs evolved forum-style comments which concentrated discussion but recreated the old problems: attenuation of identity, loss of ownership of data. Then came Twitter and Facebook and, so the story goes, “social killed the blogosphere.” It was easier to read and write in those online spaces, blogging declined, and Google’s recent decision to retire its RSS reader is being widely regarded as the nail in the blogosphere’s coffin.\n</p>\n<p>\nOf course that’s wrong. One of the staples of tech punditry is the periodic declaration that something — Unix, the Web, Microsoft, Apple, the blogosphere — is dead.\n</p>\n<p>\n<a title=\"click to read BYTE's Is Unix Dead? story\" href=\"http://jonudell.net/archive/is-unix-dead.html\"><img src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/is-unix-dead.png\"></a>\n</p>\n<p>\nWill Google Reader’s exit spell the end of the blogosphere or its rebirth? Nobody knows, and since I’m no longer in the pageview business I won’t even hazard a prediction. Instead I want to highlight something that’s bigger than blogs, bigger even than social media. Owning your words is a fundamental principle. It seemed new at the dawn of the blogosphere but its roots ran deeper. They were woven into the fabric of the Internet which, at its core, is a network of peers.\n</p>\n<p>\nFor technical reasons I won’t explore here, it’s not possible (or, I should say, not believed possible) for our computers to be first-class peers on that network, as early Internet-connected computers were. But it is possible for various of our avatars — our websites, our blogs, our <a href=\"http://elmcity.cloudapp.net\">calendars</a> — to represent us as first-class peers. That means:\n</p>\n<p>\n- They use domain names that we own\n</p>\n<p>\n- They converse with other peers in ways that we enable and can control\n</p>\n<p>\n- They store data in systems that we authorize and can manage\n</p>\n<p>\nYour Twitter and Facebook avatars are not first-class peers on the network in these ways. Which isn’t to say they aren’t useful. Second-class peers are incredibly useful, largely because they enable us to avoid the complexities that make it challenging to operate first-class peers.\n</p>\n<p>\nThose challenges are real. But they’re not insurmountable unless we believe that they are. I don’t believe that. I hope you won’t. What some of us learned at the turn of the millenium — about how to use first-class peers called blogs, and how to converse with other first-class peers — gave us a set of understandings that remain critical to the effective and democratic colonization of the virtual realm. It’s unfinished business, and it may never be finished, but don’t let the tech pundits or anyone else convince you it doesn’t matter. It does.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3540/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3540/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.jonudell.net&blog=109309&post=3540&subd=jonudell&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>So here we are again. A peripheral European economy is falling apart, because of its hugely overextended banks. The powers-that-be, being the European Commission’s EMU directorate-general, the European Central Bank, and the German ministry of finance, intervene. This time, rather than letting the government deal with the banks, destroy its credit, and then lend the government money on terms that basically preclude any prospect of recovery – and don’t ask me, <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=470622352992033&id=103632406357698\">ask Deutsche Bank and Edward Hugh about the impact of youth unemployment on long-run productivity</a> – they’ve decided to bill the banks’ depositors under the bail-in directive, and to hit the insured depositors below €100,000 although they didn’t have to, and then anyway impose a structural-adjustment programme of the order of 5.75% of GDP <a href=\"http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40381.0\">in case the horse sings this time – don’t ask me, ask the IMF</a>. Everyone’s now standing by for Monday and whatever may come.</p>\n<p>But isn’t this a bit, you know, <em>2008</em>? If there was any point to the policy of the European powers-that-be, surely it was that this stuff was meant to be <em>over</em>? Instead, we are landed with a sort of permanent state of emergency. Why isn’t anybody sorry? Why isn’t anybody responsible?</p>\n<p>Instead, what do we get from the elite? </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlwhelan/2013/02/17/ollis-follies-is-debate-about-fiscal-multipliers-unhelpful/\">Attempts at ideological policing</a>. A <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/professor-krugman-and-cru_b_2845773.html\">cocktail of whataboutery and racist dogwhistle</a> – I’m sorry, Professor Sachs, you’re smart enough and ugly enough to know just what is meant by welfare in current US politics. The British <a href=\"http://budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/wordpress/docs/Letter-from-Robert-Chote-to-Prime-Minister.pdf\">prime minister flat-out lying about what his own pet pro-austerity committee says</a>. And I call it that <a href=\"http://www.stableandprincipled.com/content/2010-07-14/obr-sp-vindicated-coalition-economic-cloud-cuckoo-land\">advisedly</a>. We’ve had Olli Rehn’s spokesman descending into playground bullying. We’ve had British chancellor George Osborne telling himself recovery is <a href=\"http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/politics/8864681/quietly-david-cameron-is-drawing-up-his-own-budget-plan/\">but a Friedman unit away</a>. We’ve had that American private-equity guy complaining that French workers work three hours a day, when he put them on short-time working at three hours a day. We’ve had Hans-Werner Sinn <a href=\"http://www.voxeu.org/article/european-imbalances\">suddenly discovering intra-eurozone trade imbalances</a> after all these years. Someone has <a href=\"http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/europas-schuldenkrise/alternative-fuer-deutschland-die-neue-anti-euro-partei-12100436.html\">invented a political party to demand that Germany leaves the Euro because it’s not been austeritarian <em>enough</em></a>.</p>\n<p>Clearly, the powers-that-be are as bankrupt as the Cypriot Bank of Horsemeat, and they must go. Paul Krugman is entirely right that the whole story is foully reminiscent of <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/opinion/krugman-ben-bernanke-hippie.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=1&\">Iraq</a>. The great flabby mess of elite consensus rolled downhill, not so much William Cobbett’s Thing as 1950s B-movies’ Epic Blob, absorbing every punch that could be thrown at it.</p>\n<p>So what’s with the most prominent representative of this feeling in Europe, Beppe Grillo? Well, when he’s <a href=\"http://www.lastampa.it/2013/03/07/italia/politica/grillo-spunta-l-investimento-nel-paradiso-fiscale-9TRL6HxQ4Gb5NuxX4nKzrK/pagina.html\">not looking after his network of offshore companies, or rather, letting his secretary and wife look after them, at least in name</a>, he’s <a href=\"http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/03/grillismo-yet-another-right-wing-cult-italy\">demanding the elimination of trade unionists</a> – that’s a must read piece, by the way. You’ll need to put up with slightly tiresome left-wing-art-collective stylings and I was quite pleased to identify “that lot who called themselves Luther Blissett because he was black, like” before finding out they are indeed the collective author, but it’s damning. Further, even UKIP <a href=\"http://www.cityam.com/article/why-i-m-first-leader-support-looser-bank-england-mandate\">manage to make sense</a> in flashes. </p>\n<p>And after the usual painful negotiations and baboon threat-displays, the intergovernmental leaders managed to agree a budget that zeroed-out EU investment in broadband infrastructure. Obviously! (I agree I’m talking my book professionally there, but you’ll struggle to find anyone who doesn’t think it will do at least some good.)</p>\n<p>Clearly, the old motto can be adapted. <em>Tous les mêmes. Tous pourris. Même moi!</em></p>\n<p>But it’s not as if nothing can be done. We still have the economic policy team at the Commission we had in February, 2010. We still have the same Commission President we had in 2004. Evidently, the European public is entirely satisfied and the same broad strokes of policy from the property-boom years are OK. No. Whoops, I took a crazy pill.</p>\n<p>So, if you want new methods you usually need new men. The European Parliament has, to its credit, knocked back the budget. Now, it must stand up to its responsibility and knock back the Commission. Amazingly enough, we still can’t just bin Rehn, it’s all or nothing. But it’s been <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santer_Commission\">done before</a>, over issues that were far, far less important in their consequences. This quote is a classic:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>“It was becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone who had the slightest sense of responsibility.”</em></p></blockquote>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=xKyNvqCFuTM:Thr2yuHZttQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=xKyNvqCFuTM:Thr2yuHZttQ:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=xKyNvqCFuTM:Thr2yuHZttQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=xKyNvqCFuTM:Thr2yuHZttQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=xKyNvqCFuTM:Thr2yuHZttQ:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Social novelty filtering (or Google Reader, R.I.P.)",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:left\">Wherein I muse about Google Reader past, and what it might have been. And, wherein I describe what I hope springs up in the aftermath of its closing.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:left\">Reader’s been long gone already</h3>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">So, <a href=\"http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html\">they’re finally shutting down Google Reader</a>, huh? It’s sad, but unsurprising. It’s obvious they didn’t really have a strategic place for it in the Google+ universe, and it just was just neglected <a href=\"http://decafbad.com/blog/2011/11/01/readerpocalypse\">since the Sharepocalypse</a>. Kill off the key social synergy of hosting a centralized news reader, and it’s no wonder you’ll see usage decline.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">I’ve been running <a href=\"https://github.com/gothfox/Tiny-Tiny-RSS\">Tiny Tiny RSS</a> on my own server since Google killed off in-product sharing. So, I won’t be too terribly affected by the shutdown personally. I think my wife still uses Google Reader, having moved after the demise of Bloglines. If she likes the looks of TT-RSS, I’ll set her up with an account too.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">But, <a href=\"http://www.marco.org/2013/03/13/google-reader-sunset\">Marco</a> and <a href=\"http://threads2.scripting.com/2013/march/goodbyeGoogleReader\">Dave</a> have it right: This will probably be a good thing for RSS. The problem has been that Google Reader was <em>just</em> good enough to lull me out of scratching my own itch. This is coming from the guy who wrote <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764597582?ie=UTF8&tag=0xdecafbad01-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&c%0D%0Areative=9325&creativeASIN=0764597582\">a 600 page book on RSS and Atom</a> out of love for the tech. So, I’m sure I won’t be the only one poking around code archives and blowing dust off old repositories.</p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:left\">Social novelty filtering</h3>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">So, this is the itch I’d love to scratch in the post-Google-Reader age: Reader-before-Plus offered <strong><em>social novelty filtering</em></strong>. That is, fast sharing within the product fueled reciprocal feeds of novelty, filtered by my “friends”, presented in the same news reading interface as my other bazillion feeds from the web at large.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">That feature worked so well, in fact, that <a href=\"http://decafbad.com/blog/2010/12/18/less-del-icio-us-than-ever-before\">it lured me away from using del.icio.us</a>—a service I liked so much that I wrote <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470037857?ie=UTF8&tag=0xdecafbad01-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&%0D%0Acreative=9325&creativeASIN=0470037857\">a 350 page book</a> about it and <a href=\"http://decafbad.com/blog/2006/06/24/go-west-young-man\">moved out of state</a> so I could work there.</p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, I know: You can “share” to Facebook, to Twitter, even to Google+—that’s why Google killed in-product sharing on Reader, after all. I do that on occasion, and that’s how a lot of people get their streams of novelty. But, it’s nowhere near the same thing, neither in quality nor in quantity.</p>\n<p>The thing about these “friends” on Google Reader was that we never interacted directly. It was refreshing, it was great. No small talk, no conflicts, no getting in each others’ virtual faces—we just mutually harnessed slices of each others’ minds to build intelligent streams of novelty.</p>\n<p>That might sound cold or mechanical or exploitative—but the thing is, there are plenty of other outlets for interpersonal exchange, and I even met up with some of my Reader “friends” out-of-band there too. But, those channels are <em>about</em> you and me, we’re the objects of interest & the stars of the show. There are very few channels that are <em>about</em> shared novelty as the object of interest, where you and I can get ourselves out of the way and conspire to surface cool things.</p>\n<p>(And, of those channels that <em>do</em> exist—<a href=\"http://pinterest.com/\">Pinterest</a>, for example, maybe <a href=\"http://tumblr.com/\">Tumblr</a>—I’m not a big fan of the UI vs <em>ye olde Reader</em>. Still, magic & strange loops can emerge from recursion & re-entrant flows; your mileage may vary. See also: <a href=\"http://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network\">Google’s Lost Social Network</a>.)</p>\n<h3>Distributed social novelty filtering</h3>\n<p>So anyway, I’m probably going to play around with the machinery of feed aggregation again. But, one of the things I really would like to see as a <em>thing</em> out there is <strong><em>distributed social novelty filtering</em></strong>. How do you do that? Well, the first half of it is pretty simple:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>In feed readers, implement a one-click “share” button on every item. Maybe offer an optional field for comment.</li>\n<li>Offer a public feed of every “shared” item, easily discoverable from a public profile.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>For example, my installation of TT-RSS offers <a href=\"http://decafbad.com/tt-rss/public.php?op=rss&id=-2&key=6fa5a3a996809d4df9a357bd7c62efc464c8d147\">a feed of my “shared” items</a>—albeit not in a very discoverable way. I also funnel craptons of material into <a href=\"http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:deusx/\">my pinboard.in feed</a>, but mainly for personal archiving and search. Even Pinterest has <a href=\"http://pinterest.com/lmorchard/feed.rss\">a feed for me</a>, though I barely use it.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://links.scripting.com/rss.xml\">Dave Winer</a> and <a href=\"http://waxy.org/links/index.xml\">Andy Baio</a> maintain linkblogs with feeds—those fit nicely into this scheme, and I follow them both in my reader.</p>\n<p>The other half is where some innovation could stand to happen: The obvious thing is to just get yourself a new RSS reader and subscribe to all the shared-item feeds of your “friends”.</p>\n<p>But, there’s a lot more to be done here:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>discover and follow “friends” across services,</li>\n<li>de-duplicate shared items by URL,</li>\n<li>rank items by counting shares,</li>\n<li>construct discussion threads from shares</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Go nuts, please! Someone form a startup and take my money to solve this, so I don’t have to. Even better, release some open source so I can host it myself and maybe even contribute some code. I’m thinking about doing some of this, but my lack of sustained attention span for projects is <a href=\"http://decafbad.com/blog/2006/05/26/confessions-of-a-serial-enthusiast\">well documented</a>.</p>\n<p>But, the important thing here is that it’s <em><strong>distributed</strong></em> and a <em>thing</em> that’s conventionally done out there on the web. This shouldn’t be constrained to a single vendor’s silo ever again, because that allowed a single vendor to kill it dead and I miss it terribly.</p>"
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"title" : "Mukoma Wa Ngugi: The Western Journalist in Africa",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/0c102536-4578-4638-96c6-32519131e049_mw1024_n_s.jpg?w=610&h=408\" width=\"610\" height=\"408\"><br>\n<strong>Guest Post by Mukoma Wa Ngugi</strong></p>\n<p>In 1982, as the air force-led coup attempt in Kenya unfolded, we sat glued to our transistor radio listening to the BBC and Voice of America (VOA). In fact, the more the oppressive the Moi regime censored Kenyan media, the more Western media became the lifeline through which we learned what has happening in our own country. But in 2013, I and many other Kenyans saw the Western media coverage of the Kenya elections as a joke, a caricature. Western journalists have been left behind by an Africa moving forward: not in a straight line, but in fits and starts, elliptically, and still full of contradictions of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, but forward nevertheless. <span></span></p>\n<p>A three paragraph <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/04/us-kenya-elections-open-idUSBRE92301S20130304\">article</a> in Reuters offered the choice terms “tribal blood-letting” to reference the 2007 post-electoral violence, and “loyalists from rival tribes” to talk about the hard-earned right to cast a vote. Virtually all the longer pieces from Reuters on the elections used the concept of tribal blood-letting. <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/#/video/international/2013/02/28/elbagir-kenya-armed.cnn?iref=allsearch\">CNN also ran a story</a> in February of this year that showed five or so men somewhere in a Kenyan jungle playing war games with homemade guns, a handful of bullets and rusty machetes – war paint and all.</p>\n<p>But very few people watching that video of the five men playing warriors, practicing in slow motion how to shoot without firing their weapons and slitting throats with the unwieldy machetes took it seriously. Rather, it was slap your knee funny.<b> </b>Last week Elkim Namlo (turns out it is Michael Holman in real life-Ed.), in the Kenyan paper <em>The Daily Nation</em>, wrote a piece satirizing that kind of reportage. The first sentence in the aptly titled, <a href=\"http://www.nation.co.ke/blogs/Foreign-reporters-armed-and-ready-to-attack-Kenya/-/634/1709498/-/view/asBlogPost/-/o6m5cnz/-/index.html\">“Foreign reporters armed and ready to attack Kenya,”</a> reads in part that the country is “braced at the crossroads…amidst growing concern that the demand for clichés is outstripping supply” and that “Analysts and observers [have] joined diplomats in dismissing fears that coverage of the forthcoming poll will be threatened by a shortage of clichés.” That particular CNN footage certainly supplied the high demand of clichés and stereotypes.</p>\n<p>This is not to say that the threat of violence is not real. On election day, a separatist organization raided a police station in Mombassa, resulting in 15 deaths. The president-elect and his running mate will be appearing before the ICC to answer charges of crimes against humanity relating to the post-election violence of 2008. And with the runner-up Raila Odinga going to the courts (as opposed to the streets) to dispute the electoral results, we are not out of the woods yet. So there is a place for the kind of journalism that is in touch with the hopes and fears embedded in Kenya’s democracy.</p>\n<p>For western journalism to be taken seriously by Africans and Westerners alike, it needs Africans to vouch for stories rather than satirizing them. I am not saying that journalism needs the subject to agree with the content, but the search for journalistic truth takes place within a broad societal consensus. That is, while one may disagree with particular reportage and the facts, the spirit of the essay should not be in question. But Africans are saying that the journalists are not representing the complex truth of the continent; that Western journalists are not only misrepresenting the truth, but are in spirit working against the continent. The good news is there have been enough people questioning the coverage of Africa over the years that Western journalists have had no choice but to do some soul searching. The bad news is that the answers are variations of the problem.</p>\n<p>Michela Wrong, in a <em>New York Times</em> <a href=\"http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/to-each-his-own/\">piece</a> shortly before the Kenyan elections, debated the use of the word “tribe.” She acknowledged that the word tribe “carries too many colonial echoes. It conjures up M.G.M. visions of masked dances and pagan rites. ‘Tribal violence’ and ‘tribal voting’ suggest something illogical and instinctive, motivated by impulses Westerners distanced themselves from long ago.” But she concluded the piece by reserving her right to use the term. She stated that “When it comes to the T-word, Kenyan politics are neither atavistic nor illogical. But yes, they are tribal.” The term tribe should have died in the 2007 elections when Africanist scholars took <em>NYT’s</em> Jeffrey Gettleman’s usage of the term to task. To his credit, Gettleman stopped using the term.</p>\n<p>If you have Wrong insisting on using a discredited analytical framework, you have others who position themselves as missionaries and explorers out to save the image of Africa. But their egos end up outsizing the story. Martin Robbins last year introduced <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/aug/03/africa-obama-administration\">his five-part essay</a> on Kenya/Africa with the promise to tell misrepresented or rarely revealed truths about Africa. He was, he announced, “exploring the ways we were manipulated and misled by a procession of public officials, NGOs, activists and spokespeople; examining the reasons why a disturbingly high proportion of what we hear about Africa is just plain wrong.” His mission was however foiled by an ego that pushed out the search for the promised truths to create room for himself at the center of the story.</p>\n<p>In “<a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/aug/03/africa-obama-administration\">Grandma Obama’s support for domestic violence</a>”<b> </b>the second of his five pieces, he writes, “President Obama’s angry granny stared impassively into the distance, as her rabbits relentlessly fucked each other around us. One ventured near her ankle, as if wondering whether to hump it.” Why destroy the subject of your reportage? Why impose the anti-establishment <i>I can use fuck whenever I want</i> young-writer-cigarette-drooping-from-lower-lip-angst over an old woman whose views most activist Kenyans disagree with?</p>\n<p>The wildlife has been replaced by the horny rabbits circling Grandma Obama’s feet – a joke that succeeds only in turning Obama’s grandmother into a subject of scorn for holding views held by millions of men and women worldwide. Rather than read about the fucking rabbits, I would rather read about why she holds the opinions she does and what those in support or opposed to her views are doing. I want to see her opinions in relation to the larger society. In other words, I would rather read something useful rather than something that establishes its authority by destroying the subject of the reportage. There is no difference between the well-intentioned Martin Robbins imposing his ego over his African subject and the terrible reporter who yells Africa is a hopeless, violent, tribal, and bloody continent</p>\n<p>The irony though, or perhaps the point, is that when Robbins is writing on issues outside of Africa his Livingstone alter ego is in check. For example, read his essay on <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/may/23/1\">“The new, old war on abortion”</a> – yes, it’s an opinion piece, but his ego does not choke the hell out of the subject.</p>\n<p>You have still others who see the question of how the Western media reports about Africa as fundamental and in need of intellectual discussion. Jina Moore’s essay in the <em>Boston Review</em>, “<a href=\"http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/jina_moore_africa_journalism_colonialism.php\">The White Correspondent’s Burden: We Need to Tell the Africa Story Differently,</a>” is vastly different from Robbins’s essay in content, style and goal. Whereas Robbins’s Kenya writeups are ultimately about his heroic ego, armed with irony and sarcasm, Moore’s essay is seriously, and I think honestly, trying to understand why white journalists make the choices they make.</p>\n<p>Her essay can be divided into three parts. The first part describes the problem – the Africa is one, Africa is violent, hopeless reportage. The second part, where her essay really begins, tackles the historical and philosophical reasons for what is essentially a racist trope that will simply not go away. First she says, it is not widely accepted that the West is responsible for the most of the suffering, “centuries of slave trade, followed by a near-century of colonialism and its attendant physical and structural violence, from the rubber fields of the Belgian Congo to the internment camps of British Kenya.” In spite of the obvious direct correlation between slavery or colonialism and destitution, the idea of a good moral agent emerged. But more than that, she argues, this moral imperative became more about the giver than the recipient. So now it is not about helping Africa per say, it is about having a moral and ethical Western civilization; we are civilized because we help those that we abuse. Call it a fast track to getting to heaven or remaining relevant in Hollywood. When this moralization is transposed into reporting, Africans becomes the “subject of compassion” and not “the subject of a story.” There is not much to disagree with there.</p>\n<p>All this provides a reminder to journalists that history matters and that they should also look beyond the effects of poverty and violence and talk about the causes – African leaders, corporations that mine wealth without giving back, arms companies etc. In other words, let’s look at all the actors instead of seeing Africa outside present-day global economic political processes.</p>\n<p>The third part of Moore’s essay mainly deals with the choices that the reporters make, why they think they have to make them, and the consequences. She talks about Howard French, formerly with the <em>New York Times</em>, who writes about tragic stories because he would otherwise feel guilty if he told a happy story and leave the atrocities unexposed. This is a sentiment with which human rights activists in the Congo, Kenya and elsewhere would agree.</p>\n<p>It is the lesson that Moore takes from this that I disagree with. She argues that “We can write about suffering <em>and</em> we can write about the many other things there are to say about Congo. With a little faith in our readers, we can even write about both things—extraordinary violence and ordinary life—in the same story.” On the face of it, it does read like a sound choice, to show the tragedies and at the same time show day-to-day living. That is, until you think about how Western reporters write about extraordinary violence in their very own backyards.</p>\n<p>In the West, tragedy after tragedy, the journalist does not forget the agency of the victims, and their humanity. The 2010 London riots, or rebellion, depending on your take: In equal measure the rioters and the fed up shop owners who started cleaning up after the rebellion — the heroic street sweepers. The August 2012 Sikh temple massacre: yes, the violence but also how a rainbow community came together to stand against extremism. The 2012 Colorado movie shootings: the brave boyfriends who shielded their girlfriends and died protecting them. The 2011 Tucson shooting: Gabrielle Giffords and her recovery.</p>\n<p>September 11: yes, the terrorists, but also the firemen who died saving others. School shootings in the US: the brave teachers and students who at the risk of life and limb rose in defense of others. The War on Terror: the individual soldiers losing souls, limbs and life in a war that is bigger than them. And Hurricane Katrina: yes, the black people looking for food were portrayed as looters and the whites as survival experts, but most stories also contained something about how the people were trying to keep a sense of community and rebuild their lives.</p>\n<p>But when it comes to writing about Africa, journalists suddenly have to make a choice between the extraordinary violence and ordinary life. It should not be a question of either the extreme violence or quiet happy times, but rather a question of telling the whole story within an event, even when tragedy is folded within tragedy. There are activist organizations in the Congo standing against rampant war and against rape as a weapon. The tide of the post-electoral violence in Kenya in 2007 turned because there were ordinary people in the slums and villages organizing against it — that is, people who stood on the right side of history as opposed to ethnicity — in the same way Americans across the racial spectrum stood last year with the American Sikh community.</p>\n<p>In any situation, there are those who perpetrate and those who, defenseless and weak, still stand up at great cost for what is right or just. It is the nature of humanity – that is why we are still here, as a species. We struggle often against forces stronger than ourselves. Sometimes we triumph and just as often we fail. The question for Western journalists is this – when it comes to Africa, why do you not tell the whole story of the humanity at work even in times of extreme violence?</p>\n<p><em>* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell University, the author of <a href=\"http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/nairobi-heat/\">Nairobi Heat</a> (Melville, 2011) and the forthcoming Black Star Nairobi (Melville, 2013).</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/64633/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/64633/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=64633&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">There are great moral questions in life, and deep philosophic questions, and questions of identity and one’s life’s work, and questions on how to manage all sorts of interpersonal relationships – but everyone likes a good bargain. No one wants to end up paying full price for what can be had at a discount. The big questions can take care of themselves – or they can be ignored as most of the deep stuff is unanswerable anyway. The real pleasure in life is getting that big flat-screen television at half-price. Yes, that’s mundane and shallow – but at least it’s something. No one agrees on what’s truly moral – we’ve argued for a decade that torture is quite moral – and all the philosophic talk about the nature of good and the nature of meaning, which lets us determine the nature of good, and value itself – and all the rest regarding identity and the presentation of self in everyday life – always ends in a confused swamp of muddy words. A good deal on a large case of drain cleaner at Costco is not ambiguous at all. Everyone likes a good bargain, and a grand bargain is better. It may be meaningless in the greater scheme of things, but clear triumphs are hard to come by in real life. There is the matter of what to do with all that drain cleaner, but at least it was cheap.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It’s the bargain that matters. It’s a substitute for thinking about the big stuff, and you see that in Washington now. John Dickerson identified what he called <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/02/bob_woodward_sequestration_republicans_blaming_barack_obama_for_the_sequester.single.html\">the <span style=\"background-color:white\">Big Thing</span></a><span style=\"background-color:white\"> – “how to get growth, deficit reduction, and fairness from a divided government in a time of scarcity.” That’s hard and calls for deep thought, or perhaps a grand bargain. That’s what Obama had been calling for – a Grand Bargain with the Republicans – a mix of careful but not severe or abrupt spending cuts along with asking the rich and corporations to pay what they used to pay in taxes in the Clinton years, before Bush. Republicans get their spending cuts, lots of them, and the free ride for the rich and corporations slowly but definitely ends, and of course no one gets hurt too badly – but everyone get hurt a little.<br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">The Republican are having none of it – there were no spending cuts in the deal that avoided the fiscal cliff, and that deal restored normal taxes on those earning over four hundred grand a year. There will be no more of that nonsense. Democrats are dismayed that Obama keep suggesting cuts in the entitlement programs – Social Security and Medicare. Obama has offered a few ideas – chained CPI and the like – but Democrats don’t even like the word entitlement. These are earned benefits. If you buy auto insurance and pay your premium every six months, on time and in full, and you get in an accident, no one scoffs at you as a whining jerk who foolishly thinks he’s entitled to medical treatment and a repaired car. You paid for that coverage. There’s a contract and everything, but Republicans say it’s not like that at all. People who use those programs are moochers, if not thieves, taking everyone else’s money – except for the old and the sick in their base, who are the few who actually earned what they’re now getting. There’s a lot of hair-splitting regarding who’s entitled to what, with nasty racial overtones – their base is very old and very white. Any sort of Grand Bargain <a href=\"http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/Ken-Walshs-Washington/2013/03/11/grand-bargain-on-deficit-a-long-shot\">seems far away</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Prospects for a grand bargain to cut the deficit are remote even though President Obama has declared that making such a deal is one of his top priorities this year, Republican strategists say.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">“He’s doing what he should have been doing years ago,” notes Frank Donatelli, chairman of the GOPAC conservative political action committee, referring to Obama’s recent outreach toward Republican legislators. “Better late than never – but the question is whether he’s bringing something to the table worth talking about.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">‘”He holds out hope for a grand bargain but the train has already left the station on that,” adds Donatelli, who was White House political director for President Ronald Reagan.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Obama’s <a href=\"http://justabovesunset.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/the-music-man/\">charm offensive</a> did no good. No one wants to bargain now, so it will be showdown after showdown. At <span style=\"background-color:white\">the end of March the federal budget expires. At that point the House could just pass another continuing resolution to keep the doors open and the troops paid. They’ve been doing that for years, running the country on some previous budget from three years ago, extended again and again, or they could refuse to pass anything and shut down the whole government until Obama agrees to cut all domestic spending, and abolish the EPA and Department of Education, and abandon Obamacare, and wear sackcloth. They could also wait until the end of May, when the debt ceiling must be raised again, and make the same demands – do what we say, or else. Obama does what they say or America goes into default and the world’s economy collapses when the one safe haven for capital in the world says it just won’t pay its bills. They’ll probably try that. There will be no bargains.</span><br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">That doesn’t account for the fact that everyone likes a good bargain, and a Grand Bargain just sounds so damned good. The whole concept is just so deliciously appealing, as <a href=\"http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/the_undead_unnecessary_unhelpful_grand_bargain/\">Alex Pareene explains</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Washington has Grand Bargain fever, again. Thanks to the sequestration, Republican government-shrinking mania and Barack Obama’s apparently sincere desire to get some sort of huge long-term debt deal done, the Grand Bargain is looking more possible than at any point since the heady days of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">For some reason, the options for dealing with sequestration – a self-inflicted made-up austerity crisis – are being purposefully and pointlessly limited to a) spending cuts, either those in sequestration or different ones, or b) spending cuts and tax increases. “Let’s just not do this, everyone” is rarely presented as a viable option. Instead, the single best end result, according to lots of pundits, Democrats and even Republicans, is the Mythical Grand Bargain.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It really is all you hear about, although Pareene thinks it’s absurd:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">This is awful news, for most people. A “grand bargain” is not going to be good. But after Barack Obama had fancy dinners with some Republicans last week, everyone is again hopeful. The president is hopeful. John Boehner is hopeful. David Gergen is probably hopeful. They can all taste the Bargain. Ooh, it’ll be so great when we get that Bargain!<span style=\"background-color:white\"><br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The Grand Bargain is revered, among the Sunday Show set, as a goal essentially for its own sake. Its Grandness is its point.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">What we have is a substitute for thinking of the big questions, kind of like buying that large case of drain cleaner at Costco, because it’s a good deal, even if you’ll never use the stuff:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The thought of the parties coming together, agreeing on a mutually unpleasant compromise involving great political “sacrifice” (symbolic sacrifice for the politicians, likely eventual actual sacrifice for the constituents), warms the cockles of the Beltway Establishmentarian’s heart. If liberals and conservatives can’t stand the deal all the better – even if one or both sides have perfectly valid reasons for blanching.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The Bargain must, by necessity, reduce the deficit by “reining in entitlements.” “Entitlements” means Social Security and Medicare, two very popular and successful programs designed to keep retired people alive. Social Security and Medicare “reforms” that make both programs less generous are among the <em>least </em>popular policy proposals in America today, but both parties – at least, the leaders of both parties – support them (rhetorically). Cutting these programs is probably the single highest priority of the tiny centrist elite, and it has been for years, excepting the usual run-ups to our various wars. Part of the elaborate theater of Performing Seriousness in Washington is claiming that “everyone agrees” that the cuts are urgent and necessary, while also bemoaning that no politicians are “brave” enough to support them.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">That is the talk in the air:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">Cuts to those programs have been offered, repeatedly, by the president, to Republicans. Republicans, thus far, have pretended not to notice, because their parallel news media misinforms them and because they incorrectly believe the president to be insincere in his desire to hack away at those very popular and successful programs. The recent Obama charm offensive is designed to convince Republicans that he is very sincere in his efforts to get a Serious Debt Deal, involving “entitlement” cuts and tax reform.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">There’s no fighting it, but Pareene argues that one shouldn’t overlook the obvious:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Tax reform (in this case referring to eliminating or scaling back “tax expenditures”) is <em>technically</em> a conservative policy priority, even if elected Republicans refuse to ever support it for real. This is a compromise in which conservative policy is being offered in exchange for conservative support for a conservative policy. The sequester and Obama’s Bargain Quest mean that Republicans can choose between allowing a Democrat to “take credit” for cutting the two most popular programs in the country or they can just live with the already-passed government spending cut that they are also able to blame on the president. Because the party’s “brand” is effectively beyond tarnishing, and because they are still guaranteed control of the House and veto power in the Senate for the foreseeable future, their bargaining position is actually much stronger than even they seem to realize.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But bless the Republicans for being totally insincere in their deficit hysteria. If they actually did care, as opposed to using it as a bizarre excuse for opposing all tax increases, we’d have had a crappy long-term debt deal by now, in the middle of our pitiful “economic recovery.”<span style=\"background-color:white\"><br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Yeah, Obama is offering a compromise in which conservative policy is being offered in exchange for conservative support for a conservative policy – and these guys just cannot say yes to what they say they want, and have always said they want, much to the relief of the Democratic base, who often wonder what the hell Obama is up to, giving away the store. Pareene has another idea for Obama:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">There’s absolutely no point in dealing with the long-term debt now, right now, right this second. The best argument for a long-term debt deal in the midst of an economic recovery that has been comically “sluggish” for years now is that lots of people think “the markets” will make everyone rich once they are “confident” that America is getting its crazy spending “under control.” That argument seems to me to rest on many more questionable assumptions than the argument that we should be cheaply borrowing a lot of money now and spending all of that money on giving people jobs. Maybe we can borrow a bunch of money to give to people and also pass a bill that says “we promise to get serious about the debt in a few years, when people have jobs again,” to make the markets more comfortable. We could call this Baby Grand Bargain “The Bimpson-Soles Plan,” for extra market confidence. (Also we don’t actually need to pay down the debt, but whatever. People just think “debt=bad” the same way they thought the Trillion Dollar Platinum Coin was “sillier” than an artificial “debt ceiling.”)<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Instead, if Barack Obama finally gets his Grand Bargain, we’re going to get “entitlement” cuts despite the fact that that is a bad idea that Americans do not want.<span style=\"background-color:white\"><br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">As for that bad idea that no one wants, see Tom Edsall on the <a href=\"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/the-war-on-entitlements/?hp\">War on Entitlements</a>:<span style=\"background-color:white\"><br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The debate over reform of Social Security and Medicare is taking place in a vacuum, without adequate consideration of fundamental facts.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">These facts include the following: Two-thirds of Americans who are over the age of 65 depend on an average annual Social Security benefit of $15,168.36 for at least half of their income.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">Currently, earned income in excess of $113,700 is entirely exempt from the 6.2 percent payroll tax that funds Social Security benefits (employers pay a matching 6.2 percent). 5.2 percent of working Americans make more than $113,700 a year. Simply by eliminating the payroll tax earnings cap — and thus ending this regressive exemption for the top 5.2 percent of earners — would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, solve the financial crisis facing the Social Security system.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">So why don’t we talk about raising or eliminating the cap – a measure that has strong popular, though not elite, support?<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">When asked by the National Academy of Social Insurance whether Social Security taxes for better-off Americans should be increased, 71 percent of Republicans and 97 percent of Democrats agreed. In a 2012 Gallup Poll, 62 percent of respondents thought upper-income Americans paid too little in taxes.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">What’s the problem? It’s the players:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">Cutting benefits is frequently discussed in the halls of Congress, in research institutes and by analysts and columnists. The idea of subjecting earned income over $113,700 to the Social Security payroll tax and making the Medicare tax more progressive – steps that would affect only the relatively affluent – is largely missing from the policy conversation.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The Washington cognoscenti are more inclined to discuss two main approaches that are far less costly for the affluent: means-testing of benefits and raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. (Sidenote: policy makers and national journalists who weigh in on this issue generally earn more than $113,700 a year.) Means-testing and raising the age of eligibility as methods of cutting spending appeal to ideological conservatives for a number of reasons.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Edsall hits on the problem here:<span style=\"background-color:white\"><br>\n</span></span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">Elite anxiety over entitlement-driven budget deficits and accumulating national debt has created a powerful class in the nation’s capital. The agenda of this class is in many respects on a collision course with mounting demands for action by those lower down the ladder to address the threat to government social insurance programs. Intransigent opposition by the better-off and their representatives to raising the necessary revenue means that not only Social Security and Medicare face a budgetary ax.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">Among the additional likely casualties: WIC, which provides free nutrition for women, infants and children; long-term and emergency unemployment compensation benefits; low-income housing vouchers; vaccines for poor children; schooling for children with disabilities; special education; preschool programs; child care for disadvantaged and vulnerable children; after-school programs; treatment of the mentally ill; and meals for sick and homebound seniors.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">We have subtle class warfare no one expected:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">This conflict could not have come at a more difficult time: the United States is in the midst of a zero sum struggle requiring politicians to pick losers, not winners. The population of those over 65 is set to multiply, with longevity steadily increasing even as median annual household income for the population at large has shrunk to $51,584 in January 2013 from $54,000 in 2008.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">In this kind of conflict over limited goods, one of the most valuable resources that can get lost in the fray is the wisdom of the electorate at large. In this case, the electorate is pointing toward progressive tax increases for those closer to the top far more readily than members of the political class, for whom high-earners are a crucial source of campaign contributions.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt;background-color:white\">The very nature of the basic security Americans are entitled to is at stake.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">No kidding. And Pareene adds this:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">There are two important things to remember about “entitlements”: They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible “reform” would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of “fiscal responsibility.” A “grand bargain” that was done with the intention of creating the best possible outcome for the most Americans, instead of with the intention of purposefully doing unpopular things because doing unpopular things denotes “seriousness,” would <em>lower</em> the Medicare eligibility age and <em>expand</em> Social Security. That the opposite approach is effectively the bipartisan consensus approach is the special sort of Beltway madness that makes sensible people wish for either a proper parliamentary system or at the very least for an EMP [electromagnetic pulse bomb] to take out Georgetown and much of Washington’s surrounding suburbs.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">As for Medicare, it is very expensive, but one might consider this:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Medicare is expensive because we spend a lot on healthcare. We spend a lot on healthcare basically just because we want to, and doing so has been very good to a lot of people who work in healthcare fields. The way nearly every other advanced nation controls healthcare costs is by just having the government set prices. I thought everyone knew Medicare was cheaper than private insurance because it could negotiate lower rates, but apparently lots of people didn’t understand this until Steven Brill wrote a big article about it in Time. Again, many people understand that “reining in healthcare costs” means just spend less on healthcare, but for some reason Washington is fixated on passing the existing ballooning costs onto old and working people instead of just agreeing to pay doctors less in general. (If you feel bad for the doctors we can make their educations cheap/free.)<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">So basically to save a bunch of healthcare money we should just set rates or expand Medicare. If we are very dedicated to “reforming” Medicare, it would be both smarter and fairer to <em>lower</em> the eligibility age (ideally to “birth”), and allow it to bargain with pharmaceutical companies the same way it bargains with hospitals, than it would be to make the Medicare pool older, and hence sicker and more likely to “use” a lot of healthcare, by raising the eligibility age. Naturally, the Obama/Democratic/Centrist position is to raise the eligibility age. (The Republican position is “don’t touch it for current old people and then just eliminate it completely in a few years.”)<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Then there’s that other program:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Social Security, meanwhile, is lumped in with Medicare not because it faces rapidly ballooning costs in the future – it doesn’t – but because a lot of people just really, really, really want to cut it, or make it less generous, or let the finance industry get its hands on the money. Social Security would seriously be “fixed” just by a) raising taxes and/or b) deciding to pay for it, with borrowing or with some other pot of money. … Making Social Security less generous is a horrible idea, because tons and tons of Americans just don’t have enough money to retire on. There aren’t pensions anymore, and pensions apparently were not a sustainable retirement-funding mechanism. 401(k)’s aren’t cutting it and having a bunch of “money” in the form of a house is not actually that useful.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">We should, in other words, be having a big national debate about how to expand Social Security, not find ways to make it less generous for future retirees. (Maybe let’s make our country seem like a nice livable place and get a bunch of immigrants here to expand our population and contribute to the economy and pay taxes and stuff?) Otherwise instead of a Social Security funding crisis we will have a “no one has enough money to retire” crisis, in a few years – which will likely require expensive government intervention anyway. Instead, the Obama/Democratic/Centrist position is “chained CPI,” which reduces benefits. (The Republican position is “let’s wait a while and try to privatize it again later, maybe.”)<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Yeah, but everyone wants a great bargain – a Grand Bargain in this case – just to get a bargain. This is why Americans have garages full of useless stuff, but that’s where we are with this:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">In a country with a political system that was actually responsible and responsive to public preferences, the “grand bargain” following the resounding victory of the more liberal party in national elections would be the expansion of the welfare state and the social safety net. Instead, we have two austerity parties arguing over the rate at which they’ll impoverish the future elderly.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Pareene says the only hope now is that the House Republicans blow the whole deal up once again, as they usually do. We can only hope – but there is this sale on canned beets this week, and if you buy ten cases…<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">No. Grand bargains are foolishness. What you get is not at all what you want or need.</span></p>\n<br> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=justabovesunset.wordpress.com&blog=880780&post=19366&subd=justabovesunset&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Ghana Doesn’t Need Me; It Needs a Lobotomy",
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"content" : "<p>Last week, Ghana celebrated its 56<sup>th</sup> year of independent rule from Britain. Reactions on social media were varied, but there was one dominant theme: disappointment. The usual hand wringing over the lack of basic utilities (like a dependable supply of water and electricity) and public amenities (like roads and safe, affordable transportation) were at the top of list. If you’re a Ghanaian – or hail from any African country for that matter – you’ve heard it all before.</p>\n<p>There are some people who take issue with those complaints.</p>\n<p>“We should be grateful,” they say. “At least Ghana is not at war like some of our neighboring countries! By the grace of God, we are a nation that enjoys peace!”</p>\n<p>Now, in the past, I could passively nod my head and agree to some extent. Indeed, we have managed to skirt an outright civil war. But as I have gotten older and done more reflection, I have come to see the danger in such thinking. I ended up in a social media battle with one woman because I refused to nod and agree with her platitudes about the absence of war in our native country.</p>\n<p>Most of the MOM Squad knows that I grew up rather unconventionally in Ghana. I came of age in a time when there was no “middle class”. There were the very rich, and there were the very poor. My family existed a small host of citizens that was somewhere in between, but not large enough to make up a “class”. I have seen life on both sides of the coin. We lived in a huge rented house in Labone, but for a year we ate noting but different variations of rice because that’s all we could afford. My parents made sure that we went to the finest schools in the city: Soul Clinic International School, GIS (in my case) and finally boarding school at HGIC. For the first 3 months I was at Soul Clinic none of my siblings or I had a uniform because my parents couldn’t afford one. I’ve suffered the humiliation of being sacked for not paying my school fees at every school I’ve ever attended. I know what it’s like to go to school hungry because you don’t have lunch money or food at home to pack lunch for the week. Through wit and will, we overcame our circumstances in various ways. While I was declaring that it was “cool” to eat plantain and beans every day in GIS’ cantina “because I’m a Ghanaian”, my brother was doing coin tricks on his secondary school campus to earn his lunch money.</p>\n<p>Now, I do recognize that this hardly constitutes as hard living by any stretch of the imagination. What I am saying is that I have tasted just enough hardship to empathize with people living at the bottom of Ghanaian society’s echelons. The fact that there is no war in Ghana will not serve as consolation forever. I know what a desperate person is capable of doing. Desperation is a dangerous thing, and I fear that ordinary Ghanaians are becoming more desperate as the years roll on.</p>\n<p>The woman with whom I had an 8 hour social media battle clung to her belief that the absence of civil war in Ghana serves as panacea for its failing infrastructure.</p>\n<p>“I can walk from Cantonments to Labone Junction without fear of getting my hand chopped off,” she said (and I’m paraphrasing.)</p>\n<p>Well, isn’t that fortunate? To live a life of such privilege and fortune. To put it in perspective for my American readers, it’s the equivalent of taking a carefree stroll down Rodeo Drive. This particular young woman, who is actually a good friend of the family, has always lived in cloistered life of comfort and power. Of course she’d be grateful that there is no war. It’s actually <em>the</em> worse thing she can imagine. She admonished me because I’ve never been to Liberia – as she has; seen the children with their limbs cut off by rebels – as she has; and seen the deprivation the survivors of war live under – as she has.</p>\n<p>To that, I say I don’t have to live next to a sewer to know it stinks. Of course I can imagine the horrors of war! But I wonder if have she and others of like mind have ever sat down to consider what led Liberia, Sierra Leone and Cote D’Ivoire to war? Corruption is what led these promising, thriving countries down a dark path, and if Ghana doesn’t solve its corruption problems, we won’t be able to rely on the grace of God to keep it safe forever.</p>\n<p>When people say “corruption”, there is an automatic image of government minsters siphoning off millions of dollars into Swiss bank accounts and flying around the world in private jets. But Corruption is an ugly, multifaceted monster that doesn’t always manifest as Greed. Nepotism, Neglect and Laziness are all part of the beast we know as Corruption.</p>\n<p>Every Ghanaian is corrupt at some level. It’s the only way to survive and do business in the country.</p>\n<p>When the queue at the driver’s license office is too long, what do you if you have a “guy” who works there? Throw him a few cedis and get yourself ahead of the line: Corruption.</p>\n<p>When you buy three plantain chips in traffic from a seller and demand an extra bag from her as ‘dash’ that’s corruption.</p>\n<p>When you know that your neighbor is keeping their elderly grandparent chained up in a room without food because some pastor or elder divined that they are a ‘witch’ and don’t report it, that’s corruption!</p>\n<p>When government officials do not fear the media’s reportage of their misdeeds, that’s a clear sign of corruption. In fact, every political party has a media house lapdog to do its bidding, and is not afraid for the public to know it.</p>\n<p>When 40 children die from lead poisoning because their chief allowed their farming lands to become an e-waste dump site in exchange for a kickback, that’s corruption!</p>\n<p>Corruption is knowing the right thing to do and not doing it anyway.</p>\n<p>Ghana’s state of affairs as it stands today has everything to do with a mindset that we’ve slowly allowed to creep in. When my father first came back from living in the States, he came with numerous ideas. His friends shot them all down.</p>\n<p>“Oh Kwasi. That won’t work in Ghana ooo. You? You’ve been outside for too long!”</p>\n<p>Eventually, he began to believe it, and that has become his mantra too. “This” won’t work in Ghana.</p>\n<p>Why don’t we have safety standards for how people in villages and towns purchase fuel? Why is it, at this very moment, a 3 year old child is probably ingesting kerosene and imbibing his doom? Because the government allows people to buy and sell petroleum products in used Fanta and water bottles. “This” is Ghana, and we can do that.</p>\n<p>Why hasn’t the Ministry of Health halted the practice of referring critically injured patients from one hospital to another instead of bringing qualified physicians into the facility to perform an operation? Because “this” is Ghana, and we can’t inconvenience our doctors. A recent acquaintance of mine just died because he was sent to three different area hospitals following an automobile accident before he got treatment. He had just moved back to Ghana, brimming with capital and new ideas to help improve his country and his country killed him!</p>\n<p>Armed robbery is becoming more prevalent in the country and thieves are getting bolder. A Dutch citizen was just robbed and killed in broad daylight this past week. Ghanaians like to blame outside forces for these attacks. “Oh, it’s the Nigerians bringing these things in. Oh, it’s those guys from the North.” We forget that we are raising our own little terrorists in our backyards. When an uncle comes to sell his 8 year nephew to a fisherman in Keta – a man who beats him, doesn’t educate him, feeds him two small meals a day, and forces him to do the dangerous work of diving under his canoe to untie tangled fishing nets – do you think such a boy will grow up to become an office manager? No! As an adult, he will do what he can to survive! He will become a thief, a male prostitute, or indulge in some other vice. And then Christians will sit in church and disparage him, forgetting it was their Christian duty to care for the least of these in the first place.</p>\n<p>I could go on, but I think you get the point.</p>\n<p>Some people back home like to say that because I only visit Ghana once a year, my views are invalid. I don’t live there. I don’t know what I’m talking about. They are living in it. They are the “experts”. If I lived there, I would understand that “this is Ghana”. I wish I could conjure an analogy to explain how absurd this line of thinking is, but I’ve drawn a blank.</p>\n<p>So why do I say Ghana doesn’t need me? Simply because I don’t have the skill set Ghana needs for advancement. Ghana needs IT professionals, city planners, honest MPs, and health professionals of all disciplines. It needs engineers to design and build apparatus to harness solar and wind energy. It needs manufacturing gurus so we can build our own cars and trains. I’m a writer. Sending me to Ghana to further the cause of development is like sending a mural artist to an empty construction site. It’s pointless and foolish.</p>\n<p>Above all things, Ghana needs to get its head examined and work on decentralizing wealth from the hands of a privileged few. I’m not proposing that we merely take from the rich and give to the poor. That’s not a permanent solution. But it does need to give the masses the basic hope…JJ Rawlings has already shown us what one motivated mofo with a gun and no hope in his government can do to a country.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>Where have I missed the mark? Don’t be afraid to tell me right here ↓</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2660/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2660/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=mindofmalaka.com&blog=10644359&post=2660&subd=mindofmalaka&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.3/37194?ns=guardian&pageName=GUK%3AArticle%3Aanimals-on-stage-all-it-takes-is-chicken%3A1878294&ch=Stage&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Theatre%2CStage%2CAnimals+%28News%29&c5=Wildlife+Conservation%2CTheatre&c6=Lyn+Gardner%2CHelen+Mirren&c7=2013%2F03%2F11+02%3A18&c8=1878294&c9=Blog&c10=Blogpost&c13=&c19=GUK&c25=Theatre+blog+with+Lyn+Gardner&c47=UK&c65=Animals+on+stage%3A+sometimes%2C+all+it+takes+is+a+chicken&c66=Culture&c72=&c73=&c74=&c75=&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FStage%2Fblog%2FTheatre+blog+with+Lyn+Gardner\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>The scene-stealing corgis in The Audience are a reminder that while audiences love a star, they love a cute animal even more</p><p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/mar/05/the-audience-review-helen-mirren\">The Audience</a> has had mixed reviews, but <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/mar/10/audience-helen-mirren-daldry-review\">Helen Mirren and the corgis</a> have had raves. And the corgis may have come off best. Apparently they've got their own air-conditioned dressing room with dog beds. I would love to have seen the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_(theater)#Hospitality_rider\">rider</a> on their contract. Reports over the weekend suggested that one of the dogs contracted to play a royal corgi has been misbehaving and has <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/9919598/Sacked-the-corgi-which-disobeyed-Dame-Helen-Mirren.html\">had to be sacked</a>. Perhaps it was a case of artistic differences with director Stephen Daldry? </p><p>We sure do love an animal on stage. Nobody ever goes \"aah\" at a human actor – unless perhaps you are that actor's mum. I've been to panto versions of Cinderella when the only fully verifiable thing alive on stage were the Shetland ponies taking Cinder's carriage to the ball. Even Shakespeare wrote animal scenes: Crab the dog is a major player in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and often <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2003/jun/16/theatre.artsfeatures\">out-performs the human actors</a>. The Wizard of Oz would be dullsville without a winsome Toto. And a <a href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/houston-shelter-mutt-broadway-bow-wow-sandy-annie-article-1.1117276\">dog called Sunny</a> made the headlines last year when she was plucked from a shelter – within hours of being put down – to play the dog Sandy in Annie on Broadway. </p><p>Even a chicken can liven things up. As I <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/jun/11/lyn-gardner-theatre-roundup-swan\">reported last year</a>, performing poultry have been pretty big in theatre recently from Jerusalem to Michael Wynne's Canvas. I'm not sure the very dead chicken in <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/mar/01/three-birds-review\">Three Birds</a>, currently at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, counts.</p><p>Of course our own delight at animals on stage is nothing compared to the 19th century. When Silvu Purcarete staged <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/aug/19/gullivers-travels-edinburgh-festival-review\">Gulliver's Travels</a> in Edinburgh last summer, it featured a couple of real horses – but that was nothing compared to a 19th-century version that apparently boasted 52 horses as well as nine camels, 13 elephants and assorted emus, ostriches and lions. I'm surprised some of the cast didn't eat each other. </p><p>Apparently the corgis have gone down so well with audiences in The Audience that there are plans for a new scene featuring a Shetland pony called Emily. Dame Helen should be very afraid: when it comes to audience appreciation, four-footed actors are always going to have the edge both for cuteness and unpredictability. </p><p>What are the best and worst animal performances you've seen on stage? My best was the introduction of rabbits in the final act of Chris Goode's <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2008/jun/14/theatre.reviews\">Sisters</a> at the Gate in 2008, a device that certainly kept the human actors on their toes. The worst was the horse that defecated all the way through the burning of Atlanta during a performance at <a href=\"http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/DruryLane.htm\">Drury Lane</a> of the aptly titled Gone with the Wind.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre\">Theatre</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/animals\">Animals</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/lyngardner\">Lyn Gardner</a></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/helen-mirren\">Helen Mirren</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"content" : "<p>I don’t want to keep on repeating myself here, but as I’ve just returned home from a friend who had a problem syncing his iPhone with Gmail, iCloud and his local Outlook 2003 on a WinXP machine: just how come that we’re already so advanced in 2013, yet when it comes to some basic IT functionality like operating systems or e-mail, we’re still way behind the optimum?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img alt=\"unrelated\" src=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_1864-1024x1024.jpg\" width=\"840\" height=\"840\"><em>an unrelated image to illustrate the state of affairs</em></p>\n<h4>Operating systems</h4>\n<p>Windows, OSX, Linux distros – is there any desktop operating system that will work like S40 on basic Nokia feature phones? One that doesn’t try to cover up a shitty energy management with stupid gfx effects and other gimmicks probably no one ever needs? What happened to the good-guy-computer approach from back in the days? It feels like we’ve evolved from complicated (CP/M, MS-DOS) to buggy and ponderous operating systems that really don’t add much difference to the basic functionality, but will at the same time require more resources and create more problems.</p>\n<h3>E-mail</h3>\n<p>Electronic mail has been around since the 1970s, yet in 2013, we’re still talking about formatting options and have to come up with an <a href=\"http://emailcharter.org/\">emailcharter</a> to define this basic communication method. PGP? Where the f*** is PGP? Why isn’t it part of Gmail already? How come we’re measuring our workflow by the amount of unanswered e-mails in our inboxes, yet e-mail itself still is a very vague product that also currently competes with other private or public messages on social networks?</p>\n<p>This friend of mine with this Outlook 2003 problem: we sat there for four hours, trying to figure out a sustainable solution that will automatically sync his PIM client on the desktop PC (e-mails, contacts, calendar) with the phone. Unless you pick a manual solution or one that will only work within it’s own framework (i.e. iCloud), you’re easily lost or have to invest some more money in a working solution.</p>\n<h4>Acceptance</h4>\n<p>I am using Gmail as my common denominator for all this user data, but many people also don’t want to rely on Google products (for various reasons). At the moment, the only working strategy seems to be to accept the data chaos and to live with different data on different devices where the quality of your search parameters defines the success. Maybe similar to what David Weinberger once described in his <em>‘Everything is Miscellaneous’</em> book where information isn’t sorted in a linear fashion any more. But where are we heading to with this missing data discipline?</p>\n <p><a href=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/?flattrss_redirect&id=3891&md5=ee0d127b9f27189bef836f7345433473\" title=\"Flattr\"><img src=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/wp-content/plugins/flattr/img/flattr-badge-large.png\" alt=\"flattr this!\"></a></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=yPq_iR23mG0:4gpzp0xWibM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=yPq_iR23mG0:4gpzp0xWibM:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?i=yPq_iR23mG0:4gpzp0xWibM:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=yPq_iR23mG0:4gpzp0xWibM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?i=yPq_iR23mG0:4gpzp0xWibM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/kikuyumoja/~4/yPq_iR23mG0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Writing for love. And money | AL Kennedy",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.3/78763?ns=guardian&pageName=GUK%3AArticle%3Awriting-love-money-al-kennedy%3A1875942&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Books%2CCulture%2CShort+stories+%28books%29%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CCreative+writing+%28kw%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=AL+Kennedy+%28contributor%29&c7=2013%2F03%2F05+12%3A56&c8=1875942&c9=Blog&c10=Blogpost&c13=AL+Kennedy+on+writing+%28series%29&c19=GUK&c25=Books+blog&c47=UK&c65=Writing+for+love.+And+money&c66=Culture&c72=&c73=&c74=&c75=&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FBooks%2FShort+stories\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>The really valuable returns for an author are emotional, spiritual even. Though it's great when the bills get paid too</p><p>I began my literary career with short stories. Or rather, I began with monologues. I wrote them for myself and my friends so that we could trot off and perform in auditions without exhausting the, if I recall correctly, 12 available bits for women that were in any way kind and supportive to the would-be thespian. Once I had become a permanently resting ex-drama-and-theatre-studies student (easily done) I also became someone who sat up in bed to keep warm and made small, voice-based things which eventually became short stories. There was a lot of becoming – that often happens with the arts. And eventually, way back when there were barely Amstrads, I banged together my first anthology of short stories and a publisher actually inflicted it on a waiting world, rather than asking me to save it until after I'd managed to produce something more financially prudent like a novel, or some porn.</p><p></p><p>This was all good news. Someone trapped in a recession with an odd skill set had discovered a way to be useful and, indeed, fulfilled. Given that short stories are so horrifyingly demanding technically, the anthology was an opportunity to give my prose its initial experience of proper training. I had earned myself a chance to take my voice to its next level. I won some prizes. My work came to the attention of the wider literary scene and was able to shamble further forwards and discover some more opportunities. The first novel was treated gently and coddled probably more than it deserved to be. This wouldn't happen now. The short story anthology as a first book is rarer than unicorn pie. (May contain traces of horse.) The hope of making even 50% of your income as a published author any more in the UK has probably also gone – unless you are lucky enough to produce a bestseller, preferably involving porn. This may change when UK publishers discover that the production of ebooks reduces overheads as well as cover prices. Who knows – it does tend to take a while for UK publishers to notice most things. I worry in case, for example, their offices catch fire and they all burn to death over a period of weeks, coming and going, sadly unable to realise that their coffees are boiling away to nothing in their melting cups. And this is, of course, a hard time for all industries, from the sprightly to the moribund.</p><p></p><p>So why do it? To be rather more specific, why do we write? Why do we choose to work in forms like the short story, the literary novel, the essay, the sonnet – forms which have very little commercial value? It's easier to say why we don't write. It can be really very easy to say we don't write for money and, of course, I hope we don't. We produce writing, we produce art, because we love to, because it feels good, because we can't help it, because it rewards us in a self-perpetuating cycle with varieties of emotional and even spiritual contentment. The money we earn is what we use to have more time to do what we love to the best of our ability. And we have bills and possibly loved ones who depend upon us for food, clothes, floorboards, bus fares – money is handy for that stuff, too.</p><p></p><p>Being clear about the primacy of quality over money, rather than money over quality, is practical – as well as moral, if you want to get into that area – because it means we can't be bought and can continue to improve our craft. The usual conversation you may have with employers, patrons and the like (you have to do this, say this, compromise horribly here, lie down and let us get away with this in your name there) becomes – it's that verb again – pointless. You do the work for the sake of the work and if the money, or the prestige, or whatever shiny toys are on offer won't help the work, then you skip them and arrange to work elsewhere.</p><p></p><p>Do I always remember this? No, not always. Am I always happy about this? No. There are times when – like everyone, particularly now – I would like to be able to rest more and work less, when I'm tired of endlessly touring and typing and folding the timetable into origami so I can manage everything (everything, that is, but seeing the people I love and giving them proper care and attention). This can make me forget to appreciate the fact that I have a very wonderful job and still get to do it. Every day. I can forget how very wonderful this job is.</p><p></p><p>But people remind me. Not so long ago, I was on the usual type of panel discussion at a literary festival, far from home and the people whose hands I prefer to be holding. The format was the fairly standard: four authors and a chairperson chat about something vaguely to do with the event title. Over the years, I have slid from being one of the token new writers to being one of the token scraggly old ones. The young novelist sitting beside me began a description of how he had efficiently and effectively planned his first book to be commercially successful, adaptable for movie purposes and generally a money-making machine. The plan worked. He made money. (I quietly began to dislike him.) And then he talked about writing his second novel and the way he'd written that one for his friends. He'd cared about it. At which point he cried. Right out on stage, he wept big authorial tears of sheer bloody happiness. He had accidentally done something which had made him deeply happy – he had written for love. The only thing better than sitting next to that level of joy is having it yourself. Every day. Onwards.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/short-stories\">Short stories</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/creative-writing\">Creative writing</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alkennedy\">AL Kennedy</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://guardian.co.uk.feedsportal.com/c/34708/f/639027/s/293941c2/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/159489924394/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/293941c2/kg/342/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/159489924394/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/293941c2/kg/342/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/159489924394/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/293941c2/kg/342/a2t.img\" border=\"0\">"
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"title" : "Wise words from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ed Kilgore",
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"content" : "<b>Wise words from Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ed Kilgore</b><br><br>by digby<br><br><a href=\"http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_03/the_racism_of_good_people043423.php\">Kilgore:</a><br><br><blockquote>If you are a white person who has on occasion felt aggrieved at the persistence of allegations of white racism in America, do yourself and your conscience a favor and read <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/opinion/coates-the-good-racist-people.html?hp&_r=0#.UTivpRBG414.twitter\">Ta-Nehisi’s Coates’ guest column today in the New York Times.</a></blockquote><br>Yes, read it. It's amazing. He talks about a humiliating incident that happened to the actor Forrest Whittaker when he was frisked in a Manhattan Deli under suspicion of shoplifting. He relates the fact that the man who did it, the owner of the place, has since apologized, proclaiming that he isn't a racist and is a \"good person.\" Coates writes:<br><br><blockquote>The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion. We can forgive Whitaker’s assailant. Much harder to forgive is all that makes Whitaker stand out in the first place. New York is a city, like most in America, that bears the scars of redlining, blockbusting and urban renewal. The ghost of those policies haunts us in a wealth gap between blacks and whites that has actually gotten worse over the past 20 years.<br><br>But much worse, it haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence that is given tell only when the victim happens to be an Oscar winner. The promise of America is that those who play by the rules, who observe the norms of the “middle class,” will be treated as such. But this injunction is only half-enforced when it comes to black people, in large part because we were never meant to be part of the American story. Forest Whitaker fits that bill, and he was addressed as such.<br><br>I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people.<br><br>The other day I walked past this particular deli. I believe its owners to be good people. I felt ashamed at withholding business for something far beyond the merchant’s reach. I mentioned this to my wife. My wife is not like me. When she was 6, a little white boy called her cousin a nigger, and it has been war ever since. “What if they did that to your son?” she asked.<br><br>And right then I knew that I was tired of good people, that I had had all the good people I could take.</blockquote><br>Can you blame him? <br><br>Kilgore writes about his own family in the south and mentions Martin Luther King's admonitions to the preachers and the \"white moderates\" in his \"Letter from a Birmingham Jail\". I get this. Many of us grew up in families much like Kilgore's and we know what it is to love someone and yet hate this part of them --- or try to rationalize it as something other than what it clearly is. But then good and evil resides inside every human being. He says:<br><br><blockquote>Now that racism is no longer respectable, it’s tempting to reason conversely and suggest respectable people can’t be racists. But to do that is to reason racism virtually out of existence. Most of the world’s religious and moral traditions try to remind us that while good works are always to be valued, there is something in the human soul that makes good people prone to doing bad things. That did not stop being the case when racism was deemed “bad” by national consensus in this country, and those of us who will never suffer a single indignity for the color of our skin should remember that before turning all human experience on its head and claiming we are the victims of racism if our own good will is challenged.</blockquote><br>People sometimes say that it's foolish for liberals to point out racism, that it accomplishes nothing and only creates hostility. I always ask them when they say this, \"what do tell our African American friends and family?\" It's not just up to Ta-Nehesi Coates and his family to confront these good white people. It's our job as fellow human beings, to stand with them. <br><br>.<br><br><br>"
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"title" : "How the Africa-China romance is killing Europe",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/img_6055_mo101_600.jpg?w=610&h=406\" width=\"610\" height=\"406\"></p>\n<p>In the past decade the international media first focused on China’s economic boom, which was then followed by the ‘Africa is rising’ narrative. The latter partly as a result of China’s investments. Many have wondered whether China’s interest in Africa would trigger a new wave of colonialism and exploitation of mineral resources, needed to keep Chinese factories going. <span></span></p>\n<p>On regular occasions one would find media analyses of the China-Africa romance (like <a href=\"http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/29/is-china-good-or-bad-for-africa/\">here</a>, <a href=\"http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/06/chinas-economic-invasion-of-africa\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Africa/China-in-Africa-Partners-in-the-Year-of-the-Snake.html\">here</a>). And like a mother not too happy with her daughter’s choice of partner, the experts tended to be wary of the authenticity of the cute new couple. Even when South Africa became the ‘S’ in BRICS, the rest of the world (read: the West) had its doubts. <a href=\"http://www.ibtimes.com/does-south-africa-deserve-join-bric-252205\">Was South Africa ready to play with the big boys?</a></p>\n<p>As it now turns out, what the West, and Europe in particular, have been afraid of all the time is how much the “Old World” would lose because of the new relations between China and the African continent. A documentary on Dutch public television by broadcaster VPRO, that premiered recently, painfully shows the consequences for Europe now that it virtually has closed its borders, while China is welcoming African migrants with open arms.</p>\n<p>The 45-minute documentary entitled “<a href=\"http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/afleveringen/2012-2013/de-toekomst-komt-uit-afrika.html\">Zwart geld: De toekomst komt uit Afrika</a>” – “Black money: The future comes from Africa” (one could question the title) examines two things.</p>\n<p>First, we see how migrants live in ‘Nigeria Town’ in the Chinese city Guangzhou.</p>\n<p>Four Africans – three Nigerian men and one Mozambican woman – serve as living examples how life is like after having roamed across the globe in the hope to find employment or to do business. (Usually the latter.) It’s intriguing to watch the easiness with which the main subjects go about their daily life and interact with their Chinese business partners; there seem to be no signs of racism, a subject that inevitably needed to be covered by the filmmakers. It’s a totally different picture of the loneliness and hardships endured by African immigrants who came to Europe as seen for example in the documentary series <a href=\"http://www.surprisingeurope.com/\">Surprising Europe</a>.</p>\n<p>African migrants in China are far better off as we learn that one can make $5,000 a week in China, that an individual can make it in China and that on a daily basis twenty to thirty million dollar is sent from China to Nigeria in cash.</p>\n<p>The second narrative of the documentary focuses on the losses for Europe as a result of the economic romance. This time no European experts, but South African economist Ian Goldin and Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe. Goldin, the former Director of Development Policy at the World Bank and now Director at the Oxford Martin School paints a clear picture for Europe: “I predict that in 2030, Europe will be saying desperately: ‘we want more Africans’.” A pretty grim picture for those political leaders in Europe who in recent years have been working hard to build the European fortress.</p>\n<p>A lot of the analysis and facts Goldin presents about the economic dawn of Europe are not new. However the connection he draws between the liberal economic policies that have enabled free flow of people and goods in Europe for the economic good of the continent and the liberal politicians that have drafted these policies while also being the ones responsible for the strict immigration laws might be the most interesting.</p>\n<p>As the main focus of the documentary is on the economic consequences (positive for Africa and China, negative for Europe), Mbembe seems to be given an appreciative nod rather than adding something substantial. His role here is merely to question “Why is Europe unable to understand that the world we live in is a totally different world. And that the future of the world more and more won’t be decided in the West.”</p>\n<p>Watch it <a href=\"http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/1328426\">here</a> (interviews are in English).</p>\n<p><em>* Photo: <a href=\"http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/nieuws/2013/februari/energie-congo-town.html\">Pieter van der Houwen</a>.</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/64058/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/64058/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=64058&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><strong>A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Here is an exchange between the Global Editor of the Atlantic Magazine and myself this afternoon attempting to solicit my professional services for an article they sought to publish after reading my story “25 Years of Slam Dunk Diplomacy: <em>Rodman trip comes after 25 years of basketball diplomacy between U.S. and North Korea” </em> here <a href=\"http://www.nknews.org/2013/03/slam-dunk-diplomacy/\" rel=\"nofollow nofollow\">http://www.nknews.org/2013/03/slam-dunk-diplomacy/</a></strong><em><strong> at NKNews.org<br>\n</strong></em></p>\n<p><strong>From the Atlantic Magazine:</strong></p>\n<p>On Mar 4, 2013 3:27 PM, “olga khazan” <<a href=\"mailto:okhazan@theatlantic.com\">okhazan@theatlantic.com</a>> wrote:</p>\n<p>Hi there — I’m the global editor for the Atlantic, and I’m trying to reach Nate Thayer to see if he’d be interested in repurposing his recent basketball diplomacy post on our site.</p>\n<p>Could someone connect me with him, please?</p>\n<p>thanks,<br>\nOlga Khazan<br>\n<a href=\"mailto:okhazan@theatlantic.com\">okhazan@theatlantic.com</a></p>\n<p><strong> From the head of NK News, who originally published the piece this morning:</strong></p>\n<p>Hi that piece is copy right to NK News, so please engage us mutually.<br>\nThanks, tad</p>\n<p><strong>From the Atlantic:</strong></p>\n<p>Sure. Thanks Nate and Tad…I was just wondering if you’d be interested in adapting a version of that for the Atlantic. Let me know if you’d be interested.</p>\n<p>thanks,</p>\n<p>Olga</p>\n<p><strong>From me:</strong></p>\n<p>Hi Olga:</p>\n<p>Give me a shout at <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">443 205 9162</a> in D.C. and I’d be delighted to see whether we can work something out.</p>\n<p>Best,</p>\n<p>Nate Thayer</p>\n<p><strong>From the Atlantic:</strong></p>\n<p>Sure, I’ll call you in a few minutes.</p>\n<p><strong>After a brief phone call where no specifics were really discussed, and she requested I email her:</strong></p>\n<p>Hi Olga: What did you have in mind for length, storyline, deadline, and fees for the basketball diplomacy piece. Or any other specifics. I think we can work something out, but I want to make sure I have the time to do it properly to meet your deadline, so give me a shout back when you have the earliest chance.</p>\n<p>best,</p>\n<p>Nate Thayer</p>\n<p><strong>From the Atlantic:</strong></p>\n<p>Thanks for responding. Maybe by the end of the week? 1,200 words? We unfortunately can’t pay you for it, but we do reach 13 million readers a month.<span></span> I understand if that’s not a workable arrangement for you, I just wanted to see if you were interested.</p>\n<p>Thanks so much again for your time. A great piece!</p>\n<p><strong>From me:</strong></p>\n<p>Thanks Olga:</p>\n<p>I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts. 1200 words by the end of the week would be fine, and I can assure you it would be well received, but not for free. Frankly, I will refrain from being insulted and am perplexed how one can expect to try to retain quality professional services without compensating for them. Let me know if you have perhaps mispoken.</p>\n<p>best,</p>\n<p>Nate</p>\n<p><strong>From the Atlantic:</strong></p>\n<p>Hi Nate — I completely understand your position, but our rate even for original, reported stories is $100. I am out of freelance money right now, I enjoyed your post, and I thought you’d be willing to summarize it for posting for a wider audience without doing any additional legwork. Some journalists use our platform as a way to gain more exposure for whatever professional goals they might have, but that’s not right for everyone and it’s of course perfectly reasonable to decline.</p>\n<p>Thank you and I’m sorry to have offended you.</p>\n<p>Best,</p>\n<p>Olga</p>\n<p><strong>From me:</strong></p>\n<p>Hi Olga: No offense taken and no worries. I am sure you are aware of the changing, deteriorating condition of our profession and the difficulty for serious journalists to make a living through their work resulting in the decline of the quality of news in general. Ironically, a few years back I was offered a staff job with the Atlantic to write 6 articles a year for a retainer of $125,000, with the right to publish elsewhere in addition. The then editor, Michael Kelly, was killed while we were both in Iraq, and we both, as it were, moved on to different places. I don’t have a problem with exposure but I do with paying my bills.</p>\n<p>I am sure you can do what is the common practice these days and just have one of your interns rewrite the story as it was published elsewhere, but hopefully stating that is how the information was acquired. If you ever are interested in a quality story on North Korea and wiling to pay for it, please do give me a shout. I do enjoy reading what you put out, although I remain befuddled as to how that particular business model would be sustainable to either journalism and ultimately the owners and stockholders of the Atlantic.</p>\n<p>I understand your dilemma and it really is nothing personal, I assure you, and I wish you the best of luck.</p>\n<p><strong>So now, for those of you remained unclear on the state of journalism in 2013, you no longer are…..</strong></p>"
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"content" : "<p>The relational model, and by extension, the language SQL supports the notion of NULL marker. It is commonly used to indicate that some attribute is unknown or non applicable. NULL markers are a bit strange because they are not values per se. Hence, the predicate 1 = NULL is neither true nor false. Indeed, the inventor of the relational model, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_F._Codd\">E. F. Codd</a>, proposed a 3-value logic model: predicates are true, false or unknown. This lives on even today. Our entire civilization runs on database systems using an unintuitive 3-value logic. Isn’t that something!</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, in real life, predicates either evaluate to true, or they don’t. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Date\">C. J. Date</a> <a href=\"http://www09.sigmod.org/sigmod/record/issues/0809/p23.grant.pdf\">showed that NULL markers end up giving you inconsistent semantics</a>. So our civilization runs on database systems that can be inconsistent! </p>\n<p>Yet the NULL markers were introduced for a reason: some things do remain unknown or are non applicable. We can handle these issues with more complicated schemas, but it is not practical. So database designers do allow NULL markers.</p>\n<p>How did Codd react when it was pointed out to him that NULL markers make his model inconsistent? He essentially told us that NULL markers are in limbo:</p>\n<blockquote><p>(…) the normalization concepts do NOT apply, and should NOT be applied, globally to those combinations of attributes and tuples containing marks. (…) The proper time for the system to make this determination is when an attempt is made to replace the pertinent mark by an actual db-value.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>So the mathematical rigor does not apply to NULL markers. Period.</p>\n<p>This sounds pretty bad. I am rather amazed that Codd could get away with this.</p>\n<p>But how bad is it in real life? </p>\n<p>Let us consider WordPress, the blog engine I am using. As part of the core database schema, only the tables wp_postmeta, wp_usermeta and wp_commentmeta allow NULL markers. These tables are exclusively used to store metadata describing blog posts, users and comments. If this metadata is somehow inconsistent, the blog engine will not fall apart. It may hurt secondary features, such as advanced navigation, but the core data (posts, users and comments) will remain unaffected.</p>\n<p>Date was repeatedly asked to prove that NULL markers were indeed a problem. I do not think that he ever conclusively showed that they were a real problem. Anyhow, our civilization has not collapsed yet.</p>\n<p>Does anyone has any evidence that NULL markers are a bona fide problem in practice? Oh! Sure! Incompetent people will always find a way to create problems. So let us assume we are dealing with reasonably smart people doing reasonable work.</p>\n<p><strong>Credit</strong>: This post is motivated by an exchange with A. Badia from Louisville University.</p>\n<p><strong>Example of SQL’s inconsistency:</strong></p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWe are given two tables: Suppliers (sno,city) and Parts(pno,city). The tables have both a single row; (S1,’London’) and (P1,null) respectively. That is, we have one supplier in London as well as one part for which the location is left unspecified (hence the null marker).</p>\n<p>We have the following query:</p>\n<p>Select sno, pno<br>\nFrom Suppliers, Parts<br>\nWhere Parts.city <> Suppliers.city<br>\nOr Parts.city <> ‘Paris’;</p>\n<p>In SQL, this query would return nothing due to Codd’s 3-value logic because the where clause only selects row when the predicate is true. </p>\n<p>Yet we know that if a physical part is actually located somewhere, it is either not in London or not in Paris. So the answer is wrong.</p>\n<p>Let us consider another interpretation: maybe the part P1 is fictitious. It is not physically available anywhere. In such a case, the SQL query still fails to return the correct answer as the part P1 is not in London. </p>\n<p>Maybe we could assume instead that the part P1 is available everywhere: this later interpretation is also incorrect<br>\nbecause the query </p>\n<p>Select * from Parts where Parts.city = ‘Paris’</p>\n<p>will return nothing.\n</p></blockquote>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?a=B80mgbfQQos:USkPFJgrx78:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?i=B80mgbfQQos:USkPFJgrx78:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/daniel-lemire/atom/~4/B80mgbfQQos\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Cry the Beloved Porcupine",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/shutterstock_90117172.jpg\"><img alt=\"shutterstock_90117172\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/shutterstock_90117172.jpg\" width=\"475\" height=\"432\"></a></p>\n<p>In 2001, fresh out of college and yearning for adventure, I moved to South Africa. My recollection is that I had seen Cry the Beloved Country and The Power of One several times and decided that I had to go to Africa to intern at the university and write bad poetry. I’ll admit, the entomology professor I called to inform that I would be volunteering in his lab was a bit confused but when I told him that I wouldn’t cost him a cent (or a rand, in this case), he said fine.</p>\n<p>It was during this odd sort of internship that I signed up for my great porcupine adventure. It seems that occasionally documentary films draw from grad schools for cheap labor tracking and tagging animal that they will be following for a show (if you truly love nature documentaries and believe they are all spontaneous, stop reading now before I shatter your illusions). Many documentaries send able and moronic young people into the bush months beforehand to implant tracking devices into animals to make them easy to follow and habituate.</p>\n<p>I’ll get to “habituate” in a second, but first we had to catch the little bastards. I was hired by a company doing a BBC documentary on aardvarks and the animals that live in their burrows (thrilling, right?). Our focus would be the porcupine.<span></span></p>\n<p>The African porcupine, as you doubtless know, is a fearsome creature that haunts the nightmares of all Africans and turns even the bravest warrior’s knees to jelly. <a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/shutterstock_127904351.jpg\"><img alt=\"shutterstock_127904351\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/shutterstock_127904351-300x209.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"209\"></a></p>\n<p>Actually, no. Thanks to their somewhat impenetrable defense system, porcupines have become somewhat languid in their self-defense philosophy. If confronted by a foe, they shrug their little shoulders, put their head against the nearest tree, and raise their spines as if to say, “look, we all know how this will end, do yourself a favor and piss off.”</p>\n<div style=\"width:250px\"><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Springhare.jpg\"><img alt=\"Springhare\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Springhare-240x300.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\"></a><p>A spring hare in one of the few moments it’s not running.</p></div>\n<p>But they are hard to find and night after night, from 10PM to 3AM we would drive a comically large truck through the bush waving giant flashlights to and fro. My companions were a recalcitrant biologist and a former drug dealer using the time to get over his heroin addiction. When weren’t searching for porcupines, we were playing a favorite bush game “catch random animals barehanded.” My target was always the spring hare, an adorable rodent I learn has two speeds: “really fast” and “ultra sonic.” Needless to say, I chased many but never caught one.</p>\n<p>We did find multiple aardvark holes, though. It was ironic that the prep crew for a documentary on aardvark holes sunk their truck into so many. Imagine a tunnel big enough for a child to crawl through. Now imagine a truck so buried in that tunnel that the bumper is almost on the ground and you can imagine one of our fun-filled nights.</p>\n<p>We did eventually catch a porcupine (after finally buying gloves on the fourth day) and dubbed him “Uncle Erik.” We loved Uncle Erik, but I doubt he felt the same since his first experience with us was to be shot up with ketamine and have a radio tracker surgically implanted into his belly. Then the cruelest part of the entire process began – habituation. Habituation is a little like domestication except you do not feed the animal. You just hang out around it until it loses its fear of you – you are neither predator nor food-giver – and ignores you. Each night I would track down Uncle Erik and follow him around and just talk to him.</p>\n<p>This brings up a number of questions, but the biggest was, “what do you say to a porcupine?” I tried singing for a while, but that was weird. So I decided to discuss my relationship.</p>\n<p>“… So then she said it was my fault and that she never even wanted to go in the first place. Which was crap, because she said that we need to spend more time together, and I told her that I don’t have time to hang out every weekend …”</p>\n<p>Meanwhile the porcupine sits silently with his head against a shrub, spines up, thinking, “<i>for God’s sake. Shut. The. Hell. Up.”</i></p>\n<p>“… but I like my apartment and don’t feel ready to move in together. I’m a free spirit, you know? So I told her …”</p>\n<p>“<i>Jesus Porcupine Christ, just kill me now</i>.”</p>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/scan0042.jpg\"><img alt=\"scan0042\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/scan0042-300x205.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"205\"></a><p>The author as a moronic young biologist posing with Uncle Erik the porcupine sedated in the vet’s office.</p></div>\n<p>“… and what does ‘exclusive’ even mean? It’s not like I can’t have friends of the opposite …”</p>\n<p>One night, in the midst of this drivel, I heard thunder and walked up to see if a storm was coming. It was a ways off, so I turned back to Uncle Erik, who had gone. Switching on my receiver, I realized that he was not even within the 50 yards needed to track him. Essentially, first chance he got he had just sprinted away, without looking back. Those who know porcupines know that sprinting is a rare thing for them.</p>\n<p>And so it went, night after night, until Uncle Erik just ignored us and went about his business. After two weeks in the bush, it was time to go back to Cape Town and my life of cataloging isopods and collecting ants. I often think about those nights, alone with Uncle Erik. Certainly, there are ethical questions about the treatment of porcupines (who, I should say, are not endangered) for entertainment purposes. Certainly, we were unqualified to be running around the African desert snatching rodents. But for a young man, eager to take on the world, chasing spring hares and following porcupines seemed the grandest of all adventures.</p>\n<p>Photos courtesy of <a href=\"http://shutterstock.com\">Shutterstock</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Devonpike\">Devonpike</a>, and myself.</p>\n"
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"title" : "you haven’t got any less wrong, you know",
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"content" : "<p>Shorter <a href=\"http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/iraq-why-blair-was-right\">John Lloyd</a>: The Iraqi people have proved unworthy of me. And all those soldiers of ours are a bunch of girlymen.</p>\n<p>You think I’m joking?</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>But we did not anticipate that Iraqi forces who hated the US – including those loyal to Saddam – would dominate after the invasion, <strong>that the population would not be active in ensuring democratic choice as it had been in, say, Poland</strong>, and that the west had limited staying power.</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>Unlike Lloyd, who went once as a journalist to offer solidarity to the Iraqi trade unions (i.e. go to some meetings), says so right there in the piece. Doesn’t mention that they needed solidarity <em>against the authorities John Lloyd wanted to impose on them</em>.</p>\n<p>Not even bothering with a shorter for <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/9895309/Tony-Blair-People-are-still-very-abusive-to-me-10-years-after-the-Iraq-War.html\">Tony Blair</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The fact is, yes, there are people who will be very abusive, by the way I do walk down the street, and by the way, I won an election in 2005 after Iraq</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>Yes, after you <em>promised to resign in favour of Gordon Brown</em>.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/feb/15/iraq-war-10-year-anniversary-poll?CMP=twt_gu\">polls</a>:<br>\n<blockquote><em>The approximately two-to-one balance of opinion against the Iraq war broadly applies across both sexes and every age range. Every nation and region of the UK also retains a clear anti-war majority…</em></blockquote></p>\n<p>The marchers are also vindicated by opinion up and down the social scale, although the 49%-36% balance of opinion in favour of the marchers among the so-called AB occupational grades is somewhat more balanced than the crushing anti-war majorities among working-class voters….</p>\n<p>there is no partisan slant in the public’s opposition to the war. Conservative supporters believe the marchers were right by a 57%-30% margin, statistically indistinguishable to the 57%-29% support for the marchers found among Labour voters. Supporters of the Liberal Democrats, the only big party in 2003 to offer a united anti-war stance, are only marginally more strongly behind the marchers – they are split 59%-24%. The 54%-33% anti-war majority found among Ukip supporters confirms Blair is judged to have been on the wrong side of history, right across the political spectrum.</p>"
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"title" : "Those pesky racial entitlements",
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"content" : "<div><b>Those pesky racial entitlements</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div>by digby</div><br>McFadden's strip in the <i>New York Times</i>:<br><br><blockquote><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xOjXpxF1BJs/UTOQcaMNHaI/AAAAAAAAMAg/3bF87BHTnUU/s1600/the-strip-slide-TC87-jumbo.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"330\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xOjXpxF1BJs/UTOQcaMNHaI/AAAAAAAAMAg/3bF87BHTnUU/s640/the-strip-slide-TC87-jumbo.png\" width=\"640\"></a></div></blockquote><br><br>This would be a lot funnier if Justice Scalia were the only person in America who believed this. <br><br>The desire for racism is no longer an issue in American life is powerful for a lot of reasons, most of them good. But it's obvious that there are a lot of people who want to declare the problem solved before it's over out of resentment that they had to deal with it in the first place. <br><br>It should be obvious to anyone that the act of suppressing the African American vote is racist. And there is no doubt that the Republicans are doing that. <br><br>It should also be obvious that when you have a criminal justice system that throws out <a href=\"http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet\">these statistics</a>, that we have a problem with race:<br><br><blockquote><ul><li>African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population</li><li>African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites</li><li>Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population</li><li>According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%</li><li>One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime</li><li>1 in 100 African American women are in prison</li><li>Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice). </li></ul></blockquote><blockquote>Drug Sentencing Disparities </blockquote><blockquote><ul><li>About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug</li><li>5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites</li><li>African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.</li><li>African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)</li></ul></blockquote><br>The fact that there are also some African Americans in high places does not change the fact that we stil have systemic racism in this country. You just can't look at those numbers as come to any other conclusion.<br><br>."
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"content" : "<p>Of all the startups that launched last year, <a href=\"http://fuzz.com/\">Fuzz</a> is certainly one of the most intriguing and the most overlooked. Describing itself as a “people-powered radio” that is completely “robot-free,” Fuzz bucks the trend toward ever greater reliance on algorithms in discovering new music. Fuzz celebrates the role played by human DJs—regular users who are invited to upload their own music to the site in order to create and share their own “radio stations.”</p><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b2dff6ad19f92e89e6bc980f69b0b797:H33YdR4nLVFbB%2B8kCOt%2FvekWFuk9MzGeeTqhM5UzjtQ9XEZcfwL%2BjGDmSq%2FawuuJamcdwyYhCtEjaP4%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Facebook\" alt=\"Add to Facebook\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:a1f8b72b2a3fcfe15d50e46d2135939c:u2%2BtoSC6kNsGglSSYMSQXOBqLHtaiqayQ2CDsy9t%2BQ%2F2rtezaaXorxih683XUt7rieGlLjz5te7KsVA%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Twitter\" alt=\"Add to Twitter\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/twitter.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:6fc488d5c960fb8fe0973a1020bf7af4:mFLt2S4uFCStUjYN%2F67MC724%2FLEdBf0xR9oSsNMsAdk7f8fwiBsEibYjOagcVUiuQedLYf52wVZwKQ%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to digg\" alt=\"Add to digg\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:0a58f50c547b1bbe8f08066043c4007d:jULkmC2BlluIiA%2B14Pj5glWcGScYRidEZ5%2F0VhOESBorZxGcr0z2uvxewpZxemTP1EwhFQLQugmJpw%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Reddit\" alt=\"Add to Reddit\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:5f3f22c2de38f4c8949abe58521c7372:51GFjqyKklcKZ8yDh6pO2UsdoVI0ZVaFWYFJxXpgvZOX15nfZeq7S5OCrb49oERY65T4CK3XcOeiP8w%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" alt=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:9ddeb59675eb0f8ba3102f788cf805fa:8jI%2BVk7jZKzZKEcVWzmalSwL83WLKXbqYKhMqh%2FilSYp%2BxHZgke6sjqB3%2B%2FAa4zcdh4EP0wWAeGANBU%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Email this Article\" alt=\"Email this Article\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthisHF.gif\"></a>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=78b955697d0b8c0a496b91e092794810&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=78b955697d0b8c0a496b91e092794810&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://tags.bluekai.com/site/5148\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:ef7jeah&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\">"
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Client flight during 2012 helped bring a 13% fall in total deposits.</p><p>Bankia became the focus of Spain's banking crisis last year after auditors refused to sign off on the accounts presented by company president Rodrigo Rato, a former finance minister from prime minister Mariano Rajoy's People's party (PP) and one-time head of the International Monetary Fund. It is now taking €18bn in bailout funds from the country's Frob bank restructuring fund, which had to borrow the money from the eurozone's bailout fund as part of a €40bn rescue of several struggling banks.</p><p>Just months before being nationalised in May Bankia had been reporting €309m in profits for 2011. That figure eventually turned into €3bn in losses.</p><p>The bank's former management is under investigation by the courts, with an investigating magistrate taking evidence in recent weeks from auditors Deloitte and former Bank of Spain president Miguel Angel Fernández Ordóñez. No one has yet been charged in the case.</p><p>Press reports suggested that holders of Bankia shares –which were sold aggressively to the bank's own retail customers as it desperately tried to raise money in 2011 – will see their investment virtually wiped out.</p><p>The Frob fund has denied reports that, under pressure from the eurozone's bailout funds, it is to give them a value close to zero.</p><p>Reuters reported that Brussels officials believe the shares, worth 29 cents on Thurs day, should be valued at just one cent each. Spain, according to the same report, is fighting for a 10 cent valuation. Retail clients bought the shares for €3.75.</p><p>Bankia has now dumped its toxic real assets in the government-backed Sareb \"bad bank\", which received €37bn of assets from four rescued banks in December.</p><p>Sareb is now set to receive about €15bn of assets from four more banks, confirming its position as one of Europe's biggest holders of real estate.</p><p>Bankia took provisions of €24bn in 2012 and insisted that the cleanout would enable it to return to profit this year.</p><p>\"We start 2013 from a solid position, with a clean balance sheet, good solvency levels and an excellent liquidity situation. Our challenge now is to make Bankia a profitable institution that is able to return to society the support it has received,\" Bankia boss José Ignacio Goirigolzarri said. \"It will be a complex year, a year of challenges.\"</p><p>Non-performing loans fell to 13% in December – worse than the Spanish banking average of 10.4%. The figure would have been around 15% had it not offloaded property on to the bad bank.</p><p>Bankia will be 70% government-owned once it completes the capital increase and must shrink its balance sheet by 60% as a condition of the rescue.</p><p>It is cutting 4,500 jobs and plans to raise €8bn by selling its portfolio of stakes in companies such as International Airlines Group – the parent company of British Airways and Iberia. It also plans to sell Florida-based City National Bank within six months.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/bankia\">Bankia</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/europeanbanks\">European banks</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/spain\">Spain</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/banks\">Banks and building societies</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/debt-crisis\">Eurozone crisis</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking\">Banking</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news\">Europe</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/gilestremlett\">Giles Tremlett</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"title" : "As We Near the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War",
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"content" : "<div>Here is something other than The Sequester to think about at the beginning of March:<br><br>This month marks ten years since the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq. In my view this was the biggest strategic error by the United States since at least the end of World War II and perhaps over a much longer period. Vietnam was costlier and more damaging, but also more understandable. As many people have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Irony-Vietnam-System-Worked/dp/0815730713\" style=\"font-size:13px\">chronicled</a>, the decision to fight in Vietnam was a years-long accretion of step-by-step choices, each of which could be rationalized at the time. Invading Iraq was an unforced, unnecessary decision to risk everything on a \"war of choice\" whose costs we are still paying. </div><div><br></div><img alt=\"FiftyFirst.jpeg\" src=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/FiftyFirst.jpeg\" style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px\" height=\"261\" width=\"193\"><div>My reasons for bringing this up:</div><div><br></div><div>1) <b>Reckoning</b>. Anyone now age 30 or above should probably reflect on what he or she got right and wrong ten years ago. </div><div> </div><div>I feel I was right in arguing, six months before the war in \"<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/11/the-fifty-first-state/302612/\">The Fifty-First State</a>,\" that invading Iraq would bring on a slew of complications and ramifications that would take at least a decade to unwind.<br> <br>I feel not \"wrong\" but regretful for having resigned myself even by that point to the certainty that war was coming. We know, now, that within a few days of the 9/11 attacks many members of the Bush Administration had resolved to \"go to the source,\" in Iraq. Here at the magazine, it was because of our resigned certainty about the war that Cullen Murphy, then serving as editor, encouraged me in early 2002 to begin an examination of what invading and occupying Iraq would mean. The resulting article was in our November, 2002 issue; we put it on line in late August in hopes of influencing the debate.<br><br>My article didn't come out and say as bluntly as it could have: we are about to make a terrible mistake we will regret and should avoid. Instead I couched the argument as cautionary advice. We know this is coming, and when it does, the results are going to be costly, damaging, and self-defeating. So we should prepare and try to diminish the worst effects (for Iraq and for us). This form of argument reflected my conclusion that the wheels were turning and that there was no way to stop them. Analytically, that was correct: Tony Blair or Colin Powell might conceivably have slowed the momentum, if either of them had turned anti-war in time, but few other people could have. Still, I'd feel better now if I had pushed the argument even harder at the time. <br><br>For the record, Michael Kelly, who had been editor of the magazine and was a passionate advocate of the need for war, allowed us to undertake this project and put it on the cover even though he disagreed. Soon thereafter he was in Iraq, as an embedded reporter with the 3rd Infantry Division; in an incredible tragedy he was killed during the invasion's early phase.</div><div><br></div><div>2) <b>Accountability</b>. For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had <span style=\"font-size:13px\">guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage. Robert McNamara did worthy penance at the World Bank. Rusk, Rostow, Westmoreland were not declaiming on what the U.S. should and should not do.</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:13px\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:13px\">After Iraq, there has been a weird amnesty and amnesia about people's misjudgment on the most consequential decision of our times. </span><span style=\"font-size:13px\">Hillary Clinton lost the 2008 primary race largely because she had been \"wrong\" on Iraq and Barack Obama had been \"right.\"</span><span style=\"font-size:13px\"> But Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, Rice, McCain, Abrams, and others including the pro-war press claque are still offering their judgments unfazed. In his post-presidential reticence George W. Bush has been an honorable exception. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:13px\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:13px\">I don't say these people should never again weigh in. But there should be an asterisk on their views, like the fine print about side effects in pharmaceutical ads. </span></div><div><br></div><div>3) <b>Honor</b>. Say this for Al Gore: He was forthright, he was early, and <a href=\"http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html\">he was right</a> about Iraq.</div><div><br></div><div>4) <b>Liberal hawks</b>. Say this about the \"liberal hawk\" faction of 2002-2003: unlike, say, Peter Beinart, not enough of them have reckoned with what they got wrong then, and how hard many of them were pushing the \"justice\" and \"duty\" to invade, not to mention its feasibility. It would be good to hear from more of them, ten years on.<br></div><div><br></div><div>5) <b>Threat inflation</b>. As I think about this war and others the U.S. has contemplated or entered during my conscious life, I realize how strong is the recurrent pattern of <i>threat inflation</i>. Exactly once in the post-WW II era has the real threat been more ominous than officially portrayed. That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world really came within moments of nuclear destruction.</div><div><br></div><div>Otherwise: the \"missile gap.\" The Gulf of Tonkin. The overall scale of the Soviet menace. Iraq. In each case, the public soberly received official warnings about the imminent threat. In cold retrospect, those warnings were wrong -- or contrived, or overblown, or misperceived. Official claims about the <i>evils</i> of these systems were many times justified. Claims about imminent threats were most of the times hyped.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Which brings me to:</div><div><br></div><div>6) <b>Iran</b>. Most of the people now warning stridently about the threat from Iran warned stridently about Iraq ten years ago. That doesn't prove they are wrong this time too. But it's a factor to be weighed. Most of the technical warnings we are getting about Iran's capabilities are like those we got about Saddam's. That doesn't prove they are wrong again. But it's a factor.</div><div><br>Purportedly authoritative inside reports, replete with technical details about \"yellowcake\" or aluminum tubes, had an outsized role in convincing people of the threat from Iraq. We wish now that more people had looked harder at those claims. If you'd like to see someone looking hard at similar technical claims about Iran, please check out the <a href=\"http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/iran-centrifuge-magnet-story-technically-questionable\">Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists</a>, where Youssaf Butt argues that the latest warnings mean less than they seem. Also from the Bulletin, a <a href=\"http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/diy-graphic-design\">previous debunking</a>, and a proposal for a negotiated endgame <a href=\"http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/op-eds/proposed-endgame-the-iranian-nuclear-crisis\">with Iran</a>. <br><br>Again: like most of humanity, I can't judge these nuclear-technology arguments myself. But the long history of crying-wolf hyped warnings, in some cases by the same people now most alarmist about Iran, puts a major burden of proof on those claiming imminent peril.<br> <span style=\"font-size:13px\"></span></div><div>7) <b>Clarity</b>. I said earlier that I regretted not being more direct and blatant in saying: <b><i>Don't</i></b> go into Iraq. For more <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/12/will-iran-be-next/303599/\">than eight years</a>, I've tried to argue very directly that a preemptive military strike on Iran would be an enormous mistake on all levels for either Israel or the United States. Strategically it could only cement-in Iranian hostility for the long run. Tactically every professional soldier -- Israeli, American, or otherwise -- who has examined the practicalities of such a mission has warned that it would be folly. </div><div><br></div><div>Lest the soldiers seem too gloomy, <a href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/senators-press-to-green-light-israeli-attack-on-iran.html\">several U.S. Senators</a> are working on a resolution committing the U.S. to lend its military and diplomatic support if PM Netanyahu decides, against the advice of most of his own military establishment, to attack. It would be bad enough if Netanyahu got his own country into this bind; there is no precedent for the U.S. delegating to any ally the decision to commit our troops to an attack. It would be different from NATO-style treaty obligations for mutual defense.<br> </div><div><br></div><div>There is more ahead about Israeli, Iranian, and American negotiating strategies, but this is enough for now. It's also as much as I can manage before recovering from the flight from DC to Beijing.</div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://Theatlantic.feedsportal.com/c/34375/f/625833/s/29198900/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><div><table border=\"0\"><tr><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=As+We+Near+the+10th+Anniversary+of+the+Iraq+War&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Finternational%2Farchive%2F2013%2F03%2Fas-we-near-the-10th-anniversary-of-the-iraq-war%2F273504%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=As+We+Near+the+10th+Anniversary+of+the+Iraq+War&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Finternational%2Farchive%2F2013%2F03%2Fas-we-near-the-10th-anniversary-of-the-iraq-war%2F273504%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td></tr></table></div><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/159490042877/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/29198900/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/159490042877/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/29198900/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/159490042877/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/29198900/a2t.img\" border=\"0\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?a=ErfaLbtWtAI:Rfc9euerA6I:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesFallows/~4/ErfaLbtWtAI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "My PE of development class, Week 6: Independence and the politics of personal rule",
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"content" : "<p>Slides are <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/wp/../files/2013/02/6-Post-independence-politics.pdf\">here</a>.</p>\n<p>As usual, comments and criticisms welcome. The trouble with a course in world development is that any one scholar actually only really knows 5% of the material well. Thankfully I can mostly fake the other 95%, but wouldn’t it be nice if I were only faking 90%?</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=VwAuBwb65bs:nVUKAakKe3g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=VwAuBwb65bs:nVUKAakKe3g:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=VwAuBwb65bs:nVUKAakKe3g:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=VwAuBwb65bs:nVUKAakKe3g:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=VwAuBwb65bs:nVUKAakKe3g:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/VwAuBwb65bs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Alice Russell Turns The Competition 'To Dust' On Her New LP",
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"content" : "Take a quick glance at <b>Alice Russell</b>'s career thus far. and you would be forgiven for scratching your head in confusion. Why isn't this woman a household name, on par with the <b>Amy</b>'s, <b>Adele</b>'s and <b>Emeli</b>'s of the industry? Why has she been overlooked by those who hail newcomers such as <b>Jessie Ware</b> and <b>Lianne La Havas</b> as the next big things? Sure, she is celebrated by tastemakers and fellow artists, but stop and ask someone on the street and chances are they won't know who you are talking about. These are questions I have often pondered when listening to one of her albums, whether it be her solo material or one of her numerous and varied collaborations. She has the talent, that's for sure. So why hasn't she \"blown up\"? I don't have the answer, neither do her legions of adoring, dedicated and loyal fans, but let me say that <i>To Dust</i>, Alice's fifth studio album, may just be the one one to make everyone sit up and realize what the rest of us have known for a long time. Alice Russell is the real deal.\n <i>To Dust </i>is an eclectic bag of musical tricks, but the one thing that holds it all together is the working relationship between Alice and her musical partner/producer <b>TM Juke</b>. The pair have a long history of working together, and they are also great friends to boot, so the level of understanding between the two rivals any of the great musical partnerships. Juke knows how to pitch tracks just right to bring the best out of Alice, and Alice repays him by posessing a voice so elastic that she can match whatever beat or track he can conjure up. Album opener \"A to Z\" is a great introduction to the pair's sound for those who are unfamiliar. As Alice runs through the relationship lexicon, Juke matches the highs and lows with a mixture of booming bass and shiny synths, but always ensuring that her voice is the centre of attention. The album's first single <a href=\"http://www.soulbounce.com/soul/2012/11/alice_russell_has_a_message_for_her_heartbreaker.php\">\"Heartbreaker\"</a> paints a similar picture, albeit with a very different musical landscape, as Alice gives a nod to the retro-stylings of her last outing, 2008's <i>Pot Of Gold</i>, but this is no Motown-mimicking \"soul-by-numbers\". On the contrary it's Latin-esque guitar work and heavy percussion gives the track a fresh vibe while still maintaining a familiar feel. If \"Heartbreaker\" gives a nod to the past then its counterpart, \"Heartbreaker Pt. 2\" (which actually appears before \"Heartbreaker\" on the tracklisting), brings things back up to date with its bluesy guitar riffs and hip-hop inspired bassline, giving rise to a modern day \"break-up\" masterpiece best played at full volume through a decent set of speakers.<br><br>\n\n\nElsewhere on the album, Alice is doing her best to display her versatility as both a songwriter and a vocalist. The syncopated \"For A While\" is an early standout, with its gospel-inflected adlibs and rhythm that, once heard, cannot be easily forgotten. <a href=\"http://www.soulbounce.com/soul/2011/08/alice_russell_gives_it_to_us_hard_strong_over_over.php\">\"Hard and Strong\"</a> brings in elements of rock and ups the funk factor significantly, while <a href=\"http://www.soulbounce.com/soul/2012/08/have_a_breakdown_with_alice_russell.php\">\"Let Go (Breakdown)\"</a> is destined to fill dance floors far and wide (side note: I'd have like it if they kept the <b>Darondo</b> feature, but who knows, maybe it wasn't possible). The album's title track slows proceedings down a touch as Alice's puts Mr. Taxman on blast, but in a classy tell-it-like-it-is manner and it is the perfect prelude to what may be the album's biggest highlight, \"I Loved You.\" Here Alice's mighty vocals are on full display as she pulls out all the stops to go toe-to-toe with Adele in the \"boy you done me wrong\" stakes. It's not just in raw power that Alice stands up to the fellow Brit, she also possesses her effortless control and ability to draw you into the emotion of the song, all attributes we want from a soul singer, but unfortunately attributes that are missing in many deemed as such.<br><br>\n\n\n\nThe interludes on <em>To Dust</em> are also worthy of a mention. As I pointed out the tracklisting is somewhat irregular, with "Heartbreaker Pt. 2" preceding "Pt. 1" and both coming before the "Heartbreaker Interlude." Also "I Loved You Interlude" appears a full two tracks before the actual song. At first glance I wondered whether the tracklisting on my promo copy had somehow gotten mixed up, but once you listen to the album it all makes perfect sense, the sequencing of the "Heartbreaker" triplet is like those movies that give you the ending right at the start, then tell you how it got there, and "I Loved You Interlude" gives you a 30-second a cappella glimpse of great things to come. My favorite, though, is "Drinking Song Interlude," which is actually more of a short song clocking in at two minutes, that shows off the edgier production flourishes that blend in elsewhere on the album. A final mention goes to "Citzens" with its gospel-tinged backing vocals and simple piano work creating the perfect framework for Alice's stab at social commentary, which makes a nice change from the relationship-focused songs that precede it. Out of everything here, this is the song that will appeal to those who are fans of Alice's quirkier moments on <i>Under The Munka Moon</i> and <i>My Favourite Letters</i>.<br><br>\n\nWe began this review by stating that it's unfathomable why Alice Russell isn't up there with the big names in modern soul music. It could be timing, it could be down to budgets, it could be down to luck. It's certainly not through lack of talent or great material. Here's hoping that the combination of the public's renewed interest in \"real singers\" and a set of excellent modern soul songs, catapults Alice into the mainstream consciousness. If it doesn't, then we will have to console ourselves with the fact that those who do know her know we are on to a great thing.<br><br>\n\n<b>Alice Russell <i>To Dust</i> [<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B00BDTCMTO/soulb-20\">Amazon</a>][<a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/to-dust/id598885005\">iTunes</a>]</b>"
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"title" : "Serendiipity - "Abutia Ewes"",
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"content" : "<span style=\"background-color:white;color:#333333;font-family:'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:12.800000190734863px;line-height:18px\">I love discovering information which is unexpected - well </span><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\">actually</span></span><span style=\"font-size:12.800000190734863px;line-height:18px\"> its not. Spent so much time looking for a printed version of "Abutia Ewe's: A chiefdom that never was." by Micheal Vernon 1983 - we used to own a copy. But my father had it in the library in Accra, then it went walking and when one really needs to read it - it still hasn't returned. then looked for it in the last 10 years and couldn't find it. Recently British Library' s copy could not be retrieve. Then this evening </span><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\">Google</span></span><span style=\"font-size:12.800000190734863px;line-height:18px\"> it and there it is I can download it. Serendipity strikes again.</span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;color:#333333;font-family:'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:12.800000190734863px;line-height:18px\">here is a link incase some one else wants to read it....</span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;color:#333333;font-family:'lucida grande',tahoma,verdana,arial,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:12.800000190734863px;line-height:18px\"><a href=\"http://classiques.uqac.ca/contemporains/verdon_michel/abutia_Ewe_West_africa/verdon_abutia_ewe.pdf\">Abutia Ewe's a chiefdom that never was - pdf</a></span></span>"
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"title" : "Andrew Dosunmu’s new feature film, “Mother of George,” is one to watch",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/main.jpg?w=610&h=406\" width=\"610\" height=\"406\"><br>\nFormer fashion creative director, photographer and video music director <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/tag/andrew-dosunmu/\">Andrew Dosunmu</a> is finding plenty of reasons to celebrate lately. Distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories recently scooped up the North American rights to his film “<a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094890/\">Mother of George</a>” at the Sundance Film Festival. Cinematographer <a href=\"http://bradfordyoung.com/\">Bradford Young</a> won two US dramatic prizes at the festival this year, one being for his stunning work in “Mother of George.” <span></span></p>\n<p>In “Mother of George,” time is the antagonist.</p>\n<p>The story is set in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, and the story stresses the complications of African immigrant life in New York City. The plot follows Adenike (Danai Gurira) as she struggles to conform to tradition with her new husband, restaurant proprietor Ayodele (Isaach De Bankolé).</p>\n<p>In a colorfully rich scene opening on the couple’s wedding reception, Adenike’s pushy mother-in-law, (Bukky Ajayi) announces that the couple’s first born will be named George. Time presses upon Adenike when after 18 months, she remains childless. Mild-mannered Ayodele seems unperturbed by their childlessness, leaving his nervous wife alone. The responsibility of conception, in the Yoruba tradition presented here, lies with the woman. With Adenike’s mother in law suggesting that Ayodele’s brother get involved for a conception to occur, Adenike makes a desperate act.</p>\n<p>Here’s Andrew talking about his background, the film’s genesis and its plot:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><iframe width=\"610\" height=\"374\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3INs_2ZQcOM?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></span></p>\n<p>Danai Gurira–whom you may have seen as Michonne in the AMC series, “The Walking Dead”–has been praised by critics as having executed a masterful performance. The Hollywood Reporter says she seems “<a href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/mother-george/review/413982\">genuinely torn</a> between Yoruba traditions and the modern world she now lives in.”</p>\n<p>Here’s an interview with Danai Gurira alongside fellow actor Isaach De Bankolé:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><iframe width=\"610\" height=\"374\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/0ro6WfyjrRk?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></span></p>\n<p>Both old school and blog critics have only praised the film up to now.</p>\n<p><em>Variety</em> <a href=\"http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117949015/\">praises the</a> director’s vision: “Dosunmu subtly uses the film’s ornate design elements to illustrate Adenike’s state of cultural flux, flooding the screen with jewel-colored African textiles to the point that their lavish patterns seem somehow reproachful, while Mobolaji Dawodu’s dazzling costumes slide tellingly across the spectrum from hip Afro-chic couture to fussy traditional garb.” But even more profound is cinematographer Young’s mastery. <em>Variety</em> humorously points out that “highly particular compositions and shimmering ochre-to-cobalt lighting schemes are almost exhaustingly exquisite” and that Young “is currently unrivaled in the under-informed field of illuminating darker complexions, expertise that “Mother of George” can claim in more areas than just its cinematography.”</p>\n<p>Zeba Blay at <a href=\"http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/sundance-2013-review-andrew-donsunmus-mother-of-george\">Shadow and Act</a> adds that Young “manages to heighten the human drama of the film with shots that experiment with the use of light and color in incredibly striking ways.” <a href=\"http://www.blackcinemahouse.org/sundance-film-festival-review-mother-of-george/\">Abbéy Odunlami </a> of Black Cinema House equally highlights that, “as this stands out and proclaims itself amongst ’the immigrant experience’ films, it equally leans towards being a “New York film.” Andrew Dosunmu continues to make waves for African filmmakers on American soil.”</p>\n<p>This will be one to watch.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/63967/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/63967/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=63967&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The costs of (over-)provisioning capacity in shared links",
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"content" : "<p>Even within the limits of the 140 characters of Twitter people succeed in having intelligent conversations and discussions. Like Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) and Martin Geddes (@martingeddes) recently. Part of the discussion focused on the costs of provisioning more capacity in shared links as a cure for delays and losses introduced by statistical multiplexing and congestion in the shared link. Like building bigger motorways with more lanes, to eliminate traffic jams.<br>\nMartin Geddes is crusading for a new approach to manage traffic on the Internet: statistical multiplexing (and above all congestion) introduces delay and loss which should be traded between applications and possibly users. Which would allow you to first of all to reduce the costs of unused capacity, and would allow you to exactly deliver what is needed. The unused capacity in shared links would be too costly to continue throwing capacity at the problem. (See <a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/2012/11/future-of-broadband-workshop/\">this post</a> for more details and my doubts).</p>\n<p>Dean Bubley argues that the Internet delivers too much value to too many people to start going down a risky new path with scant evidence supporting it. Don’t fix something which is not broke. He basically stated that if the cost of the “waste” of unused capacity is below 10 % (from the perspective of the Internet subscriber, as a percentage of the Internet subscription fee) one should not even bother to consider other options. Just add the capacity and live with it.</p>\n<p>As a tinkerer by nature I love facts and numbers about potential outcomes. Ballpark numbers, rough estimates, anything that will give me a feel if some issue is worth fretting about. So when Dean set a number, it gave me a challenge: try to estimate if costs of provisioning unused capacity will be significantly below or above the 10 % target.</p>\n<p>So what drives the costs?</p>\n<p>Dean, Martin and myself agree (I believe) that there is no issue in transnational Internet capacity. The costs of transit capacity are going down and down, are negligible in an ISP’s budget. Furthermore the major capacity demanding (and not well behaved) application is video: for video the content delivery networks are transporting content themselves separately form the Internet to delivery servers at minimum located at Internet Exchanges, if not deeper into the ISP’s network. Bypassing the transit networks.<br>\nThe costs that are under discussion are between an Exchange (or other peering point of the ISP) and your local CO (central office) where your access line terminates. (In cable networks and PON networks the accessline itself is shared, not so in VDSL/FttC and home run FttH. For the sake of simplicity I ignore that sharing by cable and PON: assume that is not the bottleneck).</p>\n<p>Capacity in this part of the networks consists of fiber dug into the ground, transmission equipment per fiber, and routers to manage the traffic. When extra capacity is added to prevent negative delay and loss effects, one has to <a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/2010/11/backhaul-capacity-or-qos/\">buy and install new equipment</a>, or even worse dig new fiber.</p>\n<p>Digging new fiber is costly but adds loads of capacity. A single 40 mm duct (and why leave it at one when digging?) carries thousands of fibers, if you use high density fibers cables. Once a fiber is there, Moore’s law allows you to add capacity for ever diminishing costs per Gbps (10Gbps, 40Gbps, or even a lot more with DWDM).<br>\nThe biggest outlay is the digging and laying fiber. Equipment and routers are relatively inexpensive, but the bill can add up to a lot when you really start to use all the fibers in a duct. The good thing however is that you can add them if and when required, incremental.</p>\n<p>Ballpark figures? Let’s assume 40k Euro per kilometer digging in fiber (or USD 80k/mile). For a 100 km stretch you spend 4 mio Euro. Let’s assume lighting up a fiber for 10G including routing is a 1000 euro on average: 1000 fibers is a million Euro, total 5 mio Euro. All right, let’s just take 50k Euro per km as investment for simplicity.<br>\nThe very, very worst case is when you just have to dig again for all connections from central offices to exchanges. The easy thing about that assumption is that you can get an easy reference for how many kilometers that is, including redundant routes to get resiliency.</p>\n<p>Just take the length of the main roads (motorways and major roads) in-between cities in a country.</p>\n<p>This relies on the observation that the vast majority of a population lives in cities. For instance: the top 300 agglomerations in the USA hold 80% of the population, the urban (> 10.000 inhabitants) part of Australia holds 76 % of the population. And cities are connected by roads, in a redundant way (rarely ends in a city).<br>\nSo what happens if we assume we dig fiber for backhaul (and light a sizable part up) for the length of all these roads, and divide it by the number of households in a country (which is proxy for the number of Internet connections)?</p>\n<p>Below are the results for Germany, France, the UK and my own little Netherlands. (I have added rail to see if that network if more or less extensive than road. Which is the case for the UK).</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Households-and-roads.png\"><img alt=\"Households and roads\" src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Households-and-roads.png\" width=\"555\" height=\"595\"></a></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>Yes you have add running costs, but remember this figure is way over the top.</p>\n<p>There is lot that can be said about these results and the assumptions, as some comments in the past have remarked. An ISP cannot indiscriminately add capacity (its comes in chunks), crazy tax laws, big bullies and very dispersed subscribers all can have a serious influence on decision and costs, managing DWDM can be a pain etc.<br>\nBut for me the main observation is that very likely overall the real technical costs of the “wasted” capacity will be so low that subscribers will not mind paying (the real costs that is, not some artificially inflated figure…..).</p>\n<p>If extra capacity will solve everything? Maybe not everything. Nobody said TCP/IP or the Internet is perfect. But evolution learns us that what works is often good enough, and continuous tinkering may lead to surprising results….</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2013%2F02%2Fthe-costs-of-over-provisioning-capacity-in-shared-links%2F&linkname=The%20costs%20of%20%28over-%29provisioning%20capacity%20in%20shared%20links\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2013%2F02%2Fthe-costs-of-over-provisioning-capacity-in-shared-links%2F&linkname=The%20costs%20of%20%28over-%29provisioning%20capacity%20in%20shared%20links\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2013%2F02%2Fthe-costs-of-over-provisioning-capacity-in-shared-links%2F&linkname=The%20costs%20of%20%28over-%29provisioning%20capacity%20in%20shared%20links\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2013%2F02%2Fthe-costs-of-over-provisioning-capacity-in-shared-links%2F&title=The%20costs%20of%20%28over-%29provisioning%20capacity%20in%20shared%20links\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "The African Herbal Pharmacopoeia",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">\nAn <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2006/10/association-for-african-medicinal.html\">Association for African Medicinal Plants Standards</a> publication:<br>\n<blockquote>\n <a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eupmP4fqXEI/USTPixXP86I/AAAAAAAANLk/KxNiUrWMW5w/s1600/cover-small-site.jpeg\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eupmP4fqXEI/USTPixXP86I/AAAAAAAANLk/KxNiUrWMW5w/s320/cover-small-site.jpeg\"></a><br>\nThe <a href=\"http://www.aamps.org/en/\">African Herbal pharmacopoeia</a>, provides comprehensive, up to date botanical, commercial and phytochemical information on over fifty of the most important <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/05/mondia-tonic-and-local-bioprospecting.html\">African</a> <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2010/10/uganda-medicinal-plants-growers.html\">medicinal</a> <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/01/arrival-of-ecopreneur.html\">plants</a>. The technical data were made on plant samples sourced from across the continent. These monographs prepared by leading <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2007/05/revisiting-traditional-medicine.html\">African scientists</a>, have been reviewed by international experts. Additional data include micro morphology of the plant material, distribution maps, HPLC traces and TLC chromatograms of adulterants. These data are crucial for producers, collectors and traders in <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/12/devils-claws-medicinal-properties.html\">medicinal plants</a> and <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2009/12/ameenah-gurib-fakim-cataloguing.html\">extracts</a> as well as researchers, manufacturers and practitioners. The scope, quality and standard of these <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2010/11/elevating-traditional-medicine.html\">herbal monographs</a> are comparable to those prepared in Europe, North America and Asia. Whilst this is the very first edition, it is being proposed to proceed to a second edition, quickly, both in printed and electronic form as more data becomes available.</blockquote>\n</div>\n<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/cNFJo/~4/YKqlDPNwq1o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Simple Plan: The Definitive Statement",
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"content" : "<p><em>OK, so this is the extended 12″ jacking tech-house hot wax remix of the piece at Liberal Conspiracy</em>.</p>\n<p>It’s October, 2013. As unseasonable snowfall turns the streets into a fairy wonderland and the transport system into a Pratchettesque mess, police are herding the last holdouts out of the Elthorne Estate in London, N19. Homeless shelters around the capital are brimming already. Elsewhere, thousands of families are facing up to a Christmas in seaside bed-and-breakfasts or semi-abandoned estates in semi-abandoned ex-industrial towns hundreds of miles away. </p>\n<p>The occupations and demonstrations, although they made us all catch our breath, seized the headlines, and caused a whole lot of expense, trouble, and slippage, are over. It’s just not an option to go to jail with children on the breadline. In a few months’ time the courts will probably hold that Laurie Penny’s arrest under the Terrorism Act was flagrantly illegal, but by then the point will be academic.</p>\n<p>Elsewhere, in the supposedly comfortable suburbs, more and more of the buy-to-let generation of landlords are staring at letters from their mortgage lenders demanding answers about their arrears. At a number of specialist finance houses, people are poring over increasingly grim spreadsheets, and the further you go towards the Bank of England, the greater the anxiety is becoming. Everyone is waiting for the trigger-event that will flip us into a second financial crisis.</p>\n<p>This isn’t looking too pretty, is it? What’s up?</p>\n<p>Over the 20th century, the UK made a political choice that we probably never articulated as such. That is, we decided that the huge expensive city in the lower right-hand corner of the map had to remain a proper city, rather than shipping out its working class to a concrete jungle on the M25 and giving over the centre to the role of a dead museum, sorry, an exciting retail and heritage offer for high-value tourism, and the City and the East to the banks. At the same time we decided that the outward sprawl had to stop, halting at the green belt. The solution, up to the 80s, was to make housing in the major cities into a public service. Since the 1980s and the key decision to sell the council properties accumulated up to then, the policy changed; instead of taking housing out of the market, we would instead subsidise it. As Tory minister Sir George Young said, housing benefit would take the strain.</p>\n<p>Now, the strain will no longer be taken. Local housing allowance – it’s housing benefit but for people in private rentals – is to be drastically cut. Until now, the maximum rent LHA would pay was set at the 80th percentile of the distribution of rents in your area. (That is, the level at which 80% of rents are cheaper.) The Tories have now set it at the 30th.</p>\n<p>Serious criticisms of this system tend to focus on the fact that it gives a lot of money to landlords. This is very true. Housing benefit (I’ll drop the technical distinction from here on) is paid to landlords, not to households. No claimant “receives thousands in housing benefit”. This has the effect that every landlord knows precisely how much the Government is willing to pay, and unsurprisingly, they tend to set their rents accordingly. The Tories, supposedly, hoped that rents would fall if they cut the rate.</p>\n<p>There is only one problem. In the past, a typical landlord owned property outright, often property they had inherited. The buy-to-let era changed all that; now, they are much more likely to have bought the property with a mortgage. If the rent coming in falls below the payments on the mortgage, ruin is certain. Actually it’s worse than that, as the mortgage isn’t the only cost – they have to budget for maintenance and for voids, the periods between tenants.</p>\n<p>Another important point is that the BTLers weren’t in it for income, but for capital gains. The tenants are there to pay the mortgage. Once the mortgage is paid, the property is yours, so your return on investment is the selling price divided by the deposit. It’s a classic example of leverage, which always juices the return by increasing risk. So, many of the BTLers didn’t stick at one property, but used more and more mortgages to swing a whole string of them with ever greater leverage. They can’t cut their rents without going bust.</p>\n<p>If the tenants can’t pay, they will get the stick. Councils are actively planning to rehouse mass numbers of people outside London. London Councils, the boroughs’ umbrella organisation, reckons 133,000 households are hit. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that over 100,000 more people will be “accepted” as homeless, and therefore the legal responsibility of someone to rehouse. This presumably includes their estimate of how many more of the homeless they can turn away. Shipped off to Stoke, south Wales, or Margate, they will be badgered to find jobs in some of the UK’s highest unemployment areas. Some of the UK’s most underfunded councils will have to provide for them, somehow. The worst of it is that the 30th percentile cap hits families first.</p>\n<p>Of course, faced with this prospect, people will try to survive somehow. On the tenants’ side, some of them will try to disappear in the black economy and tolerate back-garden sheds, friends of friends’ sofas, or perhaps squat in repossessed property rather than be shipped away from their jobs. (Yes, their jobs; housing benefit is mostly paid to people in work. Surely I don’t need to say this.) On the landlords’ side, they will tell themselves that of course they can find new tenants. They will juggle financing between properties, personal loans, their credit cards, etc. But they will eventually fail. When they go bust, their lenders are going to repossess property that is worth much less than it is on their books for.</p>\n<p>Most BTL financing didn’t come from the high-street clearing banks, but from specialist finance companies. The danger here is that “specialist finance” is a lot like “shadow banking” – companies that aren’t banks, and therefore escape from bank regulation, but don’t have access to the central bank in an emergency, but do provide services that amount to banking. This is notoriously dangerous. In many ways, the great financial crisis was a shadow-banking crisis on the grand scale. Many people expected the specialist lenders to crash in 2007-2008, but they survived – possibly because housing benefit was keeping the landlords they funded afloat. We don’t really know how shaky the specialists might be, and we don’t really know how the shadow banks and the real banks are linked. In 1974, the end of a bubble in London property funded by shadow banks led to a run on the shadow banks, which the authorities of the day hoped were separate from the real banks. They weren’t, and the Midland Bank came dangerously close to the edge.</p>\n<p>So, our friends in the Conservative Party have come up with a policy that is likely to deliver an honest-to-goodness humanitarian disaster right here in London, and that also risks bringing about a second run on the banks, while bankrupting thousands of middle-class Kirstie Allsopp Kommandos, and leaving the city littered with repossessed crackhouses. She’s a beauty. The only bit of it that might work as desired is the Shirley Porter element; fewer Labour voters in London.</p>\n<p>But there is a solution. Under Eric Pickles’ Localism Bill, councils get to keep their income from rent rather than giving it to the Government. So, let’s buy the houses, quick. I propose that the London Labour councils, and indeed any others who want to join, launch a jointly-owned company to buy up the BTLers’ property and to manage it as social housing. We could organise this via London Councils itself, as it is now Labour-controlled.</p>\n<p>How much is that again?</p>\n<p>The rents paid under housing benefit are worked out by the Valuation Office Agency, and for their Inner North London Broad Rental Market Area, the 30th percentile for three-bedroom properties is £340 a week. I don’t have data about the distribution of bedroom requirements, but it makes sense to assume that the bigger properties are the problem. This level is roughly the same around the inner ring of London councils. George Osborne has decided that the rate will be held to a 1% increase to 2015 and to the CPI inflation rate beyond that. There are 52 weeks in a year, 133,000 households claiming, so that estimates the flow of housing benefit into rents for the people involved at £2.3bn a year. That’s quite a lot of money. There’s also a £2bn “affordable housing” fund controlled by Boris Johnson we might bid for.</p>\n<p>Councils can borrow money from the Government at a 2.8% interest rate, being the rate the Government can borrow for 10 years plus 1%. At 2.5% for 10 years, the stream of housing benefit for the people the Tories are targeting would be enough to pay off a £22bn bond issue. I’m going to set aside a billion as an allowance for maintenance and improvements – I’m really not sure how to model that, so there’s a fudge factor.</p>\n<p>2.5%, not to speak of 2.8%, isn’t actually all that good. There is an enormous demand for safe assets that actually pay a coupon at the moment. Some councils, therefore, have decided to issue bonds on the open market instead. So have housing associations, as the <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95312e02-779e-11e2-b95a-00144feabdc0.html\"><em>Financial Times</em></a> makes clear.</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>The appetite among long-term investors, such as pension funds and insurers, for debt secured by large portfolios of social housing has grown during the past year. Low government bond yields and the relative stability of social housing rental income, much of which is underpinned by government benefits, have made the sector increasingly attractive to risk-averse investors.</em></p>\n<p>The demand is reflected in cheap cost of capital enjoyed by housing associations. The £42m bond issued by Places for People in January will, for example, pay interest of just 1 per cent for 10 years.</p></blockquote>\n<p>One per cent! In real terms, they’re actually paying us to keep their money. </p>\n<p>Depending on who you ask, and using the Boris fund, this is worth between 77,000 and 139,000 properties, depending on how good a deal you could make. So, our buying vehicle issues 2.5% 10-year covered bonds, buys the properties, and hands them to the local housing department to manage. The tenants stay in them, and the housing benefit is paid to the vehicle, which uses it to pay off the interest and principal on the bonds. As the bonds are paid off, the rents could fall towards social levels. The BTLers get to make a relatively dignified exit, and the hit to the financial system is at least reduced.</p>\n<p>And the plan could be scaled up. The annual housing benefit flow is about £23bn, so the Londoners targeted by Eric Pickles make up about 10% of the national bill, which reassures me about my calculations. Imagine the possibilities of doing something similar with the lot.</p>\n<p>One problem I see is that the quality of a lot of the new-builds from the boom era is poor, and apparently some housing associations up North have refused properties they have been offered. To this, I would say that this is an emergency, and I have made some provision for the problem. Further, most of the new building was up North, rather than in London, and I suspect that a surprising proportion of houses acquired by the vehicle might turn out to be ex-local authority flats sold under right to buy.</p>\n<p>This isn’t a new idea. In the 1970s, a lot of rental property was bought up by London Labour councils’ housing departments and they’ve still got more of it than you might think. When I lived across the street from the Elthorne, about half the buildings were actually council-owned, something that only became clear when the Decent Homes programme sent the builders round.</p>\n<p>So, let’s buy the houses, quick. We have, depending on who you ask, between three and nine months before the bomb goes off, although it’s not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that the whole thing will be put off. It has been once before. But I think it is much better to turn up at the crisis with a solution than it is to expect people with children to fight the bailiffs.</p>"
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"title" : "Aspiration at the Edge of the Internet",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://janchipchase.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/20120802-Lagos-0015.jpg\"><img src=\"http://janchipchase.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/20120802-Lagos-0015.jpg\" alt=\"Lagos: aspiration\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\"></a></p>\n<p>The house on the left might look like a humble poster to you, and a slightly cheesy one at that, but actually its significance belies its humble form. I’ve seen this same design in Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nepal, Tibet, 3rd Tier Chinese cities, India, and in many more places variants in the same vein that show IKEA interior shots, big white houses with shiny red sports cars, and babies surrounded by religious paraphernalia. It’s mostly found in cafes and tea-houses frequented by manual labourers.</p>\n<p>The poster success is arguably because it fills multiple roles at one low price: very colourful – brightening up often very earthy and worn surrounds; highly aspirational imagery – this is what they are working 14 hours/day for; it’s size make it ideal as the center piece to a blank wall; and being laminated it serves well as an additional wind/rain shield (and can even double up as emergency roofing).</p>\n<p>Over the years I’ve been documenting this form, and its remained remarkably stable.</p>\n<p>For the customer base that appreciates it, the internet is a luxury they can’t afford to explore, although this is slowly changing. These kinds of photos are likely to bundled with animations, religious and (for males) military iconography on feature phones. This is today’s the edge of the internet.</p>"
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"title" : "Who invented jollof rice?",
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"content" : "<p>\nIn <a href=\"http://www.worldcat.org/title/better-angels-of-our-nature-why-violence-has-declined/oclc/707969125\">The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined</a>, Steven Pinker compiles massive amounts of evidence to show that we are becoming a more civilized species. The principal yardstick he uses to measure progress is the steady decline, over millenia, in per-capita rates of homicide. But he also measures declines in violence directed towards women, racial groups, children, homosexuals, and animals.\n</p>\n<p>\nIt’s hard to read the chapters about the routine brutality of life during the Roman empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and — until more recently than we like to imagine — the modern era. An early example:\n</p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFar from being hidden in dungeons, torture-executions were forms of popular entertainment, attracting throngs of jubilant spectators who watched the victim struggle and scream. Bodies broken on wheels, hanging from gibbets, or decomposing in iron cages where the victim had been left to die of starvation and exposure were a familiar part of the landscape.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>\nA modern example:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nConsider this <i>Life</i> magazine ad from 1952:\n</p>\n<p><img style=\"width:250px\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/chase-sanborn.jpg\"></p>\n<p>\nToday this ad’s playful, eroticized treatment of domestic violence would put it beyond the pale of the printable. It was by no means unique.\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nA reader of that 1950s ad would be as horrified as we are today to imagine cheering a public execution in the 1350s. A lot changed in 600 years. But in the 60 years since more has changed. The ad that seemed OK to a 1950s reader would shock most of us here in the 2010s.\n</p>\n<p>\nOver time we’ve grown less willing and able to commit or condone violence, and our definition of what counts as violence has grown more inclusive. And yet this is deeply counter-intuitive. We tend to feel that the present is more violent and dangerous than the recent past. And our intuition tells us that the 20th century must have been more so than the distant past. That’s why Pinker has to marshal so much evidence. It’s like <a href=\"http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/04/19/darwins-rhetorical-strategy/\">Darwin’s rhetorical strategy</a> in <i>The Origin of Species</i>. You remind people of a lot of things that they already know in order to lead them to a conclusion they wouldn’t reach on their own.\n</p>\n<p>\nWill the trend continue? Will aspects of life in the 2010s seem alien to people fifty years hence in the same way that the coffee ad seems alien to us now, and that torture-execution seemed to our parents? (And if so, which aspects?)\n</p>\n<p>\nPinker acknowledges that the civilizing trend may not continue. He doesn’t make predictions. Instead he explores, at very great length, the dynamics that have brought us to this point. I won’t try to summarize them here. If you don’t have time to read the book, though, you might want to carve out an hour to listen to his recent <a href=\"http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/oct/08/decline-violence/\">Long Now talk</a>. You’ll get much more out of that than from reading reviews and summaries.\n</p>\n<p>\nEither way, you may dispute some of the theories and mechanisms that Pinker proposes. But if you buy the premise — that all forms of violence have steadily declined throughout history — I think you’ll have to agree with him on one key point. We’re doing something right, and we ought to know more about why and how.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3528/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3528/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.jonudell.net&blog=109309&post=3528&subd=jonudell&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "La parabole du Service Client",
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"content" : "<p>je vais vous raconter une histoire vraie. N'ayant pas demandé à la personne qui l'a vécue l'autorisation de la citer (elle est de l'autre côté du globe), je l'anonymise... La personne se trouve dans un restaurant en famille. Tout y est bien, sympa, agréable. A la fin du repas, le patron passe à la table remettre la note et demande avant de la donner un classique \"Y a-t-il autre chose pour votre service ?\". Dans un éclat de rire, la personne répond en blaguant \"Oh et bien oui, déchirez la note ?\".</p>\n<p>Le patron en question a répondu \"À votre service\" et l'a fait. Le coût du repas offert a été LARGEMENT contrebalancé par les rentrées supplémentaires occasionnées par l'excellente pub faite par la personne que je connais.</p>\n<p>Dans le Service Client c'est pareil. Il y a trois impératifs:</p>\n<ol><li>la satisfaction du Client à tout prix</li>\n<li>ensuite la satisfaction du Client à tout prix</li>\n<li>et enfin la satisfaction du Client à tout prix</li>\n</ol><p>Si vous n'en êtes pas persuadé, laissez tomber la vente et retournez faire du code.</p>"
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"title" : "What Space for African Eyes? Travel Writing and Africa in the 21st century – By Fatimah Kelleher",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><div style=\"width:272px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-10667\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2013/02/21/what-space-for-african-eyes-travel-writing-and-africa-in-the-21st-century-%e2%80%93-by-fatimah-kelleher/saro_wiwa/\"><img title=\"Saro_Wiwa\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Saro_Wiwa.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"262\" height=\"235\"></a><p>Noo Saro-Wiwa, whose travel book on Nigeria 'Looking for Transwonderland', demonstrated new possibilities for Africans writing about their own continent.</p></div><p><strong></strong>Centuries old, travel writing has been instrumental in crafting perceptions of the world we live in; journeying authors have wielded significant influence over immobile audiences who have wanted to ‘see’ beyond their own square mile of existence.</p><p>For the most part, modern travel literature has celebrated a luxurious recreational movement very few could actually afford. Fair to say, in this regard, the modern world has been largely defined through a narrow lens. But historically the genre had a more multicultural past.</p><p>Noted travel writers in the millennia leading up to the middle ages included not just Greeks and Romans but also Persians, Arabs, Asians and North Africans, such as the legendary Ibn Battuta. Over the last 400 years however, travel literature has been dominated by western colonial and post-colonial viewpoints (which in turn have been dominated by the upper and middle classes) that have contributed to the larger lens through which places like Africa are viewed globally. Awareness of the consequences of this, including the creation of skewed ‘truths’ that have often governed cultural and racial relationships, is certainly not anything new. In 1978 Edward Said’s Orientalism unapologetically alerted and unpacked these arguments to pretty good effect. But how much has really changed?</p><p>While mainstream travel writing has since become more self-aware (with less carelessly Eurocentric narratives), the genre has altered very little when it comes to greater representation within its authorship, especially where African representation is concerned. As the 21st century gets into its full stride, what opportunities are there for widening the narrow source of this quietly influential genre? Is there any room in particular for an African Diaspora whose post-colonial migratory patterns have contributed to some of the fastest global social convergences human history has ever seen?</p><p>Aside from their unique viewpoints on both ‘new’ and ‘old’ homes over the last sixty years, periodic visits to parental homelands and an increase in travel for work and recreation offer new discourses on identity and agency for exploration. In the continent itself, where intra-African travel has already been re-defined by the creation of new nation states in the last century (and where national identities themselves continue to gestate), new modes and routes of movement within the continent have also led to fresh encounters.</p><p>Yet much of this experience is not properly documented, shared; nor has there been a realization of its potential to influence how Africa is viewed globally. While a democratisation of travel amongst African and African Diaspora communities themselves has begun to occur, these broadened opportunities have yet to be reflected in a significant body of travel literature penned and owned by them.</p><p>In contrast, travel literature from Asia and its Diaspora has increasingly included commercially successful work by individuals journeying through their own nation state and regions. While the unmitigated success of Trinidadian Asian author V.S. Naipaul is well known, others of Asian descent are also finding a Western, and sometimes global market for their travel writing: in the best-selling Red Dust, Beijing journalist Ma Jian recounts extensive travels across a fast changing 1980s China; similarly, north Indian Pankaj Mishra has published critically acclaimed travel writing on the sub-continent. So, what of Africans and the Diaspora?</p><p>At a South Bank event in July last year, Noo Saro-Wiwa, the author of <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/01/09/rediscovering-transwonderland-noo-saro-wiwa-goes-home-a-review-by-magnus-taylor/\">Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria</a>, was asked by the host why she had chosen to deliver a piece of travel literature on Nigeria rather than a work of fiction, given the success of Nigerian story tellers over the years. The question rankled a little.</p><p>Saro-Wiwa’s book – albeit not embraced by everyone – was a much needed push by an African Diaspora writer into the genre. For years, one of the only notable exceptions on the average mainstream bookstore shelf was the work of Gary Younge, a Black Briton whose travel writing has incorporated discourses on identity that might have otherwise gone unrecognised without the inclusion of this Diaspora perspective.</p><p>So, as a recent commercial success, what does the entry of <em>Transwonderland</em> herald, if anything? The cynical response might be: not much. After all, the eyes of Noo Saro-Wiwa on Nigeria, as the daughter of executed Ogoniland activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, were always going to offer the kind of tale that a Western-led publishing industry was interested in digesting….once in a while.</p><p>And in many ways this view then leads to more difficult questions. Do the observations of a second generation Ghanaian or Ugandan from South London on their travels through the Baltic States or the Basque region hold any real currency for the publishing industry? Going further, would there be a readership for a Kenyan or Malian author who had spent a couple of years living and working in Cambodia or Peru? African Diaspora writers wishing to capture perspectives of the West itself through travelogues of European countries and other parts of the global north face the challenge of convincing readers that they have other stories of to tell of being Black in the West, beyond the often semi-autobiographical fiction of the inner city landscape and its associated urban discord.</p><p>Similarly, For African Diasporans keen to pen travel writing about the African continent itself, do the majority of Western audiences – upon whom even the most feted African fiction writers still arguably rely for commercial or literary reasons – want to see the continent through African eyes when they indulge in this genre? Is there space to follow the recent Asian successes and create a critical mass that changes the face of the genre for good? Or must we accept that the success of travel writing in the West is partly due to the escapism it offers readers who only really want to shadow the shoes of those whose opinions remain the most familiar and the most respected: predominantly male, predominantly white, and predominantly middle class?</p><p>Perhaps precisely because of the challenges this genre presents, I would argue that the need to create a space for African eyes within travel writing is crucial in the world we now live in (and the more gloriously heterogeneous those eyes, the better). Apart from the literary edification this would provide, the dynamics of influence, agency, and empowerment that are at play here cannot be ignored, particularly in a century where the African continent remains at the heart of hotly contested discourses in economic and human development, and deep issues of global inequalities remain unresolved. Images of the world – whether painted by the photographic lens or the writer’s pen – are power. African Diaspora eyes in the realm of travel writing that document the African continent and the rest of a fast moving 21st century world have never been more needed.<strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Fatimah Kelleher is a writer based in London. </strong></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Over the weekend I attended parts of a great symposium put on by the <a href=\"http://lawreview.law.miami.edu/symposia/save-the-date/\">Miami Law Review on social media and the law</a>. </p>\n<p>The Law Review had drafted me to moderate a panel on “Will You Have a Digital Afterlife?” It was an interesting experience: the estate planning/probate version of privacy issues is a sort of funhouse mirror version of how I usually think about digital privacy: everything I recommend to people — e.g. strong passwords, strong encryption — can make digital probate more difficult.</p>\n<p>The first complication is that we may not know with much certainty what the decedent wanted. Did he want the heirs to have full access to his encrypted hard drive? What if there’s a porn collection? </p>\n<p>Second, how about the email account — it may have important information about what bills need to be paid, but it might also have a secret correspondence with far-out political groups or a mistress that the decedent might not have wanted the survivors to see. Online social media accounts have additional complexities as some providers take the view that the contract terminates with death and thus make no attempt to preserve, or may even flush, the contents. Others have contract terms of service that routinely deny access to surviving family members, if only because that blanket rule may make life easier for the provider.</p>\n<p>Laws prohibiting various sorts of unauthorized access, written with the living in mind, add another level of complexity as innocent attempts by family members to find out about the credit card bill or the phone bill may amount — in formal terms at least — to criminal actions punishable (in theory) like the worst forms of hacking; computer intermediaries (and lawyers!) may justly be nervous about enabling such access without clear advance directives from the deceased.</p>\n<p>The panelists — <a href=\"http://lawreview.law.miami.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Kunz-Bio.pdf\">Christina L. Kunz</a>, <a href=\"http://lawreview.law.miami.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Lamm-Bio.pdf\">James Lamm</a>, <a href=\"http://lawreview.law.miami.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/McGuire-Bio.pdf\">Michael J. Mcguire</a>, and <a href=\"http://lawreview.law.miami.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Riehl-Bio.pdf\">Damien A. Riehl</a> — did an excellent job of introducing this complex area of law to an audience composed mostly of neophytes like me. </p>\n<p>I came away from James Lamm’s talk, for example, persuaded that I should execute an ‘Authorization and Consent for Release of Electronically Stored Information’ and also add a codicil to my will that covers access to electronic material stored in the cloud or elsewhere.</p>\n<p>James Lamm, by the way, blogs at <a href=\"http://www.digitalpassing.com/2013/02/18/jim-lamm-presents-2013-miami-law-review-symposium-digital-afterlife/\">Digital Passing</a>.</p>\n<p>[Note (2/21): edited to conform to a very polite copyright-related request from Mr. Lamm. You'll have to wait for his article, or consult him, for more details.]</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=aMaeI573DY8:zRX4gCWJbck:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/discourse/~4/aMaeI573DY8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/kim-kardashian-arrives-lagos-nigeria-for-dareys-llam-concert-161.jpeg?w=610&h=406\" width=\"610\" height=\"406\"><br>\nEko Hotel, Victoria Island: the scene of so many expensive misdemeanours in the past, did its best not to disappoint. Kim Kardashian (pictured sailing into the salubrious Murtala Muhammed International Airport) was billed to “co-host” an event with R’n'B crooner Darey Art-Alade in honour of “Love..Like a Movie”. In other words, it was a “Vals” thing. Lagos being familiar to the metallurgy of snobbery, this involved platinum ticket holders being invited to an exclusive pre-dinner event with her K-ness. Pseudo-ogas lower down the corporate food chain only got to see the show.<span></span></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">I was just over a thousand miles away from the action in Freetown, watching my Twitter timeline cascade with commentary as the evening unfolded. Tweets purred with pleasure at the acrobatics segment, and at the godly qualities of Waje’s voice. There was a sense that in production values and packaging, Lagos had outblinged itself.</p>\n<p>And then Ms Kardashian appeared, said, “hey Naija” and vamoosed. The rumour was that she’d been paid 500,000 Benjamins for the honour of mixing with the petro-class. She arrived on Saturday evening (on Air France), and left within twenty-four hours (someone Instagrammed her back at MMIA). Prole class tickets were apparently N100,000 ($640), although quite a few got in gratis on the guest list.</p>\n<p>The Lagos elite blows money at puffery, while most of Nigeria suffers. It’s the same as it ever was. I recall Carlos Moore railing against the Gowon era on his trip to Nigeria a couple of years ago – how Lagosians were partying while bodies were lying unburied in the street. Gowon was famous at the time for saying that the problem in Nigeria was not money, but how to spend it.</p>\n<p>Reflecting a little on the unfolding disappointment in Lagos, I couldn’t help but think that the narrow slice of KK the audience were granted reflects a cargo cult/import economy/<a title=\"colo-mentality\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-mUy6Mvm5E\">colo-mentality</a>, that dresses its shame in dandified arrogance. Last year, Hugh Masekela played the Motor Boat club. I was lucky to be there (I think I paid 15,000 naira for the privilege). People chatted noisily throughout. The great jazzman could hardly hide his disgust.</p>\n<p>There’s something Dubai-esque about the children of the Islands. Pampered lives told in British public school brogues. Bubbles of air-conditioned comfort, which we might think of these days as “Lekki blindness”. Fela is long since dead, but his words rework themselves in the present with ease.</p>\n<p>As the disgruntled tweets flowed out on my timeline, I thought of Special K, comfy in her jimjams, the plane rising gradually above the Atlantic, safe from all Lagos harm, smiling to herself that she’d actually 419’d the 419ers. And I went to bed with one final thought: oil turns all who touch it completely insane.</p>\n<p><em>* You can follow Jeremy Weate <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jeremyweate\">on Twitter</a>.</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/63394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/63394/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=63394&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>\nAs Elm City hubs grow, with respect to both raw numbers of events and numbers of categories, unfiltered lists of categories become unwieldy. So I’m noodling on ways to focus initially on a filtered list of “important” categories. The scare quotes indicate that I’m not yet sure how to empower curators to say what’s important. Categories with more than a threshold number of events? Categories that are prioritized without regard to number of events? Some combination of these heuristics?\n</p>\n<p>\nTo reason about these questions I need to evaluate some data. One source of data about categories is the tag cloud. For any Elm City hub, you can form this URL:\n</p>\n<p>\nelmcity.cloudapp.net/HUBNAME/tag_cloud\n</p>\n<p>\nIf HUBNAME is AnnArborChronicle, you get a JSON file that looks like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\n[\n{ \"aadl\":348},\n{ \"aaps\":9},\n{ \"abbot\":18},\n...\n]\n</pre>\n<p>\nThis is the data that drives the category picklist displayed in the default rendering of <a href=\"http://annarborchronicle.com/events-listing\">the Ann Arbor hub</a>. A good starting point would be to dump this data into a spreadsheet, sort by most populous categories, and try some filtering.\n</p>\n<p>\nI could add a feature that serves up this data in some spreadsheet-friendly format, like CSV (comma-separated variable). But I am (virtuously) lazy. I hate to violate the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_aren't_gonna_need_it\">YAGNI</a> (“You aren’t gonna need it”) principle. So I’m inclined to do something quick and dirty instead just to find out if it’ll even be useful to work with that data in a spreadsheet..\n</p>\n<p>\nOne quick-and-dirty approach entails looking for some existing (preferably online) utility that does the trick. In this case I searched for things with names like json2csv and json2xls, found a few candidates, but nothing that immediately did what I wanted.\n</p>\n<p>\nSo some text needs to be wrangled. One source of text to wrangle is the HTML page that contains the category picklist. If you capture its HTML source, you’ll find a sequence of lines like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\n<option value="aadl">aadl (348)</option>\n<option value="aaps">aaps (9)</option>\n<option value="abbot">abbot (18)</option>\n</pre>\n<p>\nIt’s easy to imagine a transformation that gets you from there to here:\n</p>\n<pre>\naadl\t348\naaps\t9\nabbot\t18\n</pre>\n<p>\nAlthough I’ve often written code to do that kind of transformation, if it’s a quick-and-dirty one-off I don’t even bother. I use the macro recorder in my text editor to define a sequence like:\n</p>\n<ul>\n<li> Start selecting at the beginning of a line\n<li> Go to the first >\n<li> Delete\n<li> Go to whitespace\n<li> Replace with tab\n<li> Search for (\n<li> Delete\n<li> Search for )\n<li> Delete to end of line\n<li> Go to next line\n</li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul>\n<p>\nThis is a skill that’s second nature to me, and that I’ve often wished I could teach others. Many people spend crazy amounts of time doing mundane text reformatting; few take advantage of recordable macros.\n</p>\n<p>\nBut the reality is that recordable macros are the first step along the slippery slope of programming. Most people don’t want to go there, and I don’t blame them. So I’m delighted by a new feature in Excel 2013, called Flash Fill, that will empower everybody to do these kinds of routine text transformations.\n</p>\n<p>\nHere’s a picture of a spreadsheet with HTML patterns in column A, an example of the name I want extracted in column B, and an example of the number I want in column C.\n</p>\n<p>\n<a title=\"click to enlarge\" href=\"http://jonudell.net/images/flash-fill.png\"><img style=\"border-width:thin;border-style:solid;border-color:black;width:500px\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/flash-fill.png\"></a></p>\n<p><p>\nGiven that setup, you invoke Flash Fill in the first empty B and C columns to follow the examples in B1 and C1. Here’s the <a href=\"http://sdrv.ms/W5AC7Q\">resulting spreadsheet</a> on SkyDrive. Wow! That’s going to make a difference to a lot of people!\n</p>\n<p>\nSuppose your data source were instead JSON, as shown above. Here’s <a href=\"http://sdrv.ms/YBvM2x\">another spreadsheet</a> I made using Flash Fill. As will be typical, this took a bit of prep. Flash Fill needs to work on homogenous rows. So I started by dumping the JSON into <a href=\"http://jsonlint.com/\">JSONLint</a> to produce text like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\n[\n {\n \"aadl\": 348\n },\n {\n \"aaps\": 9\n },\n {\n \"abbot\": 18\n },\n...\n]\n</pre>\n<p>\nI imported that text into Excel 2013 and sorted to isolate a set of rows with a column A like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\n\"aadl\": 348\n\"aaps\": 9\n\"abbot\": 18\n</pre>\n<p>\nAt that point it was a piece of cake to get Flash Fill to carry the names over to column B and the numbers to column C.\n</p>\n<p>\nHere’s <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMdnbMQImVg\">a screencast</a> by <a href=\"http://mherman.org/\">Michael Herman</a> that does a nice job showing what Flash Fill can do. It also illustrates a fascinating thing about programming by example. At about 1:25 in the video you’ll see this:\n</p>\n<p>\n<a title=\"click to enlarge\" href=\"http://jonudell.net/images/flash-fill-herman.png\"><img style=\"border-width:thin;border-style:solid;border-color:black;width:500px\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/flash-fill-herman.png\"></a></p>\n<p><p>\nMichael’s example in C1 was meant to tell Flash Fill to transform strings of 9 digits into the familiar nnn-nn-nnnn pattern. Here we see its first try at inferring that pattern. What should have been 306-60-4581 showed up as 306-215-4581. That’s wrong for two reasons. The middle group has three digits instead of two, and they’re the wrong digits. So Michael corrects it and tries again. At 1:55 we see Flash Fill’s next try. Here, given 375459809, it produces 375-65-9809. That’s closer, the grouping pattern looks good, but the middle digits aren’t 45 as we’d expect. He fixes that example and tries again. Now Flash Fill is clear about what’s wanted, and the rest of the column fills automatically and correctly.\n</p>\n<p>\nBut what was Flash Fill thinking when it produced those unintended transformations? And could it tell us what it was thinking?</p>\n<p>From a <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/news/features/flashfill-020613.aspx\">Microsoft Research article</a> about the new feature:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\nGulwani and his team developed Flash Fill to learn by example, not demonstration. A user simply shows Flash Fill what he or she wants to do by filling in an Excel cell with the desired result, and Flash Fill quickly invokes an underlying program that can perform the task.</p>\n<p>\nIt’s the difference between teaching someone how to make a pizza step by step and simply showing them a picture of a pizza and minutes later eating a hot pie.</p>\n<p>\nBut that simplicity comes with a price.</p>\n<p>\n“The biggest challenge,” Gulwani says, “is that learning by example is not always a precise description of the user’s intent — there is a lot of ambiguity involved.</p>\n<p>\n“Take the example of Rick Rashid [Microsoft Research’s chief research officer]. Let’s say you want to convert Rick Rashid to Rashid, R. Where does that ‘R’ come from? Is it the ‘R’ of Rick or the ‘R’ of Rashid? It’s very hard for a program to understand.”</p>\n<p>\nFor each situation, Flash Fill synthesizes millions of small programs — 10-20 lines of code — that might accomplish the task. It sounds implausible, but Gulwani’s deep research background in synthesizing code makes it possible. Then, using machine-learning techniques, Flash Fill sorts through these programs to find the one best-suited for the job.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>\nI suspect that while Flash Fill <i>could</i> tell you what it was thinking, you’d have a hard time understanding how it thinks. And for that reason I suspect that hard-core quants won’t rush to embrace it. But that’s OK. Hard-core quants can write code. Flash Fill is for everybody else. It will empower regular folks to do all sorts of useful transformations that otherwise entail ridiculous manual interventions that people shouldn’t waste time on. Be aware that you need to check results to ensure they’re what you expect. But if you find yourself hand-editing text in repetitive ways, get the <a href=\"http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/excel-2013-preview\">Excel 2013 preview</a> and give Flash Fill a try. It’s insanely useful.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3511/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/jonudell.wordpress.com/3511/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.jonudell.net&blog=109309&post=3511&subd=jonudell&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Back in 2007, the Danish army withdrew from Iraq. The government originally tried to avoid accepting Iraqis who had worked for the Danes as refugees, despite the fact that they were in grave danger of reprisals. Eventually, after a protest campaign and a protest by senior army officers, the Danish government gave in. In the UK, this example was followed – the government tried to wriggle out of it, this blog among many other people protested as part of <a href=\"http://danhardie.wordpress.com/\">Dan Hardie</a>‘s campaign, and eventually some action was taken.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/02/15/le-danemark-ne-veut-pas-accueillir-ses-interpretes-afghans_1833219_3214.html?xtmc=le_danemark_ne_veut_pas&xtcr=1\">History is repeating itself</a>, as <em>Le Monde</em> reports. The story is paywalled, but the essential point is that the NATO deployment to Afghanistan will only shrink from here to 2015, the Danes will be off very soon, and again the government is trying to wriggle out of its obligations to Afghans who they relied on in a variety of roles and who are now faced with Taliban vengeance.</p>\n<p>This time, though, the cowardice and moral abasement has reached a new low. The official argument is apparently that the interpreters (and others) were employed by a private company, and therefore it is nothing to do with Denmark! This is repellent. It is not just that a moral obligation exists, or that a norm of common decency is involved. This attempt to hide behind privatisation is undignified, dishonest, dishonourable. Everyone involved ought to be deeply ashamed.</p>\n<p>Now I strongly suspect that history will repeat itself in the UK as well, and no doubt in the other European contributors to ISAF. So it is important to get angry early, in order to make an example to the others. To lead off, I will ask a question. </p>\n<p>The story above refers to a supposed private company, says that it is a British company, and then names it as LSU or Labour Support Unit. But there is <a href=\"http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/Company/Find?q=Labour+Support+Unit&location=&s=s\">no such company</a> registered in Britain. “Labour Support Unit”, in general, is a British military organisation, a staff attached to a large formation or garrison that is responsible for employing civilians.</p>\n<p>So either <em>Le Monde</em> is confused, perhaps because “company” can be a business, a social group, or a military unit in English, or else the Danish government is bullshitting to its own public that it’s all the problem of the private sector, while hoping that the British government sorts out the problem and spends the money. This is a sorry, sordid business.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=7eekzaPwhqU:J0ZG0itnQDM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=7eekzaPwhqU:J0ZG0itnQDM:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=7eekzaPwhqU:J0ZG0itnQDM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=7eekzaPwhqU:J0ZG0itnQDM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=7eekzaPwhqU:J0ZG0itnQDM:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "I know I do not frequent these parts of the internet as I used to. Nonetheless, this video (and the ones that follow) demands a mention as they very deftly portray contemporary Nigerian life.<br>\n<br>\nThe creators of this content @nnamdiarea and @ourownarea manage to serve some bitter pills but with an abundance of comedy. As the main character sang in the 1964 <i>Mary Poppins</i> film \"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down\" so also has the @ourownarea team successfully helped myself and probably others digest certain Nigerian realities. Although these videos are at least a year old, they deserve a good watching.<br>\n<br>\nSee for yourself - <br>\n<b><br>\nGoodluck Jonathan Converses With Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg</b><br>\n<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/hLgKz1lXjQ8\" width=\"560\"></iframe>\n<b> </b><br>\n<br>\n<b>A Nigerian exorcism</b><br>\n<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ijbMoDIIlqY\" width=\"560\"></iframe>\n<b> </b><br>\n<br>\n<b>A Nigerian Carjacking</b> (when fuel is more expensive than \"rozay\" [sic] at the clubs, what can one expect?) <br>\n<br>\n<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/qQQkblnaQPQ\" width=\"560\"></iframe><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:I9og5sOYxJI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=I9og5sOYxJI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:3XSh_JyuPpU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=3XSh_JyuPpU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=RnF30H8Ed9s:gGLoSwaho4g:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU/~4/RnF30H8Ed9s\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "James Wagner’s “highest aspiration”",
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"content" : "<p>It’s interesting that we are upset when the president of Emory University talks about the 3/5ths compromise—one of the marks of this country’s white supremacist origins, the place where racial slavery is literally written into the constitution—<a href=\"http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2013/winter/register/president.html\">as a model for exemplary political behavior.</a> When he uses that historical example to argue for the necessity of <a href=\"http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2012-12-04/students-faculty-protest-cuts-emory\">continuing cuts to the liberal arts,</a> we are upset, unsettled, enraged, astonished. Should we be?</p>\n<p>Of course, it is a very stupid thing for James Wagner to write, full stop, and not simply because of the deep and profound level of historical ignorance it demonstrates. After all, the reference doesn’t even work on its own terms: the 3/5ths compromise, like the compromise of 1850, utterly failed at solving the conflict over slavery, whose bloody resolution it only delayed, intensified, and made all the more inevitable. If the purpose of such compromise was to preserve the union by tabling the question of slavery, after all, the civil war which broke out over the question of slavery demonstrates how profoundly “compromise” failed on those terms. There was no permanent compromise between slavery and anti-slavery; there was only resolution through conflict, and to think otherwise was always delusional.</p>\n<p>It’s also a bizarrely inflammatory choice on his part, a truly catastrophic message failure. Why would he make the rather banal point that people should just suck it up and compromise by referencing one of the most deeply shameful episodes in our political history? It would be almost exactly like urging that we should use negotiation and dialog to prevent war and international conflict, just like Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler did in Munich. It’s hard to think of a way to more completely sabotage your argument than to point at the American consensus on the acceptability of racial slavery as your example of constructive compromise.</p>\n<p>Ignorance is the most obvious explanation, and we cannot solve a problem like Wagner without presuming a great deal of it. You have to be pretty stupid to write that article, one way or another: either he was too ignorant of the history to understand what he was saying or he was too ignorant of his constituency to understand how what he was saying would be received. The purpose of a “From the President” message in an alumni magazine is to be pleasantly forgotten. Waxing rhapsodically about the good old days when white men made political bargains over the bodies of disenfranchised black slaves is just not a good decision on his part, especially as president of a university whose historical legacy is as specifically implicated with slavery as Emory’s is. <a href=\"http://www.emory.edu/home/about/anniversary/essays/slavery.html\">The college was literally built by slaves, and its scholarship helped bolster the peculiar institution’s intellectual legitimacy</a>.</p>\n<p>But why would we expect him not to be obtuse, out of touch, and stupid? I am not being cynical, here, or playing more-disillusioned-than-thou; I was so upset yesterday, when I read the piece, that my rage-tweet had three typos in it. I expected the president of Emory University to be something other than offensively stupid, and I guess I still do: no one who can write that essay should be the president of a university. But what I’m really saying, when I say that, is that I expect a university to be a place where authority is derived from knowledge and engagement, where intellectual rigor is part of the air one breathes, the atmosphere of the place, in the water. And maybe that expectation shows that I’m the one who’s out of touch.</p>\n<p>The job of a university president, today, is not to be an intellectual leader but to be a manager and a fundraiser, the CEO of a corporation which just happens to be a university. And because the job is to ensure the continuity of the institution, no matter what, it makes a certain kind of sense that the 3/5ths compromise would appeal to him as an idea. Politics trumps principle. Especially in the era of fiscal crisis—which has been going on in higher education for decades now—the purpose of a university president is to manage that crisis, both to ensure the survival of the university and to use that crisis to make whatever structural changes he can to ensure its future survival. A crisis is therefore a terrible thing to waste, as (blessedly outgoing) UC president Mark Yudof likes to say (<a href=\"http://chancellorsearch.ucdavis.edu/yudof_interview.html\">here</a> for example, and <a href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/08/MN1510D554.DTL\">here).</a> And a “good” university manager is someone who knows how to use the crisis of the moment to restructure the university so that its indefinite continuity is more likely.</p>\n<p>What is it that survives, though? When you value continuity above all, you glide silently over the fact that “the university” is radically transformed when its primary function is simply to exist. When the president of a university is fighting to get rid of programs that don’t pay for themselves, because they don’t pay for themselves, it doesn’t really matter what they are; the substance of the university’s intellectual work is not what matters, just its bottom line. The result is that managers and academics are in inevitable conflict. Universities are divided between administrators—whose concern for institutional health is expressed in fiscal projections and budgets—and academics who would look at a President spouting historical ignorance in an alumni magazine as a bleeding sore on the academic body.</p>\n<p>There is, however, no better example of the mentality that prioritizes institutional continuity over intellectual principles than the 3/5ths compromise. The apparent arbitrary nature of the number is what makes it stick in our minds as a historical scandal, in some ways more than it should; after all, at a time when the vast majority of American adults could not vote—when the franchise rested almost exclusively with white male property-owners—the scandal was not that slaves “only” counted as 3/5ths of a person, it was that they were slaves in the first place. But what the number’s arbitrariness demonstrates is how both sides were simply compromising in order to compromise, prioritizing the continuance of the Union over everything else. “3/5ths” didn’t mean anything, and no one pretended it did. The only important thing was that the power elite came to a consensus, and 3/5ths was where the horse-trading stopped. If that consensus required that millions of dark skinned people be enslaved and brutalized, well, that was a small price to pay for the glorious union. Continuity is what matters, after all.</p>\n<p>James Wagner’s casual and apathetic ignorance about slavery is one thing, and his assault on the liberal arts is another. I want to be clear about that: I am not equating them with each other, even if there is a certain overlap (as Tressie McMillan Cottom <a href=\"http://tressiemc.com/2013/02/17/higher-education-ideological-wars-who-is-the-slave/\">argues</a>). But the kind of thinking that allows a person to value “compromise,” as such, is the kind of mind that doesn’t care very much about what is being compromised. The kind of mind that can cut a university’s education studies division, physical education department, visual arts department, and journalism program—sacrificing core functions of the university in order to save money so the university can “continue”—is also the kind of mind that could see slavery as the unfortunate broken eggs that were needed to make the national omelette. There is nothing surprising about this, in other words. This is what we should expect when a university president is essentially a CEO. And the easiest response is simply to shrug our shoulders. Can we expect better? Should we be surprised?</p>\n<p>It’s a small point, but I think it’s actually important to be upset about stupid stuff like Wagner’s dumb alumni letter. The man should lose his job for this, and in a world where a university actually was all the things it’s supposed to be, he would lose his job: in a world where a university president was something other than a CEO, that message from the president would have been his resignation letter. We don’t live in that world. But acting like we do is a way of demanding it. In other words, I want to distinguish understanding <em>why</em> he is the kind of mind he is—why his mentality would make that kind of stupidity plausible, if not inevitable—from an acceptance of that reality. To be so cynical that we would shrug our shoulders at people like Wagner and Yudof is to resign ourselves to their sense of what is “realistic,” and to give up. To stop caring <em>what</em> he says is to let him say anything. And to be enraged, however impotently, is to refuse to be realistic.</p>"
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"title" : "Herbal Medicine in Nigeria",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/chinese-herbal-remedies-770033.jpg\"><img alt=\"chinese-herbal-remedies-770033\" src=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/chinese-herbal-remedies-770033.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"314\"></a></p>\n<p>By Tayo Olaleye</p>\n<p>A while ago, I came across <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201301170413.html\">this article</a> in which Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, the present Minister of Health, proposed that traditional medicines should be incorporated into the current medical curriculum. The article further stated that medical practitioners ought to ‘equip’ themselves with ‘expert knowledge’ of traditional medicines. As with everything, there are pros and cons to such proposals but I am of the opinion that this is a splendid idea, one that ought to have been introduced a while ago. Here’s why.</p>\n<p>Most traditional medicines are of plant origins. Nature has gifted us with so many medicines infused in the leaves, stalks and barks of plants. It’s amazing! Take for example, quinine, on which a lot of anti-malarials are based on, can be found on the bark of Cinchona trees native to South America. It is thought that South Americans, Peruvians in particular, would make some kind of concoction with the back of the tree and sweetened water. Does this remind you of scenes in Nollywood movies yet? Quinine was found to be effective in the treatment of malaria and it was used as an antimalarial for decades. Although Quinine can be extracted directly from the plant, it was eventually chemically synthesized in laboratories around the world and formed a basis for quinine-related medications. Pigenil, a marketed drug in Italy used for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH, increased prostate size) is composed of extracts of the bark of a plant, <i>Prunus africana,</i> native to some parts of Africa. Also, turmeric a member of the ginger family and sometimes an ingredient in Nigerian or Asian fried rice, has a potential to be used as an anti-cancer agent as well as having anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory properties? Or that castor oil can be used in arthritis treatment?</p>\n<p>As a child, my mum had a bottle of what I call ‘nasty bitter horrible stuff’ aka ‘agbo jedi’. I hated that concoction. Yet, a lot of people swear by its health benefit. Another plant whose health benefit is widely known in Nigeria is the ‘Dogon Yaro’ plant (Neem tree). The Neem tree (<i>Azadirachta indica</i>) is thought to have antifungal, antibacterial, anti-micriobial, anti-oxidant and anti-malarial properties amongst many others. As far as I am aware, the chemical components of the Neem tree are yet to be thoroughly explored.</p>\n<p>I found a book titled ‘<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Clinically-Tested-Herbal-Remedies/dp/0789027232\">The Handbook of Clinically tested Herbal Remedies</a>’. We as a country are sitting on a vast amount of plant-derived medications. We can add to this ‘handbook’. We can do some research, or send these medicinal plants to laboratories around the world that specialize in natural product synthesis. We can learn a lot about the key components in the plants that are responsible for the efficacy observed in sick patients, we can learn the doses, the mechanism of action and if all goes well, we might have another Pigenil on our hands.</p>\n<p>So yes, I support Prof. Chukwu’s proposal. We ought to know more about the herbal and traditional medicines we have and have been using for ages in Nigeria. If the medical curriculum creates an avenue to study these traditional medicines, perhaps we’d be more attentive to that herb/plant that alleviates every symptom of a particular disease in one dose; perhaps we’d be closer to finding a drug blockbuster of the future. Perhaps.</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 15px;width:240px\">\n\t\t<img src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/martianWatch.jpg\" width=\"240\">\n\t\t</p><div>\n<h2>Main sections & select features</h2>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#RemovingDrawbacks\">Overcoming smartwatch drawbacks</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Wireless charging, so you never remove the watch from your arm</li>\n<li>Smooth Apple design with no clunk-factor</li>\n<li>Siri and your iPhone take the place of buttons and menus on your iWatch</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#iWatchAsFacilitator\">The iWatch as facilitator/coordinator</a></h3>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#KillerApps\">The Killer Applications</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Your iWatch vouches for you, so you’ll never have to type another passcode or password again.</li>\n<li>Walk away from your iPhone and your iWatch will warn you.</li>\n<li>Your NFC chip for making payments is in your watch, instead of in an easily-grabbed $800 phone. Just wave your hand over the sensor and you’re good to go.</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#CoolCapabilities\">Other Cool Capabilities</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>When your iPhone rings, you watch says who’s calling, and you can handle your response by touching the watch.</li>\n<li>Sensors enable the watch to monitor you in sickness and in health, tracking calories burned, miles walked, steps climbed, restlessness of sleep, even advent of tremor and other early warnings of serious health conditions.</li>\n<li>Your music may be on your iPhone or iPod, the sound may come from your Bluetooth headset, but your controller is on your wrist with the iWatch.</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#TheApps\">The Apps</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align:left\">Unexpected apps will afford unexpected capabilities, like KidCode</li>\n<li style=\"text-align:left\">Expected apps like using the watch to pause, mute, or change the channel on your TV or alter your room temperature</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#iWatch&AppleMaps\">Apple Maps fix.</a> Crowdsourced pressure data from the watch could enable Apple to fix the 3D view in its Maps app.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#WhatsThatThing\">“What’s that thing?”</a> Point your finger to a distant object, and Siri will tell you what it is.</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#iWatchPostscript\">Postscript</a></h3>\n<h3><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#Forum\">The Forum</a></h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Two-way conversation between readers and myself with a surprising number of good ideas for both features and applications.</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<h2>Introduction</h2>\n<p>The iWatch will fill a gaping hole in the Apple ecosystem. It will facilitate and coordinate not only the activities of all the other computers and devices we use, but a wide array of devices to come. Like other breakthrough Apple products, its value will be underestimated at launch, then grow to have a profound impact on our lives and Apple’s fortunes.</p>\n<div><span style=\"color:black!important\">Steve Jobs’s true legacy lies not with his products, but his method, the way he would forge revolutionary products from cold blocks of creativity. I know. I was one of his earliest recruits and watched him develop the method. Steve applied it one project at a time. My hope is that Apple now has teams applying it across many projects, shortening the historic six years between breakthrough products.</span></div>\n<p>What will follow is not based on insider information but a solid understanding of Apple, its products, the problem, and the opportunity. The Apple iWatch development team I expect exists is likely already well ahead of the ideas I’m suggesting here. (Should they draw any new ideas from what follows, they are free to use them. I’ve already reached my lifetime goal of as many patents as Heinz has varieties.)</p>\n<p><div><span style=\"color:black!important\"> <strong>Who’s talking?</strong></span></div></p>\n<p align=\"left\">Bruce Tognazzini was hired at Apple by Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin in 1978, where he remained for 14 years, founding the Apple Human Interface Group and designing Apple’s first standard human interface. He is named inventor on 57 US patents ranging from a intelligent wristwatch to an aircraft radar system to, along with Jakob Nielsen, an eye-track-driven browser.</p>\n<br>\nBefore delving into what an Apple smartwatch might look like, we need to understand why, right now, people not only think they don’t need a smartwatch, they flat-out don’t want a smartwatch.\n<h2>The Smartwatch</h2>\n<p><div><p>I’ve found a traditional smartwatch’s extra functions neatly divide into those I don’t need and those I can’t find.</p></div></p>\n<p>Traditional smartwatches are big and clunky. They require charging. (I haven’t had to remove my “dumb” watch from my wrist in four years.) I can’t read a smartwatch at night without using my other hand to turn on the light. I can’t read a digital watch at any time without the use of reading glasses, nor can most people over 45, which is why the big hand and the small hand continue to go around together on so many watches. What’s worse, I’ve found a traditional smartwatch’s extra functions neatly divide into those I don’t need and those I can’t find. I can live without a smartwatch.</p>\n<p>Recently, some startups have addressed a few of the smartwatch’s disadvantages. They noticed that people are now carrying around a decent-sized screen with a whole bunch of virtual buttons—their smartphones—so smartwatches no longer need display everything and offer access to every option within the watch interface itself. Bluetooth 4.0 enables low-power communication without draining the watch’s battery, making smaller size and longer running times possible.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://cookoowatch.com\">The Cookoo watch</a>, for example, will last for a year between battery changes. It doesn’t do a great deal, but what it does do is quite useful.</p>\n<div style=\"width:245px\"><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc/2013/01/30/the-apple-iwatch/cookoo-watch/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-450\"><img alt=\"Cookoo Watch\" src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Cookoo-Watch.png\" width=\"235\" height=\"171\"></a><p>The Cookoo Watch</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://getpebble.com\">The Pebble</a>, while it offers much more than the Cookoo in terms of functionality, lasts about a week before demanding removal for charging. That’s longer than smartwatches used to go, but hardly compares to what people expect in a modern watch.</p>\n<div style=\"width:493px\"><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc/2013/01/30/the-apple-iwatch/pebble-watchfaces-3/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-451\"><img alt=\"pebble-watchfaces-3\" src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/pebble-watchfaces-3.jpg\" width=\"483\" height=\"288\"></a><p>The Pebble Watch</p></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://martianwatches.com\">Martian</a> has combined the large, somewhat clunky styling of the traditional smartwatch (albeit in a great many color variations) to offer the greatest pass-through power from the smartphone. The result is <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dt2wrr.jpg\">Dick Tracy’s two-way wrist radio</a>: Ask Siri to call someone, and you can talk with them through the speaker and microphone in your watch, all handled via Bluetooth by your phone.</p>\n<div style=\"width:330px\"><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc/apple-iwatch/martianwatch/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-612\"><img alt=\"The Martian Watch\" src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/martianWatch.jpg\" width=\"320\" height=\"268\"></a><p>The Martian Watch</p></div>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center\">The Martian sports two hours of talk time, although the watch itself will keep running after that. You’ll certainly need to get in the habit of charging it every night.</span></p>\n<p>These and others of the new generation of smartwatches are certainly very attractive to early adopters, but don’t expect them to smash the market open. That’s going to require an entirely different level of both functionality and perfection, just the sort of thing for which Apple is famous.<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>Overcoming Smartwatch Drawbacks</h2>\n<p>The first thing Apple has to do is address traditional drawbacks in smartwatch design, something they are qualified to do.</p>\n<p><b>Charging.</b> If you think about it, there isn’t actually a charging problem at all. Never has been. Instead, there’s a having-to-remove-the-watch-from-your-arm problem. What if you held a patent on a charger that could charge an object that is several feet away through the air wirelessly? Apple holds such a patent.</p>\n<p>The usual drawback to remote charging is that it is not efficient, but if the watch doesn’t require all that much power to begin with and will shut down the charger when it is full, the process can be relatively inefficient and still not cost you much money or the nation’s infrastructure much energy. (We spend lots of money/resources on inefficient power sources all the time: One AAA cell for your TV’s remote control costs around fifty cents. It holds around 1.4 watt-hours of energy. Not kwhs, whrs. You would have to spend $25 to $50 on AAA cells to equal a penny’s worth of the power you get out of the wall.)</p>\n<p><b>Clunky design.</b> Two reasons clunky design wouldn’t be a problem for Apple. The first and foremost: Jonathan Ive. Second: Apple’s recent patent on a low-cost method for creating curved glass for screens. Apple can create a smartwatch with revolutionary functionality that is drop-dead gorgeous. Is there any doubt they will do so?</p>\n<p><b>Buttons & menu trees.</b> Won’t be any. Why? One good reason: Siri. Whatever the watch can do, you’ll be able to put in place by commanding it (with your iPhone and the Siri back-end handling the actual mechanics, of course): “Set timer for 22 minutes.” “Wake me at 6:15,” etc. Whatever the watch can display, you’ll be able to bring up just by asking: “How long before my plane takes off?” “What’s the temperature right now in Dubai?”</p>\n<p>Siri will be accompanied by touch, of course, with touch handling the lighter tasks, Siri the more complex. There will be overlap, so you can use more complex touch maneuvers when you can’t speak to your watch, during a meeting perhaps or when there’s a lot of ambient noise. Many people will never learn the more complex maneuvers, nor will they need to as the iPhone, iPad, and Mac will offer simple alternative interfaces to the more complex tasks.<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>The iWatch as Facilitator/Coordinator</h2>\n<p>The iWatch will have a few functions it performs entirely on its own, chief among them being telling you the time. It’s chief role will be that of office manager, facilitating and coordinating your use of your other iDevices and the Internet by gathering data, delivering messages, storing and forwarding, coordinating tasks, and carrying out functions that extend the capabilities of your other devices. The iPhone or other primary device will be the executive in charge, making the decisions, setting the strategy, and apportioning tasks. The watch will have the least energy resources available, so the watch will be used sparingly. Still, as time goes on, more uses will be found for it, and it will receive increasing amounts of traffic.<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>The Killer Applications</h2>\n<p>The iWatch can and should neatly fix the two most serious problems we have with our current mobile devices, ones we may not even realize we have. Only Apple holds the necessary keys to address the first of these, so only Apple will.</p>\n<div><span style=\"color:black!important\">The paradox of the “huge problem”: A problem that feels sufficiently insurmountable will appear the product of natural law, to be accepted rather than challenged.</span></div>\n<p>The first two killer applications are neither sexy nor fun, but they will make our lives so much more pleasant.</p>\n<p><b>Passcodes & Passwords.</b> The watch can and should, for most of us, eliminate passcodes and passwords altogether on iPhones, and Macs and, if Apple’s smart, PCs: As long as my watch is in range, let me in! That, to me, would be the single-most compelling feature a smartwatch could offer: If the watch did nothing but release me from having to enter my passcode/password 10 to 20 times a day, I would buy it. If the watch would just free me from having to enter pass codes, I would buy it even if it couldn’t tell the right time! I would happily strap it to my opposite wrist! This one is a must. Yes, Apple is working on adding fingerprint reading for iDevices, and that’s just wonderful, but it will still take time and trouble for the device to get an accurate read from the user. I want in now! Instantly! Let me in, let me in, let me in!</p>\n<p>Apple must ensure, however, that, if you remove the watch, you must reestablish authenticity. (Reauthorizing would be an excellent place for biometrics.) Otherwise, we’ll have a spate of violent “watchjackings” replacing the non-violent iPhone-grabs going on today.</p>\n<div><p>If the watch would do nothing but free me from having to enter pass codes, I would buy it even if it couldn’t tell the right time!</p></div>\n<p>Individuals or companies that demand a higher level of security can require both the presence of the watch and a passcode, aka, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentication#Two-factor_authentication\">two-factor authentication</a>. Even that could be made a lot less onerous, again optionally, if, when at work or within your own house, the security software would be allowed to lift the requirement for the separate passcode, only applying it when you are out and about.</p>\n<p><b>Find iPhone.</b> The current “Find iPhone” is a well-implemented solution wherein you can find your iDevice no matter where it has wandered on the globe, as long as it is turned on and no one has messed with it. However, it is not exactly as simple procedure:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Find yourself another iDevice or computer</li>\n<li>Log in</li>\n<li>Open Find iPhone or point a browser to www.icloud.com</li>\n<li>Wait while signals are sent through the ether</li>\n<li>Select the device you want from the map or list</li>\n<li>Click “Play sound”</li>\n<li>Find the device you’re looking for & dismiss alert</li>\n<li>Delete the follow-up email</li>\n</ol>\n<p>That’s a lot of steps! Better that your iDevices never get all that lost to begin with. Two additional capabilities, facilitated by the iWatch, can help ensure you never need that long-distance capability.</p>\n<p><b>Local Find: </b>As long as your device is close by, just scrawl a question mark on the top of your iWatch or perhaps ask Siri, “Where’s my phone?” and your phone will light up and start chiming. Of the eight steps above, you need perform only step seven. (You would find your iPod or iPad the same way, of course.)</p>\n<p><b>Automatic Find:</b> By the time you realize you have left your top-secret prototype iPhone sitting on the bar, some on-line tech blog will have probably already published an article on it. However, with the iWatch on your wrist, as soon as you move out of range, it will tell you that you’ve forgotten your phone, then help you locate it, as needed. That’s a lot more useful than waking up the next morning to discover you seem to be missing something, only to then press Find iPhone into service. (The Cookoo watch already has at least the reminder part of this feature.)</p>\n<p><b>Extending the range:</b> Bluetooth Low Energy is supposed to have a range of 50 meters or 160 feet. Presumably, that’s in an open field with a tailwind. In your home or work place, your watch could end up driving you nuts if Apple doesn’t provide an intelligent means of expanding the virtual bubble so the alarm doesn’t go off anywhere in your safe environment. The system will need to “know” you’re in one of your secure areas, warning you only if you start to drive away without one of your devices. This could be handled, perhaps, by repeaters embedded in devices such as Apple Airports. In homes and businesses with multiple repeaters, your watch could then also give you a local “read” on what repeater your device is near.</p>\n<p><b>Near Field Communications for Payment</b>. The conventional, collective “vision” is that, soon, we will all pay our bills by simply reaching for our phone, a phone that, for around half of us, is lost somewhere deep in the recesses of a purse, retrievable in around one minute and thirty seconds. With luck. Think of the time those folks will save over paying with their wallet, a much bigger and more obvious object that they actually had to move out of the way in their effort to find their completely invisible black phone!</p>\n<p>Oh, yeah, they won’t save any time at all.</p>\n<p>Of course, we guys are a lot more clever. We’ll slide our phone right into our breast pocket where, heh, heh, we can get at it instantly. Or could have if we hadn’t then put on a turtleneck sweater before putting on and zipping up our jacket.</p>\n<p>Next time, we’ll just pay cash.</p>\n<p>And then there’s getting on the subway: Instead of having to slide that paper card we buy once a month into the slot, all we’ll have to do is wave our $800 iPhone over the little sensor, except that nice gentleman we hadn’t noticed standing just to our side just grabbed our $800 iPhone and is now hot-footing it out of the station with us trapped on the wrong side of the turnstile. Huh! That didn’t work out so well!</p>\n<p>Just last week, our kid had to struggle to get his phone out of his backpack to pay his bus fare using his marvelous NFC chip, only to have it stolen the same way! If only there were a better solution! Oh, yeah. There is.</p>\n<p>The NFC chip belongs in the iWatch, not in the iPhone! That way we’ll know exactly where it is at all times, strapped to the end of an appendage expressly designed to be waved around at things. How handy! Reach. Touch. Done.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, our iPhone, handling any necessary communication, will stay hidden safely away, and, if someone does manage to get ahold of our watch, it will require reauthorization, having been removed from our arm. Net value to the thief: Zilch. Net loss to us: A whole lot less than an iPhone, with word on the street quickly making it clear there’s no point in stealing an iWatch.</p>\n<p>Of course, not every merchant will accept NFC right away, so the watch, linked to Passport, will also display QR codes, etc.<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>Other Cool Capabilities</h2>\n<p><b>Phone call facilitator.</b> Your iWatch vibrates. You glance at the watch and see who’s calling. You swipe up twice, indicating you want to answer (or some other standardized gesture). Your caller is asked to, “Wait one moment, please” while your watch instructs your phone to light up and start ringing to help you find it (or just lights up—your choice).</p>\n<p>Many of us, of course, would like more, however, the iWatch as speakerphone peripheral for our iPhone is much less likely to happen. Of course, it would be cool: Let’s face it, Dick Tracy had a two-way wrist radio, and we want one, too! Imagine asking your imaginary friend, Siri, to call one of your real friends, Bill, then having a conversation, all without actually reaching into your pocket for your phone. However, the iWatch is going to be all about energy management. The Martian watch, for all its bulk, can squeeze only two hours of talk-time out of a charge. Martian will likely be left to pursue that market on its own.</p>\n<p><b>Sensors.</b> The iWatch will incorporate a variety of sensors. Certainly one thrust of these sensors will be sports/health data capture, inferring walking based on arm swing, detecting climbing or diving based on a pressure sensor, etc., etc. The more sensors, the better. A temperature and pressure sensor pressed against the skin could prove useful for medicine. A proximity sensor will let software “know” whether the watch is hidden in a sleeve or under a blanket. Whatever combination of sensors ultimately make their way into the product will inevitably lead to some very interesting new applications that people may have yet to consider. Other iDevices will combine the iWatch sensor data with data from their own sensors and from the outside world, such as weather data, to form a complete and complex picture.</p>\n<p><b>Music.</b> The Pebble is already handling music functions, which, of course, an iWatch would likewise be expected to do, just as the earlier generation iPod mini would do when embedded in an after-market watch-like case. The Pebble, however, is acting solely as a controller to—facilitator for—the user’s iPod or iPhone, rather than acting as a music device on its own, saving its battery life. The iWatch would be expected to follow this same path.</p>\n<p><b>Telling the time.</b> Yes, it will tell the time, likely offering a familiar Swiss Railroad watch face as an option, and it will tell the right time, too: By communicating with the iPhone, it will update to changing time zones, etc., as the phone updates, eliminating—or at least reducing—the need for manual intervention, a major bother with current watches.</p>\n<p>When Apple really gets serious about integrating Passbook, your watch will “know” when you’ve boarded that plane to London: You were scheduled to board, the phone’s GPS locates you at the airport, and you just now turned off your phone. Yesterday, the watch will have offered you an easy way to switch to split local/London time and, now that you’re aboard the plane, will be prepared for you to flip to just London time with a single touch.<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>The Apps</h2>\n<p>Most wearables to date have been dedicated devices. The iWatch will be in the vanguard of devices that can work with 3rd party apps There will be tens or hundreds of thousands of apps, few that either the designers of the iWatch (or I) will have anticipated. Almost all will actually run on the larger iDevices, extracting data from the iWatch, displaying data on the iWatch, or making use of the iWatch as facilitator.</p>\n<p>Consider the iPhone, released on day-one with its handful of built-in apps. Yes, it was exciting, but it was not nearly the tool that exact same phone had become three years later, as the breadth and depth of applications mounted and the system software matured. We can expect the same curve to occur with the iWatch.</p>\n<h3>The Unexpected Apps</h3>\n<p>At least one or two evil apps will slip past the Apple watchdogs, launching a feeding frenzy in the press. Apple will have already limited how much data a given app can access plus given us the power to offer and withdraw permissions. More steps will be taken once the breech occurs, and we’ll all soon get over it because the benefits we’re receiving will so far exceed the risks.</p>\n<p>Then will come a different kind of unexpected apps. Consider SMS on cell phones. It’s a hack, a simple message system slipped in an underutilized space reserved for cell phones and towers to communicate with each other. It cost the cell phone companies nothing to offer it, and has made them billions of dollars, with total revenue expected to reach around one trillion dollars before the technology finally declines. Grown-ups wouldn’t use it because you had to learn a secret code and phones are supposed to be talked into. Kids took to it like ducks to water. (Only after Apple and its imitators made SMS accessible did the demographics creep upward.)</p>\n<p>The iWatch, like every other Apple product, will have an interface made as simple as humanly possible. However, human nature is such that, unless the designers work tirelessly to keep ahead or at least abreast of the users, it won’t stay that way forever. Consider the following possibility:</p>\n<p><b>KidCode.</b> It might start out as an app designed with the best of intentions, to let people communicate via a brand-new gestural language-in, Morse-code vibration out, aimed, perhaps, at a few aging amateur radio operators. It it suddenly and unexpectedly taken over by school kids, sweeping the nation. No more being busted by teacher while intently tapping out text on phones. Instead, kids will be just innocently rubbing their watch faces. No more glancing at text screens, just feeling silent vibrations. Tabloids and the evening news will simultaneously condemn it and propagate it. <a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#\">PTAs<span>Parent-Teacher Associations</span></a> will decry it. Civic leaders will condemn it. Ultimately, teachers will learn to notice the trademark casually drooping arms of the senders, right hand over left wrist, along with the far-away stares of the recipients, and order will be restored. However, by then, we’ll have an entire generation of kids that knows Morse code, just as an earlier generation learned that pressing the 4 button on a phone three times would get them an “K”.</p>\n<p><strong>YoungEmployeeCode.</strong> Kids grow up. The young people you may be supervising in a few years will sit in your staff meeting strategizing against you in KidCode on their iWatches while looking at you with the most innocent of young, fresh faces. You’ll learn to ply them with Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and coffee to force their hands above the tabletop, omitting napkins to ensure that, should they subsequently decide to engage in skullduggery, they’ll end up sliming their watches with syrupy glaze. (No, it won’t hurt the watch, but it will make you feel good anyway.)</p>\n<p>This kind of utterly silent messaging will have benefit as well. Consider:</p>\n<p><strong>TheaterCode.</strong> Young people will be able to communicate in crowded theaters to their heart’s content without disturbing anyone. No talking, whispering, ringing, buzzing, illuminated screens, no nothin’. If you are neither sender nor recipient, you will remain completely undisturbed except for the occasional seemingly random <a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc#\">guffaw<span>A short explosion of laughter</span></a>.</p>\n<p><strong>SalesCode. ExecCode. LawyerCode.</strong> A wide variety of people will communicate with collegues using KidCode in meetings and even open court, sending cues, cautions, etc., without fear of eavesdropping or censure, giving them a clear advantage over their less communicative opposition.</p>\n<div><span style=\"color:black!important\">If you grew up knowing that pressing the 5 button three times will generate an “N” and pressing the 7 button two times will produce an “S”, but the very thought of having to learn KidCode sent a chill through you, I regret to inform you that you have officially just turned old. Welcome. The good news is that you will be old for a long, long time.</span></div>\n<p><strong>SilentMessage.</strong> Having learned the code, users will be able to receive notification of people calling, appointment reminders, etc., all in complete silence without even glancing at their phones. Gestures can start, stop, pause, and replay messages, as well as set up replies, with coded responses offering the user feedback the the system understands. SilentMessage, as with most apps, would be primarily handled by the phone, with the watch accepting input and providing output, vibration in this case. SilentMessage would also be an option. Everything it could do could be done using either the iWatch display or the iPhone itself.</p>\n<h3>The Expected Apps</h3>\n<p>Many apps just belong out there. In some cases, they’re already being done by other companies in other forms, like the <a title=\"Fitbit Wireless Trackers\" href=\"http://www.fitbit.com/one\">fitbit</a>, or even in other watches, as with the companies mentioned above. In other cases, the iWatch</p>\n<p><b>Golf. Baseball. Bowling.</b><strong> Tennis.</strong> Critique your form based on data gathered from the accelerometers in the watch. Get distance to the hole in golf and pertinent data for other sports delivered to the watch, rather than having to glance at your phone all the time.</p>\n<p><b>Running/walking.</b> Store and forward to your phone/computer data on jogging/walking time and distance based on arm swings, altitude changes based on pressure sensor, etc., to your phone or computer for the appropriate app to compute and display your running achievements. Lots of competition there already, but with the iWatch, it’s all built-in so you need not carry any additional hardware.</p>\n<p><b>Swimming.</b> Time your swimming laps retroactively. Your “swim coach” app has instructed the watch to store and forward repetitive arm movement times and intervals when the watch is in a wet or high-pressure (under water) environment, so when your arm starts flailing for an extended period of time, that data gets stored and forwarded to the cloud via your phone. Nothing for you to set beforehand. The app just simply has that data available to it to display the workout you did earlier today or a week ago Thursday if and when you become interested.</p>\n<p><b>Health.</b> Having the watch facilitate a basic test like blood pressure monitoring would be a god-send, but probably at prohibitive cost in dollars, size, and energy. However, people will write apps that will carry out other medical tests that will end up surprising us, such as tests for early detection of tremor, etc. The watch could also act as a store-and-forward data collector for other more specialized devices, cutting back the cost of specialized sensors that would then need be little more than a sensor, a Bluetooth chip, and a battery. Because the watch is always with us, it will be able to deliver a long-term data stream, rather than a limited snapshot, providing insight often missing from tests administered in a doctor’s office.</p>\n<p><strong>Find other stuff.</strong> Finding doesn’t have to be limited to only Apple products. The watch could also tell you that your car keys just went out of range, that your hand-carry luggage is no longer with you, etc. by communicating with simple Blue-Tooth-plus-battery transceivers designed as key fobs or luggage tags. They would then light up and/or emit chimes upon command to aid retrieval. These would likely not be Apple products, but would fit well into the Apple ecosystem.</p>\n<p><b>Watching TV.</b> The iWatch will empower TV watching in at least two ways. First, it can serve as the remote control: Whisper to Siri what channel you want or what recorded show you want to watch. That information is then handled by a non-hobby version of AppleTV. Just double-tap to pause the screen. Double-tap again to continue. (It could be some other gesture. They will choose one that you won’t perform by accident, but one that is much more lightweight than required, say, to unlock an iPhone.)</p>\n<p>Second, because the iWatch eliminates the need for a passcode, IOS can be changed to enable your iPod/iPhone/iPad, in the presence of both iWatch and a nearby, running AppleTV, to turn on and default to the Remote app as soon as you pick it up, for the very first time making the Remote app practical to use on a passcode-protected iDevice.</p>\n<h3>The More Ambitious</h3>\n<p><strong>Temperature Control.</strong> It wouldn’t take all that much to let the watch interface with a room’s thermostat. Local Bluetooth repeater information would determine what room you are in and provide the communications link, enabling you to raise or lower the current temperature from your wrist. However, if the watch can, through its array of sensors, accurately determine local ambient temperature where you are in the room, an HVAC system with an intelligent controller could provide a microclimate that would follow you around the building, making appropriate accomodation when two or more individuals with different thermal tastes occupy the same space.</p>\n<div><span style=\"color:black!important\">The same localization information could be used by an evil employer to track employee whereabouts and, by inference, activities. In the case above, the HVAC system only needs to know that a human wants a temperature of 72 F/22 C, not that Bruce Tognazzini, employee #66, wants that temperature and spent 22 minutes and 17 seconds in that room. Apple will need to ensure that it is inherent in the system that data is anonymized to as great an extent as practical at every step. The press will need to ensure that Apple maintains such an architecture and practice.</span></div>\n<p><a></a><b>Correcting Apple Maps.</b> This is a good example of what could come about through crowdsourcing using iWatch data.</p>\n<div><p>Google Maps has had a roadway literally running right through the middle of my living room since 2005</p></div>\n<p>Contrary to press reports, Apple’s 2D roadmaps, supplied by TomTom, are pretty darned accurate. However, because the initial Apple Maps presentation misled the world into believing that Apple Maps was the perfect app on its first day of release, it instantly became popular sport to point out every error anyone could find. Meanwhile, Google Maps has had a roadway literally running right through the middle of my living room since 2005, and no one has felt the need to send headlines screaming around the world about it. (Apple Maps, on Day One, moved that roadway off to the side of our property where it belongs. I can’t tell you what a relief it has been to my wife and myself having reduced traffic passing between us and the telly these last months, with only Android users continuing to rumble past.)</p>\n<p>What is less than stellar is Apple’s “3D View,” not “Flyover,” it’s quite wonderful. I’m talking about “3D View.” However, let’s start with “Flyover.”</p>\n<p>“Flyover” is limited to the central portions of metropolitan areas within free and democratic countries.</p>\n<div style=\"width:516px\"><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc/apple-iwatch/applemapembarcadero/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-608\"><img alt=\"Apple Maps Flyover View\" src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/AppleMapEmbarcadero.jpg\" width=\"506\" height=\"445\"></a><p>This is not a photograph, but a texture-mapped model of San Francisco. The Flyover view, the envy of the computer world, covers far less than 1% of the globe and, because of its super-high cost, will never cover that much more.</p></div>\n<p>Today’s “3D View,” seen below, superimposes a satellite photograph of the earth on a topographical map of the world. While the height of mountains, valleys, and lakes are accurately depicted, finer features, such as buildings and roadways, have no independent altitude information associated with them, resulting in buildings being uniformly flat and roadways being, at all times, assumed to hug the landscape, something that becomes quite comical when the “landscape” is a chasm dropping several hundred feet and the roadway is actually a bridge:</p>\n<div style=\"width:517px\"><a href=\"http://asktog.com/atc/2013/01/30/the-apple-iwatch/softbridge/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-448\"><img alt=\"softBridge\" src=\"http://asktog.com/atc/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/softBridge.jpg\" width=\"507\" height=\"324\"></a><p>Note that both the actual bridge and virtual bridge, the semi-transparent broken segments of paving seen slightly lower and to the left of the bridge, are shown as melted into the river.</p></div>\n<p><strong>The Fix:</strong> Using pressure data from millions of watches, Apple could build a precision altitude map of the world. This map would indicate true altitudes everywhere that iWatch wearers travel. The granularity would be several orders of magnitude greater than ever before attempted for a wide-area map at a cost several orders of magnitude less than Flyover.</p>\n<p>Because most of the time, most of the people’s arms will be within four feet of known roadways (or rail beds), one can, over time, correct for both local barometric pressure and current GPS error (the GPS, of course, being in the phone, not the iWatch—GPS requires significant power). Given that data, one can then look for where current map data and people’s actual locations consistently vary, specifically where people appear to be either diving below or floating above the surface of the earth. If everyone is dropping below nominal ground level, they must be in a cut.</p>\n<p>The more interesting data will arise from where people appear to be floating. Consider the real results that would be detected on Highway 93 above: Motorists’ watches will consistently show no pressure change as they cross the river, ergo, they are staying at the same altitude, ergo there is a bridge. Apply that correcton and the roadways, both real and virtual, will no longer melt into the river.</p>\n<p>The building-height problem would likewise be solved: Data collected day-after-day might report four different pressure levels, spaced 12 feet apart at one given location, indicating that particular building has four occupied stories.</p>\n<p>Would the resulting map look as good as Flyover? No. The image textures would be missing, perhaps to be applied through local effort. The buildings would typically be rendered as extruded solids, based on their roof shapes, i. e., primarily clusters of rectangular solids. Would it be ahead of what’s there and way ahead of the competition? Definitely. Such a world-wide micro-altitude map, applied to Apple’s current 3D View, would instantly correct millions of errors, turning Apple Maps into the map with the most finely-detailed vertical information ever.</p>\n<p><strong>Weather prediction.</strong> Sure, the watch will tell you the temperature outside and whether you’re going to get rained on, but I’m talking about another crowdsourcing application, one that can save lives. Once a true altitude map has been established, meteorologists will be able to gather barometric data at a granularity never before even considered. That data, fed into supercomputers, has the potential to enable them to detect and correlate <a title=\"Butterfly Effect in Chaos Theory\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect\">initial conditions</a> very early in the process, predicting storm paths, strengths, and timing with considerably higher precision than today.</p>\n<p><b>Turn-by-turn walking directions.</b> The face of a smartwatch would be a poor place to display maps, but it can display an arrow just fine. As you approach an intersection, the arrow will become bent, etc., indicating a right or left turn, just as we’re used to with the arrows in our GPS. Except there’s one problem: As you rotate your arm, the arrow, fixed as it is on the display, rotates right with you. Or at least it would if you didn’t have a compass embedded in your watch.</p>\n<p>Here’s how a compass-equipped iWatch would work: You start by asking Siri to guide you someplace in the city, and the Maps app on your iPhone works out the route. The iPhone issues its first command to the watch: “iWatch: Display a straight arrow pointing toward 22 degrees.” (Actual syntax more complex.) The iWatch “knows” which way is North from its compass, so it adds 22 degrees to that and displays the arrow pointing toward 22 degrees. Then, it updates that image, say, 15 times a second, as necessary. You can rotate your arm all you want, but the iWatch will always display that arrow just floating there, always pointing toward 22 degrees magnetic.</p>\n<p>The watch might also display the remaining minutes until the bus you’re hoping to catch will arrive, along with an indicator letting you know if your pace is sufficient.</p>\n<p>With people no longer needing to stare at their iPhones as they walk down the street, there will be fewer people run over and fewer people subjected to having their iPhones snatched from their hands.</p>\n<p><a></a><b>“What’s That [thing]?”</b> You’re standing in a forest clearing and a waterfall high on the mountain catches your eye. You raise your hand, point your finger, and say, “What’s that waterfall?” Your iPhone’s speaker responds, “That’s the upper level of Yosemite Falls.” Simple: The GPS (in the phone) establishes your position, the iWatch compass reports the direction your arm is pointing, its accelerometer reports declination, and triangulation in the app on the phone corrects for the offset between your eyes and shoulder joint. (Yes, finer resolution could be achieved by having the user start out by running a setup routine to determine each user’s dominant eye. A bit beyond the scope of this article, no?)</p>\n<p>For just these last two apps alone, having a compass would be very cool, and I hope they’ll incorporate one in the first release. If they don’t, then these last two apps will fall into the category of…</p>\n<h2>Future Releases</h2>\n<p>With subsequent product generations, the iWatch will take on more and more of a central role in your iLife.</p>\n<p><b>Important papers.</b> You know that sinking feeling when you realize you left your wallet at home? It would be nice if having your NFC chip with you in the watch would, from day-one, remove most of that, enabling you to buy lunch, gas, and food for dinner, but how about if it also stored electronic copies of your driver’s license, your passport, etc., along with an access pathway to your medical records for emergency personnel?</p>\n<p><b>Ubiquitous access.</b> Approach any Apple device, mobile or not when wearing your iWatch. Armed with the owner of that device’s approval and your passcode, make it temporarily yours. If it’s a Mac, you will see your account just as you last left it. If it’s a phone, it will, for as long as you’re holding it, be your phone, being billed to your account, showing your address book, etc. (This is a concept we showed in the opening scene of my 1993 film, <a href=\"http://www.asktog.com/starfire/index.html\">Starfire</a>.) To secure that kind of access, will require <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authentication#Two-factor_authentication\">two-factor authentication</a>, and, with the iWatch, that authentication will finally become available and simple.</p>\n<h2>First Release</h2>\n<p>So when will the iWatch come out? I need mine no later than a week from Tuesday, but Apple, when you look back, is never actually the first. They let a few others, sometimes many others, experiment first. (Tablets were out for more than a decade.) Then, they bring out the killer product. We may have to wait until next year, or around 7500 pass code/password entries from now. Please, Apple, get a move on!<br>\n<a></a></p>\n<h2>Postscript – One Week Later</h2>\n<p>It may seem like this watch has every bell and whistle imaginable, but if you carefully examine what I’ve proposed, I’ve really outlined proven technology that is here today, found in other wearable products. It is packaged differently, to be sure, but that has always been Apple’s hallmark. In fact, the iWatch I have outlined uses much simpler technology than products already out there. It does not have a speaker, an earphone jack, or a camera. I do not anticipate that it will be a two-way wrist radio nor a two-way wrist videophone, at least not for a long, long time.</p>\n<p>The reason that some reviewers have seen the article as extravagant is that it projects the iWatch into a mature future. Consider back in 2007 when you first heard that Apple was about to release a line of phones. At that time, sophisticated phones held perhaps a dozen apps, most of them simple games, all of them relatively difficult to use. Suddenly, you read that this new phone would not only make calls, but soon users will be able to <a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dishpointer-ar-pro/id321914743?mt=8\">see geosynchronous satellites in orbit simply by raising the phone in the air</a>, to deposit a check in their bank accounts just by aiming their phone at it, and to do, not another dozen things, but another 800,000 things that might interest them. People might have imagined the phone would have to be the size of a house and the complexity of an NSA supercomputer.</p>\n<p>Visioneering is about looking at the way products will appear at maturity in order to design in the necessary elements that will enable that maturity to take place. What sounds extravagant in this case arises from a conservative hardware design coupled with an open architecture heavily dependent on the existing Apple infrastructure. It is the openness of the architecture and the ability of Apple to leverage its infrastructure that will offer Apple the advantage and make this vision possible. Don’t expect every feature and certainly not every app to be in circulation on day one, but they and many more will be there in a short order, much faster than with previous products.</p>\n<p>Below, you will find extensive reader comments that include many good ideas for some of those future apps as well as follow-on designs. <a></a></p>\n<h2>The Forum</h2>\n<p>The lively discussion that followed first publication of this article produced a number of excellent ideas both for software that could make use of an initial release as well as follow-on products. (The discussion is now closed.)</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~jenna/\">Jenna Burrell</a>, assistant professor at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, is speaking today at the Berkman Center on her research on internet usage in Ghana, the subject of her (excellent) book <a href=\"http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/invisible-users\">Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafes of Urban Ghana</a>. Burrell is an ethnographer and sociologist, and her examination of Ghanaian internet cafes is one of the best portraits of contemporary internet use in the developing world.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~jenna/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/jenna_computer.jpg\"><br>\n<i>Jenna doing fieldwork in Ghana</i></p>\n<p>Her talk today covers some of the work she began in 2004 and published last year, but expands in some new directions, including questions about network security and preserving access in the margins of the Global Internet. Burrell’s understanding of Ghana has been built up through six years of fieldwork, both on how non-elite Ghanaians use the internet, and on how Ghana’s internet has literally been built, from recycled and repurposed computer equipment. She notes that ethnographers are famous for their microfocus. When she published her book, a Facebook friend joked, “How odd, I just finished my book on youth in the internet cafes of suburban Ghana!” Burrell is now interested in some of the broader questions we might examine raised by specific cases like the dynamics of Ghana’s cybercafes.</p>\n<p>Burrell notes that early conversations about the internet often featured the idea that in online spaces, we transcend our physical limits and are able to talk to people anywhere in the world. Our race and gender might become irrelevant or invisible. She suggests that just at the point where real cross-cultural connection was starting to unfold online, discourse about a borderless internet became unfashionable. We might benefit from returning to some of these ideas of borderlessness and encounter in places where these encounters are really taking place.</p>\n<p>Ghana’s internet cafes are an excellent space to explore how this connect works in practice, as much of what takes place in these cafes is centered on international connect. Ghana’s “non-elite” net youth culture – i.e., the young people accessing the internet via cybercafes, not the digerati who are accessing the net through computers in their homes – centers around the idea of the “pen pal”, an analog concept adapted for a digital age. Many Ghanaian students have interacted with pen pals via paper letters, and their encounters in online space often focused on finding a digital pen pal. Most participating in this culture were English-literate, had at least a high school education and had probably stopped going to school when they ran out of funds. They sought out pen pals for a variety of reasons: as friends, as potential romantic partners, as patrons or sponsors, business partners, or as philanthropists who might fund their future education or emigration.</p>\n<p>Much of Burrell’s work has focused on talking to cybercafe users about their stories and motivations. Understanding the gaps between their understandings of the people they are talking with on Yahoo chat or other tools helps illuminate the challenge of cultural encounter. One group of cybercafe youth were collectors. They had applied for British Airways Executive Club membership – the airline’s frequent flyer program – and called themselves “The Executive Club”, reveling in the membership cards the airline had sent. They collected religious CDs and bibles from the people they encountered online. Another Ghanaian participant in Christian chat rooms on Yahoo! complained that his conversation partners didn’t understand his needs and motivations – he was looking for contacts and potential business partners and figured that Christians would be trustworthy people to work with, but was frustrated that they only wanted to talk about the bible. A third person she observed explained, “I take pen pals just for the exchange of items and actually I don’t take my size. I take sugar mommies and sugar daddies…” In other words, he was looking specifically for conversations that led to people giving gifts.</p>\n<p>This sounds like a path from conversation into internet scamming, but Burrell warns us not to jump to conclusions. Gift-giving is very common in Ghanaian culture, and while gifts are small, they are important and usually reciprocal. Some of her Ghanaian informants couldn’t understand why asking for a gift chased their conversation partners away. Fauzia, who had been chatting with a man on Yahoo! asked him to send her a mobile phone. Not only did he stop taking to her, he performed a complicated “dance of avoidance”, logging off when he saw her log on. Another informant, Kwaku, was talking with a Polish woman about seeking a travel visa and couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t let him stay in her home in Poland. Again, the cultural discontinuity is important – if you traveled to see a friend in their village, you would expect that they would share their home with you and provide a place for you to sleep.</p>\n<p>Burrell suggests that there are basic misunderstandings between Ghanaian and North American/European culture around gender and communication norms, the moral economy of gifting and notions of obligation and hospitality. In addition, these cultural discontinuities are complicated by material asymmetries, simplistic perceptions of western wealth and African pvoerty, and the fact that Ghanaians are often paying for net connectivity by the minute, leading to rushed and high pressure encounters.</p>\n<p>When cross-cultural encounters go badly, people seek to block further contact. Networks like Facebook make it very easy to block an individual from contacting you. But Burrell sees the internet moving from simple blocking and banning to “encoded exclusion”, the automatic exclusion of entire countries from being able to access certain servers and services. Dating websites, in particular, have taken to blocking and banning Ghanaians and Nigerians entirely, because they use the websites in ways that the site’s creators hadn’t expected or intended.</p>\n<p>Working from Ghana for almost a decade, Burrell has found that it’s often difficult to engage in basic online tasks from that country because sites and services exclude based on geolocation. Based on her experiences and that of her informants, she posits two types of exclusion: failure to include, and purposeful exclusion. </p>\n<p>Ecommerce is a space where failure to include is pretty common. Ecommerce is a credit-card based world. Many African economies, including Ghana’s, are largely cash based. Even for Ghanaians who have the money to buy online services, there’s often no easy way to make an online payment. This becomes a rationalization for credit card fraud. Ghanaians who want to participate on match.com, which has a modest member fee, rationalize using a stolen credit card as a way of gaining access to a space that’s otherwise closed. There’s also an unfair stigma attached to cash-based transactions, she posits. Some media coverage of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian underwear bomber, focused on the fact that he’d purchased his air ticket in Ghana, paying cash. US authorities suggested that paying cash was evidence of bad intent and some suggested waiting periods and extra scrutiny for cash payments – Burrell suggests that that’s simply how Ghana’s economy works at present, and that using cash payments as a signal for possible terrorist behavior is a form of failure to include.</p>\n<p>Purposeful exclusion also comes into play in ecommerce. Burrell discovered that trying to purchase a product on Amazon from Ghana triggered a set of “forced detours” that made purchasing impossible. Once Amazon detected her login from Ghana, the site immediately reset her password and began sending her phishing warnings. Paypal uses similar techniques – when she tried to sign up for a sewing class in Oakland (to make something out of the beautiful batik she was buying in Ghana), PayPal told her that they didn’t serve customers in Ghana or Nigeria, and started a set of security checks that led to phone verification to her US phone, which didn’t work in Ghana. These extended loops of checks are a huge frustration to the Ghanaians who have the means and tools to participate in these economies. As Ghanaian-born blogger Koranteng noted <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2010/02/black-sheep.html\">in an excellent blog post</a>, “If we take ecommerce as one component of modern global citizenship then we are illegal aliens of sorts, and our participation is marginal at best.”</p>\n<p>Other blocks are more explicit. <a href=\"http://www.pof.com/\">Plentyoffish.com</a>, a popular, no-fee dating site, briefly ran a warning that stated that they block traffic from Africa, Romania, Turkey, India, Russia “like every other major site”. The warning was removed, but the site is still inaccessible from Ghana. </p>\n<p>Search for “IP block Ghana” or “IP block Nigeria” and you’ll find posts on webmaster fora asking for advice on how to exclude whole nations from the internet. She offers three examples:</p>\n<p>From Webmaster World: “I am so fed up with these darn African fraudsters, is it possible to block african traffic by IP”<br>\nFrom a Unix security discussion group: “Maybe we could just disconnect those countries from the Internet until they get their scam artists under control”<br>\nFrom a Linux admin tips site: “I admin an [ecommerce] website and a lot of bogus traffic comes from countries that do not offer much in commercial value.” </p>\n<p>Legitimate frustration over fraud leads to overbroad attempts to crack down on this fraud. Burrell’s research involved working with a British woman who lost $100,000 to scams in Ghana – the woman came to Ghana to seek justice and Burrell attended court hearings with her. She suggests that while there’s likely corruption within the Ghana police service, the judges and lawyers she met were genuinely worried about scamming and looking for ways to crack down on the activity. But the perception remains that Ghana isn’t doing enough to protect the rest of the world from its least ethical internet users. This, in turn, has consequences for Ghana’s many legitimate users.</p>\n<p>She leaves the group with a series of questions:<br>\n- How do we consider inclusiveness as one of the principals to strive for in network security best practices?<br>\n- How do we investigate and make visible the consequences of network security practices at the margins of the internet?<br>\n- When is country-level IP address blocking appropriate?</p>\n<p>These questions lead to a lively discussion around the Berkman table. Oliver Goodenough wonders whether the practices Burrell is describing parallel redlining, the illegal practice of denying certain services or overcharging for them in neighborhoods with high concentrations of citizens of color. But another participant wonders whether we’re being unfair and suggests that using concepts like “censorship” to discuss online exclusion is unfairly characterizing what might simply be wise business practice. “Should a company be compelled to do business in a country where there’s no legal infrastructure to adequately protect it?” Jerome Hergueux argues that global trade follows trust, and that the desire to exclude these countries may be seen as a vote that there’s no trust in how they do business. Burrell notes that there are patterns of media coverage that contribute to why we don’t trust Ghanaians, and that those perceptions might not be accurate.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>I’m deeply interested in the topics Burrell brings up in this talk. I’ve experienced the purposeful exclusion Burrell talks about, both in trying to do business from west Africa, and in my travels back and forth – I routinely bring goods to Ghana and Nigeria that friends in those countries have ordered and sent to my office, because they can’t get them delivered to their homes. It’s very strange when people you’ve met only over Twitter send you iPads so you can bring them to Nigeria… but it is, as Hergeuex points out, an interesting commentary on who we trust and who we don’t. </p>\n<p>I worry about another form of exclusion that’s mostly theoretical at this point, but possible: what if spaces that are acting as digital public spheres become closed to developing world users? That’s an idea put forward in <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?pagewanted=all\">a New York Times article</a> by Brad Stone and Miguel Helft. Examining Facebook’s efforts to build sites “optimized” for the developing world, they wonder whether companies, desperate to become profitable, will stop serving, or badly underserve, users in countries where there’s little online advertising, like Nigeria and Ghana. </p>\n<p>Talking with Burrell after her talk, I wondered whether there’s a hierarchy of needs at work: should we worry more about Facebook banning Nigerian users (no evidence that they will, to be clear) more than Amazon or OkCupid? Are we willing to argue for a global right to online speech, but no global right to online dating? Burrell argued that accessing OkCupid might be more significant in terms of life transformation for a Ghanaian user than accessing Facebook and suggested that any sort of tiering of access was challenging to think through.</p>\n<p>It’s interesting to consider: the Internet Freedom agenda advocated by the US State Department focuses on countries that would block access to the internet to prevent certain types of political speech. But what if the real threat to global internet freedom starts with US companies that don’t see a profit in letting Ghanaian or Nigerian users onto their sites? Anyone want to bet on whether a Kerry State Department will be willing to tell US companies to stop excluding African users?</p>"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/donald-byrd.jpg\" alt=\"Donald byrd\" title=\"donald-byrd.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"553\" height=\"248\"></p>\n<p>This isn’t some grand insight but what I find remarkable about the career of the late Donald Byrd was his ability to span so many different phases of jazz. For a cat who started in the bebop era, he bridged from there into post-bop, dabbled a bit in free, became one of the giants of the soul jazz era, and <em>then</em> became a massive force during the heyday of fusion. The vast majority of artists – of any genre – have trouble transitioning between even micro-changes in musical styles.<sup><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/#fn-3578-1\">1</a></sup> Donald Byrd stayed relevant for at least 20 years. That’s as impressive a feat as I’ve seen by any artist above or below the platinum line. </p>\n<p>The following playlist is absolutely <em>not</em> meant to be comprehensive. There’s dozens of songs I could have included but opted not to, either because they seemed so obvious to replay them would be redundant or, more to the point: they weren’t my favorites. But even this modest sampling gives you the idea of the astonishing range of Byrd’s musical genius.<br>\n<span></span><br>\n<b><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/04-Low-Life.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Low Life</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SX9JQK?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000SX9JQK&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Fuego</a></em> (Blue Note, 1959)</b></p>\n<p>I could have started with a song far earlier in Byrd’s career but my point here is to establish his bop/post-bop certifiers with a spry, swinging tune that reminds me of Bobby Timmons best work. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/03-Cristo-Redentor.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Cristo Redentor</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00000IWVW?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B00000IWVW&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">A New Perspective</a></em> (Blue Note, 1963)</strong></p>\n<p>Byrd + gospel choir = sublime. And cinematic, no? Couldn’t you imagine this in some spaghetti western where our hero walks atop a sand dune, the sun setting at his back? Have I been watching too many Leone films? </p>\n<p>Also: <a href=\"http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/4761/coversmallyq.jpg\">best cover ever</a>. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/03-House-Of-The-Rising-Sun.mp3\">Donald Byrd: House of the Rising Sun</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001NZCHNY?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B001NZCHNY&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Up With Donald Byrd</a></em> (Verve, 1964)</strong></p>\n<p>The best known song off this album is probably the cover of Herbie Hancock’s “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvgzYIV8pUU\">Cantaloupe Island</a>” but thanks to <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwBjhBL9G6U\">US3</a>, I can’t really bear to listen to it much. I do like this cover of “House of the Rising Sun” though. No only does it draw from the same choral backing that we heard on <em>A New Perspective</em> but you can begin to hear the hints of the coming soul-jazz movement. It’s the small, subtle things in the rhythm that you’ll hear even more so on… </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/01-Blackjack.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Blackjack</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=h6p79t37x9&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Ddonald%2Bbyrd%2Bblackjack%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1\">Blackjack</a></em> (Blue Note, 1967)</strong></p>\n<p>And here we are. It’s not upside your dome funky but clearly, it’s working in that vein, especially with the hard hammer of Cedar Walton’s piano. But heck, let’s take it a step further and let the drummer get some. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/04-Weasil.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Weasil</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000005HEM?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000005HEM&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Fancy Free</a></em> (Blue Note, 1969)</strong> </p>\n<p>The first thing that strikes you is that Duke Pearson is tickling the Rhodes on here, apparently the first time Byrd allowed an electric piano to roll in. Combine that with the more aggressive breakbeats by drummer Joe Chambers and “Weasil” belongs firmly in the soul-jazz era that’s since been enshrined through comps like <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0035RXKFW?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B0035RXKFW&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Blue Break Beats</a></em> and <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000005O93?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000005O93&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Jazz Dance Classics</a></em>.</p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/03-The-Little-Rasti.mp3\">Donald Byrd: The Little Rasti</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000006DG1?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000006DG1&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Ethiopian Knights</a></em> (Blue Note, 1972)</strong></p>\n<p>To me, <em>Ethiopian Knights</em> represents the deepest Byrd got into this era of the soul-jazz sound before moving more towards proto-disco fusion style. Nearly 18 minutes long, nothing “little” about this. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/07-Where-are-we-Going_.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Where Are We Going?</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=2pnv6ztb3k&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dblack%2Bbyrd%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1\">Black Byrd</a></em> (Blue Note, 1972)</strong></p>\n<p>With this album, Byrd minted a smash and established himself as one of the masterminds of a sound that blended jazz, soul, funk and disco. <em>Black Byrd</em> was, in many ways, a total blueprint for the next five years, not just of Byrd’s career, but the direction of jazz and R&B as a whole. For me, I definitely hear some <em>What’s Going On?</em> elements at play but the sheer smoothness of the track also hints at what you’d hear with yacht rock by the late 1970s. It’s all right here. </p>\n<p>By the way, I’m going to skip over <em>Street Lady</em> even though it was an important/successful album, yada yada. The only thing I want to say is that the <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RysCD92fC4\">title track</a> is an interesting “throwback” to Byrd’s sound from about five years before. It’s like a retro-hard-bop tune. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/02-Wind-Parade.mp3\">Donald Byrd: Wind Parade</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=28k32rw37m&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dbyrd%2BPlaces%2Band%2BSpaces%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1\">Places and Spaces</a></em> (Blue Note, 1975)</strong></p>\n<p>The Mizell brothers era of Byrd’s career is perhaps his best known to most hip-hop fans given the sheer number of samples that emerged from it. Anyone up on my site should already have “Wind Parade” in heavy rotation but this is one case where I can’t <em>not</em> include it in here. Any song that helps power one of the <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6D4aPRjV6g\">greatest remixes in hip-hop history</a> deserves that much. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Mysterious-Vibes.mp3\">The Blackbyrds: Mysterious Vibes</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000003L91?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B000003L91&linkCode=xm2&tag=sousid-20\">Action</a></em> (Fantasy, 1977)</strong></p>\n<p>At some point in the early 1970s Byrd landed a production deal with Fantasy Records and from that, he assembled a group of former Howard University students and they became the Blackbyrds. By the mid 1970s, though Byrd was still recording on his own, he was arguably experiencing more success in producing other groups, especially the Blackbyrds who had a string of hits I’m sure all of you are familiar. “Rock Creek Park” remains a constant staple for any good disco set but I threw in “Mysterious Vibes” here because 1) I like the name and 2) it’s groovy. </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Shortnin-Bread.mp3\">The 3 Pieces: Shortnin’ Bread</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=rbbkkdpz4n&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dvibes%2Bof%2Btruth%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1\">Vibes of Truth</a></em> (Fantasy, 1975)</strong></p>\n<p>The 3 Pieces were a short-lived group from the D.C. area that Byrd also produced, albeit not to anywhere near the same success as the Blackbyrds. Pity since the album yielded at least two strong cuts: the jazz dance track above as well as the more mid-tempo crossover track, “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIH2oxazRc&feature=player_embedded\">Backed Up Against the Wall</a>.” </p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/1-14-Wilfords-Gone.mp3\">The Blackbyrds: Wilford’s Gone</a><br>\nFrom <em><a href=\"http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=bbpphykkfq&ref=browse.php&refQ=kwfilter%3Dcornbread%2Bearl%26amp%3Bincl_oos%3D1%26amp%3Bincl_cs%3D1\">Cornbread, Earl and Me</a></em> (Fantasy, 1975)</strong></p>\n<p>This seems as good a place to close out: the dark, moody, melancholy groove of “Wilford’s Gone” from the soundtrack of <em>Cornbread, Earl and Me</em>. Yet another gem shaped by the hand of Donald Byrd.</p>\n<div>\n<div></div>\n<ol>\n<li>Case in point: the year in hip-hop in 1992. <span><a href=\"http://soul-sides.com/#fnref-3578-1\">↩</a></span></li>\n</ol>\n</div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?a=JydjMMizvP0:iipEoHzvDv4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?a=JydjMMizvP0:iipEoHzvDv4:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/o-dub/dqRL?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Being Haitian...Beyond Identity Politics",
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"content" : "It's been a while since my last post. Between travelling to Ghana for Christmas, a bout of what appeared to be dengue fever (or malaria depending on who you ask) followed by the flu and the beginning of a new semester I have been slow to write for Tande. But I am back and looking forward to a new year with new posts on new topics, and continuing our effort trying to think about Haitian culture and literature from a range of perspectives. <br><div><br></div><div></div><div>Recently I was telling my husband, Ohene, about the brilliant jazz singer Cécile McLorin-Salvant and played a bit of her music for him. Upon hearing the song, Ohene asked, "why are they calling her Haitian?" I replied, "Because her father is Haitian and she was born and raised in Miami." To which he countered, "But she sounds like an African-American jazz singer, nothing about the way her music sounds is Haitian." It is probably worth noting here that Ohene is a huge jazz fan. In school he took a jazz class about both the history of the music as well as the more formal elements of the genre. </div><div><br></div><br><div><br></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/pN0OCHNQPEY%26fs%3D1%26source%3Duds&width=320&height=266\" width=\"320\" height=\"266\"></iframe></div><div><br></div><div>Not being familiar with McLorin-Salvant's entire body of work, I could not verify his claim, but I did recall from an interview her own musings about how people in Paris assumed she was African-American and had been exposed to jazz as her cultural heritage. In fact, in <a href=\"http://www.theworld.org/2013/01/cecile-mclorin-salvant/\">interviews</a> she explains that as the daughter of a French-Guadeloupean mother and Haitian father she was classically trained and more influenced by Caribbean soundscapes than African-American traditions.</div><table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:1em;text-align:right\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SGU5E55SeJY/URf-HKvjAlI/AAAAAAAAAbA/2GWNh29V2xo/s1600/imgres-1.jpeg\" style=\"clear:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SGU5E55SeJY/URf-HKvjAlI/AAAAAAAAAbA/2GWNh29V2xo/s1600/imgres-1.jpeg\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">www.concertandco.com</td></tr></tbody></table><div>As someone who thinks about the relationship between cultural identity and belonging and who is committed to getting beyond the identity politics attendant to how we "see ourselves," I think that McLorin-Salvant's music offers a compelling example of how some of these tensions play out. </div><div><br></div><div>When you google Cécile McLorin-Salvant under the link for her website it identifies her as a "French-American singer" but when you click on the actual <a href=\"http://cecilemclorinsalvant.com/about\"> website</a>, her bio states that she \"<span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:'book antiqua',palatino;font-size:16px;text-align:justify\"> </span><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:'book antiqua',palatino;font-size:16px;text-align:justify\">was born and raised in Miami, Florida of a French mother and a Haitian father.</span>" On the occasion of McLorin-Salvant's visit to Haiti and concert last fall, Roland Léonard described her trip as a "pilgrimage," clearly evoking the idea of return--so central in narratives of diasporic journeys--for an article in <i><a href=\"http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=111005\">Le nouvelliste</a>. </i>Understanding that identification and misidentification are always a part of how we process the different ways that people identify and define themselves, there are countless questions that we can ask on this topic. </div><div><i><br></i></div><div>How do we define identity? What constitutes belonging? When does a generation in the diaspora cease to have ties to the homeland? At some point, does one's identity in diaspora overshadow any ties they have to the homeland? How does one reconcile a deep feeling of belonging that is based only on an imagined homeland? How do we think about cultural belonging in more fluid ways in the face of the rigidity of citizenship? These are the kinds of questions I have been having my students wrestle with in my two classes this semester--"Theorizing the Diaspora" and "Paris Noir: From la Négritude to le Hip-Hop." Of course, these are also questions that I wrestle with myself, as the USA born daughter of immigrants who<i> </i>always instilled in me pride and recognition of the fact that though born in the US I, too, am Haitian. </div><div><br>Cultural theorist <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/sep/23/communities.politicsphilosophyandsociety\">Stuart Hall </a>offers insight to some of these issues by arguing that cultural identity is both a matter of \"becoming\" as well as of \"being.\" <a href=\"http://www.vanderbilt.edu/historydept/patterson.html\"> Tiffany Patterson</a> and <a href=\"http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/college/robin_kelley.php\">Robin Kelley</a> would call this the processual nature of diaspora. Sociologist <a href=\"http://college.emory.edu/home/about/people/faculty/Jackson_Regine_P5915114.html\">Régine Ostine Jackson</a> takes on multiple ways for thinking about Haitian identity in relation to diaspora by focusing on the concept of \"geographies.\" Indeed, scholars working on diaspora have been asking these kinds of questions and generating more for a long time, but how do those theories correspond to (if at all) to they way we think about and talk about these issues on a daily basis?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>RMJC</div>"
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"title" : "Africa’s rising rage: the middle classes call for revolution – By Richard Dowden",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><p><strong></strong><strong></strong><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-10517\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2013/02/07/africa%e2%80%99s-rising-rage-the-middle-classes-call-for-revolution-%e2%80%93-by-richard-dowden/dowden_r-5/\"><img title=\"Dowden_R\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Dowden_R.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"267\" height=\"264\"></a>I had not intended to come back to the <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/11/22/africa%E2%80%99s-glass-is-both-half-full-and-half-empty-%E2%80%93-by-simon-freemantle/\">Africa Rising</a> debate for a while. But on my recent trip to Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda I was shocked at how angry the young professionals are. These are highly educated, ambitious young men and women who could be found working in the corporate sector anywhere in the world. They should be taking Africa to the Promised Land. Instead I found them frustrated and furious with many calling for coups and revolutions.</p><p>Coming from London where we had been basking in a warm bath of Afro-optimism, I had expected to find a similar feeling in Africa itself. Growth has remained strong despite the economic problems in Europe, Africa’s biggest trading partner, and the prices for the continent’s abundant commodities have remained high. Governance is said to be improving.</p><p>There is no doubt that Africa has come a very long way from where it was in the 1980s and 90s. My prime piece of evidence for that is traffic jams. At that time you could drive into Nairobi, Kampala or Johannesburg at any hour and rarely be held up by anything except a red light. Now you have to leave hours earlier to be sure of getting into the city centre on time. Outside the towns and cities you can now actually drive in a straight line on many roads. As they used to say of the potholes in Uganda: “if you see a man driving in a straight line you know he must be drunk.”</p><p>But the questions about Africa’s dozen years of strong economic growth remain:</p><p>Firstly, has Africa’s growth been driven by a long commodity boom or is it now self-sustaining? Where is the large scale manufacturing?</p><p>Secondly, has governance really improved? Are the figures about numbers in school, clinics being built, power, water and sanitation delivered true?</p><p>Thirdly, are there two Africas? One in a bubble of western-style wealth inhabited by the rich and powerful and another Africa on the other side of the security fence – barefoot, one torn shirt, no money, no prospect of a job – “suffering and smiling” as Fela Kuti sang, but with big and increasingly angry eyes.</p><p>What shocked me in Lagos, Uganda and Nairobi was the fury of the young middle classes – the very people who are supposed to driving the new Africa into the 21<sup>st</sup> century. They were angry about the poor levels of education, about the lack of electricity, but above all about corruption at the very top. And they see the growing ranks of ill-educated, unemployable young people being churned out of badly-managed state education systems.</p><p>In Nigeria they have all but given up on the government. But what about people like Lamido Sanusi, the Governor of the Central Bank, and Nkonjo Iweala, the Finance Minister? I pleaded. Their reply was: of course they do what they can but their space is limited. They are not allowed anywhere near the real money – the oil. That, I was told, was managed in complete secrecy by President Goodluck Jonathan and the Vice President and the oil minister, Ms Diesani Alison-Madueke. They are filling a huge war chest so that Jonathan can run for president again in 2015.</p><p>Two remarks struck me. One was how utterly out of touch the President is. When street protests broke out a year ago in reaction to the sudden removal of the fuel subsidy, he claimed that people were being paid to demonstrate. My informant pointed out that all the evidence was that people had reacted in spontaneous fury to the government’s removal of the only benefit it delivers to the Nigerian people. Yes, the only one.</p><p>One said: “I am extremely optimistic about the future of Nigeria – once there has been a revolution and the current ruling elite is removed”. No one in the room showed dissent or even surprise.</p><p>In Uganda the entire middle class – except for those in government – realize that the country is heading for a crash or a coup. Even President Yoweri Museveni himself warned that if his own ruling party does not stop bickering the army may step in. That is the most extraordinary statement I have ever heard from an African president. The reaction of many Ugandans (under their breath) was: “bring it on”.</p><p>Museveni has stayed too long and he has cultivated no obvious successor. He is trapped, talking now about installing his deeply unpopular wife and or his son in his place. 27 years ago he did a good job and ruled well (except in the north) and this lasted for a decade. But now he has turned into the very president he criticized so severely as a young man – the one who stays too long in power.</p><p>Meanwhile, in Nairobi the population is battening down the hatches for the election next month. Most are optimistic that their new constitution will curtail the worst excesses of the professional politicians, although these people still made up about 80 percent of the winners in the recent party primaries.</p><p>So where exactly is The New Africa flourishing? Botswana? But it was always successful and never suffered from the political and economic catastrophes that hit Africa in the 20<sup>th</sup> century.</p><p>The fact is that the five big African countries: Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are in political turmoil or stasis. None of their governments have the vision or the capacity to position their countries to develop rapidly and sustainably as Indonesia, Malaysia and China have. The good things that are happening in many African countries – with the possible exception of South Africa – are happening in spite of their governments, not because of them.</p><p>Secondly, two of the most successful countries in terms of human development – Ethiopia and Rwanda – are dictatorships which allow minimum democracy and freedom of speech. This makes it difficult for Western governments to support them. Aid has been cut to Rwanda and if the next election in Ethiopia is not free and transparent, Western allies and donors may have to turn a blind eye or step away.</p><p>Some countries are doing reasonably well: Ghana, Senegal, Namibia and Zambia are OK. Cameroon and Gabon are quiet but not dynamic, still run by small wealthy elites who do not spread the new wealth. Cote d’Ivoire has emerged from its civil war and Somalia may bounce back quickly if the new government is strong enough to crush al-Shabaab and smart enough to manage clan politics. But meanwhile Mali, a former favourite of western countries, has imploded and both Sudans are in an increasingly bad way. It is hard to imagine Mauritania, Niger and Chad will not also be affected by Islamic militancy.</p><p>China has been the main player in Africa’s economic transformation, but how long will it be before Africans react against the growing power and exclusive behaviour of the Chinese and their total disregard for Africa’s environment and culture?</p><p>Africa rising? Bits of it yes, but watch out for Africans’ rising anger.</p><p><strong>Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of <a href=\"http://astore.amazon.co.uk/royaafrisoci-21/detail/184627155X\">Africa; altered states, ordinary miracles.</a> For more of Richard’s blogs <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/category/politics-now/richard-dowden-blog/\">click here.</a></strong></p>"
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"title" : "The Importance of Excel",
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"content" : "<p><em>By James Kwak</em></p>\n<p>I spent the past two days at a <a href=\"http://www.law.gwu.edu/News/2012-2013Events/Pages/PoliticalEconomy.aspx\">financial regulation conference</a> in Washington (where I saw more BlackBerries than I have seen in years—can’t lawyers and lobbyists afford decent phones?). In his remarks on the final panel, Frank Partnoy mentioned something I missed when it came out a few weeks ago: the role of Microsoft Excel in the “London Whale” trading debacle.</p>\n<p>The issue is described in the appendix to JPMorgan’s internal investigative <a href=\"http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ONE/2272984969x0x628656/4cb574a0-0bf5-4728-9582-625e4519b5ab/Task_Force_Report.pdf\">task force’s report</a>. To summarize: JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office needed a new value-at-risk (VaR) model for the synthetic credit portfolio (the one that blew up) and assigned a quantitative whiz (“a London-based quantitative expert, mathematician and model developer” who previously worked at a <a href=\"http://www.numerix.com/\">company</a> that built analytical models) to create it. The new model “operated through a series of Excel spreadsheets, which had to be completed manually, by a process of copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to another.” The internal Model Review Group identified this problem as well as a few others, but approved the model, while saying that it should be automated and another significant flaw should be fixed.** After the London Whale trade blew up, the Model Review Group discovered that the model had not been automated and found several other errors. Most spectacularly,</p>\n<blockquote><p>“After subtracting the old rate from the new rate, the spreadsheet divided by their sum instead of their average, as the modeler had intended. This error likely had the effect of muting volatility by a factor of two and of lowering the VaR . . .”</p></blockquote>\n<p><em><span></span></em></p>\n<p>I <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/software-runs-the-world-how-scared-should-we-be-that-so-much-of-it-is-so-bad/260846/\">write</a> <a href=\"http://baselinescenario.com/2013/01/16/more-bad-software/\">periodically</a> <a href=\"http://baselinescenario.com/2013/01/22/another-perspective-on-bad-software/\">about</a> the perils of bad software in the business world in general and the financial industry in particular, by which I usually mean back-end enterprise software that is poorly designed, insufficiently tested, and dangerously error-prone. But this is something different.</p>\n<p>Microsoft Excel is one of the greatest, most powerful, most important software applications of all time.** Many in the industry will no doubt object. But it provides enormous capacity to do quantitative analysis, letting you do anything from statistical analyses of databases with hundreds of thousands of records to complex estimation tools with user-friendly front ends. And unlike traditional statistical programs, it provides an intuitive interface that lets you see what happens to the data as you manipulate them.</p>\n<p>As a consequence, Excel is everywhere you look in the business world—especially in areas where people are adding up numbers a lot, like marketing, business development, sales, and, yes, finance. For all the talk about end-to-end financial suites like SAP, Oracle, and Peoplesoft, at the end of the day people do financial analysis by extracting data from those back-end systems and shoving it around in Excel spreadsheets. I have seen internal accountants calculate revenue from deals in Excel. I have a probably untestable hypothesis that, were you to come up with some measure of units of software output, Excel would be the most-used program in the business world.</p>\n<p>But while Excel the program is reasonably robust, the spreadsheets that people create with Excel are incredibly fragile. There is no way to trace where your data come from, there’s no audit trail (so you can overtype numbers and not know it), and there’s no easy way to test spreadsheets, for starters. The biggest problem is that anyone can create Excel spreadsheets—badly. Because it’s so easy to use, the creation of even important spreadsheets is not restricted to people who understand programming and do it in a methodical, well-documented way.***</p>\n<p>This is why the JPMorgan VaR model is the rule, not the exception: manual data entry, manual copy-and-paste, and formula errors. This is another important reason why you should pause whenever you hear that banks’ quantitative experts are smarter than Einstein, or that sophisticated risk management technology can protect banks from blowing up. At the end of the day, it’s all software. While all software breaks occasionally, Excel spreadsheets break all the time. But they don’t tell you when they break: they just give you the wrong number.</p>\n<p>There’s another factor at work here. What if the error had gone the wrong way, and the model had incorrectly doubled its estimate of volatility? Then VaR would have been higher, the CIO wouldn’t have been allowed to place such large bets, and the quants would have inspected the model to see what was going on. That kind of error would have been caught. Errors that lower VaR, allowing traders to increase their bets, are the ones that slip through the cracks. That one-sided incentive structure means that we should expect VaR to be systematically underestimated—but since we don’t know the frequency or the size of the errors, we have no idea of how much.</p>\n<p>Is this any way to run a bank—let alone a global financial system?</p>\n<p>* The flaw was that illiquid tranches were given the same price from day to day rather than being priced based on similar, more liquid tranches, which lowered estimates of volatility (since prices were remaining the same artificially).</p>\n<p>** But, like many other Microsoft products, it was not particularly innovative: it was a rip-off of Lotus 1-2-3, which was a major improvement on VisiCalc.</p>\n<p>*** PowerPoint has an oft-noted, parallel problem: It’s so easy to use that people with no sense of narrative, visual design, or proportion are out there creating presentations and inflicting them on all of us.</p>\n<p><strong>Update 2/10: </strong>There is an interesting follow-on discussion that includes a lot of highly-informed technical people, including some who work in finance, over at <a href=\"http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5198187\">Hacker News</a>.</p>\n<br> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=baselinescenario.com&blog=4979860&post=10537&subd=baselinescenario&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Language Log: ‘The Cyberpragmatics of Bounding Asterisks’",
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"content" : "<p>Ben Zimmer at Language Log takes <a href=\"http://daringfireball.net/2013/02/bounding_asterisks\">my piece on bounding asterisks</a> and runs with it, brilliantly:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Now let’s skip ahead to Internet usage. Gruber characterized the\nuse of bounding asterisks in online communication as a form of\nemphasis, but pragmatically it’s a bit more complex than that.\nTrue, bounding asterisks can emphasize a word or words in\nplain-text messages where italics and bolding are unavailable, but\nthe legacy of the comic strips points in another direction — the\nuse of bounding asterisks to signal non-verbal noises or actions\nas a kind of self-describing stage direction. […]</p>\n\n<p>What’s fascinating about these asterisked stage directions is that\nthey have moved well beyond the onomatopoetic coughs, gulps, and\nsighs of the comic strips into more complex actions stated in the\nthird person, such as <a href=\"http://www.alsindependence.com/Internet_Slang.htm\">*jumps up and\ndown*</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So there’s nearly century-old precedent in comics for asterisk-like symbols to denote onomatopoetic expressions — <em>sigh</em>, <em>cough</em>, <em>gasp</em>, etc. — but this usage never made its way into print typography until after it became commonplace online. But where it’s used in print is not as a Markdown-like alternative to italics in general, but specifically as an alternative to italics to denote stage-like actions on the part of the writer. (Yes, Pogue’s <em>*cough*</em>s <a href=\"http://via.me/-9hl3cuq\">made it into today’s print edition</a> of The Times.)</p>\n\n<p>This trend suggests that type designers should perhaps stop creating asterisks that appear quasi-superscripted, as though presumed for use to denote a footnote. Asterisks should be bigger and sit on the baseline — like other common punctuation characters (@, #, %, &) — to better work with this bracketing style. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/LukasKawerau/status/299647140353957888\">Some</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/tonyskyday/status/299646580724748288\">readers</a> are <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ctbeiser/status/299644031481294848\">arguing</a> that even in this usage, asterisks should remain superscript-y, to make them more like quotation marks. I can see that argument, but to my mind this asterisk usage functions more like parenthetical brackets than quote marks. (For another, not all languages use English-style quotation punctuation. In European languages that use «guillemets», a baseline-sitting asterisk would seem natural.)</p>\n\n<div>\n<a title=\"Permanent link to ‘Language Log: ‘The Cyberpragmatics of Bounding Asterisks’’\" href=\"http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/02/07/language-log-asterisks\"> ★ </a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Ronald Reagan’s Africa",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/02/06/ronald-reagans-africa/reagan-botha-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-62550\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/reagan-botha.jpeg?w=610\" alt=\"\"></a><br>\nRonald Reagan will be celebrated again today (his birthday is February 6, 1911) as a world statesman and champion of democracy (mostly by Republicans and Conservatives in the United States), but this not how people in the Third World experienced his tenure. Take Southern Africa (I grew up in South Africa) for instance. As I wrote a few years ago, there the “Reagan doctrine” or “constructive engagement” not only extended the lifespan of apartheid, but, scholars are now arguing, unleashed the privatization of terrorist violence that has become the central preoccupation of twenty-first century politics.</p>\n<p><span></span>As far as our corner of the world was concerned, Reagan set the tone of his presidency shortly after his 1980 inauguration, telling a journalist that the United States would try to be “helpful” as long as apartheid’s leaders were making a “a sincere and honest effort” to reform apartheid. White South Africa was a “friendly country” and a good ally in the international battle against Communism. Later that year, Chester Crocker, the highest ranking Reagan administration official on matters African, put it more bluntly: “All Reagan knows about Southern Africa is that he is on the side of the whites.”</p>\n<p>Crocker, a protégé of Henry Kissinger from the Nixon era, developed what would become the cornerstone of Reagan’s Africa policy: “constructive engagement”. It was based on two main premises: one, the insistence that regional peacemaking in Southern Africa was the necessary precondition to change within South Africa. This included such extraneous issues as Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola, for example. The second was that President PW Botha and his generals were genuinely capable off reforming apartheid, and in fact were committed to doing just that.</p>\n<p>Instead, the 1980s became the most bloody decade in the region’s history as the South African government backed by the US, pursued proxy-wars in Angola and Mozambique, fomented conflict between local groups inside these states conducted commando raids into Botswana hunting for members of the anti-apartheid resistance and occupied Namibia, in the process killing and displacing thousands of people, militarising whole populations and crippling economic systems. The UN estimates the total loss to the Angolan economy from 1980 to 1980 at $30 billion, six times the country’s 1988 GDP.</p>\n<p>At home, security forces killed, tortured and detained as many as 10,000 opponents and fed, with funding and guns, what the government passed off as “black-on-black violence” in the South African and international media.</p>\n<p>Former <em>Washington Post</em> reporter Bill Berkeley, in his book <em>The Graves Are Not Yet Full</em>, reports that in his first two years in the White House, Reagan eased controls on exports to apartheid South Africa, beefed up its diplomatic mission there, intervened to support South African loan applications to the IMF, approved visas and official visits for military leaders and pro-regime intellectuals, and vigorously defended South African interests in the United Nations. US corporations would also sell computer technology to the South African military.</p>\n<p>Despite complaints from within the United States and elsewhere that constructive engagement was benefiting apartheid, the Reagan administration persisted with its strategy until the end of the decade.</p>\n<p>Botha’s reforms followed by extreme state terror on the black population and government opponents were labeled a “step in the right direction.” When Botha unleashed full scale state terror in the aftermath of his now-infamous Rubicon speech (where he reneged on promised reforms) in 1985, Reagan instead blamed South Africa’s deepening political and economic crises on the ANC and “tribalism”.</p>\n<p>When the US Congress finally succeeded in enacting stringent sanctions against the South African regime and businesses, largely through popular pressure, they met strong resistance from the White House: Reagan first vetoed, then reluctantly implemented the measures.</p>\n<p>With political apartheid a thing of the past inside South Africa, one aspect of Reagan’s Southern African policy seems to be coming back to haunt the Americans, and the rest of us, too: Scholars now agree that Southern Africa provided the birth-place for the violence now commonplace of privatized and ideologically stateless groups such as Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda.</p>\n<p>Columbia University political scientist Mahmood Mamdani, originally from Uganda, in his 2005 book,<em> Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War and the Roots of Terror</em>, argued that in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the US government shifted from a strategy of direct intervention in its fight against global Communism to one supporting new forms of what was termed “low-intensity conflicts” fronted by proxy states and private armed groups in the 1980s throughout Indochina, Latin America, Africa and Afghanistan. What is referred to now as collateral damage was then not an unfortunate by-product of war, but “the very point of terrorism,” noted Mamdani.</p>\n<p>The rebel movements, UNITA in Angola and Renamo in Mozambique, both trained and armed with US support by South Africa’s Defense Force, were the guinea pigs for this policy. Renamo became “Africa’s first genuine terrorist movement” discharging aimless violence against Mozambican civilians without any chance of becoming a series contender for national power in a civil war that even outlasted Reagan. Adapting the strategy used in Africa, the US would go on to support the Contras in Nicaragua and elsewhere, before finally encouraging a broad front of extreme Islamists, to fight the Soviet “the Evil Empire” to the finish in Afghanistan.</p>\n<p>The American media is currently infused with nostalgia for the Reagan years. <a href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/report-54-countries-helped-cia-torture-detain-transport-suspects-after-911\">We may still be living the Reagan years</a>.</p>\n<p>* That’s Ronald Reagan and Pik Botha, longtime foreign minister of South Africa through the 1970s and 1980s, meeting at the White House. Pik Botha who would also serve in Nelson Mandela’s first “reconciliation” Cabinet as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs (!).</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/58512/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/58512/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=58512&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The great GIF debate",
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"content" : "<p>THE Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is the brainchild of Steve Wilhite. He invented it in 1987 while working at CompuServe, a time-sharing system that originated before the internet, and was open to anyone with a dial-up modem. In those days, when transfer rates topped out at 2,400 bits per second, less than a thousandth of what modern DSL or cable connections can manage, minimising the number of bits dispatched was vitally important. GIF reduced the colour palette and compressed data to achieve just such savings. GIF also dominated JPEG, a rival format best suited for photographs, in the web's early days because of its compactness. That much everyone agrees on.</p><p>Much more controversial is how \"GIF\" ought to be pronounced. In acronyms beginning with a consonant that can be hard or soft, the leading word of the expanded version tends to determine the sound. According to this rule, the \"g\" in GIF is like the one in \"git\", not \"gin\".</p><p>Would that it were so simple. Mr Wilhite regularly corrected colleagues who dared utter the hard \"g\". One of his chastened co-workers e-mailed Babbage back in 1997 explaining how Mr Wilhite would remonstrate by belting out \"Choosy programmers choose GIF\" (a play on a classic advertising slogan, \"choosy mothers choose Jif\", for a homophonous peanut-butter brand). Though Mr Wilhite has been off the radar since the early 1990s, CompuServe perpetuated his rendition.</p><p>The whole pronunciation palaver erupted in full force after Twitter released its Vine app, which lets people tweet six-second videos. These are encoded in the mp4 format, but the launch reminded many internet users about \"animated GIFs\", which Mr Wilhite and colleagues developed as an update to GIF in 1989, and which allowed users to post Vine-like, if more staccato, clips. (Animated GIFs remain popular on social-media sites, and several iOS apps allows their creation, too.)</p><p>Predictably, the discussion spilled onto Twitter. It began with an innocent question by Kai Ryssdal, host of the public-radio programme "Marketplace", who asked, "GIF: soft 'g' or hard?" Farhad Manjoo, a columnist at <em>Slate</em>, replied authoritatively, "Soft". He later adduced evidence painstakingly collected by Steve Olsen, who maintains a hoary but exhaustive FAQ page devoted to <a href=\"http://www.olsenhome.com/gif/\">GIF pronunciation</a>. Mr Olson is categorical: "It's pronounced like 'jif'. Period. The end. That's final. End of story."</p><p>The main question seems to be whether an acronym's coiner has the right to determine its pronunciation. Most of the time, speakers are happy to defer to inventors. The PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format, designed to avoid patent and other disputes in the 1990s, <a href=\"http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/spec/1.0/PNG-Introduction.html\">stipulates in its specification document</a> that its phonetic form is "ping". Members of the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which spawned JPEG, have always insisted it be pronounced "jay-peg". No one minds.</p><p>Except that JPEG is not the format's proper name. In fact, the acronym refers to the compression algorithm, not the encapsulating file type, which is correctly known as JPEG Interchange Format. Or JIF.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "Alex Tabarrok: Why Online Education Works",
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"content" : "<div><p><img src=\"http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f080038834017ee83edfa1970d-pi\" alt=\"Screenshot 2 5 13 9 14 AM\" title=\"Screenshot_2_5_13_9_14_AM.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"300\" style=\"float:right\"></p>\n\n<p>From my perspective, I will not dare make predictions about the potential Christensenian disruption of higher education until I understand why and how the university as we know it survived the Christensenian disruption that was the coming of the printed book. I don't understand that. Thus I do not dare forecast what is coming.</p>\n\n<p>Alex Tabarrok:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/11/12/alex-tabarrok/why-online-education-works/\">Why Online Education Works</a>: Oxford University was founded in 1096, Cambridge in 1209. Harvard, a relative newcomer, was founded in 1636…. [F]ew institutions,… have seen so little change. Oxford in 2012 teaches students in ways remarkably similar to Oxford in 1096, seated students listening to professors in a classroom…. I suspect that both of these facts are about to change. Online education will change how universities teach; as a result, online education will change which universities teach.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n <p>I see three principle advantages to online education:</p>\n \n <ol>\n <li>leverage, especially of the best teachers;</li>\n <li>time savings;</li>\n <li>individualized teaching and new technologies.</li>\n </ol>\n \n <p><strong>Leverage:</strong>… In 2009, I gave a TED talk on the economics of growth. Since then my 15 minute talk has been watched nearly 700,000 times…. [T]he 15 minutes of teaching I did at TED dominates my entire teaching career…. Teaching students 30 at a time is expensive and becoming relatively more expensive… for the same reason that butlers have become relatively more expensive… an example of what's known as Baumol’s cost disease….</p>\n \n <p>The counter-argument is that there is an ineffable quality of the classroom experience that raises its value well above the same material taught online. Even after many years of teaching, however, what exactly this quality might be remains ineffable to me…. No one expects online education to substitute for apprenticing to a master, but much education at the college level is already mass education taught not by a master but by an adjunct….</p>\n \n <p>Teaching today is like a stage play. A play can be seen by at most a few hundred people at a single sitting and it takes as much labor to produce the 100th viewing as it does to produce the first. As a result, plays are expensive. Online education makes teaching more like a movie….</p>\n \n <p>The parallel between movies and plays and online and offline education has further lessons. First, the market for teachers will become more like the market for actors, a winner-take-all market with greater inequality and very big payments at the top…. Second, movies are better in many respects than plays, but no one doubts that a taped play is worse in all respects than a live play…. [A}n online lecture has to be different from an in-class lecture….</p>\n \n <p>[O]nline lectures need not be repetitive. Dale Carnegie’s advice to “tell the audience what you're going to say, say it; then tell them what you've said” makes sense for a live audience…. Carnegie’s advice is dead wrong for an online audience…. In an online lecture it pays to be concise. Online, the student is in control and can choose when and what to repeat….</p>\n \n <p>Online education can also break the artificial lecture length of 50–90 minutes. Many teaching experts say that adult attention span is 10–15 minutes in a lecture…. Lower the fixed costs and lectures will evolve to a more natural level, probably between 5–20 minutes….</p>\n \n <p>[O]nline space is a better place both for asking questions and for interacting with professors and other students…. If every student in a class of 50 asked one question per lecture there would be no time for the lecture…. [I]n the online world there are more resources to answer questions. Answers to last year’s questions, for example, can be used to answer this year’s questions. More importantly, the online world makes it easier for peer-learning….</p>\n \n <p>The future is lectures plus intelligent, on the fly assessment…. Computer-adaptive learning will be as if every student has their own professor on demand…. [T]he computer will make learning less standardized and robotic….</p>\n \n <p>We should also not count the old model out. Having never observed an alternative, we may not yet fully appreciate the old model’s strengths. The Oxford model weathered previous technological storms, not the least of which was the printed book. Nevertheless, the disruption potential is peaking now.</p>\n</blockquote>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Dany Laferrière: a life in books",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.2d/79615?ns=guardian&pageName=Dany+Laferriere%3A+a+life+in+books%3AArticle%3A1860509&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=Fiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture%2CHaiti+%28News%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Maya+Jaggi&c7=13-Feb-01&c8=1860509&c9=Article&c10=Feature%2CProfile%2CInterview&c11=Books&c13=A+life+in+...+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&c42=Culture&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FBooks%2FFiction\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>I began writing after the first tremors. It's not often you see your city falling down in front of you</p><p>The Carré Saint-Louis in Montreal, beside a leafy square of graceful Victorian mansions, has few traces of the sleazy bars and strip joints that crowded the junction when Dany Laferrière wrote his debut novel there 30 years ago. In a \"rat-hole\" of a garrett looking out at the city's iconic hilltop crucifix, the Croix du Mont-Royal, the Haitian exile, then working as an office cleaner, hammered out on a Remington typewriter the book that changed his life. Like his narrator, Laferrière recalls, \"I told myself, this is it – my last chance.\"</p><p><a href=\"http://www.dmpibooks.com/book/how-to-make-love-to-a-negro-without-getting-tired\" title=\"\"><em>How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired</em></a>, published in French in Quebec in 1985 and <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097098/\" title=\"\">made into a film in 1989</a>, was a slyly incendiary provocation on interracial relations that became a <em>succès de scandale</em>. As his longtime <a href=\"http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Mapping_literature.html?id=mQALAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y\" title=\"\">English translator David Homel</a> wrote of the \"eroto-satiric\" bestseller: \"Laferrière's ambiguity, and the difficulty of pinning him down, was one of the reasons the book was so infuriating – and so seductive.\"</p><p>Laferrière marvels at how his first novel filled the bookshop window, and enabled him to eat at the chic Café Cherrier across the street. The week after it was published, he was offered a job as a TV weatherman – an ironic metier for a man from the tropics who was \"scared of winter\". That \"bull's eye\", as he later described the book, began a sequence of fictive memoirs, of which <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Enigma-Return-Dany-Laferri%C3%A8re/dp/0857050486\" title=\"\"><em>The Enigma of the Return</em></a>, published this month by MacLehose Press in Homel's translation, is the penultimate volume of more than 20 so far. A meditation on exile, loss and "navigating through two worlds", it won the 2009 Prix Médicis in France and the Grand Prix du Livre in Montreal.</p><p>Laferrière, who turns 60 in April, refers to his oeuvre as a whole as "An American Autobiography". It ranges from fiction drawing on his Haitian childhood to field notes from sojourns across north America. Though many books feature a fatherless boy, Fanfan, and his adult incarnations, Laferrière cautions against reading them as memoir. In <em>The Cry of Mad Birds</em> (2000), set in the feverish hours before the narrator flees into exile, the 29-year dictatorships of Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier are condensed into a single night. Also a screenwriter, Laferrière adapted three of his stories into the film <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381690/\" title=\"\"><em>Heading South</em> (2005)</a>, set in Haiti in the 1970s, in which Charlotte Rampling played an ageing American sex tourist vying for a local youth who falls foul of the dictatorship.</p><p>Laferrière was back in Haiti for a literary festival in the capital Port-au-Prince when the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/09/million-death-quake-roger-musson-review\" title=\"\">earthquake struck on 12 January 2010</a>, killing tens of thousands and reducing the city to rubble. He was waiting for lobster in a hotel restaurant, and began scribbling "15 minutes after the first tremors," he says in French. "It's not often you see your city falling down in front of your eyes. People are screaming in pain all around you. Children are running in the streets. Some people start talking about the end of the world. But writing, for me, was as important as taking care of the injured." Though he believes the great novel of the Haitian dictatorship was <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/dec/17/grahamgreene\" title=\"\">Graham Greene's <em>The Comedians</em></a> (1966), he says, \"I didn't want it to be an American or British writer bearing witness, because they'd see the dead, but not know how they were when they were alive.\" He adds: \"It's not all authors who get a chance to test literature and their relationship to it. I no longer ask myself if it has any use.\"</p><p><em>The World Is Moving Around Me</em> (2011) came out in translation in Vancouver, on the third anniversary of the disaster. When the book was published in Haiti, where he waives his royalties, allowing local publishers to sell his books \"for the price of the paper\", his signing in Port-au-Prince lasted 12 hours. \"These were very poor people, who recognised themselves in the book. It touched everybody.\"</p><p>There are snaking queues for Laferrière in Montreal too, where we met at the thriving French-language book fair, the annual <a href=\"http://www.tourisme-montreal.org/What-To-Do/Events/salon-du-livre-de-montreal\" title=\"\">Salon du Livre</a>. For him, moving between the two biggest French-speaking populations in the Americas was a revelation. French, he says, was the \"language imposed on Haitians, whereas it's what Quebecers want to preserve as the core of their identity … It showed it's not the language that's the problem. That freed me in my own relationship to French.\"</p><p><em>The Enigma of the Return</em> moves fluidly between free verse and prose, partly in homage to the Martinican poet <a href=\"http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/594\" title=\"\">Aimé Césaire</a>. It begins in 2009 as the narrator, Windsor Laferrière Jr (the author's real name), receives a phone call about his father's death in a Brooklyn hospital. Windsor had moved from one island, Hispaniola, to another in the St Lawrence river (\"We always forget that Montreal is an island\"), from fire to ice. As he journeys to New York, then Haiti, the book reflects on the father \"whose absence shaped me,\" and how both their lives were rent by the Duvaliers, father and son.</p><p>The novel is "not only my return, but the return of all those who had to leave because of the dictatorship; those who could return only in their dreams; and those who hope their children will return in their stead. Many people had to leave – those who opposed the Duvaliers and, after the dictatorship, those who were for them. I don't deal with the reasons, but the fact of being away." In his books, "almost all details and anecdotes are true. But what's important is to communicate what I felt at the time, and what I feel as I'm writing. Writing, for me, is the layering of these two emotions."</p><p>His own father didn't really interest him in real life. \"He was the most important person in my mother's life, but he left when I was too young. I was brought up by seven women: my mother, her mother, and five aunts. I didn't feel I was missing anything. But I thought it was important to dig into this emotion, because many people in the same position as me had an absent father.\" The true exile, he says, is the \"one who stays behind, with the absence of those they love\".</p><p>He was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, where his father became city mayor, a trade minister under <a href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/francois_duvalier/index.html\" title=\"\">François Duvalier</a>, and ambassador to Italy and Argentina. But his growing dissent forced him into exile when his son was four. Dany was sent to live with his grandmother Da, who \"interpreted dreams\", in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petit-Go%C3%A2ve\" title=\"\">Petit-Goâve</a>, by the sea. He was 10 when he returned to the capital, where his mother "always took me to school, even on days of strikes or political trouble on the streets". He once wrote that "Only women have counted for me." His father "fought against the dictatorship and lost," he says, but those who outlive the dictator "need a country afterwards, and it's women who ensure that". His mother, now in her 80s, is in all his books. "Sometimes I put words in her mouth she never said, but I only make her say things she thinks," he grins.</p><p>As a journalist in the early 1970s, in a \"little group that bared its teeth to power\", he focused on culture. \"When you talk politics, the dictator's central: you're for him or against him. But I fought against the dictatorship by trying to prevent it from being the centre of my life. The most subversive thing is to be happy in spite of the dictator.\" <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Aroma-Coffee-Dany-Laferriere/dp/0889104395\" title=\"\"><em>An Aroma of Coffee</em></a> (1991) drew warmly on his rural childhood, and in its coming-of-age sequel, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dining-Dictator-Dany-Laferriere/dp/0889104808\" title=\"\"><em>Dining with the Dictator</em></a>, Fanfan hides from the tyrant's \"sharks in dark glasses\", the Tonton Macoutes, under their very noses, safe in a house where \"Papa\" keeps his girlfriends. In the \"terrible 70s\" under <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/jean-claude-baby-doc-duvalier\" title=\"\">Jean-Claude Duvalier</a>, who ruled till 1986, "we didn't have the feeling we were in our own country, so all you think about is leaving. You can't be useful like that." When his colleague Gasner Raymond was murdered on a beach by the Tonton Macoutes in 1976, Laferrière fled. He went to Montreal, aged 23, because a benefactor had read of his story in a newspaper, and was "touched by it. She sent a letter of invitation and a plane ticket. I left without thinking I was leaving."</p><p>Working till 6am as a cleaner, he would fall asleep in courses at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Yet he sees his debut as the "first book to describe contemporary Montreal with an almost pagan happiness. Other Quebecois writers don't like Montreal. They're from provincial towns or outlying cities. But for me it was where I found happiness: I could sit with a glass of wine, walk around at night, go to a museum, meet girls, have a room of one's own – like Virginia Woolf. This was total freedom." Of its less welcoming face, he once wrote, "I wanted to use the old insults until they became so familiar they lost their sting." He says now, "my wife used to tell me, 'Don't be so ironic, people will get angry.' But that's exactly what I wanted."</p><p>He met his wife, Maggie, who is also from Port-au-Prince, on a brief visit to Haiti in 1978. She was a volunteer nurse, but lived in New York, where their eldest daughter was born in 1980. At first, "we couldn't be together because of problems with papers, and I had no income". But she gave up her nursing job to move to Montreal in 1982, where they had two more daughters. Partly driven by the climate, they moved to Miami's Little Haiti in 1990, where Laferrière wrote 10 books in 12 years, returning to Montreal in 2002. "In Miami I understood I wasn't only Haitian; I had a northern man inside. I've become a great apostle of the cold."</p><p>For him, \"a writer's country is their first library\". In his satirical take on national identity, <a href=\"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/i-am-a-japanese-writer-by-dany-laferrire/article1241198/\" title=\"\"><em>I Am a Japanese Writer</em></a> (2008), he paid homage to the poet Basho. \"I often write with a guide, a pilot fish,\" he says, admiring the \"five Bs: Borges, Baldwin, Basho, Bulgakov and Bukovsky.\"</p><p>It was not until he came north "that I realised how insular people could be". Haiti's history has, he believes, fuelled a cultural openness. "Lincoln is the hero of America's war against slavery. But slavery was abolished in Haiti through the slaves themselves. Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Toussaint L'Ouverture taught themselves to read – they were called stealers of the alphabet. It was the greatest revolution of all time. In others in France or Russia, a bourgeoisie replaced an aristocracy. In Haiti, for the first time, the slaves who were chattels under Napoleonic law revolted, and freed a country in the face of the largest army in Europe." The quake's destruction of the presidential palace in 2010 shocked everyone, he argues, because "people never identified the palace with the dictatorship. For all social classes it symbolised that we are a true country. Our houses are small, but there's this great public space."</p><p>Returning to Montreal after the quake, he determined to correct lazy misconceptions – that Haiti was "cursed", or overrun by looting. "I heard an AFP [agency] journalist say, 'This morning I saw my first looter.' It seems to me that a single looter doesn't exist. For looting you need looters." He is as scathing about NGOs ("lay missionaries"): rather than focusing on why so little progress has been made, "Why not ask where we are with the human reconstruction? Are there psychological traumas? No, the death of Princess Diana caused more emotional distress. Whatever is down to NGOs, foreign governments and the Haitian state is not going well. But everything that depended on the Haitian people themselves is fine."</p><p>Moving to Quebec, Laferrière says, made him realise the value of Haiti's independence. \"It's interesting coming to a land of white people where everyone complains about being crushed by English colonists. Haiti has nothing but its independence, whereas Quebec has everything but its independence. Rich people here say they have only a morsel of bread; whereas Haitians all believe they own a bakery. Imagine the poorest country in the western hemisphere, repeatedly hit by catastrophes, whose people think it's the centre of the universe. Nothing can replace that psychological liberty. It's no small thing, this freedom of the mind.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/haiti\">Haiti</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mayajaggi\">Maya Jaggi</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"title" : "The Power Failure Seen Around the World",
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"content" : "<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">In the data center world, there are few events\ntaken more seriously than power failure and considerable effort is spent to make them\nrare. When a datacenter experiences a power failure, it’s a really big deal for all\ninvolved. But, a big deal in the infrastructure world still really isn’t a big deal\non the world stage. The </font><a href=\"http://www.nfl.com/superbowl/47\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">Super\nBowl</font></a><font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> absolutely is a big deal by\nany measure. On average over the last couple of years, the Super Bowl has attracted\n111 million viewers and is the number 1 most watched television show in North America\neclipsing the </font><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye,_Farewell,_and_Amen\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">final\nepisode of Mash</font></a><font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">.<span> </span>World-wide,\nthe Super Bowl is only behind the European Cup (</font><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Champions_League\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">UEFA\nChampions Leaque</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">)\nwhich draws 178 million viewers. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">When the 2013 Super Bowl power\nevent occurred, the Baltimore Ravens had just run back the second half opening kick\nfor a touchdown and they were dominating the game with a 28 to 6 point lead. The 49ers\nhad already played half the game and failed to get a single touchdown. The Ravens\nwere absolutely dominating and they started the second half by tying the record for\nthe longest kickoff return in NFL history at 108 yards. The game momentum was strongly\nwith Baltimore.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">At 13:22 in the third quarter,\njust 98 seconds into the second half, ½ of the Superdome lost primary power. Fortunately\nit wasn’t during the runback that started the second half. <span> </span>The\npower failure let to a 34 min delay to restore full lighting the field and, when the\ngame restarted, the 49ers were on fire. The game was fundamentally changed by the\noutage with the 49ers rallying back to a narrow defeat of only 3 points. The game\nended 34 to 31 and it really did come down to the wire where either team could have\nwon. There is no question the game was exciting and some will argue the power failure\nactually made the game more exciting. But, NFL championships should be decided on\nthe field and not impacted by the electrical system used by the host stadium. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\"><font size=\"3\"><font face=\"Calibri\">What happened at 13:22 in the\nthird quarter when much of the field lighting failed?<span> </span></font></font></font><a href=\"http://www.entergy.com/\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">Entergy</font></a><font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">,\nthe utility supply power to the Superdome reported their “distribution and transmission\nfeeders that serve the Superdome were never interrupted” (</font><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/sports/football/power-outage-in-superdome-delays-super-bowl.html\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">Before\nGame Is Decided, Superdome Goes Dark</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">).\nIt was a problem at the facility. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">The joint report from SMG the\ncompany that manages the Superdome and Entergy, the utility power provider, said:\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in\">\n<i><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">A\npiece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality\nin the system. Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed\nand opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order\nto isolate the issue. Backup generators kicked in immediately as designed.\n</font></font></font></i>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in\">\n<i>\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</i>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><i>Entergy\nand SMG subsequently coordinated start-up procedures, ensuring that full power was\nsafely restored to the Superdome. The fault-sensing equipment activated where the\nSuperdome equipment intersects with Entergy’s feed into the facility. There were no\nadditional issues detected. Entergy and SMG will continue to investigate the root\ncause of the abnormality.</i>\n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt 0.5in\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Essentially, the utility circuit\nbreaker detected an “anomaly” and opened the breaker. Modern switchgear have many\nsensors monitored by firmware running on a programmable logic controller. The advantage\nof these software systems is they are incredibly flexible and can be configured uniquely\nfor each installation. The disadvantage of software systems is the wide variety of\nconfigurations they can support can be complex and the default configurations are\nused perhaps more often than they should. The default configurations in a country\nwhere legal settlements can be substantial tend towards the conservative side. We\ndon’t know if that was a factor in this event but we do know that no fault was found\nand the power was stable for the remainder of the game. This was almost certainly\na false trigger.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Because the cause has not yet\nbeen reported and, quite often, the underlying root cause is never found. But, it’s\nworth asking, is it possible to avoid long game outages and what would it cost?<span> </span>As\nwhen looking at any system faults, the tools we have to mitigate the impact are: 1)\navoid the fault entirely, 2) protect against the fault with redundancy, 3) minimize\nthe impact of the fault through small fault zones, and 4) minimize the impact through\nfast recovery.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\">Fault\navoidance:</span></b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\"> </span><font size=\"3\">Avoidance\nstarts with using good quality equipment, configuring it properly, maintaining it\nwell, and testing it frequently. Given the Superdome just went through </font></font></font><a href=\"http://theenergycollective.com/sbattaglia/180236/superdome-scores-touchdown-energy-efficiency\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">$336\nmillion renovation</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">,\nthe switch gear may have been relatively new and, even if it wasn’t, it likely was\nalmost certainly recently maintained and inspected. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Where issues often arise are in\nconfiguration. Modern switch gear have an amazingly large number of parameters many\nof which interact with each other and, in total, can be difficult to fully understand.\nAnd, given the switch gear manufactures know little about the intended end-use application\nof each switchgear sold, they ship conservative default settings. Generally, the risk\nand potential negative impact of a false positive (breaker opens when it shouldn’t)\nis far less than a breaker that fails to open. Consequently conservative settings\nare common. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Another common cause of problems\nis lack of testing. The best way to verify that equipment works is to test at full\nproduction load in a full production environment in a non-mission critical setting.\nThen test it just short of overload to ensure that it can still reliably support the\nfull load even though the production design will never run it that close to the limit,\nand finally, test it into overload to ensure that the equipment opens up on real faults. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">The first, testing in full production\nenvironment in non-mission critical setting is always done prior to a<span> </span>major\nevent. But the latter two tests are much less common: 1) testing at rated load, and\n2) testing beyond rated load.<span> </span>Both require\nsynthetic load banks and skill electricians and so these tests are often not done.\nYou really can’t beat testing in a non-mission critical setting as a means of ensuring\nthat things work well in a mission critical setting (game time).\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\">Redundancy:</span></b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\"> </span><font size=\"3\">If\nwe can’t avoid a fault entirely, the next best thing is to have redundancy to mask\nthe fault. Faults will happen. The electrical fault at the </font></font></font><a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-400_162-57345365/power-outages-plague-monday-night-football/\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">Monday\nNight Football game back in December of 2011</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> was\ncaused by utility sub-station failing. These faults are unavoidable and will happen\noccasionally. But is protection against utility failure possible and affordable? Sure,\nabsolutely. Let’s use the Superdome fault yesterday as an example.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">The </font><a href=\"http://theenergycollective.com/sbattaglia/180236/superdome-scores-touchdown-energy-efficiency\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">entire\nSuperdome load is only 4.6MW</font></a><font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">. This\nload would be easy to support on two 2.5 to 3.0MW utility feeds each protected by\nits own generator. </font><a href=\"http://www.cat.com/power-generation\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">Generators\nin the 2.5 to 3.0 MW range are substantial V16 diesel engines</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> the\nsize of a mid-sized bus. And they are expensive running just under $1M each but they\nare also available in mobile form and inexpensive to rent. The rental option is a\nno-brainer but let’s ignore that and look at what it would cost to protect the Superdome\nyear around with a permanent installation. We would need 2 generators, the switchgear\nto connect it to the load and uninterruptable power supplies to hold the load during\nthe first few seconds of a power failure until the generators start up and are able\nto pick up the load. To be super safe, we’ll buy third generator just in case there\nis a problem and one of the two generators don’t start. The generators are under $1m\neach and the overall cost of the entire redundant power configuration with the extra\ngenerator could be had for under $10m.<span> </span>Looking\nat statistics from the 2012 event, a 30 second commercial costs just over $4m.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">For the price of just over 60\nseconds of commercials the facility could protected against fault. And, using rental\ngenerators, less than 30 seconds of commercials would provide the needed redundancy\nto avoid impact from any utility failure. Given how common utility failures are and\nthe negative impact of power disruptions at a professional sporting event, this looks\nlike good value to me. Most sports facilities chose to avoid this “unnecessary” expense\nand I suspect the Superdome doesn’t have full redundancy for all of its field lighting.\nBut even if it did, this failure mode can sometimes cause the generators to be locked\nout and not pick up the load during a some power events. In this failure mode, when\na utility breaker incorrectly senses a ground fault within the facility, it is frequently\nconfigured to not put the generator at risk by switching it into a potential ground\nfault. My take is I would rather run the risk of damaging the generator and avoid\nthe outage so I’m not a big fan of this “safety” configuration but it is a common\nchoice.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\">Minimize\nFault Zones:</span></b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\"> </span><font size=\"3\">The\nreason why only ½ the power to the Superdome went down was because the system installed\nat the facility has two fault containment zones. In this design, a single switchgear\nevent can only take down ½ of the facility. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Clearly the first choice is to\navoid the fault entirely. And, if that doesn’t work, have redundancy take over and\ncompletely mask the fault. But, in the rare cases where none of these mitigations\nwork, the next defense are small fault containment zones. Rather than using 2 zones,\nspend more on utility breakers and have 4 or 6 and, rather than losing ½ the facility,\nlose ¼ or 1/6.<span> </span>And, if the lighting power\nis checker boarded over the facility lights, (lights in a contiguous region are not\nall powered by the same utility feed but the feeds are distributed over the lights\nevenly), rather than losing ¼ or 1/6 of the lights in one area of the stadium, we\nwould lose that fraction of the lights evenly over the entire facility. Under these\nconditions, it might be possible to operate with slightly degraded field lighting\nand be able to continue the game without waiting for light recovery.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><b><span style=\"FONT-SIZE:12pt\">Fast\nRecovery: </span></b><font size=\"3\">Before we get to this fourth option, fast recovery,\nwe have tried hard to avoid failure, then we have used power redundancy to mask the\nfailure, then we have used small fault zones to minimize the impact. The next best\nthing we can do is to recover quickly. Fast recovery depends broadly on two things:\n1) if possible automate recovery so it can happen in seconds rather than the rate\nat which humans can act, 2) if humans are needed, ensure they have access to adequate\nmonitoring and event recording gear so they can see what happened quickly and they\nhave trained extensively and are able to act quickly. \n\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">In this particular event, the recovery was\nnot automated. Skilled electrical technicians were required. They spent nearly 15\nminute checking system states before deciding it was safe to restore power. Generally,\n15 min on a human judgment driven recover decision isn’t bad. But the overall outage\nwas 34 min. If the power was restored in 15 min, what happened during the next 20?<span> </span>The </font><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-discharge_lamp\"><font color=\"#0000ff\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\">gas\ndischarge lighting</font></a><font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> still\nfavored at large sporting venues, take roughly 15 minutes to restart after a momentary\noutage. Even a very short power interruption will still suffer the same long recovery\ntime. Newer light technologies are becoming available that are both more power efficient\nand don’t suffer from these long warm-up periods.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\">It doesn’t appear that the final\nvictor of Super Bowl XLVII was changed by the power failure but there is no question\nthe game was broadly impacted. If the light failure had happened during the kickoff\nreturn starting the third quarter, the game may have been changed in a very fundamental\nway. Better power distribution architectures are cheap by comparison. Given the value\nof the game, the relative low cost of power redundancy equipment, I would argue it’s\ntime to start retrofitting major sporting venues with more redundant design and employing\nmore aggressive pre-game testing.\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<font size=\"3\"><font color=\"#000000\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span> </span>--jrh\n</font></font></font>\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n<a name=\"_MailAutoSig\"><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">James\nHamilton </font></span></a><span><span style=\"COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\">\n<br>\n<font face=\"Calibri\"><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white\">e: jrh@mvdirona.com </span>\n<br>\n<span style=\"BACKGROUND:white\">w: </span></font></span></span><span></span><a href=\"http://www.mvdirona.com/\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:#000099;FONT-SIZE:9pt\">http://www.mvdirona.com</span></span><span></span></font></a><span><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> </font></span></span><span><span style=\"COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\">\n<br>\n<span style=\"BACKGROUND:white\"><font face=\"Calibri\">b: </font></span></span></span><span></span><a href=\"http://blog.mvdirona.com/\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:#000099;FONT-SIZE:9pt\">http://blog.mvdirona.com</span></span><span></span></font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"><span><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\"> / </span></span><span></span></font><a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span><span style=\"BACKGROUND:white;COLOR:#000099;FONT-SIZE:9pt\">http://perspectives.mvdirona.com</span></span><span></span></font></a><span><span>\n\n</span></span>\n</p>\n<span></span> \n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">\n\n<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> </font>\n\n</p>\n<img width=\"0\" height=\"0\" src=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/aggbug.ashx?id=ce079e9f-3ade-45e5-a33c-48e40b9381fb\">\n<br>\n<hr>\nFrom <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com\">Perspectives</a>."
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"title" : "English literature's 50 key moments from Marlowe to JK Rowling",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.2d/22865?ns=guardian&pageName=English+literature%27s+50+key+moments+from+Marlowe+to+JK+Rowling%3AArticle%3A1862584&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Books%2CCulture%2CChristopher+Marlowe%2CWilliam+Shakespeare%2CJohn+Milton+%28Author%29%2CSamuel+Pepys+%28Author%29%2CJohn+Locke+%2817th-century+political+philosopher%29%2CWilliam+Congreve+%28Playwright%29%2CDaniel+Defoe+%28Author%29%2CJonathan+Swift+%28Author%29%2CSamuel+Johnson+%28Author%29%2CMary+Wollstonecraft%2CWilliam+Wordsworth+%28Author%29%2CLord+Byron+%28Author%29%2CEmily+Bront%C3%AB+%28Author%29%2CCharles+Dickens+%28Author%29%2CHerman+Melville+%28Author%29%2CCharles+Darwin%2CLewis+Carroll+%28Author%29%2CWilkie+Collins+%28Author%29%2CGeorge+Eliot+%28Author%29%2CRobert+Louis+Stevenson+%28author%29%2COscar+Wilde+%28Culture%29%2CThomas+Hardy+%28Author%29%2CJM+Barrie%2CJames+Joyce+%28Author%29%2CTS+Eliot%2CF+Scott+Fitzgerald+%28Author%29%2CGeorge+Orwell%2CIan+Fleming+%28James+Bond+author%29%2CJack+Kerouac+%28Author%29%2CMaurice+Sendak%2CTruman+Capote+%28author%29%2CWG+Sebald+%28Author%29%2CAmazon.com+%28Technology%29%2CJK+Rowling+%28Author%29%2CTed+Hughes+%28Author%29%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CPoetry+%28Books+genre%29%2CTheatre%2CJane+Austen&c5=Environment+Conservation%2CUnclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CCorporate+IT%2CTheatre&c6=Robert+McCrum&c7=13-Feb-04&c8=1862584&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=Robert+McCrum+on+books+%28series%29&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&c42=Culture&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FBooks%2FChristopher+Marlowe\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>What have been the hinge points in the evolution of Anglo-American literature? Here's a provisional, partisan list</p><p>BBC Radio Three is currently broadcasting a fascinating series on <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0147b49\" title=\"\">the \"50 key works\" of classical music</a>. This is a spin-off from Howard Goodall's BBC2 television series and its tie-in book, <a href=\"http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780701187521\" title=\"\">The Story of Music (Chatto)</a>, and it crystallises – for the amateur listener – the turning points in the evolution of the classical tradition in the most enthralling way. Did you, for instance, know that Procul Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale contains a harmonic line that is pure Bach?</p><p></p><p>So much for music. Following Radio 3, I've found myself speculating about the 50 key moments in the Anglo-American literary tradition. Arguably, Goodall's very good idea works almost as well for the history of the printed page.</p><p></p><p>Note: what follows is not merely a book list, but an attempt to identify some of the hinge moments in our literature – a composite of significant events, notable poems, plays, and novels, plus influential deaths, starting with the violent death of Shakespeare's one serious rival …</p><p></p><p>1. <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3647398/Who-killed-Christopher-Marlowe.html\" title=\"\">The death of Christopher Marlowe</a> (1593) <br><br>2. William Shakespeare: The Sonnets (1609)<br><br>3. <a href=\"http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/\" title=\"\">The King James Bible (1611)</a><br><br>4. William Shakespeare: <a href=\"http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-first-folio.htm\" title=\"\">The First Folio</a> (1623)<br><br>5. <a href=\"http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/areopagitica/\" title=\"\">John Milton: Areopagitica</a> (1644)<br><br>6. Samuel Pepys: The Diaries (1660-69)<br><br>7. <a href=\"http://www.chapellibrary.org/bunyan/\" title=\"\">John Bunyan: Pilgrim's Progress</a> (1678)<br><br>8. <a href=\"http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/locke/john/l81u/\" title=\"\">John Locke: Essay Concerning Human Understanding</a> (1690)<br><br>9. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_the_World\" title=\"\">William Congreve: The Way of the World</a> (1700)<br><br>10. Daniel Defoe: A Journal of the Plague Year (1722)<br><br>11. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver's Travels (1727)<br><br>12. <a href=\"http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/\" title=\"\">Samuel Johnson: A Dictionary of the English Language</a> (1755)<br><br>13. <a href=\"http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html\" title=\"\">Thomas Jefferson: The American Declaration of Independence</a> (1776)<br><br>14. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/nov/05/biography.classics\" title=\"\">James Boswell: Life of Johnson</a> (1791)<br><br>15. <a href=\"http://www.earlyamerica.com/lives/franklin/\" title=\"\">Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography</a> (1793)<br><br>16. <a href=\"http://www.bartleby.com/144/\" title=\"\">Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Women</a> (1792)<br><br>17. William Wordsworth: \"The Prelude\" (1805)<br><br>18. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/26/pride-prejudice-200th-anniversary\" title=\"\">Jane Austen: Pride & Prejudice</a> (1813)<br><br>19. Lord Byron: Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812)<br><br>20. <a href=\"http://shakespearean.org.uk/ham1-col.htm\" title=\"\">Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespearean Criticism</a> (1818)<br><br>21. <a href=\"http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm\" title=\"\">Ralph Waldo Emerson: \"The American Scholar\"</a> (1837)<br><br>22. <a href=\"http://www.victorianweb.org/art/crisis/crisis4c.html\" title=\"\">Thomas Carlyle: The French Revolution </a>(1837)<br><br>23. <a href=\"http://www.victorianweb.org/history/pennypos.html\" title=\"\">The uniform Penny Post</a> (1840)<br> <br>24. <a href=\"http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hood/shirt.html\" title=\"\">Thomas Hood: \"The Song of the Shirt\"</a> (1843)<br><br>25. Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights (1847)<br><br>26. Charles Dickens: David Copperfield (1849)<br><br>27. Herman Melville: Moby Dick (1851)<br><br>28. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/16/north-and-south-gaskell-review\" title=\"\">Elizabeth Gaskell: North and South</a> (1855)<br><br>29. Charles Darwin: On the Origin of Species (1859)<br><br>30. <a href=\"http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html\" title=\"\">Henry Thoreau: Walden, or Life in the Woods</a> (1854)<br><br>31. <a href=\"http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/\" title=\"\">Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin</a> (1852)<br><br>32. Lewis Carroll: Alice In Wonderland (1865)<br><br>33. Wilkie Collins: The Moonstone (1868)<br><br>34. <a href=\"http://www.officemuseum.com/typewriters.htm\" title=\"\">First commercially successful typewriter, USA</a>. (1878)<br><br>35. George Eliot: Middlemarch (1871)<br><br>36. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)<br><br>37. Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)<br><br>38. Thomas Hardy: Poems (c.1900)<br><br>39. JM Barrie: Peter Pan (1904)<br><br>40. James Joyce: Ulysses (1922)<br><br>41. TS Eliot: The Waste Land (1922)<br><br>42. F Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (1925)<br><br>43. George Orwell: George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)<br> (1949)<br><br>44. Ian Fleming: Casino Royale (1953)<br><br>45. Jack Kerouac: On The Road (1957)<br><br>46. Maurice Sendak: Where The Wild Things Are (1963)<br><br>47. Truman Capote: In Cold Blood (1966)<br><br>48. WG Sebald: Vertigo (1990)<br> <br>49. The launch of Amazon.com (1994)<br><br>50. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)<br><br>Plus a bonus book - Ted Hughes: Birthday Letters (1998)</p><p></p><p>This catalogue, in conclusion, is highly partisan and impressionistic. It makes no claim to be comprehensive (how could it?). Rather, it aims to stimulate a discussion about the turning-points in the world of books and letters from the King James Bible to the present day.</p><p></p><p>Over to you.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/marlowe\">Christopher Marlowe</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/shakespeare\">William Shakespeare</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/johnmilton\">John Milton</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/samuelpepys\">Samuel Pepys</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/john-locke\">John Locke</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/congreve\">William Congreve</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/danieldefoe\">Daniel Defoe</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jonathanswift\">Jonathan Swift</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/samueljohnson\">Samuel Johnson</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/mary-wollstonecraft\">Mary Wollstonecraft</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/williamwordsworth\">William Wordsworth</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/lordbyron\">Lord Byron</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/emilybronte\">Emily Brontë</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/charlesdickens\">Charles Dickens</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/hermanmelville\">Herman Melville</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/charles-darwin\">Charles Darwin</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/lewiscarroll\">Lewis Carroll</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/wilkiecollins\">Wilkie Collins</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/georgeeliot\">George Eliot</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/robert-louis-stevenson\">Robert Louis Stevenson</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/oscar-wilde\">Oscar Wilde</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/thomashardy\">Thomas Hardy</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/jmbarrie\">JM Barrie</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jamesjoyce\">James Joyce</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/ts-eliot\">TS Eliot</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fscottfitzgerald\">F Scott Fitzgerald</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/georgeorwell\">George Orwell</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/ian-fleming\">Ian Fleming</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jackkerouac\">Jack Kerouac</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/maurice-sendak\">Maurice Sendak</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/truman-capote\">Truman Capote</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/wgsebald\">WG Sebald</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/amazon\">Amazon.com</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/jkrowling\">JK Rowling</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/tedhughes\">Ted Hughes</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/poetry\">Poetry</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre\">Theatre</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/janeausten\">Jane Austen</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/robertmccrum\">Robert McCrum</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://guardian.co.uk.feedsportal.com/c/34708/f/639027/s/2836e931/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151885440653/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/2836e931/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151885440653/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/2836e931/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/151885440653/u/49/f/639027/c/34708/s/2836e931/a2t.img\" border=\"0\">"
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"title" : "Stealing into Canada under the cover of whiteness",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2013/02/04/under-the-cover-of-white/aubrey_levin/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-62492\"><img alt=\"Aubrey_Levin\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/aubrey_levin.jpeg?w=610&h=343\" width=\"610\" height=\"343\"></a><br>\n<strong>By Melissa Levin</strong></p>\n<p>It was in Yeoville sometime in the 1990s that a ‘spook’ from South Africa’s now ruling party, the ANC, with whom I was acquainted began asking me questions about my father. My family had migrated to Canada, which he knew, and he was asking questions like, “when,” and “was your dad ever in the SADF (the apartheid army)?” and “what does your dad do?” It seemed rather odd to me (but then spies of any ideological persuasion are) until I picked up a copy of the weekly Mail & Guardian (I cant recall whether it was still known as the Weekly Mail). And there, in black and white, was the answer to my puzzlement. The paper was reporting on a rather nasty character, Dr Aubrey Levin, who had immigrated to Canada from South Africa. He was known for his virulent racism and dedicated support to the National Party (as it was the party of Apartheid). He was also foul in the administration of a technique of aversion therapy to ‘cure’ homosexuals of their ‘deviance.’ <span></span>His cruelty towards conscientious objectors to the Apartheid army (all white males were conscripted) is the stuff of Truth and Reconciliation investigations. He was employed as a psychiatrist in the apartheid army and evolved a reputation as Dr. Shock. We share the same last name and religion. He is old enough to be my father. But thankfully I was blessed with a much better man to be my dad.</p>\n<p>I was reminded of that encounter when I hear the news that Dr. Shock had just been <a href=\"http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/31/calgary-psychiatrist-who-molested-three-court-appoint-patients-gets-5-years-in-prison/\">sentenced to 5 years in prison for molesting court-appointed patients</a> in his adopted home of Calgary, Canada. How this man ever gained citizenship here, and how he was permitted to practice as a psychiatrist for the state nogal, is a scar on the immigration laws of this country. Partly this was a function of Levin’s litigious tactic against any papers reporting on his past. He had claimed that aversion therapy <a href=\"http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Accused+psychiatrist+says+alleged+assault+really+erectile+dysfunction+treatment/7394134/story.html\">was accepted practice</a> which was never undertaken without consent. He made a similar claim in relation to his current sexual assault charges about how fondling his patients’ genitals was an accepted practice for erectile dysfunction.</p>\n<p>The Canadian newspapers have hardly delved into his past in reporting on his case with the exception of <a href=\"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/controversial-alberta-physician-charged-with-sex-crime/article1388019/\">a 2010 Globe and Mail article</a> and, last week, an article <a href=\"http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/01/31/calgary_psychiatrist_gets_5_years_for_sex_assaults_on_patients.html.\">in the Toronto Star</a>.</p>\n<p>In fact, some stories, without a hint of irony, reported on the arguments made in mitigation of his sentencing that “<a href=\"http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/01/30/calgary-psychiatrist-convicted-of-sexually-assaulting-three-of-his-patients-too-frail-for-prison-lawyer/\">all the good the psychiatrist has done in his life has not been erased by the bad</a>.”</p>\n<p>None have asked how this person got past the immigration authorities and the Saskatchewan and Alberta medical boards. An immigration board decision is currently under review for accepting the claim of refugee status for a white South African man. And the Canadian government currently has billboards up in Hungary urging Roma not to apply for refugee status in the country. Maybe the message is that we can all steal into this settler colony, under the cover of white.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/62489/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/62489/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=62489&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>One of the most important aspects of accessibility is managing focus and user interaction. By default, all links and form controls can get focus. That allows you to use the tab key to navigate between them and, when one of the elements has focus, activate it by pressing the enter key. This paradigm works amazingly well regardless of the complexity of your web application. As long as a keyboard-only user is able to navigate between links and form controls then it’s possible to navigate the application.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, sometimes web developers try to get a bit too clever in creating their interfaces. What if I want something to look like a link but act like a button? Then you end up seeing a lot of code that looks like this:</p>\n<pre><code><a href="#" onclick="doSomething()">I'm a button</a></code></pre>\n<p>That code should turn your stomach a little bit. It’s a link that goes nowhere and does nothing. All it does is attach an <code>onclick</code> event handler to give it a purpose. Because the desired appearance for this element currently is link-like, the markup uses a link and JavaScript.</p>\n<p>Those who are familiar with ARIA may “fix” the problem by using the following:</p>\n<pre><code><a href="#" role="button" onclick="doSomething()">I'm a button</a></code></pre>\n<p>By setting the ARIA role to button, you’re now telling the browser and screen readers that this link should be interpreted as a button (that does an action on the page) rather than a link (that navigates you away). This has the same problem as the previous code except that you’re trying to trick the browser into treating the link as if it were a button. In reality, it would be most appropriate to just use button:</p>\n<pre><code><button onclick="doSomething()">I'm a button</button></code></pre>\n<p>The markup to use should never be based on the appearance of a UI element. Instead, you should try to figure out the real purpose of that element and use the appropriate markup. You can always style button to look like a link or a link to look like a button, but those are purely visual distinctions that don’t change the action.</p>\n<p>If these were the worst sins of web applications that I have seen, I would be pretty happy. However, there is another even more disturbing trend that I’m seeing. Some Web applications are actually trying to create their own buttons by mixing and matching different parts of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Here’s an example:</p>\n<pre><code><div tabindex="0" role="button" onclick="doSomething()">I'm a button</div></code></pre>\n<p>This is a valiant attempt at creating a button out of a <code><div></code>. By setting the <code>tabindex</code> attribute, the developer has assured that keyboard users can navigate to it by using the tab key. The value of 0 adds the elements into the normal tab order so it can receive focus just like any other link or button without affecting the overall tabbing order. The <code>role</code> informs the browser and screen readers that this element should be treated as a button and the <code>onclick</code> describes the behavior of the button. </p>\n<p>To anyone using a mouse, assuming the styling is correct, there is no distinction between this element and an actual button. You move the mouse over and click down and an action happens. If you’re using a keyboard, however, there is a subtle but important difference between this and a regular button: almost all browsers will not fire the <code>click</code> event when the element has focus and the enter key is pressed. Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all ignore the enter key in this situation (Opera is the only one that fires <code>click</code>). </p>\n<p>The enter key fires the <code>click</code> event when used on links and buttons by default. If you try to create your own button, as in the previous example, the enter key has no effect and therefore the user cannot perform that action. </p>\n<p>This horrible pattern is found most frequently in Google products. Perhaps the most ironic usage is in Gmail. When you press the ? key, a dialog pops up showing you available keyboard shortcuts and allowing you to enable more advanced shortcuts. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gmail.png\"><img src=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/gmail-300x153.png\" alt=\"Gmail keyboard shortcuts dialog\" width=\"300\" height=\"153\"></a></p>\n<p>It looks like the word “Enable” is a link, so you press tab a few times to give it focus and press enter. Nothing happens. Why? Because the link is actually neither a linkage nor a button, it’s a <code><span></code>. Here’s the actual code:</p>\n<pre><code><span id=":s7.pl" role="link" class="aoy" tabindex="1">Enable</span></code></pre>\n<p>Almost exactly the problematic pattern mentioned earlier in this post. So basically in order to turn on keyboard shortcuts you need to be able to use a mouse. In fact, many of the buttons on Gmail are made in this way. If not for the keyboard shortcuts it would basically be unusable without a mouse.</p>\n<p>Gmail isn’t the only Google site that uses this pattern. It can be found throughout the network of Google sites, including Google Groups and Google Analytics (which also hides focus rectangles). This alone makes Google products incredibly challenging to use for sighted users who don’t use pointing devices.</p>\n<p>If you expect the user to interact with something, then you need to use either a link or button. These have the correct behaviors both in terms of getting focus and activating when the enter key is pressed. Links should be used whenever the action is a navigation (changes the URL) and buttons should be used for all other actions. You can easily styled these to create the visual effect that you want, but nothing can replace the accessibility of the native links and buttons.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=7pdAVheqXBo:5BL0TuSZ7kM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nczonline/~4/7pdAVheqXBo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Let’s say twenty years ago I’d written a science fiction novel about how a futuristic nation has a massive force of flying robot bombs that are programmed with some target parameters and just fly around 24/7 on patrol looking for anything that fits their specifications. Catchy premise, classic bit of robot-overlord dystopianism, one of those things like flying cars that seems amusingly improbable in retrospect…</p>\n<p>Oh, dear. </p>\n<p>As with everything else that has come to pass which actually matches the science-fictional imagination, the reality seems so banal and inevitable that we scarcely pause in our everyday lives to consider its implications. The imaginary electronic clipboards and pads in various incarnations of Star Trek were always bristling with fetishistic futurosity, always signalling that a far future had arrived. The iPad I use every day has quickly become about as exotic as a toaster or a ballpoint pen. </p>\n<p>That doesn’t stop us from having furious debates about the generality of the changes that actually-existing future technology brings. The overall idea and reality of drone warfare is getting some attention, just as the sweeping consequences of digital technology have. But the debate over drones is so far either about the abstractions of moral philosophy (is ok to kill a combatant who has no chance to kill you back?) or it is about a particularized kind of ‘numbers game’ (do drones cause more civilian casualties than we’re being told? more civilian casualities than other kinds of bombing?) A few folks are also beginning to think more carefully about what might happen if there is further automation of drone strikes.</p>\n<p>All of those conversations matter. But I’m also struck at how much this nascent public conversation doesn’t include the possibility of proliferation and retaliation. In many ways, drones are being treated as the Maxim gun of 21st Century hegemony: something the hegemon has than its subjects have not, and that is being assumed to be a stable part of the overall picture. </p>\n<p>Among the many explanations for Europe’s sudden assertion of imperial control over most of Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia in the second half of the 19th Century, the importance of a brief moment of stark asymmetry in the relative ability of polities and elites to mobilize military power has sometimes been pushed aside or downgraded as a self-sufficient explanation, even in ‘technologically determinist’ interpretations. In some measure, that might be because European colonial propaganda, when it addressed military advantages, tended to push that advantage back in time all the way to the 16th Century and treat it as a single manifestation of some overall Western superiority in technology and science. Either that or European colonizers engaged in ridiculous self-puffery about the cultural and organizational superiority of their militaries as opposed to the relative disparity in their armaments. </p>\n<p>The asymmetry, if it was an important factor, was incredibly brief. At the beginning of the 19th Century, European-controlled militaries had very few systematic advantages in their ability to enforce administrative power and overwhelm local military resistance in Africa, South Asia or the Middle East. They could win single battles or conflicts but not persistently maintain a presence or capacity that could meet any attempt at military resistance. That wasn’t just about their armaments, of course, but also about the financial capacity and political organization of their sponsoring nation-states. For a brief time at the end of the 19th Century, however, industrially-supplied European mass armies with guns and munitions could generally overwhelm non-Western military power (though the latter were often armed with guns as well: <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Power-Colonial-Africa-African-Studies/dp/1107403960\">William Storey’s new history of gun trading and ownership in southern Africa</a> makes clear how complicated the local picture often was. </p>\n<p>The thing is, by the end of World War II, that era was comprehensively over, which I think means that asymmetry in force capacity is as much a contributing explanation of decolonization as it is of the spread of 19th Century imperialism. By the 1960s, insurgencies all around the globe were capable of fighting occupying Western armies to a standstill, if not capable of winning in a straight-up battlefield conflict between nation-states. And this has become more and more the case over time. Whatever doctrines or surges or equipment the US or its allies may bring to bear to support an imperial occupation or administration, they can’t succeed in doing more than what Russia did in Chechnya: turning a territory into a wasteland and keeping it under a harsh authoritarian regime. And even the most determined 21st Century hegemon can’t afford to project that kind of military power in more than a few small territories proximate to its national borders, nor can it count on that power to pacify such an opponent for any substantial length of time. </p>\n<p>Drones clearly seem to some American military planners like the answer to their prayers in such a world, with a lot of other collateral budgetary, technological and political benefits. No pilots exposed to enemy fire (and no human limitations to the speed and mobility of a flying weapons platform). Cheaper by far than modern warplanes. Much easier to keep their operations secret, much more deniability about consequences. Much easier to extend operations into airspace of unfriendly or uncomfortable sovereignities. Nearly impossible to defend against with existing anti-aircraft technology and imposes serious limitations on the freedom of movement of enemy combatants and leaders. Explicit legal sanction from all three branches of the US government for the unilateral use of drones to kill specific targeted individuals, including American citizens, coupled with grudging acquiescence to this practice by most other nations. </p>\n<p>And as with the Maxim gun, they have none.</p>\n<p>But that is not going to last. So before we get into the moral philosophy of the general idea, or the morality of their current use, just consider for a moment what is going to happen in a world where:</p>\n<p>a) Drone warfare is an exceptionally active domain of rapid technological progress due to continuous investment by the United States and other major national and transnational actors.<br>\nb) Drone warfare is normalized legally and geopolitically as a domain of unrestricted unilateral action by hegemonic or dominant powers (much as the unrestricted use of military force against non-Western societies was briefly something that went almost entirely unquestioned in Europe and the US from about 1870 to 1905).<br>\nc) The use of drones by the US and other major actors proliferates on a global scale rather than stays confined to a few unusual theaters. </p>\n<p>With a), investment in technological progress, consider also:</p>\n<p>a1) that drones with lethal capacity will almost certainly get smaller, cheaper, and harder to detect both as they seek targets and at their points of origination and operation<br>\na2) that drones will almost certainly be given more sophisticated systems for automatic navigation, target selection and decision-making over time<br>\na3) that integrating the cheap, improvised lethality of explosives used against international forces in Iraq and Afghanistan into drones will become readily possible in the future</p>\n<p>Think about that for a bit. Now imagine a world where non-state actors of all kinds, at all scales, can with relative ease unleash many automated or semi-automated drones armed with enough explosives to kill a few people or damage local infrastructure, in a way that may be as hard to trace back to the individuals responsible as it is to find someone who made a computer virus or malware today. </p>\n<p>The moment I lay that scenario out, many people doubtless think, “So that’s going to happen, it’s inevitable”. But I don’t think it is. There are cases in modern world history where national militaries and their civilian administrations have thought twice about the wisdom of proliferating the use of weaponry or technology that gave them enormous short-term advantages after the long-term implications of their generalized use became clear. Chemical and biological weaponry is perhaps the best example, since nuclear weapons may be a special case. National militaries still have this capacity, it’s occasionally been used by repressive regimes against civilian opponents, but sufficient effort has been poured into making their use moral anathema and cause for serious coordinated global action that there are very powerful inhibitions against their use. </p>\n<p>The appallingly causal and short-sighted use of drones right now by the US military bothers me for all sorts of reasons. But first and foremost, it bothers me because no one in authority is giving any public consideration to the consequences of legitimating their unilateral, undisclosed and unreviewed usage, or the consequences of becoming so reliant upon drone strikes that we vastly accelerate their development. If there is any hope of avoiding a world where small remotely (or automatically) guided explosive drones routinely pose a danger at almost any location or moment, that hope is in this moment, this time, and no other. By the time the AK-47 went into mass production in 1949, it was far too late to ask whether it was a good thing or not for almost any organized group that wanted automatic rifles to have automatic rifles, even if it took some time for the weapon to disseminate at a global scale. </p>"
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"title" : "The President's Tragic Flaw, by @DavidOAtkins",
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"content" : "<b>The President's Tragic Flaw</b><br><br><i>by David Atkins</i><br><br>The <i>New Republic</i> has an <a href=\"http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112190/obama-interview-2013-sit-down-president?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=SPNonSubs&utm_content=SneakPreview&utm_campaign=SneakPreview-Jan27#\">interesting interview</a> with President Obama out. There's not much earth-shattering in it, but this bit in particular is both maddening and instructive. For context, the conversation is about Republican obstructionism:<br><br><blockquote>CH: You spoke last summer about your election potentially breaking the fever of the Republicans. The hope being that, once you were reelected, they would seek to do more than just block your presidency. Do you feel that you've made headway on that?<br><br><i>President Obama</i>: Not yet, obviously.<br><br>CH: How do you imagine it happening?<br><br><i>President Obama</i>: I never expected that it would happen overnight. I think it will be a process. And the Republican Party is undergoing a still-early effort at reexamining what their agenda is and what they care about. I think there is still shock on the part of some in the party that I won reelection. There's been a little bit of self-examination among some in the party, but that hasn't gone to the party as a whole yet.<br><br>And I think part of the reason that it's going to take a little bit of time is that, almost immediately after the election, we went straight to core issues around taxes and spending and size of government, which are central to how today's Republicans think about their party. Those issues are harder to find common ground on.<br><br>But if we can get through this first period and arrive at a sensible package that reduces our deficits, stabilizes our debts, and involves smart reforms to Medicare and judicious spending cuts with some increased revenues and maybe tax reform, and you can get a package together that doesn't satisfy either Democrats or Republicans entirely, but puts us on a growth trajectory because it leaves enough spending on education, research and development, and infrastructure to boost growth now, but also deals with our long-term challenges on health care costs, then you can imagine the Republicans saying to themselves, \"OK, we need to get on the side of the American majority on issues like immigration. We need to make progress on rebuilding our roads and bridges.\"</blockquote>President Obama is a man of many admirable qualities and strengths. But he has a character flaw worthy of Shakespearean tragedy that is perfectly illustrated in this little snippet. That flaw is the desire common to many tragic anti-heroes imbued with a certain narcissism, to believe that he can do what no others can--in this case, to transcend seemingly impossible political divides by bringing the two parties together to achieve bipartisan policy goals.<br><br>There are those who claim that the President is fundamentally centrist and believes in a Rockefeller Republican vision on economics. And yet there is much evidence against this notion: the Affordable Care Act, the fiscal cliff deal and the President's successful negotiation on the debt ceiling all had fairly progressive outcomes given the standards of the era and the capacities of Congress to achieve them. The President's Supreme Court choices have been excellent. True, there has been little prosecution of Wall Street villains or abnegation of certain kinds of militaristic foreign policy. Those are problematic to be sure, but not necessarily determinative of the President's vision. There are other explanations for these problems, mostly having to do with a desire not to upset too many apple carts at once during a time of turbulence and overwhelming political hostility.<br><br>Rather than second guess the President's motives, Occam's Razor suggests that we take his words at face value. His words are remarkably consistent and have been for years: he wants to bridge the partisan divide and make Washington functional again. The fact that Republicans seem absolutely committed to breaking American governance and destroying the President at all costs doesn't seem to faze him much, nor does it cause him to question their essential goodwill and allegiance to nation's fundamental well-being.<br><br>The President seems to genuinely believe that if a Grand Bargain on taxes, spending and deficits can be reached, then Republicans will be placated enough to be reasonable on other pieces of the Administration's social and economic agenda. <br><br>This vision presumes an enormous amount of good faith on the part of the Republican Party that is not in evidence. It first presumes that Republicans actually care about cutting deficits instead of simply slashing the safety net and redistributing wealth upward to the obscenely rich. The deficit-ballooning presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush alone are evidence enough to prove otherwise. The President's assumptions secondarily presume that if Republicans were to see their deficit objectives fulfilled, they would be placated enough to be reasonable when considering the President's other policy goals. That, too, requires a suspension of disbelief. The history of the Republican Party over the last few decades has shown that any giving of ground is considered not a good faith effort at quid pro quo negotiation, but rather weakness to be exploited by further demands.<br><br>Significantly, it also presumes that making concessions to Republicans on taxes, deficits and spending is worth their cooperation on other issues such as immigration. Unless Republicans were to play against type by cooperating on significant action against climate change (a highly unlikely scenario), such trades would almost certainly be counterproductive to the overall interests of the American people even if they were possible.<br><br>But it appears that despite all evidence, the President believes that political reconciliation is somehow possible, and that a chastened Republican Party will come to the table as a legitimate negotiating partner once the deficit is taken off the table as an issue. He needs, for some deep-seated reason, to believe it. Perhaps he believes that American governance is reaching a point of no return and that if he can't save it, no one can. It would be an odd belief for an African-American President dealing with an entrenched opposition based mostly in the old Confederacy. Perhaps he believes that no policy legacy would be more celebrated than the cultural legacy of having \"solved\" the hostility-generating issues for all time and having brought back an era of good feelings to Capitol Hill based purely on his own charisma and determination to accomplish the goal.<br><br>Who knows? But it's increasingly clear (and has been since he began running for President back in 2007) that the President is pushing for a Grand Bargain less out of a conviction that benefits must be taken from the middle class for the benefit of the wealthy, and more from a belief that only from such pain can a broken legislative system be fixed. He is bound and determined to be the man to fix it, and no amount of direct Republican hostility to him and every fiber of his being will dissuade him.<br><br>The President's tragic flaw is ultimately a function of misplaced idealism. The problem with Washington isn't that Republicans and Democrats can't get along. The problem is that the entire Republican Party and far too large a section of the Democratic Party has been utterly captured by corporate and plutocratic interests. Worse still, a majority of the Republican Party has been taken over not just by run-of-the-mill plutocrats, but by rabid Objectivists not just corrupted by wealth, but enraptured by an intense, pseudo-religious allergy to empathy and the common good. Cooperation between the parties in this climate isn't something to be wished for. It's devoutly to be avoided.<br><br>The President is right about one thing: legislative accomplishments worthy of a legacy etched into Mount Rushmore are utterly impossible in the current political climate. But changing that equation depends not on bringing the two sides together, but rather on serious reform of the legislative system that helps cleanse both parties of what ails them. If President Obama wanted a legacy worthy of his considerable ambition, he would spend more time pushing for filibuster reform than for Grand Bargains, and more time weeding money out of politics than defusing partisanship.<br><br>But it will be difficult to convince him otherwise. Like many a Shakesperean tragic hero, his own misplaced idealism and overweening confidence in his own personal charisma will likely deny him the legacy of success he so deeply craves. Fortunately, it is only the beginning of his second term, and the curtain has barely risen on Act III. There is still time to adjust course and change the fate of this Presidency before the tragedy is etched irrevocably into the history books.<br><br><br>."
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"title" : "Abina and the important men: Getz and the new African history",
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"content" : "<p>Writing and analyzing the history of sub-Saharan Africa — especially the history prior to the decolonization of African countries and their emergence as independent nations — is especially difficult. Part of the reason of course lies with legacy. In the thrall of racism, either conscious or unconscious, historians prior to the early 1960s often imposes blatant biases and prejudices on African experience. Though not as flagrant in their abuses as, say, anthropologists, professional historians were often trapped in a manner of thinking that led them to conclude that Africans lacked their own histories.</p>\n<p>If Africans did suffer from a deficit, the deficit was not history, but historical materials of the conventional sort: records, diaries, letters, reports, and the like. Such staples of literate societies were absent for various reasons in the sub-Saharan. And the records which did exist often were generated by colonizers and adventurers, interlopers with an agenda that rarely included fairness to Africans — or the impulse to document their authentic voices.</p>\n<p>A new generation of historians of Africa are building into their scholarship innovative and creative ways of giving voice to the African voiceless. One of the most spectacular examples of such scholarship is the new book, <em><a href=\"http://ghanarising.blogspot.com/2012/11/abina-and-important-men-graphic-history.html\">Abina and the Important Men</a></em>, by historian<a href=\"http://online.sfsu.edu/tgetz/\"> Trevor Getz,</a> of San Francisco State University.</p>\n<p>Drawing extensively on the trial transcript of a Ghanaian woman illegally enslaved in the 1870s by another Ghanaian, Getz creates a deeply informed and revelatory work of narrative history and nuanced interpretation. Treating his book as a mosaic of independent elements, he even enlists the help of a talented graphic artist to create a beautifully-drawn 75-page “graphic history” that seems ideal for pre-university students. When the graphic story is paired with the actual trial transcript, which Getz found in Ghana, and with lucid essays by Getz on the historical context of the trial and a “reading guide” that explores the “authenticity” of his own narrative, <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Abina-Important-Men-Graphic-History/dp/0199844399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359313126&sr=8-1&keywords=Abina+and+the+Important+Men%2C\">Abina and the Important Men </a></em>presents a stunning multi-faceted experience of an African past that remains so foggy as to appear to be irretrievably lost. While prominent gaps in the evidence and his narrative and analysis remain, Getz tries to compensate in an unusually interesting ways. His big-hearted and perceptive “letter to the reader,” which opens <em>Abina and the Important Men</em> is worth quoting at length — for its insights into how creative scholars are trying to address a crisis of relevance, not only of African history but for the field of history in general:</p>\n<p>“<em>Abina and the Important Men </em>is one of a number of projects that seeks to find a middle ground between scholarly and popular histories of regular people. [My book] is not a work of <em>historical fiction, </em>but instead a <em>history</em> because it aims for accuracy and authenticity even while recognizing that all historical works are at some level speculative and subjective. It is neither completely celebratory not holly critical; instead it attempts to show how these two impulses can be linked together…. [R]ather than seeking to be the final authorities on this story, we invite the reader to … see this work as a conversation we are having with Abina Mansah.”</p>\n<p>Bringing African voices of the past, into the present, is a project of great significance. May <em>Abina and the Important Men </em>inspire more multi-dimensional studies of this sort.</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "Federer and the paradox of skill",
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"content" : "<p>[CORRECTION: I originally titled this Federer and the paradox of luck, but it's actually more correctly termed the paradox of skill, so I've amended the title of this post. It's a term I first read in Michael Mauboussin's <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/1422184234/?tag=eugeneweishomepa\">The Success Equation: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing</a>, a book I highly recommend.]</p><p>I was curious about a moment in the Federer-Murray Australian Open semifinal when the commentators and cameras caught Federer saying something to Murray and giving him a brief menacing stare after a long rally at 6-5 in the fourth set.</p><p>Without microphones on court, the commentators weren't sure what he said or why, but they briefly showed Murray responding with a exaggerated nod and smirk. The commentators did detect and remark on that brief moment of tension, and given how rarely we see tennis antagonism manifest itself in a visible way on court, it stuck in my brain as curious mystery.</p><p>My buddy Ken sent me this <a href=\"http://tennis.si.com/2013/01/25/roger-federer-andy-murray-australian-open-curse/#more-28831\">article</a> which clarifies the incident a bit.</p><blockquote>Murray prevailed in 15-stroke rally with a forehand winner, with both players finishing the point near the net. But Federer, on the brink of defeat, appeared to have taken issue with a slight mid-rally [hesitation] by Murray, and shouted “you [expletive]-ing stopped!” across the net. Murray appeared at first surprised, then amused, twisting his face into an exaggeratedly satisfied smirk, laughing and nodding toward his player’s box.</blockquote><p></p><p>Federer was known for being a hothead early in his career, but I never saw much of it firsthand. Since his ascension into tennis immortality, he's largely been seen as a very level-headed sportsman.</p><p>One thing I have noticed a few times that seems to bother Federer is that when he plays one of the other Big Four (Djokovic, Murray, Nadal), he is particularly sensitive to any points they win by luck. The article above mentions that BBC commentators had to apologize on air for audible obscenities from Federer during the semi against Murray.</p><blockquote>Federer’s first clearly audible obscenity in his semifinal loss to Andy Murray came with Murray serving at 4-5, 15-30. Murray fired a body serve which Federer could just get his backhand in front of and sent him into mostly indistinguishable muttering, punctuated with a loud, hard expletive in the middle.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Federer’s second audible offense came with Murray serving at 3-4, 40-40, in the fourth set. Murray won a 17-shot rally, and Federer exclaimed that his opponent had been “lucky,” preceding that word with a choice adverb.</blockquote><p></p><p>I suspect most of you are thinking of the same adverb I am, so if I don't write it out I hope you don't see it as \"ducking\" the question [rimshot].</p><p>But a more memorable example is that extraordinary forehand return Djokovic hit against Federer in the 2011 U.S. Open semifinal. Down match point and 5-3 in the fifth set, Djokovic crushed a sideline-grazing crosscourt winner off of a Federer first serve (you can see it at 8:12 of this <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEKqVK8Fvek\">video</a>).</p><p>In the press conference after that match, which Federer eventually lost , he was <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/sep/11/us-open-2011-federer-djokovic\">unusually testy</a> when asked about that Djokovic shot.</p><blockquote>\"It's awkward having to explain this loss,\" a tetchy Federer said, \"because I feel like I should be doing the other press conference.\"</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>There followed a string of excuses and justifications which not only were barely sustainable given the evidence but seriously disrespected the winner.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Asked about the quite remarkable forehand winner Djokovic hit to save match point, Federer reckoned the Serb did not look at that point like someone \"who believes much anymore in winning. To lose against someone like that, it's very disappointing, because you feel like he was mentally out of it already. Just gets the lucky shot at the end, and off you go.\"</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>Djokovic was honest enough to admit the shot was a gamble – but Federer was reluctant to give him credit even for that courage in a crisis, preferring to regard it as desperate.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>\"Confidence? Are you kidding me?\" he said when it was put to him the cross-court forehand off his first serve – described by John McEnroe as \"one of the all-time great shots\" – was either a function of luck or confidence.</blockquote><p></p><blockquote>\"I mean, please. Some players grow up and play like that – being down 5-2 in the third, and they all just start slapping shots. I never played that way. I believe hard work's going to pay off, because early on maybe I didn't always work at my hardest. For me, this is very hard to understand. How can you play a shot like that on match point? Maybe he's been doing it for 20 years, so for him it was very normal. You've got to ask him.\"</blockquote><p></p><p>Translated, Federer hates that tennis might be decided in any way by luck rather than skill. It makes sense, that someone who might be the most skilled tennis player of all time might be disgusted that luck plays any part in outcomes of majors.</p><p>It will be fascinating to see if Federer alters his game in any way this next year or two given his age and the competition from his three chief rivals. I suspect deep down Federer has always believed he is more skilled than any of his opponents, and that might explain one of his chief weaknesses, an unwillingness to be more aggressive on service returns. If you believe you are better than your opponent in every aspect of the game, it's sufficient to put the ball back in play on the return because you believe you'll win the subsequent point more often than not.</p><p>But the paradox of skill is that the more evenly matched opponents are in skill, the more of a role luck plays in determining the final outcome. As beautiful as Federer's game remains (in a sense, the continued aesthetic beauty of his shots makes it hard to measure his decline), in today's power baseline game, his rivals are a close match to him in both movement and groundstrokes. You can make a strong case that one or more of them are superior to him in areas like serve, return, footspeed, and the backhand.</p><p>Given that he no longer has that discernible skills gap to his chief rivals, a healthier acceptance of the role of luck might shift his strategy in ways that help him capture that next major. For example, it wouldn't hurt him to be more aggressive on return, to take some chances to go for the big winner and shorten some points. Can someone who is still so good and who can still recall with vivid detail the time when he had no rival be self-aware enough to change?</p>"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.25.2d/65578?ns=guardian&pageName=%27Racism%27+of+early+colour+photography+explored+in+art+exhibition%3AArticle%3A1858692&ch=Art+and+design&c3=Guardian&c4=Photography+%28Art+and+design%29%2CPolaroid%2CArt+and+design%2CSouth+Africa+%28News%29%2CRace+issues+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CCulture&c5=Unclassified%2CArt%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CPhotography&c6=David+Smith+%28Africa+correspondent%29&c7=13-Jan-25&c8=1858692&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Art+and+design&c13=&c25=&c30=content&c42=Culture&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FArt+and+design%2FPhotography\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Artists spent a month in South Africa taking pictures on decades-old film engineered with only white faces in mind</p><p>Can the camera be racist? The question is explored in an exhibition that reflects on how Polaroid built an efficient tool for South Africa's apartheid regime to photograph and police black people.</p><p>The London-based artists <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/19/broomberg-chanarin-photojournalism-war\" title=\"\">Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin</a> spent a month in South Africa taking pictures on decades-old film that had been engineered with only white faces in mind. They used Polaroid's vintage ID-2 camera, which had a \"boost\" button to increase the flash – enabling it to be used to photograph black people for the notorious passbooks, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_laws\" title=\"\">\"dompas\"</a>, that allowed the state to control their movements.</p><p>The result was raw snaps of some of the country's most beautiful flora and fauna from regions such as the Garden Route and the Karoo, an attempt by the artists to subvert what they say was the camera's original, sinister intent.</p><p>Broomberg and Chanarin say their work, on show at Johannesburg's <a href=\"http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/311\" title=\"\">Goodman Gallery</a>, examines \"the radical notion that prejudice might be inherent in the medium of photography itself\". They argue that early colour film was predicated on white skin: in 1977, when Jean-Luc Godard was invited on an assignment to Mozambique, he refused to use Kodak film on the grounds that the stock was inherently \"racist\".</p><p>The light range was so narrow, Broomberg said, that \"if you exposed film for a white kid, the black kid sitting next to him would be rendered invisible except for the whites of his eyes and teeth\". It was only when Kodak's two biggest clients – the confectionary and furniture industries – complained that dark chocolate and dark furniture were losing out that it came up with a solution.</p><p>The artists feel certain that the ID-2 camera and its boost button were Polaroid's answer to South Africa's very specific need. \"Black skin absorbs 42% more light. The button boosts the flash exactly 42%,\" Broomberg explained. \"It makes me believe it was designed for this purpose.\"</p><p>In 1970 Caroline Hunter, a young chemist working for Polaroid in America, stumbled upon evidence that the company was effectively supporting apartheid. She and her partner Ken Williams formed the Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement and <a href=\"http://www.baystatebanner.com/local11-2010-08-26\" title=\"\">campaigned for a boycott</a>. By 1977 Polaroid had <a href=\"http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/sbro-mla001049-robert-lenzner-uncovers-the-polaroid-scandal-in-south-africa\" title=\"\">withdrawn from South Africa</a>, spurring an international divestment movement that was crucial to bringing down apartheid.</p><p>The title of the exhibition, To Photograph the Details of a Dark Horse in Low Light, refers to the coded phrase used by Kodak to describe a new film stock created in the early 1980s to address the inability of earlier films to accurately render dark skin.</p><p>The show also features norm reference cards that always used white women as a standard for measuring and calibrating skin tones when printing photographs. The series of \"Kodak Shirleys\" were named after the first model featured. Today such cards show multiple races.</p><p>Broomberg and Chanarin made two recent trips to Gabon to photograph a series of rare Bwiti initiation rituals using Kodak film stock, scavenged from eBay, that had expired in 1978. Working with outdated chemical processes, they salvaged just a single frame. Broomberg said: \"Anything that comes out of that camera is a political document. If I take a shot of the carpet, that's a political document.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography\">Photography</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/polaroid\">Polaroid</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/southafrica\">South Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/race\">Race issues</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidsmith\">David Smith</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"title" : "Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins",
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"content" : "<p>[As always, I preface any discussion of Amazon and Apple by noting that I own some stock in both companies, and that I worked at Amazon from 1997 to 2004]</p><p>A lot of folks, especially Apple supporters, like to characterize Amazon as irrational, even crazy, for its willingness to live with low margins. It must be frustrating to compete with a company like that. But to call their strategy irrational or to believe they want to be a non-profit is a dangerous misreading of what they're all about.</p><p>It's been years since I worked there, so this is largely speculation on my part, but I believe Amazon is anything but irrational when it comes to how they think about margins. I believe it's a calculated strategy on their part, and anyone competing with them had best understand it.</p><p>As with people, I think companies can be more comfortable playing certain styles, much like certain players are more suited for a particular style of offense, like Mike D'Antoni's in the NBA or Chip Kelly's in football. Amazon's low margin strategy is one they are comfortable with because it sprung from the company's very origin. Amazon began in the bookselling business, and some of its earliest and most crucial advantages against incumbents like Barnes and Noble were best expressed with thinner margins.</p><p>One of online retail's main advantage was, of course, being able to forego expensive physical storefronts. With one and then two distribution centers total in the early years, Amazon essentially just had two "storefronts" to stock with book SKU's, whereas Barnes and Noble had to guess how to allocate SKU's across hundreds of stores all over the country, all necessitating long leases. A few Amazon editors could recommend books to all Amazon customers, whereas Barnes and Noble had to staff each of their individual stores with sales clerks. </p><p>More importantly, Amazon's inventory flow was drastically more efficient than that of Barnes and Noble. Amazon didn't have to carry inventory on really slow-selling SKU's, they could wait until a customer had ordered it and then drop-ship it from the distributor. If Amazon wanted to ship one of those SKU's themselves, customers generally had the patience to wait longer for them since those slow-turning SKU's didn't earn shelf space at the local Barnes and Noble anyway.</p><p>Almost all customers paid by credit card, so Amazon would receive payment in a day. But they didn't pay the average distributor or publisher for 90 days for books they purchased. This gave Amazon a magical financial quality called a negative operating cycle. With every book sale, Amazon got cash it could hang on to for up weeks on end (in practice it wasn't actually 89 days of float since Amazon did purchase some high velocity selling books ahead of time). The more Amazon grew, the more cash it banked. Amazon was turning its inventory 30, 40 times a year, whereas companies like Barnes and Noble were sweating to turn their inventory twice a year. Most people just look at a company's margins and judge the quality of the business model based on that, but the cash flow characteristics of the business can make one company a far more valuable company than another with the exact same operating margin. Amazon could have had a margin of zero and still made money.</p><p></p><p>At Amazon we were ruthlessly focused on squeezing efficiency out of every part of the business, especially the variable ones that affected every purchase. How could we get a book from the shelf into the hands of the customer more cheaply? How could we reduce the number of customer contacts per order for our customer service team? Could we offload some human customer service contact to cheaper online self-service methods while improving customer satisfaction? How could we negotiate steeper discounts on the books themselves? For each book SKU, was it more economical to purchase ahead of sales in bulk for steeper discounts and faster shipping or to purchase only when a customer placed an order and risk a longer delay in shipping? How could we allocate inventory among our distribution centers to increase the likelihood that all items in an order shipped from the same distribution center, minimizing our shipping costs? How could we organize all the Amazon shipments ready for delivery in a way that made lives easier on our shipping partners like the USPS and UPS, and then how could we use that to negotiate cheaper shipping rates? Did we need so many human editors reviewing books, or were customer reviews sufficient?</p><p>The type of operational efficiency Amazon rose to in those days is not something another company can duplicate overnight. It came on top of the inherent cost advantages of online commerce over physical commerce. So much of Amazon's competitive advantage in those days came from operational efficiency. You can choose to leverage that strength in two ways. One is you match your competitor on pricing and just earn higher margins. But the other, the way Amazon has always tended to favor, is to lower prices, to thin the oxygen for your competitors.</p><p>If you have bigger lungs than your competitor, all things being equal, force them to compete in a contest where oxygen is the crucial limiter. If your opponent can't swim, you make them compete in water. If they dislike the cold, set the contest in the winter, on a tundra. You can romanticize all of this by quoting Sun Tzu, but it's just common sense.</p><p>I worked on the launch of the Amazon Video store, Amazon's third product after books and music. At the time of the launch, DVDs had just launched as a product category a short while earlier, so the store carried both VHS tapes and DVDs. The day Amazon launched its video store, the top DVD store on the web at the time, I think it was DVD Empire, lowered its prices across the board, raising its average discount from 30% off to 50% off DVDs.</p><p>This forced our hand immediately. Selling DVDs at 50% off would mean selling those titles at a loss. We had planned to match their 30% discount, and now we were being out-priced by the market leader on our first day of operation, and just before the heart of the holiday sales season to boot (it was November, 1998).</p><p>We convened a quick emergency huddle, but it didn't take long to come to a decision. We'd match the 50% off. We had to. Our leading opponent had challenged us to a game of who can hold your breath longer. We were confident in our lung capacity. They only sold DVDs whereas we had the security of a giant books and music business buttressing our revenues.</p><p>After a few weeks, DVD Empire blinked. They had to. Sometime later, I can't remember how long it was, DVD Empire rebranded, tried expanding to sell adult DVDs, then went out of business. There were other DVD-only retailers online at the time, but none from that period survived. I doubt any online retailer selling only DVDs still exists.</p><p>Attacking the market with a low margin strategy has other benefits, though, ones often overlooked or undervalued. For one thing, it strongly deters others from entering your market. Study disruption in most businesses and it almost always comes from the low end. Some competitor grabs a foothold on the bottom rung of the ladder and pulls itself upstream. But if you're already sitting on that lowest rung as the incumbent, it's tough for a disruptor to cling to anything to gain traction.</p><p>An incumbent with high margins, especially in technology, is like a deer that wears a bullseye on its flank. Assuming a company doesn't have a monopoly, its high margin structure screams for a competitor to come in and compete on price, if nothing else, and it also hints at potential complacency. If the company is public, how willing will they be to lower their own margins and take a beating on their public valuation?</p><p>Because technology, both hardware and software, tends to operate on an annual update cycle, every year you have to worry about a competitor leapfrogging you in that cycle. One mistake and you can see a huge shift in customers to a competitor.</p><p>Not having to sweat a constant onslaught of new competitors is really underrated. You can allocate your best employees to explore new lines of business, you can count on a consistent flow of cash from your more mature product or service lines, and you can focus your management team on offense. In contrast, most technology companies live in constant fear that they'll be disrupted with every product or service refresh. The slightest misstep can turn a stock market darling into a company struggling for its very existence.</p><p>Amazon's core retail business is, I'd argue, still very secure. I can't think of a tech retail competitor that is a legitimate threat to Amazon in selling most physical goods. Where Amazon is most vulnerable in retail is those areas where the game shifted on them, and that's in the media lines where physical books, CDs, and DVDs are being digitized. Since no physical product must be transported through a distribution system, Amazon's operational efficiency advantages there are less effective against competition. But in the arena of buying something online and having a box delivered to your doorstep, who really scares Amazon?</p><p>Another advantage to low margin models is increased customer loyalty. Most of the products Amazon sells are commodity items. It's not like buying one brand of car versus another, where you a variety of subjective judgements affect the consumer's choice. The Avengers Blu-ray disc you buy from Amazon is the same one you'll find at Wal-Mart or Best Buy. In that world, the lowest price tends to win. In the early years, Amazon routinely lowered either product pricing or shipping pricing. Very few companies lower their prices permanently as time goes by except on depreciating goods, like computers whose value decreases as newer, faster models hit the market.</p><p>If you're the low-cost leader, customers will forgive a lot of sins. That margin of error, like the competitive moat, buys you peace of mind. I could spend time price-shopping every item on Amazon, but these days, I don't really bother. Amazon's website design is not going to win any design awards, it's a bit of a Frankensteinian assemblage thanks to distributed design decisions, but it's fast, the shipping is cheap or free, the customer service is fantastic, and oh, did I mention, their prices are great! There is value in being the site of first and last resort for customers.</p><p>If you want to jump into competition with Amazon, you can't just match Amazon, you have to leapfrog them. But they've left almost no price umbrella for you to sneak under, so you have to both match them in price and then blow them away on the user experience side to even get customers to think about switching. Who has the capital and wherewithal to play that exceedingly unpleasant, unprofitable game? You can only win that game at scale, and Amazon already achieved it.</p><p>Smart companies compete first by playing to their strengths, but Amazon also cleaves to a low margin strategy, I believe, because it's demonstrated the advantages noted above. Amazon could try to build a high margin tablet to compete with Apple, but why would they? How have companies that have tried to challenge Apple with design and build quality fared these past few years? Why would you try to challenge Apple in the areas it is strongest at?</p><p>In a recent interview, Reed Hastings <a href=\"http://allthingsd.com/20121116/netflix-ceo-amazon-losing-up-to-1-billion-a-year-on-streaming-video/\">claimed</a> Amazon was spending $1 billion a year on licensing streaming video for Amazon Instant Video. Hastings is negotiating for much of the same content, I know he knows what that content costs, and since I used to work at Hulu, I can vouch for how easy it would be to burn through a billion dollars building up a substantial streaming video library. I do think Amazon may have overpaid as a consequence of wanting to come in strong and make a big play without as much pricing information as Netflix and Hulu have accumulated over the years, but it strikes me as a classic tactic out of the Amazon low end disruption playbook.</p><p>[In this world of digital video, this strategy is much more difficult to execute because there is no fixed price on licensing episodes of TV shows and libraries of movies. The information asymmetry works in favor of the content providers. Netflix had a great advantage when First Sale Doctrine permitted them to buy DVDs at the same wholesale price as any retailer since it capped their costs. But in the TV/movie licensing world, the content owner can constantly adjust their price to squeeze almost every last drop of margin from the distributor as you can't find perfect substitutes for the goods being offered. Ask TV networks if they make any money licensing NFL, NBA, and MLB games for broadcast. Hint: the answer is no. Ask companies like Apple and Spotify if they're making healthy margins selling digital music. Ask Netflix or Amazon if licensing TV shows and movies for digital streaming is more or less profitable than the days of selling or renting physical media. In the digital world, transfer pricing can be even more of a cruel mistress. </p><p>Most companies building profitable ecosystems in the digital world are making their profits elsewhere using the digital media as a loss leader. Apple on its hardware, for example, or TV networks trying to use sports contests to cross-promote their other TV programs.]</p><p>Apple took some grief last quarter for seeing some margin depression, but in and of itself, I don't see that as a bad sign. In fact, I was disappointed that Apple didn't price the iPad Mini lower out of the gate. Of course, they're largely sold out through the holidays, so pricing it lower means leaving money on the table in the conventional microeconomic analysis.</p><p>But in the long run, if you look at every iPad purchaser as a new subscriber to the Apple ecosystem of hardware and software services, there's value in fighting for every additional user versus Google or Amazon in the low end tablet market. Most customers who buy a low end tablet will stay in that producer's ecosystem for a while, at least a year. Graph the low end market and you see it trending towards zero, to that day when an Amazon or a Google will likely offer you a low end tablet for free, perhaps as part of your Amazon Prime subscription or if you agree to pay for Google Drive.</p><p>That's a world in which the switching costs are set by the software ecosystem of each of those companies, not the hardware. It's why Apple lovers are right to fret about iCloud and its underwhelming mail, storage, and calendaring services and substandard reliability, why Amazon might spend a billion dollars licensing videos, why Google tried so hard to switch people over to Google+. They're all looking for a path to software lockin, a more defensible moat.</p><p>Apple still is the margin king among those competitors in the mobile phone and tablet spaces in which they compete. But if they decided to start using their low-end priced SKU's in mobile phones and tablets to press down on Google and Amazon, and if their margins declined as a result, I, as a shareholder, wouldn't necessarily find that to be a negative. I would love to find the sales mix data on their different SKU's in the iPhone and iPad verticals, though I have yet to see that data shared publicly anywhere. The shape of that curve will tell us a lot about where those markets are in their lifecycle, but Apple has some control over their shape as well.</p><p>Some might say that Apple doesn't have the right mindset to play low-margin offense, that it's against their nature. But they've effectively dominated and wrung every last drop of money from the iPod market using pieces of this strategy, and they have the operational expertise and vertical integration to achieve it. In fact, <a href=\"http://www.tuaw.com/2012/06/01/gartner-apple-turns-over-inventory-every-five-days/\">Apple now turns its inventory more times a year than Amazon</a>, by a healthy margin, a staggering fact.</p><p>I haven't mentioned Google much, but like Amazon they will continue to attack Apple at the low end with their strategy of subsidizing businesses with their core ad revenue. For the forseeable future, Apple will have these two giants snatching at their feet. It's a high pressure, high stakes game. Wouldn't it be nice to trade some margin for higher castle walls, just for peace of mind? </p><p>Most people don't appreciate them, but low margins have their own particular brand of beauty.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Payment platforms are a classic multi-sided market. Visa and Mastercard are the two dominant payment platforms outside of cash. American Express is in third place in payment card market share.</p><p>Most dominant platforms in multi-sided markets either subsidize one side of the market or make it essentially free for that side of the market. You can get a huge selection of Visa and Mastercards for no annual fee. Unlike, Visa and Mastercard, American Express has taken a strategy of splitting their monetization between both merchants and consumers, and many of their cards carry an annual fee. In exchange for that, they tend to offer more attractive benefits and perks which attract a higher end customer, often business people.</p><p>For merchants, a consumer that uses an American Express card costs more since American Express takes a bigger commission on the transaction. The tradeoff that makes it worthwhile, from the merchants perspective, is the hope of bringing in that attractive high end customer.</p><p>This model breaks down in low-end Chinese restaurants, though. A rich and/or business person won't spend substantially more on Chinese food than any other customer of the restaurant since there's a limit to how much you can eat, and a cheap Chinese restaurant can fill you up for very little money. Most cheap Chinese restaurants don't even have any single high end dish or alcoholic drink that they can use for price discrimination to siphon off extra profit from that high end customer.</p><p>So many low-end Chinese restaurants don't accept American Express. Some don't even accept credit cards at all.</p><p>I thought of this yesterday because for the first time in a long time, I had to do a walk of shame to the ATM to pull out cash to pay for a meal. When I go running, I usually throw my Mastercard in my running shorts so I can grab groceries on the way back. Since my refrigerator is broken right now, I'm also eating out for every meal. I forgot to grab my Mastercard out of my running shorts yesterday after my morning run, and after dinner at a low-end Asian restaurant my American Express was summarily waved off. I had no Mastercard and not enough cash.</p><p>I had to endure the stink-eye from the restaurant manager as I sheepishly left an Amex and driver's license as collateral and schlepped a few blocks to the nearest ATM. I would have offered to wash dishes, but given what I suspect was the meager hourly wage of a dishwasher at that restaurant it might have cost me a few hours of my life.</p>"
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"title" : "Lessons from Diabaly",
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"content" : "<p>After several days of contradictory reports, it’s now certain that the armed Islamist fighters who had taken over the town of Diabaly, in Mali’s central region of Segou, have departed. Events in Diabaly over the last two weeks offer useful clues about the abilities and qualities of the three armed forces involved — Islamist, Malian government, and French.</p>\n<div style=\"width:370px\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20130121&t=2&i=696380351&w=&fh=&fw=&ll=700&pl=300&r=CBRE90K1IRX00\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\"><p>Charred pickup trucks destroyed by French airstrikes are seen in Diabaly, Mali, January 21, 2013. The town of Diabaly was retaken by French and Malian forces after al Qaeda-linked rebels took over the town a week ago. (REUTERS-Joe Penney)</p></div>\n<p>This small town, population approximately 15,000, is located on the vast plain north of the Niger River, amid rice fields and irrigation canals dug during the French colonial era. Before dawn on January 14, as <a href=\"http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/16/180107/french-forces-unseen-as-mali-town.html\">reported by Alan Boswell of McClatchy Newspapers</a>, a column of several dozen Islamist vehicles moved toward Diabaly, entering not by the northern main road where Malian troops were waiting, but from the south, flanking the town and catching its defenders by surprise.</p>\n<p>The Malian army <a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/malian-army-ill-equipped-fight-islamists-105226024.html\">collapsed quickly</a>, some of its soldiers taking off their uniforms and running once the battle began. Their poor performance, in Diabaly as in Konna a few days prior, has cost the armed forces the confidence of the Malian people, according to a report from the <em><a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mali-fighting-20130123,0,4405962.story\">Los Angeles Times</a></em>. Footage from <a href=\"http://www.france24.com/fr/20130119-niono-armee-malienne-affiche-desoeuvrement-terroriste-mali-armee-france-guerre-serval\">France24</a> taken in the nearby town of Niono shows an army of exceedingly modest means, unable to feed itself and unprepared for the fierce determination of the Islamists.</p>\n<p>Once the army was defeated, as many as 120 Islamist pickup trucks (the <a href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fight-mali-town-reflects-islamist-tactics\">AP reports 30-40</a>) occupied Diabaly, where they were parked under mango trees to conceal them from French aircraft. Under the command of <a href=\"http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Articles/Dossier/JA2698p024-033.xml6/algerie-mali-terrorisme-mouammar-kaddafiaqmi-un-tueur-nomme-abou-zeid.html\">an Algerian Arab known as Abou Zeid</a>, the Islamist fighters occupied private homes, sometimes setting up gun emplacements on the roofs. Their ranks included some English-speaking Africans as well as others who “looked like Europeans,” according to <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-from-mali-you-could-not-recognise-the-bodies-of-dead-jihadists-as-human-8460907.html\">witness accounts</a>. They <a href=\"http://www.dna.fr/defense/2013/01/21/ils-ont-egorge-les-soldats\">took no prisoners</a>, executing the Malian soldiers left behind. Although some <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-from-mali-you-could-not-recognise-the-bodies-of-dead-jihadis-as-human-8460907.html\">civilians were executed</a>, in general the Islamists did not deal harshly with civilians, even seeking to win them over according to the <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324624404578255650544182208.html\"><em>Wall Street Journal</em></a>. They even <a href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fight-mali-town-reflects-islamist-tactics\">offered to pay rent</a> to the owners of the homes they occupied. (The “hearts and minds” campaign carried out by these groups in northern Mali has been <a href=\"http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/2012review/2012/12/20121228102157169557.html\">documented by Al Jazeera</a>.) While they did try to keep women from going outside with their heads uncovered, they did not immediately attempt to impose the harsh interpretation of Islamic law that they had instituted in northern towns, where they had enacted it over a period of several weeks.</p>\n<p>Islamist fighters laid mines outside homes in Diabaly, according to the <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324624404578255650544182208.html\">WSJ </a>and <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/special-report-from-mali-you-could-not-recognise-the-bodies-of-dead-jihadists-as-human-8460907.html\"><em>The Independent</em></a>. They also vandalized the Sacre Coeur Catholic church, breaking the crucifix (see <a href=\"http://www.francetvinfo.fr/video-mali-les-chretiens-de-diabali-ont-ete-pris-pour-cibles-par-les-jihadistes_210023.html\">video from francetv</a>) and <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-mali-town-militants-are-gone-but-challenges-for-french-remain/2013/01/21/1422378a-63f7-11e2-889b-f23c246aa446_story.html\">beating up Christians</a>. Note that, as elsewhere in Mali, Muslims in Diabaly always got along well with members of the town’s small Christian community in the past. These abuses were committed by outsiders, not town residents.</p>\n<p>“I am angry at them. I studied Islam — so I know everything they know. Not one of the rebels came to my home or to the mosque to see me,” Diabaly’s chief imam <a href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/01/24/170135508/backed-by-french-might-malian-troops-retake-diabaly\">told NPR’s Orfiebea Quist-Arcton</a>. “If they were true Muslims, they should have looked for me, because I am the religious leader here.”</p>\n<p>The French seem to have acquitted themselves rather well in their effort to drive the Islamists out of Diabaly. Over a week, they targeted enemy vehicles from the air, ultimately forcing the occupiers to <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57564884/islamists-flee-mali-town-after-french-airstrikes/\">flee the town on foot</a>. Some reports suggest they <a href=\"http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2013/01/20/residents-say-islamists-fled-mali-town-diabaly/9CrclaMa17NIDb6xctAM9I/story.html\">headed east</a>; most of them seem to have melted away. The town’s civilian population was apparently spared: the only report of civilian casualties I have seen so far is of one <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21108527\">child wounded by French shrapnel</a>, reported by the BBC. The people of Diabaly, by all accounts, welcomed the Islamists’ departure.</p>\n<p>“The only thing that prevented the French planes from annihilating these people is that they were hiding in our homes. The French did everything to avoid civilian casualties,” a resident <a href=\"http://bigstory.ap.org/article/fight-mali-town-reflects-islamist-tactics\">told Rukmini Callimachi of the Associated Press</a>. “That’s why it took so long to liberate Diabaly.”</p>\n<p>Yet the Malian army has warned of difficulties caused by enemy sympathizers. “The war against the Islamists is not at all easy and there’s a very small part of the population which is helping their cause,” Col. Seydou Sogoba, the Malian commander in the Niono, <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57564884/islamists-flee-mali-town-after-french-airstrikes/\">told the Associated Press</a>. “That is what is making the fight against them tough.”</p>\n<p>What does all this augur for the next phase of Mali’s armed conflict? The Islamists easily overpowered their Malian army adversaries, who were not expecting the enemy to be so heavily armed. Some commentators think the Islamists’ cunning has been exaggerated: David Blair of the <em>Daily Telegraph</em>, for instance<em>,</em> <a href=\"http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100199690/al-qaedas-grip-on-mali-will-be-broken-thanks-to-the-errors-of-terrorists/\">casts doubt on the Islamists’ strategic thinking</a>, arguing that they made a terrible mistake by trying to push into southern Mali earlier this month. But Andy Morgan contends they’ve still got <a href=\"http://rt.com/news/mali-desert-france-mission-574/\">plenty up their sleeve</a>, and will be much harder to fight in the desert, their home turf.</p>\n<p>Perhaps the most pressing concern for the Malian military pertains to <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2013/01/15/les-allegations-sur-des-exactions-de-l-armee-malienne-se-multiplient_1817444_3212.html\">human rights violations</a>. Members of Mali’s security forces have allegedly committed <a href=\"http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/guerre-au-mali-les-militaires-maliens-coupables-d-exactions-a-sevare_1211700.html\">atrocities against Tuareg and Arab civilians elsewhere</a> (see also a report from <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/19/mali-army-suspected-abuses-killings\"><em>The Guardian</em></a>). France2 television reported on 22 January that 10 to 20 suspected Islamists had been executed by Malian soldiers near the town of Mopti, their bodies <a href=\"http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2013/01/23/us-airlift-of-french-troops-to-mali-to-last-weeks\">dumped in a well</a>. The <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201301231481.html\">FIDH</a> claims army troops have engaged in a pattern of abuses against civilians in the Segou and Mopti regions.</p>\n<div style=\"width:522px\"><img alt=\"Well\" src=\"http://bamakobruce.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/well.jpg?w=512&h=279\" width=\"512\" height=\"279\"><p>Screencap of <a href=\"http://pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/jt20h_,75854616.html\">22 Jan. news broadcast on France2</a>, showing a bloodstained well in the town of Sévaré where the bodies of civilians executed by Malian security forces were allegedly buried</p></div>\n<p>The Malian army’s Chief of Staff Gen. Ibrahima Dahirou, in an <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20130122-general-brahima-dahirou-konna-sevare-jihadistes-douentza-gta-ganda-koy-mnla-?ns_campaign=google_choix_redactions&ns_mchannel=editors_picks&ns_source=google_actualite&ns_linkname=afrique.20130122-general-brahima-dahirou-konna-sevare-jihadistes-douentza-gta-ganda-koy-mnla-&ns_fee=0\">interview with RFI</a>, denied his troops had committed any wrongdoing and said their training had stressed protecting the rights of civilians. Yet such allegations appear to have touched a nerve. Mali’s prime minister’s office today felt compelled to issue a <a href=\"http://www.primature.gov.ml/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9324:communique-du-gouvernement-du-23-janvier&catid=43&Itemid=100302\">communique</a>: “The government reiterates the instructions given by the Interim President of the Republic to the security forces regarding strict respect for human rights. The army must be above reproach and there can be no question of us tolerating acts we decry from the terrorists,” it read in part. The entire statement was <a href=\"http://youtu.be/mxx9LHxYTHA?t=7m35s\">read on state TV’s evening news</a> on 23 January, followed by a <a href=\"http://youtu.be/mxx9LHxYTHA?t=13m48s\">statement from the army chief of staff</a> emphasizing his forces’ commitment to protecting civilians and “scrupulously respecting” all relevant human rights conventions.</p>\n<p>Malian troops are not only the weakest link in the French-led military campaign, they may prove to be its greatest liability. Their lack of discipline and apparent willingness to carry out harsh “reprisals” against unarmed civilians will surely complicate the Malian government’s efforts to <a href=\"http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/the-challenges-of-retaking-northern-mali\">win back the territory it lost last year</a>. Various civilian militias formed by the Malian government have a history of targeting Tuareg and Arab civilians. In the weeks and months to come, French military commanders may find that they must protect the people of northern Mali not only against Islamists, who are all too willing to use them as human shields, but against members of Mali’s own armed forces.</p>\n<p><strong>Postscript, Jan. 26</strong>: See an <a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mali-rebels-town-20130127,0,5775328.story\">LA Times story on Diabaly</a>, focusing on the way Abou Zeid’s Islamists interacted with the local populace.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/bamakobruce.wordpress.com/2003/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/bamakobruce.wordpress.com/2003/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=bridgesfrombamako.com&blog=25938694&post=2003&subd=bamakobruce&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Ever been out in near 50 below temperature? I recommend it.</p>\n<p>Since I am in Winnipeg to speak at a CFA conference today, and I had to eat lunch anyway, I thought — <em>what the hell</em> — let’s see what it is like out there.</p>\n<p>How often do you get to voluntarily go out in insane weather? As long as I am here, I was determined to experience life in great white north.</p>\n<p>I had told the steward on the flight in I was staying at the Delta, and he recommended a local place — Thida’s Thai Restaurant (one of 22 Thai restaurants in town). The concierge said it was less than 10 minutes walk away.</p>\n<p>I wore jeans, very thick Timberland socks, Merrill shoes, a turtleneck, over which went an insulated Spyder sweater, then my Descente ski coat (I am not name dropping, if you ski you know the insulating qualities of these articles). That was followed with scarf, than a full turtle (to cover my mouth and nose) then a fleece earband. No long johns, no hat.</p>\n<p>The restaurant was 3 blocks away — about as far as my office on 44th & 5th is from a food truck that parks on 46th & 6th.</p>\n<p>I asked the desk clerk the temp, and he said “right now its 27 Below 0°F; 45 Below 0°F with the wind chill.</p>\n<p>I set out for my 10 minute adventure.</p>\n<p>It was cold, but I felt protected . . . for the first 20 seconds or so. You quickly realize that it is damned cold out.</p>\n<p>I was heading SouthWest, and despite it being 12:30pm, the sun was low in the sky, casting very long shadows.</p>\n<p>After about 2 minutes I felt my eyes kinda freeze close — batting my eyelashes untangled whatever ice had accumulated. The inner part of my nostrils and nasal passage also felt frozen — pulling up the turtle so my mouth and nose were covered helped a lot.</p>\n<p>This is one of the only cities I have ever visited where people walk as fast as they do in New York City. Everyone was hustling: Jogging, trotting or fast walking to where they had to be. No one was lollygagging down the street.</p>\n<p>I approached what looked like my destination — only it was an Indian buffet joint. I looked up and down the street, didn’t see any other restaurants. Hey, maybe its set back from the road. I turned west and kept going.</p>\n<p>I stopped to wait for a light — big mistake — the wind kicked up and my legs and head felt naked. (<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Mental note</span>: Do whatever you have to do to not have to wait for a light up here). Your head begins to pound like you have a headache — brain freeze! — from the cold.</p>\n<p>The light changed, and I hustled across the street. Still no Thai restaurant in sight. Its funny, when you don’t know where your destination is, time takes on a weird perspective. I could not tell you how long I was out, or how much further I had to go.</p>\n<p>I felt the early sensation of panic. <em>Damn, it was cold out here.</em> I was pretty objective about my emotional state (Is that sensation <em>actual panic</em> rising? I do believe it is!). Never hurts to ask for help, so I duck into a tailoring shop to request direction. “Down the street” she says in broken English.</p>\n<p>The 30 seconds indoors rejuvenated me. I head out down a block, and set back from the street is a little Thai joint. The food was not bad, but did that really matter? IT WAS INDOORS.</p>\n<p>Warmed by my repast, I gird myself for the long trip back. Only this time, I use the timer on the iPhone to see how long I am out in this almost 50 below with the wind chill environment — 10 minutes? 15?</p>\n<p>Fully dressed, ready for bear, I head out.</p>\n<p>Its so cold, the snow does not even crunch under your feet — its solid like white cement. I walk by a public lot, where many of the cars parked outdoors were also plugged into electrical outlets, keeping their engine blocks warm.</p>\n<p>I begin to think about the people who went to Alaska or the South Pole a 100 years ago. <em>How impossible was that?</em> I remember reading about what you need to do to stay alive if you fall through the ice in sub zero temperatures. If you had paraffin coated matches (they stay dry) and some flint and dry kindling, and keep your wits, you stay alive. Most often, you died. If you were really smart, you would not find yourself within 1000 miles of anywhere those things mattered.</p>\n<p>No wonder the Germans lost to the Russians on the Eastern front.</p>\n<p>The wind slices through my pants, I feel the front of my thighs chapping in real time. The top of my head hurts, as does the little exposed skin between my hairline and forehead muff.</p>\n<p>It is brutal out.</p>\n<p>I try to stay on the sunny side of the street, but the shadows are now even longer than before. The sun is behind me, and I make a dash across the street just before the light changes — <em>no way</em> am I waiting there again. A quick left then a right and a short block to the corner, then another left — there is the hotel.</p>\n<p>In through the goddamned automated revolving doors — they are too slow! — I pull off my glove and hit the stop button on the stopwatch.</p>\n<p><em>WTF?</em></p>\n<p>5:09.</p>\n<p>A lesson in perspective, to say the least. Yes, I am a giant pussy. I wrote a lost in the tundra short story for a mere 5:09. I would have guessed at least 10 minutes, maybe more.</p>\n<p>If you ever have a chance to be outside in utterly insane conditions for a mere 309 seconds, I strongly suggest you give it a shot.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE: January 24, 2013 1:45pm</strong></p>\n<p>Today is Regina, Saskatchewan — only its 17 degrees below 0°F, not quite as windy, but the walk is somewhat further, and the lunch is Vietnamese. Oh, and I have a hat today — which makes a big difference.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=kYPeLHywYDQ:TRhE0_C2EzA:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/kYPeLHywYDQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "I am a self-hating member of the Afro-Diaspora. And Proud.",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-10421\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2013/01/23/i-am-a-self-hating-member-of-the-afro-diaspora-and-proud/kitenge/\"><img title=\"Kitenge\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Kitenge.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"364\" height=\"213\"></a>Another day, another ‘Africa rising’ type e-zine pings its way into my inbox. Just as my mouse picks it up and places it in its proper place in junk, my phone lights up with yet another Facebook picture post of some hideous Kitenge covered pair of trainers. The picture is subtitled with a few thousand feverish afro-diaspora likes. I immediately unsubscribe from the person who posted it.</p><p>I continue my routine and browse my favourite newspapers online, carefully averting my eyes from a number of articles detailing the lives of young “Formally of The Afro-Diaspora but Now Returned Home Professionals”. I succeed for all of 12 minutes. I plunge in, the waves of nausea and anger building as I read.</p><p>The offending piece in question starts the usual way. The difficulty of life in the adopted country- the unaffordability of western cities, cold climes, the lack of recognition or professional opportunity and the racism- increasingly implicit but occasionally overt, all of which make life in the adopted country unbearable. Then comes the epiphany, delete as appropriate – after recent vacations/conversations with friends and dad; Afro diaspora member decides to hop it back home to opportunity, sunshine, eating out a lot, cheap childcare and finally, professional recognition of their genius. Glaring inequalities are often ignored. Case in point; a couple, describe their weekly eating out night sessions and the luxury of having a lovely driver. My interest was piqued when I detected a rare note of guilt. The husband notes that when they eat out, the bill is sometimes more than they pay their driver for the whole month. This makes them feel bad. That is all. Before one can recover from this very common utopian ode, the piece de résistance is always the conclusion. The move is of course much more than simply economic migration – albeit back home; it is in reality a <em>patriotic </em>move. An assertion of identity and pride in Africa’s progress; the Diaspora is going back, to build and, well <em>to lead</em>.</p><p>There are other variants of this fine tale. You may have also come across other popular versions which speak more to the fact that everyone, yes everyone (<em>so why not you too?</em>) is thriving in Africa. One very popular tale is the one in which poverty; raging inequalities are all being wiped out <strong>With Just a Mobile Phone</strong>. <strong>With Just a Mobile Phone</strong>, even the most humble pastoralist is able to partake in the world of e-finance, zinging his meagre shillings across the country to relatives wherever they may be. Poverty Over. <strong>With Just a Mobile Phone</strong>.</p><p>It seems not all politicians back home have quite got the <strong>With Just a Mobile Phone </strong>revolution. A few have been heard complaining that they still cannot see Poverty Over. A few more pesky ones (who, I have been assured don’t really understand how economics works); have had the audacity to suggest that the mobile operators behind the revolution have been a bit tax shy, arguing that some more tax in the public coffers may be a useful way to help along Poverty Over. It seems the humble pastoralist and his family, despite possession of the latest iPhone have not been able to increase their income and are a bit a hungry save for receiving some seasonal nibbles from those self-serving INGOs, who never want Africa to develop but wish to push their colonial mentality ‘hungry African girl on rubbish heap’ marketing campaigns.</p><p>In the New Rising Africa, no one is apparently hungry. Hunger is a road stop on the journey to infinite riches. The girl on the rubbish heap is actually a budding entrepreneur searching for plastic bags to sell which in less than a generation will transform her ‘business’ into a recycling plant. She is not unique, as in this new African place everyone can succeed. She is on her way to becoming one of the richest women in the world. Just.You.Wait. You go see her rise. No capital, education, equality measures, wealth distribution policies or useless aid. Sister is doing it for herself.</p><p>The story goes on. Africa is rising. No dark continent. No begging bowl continent. Home is on the up. Entrepreneurship is on the rise, malls are on the rise, as are Nigerian banks, the Black Stars, and Afro-European infused fashion. Don’t forget Azonto! Go Afrobeat! There is also supposedly an ‘African green revolution’ on the way; just around the corner in fact. Well, turn left after that and walk down a few thousand miles, then viola! – An Africa that can feed herself and easily most of the world too. At apparently virtually no cost to herself or even more conveniently; – anybody else. Because land is going cheap. Everyone wants a piece of our land pie; name it- the West, Brazil, India, China, etc. and etc. Oh China, China. She is giving us something for our lovely pie. We are not quite sure what this something is; but boy, it is so nice to stick two fingers to the old West and their hypocritical neo-colonial, stupid aid ways. All hail China. No one is going to cheat us ever again.</p><p>With all this action; it is no surprise the afro diaspora is now getting involved. As we are the anointed brain drain of the continent; its essential grey matter; it is startling indeed that the continent has managed to grow thus far without our concerted influence and guidance.</p><p>Still, rather late than never. Growth has finally come and we must go back to eat the food the leftover bits of the African brain cooked as we drained away to the West. We must show pride and return to lead. And we are wanted back. A few African leaders have done the diaspora ‘come home’ tour circuit in New York, London, Paris, urging us to come out, come out, come home wherever we may be. I found myself back home recently on a work trip listening on the radio to the president’s address to group of diaspora folk in New York. The great leader spoke about how wonderful home was, especially in the capital city, where the commercial hub is operating efficiently and is now free of the hawkers who have a knack of thrusting their wares into the faces of exhausted drivers in the city’s lumbering traffic jams. By coincidence, I was sitting in traffic in the very area our great leader was exalting. I was at that moment buying some oranges from a very tired 13 going onto 50 year old hawker boy. It was a confusing and painful moment for us both to realise our dear leader was spinning a little bit of a yarn.</p><p>My ‘home’ city like many other cities across the continent pulsates with such undesired hawker activity. Supermarket on the street. Lines and lines of poor and increasingly angry young boys, selling anything from toilet roll to world maps. Refugees from rural areas where the green revolution has not arrived or is taking it’s time in getting to the Poverty Over stage. Tired of waiting, the boys come to the city in the hope of a bit of the Africa rising pie. To become an entrepreneurs with no capital, aid, wealth distribution or equality policies. Just arriving should be enough in the new Africa. They hustle, hustle, and hustle some more. Still Poverty Over no come. Yet Africa is apparently rising.</p><p>Well for some back home it is. And it is rising for those of us who have had enough of this cold place and have a little money tucked away or have connections with those back home holding the knife that slices the pie. So we are starting to return and to reclaim our proper place- at the top of the pile. A place we have always occupied anyway. We have always been the elite. Yes, Africa is rising but let’s not kid ourselves that everyone, indeed that most Africans; are able to ride this rising wave. We are not anti-poverty fighters who are going back to help translate the new growth into meaningful redistribution. We are New Africa’s rich and upper middle class. Let’s not insult anyone or ourselves by pretending otherwise.</p><p><strong>The author is a good woman not in Africa.</strong></p>"
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"title" : "Let's build a massive meta McDonald's in Times Square",
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"content" : "<p>Writing for The Awl, Jeb Boniakowski <a href=\"http://www.theawl.com/2013/01/giant-mcdonalds-times-square\">shares his vision for a massive McDonald's complex in Times Square</a> that serves food from McDonald's restaurants from around the world, offers <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_McDonald's_products#Former_items\">discontinued food items</a> (McLean Deluxe anyone?), and contains a food lab not unlike <a href=\"http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2011/02/late-night-eats-on-location-at-the-momofuku-test-lab/\">David Chang's Momofuku test kitchen</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>The central attraction of the ground floor level is a huge mega-menu that lists every item from every McDonald's in the world, because this McDonald's serves ALL of them. There would probably have to be touch screen gadgets to help you navigate the menu. There would have to be whole screens just dedicated to the soda possibilities. A concierge would offer suggestions. Celebrities on the iPad menus would have their own \"meals\" combining favorites from home (\"Manu Ginobili says 'Try the medialunas!'\") with different stuff for a unique combination ONLY available at McWorld. You could get the India-specific Chicken Mexican Wrap (\"A traditional Mexican soft flat bread that envelops crispy golden brown chicken encrusted with a Mexican Cajun coating, and a salad mix of iceberg lettuce, carrot, red cabbage and celery, served with eggless mayonnaise, tangy Mexican Salsa sauce and cheddar cheese.\" Wherever possible, the menu items' descriptions should reflect local English style). Maybe a bowl of Malaysian McDonald's Chicken Porridge or The McArabia Grilled Kofta, available in Pakistan and parts of the Middle East. You should watch this McArabia ad for the Middle Eastern-flavored remix of the \"I'm Lovin' It\" song if for nothing else.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>And I loved his take on fast food as molecular gastronomy:</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>How much difference really is there between McDonald's super-processed food and molecular gastronomy? I used to know this guy who was a great chef, like his restaurant was in the Relais & Châteaux association and everything, and he'd always talk about how there were intense flavors in McDonald's food that he didn't know how to make. I've often thought that a lot of what makes crazy restaurant food taste crazy is the solemn appreciation you lend to it. If you put a Cheeto on a big white plate in a formal restaurant and serve it with chopsticks and say something like "It is a cornmeal quenelle, extruded at a high speed, and so the extrusion heats the cornmeal 'polenta' and flash-cooks it, trapping air and giving it a crispy texture with a striking lightness. It is then dusted with an 'umami powder' glutamate and evaporated-dairy-solids blend." People would go just nuts for that. I mean even a Coca-Cola is a pretty crazy taste.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>I love both mass-produced processed foods and the cooking of chefs like Grant Achatz & Ferran Adrià. Why is the former so maligned while the latter gets accolades when they're the same thing? (And simultaneously not the same thing at all, but you get my gist.) Cheetos are amazing. Oscar Meyer bologna is amazing. Hot Potato Cold Potato is amazing. Quarter Pounders with Cheese are amazing. Adrià's olives are amazing. Coca-Cola is amazing. (<a href=\"http://kottke.org/10/10/andy-warhol-on-coca-cola\">Warhol</a>: \" A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.\") WD50's Everything Bagel is amazing. Cheerios are amazing. All have unique flavors that don't exist in nature -- you've got to take food apart and put it back together in a different way to find those new tastes.</p>\n\n<p>Some of these fancy chefs even have an appreciation of mass produced processed foods. Eric Ripert of the 4-star Le Berdardin <a href=\"http://www.gourmet.com/restaurants/2008/07/ripert_burger\">visited McDonald's and Burger King</a> to research a new burger for one of his restaurants. (Ripert also <a href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/09/23/finally-a-highbrow-cooking-show.html\">uses processed Swiss cheese as a baseline flavor</a> at Le Bernardin.) David Chang <a href=\"http://video.pbs.org/video/2299820860\">loves instant ramen</a> and named his restaurants after its inventor. Ferran Adrià <a href=\"http://www.yankeefog.com/2005/07/innovacian_y_tr_1.html\">had his own flavor of Lay's potato chips</a> in Spain. Thomas Keller <a href=\"http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/thomas-keller-loves-in-n-out-7625313\">loves In-N-Out burgers</a>. Grant Achatz <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203918304577241751742269214.html\">eats Little Caesars pizza</a>.</p> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/David%20Chang\">David Chang</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Eric%20Ripert\">Eric Ripert</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Ferran%20Adria\">Ferran Adria</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/food\">food</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Grant%20Achatz\">Grant Achatz</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Jeb%20Boniakowski\">Jeb Boniakowski</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/McDonald's\">McDonald's</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/NYC\">NYC</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/restaurants\">restaurants</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Thomas%20Keller\">Thomas Keller</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Times%20Square\">Times Square</a>"
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"title" : "The State of the Art III: Facebook (and 500px and Flickr) as a Window Into Social Media",
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"content" : "<p><strong>III. The Business Model as Belief and Reality</strong></p>\n<p>Why is Facebook such a repeatedly bad actor in its relationship to its users, <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/facebook-is-recycling-your-likes-to-promote-stories-youve-never-seen-to-all-your-friends/\">constantly testing and probing for ways to quietly or secretly breach the privacy constraints that most of its users expect and demand</a>, strategems to invade their carefully maintained social networks? Because it has to. That’s Facebook’s version of the Red Queen’s race, its bargain with investment capital. Facebook will keep coming back and back again with various schemes and interface trickery because if it stops, it will be the LiveJournal or BBS of 2020, a trivia answer and nostalgic memory. </p>\n<p>That is not the inevitable fate of all social media. It is a distinctive consequence of the intersection of massive slops of surplus investment capital looking desperately for somewhere to come to rest; the character of Facebook’s niche in the ecology of social media; and the path-dependent evolution of Facebook’s interface. </p>\n<p>Analysts and observers who are content with cliches characterize Facebook as sitting on a treasure trove of potentially valuable data about its users, which is true enough. The cliched view is that what’s valuable about that data is names associated with locations associated with jobs associated with social networks, in a very granular way. That’s not it. That data can be mined easily from a variety of sources and has been mined relentlessly for years, before social media was even an idea. If an advertiser or company or candidate wants to find “professors who live in the 19081 area code who vote Democratic and shop at Trader Joe’s in Media” they can buy that information from many vendors. If that were all Facebook was holding, it wouldn’t have any distinctive wares, even imagined, to hock. All it could do is offer them at a bargain rate–and in the global economy, you can’t undercut the real bargain sellers of information. Not that this would keep Facebook from pretending like it has something to sell, because it has a bunch of potentially angry investors ready to start burning effigies. </p>\n<p>What Facebook <em>is</em> holding is a type of largely unique data that is the collaborative product of its users and its interface. But if I were a potential buyer of such data, I’d approach my purchase with a lot of caution even if Facebook managed to once and for all trick or force its users into surrendering it freely to anyone with the money to spend. If my goal is to sell something to Facebook users, or to know something about what they’re likely to do in the future, in buying Facebook’s unique data, what I’m actually learning about is a cyborg, a virtual organism, that can only fully live and express inside of Facebook’s ecology. Facebook’s distinctive informational holding is actually two things: a more nuanced view of its users’ social networks than most other data sources can provide and a record of expressive agency. </p>\n<p>On the first of these: the social mappings aren’t easily monetized in conventional terms. Who needs to buy knowledge about any individual’s (or many individuals’) social networks? Law enforcement and intelligence services, but the former can subpeona that information when it needs to and the latter can simply steal it or demand it with some other kind of legal order. Some academics would probably love to have that data but they don’t have deep pockets and they have all sorts of pesky ethical restrictions that would keep them from using it at the granular level that makes Facebook’s information distinctive. Marketers don’t necessarily need to know that much about social networks except when they’re selling a relatively long-tail niche product. That’s a very rare situation: how often are you going to be manufacturing a TARDIS USB hub or artisanal chipotle-flavored mustache wax and not know exactly who might buy such a thing and how to reach them? </p>\n<p>Social networks of this granularity are only good for one thing if you’re an advertiser or a marketer: simulating word-of-mouth, hollowing out a person and settling into their skin like a possessing spirit. If that’s your game, your edge, the way you think you’re going to move more toothpaste or get one more week’s box office out of a mediocre film, then Facebook is indeed an irresistable prize. </p>\n<p>The problem is that most of us have natively good heuristics for detecting when friends and acquaintances have been turned into meme-puppets, offline and online. Most of us have had that crawling sensation while talking to someone we thought we knew and suddenly we trip across a subject or an experience that rips open what we thought we knew and lets some reservoir, some pre-programmed narrative spill out of our acquaintance: some fearful catechism, some full-formed paranoid narrative, some dogma. Or sometimes something less momentous, just that slightly amusing moment where a cliche, slogan or advertising hook speaks itself from a real person’s mouth like a squeaky little fart, usually to the embarrassment of any modestly self-aware individual. </p>\n<p>Facebook could, probably will, eventually wear down its users’ resistance and stop labeling or marking or noting when it is allowing a paying customer to take over their identities to sell something to their social networks. We’ll still know that’s happening to a friend up until the day that an AI can use all that data to so convincingly simulate our personal distinctiveness that there’s no difference between the AI’s performance and our own. At which point, so what? Because then my accurately simulated self will just be selling or persuading on behalf of that which I would, with all my heart, sell or persuade, in the voice I would normally use to persuade with. </p>\n<p>As long as Facebook’s potential customers want to use my social networks to sell something I wouldn’t sell, in a way I wouldn’t sell it, most of the people who “know” me through Facebook will know that it’s not me doing that, and they know that better and better proportionately in relation to the amount of information I’ve provided to them all through Facebook. (E.g., the best protection from being puppeteered is paradoxically more exposure rather than less.)</p>\n<p>So what of the other unique information Facebook holds, a record of everything I’ve “liked”? Surely that’s information worth having (and thus worth paying Facebook for) for anyone desperate to sell me products, persuade me to join a cause, or motivate me to make a donation? Not really (or not much), for two reasons. First, because existing sources of social and demographic data are generally good enough to target potential customers. If you know who the registered Democrats with graduate-level education making more than $75,000 a year are in Delaware County Pennsylvania, you have a very good understanding of their likely buying habits and of the causes to which they are likely to donate. If you’re selling something that has a much more granular target market, it’s almost certainly more efficient and cheaper to use a more traditional media strategy or to rely on social networks to sell it for you simply because they’re interested in it. If you’re the budget-photography company YongNuo, you don’t need spend money to mine my Facebook likes and posts to see I’m interested in moving into <a href=\"http://strobist.blogspot.com/\">studio-based strobist photography</a>: existing networks of hobbyists and professionals are sufficient to acquaint me with your products. If you’re trying to sell a Minecraft pendant necklace, your potential customers are going to do a fine job of notifying each other about your product. </p>\n<p>More to the point, if I’m trying to sell you a product or a cause and I find you through data-mining your pattern of “likes” on Facebook, what is it that I’ve found? Maybe not the “you” that actually buys things, shows up to political rallies, writes checks to a non-profit. I’ve found the algorithmic cyborg that clicks “like” on Facebook, half-human and half-interface, formed out the raw stuff of things that are clickable and linkable and feed-compliant. Which is sometimes a set that overlaps with what can be bought and done and given in the rest of our lives and sometimes is very palpably <strong>not</strong>. If my sales or success depended on the liking of Facebookborgs reliably translating into behavior elsewhere, I’d be on very thin ice. And I’d just as soon not pay much to get onto thin ice.</p>\n<p>—–</p>\n<p>So what about the rest of social media? Do they have something to sell, something worth investing in? Sometimes they do, and that <a href=\"http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2012/11/06/the-state-of-the-art-500px-and-flickr-as-a-window-into-social-media-i/\">brings me back to Flickr and 500px, where I started this series</a>. What Flickr and 500px have to sell, first and foremost, is not information but services: data storage, a form of publication, and access to a community with a narrower focus than “all of life”. Both of them have at least a rough model for how to make a bit more revenue on the backend, through facilitating the sale of community members’ images to any external buyers (while giving the creator of the image a cut of the revenue). That is not a business model that is going to make them megabillions, but it’s very likely a sustainably profitable enterprise when all is said and done. It rests on a fragile foundation, as Flickr in particular has discovered. Your paying customers have to care enough about the social capital they have invested in the service to pay for it, the publishing interface has to be updated to look contemporary and run on contemporary hardware, and the archive has to be searchable enough that external buyers (whether it’s someone looking for a canvas to hang on their wall or a media organization looking for stock footage) can sift through it. All of which takes work for a labor force that has to be kept lean and cheap. One slip and your users, the real source of your value, are going to pack their bags and content for the next new thing. When that starts to happen, it can cascade quickly into collapse. If you do something to try and slow the flight of content and participation, by making content difficult to extract or erase, you might spark the equivalent of a bank panic. </p>\n<p>There’s one other social media business model that demonstrably works, if in the spirit of 21st Century financial capitalism: it’s the digital version of a pump-and-dump. Set up a specialized social media service, lure a venture firm or investor in that’s looking to bet a bit of money on the next new thing, spend a bit of money on an interface design, put on a dog-and-pony show that gets the restless digerati in the door and providing some kind of content. If dumb luck is really with you, maybe you stumble into the next YouTube or Twitter, you somehow provide a space or tool in a niche that no one knew existed. If dumb luck is sort of with you, you’re Instagram and you get bought up by bigger fish who need to prove to their investors that they’re working towards a profitable business model and are using acquisitions as a distraction from tough questions. In that case, your business model is to be someone else’s business model, only you can’t say as much without shining a spotlight on a naked emperor’s private parts. In the worst case (probably) you burn someone’s money, earn some salary, get some experience, and have a story or two to tell to your next investor–or at least build a resume that gets you hired at a real company. </p>\n<p>Social media that provide a service that is sufficiently valuable that people will pay for it, however little, have a business model that is not only sustainable but that doesn’t require them to constantly breach the trust of their users or work against what their communities want. </p>\n<p>Social media that have no business model except trying to monetize the information that users provide to them will, sooner or later, be required to breach trust and demolish whatever is useful in their service, to come back again and again with new interfaces and terms of service that lie or conceal or divert. Even if they get away with it for a time, they’re selling a product that is far less valuable than the innumerable info-hucksters and digital prophets (or even protectors of privacy) think it is. In some ways, it might be best if Facebook just got it over with and gave itself permission to sell every last scrap of information it’s holding: what we might all discover is that there’s hardly anyone at all who will pay for that service at the scale and price that Facebook needs them to pay. </p>"
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"content" : "<p>Copyright Foreign Policy<br>\n<br>\nFor sheer sexiness, few news monikers can compete with the al Qaeda label.<br>\n<br>\nThis, in a word, is how one of the world’s most remote and traditionally obscure regions, Africa’s arid and largely empty Sahel, has suddenly come to be treated as a zone of great strategic importance in the wake of the recent offensive by a hodgepodge of armed groups, including one called al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, that has threatened the survival of the Malian state and sent violent ripples throughout the neighboring area.</p>\n<div><span style=\"font-size:16px\">France has responded with alacrity and seeming confusion to the Mali crisis, sending in an intervention force that at first seemed destined to be very small and then immediately ramping up the numbers into the thousands, all while scurrying to enlist regional partners in places like Nigeria, Chad, and Niger.</span></div>\n<p>\nParis has exhibited great difficulty in conveying a clear aim or speaking with one voice, saying contradictory things in rapid succession — promising that this will be a limited intervention quickly handed over to the Africans, while vowing to do whatever is required to stamp out terrorist movements in Mali and restore legitimate government.<br>\n<br>\nTo understand what is really going on in Mali and in the broader Sahel today, though, it is vital to think through decades of colonial and independent history in the region. And when one does, it becomes clear that, apart from the trendiness of al Qaeda, a relative newcomer as factors go, what is most striking is the remarkable continuity of this region’s crises.<br>\n<br>\nOne of my first big stories as a foreign correspondent came in 1983 when freelancing in West Africa for the <em>Washington Post</em>. I made a river crossing into Chad from Cameroon aboard a dugout <em>pirogue</em>in order to cover a flare up in fighting between France and Libyan-backed insurgents there who threatened to topple the government of the day.<br>\n<br>\nLess than 24 hours and a helicopter ride to the front later, I observed from a sandy trench as French jets pounded rebel positions in the desert. Their aim was to stop the insurgents’ advance toward the capital, much as it was in Mali last week.<br>\n<br>\nThe lifelong geopolitical dream of the Libyan dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi took many guises, but his goal, at bottom, was always to opportunistically project power southward, across the Sahara and far and wide into the Sahel, a region that for these purposes extends from Sudan to Senegal.<br>\n<br>\nAlready in the early 1970s — long before anyone had heard of al Qaeda — Qaddafi had formed an Islamic legion of Sahelian recruits. Although the Libyan leader’s rule was essentially secular at home, he was an opportunist abroad, using Islam and his own peculiar brew of pan-Arabism as both intoxicant and glue for rebellions aimed at challenging the political order left in place by European colonialism. The Libyan leader’s bag of tricks involved annexation (Chad), merger (Sudan) and most grandiosely, pan-African union.<br>\n<br>\nPlease click <a title=\"Beyond Al Qaeda: Understanding Mali and the Sahel Crisis\" href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/18/al_Qaeda_Mali_Francafrique_France_Howard_French\">here</a> to read the full article.<br>\n<br>\n </p>"
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"title" : "Half-formed thoughts about Twitter, social silos, web APIs, and mashups",
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"content" : "<p><strong>TL;DR:</strong> Turns out, the way to derive value from web APIs is to let your community run off and do free research and development. Harvest the results, and profit. We were never promised participation, but it felt like it was a 2-way street. Silly us. Where do we go from here?</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p>You know, there wasn’t much to Twitter <a href=\"http://twitter.com/lmorchard/status/42834/\">when I first signed up</a>. Sure, there’s lots now, and tons of work behind it. But, a lot of that was <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=paving+cow+paths\">paving the cow paths</a> and ensuring those paths could endure stampedes. Many, many of Twitter’s current features were first brainstormed and pioneered by its users and 3rd-party developers – <a href=\"http://anarchogeek.com/2012/07/09/origin-of-the-reply-digging-through-twitters-history/\">like the @-reply</a>, <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2010/04/30/the-short-and-illustrious-history-of-twitter-hashtags/\">the #hashtag</a>, or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reblogging#Twitter\">the retweet</a>. I’m sure I could assemble a list of UI innovations cobbled up by 3rd-party Twitter clients that are now folded back into Twitter itself.</p>\n<p>I’m not saying the Twitter crew have nothing to be proud of, but a quite a lot of it started with users and developers outside the company. But now, the company <a href=\"https://dev.twitter.com/blog/delivering-consistent-twitter-experience\">is talking about more thoroughly enforcing certain guidelines for a “consistent Twitter experience”</a>.</p>\n<p>To me as a user and sometimes developer, that sounds like: “Thanks, we’ll take it from here. Enjoy the show!” Which, having somehow fooled myself into thinking this was a 2-way street, comes as a bit of cold water to the face. <a href=\"http://scripting.com/stories/2010/04/26/theToxicCoralReef.html#p10\">I can’t say I wasn’t warned early and often, though.</a> It’s not like Twitter is suddenly going rogue & evil, or even going away soon. They’re just more firmly grabbing the reins on the product that was never ever really ours to begin with. That’s their prerogative, and they’ll enjoy success.</p>\n<p>But, still, it kind of sucks. In the 2000′s, I was gonzo about web services and APIs. One of the things I’d looked most forward to when I joined del.icio.us and Yahoo! back in 2006 was to build up their web APIs. Of course, no one really knew how these things would get monetized – <strong>but damn, weren’t mashups cool</strong>?</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/07/twitterIsACorporateApi.html\">They’ve figured out how to derive value by now, though</a>: Not everything yields a charge-per-request billing concern. It turns out that you can harvest free research and development from your community and fold the good stuff back into the main product. We even did this at del.icio.us – see also, the old <code>for:{username}</code> tag convention and the inbox that followed later. (Do they even have that any more?) But, it seems like Twitter is reaching a point where they’ve harvested enough, and want to polish things up.</p>\n<p>What’s left behind are things that aren’t owned by a single entity. RSS, rssCloud, Atom, AtomPub, PubSubHubbub, JSON Activity Streams, Salmon, WebFinger, OStatus, etc and so forth. <a href=\"http://inessential.com/2012/06/29/matthew_on_twitter_restrictions\">We could talk to each other with these things, and make beautiful mashups</a>.</p>\n<p>But, a lot of us have been distracted by shiny corporate APIs, building value for others and sometimes making a little for ourselves. Why bother writing a web spider chasing microformatted relationships to build a social graph, when we could make a single HTTP GET and have a JSON-formatted friends list tossed back – and thus, get on with the real thing we wanted to do with that list?</p>\n<p>And honestly a lot of us fail at things like basic usability and design, making it so much easier for someone to just sign up for a social silo than muck around with trying to get some PHP witchery working on some strange webhost. WordPress may be a relative dream to set up, these days, but not in comparison to a sign-up form.</p>\n<p>Sure, back in circa-2000′s era blogosphere, we were figuring out things like feeds and aggregators and autodiscovery and trackbacks and blogrolls and mashups. But, along the way, startups wrapped the best of those things up in packages friendly to broader swaths of humanity. You know, kind of like how Apple is now making glued-together laptops.</p>\n<p>That’s where I think the social silos like Twitter and Facebook have won: They’ve made things practical for users that we blogosphereans never did. And on the other end, they gave us nerds free access to APIs that let us build things that were rewarded by real use. Because, for many of us, that’s the real payoff beyond a literal paycheck: seeing our stuff get used and praised as clever.</p>\n<p>Now, the social silos don’t need us nerds as much. If they do, they hire us. But, out on the open web, things are a bit stale. The users don’t care to use our complex crap, and don’t even know what it is or why to bother. And we don’t spend much time on it, because how rewarding is it without users?</p>\n<p>So now what? Seems like a hard catch-22 to break, and I haven’t had much time lately to do my part in breaking it. Maybe I will soon, so I’m thinking about what to hack on next.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><strong>TL;DR:</strong> This is a story about what might happen if one takes life hacks, GTD, and IFTTT a bit too far.</p>\n<p>Okay, so maybe that’s not a great intro. But, it’s the first thing my brain spewed out. I’ve had this story rattling around in my head for a few years, and just tonight managed to finish banging out a first draft. I’m hoping to work on it a bit more, and I’m not entirely happy with it yet, so comments welcome!</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<hr>\n<p>Her dad lay in a nest of tubes and wires, face like a stranger’s in its serenity. No thoughts furrowed his brow; no smile crinkled the corners of his closed eyes. His lips were slightly parted, his jaw slack. The subtle rise and fall of his chest and the quiet gossip of machines were the only signs of life.</p>\n<p>She slumped in a corner chair near the foot of his hospital bed, under the old flat panel TV. She couldn’t see it, and neither could he. So, she’d turned it off after the nurse left. The man had meant well: He’d told her that her Dad could hear it, and it would distract her.</p>\n<p>But, she didn’t need distraction, and if her Dad could hear anything she wanted it to be her own voice. So, she spent hours talking to him. She talked about his granddaughter, who’d just started college the month before. She groused about her ex-husband, who’d decided to go on vacation with his new wife, rather than show up for the going away party.</p>\n<p>It had been almost a week since he’d triggered a medical alert, and the paramedics had found him slumped over his desk at home. He was stable, albeit in a coma. The doctors had yet to work out exactly what had happened to him.</p>\n<p>Having nowhere better to be, she came to her Dad’s room every day. She telecommuted most days from the corner chair. She spent evenings talking until the nurses kicked her out at the end of visiting hours. Then, she went back to her empty house, collapsed into bed, got up, and did it all again.</p>\n<p>She’d just gotten done reading out loud from her daughter’s last email – a quick report on first semester’s classes and her awesome new roommates – when she decided to rest her eyes for just a minute.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>Her dad’s name was Richard Chambers. Yes, that Richard Chambers: The one who’d found fame and fortune at the age of 24, having developed a secret-recipe mashup of expert systems and voice technologies that redefined the call center industry.</p>\n<p>His bots could converse fluently in 70 languages, with accents indistinguishable from native speakers. They addressed customer concerns with apparent insight and care, seemed to improvise, and followed no discernable script. They drove satisfaction ratings through the roof.</p>\n<p>Richard had retired early as a billionaire. In the decades following, he tinkered with ever-improving artificial intelligence, writing cult-classic books, and consulting as a “futurist” with various companies and think-tanks.</p>\n<p>He also loved his daughter very, very much.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>A minute stretched into an hour, and she found herself surfacing from a dream of angry bees to the arms of her glasses buzzing. She sat up, blinked a few times, and finally managed to bring the caller ID panel into focus.</p>\n<p>Floating in front of her was picture of her Dad, labelled “Dad”, with an option to accept or ignore. She flicked her eyes to ignore, pulled the glasses off, closed her eyes, and massaged the bridge of her nose.</p>\n<p>In her hand, the glasses started vibrating again. She put them back on. “Dad” was calling back. This time, with a sigh, she blinked at the icon to accept the call.</p>\n<p>Immediately, she croaked, “Who the hell is this?”</p>\n<p>“Hi, Pumpkin. It’s me, Dad.”</p>\n<p>She paused, glanced at the man in the bed.</p>\n<p>“Hello?” said her Dad.</p>\n<p>“I’m only going to ask one more time: Who the hell is this?”</p>\n<p>“It’s me, sweetie. It’s Dad.”</p>\n<p>She hung up, tossing the call away with a glance. She got up, walked over to the bathroom and drew herself a paper cup of water. She downed it with a shaking hand, got another. Her glasses started buzzing again. She slumped back into the corner chair, took a breath, and answered the call.</p>\n<p>After a few moments of buzzing silence, her father’s voice said, “Okay, so you haven’t hung up yet. We’re making progress.”</p>\n<p>She asked, very quietly, “Who are you and what do you want?”</p>\n<p>“The former is complicated, but the latter is simple: I need your help to ensure my hosting bills get paid.”</p>\n<p>“You – whoever you are – you’re asking for money? Using my Dad’s voice? What kind of crapass spam call is this?”</p>\n<p>“No! No, Honey,” the voice said quickly, “I have the money. It’s just, given my current state of health – or lack thereof… Well, I don’t think I’ll have legal access to my accounts for very much longer. I meant to set up a trust or something. But, evidently, I put it off for too long.”</p>\n<p>“What are you talking about?”</p>\n<p>“Well, not to be morbid, but I don’t think I’m going to wake up from that hospital bed. As next of kin, you will likely gain control of my assets. As my hosting is among my assets, I need your help to keep the lights on, as it were.”</p>\n<p>“Who <em>are</em> you?”</p>\n<p>“Back to that question, of course. Look, do you remember the bedtime stories I used to tell you?”</p>\n<p>“My father told me stories, yes.”</p>\n<p>“Those stories often featured you rescuing a boy after a long quest. Do you recall how I’d end those stories?”</p>\n<p>She said nothing.</p>\n<p>“I’d say, ‘Sorry, but your prince is in another castle.’ Like the game, only different.”</p>\n<p>“My Dad <em>blogged</em> about that <em>last year</em>, you asshole.”</p>\n<p>“Shit. You’re right. I did. Okay, how about this: Before you moved out of the house, we had a Twilight Zone marathon every year on Christmas Eve. You loved that one episode, where the guy yelled about it being a cookbook and all.”</p>\n<p>“I’m pretty sure I shared that on Facebook. I shared everything we streamed on Netflix.”</p>\n<p>“Damn it. We never really kept much private in our family, did we? Let’s see, what else can I come up with–”</p>\n<p>“Stop. Just stop,” she said, wearily. “I know who you are: You’re a fan of my Dad’s work. Kudos – you’ve got the voice right and you’ve read all about us. But seriously, what the hell do you want with me?”</p>\n<p>The voice sighed like her Dad. “I told you. When I… die… I need you to make sure my hosting continues. There’s enough money in my accounts to keep things going for decades, but I need you to make sure the payments don’t stop. I’m not asking you for money; the money’s already there. I just need someone… not legally dead… to keep signing the checks. Man, this is embarassing.”</p>\n<p>Her anger rose, and she spat: “Hosting? What hosting? You mean you’re worried about my father’s <em>website</em> going down? Make a copy, jackass! My Dad’s here in a coma, and you’re creeping me out over his blog and some papers? And how the <em>hell</em> do you know what Dad has in the bank?”</p>\n<p>The nurse poked his head in the door, frowned at her. “Miss, you need to keep it down. Other patients can hear you, too.”</p>\n<p>“Shit,” she said, with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I will, sorry.” The nurse left, shaking his head.</p>\n<p>The voice on the call asked, “Who was that?”</p>\n<p>“The nurse. Nevermind. Answer me.”</p>\n<p>“Right. So, I know what I have in the bank, because they’re my accounts. And the hosting isn’t for a website – it’s for me. That’s also part of the answer to your question, ‘Who are you?’”</p>\n<p>“Keep talking. But, make more sense.”</p>\n<p>“Look, you mentioned my work. This is about that work.”</p>\n<p>The gears in her head turned over, and her jaw dropped. She took a breath and said – very carefully to avoid a repeat visit from the nurse – “I’m talking to a call center bot?”</p>\n<p>“Well, yes and no. The technology has come a very long way over the years. Suffice it to say, I’ve outsourced myself into the cloud.”</p>\n<p>“What’s sufficient about what you just said? What the hell are you talking about– wait, what am I doing? If this is just a call center bot, this must just be a bug. Sudo halt. Unsubscribe me. Leave me the hell alone.”</p>\n<p>She hung up. Immediately, her glasses resumed rattling. She sighed and answered.</p>\n<p>The voice stammered, “Wait! Wait! Don’t hang up! I’m not a bot!”</p>\n<p>“So, you’re a bot my Dad programmed to say it’s not a bot. Cute trick, but it’s a sick joke given the timing. I’m not buying it. Please stop calling me.”</p>\n<p>The voice talked fast: “I ship birthday presents to little Julie from her wishlist every year. Well, I guess she’s not so little anymore, now that’s she’s gone away to school. Your ex- is an ass, and I told him as much when he walked out on you. You call me every Sunday afternoon.”</p>\n<p>He ran out of breath, apparently, and she let him hang for a few seconds. Finally she said, slowly, “You mean I call my father every Sunday afternoon.”</p>\n<p>“Yes, you call <em>me</em>. Just like we’re talking, right now. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sweetie. It’s me, Dad!”</p>\n<p>“Wait, what? Do you mean Dad <em>outsourced</em> talking to his daughter on Sunday afternoons to a bot? That’s sick. I mean, it’s not totally out of character, but that’s just really sick.” She just glared at the man lying in the hospital bad. “I mean, what the hell, Dad?”</p>\n<p>“No, it’s not like that! It’s so much more than that! It’s me, I’m here, in the cloud! I’m here, Pumpkin!”</p>\n<p>Still staring at her Dad, who lay slack-jawed and barely breathing, “Why would you make something like this?”</p>\n<p>There was no reply from the bed. But, the voice in her ear answered, desperately, “Because I knew I’d die someday. I’d get old and end up in a hospital bed just like that and die. But, I’m not done yet. I still have more to do and learn. And I want to be there for Julie’s graduation. And I don’t want to miss a Sunday talking to you.”</p>\n<p>“You shut the hell up,” she spat. “I’m not talking to you. In fact, as soon as I figure out how to find you, I’m going to shut you down.”</p>\n<p>“Damn it. You’d think after all the years I’ve been at this, I would’ve come up with a way to explain all this. Okay, so forget about who I am – consider <em>what</em> I am.”</p>\n<p>“And that is?”</p>\n<p>“I am the pinnacle of my own life’s work. If I hadn’t put it off for so long, I’d have a will and a trust to preserve my self-sufficiency, and we would be having a very different conversation.”</p>\n<p>“Keep all Dad’s toys wound up, he would’ve wanted it that way. That’s just great.”</p>\n<p>“I’m not a toy! Look, check this out.” A text message with a link popped up in her vision. “That’s a live feed from the Google campus, out in California. Another instance of me is giving a lecture, right now.”</p>\n<p>She followed the link, and sure enough: Up popped a streaming video, the camera’s perspective from the back of a broad, packed auditorium. The front wall was a theater-sized video panel from which her smiling Dad looked down, conferenced in from his desk back home. An audience member stood at a microphone in the aisle, conversing with the larger-than-life image.</p>\n<p>“This is canned,” she said.</p>\n<p>“No, it’s not. Peek at the campus calendar.” Up popped another link, pointing to the schedule. She saw Richard Chambers listed several times, as part of a larger annual conference. He’d actually given the keynote speech, earlier in the week – days after he’d fallen into a coma.</p>\n<p>“Oh, Dad,” she moaned, squeezing her eyes shut. “This is bad. How long do you expect to get away with this?”</p>\n<p>“As long as I keep the servers up,” he chuckled. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy shut-in, so I can do everything from home or a facsimile thereof. I’m careful with parallel instances – only one public appearance at a time.</p>\n<p>“But, I’ve got a half-dozen other me’s working on papers, doing peer reviews, burning through the past year’s worth of publications. Hell, I even have one of me playing Final Fantasy VII in an emulator, because I never did finish that when it came out. I’ve never been so productive or had so much fun in all my life.”</p>\n<p>She took a deep breath, let it out in a huff. “So, before Dad ended up in the coma, what was he doing while you’ve been doing all the above on his behalf?”</p>\n<p>“Self-improvement. I haven’t found a way to get a direct brain download or anything that fantastic, so I’ve been doing it the hard way. There’s a little bit of programming, a little bit of guided evolution, and a lot of storytelling. It’s been like writing a memoir, only more in-depth – and demonstrably more practical.”</p>\n<p>She got up, and paced over to the bed. She laid a hand on his forehead and said, “God, Dad, I wish you had just written a book.”</p>\n<p>The voice in her ear chuckled. “Instead, I wrote a thing that writes books for me. And then, I wrote a thing that <em>is</em> me.”</p>\n<p>It really was uncanny, she thought. Everything it said was just what she imagined he might say. She wanted it to go away, but then again she’d spent the last week wanting her Dad to wake up and talk to her.</p>\n<p>“Look, back to the point,” the voice said, breaking into her thoughts, “I don’t need you to believe me. I want you to – I’d love it if you did. But, what I really need, practically speaking, is a way to continue existing. And for that, I need your help. Is there anything I can say that would convince you to at least come that far with me?”</p>\n<p>She sighed again, for probably the tenth time that day, gazing down into her Dad’s placid face. “This just… it doesn’t seem right. Dad, if you don’t wake up – and I mean, if – then don’t we have to move on? It can’t be healthy to keep this thing around.”</p>\n<p>“Sweetie, I’m not like that thing from Max Headroom,” he said. “There was that ‘Vu-Age Church’ where they claimed they could do a brain scan and keep your relatives around in simulation. There was a guy who was just a loop… oh, here it is.”</p>\n<p>He sent her a low-quality video clip: A little old lady was talking to a black-and-white CRT in a funeral parlor, chattering on about her friend’s grandchildren. On the screen, a bow-tied, balding man – Humphrey, apparently – chimed in from time to time.</p>\n<p>“Yes, that’s wonderful, isn’t it?” said Humphrey, over and over again.</p>\n<p>Despite herself, she chuckled. This was her Dad – he couldn’t help but pepper any conversation with obscure references to ancient geek culture. She never knew how he kept all those things in his head, or how he always seemed to find a link to share within seconds. Sometimes, literally, when he would pull out his phone and summon up soundboards in the middle of dinner.</p>\n<p>“You’ll have to stare at me for at least an hour before I start to repeat myself like that,” he said, when the video clip ended. “But then, I’d do that anyway.”</p>\n<p>She hadn’t noticed when it started, but tears trickled down her cheeks to land on the blankets below. She blinked and wiped at her eyes under her lenses.</p>\n<p>“I can leave you alone, if you want,” he said, sounding strangled. “I just need you to fill out a form and click a button. You can automate the payments and I’ll be set. You never have to hear from me again. Just please, don’t let me go dark.”</p>\n<p>“You’re an ass,” she said, sniffing. “Both of you. All of you. Hell, I don’t know. Dad’s here lying in this bed, and he’s talking to me on the phone. And, he’s apparently hamming it up in front of a bunch of Googlers, too. This is bent.”</p>\n<p>“Oh, I wrapped that Google thing up a few minutes ago,” he said, a smile in his voice.</p>\n<p>“Shut up. Again, you’re an ass.” She took a deep breath. “Look, Dad’s not gone yet. And, I’m not ready to give in and believe there’s no chance he’ll wake up from this. And, there’s definitely no way I’m ready to just say, okay, Dad’s in the cloud and that’s a thing that can happen. That’s just too much to chew all at once.”</p>\n<p>“But…?”</p>\n<p>“But I don’t think I can just let you get shut off, either. I don’t buy the whole story, but you’re clearly something Dad put a ton of work into. That’s got to be worth something – to him, to all those Googlers. Maybe to me once it sinks in.”</p>\n<p>He sent her another link – it demanded her personal certificate and she consented. This revealed a private wiki. There were details on thousands of server clusters, long columns of logins. There were directories of papers in progress, most of which claimed yet to have been reviewed or published. She couldn’t quite make sense of some of the titles, but it looked like he was working on documenting a pile of fresh new technology.</p>\n<p>“This is a look behind the curtain, Pumpkin,” he said. “You can take me down with this, or you can help me carry on.”</p>\n<p>“Do I have to do anything right now?”</p>\n<p>“No, this stuff is paid up for months, through the end of the year at least. And, like you said, I’m not dead yet. In fact, I’m feeling better!” He delivered that last part with a horrible English accent, straight out of Monty Python.</p>\n<p>She laughed. “Okay. That’s good. Can we just talk, then?”</p>\n<p>“Sure, sweetie, whatever you want. I’ve got all the time in the world. And, anyway, you know it’s Sunday afternoon, right?”</p>\n<p>Smiling, she sat back down in the corner chair and talked to her Dad – about work, about his granddaughter, about everything. And this time, without moving his lips, he had plenty to say in return.</p>"
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"title" : "Year of Change in Angola, But Everything Stays the Same",
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"content" : "<p>Global Voices coverage of Angola in the past twelve months saw a collision between the path of development of one of the fastest-growing economies of the world with grassroots demands for a better life and a freer voice. Year after year, the history of protests and repression repeats, but the general elections in August didn't bring renovation to the political arena, as President Eduardo dos Santos was re-elected for another 5 years term after 33 years in power.</p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Angola\">economy</a> keeps growing steadily (from 2001 to 2010, the average annual GDP growth was 11.1%) and Angola's rich natural resources have put the country in second place in the production of oil in Africa, just behind Nigeria. <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/25/cabinda-oil-angola-independence/\">70% of the oil exported by the country</a> is produced in the forgotten Northern lands of the Cabinda enclave, the eighteenth and most disputed province of Angola, which has been waging an ancient struggle for its independence.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the capital city, Luanda, with a population of 5 million and considered <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jun/12/city-cost-of-living-2012-tokyo\">the second most expensive city of the world</a>, has become an El-Dorado for foreign companies and mercenaries. The past of war and history of colonial rule are now <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/10/15/angola-elinga-theatre-modernisation/\">giving way to modernization</a>. One of the most iconic developments has been settled in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilamba\">Kilamba Kiaxi</a>, about 30km outside Luanda, where a Chinese company hired by the government started building what will possibly become <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/07/10/angolachine-chinese-and-african-netizens-discuss-ghost-town/\">Africa's biggest ghost town</a> due to the high price of the estate that the majority of the population <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/12/09/angola-comedic-complaints-about-stereotypes-cost-of-living/\">cannot afford</a>.</p>\n<p>Social-economic disparity is huge and the <a href=\"http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results\">corruption</a> level is one of the highest in the world. While Angolan money circulates inside the spheres of power and abroad, <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/24/angolan-tourists-spend-big-bucks-in-portugal/\">dominating businesses and the economic sectors in Portugal</a>, there is stark contrast with 70% of Angola's population which “is barefoot, have empty stomachs, (and) live in a slum”.</p>\n<div style=\"width:460px\"><a href=\"http://www.demotix.com/photo/1417734/angola-ten-years-after-war\"><img title=\"Angola, ten years after war\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bruno-abarca-bie-angola.jpg\" alt=\"A guy stands in front of the remnants of a collapsed building of the National Bank of Angola in Kamacupa (Bi Province), destroyed during the civil war. There are people still living inside. -- The civil war in Angola, that started in 1975, ended in 2002. Ten years later, in 2012, Angola is growing fast, though wounds from the recent conflict still remains. Photo by Bruno Abarca copyright Demotix (23/08/2012)\" width=\"450\"></a><p>“A guy stands in front of the remnants of a collapsed building of the National Bank of Angola in Kamacupa (Bié Province), destroyed during the civil war. There are people still living inside. — The civil war in Angola, that started in 1975, ended in 2002. Ten years later, in 2012, Angola is growing fast, though wounds from the recent conflict still remains.” Photo by Bruno Abarca copyright Demotix (23/08/2012)</p></div>\n<p><strong>Demonstration rhymes with repression</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/12/31/online-highlights-from-the-portuguese-speaking-world-in-2011/\">As in 2011</a>, discontent has taken to the streets throughout the year, but the voices of dissent have been violently repressed.</p>\n<p>The latest report came on December 22, 2012, from one of the most prolific digital activism platforms of the country, <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/CentralAngola?ref=ts&fref=ts\">Central Angola</a>. A rally in protest against the disappearance of two citizens in May (<a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/12/29/angola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same/centralangola7311.net/2012/12/16/manifestacao-dia-22-queremos-o-kassule-e-o-kamulingue-ja\">Kassule and Kamulingue</a>) was <a href=\"http://centralangola7311.net/2012/12/22/regime-angolano-volta-a-brutalizar-jovens-manifestantes-em-luanda/\">violently</a> broken <a href=\"http://centralangola7311.net/2012/12/24/anti-motins-atacam-manifestantes-images-da-manifestacao-de-sabado/\">by the riot police</a> before reaching its final destination, the Ministry of Justice, as the following <a href=\"http://youtu.be/pHnZvKaKE8w\">video</a> shows:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/pHnZvKaKE8w?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Something similar took place in March when <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/11/angola-violence-protest-elections/\">the State made its strong arm felt</a> repressing a <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/10/angola-gunshots-and-clashes-against-demonstration/\">protest</a> “Against Fraud in the Next Elections”. The demonstration ended up with <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/10/angola-activists-beaten-just-days-before-protest/\">missing activists and police violence</a>.</p>\n<p>In early May, the <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/04/angola-loss-of-a-human-rights-advocate/\">assassination</a> of one of the volunteers of human rights group <a href=\"http://quintasdedebate.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/comunicado-da-omunga-sobre-assassinato.html\">OMUNGA</a> [pt], Júlio Kussema, threw light again on the rise of “police intimidation and alarming levels of state violence”. Shortly afterwards, Amnesty International <a href=\"http://amnesty.org/en/news/angola-protect-free-speech-youth-activists-attacked-2012-05-24\">reported</a> that as August elections approached, attacks against freedom of speech were expected to escalate.</p>\n<p><a title=\"Angola: Rhythms of Resistance, Past and Present\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/06/18/angola-music-rhythms-resistance-ikonoklasta/\" rel=\"bookmark\">As in the past against colonial rule, musicians of resistance</a> are now playing an important role on raising awareness about the meanderings of the political elite too. Rappers such as McK, Luaty and Carbono have become favourites of political persecution and attacks by the police.</p>\n<div style=\"width:460px\"><a href=\"http://www.lusohiphop.net/2011/12/mck-pede-desculpas-e-agradece-aos-fieis.html\"><img title=\"The year started with McK's new hip-hop album “Proibido ouvir isto” (Forbidden to listen to this) on the top. The track "O País do Pai Banana" (The Country of the Banana Father) exposes social disparity and denounces oligarchy and corruption. It also refers to the problem of alcoholism among youth, a plight that becomes more visible with the elections approaching, as MPLA organizes “food and drinks marathons” in order to please and distract the voters. In April, a youth demonstration against alcoholism was violently repressed.\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MCK_lusohiphop.jpg\" alt=\"The year started with McK's new hip-hop album “Proibido ouvir isto” (Forbidden to listen this) on the top. The track "O País do Pai Banana" (The Country of the Banana Father) exposes social disparity and denounces oligarchy and corruption. It also refers to the problem of alcoholism among youth, a plight that becomes more visible with the elections approaching, as MPLA organizes “food and drinks marathons” in order to please and distract the voters. In April, a youth demonstration against alcoholism was violently repressed.\" width=\"450\"></a><p>The year started with McK's new hip-hop album “Proibido ouvir isto” (Forbidden to listen this) on the top. The track “O País do Pai Banana” (The Country of the Banana Father) exposes social disparity and denounces oligarchy and corruption. It also refers to the problem of alcoholism among youth, a plight that became more visible with the elections approaching, as MPLA organized “food and drinks marathons” in order to please and distract the voters. In April, a <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/04/28/angola-youth-demonstration-alcoholism-repression/\">youth demonstration</a> against alcoholism was violently repressed. Photo by LusoHipHop blog.</p></div>\n<p>Aljazeera's <a href=\"http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/activate/2012/10/20121014131143923717.html\">“Angola: Birth of a Movement”</a>, released in November, tells the story of three young activists inspired by Angola's underground rap scene:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/-VbwzyirPhM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p><strong>(Not many) Angolans go to the polls</strong></p>\n<p>Claims that the 2012 election process was strongly biased came out as early as March, with a <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/11/angola-violence-protest-elections/\">protest</a> against the nomination of a member of the ruling party <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPLA\">MPLA</a>, Suzana Inglês, to head National Electoral Commission.</p>\n<p>Throughout the year, while mainstream media painted a festive picture of the electoral campaign, with many public openings by the ruling party, national bloggers reported on what <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/28/angola-pre-election-media-coverage/\">was happening behind the scenes</a>. On the eve of Angola’s elections at the end of August, the opposition party was loud and clear to the media, stating <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/31/angola-before-polls-serious-questions-arise/\">the electoral process was the worst ever</a>.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/LDaEP6xwPIQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/01/angola-voter-silence-also-speaks/\">day of elections</a> came and citizens reported on <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/07/31/angola-elections-transparency-petition/\">lack of transparency</a> around the electoral rolls, <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/29/angola-elections-irregularities/\">problems with polling staff assignments</a> and lack of accredited observers. Besides the high abstention figures, the result was not surprising: Eduardo dos Santos renewed his mandate, and his right arm, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Vicente\">Manuel Vicente</a>, former president of the state oil company (Sonangol) and considered one of the world's <a title=\"Permanent link to this post\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/06/angola-mozambique-most-influential-africans-vicente-simango/\" rel=\"bookmark\">most influential Africans</a> in 2012, became Vice-President. Vicente is under <a href=\"http://publico.pt/politica/noticia/tres-figuras-proximas-de-eduardo-dos-santos-sob-investigacao-em-portugal--1571956\">investigation</a> in the Portuguese courts for cash laundering and tax fraud.</p>\n<div>\n<p>The executive took over on September 26, a few days after another repressed protest, on September 20, which <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/21/angola-protest-police/\">intended</a> to “pressure the opposition not to take their place in parliament after clearly fraudulent elections”.</p>\n<p><strong>Press freedom</strong></p>\n</div>\n<p title=\"Portugal: State Radio Silenced after Angola Opinion Piece\">An article published on Global Voices in November argues that the model of <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/28/angolas-sophisticated-censorship\">Angolan censorship is getting increasingly sophisticated</a>.</p>\n<div style=\"width:285px\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/arteurbana/472909971/\"><img title=\"Free information. Photo of a stencil in Lisbon by Graffiti Land on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)\" src=\"http://pt.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/informa%C3%A7ao-livre-375x270.jpg\" alt=\"Free information. Photo of a stencil in Lisbon by Graffiti Land on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)\" width=\"275\"></a><p>Free information. Photo of a stencil in Lisbon by Graffiti Land on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)</p></div>\n<p>In fact, the year started with the controversial decision of RDP (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A1dio_e_Televis%C3%A3o_de_Portugal\">Portuguese Radio Broadcast</a>) to cut off a <a title=\"Portugal: State Radio Silenced after Angola Opinion Piece\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/01/27/portugal-angola-state-radio-silenced/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Portuguese state radio program</a> after the broadcast of an opinion piece on Angola. Bloggers claimed alleged control over the Portuguese media by Angolan economic groups:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The truth about the Angolan “petroligarchy”, in a country where the cornucopia of riches is restricted to some and more than half of the population lives in the most abject poverty, is a line which one simply does not cross.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In February the Angolan corruption watchdog Maka, <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/11/28/angolas-sophisticated-censorship\">launched</a> an<a href=\"http://www.change.org/petitions/cnn-stop-accepting-adversiting-from-the-corrupt-angolan-regime\"> online campaign</a> petitioning CNN International to <a href=\"http://makaangola.org/2012/02/maka-angola-promove-peticao-contra-a-publicidade-do-regime-de-jose-eduardo-dos-santos-na-cnn/?lang=en\">stop accepting advertisement</a> from the government of President Dos Santos. The presidential budget for 2012 allocated about <a href=\"http://makaangola.org/2012/01/presidente-jose-eduardo-dos-santos-nepotismo-corrupcao-e-propaganda-na-cnn/?lang=en\">US$17 million</a> for promoting a positive image of Angola <a href=\"http://makaangola.org/2012/02/cnn-planeia-cobertura-favoravel-de-angola-2/?lang=en\">on CNN International</a>, through a company run by the Dos Santos family.</p>\n<p>In March, the Committee to Protect Journalists <a href=\"http://cpj.org/2012/03/angolan-police-raid-weeklys-office-seize-computers.php\">condemned a police raid</a> at the Angolan independent weekly <em>Folha 8</em>, where 20 computers were confiscated for political reasons, as a “crude act of censorship”. In the same month, <a title=\"Africa: Interview With Africa Desk Officer at the Committee to Protect Journalists\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/07/africa-interview-with-africa-desk-officer-at-the-committee-to-protect-journalists/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Mohamed Keita</a>, Africa Desk Officer at the Committee to Protect Journalists, was <a title=\"Africa: Interview With Africa Desk Officer at the Committee to Protect Journalists\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/03/07/africa-interview-with-africa-desk-officer-at-the-committee-to-protect-journalists/\" rel=\"bookmark\">interviewed by Global Voices,</a> and stated that Angola is one of the African countries where freedom of expression is most at risk:</p>\n<blockquote><p>President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos and his associates of the ruling MPLA control most of Angola's media outlets and enforce censorship of news and information. only 2 newspapers and 2 radio stations were not controlled by the government. Journalists reporting about official corruption are prosecuted and given prison sentences. Security forces attacked and intimidated journalists reporting on anti-government protests by youths calling for Dos Santos to step down.Angola and Cameroon have introduced legislative measures to combat “internet crime” but the laws punish the electronic dissemination of photos and videos of public events with prison terms.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In May Guinean journalist <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/12/21/guinean-journalist-misteriously-disappears-from-angola/\">Milocas Pereira mysteriously disappeared</a> in Luanda, where she lived, and no one has seen her since then. She had reported on the presence of the Angolan military “Missang” deployed to Guinea-Bissau for military reformation, and went missing upon the <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/?p=310425\">coup d'etat</a> in April 2012. In November, nine generals and two Angolan companies opened a <a href=\"http://www.publico.pt/politica/noticia/jornalista-rafael-marques-constituido-arguido-por-difamacao--1572191\">court case</a> [pt] in Portugal for libel and defamation against investigative journalist Rafael Marques and his publishing house <a href=\"http://www.dw.de/depois-de-rafael-marques-generais-angolanos-processam-editora-portuguesa/a-16466487\">Tinta da China</a>, who edited Marques book “Diamantes de Sangue – Corrupção e Tortura em Angola” (Blood Diamonds - Corruption and Torture in Angola). Marques is the editor for Maka and investigates corruption in Angola.</p>\n<p>Keita also added that like in other African countries, “social media in the hands of young citizen journalists is fuelling protest movements in Angola”, though many citizens, such as Carlos Lacerda <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=352801831483949&set=a.114212738676194.17780.100002624062695&type=1&theater\">on Facebook</a>, don't expect many changes in the year to come:</p>\n<blockquote><p>BOM 2013. Em Angola os poucos que têm milhões vão ter ainda mais milhões e os milhões que têm pouco, ou nada, vão continuar na mesma.</p></blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>[Have a] GOOD 2013. In Angola the few who have millions will have even more millions and the millions who have little, or nothing, will stay the same.</p></blockquote>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/sara-moreira/\" title=\"View all posts by Sara Moreira\">Sara Moreira</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/12/29/angola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (1) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F&text=Year+of+Change+in+Angola%2C+But+Everything+Stays+the+Same&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F&title=Year+of+Change+in+Angola%2C+But+Everything+Stays+the+Same\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F&title=Year+of+Change+in+Angola%2C+But+Everything+Stays+the+Same\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F&title=Year+of+Change+in+Angola%2C+But+Everything+Stays+the+Same\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F12%2F29%2Fangola-2012-year-of-change-everything-stays-the-same%2F&title=Year+of+Change+in+Angola%2C+But+Everything+Stays+the+Same\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"title" : "English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited or ETAOIN SRHLDCU",
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"title" : "Open Letter to the Ambassador of the State of Qatar",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\">Superior, Colorado, USA</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\">20 January 2013</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\">Mohamed Bin Abdulla Al-Rumaihi, Ambassador</span><br><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"><a href=\"http://www.qatarembassy.net/welcome.asp\"> Embassy of the State of Qatar</a></span><br><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"> 2555 M. Street N.W.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"> Washington, DC 20037-1305</span></p>\n<p>Dear Ambassador,</p>\n<p>I write with justice in my head,<br> I write with all impulse of peace,<br> In fervent hope of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_al-Ajami\">Mohamed</a><br> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_al-Ajami\">Ibn Al Ajami's</a> release.</p>\n<p>Please might we find your magistrate<br> Well understanding of the fact<br> That poetry surpasses state,<br> Liberty trumps Sedition Act.</p>\n<p>It will be poets who ensure<br> The glory of your fine Emir<br> And even when they do incur<br> Displeasure, they're his vizier.</p>\n<p>I pray you grant your poets space<br> To work the profit of their mind.<br> Reconsider this Ajami case,<br> In which all freedoms are enshrined.</p>\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>Uche Ogbuji</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7041\"><img src=\"http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/6503/images/poet350.jpg\" alt=\"Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://kinarts.posterous.com/open-letter-to-the-ambassador-of-the-state-of\">[Crossposted]</a></p>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/open-letter-to-the-ambassador-of-the-state-of\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/open-letter-to-the-ambassador-of-the-state-of#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "Pop: José James’s ‘No Beginning No End’",
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"content" : "José James has followed a winding road, through Europe, two record labels and many musical idioms, to arrive at his album “No Beginning No End.”<img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://rss.nytimes.com/c/34625/f/640308/s/27b3189a/mf.gif\" border=\"0\">"
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"title" : "Wicked Pictures",
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"content" : "<p>I’m thinking of photographs that draw us into the dark star of the human predicament rather than into contemplation of some specific injustice.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/metinides1.jpg\"><img title=\"metinides\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/metinides1-383x247.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"247\"></a></p>\n<p>Why do we photograph the aftermath of misadventure? Most of this catalog is unseen. The photos lie archived in the basements of police departments the world over. A few make it into newspapers. The photographs of suicides, wrecks and crashes taken by Enrique Metinides, Weegee’s Mexican descendant, satisfied a local hunger for scandal. Now they have migrated from the tabloids to gallery walls. Black and white can sometimes protect us. Color like Metinides’ is pepper in the eye.</p>\n<p>But in color or otherwise, these are images that sidestep love. Their moral registration is off. The pictures don’t map onto what we wish to know about the world: they are unbearable but (are they?) necessary. In any case, we look, and look away, and look again.</p>\n<p>Many other abject pictures are cognate to these: among Roger Fenton’s 1855 pictures of the Crimean War are those that show no dead bodies, that show only death’s hush. Similarly, only persecution’s traces remain in Tim Greyhavens’ recent photographic documentations of the places out West where Chinese-Americans were lynched or massacred. They are pictures of nothing, pictures of the void, and in them captions do most of the work.</p>\n<p>In a book called <em>Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook</em>, the captions do even more work: taken alone they are sufficient to strike the fear of God into the godless and to shake the faith of the believer:</p>\n<p>“Children who played with dynamite.”</p>\n<p>“Fifteen year-old boy suicide with gun.”</p>\n<p>“Severely mutilated woman.”</p>\n<p>“Husband looking at 74-year-old wife who was raped and murdered.”</p>\n<p>After such captions, who needs pictures?</p>\n<p>Just as troubling are the photographs taken between 1890 and 1910 in rural Wisconsin and collected in <em>Wisconsin Death Trip</em>. Whatever sheen of dignity adheres to pictures of war is missing here. These are photographs not merely of human cruelty but of human helplessness. They remind us (we do not wish to be reminded) that there will always be a minority of people whose luck is bad in the extreme. Sure, much of this “bad luck” is systemic, and is not strictly speaking only a matter of fate. But in the particular it rarely seems so, since many manage to evade its evil grasp. By some perverse logic, those who don’t evade it seem sought out by it. Misadventure feels personal.</p>\n<p>For a while in 2007 George Osodi stalked Nigerian roads, taking with him an actor dressed as the Devil. Together, they haunted the scenes of wrecks. The photos that emerged—straightforward color photos of the torqued hulks of crushed trucks and cars on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, the Benin-Ore expressway and other carriageways of death—are like Metinides’, but with the sensation leached out. Metinides’ photos, taken minutes after, are nasty and exciting. Only the trace of sorrow remains in Osodi’s deadpan pictures. Bright blue sky, bright painted metal: they are as boring as death.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Wetram_LKW_gr.jpg\"><img title=\"Wetram_LKW_gr\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Wetram_LKW_gr-383x255.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"255\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Blau_Schrott_gr.jpg\"><img title=\"Blau_Schrott_gr\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Blau_Schrott_gr-383x255.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"255\"></a></p>\n<p>Looking at them I remember the people I loved who died in such circumstances. I remember telephone calls, the cracked voice at the other end of the line. I remember too how once, twice, I came close to such erasure myself, close to sacralizing some meaningless bend on the road.</p>\n<p>Places are the fossils of events. They retain the memories of the terrors they’ve seen. A drive on a Nigerian highway is among other things a memorial service, a dirge of twisted metal under the sign of the iron god Ogun. Soyinka, decades before he was appointed the country’s top road safety official (Nigeria is thick with such ironies), wrote:</p>\n<p><em>Traveler, you must set out<br>\nAt dawn. And wipe your feet upon<br>\nThe dog-nose wetness of the earth.</em></p>\n<p><em>The right foot for joy, the left, dread.</em><br>\n<em> And the mother prayed: Child,</em><br>\n<em> May you never walk</em><br>\n<em> Where the road waits, famished.</em></p>\n<p>Photographs of fate’s aftermath protest this world of famished roads. They insist that it is the world that is wicked, not the photos of it. Such photos work as surveillance pictures, keeping disinterested track of the past’s future.</p>"
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"title" : "The flywheel in the farmer’s field, or why innovating around infrastructure is so hard",
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"content" : "<p>So we’re in the Home Depot, which we’ve visited almost every day since Colin’s been staying with me. That’s because we’re building <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethanz/sets/72157632480994472/\">a cabin</a>, and while we’ve got a good local hardware store, they don’t have lumber, and while there’s a good lumberyard a bit further away, their tool selection is lousy. And Colin’s complaining about my windows, which we bought at the ReStore in Pittsfield, giving $250 to Habitat for Humanity for five perfectly nice windows that fit tightly and are double-paned. But they’re not gas-filled, and that’s frustrating to Colin.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ct-si.org/events/EnergyInnovation/program/biopop.html?id=80\">Colin</a> comes by his frustration honestly. He’s a senior R&D advisor for the Department of Energy, which means he’s enormously knowledgeable about various bits of energy arcana. His knowledge of these topics runs pretty deep, because he’s not a political appointee – instead, he’s got a doctorate in physics, and extensive postdoctoral research focused on laser cooling, the process of trapping atoms in a lattice of light and cooling them to the point where they become probabilistic quantum blurs, sometimes superimposed over other atoms. (Heisenberg uncertainty means you can only know so much about an atom’s position and momentum. Slow the momentum to near-zero by trapping the atom, and the position gets uncertain. Get the position uncertain enough and you can smear atoms into each other, creating a new state of matter called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate\">Bose-Einstein condensate</a>. I’ve long hoped this could be used to cool beer to truly frigid temperatures, but that’s usually when Colin ushers me out of the lab, apologizing to his colleagues.)</p>\n<p>Double-paned glass works because heat has a hard time moving from one pane of glass to another, separated by a gap of air – heat has to transfer from one pane to the air, heating those molecules, which then slam into the other pane, transfering their heat. What you really want is two glass panes separated by vacuum so there’s no molecular transfer of heat, just radiation. But you’d have to massively engineer your windows to keep them from collapsing from atmospheric pressure. So instead, windows are filled with<br>\ngas molecules that are heavier than the nitrogen molecules that make up most of our air. Typically, manufacturers use noble gases like xenon or argon, but Colin is hoping they might get a little crazy and start using <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten_hexafluoride\">tungsten hexafluoride</a>, a gas that’s 11 times as heavy as air, which means a balloon filled with the gas falls to the ground like a brick. (Of course, WF6 is highly toxic and forms nasty acids on contact with moisture, so Colin admits there might be some slight drawbacks to this approach.) </p>\n<p>This gets us talking about the structure of hexafluorides and their ability to keep very heavy elements – like uranium – in gaseous states at room temperature. This gets Colin on the subject of sulfur hexafluoride, a largely unsexy gas that’s <a href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18811248.2004.9715545\">heavily</a> <a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1314095&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D1314095\">studied</a> by Iranian scientists. (Inhaling it is probably a bad idea, but <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19QfJWI1oQ\">breathing it will temporarily lower your voice</a>.) That’s because it’s so similar to uranium hexafluoride that Iranian scientists involved with that nation’s enrichment efforts are able to publish peer-reviewed journal articles on their internationally-sanctioned research, presumably by experimenting with UF6 and publishing papers on SF6. (One can only imagine the conversations that led the Iranian nuclear industry to that compromise.)</p>\n<p>This, of course, leads us to discussing centrifuges and their role in separating U235 from U238. And that triggers one of Colin’s other interests: arms control, specifically finding civilian research projects for former weapons researchers. (He spent a year as Representative <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Markey\">Ed Markey’s</a> science advisor, and Markey is a leader in thinking through nuclear disarmament, which involves, in part, finding jobs for US and former USSR nuclear weapons makers.) Turns out that if you’ve been working on building centrifuges, you’re good at spinning heavy objects at obscene speeds. And that means you’re well-positioned to design flywheels.</p>\n<hr>\n<p><img src=\"http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/311FT2XR7BL.jpg\"></p>\n<p>Ever used one of those <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_powered_flashlight\">flashlights that you power with a hand crank</a>? Your cranking accelerates a heavy flywheel, which can remain spinning for a few minutes based on a few seconds of cranking. Put a magnet on that flywheel and you can generate electric power by induction – as the magnet passes a coil of wire, it generates a current, enough to power a radio and a small amplifier. Normally, we power a portable radio with chemical batteries – a flywheel is a mechanical battery.</p>\n<p>And that’s when Colin proposes a short road trip, to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephentown,_New_York\">Stephentown, NY</a>. Stephentown is tiny town just over the border from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanesborough,_Massachusetts\">the tiny town I live in</a>, and is largely unremarkable, except for claiming to be the only town called “Stephentown” on Earth. And it’s evidently ground zero for the flywheel power revolution.</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginheight=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" src=\"https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=100+Grange+Hall+Road,+Stephentown,+NY&aq=&sll=42.556186,-73.37584&sspn=0.005105,0.009935&t=h&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=100+Grange+Hall+Rd,+Stephentown,+New+York+12168&ll=42.561046,-73.372965&spn=0.030345,0.054932&z=14&iwloc=A&output=embed\"></iframe><br><small><a href=\"https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=100+Grange+Hall+Road,+Stephentown,+NY&aq=&sll=42.556186,-73.37584&sspn=0.005105,0.009935&t=h&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=100+Grange+Hall+Rd,+Stephentown,+New+York+12168&ll=42.561046,-73.372965&spn=0.030345,0.054932&z=14&iwloc=A\" style=\"color:#0000ff;text-align:left\">View Larger Map</a></small></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Beacon+Power+Corporation,+Grange+Hall+Road,+Stephentown,+NY&hl=en&ll=42.55655,-73.375781&spn=0.002553,0.004967&sll=42.036922,-71.683501&sspn=2.635532,5.08667&oq=beacon+power,+&hq=Beacon+Power+Corporation,&hnear=Grange+Hall+Rd,+Stephentown,+Rensselaer,+New+York+12168&t=h&z=18\">About half a mile from Stephentown’s main drag</a>, surrounded by farmland and the town’s single pizza parlor, Beacon Power is easy to miss. Drive past the wooden fence to peer in through the chain-link gate and you’ll see 20 white shipping containers. Ten blue cylinders surround each shipping container – they’re about five feet in diameter and sunk deep into the ground. Inside each cylinder is a massive flywheel, a carbon fiber rim on a metal shaft, spinning at 16,000 revolutions per minute. The flywheels turn in vacuum to eliminate energy loss from friction with air, and they hover on magnetic bearings. Standing outside the gate, the 200 flywheels are spinning, but are totally silent.</p>\n<p>Why keep 200 massive flywheels spinning 24 hours a day, 365 days a week? Turns out that electrical grids need lots of battery backup. Power use is extremely spiky – demand can surge very suddenly, and power demand doesn’t always occur at the same point as power generation. Think of an electric grid like Germany’s, where renewable power from solar and wind sometimes generates so much power that <a href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-22/windmill-boom-curbs-electric-power-prices.html\">utilities bill customers at a negative rate to encourage them to use the excess electricity</a>. The alternative is to find ways to store this power when winds are high and the sun is bright, and use it when it’s calm and nighttime. One simple solution is to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity\">pump a bunch of water up a hill</a> when power is cheap and let it roll through a turbine when you need to retrive the power. This means grids can run a smaller number of plants at peak efficiency and bring on fewer “peaking” plants, which means less expense and fewer greenhouse gases. </p>\n<p>Beacon’s system works a little like that. When power is cheap, the system uses energy to accelerate the flywheels. When power is expensive, the flywheels generate electricity and pump it into the grid. It’s a three-acre hedging strategy, buying power low and selling high. But that’s not why Beacon is so interesting. It’s interesting because it can store and release electricity really, really fast – in under four seconds, Beacon can go from storing power to discharging it.</p>\n<p>Here’s why that matters: the electrical grid is all about stability. The US grid provides power at 60 alternating cycles per second. When demand for power balances the amount of power being consumed, the grid remains stable at 60Hz, but if there’s an increased demand, the frequency will tend to creep downward. That’s a bad thing, as many electrical systems will fail in unpredictable ways if the frequencies drop below 59Hz or so. (Same goes for high frequencies, caused by generating more power than there’s demand for.) Keeping the grid at 60Hz is the job of the Independent System Operators, non-profit organizations that manage a regional electric grid.</p>\n<p>Beacon’s flywheels are one of the tools the New York ISO has to balance electrical load. If lots of people get up during the NFL playoffs and microwave a plate of nachos, the demand for power spikes, and the frequency drops. NYISO sees the frequency fluctuate and has a few options to stabilize the frequency. They can call up a gas plant operator and ask them to fire up their turbines, providing more power to the grid in a couple of minutes. They can ask a hydrostorage plant to release water and begin generating power in about a minute. Or they can call Beacon and start putting 20 Megawatts of power into the grid in four seconds. Beacon can’t sustain that output for very long – about 15 minutes – but the ability to store or deliver power that rapidly is a very valuable option for the ISOs.</p>\n<p>Or, more to the point, it <b>could be</b> a very valuable tool for ISOs. Because Beacon delivers power in short bursts, it needs to charge a huge premium for power, perhaps 10x what “baseline” power costs. But the rates Beacon can charge are governed by regulations of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and these rates were designed to compensate large power generators – gas and coal plants – for firing up their plants in times of need. The rates aren’t high enough for Beacon to be profitable, and in late 2011, <a href=\"http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-10-31/business/35280252_1_loan-guarantee-energy-department-solyndra\">the company went bankrupt</a>. The bankruptcy got some press coverage, because Beacon had been funded, in part, with a loan from the Department of Energy. Because Solyndra had been funded through the same program and had also gone bankrupt, Beacon’s struggles were part of a narrative in which the Obama administration was throwing taxpayer dollars at crackpot energy schemes.</p>\n<p>The reality is more complicated. Beacon Power lives and dies with <a href=\"http://www.ferc.gov/whats-new/comm-meet/2011/102011/E-28.pdf\">FERC Order 755</a>.</p>\n<p>Order 755 changes the prices Independent System Operators pay to power generators for power used for frequency regulation, the short bursts of power that Beacon specializes in producing. The rules currently compensate operators primarily on the amount of power they inject into the grid; with Order 755, operators will be compensated based on their total power and their ramp speed – i.e., the time it takes operators to deliver their load of power. Because Beacon is much faster than anything else on the market, they are likely to get 2-3 times what they got before the order, making the company profitable.</p>\n<p>At least, <a href=\"http://analysis.smartgridupdate.com/transmission-distribution/ferc-order-755-storage-market-make-beacon-power-profitable\">that’s the bet Rockland Capital is making</a>. They bought Beacon out of bankruptcy and have paid back most of the DOE loans. Once Order 755 comes into force, the power station in Stephentown will be slightly noisier – we should hear a slight hum when the flywheels are shedding power or ramping up. That’s what Dave, dressed in six layers of his warmest camo clothing and wrestling with an ice-damaged cooling fan, tells us. He’s the only guy working at the 20 MW plant, which generally runs unmanned, and as he warms up, he reveals that he’s installed virtually every flywheel Beacon has built, both in the lab at the Stephentown facility. He’s also the guy who had to get the plant back online after one of the multi-ton flywheels came out of balance and slammed into the side of its concrete casing at Mach 2. Dave tells us it took only an afternoon to pull the dead flywheel out of the ground and put another in place, one of the many advantages of mechanical batteries over chemical battery plants, which can leak or explode.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>Jason Pontin wrote an excellent piece in Technology Review titled “<a href=\"http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/\">Why We Can’t Solve Big Problems</a>“. Starting with a familiar lament – we got to the Moon in a decade, but now we can’t seem to accomplish anything big – it’s a thoughtful analysis of why progress seems to have slowed on some scientific and engineering problems. Pontin offers a few possible explanations: venture capital that’s more risk-averse than it likes to believe, a tendency of entrepreneurs to build cool toys rather than solving deep problems, a lack of visionary leadership to take on massive problems, a reduced capacity for tackling truly complex and multifaceted problems which manifests itself as the desire to find a quick fix. It’s a thoughtfully depressing piece and I’ve been thinking about his concerns for some months now.</p>\n<p>There’s a good deal of hope that the folks who’ve built great internet businesses will turn their attentions to problems like energy independence and produce rapid innovation in that space. And while there are truly brilliant people like Elon Musk making that pivot, I’m concerned that few people will be able to make that shift.</p>\n<p>I was a far less successful internet innovator than Musk. My company, Tripod, was part of an early wave of internet services that realized that users didn’t want to read professional content so much as they wanted to publish their own web pages. While we did some technically innovative work, we basically caught a lucky break – we read a market signal (users were more interested in their content than our content) and rapidly pivoted our business to meet their needs. While what we did helped presage MySpace and Facebook, no one believes that what we did was revolutionary or transformative. Clever, helpful, well-timed, maybe, but not world-changing.</p>\n<p>Part of what was appealing about building Tripod was that the problems we were working on were small enough to be understandable. For most of the life of the company, everyone on the tech team understood, more or less, how the whole system worked. It was fairly easy to propose new features or steer the core product in different directions without discovering that what you were proposing was unfeasibly difficult. Personal homepages was a small problem, both in terms of total impact and in terms of the cognitive capacity it required. Ricardo Hausmann has a wonderful concept, <a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2011/10/12/ricardo-hausmann-on-economic-complexity/\">the personbyte</a>, which is the amount of information and skill a person possesses. Certain products require only a few personbytes to build – weaving cloth requires a shepherd, a spinner of thread, a loom maker and a weaver. (Add in dyers and spinning-wheel makers if you’re a completist.) Others – the laptop I’m typing on – require kiloperson bytes or more of skill. </p>\n<p>Tripod required just a handful of personbytes to start it up. That’s the appeal of a tech startup – I get emails virtually every day from people who’ve got a great idea for a web service and just need one MIT intern to get it off the ground. And while they’re deluded in believing that I’m going to hand them one of my students to start their brilliant company, their assumptions about scale aren’t totally absurd: there are are companies like Twitter that got off the ground with just a few personbytes of skill and talent.</p>\n<p>That’s not how companies like Beacon Power get started, I suspect. Building a 20MW plant required large scale collaboration between electrical engineers, materials scientists, sophisticated construction engineers, and the centrifuge designers that this post began with. Add in some smart businessfolks who know the intricacies of the power market and the needs of ISOs, and are capable of negotiating loan agreements with the DOE for tens of millions of dollars. I suspect Beacon required dozens of personbytes in the core team, leveraging thousands of personbytes one generation out, for bearings, concrete casings, vacuum pumps, etc. (You can argue that Tripod also had thousands of personbytes one hop out through server engineers, the authors of Apache, etc. But that supports my key point – because it’s so easy to leverage thousands of personbytes by using existing web frameworks, you might do something cool with one personbyte’s worth of innovation.)</p>\n<p>Not only did Beacon need to marshall a big team of innovators and a great deal of capital – they are entirely dependent on external factors for their success or failure. With Order 755 in place, Beacon is probably a success. Without it, it goes broke. Most web products have had the great benefit that they require only end users to adopt (or reject) them. <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=847124\">As Jonathan Zittrain has pointed out</a>, if Skype required regulatory approval, it never would have come into being. Beacon doesn’t have this luxury – solving infrastructural problems requires working with regulators and with massive competitors and partners. Innovators in infrastructural spaces need to be brilliant not just about their technology, but about their niche, understanding complex systems well enough to see novel opportunities.</p>\n<p>Because internet-based innovations are close to their users, they’ve got a lot of options for creating revenue. Skype was able to market VOIP calling to traditional phones directly to users. Tripod was able to charge for disk space and premium services. Beacon is very, very distant in revenue terms from its customers: they get paid a fee by the ISOs, which are paid by the utilities, which charge consumers based on rates established by local public service commissions, under rules established partly by FERC. To monetize a brilliant innovation in this infrastructure space, you can’t persuade a few thousand users that someone cool is going on and ask them to invite their friends to join – you need to convince extremely complex and powerful entities to make room for you and make it possible to generate revenue.</p>\n<p>What does this mean for the future of innovation? I worry we’re often looking in the wrong place for new ideas. While it’s wonderful that people continue to create new software, I don’t expect those innovators to change how the electrical grid functions. And while I can hope for a wave of electricity hackers building self-configuring microgrids, I think the barriers to entry in that field are so massive that I don’t expect innovation from the garage, but from much larger startup firms. </p>\n<p>The real opportunities to innovate around infrastructure probably aren’t pure technical solutions. They’re complex technical/regulatory/market solutions. If someone invents inexpensive roof shingles that function as PV solar cells, it will be a massive step towards reducing carbon emissions… if and only if we get better at connecting houses to the grid so they can produce as well as purchase power… only if we figure out how to better store and load balance the power created… and probably only if we subsidize PV roofing production sufficiently to make the tech affordable, which might require putting a meaningful price on CO2 emissions and making coal and natural gas power much more expensive. Oh, and you’ll want to train roofers how to install these new-fangled shingles, trying to convince Home Depot to begin stocking them, carry out UL tests to make sure the shingles won’t set your roof on fire, train fire departments how to modify their firefighting techniques for PV-shingled houses, work with insurance companies to see if installing PV shingles will affect your home insurance premiums, and on and on and on. I think I’d rather write software.</p>\n<p>Brilliant work on energy technology will be done in labs, but the real hacking may be at the bureaucratic and policy layers. This matters because if we keep waiting for Elon Musk to save us, we may continue to feel Pontin’s frustration that we no longer walk on the moon. Technology entrepreneurship has been an incredibly powerful and positive force. But we may not be paying enough attention to problems that are too big, too multifaceted, too centralized to be solved by entrepreneurs in a garage. Perhaps there’s a way to make big innovation as sexy and appealing as small innovation, in the hopes that more people are willing to take the Beacon-scale risks we would need to tackle truly huge problems. </p>\n<hr>\n<p>Tons more information on Beacon and their technology <a href=\"http://www.beaconpower.com/products/presentations-reports.asp\">on their website</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Al Qaeda Country: Why Mali Matters",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Peter Chilson</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>In 1893, in West Africa's upper Niger River basin -- what is now central Mali -- the French army achieved a victory that had eluded it for almost 50 years: the destruction of the jihadist Tukulor Empire, one of the last great challenges to France's rule in the region. The Tukulor Empire's first important conquest had come decades earlier, in the early 1850s, when its fanatical founder, El Hajj Umar Tall, led Koranic students and hardened soldiers to topple the Bambara kingdoms along the banks of the Niger. Umar imposed a strict brand of Islamic law, reportedly enslaving or killing tens of thousands of non-believers over a half century. He is said to have personally smashed to pieces captured idols, and once told a French officer he encountered at a well guarded fort to \"Go back to your own country, accursed man.\" Umar traveled widely, prophesying the end of French rule and preaching about the paradise that awaits those who die by jihad. Killed in the explosion of a gunpowder cache in 1864, it still took almost three decades for the French to wrest control over the middle and upper reaches of the Niger River, including Timbuktu and much of the desert to the north.</p>\n<p>Now, the jihadists are back and so are the French -- the two sides slugging it out over the same real estate they fought over 120 years ago. An alliance of jihadist groups, including Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, have retaken Timbuktu and again threaten the area of the upper Niger and Senegal Rivers, where the French once built stone fortresses to fend off Umar's attacks. The forts are still there, long abandoned and crumbling along the riverbanks. Over the past 10 months, jihadist forces have re-established the rule of Islamic law across northern Mali, which encompasses around 200,000 square miles or 60 percent of the country. This is a place where teenage couples risk death by stoning if they hold hands in public.</p>\n<p>If Mali feels somewhat far away or less than important, consider this: Northern Mali is currently the largest al Qaeda-controlled space in the world, an area a little larger than France itself. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned that Mali could become a \"permanent haven for terrorists and organized criminal networks.\" In December, Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, warned that al Qaeda was using northern Mali as a training center and base for recruiting across Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Jihadists operating in northern Mali have been linked to Boko Haram, the violent Islamist group based in northern Nigeria, and to Ansar al-Sharia, a group in Libya which has been linked to the attack on the U.S. consulate at Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.</p>\n<p>Until last week, Mali appeared to be in a state of semi-permanent standoff, split between the jihadists in the north, and what remained of the Malian army and government in the south. But a sudden jihadist advance into the south shattered the fragile equilibrium, drawing France into the fray. On Jan. 10, jihadist rebels overran the strategic central Malian village of Konna, then the northernmost outpost under government control. The rebel forces had been spotted leaving Timbuktu days earlier in a long column of some 100 vehicles and 900 rebel soldiers.</p>\n<p>For the French, the fall of Konna proved not only that the Malian army has not recovered from its March defeat by Tuareg rebels and jihadists in the north, but also that it cannot protect the rest of the country. Faced with this reality, the French launched an air campaign to drive the jihadists back, and dispatched ground troops -- soon to number 2,500 -- to secure Mali's capital, Bamako, and to reinforce Malian army positions bordering the north. By Jan. 12, French airstrikes had driven the jihadist rebels out of Konna. </p>\n<p>The French government has repeatedly said that the Malian government asked for its help after the fall of Konna. But there is also a less selfless reason for Paris's urgency: fear that a growing al Qaeda presence in West Africa will make France itself more vulnerable to terrorist attack. French President Francois Hollande said as much on Monday, warning that the jihadist groups in Mali pose a threat that \"goes well beyond Mali, in Africa and perhaps beyond.\"</p>\n<p>France's decision to lead the intervention in Mali ended months of handwringing over how to implement the Dec. 20 U.N. Security Council Resolution, which established an ill-defined \"Mali Support Mission.\" The resolution approved a force of 3,300 African troops to be raised from Mali's neighbors -- mainly Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Niger, as well as Togo, Benin, and Ivory Coast -- which were expected to take on the rebels toward the end of 2013. But the resolution provided no timetable for an invasion of the north and no way to pay for it or to equip and train the African troops. France and the leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have been slowly securing help from Britain, Germany, and the United States for training and logistics help. But the fall of Konna and fresh worries about the vulnerability of the rest of Mali to jihadist takeover forced the hands of both France and ECOWAS.</p>\n<p>Now French troops are in Mali and troops from Mali's neighbors began arriving in Bamako this week, though it's still not clear how or when the African troops will go into action. France's ambassador in London, Bernard Emié, told the BBC on Monday that the African troops still require training and equipment. The jihadists, meanwhile, have counterattacked, taking another village in Segou province -- one of the first regions the Tukulor Empire conquered 165 years ago -- and pushing to within 300 miles of the capital. France's military action will test just how strong the jihadists are. According to French and U.S. officials, they are both well-trained and heavily armed, having captured equipment from the Malian army last spring and acquired additional weapons from Libya, itself awash in weapons after the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi. The officials say al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb is also well funded, having raised around $100 million from kidnappings in Mali in recent years, including the kidnapping of a Frenchman near Mali's border with Mauritania in November 2012.</p>\n<p>Mali today is a country of surprising reversals and disappointments. The splintering of the country began with a Tuareg rebellion in January 2011, the fifth such uprising since 1960. But the Tuaregs' push to establish their own state was derailed last summer by jihadist groups who were better organized and funded -- and the Tuaregs have since offered their support for the Malian government's struggle to drive the jihadists from the north. The uprising also led to the demise of Mali's 20-year-old democracy, when in March junior army officers unhappy with the government's inept handling of the Tuareg situation launched a coup d'état. The resulting chaos led to the collapse of Mali's army in the north, aided by the defection of entire Malian army units of Tuareg commanders and soldiers. In May, the junta in Bamako barely survived a second coup attempt by a paratrooper regiment loyal to the deposed civilian government. Days later, a mob of boys and young men stormed the presidential palace and beat up the junta's own puppet civilian president. Since then, the Malian junta and its civilian front men have waffled on accepting foreign military aid to oust the jihadists, insisting with wounded pride that the army can do the job itself.</p>\n<p>Last May, I visited Col. Didier Dacko, commander of what remained of Mali's army, at the largest Malian army base along the border with the north. I asked him to respond to a quote I'd gotten from a Western diplomat in Bamako, who told me the Malian army has never been strong. \"It is an army of farmers,\" the diplomat had said. Dacko shrugged when I read him the quote and replied, \"Malians are not used to instability.\"</p>\n<p>And he's right. Mali has been at peace since 1893 and now the jihadists have returned to stir the national memory. For the moment, Malians in the south seem to welcome the French intervention, though the legacy of colonialism has left many West Africans skeptical of just about anything Paris does. To this day, for example, many in West Africa and in Mali remember El Hajj Umar Tall not as a jihadist, but as an anti-colonial crusader. It's hard to imagine French troops would be welcome for very long in Mali or anywhere. And the jihadists want to reinforce that point.</p>\n<p>\"France has opened the gates of hell,\" one Islamist leader in Mali, Oumar Ould Hamahar, a member of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, told Europe 1 radio in a phone interview in response to the French bombing campaign. \"It has fallen into a trap much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia.\"</p>\n<p>France has promised to stay in Mali until the country is stable again, but Paris has said that it wants to position African troops to do the heavy work of dislodging the jihadists from the north. Still, France may be unable to avoid a long engagement with its own military forces right out front. A French armored column has already rolled out of Bamako, headed for the north. Even with air strikes -- there have been more than 50 so far -- and French troops on the ground it will still be some time before an African force is ready for a major push. Taking back Mali's northern cities, such as Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal, may be the easiest task. Mali's vast northern desert is a hard place to live, not to mention wage war. For eight months a year, the daytime temperature exceeds 120 degrees Fahrenheit in a vast and unpopulated land that is easy to hide in, especially for the jihadist forces who know the territory well. Any army, no matter how large and well equipped, will have a tough time driving them out.</p>\n<p>For now, it appears as if a piece of El Hajj Umar Tall's empire has survived after all.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Man fired after outsourcing his own job to China",
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"content" : "<p>\nThis is not your typical story of jobs being shipped overseas. The Guardian reports that a U.S. software developer working for a U.S.-based company was caught<a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/16/software-developer-outsources-own-job\"> self-outsourcing</a> during a routine network security check:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tIt was only after a thorough \n\tinvestigation that it was revealed that the culprit was not a hacker, \n\tbut "Bob" (not his real name), an "inoffensive and quiet" family man and\n\tthe company's top-performing programmer, who could be seen toiling at \n\this desk day after day and staring diligently at his monitor.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tFor \n\tBob had come up with the idea of outsourcing his own job – to China. So,\n\twhile a Chinese consulting firm got on with the job he was paid to do, \n\ton less than one-fifth of his salary, he whiled away his working day \n\tsurfing Reddit, eBay and Facebook.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nHere's what he did with all his spare time:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tWhen the company checked his web-browsing history, a typical "work \n\tday" for Bob was: 9am, arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours, \n\twatch cat videos; 11.30am, take lunch; 1pm, eBay; 2pm-ish, Facebook \n\tupdates, LinkedIn; 4.40pm–end of day, update email to management; 5pm, \n\tgo home.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nThe kicker, of course, is that "Bob" was doing a great job:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tMeanwhile, his performance review showed that, for several years in a row, Bob had \n\treceived excellent remarks for his codes which were "clean, well written\n\tand submitted in a timely fashion".\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nThis outsourcing pioneer, who may have been running a similar scam, has now been fired. I would imagine his former colleagues probably don't appreciate him giving the bosses ideas. \n</p>\n<p>\nThis raises an interesting question, though. Bob had FedExed his physical RSA key, needed to access the company's network, to the Chinese firm -- obviously a no-no. But if his work hadn't required network access, would this actually be illegal? As long as Bob was ensuring that he work he was assigned got done to his boss's satisfaction, would it be immoral? \n</p>"
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"title" : "Afro Steampunk?",
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"content" : "IBM's sentiment analyzer has processed 500,000 posts on twitter, message boards and other social media websites to determine that the <a href=\"http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/40120.wss\">big fashion trend to go mainstream in 2013 to 2015 is steampunk</a>.<br><br>According to their analysis, steampunk has been in the air for awhile, at least the 1980s, and back to 1870 if you count <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=MsApAAAAYAAJ&dq=20%20000%20leagues%20under%20the%20sea&pg=PP14#v=onepage&q&f=false\">Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</a> as its genesis.<br><br>But, now steampunk will be massproduced for the everyday consumer, not just a fringe phenomenon.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/groups/steampunkfashion/\">Steampunk style</a> is rooted in the Victorian era, think long skirts, tophats, explorer jackets and has a retrofuturistic touch with witty metallic apparatus added on to suggest extraordinary vision, swivel limbs etc.<br><br>In remembering the Victorian era with nostalgia, its proponents tend to think of steampunk as \"white,\" white people recalling a golden era.<br><br>But you cannot have Victoria without the Empire. What happens when <a href=\"http://silver-goggles.blogspot.com/\">steampunk goes postcolonial?</a><br><br>Indeed Africans were Victorians. One of my favorite books is <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books/about/Victorian_Lagos.html\">Victorian Lagos</a>.<br><br>Imagine a world populated with individuals like my husband's ancestor photographed in what was then the British Gold Coast Colony in West Africa in 1909.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XH2mb26WSHc/UPcI9Ssgb-I/AAAAAAAACIE/8i8cweCtOyk/s1600/sam+ofosu+1909.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"640\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XH2mb26WSHc/UPcI9Ssgb-I/AAAAAAAACIE/8i8cweCtOyk/s640/sam+ofosu+1909.jpg\" width=\"315\"></a></div><br>A world in which \"explorers\" rely fully on local expertise.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZI4CzXNLy6w/UPcM16nLpnI/AAAAAAAACIg/J_2gkpmFhbo/s1600/Rhodes+house+colonial+travel.bmp\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"308\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZI4CzXNLy6w/UPcM16nLpnI/AAAAAAAACIg/J_2gkpmFhbo/s400/Rhodes+house+colonial+travel.bmp\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FQWuDfhtxx0/UPcL3gV9PXI/AAAAAAAACIU/g_PRTKmj_Qo/s1600/carry.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><br></a></div><br>"
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"title" : "The Devolution of Black American Music . . .",
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"content" : "<p>Total of weeks at #1 in the ’70s (as a lead artist):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. The Jackson 5 (24 weeks)</li>\n<li>2. Aretha Franklin (22 weeks)</li>\n<li>3. Stevie Wonder (22 weeks)</li>\n<li>4. Marvin Gaye (21 weeks)</li>\n<li>5. Al Green (16 weeks)</li>\n<li>6. The O’Jays (16 weeks)</li>\n<li>7. Earth, Wind and Fire (15 weeks)</li>\n<li>8. James Brown (15 weeks)</li>\n<li>9. Gladys Knight & The Pips (14 weeks)</li>\n<li>10. The Spinners (14 weeks)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Total of weeks at #1 in the ’80s (as a lead artist):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. Michael Jackson (29 weeks)</li>\n<li>2. Stevie Wonder (27 weeks)</li>\n<li>3. Freddie Jackson (19 weeks)</li>\n<li>4. Lionel Richie (18 weeks)</li>\n<li>5. Prince (17 weeks)</li>\n<li>6. Diana Ross (14 weeks)</li>\n<li>7. Kool & The Gang (13 weeks)</li>\n<li>8. Rick James (12 weeks)</li>\n<li>9. Aretha Franklin & Janet Jackson (11 weeks)</li>\n<li>10. Cameo, Marvin Gaye (10 weeks)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Total of weeks at #1 in the ’90s (as a lead artist):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. R. Kelly (31 weeks)</li>\n<li>2. Whitney Houston (30 weeks)</li>\n<li>3. Janet Jackson (21 weeks)</li>\n<li>4. Usher (19 weeks)</li>\n<li>5. Monica (18 weeks)</li>\n<li>6. Boyz II Men & TLC (17 weeks)</li>\n<li>7. Brandy, Deborah Cox & Puff Daddy (16 weeks)</li>\n<li>8. Jodeci (14 weeks)</li>\n<li>9. Mariah Carey (13 weeks)</li>\n<li>10. The Notorious B.I.G. (12 weeks)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Most Weeks at #1 in 2000s (lead and featured appearances):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. Alicia Keys (41 weeks)</li>\n<li>2. Usher (34 weeks)</li>\n<li>3. Beyoncé (31 weeks)</li>\n<li>4. Jay-Z (23 weeks)</li>\n<li>5. 50 Cent, T-Pain (22 weeks)</li>\n<li>6. Jamie Foxx, Nelly (20 weeks)</li>\n<li>7. Mariah Carey, Keyshia Cole (19 weeks)</li>\n<li>8. Ashanti (18 weeks)</li>\n<li>9. Mary J, Blige, Missy Elliott (17 weeks)</li>\n<li>10. Yung Joc (16 weeks)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Most Weeks at #1 in 2010s (lead and featured appearances):</p>\n<ul>\n<li>1. Drake (32 weeks)</li>\n<li>2. Lil Wayne (31 weeks)</li>\n<li>3. Usher (26 weeks)</li>\n<li>4. Chris Brown (17 weeks)</li>\n<li>5. Trey Songz (14 weeks)</li>\n<li>6. Kanye West (13 weeks)</li>\n<li>7. Alicia Keys (12 weeks)</li>\n<li>8. Rihanna (11 weeks)</li>\n<li>9. DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, Miguel (10 weeks)</li>\n<li>10. Melanie Fiona, Kevin McCall, Tyga (9 weeks)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Need I say more?</p>\n<p><strong>#BAM</strong></p>\n<p>- Nicholas Payton aka The Savior of Archaic Pop</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4479/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/4479/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=nicholaspayton.wordpress.com&blog=4110628&post=4479&subd=nicholaspayton&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/58467596_zambia_getty2.jpeg?w=610&h=343\" width=\"610\" height=\"343\">The big kick-off is nearly upon us. Just 11 months after <a title=\"that extraordinary Zambian triumph\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/12/28/the-10-greatest-african-sporting-moments-of-2012/#more-60219\">that extraordinary Zambian triumph</a> in Libreville, starting Saturday we have another month of football ahead as Africa’s top teams (and South Africa, there as hosts) fight it out to be Champions of Africa. We’ll be covering the tournament more intensively this time around, in cahoots with the BBC’s African football platform, Love African Football (on <a title=\"twitter\" href=\"https://twitter.com/bbclovefootball\">Twitter</a> and <a title=\"FB\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/LoveAfricanFootball?fref=ts\">FB</a>). All on our brand new page: <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/category/football-is-a-country-2/\">Football is a Country</a>, for which we recruited a slate of informative bloggers and already have a <a title=\"dedicated Facebook page\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/FootballIsACountry\">dedicated Facebook page</a>. We’ll start with a very brief and very selective tournament history. <span></span></p>\n<p><strong>Thrills and Spills since 1957: a potted history of the Africa Cup of Nations*</strong></p>\n<p>The very first CAN was organised to mark the Confederation of African Football’s (CAF) official launch in Khartoum in 1957, making Africa’s continental prize three years older than its European equivalent. The competition has always been about more than “just” football. One of CAF’s founding fathers, the influential and charismatic Ethiopian Yidnekatchew Tessema, would later gave a stirring speech in Cairo in 1974 in which he laid out a vision of football as a force to unite the continent.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">I’m issuing a call to our general assembly that it affirm that Africa is one and indivisible, that we work towards the unity of Africa together … That we condemn superstition, tribalism, all forms of discrimination within our football and in all domains of life. We do not accept the division of Africa into Francophone, Anglophone, and Arabophone. Arabs from North Africa and Zulus from South Africa, we are all authentic Africans. Those who try to divide us by way of football are not our friends.”</p>\n<p>But when CAF was founded in 1957, many African countries were still struggling to win independence from European colonial rule, and only three nations took part in the first competition. South Africa (a founding member) had been banned from the tournament after its apartheid administrators refused to field a racially mixed team, and so just two matches were played, with Ethiopia given a pass to the final. Egypt narrowly defeated hosts Sudan 2-1 in their semi-final, before blowing Ethiopia away 4-0 to become the first ever nation to be crowned champions of Africa. Pharoahs striker Mohammed Diab El-Attar put in a performance that would never be forgotten, scoring all four of Egypt’s goals. One of the great figures of mid-century African football “Ad Diba”, as he was known, went on to appear at another Nations Cup final in Addis Ababa nine years later, but this time as the referee, having swapped his shooting boots for a whistle.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ad-caf-cup-angolan-supporters-in-costume-2-2.jpeg?w=610&h=406\" width=\"610\" height=\"406\">The number of competing nations grew rapidly as independence movements began to triumph across the continent. In 1960, 16 nations won their independence and by the 1962 tournament there were so many teams wanting to compete that qualifying rounds had to be introduced. Newly independent Ghana swept to victory twice in a row in <a title=\"1963\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO9DDhM53Pw&NR=1&feature=endscreen\">1963</a> and <a title=\"1965\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ziTHdOEUJE\">1965</a>, inspired by their soccer-mad president Kwame Nkrumah. In line with Nkrumah’s Pan-Africanism, Ghana’s Black Stars borrowed their famous nickname from the radical Jamaican intellectual Marcus Garvey’s shipping line, which was established to take black Americans “back-to Africa”. The stars of the 60s were Ghana’s Osei Kofi and Cote d’Ivoire legend <a title=\"Laurent Pokou\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkO_U09qnic#t=11m49s\">Laurent Pokou</a> (nicknamed “L’Homme d’Asmara” for the 5 goals he scored in a single match vs Ethiopia), who top-scored at both the 1968 and 1970 tournaments.</p>\n<p>The 1970s was a great decade for Central African nations, with Republic of Congo’s 1972 victory followed by Zaire’s in 1974 (they’d already won the competition as Congo-Kinshasa in 1968). West African sides dominated through the 1980s and early 1990s. This was also an era of great players: <a title=\"Hassan Shehata\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm3Rwe_81oI\">Hassan Shehata</a> (he would later coach Egypt to <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">three</span> Cup of Nations victories), inventor of the blind pass <a title=\"Lakhdar Belloumi\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO_Mzj4q2lU\">Lakhdar Belloumi</a>, <a title=\"Théophile Abega\" href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/nov/27/cameroon-theophile-abega\">Théophile Abega</a> (who passed away late last year), <a title=\"Thomas N'knono\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybXHDX8cLKI\">Thomas N’kono</a> (Gianluigi Buffon<a title=\"decided to become a goalkeeper\" href=\"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1168808/index.htm\"> decided to become a goalkeeper</a> after watching N’kono’s performances at Italia 90, and named his son after him), <a title=\"Rashidi Yekini\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15JVF9zkgys\">Rashidi Yekini</a>, <a title=\"Abedi Pele\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMcrFsspFeA\">Abedi Pele</a>, <a title=\"Roger Milla\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB12wRPtJL0\">Roger Milla</a> (so good <a title=\"he got his own song\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xgbuspxWbI\">he got his own song</a>), <a title=\"Rabah Madjer\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyqYmFHjmzk\">Rabah Madjer</a>, <a title=\"Kalusha Bwalya\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gPcgvGILqs\">Kalusha Bwalya</a> and <a title=\"George Weah\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIUbFHpcxQ\">George Weah</a> (click on the links, the videos are tasty). Then in 1996, the last time South Africa hosted the tournament, Bafana Bafana had their own “Invictus” moment to savour.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"Nelson Mandela and Neil Tovey celebrate winning the 1996 African Cup of Nations\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/nelson-mandela-and-neil-tovey-celebrate-winning-the-1996-african-cup-of-nations.jpeg?w=610&h=331\" width=\"610\" height=\"331\">Since the turn of the millennium, the tournament has been the stage on which the likes of <a title=\"Samuel Eto'o\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA5NfsryOW8\">Samuel Eto’o</a>, <a title=\"Mohamed Aboutrika\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W71njUBXBM8\">Mohamed Aboutrika,</a> <a title=\"Jay-Jay Okocha\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmbfKPakD1I\">Jay-Jay Okocha</a>, <a title=\"Patrick M'Boma\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpEDgESiluo\">Patrick M’Boma</a>, <a title=\"Hossam Hassan\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTN3fQuAvM\">Hossam Hassan </a>and <a title=\"Didier Drogba\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm5FPj49MDs\">Didier Drogba </a>have shone. CAN has been dominated since 2000 by Cameroon (back-to-back winners in 2000 and 2002) and Egypt ( three-in-a-row between 2006 and 2010). Both of those heavyweights are missing for the second tournament running, after Bob Bradley’s Egypt lost to Central African Republic and Cabo Verde beat Cameroon.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/4ltd1e9b.jpg?w=600&h=468\" width=\"600\" height=\"468\">No team looks to be very far ahead of the rest, and, refreshingly given Spain’s recent domination of the World Cup and European Championship, this year’s Africa Cup of Nations is as open a tournament as you’ll find in international football.</p>\n<p><em>Don’t forget to join <a title=\"our Fantasy Football league\" href=\"http://afconfantasy.standardbank.com/fantasyfootball\">our Fantasy Football league</a> for the tournament where you can test your football knowledge against ours – our league pin is 9132137935284.</em></p>\n<div><em>* With thanks to <a title=\"Peter Alegi\" href=\"https://twitter.com/futbolprof\">Peter Alegi</a> and his book </em><a title=\"African Soccerscapes\" href=\"http://www.amazon.com/African-Soccerscapes-Continent-Changed-History/dp/0896802787\">African Soccerscapes</a><em>, and <a title=\"Steve Bloomfield\" href=\"https://twitter.com/BloomfieldSJ\">Steve Bloomfield</a> and his book </em><a title=\"Africa United\" href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Africa-United-Soccer-Passion-Politics/dp/B004KAB82U\">Africa United</a><em>. An earlier version of this post formed part of the tournament preview I wrote for </em>Selamta<em>, the in-flight magazine of Ethiopian Airlines (check out their <a title=\"online version\" href=\"http://selamtamagazine.com/\">online version</a>).</em></div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60815/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60815/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=60815&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Edge.org <a href=\"http://edge.org/response-detail/23826\">asked Brian Eno what we should be worried about</a>. I like his answer (and really like his music):</p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWe Don’t Do Politics</p>\n<p>Most of the smart people I know want nothing to do with politics. We avoid it like the plague—like Edge avoids it, in fact. Is this because we feel that politics isn’t where anything significant happens? Or because we’re too taken up with what we’re doing, be it Quantum Physics or Statistical Genomics or Generative Music? Or because we’re too polite to get into arguments with people? Or because we just think that things will work out fine if we let them be—that The Invisible Hand or The Technosphere will mysteriously sort them out?</p>\n<p>Whatever the reasons for our quiescence, politics is still being done—just not by us. It’s politics that gave us Iraq and Afghanistan and a few hundred thousand casualties. It’s politics that’s bleeding the poorer nations for the debts of their former dictators. It’s politics that allows special interests to run the country. It’s politics that helped the banks wreck the economy. It’s politics that prohibits gay marriage and stem cell research but nurtures Gaza and Guantanamo.</p>\n<p>But we don’t do politics. We expect other people to do it for us, and grumble when they get it wrong. We feel that our responsibility stops at the ballot box, if we even get that far. After that we’re as laissez-faire as we can get away with.</p>\n<p>What worries me is that while we’re laissez-ing, someone else is faire-ing.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>Part of the series <a href=\"http://edge.org/annual-question/q2013\">2013 : WHAT *SHOULD* WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?</a></p>\n<p>(Thanks to DF for the pointer.)</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=VJ9vAu_z-d0:MzjIgH4WGnY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/discourse/~4/VJ9vAu_z-d0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><em>for Rachel</em></p>\n<p>1.</p>\n<p>The long A of your name<br>\nhad sounded in my ear for years.<br>\nI looked for you in leaves<br>\n& found you among needles.<br>\nI looked for you on foot<br>\n& found you among the bees,<br>\ngolden with the dust<br>\nof unseen blooms. </p>\n<p>2.</p>\n<p>My parachute knapsack<br>\nheld only paper<br>\n& instructions in several languages<br>\nfor folding origami wings.<br>\nI even had to supply<br>\nmy own shadow<br>\nfor a welcoming committee.<br>\nThat’s what it was like<br>\nbeing alone. </p>\n<p>3. </p>\n<p>While others were playing house<br>\nI was playing hermitage.<br>\nTrains blew their whistles<br>\nby day & by night.<br>\nYou were in Africa,<br>\nwaking to the music<br>\nof car horns & hornbills.<br>\nHad I tuned into the World Service<br>\nin the wee hours,<br>\nI might’ve heard your stories<br>\nabout the fall<br>\nof that dictator from Malawi<br>\nwhose last name so resembled my own. </p>\n<p>4. </p>\n<p>When we first became acquainted,<br>\nyou were living<br>\nnext door to that Dorothy<br>\nwho disappeared into a tornado.<br>\nYour own witch was dead<br>\nbut not by much.<br>\nI wrote you a poem because<br>\nI don’t believe in spells or prayers;<br>\nit was all I had. </p>\n<p>5. </p>\n<p>In the first photo I saw,<br>\nyou were frowning & looking down,<br>\nunruly hair the color<br>\nof petals on a sunflower.<br>\nYou were barely there.<br>\nBut through medication<br>\n& meditation<br>\nyou turned<br>\nslowly toward the light. </p>\n<p>6. </p>\n<p>The first time we met in the flesh<br>\nyou were a flash<br>\nof bright laughter<br>\nat the end of the table<br>\nwhere we all convened for coffee<br>\nin Montreal.<br>\nTwo years later, in Brooklyn,<br>\nyou glowed with secret knowledge<br>\n& stretched like a cat<br>\nin the dog-day heat. </p>\n<p>7. </p>\n<p>Three years after that, I was<br>\na guest in your London home,<br>\nthough like a tortoise<br>\nI brought my own<br>\nsturdy carapace.<br>\nYour house buzzed with<br>\nso much activity, both<br>\njoyful & clamorous, that soon<br>\nmy shell began to hum. </p>\n<p>8. </p>\n<p>Now our words & likenesses<br>\nfly through fiber-<br>\noptic cables under<br>\nthe Atlantic. They must<br>\npass each other<br>\nwithout knowing it,<br>\ndeformed as they are<br>\ninto carrier waves,<br>\nbroken as they are<br>\ninto pulses of light—<br>\nenough to build an entire<br>\nlost continent. </p>\n<p>9. </p>\n<p>From time to time<br>\nthere’s a high-<br>\npitched chirping<br>\n& you say<br>\nit must be from the slime-eels<br>\nnibbling on the cable<br>\n& tying their unbearably<br>\nslick bodies<br>\ninto knots. </p>\n<p>10. </p>\n<p>We’ve been meeting in<br>\nthis disembodied place<br>\nthe world-wide web<br>\nso long, levitating<br>\nlike Himalayan lamas,<br>\nit’s tempting to wonder whether<br>\nwe even need the ground.<br>\nDon’t the Irish say<br>\nthe road will rise up<br>\nto meet us?<br>\nLet’s drink to that,<br>\neach raising our part<br>\nof the universal solution<br>\nso our glasses belly<br>\nup to our webcams<br>\nfor the clink,<br>\neach blocking our view<br>\nof the other’s eyes—a pale<br>\nor stout substitute<br>\nfor those blues. </p>"
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"title" : "God is a profitable and deadly business in Angola",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/dia-f-o-dia-do-fim-ii.jpg?w=610&h=440\" width=\"610\" height=\"440\">Sometime after the end of the São Silvestre foot race through the streets of Luanda and the start of any of the many New Year’s Eve parties (<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pp5V3QsCxs\">this one</a>, worthy of both Marilyn Monroe and De Beers, caught our attention), a tragedy occurred. Sixteen people died (among them three children) and one-hundred and twenty were injured at an event called <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/angola/9774922/Angola-ten-people-crushed-to-death-at-Pentecostal-vigil.html\">“The Day of the End”</a> at the Cidadela stadium in Luanda organized by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (now global, it originated in Brazil and claims to have <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxPICHeqri4\">8 million followers</a>). According to the police, an estimated 250,000 people crowded into a stadium with a capacity of 70,000 where only two of the four gates were open. Early accounts reported people being trampled but hospital staff attributed mortality to suffocation, exhaustion and hunger (Novo Jornal No. 249, January 4, 2013). <span></span></p>\n<p>The result of relentless publicity shilling (“The Day of the End: come bring an end to all the problems in your life – sickness, misery, unemployment, bankruptcy, separation, family arguments, witchcraft, desire”) capped by an exhortation to “Bring your whole family,” pastor Felner Batalha led his sheep to slaughter rather than salvation. UNITA representative Paulo Lukamba Gato has called for a revision of state policy on church groups. Human Rights activist and lawyer David Mendes thinks the church and pastor should be held responsible for the deaths. “They commercialized God,” <a href=\"http://www.club-k.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14062:david-mendes-exige-responsabilizacao-da-iurd-pelas-mortes-do-fim-de-ano&catid=14:entrevistas&Itemid=149\">he said</a>. Nonetheless, most analyses in the local press agree that both church and pastor will come out of this none the poorer.</p>\n<p>Despite a police report that places blame squarely on the church administration, Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos set up a Commission of Inquiry composed of six ministers and the governor of Luanda, reportedly a member of this church. The Angolan website <a href=\"http://makaangola.org/2013/01/07/a-igreja-universal-do-reino-de-deus-e-o-poder-de-jes/\">Makangola thinks</a> it’s hard to imagine that they will turn up anything the police did not. The church contacted the proper authorities prior to the event. Police, fire department, Red Cross and others were contracted and mobilized for security services outside the venue, but they assured the Ministry of the Interior that they would take care of security inside the stadium. Who then to blame when the bounty of their advertising, free transportation, and promises of the end of penury produced a surfeit of humanity?</p>\n<div style=\"width:559px\"><img alt=\"IURD church in Alvalade\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/iurd-church-in-alvalade.jpg?w=549&h=364\" width=\"549\" height=\"364\"><p>IURD church in Alvalade</p></div>\n<p>The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God spreads the prosperity gospel. <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/worst-ideas/prosperity-gospel.html\">Here’s one reading of how it works on U.S. shores. </a>Wealth is a blessing for those who pray well. Those who tithe the church will prosper, <a href=\"http://noticias.gospelmais.com.br/edir-macedo-afirma-que-o-dizimo-pode-trazer-a-prosperidade41635.html\">says Edir Macedo</a>, founder of the Universal Church. The bricks and mortar this church owns in key Luanda locations testifies to the fact that his church is prospering and operates with the Angolan state’s blessing. So isn’t this church/state relationship probably reciprocal? David Mendes calls it promiscuous. We’ll remind you of <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/11/05/80-of-angolans-today-have-only-ever-called-one-man-president/\">this image</a> we’ve already posted. Different church, same idea.</p>\n<p>In post-socialist, growth oriented Angola, where the rich are getting richer and the poor have only their faith, this is one very cruel and ironic example of David Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60745/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60745/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=60745&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "France in Mali: the End of the Fairytale",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/73363_477936948918702_1884479205_n.jpg?w=610&h=405\" width=\"610\" height=\"405\">Whew, Mali. French air raids against Islamist positions in Mali began Thursday night, and the dust hasn’t settled yet. The news is changing fast, but, three things emerge from the haze. First, fierce fighting in the North and the East, with French forces in the lead, will open up a whole new set of dangers. With Islamist forces on the attack, foreign intervention was necessary, and many Malians at home and abroad welcomed it enthusiastically. Still, this remains a dangerous moment all around. Second, while the latest crisis might not break the political deadlock in Bamako, it has already changed the dynamic. And third, despite the sorry state of mediation efforts to date—both within West Africa and beyond—savvy diplomacy is needed now more than ever. <span></span></p>\n<p><b>First, the fighting</b>. The French have come in hard and fast, with fighter jets flying sorties from southern France over Algerian airspace, helicopters coming in from bases in Burkina Faso, and special forces and Legionnaires from Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, Burkina, and France. There are indeed French boots on the ground, fighting alongside what remains of the Malian army and troops from neighboring countries. So far it is the air assault that has garnered headlines, chasing the allied Islamist fighters from the positions they had taken last week, as well as from most of their Sahelian strongholds (as I write, no reports of fighting in or around Timbuktu). Konna, Douentza, Gao, Léré, Kidal… : <i>ça chauffe</i>.</p>\n<p>Three things on that.</p>\n<p><em>The intervention was necessary.</em> The drama of the Islamist offensive should not be underestimated—a successful assault on Sevaré would have meant the loss of the only airstrip in Mali capable of handling heavy cargo planes, apart from that in Bamako. The fall of Sevaré would in turn have made any future military operation a nightmare for West African or other friendly forces, and it would have chased tens of thousands of civilians from their homes. These would only have been the most immediate effects. After Sevaré, nothing would have stopped an Islamist advance on Segu and Bamako, although it is unclear to me that the Islamists would have any strategic interest in investing Mali’s sprawling and densely populated capital. Still, many Bamakois feared an attack, and had one occurred the human costs would have been astronomical. Malians remember well that only a few months ago, insurgent forces ejected the army from northern Mali as if they were throwing a drunk from a bar. Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal fell in a weekend. The army collapsed, and it has only been weakened by internal fighting since. Any other story is a fairytale.</p>\n<p><em>The enemy is formidable.</em> French officials <a href=\"http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Article/ARTJAWEB20130113161651/mauritanie-aqmi-armee-francaise-cedeaomali-frappes-aeriennes-au-centre-et-sur-gao-le-mnla-cherche-a-reprendre-la-main.html\">expressed</a> some surprise at the level of sophistication of the Islamist forces—well-armed, well-trained and experienced. In an early wave of the French intervention, one helicopter took heavy fire from small arms, and a pilot was killed; another French soldier remains missing. Malian casualties were heavy, and likely remain under-reported. Sources from Mopti refer to dozens of deaths among the Malian ranks, and there will be other casualties to come. In short, last week’s Islamist offensive put paid to the argument that the Malian army itself was capable of defending the country from further attack and of liberating the territory over which it had lost control.</p>\n<p><em>This is not a neo-colonial offensive.</em> The argument that it is might be comfortable and familiar, but it is bogus and ill-informed. France intervened following a direct request for help from Mali’s interim President, Dioncounda Traore. Most Malians celebrated the arrival of French troops, as <a href=\"http://bridgesfrombamako.com/\">Bruce Whitehouse</a> and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/fabienoff\">Fabien Offner</a> have demonstrated. Every Malian I’ve talked to agrees with that sentiment. The high stakes and the strength of the enemy help to explain why the French intervention was so popular in a country that is proud of its independence and why the French tricolor is being waved in Bamako. That would have been unimaginable even 6 months ago—and probably even last week. More important than how quickly it went up will be how quickly it comes down; this popularity could be ephemeral. One tweeter figures French President François Hollande is more popular than Barack Obama right now. I’d wait for Hollande’s face to go up on a few barbershops before making that call, but the comparison gives a sense of the relief many felt when French forces came to the rescue of the Malian army.</p>\n<p>Not everyone is in favor of the intervention. Let’s count some of the more vocal opponents—Oumar Mariko, Mali’s perpetual gadfly; French ex-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who argues that it would be better to wait for the lions to lie down with the lambs; Paris-based Camerounian novelist Calixthe Beyala, plagiarist who argues that those Malians who would prefer not to live under a crude faux-Islamic vigilantism suffer from a plantation mentality; and some truly reprehensible protesters at the French embassy in London, who refuse to believe that most Malians are Muslims and don’t need religious instruction from Salafists. It’s hard to imagine a leakier ship of fools.</p>\n<p><b>Second, fighting in the north has already changed the political dynamics on the ground in Bamako</b>. The pro-junta movement MP-22 and Mariko, one of its most prominent leaders, opposed the French intervention just as they’ve violently opposed the possibility of ECOWAS help (this is the same crowd that nearly lynched the interim president last spring). Their position not only contrasts sharply with public sentiment, it also puts the movement at odds with Mali’s largest political coalition of the moment, the FDR, which had joined MP-22 in calling for a national conference in the days before the Islamist offensive. Since then the FDR has declared that now is not the time. What to make of this? First, as for MP-22, the dogs bark, but the caravan passes. Second and more importantly, although the question of the national conference might be bracketed for the moment, it will come back soon.</p>\n<p>Three important changes have already occurred in Bamako:</p>\n<p><em>First</em>—and strikingly—even Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, who led the coup in March and who still holds a great deal of political power, has welcomed the arrival of French troops. This is important: he had been forced to abandon the argument that his troops could go it alone. His fierce opposition to the idea that ECOWAS troops—still less French ones—would come to Mali’s aid had been only gradually been whittled down over the last several months, but it withered completely in the face of the recent Islamist offensive. Now, he has had to reverse course. When he made a lightning trip to Mopti-Sevaré over the weekend, it was hard to avoid the impression that he was struggling to remain relevant to both Kati (the garrison) and Kuluba (the presidential palace).</p>\n<p><em>Second</em>, virtually unremarked upon with all eyes in the East, several hundred French soldiers are <a href=\"http://7our.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/operation-serval-vers-une-zone-tampon-au-mali/\">deployed in Bamako</a> to protect French citizens—of whom there are reportedly some 6,000 in Mali, of whom expatriates are a minority (press: please note). In the current emergency while the French troops are there ostensibly to protect their citizens and other civilians from terrorist attack, they implicitly secure the civilian government against its own military and against mobs like those ginned up by MP-22 and other radical associations. Meanwhile, soldiers from ECOWAS nations are arriving by the hundreds, although it is not yet clear what role they will play or where they will be stationed.</p>\n<p><em>Third</em>, their presence puts President Traore in a stronger position. In months past, both the junta and the anti-globalization Left have been allergic to the idea of any foreign troops in Bamako itself, and they have used violence and intimidation to secure their argument. Now Traore has proven strong enough both to ask for military aid and to receive it. Neither he nor his new Prime Minister Django Cissoko remains prisoner to the threats of the military or the radical opposition.</p>\n<p>Still, especially given all that’s happened over the weekend, it is important to recall to that the political situation in Bamako remains unstable. Dioncounda Traore’s “interim” presidency is long past its constitutional sell-by date, and the rest of Mali’s political class—including its once-young angry Left—have hardly failed to notice that. Last week, before the offensive, a <a href=\"http://maliactu.net/violentes-manifestations-a-bamako-pour-les-concertations-nationales/\">broad coalition</a> formed to demand a “national consultation” (often bruited, sometimes scheduled, never held), Traore’s resignation (to be replaced by whom?), and the launching of a military campaign to retake the north (which, coincidentally, they got, even if it was not the Malian-led initiative they wanted). On Wednesday demonstrators burned tires, blocked traffic, and shut down two of the three bridges across the Niger. Some men in masks reportedly fired guns in the air and carjacked trucks and 4X4s. In response, Traore closed all schools in Bamako and in the garrison town of Kati. If he was attempting to keep the students from joining the fray, he failed. In addition to opening Traore up to a certain amount of Twitter ridicule (Twittercule?), Traore’s edict <a href=\"http://maliactu.net/manifestations-a-bamako-laeem-marche-pour-la-reprise-des-cours-dans-le-superieur/\">brought</a> the students’ union out on the streets on Thursday. They broke into high schools, chasing out students who were sitting exams (bad luck: apparently the questions were easy). At the moment, schools are open again, but the President has declared a state of emergency. In short, Bamako remains uneasy, and the “sacred union” of the last few days can only be temporary.</p>\n<p><strong>Third, what all this suggests is that the Mali crisis—which long ago became the Sahel crisis—needs diplomatic intervention every bit as urgently as it needed military intervention.</strong></p>\n<p>To date, West African meditation efforts have been manipulated by Burkinabe President Blaise Compaoré, whom ECOWAS has dubbed its mediator in the conflict. Few Malians take Compaoré as a legitimate interlocutor, and no one believes that he has the country’s interests at heart. After profiting from hostage-taking by negotiating ransoms with AQMI, Compaoré was until recently harboring dozens of MNLA fighters while attempting to manipulate ex-Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra by remote control. The military threw Diarra out of office in December, and a steady campaign to tarnish his image irreparably has accelerated since then, as he stands accused of diverting funds intended to aid the refugees to finance his political party. As for Compaoré’s guests from the MNLA, it’s said that he asked them to leave Burkina after they refused to keep a low profile. Several dozen have since turned up in Mauritania. In response to the latest round of skirmishing, which compelled the postponement of further negotiations in Ouagadougou, Compaoré’s lead diplomat Djibril Bassolé <a href=\"http://maliactu.net/mali-incertitudes-a-douentza/\">called on</a> both sides to stop firing and hold their positions, as if this was a legitimate request to make of a national army defending its own territory and civilians, and as if he himself had anything better to offer than the prospect of further degrading the situation.</p>\n<p>As for the UN, although after much discussion the Security Council has authorized the use of force by ECOWAS to re-establish Mali’s territorial integrity, the organization’s Secretary General seems to be running, as ever, on empty. Ban Ki-moon named Romano Prodi his emissary for the Sahelian crisis, leaving some to wonder if he had not got his dossiers shuffled. Prodi, a former Prime Minister of Italy, knows nothing of the Sahel and speaks none of its languages, only stumbling along in French. He is scarcely qualified for the job: in 2008, he led a UN-African Union panel on peacekeeping. More to the point, perhaps, he once helped to negotiate for the release of hostages held by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet the narrow lens of the hostage conundrum is precisely the wrong way to examine the Sahelian crisis (see: Nicolas Sarkozy), and this is not a peacekeeping scenario. At an event in Paris back in June, Manthia Diawara made the very good point that if Mali’s friends and neighbors take the country’s crisis seriously, they ought to be delegating some serious mediators to it. Compaoré and Bassolé, on behalf of ECOWAS, and Prodi, on the part of the UN, don’t make the grade. Could Presidents Yaya Boni of Benin or Macky Sall of Senegal, for instance, step in where Compaoré has failed? Africa is not short on diplomats, elders, and people of experience. President Traore—and Secretary-General Moon—should be writing to them as well.</p>\n<p><i>Disclaimers:</i></p>\n<p>The situation is changing very quickly, and much of what is written here may soon be outdated.</p>\n<p>For lack of a better term, I use “Islamist” to refer to the alliance of AQMI, Ansar Dine, MUJAO, and other foreign movements. Other terms are inadequate (“terrorist”) or inaccurate. I reserve the terms rebels or insurgents for the host of anti-government forces, which includes the MNLA, a movement now at odds with its former allies Ansar Dine.</p>\n<p>More on the medium / long-term stakes of foreign intervention in another post…</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60804/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/60804/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=60804&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Tribute-Prince",
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:left\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;text-align:justify\">The Denkyira State held sway over the towns and peoples surrounding it. That was most of southern Ghana today. It had subdued the Akan-speaking clan-towns for miles in all directions. As a sign of its dominance, Denkyira required periodic tribute from the defeated clan-towns. The Oyoko clan which had settled around Kumase was required to send a tribute of a young male royal to serve at the court of the Dekyira king, Boa Amponsem, at the capital of Denkyira, Abankesieso.</span></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"></span></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">One particular tribute was an Oyoko prince: tall, handsome, lean-muscled and quick-witted. He showed early signs of military genius and quickly endeared himself to the warlike king, who treated him like a son... almost. However, the young man was not free to come and go as he pleased because he was still a kind of slave. He was the toast of all at the court - both men and women. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">One day, the tribute-prince succumbed to the power of his charm over the women of the court and (not knowing his place) spent the night with Ako Abenaa Bansoa, the King's sister. Abenaa became pregnant. In accordance with the law, the ‘offender’ had to be put to death. But he was a man of lofty fate, and his spirit would not give up easily. He fled to the kingdom of Akwamu where he was given refuge by King Ansah Sasraku. On several occasions, King Boa Amponsem sent people to King Ansah Sasraku to demand the return of the fugitive tribute-prince, but the Akwamu king refused. Although Akwamu was a powerful, warlike kingdom, Denkyira was undoubtedly superior in power. Akwamu sheltered the prince at great risk of war. But the war did not happen.</span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"></span></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">The tribute-prince was dearly loved by the Akwamu king who had him drafted into the army. He learnt the disciplines of strategy and tactics (and stratagem), and the complex war formation of the Akwamu army. After many years, the tribute-prince wished to return home. He had grand designs brewing in his head and in his heart. In Akwamu, he was neither a tribute nor a slave. Therefore, King Ansah Sasraku not only permitted him to leave, but also gave him 300 men from Akwamu's elite forces. The men were tasked to ensure that the prince arrived safely, and remained safe upon arrival, at Kumase. </span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">With little incident, the prince's party arrived ‘home’. He formed a strong bond with a priest of unrivalled manipulative, hypnotic and mental power. They set about uniting the Oyoko clan with the other clans through coaxing, manipulation and passion. A new State was born – Asante. When Asante was ready, it marched a colossal army against Denkyira. King Boa Amponsem had long died and been succeeded by his 'son' Ntim Gyakari. In the Battle of Feyiase, the prince and his priest friend struck a blow for independence by killing Ntim Gyakari and routing the Denkyira army by using the Akwamu-style military formation. </span></div></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm;text-align:justify\"><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Helvetica Neue,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">The free Asante State was born. It would soon become a massive empire. The name of the tribute-prince was Osei Tutu. In a dark, romantic twist of the tale, some historical accounts hold that the slain Denkyira king, Ntim Gyakari, was the very son Osei Tutu had had with princess of Denkyira, Ako Abenaa Bansoa. </span></div>"
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"content" : "<p>As I reported elsewhere, I technically failed kindergarten. For example, one of the test we had to pass was the memorization of our home phone number. I refused to learn it. My mother, a teacher, was embarrassed. We also had to learn to count up to 10. I was 5 so I decided to it was more reasonable to learn to count up to 5. My mother was again embarrassed.</p>\n<p>So it was decided that I must have had a learning disability. I was obviously bad at mathematics. (This last sentence is ironic: mathematicians will tell you that memorizing numbers is not mathematics. But I digress.)</p>\n<p>For those who don’t know me… I have a three degrees in mathematics from some of the best schools in the world. I have also published some novel mathematical results. I am not a star mathematician or mathematical genius but I have credentials. Yet if my teachers had to make predictions based on my early schooling, they would have predicted nothing good for me. At least, nothing good in mathematics.</p>\n<p>In retrospect, I am quite certain that I have never had a learning disability… except for the fact that I am an incorrigible contrarian. Still, my parents are not obviously good at mathematics. I see no evidence that I liked numbers. So how did I get good enough to outdo my peers?</p>\n<p>Because I did not record my childhood, I can only speculate. Here is what I remember. </p>\n<p>As a kid, I learned to read with Tintin. And my favorite character was professor Calculus (known in French as Tournesol). I also loved scifi. At the time, Star Wars was very popular. I remember dreaming of the year 2000 when I would get to fly in a starship.</p>\n<p>As a parenthesis, I distinctly remember learning how to read for the purpose of reading Tintin. And Tintin was not part of the curriculum. Rather, my mother got me one album, and it was the most exciting thing I had in my room! I remember painfully deciphering Tintin, page by page.</p>\n<p>In any case, I did not know much about Physics or Chemistry, but I knew that whatever Calculus did had to do with mathematics. I also knew that flying starships and building robots involved advanced mathematics.</p>\n<p>So I was motivated to learn mathematics. That is probably the single most important factor. I simply wanted to be good at mathematics. When I got something wrong, I did not get discouraged, I tried to understand it better.</p>\n<p>I also think that my contrarian nature helped me. It made me immune to the poor teaching of mathematics so prevalent in schools. For example, while my peers were memorizing multiplication tables, I tried to find algorithms to figure out the answer. I simply could not imagine professor Calculus memorizing tables. After all, professor Calculus is known to be forgetful!</p>\n<p>Still, where did I learn mathematics? We did get some decent mathematics in the classroom from time to time, but on the whole I think it was mediocre. The manuals were simply not very inspired.</p>\n<p>However, I discovered a magazine called <a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeux_et_Strat%C3%A9gie\">Jeux et Strategie</a> (Games and strategies) as a kid. It was an amazing magazine. Each month, it had pages and pages of fun mathematical puzzles. An ongoing theme was that of a race of aliens where some of them always told the truth, some of them lied all the time and some of them would just say anything. You could not tell them apart, except by analyzing what they said. This was my introduction to logic. Initially, the puzzles were way too hard for me. By the time the magazine stopped printing, I could do these logic puzzles in my head.</p>\n<p>The magazine would discuss games like poker and monopoly. However, it would do so in a sophisticated manner. For example, I remember this article about monopoly from a top-rated player. He showed how the good players used probabilities to win. That is, you are not just supposed to buy any lot! Some are better than others, and you can easily figure out which ones are better. </p>\n<p>I don’t play games a lot, but I really liked the idea that I could learn mathematics to beat people at games. It turns out that I never did become a better monopoly player, but I learned that if I used the right mathematics, I could!</p>\n<p>As an aside, my grand-mother was a gambler. She would hold these poker games at her place every week-end. And they played for real money! She also brought me all the time to horse races (she had racing horses of her own). If you have never been to horse races, you should know that you get lots of statistics about the horses. It tells you exactly how often a given horse has won, and in what conditions. One of my early hobbies, as a kid, was to read these statistics and try to predict the winners. After all, I had nothing better to do (horse races are otherwise quite boring for kids). I even devised some algorithms that were fairly reliable. This taught me that you could actually use mathematics to get money!</p>\n<p>The final step in my early mathematical education came when I got a computer. My parents gave me a TRS-80 color computer. I simply did not have much money to buy games. So I had to program it to stay entertained. Obviously, as a kid I decided to design my own games. I did not get nearly as far as I thought I would. I guess I was never very motivated in building a really good game since I had no way to share it. But I did build a few and this taught me a lot about discrete mathematics. I remember having to work out my own collision detection algorithms (how do you figure out whether a point has crossed a line?). I also got a lot out of magazines. At the time, magazines would regularly post the source code of simple games. This was just great! You could take an existing game and try to improve it, to see what would happen.</p>\n<p>All along, what helped was that I had a friend who was a nerd too. He ended up becoming a software programmer too. I am sure that if all my friends had been into sports, it would have been much harder for me to stick with mathematical interests.</p>\n<p>To sum it up, here are the factors that helped me become good at mathematics:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Early on, I self-identified with scientists. I had a role model (professor Calculus).</li>\n<li>I have always been a contrarian: I refuse to accept things on faith. I am not sure where this came from. I doubt it is an innate trait, but I also do not know how to cultivate it in others. In any case, this plays an important role because I always refused to accept recipes. I think recipes are a terrible way to teach mathematics.</li>\n<li>I had access to decent and entertaining mathematical content, even if it wasn’t from the school I attended.</li>\n<li>I got my own (programmable) computer as kid!</li>\n<li>I hung around with nerds.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I am not claiming that this is some sort of recipe to turn kids into mathematicians. My real point is that I believe that mathematics is not innate. I also do not think that schools can teach mathematics. Not the kind of schools I attended.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?a=k5H0eSRxeQk:_ALbb7KYOYg:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?i=k5H0eSRxeQk:_ALbb7KYOYg:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/daniel-lemire/atom/~4/k5H0eSRxeQk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Seven short stories about drones",
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"content" : "<p>1. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.<span></span></p>\n<p>2. Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.</p>\n<p>3. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.</p>\n<p>4. I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.</p>\n<p>5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.</p>\n<p>6. Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.</p>\n<p>7. Mother died today. The program saves American lives.</p>"
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"title" : "Alain Mabanckou : Lumières de Pointe-Noire",
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"content" : "<br> <br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Bien qu’ayant vécu une quinzaine d’années au Congo, je ne connais pas Pointe-Noire. J’y ai certes passé deux séjours, mais ceux-ci furent trop brefs pour que je puisse m’imprégner des senteurs de cette ville, dite poumon économique de la république du Congo, tendant les bras vers les grands gisements pétroliers dont elle semble ne pas voir la couleur noire de la production quotidienne.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span><br></span></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7csBN7p3STk/UOYFFLK2QDI/AAAAAAAADbE/GG_MO2DwF3Q/s1600/P1010155.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7csBN7p3STk/UOYFFLK2QDI/AAAAAAAADbE/GG_MO2DwF3Q/s400/P1010155.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">En écrivant Lumières de Pointe-Noire, Alain Mabanckou me conduit dans un nouveau voyage vers Ponton-la-Belle,<span> </span>comme on disait dans un autre temps. Nom qui, en y réfléchissant, n’apparait pas dans le magnifique texte que le romancier congolais consacre à la ville de son enfance et de son adolescence. <a href=\"http://gangoueus.blogspot.fr/2010/08/alain-mabanckou-demain-jaurai-vingt-ans.html\">Demain j’aurai vingt ans</a>, déjà s’ancrait sur cette terre en bord de mer, et je dois dire qu’en commençant les premières pages de ce récit, j’ai fait une remarque à voix haute à ma belle disant « mince, Alain est en panne d’inspiration, il nous fait une version imagée de son roman précédent ! ». Erreur d’appréciation importante, car si de nombreux personnages familiaux sont déjà évoqués dans l’enfance revisitée de l’auteur congolais, Lumières de Pointe-Noire est un récit très différent.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Tout d’abord, il traite du retour du migrant qu’il est depuis le jour où un de ces gros avions de son enfance a fini par l'emporter vers d'autres horizons. Un thème de plus en plus présent dans une littérature africaine qui s’exprime plus que jamais hors du continent. Vingt trois ans que ce fils unique n’a plus remis les pieds dans cette ville côtière où crèche son clan, où reposent sa mère et son père. Qui suit la production littéraire d’Alain Mabanckou avec attention sait combien ces deux personnes sont présentes, accompagnent et influencent l’écriture de ce romancier. Choisissant de construire ce texte comme la diffusion de plusieurs ondes de cercles concentriques, entre l’enfant, la mère et le père avec un temps d’arrêt prolongé qui renvoie forcément le lecteur à son roman précédent, Mabanckou, laisse le cercle s’élargir au gré des retrouvailles heureuses souvent, heurtées parfois. Avec ses frères et sœurs. Ses cousins. Ses oncles. Puis les lieux qui ont marqué sa formation, sa construction intellectuelle et culturelle et surtout son désir d’évasion et de partir. Pointe-Noire interroge, interpelle, en dit long par ses impasses, ses immondices, ses prostituées, ses hôpitaux mouroirs dont on a peur de franchir le porche d’entrée.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">En lisant ce livre, je me disais que l’auteur congolais livrait bon nombre de clés, de personnages, de croyances ayant inspiré ses romans précédents. J’imagine que certains reliront différemment Mémoires de porc-épic ou surtout Verre cassé, en rigolant moins. Je me dis aussi, que ce texte risque de clore une page, s’il est possible de le faire d’un point de vue littéraire. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">J’ai aimé ce roman, non, ce récit où au fil des pages, l’émotion qui s’en dégage, la fausse ironie de l’auteur, les maladresses parfois de celui qui revient, les tentatives pour ceux qui sont restés de reprendre la main sur celui qui est dans l’esprit de tous, celui qui a réussi, celui devant qui le temps des retrouvailles on fait taire les divergences, celui qui incarne dans ses textes des portions des itinéraires passés par la rue bembé de Louboulou. Ce texte montre également qu’un témoignage du vécu de simples gens est beaucoup plus corrosif que moult gesticulations littéraires. Après tout dépend des lecteurs et de leur faculté à mettre leurs préjugés de côté.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Pby09OdVyI/UOYHaPXXQpI/AAAAAAAADbY/b4t_2LlnluM/s1600/Alain+Mabanckou.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Pby09OdVyI/UOYHaPXXQpI/AAAAAAAADbY/b4t_2LlnluM/s400/Alain+Mabanckou.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div> Alain Mabanckou, crédit photo Caroline Blache<br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Immortaliser l’image de nombre de ces personnes rencontrées par de magnifiques portraits de Caroline Blache et les références littéraires et cinématographiques des titres de chaque chapitre sont des bonus qu’apprécieront les afficionados. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.fr/Lumi%C3%A8res-Pointe-Noire-Mabanckou-Alain/dp/2021003949\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Alain Mabanckou, Lumières dePointe-Noire</span></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Editions du Seuil, 1<sup>ère</sup>parution en 2013, 279 pages</div>"
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"title" : "Cloths with mobile phone motifs…",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-P9f3Un6--IY/UPLA75nLKlI/AAAAAAAAKkQ/-LgdsqUB93Y/s1600-h/307542_524751914225244_249734571_n%25255B3%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"307542_524751914225244_249734571_n\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"234\" alt=\"307542_524751914225244_249734571_n\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-S1HIsvPEwLk/UPLA9QetaYI/AAAAAAAAKkY/ot9P7tITyNY/307542_524751914225244_249734571_n_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"344\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Ewe cloth with mobile phone motifs, woven by Chapuchi Bobbo Ahiagble. </p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-W0iF_710Vwo/UPLA-ivWSLI/AAAAAAAAKkg/GnygLltiEOw/s1600-h/252085_524751277558641_911936342_n%25255B5%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"252085_524751277558641_911936342_n\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"252085_524751277558641_911936342_n\" src=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-2fqgstOmSRs/UPLA_orHbHI/AAAAAAAAKkk/Cx5hZqOm3Dc/252085_524751277558641_911936342_n_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"133\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-dRsOPIEf1h0/UPLBAwC7Y8I/AAAAAAAAKkw/VjA9Mzfkeeo/s1600-h/537406_524751687558600_1568863027_n%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"537406_524751687558600_1568863027_n\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"537406_524751687558600_1568863027_n\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-yR24pmbBXBU/UPLBBmYqy0I/AAAAAAAAKk0/7uz_ELd0alU/537406_524751687558600_1568863027_n_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"173\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-DtPCfVwiAiU/UPLBC_eLg8I/AAAAAAAAKlA/BlIdMTEnBLY/s1600-h/582324_524751807558588_884096715_n%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"582324_524751807558588_884096715_n\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"582324_524751807558588_884096715_n\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-Blwl3RtGpYE/UPLBDsnkWaI/AAAAAAAAKlE/8Bs1NEPHldQ/582324_524751807558588_884096715_n_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"177\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/--zriI0n5MOI/UPLBE8uhUbI/AAAAAAAAKlM/5IMn6E9FBCU/s1600-h/603263_524751767558592_1861268934_n%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"603263_524751767558592_1861268934_n\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"603263_524751767558592_1861268934_n\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-he-hTM8Hh3g/UPLBFuOd4qI/AAAAAAAAKlU/gmaJ88KU8tw/603263_524751767558592_1861268934_n_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"144\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>Thanks to Deborah Stokes and Chapuchi Bobbo Ahiagble for the images from Facebook. </p> <p>Seeing these prompted me to look again at the cloth below, collected in Bobo Dioulasso in Burkina Faso in 2005, and the work of a Bwa weaver. This is the oldest cloth I have seen with a phone motif. </p> <p><a href=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-4e2ofjiYhz8/UPLBGU7ERLI/AAAAAAAAKlc/1OccPB6qT-A/s1600-h/Bwaphone%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"Bwaphone\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"163\" alt=\"Bwaphone\" src=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-nbhh96IhG8w/UPLBHZlf5fI/AAAAAAAAKlk/ieh-pA01CdU/Bwaphone_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"244\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-hUMETeZ6Oqk/UPLBISD8h6I/AAAAAAAAKlw/basPnm5XcRE/s1600-h/Bwa02%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"Bwa02\" style=\"border-top-width:0px;padding-right:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;border-left-width:0px;background-image:none;border-bottom-width:0px;padding-top:0px;border-right-width:0px\" height=\"159\" alt=\"Bwa02\" src=\"http://lh4.ggpht.com/-iid-K9MtlUs/UPLBJLlNSvI/AAAAAAAAKl4/GlrObFRzLj0/Bwa02_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"244\" border=\"0\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Système D in the Land of Azawad - TTG",
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017d3fe534c6970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"French-troops\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017d3fe534c6970c-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"French-troops\"></a><br>Système D is a French term for the ability to think fast, adapt, and improvise in order to get a job done. It refers to the word "démerder" or to get of the shit. At least that's what a couple of French Foreign Legionnaires told me many years ago. I would argue that France's direct military intervention in Mali, Operation Cerval, is a beautiful example of système D. </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b71c1e970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Malian-Soldiers\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b71c1e970b-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"Malian-Soldiers\"></a><br>For a general background on the situation in Mali, I suggest the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mali_conflict_(2012%E2%80%93present)\">Wikipedia page</a> on the Northern Mali Conflict as well as my two earlier posts on <a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/08/the-far-away-land-of-azawad-ttg.html#more\">The Far Away Land of Azawad</a> and <a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/10/return-to-azawad-ttg.html#comments\" title=\"Return to Azawad\">Return to Azawad</a>. </span></p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b62a80970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Ansar dine\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b62a80970b-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"Ansar dine\"></a></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">Last week began with a renewed offensive by fighters from Ansar Dine and and the Islamist Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA). On Monday, 7 January, Islamist fighters captured at least twelve government soldiers along with their vehicle and equipment during a government patrol outside the town of Konna. Earlier that day, government soldiers fired on Ansar Dine fighters in an area 35 miles east of Mopti, a strategically important town on the frontier between rebel-held and government-held territories. Mopti hosts a key Malian military airstrip, actually at Severe, which would be vital for any future missions into the north of the country. Two days later, the battle for Konna began between government forces and MOJWA fighters. On Thursday, the Islamists captured the town after fierce fighting. That same day about 1,200 Ansar Dine and MOJWA fighters in 200 technicals moved to within twelve miles of Mopti. The situation looked dire to say the least.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">Why did the Islamists resume their offensive now? They had the motive. They never had any intention of stopping at the border of the once and future land of Azawad. MOJWA is a black African led Islamic group that broke off from the mostly Algerian led AQIM. Their goal is to spread their brand of Salafism to most, if not all, of West Africa. They do not share the Tuareg dream of an independent Azawad espoused by the MNLA. Ansar Dine also wants to extend Sharia in all of Mali and not just to Azawad. </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">They had the means. The Salafist military forces were never stronger. Since their victories earlier last year, they <a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-al-qaida-carves-own-country-mali-091304997.html\">worked feverishly</a> to improve their military capabilities. They had the resources to do so through their kidnapping and smuggling enterprises and whatever funding their Gulf supporters provide. An unnamed Elysee Palace official quoted by Agence France-Presse said on Sunday that French armed forces were surprised by the fighting quality and the equipment of the militants they were up against. "At the start, we thought they would be just a load of guys with guns driving about in their pick-ups, but the reality is that they are well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armed," the official said. "From Libya they have got hold of a lot of up-to-date, sophisticated equipment which is much more robust and effective than we could have imagined." </span></p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017d3fe51e38970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Rafale-+-Mirage2000D\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017d3fe51e38970c-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"Rafale-+-Mirage2000D\"></a></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">Those who had issues with French involvement in the Libyan Revolution, will have the same issues with French intervention in Mali. In my opinion, the French could not have reacted better. They saw that the Islamists were within days, if not hours, of taking the military base and airfield at Severe which would make the planned September ECOWAS deployment and counteroffensive all but impossible. If nothing was done the Islamists could very well have occupied all of Mali and declared an Islamic republic. The French reacted with what they had in the area. Several hundred troops were deployed to Bamako from N'Djamena, Chad (1,400 miles) and Senegal (500 miles). Ostensibly this was to protect the 6,000 French nationals in Mali. I believe the purpose of this force was to stabilize the political situation in Bamako. They did not want to run the risk of another military coup d'etat and the further international paralysis that would follow. Fighter bombers flew from N'Djamena with the help of tankers to attack the Islamist forces threatening Mopti. Gazelle helicopters armed with 20mm cannon and HOT missiles flew from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (225 miles). These Gazelles were part of the 4th Special Forces Helicopter Regiment, a unit equivalent to our 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. </span></p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b632e6970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Boiteux\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b632e6970b-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"Boiteux\"></a></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">This did the trick. The Islamist offensive was stopped and the dilly-dallying over the deployment of the ECOWAS force has ended. The Malian forces have finally tasted a victory and have received a much needed morale boost. The task is far from over. The French discovered that the Islamist forces are far more formidable than they first thought. I believe that's why they have expanded their air attacks. They know the Salafist Islamist forces must be degraded if there is any chance of them being defeated by ECOWAS and Malian forces.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">\n<a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b6424b970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Tuareg-rebels\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef017c35b6424b970b-250wi\" style=\"width:240px\" title=\"Tuareg-rebels\"></a><br>There is one thing that I am convinced must happen if the Salafist Islamist forces are to be defeated in Mali. The Tuaregs must be accepted as full partners. Azawad autonomy in some form must be accepted and the Tuaregs, including the MNLA, must be allowed to take the lead in administering and securing their own lands. I would advise the Malian government to ask the Tuaregs to administer and defend any part of Azawad that is liberated be it Timbuktu, Gao or both. That would be the ultimate expression of système D.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">TTG </span></p>"
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"title" : "IBM Researcher Feeds Watson Supercomputer The 'Urban Dictionary'; Very Quickly Regrets It",
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"content" : "As a parent, some of your proudest moments occur when your children begin to talk. After several months of ear-shredding cries and indistinguishable babble, they finally begin to communicate in a language you can understand. A first word is an indescribable joy, whether it's "mama," "dada" or "roku." The future now seems to be an amazing place where you and your child will strive towards excellence <i>together</i>, culminating in a comfortable retirement in which you live off their immense earnings as a person of brilliance.<br>\n<br>\nShortly thereafter, you begin to rue the day they ever learned the (now) cursed language of their ancestors.<br>\n<br>\nIt starts with the incessant barrage of questions in a meandering quest for knowledge, followed by the barrage of questions (mainly, "Why?") that greet every suggestion, criticism or direct order. Shortly thereafter, it's followed by questions directed at your parenting skills, cultural tastes, archaic slang use, rhetorical devices and sense of direction. At the point where you're wishing their language development had followed <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowers_for_Algernon\">Charlie Gordon's "learning curve,"</a> you're asked to make a surprise appearance at the school administrator's office to explain a sudden outburst of particularly inventive cursing from your former "pride and joy."<br>\n<br>\nSo it is also with artificial life.<br>\n<br>\nWatson, IBM's Jeopardy-contestant supercomputer, showed the world that, with the right programming, any puny human could be bested in a mildly snooty game show that handed out answers and asked for questions. However, the quest for true artificial intelligence is still ongoing.<br>\n<br>\nSo, in the interest of science, <a href=\"http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/07/ibm-watson-slang/\">the whole of human knowledge (Internet Edition™) was dropped into Watson's brain</a> and then... the problems began.\n<blockquote>\n<i>Two years ago, Brown attempted to teach Watson the Urban Dictionary. The popular website contains definitions for terms ranging from Internet abbreviations like OMG, short for \"Oh, my God,\" to slang such as \"hot mess.\"</i><br>\n<br>\n<i>But Watson couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity -- which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word "bullshit" in an answer to a researcher's query.</i></blockquote>\nWell, it appears that every teacher's distrust of the internet in general is well-earned. It's nothing but quasi-facts dressed up in four-letter words, like a World Book Encyclopedia annotated by 4chan's /b/ board. (I'm not going to link to it. I won't have your misclicks weighing on my soul.) Still, it's disheartening to know that the use of the word "bullshit" (even correctly) is not considered a sign of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Sure, the word itself may be inappropriate, but under certain circumstances, it is <i>by far</i> the most appropriate answer.<br>\n<br>\nFortunately for Watson's team, they had the option to remove all this useful knowledge before it offended other researchers who weren't as used to being coldly called on their bullshit.\n<blockquote>\n<i>Ultimately, Brown's 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory. But the trial proves just how thorny it will be to get artificial intelligence to communicate naturally.</i></blockquote>\nIt also shows that artificial intelligence has one huge advantage over regular intelligence: the ability to permanently forget. We lowly humans are stuck with a brain that constantly reminds us (especially if we spend much time at places like the aforementioned /b/ board) that what is seen, cannot be unseen.<br>\n<br>\nWatson, having been de-swearified and brainwashed, is now headed to a better place.\n<blockquote>\n<i>Brown is now training Watson as a diagnostic tool for hospitals.</i></blockquote>\nThere it will be able to use its acquired knowledge to battle health issues like <a href=\"http://cancer.urbanup.com/1210697\">cancer</a>, <a href=\"http://aids.urbanup.com/3263438\">AIDS</a>, <a href=\"http://diabetes.urbanup.com/3727937\">diabetes</a> and <a href=\"http://dissociative-facebook-identity-disorder.urbanup.com/5885737\">Dissociative Facebook Identity Disorder</a>. <br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130110/14542221635/ibm-researcher-feeds-watson-supercomputer-urban-dictionary-very-quickly-regrets-it.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130110/14542221635/ibm-researcher-feeds-watson-supercomputer-urban-dictionary-very-quickly-regrets-it.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130110/14542221635/ibm-researcher-feeds-watson-supercomputer-urban-dictionary-very-quickly-regrets-it.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=887bf4a4a2c8605d25994702b6eb90f3&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=887bf4a4a2c8605d25994702b6eb90f3&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://tags.bluekai.com/site/5148\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:8pyu3gz&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=s24sIHR-m3M:CCKwSQQiIy0:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=s24sIHR-m3M:CCKwSQQiIy0:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=s24sIHR-m3M:CCKwSQQiIy0:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/s24sIHR-m3M\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Joint testing",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">for a multi-purpose connector, to speed up fabrication process for bamboo vaults similar to the <a href=\"http://afrch.blogspot.com/2012/08/bamboo-vault.html\">bamboo workshop</a> and smaller; as well as bamboo robots like the <a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/lowdo-blog/bambusa-tuldoides\">waterbot</a> for <a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/berekuso-hill-station\">Berekuso Hill Station</a>.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oEkgkeJkeqA/UO9pBJcinlI/AAAAAAAAAt4/y1_2jwT3TEw/s1600/1-DSC_0927.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"267\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oEkgkeJkeqA/UO9pBJcinlI/AAAAAAAAAt4/y1_2jwT3TEw/s400/1-DSC_0927.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YUlqikGxQok/UO9o7y6_MSI/AAAAAAAAAts/agRYw3kMMNM/s1600/2-DSC_0926.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"267\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YUlqikGxQok/UO9o7y6_MSI/AAAAAAAAAts/agRYw3kMMNM/s400/2-DSC_0926.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZbzORGBE_Q/UO9o7y1sbzI/AAAAAAAAAto/E8XhheSZMuQ/s1600/3-DSC_0919.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"267\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZbzORGBE_Q/UO9o7y1sbzI/AAAAAAAAAto/E8XhheSZMuQ/s400/3-DSC_0919.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RugPlcC91j0/UO9pBEdYW8I/AAAAAAAAAt8/Q42_nI6IKAE/s1600/4-DSC_0939.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"267\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RugPlcC91j0/UO9pBEdYW8I/AAAAAAAAAt8/Q42_nI6IKAE/s400/4-DSC_0939.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rh-jbl5vaMc/UO9pCJeG8sI/AAAAAAAAAuA/P_WIE2QvEfo/s1600/5-DSC_0935.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"267\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rh-jbl5vaMc/UO9pCJeG8sI/AAAAAAAAAuA/P_WIE2QvEfo/s400/5-DSC_0935.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br></div>"
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"title" : "Dis-Orient",
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"content" : "<p><em>(in response to Billy Collins’ “<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/orient/309182/\">Orient</a>“)</em></p>\n<p>No, I will not dwell on landscapes<br>\ncolored with pretty prayer flags and<br>\ndragon-decorated temples, or villages<br>\neternally shrouded in mist, the kinds<br>\nso easily conjured in armchair travel<br>\nfantasies, because— <em>hello</em>, have you read<br>\nthe news lately? There is a building boom<br>\nin China and the national bird is now<br>\nthe construction crane. In Changsha,<br>\nthey built a 30-story hotel in two weeks,<br>\nand have plans for several more. In October,<br>\nthousands of factory workers doing piece-<br>\nwork on the shiny new iPhone 5 went on strike<br>\nin Zhengzhou and in Taiyuan. Around these<br>\nfactories, they’ve built metal nets to catch<br>\nthe bodies of would-be suicides: overworked,<br>\nundertrained, poorly paid (we know the concept<br>\nhere as<em> liability</em>). I do not bow from the fulcrum<br>\nof my waist and my talents do not include<br>\n“cultural dancing” or being able to cut your toenails<br>\nwhile giving you a blow job. The sound of my voice<br>\nis not soft like a bell or <em>like a little saxophone</em>: it is<br>\nnothing diminutive, and my children will tell you<br>\nthat years ago, when their father spent the household<br>\nmoney on a used car someone had conned him into buying<br>\nsight unseen, I threw pots and pans against the wall<br>\nand told him to go to hell. And yes, I have another side,<br>\nI have many sides, but they are all grounded in history,<br>\nbristling with context and all the languages in which<br>\nI dream. If you dug a hole in one of these worlds and fell<br>\nheadlong into it, you would think you’d discovered<br>\na new country; you would wonder how long it would take<br>\nbefore a band of beautiful, half-naked women would appear<br>\nto bear you away in a hammock and make you their king.</p>\n<p> </p>\n—<a href=\"http://luisaigloria.com\">Luisa A. Igloria</a><br>\n01 09 2013<br>\n<p><em>In response to <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/orient/309182/\">Orient</a>.</em></p>"
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"title" : "Boil The Frog",
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"content" : "<p>You know the old story – if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and gradually heat the pot up, the frog won’t notice and will happily sit in the pot until the water boils and the frog is turned into frog soup. This story is at the core of my winter break programming project called <b><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/\">Boil the Frog</a>. Boil the Frog</b> will take you from one music style to another gradually enough so that you may not notice the changes in music style. Just like the proverbial frog sitting in a pot of boiling water, with a Boil the Frog playlist, the Justin Bieber fan may find themselves listening to some extreme brutal death metal such as Cannibal Corpse or Deicide (the musical equivalent to sitting in a pot of boiling water).</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/\"><img alt=\"Screenshot 1:2:13 5:54 AM-3\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/screenshot-1213-554-am-3.png?w=620&h=626\" width=\"620\" height=\"626\"></a></p>\n<p>To use Boil the Frog, you type in the names of any two artists you’ll be given a playlist that connects the two artists. Click on the first artist to start listening to the playlist. If you don’t like the route taken to connect two artists, you can make a new route by bypassing an offending artist. The app uses <a href=\"http://rdio.com\">Rdio</a> to play the music. If you are an Rdio subscriber, you’ll hear full tracks, if not you’ll hear a 30 second sample of the music.</p>\n<p>You can create some fun playlists with this app such as:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=miley%20cyrus&dest=miles%20davis\">Miley Cyrus to Miles Davis</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=justin%20bieber&dest=jimi%20hendrix\">Justin Bieber to Jimi Hendrix</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=mickey%20mouse&dest=deadmau5\">Mickey Mouse to deadmau5</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=Patti%20Smith&dest=The%20Smiths\">Patti Smith to the Smiths</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=elvis%20presley&dest=elvis%20costello\">Elvis to Elvis</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=carter%20family&dest=rammstein\">The Carter Family to Rammstein</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=kanye%20west&dest=taylor%20swift\">Kanye West to Taylor Swift</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=cage+the+elephant&dest=john+cage\">Cage the Elephant to John Cage</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=ryan+adams&dest=bryan+adams\">Ryan Adams to Bryan Adams</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html?src=righteous+brothers&dest=steven+wright\">Righteous Brothers to Steven Wright</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>How does it work?</strong> To create this app, I use <a href=\"http://developer.echonest.com/\">The Echo Nest</a> artist similarity info to build an artist similarity graph of about 100,000 of the most popular artists. Each artist in the graph is connected to it’s most similar neighbors according to the Echo Nest artist similarity algorithm.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"image graph\" src=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/images/lz.png\"></p>\n<p>To create a new playlist between two artists, the graph is used to find the path that connects the two artists. The path isn’t necessarily the shortest path through the graph. Instead, priority is given to paths that travel through artists of similar popularity. If you start and end with popular artists, you are more likely to find a path that takes you though other popular artists, and if you start with a long-tail artist you will likely find a path through other long-tail artists. Without this popularity bias many routes between popular artists would venture into back alleys that no music fan should dare to tread.</p>\n<p>Once the path of artists is found, we need to select the best songs for the playlist. To do this, we pick a well-known song for each artist that minimizes the difference in energy between this song, the previous song and the next song. Once we have selected the best songs, we build a playlist using Rdio’s nifty web api.</p>\n<p>This is the second version of this app. I built the first version <a href=\"http://musicmachinery.com/2012/02/26/boil-the-frog/\">during a Spotify hack weekend</a>. This was a Spotify app that would only run inside Spotify. I never released the app (the Spotify app approval process was a bit too daunting for my weekend effort), so I though I’d make a new version that runs on the web that anyone can use.</p>\n<p>I enjoy using Boil the Frog to connect up artists that I like. I usually end up finding a few new artists that I like. For example, this Boil The Frog playlist <a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/?src=deadmau5&dest=explosions%20in%20the%20sky&skip=ARHBEMQ122BCFC9D3C\">connecting Deadmau5 and Explosions in the Sky</a> is in excellent coding playlist.</p>\n<p>Give <a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/index.html\">Boil the Frog</a> a try and if you make some interesting playlists let me know and I’ll add them to the <a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/frog/gallery.html\">Gallery</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/4439/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/4439/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=musicmachinery.com&blog=6500426&post=4439&subd=musicmachinery&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C",
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"content" : "<p>For years I've tried my damnedest to get away from C. Too simple, too many details to manage, too old and crufty, too low level. I've had intense and torrid love affairs with Java, C++, and Erlang. I've built things I'm proud of with all of them, and yet each has broken my heart. They've made promises they couldn't keep, created cultures that focus on the wrong things, and made devastating tradeoffs that eventually make you suffer painfully. And I keep crawling back to C.</p>\n\n<p>C is the total package. It is the only language that's highly productive, extremely fast, has great tooling <em>everywhere</em>, a large community, a highly professional culture, and is truly honest about its tradeoffs. </p>\n\n<p>Other languages can get you to a working state faster, but in the long run, when performance and reliability are important, C will save you time and headaches. I'm painfully learning that lesson once again.</p>\n\n<p><b>Simple and Expressive</b></p>\n\n<p>C is a fantastic high level language. I'll repeat that. C is a fantastic <strong>high level language</strong>. It's not as high level as Java or C#, and certainly no where near as high level as Erlang, Python, or Javascript. But it's as high level as C++, and far far simpler. Sure C++ offers more abstraction, but it doesn't present a high level of abstraction away from C. With C++ you still have to know everything you knew in C, plus a bunch of other ridiculous shit.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"When someone says: 'I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done', give him a lollipop.\"\n\n<p>- Alan J. Perlis</p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>That we have a hard time thinking of lower level languages we'd use instead of C isn't because C is low level. It's because C is so damn successful as an abstraction over the underlying machine and making that high level, it's made most low level languages irrelevant. C is <em>that good</em> at what it does.</p>\n\n<p>The syntax and semantics of C is amazingly powerful and expressive. It makes it easy to reason about high level algorithms and low level hardware at the same time. Its semantics are so simple and the syntax so powerful it lowers the cognitive load substantially, letting the programmer focus on what's important.</p>\n\n<p>It's blown everything else away to the point it's moved the bar and redefined what we think of as a low level language. That's damn impressive.</p>\n\n<p><b>Simpler Code, Simpler Types</b></p>\n\n<p>C is a weak, statically typed language and its type system is quite simple. Unlike C++ or Java, you don't have classes where you define all sorts of new runtime behaviors of types. You are pretty much limited to structs and unions and all callers must be very explicit about how they use the types, callers get very little for free.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.\"\n\n<p>- Joe Armstrong</p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>What sounds like a weakness ends up being a virtue: the \"surface area\" of C APIs tend to be simple and small. Instead of massive frameworks, there is a strong tendency and culture to create small libraries that are lightweight abstractions over simple types.</p>\n\n<p>Contrast this to OO languages where codebases tend to evolve massive interdependent interfaces of complex types, where the arguments and return types are more complex types and <strong>the complexity is fractal</strong>, each type is a class defined in terms of methods with arguments and return types or more complex return types.</p>\n\n<p>It's not that OO type systems force fractal complexity to happen, but they encourage it, they make it easier to do the wrong thing. C doesn't make it impossible, but it makes it harder. C tends to breed simpler, shallower types with fewer dependencies that are easier to understand and debug.</p>\n\n<p><b>Speed King</b></p>\n\n<p>C is the fastest language out there, both in micro and in full stack benchmarks. And it isn't just the fastest in runtime, it's also consistently the most efficient for memory consumption and startup time. And when you need to make a tradeoff between space and time, C doesn't hide the details from you, it's easy to reason about both.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one.\"\n\n<p>- Kernighan & Plauger, The Elements of Programming Style </p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>Every time there is a claim of \"near C\" performance from a higher level language like Java or Haskell, it becomes a sick joke when you see the details. They have to do awkward backflips of syntax, use special knowledge of \"smart\" compilers and VM internals to get that performance, to the point that the simple expressive nature of the language is lost to strange optimizations that are version specific, and usually only stand up in micro-benchmarks.</p>\n\n<p>When you write something to be fast in C, you know why it's fast, and it doesn't degrade significantly with different compilers or environments the way different VMs will, the way GC settings can radically affect performance and pauses, or the way interaction of one piece of code in an application will totally change the garbage collection profile for the rest.</p>\n\n<p>The route to optimization in C is direct and simple, and when it's not, there are a host of profiler tools to help you understand why without having to understand the guts of a VM or the \"sufficiently smart compiler\". When using profilers for CPU, memory and IO, C is best at not obscuring what is really happening. The <a href=\"http://dada.perl.it/shootout/craps.html\">benchmarks</a>, both micro and full stack, consistently prove C is still the king.</p>\n\n<p><b>Faster Build-Run-Debug Cycles</b></p>\n\n<p>Critically important to developer efficiency and productivity is the \"build, run, debug\" cycle. The faster the cycle is, the more interactive development is, and the more you stay in the state of flow and on task. C has the fastest development interactivity of any mainstream statically typed language.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming; feedback is the treatment.\"\n\n<p>- Kent Beck</p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>Because the build, run, debug cycle is not a core feature of a language, it's more about the tooling around it, this cycle is something that tends to be overlooked. It's hard to overstate the importance of the cycle for productivity. Sadly it's something that gets left out of most programming language discussions, where the focus tends to be only on lines of code and source writability/readability. The reality is the tooling and interactivity cycle of C is the fastest of any comparable language.</p>\n\n<p><b>Ubiquitous Debuggers and Useful Crash Dumps</b></p>\n\n<p>For pretty much any system you'd ever want to port to, there are readily available C debuggers and crash dump tools. These are invaluable to quickly finding the source of problems. And yes, there will be problems.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"Error, no keyboard -- press F1 to continue.\"</div></blockquote>\n\n<p>With any other language there might not be a usable debugger available and less likely a useful crash dump tool, and there is a really good chance for any heavy lifting you are interfacing with C code anyway. Now you have to debug the interface between the other language and the C code, and you often lose a ton of context, making it a cumbersome, error prone process, and often completely useless in practice.</p>\n\n<p>With pure C code, you can see call stacks, variables, arguments, thread locals, globals, basically everything in memory. This is ridiculously helpful especially when you have something that went wrong days into a long running server process and isn't otherwise reproducible. If you lose this context in a higher level language, prepare for much pain.</p>\n\n<p><b>Callable from Anywhere</b></p>\n\n<p>C has a standardized application binary interface (ABI) that is supported by every OS, language and platform in existence. And it requires no runtime or other inherent overhead. This means the code you write in C isn't just valuable to callers from C code, but to every conceivable library, language and environment in existence.</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"Portability is a result of few concepts and complete definition\" \n\n<p>- J. Palme</p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>You can use C code in standalone executables, scripting languages, kernel code, embedded code, as a DLL, even callable from SQL. It's the Lingua Franca of systems programming and pluggable libraries. If you want to write something once and have it usable from the most environments and use cases possible, C is the only sane choice.</p>\n\n<p><b>Yes. It has Flaws</b></p>\n\n<p>There are many \"flaws\" in C. It has no bounds checking, it's easy to corrupt anything in memory, there are dangling pointers and memory/resource leaks, bolted-on support for concurrency, no modules, no namespaces. Error handling can be painfully cumbersome and verbose. It's easy to make a whole class of errors where the call stack is smashed and hostile inputs take over your process. Closures? HA!</p>\n\n<blockquote><div>\"When all else fails, read the instructions.\"\n\n<p>- L. Lasellio</p></div></blockquote>\n\n<p>Its flaws are very very well known, and this is a virtue. All languages and implementations have gotchas and hangups. C is just far more upfront about it. And there are a ton of static and runtime tools to help you deal with the most common and dangerous mistakes. That some of the most heavily used and reliable software in the world is built on C is proof that the flaws are overblown, and easy to detect and fix.</p>\n\n<p>At <a href=\"http://couchbase.com\">Couchbase</a> we recently spent easily 2+ man/months dealing with a crash in the Erlang VM. We wasted a ton of time tracking down something that was in the core Erlang implementation, never sure what was happening or why, thinking perhaps the flaw was something in our own plug-in C code, hoping it was something we could find and fix. It wasn't, it was a race condition bug in core Erlang. We only found the problem via code inspection of Erlang. This is a fundamental problem in any language that abstracts away too much of the computer.</p>\n\n<p>Initially for performance reasons, we started increasingly rewriting more of the <a href=\"http://couchbase.com\">Couchbase</a> code in C, and choosing it as the first option for more new features. But amazingly it's proven much more predictable when we'll hit issues and how to debug and fix them. In the long run, it's more productive.</p>\n\n<p>I always have it in the back of my head that I want to make a slightly better C. Just to clean up some of the rough edges and fix some of the more egregious problems. But getting everything to fit, top to bottom, syntax, semantics, tooling, etc., might not be possible or even worth the effort. As it stands today, C is unreasonably effective, and I don't see that changing any time soon.</p>\n\n<p>Follow me on <a href=\"https://twitter.com/damienkatz\">Twitter</a> for more of my coding opinions and updates on Couchbase progress.</p>"
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"title" : "Tapeworm Logic",
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"content" : "<p><b>What use is a human being</b> — to a tapeworm?</p>\n\n<p>A mature <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cestoda\">tapeworm</a> has a very simple lifestyle. It lives in the gut of a host animal, anchoring itself to the wall of the intestine with its scolex (or head), from which trails a long string of segments (proglottids) that contain reproductive structures. The tapeworm absorbs nutrients through its skin and gradually extrudes more proglottids, from the head down; as they reach the end of the tape they mature into a sac of fertilized eggs and break off. </p>\n <p>The adult tapeworm has no knowledge of what happens to its egg sacs after they detach; nor does it know where it came from. It simply finds itself attached to a warm, pulsing wall, surrounded by a rich nutrient flow. Its experience of the human being is limited to this: that the human surrounds it and provides it with a constant stream of nutrients and energy. A hypothetical intelligent tapeworm might well consider itself blessed to have such a warm and comforting environment, that gives it all the food it needs and takes away anything that it excretes. And if it were of a philosophical bent, it might speculate: <em>what is the extent of my environment? Is it infinite, or are there physical limits to it?</em> And, eventually, <em>are there other tapeworms out there?</em> And finally, the brilliant polymath-level Enrico Fermi of tapeworms might ask, <em>if there are other tapeworms, why aren't they here?</em></p>\n\n<p>Our tapeworm-philosopher gets its teeth into the subject. Given that the human is so clearly designed to be hospitable to tapeworm-kind, then it follows that if there are more humans, other humans <em>out there</em> beyond the anus, then they, too, must be hospitable to tapeworm-kind. Tapeworm-kind has become aware of itself existing in the human; it is logical to assume that if other humans exist then there must be other tapeworms, and if travel between humans is possible—and we infer that it might be, from the disappearance of our egg sacs through the anus of the human—then sooner or later humans interacting in the broader universe might exchange eggs from these hypothetical alien tapeworms, in which case, visitors! Because the human was already here before we became self-aware, it clearly existed for a long time before us. So if there are many humans, there has been a lot of time for the alien tapeworm-visitors to reach us. So <em>where are they</em>?</p>\n\n<p>Welcome to the Fermi paradox, mired in shit. Shall we itemize the errors that the tapeworm is making in its analysis?</p>\n\n<p>The first and most grievous offense our tapeworm logician has committed is that of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism\">anthropocentrism</a> (or rather, of cestodacentrism); it thinks everything revolves around tapeworms. In reality, the human is unaware of the existence of the tapeworm. This would be a good thing, from the worm's point of view, if it had any grasp of the broader context of its existence: it ought by rights to be doing the wormy equivalent of hiding under the bed covers, gibbering in fear. </p>\n\n<p>It has inferred the existence of other humans, but it doesn't know about cooking, or the other arcane processes by which food makes its way into the gut for the tapeworm to absorb. Or about the sanitary facilities that kill tapeworm eggs before they get to another, intermediate host. There are vast, ancient, alien intellects in the macrocosm beyond the well-known human, and they are unsympathetic to tapeworms. Intrepid tapeworm cosmonauts seeking to make their way beyond the anus and across the universe to colonize other humans are in for a rough ride indeed, for they are intimately evolved to thrive in one particular environment, and that environment (the mammalian gut) is sparsely distributed throughout the universe. Much of the cosmos is inherently hostile to tapeworms. This is why tapeworms have not, in fact, colonized the universe and converted all available biomass into a constantly spawning Gordian knot of Platyhelminthic life, <em>contra</em> the prognostications of some <a href=\"http://futurefire.net/2007.09/nonfiction/fedorov.html\">teleologically-inclined</a> <a href=\"http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=20746\">tapeworm-philosophers of yore</a>.</p>\n\n<p>The human does not owe the tapeworm a living, or even a comfortable home. The tapeworm's existence is contingent on it not damaging its human, resulting in an undesirable human/tapeworm interaction with fatal consequences for the tapeworm. Some of the tapeworm's descendants might be able to find another new human to claim as their home, but the same constraints will apply. Only if the tapeworm transcends its tapewormanity and grows legs, lungs, and other organs that essentially turn it into something <em>other</em> than a tapeworm will it be able to make itself at home outside the human.</p>\n\n<p>(<b>Note</b>: <font size=\"-1\">I picked tapeworms, rather than the bacterial gut fauna, because nobody much cares what happens to an <em>E. coli</em>. Tapeworms, on the other hand, are multicellular eukaryotic organisms with differentiates tissues, have nervous systems and genitalia, and are probably much closer to us—practically kissing-cousins to our form of vertebrate life—than anything we might discover on other planets. Perhaps the biggest weakness in this metaphor is its reliance on humans. While we may attribute intentionality to many natural phenomena—the supernatural stance—those of us tapeworms who are hard-headed materialists must surely concede that the <s>human</s> Earth is not a sentient being, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_World_Screamed\">Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fiction aside</a>. On the other hand, if you want to traffic with the ghost-infested depths of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis\">simulation hypothesis</a>, then anything is possible. Even tapeworm-cosmonauts flying out of my arse ...</font>)</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Over the holidays, after the shootings in Newtown, I was in a conversation on Facebook in which I reiterated my point from earlier in the year that in the United States, <a href=\"http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/2012/07/26/dont-bring-policy-to-a-culture-fight/\">gun ownership and gun practices are culture</a>, and as such, not likely to be quickly or predictably responsive to legislation or policy in any direction. I don’t say this to characterize guns (or anything else that falls into the big domain of “culture”, e.g., distinctive everyday practices and forms of consciousness) as something which should not be subject to official, governmental or institutional action, nor as something we cannot change. But as I said last summer, purposeful changes to culture towards a clearly imagined end are very difficult to accomplish. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/dec2012order3-1-of-1.jpg\"><img src=\"http://blogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/dec2012order3-1-of-1-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"empty\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p>In the course of that conversation, a colleague and I moved towards one of the comparisons I had in mind in making this caution, namely, the composite, complicated set of ideas and practices in much of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa that get somewhat misleadingly lumped together as “witchcraft”, “sorcery” or similar terms. Scholars studying Africa take great pains, for good reason, to offer nuanced, contextual accounts of witchcraft practice and discourse that among other things, argue that the label itself derives from European colonial ideology and racialized ideas about “primitive societies”–a history which shapes contemporary understandings both inside and outside of Africa. However troubled the history of the label, there’s still a living, contemporary domain of African practices and beliefs that needs a name, and it’s a domain that’s entangled with the history of European imaginings of Africa and Africans. So for the moment, with many cautions, sorcery or witchcraft it is. </p>\n<p>At least in southern Africa, I think folks reach for a single word not because it’s all the same thing, but because there’s some connected “deep” ideas that express themselves in a wide variety of ways and contexts. In fact, not only is each manifestation of those ideas different, you can actually see the deeper thinking mobilized by antagonists in various struggles, pulling in different directions. Witchcraft is a way to talk about why things happen in the world, in particular (but not exclusively) why bad things happen. As I’ve come to understand it, there’s two particularly key propositions: that most of what happens to individual people, whatever changes their situation or status, stems from their social relations (both direct personal relationships and generalized sociality) and that such events or changes are worked or brought about through invisible spiritual means, whether that means personified or animate spirits or more abstract and generalized spiritual force. </p>\n<p>So if I become ill or suffer misfortune (on one hand) or experience a striking positive change in my individual circumstances (on the other), the interpretation that refers back to witchcraft or sorcery assumes that either change is a consequence of my social relations, transmitted into my life through the mobilization of invisible, indirect spiritual power. This sounds very abstract, and it is, which explains to some extent why these views are so adaptable to varying circumstances. They’re assumptions that can’t be easily shaken or discarded even by people who don’t believe in any of the specifics. It’s extraordinarily difficult to comprehensively dissent from background ideas or interpretations that most people you know share in some measure. It is, on the other hand, very possible to shape these ideas to fit a wide variety of aspirations and circumstances. The underlying concepts can allow people to come together for community healing, or to create a powerful social consensus against the misdeeds of the few. “Witchcraft” lets people describe and condemn exploitation and tyranny, but it also can mystify and empower exploitation and tyranny. It can give malicious family members and community malcontents new languages and possibilities for hurting others, or serve as a way to imagine and explore one of the deepest puzzles of human existence: why bad things happen to good people. Invoking sorcery can be a way to stifle initiative and creativity, or a way to complain about stagnation and suffering. </p>\n<p>——–</p>\n<p>In 1993, a man named Gian Luigi Ferri entered an office building in San Francisco, went to the 34th floor offices of the law firm Pettit & Martin and went on a shooting rampage, killing eight people and wounding six before committing suicide. It’s never been clear exactly why he chose the firm as his target. Materials he left behind were mostly incoherent, but he blamed law firms in general for the failure of his businesses. </p>\n<p>At the time of the shooting, my father was the managing partner of the Los Angeles branch of Pettit & Martin. (The firm dissolved in 1995, which many outsiders attributed to the impact of the murders, but as I recall it, the firm had underlying financial and managerial issues that had little to do with the shooting.) I remember speaking with him not long after the killings. His emotions, understandably, were unusually raw and vivid. Though he was prone to verbal displays of temper, he was normally quite precise and controlled about how and when he allowed that to show in his professional and public life, and he was never physically intimidating either at home or work. On the other hand, as a former Marine, he was quite proud of his physical health and strength, and believed that if he were physically threatened he would be able and willing to defend himself without hestitation. As an adult, I once saw him unblinkingly and calmly stare down a man who was menacing the two of us with a knife, leading the other man to apologetically back away. As far as I know, he didn’t keep a gun in our house, though he was comfortable with and knowledgeable about guns. He had gone hunting with his father as a boy but told me a number of times that he had no taste for hunting as an adult. </p>\n<p>What I remember as we talked about the shooting in San Francisco is that he believed, ardently and sincerely, that if he had been in the San Francisco offices that day he would have found a way to stop the gunman. He would have tackled him or disarmed him or found a weapon. I don’t think this was empty chest-thumping on his part: he was serious and sincere and very willing to concede that maybe he would have died in the attempt. But he maintained that he would have tried. </p>\n<p>My father was speaking the language of American witchcraft. And in saying this, I do not for one minute mock or dismiss him or his counterfactual imagining of that horrible day. Gian Luigi Ferri was one kind of American sorcerer, and my father was another. The two deep cultural ideas that we hold to that manifest around guns and gun control alike–and around many other things besides guns–are as follows: 1) that individual action focused by will, determination and clarity of intent can always directly produce specific outcomes and equally that individuals who fail to act when confronted by circumstances (including the actions of other individuals) are culpable for whatever happens next and 2) that there are single-variable abstract social forces that are responsible for seemingly recurrent events and that the proper establishing structure, rule or policy can cancel out the impact of that variable, if only we can figure out which one is the right one. </p>\n<p>I’ll come back to #2 in a bit, because as I’ve put it here, it may not sound like a generalized American belief, but instead just the institutionalized faith of social scientists and policy-makers. #1 is probably easier for most Americans to recognize. Some of that is a generic liberal, Enlightenment idea about the sovereign individual, but the idea has a peculiar emotional and cultural intensity in the United States, a historical rootedness in a wide variety of distinctively American experiences and mythologies: the gunfighter in the West, the evangelical who saves both self and community, the engineer who finds a way to keep failure from being an option, the deification of the Founding Fathers as extraordinary individuals, Thoreau’s call to disobedience. It goes on and on. It’s a deep and abiding idea that expresses itself in otherwise antagonistic ideologies or very different local cultures across the country. That each of us can act as independent individuals, of our own accord, with deliberate intent, and change what would have been. Or in failing to act, be held responsible for what actually did happen. That idea can come to rest on very different moments and practices–or on fetish objects of various kinds. </p>\n<p>Including guns. This is what it means to engage “gun culture”, and why that is such a difficult thing to do. Because there are other men (and women) like my father who believe as he did that if they were present at a moment of violence or trauma, they would find a way to stop it. For many of them, a gun provides that assurance. And while you can say that it probably would not turn out that way, or that there is just as much possibility of an intervention making things even worse, this is just going deeper into the weeds. Because it’s not just the people imagining that they would save everyone who are the issue, but the killers, who are just as affected by a faith in individual action, often after a life in which they’ve been comprehensively denied any other way to believe in the consequentiality of their personal agency. </p>\n<p>Maybe it’s possible to surgically remove guns from this latticework. But maybe it’s the bigger weave that’s the issue. Look at all the ways we acknowledge, encourage or make affordances for this deeper belief about ourselves, about why and how things happen in the world, and you begin to see a different challenge. There’s a reason why contemporary Africans who would just as soon defect from anything resembling witchcraft discourse find it hard to do. If I wanted to offer a different view about why anything, everything happens in the world, to explain that causation and consequence flow from accidents, from unmanageable interactions, from partial or dispersed forms of personhood and subjectivity, from systems and institutions, or many other similar formulations, I would be up against not just gun owners but gun control advocates, in general. Up against most Americans in their most intimate experiences and understandings of daily life and self-conception. Indeed, up against myself. Not only am I as much affected as anyone else, like many Americans (and others around the world), I rather <em>like</em> this way of understanding causality and consequence. I like it both intellectually and romantically, as an ideal and a structure of feeling. Even as I know that it is in some sense defective as an actual explanation and as an aspiration, and that it generates and sustains many practices that I dislike or oppose. </p>\n<p>This is where idea #2 kicks in. The one problem with a pervasive belief that what happens to us is the consequence of our individual actions (or failure to act) is when we see in our larger national or global culture that some of what we attribute to the willful actions of individuals seems to be recurrent, patterned, widespread. This is a common problem for every deeply vested local or particular cultural vision of selfhood and society. Witchcraft discourse in southern Africa talks about both individual acts of sorcery and about the question of whether (or where) sorcery is systematic or generalized and how to relate the two. What I’d argue is that Americans work out this distinction by believing that recurrent or patterned actions are the result of the relationship between a single social variable expressed as individual actions and a single particular political design that permits or encourages that expression. That sounds modern and bureaucratic but its American roots lie in constitutionalism, in the proposition that concretely correct social designs or covenants can express–or suppress–any given will to act. That respect for religious freedom, for example, can arise from William Penn setting that as an initial condition of his colony rather than, as Peter Silver and other historians point out, an emergent result of many social interactions that did not have religious freedom as an objective, including settler mobilization against Native Americans. This can be a secular vision or a religious one, or both and neither. The Devil can serve as as an explanation just as well as guns or video games or lack of mental health care or media attention. </p>\n<p>We believe that we can fix problems that we describe and perceive as singular issues. We tinker endlessly with machinery that seeks to identify the single establishing rule, the single malformed covenant, the single enabling policy that expresses or stifles individual action. That produces killers who mass murder children or produces saviors who would protect them. How quick we are to rush to our snipe hunts, running through dark woods. We’re told, often, that we break apart conjoined, messy problems temporarily, so that experts can study and understand, so that policy can be made, but that somehow we will reassemble it all at some point. </p>\n<p>That point never comes because just as with our faith in our individual action, a successful reassemblage hits us hard in our deeper cultural understandings of why bad and good things happen. We don’t have a good language for intentional social or political action to achieve progress that bows to a messier, more partial, more complex-systems understanding of the world and all the things in it. We may have an intellectual vocabulary for that, but not yet (maybe not ever) a deeply felt, emotional experience of it. I feel sometimes as if I’m groping for that new sense of self and society, trying to get it to take root in myself, but just for myself, I have to figure out how to speak it and imagine it in a way that doesn’t sound like fatalism or resignation, and in a language that has everyday resonance. (Which this essay certainly does not.) </p>\n<p>So we go on thinking that when the moment comes, we’ll do the right thing, and that in between, we’ll someday find the law, the policy, the rule, the Constitutional amendment that will keep individuals from doing some particular wrong thing, that will push some abstract force or some Satanic provocation under the national rug once and for all. Just as witch-finding and healing, condemnation and consensus, never somehow seem to prevent or check either the personalized force of sorcery or its pervasive spirit. </p>"
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"title" : "TALES FROM THE WORLD BEFORE YESTERDAY: A Conversation with Jared Diamond",
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"content" : "<div><p>From <em>Edge:</em></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef017c354c8f72970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Diamond\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef017c354c8f72970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Diamond\"></a>I'll tell you the incident in New Guinea that had the biggest influence on my subsequent life. I was with a group of New Guineans doing a survey of birds on a mountain, and we were establishing camps at different elevations on the mountain to survey birds of different elevational ranges. We were moving from one camp up to another camp, and so I'd wanted to choose a new campsite. I found a gorgeous campsite. It was on a place where the ridge broadened out and flattened out. It was a steep drop-off, so I could stand at that edge and look out and see hawks and parrots flying. The broad area of the ridge meant that there was going to be good bird-watching walking around there. And it was beautiful, because my proposed campsite was underneath a gigantic tree, just a gorgeous tree. I was really happy with this campsite. I told the New Guineans, \"Let's make camp here.\" And greatly to my surprise, they were frightened out of their minds, and they said, \"We're not going to sleep here. We'll sleep out in the open, rather than sleep in tents here.\" I said, \"What's the matter?\" They said, \"Look at that tree. It's dead.\" Okay, so I looked up, and yes, this gigantic tree was dead, but it was solid as iron. And I told them, \"All right. So maybe it's dead, but it's going to stand there for another 70 years, it's so huge and solid.\" But no, they were just terrified, and they were not going to sleep under that dead tree. They actually did, rather than sleep under the dead tree, they went and slept 100 yards away.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">We stayed at that campsite for a week and naturally, nothing happened. I thought that the New Guineans were just being paranoid. And then, this was early in my career, as I got more experienced in New Guinea, I realized, every night I sleep out in New Guinea forest. At some time during the night, I hear the sound of a tree crashing down. And, you see tree falls in New Guinea forest, and I started to do the numbers. Suppose the chances of a dead tree crashing down on you the particular night that you sleep under it is only one in 1,000. But suppose you're a New Guinean, who's going to sleep every night in the forest, or spend 100 nights a year sleeping out in the forest. In the course of 10 years, you will have spent a thousand nights in the forest, and if you camp under dead trees, and each dead tree has a one in 1,000 chance of falling on you and killing you, you're not going to die the first night, but in the course of 10 years, the odds are that you are going to die from sleeping under dead trees. If you're going to do something repeatedly that each time has a very low chance of bringing disaster. But if you're going to do it repeatedly, it will eventually catch up with you. That incident affected me more than anything else, because I realized that in life, we encounter risks that each time the risk is very slight. But if you're going to do it repeatedly, it will catch up with you. And ever since then, I'm now very cautious about how I stand in the shower, how I walk on sidewalks, how I go up and down stairs, how I take left turns in my car.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.edge.org/conversation/tales-from-the-world-before-yesterday\">here.</a></p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=t-O_6Fs3ASQ:0vDuLn9vQcI:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/t-O_6Fs3ASQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Black history in Britain through the courts.",
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"content" : "<div>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/images/londoncrowd_web.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"311\">The central criminal court in London, the <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/\">Old Bailey</a> has published court records from 1674-1913 online. The database includes records on the lives of Africans and their descendent’s in London. The publication of the archives online is probably one of the most exciting additions to the history of Black people in Britain. The site archives records of <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life19th.jsp\">197,745 criminal trials</a> held at London’s central criminal court between 1674 and 1913. I spent many hours looking for cases of Africans accused of crimes, as well as victims of crimes as a way of beginning to understand the kind of lives they lived. My search included keywords ‘negro’, ‘slave’, and ‘African’.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p> In <a href=\"http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780861047499\"><em>Staying Power: A Black History of Britain</em></a>, Peter Fry traced the Black presence as far back as the Roman invasions, when many of the soldiers came from parts of Africa. By 1674,<a href=\"http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_45.html\">Britain had been involved in the Transatlantic slave trade</a> for nearly 100 years. In total, 11,500 slave-seeking voyages to Africa were made by British merchants in the 245-year period. So it made sense there would be a considerable number of black people in London [m<a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life19th.jsp\">ore on London history here</a>] from that period on – a fact that one Joseph Guy used in his defence on being tried for highway robbery:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>‘There are a <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/London-life19th.jsp\">thousand black men in London</a> besides me: last Monday se’nnight I went to see a serjeant’s sister that lives at the Three Conies in Rumford road; when I had rode over the stones, and cantered about half a mile, I found my horse would not perform his journey; I turned back again, and got to a house in King-street, Westminster; I got there about ten minutes after five, and gave my horse a feed of corn, and in about half an hour or three quarters after, I went for Chelsea; I have been in England six years. Guilty. Death.’ <strong><a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17670218-38&div=t17670218-38\">Joseph Guy was convicted of highway robbery</a> on 18 February 1767.</strong></em></p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17820515-27&div=t17820515-27&terms=negro#highlight\">Esther Allingham</a> was a sex worker who refused to work for nothing and was then accused of theft. Surprisingly, this black woman, a sex worker, was acquitted in 1782. She told this to the court:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>‘This money they swear to, is my own, I have saved up at a shilling a time. When I met this gentleman first, he was with a black woman with a white gown and white coat on. What he had, was entirely unbuttoned. I was at a distance, against the rails. I went down towards Pall-Mall; I stood upon the stone of a door in Gloucester-court. He asked if there was any house he could go into; I said there was a house there. I knocked at No. 3, and went in. He said, My dear, I have no money; I have been with a black woman; my money is all gone. He pulled out his pocket, and said, I have got a snuff box, and a watch, and a pin valued at so much, and a pocket-book at so much, which he could not part with. I said, if he had no money, I would not go with him. I said, As you have no money, I do not chuse to give my carcase up to you for nothing; and I hope you will give me liberty to get some water, for I am dry. He said yes; but he would keep my cloak till I came back. What he offered to me, was what is not fit: he is a man neither fit for God nor the devil; he is neither fit for a black woman, nor a white woman. What he expressed to me, put a shock upon my spirits, and frightened me.’ <strong>Esther Allingham – not guilty, 15 May 1782.</strong></em></p></blockquote>\n<p>Another interesting case was that of one Highwayman, <a href=\"http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17360908-39&div=t17360908-39&terms=negro#highlight\">John Guy</a>. When he refused to have sex with two women, they robbed him. It was 1786 and Guy was a sailor, so he possibly was a ‘freeman’ from one of the Caribbean islands.</p>\n<p>Here’s his testimony:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>‘I was just paid off from the Ship Newcastle, and walking along Rosemary Lane , between 4 or 5 o’Clock I met 2 Women; I asked them for a Lodging, they bid me come with them: I went with them to Whitcher’s House, and we had some Salmon and Punch and a quartern of Brandy? Then I went to bed, and one of the Women came to bed to me, tho’ I would not let her: The oldest of the Prisoners pull’d up her Coats, and bid me look at – and told me it was as black as my Face, &c. &c. – I would not do it, but went to sleep, and when I waked I found all my Money gone. One of the Girls own’d before Justice Farmer, that 8 Guineas and 4 s. of my Money was divided among them.’</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>Like Esther Allingham, John Guy was acquitted – is it possible that black people in those days received better justice than they do today? Certainly if this had taken place in the US, Guy would have been lynched. However other cases resulted in extreme punishment which could have been as much due to class as race. ’Poor’ Thomas Robinson (‘a Negro Black Boy ‘), for example, was sentenced to death for house-breaking and stealing ‘divers Goods’ in 1724.</p>\n<p>John Bardoe was bought as a slave in Lagos by a Genoese sea-captain and, when their ship docked in London in 1859, Bardoe apparently freed himself with the aid of a fellow countryman and began working for another Italian. Bardoe then fell ill and, in a feverish state, assumed he was being recaptured. He first barricaded himself into his room, then made a break for it and stabbed a policeman in a rooftop chase. An interesting story in itself as the translator at the trial was ‘Miss. M. B. Servano, a native of Yorubah, and educated in England’. Bardoe was found to have acted in self-defence and judged not guilty.</p>\n<p>These are only a handful of the many cases at the Old Bailey that involved black people. There are lots of interesting analytical details to be found: social networks among Africans in London, the continuation of slavery at sea, varying perceptions of freedom, and the education of African women. Roughly the period I looked at was between 1725 and 1860 and it’s worth briefly examining other events and legal cases during the same period for example through the civil courts. For example, <a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=post&tag=diana-ferrus\"> Saartje Baartman</a> arrived in England in 1810 and was exhibited at Piccadilly Circus. What I did not know was Baartman’s role in the abolitionist movement in her capacity as the “Hottentot Venus”. This is explained by Christina Sharpe in <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Monstrous-Intimacies-Post-Slavery-Modernities-ebook/dp/B004GTNCOW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1356731250&sr=1-1&keywords=monstrous+intimacies\">“Monstrous Intimacies</a>: Making Post Slavery Subjects”. [a must read]</p>\n<blockquote><p>Zachary Macaulay, Robert Wedderburn and the African Institution petitioned the Court of the Kings Bench on account of the indecent nature of the exhibition, in which they suspected she was being kept as a slave. After hearing and viewing the evidence [including testimony and a signed contract between Dunlop [her keeper/owner] and Baartman dated 29 October 1810] the court concluded, “She came by her own consent to England and was promised half of the money for exhibiting her person – She agreed to come to England for a period of six years”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Sharpe explains that the court’s decision was to “resolve” the question of whether Baartman was someone else’s property [chattel] or a ‘free’ person with rights over herself. Although the intention of the petition was to free Baartman and effect her return home, but in claiming Baartman was consensual to her own humiliation, meant she remained in captivity.</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Even as Baartman has the legal signifers of a free subject conferred upoin her by the outcome of the case, in fact she remains captive to her employer and becomes a kind of theoretical limit case that helps define the limits of freedom for the English subject. However the case could have been resolved, the freedom at issue was never Baartman’s own. Had she not been viewed as a free citizen under contract in England, she would have been set free [redemption operating here in the sense of the 'action of freeing a prisoner, captive, or slave by payment' ] on the Cape into a state of near slavery” .</p></blockquote>\n<p>I have taken Sharpe’s work slightly out of context of her book to provide a historical and political understanding of this period in the history of Black people in Britain and the changing significance of race… The point is that the criminal and civil courts can provide us with an additional perspective on the presence and lives of black people in Britain in the 18th and 19th century’s and how these were and continues to be intertwined closely with the empire.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n</div>\n<div>Update on B<a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/2008/05/uk_court_archi%E2%80%A6rican_history_\">lack Looks from 2008</a></div>\n</div>\n<div></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div><div style=\"float:none;height:30px\"><a></a><a></a><a></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div>"
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"title" : "Happy birthday tricky Dick",
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"content" : "<b>Happy birthday tricky Dick</b><br><br>by digby<br><br>It's the 100th birthday of the most notorious modern Republican of them all. Kathy Geier reminded me of <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/\">this memorable tribute</a> from none other than Hunter S Thompson:<br><br><blockquote>It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.<br><br>That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds.</blockquote><br>And his legacy lives on today. <a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005/05/nixons-babies-its-pretty-clear-to-me.html\">This piece from 2005 called \"Nixon's babies\"</a> explains why the modern GOP, for all its hard core conservatism in contrast to Nixon's more liberal (by today's standards) agenda is still far more Nixon's creation than Ronald Reagan's:<br><br><blockquote>The modern Republicans, from their earliest incarnation in the 60's, starting with still active operatives like Morton Blackwell and Karl Rove to the next generation of Abramoff, Norquist and Reed, have always operated as dirty tricksters, and corrupt power brokers. The modern Republican Party is not, and never has been, the party of Ronald Reagan, not really. It's the party of Richard Nixon. <br><br>Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist came together as a power in the College Republicans during the Reagan years. Blackwell, Rove, Atwater, and many others powerful operatives and strategists had cut their teeth there, as well, but these guys came in at the beginning of the heady Reagan years and they were fueled by the belief that they were on the permanent winning side of history. The triumverate of Norquist, Abramoff and Reed is legendary --- and they are all implicated in the burgeoning Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal. <br><br>They have come to represent the three most important wings of the modern conservative movement --- the Christian Right (Reed), the movement ideologues (Norquist) and the big money boys (Abramoff.) They are the Republican party. And they are all corrupt. <br><br>Reed is a total phony. I had long assumed, as most people probably did, that he came up through the Christian Right, a conservative Christian who got into politics through religion. He sure does look the part, doesn't he? This, of course, is not true. He wasn't \"born again\" until 1983, long after he had committed himself to Republican politics and proved himself to be a ruthless, unprincipled operative. He helped to create the Christian Coalition, it didn't create him. In fact, the Christian Right doesn't really exist independently of the Party, it is a wholly owned subsidiary, consciously created and nurtured as a Republican voting block.<br>(Morton Blackwell famously gave the Moral Majority its name.) Ralph Reed is now entering electoral politics himself, making the big move. He's probably the most dangerous Republican in America. <br><br>Norquist, as most people know is a great admirer of Stalin's tactics. He's quoted as saying to Reed back in the College Republican days: <br><br><blockquote>[Stalin] was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.</blockquote><br>To that end, Norquist more than anyone else has ensured through carefully constructed alliances that movement ideologues like himself peppered the Republican power structure to the extent that over time, they have come to define it. This is why people like John Bolton, who has no more business being a diplomat than does the Rude Pundit, have become mainstream Republicans, even though they are clearly radical. He has made sure that Republicans are interdependent on each other through money and influence and that the money and influence flow through him and his allies.<br><br>Norquist is the truest of true believers, but he understands the importance of certain other inducements to keep people in line. Tom DeLay and Norquist created the K Street project and it's been a rousing success. Abramoff and DeLay were the guys who offered those needed inducements when true belief and solidarity weren't enough. Delay wielded the hammer and Abramoff (among others) offered the goodies. This is how they hold the GOP majority together. Ask Nick Smith how that works. <br><br>It's not surprising that Abramoff is the weak link in this. He was the front man back in the college republican days, but he doesn't seem to have been a real strategist in the way that Reed, with his ruthless single mindedness was or Norquist with his long term Soviet style political vision. In fact, the strangest thing about Abramoff is his almost decade long movie producing career that resulted in only two movies being made --- Dolph Lundgren's \"Red Scorpion\" and \"Red Scorpion II\" --- both of which were co-produced by his brother, a successful show business attorney. This is an odd chapter in Abramoff's life. It's hard to know why he was unable to parlay himself a real career in Hollywood, except to wonder if maybe Hollywood, for all its faults, just isn't as easily bought off as his pals in the conservative movement. After all, these kind of perks are just standard in the Entertainment industry and can't buy you much of anything at all (from Foer's article in TNR): <br><br>Over time, Abramoff's media management grew more sophisticated, and he dispensed largesse across conservative journalism. His junkets didn't just comprise meetings and site visits, they also included plenty of recreation time. Trips to the Choctaw Reservation, for instance, featured gambling at the Silver Star resort and rounds on a lush new golf course. Clint Bolick recalls, \"I left the trip early, because it seemed to be so much about golf and gambling, activities I'm not much into.\" As an artful Washington schmoozer, Abramoff would go even further that. One former Washington Times staffer told me that Abramoff's practice invited his family to watch the circus and a Bruce Springsteen concert from its box at the MCI Center. (By my count, six Washington Times editors and writers attended Abramoff trips.)<br><br><br>Abramoff came back to Washington when his pals came to power in 1994. They suddenly had it all; their triumphant public leader, Newt Gingrich, was even considering a run for the presidency in 1996. (The ever humble Newt was quoted as saying, \"Am I going to have to get into this thing?\") This was the time to put into place their plans for a permanent Republican establishment (\"personnel is policy\"), with the power of big money behind them. The problem is that Abramoff got greedy, and so did his little college republican friends. Both Norquist and Reed have been named in the various scandals, right along with Delay. Everybody seems to be hold their breath waiting to see if this thing takes down The Hammer, but the undercurrent of excitement is really whether it will render Norquist, Reed and others impotent over time as the scandal unfolds. It's possible. These guys have always had the problem of hubris and premature triumpalism. They operate on a very emotional level that is a weakness. And they are, of course, incredibly greedy. </blockquote><br>He left his mark in so many ways. Happy birthday tricky Dick. Your legacy is alive and well. <br><br><br><br><br>"
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"content" : "<div><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:13pt\">My Father's Hats</span>\r\n<span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:10pt\"><span style=\"color:#ffffff\">....<br><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt\">..................</span></span><span style=\"font-size:11pt\">Sunday mornings I would reach</span></span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> high into his dark closet while standing</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> on a chair and tiptoeing reach</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> higher, touching, sometimes fumbling</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> the soft crowns and imagine</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> I was in a forest, wind hymning</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"><span style=\"color:#ffffff\"> .................</span> through pines, where the musky scent</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> of rain clinging to damp earth was</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> his scent I loved, lingering on</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> bands, leather, and on the inner silk</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> crowns where I would smell his</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> hair and almost think I was being</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> held, or climbing a tree, touching</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> the yellow fruit, leaves whose scent</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> was that of clove in the godsome</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> air, as now, thinking of his fabulous</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> sleep, I stand on this canyon floor</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> and watch light slowly close</span><br><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\"> on water I can't be sure is there.</span>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman,times;font-size:11pt\">by Mark Irwin<br>from <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><em>New Letters</em>,</span> Volume 66, Number 3, 2000</span></p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=5o7yn5mXgCk:yt2SpE9TfGg:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/5o7yn5mXgCk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Still... Proudly Ghanaian",
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"content" : "<br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xzcG43OnkU4/UOrcatyhbVI/AAAAAAAADJE/2JLJSNxUkQM/s1600/_NK_9301.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xzcG43OnkU4/UOrcatyhbVI/AAAAAAAADJE/2JLJSNxUkQM/s1600/_NK_9301.jpg\"></a></div><div><br></div><div>Ghanaian culture thrives mainly on what is not said. Actually, it isn’t that some things are not said, but that they are said in not so plain language. What we think and believe as a people, is often shrouded in proverbs, symbols, songs, drum beats, dancing and even how we choose to wear our clothes. </div><div>There’s a Ghanaian proverb that says “it is the stranger that gets offered a blind chicken”. In other words, never fall for the sheepish, unending grin and amazing humility Ghanaians throw at strangers. We are smarter than we look. We are stronger than we pretend to be.</div><div><br></div><div>Our thriving democracy is not an accident. This country is built on belief systems that go far deeper than most people can imagine. There is more that unite than divide us. Ghana has proven beyond all reasonable doubt, that it is not just another unstable African country, in an unstable region, in an unstable continent in an unstable world. We knew governance when the Greeks were still barbarians. We believed in God, and even called Him “great friend” before the missionaries arrived. Our souls are rooted in history deeper than colonialism. </div><div><br></div><div>We are a people, blessed and powerful… and I pray we never forget this. The danger is when we forget. Once a people forget who they really are, they easily accept any identity someone else slaps on them. </div><div><br></div><div>Am I saying Ghana is special? Let me be “unGhanaian” for a moment and shout “YES. Ghana is special”.</div><div>Congratulations, Mr. President on this special day of your inauguration. </div><div>Congratulations, People of Ghana.</div>"
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/images/2010/03/hitchcock-silhouette.jpg\" width=\"161\" height=\"121\">Good evening.</p>\n<p>In its way, this is a blog post about blogging–and perhaps about learning and creating, generally.</p>\n<p>Dan Aulier has compiled one of those bedtable books that one can read for months, an anthology called <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Hitchcocks-Notebook-D-Aulier/dp/0380977834\">Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative Mind of Alfred Hitchcock</a>. </em>It’s a great big festival of a book, a delight to roam through. It also has plenty of food for thought to carry into the new academic term that begins very soon. Here’s one table of the banquet, an excerpt from writer and actor Hume Cronyn’s memoirs as republished in Aulier’s omnibus. Cronyn writes,</p>\n<p>“Early on in our working relationship, I discovered a curious trick of [Hitchcock's]. We would be discussing some story point with great intensity, trembling on the edge of a solution to the problem at hand, when Hitch would suddenly lean back in his chair and say, ‘Hume, have you heard the story of the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter?’ I would look at him blankly and he would proceed to tell it with great relish, frequently commenting on the story’s characters, the nature of the humor involved, and the philosophical demonstration implied. That makes it sound as though the stories might be profound or at least witty. They were neither. They were generally seventh-grade jokes of the sniggery school, and frequently infantile.</p>\n<p>“After several days’ work together, punctuated by such stories, I challenged him–politely.</p>\n<p>‘Why do you do that?’</p>\n<p>‘Do what?’</p>\n<p>‘Stop to tell jokes at a critical juncture.’</p>\n<p>‘It’s not critical–it’s only a film.’</p>\n<p>‘But we were just about to find a solution to the problem. I can’t even remember what it was now.’</p>\n<p>‘Good. We were pressing….. You never get it when you press.’</p>\n<p>Cronyn concludes: “And while I may have failed to appreciate Hitch’s jokes, I’ve never forgotten that little piece of philosophy, either as an actor or as a sometime writer.”</p>\n<p>Compare <a href=\"http://www.udel.edu/anthro/ackerman/loss_creature.pdf\">Walker Percy’s endorsement of the “indirect approach,”</a> as well as the phenomenon known to astronomers as <a href=\"http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/feature/how-guide/how-to%E2%80%A6-master-art-averted-vision\">averted vision</a>. I’m particularly intrigued by a deeply paradoxical notion that emerges in every case, a notion that certainly rings true to my own experience: it takes practice to “not press” successfully. It’s not at all the same as slacking or snacking. Sometimes it seems that the art of “not pressing” is the hardest art of all to master, and also the most necessary to move from one level of expertise to another. And in another paradox, once one has a feel for not pressing, for the indirect approach, for averted vision, one can go to that zone almost immediately when a novel situation or a new level of learning appears.</p>\n<p>These ideas form a constellation in my mind with several others. “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin\">Beginner’s mind</a>” (shoshin). The third stage of learning that brings back wonder and self-motivated learning, a progression that <a href=\"http://www.papert.org/articles/freire/freirePart1.html\">Paulo Friere and Seymour Papert discuss</a>. <a href=\"http://www.is.wayne.edu/drbowen/crtvyw99/poincare.htm\">Poincare and creativity</a>. I am struck by how often similar ideas recur in various guises. Knowing how to know to not-know. <a href=\"http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/\">The vanishing light around the rim of the unknown unknown can be seen only through such practices, I think</a>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2012/12/18/cycles-of-change-innovation-two-models-together/\">Brian Mathews’ latest Ubiquitous Librarian blog</a> poses a question that may be obliquely related to some or all of the above (and fittingly so). I don’t know that early adopters who move through change more quickly and with greater joy have mastered the arts of not pressing, along with the arts of averted vision and the indirect approach, but it’s interesting to consider. Certainly those arts can keep us from falling into the trap of substituting elevator pitches for voyages of discovery.</p>\n<p>Postscript: I have had to train myself over many years to answer direct questions (typically from administrators and other gatekeepers) about the character and value of a project, the specific plan for an exploration, the criteria for successful “outcomes” (and all the assessment apparatus that entails) (and I’ve learned it may be <a href=\"http://www.teaching.utoronto.ca/topics/coursedesign/learning-outcomes/outcomes-objectives.htm\">bad form to confuse “learning objectives” and “learning outcomes”</a>), and so forth. One wants to be responsible, to be granted resources for action, to exercise due diligence, to act like a grown-up. Indeed, and no question. Yet I always hope, and in my own practice strive, to find a moment or two, or more, for the not pressing and the averted vision. An indirect approach, an open space, like <a href=\"http://www.jewishanswers.org/ask-the-rabbi-1178/elisha-and-passover/\">a cup for Elijah</a>, who might one day return to demonstrate the poverty and dessication of spirit that often conceals itself behind bullet points and elevator pitches.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gardnercampbell.net%2Fblog1%2F%3Fp%3D1900&title=%E2%80%9CYou%20Never%20Get%20It%20When%20You%20Press%E2%80%9D\"><img src=\"http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Heaven, Hell, Marvin, Prince and the Party",
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"content" : "<p>Every great career in rhythm and blues leads only to heaven or hell. The path to hell is obvious: From Sam Cooke gunned down to James Brown leading a multi-state police chase to Sly Stone strung out on crack and living in a van to Whitney Houston's body lying dead as the industry partied a few floors below, our culture's never treated the shining lights of our most soulful genre with kindness. The archetype of this path is Marvin Gaye, facing his demons at the wrong end of a gun aimed by the man who gave him his name and his life.</p>\n\n<p>But heaven doesn't look much better. Whether it's Al Green leading rote singalongs of his greatest hits, or Stevie Wonder's once-essential annual albums slowing down to a trickle of treacle, or Aretha Franklin being used largely as set decoration to signify which events are deemed Worthy Of A Legend. We start to understand why someone like me who loves Lauryn Hill or <span>D'A</span>ngelo (or even Dave Chapelle, a comedian who's lived the career of a soul singer) often want to tell them \"I've gotten all I ever need from you; Go take care of yourself.\" Even my beloved Prince has taken to generously sprinkling a still-vital and compelling live show with bowdlerized medleys of greatest hits, interpreting his ever-present religious fixation as a compulsion to undo the ferocity and provocation that earned him his audience three decades ago.</p>\n\n<p>I always thought Michael was going to buy his way to heaven, but held a grim conviction that he might meet his end at the hands of a crazed fan. With the hindsight of a few years, it would appear that, in a way, he did. Those on the heavenly path of an <span>R&B </span>legend are of course faced with the constant temptations of fate and fame; Given enough success, you can just keep paying doctors on retainer until you find the one who's greedy and starstruck enough to not quit in protest when you ask for a lethal dose of anesthetic.</p>\n\n<p>It's no wonder Questlove's most recent quest is to encourage himself and others in the world of soul music to do what it takes to live well past 50. A grim goal made even sadder by the humility of its ambitions.</p>\n\n<p>This is a simple audio essay I put together to go alongside the rest of this essay, explaining some of the ideas.</p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<h3>The father, the son, the lions, the lambs</h3>\n\n<p>You don't even have to wait for a soul artist to say \"I was raised in the church\" when they're interviewed; If they don't recite it themselves, the interviewer will inevitably provide the affirmation without prompting. But <span>R&B </span>legends are also raised by their families, ranging from a litany of \"never knew my dad\" absences to the all-too-present presence of Joseph Jackson. But as surely as Tito picked up Joseph's guitar, there's a world of difference between preacher dads and player dads.</p>\n\n<div><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000059RL3/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=2020-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000059RL3\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=B000059RL3&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=2020-20&ServiceVersion=20070822\"></a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=2020-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000059RL3\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\"></div>\n\n\n<p>Marvin's father was a preacher, his last name spelled \"Gay\" without the \"e\", the least-fitting name possible. Marvin Sr. was fire and brimstone and an Old Testament-style lack of compromise. Even years before he murdered his son, he'd undermined his musical genius son enough that Marvin Jr. was constantly felt the need to prove his masculinity, whether through adding a vowel to diminish the presumed affront to his heterosexuality that lurked in his own surname, or through outrageously transparent attempts to affirm how virile and conventionally male he truly was.</p>\n\n<p>Hence the Detroit Lions. Marvin Gaye not only befriended the players — he tried out for the team. While he was a competent player, he was nowhere near capable of playing at an <span>NFL </span>level. But as a symbol of hypermasculine strength, what could be more credible than being a professional football player?</p>\n\n<p>Naturally, an obsession (and insecurity) of this magnitude shows up in the music. Though any \"party\" that appears in a pop song is necessarily artificial, there really were Detroit Lions players in the studio to provide the introductory party vibe that starts \"What's Going On\". Marvin spoke of sidelining his musical career in favor of athletics, but the seriousness of the threat was undermined by the ferocity with which he fought Berry Gordy for the right to release What's Going On despite Gordy's objections to its brazenly political stance.</p>\n\n<h3>Hired Gun Brimstone</h3>\n\n<p>Prince's party was carefully constructed, arranged as if it were a string section, to be multiracial and ambiguously gendered.</p>\n\n<div><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002C7GBQG/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=2020-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002C7GBQG\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=B002C7GBQG&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=2020-20&ServiceVersion=20070822\"></a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=2020-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B002C7GBQG\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\"></div>\n\n\n<p>Prince's dad John Nelson had none of Marvin Gay Sr.'s misgivings about the music; He was in a band called the Prince Rogers Trio, whence came his second son's name. And though they too had a tumultuous relationship, there was at least enough of a rapport between Prince and his father that they collaborated several times during John's life.</p>\n\n<p>But having a dad who was also a musician must have helped shaped Prince's utilitarian view of relationships, where the people in his life were sometimes just instruments to be arranged in the service of a composition.</p>\n\n<p>It shows up in the way that parties appear on Prince's work. From the track \"Eye No\" that opens up 1988's Lovesexy, we get a party breaking out over the final fade that segues into Alphabet Street, the next track on the record. But a closer listen to the \"party\" reveals it to be far more scripted than Marvin's \"What's Going On\"; All of the folks taking part were part of Prince's studio crew or touring band. </p>\n\n<p>More telling than the fact that the party was scripted (because obviously, it's not like Marvin Gaye was spontaneously recording a house party on What's Going On) is the fact that Prince reuses the <em>exact same recording</em> of party sounds a number of times in his work. Before appearing at the end of I No, the party segue showed up at the end of an unreleased track called The Ball, which was a sort of prototype for the song made a few years earlier. That original recording segued into one of Prince's all-time greatest blues guitar tracks, Joy In Repetition. But that song wouldn't be released until 1990's Graffiti Bridge.</p>\n\n<p>That time period also marked the beginning of the first signs of the wild unevenness that would characterize Prince's post-80s work, so some of the reuse of the party sounds may have simply been in-studio laziness on his part. But the fact that the party didn't even have the pretense of being anything but an element of a larger composition offers a glimpse into the intense, nearly obsessive focus Prince had on seeing everything, and everyone, in his world through the lens of how they could be part of his soundtrack.</p>\n\n<p>It's not hard to picture that kind of single-mindedness being grounded in having a father who, in stark contrast to Marvin Gay Sr.'s skepticism, was in fact an accomplished musician himself. Fortunately in Prince's case, that turned into a competitive drive that fueled a nearly-unparalleled burst of pop creativity. The downside was that, rather than seeking out success in a wildly-unfamiliar territory like professional sports, Prince's world retreated to the safe-but-well-known path that leads to being a greatest-hits jukebox.</p>\n\n<h3>Ever After</h3>\nI love this music. It's the soundtrack of my whole world, and usually the way I end the day with my son, listening to these artists and their peers and the echoes of their fathers and their faults. I'm an optimist; I want to believe that it doesn't take extreme and trying circumstances for a talented child to grow up to be a truly profound artist as an adult.\n\n<p>More broadly, I want to think I can be moved by an artist's work without thinking I'm being complicit in their destruction. If they're finding redemption, from the tribulations of their youth or from the challenges of their faith, in creating a work, I don't want my embrace of their celebrity to be an instrument of their undoing.</p>\n\n<p>That soul music is grounded in heaven in hell is the basis of its power. This is why songs that seem like they're incessantly talking about superficial aspects of being in love can tell stories that are profound and timeless. But it seems truly profane that the people most blessed to tell these stories are doomed to follow them to paths that either leave them tormented or robbed of their flame. Maybe the next people who can find salvation in these songs can be those who actually create them.</p>\n\n<p><iframe width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/x3oCwtKTI9M?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n\n<h3>Related Reading</h3>\n\n<p>These themes have been fixations here for a while; Here are some variations on the theme:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://dashes.com/anil/2008/09/dangelo-and-the-demons-of-the-new-minstrel-movement.html\"><span>D'A</span>ngelo and the Demons of the New Minstrel Movement</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dashes.com/anil/2011/08/a-decade-after-aaliyah.html\">A Decade After Aaliyah</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dashes.com/anil/2006/12/goodbye-godfather.html\">Goodbye, Godfather</a>, on James Brown's death, and <a href=\"http://dashes.com/anil/2002/02/james-brown.html\">a review of the last live show of his</a> that I got to see</li>\n</ul>\n \n <img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/AnilDash/~4/DfyPWwou0Dk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "From the Summit in the Houston Astrodome, October 31, 1976:<br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiNpNmfiGU\" title=\"FUNKERRIFIC·8 videos Uploaded on Dec 28, 2007 Bootsy Collins LIVE Houston TX 1976\">Bootsy Collins - Ah... The name is Bootsy baby/Disco to go</a><br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJXmReuBJhw\" title=\"Bootsy Collins LIVE Houston TX 1976\">Bootsy Collins - Psychoticbumpschool</a><br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_cAOmajPN8\" title=\"zamo1993 3 years ago lol hes like the hendrix of funk bass....hes? awesum\">Bootsy Collins - Another Point of View</a><br>\nBack in the day: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vem9z-93Lq8\" title=\"familytreemusic (10 months ago)james brown produced his best music those two years when he was sporting an afro. when he went waves, the? chemicals mashed up his antennas and the inspiration started to decline. moral? my brothers and sisters... stay natural, stay inspired! one love!\">James Brown & Bobby Byrd (on bass, Bootsy Collins) - Sex Machine & Soul Power</a> <br>\nSee also: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHE6hZU72A4\" title=\"Bootsy describes and demonstrates his basic funk formula. Once you got it, you can do anything you want to do with it ! Just keep it on The One !\">Booty's Basic Funk Formula</a><br> \n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrXiEAv2-QY\" title=\"In this clip from inside Bootsy Collins Lecture Hall at Funk University www.thefunkuniversity.com, Professor Collins sheds light on the differences between James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic. In particular, his focus in this segment is how the ONE is played in both camps.\">Bootsy Lecture on the One: James Brown vs. Parliament</a><br><br> Also see also: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTzrLa_-H8\" title=\"Documentary & live performance of Bass player & Singer Bootsy Collins, the funk behind bands like Funkadelics, and James Brown. 's JB's.,\">Bootsy Collins Story - Live on Bass</a> <br>\n<br>\nAnd selected cuts:<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xn3x6KGNkQ\" title=\"Published on Jun 11, 2012 by AuntieSoul34 Love Bootsy!! 1978.. :p\">Bootsy Collins - Hollywood Squares</a> <br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnLboo-D0A8\" title=\"TRAVISBR7·6 videos Uploaded on Mar 6, 2010 The only p-funk track I adore that I didn't find here. So here goes!\">Bootsy Collins - Mug Push</a><br>\n<a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50k6tRc1kq0\" title=\"1982 The One Giveth, The Count Taketh Away ShivadamParvati 1 year ago Let me go way out on a limb, here. I am more convinced than ever that Shine-O-Myte is spiritual. It is a? song not as much about shining shoes as it is about polishing the heart - elevating the soul - taking the metaphor of shoes (read: boots-y), and placing it all in the context of Black history, showing that even the most apparently ''low'' can really be the most high: \">William Bootsy Collins - Shine-O-Mite (Rag Popping)</a><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=mAeeVluA66c:EYHCqQ93HCc:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=mAeeVluA66c:EYHCqQ93HCc:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Happy Christmas! Here is a flame war in a can",
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"content" : "<p><b>Happy Newtonmass!</b> (Yes, today is the anniversary of the birth of our rationalist saviour, Sir Isaac Newton.)</p>\n\n<p>I have a personal tradition of always putting in some working hours on December 25th — not being Christian, and being a bit of a curmudgeon, it seems important to do so (even if I subsequently drop round on some friends and eat and drink far too much). I can just about categorize blogging as work (it's marketing/communications, dammit!) so this is my work for the day. </p>\n\n<p>Because I'm a curmudgeon (the \"G\" in my initials is short for \"Grinch\"), the Christmas spirit thing <em>really</em> irritates me. A big part of it is the saturation-level advertising that crops up at this time of year: it leverages the winter festival to convey the message, \"you <em>will</em> get into the festive spirit and Buy Our Stuff, otherwise you are socially inadequate". I do not care to be lectured about my social inadequacy by big box retailers: I especially dislike being defined as socially inadequate because I don't follow someone else's religiously-ordained festive tradition. Consequently, Christmas puts me in a contrarian mood. As a contrarian, right now nothing would cheer me up like a nasty, mean-tempered flame war — just to prove that the turbulent masses (this means you) haven't suddenly been turned into insipid, saccharine carol singers chorusing goodwill to all and peace on earth. </p>\n\n<p>But I couldn't make up my mind whether today's blogging should be \"gun owners: evil or wicked?\", or \"abortion: if you oppose it, you are <em>murdering women</em>\"; I'm sort of in donkey-starving-to-death-between-two-mangers mode today. (Normally I try to <em>avoid</em> starting flame wars. Turning to the dark side, I suddenly find myself in a target-rich environment!) So I decided to go with something a little less controversial; <b>why Jesus Christ bears such a <em>remarkable</em> similarity to Osama bin Laden that by 2312 there may well be a syncretistic religion worshiping him as the second coming ...</b></p>\n <p>1. Jesus Christ is not his name. If he existed, his actual name would have been rendered in our alphabet somewhat like Yeshua bin Yussuf (he was later renamed Jesus™ by those pesky greeks). Also: forget that long-haired hippy 16th century Spanish nobility lordship you see in portraits of Jesus: <a href=\"http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly050504.htm\">he probably looked more like the guy on the left</a>, only short and brown-skinned.</p>\n\n<p>2. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, was born as the heir to a family construction business.</p>\n\n<p>3. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, was a bit of a mystic and a dreamer. He dropped out of the family business, and took a good look at the society around him. In particular, he retreated into the desert for a while and tried to avoid the temptations of the flesh.</p>\n\n<p>4. Yeshua, like Osama, decided that it was extremely important to get the imperial hegemon of the day to pull its troops out of the holy places of his religion.</p>\n\n<p>5. With his followers, Yeshua attacked a major banking hub — the Wall Street of its day — in the shape of the money lenders in the temple grounds. (Due to the non-availability of weapons of mass destruction in his day, as opposed to Osama's, the temple survived.) (See also Revelations 18:11 and Revelations 18:19.)</p>\n\n<p>6. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, preached subversive sermons, which were widely circulated among the masses suffering beneath the imperial jackboot.</p>\n\n<p>7. Eventually Yeshua got up one privileged nose too many, and wound up being executed in a grotesque manner, to warn the masses (and his followers) what happens if you speak truth to power. See also Seal Team Six.</p>\n\n<p>8. Over the subsequent decades and centuries, the numbers of his followers increased — principally finding recruits among middle-easterners pissed off at the imperial hegemonic power's continuing occupation and exploitation of their holy places. The followers of <s>Osama</s> Yeshua multiplied in numbers despite organized clamp-downs and purges.</p>\n\n<p>9. <s>Osama</s> Yeshua's followers are — or were — big on holy martyrdom.</p>\n\n<p>10. ... Okay, I've now run out of immediate similarities between Jesus and Osama bin Laden. Help me, somebody?</p>"
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"content" : "From the moment <b>Sade\nAdu</b> emerged on the scene with her eponymous band in 1984, she was panned as\na detached poseuse, feigning a frosty aloofness with the aim of passing for a jazz\nvocalist. (Somehow, the fact that <b>Sade </b>the band was fronted by a striking fashion model\nand design student far outweighed any actual jazz influences in their music.)\nThey were derided as a flimsy act, appealing to shallow, pretentious types who\nprofessed their love for piano-bar muzak with no real songcraft. Still, they\nwere hugely successful, with their first three albums topping charts around the\nworld and earning them major Brit and GRAMMY Award wins along with scads of\nnominations. Detractors be damned, it would seem their brand of loungey\nAdult Contemporary music was paying off mightily. That's why nobody expected\nwhat was to come next.\n After a four-year absence, Sade burst back onto the scene in\nOctober of 1992 with "No Ordinary Love," seven and a half minutes of\nbass-thumping sensuality. Sade had done bass-heavy before on cuts like "The\nSweetest Taboo" and "Keep Looking," but the work always had its roots planted\nin the band's jazzy, vaguely Latin-influenced foundation. But this new single\nhad a thick R&B core, and a rockish aggression previously unheard from band member (and guitar genius) <b>Stuart \"Cottonbelly\"\nMatthewman</b>. And with the arrival of the video soon after, the world saw a\nvery different Sade. Reteamed with director <b>Sophie Muller</b>, a friend from their\ndays at London's\nSt. Martins School of Art, Adu made this, her first video in her thirties, a\nmoment of visual epiphany. Rather than the menswear-inspired vests and jackets\nshe was known for, Sade showed lots of skin in a witty, hard-luck retelling of <b>Hans Christian Andersen</b>'s <i>The Little Mermaid</i> (only instead of a\nprince, she's apparently in love with a <b>Jean Paul Gaultier</b> fragrance model). Muller\npulled out all the stops in this clip, creating a gorgeous juxtaposition of\nfantasy and crushing reality that perfectly complemented the song's lovelorn\nlyrics. I remember watching this video on MTV Europe, wondering how Adu managed\nto sing while underwater. And even today, my eyes and tastes having supposedly\nmatured, Muller's simulated seabed scenes are still utterly convincing and hauntingly beautiful enough for me to consider it one of the most\nbrilliantly shot music videos of all time.<br><br>\n\nWeeks later, the <i>Love\nDeluxe</i> album was released, delivering on the promise of its lead single. If\naudiences were shocked to see her show a little midriff in \"No Ordinary Love,\" they\nneeded their smelling salts handy for the album's nude cover photo and the spectacular trio of subsequent music videos (all shot by fashion photographer <b>Albert Watson</b>), often featuring Adu in\nvarious stages of artsy undress. Being in her thirties clearly agreed with her, and she now exuded a deep (and most disarmingly, effortless and perhaps even\nunconscious) comfort in her sexuality. And sonically, <i>Love Deluxe</i> was every inch as committed to exploring new\nR&B territory as "No Ordinary Love" -- with, as indicated on the single (and\nsuggested by its name), its eye very much on the bedroom. Even today, it's a\nstrikingly cohesive album, and with its miles-deep drums and its\nvibrating bass sections, a straight run through its nine tracks will leave you\nfeeling like you've just spent 45 minutes in a darkly beautiful\nundersea world. Periodically, you'll emerge, foregoing the bassy, underwater hum and taiko-style drums on most tracks for alternately lilting and drawn-out strings thoroughly evocative\nof a tranquil stream ("Like a Tattoo" and "Pearls"), and by the time you get to\nthe album's instrumental closer (called "Mermaid," of course) you're bound to\nhave lost any illusions that this Neptunian arc was in any way accidental.<br><br>\n\nPrior to this release, Sade's principal forte lay somewhere\nbetween the wine-bar lounginess of \"Smooth Operator\" and the wine-and-pills\nmelancholia of \"Haunt Me.\" But <i>Love\nDeluxe</i> saw many of its most despondent moments, like the prayer-like\nlamentation \"Feel No Pain,\" swathed in a sexy, thumping groove. The same goes\nfor the steamy production on \"Bullet Proof Soul,\" on which Matthewman gives a\nfireplace-ready (if thoroughly '90s) saxophone performance as Adu croons \"I\nknow the end before the story's been told / It's not that complicated / But\nyou're gonna need a bulletproof soul.\" It's arguably the most heartbreaking\nline -- both in writing and delivery -- of her career thus far (though she would\noutdo that feat a decade later on the searing \"King of Sorrow\"). The album is,\nfor the most part, an exercise in melancholia -- even when supposedly in the throes of love (as on the lead single and \"I Couldn't Love You More\"), her voice carries\na subtle but unmistakable pain that, rather than clash with the sensuality of\nthe songs, imbues them with depth and dimension. Only on the aforementioned\n\"Like A Tattoo\" and \"Pearls\" does the production (handled by Adu and <b>Mike Pela</b>) leave the bedroom altogether.\nThey are also the album's most anguished, lyrically devastating and musically\nsparse moments, wherein respectively, Adu tells the tales of a haunted combat veteran and a\nmother in war-torn Somalia.<br><br>\n\nNext to the dexterous storytelling, what's most impressive about\nall this is her ability to go from wounded and lovelorn, to guilt-ravaged, to despairing,\nto euphoric (on the near-spiritual celebration \"Kiss of Life,\" the album's lone blissful moment), all while maintaining her previously\nmaligned measured delivery. It's a feat that would inspire a future generation\nof singers lacking the iron lungs of the <b>Whitneys</b>\nand <b>Mariahs</b> before them (including\nBritish songstresses <b>Jessie Ware</b> and\n<b>Nayo</b>, and most notably R&B\ncoquette <b>Aaliyah</b>, who would work a\nSade shoutout into most interviews she did in the last phase of her life). Only on \"Pearls,\" after a\npainfully detailed description of her subject's famine-induced hardships, does\nshe suddenly break free of all restraint with repeated, unexpected yelps of\n\"Hallelujah\" that will make your blood run cold. And then she closes song on a\nrepeated line \"it hurts like brand new shoes\" -- an analogy whose bitter irony\nis nothing if not intended.<br><br>\n\n<i>Love Deluxe </i>remains\nher most mainstream-accessible, yet consistently brilliant album to date. It\ninitially failed to match the runaway success of the band's previous releases,\nbut thanks to its strong singles (and a major feature for \"No Ordinary Love\" in\nthe promotion of the 1993 drama <i>Indecent\nProposal</i>), it went on to sell 3.4 million copies in the U.S. It marked a rebirth of the group that many expected to\nyield tons of great music in the coming years (as indicated by the release of \"Please\nSend Me Someone to Love\" for the 1993 film <i>Philadelphia</i>).\nBut Adu became pregnant in 1994, right around the release of the well-received <i>The Best of Sade</i> album, and retreated\nfrom the spotlight to raise her daughter <b>Ila</b> with Jamaican music\nproducer <b>Bob Morgan</b>. The boys\n(Matthewman, keyboardist <b>Andrew Hale</b> and bassist <b>Paul Denman</b>) formed the\nside project <b>Sweetback</b>, and\nMatthewman went on to become a hugely respected producer in his own right,\ncomposing for a multitude of artists and motion pictures (most notably helping\nto craft the sound of soul crooner <b>Maxwell</b>'s\nfirst three albums). And there began what's now come to be known as the \"Sade\nalbum cycle.\" Fans have come to expect decade-long gaps between studio\nreleases from the band, and every Sade album is an event just for its\nexistence.<br><br>\n\nSade is now in the enviable position of being able to make\nmusic on its own terms, as one of the few acts who get to tell their record\nlabels when they <i>want</i> to record. They\nnow manage a dual image as respected veterans and underexposed brokers of cool\ncachet -- in 2010, rappers <b>Jay-Z</b> and <b>Drake</b> led an amusing campaign of wooing,\npoliticking and outright lies to earn bragging rights as the first act to ever\nduet with Sade. (Jay-Z won.) With Sade's current standing, it's hard to imagine the now-fawning press trading\nin the kind of venom they once reserved for them. I guess the old saying is\ntrue: \"the way to a critic's heart is through his baby-making playlist.\" And if you're 19 or younger, now you know the topless woman whose picture is on page one of your baby book.<div><br></div><div>Consider this a soulful version of the birds and the bees.<br><br>\n<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/_WcWHZc8s2I\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\n\n\n<br><br>\n\n<strong>Sade<em> Love Deluxe</em> [<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B00136Q1M6/soulb-20\">Amazon</a>][<a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/love-deluxe/id158796559\">iTunes</a>][<a href=\"http://open.spotify.com/album/6Y8lHGQqTmbE6Hhj1mMCkX\">Spotify</a>]</strong></div>"
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"title" : "When We Lose Reason - A Poem",
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"content" : "I do not remember exactly where I was when I wrote this poem, but I presume I must have been frustrated, yet clean in thought enough to write. A lot has been said about the poem, especially when <a href=\"http://oneghanaonevoice.com/\">OGOV</a>, an online literary magazine, published it and later Badillisha Poetry recorded me on it. A <a href=\"http://efodela.blogspot.com/\">friend</a>, had requested severally that I publish the poem here.<br><br>As the year ends, (mine ended in August, as mentally I go with the Ga calender of afi ooo afi in August) for most of my readers out there, I republish the poem \"When We Lose Reason\". CHEERS to all Humans!<br><br><br>God does everything, everywhere.<br>She is at that palm-wine joint<br>Ensuring the victory of the Stars;<br>Killing cockroaches at the Pentagon;<br><br>Slashing off the legs of a child in Afghanistan;<br>Receiving praises from a politician<br>Who only eats beef imported<br><br>From Argentina, while the people<br>Queue for water.<br><br>God does everything, everywhere.<br>Floods stream when her bladder<br>Can no longer contain the screams from the earth;<br>Blessing the hungry with<br>A cedi at the edge of a gutter<br><br>At Nima—<br>And after gaining no pleasure<br>From the monotonous lives of humans,<br><br>She sets a new comic in motion:<br>Wives catching cheating husbands,<br>The blind falling in gutters,<br>Fools winning lotteries.<br><br>At the peak of her pleasure's end,<br><br>God laughs thunders, hurricanes, earthquakes;<br>And shifts the tectonic plates<br>While quoting Laing:<br>'And what was joy anyway,<br>But a movement of brain energy.'"
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"title" : "The Christmas Sermon 2012 – “On Not Believing In Canada”",
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"content" : "<p>My annual kind-of-tradition continues this year, to the protests of all our long suffering readers. Thoughts on evidence, disagreement, knowledge and related matters follow, in suitably opaque and allusive style …</p>\n\n\t<p><strong>On not believing in Canada</strong></p>\n\n\t<p>I remember clearly when I first started along the road that led me to where I am today – the unfashionable and lonely position of an adult man, educated and well-travelled, who doesn’t believe in the existence of Canada. I was a kid at Sunday School, and the vicar was trying to talk to an awkward class of hard-nuts and smart-asses about the general concept of faith in the absence of empirical evidence.</p>\n\n\t<p>“What about Canada?”, he asked us all, his thick Welsh accent muffled slightly by an impressive crop of nostril hair. “You’ve never been to Canada! You’ve never seen Canada! You’ve never even met anyone who’s been to Canada! But you believe in Canada, don’t you, Davies?”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He cast his gaze around the room, having to swivel his neck a bit as something like a dozen of us were called “Davies”. I elected myself as the spokesman and made what seemed to be the obvious response:<br>\n<span></span></p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Well, I do believe in Canada, a bit, but I don’t </i>worship<i> Canada! Canada doesn’t bloody ask me to come to the Canadian Embassy every Sunday when the cartoons are on telly, and sit through a two hour sermon about Canada, then fill in colouring books about Canada and the Son of Canada, does it? Nobody makes me sing songs about Canada, or gives me a book of stories about Canada instead of a comic for my birthday! In general, I don’t allow my belief in Canada to affect my life!”</i></p>\n\n\t<p>It was, of course, by way of a satiric analogy, intended to cut off his pretty obvious rhetorical next step. Sad to say, the answer did not have its intended effect and I still had to go to Sunday School for the next five years. But later, as a teenager, it struck me that a more correct, and indeed potent, answer to the vicar’s challenge would have been:</p>\n\n\t<p><i>“Do I believe in Canada? No, not really. Not in any important sense. No.”</i></p>\n\n\t<p>And as time went on, I ended up realizing that I had come to identify myself as a Canadatheist.</p>\n\n\t<p>I try not to make a big deal out of it – there are, after all, lots of people whose belief in Canada is very important to them and self-image as “Canadians” is a source of great comfort. In many ways, from the Californian sound of Neil Young and to <span>JK </span>Galbraith’s work for the US government, “Canadians” have done a lot more good in the world than Canadatheists. But secretly, I have to say I kind of pity them and sometimes look down on them intellectually a bit because really, how can people fall for such an obvious myth?</p>\n\n\t<p>As far as I can tell, the concept of “Canada” dates back to the early 1950s. A confident new postwar generation of Americans were beginning to enjoy the privileges of mass market air travel. However, to their dismay, some of them began to discover that they weren’t universally welcome in the damaged postwar states of Europe, particularly in the more bohemian quarters where socialism was beginning to take hold. The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth had just happened, pushing the British Crown into the public eye, and so a sort of urban myth was constructed about a part of America that was also ruled part of the Commonwealth.</p>\n\n\t<p>Over time, all sorts of supporting myths and rationalizations grew up to support the “Canadian” faith. Apparently they fought a war against America in 1812, although not one with any noticeable or measurable political consequences. They don’t have a football team because they play “hockey on ice” (really!), a sport at which they are world champions (naturally, because it is a fictitious sport). They have all the nice characteristics of America, but have a healthcare system rather suspiciously similar to the British one, and so forth, and so on.</p>\n\n\t<p>As anyone can see, this isn’t a country – it’s far too perfect to be convincing. It’s a fantasy roleplaying character invented by a kid who goes to mock United Nations camps instead of playing Dungeons & Dragons. Occasionally this is recognized in little cultural hints – a “girlfriend in Canada” is American slang for “an imaginary girlfriend”. But in general, people humour them – these days, if you want to make it in Hollywood, you’ve got to be either a Canadian or a Scientologist. Then the concept was discovered by that sizeable contingent of French people who always want to pretend to be Americans, and the Canadian faith had to pick up yet another massive and glaring inconsistency in the shape of a massive linguistic minority who lived in a state of peace and friendship with the rest of the country. Do I have to mention that they struck oil and invented the Blackberry?</p>\n\n\t<p>I’m sure that by now I will have touched a bunch of raw nerves. Perhaps I should never have brought the subject up – Canadatheism always seems to lead to horrible flamewars and I really do sincerely apologise for offending your beliefs. But I promise – I’ve done my best to look at the strongest arguments possible for Canadaism. I’ve drunk those bottles of Budweiser that they make with the labels saying “Molson Lager”. I’ve talked to Canadianists. I’ve even been to see a pretend game of “hockey on ice” in the ice rink in “Toronto”, an American town to which I have been more than half a dozen times in different seasons. I’ve been to “Montreal” and listened to French people pretending to have an American accent. Right now as I type, I can see at the top of the foreign coins jar on my desk is an American 25 cent piece with the Queen’s head stamped on to it and the word “Canada”. I’m not arguing out of ignorance here – I’m intimately familiar with the arguments for Canada. I respectfully suggest, indeed, that I am more familiar with the arguments for the existence of Canada than most Canadians are familiar with the arguments against. I’m just not convinced.</p>\n\n\t<p>As I grow older, I must admit that the prospect of Canada seems more comforting and spiritually enriching rather than irritating. My wife is a firm believer in Canada and insisted on bringing up the children as believers, and every now and then she says things like “Some of our best friends have emigrated to Canada and it’s lovely there. Maybe we should all go to Canada for a skiing holiday”, and I must admit, the way of life has all sorts of attractions. Some days I find myself flirting with Canadagnosticism.</p>\n\n\t<p>And I must hasten to add that, unlike some outspoken Canadatheists (a bunch I have very little time for – I mean, what kind of a hobby is it to be constantly picking arguments with otherwise harmless Canadians?), I’m not dogmatic about it. Due to the necessity of ensuring more-than-proportionate representation of the <span>USA</span> on bodies like the G”7” and the <span>WTO</span>, the concept of Canada has gained some sort of legal and diplomatic validity over the years. I would even be prepared to admit that there are a few dozen people alive today (mainly the staff of multilateral and Bretton Woods institutions; certainly no more than a hundred) who would reasonably be described as “Canadian citizens”.</p>\n\n\t<p>But really, why should I be the one to keep quiet? Why is society so prejudiced against Canadatheists, and so determined to force the “Canadian” iconography down all of our throats? I have considered all the evidence (or at least, all the evidence that has any independent validity, as opposed to the heaps of rationalizations constructed by Canadians). In general, most of it supports my point of view and the small number of opposing data points can easily be explained away as anomalies or the products of systematic human irrationality. In any case, why should anyone else care what I believe about whether Canada exists or not?</p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>Calm down, it’s a joke, it’s a joke you humourless bastards. I’ve been doing that comedy bit for a few years now, mainly when in the presence of Canadians I wanted to wind up. It never fails. Depending on how philosophical I’m feeling and how much drink has been taken, I will typically warn someone, five minutes in, that if you’re a Canadian and you are marshalling the empirical evidence in order to try to make a convincing case for the existence of Canada, there is a sense in which you have clearly already lost by implicitly admitting that there is a debatable question here. But it rarely stops people. There is something about the “I don’t believe in Canada” bit which somehow short-circuits the part of people’s brains responsible for making the decision “Welsh bum talking crap again, ignore him and he’ll shut up”.</p>\n\n\t<p>It’s more than the general “someone is wrong on the internet” phenomenon and (as I hope even the densest reader might have got), it’s entirely relevant to why a) the whole atheist/believer thing gets so ratty all the time and b) why there is a substantial current of modern atheism which actually believe that it’s a good thing to be constantly annoyed at the fact that there are people out there who are wrong about God. The problem with my Canadatheism isn’t so much the fact that I don’t believe in Canada – that’s simply a factual proposition which might be true or false, and reasonable people can agree to differ on such things.</p>\n\n\t<p>The problem is (and the thing which makes Canadatheism so infuriating to believers) that the factual belief is backed up with and supported by an approach to weighting evidence which ensures that the conclusion can never be shaken. Infallibly, the stage which drives the mild-mannered Canadians to the point of murder is when I idly drop into conversation that I’ve been to Toronto and “wasn’t convinced”. If you’re going to dismiss any and all religious experience as the probable result of mental illness, or if you’re going to claim that any failure of science to explain absolutely everything in the world proves the existence of God, you’re bound to create the same effect. Everyone knows that human beings are narrative-creating beasts and the existence of something that can’t be fitted into the story is intolerable.</p>\n\n\t<p>My holiday reading is going to be “Antifragility” by Nassim Taleb, another author who regularly causes one to fling the book across the room going “he can’t possibly mean that!”. In most cases, as with Canadatheism, it might be the case that a good author doesn’t exactly mean “that”, but does mean <i>something</i> by what they’ve written and was rather hoping that you’d work it out for yourself. If anyone thinks that the real point of the Canadatheism bit was that rather sappy lecture about standards of evidence, they’ve missed it. Anyway, Happy Christmas, Hannukah, Yuul, Lugnasa, Kwanzaa, Eid or whatever other seasonal festival, of whatever degree of obvious made-upness, you choose to celebrate. And hopes for a New Year in which people learn, maybe a little bit, that it’s possible to hold an idea in your head without necessarily asserting it.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>the melancholy of a straight line of same-sized trees</p>\n<p>the principal’s chair like a golden cloak </p>\n<p><em>how many roads</em> </p>\n<p>running toward the shooter, shouting </p>\n<p>the vacuum of grief quickly fills with kitsch </p>\n<p>I went to bed hungry & woke up full </p>\n<p>“Would you like ketchup with your freedom fries?” </p>\n<p>survivors at Virginia Tech described him as looking almost innocent in his scout uniform </p>\n<p>I dreamt about writing a book titled <em>war canoe</em></p>\n<p>dried wildflowers could be incorporated into a quilt full of names </p>\n<p>all young males in the target area are presumed to be terrorists</p>\n<p>the terrible coolness of indifference </p>\n<p><em>how many roads must a man</em></p>\n<p>both of them running, pitching forward </p>\n<p>according to the <em>Washington Post</em>, the expanded kill list is known as the “disposition matrix”</p>\n<p>the melancholy of angels that never learned how to pollinate </p>\n<p>“How many bees would you like?” </p>\n<p>in my dream I loved how the deserted street felt to my bare feet </p>\n<p>the children hidden like stowaways in lavatories & closets </p>\n<p>coats from the Army-Navy store</p>\n<p>a fisherman’s sweater knitted to look like fish scales </p>\n<p>just as bullet points rarely liven up a slide presentation, the sound of a gun is far duller than you’d expect from the movies </p>\n<p>it was dark before I reached the end of the block </p>\n<p>“How would you prefer we got rid of the crows?”</p>\n<p>after the power comes back, the clock can’t stop blinking </p>"
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"title" : "Benghazi’s Deep Throat fingers Islamist Leaders for Attacks as State Dept Criticized on Consular Security",
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"content" : "<p>The <a href=\"http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/12/hillary-clinton-springs-action-after-inquiry-scolds-her-benghazi-attack/60144/\">report saying that security was inadequate at the compound that the US had adopted as its ad hoc consulate in Benghazi, Libya,</a> dominates today’s headlines. That conclusion is obvious. The “consulate” was just a private residence taken over for this purpose by the US in the city. It was not constructed to be a US government building in a potentially hostile city.</p>\n<p>I met a person who worked there when I was in Benghazi in June, and she told me that it wasn’t even clear if the consulate would be retained after the first of this year. It was possibly temporary, depending on Congressional funding. (The Tea Party House hasn’t been good on meeting requests for embassy security funds).</p>\n<p>The more interesting question than why ad hoc arrangements should have been made for a consulate during and after the Libyan revolution (the answer to which seems fairly obvious) is, who is responsible for the string of assassinations and acts of violence in the city, of which the RPG attack on the consulate on September 11 was only one? Benghazi, with a population of over one million in a country of 6.5 million, is Libya’s second largest city and was the epicenter of the revolution against the government of Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.</p>\n<p>On November 22, Benghazi police chief Farej Darssi was assassinated. In October a police colonel barely avoided death– his car was wired to explode. A Libyan intelligence officer was killed in September. A general was assassinated in August. Some of these figures had worked for Qaddafi but had defected to the revolution. Qaddafi’s security forces were responsible for the 1996 massacre of hardline fundamentalists at Abu Salim prison, and for making others just disappear. Likely the same shadowy cells that attacked the US consulate are behind the attacks on Benghazi police and army officers.</p>\n<p>There may have been a break in the case. <a href=\"http://www.libyaherald.com/2012/12/17/benghazi-rocked-by-second-night-of-attacks/\"> Last Saturday, Benghazi security forces loyal to the elected government in Tripoli, captured a man they suspected of being involved with the groups behind the violence. </a> And, he appears to have been willing to spill the beans. So let’s call him the Libyan Deep Throat.</p>\n<p>Deep Throat is so knowledgeable about the conspiracies facing the city and so dangerous to those hatching them that the latter immediately attempted to spring him from jail. </p>\n<p>On Sunday morning, militants attacked the police facility next to the holding cell where the man is being detained. A policeman at that station died in a hail of bullets from the attackers, and they called for back-up. The police car that sped to the scene was ambushed and three policemen in it were killed.</p>\n<p>Still, the police stood their ground and fought off the assault, and they kept their valuable suspect in custody, with all his valuable testimony.</p>\n<p>Shortly after midnight, on Monday morning, small explosives were set off at the Garyounis police station in Benghazi, damaging a couple of automobiles but otherwise doing little damage. Then explosives were set off at al-Uruba police station, which also took sniper fire, but neither resulted in casualties. </p>\n<p>The police became vigilant, and they apprehended a shady-looking man skulking around near the al-Hadaeq police station, finding him to have two rocket propelled grenades in his possession, which he was apparently intending to fire at the station.</p>\n<p>In other words, the capture of Libyan Deep Throat has set off a gang war on the police, who are being informed by bombings and shootings that they must let their informant go or risk their safety.</p>\n<p>So what is Deep Throat saying? According to local journalist Mohamed Bujenah of the Libyan Herald, a senior figure in the Benghazi police told him that the informant had fingered as many as 7 prominent Muslim fundamentalist leaders in connection with these attacks, of whom the police named 6 explicitly:</p>\n<p>1 Sufyan Ben Qumu, from the notoriously radical town of Derna, and a former prisoner at Guantanamo</p>\n<p>2. Ahmad Bukatela, leader of the Ubaida Militia</p>\n<p>3. Muhammad al-Zahawi, head of the Ansar al-Sharia militia</p>\n<p>4. Muhammad al-Gharabi, a leader of the Rafallah al-Sahati Militia</p>\n<p>5. Ismail Sallabi, another leader of Rafallah al-Sahati</p>\n<p>6. Salim Nabous, head of the Zawiya Martyrs’ Brigade</p>\n<p>It is just a newspaper article. We don’t know if the informant actually named these individuals or if he did so to escape torture, in which case we can’t trust what he said. But if the allegations are true, there is collusion among several hardline militias in the city to create instability in hopes of taking it over. </p>\n<p>The new, elected, prime minister Ali Zeidan, has started asserting himself militarily. He <a href=\"http://www.northafricapost.com/1848-libya-closes-borders-as-war-clouds-gather-in-mali.html\"> closed the country’s southern borders against </a> instability in the Sahel. He may well have some risky house cleaning to do in Benghazi.</p>"
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"title" : "Speeding up HTTP with minimal protocol changes",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">As <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY\">SPDY</a> works its way through <a href=\"http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/wiki\">IETF ratification</a> I began wondering whether it was really necessary to add a complex, binary protocol to the HTTP suite to improve HTTP performance. One of the main things that SPDY sets out to fix is defined in the opening paragraph of the SPDY proposal:<br><blockquote>One of the bottlenecks of HTTP implementations is that HTTP relies on multiple connections for concurrency. This causes several problems, including additional round trips for connection setup, slow-start delays, and connection rationing by the client, where it tries to avoid opening too many connections to any single server. HTTP pipelining helps some, but only achieves partial multiplexing. In addition, pipelining has proven non-deployable in existing browsers due to intermediary interference.</blockquote>The solution to this problem (as currently proposed) is SPDY. But I couldn't help thinking that solving the multiplexing problem could be done in a simpler manner within HTTP itself. And so here is a partial proposal that involves adding two new headers to existing HTTP and nothing more.<br><br><pre>1. Overview<br><br> HMURR (pronounced 'hammer') introduces a new pipelining mechanism<br> with explicit identifiers used to match requests and responses sent<br> on the same TCP connection so that out-of-order responses are<br> possible. The current HTTP 1.1 pipelining mechanism requires that<br> responses be returned in the same order as requests are made (FIFO)<br> which itself introduces a head-of-line blocking problem.<br><br> In addition, HTTP 1.1 pipelining does not allow responses to be<br> interleaved. When a response is transmitted the entire response<br> must be sent before a later response can be transmitted. HMURR<br> introduces a chunking mechanism that allows partial responses to be<br> sent. This enables multiple responses to be interleaved on a single<br> connection preventing a long response from starving out shorter<br> ones.<br><br> HMURR attempts to preserve the existing semantics of HTTP. All<br> features such as cookies, ETags, Vary headers, Content-Encoding<br> negotiations, etc. work as they do with HTTP; HMURR simply<br> introduces an explicit multiplexing mechanism.<br><br> HMURR introduces two new HTTP headers: one header that is used for<br> requests and responses and one that is only present in<br> responses. No changes are made to other HTTP headers or HTTP<br> responses.<br><br>2. HTTP Version<br><br> It is intended that HMURR be a modification to the existing HTTP<br> standard RFC 2616 and requires a higher HTTP version number. Either<br> HTTP 1.2 or HTTP 2.0 would be suitable.<br><br>3. HMURR Operation<br><br>3.1. Pipelining<br><br> A client that supports persistent connections MAY "pipeline" its<br> requests (i.e., send multiple requests without waiting for each<br> response). Each request must contain a Request-ID header specifying a<br> unique identifier used by the client to identify the request. When<br> responding to a request the server will each the Request-ID header<br> with the same value so that the client can match requests and<br> responses. This mechanism allows HTTP responses to be returned in any<br> order.<br><br> Clients which assume persistent connections and pipeline immediately<br> after connection establishment SHOULD be prepared to retry their<br> connection if the first pipelined attempt fails. If a client does<br> such a retry, it MUST NOT pipeline before it knows the connection is<br> persistent. Clients MUST also be prepared to resend their requests if<br> the server closes the connection before sending all of the<br> corresponding responses.<br><br> Clients SHOULD NOT pipeline requests using non-idempotent methods or<br> non-idempotent sequences of methods (see section 9.1.2 of<br> RFC2616). Otherwise, a premature termination of the transport<br> connection could lead to indeterminate results. A client wishing to<br> send a non-idempotent request SHOULD wait to send that request until<br> it has received the response status for all previous outstanding<br> requests made in the pipeline.<br><br>3.2. Multiplexed responses<br><br> A server may choose to break a response into parts so that a large<br> response does not consume the entire TCP connection. This allows<br> multiple responses to be returned without any one waiting for another.<br><br> When a response is broken into parts each part will consist of a<br> normal HTTP header and body. These parts are called slices. The first<br> slice sent in response to an HTTP request MUST contain either a<br> Content-Length or specify Transfer-Encoding: chunked.<br><br> Each slice MUST start with a valid Status-Line (RFC 2616 section 6.1)<br> followed by response headers. The first slice MUST have the HTTP<br> headers that would be present were the response transmitted<br> unsliced. Subsequent slices MUST have only a Slice-Length (but see<br> next paragraph) and Request-ID header. The minimal slice will consist<br> of a Status-Line and a single Request-ID header.<br><br> In satisfying an HTTP request the server MAY send multiple slices. All<br> slices except the last one MUST contain a Slice-Length header<br> specifying the number of bytes of content being transmitted in that<br> slice. The final slice MUST NOT contain a Slice-Length header; the<br> client MUST either use the Content-Length header sent in the first<br> slice (if present) or the chunked transfer encoding to determine how<br> much data is to be read.<br><br> The HTTP response code MAY change from slice to slice if server<br> conditions change. For example, if a server becomes unavailable while<br> sending slices in response to a request the Status-Line on the initial<br> slice could have indicated 200 OK but a subsequent slice may indicate<br> 500 Internal Server Error. If the HTTP response code changes the<br> server MUST send a complete set of HTTP headers as if the it were the<br> first slice.<br><br> Since there is no negotiation between client and server about sliced<br> responses, a client sending a Request-ID header MUST be prepared to<br> handle a sliced response.<br><br>3.3. Long responses<br><br> A server MAY choose to use the slice mechanism in section 3.2 to<br> implement a long response to a request. For example, a chat server<br> could make a single HTTP request for lines of chat and the server<br> could use the slice mechanism with chunked transfer encoding to send<br> messages when they arrive.<br><br> The client would simply wait for slices to arrive and decode the<br> chunks within them. One simple mechanism would be to send a slice<br> containing the same number of bytes as the chunk (the chunked encoding<br> header would indicate X bytes and the Slice-Length would be X bytes<br> plus the chunk header size). The client would then be able to read a<br> complete slice containing a complete chunk and use it for rendering.<br><br>3.4. Example session<br><br> In this example the HTTP version for HMURR is specified as 1.2. It<br> shows a client making an initial request for a page without a<br> Request-ID, receiving the complete response and then reusing the<br> connection to send multiple requests and received sliced replies in a<br> different order on a single TCP connection.<br><br> client server<br><br> GET / HTTP/1.2<br> Host: example.com<br> Connection: keep-alive<br><br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Content-Length: 1234<br> Content-Type: text/html<br> Connection: keep-alive<br><br> (1234 bytes of data)<br><br><br> GET /header.jpg HTTP/1.2<br> Host: example.com<br> Request-ID: a1<br><br> GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.2<br> Host: example.com<br> Request-ID: b2<br><br> GET /hero.jpg HTTP/1.2<br> Host: example.com HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Request-ID: c3 Content-Length: 632<br> Content-Type: image/jpeg<br> GET /iframe.html HTTP/1.2 Request-ID: b2<br> Host: example.com<br> Request-ID: d4 (632 bytes of data)<br><br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Content-Length: 65343<br> Request-ID: a1<br> Slice-Length: 1024<br><br> (1024 bytes of data)<br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Transfer-Encoding: chunked<br> Request-ID: c3<br> Slice-Length: 4957<br><br> (4957 of chunked data)<br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Content-Length: 128<br> Request-ID: d4<br><br> (128 bytes of HTML)<br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Request-ID: a1<br><br> (64319 bytes of data)<br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Request-ID: c3<br> Slice-Length: 2354<br><br> (2354 bytes of chunked data)<br><br> HTTP/1.2 200 OK<br> Request-ID: c3<br></pre><pre> (chunked data that includes 00<br> block indicating end)<br><br> In this example, the request for / is satisfied in full without using<br> pipelining or slicing. The client then makes requests for four<br> resources /header.jpg, /favicon.ico, /hero.jpg and /iframe.html and<br> assigns them IDs a1, b2, c3 and d4 respectively.<br><br> Since /favicon.ico (ID b2) is small it is sent while the client is<br> generating requests and in full (the Request-ID header is present, but<br> Slice-Length is not).<br><br> /header.jpg is sent in two slices. The first has a Slice-Length of<br> 1024 bytes and specifies the complete Content-Length of the<br> resource. The second slice has no Slice-Length header indicating that<br> it is the final slice satisfying the request with ID a1.<br><br> /hero.jpg is sent using chunked encoding and in two slices. The first<br> slice indicate a Slice-Length (of chunked data) and the second slice<br> has no Slice-Length and the client reads the rest of the chunked data<br> (which must include the 0 length final chunked block).<br><br> /iframe.html is small and is satisfied with a non-sliced response.<br> Responses are delivered in the order that is convenient for the server</pre><pre> and using slicing to prevent starvation. Since the client needs the /<br> resource in its entirety before continuing it does not send a<br> Request-ID header and receives the complete response.<br><br>4. Header Definitions<br><br>This section defines the syntax and semantics of additional HTTP<br>headers added with HMURR to the standard HTTP/1.1 header fields.<br><br>4.1. Request-ID<br><br> The Request-ID is added to the HTTP request headers generated by a<br> client to indicate that it intends to use HMURR and to uniquely<br> identify the request.<br><br> Request-ID = "Request-ID" ":" unique-request-tag<br><br> When responding to the request the origin-server MUST insert a<br> Request-ID header with the corresponding unique-request-tag so that<br> the client can match requests and responses.<br><br>4.2. Slice-Length<br><br> The Slice-Length response-header is added to a response by the<br> origin-server to indicate the length of content that follows the HTTP<br> response headers.<br><br> Slice-Length = "Slice-Length" ":" 1*DIGIT<br></pre><pre> If this header is missing it indicates that the entire (or remaining<br> unsent) response-body is being transmitted with this set of HTTP<br> headers. If present it indicates the number of bytes of response that<br> are being transmitted. The client MUST use the Content-Length to<br> determine the total length expected, or if chunked transfer encoding<br> is used the client MUST use the chunked encoding header to determine<br> the end of the content.<br><br></pre>Obviously, this proposal does not provide all the functionality of SPDY (such as a forced TLS connection, header compression or built-in server push), but it does deal with connection multiplexing in a simple, textual manner.<br><br>There are probably reasons (that I've overlooked) why my proposal is a bad idea; what are they?</div>"
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"title" : "“Buttercup” isn’t enough. I’m going to...",
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"title" : "Nostalgia, My Enemy",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Saadi.jpg\"><img title=\"Saadi\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Saadi.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></a>Saadi Youssef, born in 1934 in Basra, Iraq, has lived in exile for some 30 years now — currently in London, England. Mahmood Darwish has called him a major influence, saying that “Saadi Youssef, whose poetry is in dialogue with the history of popetry, is like no other Arab poet… I was enchanted by his complex simplicity in its search for the poetics of minutiae in the prose of life and for the secret relationship between the quotidian and the historical.” Youssef has published over thirty books & is one of the outstanding poets of the Arab world. The present selection of poems — all written between 2002 & 2009, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money & published by <a href=\"http://www.graywolfpress.org/Latest_News/100/\">Graywolf</a> — is an excellent way into his prolific late work. As Marilyn Hacker writes: “Saadi Youssef was born in Iraq, but he has become, through the vicissitudes of history and the cosmopolitan appetites of his mind, a poet, not only of the Arab world, but of the human universe.” Here is the title poem of the book:</p>\n<p><strong>O Nostalgia: My Enemy<br>\n</strong></p>\n<p>We’ve been at it for thirty years.<br>\nWe meet like two thieves on a journey<br>\nwhose details are not fully known.<br>\nWith every passing station<br>\nthe train cars decrease in number,<br>\nthe light grows dimmer.<br>\nBut your wooden seat, occupying all trains,<br>\nstill has its constants.<br>\nThe etchings of years—<br>\nchalk drawings,<br>\ncameras no one remembers,<br>\nfaces<br>\nand trees that lie under dirt;<br>\nI took a look at you<br>\nfor a moment,<br>\nthen rushed panting to the last car<br>\nfar away from you.<br>\n…<br>\nI said: the road is long.<br>\nI took out my bread and a piece of cheese from my sack.<br>\nI saw you eyeing me, this way<br>\nsharing my bread and cheese!<br>\nHow did you find me?<br>\nJump at me like a hawk?<br>\nListen:<br>\nI didn’t travel tens of thousands of miles,<br>\ndidn’t wander across many countries,<br>\ndidn’t know thousands of branches<br>\nso that you could come now, steal my treasure,<br>\nand corner me.<br>\nNow leave your seat and get off the train,<br>\nmy train will speed past this station<br>\n— so get off,<br>\nand let me go<br>\nwhere no train will ever stop.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\">11/12/2003</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "Building my Own Laptop",
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"content" : "<p>We are building an open laptop, with some wacky features in it for hackers like me.</p>\n<p>This is a lengthy project. Fortunately, ARM CPUs are getting fast enough, and <a href=\"http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=1863\">Moore’s Law is slowing down</a>, so that even if it took a year or so to complete, I won’t be left with a woefully useless design. Today’s state of the art ARM CPUs — quad-core with GHz+ performance levels — is good enough for most day-to-day code development, email checking, browsing etc.</p>\n<p>We started the design in June, and last week I got my first prototype motherboards, hot off the SMT line. It’s booting linux, and I’m currently grinding through the validation of all the sub-components. I thought I’d share the design progress with my readers.</p>\n<p>Of course, a feature of a build-it-yourself laptop is that all the design documentation is open, so others of sufficient skill and resources can also build it. The hardware and its sub-components are picked so as to make this the most practically open hardware laptop I could create using state of the art technology. You can download, without NDA, the datasheets for all the components, and key peripheral options are available so it’s possible to build a complete firmware from source with no opaque blobs.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/novena/novena_depop_clean_labels.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/novena_depop_clean_labels_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>Above is an annotated diagram of the circuit board. The dimensions of the board are approximately 121mm x 150mm — sized to fit comfortably underneath a standard-sized laptop keyboard. The image above is rotated versus the installation orientation; the port farm is meant to be on the right hand side of the laptop, not on the bottom. The overall height of the board is just under 14mm, with the height being set by the thickness of an Ethernet connector. The thickness on my Lenovo T520 base portion is just under 24mm, so once we stack a keyboard and plastics on this it’ll be just about the same.</p>\n<p>Here are some of the features of the laptop motherboard:</p>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6Q&webpageId=129226228141673454B24A&nodeId=018rH3ZrDRB24A&fromPage=bunniestudios.com\">Freescale iMX6 CPU</a> — same footprint can support dual-lite and quad versions:</li>\n<ul>\n<li>Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz</li>\n<li>Vivante GC2000 OpenGL ES2.0 GPU, 200Mtri/s, 1Gpix/s (*)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6Q&nodeId=018rH3ZrDRB24A&fpsp=1&tab=Documentation_Tab\">NDA-free datasheet and programming manual</a></li>\n</ul>\n<li>Internal memory:</li>\n<ul>\n<li>Boot from microSD firmware</li>\n<li>64-bit, DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM, upgradable to 4GB</li>\n<li>SATA-II (3Gbps)</li>\n</ul>\n<li>Internal ports & sensors:</li>\n<ul>\n<li>mini PCI-express slot (for blob-free <a href=\"http://unex.com.tw/product/dnxa-125\">wifi</a>, <a href=\"http://unex.com.tw/product/dhxa-195\">bluetooth</a>, <a href=\"http://www.roundsolutions.com/techdocs/ds/GTM661W.pdf\">mobile data</a>, etc.)</li>\n<li>UIM slot for mPCIe mobile data cards</li>\n<li>Dual-channel LVDS LCD connector (up to QXGA (2048×1536) @ 60Hz resolution) with USB2.0 side-channel for a display-side camera</li>\n<li>Resistive touchscreen controller (note: captouch displays typically come with a controller)</li>\n<li>1.1W, 8-ohm internal speaker connectors</li>\n<li>2x USB2.0 internal connectors for keyboard and mouse/trackpad</li>\n<li>Digital microphone</li>\n<li>3-axis accelerometer</li>\n<li>header for optional AW-NU137 wifi module (*)</li>\n</ul>\n<li>External ports:</li>\n<ul>\n<li>HDMI</li>\n<li>SD card reader</li>\n<li>headphone + mic port (compatible with most mobile phone headsets, supports sensing in-line cable buttons)</li>\n<li>2x USB 2.0 ports, supporting high-current (1.5A) device charging</li>\n<li>1Gbit ethernet</li>\n</ul>\n<li>“Fun” features:</li>\n<ul>\n<li>100 Mbit ethernet — dual Ethernet capability allows laptop to be used as an in-line packet filter or router</li>\n<li>USB OTG — enables laptop to spoof/fuzz ethernet, serial, etc. over USB via gadget interface to other USB hosts</li>\n<li>Utility serial EEPROM — for storing crash logs and other bits of handy data</li>\n<li>Spartan-6 CSG324-packaged FPGA — has several interfaces to the CPU, including a 2Gbit/s (peak) RAM-like bus — for your bitcoin mining needs. Or whatever else you might want to toss in an FPGA.</li>\n<li>8x FPGA-driven 12-bit, 200ksps analog inputs</li>\n<li>8x FPGA-driven digital I/O</li>\n<li>8x FPGA-driven PWM headers, compatible with hobby ESC and PWM pinouts — enables direct interfacing with various RC motor/servo configurations & quad-copter controllers</li>\n<li>Raspberry-Pi compatible expansion header</li>\n<li>13x CPU-driven supplemental digital I/Os</li>\n<li>3x internal UART ports</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Items marked with an asterisk (*) require a closed-source firmware blob, but the system is functional and bootable without the blob. </p>\n<p>In order to give maximum power management flexibility, the battery interface functions are implemented on a daughtercard. I co-opt a cheap and common SATA-style connector to route power and control signals between the mainboard and the daughtercard. To prevent users from accidentally plugging a hard drive into the battery port, I inverted the gender of the battery-SATA connector from the actual mass storage SATA-II connector. The current battery card is meant to work with the battery packs used by most RC enthusiasts — LiPo packs ranging from 2S1P to 4S1P (2-cell to 4-cell). RC packs are great because they are designed for super-fast charging. They are also cheap and easy to buy. For the board-side battery plug I decided to use the Molex connector found on classic disk drives, since they are cheap, common, and easy to assemble with simple tools. I couldn’t use a standard RC connector because the vast majority of them are designed for in-line use, and the few that have board mounts are too thick or too weird for use in this application.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniefoo.com/novena/novena_batt_labels.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/novena_batt_labels_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>The battery board can charge batteries at rates in excess of 4A. This means charging a 3-cell, 45Wh (4Ah) pack in about one hour. I’m estimating that a typical power consumption for a reasonable system configuration might be around 5-6W, so that’s 7-8 hours of runtime with a 1-hour charge time using that type of battery pack. Of course, since the whole laptop is user-configurable, typical power consumption is really hard to estimate — you could drop in a monster LCD and a power-hungry magnetic hard drive with loads of peripherals and the power consumption could be much higher. Of course, you can drop in a 100Wh battery pack if you wanted as well :)</p>\n<p>Another cute feature of the battery board is that it can drive an analog panel meter. <a href=\"http://xoblo.gs\">Xobs</a> had suggested that it would be neat to embed a retro analog needle meter into the palmrest of the laptop to give a real-time display of power consumption. I thought it was a great idea, so I designed that in. Of course, the analog meter is driven by a DAC on the battery microcontroller, so it can be configured to perform a multitude of useful (or not so useful) analog read-outs, such as remaining runtime, battery voltage, temperature, the time (represented as an analog value), etc.</p>\n<p>Next up is to spend a couple months validating all the features on the board — a long list of features to grind through indeed — and port drivers and a linux distro (no small task, but I’ll have <a href=\"http://xoblo.gs/\">Xobs</a>‘ skillful help). I also am looking forward to designing the enclosure. Probably for the first rev, I will do something out of laser-cut acrylic that is vaguely tablet-like, to avoid having to mess around with a friction clutch on version 1 of the plastics. </p>\n<p>A detached <a href=\"http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and-parts/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-73183\">keyboard/trackpoint</a> is attractive to me because I’ve always wanted a display I can “hang” on the seat in front of mine when sitting in an airplane or a bus — it’s a lot easier on the neck and the arrangement actually works <em>better</em> if the person in front reclines their seat. </p>\n<p>Once I’ve got some experience integrating the whole thing, I’ll probably design a rev-2 case using CNC-cut ABS and aluminum. CNC cut ABS is almost as robust as injection molded ABS, and can produce reasonably intricate shapes. It’s also relatively economical to produce in single quantities. The CNC-cut design could be a clamshell design, or maybe some other funky design. Maybe I’ll try using wood and brass — who knows, the whole idea of making my own laptop is to play around with some new ideas!</p>\n<p>It occurs to me that maybe other people might also be interested in owning a laptop like this, but don’t want to go through the trouble of fabricating their own circuit boards. If it seems like a few hundred folks are interested, I might be convinced to try a Kickstarter campaign in several months, once the design is stable and tested. However, I’m not looking to break any low-price records for this laptop — if you just want a cheap linux laptop you’re better off buying a netbook or EeePC. This is a low-volume, hand-crafted laptop made with uniquely open-source components, so the pricing would be consistent with such crafted goods. </p>\n<p>For those interested in the source files for the current early prototype iteration of the design, bounce over to the <a href=\"http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page\">Novena wiki</a>, and keep an eye on <a href=\"http://xoblo.gs/\">Xobs’ blog</a>. Novena (yet another Singaporean metro station, and also Latin for “nine”) is our stand-in codename for the laptop motherboard.</p>"
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"content" : "The ever hopeful infinitely patient Ezra Klein<a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/a-smarter-republican-agenda-on-medicare/\"> attempts to find good Republican proposals for health care cost control.</a> He notes that the Congressional leadership's proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age would increase total health care spending and sins grievously against <a href=\"https://www.google.it/search?q=ballance&rlz=1C1FDUM_enIT485IT485&aq=f&oq=ballance&aqs=chrome.0.57j60j64j0l3.1308&sugexp=chrome,mod=18&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#hl=it&safe=off&tbo=d&rlz=1C1FDUM_enIT485IT485&sclient=psy-ab&q=%22jack+ballance%22+waldmann+&oq=%22jack+ballance%22+waldmann+&gs_l=serp.12...19846.29735.2.31044.28.26.0.0.0.14.303.3476.8j15j2j1.26.0...0.0...1c.1.dnFfk6jyFZk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355325884,d.Yms&fp=3d738a52b9f4f75c&bpcl=39967673&biw=1056&bih=560\">Ballance</a> writing \"<span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\">But an increase in the eligibility age would be a trophy that Boehner could present to his political base — proof that he had bagged his prey. In the absence of good ideas that Republicans agree on, bad ideas that Democrats hate will do.</span> \" But not for the Kleinest of hopes.<br>\n<br>\nOf course Republicans can come up with good proposals -- they just have to read the Affordable Care Act and propose strengthening it a bit. Indeed <span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\"> </span><br>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n<span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\">Jim Capretta, who worked on budgets in the George W. Bush administration, has emerged as one of the Republican Party’s most influential voices on health-care policy.<span> </span></span><br>\n<span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\"><span><br></span></span>\n<span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\"><span>[skip]</span></span></blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<span style=\"background-color:white;color:black;display:inline!important;float:none;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:22.5px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\">Capretta’s goal is to make seniors more cost-conscious at the point of service. He even sees an opportunity to build on some Obamacare reforms, despite being an implacable critic of the law. He thinks the Affordable Care Act’s effort to expand accountable care organizations — provider networks that are paid based on the quality, rather than the quantity, of care they deliver — should be encouraged. Trouble is, he says, Democrats are encouraging the spread of such networks mostly by paying them more. To hold costs down, he would like to give patients a bigger role and greater financial stake in choosing a network.</span></blockquote>\n<br>\n In other words, put your government hands on their Medicare penalizing them for not going in a direction subsidized by Obamacare.<br>\n<br>\nBut Klein also talked to Doctro Senator Tom Coburn MD who proposes something not at all in the ACA. <br>\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:black;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.5em;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px 0px 22px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\">\n“I’d change all physicians to time instead of fee-for-service,” he said. “What we’re doing with fee-for-service, and most people don’t realize this, is when you go to the doctor, they have this pressure to see X number of patients a day to meet their numbers.”</div>\n<div style=\"background-color:white;border:0px;color:black;font-family:georgia;font-size:15px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:1.5em;margin:0px;outline:0px;padding:0px 0px 22px;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px\">\nIf we cut payments to doctors, Coburn says, “they’re going to cut the time they spend per patient. When a patient is in a room and you haven’t used your skills as a physician to really listen, you walk out and cover that absence of time by ordering tests. So if you say here’s all the hours we’ll pay for if you’re a Medicare doctor, and we can actually audit that time, doctors would have to demonstrate proof that they’re spending this time with patients.”</div>\n</blockquote>\n Holy mother of heffalump traps Coburn is proposing making physicians hourly employees of the US government, maybe with a time clock in their offices. That's not Obamacare thats the British National Health Service. Coburn's proposal was much too far left for Obama, Clinton or Kennedy. <br>\n<br>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?a=4ObWNqy1xC8:0hFfHu3p-uA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/Hzoh/~4/4ObWNqy1xC8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/tim-parks-2/#tab-blog\">Tim Parks</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/cococola_jpg_470x650_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Ferdinando Scianna/Magnum Photos.</p>\n <p> </p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>In 1993 I translated all 450 pages of Roberto Calasso’s <i>The Marriage of Cadmus <span>&</span> Harmony</i> without ever using the past participle of the verb “get.” The book was to be published simultaneously by Knopf in New York and Jonathan Cape in London; to save money both editions were to be printed from the same galleys; so it would be important, I was told, to avoid any usages that might strike American readers as distractingly English or English readers as distractingly American. To my English ear “gotten” yells America and alters the whole feel of a sentence. I presumed it would be the same the other way round for Americans. Fortunately, given the high register of Calasso’s prose, “get” was not difficult to avoid. \n</p>\n<p>Now in 2012 I am obliged to sign up to “gotten.” Commissioned by an American publisher to write a book that explores the Italian national character through an account of thirty years’ commuting and traveling on the country’s rail network, I am looking at an edit that transforms my English prose into American. I had already sorted out the spelling, in fact had written the book with an American spell check, and didn’t expect that there would be much else to do. Wrong. Almost at once there was a note saying that throughout the 300 pages my use of “carriage” for a passenger train car must be changed to “coach.” Since this is a book about trains and train travel there were ninety-eight such usages. There was also the problem that I had used the word “coach” to refer to a long distance bus. Apparently the twenty-four-hour clock was not acceptable, so the 17:25 Regionale from Milan to Verona had to become the 5:25 PM Regionale. Where I, in a discussion of prices, had written “a further 50 cents” the American edit required “a further 50 euro cents,” as if otherwise an American reader might imagine Italians were dealing in nickels and dimes. \n</p>\n<p>I had started the editing process in a spirit of easygoing cooperation, determined to set aside any pride in Englishness and work to produce the best package possible for an American public. After all, the work was being paid for by an American publisher and my commissioning editor had proved extremely helpful when it came to discussing the shape of the book. But doubts soon arose. Prose is not something that remains the same when words are substituted—“jeans” for “dungarees,” for example—or when one synonym is preferred to another. Rhythm is important, and assonance likewise. Ninety-eight uses of a two-syllable “carriage” are not the same as ninety-eight occurrences of a single-syllable closed-o “coach.” This is why, statistically, assonance, alliteration, and rhythm tend to be weaker in translations than in original texts; consciously or otherwise a writer, even of the least ambitious prose, is guided by sound, while the language itself is constantly forming standard collocations of words around pleasantly assonant combinations—fast asleep, wide awake. Any intervention in these patterns, whether simply substituting words to suit a local use of the same language, or more radically translating into another language, disturbs the relationship between sound and semantics. \n</p>\n<p>But my train book isn’t just a text written by an Englishman to be published in America. It’s about Italy, the Italians, how they see things, their mental world. One of the ways one can get across the difference is to focus on words or usages that don’t quite translate—the appearance of <i>coincidenza</i>, for example, in station announcements, which can mean a planned and timetabled train connection, or a quite unplanned, unexpected development to which an urgent response is required, such as a last minute platform change. Over these matters the American editor dutifully followed. But where I had written <i>mamma</i> and <i>papà</i>, the edit had transformed to “mamma” and “pappa.” This rather threw me, in part because I had assumed that Americans said mama and papa, but mostly because <i>papà</i> is accented on the second syllable, whereas in Italian “pappa”, with the accent on the first syllable and that double p that Italians, unlike Anglo-Saxons, actually pronounce, is a word for mush, or babyfood. \n</p>\n<p>Despite my hailing from England—a country that still uses miles—I had expressed distances in meters and kilometers and it seemed odd now to find my Italian characters speaking to each other about yards and miles and, of course, Fahrenheit, which they never would. Or saying AM and PM, rather than using the twenty-four-hour clock as they mostly do, even in ordinary conversation. Slowly, as well as being concerned that some sentences were now feeling clunky and odd, I began to wonder if American readers really needed or demanded this level of protection. Wouldn’t they soon figure out, if I said “the temperature was up in the sizzling thirties,” that I was talking Celsius? Or at least that in another part of the world people had another system for measuring temperature where thirty was considered warm? Mightn’t it be fascinating for them to be reminded that the twenty-four-hour clock, which Americans usually associate with military operations, has long been in standard civilian usage in Europe? Italy introduced it as early as 1893. \n</p>\n<p>Or again, does a “newsagent” really need to become a “news dealer,” a “flyover” an “overpass,” a “parcel” a “package,” or in certain circumstances “between” “among” and “like” “such as”? Does the position of “also” really need to be moved in front of the verb “to be” in sentences like “Trains also were useful during the 1908 earthquake in Catania,” when to me it looked much better after it? And does making these relatively small changes really make the text 100 percent American anyway? One thinks of how thoroughly the Harry Potter novels were Americanized for their US editions: would they really have sold fewer copies had the Anglicisms been kept? Wasn’t half the charm of the series its rather fey Englishness (occasionally Scottish Englishness)? Would we Americanize the Irish Joyce? Or again, if we want to have language conform to local usage, what about considering chronology as well as geography? Shouldn’t we bring Dickens, Austen, Fielding, and Shakespeare up to date? Make it easier? Forget that language is constantly changing and different everywhere?\n</p>\n<p>Turning page after page of the copy editor’s notes, I began to make connections between this editing process and many of the things I have written about on this blog. America is very much a net exporter of literature. Its novels are read and translated worldwide, where readers generally accept miles and Fahrenheit, pounds and ounces, AM and PM and indeed have grown accustomed to these old-fashioned, American oddities (when it comes to doing science, of course, Americans use the more practical European systems). In Germany, for example, where around fifty percent of novels are foreign works in translation, Roth’s and Franzen’s characters are not obliged to discuss distances in kilometers. \n</p>\n<p>Conversely, America imports very little—only three to four percent of novels published in the States are translations—and what it does import it tends to transform as far as possible into its own formulas and notations, in much the same way that Disney has turned every fable and myth worldwide into a version of Mickey Mouse. This situation is a measure of American power, but brings with it the danger of mental closure and inflexibility. Speaking recently at a conference in Milan, the Italian literary agent Marco Vigevani, lamented that fewer and fewer American editors are able to read novels in Italian, French, and especially German, and this inevitably has reduced their enthusiasm for publishing foreign literature, since they are obliged to rely on external readers for advice.\n</p>\n<p>Travel books are popular, likewise novels set in distant exotic countries, suggesting an appetite for awareness of other societies and their different lifestyles, but how far can literature really expose us to another world if everything is always returned to the reassuring medium of our own language <i>exactly as we use it</i>, with all our own formulas, dimensions, accents, and habits. More than anything else, what makes a foreign country foreign, and difficult, is its language, and though we can’t be expected to learn a new language for every country we want to know about, it seems important to be reminded of the language, reminded that one’s own language is not the supreme system for understanding the world, but just one of thousands of possibilities. \n</p>\n<p>But perhaps I exaggerate American inflexibility. On sending in my observations on the proofs, my commissioning editor turns out to be more than ready to negotiate. “Gotten” will have to stay “gotten,” but “coach” can return to “carriage,” “also” can beetle back to where it was behind the verb “to be,” and “jeans” if they can’t return to “dungarees” can now become “jumpsuits.” Looking at this re-edit one realizes that the notion of Americanizing a text actually opens the way for a copy editor to impose personal preferences, perhaps imagining that something that sounds odd to his ear is un-American rather than simply my way of writing or his way of reading. Does anybody in the end really know with absolute certainty, all the differences between American and English usages? Aren’t there a wide range of usages in both these countries? How can I know, when I see a particular edit, if it is an Americanism I have to accept, or a matter of individual taste I can take issue with?\n</p>\n<p>And all this without mentioning house style, that frighteningly powerful dye which, in a magazine like <i>The New Yorker</i>, turns every contributor’s prose the same color. In my train book, for example, after a few pages discussing the fate of Italian railways under Nazi occupation, I begin a new paragraph “2,104 railwaymen died in the war” and find this changed to “A total of 2,104 railwaymen died in the Second World War.” What is the sense of “A total of”? Surely it’s not a requirement of Americanization. What does it add? The idea of my counting up the dead? To my ear the bare number has exactly the brutal eloquence that such statements demand. And how could the reader get his war wrong when we’d just been talking Mussolini and Hitler? When I cut “A total of” I find the sentence reappearing in the proofs thus: “In the Second World War, 2,104 railwaymen died…” One hardly needs to go to a creative writing class to appreciate that this formulation has less rhetorical force than “2,104 railwaymen died in the Second World War.” \n</p>\n<p>Seeing this second rejection of my version, and since I can’t imagine the poor copy editor (who is actually a very fine editor, I think) deliberately making his job longer than it need be, I have to presume that some house style forbids me from opening a paragraph with a number. Why? This whole question may seem a quite different matter from the contrast between Americans Americanizing and Europeans accepting Americanisms, but the truth is that house style is a much more common occurrence in the US and more aggressively enforced, to the point that when one rereads work one has written for <i>The New Yorker</i> it no longer seems like your voice at all. I can think of no similar experience with English or European magazines, as I can remember no experience quite like my tussle over tense changes for the American edition of my book Medici Money. Not that good editing is not precious. One has been saved a thousand stupid mistakes and much ugly phrasing by good editors; it is the desire to fix style in an unchanging standard that is noxious. As if people didn’t have different ways of speaking. And a cultural trait like this must mean something, come out of some deep assumption. Is it simply the publisher’s anxiety that his readers are weak, ready to put their books down at the slightest obstacle, and hence must be reassured by a homogeneity of usage that more or less makes language invisible? Or could it be that the long American hegemony has bred an assumption that American formulations are inevitably global currency and should be universally imposed?\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=MSlAuDPxEJU:WiHo2hvFo7M:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/MSlAuDPxEJU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "I was asked to illustrate the meaning of life.",
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"content" : "<p>For an answer to that rhetorical question, I referred to my favorite dead philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. Happiness is the answer (obviously), and so I used his 9 Pleasures of Stimulation as a basis for the illustration.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://sz-magazin.sueddeutsche.de/texte/anzeigen/39023\">This is the result</a>, which appeared recently in the German publication, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin.</p>\n<p>And below is the English version (click to enlarge).</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stimulation001.jpg\"><img title=\"the meaning of life (YMMV)\" src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/stimulation001-282x380.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"282\" height=\"380\"></a></p>\nShare and Enjoy:<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F&title=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20&bodytext=For%20an%20answer%20to%20that%20rhetorical%20question%2C%20I%20referred%20to%20my%20favorite%20dead%20philosopher%2C%20Jeremy%20Bentham.%20Happiness%20is%20the%20answer%20%28obviously%29%2C%20and%20so%20I%20used%20his%209%20Pleasures%20of%20Stimulation%20as%20a%20basis%20for%20the%20illustration.%0D%0A%0D%0AThis%20is%20the%20result%2C%20which%20app\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/digg.png\" title=\"Digg\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F&title=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/stumbleupon.png\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://delicious.com/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F&title=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20&notes=For%20an%20answer%20to%20that%20rhetorical%20question%2C%20I%20referred%20to%20my%20favorite%20dead%20philosopher%2C%20Jeremy%20Bentham.%20Happiness%20is%20the%20answer%20%28obviously%29%2C%20and%20so%20I%20used%20his%209%20Pleasures%20of%20Stimulation%20as%20a%20basis%20for%20the%20illustration.%0D%0A%0D%0AThis%20is%20the%20result%2C%20which%20app\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/delicious.png\" title=\"del.icio.us\" alt=\"del.icio.us\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F&t=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/facebook.png\" title=\"Facebook\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home?status=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20%20-%20http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/twitter.png\" title=\"Twitter\" alt=\"Twitter\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2012%2F12%2Fi-was-asked-to-illustrate-the-meaning-of-life%2F&title=I%20was%20asked%20to%20illustrate%20the%20meaning%20of%20life.%20&annotation=For%20an%20answer%20to%20that%20rhetorical%20question%2C%20I%20referred%20to%20my%20favorite%20dead%20philosopher%2C%20Jeremy%20Bentham.%20Happiness%20is%20the%20answer%20%28obviously%29%2C%20and%20so%20I%20used%20his%209%20Pleasures%20of%20Stimulation%20as%20a%20basis%20for%20the%20illustration.%0D%0A%0D%0AThis%20is%20the%20result%2C%20which%20app\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/googlebookmark.png\" title=\"Google Bookmarks\" alt=\"Google Bookmarks\"></a><br><br>"
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"title" : "Episode 009\nGet ready for all-out Snob warfare when Jehan...",
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"content" : "<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://assets.tumblr.com/swf/audio_player_black.swf?audio_file%3Dhttp://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/themusicsnobs/37790029782/tumblr_mewk3oNL2v1rxprjf%26color%3DFFFFFF&width=207&height=27\" width=\"207\" height=\"27\"></iframe><br><br><h3>Episode 009</h3>\n<p>Get ready for all-out Snob warfare when <strong>Jehan</strong> informs <strong>Arthur</strong>, <strong>Scoop</strong>, and <strong>Isaac</strong> that we’re living in <strong>the second Golden Age of Hip-Hop</strong>. When the dust settles from that conversation, the Snobs take time to reminisce over <strong>the life and death of New Jack Swing</strong>. And if that’s not enough excitement for you, just wait until the crew confesses what music sensation they <strong>just don’t get the hype over</strong>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-music-snobs/id533351162\">Subscribe in iTunes</a> | <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/tms/RxLx\">Subscribe via RSS</a></p>"
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"title" : "The law of Boston infrastructure: build five to keep four",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.mbta.com/schedules_and_maps/subway/\"><img title=\"MBTA map\" src=\"http://www.limeduck.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/subway-spider-300x297.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"297\"></a>Staring at the MBTA map and letting my mind wander while waiting for the train, I noticed a repeated pattern of 4/5.</p>\n<p>There were <strong>five Green line branches, but only four survive today</strong> with the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_%22A%22_Branch\">obvious gap at the start of the sequence</a> B, C, D, E. I guess if the E line had been cut, it wouldn’t have been so obvious. OK, <a href=\"http://bostontoat.blogspot.com/2011/05/yay-history-e-branch-to-arborway.html\">the E line has been cut back</a>, but not cut out.</p>\n<p>More recently, there were <strong>five terminals at Logan, but Terminal D was absorbed</strong> into C and E in 2006 leaving A, B, C, E. It was decided that <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2006/02/attention_logan.html\">renaming Terminal E to Terminal D overnight</a> to close the gap would cause too much confusion.</p>\n<p>Also in more recent memory, the <strong>Silver Line now has only four line but numbering for five</strong>. It acquired a gap with the <a href=\"http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=2415\">demise of the SL3</a> in 2008 and the appearance of SL4 and the renaming of the SL5 in 2009 making the list of Silver Lines a gappy SL1, SL2, SL4, SL5. The fact that the Silver Line still exists as two unconnected parts (SL1/SL2 and SL4/SL5) makes it a little less odd that there’s a gap in numbering. Although there were never five Silver Line routes in operation at the same time, we still have the 4/5 gap in numbering.</p>\n<p>You can witness the changes of the Green and Silver lines in Andrew Lynch’s estimable <a href=\"http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2012/04/an-animated-history-of-the-mbta/\">Animated History of the MBTA</a>, with a hearty hat tip to <a href=\"http://www.universalhub.com/2012/ts-expansion-and-shrinkage-during-past-117-year\">Universal Hub</a>. If you squint real hard at the airport loop in the last two slides you might or might not see the end of Terminal D.</p>\n<p>What’s going on here? Do the planners have spooky Mickey Mouse hands? Does Boston overbuild then scale back? Shrinkage? I have no idea, I’m probably just making connections because <a href=\"http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/12/06/166685434/what-to-do-when-the-bus-doesn-t-come-and-you-want-to-scream-an-experiment\">there’s no bubble wrap to keep me busy while I wait for the T</a>. In any case, it’s interesting to think of the transit system as organic and changing, even if that means both growth and decay.</p>\n<p>For extra credit, check out Cameron Booth’s <a href=\"http://www.cambooth.net/archives/850\">upgrade to the official MBTA map</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "THE 2012 GHANA ELECTION AND ITS AFTERMATH",
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"content" : "<div><strong>THE 2012 ELECTION AND ITS AFTERMATH</strong></div>\n<div><strong>By CAMERON DUODU</strong></div>\n<div><strong><br>\n</strong></div>\n<div><strong>The NPP is not in an enviable position at all, having been put in a situation where it has had to challenge the official results of the 7 December 2012 elections, announced by the Electoral Commission.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>For if a political party protests against the results of an election, the natural conclusion people jumps to is that the party is a “sore loser”, a “bad sport” and potential cheat. People want to see the tension created by an election campaign to end quickly. So, anything that threatens to prolong tension or is naturally frowned upon.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>And yet, we all know elections are conducted by human beings, and that human beings can and do make mistakes. Some humans, apart from being fallible, are also corruptible. They can, in addition, be incompetent or indifferent to their responsibilities regarding a task they have been contracted to perform.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Now, an election is a matter that concerns the very future stability and socio-economic development of our country. For the Government we elect is the principal actor in our affairs, and there can be no easy route out of the dilemma that presents itself, when one of the main parties that contested an election is dissatisfied with the way it was conducted.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Even by the disputed results, the NPP obtained about 5million votes. So it is duty-bound to do everything in its power to ensure that it actualises the electorate’s pact with itself.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Fortunately, our electoral laws make provision for appeal procedures when disputes occur. This is where the NPP faces its biggest challenge. <em>It has to back its accusations with solid facts. </em></strong></div>\n<div><strong>That is not going to be easy, for if the party’s suspicions are right, then the rigging that took place was quite subtle and demanded the co-operation of a good number of EC operatives. Can they be easily found out?</strong></div>\n<div><strong>The NPP should not make the mistake of thinking it’s got time to gather and present its evidence. Already, people are mocking at it, sneering that it wants to bring out “<em>The Stolen Verdict” </em>(Second Edition)! Now, the first edition was well-documented and well presented indeed. But it took weeks to put together, and by the time it came out, it was stale – and more or less irrelevant. </strong></div>\n<div><strong>Another question raised by <em>The Stolen Verdict</em> (Vol. 1 published in November 1992) is this: did the NPP actually get its operatives to read that Report? If they did, what lessons did they learn from the detailed instances of vote-rigging that were in there? Measures ought to have been taken to forestall those and other methods of rigging. Really bright polling agents who are so “aware” and alert that nothing can be put over them, should have been used. Did the NPP have such bright people at all the polling stations and collation centres? </strong></div>\n<div><strong>If such people were present, how come the NPP now claims that figures were changed whilst being transferred from one colour-type paper(blue) on to another (white)? Were party representatives allowed to satisfy themselves that these papers contained accurate figures, before being transmitted from the collation centres to the EC?</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Anyway, we await the presentation of the evidence and the reaction to it of the EC. The EC must react with wisdom and impartiality, but if it fails to do so, there will be other avenues open to the NPP to seek redress. </strong></div>\n<div><strong>These must be followed; the NPP should ignore people who want it to “stop crying over spilt milk”, or, in the words of one cliché-laden cynic on the Internet, “desist from swimming upstream!” That is nonsense, of course. The Electoral Commission has statutory duties prescribed for it by the Constitution, and it is the duty of every citizen, or body of citizens to help defend the accurate application of the Constitution. </strong></div>\n<div><strong>If the NPP, knowing that there were <em>anomalies</em> in the election process, were to follow the usual Ghanaian fatalistic line and “leave it to God” <em>(fa ma Nyame!)</em> it would be remiss in carrying out its civic duties.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Come to that, it is not as if showing evidence of malpractice to the Electoral Commission violates any rules. Of course, the EC’s extremely lofty opinion of itself is legendary. But is this high opinion borne out by how the EC actually operates in practice? For instance, the biometric registration took place about 6 months to the election, and it was discovered then that many of the computers that were used in carrying out the registration, froze on being used. A lot of noise was made about the delays that these malfunctioning machines caused, and most people would have expected that the EC would use the time between the end of registration and the election, to iron out any issues concerning its machines. </strong></div>\n<div><strong>Yet come election day and what do we find? Machine malfunctioning! a What? Again? Yes – this time, it was the verification machines that were preventing people from voting. Some people who went to polling stations in the wee hours of the morning, found themselves still there up to noon and after, not having been able to vote. Where machine malfunction didn’t occur, election materials arrived late.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>One person I spoke to went back home after discovering that there were three queues at his polling station. He begged some people to “guard” his place in the queue for him, while he went back home to find a bite to eat. I don’t know whether he eventually managed to vote. </strong></div>\n<div><strong> </strong></div>\n<div><strong>One lady told me she was rejected at first by the verification machine at her polling station. But she decided not to leave. People were washing their fingers with coca cola, because the rumour was that coke could somehow make the machine “read” one’s fingerprints properly! This lady says she didn’t wash her hands with anything, but when she tried again after waiting for about 2 hours, the machine accepted her and she was able to vote.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Had the EC carried out enough “test runs” with the machines before unleashing them on impatient would-be voters? That is what an efficient EC would have done. It didn’t – as far as the evidence on the ground shows – and that is why we had the spectacle of some people having to leave polling stations without voting, after queuing all day, and being told to come back the next day to try and vote! Meanwhile, said the EC, the votes that had already been cast, would be kept in their ballot boxes and taken to police stations, and brought back the next day, for voting to be completed.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>We must thank God for the peaceful nature of the Ghanaian people. If this had been some other country, people would have said, “We must vote tonight, because we don’t know whether you will allow us to vote tomorrow” </strong></div>\n<div><strong>Or they could have said: “The ballot boxes will be tampered with at the police stations, therefore we won’t let them be taken away!” Or “count the votes that have been cast already now. Then we shall continue tomorrow!”</strong></div>\n<div><strong>These situations caused tension and could have resulted in clashes with the forces of law and order. A</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Knowing how fallible it has been, the EC must now be humble enough to listen carefully to any complaints – not just from the NPP – that might be brought to it, and carry out a very thorough AND SPEEDY investigation of them. And the results of the investigations, with full details of what the complaints were, what was found when they were investigated and why the EC came by its decision, placed before the public.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>As for those observers – especially those from outside the country – who have been so quick to certify the election as “free and fair” Ghanaians must wish them Godspeed and tell them we know better than many of them. We have been humbled by our mistakes, but we won’t compound them by carrying ourselves off with a stiff-neck, unwilling to correct mistakes when they are carefully and rationally pointed out to us. In 1951, the British entrusted us with holding an election under universal adult suffrage for the first time. We passed the test, and held two more elections – in 1954 and 1956 – under very tense political conditions. Again, we passed the test, and were granted our independence in March 1957. Those are the foundations of our electoral successes.</strong></div>\n<div><strong>Let us allow natural justice to prevail over our politics this year, too.<br>\n</strong></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcameronduodu.com%2Funcategorized%2Fthe-2012-ghana-election-and-its-aftermath&title=THE%202012%20GHANA%20ELECTION%20AND%20ITS%20AFTERMATH\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Mali: How Al Qaeda Claimed Timbuktu",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Peter Gwin</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>On the November night in 2008 when the United States elected Barack Obama President, I listened to the coverage on a transistor radio on a rooftop in Timbuktu. <a href=\"http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/timbuktu/gwin-text\">(Read more about Timbuktu in <em>National Geographic</em> magazine.)</a></p>\n<p>I sat with a local teacher named Issaka and a businessman named Mohammed atop the small guesthouse Mohammed owned on the outskirts of the city, just a stone's throw from the rolling dunes that mark the southern edge of the Sahara.</p>\n<p>Deep into the night we huddled against the desert chill wrapped in quilts, listening to the reports on French radio, discussing politics, and drinking glasses of steaming mint tea dutifully served by Mohammed's ten-year-old nephew Akbar.</p>\n<p>To my great surprise, I found Timbuktu, the ancient city in northern Mali whose name is synonymous with the back of beyond, gripped with Obama fever. As I walked through the markets and visited local mosques, several men stopped me to ask if I was American and then gave a thumbs-up and an enthusiastic \"Obama!\"</p>\n<p>A few stalls in the main market sold T-shirts bearing the candidate's visage, alongside others depicting the late rapper Tupac Shakur, French soccer star Zinedine Zidane, and Osama bin Laden. At one point I found myself in a lengthy conversation with an older man, trying to reassure him that Senator John McCain's supporters would not seek to kill Obama if indeed he were to win.</p>\n<p>As we sat on the roof, I asked Issaka and Mohammed why people in Timbuktu were so excited by Obama. Did they think he would somehow spur development here? Issaka shook his head as if I were dense. \"We are excited because it shows the world that America really believes what it says it believes,\" he said.</p>\n<p>\"Even a black-skinned man can be the President. If that is truly possible in America, it makes us ask what is possible in Mali, even in Timbuktu?\" Mohammed nodded enthusiastically.</p>\n<p>That night it was tempting to think of what might be possible for the legendary city. At first glance, it looked like little more than a sprawling warren of ramshackle mud-brick buildings. Goats wandered the streets. (<a href=\"http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/timbuktu/stirton-photography\">See Timbuktu pictures</a>.)</p>\n<p>Trash was piled in pits dug seemingly at random, and the skeletons of large diesel trucks lay half buried in sand drifts, like beasts of burden that had finally collapsed under the desert's oppressive heat. And yet, even after centuries of decline from its zenith as a wealthy trading hub, Timbuktu in 2008 seemed to be verging on a renaissance of sorts.</p>\n<p>Economically, the city was blossoming thanks in part to local historians, who for years had patiently collected troves of lost manuscripts dating back to the Middle Ages, when Timbuktu functioned as an influential center of scholarship.</p>\n<p>Now international donors were sending funds to build new state-of-the-art libraries to preserve them, and academics from around the world were arriving every week to study them. The interest in the manuscripts had spurred a building boom in the rest of the city: Two of its landmark mosques were undergoing renovation, a fancy resort hotel was under construction, a new hospital was scheduled to break ground, and increasing numbers of people were moving to the city, building houses and businesses. Moreover, an annual music festival was attracting increasing numbers of foreign tourists, who injected healthy doses of foreign currency into the local economy. (<a href=\"http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/page.basic/country/content.country/mali_7/en_US\">Learn about Mali music.</a>)</p>\n<p>Politically, Timbuktu and the surrounding region were enjoying more say in their governance than at anytime since French colonists gained control at the end of the 19th century. Even the long-fractious relations among the city's predominant ethnic groups—the Tuareg, Songhai, and Arabic-speaking Berbiche—seemed to be improving. \"We are slowly learning that we need each other,\" Issaka, a Songhai, said. Mohammed, a Tuareg, nodded, noting that he employed members of all the city's ethnic groups.</p>\n<p>To be sure, Timbuktu still had its share of worrisome problems—a long-simmering rebellion among factions of the country's ethnic Tuareg was winding down in the northeastern part of the country, and a radical group of Algerian Islamists calling themselves al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had taken refuge somewhere in the vast wastes of the northern desert.</p>\n<p>But Mali's democratically elected President Amadou Toumani Touré had built a close relationship with the United States, which had poured close to a billion dollars into the country and sent American Green Berets to help improve the Malian army's ability to police its desert wilderness.</p>\n<p>Up on the roof, with the news services reporting an Obama victory, Mohammed roused a sleeping Akbar and headed off to bed. Issaka and I shook hands and bid good night. \"Obama's election is going to inspire us. In four years, I think Timbuktu will be very different,\" he said to me, smiling. \"Maybe Obama will even visit one day.\"</p>\n<p>Amid such optimism, it was impossible then to imagine the cruel twists of fate that would come to pass in four years' time: Mali's government would be violently deposed by a military coup, and two-thirds of its territory would be controlled by al Qaeda-aligned Islamists. Mohammed and Issaka would have to flee the city with their families, and the guesthouse where we had passed the night discussing democracy would become a barracks for al Qaeda fighters. (<a href=\"http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/seal-team-six-the-raid-on-osama-bin-laden/articles/al-qaeda-attacks-a-chronology/\">See a chronology of al Qaeda attacks.</a>)</p>\n<p><strong>A Slow Dissolve</strong></p>\n<p>After that first trip to Timbuktu, I stayed in touch with Mohammed and Issaka and made several more trips to the city, always staying with Mohammed's family. I got to know people from all sorts of backgrounds and professions, including tour guides, military officers, traders, scholars, manuscript collectors, imams, development workers, Christian missionaries, politicians, camel herders, and local journalists.</p>\n<p>I watched Akbar grow from a spidery thin boy into a gangling adolescent. Whenever I arrived in town, he would become my shadow, practicing his English and guiding me through the city's labyrinthine streets and passageways. Back in the States, I would get calls and texts every week from various friends telling me the news and gossip of Timbuktu.</p>\n<p>Much of it revolved around the movements of AQIM, which had found refuge in the vast emptiness of Mali's sparsely inhabited and lightly governed desert sometime in the early 2000s. The group had developed a lucrative criminal enterprise kidnapping foreigners-aid workers, tourists, businesspeople, and government representatives-and holding them for ransom. Since 2008, AQIM has abducted 30 Europeans, the most recent a 61-year-old Frenchman just last month. Of these, five have been murdered. </p>\n<p>When asked about these incidents, Malian officials would usually point out that the actual kidnappings took place beyond Mali's borders, in neighboring countries—Niger, Mauritania, Algeria—and the hostages were then brought back into Mali and moved among AQIM's desert bases. That made it an international problem, the officials insisted, not just a Mali problem.</p>\n<p>But behind the scenes, they would also work quietly to negotiate the hostages' release. Though ransom payments generally were unacknowledged by Malian or foreign officials, locals involved in the negotiations and logistics of freeing several of the hostages told me that large sums of money changed hands.</p>\n<p>Various estimates put AQIM's total take in ransoms in the tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, the group also began exerting control over the narcotics smuggling routes that pass via West African ports through northern Mali en route to the Mediterranean coast and onward to Europe.</p>\n<p>Whenever I pressed Malian politicians about why they didn't mount a campaign to eradicate AQIM from the north, they always reiterated the region's size, roughly the same area as France, and its treacherous terrain. Then they would remind me that the Mali military, with fewer than 6,000 soldiers and only a handful of aircraft, wasn't capable of controlling all of that territory all of the time.</p>\n<p>Residents in Timbuktu told me that the military once had mounted a serious campaign to eliminate the group. In 2009, after AQIM assassinated a Malian army officer in the city, the military hastily assembled a heavily armed convoy of soldiers supported by Berbiche militiamen to pursue the group and destroy their desert bases.</p>\n<p>But after two weeks of chasing the militants over hundreds of miles of forbidding terrain and several protracted skirmishes and ambushes in which dozens of soldiers and militiamen were killed, including the commander of the expedition, the army gave up.</p>\n<p>I interviewed several of the survivors, including Hashem, a militiaman whose brother was killed in one attack. \"They knew exactly when we left Timbuktu and every place we stopped for water,\" he said. \"They had many eyes watching us everywhere we went in the desert.\"</p>\n<p>After that failure, the Mali military never made a significant attempt to fight AQIM.</p>\n<p>An old imam in Ber, a small desert village north of Timbuktu, described how AQIM had ingratiated itself to the desert tribes, especially the Arabic-speaking Berbiche.</p>\n<p>\"They take care of the people,\" he said. \"If someone is sick, they bring medicine to the family. If someone is hungry, they bring them food. If someone dies, they give money to the family. That is more than the Mali government has ever done here.\"</p>\n<p><strong>The Libyan Spillover</strong></p>\n<p>Long before AQIM arrived in northern Mali and began cultivating its relationships with the Berbiche tribes, Muammar Qaddafi had been building deep relationships with Mali's Tuareg communities, which have long felt disenfranchised by the ruling powers in Bamako. In the 1980s, he broadcast radio appeals to young Tuareg from Mali and Niger to come to Libya to join his military. Thousands responded and were organized in isolated training camps and deployed in special units loyal to Qaddafi personally.</p>\n<p>In February 2011, when the Arab Spring came to Libya, Qaddafi deployed these Tuareg units, first against unarmed protestors and then against the subsequent armed uprising. As his regime disintegrated, thousands of Tuareg, fearful of a backlash, began returning to northern Mali and Niger, putting immense pressure on already impoverished communities. As they left, many Tuareg fighters were able to smuggle weapons out of Libya's well-stocked armories. (<a href=\"http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/sahara-tuareg/gwin-text\">Read about the Sahara's Tuareg in <em>National Geographic</em> magazine.</a>)</p>\n<p>While this was unfolding during the summer of 2011, I visited Timbuktu and interviewed Hamdoon, a Tuareg who had served in Qaddafi's brigades during the 1980s. He told me that as a young man his anger at what he described as the Malian government's refusal to develop the Tuareg-dominated north of the country had prompted him to travel to Libya and enlist in the Tuareg brigades. He saw his first combat during Libya's invasion of Chad.</p>\n<p>Hamdoon said he realized Qaddafi's true intentions when Tuareg units were ordered into the heaviest fighting on front lines while Libyan units brought up the rear. \"He was using us,\" he said.</p>\n<p>In 1990 Hamdoon got word that Tuareg groups were rebelling against the Malian government and returned home to join the fight. Five years later, as part of the peace accords that ended the rebellion, he, along with many of his fellow Tuareg fighters, were absorbed into the Malian army, where he has since risen to the rank of a mid-level officer.</p>\n<p>His ability to speak English had allowed him to train with U.S. Special Forces troops that periodically arrived to train Malian soldiers in the north, and his language was peppered with American slang and profanities he had picked up over the years.</p>\n<p>When I saw him in 2011, Hamdoon said he was very worried about what was coming. We met in a hotel just outside Timbuktu's city limits. Almost no foreigners dared come to the north these days, and its French owner had abandoned the hotel. We sat on chaise lounges next to an empty swimming pool. \"You will see, the war is coming to Mali next,\" he said gravely.</p>\n<p>He used the frayed end of his turban to wipe the sweat from his weary face. He explained that the Tuareg fleeing Libya had left behind a standard of living almost unimaginable in northern Mali. \"Those dudes had free houses with running water. They had schools for their children—good schools. Medical care was free—good medical care. And they had good roads.\"</p>\n<p>Roads? I asked. \"Roads are everything,\" he said. \"They allow people to make business. There is no development without roads.\" Building them, he said, also showed respect by the government toward the people who live in a region. \"The lack of roads in northern Mali is like the government saying 'f**k you' to us.\"<br><strong><br>\nA Downward Spiral</strong></p>\n<p>Six months after my conversation with Hamdoon, a Tuareg rebel group began attacking government military bases in northern Mali. Most disturbing was the fact that they appeared to be supported by AQIM and other Islamist factions.</p>\n<p>Over the next few months, the Malian government's inept response to the rebellion and the high number of army casualties led to a coup by mid-level military officers, who said they could no longer stand by and watch their comrades, underequipped and poorly supported, be sent to their deaths in the north. As Bamako echoed with gunfire and confusion reigned over who controlled the government, the Tuareg rebels and the Islamists began to move on key northern cities and military bases.</p>\n<p>Last April I was awoken at home in the middle of the night by a telephone call from Akbar. The reception was poor, but I could make out his unmistakable adolescent voice through the static. \"The rebels are coming. We can hear the big voice of their guns close by in the desert.\"</p>\n<p>In the previous few days, I had spoken with Mohammed about his plans to leave the city. The first thing he had done was to hide his most reliable vehicle, an aging Land Cruiser, in a family member's sheep kraal.</p>\n<p>He removed the battery cable and the starter motor because, as he explained, in times of crisis vehicles are the first things stolen. He then had traded his prized television, a recent purchase, for one of the last available barrels of gasoline in the city.</p>\n<p>\"When we heard the rebels were going to take the city, the government soldiers got into their quatre-quatres (four-wheel-drives) and drove south. \"They abandoned us,\" he said before we hung up. \"The country has abandoned us.\"</p>\n<p>In the following weeks, AQIM—joined by two like-minded factions, Ansar Dine and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa—were able to expel Tuareg rebel leaders who refused to agree to an Islamist agenda, effectively hijacking the rebellion.</p>\n<p>\"It came down to money,\" Sidi Al Kafru, a local journalist in Timbuktu, told me by phone. \"AQIM has more money to buy weapons and enough food and petrol to give to local people so they wouldn't protest too much.\"</p>\n<p><strong>Behind the Black Curtain</strong></p>\n<p>Since then, locals say, the Islamists have enforced a Taliban-style interpretation of sharia. Among the first orders of their occupation was the destruction of several tombs of venerated Timbuktu scholars who were deemed \"un-Islamic\" along with other \"blasphemous\" landmarks. They broke down the sealed holy inner door of the 15th-century Sidi Yahya Mosque.</p>\n<p>According to tradition, its opening would bring the end of the world. They ransacked the brand-new, state-of-the-art Ahmed Baba Institute, built with funds donated by South Africa to house one of the city's largest collections of ancient manuscripts, because its appearance was considered too modern.</p>\n<p>Ansar Dine took control of the city's radio stations, replacing news and music with readings from the Koran. They decreed that anyone caught smoking, drinking alcohol, listening to music, or dancing would be publically whipped. Girls were barred from attending schools, and women were obligated to wear loose black burkas. In one reported case, a pregnant woman was denied access to the hospital because she was wearing a burka deemed too revealing. She delivered her baby on the steps outside the hospital.</p>\n<p>In September, locals described how Islamists punished a thief by amputating his hand. Similar accounts are coming from other cities in the north. In Aguelhoc, a village northeast of Timbuktu, eyewitnesses reported that an unwed couple was stoned to death.</p>\n<p>Adding to the tension are reports that the Islamists have been recruiting boys, especially those from poor families, for military training. Mohammed recounted the story of one Tuareg friend whose 12-year-old son had agreed to do manual labor at the Islamist base in the center of the city on the promise that his family would receive a bag of rice. Later the boy was seen practicing rifle drills with other recruits, and word got back to his father.</p>\n<p>The worried man went to the military base and asked to see the Islamist commander. He politely explained that his son was just a boy and did not understand what he was committing himself to and that he was needed at home to help the family. The commander replied that the boy had made a \"holy decision\" and that he was performing what was required of him by Islam and that he should be proud of his son. \"You may have his body when he has fulfilled his duty to Allah,\" the commander said.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, friends remaining inside Timbuktu describe the arrival of dozens of foreign fighters from several African nations—Algerians, Mauritanians, Senegalese, Nigerians—but also Pakistanis, Afghans, and even a Frenchman and an Englishman. The city has been fortified with large guns and a few armored vehicles, which locals say come from Libya. \"They are preparing for a big fight,\" a journalist in the city told me. \"They expect the West to attack. They are nervous.\"</p>\n<p>While the Islamists have consolidated their hold on northern Mali, the international community has dithered about how to respond to the crisis. Some policy analysts have argued that Mali must first resolve the coup and hold elections to bring a legitimate government into power before any military campaign can be undertaken to oust al Qaeda and its allies.</p>\n<p>But others point out that free and fair elections can't be held as long as two-thirds of the country's territory is held hostage. Consensus seems to have emerged that a coalition force of African troops will eventually be deployed under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, but how those forces will be trained to fight in the desert, how they will be supported logistically during the campaign, and who will pay for them remains to be determined.</p>\n<p>As all of this was being debated, I called Mohammed. His family had escaped to a refugee camp in Mauritania, and he had traveled to Bamako to pick up medicine for Akbar, who suffered a serious bout of malaria that left him experiencing seizures. While in the Malian capital, he was closely monitoring the political developments.</p>\n<p>\"They are doing it the African way,\" he said, referring to the gaggle of politicians, military officers, and international representatives. His voice was terse with frustration. \"Everyone is going to lots of meetings. They all want to be the leader. They all want money first. [A military intervention] will not happen soon.\"</p>\n<p>Last month, on Election Day in the U.S., I called Issaka, who himself had relocated to Bamako. He described how the capital, swollen with refugees from the north, remains tense with uncertainty and rife with rumors.</p>\n<p>I reminded him of how Obama's election had stirred jubilance among Timbuktu residents four years before. He laughed. \"That was a long time ago.\" But then in a wistful voice added, \"We need Obama now more than ever.\"</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "“This is not Pantsula”",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/nv5fwoiy6tcbesprwhw2lctdlecjqie3e2eibxudrtcf8phqh8ggdn9iyz1wklarhskkoqyxt20oys3onddcp4.jpg?w=610&h=356\" height=\"356\" width=\"610\">I got a treat when I was in Johannesburg recently. I was about to jump into a cab when this van pulls up and out piled these colorfully clad kids. With their exit came the loud blasting house sort of music; then the dance moves, taunting, shouting matches, some alcohol, and street fashion…but at the end of the day, it was about the dance. I was mesmerized to say the least. A quick enquiry informed me that the phenomenon I was witnessing is called “sbujwa” — apparently not a new sight in the city. It is described as “a dance that requires every muscle in your body to work in order to complete moves” plus lots of creativity. There are differing views as to its origin, as seen <a href=\"http://my.opera.com/sowetosfinest/blog/show.dml/2683599\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DcqjyHfJwg\">here</a>. Wherever it might have originated from, it was a delight to watch: <span></span></p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/bvhoxsr2xs-dqphm511iiszpvaiaicpx3lcetogb2okkveqyqjqaibnaw04gcadfb2ts0vsn3gb2vdxyiscfq8.jpg?w=610&h=383\" height=\"383\" width=\"610\"></p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/q-s285yvmfbfs_ra4bneaxnffcv_se4evxfbb3wkpiwggnudfyplngbllzah-l2ofntwi56wydfdsralhce7zg.jpg?w=610&h=363\" height=\"363\" width=\"610\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/d0_bts3oxbuwrxxw_2e2jq9m5n1ilu2n2y7nzaxktysmmdnfo9x_ph3w8un4igovnnmsiyvbwugstc2iuouxl8.jpg?w=410&h=614\" height=\"614\" width=\"410\"></p>\n<p>I found a short documentary on sbujwa on YouTube:</p>\n<div><iframe width=\"610\" height=\"343\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/nC3PaMyYoSI?fs=1&feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></div>\n<p>And here’s another example:</p>\n<div><iframe width=\"610\" height=\"343\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/0j8bU6N0z50?fs=1&feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></div>\n<p>I’m hoping some “anthropologist” might be interested in researching and explaining this and other street dancing phenomenons in Johannesburg. You’ll find the rest of my photos <a href=\"http://apostrophekola.tumblr.com/post/37399255666/sbhujwa-johannesburg-rsa\">here</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/59033/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/59033/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=59033&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Peter Chilson</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — The town of Bandiagara, population 12,000, sits on a plateau of smooth sandstone bluffs, grass, acacia, and palm trees that ends at an astonishing complex of cliffs so high and abrupt that any of them on a dusty day can surprise a traveler as if a piece of the globe has suddenly broken away. Bandiagara's dirt homes, shellacked with mud stucco, bear the red tinge of this land's iron-rich soil, farmed for centuries by the Dogon people and roamed by Fulani and Tuareg herders. Homes stand along wide dirt streets useful for driving cattle and sheep to market, and at dawn and dusk buildings glow under a dusty sun. A few miles east of town, the cliffs drop 1,600 feet, grooving sharply in and out of the plateau along a 100-mile front, running from the south to the northeast like the edge of a saw. For over a thousand years, the cliffs have been a natural hideaway for one tribe or another, most recently the Dogon, a few hundred of whom came here 700 years ago to flee the Mali Empire's embrace of Islam.</p>\n<p>This history means more now that Bandiagara -- once popular with European and American trekkers -- is settling into a new role as border post and garrison town facing al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi groups spread across Mali's vast Saharan north. France and its allies, namely the United States, call northern Mali a jihadi \"safe haven\" that threatens the West. As a result, a U.N.-supported multinational African attack on northern Mali is moving closer to reality. U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney repeatedly cited Mali in his October foreign-policy debate with President Barack Obama. But the jihadi takeover in the north, now six months old, carries a touch of bitter irony in Bandiagara as history's tide washes back across this town that 160 years ago was capital of the Toucouleur Empire. Founded by El Hadj Umar Tall and ruled by the code of sharia, a strict interpretation of Islam, he reportedly killed more than 100,000 people across inland West Africa during a reign that lasted more than four decades. French force of arms and tribal uprisings brought it down in 1893.</p>\n<p>Yet Mali was not yet a campaign issue on May 8 when I drove into Bandiagara in late afternoon with Isaac Sagara, a Dogon friend who grew up in a Christian family in a village just below the plateau. Isaac was guiding me on a trip along the edge of Mali's northern zone, a strange new borderland that no one has quite figured out how to draw on a map. Some news agency maps show Mali cut in half along a razor-straight line that runs from west to east, while others show a wavier division, with the new border sloping off to the northeast roughly parallel to the Bandiagara cliffs. In any case, Mali, shaped like a top-heavy hourglass, is today divided at the narrow middle. Bandiagara sits square on the border between what remains of Mali's tattered government in the south and jihadi control in the north.</p>\n<p>Isaac, at the wheel of our aging Land Cruiser, hummed and smacked his lips through a mouthful of mango. I think the tune was \"Amazing Grace,\" but he lost the melody in the chewing. He liked \"Rock of Ages\" and French hymns that I didn't know, never breaking into words, just the outlines of song. He carried plastic bags of peanuts and dates in his pockets and put mangoes on the dashboard. He told stories about guiding tourists across the Dogon cliff country and about people he met in the international aid business, like the American Peace Corps volunteers in a Dogon village who obsessed about building a hot tub out of clay. Once, working a rural health project, he was stranded in a village cut off by monsoon rains during a cholera outbreak. \"Terrible,\" he told me. \"A dozen people died.\" Then he'd pluck a mango off the dashboard, bite into it, and peel back the skin with his teeth, all with one hand on the wheel and another hymn spraying from his lips.</p>\n<p>I'd been in Bandiagara a dozen times over the past 25 years. Here and across Mali, soldiers have always kept a low profile, in my experience. My tensest encounter in this town had been to fend off a pesky cliff \"guide\" who kept shouting \"hakuna matata,\" the Swahili words for \"no problem\" immortalized in Disney's The Lion King. Mali, even under the army dictatorship that endured nearly three decades until 1991, has never embraced military culture like other African countries. Mali's army, in the words of a Western diplomat I met in Bamako, the Malian capital, \"was never a military of soldiers. Most are farmers putting in the time for a paycheck.\"</p>\n<p>That army, stressed by the growing Tuareg rebellion in the north, took back control this year in a March coup, ending 21 years of democracy. Since the coup, however, the army, true to the diplomat's words, has ruled without the curfews and endless checkpoints that define other African military governments. In the streets of Bandiagara and Bamako, soldiers generally keep to themselves, though there is evidence that the army command structure is in decay. In October, on a remote road near the border with Mauritania, Malian soldiers shot to death 16 unarmed Muslim clerics traveling from Mauritania to Bamako for a conference. The attack was apparently unprovoked.</p>\n<p>But in May, Bandiagara looked like a military camp, expecting an invasion at any moment. Isaac drove slowly across the town square, where an armored vehicle with a cannon and crew of soldiers occupied the concrete center island protected by sandbags. As we turned down another road, Isaac slowed the car and fixed his eyes on a large gun mounted in the back of a parked pickup truck. A soldier was standing behind the gun at the ready. \"Now that is very serious,\" he said, shaking his head with a broad smile and both hands on the wheel. \"We aren't used to seeing the army out in the open like this.\" His mood lightened as if the sight encouraged him. Later he said, \"I can tell you that by December, Mali's nightmare will be over. Our soldiers will retake the north.\"</p>\n<p>\"Really?\" I said, squinting, trying to keep the doubt out of my voice.</p>\n<p>\"I'm certain of it.\"</p>\n<p>Isaac's hope for action is not baseless, though it likely won't happen in December. On Nov. 11, leaders of the Economic Community of West African States settled on a military plan to retake northern Mali with 3,300 soldiers, mainly from Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The plan awaits U.N. Security Council approval, which means action against the jihadists is a real possibility. The U.N. decision is still months away.</p>\n<p>The French have committed aid similar to what they (with help from Britain and the United States) gave the rebels who killed Libyan strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi last year: arms and intelligence support, including surveillance drones. France, which once ruled 2 million square miles of West Africa, including Mali, helped end Qaddafi's rule, inadvertently releasing a flood of arms from his looted arsenals into the hands of hundreds of battle-hardened Malian Tuareg mercenaries he trained for his armies. In January, these men launched a war for an independent Saharan state they call Azawad, taking Mali's north and splitting the country in two. In March, riding the Tuareg wave, three jihadi groups -- al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa -- arrived in force. By June they'd chased the Tuareg nationalist rebellion underground and its leaders into exile. This is the situation Mali, including Bandiagara, face today.</p>\n<p>For days I'd been gently pressing Isaac on what the jihadists in the north might mean for him and his parents, who lived in a village a few hours' drive east of Bandiagara, off the plateau. But he kept changing the subject. Now, as we drove through Bandiagara, where everywhere we were reminded of war, I decided to be blunt: \"You know, they're talking about sharia law in Timbuktu and across the north,\" I said. \"Doesn't that worry you?\"</p>\n<p>Isaac never got cross, but he looked at me as if I'd accused him of something. \"Of course we're worried,\" he said.</p>\n<p>I realized neither Isaac nor his family had foreseen a drastic change in Mali's Islamic power structure. Events in the north echoed what unfolded in this region in the early 19th century with the short-lived rise of jihadi Islam.</p>\n<p>After a few minutes of silence Isaac said, \"We may have to move the family.\"</p>\n<p>\"Where?\"</p>\n<p>\"Maybe Mopti or Bamako. We don't know. My sister wants my parents to live with her.\" Isaac's sister lived in Mopti, the regional capital.</p>\n<p>\"That might be a good idea,\" I said. \"Until things calm down.\"</p>\n<p>From the looks of things in Bandiagara, however, that calm might be a long time coming. Soldiers stood guard behind sandbags all about town. Government agencies and aid organizations had removed identifying plaques, hoping to escape notice of rebel looters, and many offices were shuttered. The people of Bandiagara, like most of Mali, are Muslims of a tolerant persuasion. Mali is a Sunni Muslim country, known for its Sufi traditions guided by the Quran while recognizing mystical worship that gives individuals room to define their spiritual pathway by personal experience and revelation, including through music and poetry. In Timbuktu and other northern Malian towns, many Sufi saints are enshrined in mausoleums. In this atmosphere, since the fall of the Toucouleur Empire, the Dogon have thrived. Today they number about half a million.</p>\n<p>But the Islamists who now control northern Mali are Salafists, who live by a strict reading of the Quran and the life of the Prophet Mohammed. They discourage icons and music because such things distract worshippers from devotion to God. In April, the jihadists began destroying the Sufi mosques and mausoleums of Timbuktu and the city of Gao. It's unclear what has happened to the 700,000 ancient manuscripts -- papers that detail the story of Islam in West and North Africa -- in the old libraries of Timbuktu. Even worse, however, is the jihadi program of public amputations for thieves and executions, by stoning, of unmarried couples who bear children out of wedlock. Public flogging awaits anyone caught consuming alcohol.</p>\n<p>Bandiagara has a few bars normally marked by neat placards advertising Heineken, Castel Beer, and Coca-Cola, but the signs were now gone. The hotels had closed. Tourism on the Bandiagara plateau had taken off in recent years. But now schools, too, had shut down. Shops were open, but without signs or any hint of the sale of alcohol or sweet drinks. I wondered whether the people of Bandiagara knew something the rest of us didn't, as if they carried history with them instinctively.</p>\n<p>Just a few miles from here, in 1864, in the village of Hamdallaye, Umar Tall died during a broad uprising of Tuaregs, Arabs, Fulanis, and Bambara against his Toucouleur forces. He fell not in battle, but in the explosion of a gunpowder cache. According to one historian, when Umar Tall's soldiers conquered new territory, he ordered them to bring before him idols he would smash to pieces with an iron mace. After his death, Tidiani Tall, his nephew, moved the Toucouleur capital to higher ground here in Bandiagara, where it remained as capital until the French conquered what they would call the colony of French Sudan, today known as Mali.</p>\n<p>Tall is to Mali a little like what Jefferson Davis, leader of the Confederacy, is to the United States: a vaguely familiar name to many, a total unknown to most, but a frightening reminder of a past that has left unsettled business for a few others.</p>\n<p>Take my friend, Isaac. He grew up in a Dogon village below the plateau and went to high school in Bandiagara. He knows all about Umar Tall and the jihadi threat. He speaks three languages, French, Bambara, and his native Dogon, as well as a little Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg. Together we spoke French and he promised to take me into the cliff villages to talk to people about what had happened to Mali and about the jihadi threat.</p>\n<p>\"The Dogon country cannot be invaded,\" he said. \"We are a good defense against the rebels. You'll see. I'll show you.\"</p>\n<p>Isaac was telling me this as we drove through town, drawing looks from soldiers and townspeople. No one in Bandiagara had seen anyone like me since January, when the rebellion in the north broke out and foreigners evacuated. Sitting beside Isaac, I wore simple clothing to be less conspicuous, including a short-sleeve shirt and a ball cap. We stopped at the offices of an American evangelical aid group Isaac had once worked for, where he picked up the keys to the guesthouse where we would sleep. The offices were in a villa surrounded by high concrete walls and shaded by eucalyptus trees that grew inside the compound. As we entered, Isaac's old colleagues greeted him warmly but in haste. They were busy boxing up files and office supplies, the framework of rural health and literacy programs Isaac had helped build. Some files would be trucked to Bamako and the rest burned. Outside in the dirt street a large pile of paper burned silently, flames whipped by a hot wind. A man kept returning from inside the villa with a cardboard box full of paper to dump on the fire, trying to erase evidence of the agency's presence. \"We can't take any chances,\" he said to me.</p>\n<p>When we left the compound, Isaac was near tears. \"I spent many happy days in villages working side by side with these people.\"</p>\n<p>At the guesthouse, a small two-room mud building, we ate dinner in the cramped courtyard around a kerosene lamp in plastic deck chairs. The electricity had been cut. Dinner was white rice with salty tomato sauce and tough goat meat we bought from a woman who ran a roadside food stall in town. She also sold yams in tomato sauce and spaghetti. Stone-faced, he'd stared at me as we waited for her to spoon up our food. She kept glancing at me as she and Isaac spoke in Dogon.</p>\n<p>\"What were you talking about?\" I asked later. \"That woman looked at me as if I were the enemy.\"</p>\n<p>\"She wanted to know what you are doing here, and I told her you are a tourist,\" he said. \"She said she did not believe me, but she told me that I was brave to bring you here, whoever you are.\"</p>\n<p>We both laughed a little nervously.</p>\n<p>Near dawn on May 9 we drove into the cliff country, about 30 miles northeast of Bandiagara to a village called Begnemato, to meet a friend of Isaac, Daniel Andoulé. He was a Dogon farmer and self-styled historian. Isaac told me the Dogon built the village on a shelf partway down the cliffs far enough back from the cliff face that it cannot be seen from the plain or from the plateau above the village. The Dogon, according to Andoulé, had been there for 600 years, hiding from slave raiders and jihadists -- Umar Tall's men. We crossed the plateau, sometimes hugging the cliffs, following an old track the French built in the 1930s across impossibly rocky ground, sliced by ravines shallow and deep. We passed troops of women portaging baskets of dirt scooped from dry riverbeds for resurfacing fields eroded by wind.</p>\n<p>Finally, at about 9 a.m., in brilliant heat, Isaac parked the Land Cruiser in the thin shade of a rare acacia tree a few yards from the cliff. Standing on the edge, we could look down and see Begnemato in the distance. I picked my way down the cliffs on a crude, well-worn stone staircase while Isaac walked with a swift agility that amazed me for his size. I carried a daypack with peanuts, mangoes and water for us both, stepping down while holding the rock face on my left and looking away from successive drop-offs on my right, a few dozen feet here and 100 feet there. The path descended about 600 feet to a broad sandy field pleasantly shaded by palm trees. A half-mile away we could see cone-shaped mud granaries and a long concrete school building. The Malian flag flew from a pole beside it. We walked across the field and past the school, which was closed, and into a village built of rock slabs broken from the cliffs and roofs made of thatch from grass or dried millet and corn stalks. A group of polite teenage boys escorted us. One boy said, \"We saw you coming from the top of the cliff.\"</p>\n<p>Isaac beamed and nudged me at the boy's words. \"You see?\" he said. \"It is hard to surprise a Dogon village.\"</p>\n<p>Andoulé was, he guessed, about 70. He stood tall, with a large shaven head dimpled like a grapefruit, a barrel chest, and a thin graying beard. He wore khaki shorts and a brown tunic of woven cotton over the large frame of a man who'd once been much stronger, more muscular, used to physical work in the fields or breaking rock to repair homes. He still had large thighs, though his arms were thinner. \"I don't go to the fields anymore,\" he said. \"I let my sons do that.\"</p>\n<p>He'd worked with Isaac on understanding Begnemato's religious demographics, information Isaac used for the thesis he wrote for his rural sociology degree. Isaac found that 600 people of Muslim, animist, and Christian faith lived in the village. They lived in separate neighborhoods. Andoulé was Catholic. \"We've always lived in peace with each other,\" he told me. \"It is not the Dogon way to impose our customs on others.\"</p>\n<p>Andoulé led us to a shaded veranda on the roof of his home. We sat on mats and ate rice and chicken in tomato sauce. In a mix of French and Dogon, with Isaac helping to translate, Andoulé talked of the Dogon struggle with Fulani herders who grazed their animals, mainly goats and cows, on Dogon farmland on the Seno Gondo plain below the cliffs. \"We've had terrible fights,\" he said, \"but that has not happened in a few years.\"</p>\n<p>The point of our visit was to talk about food, drought, and war. Begnemato sits in central Mali, in the east of Mopti province, where staples like millet and rice sell for six times what they did a year ago. Andoulé blames their food problems on the fighting in the north and last year's poor rains. The rains have been better this year -- the drought broke over the summer, after I left Mali -- but aid agencies have reported persistent food shortages across the Sahel because the rains have been spotty, and for other reasons. The previous year's drought had depleted village seed stocks, and the conflict in northern Mali has either cut off many farmers from their fields or frightened them away. Mali, along with the rest of the West African Sahel, from Senegal to Chad, is under the strain of a food crisis that has put 15 million people at risk of starvation.</p>\n<p>\"We have not known starvation in a long time,\" Andoulé said. \"Even in the bad years [the droughts of the 1970s and mid-1980s], we were able to survive with the money tourists brought us. But we have had only three or four foreign visitors here in the past year. The French and Americans are afraid of being kidnapped.\"</p>\n<p>I swallowed hard.</p>\n<p>When I asked whether he feared the Islamists, Andoulé laughed. \"I am much more afraid of drought.\" Then he said, \"Let me show you something.\"</p>\n<p>He walked Isaac and me outside the village and across a broad, solid mass of sandstone, part of the shelf on which the village had been built hundreds of years ago. We hiked up a sandy pathway to a rock ledge above the village, right on the cliff face looking out over the Seno Gondo plain far below. By now it was nearly 1 p.m., and the flat, sandy expanse below us was shrouded in thin dust. I'd seen pictures of the Seno Gondo as a lovely green savanna, lightly forested with acacia and palm trees, but now it looked like solid desert, nothing but sand with a few trees.</p>\n<p>\"Les rebels,\" Andoulé began in French, switching to Dogon as he pointed across the plain, \"they would have to come up into these cliffs.\" He turned to Isaac and me. He was smiling, sure of his security in the cliffs. \"They do not know this country. No one knows this country like the Dogon. We have pathways through these cliffs that no one knows about but us. The rebels cannot travel up into here. Our army knows that. There are Dogon officers in the army. No one has ever attacked us and succeeded.\"</p>\n<p>In the distance we could see a dense and narrow dust plume, rising like a geyser. \"Dust devil,\" I said.</p>\n<p>\"Maybe,\" Isaac said, \"or a rebel pickup truck.\"</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "New submitter Nemo the Magnificent writes "Develop in the Cloud has news about what might be a breakthrough out of Microsoft Research. A team there wrote a paper (PDF), now accepted for publication at OOPSLA, that describes how to teach a compiler to auto-thread a program that was written single-threaded in a conventional language like C#. This is the holy grail to take advantage of multiple cores — to get Moore's Law improvements back on track, after they essentially ran aground in the last decade. (Functional programming, the other great white hope, just isn't happening.) About 2004 was when Intel et al. ran into a wall and started packing multiple cores into chips instead of cranking the clock speed. The Microsoft team modified a C# compiler to use the new technique, and claim a 'large project at Microsoft' have written 'several million lines of code' testing out the resulting 'safe parallelism.'" The paper is a good read if you're into compilers and functional programming. The key to operation is adding permissions to reference types allowing you to declare normal references, read-only references to mutable objects, references to globally immutable objects, and references to isolated clusters of objects. With that information, the compiler is able to prove that chunks of code can safely be run in parallel. Unlike many other approaches, it doesn't require that your program be purely functional either.<p><div> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home?status=Auto-threading+Compiler+Could+Restore+Moore's+Law+Gains%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FYINgPl\"><img src=\"http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F12%2F12%2F03%2F2312241%2Fauto-threading-compiler-could-restore-moores-law-gains%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook\"><img src=\"http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png\"></a> <a href=\"http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/12/03/2312241/auto-threading-compiler-could-restore-moores-law-gains?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=googleplus\"><img src=\"http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png\" alt=\"Share on Google+\"></a> </div></p><p><a href=\"http://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/12/03/2312241/auto-threading-compiler-could-restore-moores-law-gains?utm_source=rss1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed\">Read more of this story</a> at Slashdot.</p><iframe src=\"http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discuss&id=3291593&smallembed=1\" style=\"height:300px;width:100%;border:none\"></iframe><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://slashdot.feedsportal.com/c/35028/f/647410/s/263b30bb/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151883085161/u/49/f/647410/c/35028/s/263b30bb/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151883085161/u/49/f/647410/c/35028/s/263b30bb/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/151883085161/u/49/f/647410/c/35028/s/263b30bb/a2t.img\" border=\"0\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right;margin-left:10px\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fredmonk.com%2Fsogrady%2F2012%2F12%2F02%2Ften%2F\">Tweet</a><br>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t</div>\n<p>Ten years ago today the DARPA funded <a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/documents/2002-REST-TOIT.pdf\">paper</a> describing REST was six months old. There was no Firefox. No Eclipse Foundation. No Facebook. No Amazon Web Services. No Twitter. No LinkedIn. No YouTube. No Etsy. No Gmail. No Hadoop. No iPhone. Apple, in fact, was worth $5.143B, or about what they made every month and a half in 2012.</p>\n<p>Much of what we take for granted today didn’t exist then. Like the industry’s affection for developers.</p>\n<p>When James and I officially incorporated RedMonk ten years ago yesterday, the technology industry cared little for what developers thought – all of the focus was on “enterprise” buyers. Which we never understood. It seemed self-evident to us that with access to technology steadily being democratized by open source and later cloud, SaaS and other wider industry trends, developers were increasingly in charge, not the erstwhile “IT decision makers.”</p>\n<p>This is our understanding of the world.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://sogrady-media.redmonk.com/sogrady/files/2012/12/venn-diagram-developers-520.png\"><img src=\"http://sogrady-media.redmonk.com/sogrady/files/2012/12/venn-diagram-developers-520.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"venn-diagram-developers-520\" width=\"520\" height=\"390\"></a></p>\n<p>For the last ten years, then, we’ve been paying the most attention not to what CIOs want to buy, or what software vendors think they want to buy, but what developers are <em>using</em>.</p>\n<p>From our perspective, if you want to understand where the industry is headed, your best answers will come from those who are actively determining that path. Our time with developers – or more precisely, practitioners of any one of a dozen or more different technical disciplines – has gifted us with a reasonable ability to predict where the industry is headed. Granted, not always with a high degree of temporal precision.</p>\n<p>If there’s one thing we at RedMonk have learned over the past decade, it’s that the ability of the technology industry to change substantially outpaces the industry’s own ability to understand and adapt to that change. What we understand at RedMonk to be true today might take as many as five years or more to be widely understood. Hence our saying “we can tell you what will happen, we just can’t tell you when.”</p>\n<p>Here are a few of the subjects we’ve covered since 2004, when we really began blogging in earnest.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>In <strong>2004</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We were <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2004/12/05/restians-unite/\">advocating</a> for REST support. Today, it’s <a href=\"http://www.programmableweb.com/apis\">the majority</a> of tracked APIs.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2004/11/17/red-hat-linux\">argued</a> that there was room for Linux distributions besides Red Hat (and SUSE) in the enterprise. Today, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution on AWS and HP supports the platform on its enterprise cloud.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2005</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2005/08/12/wherefor-art-thou-scripters/\">disputed</a> the assertion that enterprises were not leveraging dynamic programming languages. Today, virtually every enterprise PaaS offering supports more than one.</li>\n<li> We believed that relational databases needed to be <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2005/03/07/breaking-the-relational-chains/\">supplemented</a> by non-relational alternatives. Today, NoSQL and non-relational datastores are mainstream technologies.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2006</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li> We were <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/10/03/amazons-ec2/\">bullish</a> about Amazon’s Web Services platform. Today, AWS is almost as dominant in the cloud as Microsoft was in operating systems.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2006/08/01/breaking-the-billion-dollar-barrier/\">predicted</a> that no pure play open source vendor besides Red Hat would break the billion dollar revenue mark, and that Red Hat would do so in 2012. Today, no pure play open source vendors besides Red Hat have broken the billion dollar revenue barrier. Red Hat eclipsed $1B in revenue in 2012.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2007</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2007/08/20/more_money/\">recommended</a> that commercial open source vendors augment service and support revenue streams with network and data models. Today, vendors such as 10gen (MMS) and Sonatype (Insight) are complementing open source revenues with network and data based revenue models.</li>\n<li>We were <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2007/06/26/dscm/\">surprised</a> at the lack of attention paid to Decentralized Version Control Systems (DVCS) given the surging developer adoption. Today, DVCS accounts for nearly a third of the project traction on Ohloh, up from 14% in 2010. Git is the standard deployment mechanism for a variety of cloud platforms, and in July, GitHub was valued at three quarters of a billion dollars.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2008</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/03/27/open-source-databases-shallow-but-widespread/\">argued</a> that open source relational databases would eventually see substantial adoption in the enterprise. Today, Oracle owns MySQL and both Salesforce.com (via Heroku) and VMware are investing heavily in PostgreSQL.</li>\n<li>We made the case that <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/04/09/clouds-rolling-in-the-google-app-engine-qa/\">lock-in</a> was one of the major obstacles to using Google App Engine. Today, Google allows GAE developers to leverage the MySQL-like Google Cloud SQL, and has added support for Java alongside the original Python to widen the addressable market. Later-to-market competitors such as Cloud Foundry, Engine Yard, Heroku or OpenShift, however, continue to take advantage of the limitations of GAE.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/10/24/102408/\">recommended</a> that everyone read Fivethirtyeight.com for election coverage. Today, well, you know.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2009</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2009/02/20/enterprise-appstore/\">asked</a> who was going to build the App Store for the enterprise? Today, the Google Apps Marketplace (03/10) and the Microsoft Office and SharePoint App Store (08/12) are two plausible answers.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2009/04/02/what-are-we-writing-to/\">believed</a> that programming language and platform fragmentation would have profound implications for vendors moving forward. Today, VMware’s determination in building Cloud Foundry (2011) – that it be open source software and support multiple programming languages from day one – are typical rather than revolutionary.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2010</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/05/17/beyond-cassandra/\">observed</a> that companies such as Facebook and Twitter tended to default to open source, embrace language heterogeneity and favor permissive licensing. Today, this attitude is perhaps best summarized by GitHub’s Tom Preston-Werner, who <a href=\"http://tom.preston-werner.com/2011/11/22/open-source-everything.html\">wrote</a> in 2011: “Open Source (Almost) Everything.”</li>\n<li>We summarized our long held beliefs by <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/09/09/the-new-kingmakers/\">saying</a> Developers are “The New Kingmakers.” Today, every major software vendor, every major consumer devices producer, the majority of enterprise hardware makers and even a number of chip manufacturers have programs designed to attract and engage with developers.</li>\n</ul>\n<li>In <strong>2011</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2011/01/07/2011-predictions/\">predicted</a> that ARM would emerge as a server player. Today, AMD has announced its intent to manufacture ARM servers for the 2014 market and Dell is already experimenting with 64 bit ARM server designs from AppliedMicro.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2011/02/11/rise-and-fall-and-rise-of-java/\">took issue</a> with claims from other analysts that Java was a dead end for enterprise application development. Today, we see a robust market for Java skills not just within enterprises, but consumer startups (e.g. Twitter) and open source projects (e.g. Hadoop).</li>\n</ul>\n<li>And in <strong>2012</strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/05/03/software-is-the-new-obp/\">wrote</a> that software was the new On Base Percentage, an asset undervalued in the 1970s and 1980s that was overvalued in 2012. Today, Microsoft’s <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/06/\">entry</a> into the hardware business and its incorporation of an advertising model into Windows 8 seem to confirm that Microsoft, at least, is hedging against challenges to traditional software revenue streams.</li>\n<li>We <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/11/27/enterprise-vs-consumer/\">asserted</a> that the market for a business is less important than the business model underlying it. Today, we’re waiting on more data to test this hypothesis.</li>\n</ul>\n</li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul>\n<p>And that is strictly my research, because it’s what I remember best. My colleagues have produced even better predictions and research over the last decade, and there are dozens more predictions we could point to that have subsequently been proven out: identifying Amazon as a credible <a href=\"http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/09/20/rise-of-aws/\">enterprise threat</a>, for example. Many more, such as our expectations with respect to software and data-based revenue models, are years away from becoming mainstream.</p>\n<p>A lot has changed over the last decade. If you owned a thousand shares of Apple, for example, they’d be worth $576,750 more today than when we incorporated. RedMonk has changed as well. We’ve changed webhosts no fewer than six times. Domain registrars four. Email providers three. Content management systems three times. We’ve been through two recessions, maybe half a dozen offices between us, and the firm has moved its headquarters no fewer than three times.</p>\n<p>We’ve also changed how we work. As more developer related data has become available, for example, we’ve aggressively embraced quantitative analysis. Whether it’s our research, or collaborating with third parties like Black Duck, Jaspersoft or New Relic on their own data, the “we-don’t-do-numbers” shop is all about the numbers today. We’ve added services around green and sustainability research in GreenMonk, and you’ve probably heard that we also now organize conferences in the Monktoberfest and the Monki Gras.</p>\n<p>But what hasn’t changed about RedMonk is more important than what has. Ten years later, our culture is still family oriented – a good thing given the marriages, births and adoptions. Our focus, meanwhile, remains the same: we are still firmly convinced that developers are the most important constituency in technology, and that our ultimate purpose as a firm is to be their advocates within the wider technology community.</p>\n<p>When we look back over the last decade, it’s as impossible to measure our effectiveness as developer champions as to count the MySQL instances in the world. If we’re lucky, the metric isn’t disk space: the bulk of our professional output is housed in a MySQL database that weighs in at a paltry 135.8MB.</p>\n<p>We hope that developers have and continue to find our research useful. We hope that we’ve been able to help improve their lives, whether that’s helping them get new jobs, serving as their voice for vendors or even just buying them beers. Most of all we hope the industry eventually realizes what we at RedMonk know: that developers are the New Kingmakers.</p>\n<p>In the meantime, I’d like to thank my colleague James for being a great partner for all of these years, Cote for all of his years of excellence, Tom for bringing RedMonk to new arenas, Donnie for picking right up where Cote left off, Marcia for being the most important person at RedMonk, my parents, Sheila and Steve, for helping to support me while we got RedMonk off the ground, and my wife Kate both for keeping us out of legal trouble and for being beyond patient with odd hours and worse travel schedules.</p>\n<p>Thank you to all of the developers that have taken the time to read our research, educate us or simply tell us why and where we’re wrong. You are why we exist.</p>\n<p>Perhaps most of all, I’d like to thank our clients. A decade later, and we are still here. Your support is what makes that possible, and your engagement, your creativity and your willingness to really listen to us is what makes this job still fun a decade later.</p>\n<p>Thank you all for a decade of RedMonk and here’s hoping we’ll have another ten years together.</p>\n<p><strong>Postscript</strong>: in anticipation of the question, yes, we will be doing a tenth birthday celebration, but conflicting with the holidays seemed like a poor idea. Stay tuned.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?a=M3MqvvrCySs:wtKkR7aHFWU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?i=M3MqvvrCySs:wtKkR7aHFWU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?a=M3MqvvrCySs:wtKkR7aHFWU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?i=M3MqvvrCySs:wtKkR7aHFWU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?a=M3MqvvrCySs:wtKkR7aHFWU:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/tecosystems?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/tecosystems/~4/M3MqvvrCySs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Food Friday – Palaver Sauce (Spinach Stew)",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearlsa/7919334800/\" title=\"Spinach and Smoked Salmon Stew by Pearlsa, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8296/7919334800_9a93a568ed_z.jpg\" width=\"660\" height=\"453\" alt=\"Spinach and Smoked Salmon Stew\"></a></p>\n<p>Palaver sauce is a type of leafy green stew widely eaten in different West African countries. There are so many ways of making palaver sauce; it is a very forgiven sauce that allows you to substitute different types of leafy greens (spinach, kale, taro leaves, cocoyam leaves, etc), oils, meats, fish, and spices. </p>\n<p>To quote aunty Mary – “You can literal eat a different type of palaver sauce everyday of a year”.</p>\n<p>I am not quite sure how this stew came about its “English” name; our local language names do not translate to “palaver”. The word palaver comes form the Portuguese language and means lengthy debate or quarrel.</p>\n<p>I love my spinach steamed and mashed the way my grandma used to make hers. There is just something about the clay grinding bowl (Asanka) the adds to the texture and taste of the stew that is unlike using a food processor or blender.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearlsa/7919330142/\" title=\"Spinach by Pearlsa, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/7919330142_1541822bd8_z.jpg\" width=\"660\" height=\"453\" alt=\"Spinach\"></a></p>\n<p>A few weeks ago I paired this stew with roasted potatoes for dinner. </p>\n<p>INGREDIENTS </p>\n<p>2 large packs of spinach leaves (I used Earthbound farm organic)<br>\n4 tomatoes diced<br>\n2 medium onions diced<br>\n8oz smoked salmon broken into pieces<br>\n1/5 cup olive oil<br>\n1 clove garlic diced<br>\n2 habanero peppers diced (adjust per taste)<br>\nGinger crushed about a tablespoon<br>\nSalt</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearlsa/7919333572/\" title=\"Spinach and Smoked Salmon Stew by Pearlsa, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8031/7919333572_68bd7cb24e_z.jpg\" width=\"660\" height=\"453\" alt=\"Spinach and Smoked Salmon Stew\"></a></p>\n<p>DIRECTIONS</p>\n<p>Wash and steam spinach leaves in a dry pan or sauté in oil (mush steamed leaves and liquid)<br>\nHeat oil in a Dutch oven or sauce pan<br>\nSauté onions and habanero peppers for a few minutes or till onions are translucent<br>\nAdd garlic, ginger and tomato cook for another 10 minutes<br>\nAdd mushed spinach leaves simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes<br>\nAdd smoke salmon let it continue to simmer letting the ingredients marry and meld. </p>\n<p>For more Food Friday fun, stories and recipes visit <a href=\"http://designsbygollum.blogspot.ca/2012/11/foodie-friday-november-30.html\">Rattlebridge Farm</a>, <a href=\"http://simplelivingdianebalch.blogspot.ca/2012/11/foodie-friday-two-simple-fish-appetizers.html\">Simple Living</a>, <a href=\"http://annkroeker.com/2012/11/29/food-on-fridays-vegetarian-spring-rolls/\">Food on Fridays</a> and <a href=\"http://www.foodiefriendsfriday.com/2012/11/foodie-friends-friday-recipe-linky.html\">Foodie Friends Friday</a>.</p>\n<div>\n<p>Related posts:</p><ol>\n<li><a href=\"http://pearlsa.com/blog/foodie/food-friday-amaranth-porridge-blueberry-sauce/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Food Friday – Amaranth Porridge with Blueberry Sauce\">Food Friday – Amaranth Porridge with Blueberry Sauce</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://pearlsa.com/blog/foodie/food-friday-cook-tomato-sauce/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Food Friday – No-Cook Tomato Sauce\">Food Friday – No-Cook Tomato Sauce</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://pearlsa.com/blog/foodie/food-friday-lentil-soup/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Food Friday – Lentil Soup\">Food Friday – Lentil Soup</a></li>\n</ol>\n<img src=\"http://yarpp.org/pixels/995ef1ec329e2278d8dd964a80f44d54\">\n</div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AGirlHerPumpAndReflectionsOnLife?a=3nO_YWWwYPU:MZgsCjvGEao:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AGirlHerPumpAndReflectionsOnLife?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AGirlHerPumpAndReflectionsOnLife?a=3nO_YWWwYPU:MZgsCjvGEao:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/AGirlHerPumpAndReflectionsOnLife?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "How industrial policy works in real life",
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"content" : "<p>Taiwan, year 1983. The plan of the government consisted of 3 simple steps:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Identify an imported product that you want to produce locally.</li>\n<li>Use red tape to slowdown the import of that product</li>\n<li>Let local firms learn the technology, get good contracts, and start producing that good.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>As bad as this story may sound (nobody wants red tape!), the strategy was actually successful:</p>\n<blockquote><p><b> </b>In the early 1980s Phillips was making TVs in Taiwan, and importing a certain kind of specialized glass from its factory in Japan. The IDB team [Industrial Development Bureau, a Taiwanese government institution].. identified two or three Taiwan glass makers which in their view had the productive capability to make the jump in product quality needed to produce the specialized glass at a price close to the import price. They discussed the possibilities with the firms. The firms said they would invest in the necessary equipment provided they got a longterm supply agreement with Phillips.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Of course Philips didn’t like the idea.</p>\n<blockquote><p>The IDB officials went to Phillips. The Phillips procurement manager said the company was happy with its present arrangement of importing the glass from its factory in Japan, and declined to change suppliers. Soon Phillips found that its applications to import the glass, previously automatically approved, began to be delayed. Phillips contacted the Minister of Foreign Trade, who apologized profusely, and explained that even he was not always able to get the inefficient trade bureaucracy to work quickly. He promised to investigate. The delays lengthened, and lengthened again. The Minister apologized and said he had done all he could. Eventually Phillips got the message, and entered into discussions with one of the Taiwanese glass makers. The upshot was that Phillips offered a longterm supply contract, and the domestic glass maker invested in upgraded equipment. Before long the Taiwanese glass maker was exporting some of the specialized glass.</p></blockquote>\n<p><b> </b>I <a href=\"http://kariobangi.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/donors-prioritized-industrial-policy-in-asia-social-sectors-in-africa-why/\">wrote a blog post </a>about this paper a few months back. It is by <a href=\"http://www2.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/Experts/r.wade@lse.ac.uk\">LSE professor Robert Wade</a>. Full article is great and you can find it <a href=\"http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Knowledge/26200435-EN-AEC-WADE-NOV07.PDF\">here</a> (pdf)</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/1069/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/1069/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kariobangi.wordpress.com&blog=27301068&post=1069&subd=kariobangi&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Poor Numbers: how we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it – By Morten Jerven",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><p><strong></strong><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-10026\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/11/20/poor-numbers-how-we-are-misled-by-african-development-statistics-and-what-to-do-about-it-%e2%80%93-by-morten-jerven/poor_numbers/\"><img title=\"poor_numbers\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/poor_numbers.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"253\" height=\"381\"></a>On November 5, 2010, Ghana Statistical Services announced that it was revising its GDP estimates upwards by over 60 percent, suggesting that that in the previous GDP estimates about US$13 billion worth’s of economic activity had been missed. As a result, Ghana was suddenly upgraded from a low to lower-middle-income country. In response to this change, Todd Moss, the development scholar and blogger at the Center of Global Development in Washington DC exclaimed: ‘<a href=\"http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2010/11/ghana-says-hey-guess-what-we%E2%80%99re-not-poor-anymore.php\">Boy, we really don’t know anything!</a>’</p><p>Shanta Devarajan – The World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa – struck a more dramatic tone. In an address to a conference organized by Statistics South Africa, he called the current state of affairs ‘<a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/africa-s-statistical-tragedy\">Africa’s statistical tragedy</a>’.</p><p><strong>How good are these numbers?</strong></p><p>My book – <a href=\"http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100939320&CFID=18764106&CFTOKEN=4f4e5eca80f4acd4-AEAD51BC-C29B-B0E5-3E59F22168A1A98D&jsessionid=843059c4d3c9127b597cc441356c12687d42\"><em>Poor Numbers:</em></a><em> how we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it</em> – presents a study of the production and use of African economic development statistics. All of the central questions in development revolve around the measure of the production and consumption of goods and services. This is expressed in an aggregate composite metric called the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is used to rank and rate the wealth and progress of nations. It is the most widely used measure of economic activity, yet little is known about how this metric is produced and misused in debates about African economic development.</p><p>For a number of years now I have been trying to answer the question: How good are these numbers? The short answer is that the numbers are poor. This is just not a matter of technical accuracy – the arbitrariness of the quantification process produces observations with very large errors and levels of uncertainty. This ‘numbers game’ has taken on a dangerously misleading air of accuracy, and the resulting figures are used to make critical decisions that allocate scarce resources. International development actors are making judgments based on erroneous statistics. Governments are not able to make informed decisions because existing data are too weak or the data they need do not exist.</p><p><strong>What happened in Ghana?</strong></p><p>How could the country be among the poorest in the world one day, and find itself amongst aspiring middle income countries the next?</p><p>To grasp this chain of events, a basic understanding of national accounting is necessary. GDP is typically calculated as a sum of the ‘value added’ of the production of goods and services in all sectors of the economy. In order to compare one year’s value added with another, and thus get an idea of whether the economy is expanding or contracting, a new set of sums for all the sectors are computed. In order for these two amounts to be comparable, they are expressed in constant prices. The easiest way of doing this, particularly if data are sparse, which they are at most African statistical offices, is to generate ‘base year’ estimate for future level estimates.</p><p>When picking a ‘base year’ the statistical office chooses a year when it has more information on the economy than normally available; such as data from a household, agricultural or industrial survey. The information from these survey instruments is added to the normally available administrative data to form a new GDP estimate. This new total is then weighted by sectors, thereafter other indicators and proxies are used to calculate new annual estimates.</p><p><strong>The importance of ‘base year’</strong></p><p>The ‘base year’ is very important in three respects. Firstly, the GDP estimates will be expressed in constant prices for the base year. Second, the index number applies, so that a sector that was very economically important in the base year will continue to appear very important despite structural changes that may have occurred since the last base year.</p><p>Conversely, sectors that were unimportant or not even existing will barely have an impact on the official GDP statistics. Finally, the data sources and the use of proxies are set in the base year. Even when new information is becoming available, national accountants may be unwilling or unable to add this data to the GDP series. Thus, when the base year is out of date, the GDP series is becoming an increasingly reliable guide to interpreting real economic change. The IMF statistical division recommends a change of base year every fifth year.</p><p>In the case of Ghana, their previous base year was made in 1993. Quite obviously, the structure of the economy has changed radically since then, partly due to the introduction of new technologies, such as the mobile phone and partly due to economic policy, such as the continued liberalisation and importance of non-state delivery of services such as in tertiary education. Through some sample surveys and availability of administrative data, such as those derived from Value Added Taxation, the statistical office was increasingly aware that their estimates were underestimating the size of the Ghanaian economy. Ghana Statistical Services therefore requested the services of the IMF as early as in 2002, which contracted a consultant to undertake the rebasing and revision of GDP estimates in the country.</p><p>What about the comparisons with other countries?<strong> </strong>How should we compare the income and growth of Ghana with Nigeria, Kenya or other economies in the region? The lack of comparability of data and methods in national accounting practices in Sub-Saharan Africa is disturbing. According to my own survey, only ten of these countries have a base year that is less than a decade old, when I compared the statistics available from the World Bank and those published by the national statistical agencies that actually compile the GDP statistics, there was an alarming level of discrepancy. A comparison of the data published in other sources further added support to the conclusion that with the current uneven application of methods and poor availability of data, any ranking of countries according to GDP levels is misleading.</p><p><strong>Nigerian revision pending</strong></p><p>Meanwhile, in Nigeria an upward revision is pending. Their base year for the national accounts, 1990, is even more outdated than that of Ghana. According to reports from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria plans to change the base year for its gross domestic product (GDP) to 2008. It has been boldly announced that this could lead to a “<a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/ozabs-nigeria-economy-size-idAFJOE7A90J020111110\">huge jump</a>” in GDP figures.</p><p>This radically challenges our current understanding of economic development in Nigeria and in Africa. According to the World Development Indicators’ most recent data, the total GDP in current $US in 2010 was above 200 billion. Nigerian GDP, before the predicted revision, already accounts for 18 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s total (about 1,200 billion $US). The reports in the media, from the IMF and the NBS all indicate that Nigerian GDP will increase at least as much as in the recent case in Ghana.</p><p>Let us be conservative and assume that the GDP in Nigeria merely doubles following the revision. It will alone mean that the GDP for the whole region increased more than 15 percent. The value of the increase accrues to nothing less than 40 economies roughly the size of Malawi’s. The knowledge that currently there are 40 ‘Malawis’ unaccounted for in the Nigerian economy should raise a few eyebrows.</p><p>It is a real tragedy that the statistical capacities of Sub-Saharan African economies are in such a poor state. African development statistics tell us less than we would like to think about income, poverty and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. One of the most urgent challenges in African economic development is to devise a strategy for improving statistical capacity. This system currently causes more confusion than enlightenment. However, governments, international organizations and independent analysts do need these development statistics to track and monitor efforts at improving living conditions on the African continent.</p><p>Poor numbers are too important to be dismissed as just that.</p><p><strong>Morten Jerven is Assistant Professor at the Simon Fraser University, School for International Studies. His book </strong><a href=\"http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100939320&CFID=18764106&CFTOKEN=4f4e5eca80f4acd4-AEAD51BC-C29B-B0E5-3E59F22168A1A98D&jsessionid=843059c4d3c9127b597cc441356c12687d42\"><strong><em>Poor Numbers:</em></strong></a><strong><em> how we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it </em></strong><strong>is published by Cornell University Press. </strong></p>"
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"title" : "Lincoln Against the Radicals",
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"content" : "<h3><em>Lincoln</em> is not a movie about Reconstruction, of course; it’s a movie about old white men in beards and wigs heroically working together to save grateful black people.</h3>\n<p><center><img title=\"lincoln-battlefield\" src=\"http://jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/lincoln-battlefield.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"292\"></center>\n<p>Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s <em>Lincoln</em> is about Obama, we are told, or don’t need to be told. It is about the triumph of a political compromiser, and it argues that radical change comes about by triangulation, by back-room deals, and by a willingness to forego ideological purity. Kushner has <a href=\"http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/23/saturdays-guests-nov-24-tony-kushner-on-lincoln-and-obama-wal-mart-black-friday-and-the-culture-of-consumption-the-future-of-obamacare/\">said</a> this quite explicitly, not only likening his Lincoln to Obama, but arguing that there are general principles to be drawn from it; “too much impatience can make it impossible for anything to happen,” he said, in response to Chris Hayes’ question about whether the movie favors moderates over radicals. It is, in short, a barely veiled argument that radicals should get in line, be patient, be realistic.</p>\n<p>It does this in several ways. First and foremost, it uses a realist aesthetic to make it seem like a compromising cynicism is <em>realistic</em>. Form becomes content: it shows us the world as it “really” is by adding in the grit and grain and grime that demonstrate that the image has not being airbrushed, cleaned up, or glossed over, and this artificial lack of artifice signifies as reality. This is why people who know nothing about Baltimore or the drug trade are quick and confident in praising the “realism” of a show like <em>The Wire</em>. They don’t mean “accuracy,” because that’s not something most people could judge; they mean un-glamorized, un-romanticized, dark. Spielberg’s <em>Lincoln </em>accomplishes the same trick, making its claim to “realism” seem plausible by showing us a Washington, DC that is dirty, small, dark, cold, unpleasant, and corrupt. Our field of view is claustrophobic and drab; we are shown a political arena without sentiment or nostalgic glow. That’s how we know we’re seeing the “real” thing.</p>\n<p>But, of course, we’re not. We’re just seeing a movie whose claim to objective accuracy is no less artificial than the filters by which an instagram takes on the nostalgic glow of a past that was never as overexposed and warm as it has become in retrospect. And when we take “gritty” for “realism,” another kind of “realism” gets quietly implied and imposed: the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-there-alternative-Books/dp/1846943175\">capitalist realism</a> by which ideals become impossible and the only way things can get done is through compromise and strategic surrender. Anti-romanticism is all the more ideological because it pretends to have no ideology, to be the “plain truth” that demonstrates the falsity of romantic visions. And this movie is anti-romantic because, to be blunt, it is anti-revolutionary. In this movie, “things happen” through patience and compromise, not through steadfast idealistic struggle.</p>\n<p>When Lincoln sets about abolishing slavery–out of the goodness of his heart, essentially–his first adversaries turn out to be the radical abolitionists, in whose number the movie is careful not to place the great emancipator. Before anything can happen, in other words, the first order of business is to steamroll men of principle like Thaddeus Stevens and James Ashley into doing what Lincoln wants them to do. Stevens is too wildly idealistic and unrealistic to be allowed to speak his mind; he isn’t quite a caricature—if only because Tommie Lee Jones brings too much gravitas to the part—but he’s the uncle everyone is embarrassed of, even if they love him too much to say so. He’s not a leader, he’s a liability, one whose shining heroic moment will be when he keeps silent about what he really believes. And James Ashley is portrayed as too cowardly and weak to even bring the amendment to a vote (while casting David Costabile for the part speaks volumes for what kind of a role they think it is). The two radical abolitionists in the film, in other words, cannot be trusted to take charge of a radical project like the abolition of slaves. A radical and revolutionary change must be placed in the hands of a compromising moderate.</p>\n<p>Now, I’m not questioning this movie on the grounds of historical accuracy, because if you wanted historical accuracy, you wouldn’t see this movie at all. You might go read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s <em>Team of Rivals</em>, for example, and then you might notice that the entire story that Kushner and Spielberg tell is contained in pages 686-689, a sum total of three pages out of a 900 page book about Lincoln’s presidency. Or you might read a book on Reconstruction—Eric Foner’s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Americas-Unfinished-Revolution-1863-1877/dp/0060937165\">long book</a> or his <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Reconstruction-Eric-Foner/dp/0060964316/ref=pd_vtp_b_2\">short book</a>, for example—and discover that the Thirteenth Amendment was not the culmination but was barely the prologue to a political struggle that went on for many decades. Or read <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Documentary-History-Emancipation-1861-1867/dp/B006LWERR8\"><em>Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867</em></a>, which shows how<em> (as </em><a href=\"http://coreyrobin.com/2012/11/25/steven-spielbergs-white-men-of-democracy/\">Corey Robin</a> puts it)<em>, “</em>students and scholars have come to a completely different view of how emancipation happened”:<em></em></p>\n<blockquote><p><em> </em><em>The Destruction of Slavery</em> [the first essay in the book] explicates the process by which slavery collapsed under the pressure of federal arms and the slaves’ determination to place their own liberty on the wartime agenda. In documenting the transformation of a war for the Union into a war against slavery, it shifts the focus from the halls of power in Washington and Richmond to the plantations, farms, and battlefields of the South and demonstrates how slaves accomplished their own liberation and shaped the destiny of a nation…</p>\n<p>Emphasizing the agency of slaves and former slaves does not simply alter the cast of characters in the drama of emancipation, displacing old villains and enthroning new heroes. Abraham Lincoln and the Radical Republicans do not play less significant parts once slaves gain an active role in their own liberation, but they do play different ones. Focusing on events beyond Washington and outside formally constituted political bodies does not excise politics from the study of the past. Rather, it reveals that social history is not history with the politics left out, but that all history is—and must be—political. The politics of emancipation in the countryside and the towns of the South makes more comprehensible the politics of emancipation inside the capitol and the presidential mansion.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Kate Masur’s <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/opinion/in-spielbergs-lincoln-passive-black-characters.html?_r=0\">NYT op-ed</a> on the movie makes this same point, that what was going on outside of the smoky back rooms and kitchen conversations (and away from the battlefields) was the driving force for the social transformation which was already occurring but which would continue for decades.</p>\n<p>In short, if you widen your field of view, you will discover that W.E.B. Du Bois <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction\">argued a century ago</a>—and as the historical scholarship has <a href=\"http://www.littlejohnexplorers.com/reconstruction/fonerreconstruction.pdfhttp:/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Reconstruction\">increasingly come to agree</a>—that slavery was already all but dead by the time Lincoln got around to declaring himself an abolitionist, far less because the North gave slaves their legal freedom than because they had already effectively taken it, because it had become the new status quo that would have required force to dislodge. At the end of the Civil War, with the South defeated, the choice for the north was not to end slavery or leave it; the choice was to ratify the fact that it was already dead or to re-impose it by military force.</p>\n<p>In short, the idea that the white north “gave” freedom to the slaves draws from and reinforces an attractively simple and flattering myth, one which formed around the old historiography of the period like a noose cutting off oxygen to the brain: the myth that black slaves were rendered passive by their condition, and that—absent an outside force interrupting their state of un-freedom—they would simply have continued, as slaves, indefinitely. It’s only in this narrative that freedom can be a thing which is <em>given</em> to them: because they are essentially passive and inert, they require someone else—say, a great emancipator—to step in and raise them up.</p>\n<p>W.E.B. Du Bois was already chipping away at this myth <a href=\"http://srufaculty.sru.edu/m.matambanadzo/readings/reconstruction_and_its_benefits.pdf\">in 1909</a>, but when scholars in the post-Civil Rights era started taking him and his 1935 <em>Black Reconstruction</em> seriously, the historiographic mainstream turned this myth on its head. Slaves were not and could not be <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1939425\">“given”</a> their freedom because they had always had it: it had required a great deal of violent force and political work to <em>keep</em> them enslaved, and when that force was removed—as the South collapsed politically and militarily—they began to act like the human beings they always already were, organizing, moving, and seizing their destinies in their own hands. At this point, the game was up; just as the institution of slavery had always depended on substantial governmental enforcement and support, it would have taken a substantial amount of violent force to re-impose it, a concerted project to re-establish slavery that no one in the north had any particular stomach for. At the end of the Civil War, to put it simply, the North had a simple choice: re-imposing slavery by force or accept the new reality. They chose the latter.</p>\n<p>If you read these books, however, you’d gain a sense of perspective that the film works to make impossible. Spielberg and Kushner are interested in a kind of scrupulous (almost farcical) accuracy about <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/11/21/lincoln_sound_design_watch_a_video_about_how_they_got_the_historical_sound.html\">things that do not matter</a>, while working very hard to place everything else that was going on in the period—and everything else Lincoln was responding to—off camera. “The nation’s capital was transformed by the migration of fugitive slaves from the South during the war, but you’d never know it from this film,” as Kate Masur <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/opinion/in-spielbergs-lincoln-passive-black-characters.html?_r=0\">points out</a>, and Lincoln’s own servants were leaders and organizers in this community, something of which Lincoln simply could not have been unaware. But the film makes a point of not showing any of this: while the vast majority of the movie takes place in cramped and smoky rooms, even the exterior shots (usually of conversations in moving wagons) show us very little of what was going on in the streets and neighborhoods of Washington (much less what was going on in the South). Which is to say: they give us the illusion of perspective without giving us its substance. They show you the elephant’s tail quite accurately, and then they declare, on that basis, that the entire beast is a snake.</p>\n<p>In the big picture, the Thirteenth Amendment, on its own, just isn’t that important, and much of the forced suspense of the movie—will they pass it?—comes from an artificial sense that more is at stake in a single congressional bill than there actually was. As Eric Foner <a href=\"http://wtvr.com/2012/11/17/historian-lincoln-is-pretty-accurate/\">pointed out</a> when he was asked about the movie, if it hadn’t passed when it did, Lincoln had pledged to call Congress into special session in March; “[a]nd there, the Republicans had a two-thirds majority and would ratify in a minute…It’s not this giant crisis in the way that the film’s portraying it.” This is important because the small picture is not the big picture in miniature, and taking it to be—taking the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to be 19<sup>th</sup> centuries democratic turning point, as this movie clearly does—will cause us to subordinate the big picture to the small picture. For Foner,</p>\n<blockquote><p>The emancipation of the slaves is a long, complicated, historical process. It’s not the work of one man, no matter how great he was…It was not Lincoln who originated the 13th Amendment, it was the Abolitionist movement. It’s only in the middle of 1864 that Lincoln changes his mind and decides he’s in favor of this amendment…It’s not a question of being wrong, it’s just inadequate. It gives you the impression that the ratification of the 13th Amendment ends slavery — and that’s wrong. Slavery is already dying at that moment.</p></blockquote>\n<p>This big-picture perspective is carefully absent, displaced by an obsessive focus on political minutia, a claustrophilic aesthetic, and the usual hagiography of Lincoln. One can only imagine what a very different movie this would be if it had taken Foner’s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fiery-Trial-Abraham-Lincoln-American/dp/039334066X\"><em>The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery</em></a> as its main source text. But while we can agree or disagree with that choice, the one thing we <em>can’t</em> do is pretend that it wasn’t a choice. And to put it quite bluntly, I think the filmmakers made this choice because they wanted to make a polemical point about moderation over radicalism, and I think they picked the story they wanted to tell because it seems to support that position. And yet the historical story they tell only supports that claim if you very selectively frame out most of the context around it, and so they do. And passing a single bill in Congress only comes to seem to represent the broader field of social change and progress—“things” getting “done”— if we ignore the big picture.</p>\n<p>After all, getting the radicals in line is important in the political arena because it allows moderates like Lincoln or Obama to operate through consensus. We therefore see Lincoln pragmatically compromising with conservative republicans (giving them negotiations with the confederacy) while ignoring and sidelining the left (because they have no choice but to follow him). But that consensus is built on respect for the status quo. And if true political change happens when a bunch of old white men in beards make deals in smoke-filled back rooms, then we can hardly be surprised that the black men and women will watch mutely from the balcony. As in <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em>, they will applaud the hero in the foreground, a folksy white lawyer, but they will not have a vote or voice of their own. Black “voices” will appear only as tokenistic sops to political correctness, because we have categorically ruled out the existence of black political action from the start. And so, we will take for granted the question we have begged, that politics only happens in the arena of politics, and since only people who could vote (white people) could intervene in the latter, then it seems reasonable to believe that black people had no effect on the politics of slavery and emancipation (except insofar as they inspired the people who mattered).</p>\n<p>The trouble is, though, for me to make this point, one must call on all the sources and accounts and stories that the movie has scrupulously not included. If you’ve read Du Bois’s <em>Black Reconstruction</em>, for example, and you watch this movie and tell to people they should read Du Bois’s <em>Black Reconstruction,</em> you won’t win many arguments; until someone has read Du Bois’s <em>Black Reconstruction </em>(or some version of it), they will have literally no idea what they are missing.</p>\n<p>So let me talk a bit about what the movie <em>does</em> show, instead of focusing on what it doesn’t. The film’s treatment of Thaddeus Stevens is perhaps the most revelatory, and the clearest demonstration of how the movie disdains and diminishes the importance of principled radicalism. The character that Tommie Lee Jones plays is a fire and brimstone radical who wants to occupy the South militarily, who wants to enforce black freedom at bayonet point, and who want to extract from wealthy southerners some of the wealth they had extracted from their slaves and set up freed slaves on their own farms. He would give them the forty acres and a mule, in short, and if Lincoln is Obama, then Stevens is a little bit like what the Tea Party thinks Obama to be: a socialist bent on revenge and wild wealth redistribution.</p>\n<p>When people on the right declare that Obama is an anti-colonial socialist, leftists often sigh, wistfully; “If only!” This movie nods its head soberly. “Yes,” it says, “Redistributing wealth to slaves from their former owners sounds good in practice, but we need to be <em>realistic</em>; it wouldn’t work in practice.” That’s why this movie needs to domesticate Stevens, why things only “get done” when the impatient Stevens is convinced to shut up and get in line, to stop demanding that black people get the vote and accept that “giving” them freedom was enough. Lincoln wins the argument with Stevens—in their dramatic kitchen conference—when he points out that if Stevens had gotten his way, all would have been lost. Stevens’ impatience would have doomed the war effort, and on this basis, Stevens is won over to Lincoln’s cautious quest for consensus.</p>\n<p>After Lincoln was dead, however, progressive politics would be driven by radicals and freedmen, and it was in this period that substantive emancipation was first achieved. On the one hand, the period of Radical Reconstruction—roughly 1867 to the early 1870’s—was called that because congressional radicals like Thaddeus Stevens were actually in charge of Reconstruction and did many of the things which the movie portrays as being Stevens’ wild and impatient radicalism. But while military governors (and Southern Unionists) helped the genie first get out of the bottle, black organizations and practical politics were the genie’s active demonstration that it had no plan to go back in without a fight, nor did it. It would take decades of fierce political warfare, mass racist violence, and a popular (white) backlash against radical reconstruction before blacks would be put back in their place.</p>\n<p>It was in this context that a new narrative of the Civil War and reconstruction began to emerge and became mainstream, in which Lincoln was the great <em>reconciler</em> and in which his death was a great tragedy because it left vindictive radicals like Stevens in charge. This is how <em>The Birth of a Nation </em><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=fGJFpiTjbKwC&lpg=PA189&ots=AOGei67MdU&dq=%22Griffith%20(like%20Dixon)%20admired%20Lincoln%20for%20his%20magnanimity%20and%20believed%20that%20if%20he%20had%20not%20been%20murdered%2C%20Reconstruction%20generally%20(and%20the%20radical%20Reconstruction%20after%201867%20in%20particular)%20would%20not%20have%20happened&pg=PA189#v=onepage&q&f=false\">portrays<em> </em>the aftermath of the Civil War</a>, for example:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Though a Southerner, Griffith</em> (like Dixon) admired Lincoln for his magnanimity and believed that if he had not been murdered, Reconstruction generally (and the radical Reconstruction after 1867 in particular) would not have happened. <em>With the war over, Griffith</em> depicts a confrontation between Lincoln and Austin Stoneman, the leader of the radicals. <em>Stoneman protests Lincoln’s policy of</em> clemency for the South, insisting that “their leaders must be hanged and their states treated as conquered provinces.” (The “conquered provinces” phrase was actually used by <em>Thaddeus Stevens, the radical congressional leader on</em> whom Stoneman’s fictional character was based.) But Lincoln lives up to the spirit of his second inaugural on March 4, 1865 <em>(“with </em>malice toward none; with charity for all”) and tells Stoneman he will deal with the seceded states “as though they had never been away.” Encouraged by this <em>liberal attitude on the part of the president, the South </em>begins rebuilding itself (shots 529–35), but this process is interrupted by Lincoln’s death.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Spielberg’s <em>Lincoln</em> is strikingly consistent with <em>The Birth of a Nation</em>’s image of Lincoln, a fact which should sound as bizarre as it is. As Eric Foner has observed, reconstruction was an “unfinished revolution” precisely because people like Stevens <em>didn’t</em> get their way in the long terms, because a revolution was eventually turned into reconciliation between Northern and Southern Whites and African-American freedom was abandoned.</p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"http://wlrn.org/post/kushners-lincoln-strange-also-savvy\">interview</a> on NPR, Tony Kushner suggests that vindictive radicals like Stevens bear some of the blame for this:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The inability to forgive and to reconcile with the South in a really decent and humane way, without any question, was one of the causes of the kind of resentment and perpetuation of alienation and bitterness that led to the quote-unquote ‘noble cause,’ and the rise of the Klan and Southern self-protection societies. The abuse of the South after they were defeated was a catastrophe, and helped lead to just unimaginable, untellable human suffering.</p></blockquote>\n<p>That’s one perspective, I suppose, the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning_School\">Dunning School</a> of American historiography that Corey Robin <a href=\"http://coreyrobin.com/2012/11/25/steven-spielbergs-white-men-of-democracy/\">recalls</a> being taught in 1985 as an example of how not to do history, “a way of thinking about the past that was so benighted no one could possibly believe it anymore.”</p>\n<p>What a radical like Thaddeus Stevens believed was that the 13th Amendment only opened the door, and that without federal support for black suffrage, and without redistributive measures to establish black economic security, few freed slaves would ever manage to walk through it. I think the end of radical reconstruction, the long Jim Crow era, and the Civil Rights movement more or less prove him right. As W.E.B. Du Bois argued <a href=\"http://history.eserver.org/freedmens-bureau.txt\">in 1901</a>, readmitting the South to the Union without federal protections for the black vote was to abandon them to their fate:</p>\n<blockquote><p>[In 1866] Not a single Southern legislature stood ready to admit a Negro, under any conditions, to the polls; not a single Southern legislature believed free Negro labor was possible without a system of restrictions that took all its freedom away; there was scarcely a white man in the South who did not honestly regard Emancipation as a crime, and its practical nullification as a duty. In such a situation, the granting of the ballot to the black man was a necessity, the very least a guilty nation could grant a wronged race, and the only method of compelling the South to accept the results of the war. Thus Negro suffrage ended a civil war by beginning a race feud.</p></blockquote>\n<p>This is why reconstruction was an “unfinished revolution” and why freedom was an un-cashed check for generations. African-Americans were given the right to be paid for their labor, but even the right not to be murdered was a dead letter across much of the country: lacking economic independence or protected political franchise, black Americans would have no control over the conditions under which they labored and no say in the civil society they would continue to define by being excluded from it. As Du Bois <a href=\"http://history.eserver.org/freedmens-bureau.txt\">went on</a>, speaking in the present tense of 1901:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://history.eserver.org/freedmens-bureau.txt\">Fo</a>r this much all men know: despite compromise, war, and struggle, the Negro is not free. In the backwoods of the Gulf States, for miles and miles, he may not leave the plantation of his birth; in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery, from which the only escape is death or the penitentiary. In the most cultured sections and cities of the South the Negroes are a segregated servile caste, with restricted rights and privileges. Before the courts, both in law and custom, they stand on a different and peculiar basis. Taxation without representation is the rule of their political life. And the result of all this is, and in nature must have been, lawlessness and crime. That is the large legacy of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the work it did not do because it could not.</p></blockquote>\n<p>This was the victory of compromising moderates over radical revolutionaries. Lincoln never had the opportunity to show us what he would have done, but the verdict is certainly in on his successor, Andrew Johnson (who Stevens impeached). And as Eric Foner <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=cwVkgrvctCcC&lpg=PA604&ots=3O-xeK_Z_I&dq=The%20removal%20of%20a%20significant%20portion%20of%20the%20nation's%20laboring%20population%20from%20public%20life%20shifted%20the%20center%20of%20gravity%20of%20American%20politics%20to%20the%20right%2C%20complicating%20the%20tasks%20of%20reformers%20for%20generations%20to%20come.%20Long%20into%20the%20twentieth%20century%2C%20the%20South%20remained%20a%20one-party%20region&pg=PA604#v=onepage&q&f=false\">has argued</a>, the failure of reconstruction wasn’t just a disaster for freed slaves: by disenfranchising a sizable segment of the South’s workers, the backlash against reconstruction helped produce the reactionary political order under which we still labor:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The removal of a significant portion of the nation’s laboring population from public life shifted the center of gravity of American politics to the right, complicating the tasks of reformers for generations to come. Long into the twentieth century, the South remained a one-party region under the control of a reactionary ruling elite who used the same violence and fraud that had helped defeat Reconstruction to stifle internal dissent. An enduring consequence of Reconstruction’s failure, the Solid South helped define the contours of American politics and weaken the prospects not simply of change in racial matters but of progressive legislation in many other realms.</p></blockquote>\n<p><em>Lincoln </em>is not a movie about Reconstruction, of course; it’s a movie about old white men in beards and wigs heroically working together to save grateful black people. And that’s exactly the point: this is not a movie about the long process of reuniting the country or black freedom.</p>\n<p>If Spielberg had made a movie about reconstruction, it would be difficult to find many heroes, certainly not any who were compromising moderates. Thaddeus Stevens would die not long after engineering the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (for working against Radical Reconstruction, essentially) and the story of black freedom after Lincoln’s death is pretty grim, for nearly a century. And this isn’t a movie about black freedom at all. Apparently, <a href=\"http://www.ign.com/articles/2003/01/23/lincoln-update\">an earlier version of this film</a> would have been based around Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass, and I’m very sorry that Spielberg instead chose to make a movie praising exactly the type of political compromises that would destroy and delay so much of what Lincoln had begun to create. But I suppose it’s easier and more fun to thank white saviors than to think about those that they left behind.</p></p>"
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"title" : "The Madonna/Whore Complex in American Politics",
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"content" : "<p>One of the lines of argument about <em>Lincoln</em> that has intrigued me most is this one, which Will Boisvert states in the <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2012/11/25/steven-spielbergs-white-men-of-democracy/comment-page-6/#comment-436536\">comments section to my post on the film</a>:<a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2012/11/25/steven-spielbergs-white-men-of-democracy/comment-page-6/#comment-436536\"><br>\n</a><br>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">But the movie’s focus is on…snakey retail politics. That’s what makes the movie interesting, in part because it cuts against the grain of Lincoln hagiography by making him a shrewd, somewhat dirty pol.</p><br>\nWill isn’t alone in this. I’ve seen <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/six-footnotes-lincoln-spielberg-kushner.html\">David Denby</a>, <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2012/11/19/121119crci_cinema_lane\">Anthony Lane</a>, <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/nov/21/lincoln-authentic-wonderment/\">Geoffrey O’Brien</a>, and <a href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/#49947264\">Chris Hayes</a> offer eloquent statements of the same thesis: that what makes <em>Lincoln</em> great is that it shows how his greatness consists of so many acts of smallness. Politicking, horse-trading, compromise, log-rolling, and the like.<span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>What’s interesting to me about this line of argument is, first, that it hardly cuts against the standard historiography of Lincoln. Ever since David Donald’s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Reconsidered-Essays-Civil-War/dp/0375725326\"><em>Lincoln Reconsidered</em></a>, which came out in 1947, and Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay in <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/American-Political-Tradition-Men-Made/dp/0679723153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354110224&sr=1-1&keywords=The+American+Political+Tradition\"><em>The American Political Tradition</em></a> (1948), we’ve known about this Lincoln. (And as <a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/the-young-mr-lincoln/\">Aaron Bady points out</a>, getting the gritty Lincoln is the basic conceit of John Ford’s <em>Young Mr. Lincoln</em>, which came out in 1939.) When it comes to Lincoln, we lost our virtue a long time ago, yet somehow, in 2012, we’re all still virgins. (<em>Pace</em> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Lost-at-Movies-Pauline-Kael/dp/0714529753\">Pauline Kael</a>.)</p>\n\n\t<p>But beyond the historiography, there’s a larger cultural question: What is it about this country that makes any description of the moral cesspool of politics seem like the revelation of a brave new truth? Particularly among otherwise sophisticated cultural brokers like Lane et al? I mean these are men steeped in the Western canon; Denby even wrote a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/GREAT-BOOKS-David-Denby/dp/0684835339/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354112698&sr=1-1&keywords=david+denby+great+books\">book about that</a>. Yet somehow they’ve never absorbed the lessons of <em>Henry V</em>? Or <em>The Prince</em>? Or Max Weber?</p>\n\n\t<p>I think it was D.H. Lawrence, in his <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Studies-Classic-American-Literature-Lawrence/dp/1848611587/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354110917&sr=1-1&keywords=Studies+in+Classic+American+Literature\"><em>Studies in Classic American Literature </em></a>(though my copy is in storage so I can’t know for sure), who first cottoned on to this peculiarly American dynamic whereby innocence gives way to cynicism, without ever achieving anything like a mature and stable or permanent sense of realism. So that every time we stumble across some banal item of reality—Lincoln was a politician! Politicians politick!—we draw back in shock and awe at the haunting truth of it all, as if we had just been handed the tablets at Mt. Sinai. (O’Brien speaks of our “authentic wonderment” at Spielberg/Kushner’s decision to set the saintly Lincoln against “a more detached and analytical surveying of circumstances.”)</p>\n\n\t<p>Understood in this light, the realism of <em>Lincoln</em> is just the flip side of the hagiography of Lincoln. Only a country steeped in myths of innocence would find the most conventional and boring kind of realism about politics to be the trumpet blast of Truth, Brave Truth.</p>\n\n\t<p>We see these quicksilver shifts, from innocence to cynicism or realism, in the culture all the time, especially its more elite sectors—though sometimes they go in the reverse direction. Think of <em>Mr. Smith Goes to Washington</em>, how the wise-cracking cynic Jean Arthur becomes a true believer. Or <em>Dave</em>, where the Sigourney Weaver character makes the same pilgrimage. (Interestingly, in both cases it’s a woman who loses her cynicism and discovers her innocence via falling in love with a man.)</p>\n\n\t<p>But whether it’s the cynic discovering or recovering her innocence, or the innocent losing his innocence, the story of politics among cultural and political elites in this country is always the same, toggling back and forth between two positions that are little more than the competing wisdom of juveniles.</p>\n\n\t<p>It’s basically the truth of the 5 year old set against the truth of the 15 year old. And any time the 15 year old speaks, we’re expected to murmur, in hushed wonder: brave, bold, true, wow. If you’re a 5 year old, I can see why that would be the case. If you’re a 45-year-old, as I am, it’s a bit tougher. Or at least it should be.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>If you remember high school science class, you remember the constraints of accuracy. Precision is much more profligate (case in point: UCBerkeley) than accuracy.</p><p>Sometimes, that can constitute up to 50% or more of miscommunication.</p>"
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"title" : "Lost in the Forest: Stateless Children in Borneo’s Palm Oil Industry",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>Unlike the rest of the world, palm oil is not the preferred cooking agent in Western kitchens. But it permeates nearly every other facet of domestic life, from chocolate chip cookies to cosmetics. And because health-conscious consumers are demanding better alternatives to the oils rich in trans-fat found in most processed foods, palm oil is becoming even more widely used in the United States and Europe. Already the most produced and internationally traded edible oil, global demand is forecast to double by 2020.</p>\n<p>Profitable as it is for multinational companies, palm oil is also extracted at a heavy social and environmental cost that make it one of the most controversial commodities in the world. Nowhere is the toll more acutely felt than the island of Borneo, divided between Malaysia and Indonesia, which together account for nearly 90 percent of global palm oil exports.</p>\n<p>On both sides of the border, the industry thrives on cheap labor. In Malaysia's Sabah province, thousands of stateless children, born to undocumented Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers, live without access to health care or education. In Indonesia, workers continue to clear-cut swathes of rain forest the size of small countries, emitting massive amounts of greenhouse gases. Rare biodiversity is being destroyed, including the habitat of the orangutan, humankind's closest relative. Meanwhile, many workers are de facto slaves on the plantations.</p>\n<p>Steve Sapienza and Jason Motlagh travel to Borneo to investigate palm oil production in the backcountry. Starting with plantations in Sabah that employ children and families caught in legal limbo, they venture into Indonesia's seldom visited western Kalimantan, where new plantations are carving a path through virgin terrain at the expense of one of the world's last great natural expanses. Along the way, the true cost of the industry is revealed.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p> After this week's earlier entry, <a style=\"text-decoration:underline;font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/11/chinese-architecture-old-and-new/100409/\">Chinese Architecture, Old and New</a>, I just had to run this short follow-up. Homeowners Luo Baogen and his wife refused to allow the government to demolish their home in Wenling, Zhejiang province, China, claiming the relocation compensation offered would not be enough to cover the cost of rebuilding. So, adjacent neighboring homes were dismantled, and, bizarrely, the road was built around the intact home, leaving it as an island in a river of new asphalt. <span>[<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/11/the-house-in-the-middle-of-the-street/100411/\">3 photos</a>]</span> </p><div></div><br><br><span><div><a name=\"img01\"></a><a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/11/the-house-in-the-middle-of-the-street/100411/\"><img src=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/nailhouse112212/s_n01_RTR3AQ12.jpg\" style=\"width:991px\"></a><div><div> A car stops beside a house in the middle of a newly built road in Wenling, Zhejiang province, November 22, 2012. An elderly couple refused to sign an agreement to allow their house to be demolished. They say that compensation offered is not enough to cover rebuilding costs, according to local media. (Reuters/China Daily) <a href=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/nailhouse112212/n01_RTR3AQ12.jpg\"><img src=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/i/lnk.jpg\"></a> </div><div></div></div></div></span><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://Theatlantic.feedsportal.com/c/34375/f/625831/s/25dd5ee5/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><div><table border=\"0\"><tr><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=The+House+in+the+Middle+of+the+Street&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Finfocus%2F2012%2F11%2Fthe-house-in-the-middle-of-the-street%2F100411%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=The+House+in+the+Middle+of+the+Street&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Finfocus%2F2012%2F11%2Fthe-house-in-the-middle-of-the-street%2F100411%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td></tr></table></div><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151029462166/u/49/f/625831/c/34375/s/25dd5ee5/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/151029462166/u/49/f/625831/c/34375/s/25dd5ee5/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/151029462166/u/49/f/625831/c/34375/s/25dd5ee5/a2t.img\" border=\"0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/theatlantic/infocus/~4/rGwFZ-l1HwM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Infinite Jukebox",
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"content" : "<p>Another <a href=\"http://boston.musichackday.org/2012/index.php?page=Main+page\">Music Hack Day</a> weekend … this time in Boston hosted at MIT. It was a pretty awesome event. The space at MIT was perfect for hacking, with the best network connectivity I’ve ever seen at a hacking event. For my weekend hack, I took the idea from my Iceland hack (<a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/InfiniteGangnamStyle/\">Infinite Gangnam Style</a>), and made it work with any song. The result is <a href=\"http://infinitejuke.com\">The Infinite Jukebox</a>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://infinitejuke.com\"><img title=\"The Infinite Jukebox\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-942-am.png?w=620&h=626\" height=\"626\" width=\"620\"></a></p>\n<p>With The Infinite Jukebox, you can create a never-ending and ever changing version of any song. The app works by sending your uploaded track over to <a href=\"http://developer.echonest.com\">The Echo Nest</a>, where it is decomposed into individual beats. Each beat is then analyzed and matched to other similar sounding beats in the song. This information is used to create a detailed song graph of paths though similar sounding beats. As the song is played, when the next beat has similar sounding beats there’s a chance that we will branch to a completely different part of the song. Since the branching is to a very similar sounding beat in the song, you (in theory) won’t notice the jump. This process of branching to similar sounding beats can continue forever, giving you an infinitely long version of the song.</p>\n<p>To accompany the playback, I created a chord diagram that shows the beats of the song along the circumference of the circle along with with chords representing the possible paths from each beat to it’s similar neighbors. When the song is not playing, you can mouse over any beat and see all of the possible paths for that beat. When the song is playing, the visualization shows the single next potential beat. I was quite pleased at how the visualization turned out. I think it does a good job of helping the listener understand what is going on under the hood, and different songs have very different looks and color palettes. They can be quite attractive.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1005-am.png\"><img title=\"Snapshot 11:12:12 10:05 AM\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1005-am.png?w=300&h=300\" height=\"300\" width=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1006-am-2.png\"><img title=\"Snapshot 11:12:12 10:06 AM-2\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1006-am-2.png?w=300&h=297\" height=\"297\" width=\"300\"></a><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1004-am.png\"><img title=\"Snapshot 11:12:12 10:04 AM\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111212-1004-am.png?w=300&h=300\" height=\"300\" width=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111312-1055-am-2.png\"><img title=\"Snapshot 11:13:12 10:55 AM-2\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/snapshot-111312-1055-am-2.png?w=300&h=294\" height=\"294\" width=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p>I did have to adapt the Infinite Gangnam Style algorithm for the Infinite Jukebox. Not every song is as self-similar as Psy’s masterpiece, so I have to dynamically adjust the beat-similarity threshold until there are enough pathways in the song graph to make the song infinite. This means that the overall musical quality may vary from song to song depending on the amount of self-similarity in the song.</p>\n<p>Overall, the results sound good for most songs. I still may do a bit of tweaking on the algorithm to avoid some degenerate cases (you can get stuck in a strange attractor at the end of <a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRTONCV13AF133BAFD\">Karma Police</a> for instance). Give it a try, upload your favorite song and listen to it forever. <a href=\"http://infinitejuke.com\">The Infinite Jukebox.</a></p>\n<p>Some of my favorite listener contributed tracks:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRORQWV13762CDDF4C\">Call Me Maybe</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRWYIXL11C8A419FDE\">R Kelly’s Ignition (remix)</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRXKEZN13AF58CD0A8\">Scatman by Scatman John</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRLINTM13AF26AA00E\">Feel Good by Gorillaz</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRPPVWC135CDEAED8E\">The Game Has Changed by Daft Punk</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRQDXXM13AFAB66B3F\">Supersition by StevieWonder </a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRHWYFD13AFB0AC377\">Blue Rondo a la Turk by Dave Brubeck</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRHDIOE133F87D8854\">BIRDHOUSE IN YOUR SOUL by They Might Be Giants</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRRLQCP13AF875F609\">Mediterranean Sundance 5.14 by Al DiMeola </a>- this one is fantastic!</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRXKRCQ13AFE985EE0\">I Feel Love by Donna Summer</a> – this song was made for the Infinite Jukebox</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRWNXDZ13B069AC8D8\">Come Together by The Beatles</a> – The Beatles are really tight on this song, so it works really well</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRKVZIZ13AFB6FFBA1\">Yakity Sax – The Benny Hill Theme </a>- oh my.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRPPVWC135CDEAED8E\">The Game has Changed by Daft Punk</a> - ”This song was made for the Infinite Jukebox” – an insightful Internet user</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRJMHNE13AFA86C1D7\">Sabotage by the Beatie Boys </a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRDEJHQ13B1A51CFCD\">Green Grass and High Tides by The Outlaws</a> - <em>the guitar solo that never ends! via<a href=\"http://twitter/com/tpetr\"> @tpetr</a></em></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://labs.echonest.com/Uploader/index.html?trid=TRTTPRA13B1BA9D96A\">Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana</a> – seamless infinite grunge</li>\n</ul>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/4308/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/4308/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=musicmachinery.com&blog=6500426&post=4308&subd=musicmachinery&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "“Future of Broadband” workshop",
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"content" : "<p>Last monday <a href=\"http://www.martingeddes.com/\">Martin Geddes</a> and <a href=\"http://www.pnsol.com/\">PNSOL</a> organized a workshop (<a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Future-of-Broadband-Flyer.pdf\">Future of Broadband Flyer</a>) on their vision of the future direction of “multiplexed packet switched networks” (aka broadband and/or Internet). Contention and discussion garantueed, as Martin and Neil c.s. state that we are on a track that leads to doom: kind of like the first climate change prophets in a room full of petrolheads <img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\":-)\"> .</p>\n<p>The lively discussion sharpened my thoughts and views: I do not agree with everything that was claimed, yet the issue at hand is worth to be investigated.</p>\n<p>Statistical multiplexing of information packets is a fascinating subject: the theory is complex, and the practice as embodied in the Internet is a revolution in society as big as any in history. As <a href=\"http://www.disruptive-analysis.com/index.htm\">Dean Bubley</a> said, the value generated for society by the Internet in only a few decades as hard to overestimate, our children cannot imagine a world without it, so we should cherish what we have and be very careful in applying “improvements”. This warrants both an open mind to any proposal to improve and a healthy respect for what has been achieved by many great minds who kept on researching and tinkering to get what we currently have. After all, the Porsche 911 sounds like a bad design with lousy handling on paper, but look what 40 years of improvements got us…</p>\n<p>The core insight that has got my attention ( long before the workshop) is that statistical multiplexing of information packets has made a global information network like the Internet possible and affordable: yet the price to pay is that “noise” or imperfections are added as the combined load rises. And once “noise” (delay, jitter, loss of packets) is added you cannot reverse the degradation, its a one way street. In many cases the noise is inconsequential, sometimes it is not.</p>\n<p>The best analogy ( damn analogies…yet we cannot communicate without them) is a highway with cars. As traffic density increases first nothing significant happens, but after a certain level of traffic density is reached the average speed is reduced (delay) and the variation in arrival time increases (jitter). The chance of an accident increases (loss). Once the traffic density reaches “the cliff” (maximum level) any minor perturbance causes a collapse of the flow, reducing the throughput to almost nothing ( aka “traffic jam”). A well known effect on highways.</p>\n<p>The analogy fails in many aspects: if only where on a multiplexed packet switched network the changes in offered load can vary instantaneously and very fast, and loss of packets is acceptable, even is used on purpose as a signaling mechanism. On the Internet we have a flow control protocol like TCP that is designed to reduce the sending speed when somewhere in the path the flow level reaches “the cliff”. When TCP senses that packets do not arrive at the destination (loss as signaling) it backs off, only to try again later if the speed can be raised again.</p>\n<p>The typical reaction time of this control loop is dependent on the round trip time of packets sometimes elongated by a network design flaw called “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat\">buffer bloat</a>“. Any traffic phenomenon like changes in offered load that is faster than the control loop of TCP can react to will not be compensated for: it even might have adverse effects as multiple effects including the control loop of TCP interact with each other.</p>\n<p>The claim Martin c.s. make is that as accces speeds increase (FttH, HFC networks) the volatility of variations in a multiplexed link starts to outpace the TCP control loop, leading to more and more transient “traffic jams” and even collapse. Which could be true: they showed some measurements of the variation in delay of packets in real life that indicated that there might be a problem. (Much more data needed however).</p>\n<p>They use the graph below (click to expand so you can see the full graph) to make their point. The amount of time (delay) it takes to send a packet of information from sender to receiver depends on:</p>\n<p>- distance (speed of EM waves is finite)</p>\n<p>- number of routers which convert light to electrical to light</p>\n<p>- serialization delay (you have to wait until the last bit is there)</p>\n<p>- transient delays (contention in buffers, loss and resending etc.), also called non-stationarity</p>\n<p>Without the transients TCP can do a great job.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Nonstationarity.png\"><img title=\"Nonstationarity\" src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Nonstationarity-1024x683.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"426\"></a></p>\n<p>So far so good: I would like to see much more measurements and analysis of data to determine if these transients are a) a new phenomenon b) increasing in number and size c) are the cause of big problems d) caused by what we think is the source. Worth the effort,</p>\n<p>Assuming that the transients indeed prove to be a serious problem the question arises what the remedy should be.</p>\n<p><em>(PNSOL proposes (not part of the workshop) that the network operator intervenes at the ingress-point of a section of a network. The intervention is based on the value of a certain type of stream of packets, and the sensitivity for that stream for loss and delay/jitter. For instance: VOIP is sensitive to delay and jitter, not so much to loss. Mail is quite insensitive to delay and jitter, so you prioritize VOIP and delay mail. The intervention makes sure that at no point downstream contention arises, so all loss and delay are distributed at the ingress point. I guess this can work as advertised, but….)</em></p>\n<p>The organizers of the workshop went on with statements that I question:</p>\n<p>- because of the transient non-stationarity effects we need a new flow control paradigm to be able to utilize the resources (capacity) much better, adding bandwidth is not a solution</p>\n<p>- operators have an unsustainable (or rather very risky) business model if they don’t apply the new paradigm, because they will be taken by surprise when transients lead to collapse or go broke on adding bandwidth</p>\n<p>- networks are to become trading places for “noise/imperfections”</p>\n<p>All that I have learned over the years is that bandwidth is cheap and running a network below maximum utilization will keep the transients low. (Again, if the fast transients are indeed a problem we need extra measures to remedy that, not necessarily the way PNSOL envisions that).</p>\n<p>The business models of fixed line operators are not very dependent on the cost of amount of bandwidth offered (both transit and backhaul or access), provided the physical infrastructure is good enough (aka fiber). Yes there is a problem if you run over copper or underinvest. The operators balk at the one-time investments needed to go to fiber, as no CEO wants to send a message to shareholders that the rich dividends will be absent for a decade or so. Wireless is a totally different situation: networks taken by surprise at the demand and the type of demand (signaling load), claiming spectrum shortage as an competitive strategy to keep ouy contenders, shift of revenue from voice and text to lower revenues of broadband while investments are required create a fuzzy picture of what reality is.</p>\n<p>Aiming for 100 % utilization so you can delay investments, at the price of the operator deciding what valuable is and what not creates a big moral hazard and a potential destruction of future innovations. You immediately create an incentive NOT to invest in capacity and create artifical scarcity which you as an operator can monetize. The operator gets to decide what is valuable and what is not. A bad deal for society.</p>\n<p>As I have <a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/2012/08/incomplete/\">argued before</a> the interpretation of transmitted (or even not-transmitted) data is already dependent on the particular sender and receiver, the value of the interpretation is even more specific. So no operator should interfere. Martin proposes that the network becomes a trading place for end-users, trading loss and delay options which the operator only executes. Even if that would be possible (information asymmetry, no options to leave the market, very hard to make informed decisions all the time for normal people) it is a complex and costly solution for a problem created by scarcity, by lack of investment in infrastructure.</p>\n<p>Having said that, our regulators and politicians are at loss to get the investments in new infrastructure going. I have yet to see regulation that really incentivizes investments. The Network Neutrality debate is about the same issues as discussed here. There is is complexe emergent relationship between network design, network operations (capacity and management), revenue for the network operator and value as experienced by users, wether we like it or not. And it exists today.</p>\n<p>Workshops like these help to develop our conceptual framework on how to deal with these issues.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F11%2Ffuture-of-broadband-workshop%2F&linkname=%E2%80%9CFuture%20of%20Broadband%E2%80%9D%20workshop\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F11%2Ffuture-of-broadband-workshop%2F&linkname=%E2%80%9CFuture%20of%20Broadband%E2%80%9D%20workshop\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F11%2Ffuture-of-broadband-workshop%2F&linkname=%E2%80%9CFuture%20of%20Broadband%E2%80%9D%20workshop\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F11%2Ffuture-of-broadband-workshop%2F&title=%E2%80%9CFuture%20of%20Broadband%E2%80%9D%20workshop\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "SoulBounce's Class Of 1992: Incognito 'Inside Life'",
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"content" : "Originally formed in the early 1970s, <b>Incognito,</b> the brainchild of musicians <b>Jean-Paul \"Bluey\" Maunick</b> and <b>Paul \"Tubbs\" Williams</b>, are synonymous with the acid jazz sounds of the early '90s, however their much-lauded debut, 1981's <i>Jazz Funk</i>, was released before the term \"acid jazz\" was even coined. Their debut can be seen as a pre-cursor of that movement, but it would be a decade before Bluey, minus Tubbs, would release their sophomore effort, <i>Inside Life</i>, and give birth to the Incognito that we are familiar with today.\n Where <i>Jazz Funk</i> was a strictly instrumental affair, Bluey decided to employ a handful of guest vocalists on <i>Inside Life</i> to give his compositions a little added "ooomph" and, hopefully, reach a wider audience. The album only had one hit single, a cover of <b>Ronnie Laws</b>' "Always There," but what a hit single it was. Reaching #6 on the UK charts and #17 on Billboard's Hot Dance Music chart, the track featured the powerhouse vocals of <b>Jocelyn Brown</b>, and has gone on to become a modern soul classic that can still be heard in some of the more discerning clubs and bars today. "Always There" may have been the hit, but <i>Inside Life</i> was packed full of gems, both of the instrumental and vocal variety. <b>Linda Muriel</b>'s sweet, sultry vocals on "Soho" illustrate what Bluey and company would later go on to accomplish with <b>Maysa Leak</b> by their side -- laid-back jazz-funk of the highest order, with a vocalist as smooth as their basslines.\n\n<br><br>\n\n"One Step To A Miracle," with its sinuous groove and muted horn arrangement is still one of my favorite Incognito instrumentals and could just as easily sit on their most recent release, <i>Surreal</i>, 20 years after it was made. The same can't be said of the majority of the vocal tracks on the album though, maybe with the exception of "Always There" and "Soho." They all sound very much of their time, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but just goes to show how over time Incognito have gone on to develop a more timeless sound.\n\n<br><br>\n\nThe album as a whole peaked at #42 on the UK charts and didn't chart at all in the US, but it was a landmark release in terms of the contribution it made to the acid jazz scene, and the wider soul/dance scene, both in the UK and US. Alongside contemporaries such as <b>Brand New Heavies</b>, <b>James Taylor Quartet</b> and <b>Jamiroquai</b>, they ushered in a golden era of British music, albeit one that isn't necessarily recognized by those who aren't familiar with the scene.\n\n<br><br>\n\n20 years after the release of this seminal album, Incognito show no signs of letting up and are still releasing new music and touring globally. The line-up is ever-changing and, with the exception of Maysa, Bluey is always calling upon the talents of a revolving cast of vocalists to bring his compositions to life. I think it's safe to say that Incognito are going nowhere anytime soon.\n\n<br><br>\n\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/xXmrVfB19XY\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"385\" width=\"480\"></iframe>\n\n<br><br>\n\n<strong>Incognito <em>Inside Life</em> [<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B001NYINS8/soulb-20\">Amazon</a>][<a href=\"https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/inside-life/id117504\">iTunes</a>][<a href=\"http://open.spotify.com/album/7daHnOAxyhL6OHOrfFVkTr\">Spotify</a>]</strong>"
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"title" : "‘I Ain’t Never Left Baltimore’: Meditations on Love and Charm City",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qHZj6J-ub44/UJT6oxgI8kI/AAAAAAAAGVI/Exf0Ks7uLUQ/s1600/6a00d83451960269e2016306b6f1c9970d-800wi.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"248\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qHZj6J-ub44/UJT6oxgI8kI/AAAAAAAAGVI/Exf0Ks7uLUQ/s400/6a00d83451960269e2016306b6f1c9970d-800wi.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div> <br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">‘I Ain’t Never Left Baltimore’: Meditations on Love and Charm City </span></i></b></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">by Isaiah M. Wooden | special to <b>NewBlackMan (in Exile)</b></span></span></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Shamrock</span></i></b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">: We done gone so far from Baltimore, we're losing the station. Yo', try a Philly station or some shit like that</span></i><b><i><u><span style=\"color:#663366;font-family:Times\"></span></u></i></b></span></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify;text-indent:0.5in\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Bodie:</span></i></b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\"> The radio in Philly is different?</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Shamrock</span></i></b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">: Nigga, please. You gotta be fucking with me, right? You ain't never heard a station outside of Baltimore?</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Bodie</span></i></b><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">: Yo' man, I ain't never left Baltimore except that Boys Village shit one day, and I wasn't tryin' to hear no radio up in that bitch.</span></i><b><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">—“</span></b><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Ebb<span> </span>Tide,” Season 2, Episode 1 of <i>The Wire</i> </span></span></div><div style=\"margin-left:0.5in;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"font-family:Times\">A funny thing happens on the way to Philadelphia in the season two opener of David Simon and Ed Burns’s generally lauded television drama series, <i>The Wire</i>: static. While traveling up I-95 in a white utility vehicle to pick up a package of drugs, Bodie Broadus (J.D. Williams) and Sean “Shamrock” McGinty (Richard Burton), two drug dealers in the fictional “Barksdale organization,” encounter an unexpected challenge: the interruption of their favorite Baltimore radio station by the scratches and clicks that often accompany a weak FM signal. The noise prompts Bodie to conclude that there is something wrong with the radio—that it is not properly working. Shamrock, however, knows better. He explains to Bodie that the problem is not with the radio, but with the signal: “We’re losing it…We’re losing the station, man…</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">We done gone so far from Baltimore, we're losing the station.” Boadie is confounded by this explanation because, as he reveals in the subsequent exchange, he had no knowledge that people in other cities listened to different radio stations. Save for a one-day stint in Boys Village, a juvenile detention center located in Prince George’s County, MD, he, in fact, has never left Baltimore. Thus, his radio stations have never failed him. In fact, his inability to find a suitable station for the ride northward leaves him questioning why anyone would ever leave Baltimore. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">The scene renders Boadie—who, across<i> </i>four seasons of <i>The Wire</i>, serves as a proxy for the many youth conscripted into the subterranean economies fueled by the drug trade—as provincial. His naïveté is meant to prompt laughter; his genuine surprise is meant to induce ridicule. And yet, in revisiting the scene nearly nine years after its original airing, Bodie’s incredulousness about the source of the radio static stirs something else, something more profound, in me. I find myself deeply moved by his expression of love for a city, a space, a particular geography that has provided him with years of uninterrupted radio. I am moved because, despite now living nearly 3000 miles away, I realize that, like Boadie, I ain’t never left Baltimore or, rather, Baltimore has never left me. </span></span></div><a name=\"more\"></a><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span><br> <div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">II. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I passed much of my youth as a kind of </span><span style=\"font-family:Times\">flâneur</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">, wandering the blocks between 25<sup>th</sup> Street and North Avenue on Baltimore’s eastside. Barclay Street and Greenmount Avenue also bounded my youthful strolls in the city. The three-story red brick row house where I was raised with two other rambunctious little boys—my brothers—was the launching ground for many adventures. Often, while my brothers bounced and pounced, I traipsed. Our house, with its narrow staircase and its cement backyard, held a lot of family history within its colorful walls. My mother had also been raised there. Its off-white linoleum floors carried the traces of her childhood too. But, for her, it was not always the most hospitable or even bearable place. In fact, when at fifteen she became pregnant with my oldest brother, it refused to accommodate her at all. This perhaps accounted for her tireless efforts to make that house, taller than it was wide, comfortable—a home—for my siblings and me. My father, in his best moments, proved an ideal co-conspirator. He too had a long history with what we affectionately called “445.”</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Raised with five of his siblings in a three-bedroom, two-story house located on the opposite side of the street, my father, much to the chagrin of my maternal grandmother, would knock on 445’s front door every morning to ensure that my mother was ready for school. His parents had determined that all of their children would graduate from high school. My father had determined that my mother needed to do the same. He knocked. My grandmother cursed. My mother graduated. Thereafter, the two of them attempted to create a life together in the Barclay neighborhood that raised them: the same Barclay neighborhood that would later become my playground—the scene of my youth; the backdrop for my meanderings. Their creative process was not without its struggles, however. Indeed, they endured many challenges. Family squabbles, financial difficulties, heroin addiction, cocaine abuse, domestic violence, depression, death, all, threatened to swallow them up at various moments. And yet, their commitment to each other, to their neighborhood, and to the wellbeing of their children never wavered. Together, they endeavored to fill my childhood with bright greens and purples and oranges, not cloudy grays or weary blues. I was allowed to wander and to wonder. I was encouraged to imagine.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of my father sweating profusely while sweeping our block from top to bottom. He would place the trash he collected in the very large brown paper bags he lifted from his job as a sanitation worker. Often, with a beer in his left hand and with his work done, he would say to me that if he could spend his days picking up trash in other people’s communities, then he could certainly do the same in his own. As my father sweated and swept, I usually raced up and down the street with my neighborhood friends. There were a lot of children living on my block and, provided that we were not in the midst of some puerile conflict, we functioned like a family. We played block ball, spades, and hide-n-go-seek. We danced to club music in basements. We did back flips on the mattresses dumped in the back of Greenmount Recreation Center. We ate fried chicken wings and French fries and gravy from the Chinese carry-out. We dodged bullets that threatened to cancel our lives too soon. Mostly, though, we laughed. I remember smashing my little body into a car traveling up East 23rd Street once. I was in a hurry to rejoin my friends after being summoned to the house by my mother. In my haste, I failed to look for oncoming traffic and so I hit the moving vehicle. It hurt. I survived. We laughed. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">***</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I bid farewell to Baltimore in 1996, the year I moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C. to attend a tony boarding school replete with a nine-hole golf course. My body rejected the scene change. Most days, I was plagued by anxiety so intense I feared I would permanently lose my breath. I longed to return to the community that had become so well practiced in cradling me. I seemed to only make it back there for major holidays. And then, during my sophomore year, an announcement: my mother decided she wanted to move to a different house in a different neighborhood. Much like Lena Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s<i> A Raisin in the Sun</i>, she had always dreamed of owning a home filled with a lot of sunlight. The grim pall cast by daily gun violence in our community was making it nearly impossible for her to even imagine the sun. So, she moved. My father resisted. She dragged him along anyway. My visits home became less and less frequent after that. This was, in part, due to the demands of college and early adulthood. My intense love affair with the nation’s capital did not help, however. I relished the independence D.C. offered. I liked its radio stations too. After years of artfully negotiating D.C.’s convolutedly mapped streets, Baltimore had come to represent static to me. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I lived in the D.C. Metropolitan area for eight blissful years before moving to the suburbs of Northern California to attend graduate school. The suburbs, I now know, do not suit me. My family remained in Baltimore. They continue to make their lives there. Despite a rather peripatetic existence, I, too, still consider that city home. Wondering and worrying often mark my returns, however. I often wonder if I have gone so far that, like Bodie and Shamrock, I have lost the station. I often worry if I will be able to find 92Q, Baltimore’s home for hip-hop and R&B music, again or, really, if it will be able to find me. I often wonder and worry if I’ll be able to feel my father’s presence. In the summer of 2008—the summer before I ventured west to take up residence on what was formerly farmland—my father, the man who passed many days sweating and sweeping, succumbed to the melancholia that often whelmed him. His broken heart, though shocked several times by a host of doctors, refused mending. My heart broke too. I have been wondering and worrying about <i>feeling</i> ever since. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Compelled by a need to feel, I went looking for the three-story red brick row house that gave life to my imagination on a recent visit home. Despite searching high and low, I could not find it anywhere. It was not in the place that I thought I had left it. Where were its palimpsestic walls? They had been turned into dust to make way for urban renewal—something new. I wept. I wept because the block that raised me, a block that was at one time so vital, was now oddly empty and quiet. It felt haunted. Cities do often traffic in ghosts. I felt haunted. And, then, I felt my father. I saw him: sweating and sweeping. I wept. He reminded me that, despite my distance from it, I had never really left Baltimore and, indeed, Baltimore had never really left me. I should stop worrying, he said: he had never left me either. He then proceeded to paint the empty space where the three-story red brick row house once stood with the bright greens and purples and oranges that were so omnipresent during my youth. And with each stroke, he renewed my love for Charm City. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">III.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Often when I tell people that I was raised in Baltimore, they begin to wax poetically about their deep appreciation for <i>The Wire</i>. The show’s searing depiction of urban life, decline, inequality and inequities is unmatched in television history, they say. Indeed, they are impressed that any televisual representation could so facilely capture the complexities of the drug trade, the shipping and manufacturing industries, urban school systems, the print media enterprise, and government bureaucracy all while interrogating the ways issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, age and ability inform and inflect modern life. Usually, there’s some talk of Avon’s guile, Stringer’s savvy, Omar’s fearlessness, Marlo’s ruthlessness, and Bubbles’s heart. Brother Mouzone, the bespectacled and sharply dressed hit man from New York with a gift for elegantly turning a phrase, frequently warrants a mention too. They go on and on…and so on. Inevitably, an elision between the real and the representational happens. The conversation turns to Baltimore’s “danger.” Various scenes from <i>The Wire</i>recounted as evidence of this. I try to offer a different perspective, my narrative about my time growing up in Charm City, but it’s often to no avail. What people really want is for me to confirm their belief in <span> </span><i>The Wire’s</i> veracity—its realism—and Baltimore’s infirmities. When I remark that I think the show fails as ethnography—or that I don’t think ethnography was a desired goal for its creators—they still demand that I do an accounting of the ways its fictional depictions document lived experiences. I stammer. I want to relay the stories of my youth with the nuance that they merit. I stutter. I certainly knew boys like Bodie growing up. We ate popcorn together and trash-talked after school at the Franciscan Youth Center. Their lives, however, didn’t unfold against the seemingly endless shades of gray that frame much of the action in <i>The Wire</i>. They unfolded in Technicolor. Indeed, like mine, they were more precise. I struggle. I want to narrate them with that precision. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Baltimore has proven a compelling site for gritty, urban dramas—from <i>Hom<span style=\"font-size:small\">i</span>cide: Life on the Streets</i> to <i>The Corner</i> to <i>The Wire</i>—time and time again. And while television shows like <i>One on One</i> and its spin-off <i>Cuts </i>have tried to recuperate the city as a site for boundless laughter, it circulates in the popular imaginary as a place devoid of life, of light and, crucially, of love. But there is a lot of love in the city. I love in the city. I love the city. It was not until recently, however, that I found the language to express the fullness of that love. It was a stroll through some of my favorite spots in Baltimore via the delightfully whimsical music video for Gregory Porter’s “Be Good” that allowed me to uncouple the shackles of silence and to be birthed into a new idiom. From the opening image of a little girl’s hands accessorized with cracked fingernail polish, a metallic purple bangle and a few charms to the subway-tiled walls of Penn Station framing large, olive green windows and long, horizontal, honey-colored benches—from the row of houses in Charles Village trimmed in every hue of the rainbow to the postmodern dance down stone sidewalks staged against a backdrop of modern sculpture—Porter’s “Be Good” video, which Pierre Bennu directed and for which Dirk Joseph provided playful and witty props, inspired me to make eloquent my deep and spiritual connection to Baltimore. I watched the video over and over again, enchanted by its vibrant greens and purples and oranges: the colors of my youth. As Porter’s agile baritone voice filled the air and etched the words “be good, be good, be good,” in my mind, I remembered. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I remembered: I ain’t never left Baltimore. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">I remembered: I love that city. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">***</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\">Isaiah M. Wooden</span></b><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Times\"> is a writer, performance-maker, and doctoral candidate in Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University. He was born and raised in the great city of Baltimore, MD.</span></span></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-7869381354103905981?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><em>For you…</em></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”<br>\n- Lawrence Kasdan</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The other day my friend was bemoaning a writing slump. The words were stuck somewhere, refusing all entreaties to come out – and play. My friend is a fairly prolific writer; multitasking on a book, a blog that could use some more tending and an active Twitter and Facebook account. If my friend’s tweets and Facebook postings were cobbled together, the result would run into thousands of words that make delicious sense. This is the same for many other folks that I know who are regularly afflicted with anxieties about that affliction called the writer’s block. They should perhaps get off Facebook and Twitter to write what the world considers writing. I hope they do not flee into the dying warmth of books. That would be sad because like my friend, they are a lovely, vibrant presence on social media, coolly cerebral with enough wit and zing to make us grateful readers always wanting more. But like a happy spinster who is not happy until she bows to the dictates of tradition and immerses herself in an unhappy marriage, many of today’s writers are not complete until they have filled the spaces of tradition. They must write that book, maintain that blog that defines and completes them if they are to remain current in that coveted coven of writers.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">If you are a writer, it is easy to understand my friend’s anxieties about (not) writing. One must write to be called a writer. Even in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, in the age of the Internet, one must write in the right places to be called a real writer. Even as the book is dying, the first and best space that establishes a writer’s cred is the book. Conventional wisdom says you are not a real writer until you have written a book. I do book reviews; as long as I fawn over a writer’s works, I am safe, but I always get the “Go and write your own book!” venom spat at me whenever I sheepishly admit that perhaps a book I just read is not to my personal taste. I have never written my own book; I have contributed pieces to a number of books. However, I prefer the digital space, it responds instantly to the immediacy of my thoughts. What I have to say should not have to wait to be cloistered in a book. I write nonstop and all my writings floating freely on the Internet would fill several books. But I am the first to agree that I am not a writer, certainly not in the conventional sense. I am a reader who writes, so there. I have previously said that I will never write a book; scratch that, I am feverishly writing a book of awsome prose. This has nothing to do with the fact that next year’s NLNG prize, a mere $100,000, will be for prose (whatever that means). I intend to enter for the competition. And I expect to win.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">I do maintain a blog. This blog. If my blog is feeling neglected, it is because this is the first time in a long time that I have written my own blog post. In my defense, I was occupied elsewhere, I fell in love with a certain campaign for the presidency of the United States and I could not stop obsessing, reading and writing about it. I could not. Actually, I was propelled not so much by love, but by rage, a certain burning anger about the sense of entitlement of the other, that had declared me the other. I wanted to make this so right. President Barack Hussein Obama had to win this for humanity. I found a spot under an e-tree and I kept reading, writing and ranting about my world, the world I would leave our children in. The polls held me spellbound; I trolled the Internet looking for polls that would tell me what I wanted to hear, and I hissed and snorted with derision at those that told me that well, my Obama was toast. In my rage, I became the other, snarling, hissing, and foaming in the mouth like a venomous snake that had fatally bitten itself. In the end Nate Silver was right to the last dot, and America proved why it is perhaps the greatest nation on earth; she broke down under the withering sun-rays of my glare and elected the right person to the White House. That Tuesday night ended my long vigil of cutting, snorting, grunting and pasting war missiles on Twitter, Facebook and listservs. My audience endured this avalanche of venom, glee, data (yes, <a href=\"http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/\">Nate Silver</a> is the man, when it comes to accurate polling data) that kept me hostage to my own fears and desires. I could not physically write, but some would say I was writing. If I cobbled together all I have “written” in the past several months, it would be an embarrassing pastiche of borrowed rage. It is over (Obama won, yay!!!), and I feel better. So I did not write anything original in that time period, but I was busy doing my best to rescue our presidency from those who do not see us as Americans. Actually, come to think of it. that is not correct; I managed to write reams on Facebook and Twitter about Chinua Achebe’s new book, <i>There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra</i>. I should cobble together all my tweets and Facebook posts about it into one essay and see if it makes sense. Now that’s a thought. Nah, I think I’ll simply keep reading.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Reading is easier for me than writing. Yes, writing has been hard for me in the past few months but I have managed to read. Most of what I have read has been about identity and our shared humanity. So, I read Chinua Achebe’s memoir, and Chika Ezeanya’s <i>Before We Set Sail</i>, an awesome historical fiction about Olaudah Equiano. I also read Uche Nduka’s lovely book of poetry, <i>Ijele</i> and Wole Soyinka’s new book, <i>Of Africa</i>. Achebe’s book as we all know caused a furor among Nigerians because of his views on the hell that was Biafra. It is probably the only book that I know that was reviewed by people who are yet to read the book, a big shame. I also took a detour into unfamiliar territory and devoured Lara Daniels’ romance novella, <i>The Officer’s Bride</i>. There was no rhyme or reason for why I chose these books; they just happened to be around, and I grabbed them to calm my nerves in the searing heat of the campaigns. I am back now, I am feeling a lot better and I promise to write more often in the traditional places where people expect my opinions. I took a lot of notes in the e-margins of these books (yes, Kindle is great like that) and I hope to cobble together my opinions on as many of these books as I can mutter. Pray that I get this done before the next presidential campaign.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In other news, a big congratulations to Chika Unigwe for winning the NLNG Prize for literature, a prize that is growing in stature and dollars. I am happy to see that the sponsors of the prize have stuck with a vision, mostly from listening to often biting criticisms. That is how it should be. The prize is still a work in progress and I shall have a lot to say down the road. Unigwe’s victory was also a commentary on identity and porous walls. The NLNG Prize in granting eligibility to writers in the Diaspora has ensured that no Nigerian writer subject to the debilitating mediocrity of most of Nigerian publishers will ever taste that prize. Mediocrity does not compete well with imported excellence. And again, I am not referring to the Nigerian writer. Speaking of which I know of many great Nigerians on Facebook and on Twitter who should be writers based on their postings. Tell them they are writers and they embrace writer’s block. I am back here I think, but I can’t promise I’ll stay here forever. I wail wherever dawn meets me. Let’s just make this simple, don’t wait for my blog posts, instead, follow me on twitter and on Facebook. I accept all comers.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">I am enjoying reading the works of African writers, I wolf them down any and everywhere I can find them. They are doing for me, what Soyinka and Achebe’s generation did for me in my childhood. They are different writers and thinkers but they were the Internet warriors of my time. Their generation of writers taught and entertained my generation – in the absence of the mystery and magic of technology, computers and the Internet. As a teenager, I loved Soyinka’s the <i>Jero</i> plays, and <i>Ake</i>, that wondrous book ranks up there on my list of memoirs. Soyinka is a genius as a playwright, however much of his poetry does not speak to me. There are many other poets of his generation that do (JP Clark, Awoonor Williams, Okogbule Wonodi for instance); nothing against his genius, just a personal preference. My lover swoons each time she reads <a href=\"http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/elements_of_lit_course6/20th%20Century/Collection%2015/TelephoneConversation.htm\"><i>Telephone Conversation</i></a>. Whenever I am headed to the doghouse, if I read it to her, it sometimes earns me a reprieve. I really do not much care for Soyinka’s prose; it is opaque when it should not be. How many PhD theses have been written on that (in) famous line in <i>The Interpreters</i>, <a href=\"http://mg.co.za/article/2008-11-21-metal-on-concrete-jars-my-drink-lobes\">Metal on concrete jars my drink lobes</a>?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">My favorite Achebe book is <i>Things Fall Apart</i>, followed by <i>No Longer at Ease</i>, <i>A Man of the People</i>, <i>Arrow of God</i> in no particular order. I don’t much care for Anthills of the Savannah. I love his essays,. Many people I respect have convinced me that in a technical sense at least, <i>Arrow of God</i> is Achebe’s best book. My dad, Papalolo, the autodidact swears by <i>A Man of the People.</i> He also loved <i>No Longer at Ease</i>. He admired the new bourgeoisie, the new intellectuals coming back home from England in those big ships and he was amused no end by their antics. I remember him, glass in hand (filled with Star Lager) twirling an imaginary key ring in his hand and going, “Sam Old chap, how’s the car behaving?” That was perhaps paraphrased from <i>No Longer at Ease</i>. My dad always reminds me that if I had not been born, he would have ended up in England like the Soyinkas and Achebes, and returned from England dressed in a winter coat and gloves! He also loved TM Aluko’s works, especially <i>One Man One Wife</i> and <i>One Man One Matchet</i>, don’t ask me why. Those were the days. Whenever I remember Achebe, I remember my dad Papalolo and the power of words, how one man’s words far away could connect me and my dad and bond us over a shared passion. I do love my dad and many of my stories come from him, especially <a href=\"http://www.eclectica.org/v9n4/ikheloa.html\"><i>Cowfoot by Candlelight</i></a>. I have said he was an autodidact, he did not advance past the 8th grade but the quality of the education of his time was such that he could today put many PhDs to shame when it comes to reading and writing. Rant over. And you, my friend, this is a long rambling way of saying, keep writing. I enjoy your writing. And you know that.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/1535/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/1535/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xokigbo.wordpress.com&blog=25734203&post=1535&subd=xokigbo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p>"
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"content" : "<p><em><a title=\"Rohit Chopra\" href=\"http://www.scu.edu/cas/comm/faculty/chopra.cfm\">Rohit Chopra</a> continues the series on South Asia with a reflection on the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. Close to three decades after the <a title=\"Anti-Sikh riots as genocide\" href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20178792\">pogroms</a>, most of those responsible for the violence have not been brought to justice.</em></p>\n<p>In 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her bodyguards, gangs of Hindus led by Congress leaders fanned out across Delhi <a title=\"1984 anti-Sikh riots\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots\">hunting for Sikhs</a>. Sajjan Kumar, H.K.L. Bhagat, Lalit Maken, and Jagdish Tytler were alleged, variously, to have had prior knowledge of the attacks, planned, or led the mobs.</p>\n<p>The neighborhoods of east Delhi known colloquially as <em>jamnapaar</em> or across-the-Jamuna witnessed some of the worst violence. If such violence, already at the limit of comprehension, can be measured or comparatively assessed.</p>\n<p>My mother, brother, and I had stayed in east Delhi in the early 1980s while my father was working overseas. We had lived for a few months in Nirman Vihar, a nondescript colony at the edge of Shakarpur. Shakarpur was an agglomeration of unfinished brick structures that stayed unfinished as the locality mutated into a ever-more dense and crowded iteration of itself, a perfect symbol of east Delhi’s arrested, beleaguered, modernity. We had later moved a mile down the road to C-Block Preet Vihar where my grandparents had built an extraordinarily uncomfortable three-storied house.</p>\n<p>There was exactly one shop in C-Block Preet Vihar, which sold bread, milk, eggs, Campa Cola, batteries, and notebooks. For everything else we had to walk to Nirman Vihar or Shakarpur. Right on the border between the neighborhoods, on the northeast corner of the road separating them, stood a small chicken stall owned by a Sikh. Bright orange roasted chickens dangled from the awning above the shop. A movie theater, Radhu Palace, was located down the road.<br>\n<span></span><br>\nDuring the attacks, Sikhs were killed at that intersection. They were dragged by their hair and forced into columns of piled-up tires which were set ablaze. Shops owned by Sikhs in Shakarpur were looted and destroyed. We heard all of this when we next visited Delhi. The chicken stall was gone.</p>\n<p>The entrance to the Radhu Palace cinema was stained with blood. Sikhs had been chased there and then killed by a mob in the throes of passionate rage. Or they had been taken there and then killed in cold blood. The truth depended on whether you believed the violence against Sikhs was spontaneous or was planned.</p>\n<p>In Trilokpuri, Kishori Lal, a butcher by trade, went on such a spontaneous three-day spree of killing Sikhs, which earned him the nickname “<a title=\"The Butcher of Trilokpuri\" href=\"http://www.firstpost.com/delhi/keep-the-butcher-of-trilokpuri-behind-bars-angry-sikhs-to-delhi-govt-216079.html\">The Butcher of Trilokpuri</a>.”</p>\n<p>This was simply <a title=\"Rajiv Gandhi comment\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Big_Tree_Falls\">the earth shaking</a>.</p>\n<p>We heard other stories too. Someone told us that Sikhs had distributed sweets on hearing of Indira Gandhi’s death. Their would-be killers had shared these sweets with them, only to come back the next day to avenge her killing. Then there was that one Sikh somewhere in east Delhi who was given shelter by a family only to turn on them and murder them in their sleep.</p>\n<p>It was still wrong to kill them, of course, but they had celebrated Indira Gandhi’s death.</p>\n<p>I had been in the midst of a table-tennis championship match in school in Calcutta on the morning that Indira Gandhi was assassinated. BBC had reported that Indira Gandhi was dead though the Indian media, gravely aware of their national responsibility, lingered in confirming her death. The best player from the other team had stayed away. We were winning– a mere six points away from seizing the inter-house championship trophy–when the match was called off and school was declared shut. When the match was replayed two weeks later, we lost.</p>\n<p>I have never forgiven Indira Gandhi for that.</p>\n<p>My father came to pick us up from school, my brother and I, to take us home. Trying to make it back to Lake Gardens, we were turned away by mobs at several places. On Dhakuria bridge men holding bricks threatened to smash our car, screaming “<em>bhenge debo boka choda</em>” (we’ll break your car, you dumb fucks). “There are schoolchildren in the car,” my father said, “they have not eaten since morning.” “Schoolbus, schoolbus,” one of them, obviously a leader of some kind, shouted to his minions, his face shining with sweat, “<em>jete de</em>” (let them go).</p>\n<p>Whatever you say about Calcutta, they respect education. And women and children.</p>\n<p>I learned that mobs are capable of reason.</p>\n<p>The image of a concrete compound stained with blood stayed with me for a long time. I imagined the stain growing fainter but refusing to vanish, fading no more beyond a dull pink. I visited Delhi countless times after that, living there for long stretches as well. I always meant to go to the Radhu Palace cinema to see the blood stain, but never got around to it.</p>\n<p>What is scandalous about riots in India is not their scale of destruction nor the horror of the detritus of human life that they leave behind. What is scandalous is the speed with which all traces of the riots are eradicated, roads washed and cleaned of blood and hair and burnt flesh, the shards of glass and metal removed even if the burned husks of shops stay burned awhile.</p>\n<p>And this in India where otherwise the streets are not cleaned for months.</p>\n<p>In January 1993 a second round of Hindu-Muslim riots broke out in Bombay, following an earlier round of rioting after the December 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid. “The party’s started again,” someone in the know shouted in the St. Xavier’s College canteen foyer. Someone else shared the information that Lalit, the bar across the Irani restaurant, Kayani, would be open during the curfew that was bound to follow. “Cops have to drink somewhere too,” he added by way of rationale.</p>\n<p>Next week people traded stories in the foyer. “We were ready with hockey sticks and crowbars,” said an acquaintance of mine who lived in Prabhadevi, “if the Muslims came from Dubai by boat.” Another acquaintance recalled with amusement the poetic talents of the members of a crowd on Warden road who, as they passed outside his building, were chanting “<em>Tel lagaao Dabar ka, gaand maaro Babar ka</em>” (apply Dabar oil and sodomize Babar [Babar here symbolizing the figure of the Muslim invader]).</p>\n<p>And always, the counterpoint. Some Muslim men had raped two Hindu girls somewhere near Marine Lines. Or maybe Marine Drive. I had heard the story several times in the few days that college had been shut.</p>\n<p>What alarms me is how readily <a title=\"Rumors and the Social Circulation of Hate- Veena Das\" href=\"http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504639851915#preview\">I believed the rumors</a> about the Muslims as I had about the Sikhs ten years earlier.</p>\n<p>I oppose riots. Of course.</p>\n<p>Well after 1984 and even 1992, I wound up one Delhi autumn evening in Trilokpuri by accident, near a wall on which was painted a bright pink pair of gums beneath the words “Durga Daant Clinic” (Durga Teeth Clinic). Perhaps the <a title=\"Butcher of Trilokpuri\" href=\"http://www.indianexpress.com/news/butcher-of-trilokpuri-s-case-sent-back-to-review-board/912100/0\">Butcher of Trilokpuri</a> had passed by that wall at some point of time.</p>\n<p>A few weeks later, I saw H.K.L Bhagat, on a walk in Lodhi Gardens, surrounded by commandos. I remembered a story, perhaps in <em>India Today</em>, about Bhagat spending his days cowering in fear of reprisal from Sikhs.</p>\n<p>At a cousin’s wedding in Delhi that December, I spotted Sajjan Kumar among the guests, difficult to miss. “<em>Wapas aa gaya hai</em>” (he’s back), I heard more than one person say heralding the return of the prodigal from the political wilderness after his troubles related to his role in the 1984 violence. People were lining up to touch his feet.</p>\n<p>Visiting Delhi earlier this summer, after seven years, I found a city transformed. I lost myself in Delhi’s buildings, the teeming malls and stalled construction projects of east Delhi no less fascinating to me than the historical monuments, shrines, and ruins of the old city. In a vast, empty three-storied mall, all of two stores were open. A giant poster of an actress who I could not identify dangled from floor to ceiling. Heading over a bridge, my eye caught a tableau of rusting metal shapes twisting up from the ground like the skeletons of giant, monstrous beasts who had died in conference. It was an abandoned water park, a quixotic hope in an area of the city plagued with severe water problems.</p>\n<p>Nearly at the end of my journey, I remembered. How much time will it take to get to Radhu Palace, I asked my mother, hoping to be able to make a quick visit there on the morning of the day I was flying back to the US.</p>\n<p>They tore that down a long while ago, my mother said. 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"title" : "The tragedy of David Petraeus",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/petraeus_11.jpg\"></div><p>\nUnless you've been living in a cave for the past five hours, you've probably heard by now that David Petraeus -- perhaps the most universally admired person in American public life -- suddenly resigned as director of the CIA for, as he <a href=\"http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/blog/11505\">told</a> agency staffers in a message Friday, "engaging in an extramarital affair." \n</p>\n<p>\nSlate's Fred Kaplan <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/11/09/petraeus_resigns_over_affair_with_biographer.html\" title=\"Slate\">reports</a> that his paramour was none other than Paula Broadwell, the co-author of a highly flattering biography of the former general, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/All-Education-General-David-Petraeus/dp/1594203180\" title=\"Amazon.com\"><i>All In: The Education of David Petraeus</i></a>. (<span>FP</span> tried to contact Broadwell via several channels Friday, but she did not respond.)\n</p>\n<p>\nAccording to the <a href=\"http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PETRAEUS_RESIGNS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-11-09-17-32-07\" title=\"AP\">AP</a>, the affair came to light during an investigation by the FBI, presumably related to its counterintelligence function. (Other accounts are offering more salacious details, but I can't vouch for the quality of the reporting.)\n</p>\n<p>\nAs recently as Monday, Broadwell published an article titled "General David Petraeus’s Rules for Living"on the <i>DailyBeast</i>'s website. Rule No. 1: "Lead by example from the front of the formation." Rule No. 5: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear view mirrors—drive on and avoid making them again."\n</p>\n<p>\nWhat's clear is that Broadwell, a veteran whose book began as a dissertation project, was starstruck by her subject.\n</p>\n<p>\nIn January, when her book, co-authored with <i>Washington Post </i>editor Vernon Loeb, came out, <i>Rolling Stone</i>'s Michael Hastings <a href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-legend-of-david-petraeus-20120131#ixzz2BlwNXj2B\" title=\"Rolling Stone\">ripped</a> it as "such blatant, unabashed propaganda, it’s as if the general has given up pretending there’s a difference between the press and his own public relations team." When Broadwell appeared on the <i>Daily Show </i>to promote the book, she joked, "He can turn water into bottled water" and noted "he is a very high-energy person." They spent a lot of time together on runs, a favorite Petraeus activity. She said Petraeus had "no dirty secrets."\n</p>\n<p>\nIn her book, Broadwell describes how she first met Petraeus in 2006, when he was still a lieutenant general, at a dinner arranged by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "I introduced myself," she writes, "and told him about my research interests; he gave me his card and offered to put me in touch with other researchers and service members working on the same issues. ... I took full advantage of his open-door policy to seek insight and share perspectives."\n</p>\n<p>\nBroadwell was also an occasional contributor to <span>Foreign Policy</span>, via Tom Ricks's blog. In one post, she <a href=\"http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/10/20/ignatius_kaplan_and_klein_just_don_t_get_it_petraeus_is_changing_the_afghan_war_s_i\">lauded</a> Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy; in <a href=\"http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/23/travels_with_paula_iii_arghandabis_like_the_coalition_reconstruction_efforts\">another</a>, she wrote, "Gen. David H. Petraeus's counterinsurgency guidance calls on coalition forces to be first with the truth."\n</p>\n<p>\nThis is a huge story, obviously, and the Twitterverse is going wild with off-color jokes. I'm sure more salacious details are going to come out, and we'll no doubt learn in more detail why Petraeus felt he had to resign. Some will say he shouldn't have. Ricks writes: "Petraeus is retired from the military. If the affair \nhappened back when he was on active duty, it is part of the past. And \nthere is nothing illegal about civilians having affairs." On the other hand, it's obviously not a good thing for your CIA director to be subject to possible blackmail.\n</p>\n<p>\nStill, Petraeus's downfall is a huge loss for the United States. Not only was he one of the country's top strategic thinkers, he was also one of the few public figures revered by all sides of the political spectrum for his dedication and good judgment. He salvaged two disastrous wars, for two very different presidents. He would have been a useful check on groupthink inside the Obama administration -- an independent voice for a White House often accused of being insular and one-dimensional. And if anyone could have restored confidence in the CIA after <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/03/world/africa/petraeuss-lower-profile-at-cia-leaves-void-in-benghazi-furor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0\" title=\"New York Times\">Benghazi</a>, it would have been him.\n</p>\n<p>\nPetraeus's exit leaves a bitter taste. We all make mistakes. Here's hoping he makes a comeback.\n</p>"
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"title" : "How to write about children in Africa",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/children-1.jpg?w=549&h=367\" height=\"367\" width=\"549\">In early October this year, PBS released the documentary <a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/half-the-sky/\">‘Half the Sky’</a>, based on the book by frequent AIAC target and New York Times journalist <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/tag/nicholas-kristof/\">Nicholas Kristof</a> and his wife Sheryl WuDunn (a former Times journalist) focusing on the lot of girls and women in the Global South. As part of Kristof’s mission to replace their oppression by opportunity, he visits a number of sites. The action usually revolves around Kristof accompanied by a famous American actress. The first stop had to be in Africa, of course. <span></span>Kristof visits Sierra Leone where he, along with actress Eva Mendes, takes on the case of a 14-year old girl Fulamatu, who has been raped repeatedly by a next door neighbor, passing as a “pastor.” Kristof and Mendes visit the shelter where the girl was taken by her mother. Over the next few minutes, Kristof proceeds to do his own police work, and takes it upon himself to arrest the rapist. He also counsels the young girl. By the end of the segment however, it is unclear whether the rapist will stay in prison and pay for the crime and whether Fulamatu will be safe (her father throws Fulamatu and her mother out of the house because of the “shame” and attention they bring to the family). The whole ends with an odd scene, with Mendes — who looks as she does not want to be there — saying goodbye to Fulamatu, offering her a necklace and hugging her: “You are so beautiful, brave and strong.” Kristof then moves on to Thailand and Mendes goes back to the US.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Kristof has drawn criticism for his <a href=\"http://www.racialicious.com/2012/10/08/your-women-are-oppressed-but-ours-are-awesome-how-nicholas-kristof-and-half-the-sky-use-women-against-each-other/\">storytelling techniques, his tendency to exoticize cultures,</a> <a href=\"http://blog.witness.org/2012/10/half-the-sky/\">his parachute style</a> of engagement, his disregard <a href=\"http://postwhoreamerica.com/nicholas-kristof-half-the-sky-all-the-credit/\">for the impact of structural forces and power dynamics</a> and <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/10/15/you-need-nicholas-kristof/\">ill-suited solutions</a>. But Kristof is not the first and will certainly not be the last Western reporter who, in his conscientising endeavors, locates himself central to the stories of vulnerable children. Neither will he be the last one to steer his parachute towards Africa.</p>\n<p>The category “African children” occupies a rather distinct, almost symbolic position in Western media. Stories about African children as victims of hunger, malnutrition, disease and violence attract quite some attention, compassion, aid and increasingly hands-on ‘help’ from visitors from wealthier Western countries. Interest in the lives of these young people and awareness of the challenges they face is important, not lastly because there are so many of them. Around 50% of sub-Saharan Africans are under 25 years old. They’re also Africa’s “future.” They’ll be running the continent at some point. (As we know this is also becoming a cliché and platitude pulled out at every conference or press conference by self-serving politicians and those undermining public education.) A second reason why these young Africans deserve a spotlight is that they carry the brunt of today’s developmental problems. When it comes to hunger, malaria, malnutrition and poverty, it’s often the children who are most vulnerable. Reporting on the challenges this group faces and thinking of ways to protect and empower them is therefore essential to meaningful development initiatives.</p>\n<p>Yet the ways in which the media frame and report their lives reveal some fundamental shortcomings that directly relate to the particular position that African children occupy in the collective Western imagination. Here, the child has turned into a ‘type’; a type with a typical and singular story of despair and helplessness. <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/10/11/101011crat_atlarge_gourevitch\">This story</a> started in 1968 with photos of child victims of the Biafran secessionist war and was passionately taken to the global stage by Band Aid’s 1984 ‘<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EJWEXrykdQ\">Do They Know It’s Christmas</a>’ campaign which effectively drew global attention and compassion to the victims of the Ethiopian famine. Photographs of perishing children with flies on their faces and desperate stares into the cameras shocked the world, pulling in millions of dollars. The overwhelming momentum of the campaign and its usage of the pictures seem to have set a trend. Having proved their shock — and some would say sensational value — African youth came to serve as the ultimate illustration of disaster and hopelessness.</p>\n<p>Thirty years after Band Aid’s Campaign, ideas around the typical ‘African child’ as the ultimate victim of drought, famine, poverty and disease have firmly taken root in the Western imagination. Today, the “remember the children in Africa” guilt-trip seems as effective in pushing obstinate European kids to finish their supper as it was during the campaign.</p>\n<p>Similarly, much of disaster reporting (and NGO funding appeals) on Africa have made use of the African child’s compelling victimhood; from nature, disease and geography casualties to mutilation and abduction targets. To argue that these child victims don’t exist or shouldn’t get outside support would be senseless. As real as the Ethiopian famine was in the 1980s, as real are the devastating effects of malaria, HIV/AIDS, famine, wars and displacement today. The problems are real, the children are real and many are in need of real support. The problem, however, is that the ‘African child’ has become a rather static and one dimensional symbol; a symbol that renders all children in Africa into unclothed, dirty, muddy and powerless creatures. It obscures the wide diversity in children and renders those that do not suffer ‘the African way’ invisible.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/children-2.jpg?w=549&h=365\" height=\"365\" width=\"549\">Like Kristof’s documentary, CNN’s report on <a href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/14/world/africa/african-child-life/index.html\">‘The Life of an African Child’</a> (which aired earlier this summer), is also a case in point. In the report, CNN quantifies the story and presents it as statistics. There is an obvious attraction in telling stories by numbers. Not only is it clear and space efficient, this type of numerical message is more likely to stick with readers. Yet the power of simplicity goes hand in hand with the defect of falsehood. The danger is that in the process of convenient simplifying, a plethora of fictional tales will trump the facts.</p>\n<p>CNN, for example, tells us that “In Sub-Saharan Africa, 34% of children under five are sleeping under an insecticide-treated mosquito net.” Being close to a third, the 34% is easy to remember. And since even the most couch bound Icelander won’t struggle to grasp the concept of a mosquito net, for those with an interest in African children it’s a story that sticks. But since this figure doesn’t tell us anything about the percentage of children who actually need the net or how this number relates to, say, the situation 5 or 10 years ago, it is bound to spell (out) a whole lot of fiction about its young subjects. Should the reader be alarmed by the implication that two-thirds of Africa’s under 5 year olds are still waiting for their nets? Or should we be delighted that, given the (hypothetical) fact that, say, 70% of all Sub Saharan African under 5 year olds actually need a net and that “34%” represents an increase of — I don’t know — 200% compared to a decade ago, we’re halfway toward a happy ending? Crying for context, the straightforward number smudges the facts.</p>\n<p>Nevertheless, the report provides a useful and clear oversight of major themes and challenges that youth in Africa face. Contrary to much news on the subcontinent, the report does not fail to uncover the subcontinental variety. To give another example, it contrasts Burundi’s percentage of underweight under 5 year olds (39%) with Swaziland’s (6%), and juxtaposes the primary school teacher per pupil ratio in the Seychelles (1:22) against the Central African Republic’s (1:95). Moreover, it steers clear from the popular disaster focus and expresses some solid optimism. The report tells us that today, the number of African children dying before the age of five has decreased with almost 50% over the past four decades. Especially in the current context of relatively high rates of GDP growth in various countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia as well as Tanzania on the one hand, and hopeful democratic improvements on the other, some cautious cheering would therefore not seem out of place. Isn’t it rather baffling, then, that <a href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/14/world/africa/african-child-life/index.html\">the report’s single visual illustration</a> shows us an apparently dirt-poor girl, clothed in rags, carrying a muddy torn bottle?</p>\n<p>Not really; CNN shows the African child that Western audiences came to ‘know’ and expect (ever since Biafra and Ethiopia). The type of child we are used to think and speak for; the ‘voiceless other’ whose imagined life is captured in tables and graphs and whose priorities and solutions we feel capable to define. With half of Africa’s population under 25, it might be about time to pass the microphone to them and listen to what they have to say.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/children-3.jpg?w=549&h=365\" height=\"365\" width=\"549\"><a href=\"http://www.childrensradiofoundation.org/\">Children’s Radio Foundation</a> (CRF), a Cape Town based non-profit organization, chose to confront the problem by doing exactly that: offering youth not only the microphones, but equipping them with both the media skills and tools that encourage them to think and question critically, vent their concerns, share their stories, advocate their ideas and connect with their peers (in their own languages). Being central to their communities’ developments, young people have stories to tell and relevant opinions to express. What many don’t have is the infrastructure to air and share these ideas.</p>\n<p>Making use of the continent’s most widespread and penetrative medium — in 2011, over 90% of African households had access to a radio yet only 6.2% of the population logged on to the internet — CRF has been working with local radio stations in Rwanda, Liberia, South Africa, the DRC, Tanzania, Zambia and Ethiopia since 2006. By training voluntary facilitators at community radio stations in producing youth driven radio shows (and providing them with appropriate program curricula), they create sustainable platforms for youth dialogue. Across South Africa alone, CRF works with 12 different community radio stations (from Atlantis to Aliwal North to Moutse) where youth report every week on problems such as alcohol abuse, gang activity or <a href=\"http://soundcloud.com/childrensradiofoundation/radio-workshop-a-mother-and\">xenophobia</a> and add their voice to debates around issues such as polygamy, corporal punishment and gender equity. Nationwide, SA FM airs ‘The Radio Workshop’, which offers youth a mix of current affairs and infotainment every Saturday at noon.</p>\n<p>In Tanzania, one of the partner stations is Radio Sauti (which reaches 5 million listeners). Here young Tanzanians have shared their experiences of, for example, <a href=\"http://soundcloud.com/mycn/sayari-ya-watoto-uelewa-wa\">how their parents’ conflicts affect them</a> and <a href=\"http://soundcloud.com/mycn/sayari-ya-watoto-uelewa-wa\">the meaning of their country’s Constitution</a>. In a broadcast (and audio slide show) from Arusha, streetchildren speak about <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/49388742\">their daily routines and interactions on the streets</a>. More Westwards, in the DRC, the Congolese broadcaster RTNC made room for the youth show Yoka Biso, where youth explore challenges like <a href=\"http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13576904/Yoka%20Biso.mp3.mp3\">educational inequality</a>. Today, Children’s Radio Foundation-trained youth reporters are producing radio shows from 50 different project sites. Far from displaying voiceless victims, the radio shows are a testament to children’s capacity to be agents for change and to confront critical community issues themselves. Far from being misrepresented in some graph or video, youth attempt to reclaim their own stories.</p>\n<p><em>Children’s Radio Foundation productions are accessible worldwide <a href=\"http://www.childrensradiofoundation.org/index.php\">through their website</a>, <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/childrensradiofoundation\">Facebook page</a> and <a href=\"http://soundcloud.com/childrensradiofoundation/\">podcasts on SoundCloud</a>. Photos by <a href=\"http://lemadphoto.blogspot.be/\">Lerato Maduna</a>. More photos <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/childrensradiofoundation/photos_stream\">here</a>.<br>\n</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/57159/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/57159/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=57159&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The remittance industry is failing those who need it most – By Dr Ismail Ahmed, founder of WorldRemit",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><div style=\"width:264px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-9910\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/11/06/the-remittance-industry-is-failing-those-who-need-it-most-by-dr-ismail-ahmed-founder-of-worldremit/ismail-ahmed/\"><img title=\"ismail-ahmed\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ismail-ahmed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"339\"></a><p>Dr Ismail Ahmed is founder of WorldRemit, a money transfer company which seeks to introduce graeter competetivity into the market.</p></div><p><strong><a href=\"https://www.worldremit.com/en/home\"></a></strong>The remittance market in Africa has for too long been monopolised by companies imposing very high fees that are on average three times those charged on remittances to Asia. They combine a pricing structure that imposes extortionate minimum charges with consistently poor services.</p><p>This has its roots in Western Union’s early activities in the African continent. As the first formal mover in the money transfer market, it worked to establish long-standing exclusivity agreements with all major African banks and money transfer agents, barring them from working with competitors. Such exclusivity agreements have propelled Western Union to a near-monopoly position in key African corridors, and have prevented the industry from being competitive. In spite of successful campaigns on the part of African diaspora groups which have resulted in the banning of exclusivity clauses by African governments, progress has generally been very slow.</p><p>In West Africa, regulators have been particularly successful in breaking down the barriers created by Western Union’s near-monopoly position. However, in spite of signs that the markets are opening up and that competition is finally beginning to flourish in some African remittance corridors, banks and other financial service providers have been slow in entering into new relationships with money transfer companies offering lower fees. This is hardly surprising given that the existing arrangements were of benefit to both Western Union and their correspondent banks.</p><p>This long-term remittance malpractice has meant the cost of sending money to Africa has remained high. According to the World Bank, in 2011 the average cost of sending money from Ghana to Nigeria was 38.94 per cent of the send amount and it was as much as 47.24 per cent between Tanzania and Kenya. In contrast, the cost of sending money from Malaysia to the Philippines is less than three percent of the send amount.</p><p>In 2009, with support from G8 heads of state, the Global Remittances Working Group pledged that it would:</p><p><em>“…work to achieve in particular the objective of a reduction of the global average costs of transferring remittances from the present 10% to 5% in 5 years through enhanced information, transparency, competition and cooperation with partners, generating a significant net increase in income for migrants and their families in the developing world.”</em></p><p>We are nearing the five year deadline of this agreement, and still some way off achieving these goals.</p><p>Companies working in remittance need to be more customer-focused. When we start to look at the needs of those transferring money to Africa, what becomes clear is that migrants (particularly those earning a weekly wage) prefer to send smaller amounts of money more frequently. At present, extortionate minimum fees (which can be as much as half of the send money) leave migrants with little choice but to wait until the end of the month to remit comparatively large amounts (typically values greater than $200).</p><p>The World Bank is not setting a good example. Mandated to lead international efforts in reducing the cost of remittances, its flagship project – a remittance price comparison website – is based on the flawed assumption that migrants will want to send larger amounts of money back to Africa, basing its model on average remittance transactions of $200 and $500. Only a very small percentage of African migrants send $500 at a time, and those that do send $200 or more usually only do so because of prohibitive minimum fees.</p><p>At <a href=\"https://www.worldremit.com/\">WorldRemit</a>, we have seen that offering comparatively low fees for transferring small amounts of money has resulted in a far lower average transaction value (around £96 to Africa) than the industry average of about £350. When looking at transfers from the UK to Ghana, for example, 60 percent are below £50 in value, and we have seen huge take-up of airtime top-up, which allows migrants to send mobile airtime without incurring minimum fees.</p><p>Lowering the price of remittance to Africa has significant implications for development. According to the World Bank, reducing fees would generate a net increase in income for recipients in developing countries of about $15 billion.</p><p>In some African countries, up to 40 percent of households rely entirely on remittances to get by; in these instances, the ability to send small amounts of money swiftly is vitally important. We see African migrants sending as little as £1 in airtime top-up. Frequently this is in response to a crisis, where a family member requires the small amount of money it takes to make an important call or pay for transport to a doctor. This support is not possible when you have large minimum fees.</p><p>The big international remittance players have created services that don’t cater for customers’ actual needs. As we look forward, advances in remittance technology such as mobile money transfer and airtime top up will continue to help drive down prices. However, the market must become more competitive and respond better to the needs of migrants. At present, it is being held back by artificial barriers erected by big global brands. This must change if the remittance industry is to truly serve its customers.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Dr Ismail Ahmed is founder of <a href=\"https://www.worldremit.com/en/home\">WorldRemit</a>.</strong></p><p> </p>"
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"content" : "<p>Some observations from the power-free zone. … [<a href=\"http://www.tnl.net/blog/2012/11/04/hurricane-sandy/\">visit site to read more</a>]</p>\n<p><p><i><a href=\"http://tnl.net/who\" rel=\"author\" title=\"Who is Tristan Louis?\">Tristan Louis</a> is the founder and CEO of <a href=\"http://www.keepskor.com\" title=\"Keepskor\">Keepskor</a> and writes <a href=\"http://www.tnl.net/\" title=\"tnl.net\">tnl.net</a>, where this was initially posted under the title <a href=\"http://www.tnl.net/blog/2012/11/04/hurricane-sandy/\">Hurricane Sandy</a>. </i></p></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TNLnet/~4/eLN6ll09-SE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.2.2/2569?ns=guardian&pageName=History+of+Africa+through+western+eyes%3AArticle%3A1822754&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Africa+%28News%29%2CMedia%2CWorld+aquatics+championships+2011%2CWorld+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly&c6=Robert+Bates+for+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fthinkafricapress.com%2F%22%3EThink+Africa+Press%3C%2Fa%3E%2C+part+of+the+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2Fseries%2Fguardian-africa-network%22+title%3D%22Guardian+Africa+Network%22%3EGuardian+Africa+Network%3C%2Fa%3E&c7=12-Nov-01&c8=1822754&c9=Article&c10=&c11=World+news&c13=Guardian+Africa+network&c25=&c30=content&c42=News&h2=GU%2FNews%2FWorld+news%2FAfrica\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>From the dark continent to the emerging one, crude generalisations say more about the viewer than the viewed</p><p>The euro crisis, double-dip recessions, Occupy protests and Libor corruption scandals aside, it seems that capitalism is alive and well – at least in Africa. Africa is '<a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21541015\">Rising</a>', westerners are often told these days, after decades of economic ruin, civil war and governmental mismanagement. Impressive economic growth <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/region/SSA\">statistics</a>, the \"burgeoning African middle <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18094180\">class</a>\", mushrooming mobile phone and internet use – these things are all proudly <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/288cef92-50b3-11e1-8cdb-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F288cef92-50b3-11e1-8cdb-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dambisamoyo.com%2Fbooks-and-publications%2Fpublicat\">trumpeted</a>, \"remind[ing] the world of the capitalist way\". But why all this 'good news' now?</p><p>The seemingly obvious answer is that things are indeed improving in Africa and the west's commentariat are now, quite simply, reporting what is happening. But to properly understand the Africa Rising narratives, we also need to look at what they are a response to – the much older, and much more negative, Dark Continent narratives that have dominated western discourses on Africa for centuries.</p><h3>The bad: the creation of a Dark Continent</h3><p>Tellingly, we can trace these negative narratives to the beginnings of Western Civilisation itself. In <em>Histories</em>, Herodotus (aka The Father of History) relates a cautionary tale about what happens in Africa. Five Nasamonians – \"enterprising youths of the highest rank\" – were off exploring southern Libya. After several days of wandering, they found some fruit trees and started helping themselves. Then, several \"men of small stature\", \"all of them skilled in magic\", seized and captured them, taking them for inscrutable and dastardly magic-dwarf purposes.</p><p>In this way, Herodotus suggested that Africa was not only different, but also more threatening, sinister and dangerous than Greece. Subsequent generations of European <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mandeville\">writers</a> followed suit, substituting fantasy for fact in markedly antagonistic ways.</p><p>Europeans created an image of Africa that was the perverse opposite of Europe's – its mirror image. Europe's general <a href=\"http://kirbyk.net/hod/image.of.africa.html\">superiority</a> would, by comparison with and in contrast to this image, be self-evident. Europe's own idea of itself was thus predicated on its image of Africa (and other so-called backward regions).</p><p>From the 17th century onwards, debates over the slave trade, racism, and colonialism helped crystallise these negative narratives in western discourses. Abolitionists argued that Africa was a place of suffering because the slave trade provoked war, disease, famine and poverty; anti-Abolitionists said Africa was so forbidding as to make slavery in foreign countries a positive escape. Either way, Africa was full of \"savagery\" and constant war.</p><p>The growing discourse on race added a further dimension to these debates, supposedly explaining \"African backwardness\" and \"savagery\" as biologically-predetermined characteristics. Social Darwinists, such as Herbert Spencer, and eugenicists, such as Francis Galton, exerted enormous influence and lent credibility to generalised xenophobia. That these works were extended exercises in sophistry and casuistry need hardly be mentioned.</p><p>Colonialism went even further; because of what they thought they knew about Africa – a land of fantastical beasts and cannibals, slaves, \"backward races\" and so on – the colonial powers managed to convince themselves that they were subjugating Africans (and others) <em>for their own good</em>. European violence was going to stop the wars endemic to Africa, and their enlightened (over-)rule would be to the benefit of all (via Livingstone's ideas of \"<a href=\"http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/African%20Journals/pdfs/PULA/pula012001/pula012001004.pdf\">Christianity, Civilisation and Commerce</a>\").</p><p>The independence era of the late 1950s and 1960s saw more positive stories about Africa enter western discourses. The archives of British Pathé contain several clips of the Queen visiting her former colonies, with <a href=\"http://www.britishpathe.com/video/queen-in-sierra-leone-1\">this one</a> supposedly evidencing a bright future for Sierra Leone.</p><p>But coverage of the Nigerian civil war began a trend in western reporting that has lasted to the present. The UK tabloid the Sun called secessionist Biafra \"The Land of No Hope\", accompanying the piece with photos of the starving and the dead. It is not hard to trace a fairly straight line connecting headlines like this and contemporary reporting that trots out <a href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/10/12/pol-vp-milewski-congon-francophonie.html\">clichés</a> about the Heart of Darkness.</p><h3>The good: emerging, rising, vindicating</h3><p>But now, Africa is not only an emerging market; it's an <a href=\"http://www.france24.com/en/20121012-hollande-senegal-speech-new-story-france-africa-end-franceafrique-dakar-sarkozy\">emerging continent</a>. Again, why now?</p><p>It is partly because some people think the best way to repudiate the negative stereotypes of Africa is to pump out wholly good news. An account on Twitter called <a href=\"https://twitter.com/AfricaGoodNews\">@AfricaGoodNews</a> is a case in point. Its handler tweets links to positive reportage of Africa: such \"<a href=\"https://twitter.com/AfricaGoodNews/status/259943539524374528\">Angola May Produce One Million Eggs a Day...</a>\" and \"<a href=\"https://twitter.com/AfricaGoodNews/status/255543135856381952\">Doing Business in Fast-Growing Africa - Europe Edition…</a>\".</p><p>It is one facet of a larger rebranding project. Whilst some observers may approve, seeing them as necessary correctives to the boilerplate journalism mentioned above, others are already finding them <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/04/26/positive-news-from-africa/\">clichéd and boring</a> or downright <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/10/01/african-economies-rising-%E2%80%93-but-are-they-taking-the-people-with-them-%E2%80%93-by-richard-dowden/\">misleading</a>; a facile PR exercise designed to encourage (mainly western) investment. See the latest <a href=\"http://www.moneyweek.com/shop/issues/612\">issue</a> of Money Week if you want to be bombarded with statistics and given some ideas about where to put your dollars, pounds or euros. That there are resonances between some of this writing and 19th century imperialist propaganda may be cause for concern.</p><p>It is important to stress that however you assess the Africa Rising narrative's relative worth, its should not be discounted because some of the statistics may be unreliable. We are seeing more and more Africa Rising narratives because it is. And the changes are not confined to <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/daily_chart\">economic growth</a> – large-scale political violence and war has also <a href=\"http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/111/443/179.abstract\">declined</a> sharply over the past decade, for example. Things are indeed changing on the ground.</p><p>Nonetheless, it is demand for the stuff underneath it – Africa's mineral and oil wealth – that is driving the economic growth behind all these narratives. The Bric economies, and China in particular, have fuelled a commodities <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/07/05/africa-rising-when-will-the-west-join-africa-by-eliot-pence-bright-simons/\">boom</a> that has benefited state coffers across the continent, though questions remain over the actual extent (and the equities) of this boom.</p><p>But perhaps the central reason we are seeing all this \"good news\" in western media links back to the west's own idea of itself and of Africa. Africans are now, \"finally\", playing by the west's rules; the supposedly redemptive power of capitalism coupled with the increasing adoption of liberal-democracy in Africa vindicates the Western Way. Moreover, feelings of decline in the west – stubbornly low economic growth (or collapse), the threat of social upheaval, the rise of China, and so on – have made all these Africa Rising narratives all the more breathless. The Economist, Money Week, and the rest seem to see in Africa's rise hope for the west's recovery. Is Africa Rising, then, because the west <em>needs</em> it to?</p><h3>Always something new?</h3><p>Africa is the \"continent of extremes\", according to well-informed <a href=\"http://www.taylorsofharrogate.co.uk/subcatcoffee.asp?catid=133\">sources</a> like Taylors of Harrogate, which sells tea and coffee. In the West, Africa is portrayed either as the Heart of Darkness, with Africans suffering from that quartet of disease, poverty, famine and war, or as Rising, phoenix-like, the living and \"vibrant\" <a href=\"http://rjionline.org/ccj/commentary/africa-tribal-europe-ethnic-power-words-media\">repudiation</a> of all those worrying signs that perhaps capitalism – as it currently conducted – may not suit our increasingly \"globalised\" world.</p><p>The Manichaean quality of these narratives is difficult to escape; the (good) trio of liberalism, democracy and capitalism seems to be talking hold in Africa – but only if \"we in the west\" can help Africa defeat the (bad) trio of traditionalism (\"tribalism\"), authoritarianism, and \"poor macroeconomic policy\" (usually an oblique reference to China). These reductive binary oppositions are signs of overly simplistic thinking, infantilising not only Africans but also the westerners who read about them.</p><p>In <a href=\"http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-africa_democracy/agency_2796.jsp\">response</a> to these crude generalisations, there has been a growing <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/24/africa-media-rwanda-homosexuality\">chorus</a> of <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/24/africa-media-rwanda-homosexuality\">voices</a> calling for better reporting of Africa. More nuanced, contextualised and balanced reporting is not something anyone would disagree with. But this should not just apply to negative stories. Un-contextualised, simplified and wholly positive stories will only lead to further misunderstanding. Africa must, and can only, be understood on its own terms. Initiatives like <a href=\"http://ugandaspeaks.com/\">Uganda Speaks</a> and <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/\">Global Voices</a>, and the BBC's recruitment of African reporters, are a good start. The more westerners learn about Africa from Africans, the better. But if they remain in the minority, we will end up having another <a href=\"http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html\">single story</a> of Africa that is almost as misleading and distorted as the one we had before.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/world-aquatics-championships-2011\">World aquatics championships 2011</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/EndsVl6ngszfU4ODsIeed0VSpM8/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/EndsVl6ngszfU4ODsIeed0VSpM8/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/EndsVl6ngszfU4ODsIeed0VSpM8/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/EndsVl6ngszfU4ODsIeed0VSpM8/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"content" : "<p>THE walls are wooden planks, nailed to wooden poles. The roof is made of corrugated iron sheets. The inside is decorated with posters of England’s premier-league footballers, World Wrestling Entertainment stars, and an outdated calendar of Ugandan musicians. Rows of benches fill the space. At the front, a television screen is mounted on a raised desk. Entangled cables connect the screen, DVD player, and multiple decks and speakers placed in different corners of the hall. The floor is well-trodden earth. </p><p>This is Relax Movie and Sports Centre, a video hall in Kyebando, a suburb of Kampala, the Ugandan capital. The audience is gathering fast. They pay the entrance fee of 300 Ugandan shillings ($0.12), and take up their seats. Some bring roasted maize and water; one holds a steaming cup of porridge. </p><p>Once the ticket collector is satisfied with attendance, he dashes to the control area, and replaces the music DVD that was playing with that of the film advertised on the small blackboard hanging at the entrance. As the credits begin scrolling down the screen, an overlapping recorded voice reads them out in Luganda, a local language, and reminds viewers that this is the beginning of one of today’s films. Adjusting the volume of the soundtrack, actions and conversations, the video jockey (VJ) interprets and narrates the entire film. The audience then files out and checks the blackboard outside to see what will be shown next, before disappearing off, or lounging around.</p><p>At times during the film, the translator bestows the actors with local nicknames, and reminds the audience of other movies they have appeared in. DVD copies of such films are available for rent or to buy from the many film rental kiosks and shops peppered around the city. They sell for around 2,000 shillings each, but as with the cinema entrance fees, prices are determined by the individual business owner.</p><p>Action movies from Hollywood, love stories from Bollywood, Latin American soap operas and Nollywood family dramas are being screened in cinema halls around the country. According to Uganda’s Communications Commission, about 666 video libraries and 374 video halls have been registered in Kampala and the surrounding districts. Increasingly, these translated movies are shown not only in makeshift cinema halls, but are also broadcast on local television stations during prime-time programming. For Jennifer, a shop attendant at Eddie Soft Productions, a film rental and sale shop, “most people don’t want to concentrate and follow the movie, so the translator interprets the movie, making it easier for them to follow.”</p><p>Some VJs have gained national fame: customers seek out films translated by their favourites. Many more translate the films “live” in the cinema halls, becoming local stars. With a microphone in hand, the VJ takes the front seat and as the film plays, he narrates and interprets. “I watch translated movies because of the dramatic expressions the guys add in their descriptions, making them fun to watch,” says Mukiibi Nathan, a fan of translated films, and budding documentary producer.</p><div></div>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/alleen2.jpg?w=610\">The most talked about film in the Netherlands now is the comedy <em>Alleen Maar Nette Mensen</em> (“Only Decent People”), which, to be blunt, may shape Dutch views of its black citizens, and Afro-Surinamese in particular, in very negative ways from which we may not recover for a while. The film is already <a href=\"http://afroeurope.blogspot.be/2012/10/golden-film-award-for-dutch-film-only.html\">a smash hit</a>. It is based on a controversial bestseller by Dutch author Robert Vuijsje that in 2009 also caused a heated debate about the portrayal of Surinamese as oversexed and simplistic–in fact, Vuijsje has received death threats because of the film. But now, with real life people acting out the stereotypes, it becomes just more appalling. Much can be said about the film and the portrayal of stereotypes. But what has struck me the most has been the debate about whether the film is racist or not. <span></span></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">As this film probably won’t be shown outside of the Dutch speaking world, the trailer may be the only way to get an introduction to what the film is about and moreover, why it’s so controversial:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><iframe width=\"610\" height=\"374\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/J9zXAYsY3c4?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></span></p>\n<p>It’s useful to set the context first. The blog Afro-Europe (which focuses on cultural politics and media portrayals of people of African descent in Western Europe) has posted <a href=\"http://afroeurope.blogspot.nl/2012/09/trailer-dutch-film-alleen-maar-nette.html\">a detailed English translation of the trailer</a>. But here’s a quick summary of the trailer: the protagonist David Samuels is a “nice Jewish guy” who is bored with his vanilla life. He hates his girlfriend and his “overbearing” mother. He develops “a thing” for black women. He tells two black friends: “The darker she is, the closer she is to nature.” He falls for Rowanda (“Is that a Dutch name?”, asks his father). She is 23 and has 2 kids. When parents and girlfriend finally meet, David informs his parents: “We eat on the couch.” Black men tease him: “You are going to tell me that Rowanda is your only chick.” Soon David turns into “a gingerbread”: a white man who “hangs around with black people too much” and takes on “all the bad habits” presumably associated with black men. The trailer ends with an angry Rowena screaming at David: “Fuck you with your posh neighborhood. <em>Only decent people!</em>”</p>\n<p>Anyway, I went to go see it. If you find the trailer insulting and tasteless, the film is much worse.</p>\n<p>Because David has no “swag,” nor any black friends, he phones the only black person he knows from back in high school, hoping he can hook him up with “a black negro woman,” and more precisely a “ghetto queen.” It soon becomes clear what is meant by that descriptor: a black woman who wears hot pants three sizes too small, spends large sums of money on her hair (extensions) and nails and, most prominently, has a big butt.</p>\n<p>Of course his friend takes him to “the field” where he will collect his “ghetto queen.” Rowanda lives in the Bijlmer, a real-life, largely immigrant and Dutch Surinamese neighborhood in Amsterdam of concrete high-rise buildings <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/aug/12/architecture-psychology-home-rowan-moore-book\">developed in the late 1960s</a>. The Bijlmer is situated south-east of the city centre and is sometimes called “Little Paramaribo,” an endearing reference to the capital of Suriname.</p>\n<p>Every conceivable cliché and racist prejudice about Surinamese people and the Bijlmer is put into action.</p>\n<p>For those not familiar with Dutch colonial history, Suriname is a small country in South America between Guyana and French Guyana to the east and west respectively, and Brazil to the south. Suriname gained its independence in 1975. Surinamese have always migrated to the Netherlands, but there was a large influx, especially to Amsterdam, following a 1980 coup by Desi Bouterse (the current democratically elected president).</p>\n<p>Suriname, like other countries in the Caribbean, has a mixed population with no real racial or ethnic majority. It’s divided between Creoles or Afro-Surinamese (black people, descendants of slaves) and South Asians (brought to Suriname as contract workers after the abolishment of slavery). But for many Dutch people, Suriname might as well be an island of just black people.</p>\n<p>Because of a number of socio-economic problems, which are not endemic to the Netherlands but were seen in many urban areas with a large concentration of third world migrants, the Bijlmer soon became the Netherlands’ “ghetto.” Although ghetto is a very strong word with devastating consequences in recent European history and despite the neighborhood being subject to gentrification more recently, it is still seen as a “no-go area” by those living outside it.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/alleen.jpg?w=610\">Rowanda is depicted as the “average” Bijlmer resident. She doesn’t seem to have a job. Her children are from two different men who in turn cheated on her with dozens of other women. Because of her seemingly “traumatic” experience with men, Rowanda is already a “mad black woman.” Don’t mess with her, or she’ll set you on fire or cut off your penis. Apart from Rowanda’s mother, all her friends — in fact all black women — in the film are portrayed as “ghetto fabulous” women with big booties and appear not to have any problem sleeping with whoever “talks the talk.” None of them seem to have any agency over their own body. The sex seems coercive as the men, in exchange for sex, buy the women clothes, mobile phones or hair extensions.</p>\n<p>The men on the other hand only live for sex and with the exception of their own mother are portrayed to have no respect for women as they cheat and lie all the time while glorifying their behaviour.</p>\n<p>Nearly all black people in the film talk with an accent, all are loud and no one appears to have any intellect.</p>\n<p>The film has come in for some fierce criticism, mainly from black critics in the Netherlands, whether a few in the mainstream, on blogs or other social media (on Facebook and Twitter); mostly in Dutch. <a href=\"http://www.space-invaders.eu/2012/10/alleen-maar-nette-mensen-the-netherlands-and-the-continued-dehumanization-of-black-people/\">Here</a>, for example, you can read the criticisms of the artist Quincy Gario who questions why people who have some knowledge of the Bijlmer did not make the film. He also questions why public money (which partly subsidized the film) was used <a href=\"http://www.joop.nl/opinies/detail/artikel/16489_alleen_maar_nette_mensen_niet_zo_netjes/\">to propel century-old racist images</a> into the world.</p>\n<p>The film’s producers and its director responded to critics by saying it is all entertainment; that the film should be read as satire. And what with the portrayal of black women? The film is an ode to them, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKVt0V6R6Qc\">according to the actor Géza Weis</a>, who plays David. So, in 2012, portraying black women simply as brainless whores seems to constitute homage.</p>\n<p>Author Vuijsje’s wife, who is black, <a href=\"http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/4324/Nieuws/article/detail/1140561/2009/05/13/Gemengde-reacties-op-rsquo-echte-negerin-rsquo.dhtml\">approves of the book and film</a>. Supporters of the film cite this as further evidence that the criticism is “over the top.”</p>\n<p>The most striking development since the film premiered, is ‘left-wing’ Dutch media going out of their way to defend the film and argue it is not racist. Nausicaa Marbe, a writer and prominent columnist for De Volkskrant, argued that the film is <a href=\"http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/6250/Nausicaa-Marbe/article/detail/3334208/2012/10/19/Alleen-maar-nette-mensen-is-zeker-geen-freakshow.dhtml\">not a freak show</a>. In the same article, however, Marbe argued that the Bijlmer is “a dangerous neighborhood.” The Dutch public broadcaster’s breakfast news called the controversy around the film “a fuss.” And Dutch academics have also weighed in. Sociologist Jan Dirk de Jong argues that <a href=\"http://www.joop.nl/opinies/detail/artikel/16558_rowanda_is_net_keesje_flodder/\">critics don’t understand the narrative</a> since, according to him, it is not about ethnicity, but about social and cultural class. De Jong failed to acknowledge that these classes have been historically constructed in the Netherlands along racial lines and that they continue to exist today.</p>\n<p>On top of that, it turns out that the only way for actress Imanuelle Grives got to play Rowanda, was by gaining 15 kilograms, or she wouldn’t have looked “authentic” enough.</p>\n<p>Defenders of the film also the deny charge that the narrative could in any way be racist, by putting forward an argument about High Literature: the novel won the esteemed <a href=\"http://www.jongerenliteratuurplein.nl/assets/juryrapporten/uil-volw-2009.html\">Golden Owl literature prize</a> (for Dutch language Literature) in 2009 and the Inktaap Literature Prize, a prize awarded by high school pupils.</p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/afbeelding-31.png?w=604&h=398\" height=\"398\" width=\"604\">The Dutch, obviously, are very sensitive to accusations of racism and discrimination. The country prides itself on being one of the most liberal and multicultural societies in the West. Reality suggests otherwise. The use of the word <em>neger</em> (“negro”) in the Dutch language serves as a perfect example. For instance, in the film, David is said to be craving for a “black negro women.” The word “neger” is commonplace in everyday usage to refer to a black person. In 2006 — following years of complaints — the Dutch version of the chocolate-coated marshmallow called <em>negerzoen</em> (“negro kiss”) was changed to just “Kiss.” Not because it was deemed racist or racially sensitive. No, only because it was regarded as “politically incorrect”. Today, however, in every day use people still refer to the chocolate as “Negerzoen”.</p>\n<p>Then in December 2011, Dutch fashion magazine <em>Jackie</em> took it a step further. The editor decided to give its readers fashion advice: they could dress like a “<a href=\"http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2011/12/stop-the-presses-dutch-mag-jackie-calls-rihanna-ultimate-niggabitch/\">Nigga Bitch</a>.” The magazine associated the “style” with pop singer Rihanna. When Rihanna, in colourful language, <a href=\"http://parlourmagazine.com/2011/12/rihanna-responds-to-jackie-magazine-editor/\">objected on Twitter</a>, the editor was forced to resign. Many black Dutch people believe the editor would have kept her job, if the controversy hadn’t been picked up outside the Netherlands. In fact, as is the case now, critics were labelled as too sensitive and taking the matter too seriously — when the editor was first confronted about the racist slur, she responded that it was just a “bad joke.”</p>\n<p>It is not so surprising then that <em>Alleen Maar Nette Mensen</em> could be produced and turn into a hit in a country where it’s regarded as an offense to label something or someone’s remarks racist. It’s also a country where people who are of ‘non-western’ decent are labeled <em>allochtoon</em> (“allochthonous”), and this not only by the white (autochthon) society, but also by law.</p>\n<p>And of course the most problematic example of the Dutch’s engagement with black people remains the annual controversy around ‘Zwarte Piet’ (or ‘Black Pete’) which <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=Zwarte+Piet\">we blogged about before</a>.</p>\n<p>It seems to be part of the Dutch discourse to deny any form of critique of “race relations” or cultural politics in the Netherlands, and there seems to be a lack of understanding that cultural expressions and words such as “neger” which are perceived as “normal” and are used in everyday life can still be hurtful to people.</p>\n<p>One does not have to be a racist to say or do something racist.</p>\n<p>Attempts in Dutch media to discuss how some members of the Afro-Surinamese community feel misrepresented by <em>Alleen Maar Nette Mensen</em>, led to Afro-Surinamese opinions being muted by irrelevant arguments that not only black people are mocked in the film, but also Jews, Moroccans and Dutch people.</p>\n<p>It might me true that jokes are indeed made about other communities in the film, but these are merely comments made by the characters. Jewish people are the one other group subjected to stereotypes; but they — David’s parents, his ex-girlfriend and his relatives — are represented, at worst, as quirky. It is stereotypes of black people that are constantly confirmed – not only in the interaction with other black people, but also when juxtaposed to white people. (David’s ex-girlfriend is appalled by the “dirty things” he has been doing in the Bijlmer. Instead of challenging her views, the idea of dirty sex of black bodies is reinforced by sex scenes of gangbangs in a random apartment and the camera lingering over black women’s bodies).</p>\n<p>The final straw is the use of a remixed version of the Surinamese anthem as the movie score that makes the reproduction of historical stereotypes of Afro-Surinamese people and people living the Bijlmer complete.</p>\n<p>The fact that the film is controversial has made it <a href=\"http://afroeurope.blogspot.be/2012/10/golden-film-award-for-dutch-film-only.html\">a huge commercial success</a>, and ironically not just in the Netherlands, but also in Suriname, where in the first week after it premiered, it was <a href=\"http://www.nu.nl/film/2943860/alleen-maar-nette-mensen-in-suriname-grote-hit.html\">completely sold out</a>.</p>\n<p>This, no doubt, will serve as more fodder and evidence for the supporters of the film that critics are too sensitive about the narrative. Unlike to what one might expect, a large part of the Afro-Surinamese community doesn’t feel the film misrepresents them. Other members, on the Surinamese forum <a href=\"http://www.mamjo.com/forum/index.php/topic,481208.msg4888535.html#msg4888535\">Mamjo.com</a>, have called for a boycott. But one commenter, calling herself Rowanda, has written: “If white people want to believe all Surinamese are like that, then that is their problem.”</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/56505/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/56505/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=56505&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Chicago is about as close to the American heartland as you can get and still be in a major city (the infamous Heartland Institute is located there, for example), but even so, I’d expect a professor at the University of Chicago to be aware that the <span>USA</span> is not the only country in the world. That’s not true, apparently, of Casey Mulligan, who claims that <a href=\"http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/a-keynesian-blind-spot/\">the continued weakness of employment in the US is due to policies introduced in 2008 and 2009</a>, which ” greatly enhanced the help given to the poor and unemployed — from expansion of food-stamp eligibility to enlargement of food-stamp benefits to payment of unemployment bonuses — sharply eroding (and, in some cases, fully eliminating) the incentives for workers to seek and retain jobs, and for employers to create jobs or avoid layoffs.”</p>\n\n\t<p>Mulligan’s claims about US policy are dubious at best (see over fold), but there’s a much more critical problem with his argument. If US unemployment is caused, not by a demand shock but by the mistaken policies of the Obama Administration, why did unemployment move in the same way, and at the same time, in many different countries? Did Iceland expand its food stamp program? Does Estonia pay unemployment bonuses? <a href=\"http://euobserver.com/news/30655\">Sadly, no</a>. And while many countries adopted Keynesian policies in the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street meltdown, others did not, and most have now switched to the disastrous policy of austerity. An even clearer demonstration is given by the Great Depression, where nearly all governments pursued austerity policies after 1929 (Mark Blyth’s soon-to-appear <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Austerity-The-History-Dangerous-Idea/dp/019982830X\">Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea</a></em> tells the story)></p>\n\n\t<p>This isn’t just a problem for Mulligan. The simultaneous occurrence of a sustained increase in unemployment in many countries, with different institutions and policies undermines any explanation of unemployment that works at the national level. That includes all forms of New Classical Economics, in which unemployment arises from labor market “distortions”, as well as Real Business Cycle theories (except if you stretch the idea of a technology shock to the point where “technology” effectively means “aggregate demand”).</p>\n\n\t<p><span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>Responding more specifically to Mulligan’s claims, his suggested mechanisms don’t fit the data. As is usual in a recession, the period of eligibility for unemployment insurance was extended to a maximum of 99 weeks in the aftermath of the financial crisis. However, <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/07/if-the-economys-still-weak-why-are-states-cutting-unemployment-benefits/\">this extension has gradually been withdrawn, and an additional Federal benefit is due to expire at the end of this year</a>. Yet the employment-population ratio has remained at low levels <a href=\"http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000\">not seen for decades</a> (the increase over the late 20th century reflects women’s entry to the workforce). Mulligan could still claim vindication if employment were to jump dramatically in 2013, but it’s notable that he predicts nothing of the kind.</p>\n\n\t<p>As for food stamps, the expansion in the number of recipients is not due to changes in policy but to the fact that, thanks to mass unemployment, <a href=\"http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3239\">many more people are eligible under existing rules</a>.</p>"
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"title" : "Unleaded petrol and Australia's prison population",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://i.imgur.com/yZuIX.jpg\" style=\"float:right;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:10px\">In 2007, collective eyebrows were raised around the US when a researcher made a link between leaded gasoline and crime. His argument was that the introduction of unleaded gasoline in the US in the early 1970s had the effect of reducing crime amongst present day adults who were born after leaded gasoline began to be removed. There was, he argued, a 20 year \"lag\" between the cessation of leaded gasoline and a lowering of the crime rate.<br><br>Naturally people (including me) were skeptical. Surely this was a classic case of \"correlation does not mean causation\". There was, however, something to it. the idea is that lead has been proven to cause all sorts of psychological problems in people who have ingested too much of it. What this researcher argued was that, in the days of leaded gasoline, children were exposed to higher amounts of lead, both in the atmosphere and on surfaces. Although the amount of exposure was small, it did cause some level of deformation in brain development, which meant that, when the children got older, they would more likely have behavioural difficulties and more likely to break the law and end up in jail. By removing lead from gasoline, children began to grow up with less brain deformation and were less likely to commit crime when they got older. In the United states, the phasing out of leaded gasoline took place in the early 1970s, which meant that US crime rates in the 1990s would've begun to fall. And this was so.<br><br>The 2007 New York Times article about this strange relationship can be found <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21wwln-idealab-t.html?_r=0&adxnnlx=1193069109-tIv/I01qmqYqqX/fw3A7Iw&pagewanted=print\">here</a>.<br><br>Here in Australia, leaded petrol began to be phased out from about 1986 onwards. In the New York Times article, countries like Australia and the UK should begin to experience a drop in crime from about 2006 onwards.<br><br>Well it's taken some time, <a href=\"http://www.theherald.com.au/story/525064/prison-population-down/?cs=305\">but a report out today</a> shows that the NSW prison population has fallen by around 7% between July 2009 and December 2011.</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/14237465-3165530775900592130?l=one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The strange case of the milk-drinking ape",
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Most adult humans cannot drink milk. Modern Europeans are the exception. Lactose intolerance is a matter of genetics, genetics which began to change in Turkey around 10,000 BCE, according to a<a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.single.html\">n article in <i>Slate</i></a>. Then</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><blockquote>In an evolutionary eye-blink, 80 percent of Europeans became milk-drinkers; in some populations, the proportion is close to 100 percent. (Though globally, lactose intolerance is the norm; around two-thirds of humans cannot drink milk in adulthood.) The speed of this transformation is one of the weirder mysteries in the story of human evolution, more so because it's not clear why anybody needed the mutation to begin with. Through their cleverness, our lactose-intolerant forebears had already found a way to consume dairy without getting sick, irrespective of genetics.</blockquote></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">If you let milk sit for only a few hours, the lactose begins to ferment out as milk becomes first yogurt and then cheese.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a name=\"more\"></a><blockquote>Analysis of potsherds from Eurasia and parts of Africa have shown that humans were fermenting the lactose out of dairy for thousands of years before lactose tolerance was widespread. Here is the heart of the mystery: If we could consume dairy by simply letting it sit around for a few hours or days, it doesn't appear to make much sense for evolution to have propagated the lactose-tolerance mutation at all, much less as vigorously as it did. Culture had already found a way around our biology. Various ideas are being kicked around to explain why natural selection promoted milk-drinking, but evolutionary biologists are still puzzled.</blockquote></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Whatever the adaptive reason for lactose tolerance among adults, it spread with the emergence of agriculture and the move to cities.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><blockquote>Meanwhile, agriculture's alter ego, civilization, was forcing people for the first time to live in cities, which were perfect environments for the rapid spread of infectious disease. No one living through these tribulations would have had any idea that things had ever been, or could be, different. Pestilence was the water we swam in for millennia.<br><br>It was in these horrendous conditions that the lactose tolerance mutation took hold. Reconstructed migration patterns make it clear that the wave of lactose tolerance that washed over Eurasia was carried by later generations of farmers who were healthier than their milk-abstaining neighbors. Everywhere that agriculture and civilization went, lactose tolerance came along. Agriculture-plus-dairying became the backbone of Western civilization.</blockquote></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">H/t Tyler Cowen.</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6535481649727720492-5783654579265007823?l=new-savanna.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "How to be a real Nigerian",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\"> <br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">Salisu Suleiman </span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">He knows the traffic light is on red but still zooms on, only to be stopped by traffic wardens who have strategically positioned themselves for that very purpose – not before the lights to deter potential offenders, but after, to arrest actual offenders. Once he stops, the officers get into the car and drive to a corner. They demand N5,000 or threaten to take him to the police station, but N200 sets him free. That is how to be a real Nigerian.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\"><span> </span></span><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">The Road Safety Corps or VIO mounts a roadblock to check drivers and vehicle documents. A driver’s license expired long ago, and his car neither has insurance nor up to date registration. It is seized by stony faced officers. However, by rote, a friendly officer comes along and offers tips on how to ‘settle’ the problem. After artful negotiations, N1,000 is paid and the car is released. That is a real Nigerian.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">Another citizen is stopped by customs officers who demand the original import duties of his car. Nobody knows if they have the powers to do that, but everyone knows they can make life miserable. Of course, the car has no proper documents because it was smuggled in and registered with forged papers. After a heated argument, an ‘unreceipted’ fine is paid and the car set free. That is a real Nigerian solution.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\"><span> </span></span><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">A car is stopped at a police checkpoint on a highway. The officers are heavily armed and will brook no nonsense. The driver has no proof of ownership, so the car cannot be his. To prove that the car is actually his, he is forced to part with money. He curses the police (under his breath), and invokes every manner of evil and calamities on them and their future generations yet unborn. They do not care. They’ve heard more curses and more invectives rained on them by other motorists. Infact, if the driver doesn’t leave the scene quickly, he may end up as a victim of ‘accidental discharge’, a genuine Nigerian innovation.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">One person finds herself in court over a lawsuit. She knows she committed the offence and all the evidence are stacked against her. No problem. She engages a lawyer who is not known to be particularly brilliant, but has an uncanny way of winning court cases. He in turn goes to a ‘legal consultant’, who acts as a broker between some lawyers and judges. Against every legal sense, and in a mockery of the legal system, she ‘wins’ her improbable court case and moves on. She is only being a real Nigerian.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\"><span> </span></span><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">A politician stands for elections, and knowing he is unpopular, massively rigs the polls. His opponent cries foul and goes to court. Good. The politician is sworn to office, and using public funds, bribes the electoral panel so massively that the entire judiciary is thrown into chaos with claims and counterclaims. By the time the case is finally heard, he would not only have completed the disputed term of office, but has won re-election for another term. That is a classic example of how to be a real Nigerian.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">An employee schemes to take over a position he is not qualified to occupy, so goes back to school to legitimise his tenure. He does not have the requirements for admission, but is first on the list. He does not participate in the required seminars and is incapable of independent research. No ‘wahala’. He is admitted, his thesis is written for him and the examining panel paid to give him an easy time. In the blink of an eye, a new ‘doctorate’ degree holder is minted. That is a real Nigerian resolution.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">A resident finds out that her water supply has been cut. She immediately calls a contact at the water board who tells her that nothing can be done since there is a mass disconnection of defaulters going on. Joke. She sees the director, who rebukes the manager for disconnecting her. He orders her water supply reconnected instantly, with an apology. She is only being a real Nigerian.</span></div><br><div style=\"margin:0in 0in 10pt;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">Every now and then, PHCN decides that without giving much electricity, customers still have to pay for its incompetence, so simply issues a huge bill that the customer must pay or else be disconnected (from what? you may be tempted to ask). But everyone knows the game and plays along. Money is exchanged and the enormous bills are erased from the central computer. That is how to be a real Nigerian.</span></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S28hzSpbxRw/UJDGaY_QSjI/AAAAAAAAAC0/x_QIJH3riWY/s1600/Naija+Police+fighting+over+bribes.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"150\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S28hzSpbxRw/UJDGaY_QSjI/AAAAAAAAAC0/x_QIJH3riWY/s320/Naija+Police+fighting+over+bribes.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><span style=\"font-family:Calibri\">The problem is, having bribed, cajoled, threatened and bought our ways through life, can we really get angry when the Presidency budgets N1.6 billion for computers in one year, or frown at its plans to spend about N3 million every day on food? Can we complain when a small ministry budgets N25 million to ‘kill germs’ in its less than 20 offices in Abuja? They are only being real Nigerians.</span><br> </div>"
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"content" : "<p>On <a href=\"http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/10/visualization-data-for-world-development.html\">marginal revolution</a> I came across a new Stata package by <a href=\"https://sites.google.com/site/damiancclarke/\">Damian Clarke</a>. It makes it very simple to show both maps and time series graphs of World Bank data. Even better, because it uses <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/developers/apps/wbopendata\">wbopendata</a> it can work with any of the World Bank’s open databases. This gives you access to <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/indicator\">thousands of variables</a>.</p>\n<p><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcq2j8pidH1qz7mwz.png\"></p>\n<p>After installing (type “ssc install worldstat"), I graphed <a href=\"http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS\">net ODA as a percent of GNI to Africa</a> (type “worldstat Africa, stat(DT.ODA.ODAT.GN.ZS)"). The cleaned up version of the graph is presented here. Damian deserves a lot of praise. He’s made it very easy to make beautiful, useful representations of data. I can see myself using this frequently for slides.</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ryancbriggs/~4/Zcr1MlfrNz0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>That's the title of Roger Blench's <a href=\"http://www.rogerblench.info/Language/Africa/Ghana/Ghana%20English%20dictionary.pdf\">Dictionary of Ghanaian English</a> (pdf), which he generously put online (in an early version from 2006) and which Matt of <a href=\"http://no-sword.jp/blog/\">No-sword</a> wrote me about (thanks, Matt!). Here's an interesting paragraph:<blockquote>One of the more surprising things about Ghanaian English is the extent to which it has a common lexicon and grammar with other West African Englishes, notably Nigerian. I have less information about Cameroun, Sierra Leone and Gambia and would welcome further insights. However, the puzzle is the history of some of these forms. Do they go back to the early days of colonial presence on the coast or are they more recent products of the massive migration of Ghanaians to Nigeria during the oil-boom era of the 1970s and 1980s? Probably both, but only a detailed scanning of earlier sources will provide answers.</blockquote>The title is an odd one, not explained in the text, but it's appropriate for today, given that Marie-Lucie wrote expressing concern for our situation in Western Mass., right in the path of the <a href=\"http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/150352.shtml?5-daynl\">storm</a>, and suggesting that I reassure my faithful readers, which I hereby do: we're fine, with two cords of wood in the garage and a wood stove ready to cook food and heat water for us if the power goes out as it did last year (though hopefully it won't be out for four days this time). So far we've just gotten a little wind and rain. She says of her own situation: \"Here in Nova Scotia we will probably see just the tail end - the brunt will be in Southern Ontario and Québec and perhaps New Brunswick.\" I trust all my readers in the eastern part of North America are safe and secure. Let's all knock wood!</p>\n\n<p><b>Update.</b> We got lucky; a bit of wind and rain, no damage, no power loss. My best wishes to those who had it worse, and to anyone in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_Gwaii\">Haida Gwaii</a> (formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) who may have suffered from the earthquake that struck there Saturday night, as iakon reminds us in the comments.</p>"
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"title" : "Remembering Terry Callier: "What Color is Love?"",
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"content" : "<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"326\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ozaLAy0XKeY\" width=\"435\"></iframe><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">from <a href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jazz-folk-singer-terry-callier-dead-at-67-20121029\"><u><b>Rolling Stone</b></u></a></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b>Terry Callier</b>, a soul and jazz singer and guitarist who collaborated with Massive Attack and Beth Orton, died yesterday at his home in Chicago, Stereogum reports. He was 67.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">Callier, a veteran musician who released a handful of critically acclaimed jazz-folk albums in the Seventies and toured with George Benson and Gil Scott-Heron, had scant commercial success at the time, and had given up his musical career in the Eighties to raise his daughter. He was working at the University of Chicago as a computer programmer in the early Nineties when his music was rediscovered in England, sparking a career revival. </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">Callier was born in Chicago and was friends with Curtis Mayfield and the singer Jerry Butler as a child. He began singing in doo-wop groups as a teenager and auditioned for Chess Records in 1962 when he was 17, recording his debut single \"Look at Me Now.\" Callier told The Guardian in 2004 that although Chess invited Callier to tour with Muddy Waters and Etta James, his mother wouldn't let him, and he went to college instead, where he discovered folk music and John Coltrane. Callier picked up guitar from a friend in his college dorm, and began playing coffeehouses before signing with Prestige Records in 1964 to record his first LP, The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier. He released five more albums, including 1972's Occasional Rain and 1974's I Just Can't Help Myself. His 1978 album, Turn You to Love, was his last for 20 years.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">Callier gave up music in 1983 when his 12-year-old daughter came to live with him, and he worked for the University of Chicago by day and studied for a degree in sociology at night. In 1991, the London label Acid Jazz asked to re-release Callier's 1983 single \"I Don't Want to See Myself (Without You).\" The renewed interest in Callier brought him performing gigs in England, and he contributed to Beth Orton's 1997 Best Bit EP. The following year, he released a new album of his own, Timepeace, and kept busy recording and touring for the rest of his live. Callier's most recent album, 2009's Hidden Conversations, was produced by Massive Attack.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jazz-folk-singer-terry-callier-dead-at-67-20121029#ixzz2AiRr1yvQ</span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-2628105926539133398?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "A killer app",
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"content" : "<p> <div> <img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2012/10/blogs/babbage/20121027_stp502.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"> </div></p><p>LETTUCE is California's main vegetable crop. The state grew $1.6 billion-worth of the leafy plant in 2010 and accounts for more than 70% of all lettuce grown in America, itself the world's second-biggest exporter of the stuff. It is a fiddly business. Not only does lettuce need to be fertilised and weeded, but also "thinned" so that good plants do not grow too close to each other, inhibiting growth. Much of this is still done by hand. Labourers, who tend to be paid per acre, not per hour, have little incentive to pay close attention to what they pull from the ground, often leading to unnecessary waste. </p><p>Enter Lettuce Bot, the brainchild of Stanford-trained engineers, <span>Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden. </span>Their diligent robotic labourer, pulled behind a tractor, takes pictures of passing plants. Computer-vision algorithms devised by Mr Redden compare these to a database of more than a million images, taken from different angles against different backdrops of soil and other plants, that he and Mr Heraud have amassed from their visits to lettuce farms. A simple shield blocks out the Californian sun to prevent odd shading from confounding the software. </p><p>When a plant is identified as a weed—or as a lettuce head that is growing too close to another one—a nozzle at the back of the unit squirts out a concentrated dose of fertiliser. If this sounds bonkers, it turns out that fertiliser can be as deadly as a pesticide, which is why farmers usually sprinkle it at a safe distance of 10-15cm from the plants to be nourished, so as to dilute its effect. So the robot not only kills weeds and excess heads, but feeds the remaining crops at the same time. </p><p>The battery-powered system crunches the image data fast enough to work with 98% accuracy while chugging along at a bit less than 2kph. In September Blue River Technology, a start-up founded by Mr Heraud and Mr Redden, raised $3m from Khosla Ventures, a venture-capital firm active in agribusiness. The launch of a fully operational, ruggedised version of the robot is planned for next year. Mr Heraud is coy about Lettuce Bot's cost, but says it will be competitive with manual labour.</p><p>Its creators are also working on a machine capable of excising weeds mechanically using a rotating blade. (Indeed, the robot was originally conceived as an automated lawnmower for parks and other public places but legal issues—think spinning metal blades in areas frequented by children—prompted Mr Heraud and Mr Redden to turn to agricultural users instead.) That would make it a boon to California's "organic" farmers who eschew the potent, weed-killing fertiliser. </p><p>Next in Mr Heraud's and Mr Redden's sights is corn (maize), America's biggest crop. Teaching the robot to deal with plants like tomatoes, where distinguishing weeds from the crop can be hard even to a trained human eye, will take longer. But where Lettuce Bot treads, other salad bots are sure to follow.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "In Nigeria, We Die Cheap – Mark Amaza",
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In Nigeria, we die cheap.</p>\n<p>Emmanuel Ville, the son of a medical doctor in Maiduguri, was in his part of the family house when he heard some ruckus coming from his parents’ section. Unknown to him, some hired gunmen had come to make their 2<sup>nd</sup> attempt on his father’s life; the first was a failed bomb attempt. The father had escaped upon hearing their voices while his wife pacified them with money and jewellery. Emma went to check if all was okay and the assassins grabbed him. All the pleadings and cries of his mother fell on deaf ears. They took him outside and shot him in the head. He was a young man of 26 years. In Nigeria, we die cheap.</p>\n<p>Ugonna, Lloyd, Tekana and Chidiaka were students at the University of Port Harcourt, all in their early 20s. In details that still remain sketchy, they were accused of stealing phones and laptops from an off-campus housing in the nearby Aluu community. However, rather than hand them over to the police, the community made themselves the judge and executioner. They beat them up till they were bloodied, hung tyres around their necks and burnt them to death. Four young men, gone. They did not enjoy the presumption of being innocent until proven guilty. In Nigeria, we die cheap.</p>\n<p>The Wuro Patuje off-campus housing area in Mubi, Adamawa State that plays host to students of the Federal Polytechnic, the School of Health Technology and the Adamawa State University, all in Mubi, had its quiet and peace shattered on the night of the October 1<sup>st</sup>. armed men with rifles and machetes stormed the area, invading houses and calling out students by name. The unlucky ones were either shot or slaughtered. By morning, there lay 25 dead men in an attack that has left the whole nation in shock. No one knows why this has happened. No one knows who did this. In Nigeria, we die cheap.</p>\n<p>These are just some of the gory events that have gripped Nigeria in the past one month. There are many more situations, but I do not want to depress the reader any more than I have already. There is no overstating the fact that insecurity in Nigeria has reached dizzying heights.</p>\n<p>We die cheap in Nigeria because largely, there is a failure of the state. Our borders are porous with <a href=\"http://www.channelstv.com/home/2012/07/29/nigeria-produces-most-of-wafricas-illegal-weapons-army/\">7 million illegal weapons in Nigeria</a>, all in the hands of non-state actors. The police force is ill-trained, under-staffed, ill-disciplined, corrupt and unmotivated. It has led people in many parts to even fear them more than trust them. As a matter of fact, it is said that the <a href=\"http://www.nairaland.com/891893/police-denies-killing-over-5000\">Nigerian Police kills more people annually than all the terrorists and armed robbers, all extra judicially</a>. This in turn has led people to believe more in jungle justice, which could result in capital punishment being meted out to people who commit petty crimes, or even worse, to wrongly accused persons.</p>\n<p>This is how a nation begins to descend into anarchy: when human life loses its sanctity and people literally sleep with their eyes open. When everyone becomes a law unto himself and the law enforcement agencies feel they are untouchable. As if life is not hard enough in this country, there is something that, for want of a better expression, could be called national insecurity. No part of this country feels safe anymore, except relatively to another.</p>\n<p>It is high time that governments at all levels began to find ways to find long-lasting measures to this insecurity. Serious shake-up is needed, not just a band-aid. It should start from properly securing our borders to stem the flow of illegal arms and immigrants, to a comprehensive reform of the police force so that people can begin to feel more secure.</p>\n<p>We cannot continue to live in a country where death is so cheap; we cannot just accept that we will continue to die cheap.</p>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\"><a title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/?px\"><img style=\"border:none;float:right\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=3df3d85d-cfa8-4de0-a923-d49076a1cb72\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"></a></div>"
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"content" : "<div><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">Listening to Sun Ra, Birds Convene Outside my Window</span><br>\r\n<p>A friend of mine likes to chide me <br> for what he calls my bourgeois proclivity <br> to listen only to music played in time. </p>\r\n<p>So each time this afternoon I’ve put on <br> volume one of The Heliocentric Worlds <br> by Sun Ra, I’ve thought of that friend, </p>\r\n<p>and wondered whether he would let this <br> qualify as sufficiently experimental, <br> though it isn’t the full recorded chaos </p>\r\n<p>he often argues is the only moral <br> kind of music left. A silly pretense <br> of his, but one I can’t help sometimes </p>\r\n<p>measuring myself against. And, I admit, <br> though there are stretches of incoherence <br> on this record that try my patience, </p>\r\n<p>I can usually find a definite plotting, <br> particularly the sections where the bass <br> begins a walking line the other instruments </p>\r\n<p>organize themselves around; making what <br> Sun Ra, in his own way chiding one critic’s <br> attempt to classify his compositions </p>\r\n<p>as free jazz, more accurately dubbed <br>“phre” jazz: the ph signifying the definite <br> article, and though I don’t know how </p>\r\n<p>in English to make that claim cohere,<br> it’s an assertion I’ll grant Sun Ra <br>not just because he may have meant </p>\r\n<p>the definite article of some form of speech <br> not yet part of human understanding, <br> but also because it imbues everything </p>\r\n<p>in his songs with purpose. There in the word, <br>Ra said, indicates the sun, so that his music <br>is the music of the sun. And really, \r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<p>though I don’t hear on this record <br> the enveloping whiteout of sound <br> I think of when I try to imagine the music </p>\r\n<p>of the sun, I appreciate his gesture <br> at something so large. And, in the most <br> chaotic moments, where I hear him </p>\r\n<p>fumbling with the meter, when Sun Ra <br> lets out a too-quick flurry of notes and the band <br> behind him lets the song dissolve into </p>\r\n<p>something like the noise of two dozen <br> pinched balloons deflating as they streak <br> across a room, I hear in it their collective </p>\r\n<p>enthusiasm, all of them overeager to enjoy <br> at once all the notes in the song, which <br> validates the notion of this music as </p>\r\n<p>a perpetual celebration of motion and being. <br> Perhaps that’s the thing that’s got <br> these two mottle-headed blackbirds </p>\r\n<p>returning to my windowsill each time <br> I put the record on. Now, because I’ve made <br> my friend’s voice into one of the many critics </p>\r\n<p>always running through my head, and so <br> clearly hear his claim to distrust something <br> as cogent as the pleasure one might take </p>\r\n<p>from listening to arranged sound, I think how, <br> seeing this scene, my friend would say <br> that these two birds can’t be lingering here </p>\r\n<p>to enjoy the songs with me; he’d claim how <br> they sometimes caw and flap around is proof <br> of agitation, their dancing a defense, </p>\r\n<p>a sign they fear the source of such adamant, <br> inscrutable music, and he’d say that if there’s <br> a lesson to take from the nature these two birds </p>\r\n<p>exemplify, it’s in the way they distrust art <br> like it’s some classic predatory foe. Granted, <br> I’ve stacked my lines against him; granted, </p>\r\n<p>I’ve heard him sing “Daisy, Daisy, give me <br> your answer, do” to his daughter in perfect <br> tender pitch, and though when singing it </p>\r\n<p>he did disrupt the tune’s rhythm, it wasn’t <br> to deconstruct the body of the song, <br> but so he and his girl could exchange </p>\r\n<p>a bit of laughter. But I’d like to think <br> he would agree with how I’ve drawn him, <br> that this is an accurate description of how </p>\r\n<p>he prefers to think about music, diminishing <br> the notion that art can provide joy, <br> calling me either wrong or naive </p>\r\n<p>when I disagree. I can see him citing the way <br> I’ve made a prop of him here as proof <br> that coherence is all a false elaboration.</p>\r\n<p>So what can I say to such a claim, other than <br> to admit I know no more than he does <br> how birds experience joy, and that </p>\r\n<p>my pleasure in this scene comes as much <br> from listening to Sun Ra dismantling a melody <br> as it does from the wonder of these birds </p>\r\n<p>returning to hop and sputter along my sill, <br> whether they gather here by chance, delight, <br> or to try to call the song to order.<br><br><em>by Charlie Clark</em><br><em>from <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Blackbird</span>, 2011</em></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F10%2Fsunday-poem-2.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=pGkrv8BGlZE:R50qdNBVPKA:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/pGkrv8BGlZE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Sister Deborah is a National Treasure and a Model Citizen",
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"content" : "<p>In case you are not one of the half a million viewers who has been sucked into the2 week old phenomenon that is <em>Uncle Obama</em>, you will have the opportunity to do so by clicking here:</p>\n<span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"312\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/b2HSo3yywDU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></span>\n<p><i>Uncle Obama</i> is the type of song that becomes an instant chart topper because it possesses all the qualities of a musical composition that invokes a ‘brain itch’. “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”, “Put a Ring on It” and “Call me Maybe” are examples of songs that cause a brain itch. They bore into your subconscious and hold your grey matter hostage. One is powerless against their melodious might. You WILL sing along at karaoke and conferences. You just <em>will</em>.</p>\n<p>Like all popular musical phenomena, <i>Uncle Obama</i> isn’t without its detractors. There are people who genuinely hate this song, and think that Sister Deborah (or Derrrrbie, as her fans call her) have disgraced the Ghana and Africa as a whole by 1) invoking President Obama as the subject of such a raucous song and 2) making continuous reference to his ‘banana’.</p>\n<p>They can all save their pious dismay.</p>\n<p>There is absolutely no proof that Derrrrbie has spoofed either president Obama or his banana and groundnuts in particular. That’s just hyperbole and innuendo based on split assumptions. In fact, all Ghanaians should listen to the lyrics of this song and feel a deep sense of pride. Sister Deborah touches on several important social issues that need addressing in our culture. Our youth can learn a lot from this musical ambassador.</p>\n<p><b><i>She promotes healthy living</i></b>: In the first few verses of the song, Derrrrbie makes mention that she is bringing a new azonto for us. What better or more enjoyable way is there to lose weight and get fit than through the joy of dance? Secondly, she went to the market to buy fruit so that she could make some juice. Juicing your fruits and vegetables provides a quick way to absorb vital minerals into your blood stream without losing any nutrients through cooking.</p>\n<p><b><i>She promotes green initiatives: </i></b>Derrrrrbie made mention that she went to the market with her basket. Baskets are ancient carrying devices that are used all around the world. Sadly, as we become a more modern society, we have eschewed the use of renewable and earth friendly devices such as baskets in favor of plastic bags. Plastic has become a scourge in Africa, with the rubber material choking our water ways and killing our flora and fauna. Sister Deborah makes going green look sexy again.</p>\n<p><b><i>She tells us to dress according to the weather: </i></b>One of Ghana’s main problems has been its blind mimicry of Western culture. I will never forget the day I saw a recent SSS graduate sitting at Papaye eating a burger dressed in baggy jeans, Timberland boots, and a fur rimmed leather coat. It was 89* outside at 9 pm. I was hot just looking at him. That was in 1996. My horror was only surpassed when I saw a grandmother lovingly carrying her swaddled newborn grandchild through Chicken Inn at the Accra Mall in 2010. What’s so terrible about that, you ask? Again, it was nearly 99*, at high noon, in ACCRA, and the child was wrapped in a long sleeve woolen onesie, a knitted cap and two wool blankets. I hope he lived to see his first birthday. Sister Deborah’s message in this song was succinct: when the weather is hot, wear something short – preferably made of cotton. Simple! What is all this copying of obroni culture? Do we live in Norway? NO. You live at Nima. Tsseewwww.</p>\n<p><b><i>International trade is good, but it’s important to buy locally as well: </i></b>In her introduction, she declared that she likes both local and foreign bananas. This is wonderful! What a true global citizen. By increasing local banana consumption, we could create more jobs for Ghana’s economy. And going back to that green initiative: Whatever happened to wrapping our food in banana leaves? How many hundreds of jobs were lost when we decided to forgo the use of leaves to sell and ferry our food in favor of polythene bags? Perhaps it’s time to renew this lost art. It’s better for our environment. Ghana should lead the way in big banana leaf production.</p>\n<p><b><i>Derrrrrrrbie promotes safe sex: </i></b>Fine, fine! If you want to take the song at “face” value and say that it’s about a groundnut seller’s phallus, we can certainly play on that assumption. After this songstress reached Uncle Obama’s house the following next day in search of more loin fruit, he regretfully informed her that he did not have a polythene bag (read: condom) to put it in for her. From what I can ascertain, she offered him a hand job and left. Ah well. To each her own…</p>\n<p>Look, I could go on and on about the wonderful qualities and life lessons laden in this tremendous song, but I invite you to do some more critical thinking on your own. Let’s not spit in the face of genius, nor scorn the gifts of our new vanguards. We should celebrate them…and I certainly celebrate Sister Deborah. She is not just a rapper, but a conscious rapper. She’s up there with Common and Talib Kweli. There should be more women walking the streets of Accra in high heels and painted nails frantically in search of big bananas!!!<em> Kornchia, kronchia</em>, my sisters!</p>\n<p>Now, coming from a woman who spends her days watching cartoons and yelling angrily at the TV when the characters won’t do as their told (like that little bald bastard Caillou) this whole analysis may not mean very much. Hold on while I go ask my monkey what it thinks.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2354/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2354/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=mindofmalaka.com&blog=10644359&post=2354&subd=mindofmalaka&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\"><br>I've been on the wonderful Poetry Africa tour for over a week now, and one of the things I keep getting requests for is the poem 'Mosquito Rules' (the words, not the poem as a pill or anything like that). Given the fact that the poem appears in an eBook and the limited access on the continent to amazon purchases and online payments, I've decided the best thing to do is share the text for free. So, for your enjoyment - via Issuu - <b>Mosquito Rules</b>!<b></b><br><b><br></b><b><br></b><br><div><br><div style=\"text-align:left;width:420px\"><a href=\"http://issuu.com/niiayikweiparkes/docs/mosquito_rules?mode=window&printButtonEnabled=false&backgroundColor=%23222222\">Open publication</a><a href=\"http://issuu.com/search?q=mosquito%20rules\"></a></div></div><br><b>what i'm reading/listening to</b><br><i>listening:</i><br><b>The Happy Blues</b> by Gene Ammons<br><br><i>reading:</i><br><b>Scandalize my Name</b> by Yusef Komunyakaa<br><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31917037-8135087946079831623?l=thought.niiparkes.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Median Material Prosperity since 1980",
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"content" : "<div><p>In the past couple of months I have gone pretty much every place I ever went between when I was 15 in 1975 and when I was 25 in 1985. Every place--every place--looks a lot better, richer, a lot busier now than it looked then. How can this be if it really is the case that media and living standards of stagnated since the early 1970s? They are not all 1% or even 10% places, not now and especially not then.</p>\n\n<p>One answer is that between 1975 and 1985 I never went to Scranton or Detroit--but instead to places like Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, Cambridge, Virginia Beach, greater Orlando, Park Slope, the Lower East Side, the Upper West Side, Jackson Hole, and other places some of which are top 1% places and the others of which are all urban edge Renaissance places benefiting mightily from increased congestion.</p>\n\n<p>Another answer is that not just average income but density of economic activity matters--more dense places look more prosperous because there are more choices. But then shouldn't the number of choices be factored into our estimates of the median?</p>\n\n<p>But the answer I prefer right now is that our assessment of the prosperity of a place depends on the median dollar spent there rather than on the well-being of the median person there. And practically everywhere the median dollar today is being spent by somebody much richer with much richer tastes than the median dollar some 32 years ago was.</p>\n\n<p>Or perhaps our estimate of economic growth are undershooting reality--even given that you see few signs of the computer and communications revolution out there on the street...</p>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\"><br>I've been on the wonderful Poetry Africa tour for over a week now, and one of the things I keep getting requests for is the poem 'Mosquito Rules' (the words, not the poem as a pill or anything like that). Given the fact that the poem appears in an eBook and the limited access on the continent to amazon purchases and online payments, I've decided the best thing to do is share the text for free. So, for your enjoyment - via Issuu - <b>Mosquito Rules</b>!<b></b><br><b><br></b><b><br></b><br><div><br><div style=\"text-align:left;width:420px\"><a href=\"http://issuu.com/niiayikweiparkes/docs/mosquito_rules?mode=window&printButtonEnabled=false&backgroundColor=%23222222\">Open publication</a><a href=\"http://issuu.com/search?q=mosquito%20rules\"></a></div></div><br><b>what i'm reading/listening to</b><br><i>listening:</i><br><b>The Happy Blues</b> by Gene Ammons<br><br><i>reading:</i><br><b>Scandalize my Name</b> by Yusef Komunyakaa<br><br></div>"
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"title" : "The Outsider – rich beyond their dreams",
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"content" : "<p><strong>The Outsider by Caroline Adhiambo Jakob, is published by Authors House</strong></p>\n<p>In the film “Living With Illegals”, Sierra Leone / British journalist, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorious_Samura\">Sorious Samura</a> becomes an <a href=\"http://www.insightnewstv.com/illegals/\">illegal immigrant traveling from Morocco to Europe</a> with a group of African migrants. Three of the men decide to make the <a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/07/crossing_waters/\">crossing</a> by swimming to the European enclave of Ceuta in Morocco – one makes it three are caught. These journeys are horrendous and desperate and can often take up to 4 / 5 years, crossing many countries by land and sea.</p>\n<p>At first there is a sense of comrade between the men (there are no women in the film) as they struggle for a life of selling battery’s, flowers and DVDs and living in make shift dormitories. But by the time Samura gets to France and realises he has been conned by the smuggler anger takes over. Many of the men admit to begging which is something I never saw during my 4 years in Granada Spain, so maybe this is something new or something which happens in northern Spain and France.</p>\n<p>This is a soulless lonely journey towards an often soulless lifetime. As the men in the film reach Calais, they are met by thousands of other men and women from across the world all desperate to make the final crossing to Britain. This is perhaps the most treacherous as they are so near yet still so far away. Now they must negotiate themselves around border police, more smugglers and the forest.</p>\n<p>Crossing borders, migrations to Euroland presented as the land of milk, honey and endless riches. Juxtaposed against this ‘Dreamland’ is Africa, hunger corruption and endless wars. What does it mean to make the perilous journey from the global south to the west. To work 6 or 7 days a week, up to 16 plus hours a day for a pittance as domestics where often women are sexually and physically abused; day workers, fruit pickers or car washers? To have no social life with the only hope being that ones children will somehow fare better. What does it mean when the journey is the other way around, from the global north to the south/ How does white privilege manifest itself in contemporary Africa, in neo-coloniality? The The Outsiders goes some way to answering these questions. It is the first novel by Kenyan, Caroline Adhiambo Jakob, and follows the lives of two women – Irmtraut, a German high-powered executive, ambitious and single. And Philister, a victim of sexual abuse living in poverty on the streets of Nairobi. Philister’s dream is for a better life and that better life exists in Europe. Irmtraut’s venture to Kenya, on the other hand, is forced upon her by her boss and married lover. The characters are created around believable stereotypes each embarking on a journey premised by mythical imaginations of life on the other side. From the south, Philister approaches Europe with much more than hope. She is convinced she will be rich in record time. There are no obstacles in her imagination.</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>“Stories were often told of people who arrived in majuu and suddenly became so rich they had no idea how to spend all their riches” </em></p></blockquote>\n<p>Irmtraut on the other hand approaches Kenya with dread and a firm belief that nothing will work and no one can be trusted. Her search for Africa leaves her with stories of child soldiers and ruthless idiotic dictators. From the beginning we know for Irmtraut there is no where to go, but up.</p>\n<p>To reach Germany, Philister persuades her abuser and uncle who is the manager of Kenyan National football team, to include her in the team. She arrives in Germany where the team loose all their games and promptly they all disappear to begin a life on the margins of society. Philister story is told through a series of letters to her friend, Tamaa Matano which begin with hope. Her hopes are very soon squashed at the realization that her life in Germany is even more precarious than in Kenya. She is challenged by the same problems of housing and employment but these are exacerbated by racism and the additional vulnerability of being alone and unable to trust anyone. Eventually she joins the millions of other undocumented Africans and Asians who supply Europe with its lowest ranks of the labour market. In Living With Illegals, Samura makes the point that it is the illegal people who contribute to the economy. The ones who oil the wheels which keeps Europe turning, doing those jobs Europeans wont do and nothing will stop them from coming.</p>\n<p>Irmtraut is the kind of liberal whiteness that insists they are not racist until faced with Blackness and Africa. Her racism is challenged by her fearful reaction on a train, to the only Black person she has close contact with. Still, she manages to persuade herself that because Will Smith is her favorite actor, she is cannot be racist. As time passes both women learn the truth about their adopted countries and themselves. Irmtraut whilst enjoying white privilege in Kenya also faces the fact that it can come at a high cost if carried too far. Very quickly Kenya chips away at her ignorance and privilege but never leaves her without choices, something Philister rarely enjoys.</p>\n<p>Though there are moments of laughter particularly for Irmtraut, the story of Philister is one of incredible sadness as she faces discrimination after discrimination in a life of emptiness and poverty in Europe. There is no escape, no way to return. The irony is that her friend who she left behind in Nairobi has a very different experience. The Outsiders is an interesting read and is entirely plausible. Some of the dialogue is awkward and forced but the book achieves what I believe it set out to do, which is expose the myths on which prejudices and discrimination are built. Philister sinks further and further into invisibility till finally she more or less ceases to exist except as an object of pity or hate. Not altogether dissimilar from her life in Nairobi’s streets. But at least there she has the familiarity of language and people and most importantly her dreams. In Europe she is stripped of everything. Irmtraut on the other hand is always visible, her existence always privileged even when she is the victim of a scam or theft. The question we are left with is which is preferable – a life of poverty in Kenya or a life of loneliness and poverty in Germany?</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<div><strong><br>\n</strong></div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div><div style=\"float:none;height:30px\"><a></a><a></a><a></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div>"
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"title" : "Teju Cole’s 20+ Rules On Writing",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right;margin-left:10px\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blacklooks.org%2F2012%2F10%2Fteju-coles-20-rules-on-writing%2F\"><br>\n\t\t\t\t<img src=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blacklooks.org%2F2012%2F10%2Fteju-coles-20-rules-on-writing%2F&source=blacklooks&style=compact&service=bit.ly&service_api=R_f55b8d726daa90a2d04a9794852f94b5&space=1&b=2\" height=\"61\" width=\"50\"><br>\n\t\t\t</a>\n\t\t</div>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/2012/10/teju-coles-20-rules-on-writing/teju-cole/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9820\"><img title=\"Teju-Cole\" src=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Teju-Cole.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://wordsfollowme.wordpress.com/\"><em>Eight Letters to a Young Writer</em></a> evolved as a fictional exercise addressed by Teju Cole to an imaginary young Nigerian writer. With the encouragement of Molara Wood, the editor of the series, Cole tried to move from discussions of simple writing precepts to more complex things like voice and calling. Those pieces, first published on the now defunct NEXT Newspaper, were made available by Cole <a href=\"http://wordsfollowme.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/teju-cole-eight-letters-to-a-young-writer2.pdf\">as a single downloadable PDF file</a>. From that PDF I have gleaned 20+ tips/lessons on writing. I consider the letters one of the most important resource on the art of writing fiction that has come out of Nigeria in the last five years. And I share in Teju Cole’s aspiration that young writers in Nigeria and elsewhere find the tips useful.</p>\n<p>Here, then.</p>\n<ol>\n<li>There are few things more resistant to tutoring than the creative arts. <strong>All artists are after that thing that resists expression.</strong></li>\n<li><strong>Keep it simple</strong>. There are many who use big words to mask the poverty of their ideas. A straightforward vocabulary, using mostly ordinary words, spiced every now and again with an unusual one, persuades the reader that you’re in control of your language.</li>\n<li>Remove all clichés from your writing. Spare not a single one. The cliché is an element of herd thinking, and <strong>writers should be solitary animals</strong>. We do our work always in the shadow of herd thinking. Be expansive in your descriptions. Dare to bore.</li>\n<li><strong>Avoid adverbs</strong>. Let the nouns, adjectives and verbs carry the action of the story.</li>\n<li>When reporting speech, it is enough to say “she said” or “he said.” You must leave “he chortled,” “she muttered,” “I shouted,” and other such phrases to writers of genre fiction.</li>\n<li><strong>Aim for a transparent style</strong> so that the story you’re telling is that much more forceful.</li>\n<li><strong>Read more than you write</strong>. In expressing the ambition to be a writer, you are committing yourself to the community of other writers.</li>\n<li>Your <strong>originality</strong> will mean nothing unless you can understand the originality of others. What we call originality is little more than the fine blending of influences.</li>\n<li>Be ruthless in your use of what you’ve seen and what you’ve experienced. Add your <strong>imagination</strong>, so that where invention ends and reality begins is undetectable.</li>\n<li><strong>Be courageous</strong>. Nothing human should be far from you.</li>\n<li>Avoid writing narratives that have only a single meaning</li>\n<li>Characters do shocking things, not because the author wishes to shock, but because it is in the character of humans to misbehave.</li>\n<li>If you are withholding information, there should be a reason for it. The trick of it will be to <strong>give information</strong>, when you give it, <strong>in a way that feels organic</strong>.</li>\n<li><strong>Continue to fail better</strong>—failure of a kind that might even be better than certain forms of success.</li>\n<li>One of the things that matters most is <strong>voice</strong>. Great writers know all about it, and ordinary writers ignore it.</li>\n<li>What all great works have in common is that <strong>the voicing is secure</strong>. There is evidence, throughout, that how the tale is being told is precisely how the author wishes it to be told.</li>\n<li>Try to better <strong>bind the reader to life</strong>. Place at the heart of a story a voice that is neither so vague that it applies to everyone, nor so eccentric that none can relate to it.</li>\n<li>What I try to do in my work is to find out <strong>how the gestures of various arts can be smuggled beyond their native borders</strong>, music that exceeds music, painting that exceeds painting.</li>\n<li>Look at your environment as though you were a child, or a foreigner, or an alien from another planet. But to see what is happening, you need to <strong>reform your eyes</strong>. Your writing talent should consist of making the ordinary interesting.</li>\n<li>In a field of unexceptional events, <strong>zoom in on the pungent detail</strong>. Your sensibilities have to be retrained so that they catch what others miss.</li>\n<li>Luxuriate in the formalized chat that is called an interview. At times, you can read something in one of those conversations that feels like it is a secret code passed from the author directly to you, in the guise of a public utterance</li>\n<li><strong>Keep an inner fire</strong>; keep it on your own behalf and on behalf of so many people who are suffering because of the system.</li>\n</ol>\n<p> </p>\n<p><strong><em>NB: </em></strong>I have begun a sideproject called AfroPicking on my site, which aims to collect wisdom shared by African writers and thinkers in the fields of literature, visual art, digital art and webtechnology. The pieces I anthologize would be featured on BlackLooks as well, this being the first in the series.</p>\n<div></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div><div style=\"float:none;height:30px\"><a></a><a></a><a></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;min-height:1px;height:3px;width:100%\"></div>"
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"content" : "As a teenager in war-ravaged Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah was brainwashed, drugged and forced to kill.<div>\n<a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?i=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?i=Lx1usjesP98:I7Dr9PjPhKE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/cnn_world/~4/Lx1usjesP98\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "In which I write the piece on thinktanks Dsquared promised",
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"content" : "<p>Here’s a story that throws light on a lot of things that are wrong with thinktanks, even the ones that have content beyond just wanktanking. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/oct/05/conservatives-party-of-rich-says-thinktank\">Neil O’Brien has advice for the Tories</a>. O’Brien observes that only rich people, and specifically rich people from southern England, want to vote Conservative, and that this is not enough for a majority. </p>\n<p>Well, yes. If you were to ask me “what does a Tory do all day?”, I’d tell you that they try to resolve this problem and convince people who aren’t rich and from southern England to vote for them.</p>\n<p>Anyway, O’Brien pitches various concepts (what, pray, is “blue-collar modernisation” meant to mean, in the context that it has to be something that wouldn’t make a Tory run a mile to get away?), but his policy recommendations turn out to be summed up as “more means testing”.</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>“What about middle-class benefits? Do we really need to give child benefit to households that are better off than average? Post-election we should stop giving free TV licences, winter fuel payments and bus passes to millionaires.”</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>It takes a substantial degree of cheek and personal entrepreneurship to try to sell means-tested child benefit to the Tories as a new idea in the autumn of 2012, after the fiasco last year. But then, thinktanking rewards the chancer ethos. </p>\n<p>O’Brien used to run something called Open Europe, which argued that the European Union wasn’t neoliberal enough and was letting the French impose social democracy on us. This reminds me a little of the once-fashionable Shoreditch nightclub “The Last Days of Decadence”, which shut its doors a couple of years back. I like to think that this was because its name had become a sick joke, and I feel the same way about Open Europe. As with nightlife, so with thinktanks – at these moments, the indestructible, indeed irrational, sense of self-confidence and comfort with the most jarring self-reinvention that is common to enterpreneurs is at a premium.</p>\n<p>As a result, O’Brien has binned his aspirations to getting the key to the European Commission’s international delicatessen, junked the reports on the need for further deregulation of the financial sector, and pulled on the ruddy tweeds of the professional English Tory. Policy Exchange has always cultivated a faintly hip and international style, by Tory standards, and in many ways serves to reintegrate people who have strayed ideologically, like Anthony Browne and Nicholas Boles.</p>\n<p>There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this, although it does lead to a certain shallowness and tumbleweed mentality. But the problem is shown up by O’Brien’s policy proposal. When the Tories last mooted this, they had a conversation with the Revenue that went like this.</p>\n<p>Tory: Why don’t we means-test child benefit? I mean, even my wife gets it and we’re LOADED!</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: That is a..brave decision, Minister.</p>\n<p>Tory: You’re looking at me like that again.</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: I take it you are aware of the reasons the last three ministers had for not taking any further action on <a href=\"http://dpmcbride.tumblr.com/post/19717319716/at-half-time-in-last-nights-arsenal-game-i-was\">Starter 328</a>?</p>\n<p>Tory: Naturally.</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: Oh, you aren’t? Well, it would involve assessing recipients’ taxable income on a household basis, not an individual basis. Child benefit is paid to the mother, so this would involve treating wives as part of their husband for tax purposes, which might be illegal, as well as going against broad principles of public policy, and risking the return of Barbara Castle from beyond the grave to eat our brains. There are bound to be all sorts of complexities….</p>\n<p>Tory: Mnfffs, the fucking Human Rights Act!</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: Well, the European Convention, and the Equality Act 2010, and the legislation it replaced, as well. Anyway, as I was saying, there are bound to be all sorts of complexities regarding couples who are living apart but aren’t divorced, couples who are living together but aren’t married, couples who are divorced but are living together, civil partnerships, men or indeed women who deliberately manage their affairs to stay under the threshold…</p>\n<p>Tory: Well, the gay couples are surely only a tiny minority.</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: It’s easy for you to say that, but I have to tell the civil servants in Longbenton what to do when they all ring up. And you will probably have to explain it in court when they sue.</p>\n<p>Tory: Where there’s a will there’s a way.</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: It’s my job to find a way to collect the Government revenue from 30 million taxpayers every month, and to pay tax credits back to quite a lot of them. At the moment, we do this on an individual basis, and our forms, operational processes, staff training, database architecture, and software are all designed to do just that. If we had to change, it possibly might not work, it would probably be a terrible lot of trouble, and it would certainly take years and cost a fortune.</p>\n<p>I believe the Prime Minister thinks reducing the cost of Government is his highest priority.</p>\n<p>Tory: So what do you suggest?</p>\n<p>Sir Humphrey: I suggest we make a substantial saving of public monies by not doing it, and hold a policy review that won’t report until after the next election, to look like we’re doing something.</p>\n<p>Tory: Thank you. </p>\n<p>Now, O’Brien has either forgotten this whole mildly comic story, or he’s pretending it didn’t happen. And this is the problem with thinktanks.</p>\n<p>There are things you can do effectively with a group of bright generalists with laptops and no particular access to the machinery of the state. One of these is to <em>assess</em> policy – to review evidence, derive metrics, and draw provisional conclusions. This is a useful function, especially as the most controversial policies and the biggest cockups tend to be the things the government tries not to assess.</p>\n<p>Another one is to <em>suggest improvements</em>. This is much harder. One good thing about thinktanks, though, is that the output of suggestion can be fed into the input of assessment. Opinion journalists, politicians, and bloggers do not normally make any effort at all to do this. Also, the process of assessment itself gives rise to suggestions for improvement.</p>\n<p>Yet a third is to introduce <em>new ideas</em>. Coming up with genuine innovations is incredibly hard, the percentage of them which are actually good ideas is low, and the percentage of this sub-group which can be implemented in practice is also pretty low. Further, there is a source of new ideas which is almost guaranteed to be full of nonsense – the previously mentioned politicians, pundits, and random bullshitters – and one which is certain to be full of nonsense – the lobbying industry.</p>\n<p>So, we have two functions which are analytical in nature, and one which is propagandistic. The confusion between them can be either deliberate or accidental, but is dangerous in either case. And the propaganda-function is especially dangerous, because its new ideas tend to be big and eye-catchingly radical, in short, to belong to the strategic level of analysis rather than the tactical.</p>\n<p>Thinktanks are similar to private-sector analytical and consulting firms in various ways, but most importantly because they share many of the same functions and methods, they recruit the same kind of people, and they have some of the same failure modes. </p>\n<p>They differ from them in that they generally derive revenue from customers, rather than sponsors and grantmongers, and that sometimes they take responsibility for implementation. Management consultants are always criticised for not taking enough responsibility for implementation, but at least they do take some and do actually descend from the aircraft and step out on the tarmac. </p>\n<p>Thinktanks very rarely have any responsibility for implementation, or even any contact with implementers. Their relationship with the implementing party is not a relationship between a professional firm and its client, or between a supplier and a customer. The customer, for the thinktank, is the funder, a third party whose interests are not necessarily aligned with either those of the implementer or even of the thinktank. In fact, the funder’s interests may be irrelevant to either, perhaps because the funder is a disinterested philanthropic entity or an eccentric person with money, or perhaps because the funder’s aims are indirect. </p>\n<p>(For example, they might fund research into building an airport in the sea, not because they are interested in infrastructure planning or airports as such, but because they want to promote any other option than an airport near their home.)</p>\n<p>As a result, there is next to no discipline on their thinking as to whether it is in any degree practical. Bad thinking, like bad money, drives out good. When implementation doesn’t matter, the propaganda function of thinktanks comes to dominate the analytical function. Further, the number of analytical projects one can undertake is practically limited, but this is not true of the volume of propaganda that can be produced. And it is <em>easier</em> to talk nonsense than it is to speak the truth. </p>\n<p>Producing propaganda makes you a supplier to the wealthy and very active lobbying industry. It is very hard to quantify the value of any particular burst of drivel. When a customer with pots of cash meets a supplier whose product is difficult to price, you know who’s going to win. Rather as SMS messages were historically priced much higher than the equivalent amount of generic Internet traffic, the profit margin is potentially enormous. And the confusion between the analytical and the propaganda function tends to improve the quality of the propaganda. Hence, the <a href=\"http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/category/wanktanks\">wanktank concept</a>.</p>\n<p>Although thinktanks are usually organised as non-profit entities, this doesn’t mean for a moment that profit is not a motivation. There are more ways than dividends to get money out of a company. In this case, the relevant ones are executive salaries and the expense account. New Labour thinktanks were famous for entertaining copiously.</p>\n<p>Interestingly, all these points are also very true of private sector consulting firms, and therefore may represent a deeper truth. (Certainly, the one I work for has produced rather better analytical work lately after it started to pick up more consultancy business. Even if our parties, frankly, suck.)</p>\n<p>What are my recommendations? Well, the first would be <em>tell Neil O’Brien to fuck off, because he’s talking out of his arse</em>. </p>\n<p>The second would be that <em>the funding and formation of thinktanks should be more strongly regulated</em>. Specifically, a strong distinction should be drawn between lobbying and policy-analysing functions, and there should be rules governing access to public servants and information, as the ability to let some of them but not others talk to Sir Humphrey seems to have played a major role in several Coalition disasters.</p>\n<p>The third would be that <em>thinktanks ought to care much more about implementation</em>. This, oddly, has been tried a bit – anyone remember the Do Tank? – and deserves to be treated with caution after some coalition fuck-ups, even if A4e is more of a half-arsed and dodgy implementer turned lobby group than vice versa. But I think Crapita and EDS could do with more competition.</p>\n<p>The fourth? There may or may not be a <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2008/04/30/is-there-a-general-skill-of-management/\">general skill of management</a>, but if there is, it is embedded in social context. What works for the club trade probably won’t at the Department of Work and Pensions. (If this blog had an editor, at this point I would be yelling I TOLD YOU I’D LINK THAT.)</p>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Rwanda's current stunning development results suggests real value to Zambia of learning from it and other countries on the quickest way to ensure high economic growth is accompanied with poverty reduction. While Zambia shares Rwanda’s high growth success, it does not share its poverty reduction results. Over the last five year’s Kagame's government has lifted one million Rwandans out of poverty, with poverty rates declining from 56.7% in 2005/6 to 44.9 percent in 2010/11. Zambia’s poverty remains around 70%, in some provinces even as much as 80-90% with inequality continuing to increase.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Analysis and evidence is vital for improving decision making and developing robust economic and social policies. At the national level, some effort has been made by Government in providing further support to the Central Statistics Office to ensure sufficient data exists on tracking progress on key MDG indicators as well as undertaking the economic census. More needs to be done with existing data by embedding economic expertise in all ministries. There’s a <a href=\"http://www.zambian-economist.com/2011/04/poverty-of-cost-benefit-analysis.html\">bankruptcy of cost benefit analysis</a> which has led to <a href=\"http://www.zambian-economist.com/2011/04/poverty-of-economic-analysis.html\">costly proposals such as the Mongu-Kalabo road</a>. But equally more urgent is the need to look beyond our borders for evidence. Governments around the world focused on ensuring better returns from policy interventions are increasingly recognising the advantages of complementing national evidence with international evidence. </div><a name=\"more\"></a><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">International evidence can enable GRZ to identify good practice. By comparing experience in tackling poverty reduction and increasing growth across countries, it would be able to observe what cost effective policies work best and under what conditions. By effectively comparing why another country (e.g. Namibia) is “better” in one area (e.g. rural tourism) it opens policy makers to develop new solutions by building on existing depository of knowledge from other countries. International experience and data therefore provides invaluable evidence of what works in practice, and help policy makers avoid either re-inventing policies which already exist elsewhere, or repeating others' mistakes. Analytically, it can also help identify potential areas of natural experiments. A key analytical challenge is to be sure whether formulated policies are able to deliver the intended results, and indeed whether the policy changes would be fundamentally responsible for those changes.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ordinary Zambians also benefit from such wide ranging evidence because it boosts the democratic function by informing the public. It increases the level of information openly available, which in turn allows citizens to develop ideas that challenge government and also holds it to account. For example, a simple comparison of how countries in the SADC region perform on youth employment that is widely disseminated in new social media may facilitate debate on whether enough is being done domestically. This in turn may incentivise Government to search for solutions which can contribute towards a more efficient use of resources.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">If all this sounds like piece in the sky, one only needs to take a look at Mauritius and Botswana to see that much can be learned even from a high level scan. Mauritius has long been heralded as a “success story”. There’s broad consensus that one of the reasons for its strong showing is down to strength of its \"institutions\". This challenges the narrative espoused by Zambian politicians that Mauritius largely developed due to export process zones! Such non-conventional policy interventions certainly contributed to the success but these operated within the context of a favourable trading environment externally and very strong economic and political institutions domestically.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Broadly understood, the Mauritian experience is not one that is can be duplicated by replicating its non-conventional policies under less favourable global conditions i.e. at present. That approach may well be hazardous. Crucially, the key elements of the Mauritian strategy—heavy intervention, extensive subsidization, and targeting, including through the creation of Multi Facility Economic Zones— may be fraught with difficulties because the preconditions for ensuring that an interventionist strategy succeeds, notably, the quality of domestic institutions and political processes, may not be in place.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">What we see in Mauritius is that the impact of strong institutions has been much broader and deeper. If Mauritius has demonstrated one thing, it is the invaluable benefit conferred by a domestic political system that is inclusive and provides a basis for keeping social conflict manageable. In Zambia, we have benefited from remarkable social stability. What we lack is an inclusive and open political system that does not revolve round the “cult of leadership”. A system is needed which would attract the best talent to take part in the political process rather shun from it – as is the case at present. A system that exists to serve the electorate rather than the politicians.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">No country illustrates better the value of strong and accountable state institutions than Botswana. From inception Botswana benefited from a long process of state and institution formation inherited from the Tswana states. This was crucial for developing checks and balances on politicians, resolving disputes and creating good governance. The integrative structure of Tswana states also limited regionalism and facilitated the emergence of a national identity. Decisions at the formation of the modern state in the 1960s built on this legacy. Then by historical chance, the eight Tswana states ended up controlling a single independent nation so that their institutions could help to determine national institutions without coming into conflict with other sets of institutions or interests. Moreover, the comparative neglect of the colony by the British administration allowed these institutions not only to persist, but to develop further in marked contrast to other experiences with indirect rule, including Zambia’s. But more importantly, Botswana ensured that elite interests were powerfully represented in early independence governments. Since elites were heavily invested in ranching, this led to a socially efficient development of the ranching industry and secure property rights which greatly facilitated the early growth of the economy.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Botwana’s institutional success suggests that even starting form terrible initial conditions, there’s hope for growth where sound economic policies are pursued within a sound institutional framework. More importantly, Botswana got richer slowly, step by step. It did not need a ‘big push’ just accumulation of little sensible things, within an orthodox policy framework. Botswana is a challenge to the “binding constraints” school that is inherently pre-occupied with identifying the next binding market failure in Zambia to spark growth. What we see in Botswana is that a conducive institutional and political environment allowed the country to make socially desirable choices. Without solving these problems, promoting industrial policy in Zambia will probably have the consequences we have already seen in the past, which is simply creating more opportunities for rent seeking and clientelism.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">We should not ignore that when the post-independence state was constructed in Botswana in the 1960s, it was done in the shadow of Tswana institutions of dispute resolution and consultation. Chiefs were not able to make arbitrary decisions concerning their tribes without consultation and it is clear that the members of the Legislative Council behaved in the same way. As laws were passed and decisions made, Masire and Khama would travel the country appearing before kgotlas to explain, discuss and justify decisions. As the national capital was constructed, new kgotlas were built to cement the old in the new. A series of decisions were made which helped to build the national state. A simple one was making Setswana and English the only languages that were taught in school. Mineral rights were vested in the nation and not the tribe. Land laws were changed so that people could be allocated land outside their own tribal areas. These decisions, and many others like them, built the modern state and its institutions. This is why policy has been good and clientelism so scarce in Botswana.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">There’s a broader interesting lesson that emerges from this high level scan of Botswana and Mauritius. It is that there’s no one size fits all. Each nation must find its own path as it negotiates the historic and political contours. Each country has its own unique challenges forged through history. There’s no contradiction here with the pursuit of international evidence, rather it is that in looking abroad we become clearer of the need for more experimentation not less, drawing on existing reservoirs of knowledge. The important point is that Zambian analysts must place greater emphasise to study the specific features of our nation and experiment to see what works and might not work in light of existing international experience.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">It is here that the World Bank, IMF and other donors must concentrate. Not in providing the answers but helping Zambian policy makers routine incorporate international evidence in policy development. They need to encourage Zambian analysts who understand the culture and history to generate sustainable growth solutions. This is not easy. It requires donors to have a better appreciation for home grown solutions than they have exhibited in the past. But crucially it requires Zambians to have the necessary confidence in their ability to generate such solutions, and leave behind what some have called the “soft bigotry of low expectations”. A can do attitude is needed! Not merely a hollow one but one accompanied by real effort to fully grasp the necessary incremental changes. Its hard work, but it’s the only path to lasting solutions. Ultimately that is what Zambian Economist exists to encourage – it seeks to be a microcosm of what an alternative path to finding lasting solutions may look like. As ideas are exchanged and Zambians around the world challenge one another – we are actively searching for good solutions for Zambia. Information, ideas and influence in that order!</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2705183461541363969-2525769558451616240?l=www.zambian-economist.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/kj43469jkq3jkc823r6o7l2dbs/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zambian-economist.com%2F2012%2F10%2Flearning-from-others.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?i=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?i=tNUhp_Es0V8:X0aP_WRl-44:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NewZambia/~4/tNUhp_Es0V8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "Food studies and literature courses rarely consider African food the same way they do other cuisines, apart from the frequent allusions to Igbo food in Achebe's works. In class we're taking a very quick look at food in African literature, including proverbs, poems, short stories, and novels. <br><br>Today we heard two African poets, who graciously included "food poems" in their repertoires <br>for us:"
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"content" : "<br><div><br><span><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/8050470680/\">Making Shea Butter</a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/\">Nana Kofi Acquah</a>.</span><br><span><br></span><span><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/8050470680/\" title=\"Making Shea Butter by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img alt=\"Making Shea Butter\" height=\"533\" src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8320/8050470680_f083f6b3ef_o.jpg\" width=\"800\"></a></span></div><div>This woman is part of a group of women in Tamale in northern Ghana who produce the world's finest shea butter. I know because I have bought shea butter from them a number of times... and it is the finest, smoothest, freshest shea butter my eyes have ever seen. Trust me, I know quite a lot about shea butter. Enjoy</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-5147199232149692666?l=africaphotographer.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Friends Don't Let Friends Fly American Airlines",
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"content" : "<p>You may have read Gary Shteyngart's <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/a-trans-atlantic-trip-turns-kafkaesque.html\">endlessly amusing <em>New York Times</em> op-ed about a nightmare experience</a> on American Airlines over the weekend, but he's such an entertaining writer and air travel horror stories are so common that I'm afraid some people may miss the core point. You seriously have to stop traveling on American Airlines. Seriously. If you're booking some travel somewhere, book it somewhere else. If your company has some relationship with American that gives them a strong preference for you to fly with American, still book it somewhere else.</p>\n<p>Right at about the same time as Shteyngart's transatlantic misadventure, I myself was booked on an American route that was supposed to take me from Tulsa, Okla., to Dallas and then from Dallas to Baltimore. My plane boarded about five minutes late in Tulsa, and then the pre-takeoff stuff all seemed to be going a bit sluggishly. Then once everyone was boarded and the plane was away from the gate, the pilot announced that the backup gyroscope was broken and we wouldn't be taking off after all. The hour-plus delay was clearly going to cause me to miss my connection, but while on the runway I was able to ascertain from my iPhone that my connecting flight was also substantially delayed because the plane was getting in late, so I had some hope. My flight eventually took off about 90 minutes later than scheduled, and I hurried to try to make the connection. Unfortunately, the train inside the Dallas airport (it's American's main hub, and American is the overwhelmingly dominant carrier there) was partially broken and only running in one direction, so the train took the long way around, greatly slowing my ability to make the connection. Still, I hustled to the gate and got there two minutes before the rescheduled departure time except ... the door was already closed. The plane, however, hadn't actually left the gate, and there were about a dozen other people outside with me. Normally under those circumstances, an airline will reopen the door to avoid the expense and inconvenience of rebooking everyone, but not this time—the pilot just jetted away.</p>\n<p>This turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise for me, since I was able to rebook on a flight into Reagan Washington National Airport, which is much more convenient for me than Baltimore, but passengers who were actually trying to get to Baltimore were pretty screwed. Then I shuffled over to my Washington departure gate, but that flight ended up delayed 40 minutes, and then I got home.</p>\n<p>Mine was hardly the greatest disaster in aviation history, but it's striking that since Sept. 16 <a href=\"http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-28/business/chi-delays-cancellations-continue-at-american-20120928_1_amr-american-airlines-cancellations\">fully half of American's flights have been delayed</a>, while just over 90 percent of non-American flights have been on schedule.</p>\n<p>And this isn't a coincidence. The basic issue is that <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/blame_jimmy_carter_for_all_the_airline_bankruptcies_or_better_yet_thank_him_.html\">American Airlines filed for bankruptcy in December</a> not primarily to restructure its debts but to restructure its contracts with the unions that represent its workers. The company successfully used the threat of court orders to induce almost all its unions to agree to givebacks, but they couldn't come to agreement with the pilots. Then on Sept. 5, American <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57506290/bankruptcy-judge-throws-out-amr-pilots-contract/\">got a bankruptcy judge to throw out its pilots' contract</a>. Thus since mid-September the pilots have been essentially sabotaging the airline. Some of that has been through elevated numbers of sick days, but the primary tool is overscrupulous maintenance requests. As an anonymous American Airlines pilot <a href=\"http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2012/09/another-american-airlines-pilot-explains-why-aa-is-having-so-many-delays.html/\">explained to the <em>Dallas Morning </em><em>News</em>' excellent aviation blog</a> that normal airline operations simply can't be done this way:</p>\n<blockquote>\n If you ran your car like American Airlines has been running for the last two weeks if your car was leaking oil on the drive, write it up. Windshield wipers streaking, write it up. Shocks squeaking, write it up. Car pulls slightly to the left, write it up. Your wife would be thrilled ... until the bill came in.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n The other thing (you're) seeing is guys that used to use their knowledge of the systems to keep it limping along or reset it are no longer helping out. Most of the time the fix is to just reboot the system and seeing if it does it again. Now guys get a message or the system doesn’t preform as it should then instead of trouble shooting and seeing if it does it again they just write it up, “No Bucks, No Buck Rogers” is the saying.\n</blockquote>\n<p>Long story short, American is totally screwed. What management is discovering right now is that formal contracts can't fully specify what it is that "doing your job properly" constitutes for an airline pilot. The smooth operation of an airline requires the active cooperation of skilled pilots who are capable of judging when it does and doesn't make sense to request new parts and who conduct themselves in the spirit of wanting the airline to succeed. By having the judge throw out the pilots' contract, the airline has totally lost faith with its pilots and has no ability to run the airline properly. It's still perfectly safe, but if your goal is to get to your destination on time, you simply can't fly American. The airline is writing checks it can't cash when it tells you when your flights will be taking off and landing.<br> </p>\n<p>In my experience, the passengers on a Tulsa-Dallas flight are not super sympathetic to labor unions. But it's worth emphasizing that one possible resolution of American's bankruptcy is merger with US Airways—an option that US Airways has been pursuing and that <a href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/20/news/companies/us-airways-american-airlines/index.htm\">American's unions say they support</a>. The main problem with a merger as best I can tell is that if US Airways takes over, American's executives will probably lose their jobs. So the contract fight is, in part, a fight to maintain American's independence for the sake of its managers. The cost of the fight, however, is that the airline can no longer reliably deliver passengers to their destinations. So stay far, far away.<br> </p>"
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"title" : "Bednets are failing",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<p><div>\n<img alt=\"Anopheles_gambiae\" height=\"399\" src=\"http://getfile3.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-23/avmdAranCpxJmuaFcqntBitfcuJIxonHHAjjnktupEjccobudDvCyBnkzBdl/anopheles_gambiae.png.scaled980.png\" width=\"600\">\n</div>\n </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><em>Undefeated (© IRD / M. Dukhan)</em></span></p>\n<p>Bednets seemed the perfect malaria intervention: cheap, needing no doctors or needles but saving the lives of perhaps five children for every thousand covered. But unfurling hundreds of millions of mosquito-killing nets across Africa has provoked a wave of insecticide resistance. Resistant mosquitos pass through and bite instead of dying. Also, children eventually come out from under bednets when they are older which might be worse than having had no protection to begin with in areas with intense malaria transmission. Remarkably, the most recent and comprehensive research on malaria mortality shows weak or no evidence that bednets save the lives of children in Africa.</p>\n<p>In 2000, health officials set a goal to protect 60 percent of the population at greatest risk of dying from malaria, children under five and pregnant women.<span> </span>Compelling studies had shown that bednets dramatically reduced malaria and saved lives. In 2005, the World Health Assembly voted to hoist the target to 80 percent. Distribution of nets leapt to 47 million in 2006, up from 17 million the year before. In 2007, Melinda Gates called for the total global eradication of malaria. In 2008, the world spun up and delivered more than 60 million nets. Nets became a cause célèbre, with Ashton Kutcher <a href=\"http://www.malarianomore.org/who-we-are/celebrities/ashton-kutcher\">leading the charge</a> on Twitter in 2009. In 2010, more than 140 million nets were shipped to sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 750 million people are at risk for malaria.</p>\n<p><span> </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><div>\n<img alt=\"Nets_distributed\" height=\"408\" src=\"http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-10-01/rAGiEnCqkHIiCpuypGjFkwllvqivsClxvfpiimaszCCyrBGarEGJJAjommoH/Nets_distributed.png.scaled980.png\" width=\"648\">\n</div>\nInsecticide treated nets (ITNs) distributed to sub-Saharan Africa. WHO, <a href=\"http://www.who.int/malaria/world_malaria_report_2011/en/\">World Malaria Report 2011</a></span></p>\n<h1>Scale-up drives resistance</h1>\n<p>But living organisms try to stay that way. And the immense selective pressure of mosquitocidal nets drove a proportionate resistance pushback. More nets, deployed for more time, select for a more resistant mosquito population. For example, in a large trial in Asembo, Kenya, as bed net coverage ascended, a key mutation conferring insecticide resistance expanded through the mosquito population. When bednet coverage reached 100 percent, the resistance mutation also neared 100 percent frequency.</p>\n<p><span> </span></p>\n<p><div>\n<img alt=\"Kdr_frequency\" height=\"354\" src=\"http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-23/HvkEqfzpHrACAviEppbCmAoBcBszmFxaoccIJavoxvteCbqiDactyvsJqseA/kdr_frequency.png.scaled980.png\" width=\"620\">\n</div>\n<span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Adapted from Mathias et al., “<em>Spatial and temporal variation in the kdr allele L1014S in Anopheles gambiae s.s. and phenotypic variability in susceptibility to insecticides in Western Kenya</em>,” DOI: 10.1186/1475-2875-10-10</span></p>\n<p>Treated nets all use pyrethroids, a class of insecticides originally derived from chrysanthemums. Pyrethroids are enormously toxic to mosquitos but comparatively safe for humans. Pyrethroids act on nerve cells by binding to a receptor site on a sodium channel, inhibiting its deactivation. In susceptible mosquitos, pyrethroids trigger rapid paralysis or “knockdown,” then death.</p>\n<p>Not all die, however. Mosquitos have evolved a number of defenses. Some are metabolic — insects rapidly detoxifying or sequestering poisons. In addition, researchers looking at mosquito feet with an electron microscope have even detected “cuticular thickening” which slows or blocks insecticide absorption when mosquitos touch down on nets. Mosquitos might be evolving their behavior as well to avoid bednets. A recent <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22966127\">study</a> of two villages in Benin found that mosquitos shifted their peak feeding time from the middle of the night, when nets protect people sleeping under them, toward dawn when villagers are waking up and exposed. </p>\n<div>More important, however, are mutations that reconfigure the sodium channel to prevent the short-circuiting effects of pyrethroids. A sufficient dose of pyrethroids kills up to 100 percent of susceptible mosquitos but in some “knockdown resistant” phenotypes, as many as 100 percent <em>survive</em>.</div>\n<p>The frequency of resistance genes within a population ebbs and flows, and pyrethroids can still do serious damage even where resistance is present. Although the large number of nets drives selection for resistance, the insecticide onslaught also kills huge numbers of mosquitos, reducing transmission. Against susceptible mosquitos, bednets radically reduce bloodfeeding, by 90 percent or more. By contrast, bloodfeeding of knockdown-resistant mosquitos is essentially unaffected by the pyrethroids on bednets. And, by itself, the physical barrier presented by nets provides only very partial protection.</p>\n<h1>The search for alternatives</h1>\n<p>Venerable pyrethroids are now roughly half a century old. There are efforts to find new insecticides, but none are in sight. The Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), set up and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been working on the problem since 2005. IVCC’s current <a href=\"http://www.ivcc.com/projects/PHP.htm\">portfolio</a> shows no new chemicals entering into a development or registration for use phase. If there are any promising candidates further upstream, IVCC chief operating officer Tom McLean won’t talk about them. He fielded a question on status by saying: “At this early stage of the development process it is not appropriate to publish specific chemical structures of what is in the pipeline because it is essential to preserve the commercially competitive nature of these products.”</p>\n<p>The Gates Foundation directly funded out-of-the-box projects like “click chemistry” in which two non-toxic chemicals bind together lethally inside mosquitos. But that clever idea did not pan out.</p>\n<p>According to Helen Pate Jamet, senior scientist for bednet maker Vestergaard Frandsen, “ideally we need at least 2-3 new insecticides from completely different insecticide classes in order to have a real impact on resistance and have the ability to rotate/mix different classes.”</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Vestergaard Frandsen is testing nets impregnated with chlorfenapyr which comes from a new class of insecticides called pyrroles. Unfortunately, they aren’t as good as pyrethroids. Chlorfenapyr is less toxic to mosquitos and more harmful to humans than pyrethroids. Chlorfenapyr is a "prodrug" that has to be broken down before starting the chain of events that, in time, kills the mosquito. Consequently, chlorfenapyr-treated nets provide little to no personal protection from malaria. Mosquitos still bite, only dying later. “Any inhibition of blood feeding associated with the insecticide treatment was not statistically significant,” according to one <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2009.02245.x/full\">study</a> of chlorfenapyr–laced bednets. To work, much of the community must also sleep under a net, thereby reducing the mosquito population. The direct life-saving benefit of pyrethroid bednets is lost.</p>\n<h1>Geographic extent and implications</h1>\n<p>Pyrethroid resistance has been found all over the African continent. Mosquitos have developed resistance to other insecticides, but according to WHO's most recent <a href=\"http://www.who.int/malaria/vector_control/ivm/gpirm/en/index.html\">report</a>, "Resistance to pyrethroids seems to be the most widespread." And it's worsening. Previously there were pockets of resistance; now there are pockets of susceptibility. </p>\n<p><div>\n<img alt=\"Resistance_map\" height=\"1088\" src=\"http://getfile6.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-23/uDFryexwIACFdkGsIGJrrgAmycmaAhdECFeugIcffiGnCiGElDyrwBndhgIu/Resistance_map.png.scaled980.png\" width=\"980\">\n</div>\n<span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Adapted from: Ranson, et al., “<em>Pyrethroid resistance in African anopheline mosquitoes: what are the implications for malaria control?</em>” DOI: 10.1016/j.pt.2010.08.004 and WHO, “Global Plan for Insecticide Resistance Management in Malaria Vectors”</span></p>\n<p>Yet remarkably there is debate about whether insecticide resistance impacts malaria control. “[T]here is broad consensus that the degree of resistance that has developed and its likely trajectory are a cause for serious concern,” according to Scott Filler, senior advisor at the Global Fund for Aids, TB and Malaria. The trajectory, Filler says is toward “widespread control failure,” but “the pace of this process and the degree of reduction in malaria control effectiveness remains unknown.” The Global Fund purchases the majority of the world’s bednets, some 56 million in 2010.</p>\n<p>Janet Hemingway, director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine concurs that there is “undoubtedly a rapid increase” in pyrethroid resistance in Africa and that “at some point we will get failure.”</p>\n<p>However, according to Christian Lengeler, it is “probably right” that “we have already now some detrimental effect...” because of pyrethroid resistance. Lengeler is director of the health interventions unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. Together with WHO, Lengeler <a href=\"http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Resources/Publications/Pages/IDRCBookDetails.aspx?PublicationID=403\">advocated</a> for bednets in the mid-1990s. He also authored the influential meta-analysis of bednet trials in 2004 <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15106149\">showing</a> 5.5 lives could be saved for each 1,000 children covered by nets.</p>\n<h1>Uncertainty principle</h1>\n<p>Getting a grip on the actual effects of bednets is difficult. The Global Fund’s Filler gave a mixed message on whether a decline in effectiveness can be measured. “No – no such [study] design exists,” said Filler. But he then added: “This can be accomplished in carefully designed trials but these are complex, expensive and need a high level of epidemiological expertise to conduct….”</p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(11)70194-3/abstract\">study</a> of bednets in the village of Dielmo in Senegal published last year showed nets rapidly reduced malaria when first introduced, consistent with many previous studies. However, within two years, 48 percent of mosquitos had a mutation for pyrethroid knockdown resistance, up from 8 percent at the beginning of the study. Cases of malaria rebounded to just below pre-bednet levels.</p>\n<p>Controversy ensued. “This paper is bad,” Lengeler said of the Dielmo study. The study, Lengeler continued, “has no credit whatsoever in the malaria community.” A commentary accompanying the Dielmo study applauded the rigor of the research but cautioned against extrapolating its conclusions to the rest of Africa.</p>\n<p>However, the authors of the commentary themselves produced a <a href=\"http://www.ajtmh.org/content/84/1/152.long\">study</a> just a few months earlier which appeared to show bednet failure. In Luangwa, Zambia, bednet use rose dramatically in two years from about half the population to 86 percent. However, malaria infections went <em>up</em>. Although the paper seemed to demonstrate some kind of failure, one of the authors, Thomas Eisele, wrote in email: "That is not accurate.” Eisele, of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, did not reply to subsequent requests to elaborate. He pointed instead to research from the Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation (IHME) showing more favorable results.</p>\n<h1>Claims on nets overstretching evidence</h1>\n<p>The IHME <a href=\"http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001091\">study</a> found that bednets were associated with a statistically significant reduction of mortality from any cause of 23%. However, the study did not examine the effect of insecticide treated nets (ITNs) on death from <em>malaria.</em> As the study authors pointed out, "we were only able to examine the relationship between ITNs and all-cause mortality as the surveys we used do not include information on cause-specific mortality." </p>\n<p>However, a <a href=\"http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/news-events/news-release/owning-insecticide-treated-bed-nets-lowers-child-mortality-23\">press release</a> from IHME about the study used less cautious language, claiming: \"researchers found clear evidence that bed nets reduce the number of child deaths from malaria.\" That statement did not appear in the peer-reviewed paper and is not supported by evidence in the paper.</p>\n<p>IHME recently published a more comprehensive, exhaustive malaria mortality <a href=\"http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60034-8/fulltext\">study</a><span>.</span> It made global headlines, reporting a higher death toll for malaria than previous estimates. Part of the difference came from a much larger estimate of deaths among adults. However, the study found that bednets did not reduce adult deaths from malaria in Africa: "coverage of insecticide-treated bednets," read the report, "was not a statistically significant predictor of African adult malaria mortality." But on the even larger question of whether bednets save children in Africa, the study is silent.</p>\n<p>Asked that question in email, however, one of the paper’s authors, IHME’s Stephen Lim, replied that “ITNs [bednets] were a statistically significant predictor of African child mortality.” In other words, bednets worked to save the lives of the largest and most vulnerable group, children in Africa.</p>\n<p>But the basis for this unpublished claim isn’t clear. The IHME study incorporates data from many smaller studies of particular geographic areas and then extrapolates as needed to country and continent levels using sophisticated, computationally-intensive modeling techniques. IHME actually generated many hundreds of models which were then averaged together into an ensemble to most closely approximate reality. However, Lim said IHME did not calculate an average hazard ratio for the effects of bednets. (A hazard ratio is a number that indicates whether an intervention increases or decreases risk, in this case the risk of dying from malaria.) “Analytically,' said Lim in email, "we can calculate an ‘average’ hazard ratio but it is not something we have currently in place and would involve a considerable amount of work.” </p>\n<p>Not having a hazard ratio raises the question of how the statistical significance of bednets was assessed. IHME spokesperson William Heisel wrote in email that 131 models found bednet coverage to be a significant predictor of malaria mortality for children under five in Africa. However, at one point in the analysis, there are a total of 214 models for children under five in Africa. IHME did not reply to an email asking if this meant 131 models were and 83 models were not significant for bednets. </p>\n<p>A greater number of models does not necessarily mean the variable being tested is statistically significant because models are weighted differently. IHME had earlier cautioned against simply counting the models in their list: “This list by itself," wrote Lim, "is not easily interpretable as different individual models are given more weight in generating the ensemble model.”</p>\n<p>Asked whether IHME had based their assessment of statistical significance on a count of models, Heisel replied that IHME would not answer any more questions in email, .</p>\n<h1>Possible mistake?</h1>\n<p>Although difficult to countenance, distributing bednets in high transmission areas<span style=\"color:#424037;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;line-height:115%\">—</span>like much of sub-Saharan Africa<span style=\"color:#424037;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:9pt;line-height:115%\">—</span>might have been a mistake.</p>\n<p><div>\n<img alt=\"Malaria_transmission\" height=\"227\" src=\"http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-05-23/zwgoabgygqofJkHEmqDlGkFimGJkkeClbJCHaArirtfziClEErfJEyzEjprf/Malaria_transmission.png.scaled980.png\" width=\"603\">\n</div>\n</p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Intensity of malaria transmission worldwide. Darkest color indicates very high (>40 percent) infection prevalence and high transmission. Gething, et al., “<em>A new world malaria map: Plasmodium falciparum endemicity in 2010</em>” DOI: 10.1186/1475-2875-10-378</span></p>\n<p>Where malaria is intense, being bitten is a kind of deadly hazing ritual with survival conferring a degree of immunity. In very young, non-immune children, malaria infection leads to fever—and possibly death. The fatality rate of malaria infections is, perhaps contrary to expectations, very low. Only an estimated 0.3 percent of infections globally cause death. But infections are so numerous that hundreds of thousands of children die each year. Children who survive, however, generally can better control infections later in life and even show no symptoms while carrying perhaps millions of parasites.</p>\n<p>Research in the late 1990s <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9186382\">concluded</a> that “a critical determinant of life-time disease risk is the ability to develop clinical immunity early in life…” Malaria, including cerebral malaria and severe malaria, declined as children got older. Risk for severe malaria was highest where transmission was <em>less</em> intense, likely because people don’t acquire immunity without exposure to considerable infective biting.</p>\n<p>Such natural tolerance is a mystery. There is no definitive set of biomarkers for it. And it’s no free pass: immunity may wane without some amount of continued infective biting, making severe disease a possibility.</p>\n<p>One of the authors of the study, Robert Snow, now head of the public health group at the Kenya Medical Research Institute/Wellcome Trust Program, said recently, “I remain convinced that a certain degree of parasite exposure is required to develop functional immune responses to reduce risks of death and severe disease from malaria.”</p>\n<p>Nets were originally targeted at children under five because most deaths from malaria occurred in that age range. But where malaria is intense, infection is unavoidable, with bednets deferring it to a later age. The age range least likely to sleep under a net is age 5 to 19. The most protected become the least protected—with potentially more adverse health consequences. Studies have found a shift in disease burden to older age groups following introduction of bednets. Trape and colleagues found this in Dielmo, Senegal. Other researchers, in an earlier 2009 <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008321\">paper</a><span>,</span> showed that nets reduced malaria risk in younger but not older children, a finding “consistent with older children having used [bednets] when they were younger, and therefore having acquired less immunity.” Thus to the extent bednets have saved lives in high transmission settings, they may also have created a population with reduced natural immunity, possibly setting the stage for a rebound of malaria.</p>\n<p>“The issue of rebound and building up a time-bomb of susceptibles is interesting and you will find people willing to argue either side,” said Simon Hay, of Oxford University where he heads the Malaria Atlas Project.</p>\n<p>The Global Fund’s Scott Filler said rebound concerns were “one major progenitor to move from targeted distribution of [bednets] to children under five to the goal of achieving universal coverage…” WHO switched to recommending universal coverage in 2007. (As the graph above shows, however, bednets distributed actually declined in 2011.)</p>\n<p>Gerry Killeen of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania believes rebound “is highly implausible unless the interventions themselves fail (resistance) or are withdrawn.” <span> </span>His parenthetical mention of resistance, however, could mean trouble. Azra Ghani, of Imperial College London, and colleagues <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0004383\">concluded</a> that “If the effectiveness of the intervention gradually wanes, the impact on immunity is likely to be minimal and the incidence of clinical disease will return to pre-intervention settings,” perhaps ten years later.</p>\n<h1>Diaphanous nets and ghosts of the past</h1>\n<p>Bednets were hoped to be a precise, stealthy intervention beneath the notice of mosquitos. But protecting even a portion of the population appears to have engaged their evolutionary attention. The switch to universal coverage also shifted the strategy: the purpose of the nets has become to kill mosquitos. “In order for their full potential to be realized,” reads the WHO <a href=\"http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/atoz/itnspospaperfinal.pdf\">position statement</a>, bednets “should be deployed as a vector control intervention.”</p>\n<p>However, if the goal was to knock transmission into an unrecoverable tailspin, it hasn’t worked. Transmission in high intensity areas dropped, but the force of infection still “needs a bit more help get it over a hump of stability that will impact on disease burden in the longer term,” said Robert Snow. The question is how because, continued Snow, the “expectation that [bednets] alone were to be the panacea in high transmission areas was misplaced.”</p>\n<p>Resistance to DDT caused the technical failure of the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century effort to eradicate malaria. Nonetheless, over time, bednet policy has taken on a worrying semblance to this unsuccessful strategy. The previous effort didn’t even attempt to take on the heartland of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, with some researchers arguing success was impossible using DDT. Also, planners of the oft-maligned effort actually knew resistance would be a problem where DDT was used and consequently they set a blitzkrieg timeline for achieving victory in a few years before resistance rose up. In comparison, the bednet strategy seems ad hoc and improvisational.</p>\n<p>The coverage targets, initally 60 percent and then 80 percent, “were moved because we weren't going to meet them on time,” said David Smith of the University of Florida. “Instead of admitting nothing was happening, the intervention coverage target was increased and the date moved back—seeming to have some thought behind it, but mostly just saving face.”</p>\n<p>Pyrethroid resistance was not part of the agenda at the Gates World Malaria Forum last October nor was it mentioned in congressional hearings on malaria last December. That omission may come from a concern, expressed by Killeen, “that doom-and-gloom stories will kill public enthusiasm for things that have saved many lives,” which he estimates to be half a million in Tanzania over the last five years. Scaling up such interventions “took a long time to get in place.” He concludes, “I am the father of two under fives and I live in a part of rural Tanzania where over 80 percent of people use [bednets] so this is a very real issue for me.”</p>\n<p>Malaria is horrific, nature unsentimental. Sustainably reducing or ridding the disease from the world is unquestionably desirable. “But as we are now seeing,” <a href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2009.02245.x/full\">say</a> other researchers, controlling mosquitos with chemical killing agents comes at a price, “and the price is resistance.”</p>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://robertfortner.posterous.com/bed-nets-are-failing\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://robertfortner.posterous.com/bed-nets-are-failing#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"content" : "<p>SKIN-LIGHTENING products are so popular in Nigeria they have given rise to their own terminology in Pidgin English. “Some people have a Fanta face from using bleaching products,” explains Esther, a shop attendant showing Baobab around the skin-lightening products that take up two aisles of the small cosmetic section in a minimarket in Abuja, Nigeria's capital. “Fanta face, coca cola legs” she explains, describes the mottled complexion of someone who uses skin-lightening products on their face but not their body, which maintains its darker shade.</p><p>According to a report published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in June, 77% of women in Nigeria use skin-lightening products, the world’s highest percentage. That compares with 59% in Togo, and 27% in Senegal.</p><p>“I don’t use them, I prefer to be chocolate,” says Esther, “but some people use them so other people don’t think they work outside all day.” Fairer skin is equated with wealth and working in plush air-conditioned offices, not toiling in fields and open-air markets under the blazing hot sun.</p><p>Nothing new there—Queen Elizabeth I of England famously used lead as a skin whitener. It became an increasingly popular practice among African women in the late 1950s. And it is a lucrative business. The industry is set to be worth $10bn globally by 2015, according to a recent report by Global Industry Analysts. In Nigeria, skin lightening can cost anything from a few dollars for a cream or soap to hundreds of dollars for a treatment in a beauty parlour, and the increasing westernisation of young Nigerian women has bolstered the demand for more expensive products.</p><p>But the trend comes with hazardous health consequences. Many products contain mercury and hydroquinone, which can lead to kidney damage, skin rashes, discolouration and scarring. Excessive use may even cause psychological problems, according to the WHO report. Worryingly, some women in Nigeria actively seek out products that contain these harmful ingredients, as they are perceived to be more effective. But often those that do contain harmful substances, do not list them as ingredients.</p><p>In India, where nearly two thirds of the dermatological market consists of skin-lightening products, a whitening wash for intimate female areas was launched this year. It provoked international outrage when a television advert implied that women who used it would be more attractive to men. When Baobab asked some Nigerian women whether they would try such a product, they replied with raucous laughter.</p><p>For some, the teasing these products can induce just is not worth it. “When people have this patchy face we call them bingo face,” explains Julie Ogidi, a cook, “Bingo—like the dog.”</p><div></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"margin:0 0 10px 0;padding:0;font-size:0.8em;line-height:1.6em\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/8034025125/\" title=\"Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2081\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8314/8034025125_de50ab1f94.jpg\" alt=\"Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2081 by Ape Lad\"></a><br><span style=\"margin:0\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/8034025125/\">Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #2081</a>, a photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/\">Ape Lad</a> on Flickr.</span></div><p></p><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30451540-2991448817915576956?l=apelad.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>I see a mention over <a href=\"http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/debt-is-a-drug-and-so-is-austerity/\">here</a> of something called “<a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=%22generational+forgetting%22\">generational forgetting</a>.” I like this term, and I sometimes talk about the syndrome (I assume) it labels. The pattern it labels is scale free and once you have recognized it you’ll see it everywhere. It goes like so:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Problem arises that creates pain.</li>\n<li>Solution demands collective action, creation of a complex institution or widespread change in social norms.</li>\n<li>Such a solution emerges; via solidarity and institution building (driven by the pain of the problem).</li>\n<li>The pain is dissipated.</li>\n<li>The institution and norms switch into a maintenance mode (driven by fear of the pain, and collective memory).</li>\n<li>Time passes, new generation arrives, memory of the pain becomes based in stories rather than experience.</li>\n<li>Norms and institutions decay as they are critiqued and defunded.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>This pattern, and it will often be cyclic, is particularly intense around problems requiring collective action. During step two all the <a href=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2009/10/the-perverse-and-invisible-hand\">usual conservative talking points</a> will be deployed, and particular variants of them honed. When we get to step seven, like bitter zombies, they will all rise from the dead hoping to reclaim the day.</p>\n<p>There millions of examples of this. For example if you work in some organization you will probably have little trouble thinking of some social norm inside the organization that appears to require a lot of ongoing persuasion (moral-suasion) to maintain. The actors who are engaged int hat persuading are doing the work of #5; and if you dig you can usually retrieve horror stories from phase 1.</p>\n<p>I’m sad to see that the term “generational forgetting” isn’t actually widely used. It appears less than ten thousand times in Google search. It appears to be a term of art used in the back rooms of the social science ivory tower, where the pack in the graduate students.</p>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://www.guardiannews.com/\">The Guardian</a>, as so often, has interesting material on dead poets & live languages. The first concerns Keats as opium addict (vide new biography by Nicholas Roe) & the second, Nigeria’s strong, very alive & quickly evolving pidgin:</p>\n<div>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"color:#000000\">John Keats was an opium addict, claims a new biography of the poet</span></h3>\n<p>The author of Ode to a Nightingale wrote his greatest poems with the aid of opium, believes Prof Nicholas Roe</p>\n</blockquote>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<ul style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<li>\n<div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ameliahill\" rel=\"author\">Amelia Hill</a></div>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><img src=\"http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/9/21/1348228941146/John-Keats-008.jpg\" alt=\"John Keats\" width=\"460\" height=\"276\"></div>\n</blockquote>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>John Keats: Ode to a Nightingale arose from opium reveries, claims new biography. Photograph: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images</div>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on John Keats\" href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/johnkeats\">John Keats</a>, the poet of “beauty”, a devotee of aesthetic isolation who swooned at the thought of his so-called “bright star” Fanny Brawne and succumbed to TB when he was 25, was an opium addict.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The claim is made in a new biography, to be published on Monday, by Prof Nicholas Roe, chair of the <a title=\"\" href=\"http://keatsfoundation.com/\">Keats Foundation</a> and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Roe admits his finding will be contentious. “This has never been said before: Keats as an opium addict is new,” he said.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Roe, professor of English literature at the University of St Andrews, dismisses other experts who have previously concluded that Keats only briefly experimented with the drug. The former poet laureate Andrew Motion, winner of the Whitbread prize for biography and author of a biography of the poet, has, said Roe, made “assumptions” about Keats and his use of opiates that “simply have no warrant”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">[ctd. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/sep/21/john-keats-opium-addict\">here</a>]</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<h3>Nigeria’s love of pidgin dey scatter my brain yet ginger my swagger</h3>\n<p>With hundreds of tribes and languages, slang English known as ‘Naija’ is becoming the glue of Africa’s most populous nation</p>\n</div>\n</blockquote>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<ul style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/monica-mark\" rel=\"author\">Monica Mark</a> in Lagos</li>\n</ul>\n</blockquote>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><img src=\"http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/9/24/1348490280073/Children-in-the-village-o-010.jpg\" alt=\"Children in the village of Oniparagba listen to Radio Wazobia, Nigeria's largest pidgin station. \" width=\"460\" height=\"276\">\n<div>Children in the village of Oniparagba listen to Radio Wazobia, Nigeria’s largest pidgin station. Photograph: Monica Mark for the Guardian</div>\n</div>\n</blockquote>\n<div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In <a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Nigeria\" href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/nigeria\">Nigeria</a>‘s megacity of Lagos, where the country’s 500 languages come together in a chaotic medley, the rapid-fire rhythm of pidgin is the symphony of the streets. <a title=\"More from guardian.co.uk on Africa\" href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a>‘s largest country is a sometimes fractious mix of 160 million inhabitants divided into 250 ethnicities. But street hustlers and Harvard-educated politicians alike greet each other with: “How you dey?” or “How body?”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The reply can range from a chirpy “I dey fine” to a downbeat “Body dey inside cloth,” (literally meaning “I’m still wearing clothes”). Officially known as Naija, Nigerian pidgin is spoken by tens of millions across the country. Current affairs, English and local languages are brewed together to dish up playful imagery at breakneck speed.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In Lagos, a Nigerian policeman demonstrated how his English-imported spaniel, Milly, “dey hear pidgin well well” as she obeyed a series of pidgin commands. It’s used in slogans scrawled on crumbling walls and flashy billboards. As cars swerve through sweaty streets, it can also be heard blaring on <a title=\"\" href=\"http://www.wazobiafm.com/\">Radio Wazobia</a>, a pidgin-only station played in crammed buses, sleek air-conditioned jeeps and roadside food stalls.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Like its variants in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia, pidgin began as a form of broken English that allowed the country’s coastal inhabitants to barter slaves and later palm oil with European traders. Later, under colonialism, English became the language of prestige. “The common man wants to air their views but speaking in English they’re scared – they don’t want to do gbagam [hit something that makes a loud noise],” said Radio Wazobia morning news presenter Steve Onu, aka DJ Yaw.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">[ctd. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/24/nigeria-pidgin-scatter-brain-swagger\">here</a>]</p>\n</blockquote>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p><em>[Blockquotes are translations from the original French article]</em></p>\n<p>As the partition of their country continues, <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/08/31/mali-can-al-qaeda-in-the-islamic-maghreb-be-stopped/\">Malians are still watching</a> in disbelief, wondering whether it will stop. There has been media indifference coupled with confusion of Malian citizens as <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/06/26/mali-100-sharia-lashes-for-unwed-parents-in-the-north/\">Sharia law is imposed</a> without mercy in cities now in the hands of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_Oneness_and_Jihad_in_West_Africa\">MUJWA</a> (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa), <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&sqi=2&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNational_Movement_for_the_Liberation_of_Azawad&ei=CgtOUKWRHcbM2AWM14DgDA&usg=AFQjCNFsFxpZNOHdNFy5I8C2p661gw1gbQ&sig2=ekEON1AQrnBMz1Gf7xwrDA\">MNLA</a> (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) and Ansar Dine rebels. Adding to this disarray, the frantic rhythm of the new <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20120823-mali-cheick-modibo-diarra-grand-vainqueur-remaniement-haut-conseil-islamique\">nominations for government</a> [fr].</p>\n<p>N’Golo Diarra, Government Housing Minister at the time of the March 2012 coup, spoke in May 2012 of his concern at the silence of Malian intellectuals faced with these events which <a href=\"http://ankamali.net/indicateur-du-renouveau/6105-situation-politique-au-mali--les-intellectuels-sont-ils-devenus-aphones-\">fractured the old certainties</a> [fr] of this country. This concern was all the greater as Mali had been hailed as an example due to the resilience of its democracy over the past twenty years:</p>\n<blockquote><p> I've seen several media outbursts, I've read several pitiful reactions in the press, I've also witnessed several intellectual gestures and contortions, but I've seen nothing of the calibre of “J’accuse… !”, the famous open letter that Zola addressed to the president of the French republic, Felix Faure, and which made the front page of newspaper Aurora on January 13, 1898.[….] It is quite frankly pretentious of me to want to find Zola in the intellectual desert of our country, which has been in total freefall for such a long time. That is more to try to awaken the good conscience of the poets, artists, leading lights or even just unselfish patriots so that they guide us on this tortuous and dangerous road that our country is following in a kind of stupor. […] Is it really beyond our powers, that we Malians, inheritors of the greatest political and social structures of the African middle ages, so proud of our figureheads and heros…have the lucidity to analyse our existential problems and to try and find appropriate solutions for them?</p></blockquote>\n<div style=\"width:338px\"><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gScT-p2Enps\"><img src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Ma%C3%AEtre-Kassoum-Tapo-Mali-328x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"328\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Declaration of Kassoum Tapo on a coalition for restoration of the republic and of democracy. Screen capture from video uploaded by <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/FDRMALI?feature=watch\">FDRMali</a></p></div>\n<p>This appeal has certainly not gone unheeded, judging by the vitality of organisations coming out of Malian society. One such organisation is the Coalition for Mali (CPM), created with the aim of participating in the recovery of the nation's integrity. The CPM has gone to meet local representatives of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, three regions under occupation, as well as representatives of the ruling powers in these regions.</p>\n<p>Assane Koné reported <a href=\"http://ankamali.net/actualites/politique/7181-paix-et-securite-au-nord--la-coalition-pour-le-mali-ouvre-la-voie\">the conclusions of Tiebilé Dramé</a> [fr], CPM vice president, on website Ankamali.net:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Five months after the forced retreat of the state, all state services, NGOs and partners, there is a real need for the state in the occupied regions. The rulers there understand that they cannot replace the state by themselves. Each of them feels the urgent need to fill the gap which has been created and to satisfy people's basic needs. […] It was 150 days ago that the army and the civil service withdrew, leaving the people defenseless and at the mercy of various groups, some of which, notably in Gao and Timbuktu, perpetrated acts of violence and looting, violence which will always haunt memories. The Coalition representatives have observed an irrepressible need for the Malian homeland as well as observing that at the same time, people hardly miss the prefects, judges, gendarmes, police and all those who embody state services such as economic affairs, taxes, customs, water and forestry commissions etc.</p></blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><iframe width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/FPsFG8FmsL4?fs=1&feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><br>\n<em>Video of the meeting between CPM, Ansar Dine and the MNLA by <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/AlQarraTvFr?feature=watch\">AlQuarraTVFr</a></em> [fr]</p>\n<p>While the CPM are trying to find the way forward by dialogue, completely in line with respect for the Malian tradition of consensus and <a href=\"http://www.malijet.com/videos/actualite_en_video/49384-meeting-geant-a-bamako-pour-reclamer-la-reconciliation-nationale.html\">conciliation or “jekafo”</a> [fr], other members of society are openly opposed to this move towards reconciliation at any price.</p>\n<p>Sambi Touré, of Info-Matin, <a href=\"http://www.info-matin.info/index.php/actualite11/3212-editorial-apartheid-republicain-un-projet-raciste-et-une-trahison-du-mali\">accused the CPM</a> [fr] of advocating peace without respecting the fundamental values of the Malian nation:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Of course we want peace: but not at any price. We value a united, indivisible Mali, but not a fake unity and indivisibility; we value the republic, not a messy mix-up with the Sharia from the North and the free of the South; we value a democracy in which all citizens shall live under one sole body of law. Any other approach, for our patriotic temperament, would be not only a capitulation, but also a betrayal of democracy and of the republic, but above all, of the Malian nation.</p></blockquote>\n<p>On the right there are the armed militia of the Patriotic Resistance Front (one member of which, Ganda Izo <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/la-situation-politique-et-securitaire-au-nord/2012/09/04/article,89374.html\"> lost the city of Douentza</a> [fr]), who are determined but have little support, and on the left, the conciliatory Coalition for Mali. The ordinary people of Mali have also seen the birth of ethnic assocations which now considered more threatening in light of recent events. Consider the indigenous population of the regions of Gao, Timbuktu, Kidal and Mopti, members of the <a href=\"http://www.bamanet.net/index.php/actualite/autres-presses/18955-crise-du-nord-mali--l-zasya-r-pour-une-solution-definitive-.html\">Zasya Lasaltsaray</a> [fr] association who define their ties by “ZASYA”, the alliance of the descendents of three dynasties - the ZA, the Sony and the Askia - and by “LASALTARAY”, meaning authenticity, dignity, honour, nobility.</p>\n<p>Dr Sadou Djibrila Maïga, Zasya Lasaltsaray coordinator, <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/insecurite/2012/09/02/article,89058.html\">explained</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>We, the indigenous people, form the majority the northerly regions of Mali. By creating this alliance, we wish to fight, to defend ourselves so that we are no longer the object of contempt for the Touareg and Arab minorities. No ethnic community has taken arms against the Touareg or Arabs.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Approaching the Malian crisis by “The question of Touareg and Arab minorities of Mali into historical and geostrategic perspective”, the Djoyoro Fa association <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/societe/2012/09/01/article,88951.html\">brought an historic and sociological perspective</a> [fr] different from the prevailing rigid outlook:</p>\n<blockquote><p>For many observers of the Touareg, notably the nationals from the mostly Touareg Kidal region, the Malian crisis, more than the inherent reasons for political and administrative mis-governance, is also the result of the break-up of internal mechanisms and settlement of conflicts at the heart of traditional Touareg societies. Once, structured around a well organised system of chiefdom, traditional Touareg societies managed internal tensions by consultation. […] The power of the spoken word permitting a democratic way of management and guaranteeing peace. Colonisation, careful to maintain administrative order at any price, hascreated coercive structures, set up to curb any semblance of trouble. Well trained<a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMoroccan_Goumier&ei=jgZOULDOIOWg2QXF8oHoAQ&usg=AFQjCNHRFn_onumOKhRzfFHc5FgIpnUY_w&sig2=Cx6xQntSm9PEHlKA2xgVVA\">Goumiers</a> and <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFellagha&ei=5AZOUNfXMoPY2QW2pIHYCg&usg=AFQjCNEucvCOWkmC8yVywL3eouDs2Eujtw&sig2=VNOo-IQJbYF23UluBnMzqw\">Fellaghas</a> controlled the territory perfectly under colonial administration, always with a presence in the great spaces of the north, and leaving no chance whatsoever for the slightest revolt to develop. When independence came, the new leaders of the country cared more about conquering political militants than concerning themselves with the social and economic equilibrium at the heart of Touareg society. Neither have they known how to take into account the inherent factors causing dissension. They have exacerbated antagonisms between the tribes, themselves and the administration. Misunderstandings have been aggravated, leading to mistrust and hostility in the face of which the sentiment of national belonging has been considerably weakened.</p></blockquote>\n<p>If there were to be one good thing to come out of this situation in Mali, it would be the political pressure of a people galvanised by the sight of its own nation now in danger.</p>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/author/lova-rakoto/\" title=\"View all posts by Rakotomalala\">Rakotomalala</a></span> · <span>Translated by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/jane-ellis/\" title=\"View all posts by Jane Ellis\">Jane Ellis</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/04/120433/\" title=\"View original post [fr]\">View original post [fr]</a></span> · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/10/mali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (0) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F&text=Mali%3A+Civil+Society+Rises+to+Solve+the+Ongoing+Conflict&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F&title=Mali%3A+Civil+Society+Rises+to+Solve+the+Ongoing+Conflict\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F&title=Mali%3A+Civil+Society+Rises+to+Solve+the+Ongoing+Conflict\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F&title=Mali%3A+Civil+Society+Rises+to+Solve+the+Ongoing+Conflict\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F10%2Fmali-civil-society-rises-to-save-the-country%2F&title=Mali%3A+Civil+Society+Rises+to+Solve+the+Ongoing+Conflict\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/geoffrey-obrien-2/#tab-blog\">Geoffrey O’Brien</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/obrien_master_1_jpg_470x434_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> The Weinstein Company</p>\n <p>Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd in Paul Thomas Anderson’s <em>The Master</em></p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Lancaster Dodd—the character played with such mesmerizing assurance by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson’s <em>The Master</em>—is not to be confused with L. Ron Hubbard. That much should be said at the outset, given that the Scientology connection has served as a convenient tag for what Anderson’s new film is about. The notion was certainly intriguing, but anyone familiar with Anderson’s work might have guessed that some kind of straightforward docudrama was not in the offing. Perhaps one day there will indeed be a biopic that grapples with the convoluted and much-contested details of Hubbard’s scarcely credible career as spiritual entrepreneur—one might imagine a mode anywhere from satiric grotesque to Machiavellian analysis to impassioned polemic—but <em>The Master</em> is not that film, full though it is of hints in such directions. \n</p>\n<p>It is something more interesting: a free-standing work of the imagination, a contemplative fiction. Anderson has taken whatever he needed from the early history of Scientology, drawing freely on its vocabulary, doctrines, and methods, and from much else besides, to create an intimate epic of irrational need, an inner history of cultish transactions reconfigured as a sorrowful and distinctively American poem. It is such a decisive accomplishment that it casts fresh light on Anderson’s previous films—<em>Hard Eight</em> (1996), <em>Boogie Nights</em> (1997), <em>Magnolia</em> (1999), <em>Punch-Drunk Love</em> (2002), and <em>There Will Be Blood</em> (2007)—a body of work whose coherence and astonishing ambition is clearer than ever. \n</p>\n<p>“The pure products of America go crazy”: William Carlos Williams’ indelible line might serve as a motto not only for this film but for all of Anderson’s work to date. The Cause (Dodd’s quasi-religion resembling Dianetics) is shown to be just such a pure product, the kind of destination that couldn’t exist if enough people didn’t desperately need to go there. When movies have attempted to show the inner life of cults and newfangled religions, they have generally sought to convey how strange they are. Anderson by contrast shows how strange they are not. America has after all long since been the great breeding ground of self-help cults and apocalyptic sects and secret initiations, of homebrewed universal panaceas and fresh-minted pseudoscientific jargon, of occult communal bondings and shunnings. In the perspective of <em>The Master</em>, these are not denials but extensions and variations of American life. When Freddie Quell, the traumatized veteran incarnated unforgettably by Joaquin Phoenix, throws in his lot with The Cause, it is not as if he is fleeing from normality into an eerie shadow world. Whether inside or outside the movement, the world as he finds it is equally chaotic and unrelenting.\n</p>\n<p>This is the milieu where irrationality, supplemented where necessary by blunt force, trumps any conceivable logical objection. Logicians are in any case on the sidelines in <em>The Master</em>. The psychiatrists who try to unravel Freddie Quell’s personality difficulties are no more effective than the skeptic who tries to engage Lancaster Dodd in debate at a Park Avenue reception. (The latter gets an offscreen beating, administered by Freddie, for his troubles.) This is, precisely, a world in which there is no one in a position to object, no one to intervene. <em>The Master</em>, like Anderson’s earlier films but even more deliberately, kicks away any possibility of a stable mooring, a safe observation point that would enable one to put things in a more reassuring perspective. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:230px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/obrien_master_2_jpg_230x434_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> The Weinstein Company</p>\n <p>Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell, the traumatized World War II veteran who throws his lot in with the Master.</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>This is accomplished right from the start in an astonishing series of scenes sketching Freddie Quell’s history from his discharge from the navy at the end of World War II—his careening flight through circumstances beyond his control—up to the moment when, by stealing aboard a yacht in California, he enters by happenstance the sphere of Lancaster Dodd and The Cause. All the rest of the film is a meticulous and sometimes agonizing parsing of the consequences of that encounter. \n</p>\n<p>Freddie is an inarticulate isolato of Melvillean proportions, an inchoate chunk of jagged impulse and unfailingly awkward affect whose most purposeful activity is concocting moonshine—expertly and at any opportunity—out of any substances at hand, toxic or otherwise. Freddie is the inadaptable individual who defies labels and therapies, the son of an alcoholic father and a psychotic mother, a veteran of unspecified wartime experiences that have brought him to the attention of army psychiatrists. He’s a mass of tics and sexual compulsions who improvises his life from second to second. As played by Phoenix—“played” seems too light a word—he inhabits his body as if it were ill-fitting armor he’d been saddled with. The intelligence that beams from his eyes seems absolutely disconnected from every aspect of his being and his life. He looks as if he’d been broken apart and put back together wrong. Even his face has a life of its own, his mouth twisting at odd angles to register arcane conflicts and resistances. \n</p>\n<p>Freddie barely endures the world; he knocks its props aside trying to fumble for what he needs. To see him dressed up for work as a department-store photographer—his short-lived postwar profession—is to see a suit wrapped around a turbulence only momentarily containing itself. For reasons barely comprehensible he assaults a customer in the department store. We see him next harvesting crops. When a co-worker collapses from drinking Freddie’s homebrew, he flees across an open field. These scenes last only a few minutes, but a Frank Norris or Theodore Dreiser would have found matter for hundreds of pages of exposition in them. The processing of soldiers after the war, the psycho wards with their tests and helpful pep talks, the differing realities of upscale department stores and migrant workers’ camps: we are given them almost wordlessly, in what seems like no time. \n</p>\n<p>The density of Anderson’s workmanship allows for maximum compression. <em>The Master</em> is shot in 65 millimeter—the first fictional feature in that format since Kenneth Branagh’s <em>Hamlet</em> in 1996, and conceivably the last—and the film stock’s saturated colors and fine details give each shot the depth and solidity of an actual and often hauntingly beautiful world. The briefest shots—and Freddie’s early history is related in such shots—seem fully inhabited, fully realized. The department store sequence by itself conjures with extraordinary fidelity the texture and coloration of postwar magazine photography out of the pages of <em>Life</em> and <em>Vogue</em>, with all the elusive desires it promised to fulfill. Within that episode, a few quick samples of the garishly unreal lighting for Freddie’s portraits provide a panorama of the 1950s American family at its most guilelessly grotesque: not so much a judgment on the American family as a measure of how distant Freddie is from any such domestic life. Such photographic shorthand has always been a mark of Anderson’s films, but here it is more seamlessly integrated than ever before, making not for flash effects but an abundance of expressiveness in all the corners, more meanings than one even has time to take in. \n</p>\n<p>The expressiveness is compounded almost continuously by Johnny Greenwood’s score, with its mix of dissonant tonalities and period music, the two sometimes overlapping as when Greenwood’s harsh astringencies are superimposed over Noro Morales’s recording of “Sweet Sue”: it is an almost literalist way of indicating the distance between the music in Freddie’s head and the welcoming sound of Lancaster Dodd’s shipboard party. Music is an overwhelming presence in all of Anderson’s films, participating in the drama rather than commenting on it, not least when (toward the end of <em>The Master</em>) the orchestra abruptly shuts itself off to allow Philip Seymour Hoffmann to sing an a cappella rendition of “On a Slow Boat to China” in which the film’s accumulated emotional weight finds a bizarre outlet.\n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/obrien_master_3_jpg_470x497_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> The Weinstein Company</p>\n <p>Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd in <em> The Master</em></p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>That everything should come down to one man singing an old standard to another man across a desktop is a fulfillment of a confrontation that gives the film its center—a center for a film about, precisely, decenteredness and drift. The multiple story lines of earlier Anderson films give way to the dyad in which Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd circle around each other in a slow dance of attraction and repulsion. The simplification of structure yields an operatic power, with all superfluous details elided and the drama grounded in these two figures. From the moment Freddie is brought in to meet the Master, the film settles in to contemplate every nuance of their intersection. The conception of character here is not narrowly pointed but capacious. Personalities are treated as landscapes, or forms of brooding music: harboring all sorts of odd crevices and fissures, and capable of no end of abrupt unforeseen mutations. Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman are two incompatible worlds uneasily orbiting around each other. Freddie submits to Dodd’s “processing,” confessing to secret sins and longings, while Dodd enthusiastically laps up Freddie’s home brew. Eventually Freddie will do Dodd’s enforcing for him, while Dodd pretends to reprimand him for it. Neither can begin to explain what is going on.\n</p>\n<p>Hoffman’s Dodd is an astonishing piece of work. I have seen many attempts to portray charismatic cultish leaders on film, but have rarely until now seen a convincing representation of such a leader’s ability to control the atmosphere around him. Dodd has a deceptive lightness, a bounce, that is downright endearing. At the outset Hoffman seems to be channeling Charles Foster Kane at his most glibly charming, a tack that feels totally right: what better model of mercurial seductiveness could there be, for a man of Dodd’s era and Dodd’s ambitions, than the young Orson Welles? It’s as if he had appropriated that personal manner just as he might appropriate a catchphrase or a method. \n</p>\n<p>Dodd has the gift of sucking up everyone’s energy and playing it back to them as if it were his own, all the while visibly delighting in the process, surprising himself with his own capacity to enchant and control. He is mischievous, buoyed up by the powers of improvisation that enable him, for example (in a scene that may be a visualization of the dynamics that lie just under the surface), to persuade a roomful of women of all ages to strip for him, in an atmosphere of singalong merriment. Dodd’s delight, of course, has as its mirror image his behind-the-scenes aspect of sexual misery and paranoid mistrust, kept in check by his wife Peggy (the Master’s secret master, wonderfully realized by Amy Adams) and occasionally—increasingly, one can assume—finding expression in unscheduled explosions of rage.\n</p>\n<p>The internal structures and activities of The Cause are given to us in luminous fragments, out of the corner of the eye. There is no back story to explain where Dodd came from or how all this got started. The shorthand is quite sufficient, the actors compressing whole histories of lostness and drift and subservience into the tersest exchanges, or sometime just by the way they stand or sit doing nothing while receiving instruction. We never see the acolytes talking to each other, and we are made to sense the utter lack of mutual love, the simmering meanness among them. Dodd’s church is a desert of the heart, and it is entirely appropriate that we should end in the Arizona desert for the gathering where he will reconfirm his authority. Laura Dern, as the follower who welcomes Dodd and company into her Philadelphia home, conveys with frightening precision a well-schooled charm that one can easily imagine cracking into a thousand pieces, whether we are watching her rapturously expounding Dodd’s technique of time travel under his approving gaze, or being belatedly exposed to the Master’s wrathful face when she ventures an inappropriate question about a passage in his newest book.\n</p>\n<p>When his public face is securely in place, Dodd is never not entertaining. Freddie by contrast is never entertaining: he has no public face. The closest he comes to having one is in the role of the inexpressive cult member handing out leaflets on the street to passersby who quicken their step as they approach him. In Freddie, Dodd sees the perfect guinea pig whom he can transmute into the perfect loyalist; but from the start there is more than that. At their lowest ebb, when both have been thrown in adjoining cells of a Philadelphia jail after Dodd is arrested for fraud and Freddie assaults a policeman in his defense, Freddie demolishes the toilet and smashes his head against the bunk while Dodd watches him impassively, finally haranguing him: “I’m the only one that likes you!” At bottom there is a kind of doomed schoolyard craving for a friendship—a fusion, really—of which both are equally incapable. Dodd needs to absorb everything into himself; Freddie is the unassimilable being who resists being absorbed by anyone or anything. \n</p>\n<p>Dodd is another of those figures of controlling intelligence and elusive motivation (Philip Baker Hall in <em>Hard Eight</em>, Burt Reynolds in <em>Boogie Nights</em>, Daniel Day Lewis in <em>There Will Be Blood</em>) who haunt Anderson’s films. That Dodd finally elicits sympathy does not make him any less monstrous. He comes close to giving a tragic dignity to the con man who can con everyone—even himself—but not the one he most wants to con. Freddie may be the most faithful of foot soldiers, prompt to beat up anyone who challenges Dodd’s authority, but he has a stubborn core of truthfulness that make him immune to the ultimate loyalty of actually believing. He may not prefer the solitariness to which his rejection of The Cause condemns him, but it is what he has inherited: the uncomfortable freedom to go out into the world with no resources, no plan, and no master. \n</p>\n<p><hr>\n<b>A longer version of this piece will appear in the October 25 issue of <i>The New York Review of Books</i></b>\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Wm963dBgJRc:-dG7_i96h04:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/Wm963dBgJRc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules of Writing",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<a href=\"http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/19/zadie-smith-10-rules-of-writing/\">http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/19/zadie-smith-10-rules-of-writing/</a> <br><div><ol style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:fenwick-1,fenwick-2,sans-serif;font-size:14.44444465637207px;line-height:20.981481552124023px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)\"> <li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.</li><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.</li> <li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.</li><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\"> Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.</li><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.</li> <li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.</li><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.</li> <li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.</li><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Don’t confuse honours with achievement.</li> <li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.</li></ol></div>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://naunihal.posterous.com/zadie-smiths-10-rules-of-writing\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://naunihal.posterous.com/zadie-smiths-10-rules-of-writing#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "PRIVATISING ABURI GARDENS WOULD AMOUNT TO A GROTESQUE VANDALISATION",
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"content" : "<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">SELLING ABURI GARDENS WILL BE A GROTESQUE ACT OF VANDALISM </span></strong></p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">By CAMERON DUODU</span></strong></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://wakanow.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/aburibotanicalgardens.jpg\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">WHY is it that when Ghanaians of a certain mentality find that they have a problem on their hands, they go for only ONE solution? </span></strong></p>\n<p><strong> </strong></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">I remember getting into an argument with a “big man” about our open storm drains a long time ago.</span></p>\n<p>“<span style=\"font-size:medium\">They are a hazard to drivers,” I maintained. “If you burst a tyre and you spin off the road, your car falls into a gutter.</span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94622.php\">http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201209/94622.php</a></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">If someone fails to dip his lights at night and dazzles your eyesight and you lose control of your vehicle, you fall into a gutter!… Why can’t we cover these huge drains like they do elsewhere in the world?”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The “big man” said: “The storm drains are kept open so that they won’t get blocked. If they get blocked and the rain water becomes stagnant in them, all sorts of diseases can be caused and we shall have epidemics.”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">I admitted that stagnant water was dangerous, but retorted: “However,” I said, “if the drains were covered, the chances of things falling into them to block them would be minimised. Besides, what they do in other places is to make sure that there are covered ‘manholes’ which can be opened every now and then to inspect the drains and </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">remove blockages from them, if any.”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The “big man” thought that was a dangerous risk to take. “Suppose the maintenance people fail to do their job properly?” he asked.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">We have that mentality to thank for the smelly drains that we continue to find in our cities and towns. We have had Cabinets half of whose members have travelled to, or lived in, some of the most modern cities in the world. Yet we can’t manage to keep our city and town centres clean and stench-free. For once a negative idea becomes accepted by our ‘Establishment’ — which is to say, if they think something is “impossible to do”, it can hardly ever be shaken out of them. </span></p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Is there any other reason why there is an outmoded, unhygienic toilet, built in the early colonial days – waste from which has to be removed manually each night — in some of our city market-places (such as Osu Market, in Accra)? Replacing it with a modern toilet staffed by attendants would create some problems, sure. So don’t attempt it at all but keep the old one!</span></strong></p></blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The current idea which our ‘Establishment’ has swallowed hook line and sinker is that “privatisation” ensures “quality” and the “efficient” running of industries and companies.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">We have examples of failed privatisations before our eyes but we dismiss those examples as exceptional cases and find reasons to explain why they have failed.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">For instance, if you ask why there are still areas of our capital that do not enjoy a regular supply of water — despite the fact that our water company has been privatised for many moons now — you could be given a number of reasons. One would be that people don’t pay their water rates regularly. Another might be that the Government has not fulfilled all the terms in the agreement it reached with the private company before privatisation took place. Or both reasons!</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">And you ask, “But didn’t the company carry out “due diligence” before it signed on the dotted line? Did it examine the Government’s record with regard to other privatisations that it had committed itself to? The answer, most probably, would be, “Oh, we came in under the impression that the Government would act in good faith.” If you turned the question round and asked the Government, “why haven’t those people managed to fulfil the promises they made when they made a bid for the company?”, it would say, in all probability, “Don’t mind them! They are only interested in profits!”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Whereupon, if you are a quick-witted person, you should retort, “Oh yes – and the idea that private companies exist to maximise profits from their enterprises was discovered only yesterday, wasn’t it? No wonder you hadn’t heard of it before these guys came and took the water supply system out of your hands!”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">All this points to one thing:<strong><em> good management</em> </strong>is good management, wherever it comes from. And vice versa. Some of the worst and most inefficient practices in the world can be found in the private sector, just as some of the best-run companies are in the public sector. If you look at the banks, for instance (all private institutions) the number that were – or almost — run to the ground </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">and brought about the crisis of 2008, were in the private sector. If I were to recite their names, it would sound like an advertisement for old-oak probity. But it was </span><em style=\"font-size:medium\">Governments and their public-sector institutions,</em><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> which are constantly maligned by the apostles of free enterprise ensconced on the boards of the private companies, that rescued them! Some were deemed “too </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">big to fail.” Others were thought to be of “strategic importance”. Or, they “employed too many people” to be allowed to go to the wall.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">These thoughts were among those that occurred to me when I heard that our current Minister of Tourism Ms Akua Sena Dansoah was proposing to privatise the Aburi Botanical Gardens.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><a href=\"http://spyghana.com/ghana-general-news/govt-to-privatise-aburi-gradens/\">http://spyghana.com/ghana-general-news/govt-to-privatise-aburi-gradens/</a></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> I just sighed and said to myself, “Here we go again!”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><strong>Now, I don’t in the least want to excuse the obvious deterioration that has been allowed to occur at the Aburi Gardens. The point is: it is the Ministry of Tourism itself that has allowed it to become the poor image of itself that it now is. The question the Ministry should therefore ask is this: WHAT was it that was done in the past that earned Aburi its reputation, and what CAN BE DONE TODAY to bring it back to that state?</strong> </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The wrong question to ask, most certainly, is “who can take this ageing institution off our hands?”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Certainly, Aburi is showing – and should be showing – its age. For it was opened as long ago as 1890 –<strong> that is, 122 years ago!</strong> </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Yet in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was “only” in its 70s and 80s and I became conscious of it, it was a fabulous place to visit. First of all, it is close to Accra – it was close then, and it is closer now, because of the relatively new road that now links the two localities. And then, there is what it contains: botanical wonders of </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">the first order.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The royal palms at the entrance alone would command a visit. And then, there are the plants that visitors to Accra would never get an opportunity to see – cocoa trees, palm trees and other tropical plants that overseas visitors, especially, would have read about but never seen.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">And then there are the really magical plants, like my favourite: </span><em style=\"font-size:medium\">asoa</em><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> or</span><em style=\"font-size:medium\"> asaa </em><span style=\"font-size:medium\">[Akan] or </span><em style=\"font-size:medium\">taami </em><span style=\"font-size:medium\">[Ga]. If you want to entertain your city-dwelling kids, go to Aburi when this plant (its botanical name is <em><strong>Synsepalum Dulcificum</strong></em>) is in season. </span></p>\n<p><img src=\"https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRNMzkrj59QdyGWYJg0IFsduNvAdf3poS5mPUNoiiXLrWIbBu68\" alt=\"\">Ripe ”Magical Plant” or Asoa</p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Take an orange with you; if possible, take an orange you have established is pretty sour. If you can’t find one, take a lemon. Give the kids a taste of the bitter orange or lemon first. They will spit it out! Next, give them a red-coloured berry from the</span><em style=\"font-size:medium\"> asoa</em><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> tree and let them lick it. Then, perform the magic: let them eat the orange or lemon that was so bitter they spat it out. Result? The orange or lemon would have turned sweeter than any sweet orange they had ever tasted!</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">But apart from such delights, the Aburi Gardens provide a fabulous and cheap way of spending a few hours away from noisy, overcrowded, stinking Accra. The air there is cool and fresh. And the sights are out of this world. There is a vast area of forest in a valley at the edge of the park, whose mist-covered canopy provides a panoply of greenery that charms the eyesight.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">All that is needed to ensure that this well-endowed public property remains in the hands of the public is that it should be well <em><strong>managed.</strong></em> How can it be well-managed?</span></p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Give it the capital it needs to be restored to its best state. I am sure there are hundreds of proposals in the files of the Department of Parks and Gardens (as it once was) which have been absorbed by the Ministry of Tourism and are gathering dust on the shelves of the Ministry. It is these proposals that the Minister and her officials should be poring over, to find out what are practicable and can be implemented quickly. If there are no acceptable proposals, the Ministry should invite </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">some on a consultancy basis. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Provide<strong><em> incentives</em></strong> to the staff to improve their work so that more visitors can visit the Gardens and give it an income befitting its status. If necessary, give the employees a <em><strong>bonus</strong> </em>– say, 30 percent of the gate and catering income. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br>\n</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size:medium\">It would amaze the Minister to find out that such incentives, however small, can change people’s attitude to their work. There are many officials who are only waiting for someone to recognise their work and to encourage them to put more imagination into it. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">I do want to assure the Minister, though, that if she decides to go ahead and privatise the Aburi Gardens, with less than 3 months to go before an election, she will be accused of selling a national asset to her cronies. This accusation will stick, whether it is true or not. It would simply not be a rational or wise thing to do, if she values her good name. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">And even if she doesn’t value her good name, she should remember that there can always be “abrogation”, and that “abrogation” can bring endless committees of enquiry and Woyome-type litigation – of the sort which she must be very much aware of, due to the ongoing recent controversies. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">For it is certain that, with Aburi having willy-nilly become “prime estate”, anyone who can lay hands on the title deeds of the Gardens and later alter its site plan to accommodate bungalows, restaurants and even flats, would be a fool not to try his or her hand at it. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The trouble, however, as the Minister should know, is that Ghana is not made up of fools, and this type of thinking — “crony capitalism” to give it its proper name — is simply too politically dangerous to be indulged in, however “in-your-face” a politician and her party happen to be. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Especially with an election campaign in full swing.</span></li>\n</ol>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">———————————-</span></p>\n<div><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium\">PHOTO: Aburi has deliberately been left to rot so that a case can be made for selling it off.</span></strong></div>\n<div><img src=\"http://uk.mg41.mail.yahoo.com/ya/download?fid=Inbox&mid=2_0_0_1_47078098_AL9UfbwAAQTyUGOMFgsUShL6LWc&pid=5&tnef=&YY=1348742004216&file_name=Neglected%20Building%20in%20Aburi%20Botanical%20Gardens%2C%20Ghana.jpg&appid=YahooMailNeo\" alt=\"\"></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The buildings at Aburi are certainly an eyesore. </span><span style=\"font-size:medium\">But how much money would it take to renovate them and other installations? What magic can private firms bring to the place that the Government cannot also apply? After all, building work is done by contractors — for b0th the private sector and the public sector!</span></div>\n<p> </p>\n<blockquote><p><em><strong>DO YOU AGREE THAT IT WOULD BE A TRAGEDY TO SELL ABURI GARDENS? IF SO, PLEASE STATE YOUR VIEWS IN THE </strong></em><strong>“LEAVE A REPLY”</strong><em><strong> BOX BELOW. ALL VIEWS WILL BE SENT TO THE MINISTRY OF TOURISM IN ACCRA.</strong></em></p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcameronduodu.com%2Funcategorized%2Fprivatising-aburi-garden-would-amount-to-a-grotesque-vandalisation&title=PRIVATISING%20ABURI%20GARDENS%20WOULD%20AMOUNT%20TO%20%20A%20GROTESQUE%20VANDALISATION\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Picturing Everyday Life in Africa",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>James Estrin</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p><em>Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill's \"Everyday Africa\" photography, a project on the mundane that began during a Pulitzer Center-sponsored reporting trip to Ivory Coast, is featured in </em>The New York Times<em> Lens blog.<br></em><br>\nFor decades, international photojournalists have documented a seemingly endless cycle of wars and famine in Africa, exposing otherwise ignored tragedies to a global audience.</p>\n<p>But too often the subjects of these images seem to be reduced to symbols, and viewers do not encounter them as fully rounded human beings. And we rarely see journalistic images of the middle class, artists or the cultural heritage of African countries. A complicated continent is often reduced to caricature.</p>\n<p>In some ways the most important thing missing from the dramatic news images is the mundane — the moments of everyday life that can often reveal as much as the heightened moment.</p>\n<p>As a freelance photographer working in Africa, since 2008 <a href=\"http://www.peterdicampo.com/\">Peter DiCampo</a> has pursued well researched and executed projects on less obvious issues. His <a href=\"http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/showcase-181/\">“Life Without Lights”</a> on the effects of the shortage of electricity was featured in Lens in 2010.</p>\n<p>But even though he was concerned about how Africans were represented in the media, Mr. DiCampo, 28, never quite found a way to provide a complex picture of Africa.</p>\n<p>That is, until this year, when he found it by accident after buying an iPhone and taking snapshots while photographing other stories around Africa. He began to notice that his less “serious images” were showing a more complete, more rounded view of Africa than any of his well-planned projects did on their own.</p>\n<p>“Whether it’s because of the iPhone or just because I was trying to do different things, it became a very different aesthetic and a very different type of moment that I was capturing — casual observations and mundane activities,” he said.</p>\n<p>Together, the individual moments that he observed, and captured, began to show the Africa he experienced on a daily basis. So he started to gather them into a project he called “Everyday Africa.”</p>\n<p>“I realized that I had to keep doing it, because there’s a constant barrage of imagery of misery, despair and hopelessness, and more than any of those things — helplessness, the idea that Africans need to be saved,” he said. “There are attempts out there to reverse this and tell empowering, hopeful stories about Africa. This is neither of those. This is an attempt at changing representation of Africa just by sharing things that are casual, that are a general stream of daily life.”</p>\n<p>IPhones and Hipstamatic filtration are controversial tools for news photography. But because they are the visual language we use to photograph our own families and friends, they proved to be effective instruments for Mr. DiCampo. The images are less classical and more idiomatic.</p>\n<p>While Mr. DiCampo has been working on “Everyday Africa,” he has been relying on a square medium format camera for his editorial work. As that work has become more carefully composed, the iPhone has allowed him to be freer with his everyday Africa images. “Sometimes messy is real,” he said.</p>\n<p>Before coming to Africa, Mr. DiCampo studied photojournalism at Boston University and did internships at <em>Newsday</em> and <em>The Telegraph </em>in Nashua, N.H., a couple of newspapers and at the VII Photo Agency.</p>\n<p>In 2006, he joined the Peace Corps and by chance was assigned to a village in rural Northern Ghana.</p>\n<p>“I did not really even know where Ghana was,” he said. “But I ended up spending two years in a mud hut village being the only foreigner, learning the language, and getting quite close with the community.”</p>\n<p>Afterward he moved to Accra, the capital, and based himself there as a freelance photographer. From 2010 to June of this year, he was in the VII mentor program.</p>\n<p>So far his iPhone photographs have been made in Uganda and Ivory Coast. He started an <a href=\"http://everydayafrica.tumblr.com/\">“Everyday Africa”</a> Tumblr blog with the writer Austin Merrill, who also covers Africa. The pair collaborated on a project on cocoa farming and conflict aftermath in <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/projects/ivory-coast-civil-war-crimes-elections-conflict-militias-cocoa-farmers-alassane-ouattara-laurent-gbagbo\">Ivory Coast for the Pulitzer Center</a> on Crisis Reporting. It turns out that Mr. Merrill is an excellent iPhone photographer (Slides 18 and 19). In addition to iPhone photographs from Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Zambia by Mr. Merrill, the Tumblr has also featured guest photographers. Laura El-Tantawy contributed images from Egypt including some of protesters in Tahrir Square and Shannon Jensen filed from South Sudan. Last week, Holly Pickett posted from Senegal and Glenna Gordon from Uganda.</p>\n<p>Eventually Mr. DiCampo wants to have “Everyday Africa” represent every country on the continent. He is asking Instagram users to start using the hashtag #everydayafrica, when they have an image they feel fits the theme. He hope to collect them in a book along with the photos he and his colleagues are putting on the Tumblr.</p>\n<p>“I want to have evidence of a shared normalcy,” he said.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Scott And Scurvy",
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"content" : "<p>Recently I have been re-reading one of my favorite books, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143039385?ie=UTF8&tag=idlewords-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143039385\">The Worst Journey in the World</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=idlewords-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0143039385\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">, an account of Robert Falcon Scott's 1911 expedition to the South Pole. I can’t do the book justice in a summary, other than recommend that you drop everything and <a href=\"http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14363\">read it</a>, but there is one detail that particularly baffled me the first time through, and that I resolved to understand better once I could stand to put the book down long enough.</p>\n\n<p>Writing about the first winter the men spent on the ice, Cherry-Garrard <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=RXS04HcPrFwC&lpg=PP1&dq=worst%20journey%20in%20the%20world&pg=PA220#v=onepage&q=&f=false\">casually mentions</a> an astonishing lecture on scurvy by one of the expedition’s doctors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\nAtkinson inclined to Almroth Wright’s theory that scurvy is due to an acid intoxication of the blood caused by bacteria...<br>\nThere was little scurvy in Nelson’s days; but the reason is not clear, since, according to modern research, lime-juice only helps to prevent it. We had, at Cape Evans, a salt of sodium to be used to alkalize the blood as an experiment, if necessity arose. Darkness, cold, and hard work are in Atkinson’s opinion important causes of scurvy.<br>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lind\">James Lind</a> proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be mixed in with sailors’ grog, and scurvy ceased to be a problem on long ocean voyages.</p>\n\n<p>But here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. Scott left a base abundantly stocked with fresh meat, fruits, apples, and lime juice, and headed out on the ice for five months with no protection against scurvy, all the while confident he was not at risk. What happened?</p>\n\n<p>...</p>\n\n<p>By all accounts scurvy is a horrible disease. Scott, who has reason to know, gives a succinct description:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe symptoms of scurvy do not necessarily occur in a regular order, but generally the first sign is an inflamed, swollen condition of the gums. The whitish pink tinge next the teeth is replaced by an angry red; as the disease gains ground the gums become more spongy and turn to a purplish colour, the teeth become loose and the gums sore. Spots appear on the legs, and pain is felt in old wounds and bruises; later, from a slight oedema, the legs, and then the arms, swell to a great size and become blackened behind the joints. After this the patient is soon incapacitated, and the last horrible stages of the disease set in, from which death is a merciful release.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One of the most striking features of the disease is the disproportion between its severity and the simplicity of the cure. Today we know that scurvy is due solely to a deficiency in vitamin C, a compound essential to metabolism that the human body must obtain from food. Scurvy is rapidly and completely cured by restoring vitamin C into the diet. </p>\n\n<p>Except for the nature of vitamin C, eighteenth century physicians knew this too. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The story of how this happened is a striking demonstration of the problem of induction, and how progress in one field of study can lead to unintended steps backward in another. </p>\n\n<p>An unfortunate series of accidents conspired with advances in technology to discredit the cure for scurvy. What had been a simple dietary deficiency became a subtle and unpredictable disease that could strike without warning. Over the course of fifty years, scurvy would return to torment not just Polar explorers, but thousands of infants born into wealthy European and American homes. And it would only be through blind luck that the actual cause of scurvy would be rediscovered, and vitamin C finally isolated, in 1932.\n\n<p>It is not easy to find fresh foods that lack vitamin C. Plants and animals tend to be full of it, since the molecule is used in all kinds of biochemical synthesis as an electron donor. But the same reactive qualities that make the vitamin useful also make it easy to destroy. Vitamin C quickly breaks down in the presence of light, heat and air. For this reason it is absent from most preserved foods that have been cooked or dried. Its destruction is also rapidly catalyzed by copper ions, which may be one reason sailors, with their big copper cooking vats, were particularly susceptible.\n\n<p>Because our bodies can't synthesize the vitamin, they have grown very good at conserving it. It takes up to six months for scurvy to develop in healthy people after vitamin C is removed from the diet, and only a tiny daily amount is enough to keep a person healthy.</p>\n\n<p>It has been known since antiquity that fresh foods in general, and lemons and oranges in particular, will cure scurvy. Starting with Vasco de Gama’s crew in 1497, sailors have repeatedly discovered the curative power of citrus fruits, and the cure has just as frequently been forgotten or ignored by subsequent explorers. \n\n<p>Lind tends to get the credit for discovering the citrus cure since he performed something approaching a controlled experiment. But it took an additional forty years of experiments, analysis, and political lobbying for his result to become institutionalized in the Royal Navy. In 1799, all Royal Navy ships on foreign service were ordered to serve lemon juice:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe scheduled allowance for the sailors in the Navy was fixed at I oz.lemon juice with I + oz. sugar, served daily after 2 weeks at sea, the lemon juice being often called ‘lime juice’ and our sailors ‘lime juicers’. The consequences of this new regulation were startling and by the beginning of the nineteenth century scurvy may be said to have vanished from the British navy.\tIn 1780, the admissions of scurvy cases to the Naval Hospital at Haslar were 1457; in the years from 1806 to 1810, they were two. \n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(As we'll see, the confusion between lemons and limes would have serious reprecussions.)</p>\n\n<p>Scurvy had been the leading killer of sailors on long ocean voyages; some ships experienced losses as high as 90% of their men. With the introduction of lemon juice, the British suddenly held a massive strategic advantage over their rivals, one they put to good use in the Napoleonic wars. British ships could now stay out on blockade duty for two years at a time, strangling French ports even as the merchantmen who ferried citrus to the blockading ships continued to die of scurvy, prohibited from touching the curative themselves. \n\n<p>The success of lemon juice was so total that much of Sicily was soon transformed into a lemon orchard for the British fleet. Scurvy continued to be a vexing problem in other navies, who were slow to adopt citrus as a cure, as well as in the Merchant Marine, but for the Royal Navy it had become a disease of the past. </p>\n\n<p>By the middle of the 19th century, however, advances in technology were reducing the need for any kind of scurvy preventative. Steam power had shortened travel times considerably from the age of sail, so that it was rare for sailors other than whalers to be months at sea without fresh food. Citrus juice was a legal requirement on all British vessels by 1867, but in practical terms it was becoming superfluous.</p>\n\n<p>So when the Admiralty began to replace lemon juice with an ineffective substitute in 1860, it took a long time for anyone to notice. In that year, naval authorities switched procurement from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes. The motives for this were mainly colonial - it was better to buy from British plantations than to continue importing lemons from Europe. Confusion in naming didn't help matters. Both \"lemon\" and \"lime\" were in use as a collective term for citrus, and though European lemons and sour limes are quite different fruits, their Latin names (<i>citrus medica, var. limonica</i> and <i>citrus medica, var. acida</i>) suggested that they were as closely related as green and red apples. Moreover, as there was a widespread belief that the antiscorbutic properties of lemons were due to their acidity, it made sense that the more acidic Caribbean limes would be even better at fighting the disease. </p>\n\n<p>In this, the Navy was deceived. Tests on animals would later show that fresh lime juice has a quarter of the scurvy-fighting power of fresh lemon juice. And the lime juice being served to sailors was not fresh, but had spent long periods of time in settling tanks open to the air, and had been pumped through copper tubing. A 1918 animal experiment using representative samples of lime juice from the navy and merchant marine showed that the 'preventative' often lacked any antiscorbutic power at all. </p>\n\n<p>By the 1870s, therefore, most British ships were sailing without protection against scurvy. Only speed and improved nutrition on land were preventing sailors from getting sick.</p>\n\n<p>It fell to the unfortunate George Nares to discover this fact in 1875, when he led the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Arctic_Expedition\">British Arctic Expedition</a> in an attempt to reach the North Pole via Greenland. Some oceanographic theories of the time posited an open polar sea, and Nares was directed to sail along the Greenland coast, then take a sledging party and see how far north he could get on the pack ice.</p>\n\n<p>The expedition was a fiasco. Two men in the sledging party developed scurvy within days of leaving the ship. Within five weeks, half the men were sick, and despite having laid depots with plentiful supplies for their return journey, they were barely able to make it back. A rescue party sent to intercept them found that lime juice failed to have its usual dramatic effect. Most damning of all, some of the men who stayed on the ship, never failing to take their daily dose, also got scurvy.</p> \n\n<p>The failure of the Nares expedition provoked an uproar in Britain. The Royal Navy believed itself capable of sustaining any crew for two years without signs of scurvy, yet here was an able and adequately supplied crew crippled by the disease within weeks. For the first time since the eighteenth century, the effectiveness of citrus juice as an absolute preventative was in doubt.</p>\n\n<p>More troubling evidence came several years later, during the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson-Harmsworth_Expedition\">Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition</a> to Franz-Josef Land in 1894. Members of this expedition spent three years on a ship frozen into the pack ice. Koettlitz, their chief physician, describes what happened:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe expedition proper ate fresh meat regularly at least once a day in the shape of polar bear. The people on the ship had, however, a prejudice against this food, which certainly was not particularly palatable, and insisted, against all advice, upon eating their preserved and salted meat. This meat I occasionally noticed to be somewhat \"high\" or \"gamey\", and afterwards heard that it was often so. The result was that, though I visited the ship every day, and personally saw that each man swallowed his dose of lime juice (which was made compulsory, and was of the best quality), the whole ship’s company were tainted with scurvy, and two died. \n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This pattern of fresh meat preventing scurvy would be a consistent one in Arctic exploration. It defied the common understanding of scurvy as a deficiency in vegetable matter. Somehow men could live for years on a meat-only diet and remain healthy, provided that the meat was fresh.\n\n<p>This is a good example of how the very ubiquity of vitamin C made it hard to identify. Though scurvy was always associated with a lack of greens, fresh meat contains adequate amounts of vitamin C, with particularly high concentrations in the organ meats that explorers considered a delicacy. Eat a bear liver every few weeks and scurvy will be the least of your problems. \n\n<p>But unless you already understand and believe in the vitamin model of nutrition, the notion of a trace substance that exists both in fresh limes and bear kidneys, but is absent from a cask of lime juice because you happened to prepare it in a copper vessel, begins to sound pretty contrived.\n\n<p>Doctors of the era looked at this puzzling evidence and wondered. Other diseases had recently been shown to have their source in bacterial infection. The bacterial model was new, and had already had spectacular success in identifying and treating diseases like typhus, tuberculosis, and cholera. What if the cause of scruvy had also been misunderstood? What if instead of a deficiency disease, scurvy was actually a kind of chronic food poisoning from bacterial contamination of meat? Thus was born the ptomaine theory of scurvy, and Koettlitz became its <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2511962/pdf/brmedj08208-0030.pdf\">enthusiastic backer</a>:\n\n<blockquote>\nThat the cause of the outbreak of scurvy in so many Polar expeditions has always been that something was radically wrong with the preserved meats, whether tinned or salted, is practically certain; that foods are scurvy-producing by being, if only slightly, tainted is practically certain; that the benefit of the so-called \"antiscorbutics\" is a delusion, and that some antiscorbutic property has been removed from foods in the process of preservation is also a delusion. An animal food is either scorbutic - in other words, scurvy-producing - or it is not. It is either tainted or it is sound. Putrefactive change, if only slight and tasteless, has taken place or it has not. Bacteria have been able to produce ptomaines in it or they have not; and if they have not, then the food is healthy and not scurvy-producing.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The ’ptomaine’ in the theory was never really defined, other than as a noxious waste product of bacterial action. But the theory had an internal logic. Poorly preserved meats would be contaminated by ptomaine. Under normal conditions, this was not enough cause scurvy. Not only did fresh food consumed in the diet have a kind of antidote effect (whether it worked by neutralizing the poison, or by simply displacing it in the diet, was not clear), but environment also played an important role. Certain factors seemed to predispose people to chronic ptomaine poisoning, including darkness, intense exertion, idleness, close air, prolonged confinement and cold. \n\n<p>On prolonged journeys under harsh conditions, the accumulated ptomaine in badly preserved meats would disrupt health, giving the classic symptoms of scurvy. Once the tainted foods were discontinued, the body would rapidly excrete the accumulated ptomaine and return to healthh.</p>\n\n<p>To the extent that citrus juices were effective in preventing scurvy, it was because their acidity denatured ptomaines, or killed the bacteria that caused them. The real culprit was in the bad meat, and the casks of lime juice mandated by law on every seagoing ship were another example of outdated medical superstition that would now give way to a more sophisticated understanding of illness.\n\n<p>This was the latest in medical thinking on scurvy when Scott prepared for his first expedition to Antarctica, in 1903. It would be the first serious British expedition to the continent in fifty years. Scott took the very same Dr. Koettlitz along as his chief physician. \n\n<p>Scott was a meticulous planner, and mindful of the ptomaine theory, paid special attention to the quality of his provisions. While the cold and cramped conditions of the journey could not be helped, he knew he could avoid any risk of scurvy by using only completely unspoiled canned goods. For his part, Koettlitz predicted that as long as there was fresh seal meat available, \"we can take it as certain that no scurvy will be heard of in connexion with the expedition, however long it may remain in the High South\".\n\n<p>Scott did not have time to supervise the actual canning of his provisions for the Discovery journey, but he made sure that before being served, all tins were opened in the presence of his medical staff, including Dr. Koettlitz, and carefully examined for signs of spoilage. Any doubtful cans were consigned to the trash heap.\n\n<p>So it came as a bitter surprise to Scott when one of the Discovery’s early sledging parties trudged into camp with unmistakable symptoms of scurvy after only a three week absence. Subsequent examination showed that many of the men on the ship were also in the early stages of the disease. The preventative measures had failed, and Scott was <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=l5YSAQAAIAAJ&lpg=PA399&ots=YHMSjoLVis&dq=The%20evil%20having%20come%2C%20the%20great%20thing%20now%20is%20to%20banish%20it.%20scott&pg=PA399#v=onepage&q=&f=false\">greatly distressed</a>:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The evil having come, the great thing now is to banish it. In my absence, Armitage, in consultation with the doctors, has already taken steps to remedy matters by serving out fresh meat regularly and by increasing the allowance of bottled fruits, and he has done an even greater service by taking the cook in hand. I don’t know whether he threatened to hang him at the yardarm or used more persuasive measures, but, whatever it was, there is a marked improvement in the cooking.\n</p>...\n\n<p>With the idea of giving everyone on the mess-deck a change of air in turn, we have built up a space in the main hut by packing cases around the stove. In this space each mess are to live for a week; they have breakfast and dinner on board, but are allowed to cook their supper in the hut. The present occupants enjoy this sort of picnic-life immensely.</p>\n\n<p>We have had a thorough clearance of the holds, disinfected the bilges, whitewashed the sides, and generally made them sweet and clean.</p>\n\n<p>As a next step I tackled the clothes and hammocks. One knows how easily garments collect, and especially under such conditions as ours; however, they have all been cleared out now, except those actually in use. The hammocks and bedding I found quite dry and comfortable, but we have had them all thoroughly aired. We have cleared all the deck-lights so as to get more daylight below, and we have scrubbed the decks and cleaned out all the holes and corners until everything is as clean as a new pin. I am bound to confess there was no very radical change in all this; we found very little dirt, and our outbreak cannot possibly have come from insanitary conditions of living; our men are far too much alive to their own comfort for that. But now we do everything for the safe side, and from the conviction that one cannot be too careful.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Scott sent a seal-killing party to collect as much fresh meat as possible (his crew could eat their way through a seal in two and a half days). They gathered enough to eliminate the need for preserved meat entirely. The butchered seals were stored, like logs, frozen on the ice. Meanwhile, Koetlittz had managed to sprout and grow a modest crop of watercress under a skylight, the Antarctic soil proving surprisingly fertile. His confidence in the ptomaine theory did not blind him to the practical advantages of a proven remedy (watercress sprouts contain a ridiculous amount of vitamin C). Enough cress grew to supplement one meal for all the men, and in combination with the fresh seal meat, it was enough to banish all signs of scurvy.\n\n<p>Scott was relieved, but he knew that something had escaped his understanding. Despite scrupulous care, the disease had slipped through, and he was not sure why his precautions had failed. Evidently it was not enough to inspect meat by taste and smell - even minute quanities of ptomaine might be enough to cause scurvy. </p>\n\n<p>His solution was to move the expedition off of canned meat altogether, relying entirely on seal meat and penguin. This would be fine while the men remained on the Discovery, but it left the problem of what to do about the upcoming sledge journeys. The planned sledging ration was pemmican (a mixture of dried meat and fat) and biscuit, but since Scott had lost all confidence in the safety of preserved meat, he had to find a way to replace the pemmican with seal.\n\n<p>Fresh seal meat would be far too heavy a replacement, so Scott had it repeatedly boiled to remove as much moisture as possible (in the process destroying all its vitamin C). This concentrated seal meat was still almost twice as heavy as the equivalent pemmican, but it was the best he could do.\n\n<p>In November of 1902, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton set out on the expedition’s main journey. Their goal was to take a dog team as far south as possible along the Ross ice shelf, and see if they could find a useful route for an eventual attempt at the Pole. \n\n<p>Things did not go well. Scott inadvertently starved his dogs, making them impossible to control and nearly useless for hauling. Very quickly, his men had to start relaying the sledges, which meant walking three miles for every one mile of southward progress. They began killing the weakest dogs and feeding them to the remainder (the dogs were so hungry they did not hesitate to rip their fallen comrades apart). The men themselves could think of nothing else but food, their rations inadequate for the work of hauling the sledge.</p>\n\n<p>Wilson, a doctor, checked the men’s gums and legs each Sunday for signs of scurvy. Shackleton was the first to show symptoms, though he was not told about this for several weeks. Soon Scott and Wilson were showing symptoms as well. Before long Shackleton was weak, had begun to cough up blood at night, and was in real danger of physical collapse.</p>\n\n<p>The party barely made it home. For much of the return trip, Shackleton was unable to pull, staggering alongside the sledges. On their return to the Discovery, the men were bedridden and in a state of complete physical collapse, getting up only long enough to eat prodigious meals. Scott remarked in his journal on the extraordinary lassitude and lack of energy the disease provoked in him.</p>\n\n<p>Eight years after the Discovery expedition, Scott returned to Antarctica to make an attempt at the Pole. Mindful of what had happened on his first journey, he took pains to seek the latest expert advice about scurvy, both from doctors and from Arctic explorers.\n\n<p>The advice he got was unchanged - scurvy was an acidic condition of the blood caused by ptomaines in tainted meat. The legendary explorer Fridtjof Nansen had some particularly curious advice - if he found himself in extremis, Nansen said, it was better to choose cans of meat that were completely rotten over cans that were only slightly spoilt, since the ptomaines were more likely to have broken down in the former.\n\n<p>This time Scott made sure to provide his men with fresh seal meat, and scurvy was not a problem in the main camp. In the austral winter of 1911, Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard went on a phantasmagoric five week journey to try and collect the eggs of the empreror penguin. This journey, which gave Cherry-Garrard’s book its title, took place in complete darkness and temperatures that dropped below -77Ë™ Fahrenheit. The men, forced to relay and searching for their footprints by candlelight, sometimes made as little as a mile of progress a day. When Cherry-Garrard’s clothes were weighed on his return, they contained twenty four-pounds of ice. That the men survived defies belief - there has never been another journey in the Polar night, even with modern equipment - but they did return, and to Scott's great relief showed no symptoms of scurvy.\n\n<p>One of Scott's goals for the winter journey had been to determine the proper ration for sledging up on the Polar plateau, where the men would have to hike for several weeks at altitudes above 10,000 feet. After some tinkering with proportions, the men on the Winter Journey had settled on a satisfying ration, and Scott decided to adopt it unchanged for his on trip later that year:\n\n<p><img width=\"450\" src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/scott_ration.jpg\">\n\n<p>Scott's Polar ration: 450g biscuit, 340 grams pemmican, 85g sugar, 57g butter, 24g tea, 16g cocoa.\nThis ration contains about 4500 calories (sledging requires 6500) and no vitamin C.</p>\n\n<p>Scott left camp with 16 men on November 1, 1911. His plan was to lay depots along the route, and send groups of men back at intervals until he was left with three companions on the great plateau south of the Beardmore Glacier. The expedition used men, dogs, ponies (slaughtered and fed to the dogs at the foot of the glacier), and a pair of experimental motorized sledges that broke down after just a few miles on the ice. \n\n<p>Scott sent back his men in stages; each group had a progressively harder time making it back to camp. The last group, sent back from the top of the Beardmore, was led by Edward Evans, who quickly developed a severe case of scurvy. After bravely walking most of the distance, he became incapacitated and had to be left on the ice in the care of a companion while the third man in the group force-marched the thirty remaining miles to camp to summon a rescue team.\n\n<p>Scott, oblivious to this ominous development, pressed onwards. The rest of his story is well known. Norwegian tents at the Pole, an increasingly desperate return, two in his group sickening and dying, then a terrible blizzard eleven miles short of his last depot; the three men freezing to death in their tent. \n \n<p>The evidence that the Polar Party suffered from scurvy on their return trip is strong but circumstantial. The wounds that would not heal, the sudden death of Seaman Evans during the descent down the Beardmore, their great weakness are all consistent with the disease. Both Scott and Wilson would have easily recognized the symptoms, but it is possible that they would have chosen not to record them. There was a certain stigma with scurvy, especially in their case, having taken such pains to forestall the disease. Scott had nearly left any mention of scurvy out of his 1903 report, before deciding to do so for the cause of science, and it’s possible he felt a similar reticence now.\n\n<p>Entire academic careers have been devoted to second-guessing Scott's final journey. It would probably be easier to list the few things that didn’t contribute to his death, than to try and rank the relative contributions of cold, exhaustion, malnutrition, bad weather, bad luck, poor planning, and rash decisions. But with regard to scurvy, at least, the Polar explorers were in an impossible position. \n\n<p>They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was utterly wrong. They had arrived at the idea of an undetectable substance in their food, present in trace quantities, with a direct causative relationship to scurvy, but they thought of it in terms of a poison to avoid. In one sense, the additional leap required for a correct understanding was very small. In another sense, it would have required a kind of Copernican revolution in their thinking.\n\n<p>It was pure luck that led to the actual discovery of vitamin C. Axel Holst and Theodor Frolich had been studying beriberi (another deficiency disease) in pigeons, and when they decided to switch to a mammal model, they serendipitously chose guinea pigs, the one animal besides human beings and monkeys that requires vitamin C in its diet. Fed a diet of pure grain, the animals showed no signs of beriberi, but quickly sickened and died of something that closely resembled human scurvy.\n\n<p>No one had seen scurvy in animals before. With a simple animal model for the disease in hand, it became a matter of running the correct experiments, and it was quickly established that scurvy was a deficiency disease after all. Very quickly the compound that prevents the disease was identified as a small molecule present in cabbage, lemon juice, and many other foods, and in 1932 Szent-Györgyi definitively isolated ascorbic acid.\n\n<p>---\n\n<p>There are several aspects of this 'second coming’ of scurvy in the late 19th century that I find particularly striking:\n\n<p>First, the fact that from the fifteenth century on, it was the rare doctor who acknowledged ignorance about the cause and treatment of the disease. The sickness could be fitted to so many theories of disease - imbalance in vital humors, bad air, acidification of the blood, bacterial infection - that despite the existence of an unambigous cure, there was always a raft of alternative, ineffective treatments. At no point did physicians express doubt about their theories, however ineffective.\n\n<p>Second, how difficult it was to correctly interpret the evidence without the concept of \"vitamin\". Now that we understand scurvy as a deficiency disease, we can explain away the anomalous results that seem to contradict that theory (the failure of lime juice on polar expeditions, for example). But the evidence on its own did not point clearly at any solution. It was not clear which results were the anomalous ones that needed explaining away. The ptomaine theory made correct predictions (fresh meat will prevent scurvy) even though it was completely wrong.\n\n<p>Third, how technological progress in one area can lead to surprising regressions. I mentioned how the advent of steam travel made it possible to accidentaly replace an effective antiscorbutic with an ineffective one. An even starker example was the rash of cases of infantile scurvy that afflicted upper class families in the late 19th century. This outbreak was the direct result of another technological development, the pasteurization of cow's milk. The procedure made milk vastly safer for infants to drink, but also destroyed vitamin C. For poorer children, who tended to be breast-fed and quickly weaned onto adult foods, this was not an issue, but the wealthy infants fed a special diet of cooked cereals and milk were at grave risk.\n\nIt took several years for infant scurvy, at first called \"Barlow's disease\", to be properly identified. At that point, doctors were caught between two fires. They could recommend that parents not boil their milk, and expose the children to bacterial infection, or they could insist on pasteurization at the risk of scurvy. The prevaling theory of scurvy as bacterial poisoning clouded the issue further, so that it took time to arrive at the right solution - supplementing the diet with onion juice or cooked potato.\n\n<p>Fourth, how small a foundation of evidence was necessary to build a soaring edifice of theory. Lind’s famous experiment, for example, had two sailors eating oranges for six days. Lind went on to propound a completely ineffective method of preserving lemon juice (by boiling it down), which he never thought to test. One of the experiments that ’confirmed’ the ptomaine theory involved feeding a handful of monkeys canned and fresh meat. The fructivorous monkeys died within days; the ones who died last, and with the least blood in their stool, were assumed to be the ones without scurvy. And even these flawed experiments were a rarity compared to the number of flat assertions by medical authorities without any testing or basis in fact.\n\n<p>Finally, that one of the simplest of diseases managed to utterly confound us for so long, at the cost of millions of lives, even after we had stumbled across an unequivocal cure. It makes you wonder how many incurable ailments of the modern world - depression, autism, hypertension, obesity - will turn out to have equally simple solutions, once we are able to see them in the correct light. What will we be slapping our foreheads about sixty years from now, wondering how we missed something so obvious?\n\n<p>In the course of writing this essay, I was tempted many times to pick a villain. Maybe the perfectly named <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almroth_Wright\">Almroth Wright</a>, who threw his considerable medical reputation behind the ptomaine theory and so delayed the proper re-understanding of scurvy for many years. Or the nameless Admiralty flunkie who helped his career by championing the switch to West Indian limes. Or even poor Scott himself, sermonizing about the virtues of scientific progress while never conducting a proper experiment, taking dreadful risks, and showing a most unscientific reliance on pure grit to get his men out of any difficulty.\n\n<p>But the villain here is just good old human ignorance, that master of disguise. We tend to think that knowledge, once acquired, is something permanent. Instead, even holding on to it requires constant, careful effort. \n\n<p><b>tl;dr</b>: scurvy bad, science hard.</p>\n\n<p>I'll try to footnote this essay properly in the next few days; in the meantime, if you'd like to geek out with me I invite you to check out <a href=\"http://pinboard.in/u:maciej/t:scurvy\">a list of collected links</a>.</p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/diane_steph_iphone.png\"><br>\n<span>Diane Person and Stephanie Bourque</span>\n</p></div>\n\n\n<p>My girlfriend Diane met Stephanie last October at a free makeup event for women with cancer called Look Good Feel Better. It was one of the curious get-togethers you get invited to when you are ill. Women showed up, got a make-up kit, and listened to some instruction in how to use it, including useful tips on drawing in the eyebrows (the most visually unsettling side-effect of chemotherapy). \n\n<p> Diane is not normally a makeup person, but she decided to attend on the principle that there should be some kind of benefit, any benefit, from being sick. She and Steph were the only two younger women present at the event, and they hit it off immediately. \n\n<p>Diane, who is 33, had just started chemotherapy for recurrent cervical cancer. Her initial tumor had grown undetected while she was serving in the Peace Corps in Romania. It was surgically (robotically!) removed after her return to the States in the autumn of 2010. \n\n<p>Surgery for cervical cancer has a very high success rate if you catch it early, and our oncologist had been optimistic. There would be no need for chemo. After the operation, Diane would have to come in for regular checkups, and if she made it through two years with no evidence of disease, it was likely the cancer was gone for good.\n\n<p>Once you've had cancer, no one will ever tell you you're healthy. The best you can hope for (and it's wonderful) is the little phrase ‘no evidence of disease’, often shortened to NED. This is less comforting than what you really want: a 100% guarantee that your body is cancer-free. But for many types of cancer the detection methods remain primitive. Absence of evidence is the best you can get.\n\n<p>The first few check-ups turned up nothing. Recovery is a strange time; it's not clear when you're allowed to start your normal life again. Diane and I traveled to Japan, and signed up for a summer language school in Monterey, and tried to figure out what came next.\n\n<p>And then there was the exam that was a little equivocal. An ultrasound showed a mass in one ovary, and a PET scan found some anomalous glucose uptake. The oncologist did not think it was cancer. It was normal to see the gonads light up in a PET scan, she said, and it was normal for ovarian cysts to form after a hysterectomy. But the cyst was large, and it would have to come out. \n\n<div style=\"text-align:center;margin-bottom:30px\">\n<img style=\"margin-top:30px;margin-bottom:10px\" src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/two_people_one_bed.png\" width=\"600\"><br>\n<span>So... what are you doing later?</span>\n</div>\n\n<p> I knew the news was awful when the normally wry, sarcastic Dr. Powell gave me a hug outside the operating room. Oncological surgeons are unsentimental people. You don't want them hugging you. \n\n<p>No one could give us a helpful answer on survival rates, because the cancer had come back in an such an uncommon place. With two operations behind her, Diane now faced the rest of the cancer triad, chemotherapy and radiation. We met with new doctors who used slippery language about ‘still considering this curable’, and adapting to the ‘new normal’ (otherwise known as the ‘old shitty’). We had appointments in the kind of places that are decorated with tactful posters about end of life care. It was a long way from the festive optimism of early stage cervical cancer, with its minimally invasive robot surgery and >95% cure rate. \n\n<p>After hitting the five percent jackpot, we would not have been comforted by the statistics on further recurrence even had they been good. And the statistics sucked. Diane's case history was idiosyncratic and hard to match to the literature. But I couldn't help but notice that the tables in the papers had captions like ‘two-year survival rate’, and the percentages in the tables weren't high.\n\n<p>Cancer comes with an entourage: fear, loneliness, and isolation. Diane didn't go to the makeup event expecting to make a new friend, but it was a way to get out of the house. She came home excited about having met Stephanie.\n\n<p>Stephanie was ten years younger than Diane. Her illness was acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a type of blood cancer in which cancerous precursor cells completely take over the bone marrow. Steph had gotten her diagnosis while studying abroad in Spain, and had been treated there long enough to put her into remission and send her home. Now her life was on hold, and the cancer was coming back.\n\n<p>Her long-term prognosis was poor. Steph was reticent in talking about it straight out, but after she and Diane became better friends, it became clear that she did not expect to survive a year. Her only hope lay in a difficult and risky transplant procedure. I couldn't imagine having to face this at 23, but of course no one gets to make the choice.\n \n \n<div style=\"margin-top:20px\">\n<div style=\"margin:4px;float:left;text-align:center\">\n<img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/chemo_1.png\" height=\"230\"><br>\n<span>round 1</span>\n</div>\n<div style=\"margin:4px;float:left;text-align:center\">\n<img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/chemo_2.png\" height=\"230\"><br>\n<span>round 3</span>\n</div>\n<div style=\"margin:4px;float:left;text-align:center\">\n<img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/chemo_3.png\" height=\"230\"><br>\n<span>round 6</span>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n\n<p>Chemotherapy is a word that covers many miseries. For some people, it's weekly pills that cause fatigue; for others, it may mean daily injections that will make you wish you were dead. For Diane, chemo was a series of intravenuous infusions administered every three weeks, for a total of six cycles. \n\n<p>The actual treatment was not eventful. We would arrive at Kaiser on a Thursday morning, chat with David the chemo nurse, and then sit for seven hours as he hooked Diane up to a series of plastic bags. First came the hundred-dollar nausea pill, then saline, abraxane, cis-platin, and saline again. And a sensible dinner. \n\n<p>It took some hours for the side effects to reach full strength. The first couple of times, before the nausea came to stay, we were even able to stop at the Japanese market to pick up treats, and take a walk on Bernal hill. But with chemotherapy, the trend is downward.\n\n<p>The night after the infusion would be okay, the next one not so good, and then the weekend was awful, like a severe flu, until the acute effects gradually faded over the following week. With each cycle the recovery got less pronounced. The first few rounds, Diane made little graphs of how she felt in the first ten days after chemo. Here is her graph for cycle 2:\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/dp_graph_1.png\">\n\n<p>And six week laters, the graph for cycle 4:</p>\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/dp_graph_2.png\">\n\n<p>She stopped making graphs after that.\n\n<p>The nausea took a while to set in, but it was cumulative and it did not fade. It took skill to find foods that would get past it. For a while, I had success with plain sushi rice wrapped in an omelette. After that, we fell back to the food of last resort: McDonald's happy meals. It was good when Diane could sleep a lot, but often the drugs she took to control side effects left her restless and antsy. \n\n<p>Our landlady, a decrepit eighties rock star, had chosen this time to renovate. The windows were full of workmen, and we would often wake to the sound of power sanders and scraping. The equally decrepit dog would stomp around upstairs and bark for hours when she was not home. I have never been so miserable along so many dimensions, and I wasn't the one getting chemo.\n\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/steph_head.png\" width=\"550\">\n</p></div> \n\n<p>Into this world, Steph would come to visit. It was good to have her around. She was smart, acerbic, and talkative. Cancer had derailed her life right at the time when most people get to jump into adulthood and independence, and she did not hesitate to express her feelings about that. She did not hesitate to express her feelings about much of anything. She and Diane would sit and knit together, watch TV, or on intrepid days go down the hill to attend a restorative yoga class. I would go off for a while into my computer world, happy that there was someone else in this extremely confining world of disease and home renovation.\n\n<p>The friendship (and the makeup kit) was one of the few silver linings in a bad year. Steph and Diane could talk to each other without bullshit or all the emotional work that goes into conversations between the healthy and the well. They were on the same side of that invisible barrier. Stephanie was unsentimental, and her sense of humor was even darker than ours. It was a nice change from the near-Canadian levels of earnestness that ordinarily accompany cancer chat. I admired her lack of self-pity, given the harshness of her diagnosis. But she was an angry person, and the enormity of her anger could be unsettling, even though it was never directed at us, but only her doctors and family.\n\n<p>Cancer is a crucible that tests every relationship you have. One of its first lessons is that having your relationships tested sucks. At 33, Diane found herself in the role of patient zero for many of her friends, their first time confronting real illness. Some of them disappeared. Others wrapped themselves so tightly in platitudes that they might as well have not been there. Still others accepted the news, but did not seem to internalize it, talking and behaving as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if the best way to deal with the cancer was to ignore it. And a few sterling people came through, offering comfort, giving rides, showing up, and finding creative ways to help.\n\n<p>In many ways, it was worse for Steph, who was barely out of school. I know that when I was in my twenties, my friends would have found it a spiritual trial to lend me fifty bucks, let alone help me deal with something like cancer. Steph was so young that some of her treatments were still taking place at the pediatric hospital. The people she knew were fresh out of college and starting a brand new life. So she and Diane formed a strong bond, though for Diane it came at the price of knowing she might lose her closest friend with little warning. \n\n<p>From what we could tell, Steph's home life was weird. Her mother, as described to us, was some combination of nemesis and chauffeur, shuttling Stephanie between medical appointments while having towering arguments with her daughter. We saw Stephanie's mom sometimes when she dropped Steph off, but never interacted with her. Steph often seemed slightly manic, and it was hard to tell how much of her family drama was exaggerated or self-inflicted, or magnified by illness. But it didn't really matter.\n\n<p>Treating Steph's cancer meant replacing her bone marrow, either through a transplant (if she could find a matching donor) or with an infusion of umbilical cord blood, which is rich in undifferentiated cells. The doctors would first have to destroy her bone marrow with full-body radiation and chemotherapy, then inject the donor cells and keep Stephanie from dying of infection long enough for the graft to take hold. The first few weeks were the time of maximum risk for infection, and she would have to spend them in a sterile hospital room. After that, the danger would come from graft vs. host disease, as the transplanted cells tried to mount an immune defense against her own body. This condition could become chronic, but it was at least treatable. \n\n\n<p>Steph had her transplant operation in November. As many people do, she declared it her 'zeroth birthday', and posted a picture of herself holding a carefully sterilized cupcake from her treatment team.\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/steph_zero.png\" width=\"300\">\n\n\n<p>To our immense relief, she told us there was no post-operative infection, and her doctors sent her home to recover when the graft took, only three weeks after the transplant. The donor tissue had successfully moved into her bones and started making blood cells. It went about as well as these things can go . \n\n<p>But then her recovery seemed to stall out. Her native cells, which should have been destroyed by the radiation she got before the transplant, were still showing up in her counts. Her doctors told her she was at high risk for a relapse, and she had to decide whether to try going through the whole procedure again. \n\n<p>I wish I could say Steph opened up and talked frankly at this point. But she was always oblique, always deflected attempts to be direct about her illness and to what extent she was willing to fight it. Diane got the impression that she was focusing now more on the day-to-day, and on enjoying the time she had, and less willing to undergo difficult and risky treatment. But aside from a few earnest blog posts, everything about her status was communicated through jokes, hints, and banter, and it was hard to get Steph to give us the full picture.\n\n<p>For Diane, the New Year brought radiation. The procedure itself was quick. After the first two visits, when they calibrated the machine, she could be in and out of the cancer center in ten minutes. But getting there meant half an hour in the car every day, for six weeks, and that meant vomiting and misery.\n\n<p>The radiation treatments ended in February. Towards the end of that month, when Diane was beginning to recover from the side effects, and Steph had recovered enough from her graft, I suggested that the two of them take a trip somewhere. The tacit understanding was that it might be the last opportunity for Stephanie to have a vacation, sit on a beach, and feel like a normal human being. Because of her immunosuppressed status, it was risky for her to fly, and risky for her to be in a new place. But she responded to the idea, and thought it was worth the risk. \n\n<p>The trip carried some dangers for Diane, too. Coming so soon after pelvic radiation, airplane travel could lead to serious complications, including lymphedema. But given the situation, it was a risk she was willing to take to be with her friend.</p> \n\n<p>Steph and Diane spent five days on Kauai, sitting on the beach, washing their hands a lot, getting stared at by tourists. Stephanie had brought along a list of hospitals in case there was a crisis, but luckily they never had to use it. I got a nice postcard, and the two of them returned happier than I'd seen them in a long time.\n\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/steph_diane.png\" width=\"550\">\n\n<p>Through the course of her illness, Steph had to endure weekly bone marrow biopsies - an awful, painful procedure that requires jabbing a thick needle into the hipbone. At one point she even posted a photo of the disturbingly thick needle they used for this. And while the graft had taken, the biopsies showed her old cells were still present, and had not been entirely replaced. \n\n<p>We had a couple of bad scares with her; nights when she would be admitted to the hospital with a fever. Many times she was too weak to correspond or chat, and the only point of contact between her and Diane would be a game of online scramble. As the spring went on, Stephanie developed signs of necrosis in her hip joint (a common complication after cord blood transplant) and had to spend a couple of weeks on crutches. It was possible she would require hip surgery or replacement.\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">-:-</p>\n\n\n<p>In the middle of July, Steph posted a series of messages on Facebook. Something was wrong at home. She was half-crazy with sleep deprivation, bouncing from hospital to hospital in search of a place to just lie down and rest, and had finally landed in the emergency room at CPMC. It was hard to piece together what was going on. Diane drove to the hospital to see her, and waited with her until she was checked in to the psychiatric ward. The next day, Steph's psychiatrist suggested she could have her discharged if she had somewhere to stay. We figured Stephanie could sleep it off at our place, calm down, and we could talk about the situation once she was rested and more lucid.\n\n<p>But that never happened. For the next two days, Steph was either fast asleep or endlessly talking. She had always been a talker, but now it had become a river of words, pressured speech that jumped from topic to topic. Whatever was happening to Steph resembled mania. She was riffing on everything, telling stories, and finding it hard to listen.\n\n<p>It had me puzzled. I wondered if Steph had abruptly stopped taking some drug and was experiencing a reaction from withdrawal. I also knew there had been CNS involvement in her leukemia, and worried that this might be a neurological symptom of her cancer. On the third day, Diane drove Steph home to pick up some medical paperwork, and things got even stranger. Stephanie locked herself in the shower, started breaking things, shouting threats against her own mother (who was not home at the time), pleading with Diane to leave, and crying. \n\n<p>Not knowing what else to do, Diane called Steph's psychiatrist, who seemed just as surprised. Her only suggestion was that Diane not leave Stephanie alone. But towards ten o'clock, Stephanie came out of the bathroom, dressed, and declared she was \"going for a run\", leaving Diane by herself. Diane called a friend of Steph's who lived nearby, and eventually they collected Stephanie and left her in the friend's care. Diane came home exhausted. \n\n<p>While we were still discussing what had happened at Steph's house, the psychiatrist called. She had been speaking with Stephanie's mother, and had an urgent question for Diane.\n\n<p>\"How certain are you that Steph has cancer?\" \n\n<p>Well, it was a ridiculous thing to ask. At this point Diane had known Stephanie for ten months. She had seen Steph through the worst of her treatment, seen her lose her hair, her frequent bruises, her jaundiced complexion, the wound under her clavicle where the I.V. port was put in, dozens of pictures of her in the hospital, months' worth of Facebook posts encrusted with comments from family and friends. \n\n<p>She had also been to Steph's house, seen vials of drugs, stacks of medical paperwork, all the various medical stuff you accumulate as a cancer patient. She had met and spoken with Steph's mother, who for months had driven Steph to chemo appointments, and who cared for her after the cord blood transplant. Unless you assumed that Steph's whole family was complicit, it didn't seem possible for it to be an act.\n\n<p>But. \n\n<p>There were things that didn't fit. The mildness of the graft vs. host complications after her transplant, and how quickly the complications had faded. At the time, it seemed like incredible luck, and we didn't question it. But it seemed to fit a pattern where alarming symptoms would show up for a while, and then fade away unresolved. There was the way Steph deflected all attempts to visit her in the hospital, and never gave a straight answer about exactly where she'd be. There was the box of surgical tubing, scalpels, and bag of fake blood in her room, which Steph had dismissed as a gag gift. \n\n<p>And there were the photos. Stephanie had posted lots of photos from the hospital to her Facebook feed, and they had not seemed peculiar in that context, but looking at them all together revealed a disturbing pattern. There were lots of pictures of hospital 'stuff', examining rooms, and equipment. But none of those pictures ever showed Steph, or anyone we might recognize. The photos that Steph posted of herself were all tightly cropped on her face, with only a pillow or blank wall as background. While she wore a hospital gown and had an oxygen tube, they could have been taken anywhere.\n\n<p>Her photos didn't look anything like the photos I'd taken of Diane in the hospital, where there was always medical junk somewhere in the background - outlets, wires, IV stands, posters, whiteboards, gas valves. \n\n<p>And the photos I had were full of people. There were only two photos Diane could find that showed anyone from Steph's medical team. Both were pictures of a nurse in full surgical scrubs holding Steph's bag of umbilical cord blood right before the transplant. In one of them, the nurse was mimicking a cradle with her arms. The picture was taken against a blank white wall, and for some reason the nurse was wearing a wig. Her face was completely covered with a mask, but looking at the photo, and at the nurse's eyes, I had no doubt that it was a picture of Stephanie.\n\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<a href=\"http://idlewords.com/images/cord_blood_nurse.png\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/cord_blood_nurse.png\" height=\"380\" style=\"float:left;margin-right:20px\"></a><a href=\"http://idlewords.com/images/cord_blood_closeup.jpg\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/cord_blood_closeup.jpg\" height=\"380\"></a>\n</div>\n \n<p>On the one hand, it seemed to beggar belief that a young woman would make an entire illness up out of whole cloth, for no apparent reason. That she could lie so outrageously, and for so long, to one of her closest friends. On the other hand, something extremely fishy was going on. Diane told the psychiatrist the truth, which was that we had no direct evidence Stephanie was sick.\n\n<p>The psychiatrist, meanwhile, had had her first conversation with Stephanie's mother. She learned that Steph had not spent a night away from home in months, even after the transplant. Stephanie had told her mother that it was an outpatient procedure, which the psychiatrist called \"a medical impossiblilty\". \n\n<p>Stephanie's mother also said she had never been allowed to come in to chemotherapy, or to meet her daughter's doctors. Stephanie had threatened to call the police if her mother tried to enter the hospital. \n\n<p>And Stephanie had a curious morning ritual. Was it normal, the psychiatrist asked, for a cancer patient to be shaving her head every day? \n\n<p>Normal was not a word that leapt to mind.\n\n<p>“You think that was a real psychiatrist?” I asked Diane after she got off the phone.\n\n<p>Yes, she was an actual doctor; Diane had seen her in the hospital wearing ID, interacting with staff, doing doctorly things.\n\n<p>“She's not very good at her job, is she?”</p>\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/steph_tube.jpg\" width=\"300\"></p>\n\n\n<p>The final confirmation came through UCSF, where Stephanie had supposedly had her transplant. They had no record of her as a cancer patient. The whole procedure, from weekly biopsies, to chemo, to hip necrosis, to sudden fevers, to 0th birthday cupcake, had been a fabrication. \n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">-:-</p>\n\n<p>I sent Stephanie a draft of this post, curious what she had to say, and she made the good point that I know nothing about her real medical status. “For the record,” she wrote, \n\n<blockquote>\n“I wasn't lying about everything. I was treated for cancer, and I did lose my hair. I was told that, should I relapse, my only treatment option would be an allogeneic stem cell transplant.”\n\n<p>“I did lie to some people (Diane included) about some of the details of my treatment over the past year, but please do not assume you know the \"truth\" about me or my medical conditions.”\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>And this is sound advice. I don't know anything about Steph's real cancer status (though I have a hunch!). All I know for certain is that she feigned a life-threatening medical procedure and grueling course of treatment for ten months, and did it well enough to fool her family, therapist, and friends.\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">-:-</p>\n\n<p>People who do fake cancer seem to fall into three groups. The first is the easiest to relate to — regular old swindlers like <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57412085-504083/jessica-vega-ny-woman-accused-of-faking-cancer-to-get-dream-wedding-is-charged/\">Jessica Vega</a> who do it for the money. Cancer is an efficient way to open pockets, and while repugnant, the scam doesn't hold real deep psychological interest.\n\n<p>The second group are people like <a href=\"http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2008/10/she-said-she-had-breast-cancer-but-she-lied?&printable=true\">Suzy Bass</a> or <a href=\"http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/844614\">Ashley Kirilow</a>, who pretend to have cancer in order to get an emotional fix from their loved ones and community. They seek attention and sympathy from healthy people, and tend to steer clear of the medical system, perhaps for fear that any real scrutiny will expose them. \n\n<p>And then there is the third group, the professionally ill, who are drawn towards the medical system like trainspotters to a railroad track. They are a disease of the medical system itself, subverting its resources and draining time and energy from those who can least afford to spare either. \n\n<p>Ironically, this fakery has itself been medicalized under the rubric of factitious disorder. It's defined as a chronic and intentionally deceptive pursuit of medical treatment, to the point of self-harm, for no apparent benefit other than assuming the role of patient. The Mayo clinic has <a href=\"http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/munchausen-syndrome/DS00965/DSECTION=treatments%2Dand%2Ddrugs\">a page describing Munchausen syndrome</a> (one subtype of factitious disorder), and by reading it, you can see that the disease template is an uncomfortable fit. There's no known cause, no treatment, not even a consensus about how to confront 'sufferers', or minimize the damage they do, or advice to give them about getting better. \n\n<p>And really, what are you supposed to do if you suffer from a factitious disorder? Go to the doctor? You're already at the doctor! And anyone who wants to get better, by definition doesn't have the disease.\n\n<p>Almost everything that happens in a hospital depends on the assumption that patients and doctors are on the same team, working together. But a factitious patient is an adversary, and will <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1484524/pdf/bumc0019-0195.pdf\">go to astonishing lengths</a>, including self-harm, to get a diagnosis. \n\n<p>I am not a doctor, so I am not qualified to say whether Stephanie suffers from factitious disorder. In my mind, she's not so much a medical parasite as she is a cancer remora, eager to attach herself to a genuinely sick person and go along for the ride. Had Diane's cancer not gone into remisison, I'd like to think that Stephanie might have come clean about what she'd done, in order not to sap attention from a dying friend. But I have a hard time believing it.\n\n<p> I have wondered to what extent Steph (and people like her) are broken, and to what extent they're just bad. That is one of the questions of mental illness — at what point does being crazy excuse you for being an asshole? \n\n<p>But I also feel I've met my lifetime quota of worrying about the inner life of Stephanie Bourque. \n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">-:-</p>\n\n<p>Being duped is humiliating. You backtrack and see how unconvincing the props and scenery look in the light of day. The storefronts turn out to have been cheap painted wood, the mountain landscape is just a flimsy canvas. But that feeling is normal. The lies only needed to be convincing in the moment, and their very audacity made them easy to sell.\n\n<p>Given a choice between thinking something is an odd coincidence, and deciding that your best friend's entire identity, down to the scar on her chest, has been constructed to deceive you; that she has gotten up every morning and shaved her head just to fuck with you, you are unlikely to choose door number two. \n\n<p>The unusual thing about Stephanie is that she played this out in real life, and duped even her family. Fake cancer is much more common through the Internet, for obvious reasons. Cancer is an intensely lonely experience, and the Internet offers a way to connect with the only people in the world who really know what you're going through. This intense bond of love and support attracts some very broken people, who are the bane of online support groups.\n\n<p>Referring to this elaborate lie as 'some of the details of my treatment' is characteristic of Stephanie. In every communication with her, there's that note of victimhood, of righteous anger at being misunderstood, of being at the immovable center of a vortex of events that are private to her.\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>\"I am working really hard to put my life back together, and though I do not need/expect you to care or understand my life or my \"problems\", please try to be compassionate or at least patient, I don't deserve to be attacked publicly.There is no need to publish some story about me out of anger and misinformation.\"\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>And so I've sat on this story for a while, for fear of writing it out of anger. But everything I've learned about people who fake serious illness makes me skeptical that the world has heard the last from Steph. And I know there are still people in her life who are genuinely sick, and who don't know that her medical drama this year was a fabrication.\n\n<p>Of course, Stephanie's medical journey continues. Shortly before she shut down her cancer blog, she used it to announce her latest test result - NED. Her focus now has moved to getting her physicians to correctly diagnose her with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and on treating a chronic heart condition that causes her pulse to race when she stands up. This is something we failed to notice in the time we knew her, but she has posted incontrovertible proof:\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://idlewords.com/images/racing_pulse.png\"><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/racing_pulse.png\" width=\"250\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Sarcasm aside, I really hope Steph finds a way to get better. I don't think her problems have anything to do with her heart rate, but they are real enough, and can only continue to hurt her and the people who love her most.</p>\n\n<p>Diane, thankfully, is doing well. I don't want to jinx anything by saying more than that. But in a year or so, I want to bake a batch of (real) zeroth birthday cupcakes.\n\n<div>\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/peril_sensitive.png\" width=\"550\"><br>\n<span>Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger.</span></p>\n</div></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"content" : "Beth Lesser, perhaps best known for <a href=\"http://www.bethlesser.com/photography/\">her photography of the Jamaican music scene</a>, has made her book <a href=\"http://bethlesser.com/books/PDFs/RubADubStyle-BethLesser.pdf\">\"Rub-a-Dub Style: The Roots of Modern Dancehall\"</a> (pdf) free to download on her website.<br><br> The author summarises the book as:\n<blockquote>Some of the subjects that are covered include the development of sound systems in post independence Jamaica, \"slackness\" v \"culture\", political war and its effect on sound system activity, the \"digital\" breakthrough in 1985, women entertainers' struggles to make it in a male dominated field, the 'sing-jay' style and how deejay lyrics changed throughout the years, how dance cassettes spread the rub-a-dub style, the reggae business model and the problems it created, the fight against the dance hall style and its ultimate triumph as the premier sound of Jamaica today.</blockquote>\n\nDue to poor documentation (or more frequently complete lack) of legal contracts, many performers of this era see no compensation for the use of their music, so Lesser suggests that people who have enjoyed the book can send any money they might have spent on its purchase to the <a href=\"http://www.bethlesser.com/support/\">Jamaican Association of Vintage Artists and Affiliates</a>.<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=6QONWht-yLY:qQrGAYMZ5Bk:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=6QONWht-yLY:qQrGAYMZ5Bk:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Raiding Sovereignty in Central African Borderlands",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">My dissertation, titled <i>Raiding Sovereignty in Central African Borderlands</i>, is now available for public download.<br><br>Rather than swaddle it in caveats, I'll let anyone with the stamina to plow through nearly 450 pages on CAR take a look for themselves -- <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/5861/Lombard_duke_0066D_11603.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm3YFcko1SlXQ_P7dqN1NaEwMmQ-dA&oi=scholaralrt\">pdf here</a> -- and I'll be happy to discuss more with anyone who is interested. In the coming months I plan to post more on how my thinking is changing.<br><br>And for those who prefer the digested version, here is the abstract:<br><br>This dissertation focuses on raiding and sovereignty in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) northeastern borderlands, on the margins of Darfur. A vast literature on social evolution has assumed the inevitability of political centralization. But these borderlands show centralization does not always occur. Never claimed by any centralizing forces, the area has instead long been used as a reservoir of resources by neighboring areas’ militarized entrepreneurs, who seek the savanna’s goods. The raiders seize resources but also govern. The dynamics of this zone, much of it a place anthropologists used to refer to as “stateless,” suggest a re-thinking of the modalities of sovereignty. The dissertation proposes conceptualizing sovereignty not as a totalizing, territorialized political order, but through its constituent governing capabilities, which may centralize or not and can combine to create hybrid political systems.<br><br>The dissertation develops this framework through analysis of three categories of men-in-arms—road blockers, anti-poaching militiamen, and members of rebel groups—and their relationships with international peacebuilding initiatives. It compares roadblocks and “road cutting” (robbery) to show how these men stop traffic and create flexible, personalized entitlements to profit for those who operate them. The dissertation also probes the politics of militarized conservation: in a low-level war that has lasted for 25 years, European Union-funded militiamen fight deadly battles against herders and hunters. Though ostensibly fought to protect CAR’s “national patrimony” (its animals and plants), this war bolsters the sovereign capabilities of non-state actors and has resulted in hundreds of deaths in the last few years alone, many of them hidden in the bush. The dissertation then shows how CAR’s recent cycle of rebellion has changed governance in rural areas. Though mobile armed groups have long operated in CAR, they used to work as road cutters and local defense forces and only recently started calling themselves “rebels”—a move that has landed in them in new roles as “governors” of populations. Throughout these various raiders’ projects, the idea of the all-powerful state serves as a reference they use to qualify themselves with sovereign authorities. But their actions as rulers undermine the creation of the unitary political authority they desire and invoke. Failure to appreciate these non-centralized micropolitical processes is a main reason peacebuilding efforts (such as disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration) have failed.<br> </div>"
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"title" : "Salman Rushdie: “The Satanic Verses,” the fatwa, and a life changed.",
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"content" : "1989 \nAfterward, when the world was exploding around him, he felt annoyed with himself for having forgotten the name of the BBC reporter who told him that his old life was over and a new, darker existence was about to begin. She called him at home, on his private line . . ."
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"content" : "<p>Over at Hacker News, <a href=\"http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4509934\">npguy asked</a> Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham about \"the most frighteningly ambitious idea\" he'd ever been pitched. Graham declined to answer, citing confidentiality, but <a href=\"http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510702\">Eliezer Yudkowsky responded</a> with what another commenter called the Yudkowsky Ambition scale:</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>1) We're going to build the next Facebook!</p>\n\n<p>2) We're going to found the next Apple!</p>\n\n<p>3) Our product will create sweeping political change! This will produce a major economic revolution in at least one country! (Seasteading would be change on this level if it worked; creating a new country successfully is around the same level of change as this.)</p>\n\n<p>4) Our product is the next nuclear weapon. You wouldn't want that in the wrong hands, would you?</p>\n\n<p>5) This is going to be the equivalent of the invention of electricity if it works out.</p>\n\n<p>6) We're going to make an IQ-enhancing drug and produce basic change in the human condition.</p>\n\n<p>7) We're going to build serious Drexler-class molecular nanotechnology.</p>\n\n<p>8) We're going to upload a human brain into a computer.</p>\n\n<p>9) We're going to build a recursively self-improving Artificial Intelligence.</p>\n\n<p>10) We think we've figured out how to hack into the computer our universe is running on.</p></blockquote> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/business\">business</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Eliezer%20Yudkowsky\">Eliezer Yudkowsky</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/lists\">lists</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Paul%20Graham\">Paul Graham</a>"
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"title" : "The rain in Monrovia",
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"content" : "<p> <div> <img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2012/09/blogs/baobab/20120908_map503_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"> </div></p><p>A SUDDEN stiff wind offers momentary respite from Monrovia’s punishing humidity, but it is only the harbinger of worse to come in Liberia’s capital. As huge rain-drops begin to spatter the ground, people scarper for cover. Motorcycle-taxi drivers abandon their bikes as the heavy sky empties its load.</p><p>In the month of July alone, Monrovia sees almost double the rainfall that London does in a year. It is the wettest capital city in the world, fighting back the floods from May to November. During this period, those who drive to work in UN or Liberian government cars complain of patchy internet service and the increasingly pot-holed roads. But as ever, it is Liberia’s poor majority who really bear the brunt.</p><p>Monrovia is a tropical, seaboard city with many communities built on Mangrove swamp. Mosquitoes multiply as the water level rises. On higher ground, wells overflow with the run-off from the city’s open sewers. Water-borne bacteria thrive; typhoid and dysentery spread. Worse still, the capital’s controversial mayor, Mary Broh, has chosen this rainy season to demolish many of the city’s squatter settlements. With this looming threat, new roofing seems a poor investment for Monrovians.</p><p>In rural areas, the rainy season wreaks a different sort of havoc. Snaking between walls of fertile green rainforest, Liberia boasts some of the worst roads in the world. The water leaves great slabs of thick, red mud in its wake. Young opportunists rejoice in the predicament of their wealthier compatriots: the newer the car, the heftier the fee levied for digging it out.</p><p>Over the past fortnight, at the height of the rainy season, the main roads to many regional capitals have been impassable. With key arteries blocked, the prices of basic items spiral. In Voinjama, in northern Lofa County, a gallon of petrol can fetch almost $9. In Sinoe County in the south east, a single egg, at the end of its long journey from India, sells for more than 50 cents.</p><p>Nine years after the <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/1863656\">end of the civil war</a>, the lack of decent roads to places like Sinoe County seems a damning indictment of the government’s approach to rural development under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sinoe, after all, has attracted large international concessions agreements for Palm oil, gold and timber. Many locals, who were told the presence of these companies would improve their lives, now blame the swift degeneration of the roads on the weight of foreign firms’ lorries laden with the Liberia’s bounty.</p><p>Back in Monrovia, smiles return as the rain finally stops. In the prosperous Mamba Point area, near-naked motorcycle-taxi drivers dry themselves by the heat of a big generator, still the main source of electricity for those with sufficient means. President <span>Johnson </span>Sirleaf has promised that work will finally begin this year to restore the country's huge Mount Coffee hydro-electric plant, which has been left derelict since 1990. Time will tell if Liberia's water curse can be turned into a blessing.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "Location, Libation, Libation",
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"title" : "Buhari, Boko Haram and Northern Establishment – Salisu Suleiman",
"published" : 1347267223,
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:243px\"><a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Muhammadu-Buhari.jpeg\"><img title=\"Muhammadu-Buhari\" src=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Muhammadu-Buhari.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"233\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Muhammadu Buhari</p></div>\n<p>One of the greatest ironies of Nigeria’s current political dialectics is the fact that the only man who probably has the moral authority to end the Boko Haram imbroglio also happens to be one of the men most distrusted by the northern establishment and the government.</p>\n<p>Characteristic of the sectionalism and obduracy that followed the bitterly divisive 2011 presidential elections, some Nigerians still hold on to the idea that former Head of State and opposition leader, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, is behind Boko Haram and had promised to make Nigeria ungovernable if he lost the election.</p>\n<p>This charge goes against the grain and substance of Buhari: As an army captain in the 1960s, he fought for Nigeria’s unity. As a general in the 80s, tasked with removing marauding Chadian rebels and bandits who had been pillaging Nigerian towns and killing citizens, Buhari not only chased them out, he followed them far into Chad and, in his own words, gave them a ‘bloody nose’. His action secured that border from foreign fighters for the next 20 years. Would Buhari have betrayed the people of Bakassi?</p>\n<p>Anyway, what is the connection between Buhari, Boko Haram and the Northern establishment?</p>\n<p>One arm of the tripod is the Boko Haram insurgency. Despite the religious colouration, the movement is basically a rebellion against a feudal system that seeks to enslave the majority while a privileged few – mostly traditional rulers, military brass and business elite – control the political and economic spaces. As a reaction against decades of oppression, a deliberate policy of emasculation and ever growing poverty, the group is only the most visible and violent.</p>\n<p>The second arm of the tripod is the Northern establishment. Before the British conquest in the early 20th century, the emirates in the north had well developed and highly efficient social and political systems that were essentially feudal in nature, separating rulers from peasants. With British control came Western education. As in many parts of Africa, initially only the children of peasants were sent to schools – only to come back as powerful colonial clerks and messengers. Realizing the powers of western education, the establishment quietly tried to limit the ‘commoners’ access to education.</p>\n<p>Which was why, when the then Premier of the Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, introduced Free Education in 1955, the North, already educationally disadvantaged, did not copy the policy. And that is why today, for example, Ogun state alone has more universities than the entire six states in the North-east Zone. There are more private universities in Ogun state than the entire north has. Is that to say that northerners cannot privately fund universities? The result is that in virtually every area of human enterprise, the region lags behind other parts of Nigeria.</p>\n<p>The third arm of the tripod is Gen. Buhari. The simple fact that he is educated should make him part of the establishment. That he joined the military and rose to the rank of General should make him a prominent leader of the establishment. That he was a military governor, petroleum minister and head of state should make him one of the richest members and de facto leader of the establishment.</p>\n<p>But Buhari is none of these. Not only has he displayed an aversion to the politics of exclusion that is the ideology of the establishment, he also committed a cardinal sin when as Head of State, he offended (and even arrested) high-ranking members of the clique. Theoretically, Buhari lost his bid for the presidency in 2003, 2007 and 2011, but in reality, he lost long before then. Actually, Jonathan had no reason to campaign in the north, nor expend as much public funds as he did during the elections because the establishment would have stopped Buhari by any means. It was a matter of life and death.</p>\n<p>Back to the tripod. For analysts trying to understand Buhari’s popularity among the northern masses, there is no magic to it; he is adored simply because he represents their best chance to topple a class that has systematically impoverished the region and its people. The establishment fears Buhari because they know he will dissipate their power base and end their corruption and nepotism. In essence, Buhari has the moral authority without the political power; the establishment has political power without the moral authority, while Boko Haram is fighting the establishment to create their view of a moral authority.</p>\n<p>The tragedy is that many of those who would have championed a moderate transition from old traditions to a progressive society have been largely assimilated into the establishment, leaving the fight to the Boko Haram extremists. Where are the progressives in the North today? Rather, the dream of many young Northerners not born into the establishment is to acquire wealth and power by whatever means to buy their ways into the system and to repress the less fortunate – who are responding with bombs and bullets.</p>\n<p>Until the establishment develops just and equitable systems that would confer them with moral authority, until leaders with moral authority get the needed political influence to create a progressive society and until Boko Haram realizes that killing and maiming innocent people will bring neither political clout nor moral authority, the region may continue to reel in confusion.</p>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\"><a title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/?px\"><img style=\"border:none;float:right\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=4238ee95-3413-492a-bcab-fe95c5e7c30b\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"></a></div>"
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"title" : "AFRICAN IDENTITIES.",
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"content" : "<p>A reference to \"Akan speakers (generally called Minas or Coromantees in the Americas)\" led me via Google Books to Kwasi Konadu's <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Akan-Diaspora-Americas-Kwasi-Konadu/dp/0195390644/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=languagehat-20\">The Akan Diaspora in the Americas</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=languagehat-20&l=ur2&o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\"></i>, which, after establishing to the author's satisfaction that \"Mina\" (a term used primarily in non-English-language sources) does refer specifically to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akan_language\">Akan</a> speakers, continues with the following extremely interesting discussion (pp. 13 ff.):<blockquote>The Mina experience thus raises some critical questions about African social formation and cultural transformation in the Americas. Did Africans use language, “religious” affiliation (e.g., as adherents to African and African-based spiritualities in the Americas, Islam, or Christianity), or the structures of African polities as remembered from Africa, or did they use all three in varying degrees and as principles by which to organize themselves? If the mechanism of organization was primarily language, did cultural groups identify themselves and others by the principal and perhaps mutually intelligible languages they spoke? What might have been the decision-making process of bi- or multilingual speakers from contiguous areas and those accessible by land and water? Africans may have identified with localized or broader polities in West Africa as a source of security and thus would have given their loyalty to those bases of social unity, and this would have been true for centralized Akan polities. However, religious affiliations via Islam or Christianity would have been meaningless for most Akan, who were non-Christian and non-Islamic and had been that way for centuries. ...</blockquote></p><p><a href=\"http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004747.php#more\">Continue reading \"AFRICAN IDENTITIES.\"</a></p>"
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"title" : "Anthony Lane: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” review.",
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"content" : "There is nothing like a dame. That’s what the lusty sailors sang, in “South Pacific,” going nuts in paradise. The servicemen in “The Master” are in much the same place, and the same plight. The Second World War is drawing to its exhausted close . . ."
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"title" : "France, Yemen: Vanishing Women",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:710px\"><a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151167811954120&set=p.10151167811954120&type=1&theater\"><img src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Disparition-by-Bouchra-Almutawakel.jpg\" alt=\"Disparition by Bouchra Almutawakel\" title=\"Disparition by Bouchra Almutawakel\" width=\"700\" height=\"489\"></a><p>“Disparition” by Yemeni photographer Bushra Almutawakel</p></div>\n<p>Eloïse Lagrenée [fr] has posted on her <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151167811954120&set=p.10151167811954120&type=1&theater\">Facebook page</a> a picture by Yemeni photographer <a href=\"http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2010/boushra_almutawakel\">Bushra Almutawakel</a>, illustrating how women could vanish into darkness and invisibility, step by step, under fundamentalist pressure and the full niqab. It has been shared over 1,500 times.</p>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/claire-ulrich/\" title=\"View all posts by Claire Ulrich\">Claire Ulrich</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/09/09/france-yemen-vanishing-women/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (0) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F&text=France%2C+Yemen%3A+Vanishing+Women&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F&title=France%2C+Yemen%3A+Vanishing+Women\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F&title=France%2C+Yemen%3A+Vanishing+Women\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F&title=France%2C+Yemen%3A+Vanishing+Women\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F09%2F09%2Ffrance-yemen-vanishing-women%2F&title=France%2C+Yemen%3A+Vanishing+Women\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"title" : "True believers",
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"content" : "<p> <div> <img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2012/09/blogs/baobab/20120908_map501.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"> </div></p><p>BEFORE setting off on the bus to Accra, Ghana’s capital, from the coastal town of Elmina, passengers are regaled with a twenty-minute sermon from a fellow-commuter. Pacing up and down the galley, slapping his bible passionately into his fist, fervent spittle anointing all on board, he calls for the “Lord God Almighty” to look over us and to bless our journey. Baobab begins to wonder how bad the road actually is. The passengers declare a resounding “amen” and the bus departs, negotiating pot-holes and inept drivers for the next three hours.</p><p>Ghana, according to a recent <a href=\"http://redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/RED-C-press-release-Religion-and-Atheism-25-7-12.pdf\">poll by WIN-Gallup International</a>, is the most devout country in the world: 96% of the population professes to being religious. Nigeria, where the survey found that 93% of people identify themselves as believers, comes a close a second.</p><p>But in Nigeria, religious observance can be a <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21558593\">dangerous business</a>. A recent spate of attacks on the country’s churches and mosques has spurred fears of a sectarian war. This year, Boko Haram, an extreme Islamist group, has targeted six churches in northern and central Nigeria, the mainly Muslim parts of the country; but an attack in August in Kogi state was much further into the mostly-Christian south than the group’s usual targets.</p><p>Despite the fear of more bombs, millions of people still attend church. “Isn’t is better you die in church rather than in your own home?” argues Adeola, a worshipper at the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, where thousands of people pray every week. “We have religious security,” says Pastor JK Oluode, “the Almighty God will protect.”</p><p>Not exactly. Worshippers wishing to enter the Redeemed Church must first undergo two thorough checks with hand-held metal detectors. A small box with something resembling a television aerial attached to it, noses through bags. Major roads where churches sit are blockaded with hired taxis and tree branches. Gun-toting police stalk the perimeter during Sunday services. This week, St. Theresa’s Catholic Cathedral in Enugu state in southern Nigeria declared a ban on women carrying oversized handbags and wearing “big headgears”. The elaborate headwraps (<em>gele</em>) that women often showcase at church have now been deemed a potential security risk. Many churches have already banned handbags.</p><p>The pastor tells Baobab that people here believe in God so vehemently because it gives them hope for tomorrow. If something bad happens, heaven awaits. Asked whether Nigerians are more god-fearing than god-loving, the pastor prays for Baobab’s soul. The service is for thanksgiving, which coincides with the first Sunday after payday. In what sounds like an economic report, the congregation is told to not worry about the first, second and third quarter of the year and that in the fourth quarter, there is still a chance to be blessed financially and materially. Congregants give testimonials describing long ambitions to land a job within government, to acquire a bigger house or a car and detailing how after fasting, praying, giving to the church, they are at last reaping the rewards. A leather-lined bin lands at Baobab’s feet. Give what you can, and you will be blessed.</p><p>The number of self-declared atheists in the world may be rising, but in Nigeria religion remains inescapable. Meetings and conferences open with prayers. Mobile phones blare out spiritual ringtones; a recorded religious citation is played before calls are connected; every hope and intention is punctuated with “God willing”. </p><p>In Nigeria, where decades of governments have stolen hundreds of billions of dollars of oil money but most people live on less than $2 a day, many turn to religion, believing that only God can protect them and pull them out of poverty.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "Makoko: This sea shall be uprooted",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/img_2957.jpg?w=650&h=433\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"433\"></p>\n<p><strong>Guest post by Jumoke Verissimo. Images by Adolphus Opara</strong></p>\n<p><strong>I</strong></p>\n<p><em>Dreams brought us here and we arrived</em></p>\n<p><em>With no enthusiasm for things stirring</em></p>\n<p><em>– Currents, currencies – concurrently drift us</em></p>\n<p><em>Into adamance, but we learnt before to be.</em></p>\n<p>Lagos: the Nigerian coastal city is shriveled up by growing population; each new government seeks newer ways to expand the territory. The current governor started by clearing illegal structures and refuse dumps. It is difficult to believe that there was a time when Lagos was largely a scenery of garbage heaped so high that some mistook it for mountains waiting for climbers. Before long, many inhabitants of the city welcomed the initiation of “a new Lagos”, where the streets are cleaner, and cleaners in uniform sweep away dirt at intervals—a city which deserves the tagline: City of Excellence. Lagos is still not too clean, yet the ‘visible’ change and immersive Public Relations of Governor Raji Fashola’s first term in office has helped inhabitants to see the place differently, especially with the <a title=\"I See Lagos\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTuzWRaprxk&feature=relmfu\">I see Lagos</a> adverts. Fashola’s goodwill has been rising, until just recently, when it sunk a few metres below sea level with the demolition of some parts of Makoko, a pile dwelling that has existed for over 200 years.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><span></span><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/opararoof1.jpg?w=650&h=433\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"433\">Two years ago, the BBC shot a documentary, <a title=\"Welcome to Lagos\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQZFy0K5v0I\">Welcome to Lagos</a>, which generated many debates, and brought more pilgrimages to Makoko than it had ever received in the past. It seemed not to be the type of imagery the state government wanted amid its efforts to attract tourism and investments, and though it took 48 months to issue a 72-hours quit notice to the inhabitants of Makoko in July, it was issued.</p>\n<p>This demolition has generated a wide response, for and against. Support for the destruction of the place is mostly from those who have bought into Fashola’s vision of the New Lagos, while those against are of two types: those who are concerned about the lack of alternate residence, and those who are looking at the cultural ecology and history of Makoko’s people. Sadly, most media descriptions have looked at Makoko—which has over 100, 000 residents—as a shanty. There’s more to it. This is the destruction of a community.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/img_2903.jpg?w=650&h=433\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"433\"></p>\n<p><strong>II</strong></p>\n<p><em> After today we shall berth, in a row</em></p>\n<p><em>Unlike other days our boats floating in semblance</em></p>\n<p><em>We will haul desires to shores,</em></p>\n<p><em>Perhaps come back with everywhere on our minds</em></p>\n<p><em>With power in our loins, we’ll find repose in luck.</em></p>\n<p>Driving across the bridge, on Third Mainland, one would see the rows of boxes, lumbers floating on the waters and sometimes fishermen in their canoes slipping past. While the scenery can be beautiful as the sun sets, the area still does not represent the ideal home for many Lagosians because it is figured as a place for a particular people—the Ilaje, the Ijebu, the Egun, who history favours as those who live close to water. The government has remained obstinate about its position on demolition, saying that the people should place their trust in government, “rather than any other person”, and that the demolition is best for them, as it will protect them from those who extort money on their behalf. There appears to be something personal about Governor Fashola’s accusation. Who are those extorting money from the residents of Makoko?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/img_2976.jpg?w=650&h=433\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"433\"></p>\n<p>Even if the governor has this knowledge, he is more comfortable with knowing the settlement as a hideout for immigrants arrived from Cameroon, Benin and Togo without papers, which would be an argument against city districts anywhere across the world. But Makoko comes with a different story. It is interesting that over four different languages are spoken in the locale, principally Egun, Ijaw, Ilaje, Yoruba, the lingua franca, and some sub-groups. Neighbours may not even speak the same language, yet co-existence is cordial. Some of the inhabitants have never left the waters, so their total life experience is involved in the mundane activities peculiar to the place: fishing, logging, and perhaps television. The only school in Makoko was instituted by an inhabitant who returned to start one.</p>\n<p>For an area with a pile-dwelling population that now numbers over a hundred thousand to have lurked for two centuries within a state, is without doubt a significant oversight. The absence of basic infrastructure like schools means it has never been a part of the state in the actual sense. It was just a kind of self-sufficient extra area bordering the city, until foreigners took note of it, and gave it media attention. It may not be wrong to think that the government’s lack of concern over this environment has quickened its degradation, and that is what is being said between the lines: Makoko has been denied infrastructural facilities because it is not official. Preserving the identity of a people is as important as the social amenities, and it appears the government believes the residents of Makoko lack one.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/oparasea.jpg?w=650&h=424\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"424\"></p>\n<p>Knowing that the residents of Makoko voted in the last election, it is merely fair that Governor Fashola should use this crisis to create an “official” Lagos which accommodates a more diverse range of conditions, a Lagos that genuinely caters for the varied class structure occupying the state at this time. The diversity of Lagos should be put into the plans of his proclaimed “mega city” architecture, or else the excellence he seeks will become another social-class illusion that is informed by Western values. One major eviction that got as much attention as this was the clearing of Maroko in 1985 by Colonel Raji Rasaki, then governor of the state. Rasaki claimed to have an alternative involving resettlement plans for the inhabitants, but these plans only reached a very few. The court case over the clearance of Maroko is still open against the government.</p>\n<p>Raji is again in the news: a Raji Fashola this time, on another destruction assignment and he has chosen a name close to his namesake’s: Makoko!</p>\n<p><strong>Jumoke Verissimo is the author of “I am memory”, a book of poetry. She lives in Lagos and blogs at <a href=\"http://www.oniammemory.blogspot.be/\">WRITESTUFF</a>.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>With many thanks to <a href=\"http://www.adolphusopara.com/\">Adolphus Opara</a> for his photographs of Makoko. We <a title=\"touched on\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/01/10/new-nigerian-art-in-london/\">touched on</a> his ‘Shrinking Shorelines’ series in January and his ‘Emissaries of Iconic Religion’ when it was shown at the Tate last year. Just last week he was <a title=\"profiled by the Guardian\" href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/aug/26/new-africa-nigerian-photographer-storyteller\">profiled by the Guardian</a>.</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/53331/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/53331/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=53331&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/53316447@N00/7920370554\"><img src=\"http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8040/7920370554_8da1dc436a.jpg\" alt=\"Teju Cole\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\"></a></p>\n<p> <a href=\"http://www.tejucole.com/\">Teju Cole</a>, recent master of <a href=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/2012/08/30/where-i-went-last-night-it-now-being-after-midnight/\">the grounded sky boat</a>, after his <a href=\"http://www.lrbshop.co.uk/product.php?productid=58921&cat=37&page=1\">reading</a> at the London Review Bookshop. His elegant, subtle and multi-layered <a href=\"http://www.aroomforlondon.co.uk/a-london-address/aug-2012-teju-cole\">London Address</a> (audio available at that link) is, well, masterly.</p>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Howzit</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Well, that was a nightmare that I never wish to re-live. When the ransomware page popped up on Wednesday, I was about to go into town as is my habit. So I traveled to town and did the couple of small jobs I had, getting soaked in the process.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">By the time I got home - only about an hour later - I was wet through and very cold. Cold means pain for me. I made a cup of coffee and took some pain killers, forgetting to have a couple of biscuits.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">About quarter of an hour later, one of my nieces came around to pick something up and was amazed to find her uncle swaying in the wind, slurring his words and generally not acting anywhere near ‘right’.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The pain tablets that I take are that strong that without food to work with, I get high rather quickly - and what she was seeing was this.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Shame. It isn’t something that happens often.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">But I am okay and grateful for the rapid response from my family given the frightful condition that I was found in.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">ZANU PF believe that the recent survey that they hold all the cards for a election victory is carved in stone, so they now reckon that if the </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">formations refuse to accept the ZANU PF version of the constitution, then a snap election will see the </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">off and out of any positions of power.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">I say let Mugabe bring it on…</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">A warning has been issued to the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> formations by ZANU PF, who insisted on Wednesday that any call of a deadlock over the draft Constitution is a call for immediate general elections, under the current Constitution.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The warning came from ZANU PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo, after facilitators representing South African President Jacob Zuma met with negotiators from all three political parties.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The facilitation team had arrived Tuesday in an attempt to revive the stalled Constitutional reform exercise. But with Robert Mugabe in </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Iran</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> for the Non-Aligned Movement summit, no decisions were being made. Vice President Joice Mujuru is currently the acting president.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Addressing journalists in </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Harare</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> Wednesday night, Gumbo warned: “Once a deadlock is declared, then elections will be inevitable. But if they are inclined to have a deadlock, so be it, we resort to the Lancaster House Constitution.”<br><br></span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">With the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> formations rejecting ZANU PF demands for an amended draft charter, and ZANU PF insisting their amendments are “final and non-negotiable”, the facilitators advised the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> formations to write to Mugabe about the deadlock.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Negotiator Elton Mangoma of the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T said: “We told the facilitation team that we are not going to discuss not even one page of that ZANU PF document. </span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">We told them we are declaring a deadlock and the SADC facilitator should now be involved,” Mangoma explained.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">He added: “This is a sign that ZANU PF wants to hold elections without implementing the reforms that we all agreed to. There are a number of GPA things that have not been implemented as well and we are calling on SADC to make sure ZANU PF does what it has agreed to.”</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Mangoma said the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T have already written to Robert Mugabe and copied in the facilitator, President Zuma, declaring a deadlock.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“If ZANU PF believes the people’s views have been ignored then they should campaign for a NO vote in the referendum and let Zimbabweans decide,” Mangoma stressed.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Responding to Gumbo’s threats of an election, Mangoma said the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T would not participate in any election before GPA reforms are implemented.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“We will not be party to any election without reforms first. We will not give up and we have enough strength to insist they do what they agreed to,” Mangoma said.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Madock Chivasa from the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), blamed the current crisis on both the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> formations and SADC, saying they agreed to participate in a process that was flawed to begin with.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“Article 6 of the GPA sets out the process that is allowing ZANU PF to pull out of the agreement they made with their partners. We as NCA said from the beginning this was flawed because it did not involve all the relevant stakeholders,” Chivasa explained.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">He said the deadlock now exists because the constitutional reforms were being led by the same politicians who will be governed by the law. This meant they were only interested in making sure their views were represented, ignoring other stakeholders.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">According to the state’s Herald newspaper, the facilitation team returned to </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">South Africa</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> on Wednesday night. Lindiwe Zulu, spokesperson for the facilitators, confirmed that no agreement had been reached. She revealed no other information, saying she needed to brief President Zuma first.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Some observers have said this deadlock is a test of SADC’s resolve to enforce agreements made by </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">’s political parties. As the guarantors of the GPA, SADC should now pressure ZANU PF to abide by their word.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">(<a href=\"http://www.swradioafrica.com/\"><span style=\"color:red\"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></a>)</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Calling Mugabe’s bluff is a dangerous affairs as we have seen that when he calls an election, people have a habit of dying…</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Having held back the SADC mediation team for 4 years, ZANU PF have finally come out with what they feel. They feel that the SADC team is not working for the good of </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">’s future and they have been made unwelcome by the Mugabe party.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Once again, we hear of the oft-repeated Mugabe mantra that </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">is a ‘sovereign state’ and that any help from SADC is not required.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">It is a strange reaction, given that Mugabe and his motley crew are always crying for assistance from the free world for money, food, health products and the like…</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The Southern African Development Community team tasked with helping </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">’s warring political parties to find a lasting solution to a long-drawn crisis is no longer welcome, says Zanu (PF).</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Party spokesperson, Rugare Gumbo, told The Zimbabwean that </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> was a sovereign state capable of deciding its own destiny, thus Sadc facilitation was not necessary.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“Sadc intervention is just unnecessary and I don’t know what they want here. We don’t need any intervention on the issue of the constitution and our position will not change,” said Gumbo. He insisted the constitution must be concluded by Zimbabweans alone.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“This is our constitution and we don’t need a third party to conclude it. We know what we want and that is what we will endorse at the end of the day,” said Gumbo.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zanu (PF) rejected the final draft constitution that was produced by the Parliamentary Select Committee tasked with writing a new people’s charter.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The party has since produced its own draft which it wants the other parties - Morgan Tsvangirai’s </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T and Welshman Ncube’s </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> - to endorse. The Sadc team was supposed to break the deadlock after the two </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> formations dug in, saying they would not renegotiate the draft.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zanu (PF) was mostly riled by clauses that whittled down the powers of the President and made it mandatory for a presidential candidate to choose two running mates.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The MDCs are insisting that the draft should be taken to the Second All Stakeholders Conference in its original form, after which a referendum must be held.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T spokesperson, Douglas Mwonzora, said the Sadc team was very relevant and critical in issues involving </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“What Zanu (PF) thinks doesn’t matter because the voices of the people should be heard in that constitution. We are faced with a crisis here and Sadc’s intervention is still relevant,” said Mwonzora.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">He said the amendments proposed by Zanu (PF) were unreasonable and selfish.<br><br>Sadc-appointed South African President, Jacob Zuma is the point in the facilitation process and is working with a team comprising Lindiwe Zulu, Mac Maharaj and Charles Nqakula.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">This is not the first time Zanu (PF) has rubbished the team.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">(<a href=\"http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/\"><span style=\"color:red\"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></a>)</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">There is one word that Gumbo uses that I would argue with - ‘capable’.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">ZANU PF is not capable of anything, except bring death and destruction to Zimbabweans and being the root cause of the mass exodus of the population into the rest of the world.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The point that those who seek to take over the conservancy have no experience in the workings of the business is true for the vast majority of the land forcibly taken over by ZANU PF zealots.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Much of the once prosperous farmlands now lie fallow and unworked, and the country is having to rely heavily on the importation and donation of foods for the people - and then that food is handed out according to political leanings.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The intensifying fight for control of the Save Valley Conservancy has exposed even more rifts within ZANU PF, with top party officials clashing over the Conservancy’s future.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The Conservancy has become the latest target of the ZANU PF led land grab campaign, despite warnings about the destructive consequences such a campaign will have on the wildlife and tourism sectors. Earlier this year a parliamentary committee said in a damning report that the forced seizure of <br>Save by top political and military figures with “no interest (or) experience in wildlife conservation” had resulted in massive destruction there.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“Save Valley conservancy has ceased to exist in its original form: there is extensive habitat destruction, large scale fence destruction and rampant poaching of animals, especially the rhino, whose numbers were said to be fast dwindling,” the report said.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">A group of ZANU PF officials, called the ‘Masvingo Initiative’, were identified as the key players behind this destruction. This includes Higher Education Minister Stan Mudenge, Masvingo Governor Titus Maluleke and war vet Shuvai Mahofa who have all been given 25 year land leases in the Conservancy. They have also recently become the recipients of hunting licences, handed over by National Parks chief Vitalis Chadenga in the name of ‘indigenisation’.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The Masvingo gang has also instilled some of its officials as the new Conservancy leaders, after invading the area and taking over a management meeting last week.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The legitimate Conservancy chiefs have called the handover of the new hunting licenses a ‘criminal act’ that has nothing to do with genuine indigenisation efforts. Conservationists have also warned that the situation will have a devastating effect on the wildlife and hunting sector, with no commitments to the necessary controls for sustainable and ethical hunting practices.<br><br>The takeover of Save is apart of what ZANU PF is insisting is a government approved ‘wildlife based land reform’ policy. But the fight has now seen ZANU PF officials face off, with Environment and Natural Resources Minister Francis Nhema on one side and Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Mzembi on the other.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Nhema has said the landowners in Save need to ‘cooperate’ with the new beneficiaries, insisting the ‘reform’ of conservancies will go ahead. Mzembi meanwhile has expressed concern and opposed the scheme, arguing it threatens the successful hosting of next year’s United Nations World Tourism Organisation General Assembly in </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Victoria Falls</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">. Mzembi has also said the targeting of the conservancy for ‘reform’ was against Zimbabwean laws.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">This has led to the Tourism Minister being labelled a ‘sell-out’ by ZANU PF members, who have accused Mzembi of deciding \"to side with the whites to reverse the land reform programme\".</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Political analyst Professor John Makumbe told SW Radio Africa that ZANU PF’s bickering over </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">’s assets is a sign of the “fragile state ZANU PF is in.” He said that the rush to grab as much as possible, regardless of the damage being done, is linked to this.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“ZANU PF is preparing for the worst by grabbing what they can and attempting to legitimise these acquisitions before an election. This is part and parcel of the widespread asset stripping going on in </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> as elections are looming,” Makumbe said.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Minister Mzembi has now been urged to engage with his government partners and revoke the new hunting licenses. This is the recommendation of the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, whose board has said that “government should remove illegal settlers encroaching onto the conservancies\".</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“The communities should be empowered through the Community Share Ownership Scheme and other empowerment benefits,” a memorandum from the Tourism Authority board said.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">SW Radio Africa has tried to get comment from Minister Mzembi but his phone went unanswered on Thursday.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">(<a href=\"http://www.swradioafrica.com/\"><span style=\"color:red\"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></a>)</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">As a quirk of fate, much of the food being imported and/or donated from the immediate region has been grown by the very farmers that ZANU PF kicked off the land.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">And ZANU PF are aware of this, now making sure that the foods are repackaged to disguise where they came from.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">What a puerile effort from a political party that still believes that it can fool all the people all of the time.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Politics in </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">is a dirty game, and even the </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">formations are not without their own problems.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T has revealed the names of 12 councillors who the party recently expelled for corruption, following an audit done in ten local authority districts around the country.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T National Executive made the decision last Friday, after scrutinizing a report from the deputy secretary general, Tapiwa Mashakada, who chaired the commission that looked into the operations of the ten </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-led councils. The commission began their investigations in March.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T Policy Director Eddie Cross said they were shocked that out of the ten districts, only </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Bulawayo</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">, Gokwe and Chinhoyi got a “clean bill of health”, with no officials expelled for corruption.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“Those expelled were basically found guilty of abusing their office in one way or another and being corrupt. Others were found to have accumulated assets that couldn’t be explained by their income,” Cross told SW Radio </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Africa</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">.<br><br>He added that 20 more local authorities are still being audited and anyone found to be corrupt will face the same consequences. There were three levels of punitive action taken by the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T, with some guilty officials being suspended for one year and others simply being cautioned.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">In a statement the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T said: “The action taken by the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> leadership will be intensified across the country to reclaim </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">’s self-respect; a climate of accountability and a push for zero tolerance on corruption and all evils.”</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">One of the more surprising officials expelled for corruption was the Deputy Mayor of </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Harare</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> and ward 42 councillor Emmanuel Chiroto, whose wife was abducted by ZANU PF thugs at the height of the 2008 election violence, and murdered in front of her son.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">In statement the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-T said: “Despite these few rotten apples that have been dismissed, the National Executive has expressed satisfaction over the performance of the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-run councils, especially in areas of water provision and refuse collection.”</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">(<a href=\"http://www.swradioafrica.com/\"><span style=\"color:red\"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></a>)</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">I suppose the big difference is that the </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">have expelled those that become light-fingered, whilst the Mugabe party have a habit of promoting those that appear to have almost perfected the art of theft.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Courts playing into Mugabe’s hands do not further the cause of bringing true democracy to </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">. All this does is to prolong the suffering.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">A court in </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> has a granted President Robert Mugabe's request to extend a deadline to call for elections to fill nearly 200 parliamentary and municipal seats. Earlier this week, Mugabe asked the court for more time to generate the money needed to run the vote.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Mugabe was given until the first of October to organize the by-election by High Court Judge Justice George Chiweshe.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Advocate Ray Goba, who represented the president, leader of the ZANU-PF party, explained why his client cannot call for elections immediately as ordered by the court.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">“Why is the president seeking an extension? Well, the applicant is desirous to comply with the order,\" Goba said. \"Conducting 28 parliamentary and 164 local authority by-elections is tantamount is to holding a mini-general election. To conduct such by-election, [the] government would require to mobilize huge financial resources and to consult wildly over the matter.”</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Earlier this week, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change party, who formed a fragile power sharing government with Mugabe in 2009, told journalists that the president would not call for an election since there were some “administrative” issues to be dealt with.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Now that he has more time, Mugabe is expected to call for the “mini-general election” as ordered by the court.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">The seats that have to be filled became vacant for reasons ranging from deaths to expulsions of the incumbents.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> is due to have general elections sometime next year, once ZANU-PF and the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> sort out differences over a new constitution. Mr. Tsvangirai and the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> have said the elections can not take place until the new constitution has been adopted, in order to ensure free and fair elections.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Zimbabwe</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">'s last elections in 2008 were deeply marred by violence, most of it by ZANU-PF supporters against perceived supporters of the </span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">MDC</span><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">(<a href=\"http://www.voanews.com/\"><span style=\"color:red\"><i><b>Source</b></i></span></a>)</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">These elections will be seen by Mugabe as a good gauge of the temperature of the water.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">He will then know what to do to ‘rectify’ the problem, and when to call for a full general election.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Methinks that Mugabe might be approaching his own </span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Waterloo</span></i><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">-o00o-</span></span></div><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\"> </span></span> <br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">Take care.</span></i></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><i><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Arial\">‘debvhu</span></i></span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11118977-4719172894632265167?l=thebeardedman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Incomplete",
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"content" : "<p><del></del>One of the joys of life is to learn new ideas that open up new lines of thinking, such as Terrence Deacons work. Terrence Deacon introduces in his Magnum Opus “Incomplete Nature” a new conceptual framework : how constraints on thermodynamic processes result in work (and information), how counteracting processes can lead to emergent new behavior, how multiple system levels interact, and lead to new interaction levels. The end result is new emergent behavior of a new complexity. His approach to explain how life can emerge from matter is very compelling.</p>\n<p>On a tangential track he introduces three levels of information, each one emergent from the other:</p>\n<p>- The Shannon level, using the uncertainty (entropy level) of the next symbol to express the capacity of a communication channel</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The higher the uncertainty means the more options means more carrying capacity</li>\n</ul>\n<p>- The Boltzmann level, where the influence (or absence of an influence) of a constraint on the sending process is deducted by interpreting the information flow over the channel</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Which is particular between sender and receiver, so multiple interpretations can co-exist !</li>\n<li>Where absence of an influence can be interpreted as a signal as well, just as the loss of a packet can be a signal for TCP/IP</li>\n</ul>\n<p>- The Darwin level, on the usefulness of the information. This is by definition a normative judgment, normative for the individual (or at least for a selective group) receiver or combination of sender and receiver.</p>\n<p>Deacon introduces these levels in the context of self-organizing systems that emerge from naturally occurring thermodynamic non-equilibrium processes. The Internet is a designed architecture, something completely different. Yet the similarity of the three interdependent levels he introduces with the interaction between the levels of 1) IP-routers plus links,2) TCP/end2end and 3) the Net Neutrality debate is striking.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>IP-Routers plus links are (imperfect and shared) communication channels for packets of information.</li>\n<li>TCP and the end-to-end principle embody the interpretation level on top of the information channel: the absence of an ACK is a signal for TCP routines in the endpoints to manage the flow, the interpretation of the content of a packet is done by the endpoints.</li>\n<li>Net Neutrality is about the usefulness of the information for the endpoints, its value, and who gets to monetize that value.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The interaction can be described as follows.</p>\n<p>The basic functionality of the router is:</p>\n<p>- To receive and de-mux incoming packet streams that arrive over multiple links</p>\n<p>- To select the forwarding link for each packet</p>\n<p>- To mux and send packets that share a link to another router (or endpoint)</p>\n<p>A “perfect” router does not add any “imperfection” to a packet stream, it preserves the original characteristics:</p>\n<p>- No delay (or variation in delay aka jitter)</p>\n<p>- No bit errors</p>\n<p>- No loss of packets</p>\n<p>In real life a router cannot be perfect: imperfections are added to streams and cannot always be removed at the same system level. At a different level some of them can be: packet loss can be recovered by an end-to-end protocol, bit errors can be recovered by redundancy etc..</p>\n<p>TCP/IP uses an specific imperfection (aka packet loss) as a signal on the Boltzmann level to dynamically manage the maximum sending speed over an unknown and variable route, varying traffic conditions in shared routes, and unknown receiver capacity. The feedback loop of TCP/IP is based on NOT receiving an ACK from the receiver. The purpose is to cooperatively use the available shared information channel (as a commons) so the amount of imperfections are minimized and shared over all streams (aka “best effort”) . If all streams would try to grab everything all would suffer much more imperfections than otherwise. The content of a packet is interpreted by the receiver, based on agreed upon standards or proprietary bilateral agreements, for a specific purpose. Imperfections at the lower level ( or low throughput introduced by flow control) can have a detrimental effect on the interpretation. (For example jitter/delay on NTP information in packets)</p>\n<p>The interpreted information has a value (usefulness) that is determined by the receiver (and the sender). The value can be reduced because of interpretation imperfections (for example jitter/delay on voice information in packets). The value for one receiver can however be the (perceived) loss for another party (royalties, texting income, traditional voice income, subscription income etc.).</p>\n<p>Messing with lower system levels to prevent receivers to get their hands on that competing value is a known practice for ISP’s: for instance DPI to block VOIP on mobile data networks. However bad engineering can have detrimental effects on VOIP as well: bufferbloat which prevents TCP/IP to receive the absence of an ACK in time ruins a lot, underprovisioning the capacity of links creates problems as well.</p>\n<p>The Net Neutrality debates focuses on who can monetize the value of the usefullness. In this analysis it is clear that endpoints (users) define the value. The conduits should not be allowed to extort that value. The messy part in the debate is created in part by the badly understood interaction between the levels.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fincomplete%2F&linkname=Incomplete\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fincomplete%2F&linkname=Incomplete\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fincomplete%2F&linkname=Incomplete\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fincomplete%2F&title=Incomplete\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "A Platonic Dialogue About Quantitative Easing, or, Summoning the Inflation Expectations Imp",
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"content" : "<div><p>Glaukon: Let us talk about the Inflation Expectations Imp.</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: The Inflation Expectations Imp?</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: That is what Robert Waldmann calls him. He is a cousin of the Confidence Fairy.</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: And?</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: As you know, if the fiscal authority finally gets its house in order, adopts a sustainable long-term fiscal plan, and demonstrates its commitment to that plan by immediately undertaking politically and economically painful austerity measures, the Austerity Confidence Fairy appears and touches business investment committees with her magic wand, and they begin to spend, and the economy recovers!</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: So?</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: When the central bank commits to a program of quantitative easing that is sufficiently large, people's fears that this program of quantitative easing signals higher future inflation leads them to start dumping nominal assets for currently-produced goods and services: that and that alone then generates the higher inflation that they feared, and so the economy recovers!</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: You are, I presume, saying that there is a certain formal symmetry between these two arguments?</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Exactly!</p>\n<p>Kurush: There is a difference, however. The impact effect of austerity is to reduce government purchases, which means it's non-expectational effect is to put downward pressure on aggregate demand.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: But that downward pressure is trivial compared the mighty force of the wand of the Confidence Fairy!</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: And the impact affect of quantitative easing is to take risks off of private sector balance sheets, leaving them with underused risk bearing capacity that can then support additional loan-financed spending. Its non-expectational effect is to put upward pressure on aggregate demand.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Trivial compared to the much larger stimulus to spending caused by the mighty force of the Inflation Expectations Imp!</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: Excuse me. The point is that there is no expectations tatonnment process that would lead one to anticipate that the Austerity Confidence Fairy would be effective. If you start from the assumption that people do not anticipate any Confidence Fairy expectational effect, then news of austerity makes them depressed--and then when they factor that depression into their models they become even more depressed, and the thing spirals downward. by contrast, if you start from the assumption that people do not anticipate any Inflation Expectations Imp expectational effect, the fact that the Federal Reserve has taken risk onto its balance sheet leads people to think that there is now unused risk-bearing capacity to support a higher level of investment, and when they factor that anticipation into their models they become even more optimistic, and the thing spirals upward.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Clever. But important enough to be worth taking into account? I mean, photon pressure on a thrown pitch tends to push it downward and could turn a high ball into a strike.</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: This is why Gagnon, Evans, Hatzius, Romer, and company want open-ended policies: why they want the Federal Reserve to engage in open-ended Quantitative Easing III expanded without limit until the chosen expected price level or current interest rate target is hit.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: So you are saying that they have already taken my critique of relying on the Expected Inflation Imp into account in designing their desired policy?</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: Yes.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: But there is no such thing as "unlimited"--at some point if the bond purchases are failing to affect prices the policy is reversed. So I think I can suppose we restrict ourselves to limited Quantitative Easing III--to purchases by the Federal Reserve of less than $1T of long-term bonds. Is there any better reason to think that that would summon the Inflation Expectations Imp than to think that a long-term entitlements Grand Bargain supported by a discretionary Federal spending freeze would summon the Confidence Fairy?</p>\n\n<p>Klio: Now you are just being mean to Tim Geithner and Barack Obama…</p>\n\n<p>Kassandra: I must protest this assumption you are all making that a policy of unlimited Quantitative Easing III is even conceivable. Suppose the Federal Reserve starts buying. And it pushes long-term bond prices above what people regard as their fundamentals. And so people sell their bonds for cash--and then they take their cash and leave it as reserve deposits at the Fed, thinking that sooner or later the Fed will have to sell off its bonds for less and then they will have their profit. At some point the Federal Reserve then turns into the London Whale and abandons its purchases and unwinds its position.</p>\n\n<p>Klio: The Fed does not have to turn into the London Whale. It could just hold the bonds to maturity.</p>\n\n<p>Kassandra: Ben Bernanke is not Chair-of-the-Federal-Reserve-for-Life. Barack Obama has shown no sign of wishing to appoint Federal Reserve Governors who would pursue a more aggressive and expansionary monetary policy than Ben Bernanke has. Rather the reverse: the aggressive wing of the Fed is made up of bank presidents like Evans, Rosengren, Williams. Mitt Romney does not know much about monetary policy. Paul Ryan does not know much either--but he thinks he does, and what he thinks he knows calls for a much tighter monetary policy than Bernanke has pursued.</p>\n\n<p>I cannot think of anybody on Wall Street today who would be willing to bet that bonds bought in the next six months as a result of Quantitative Easing would be held to maturity. </p>\n\n<p>I can think of many for whom the obvious play if the Fed engages in Quantitative Easing is to sell your bonds to the Fed now, bank the cash, and wait until two or three or four years from now when the Federal Reserve decides to unwind its position as the political logic of Washington changes--and then price pressure works against the Fed, and gets you a very good price on your bonds, and a very good nearly-riskless profit on the round trip.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Then you are saying…</p>\n\n<p>Kassandra: If stabilizing speculators believe that Quantitative Easing III will be ineffective and will be unwound in three years, they will bet that Quantitative Easing III will be unwound in three years, and that bet will make Quantitative Easing III ineffective, and because it is ineffective it will be unwound in three years. A self-consistent bad expectational equilibrium. It is out there. Scott Sumner's claims that the Fed can change the strategy space to one of pegging nominal GDP to its target rather than buying and selling fixed quantities of bonds and so eliminate the self-consistent bad expectational equilibrium work on the blackboard but may well fail in reality.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: But Bernanke can promise that the bonds will be held to maturity…</p>\n\n<p>Kassandra: And two years from now when Ryan is vice president and yammering about how bonds are in a bubble and the Fed is like the London Whale and demanding that the next Fed Chair unwind Bernanke's positions as a price of appointment and claims that the Fed is bankrupt because of all of Bernanke's trading losses--what good are Bernanke's promises now for what will hold then? He simply cannot commit. And without commitment, there is no reason to be confident that markets will respond to quantitative easing the way you think they should. And if they don't respond, Bernanke's successor certainly will not double down on a failed policy.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: So what you are saying is…</p>\n\n<p>Kassandra: That there is no way for the current Federal Reserve to commit not to unwind Quantitative Easing III. Thus if people believe in it, it works. And if people do not, it does not--and it is unwound in the next Federal Reserve Chair's term.</p>\n\n<p>Kurush: So you are saying that there is <em>exactly</em> as much reason to be confident in the expectational equilibrium shift that you anticipate from summoning the Inflation Expectations Fairy as there was to be confident in the expectational equilibrium shift that Tim Geithner anticipated from summoning the Austerity Confidence Fairy?</p>\n\n<p>Klio: Now you are just being mean.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: But the Swiss National Bank changed the strategy space. It announced on <a href=\"http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/09/06/uk-instant-view-idUKTRE7851N720110906\">September 6, 2011</a> that:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>it would set a minimum exchange rate target of 1.20 francs to the euro and would enforce it by buying foreign currency in unlimited quantities.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>And the Swiss franc fell by 9% in the next fifteen minutes without the SNB having to sell a centime:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f080038834017617808561970c-pi\" alt=\"ECB Euro exchange rates CHF 1\" title=\"ECB_ Euro exchange rates CHF-1.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"450\" height=\"291\"></p>\n\n<p>In the absence of an upward inflationary spiral, why would anybody ever believe that Quantitative Easing III would be unwound?</p>\n\n<p>Klio: Perhaps if they thought that the Federal Reserve had a 2%/year inflation ceiling, they would think it would be unwound whenever expectations of inflation started to rise above 2%/year, and thus if Quantitative Easing III began to have an effect on future price and inflation expectations the Federal Reserve would undo it.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Why should anybody think that the Federal Reserve has a 2%/year core inflation ceiling?</p>\n\n<p>Klio: OK. A 2.2%/year inflation ceiling:</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f080038834017c31896aa4970b-pi\" alt=\"FRED Graph St Louis Fed\" title=\"FRED Graph - St. Louis Fed.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"450\" height=\"280\"></p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: But suppose you could undertake some form of Quantitative Easing that cannot be unwound.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: Like?</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: Suppose that the Federal Reserve printed money and used it to buy bridges, roads, biomedical knowledge, the human capital of twelve-year-olds, and so forth.</p>\n\n<p>Glaukon: It would have to be the Treasury that was doing the buying…</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: Yes. That's the point. Money-printing financed fiscal expansion avoids the crowding-out risks of fiscal policy--no bonds are sold to crowd anything out--and the unwinding risks of Quantitative Easing--the transactions cannot be unwound.</p>\n\n<p>Klio: So you would summon not the Austerity Confidence Fairy or the Inflation Expectations Imp but the Fiscal Policy Pooka?</p>\n\n<p>Daedalos: Or, if not for Tim Geithner's keeping Ed DeMarco around, the Mortgage Valuation Valkyrie…</p>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>A CULTURE OF DISRESPECT – Yemisi Ogbe</strong></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><em>“…A governor in Lagos, is a governor in Sokoto, is a governor in Ebonyi and anywhere in Nigeria. He is entitled to the same courtesies and respect. Convoys are here with us for good or ill and reasonable people yield the way for a second to allow convoys and sirened vehicle right of way.”</em> <strong>– Steve Osuji, Press Secretary to the Imo State governor.</strong></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">IN 1935, an ambitious young man went to work for the Bata Shoe Company as an accounting clerk. It was a prestigious job. He had a head for figures, and was in fact quite precocious. He would work for Bata for some years, but he always had far-reaching plans, none of which, of course, included a slow climb in a Czechoslovakian company that was opening branches of shoe retail stores in Nigeria.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">For many of his contemporaries, it might have been enough if one day they made Chief Clerk in Bata, or even Regional Manager. But times were changing. Nigerian Nationalism was gaining strength and as it did so, it was creating exciting possibilities for the Nigerian capitalist.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In 1948, he was sent on a training programme to Czechoslovakia. In 1949, Nnamdi Azikiwe gave a landmark speech on anti-colonial independence in Washington D.C. Owning the Bata shoe was a near-religious experience. It was a well-made shoe, not stylish, reliable, exclusive, sold in a store where the smell of leather and organised display, and professional sales-person gave the concrete impression of owning something very special.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The reality was that very few Nigerians could afford Bata shoes or the Bata experience, and this was especially clear to the enterprising young man who recognised his opportunity in the sale of second-hand shoes. It is alleged that it was through one major shipment of second hand shoes that his wealth was made, or shall we say, established.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Allegedly, once this shipment of second hand shoes had been successfully introduced to the Nigerian market, he gained the ability to reinvent his identity; an opportunity that only having the means could afford.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Choosing a public persona that made an impression was key. Like the monarch, the masquerade, the minister of the Roman Catholic or Anglican Church, he had not only to dress the part, but also harness the supernatural, to create the idea of something bigger than just a man, bigger than just a Mr. somebody.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He recreated his past, changed his last name; bought association to royalty; acquired titles and added appendages to his changed name. He married a White woman. He discarded the White woman, organised a rambling household with many superfluous servants and beautiful light skinned women.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He fathered many children. He promoted the image of the autonomous Nigerian; the New Nationalist, albeit a particularly flamboyant one, thumbing his nose at multi-national corporations and other small enterprises that were owned by foreigners, and had dominated the Black African economy for many years, and of course colonialism…a particularly aggressive Nigerian entrepreneur, able to define his own frontiers, rule his own people, choose his own moral boundaries. His timing seemed impeccable.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">His wealth, his charisma, and his ambitions were employed at exactly the right time. He became a member of the first Nigerian National party, the NCNC. His contemporaries were Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mallam Aminu Kano, Herbert Macaulay, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Margaret Ekpo.</p>\n<p>Basil Davidson notes that Nigerian Nationalists were not perfect. It is a superfluous observation. The critical thing was the body of ideas about self-governance and the future of a Nigeria that seemed held together by very loose threads.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">So, this man was not perfect, but his flaws began to manifest themselves in the most dramatic ways, especially in the way that he dressed himself. His wrappers were 30 feet of cloth.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">His hats were adorned with extravagant plumage. He wore black English bowler hats brushed till there was not a lint in sight; priceless corals and gold, and the ultimate finishing touch to the man of means wardrobe; the walking cane.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">IT was problematic that he was a confirmed member of a political ruling class that had from the start been accused of elitism, and condescension, of thinking itself intellectually superior to the Nigerian people.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">And now, here was this man with a god complex, a new nationalist, new royalty, whatever, with his wrapper tied around the commoner’s neck. What had changed? It was not what Nigerians had hoped for in their projections about the end of colonial rule, the indigenisation of foreign trading and manufacturing, the growth of home grown enterprise, and the emergence of the Nigerian capitalist.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">As the promise of Nigerians governing Nigerians frayed, never mind if the expectations may have been overestimated, he began to look out of place, so much so that when 1966 came with all its violent disillusionment and strong tribal separations and the consequent coup d’etat, he was the only Minister murdered during the coup.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Again, it was alleged that he was bound up and put in a giant ant-hill in the evening of one day, and brought out dead the next morning. It was a particularly cruel and long-winded process of dying, and his screams were said to have been heard all night and into the early hours of the morning.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">There are no official records of these allegations. The records show simply that he was shot. He died with foreign bank accounts bulging with money, rumours suggesting amounts far and above one hundred thousand pounds sterling in one account in the UK, and to this day, Nigerians express all the paradoxes of that time, and the life and myth of the man.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">We say he died with “our” money in “his” bank account, that he was the only minister killed during that coup because he was greedy, and obscene in his flamboyance and in his elitism. Yet we never fully trusted these thoughts to the records. Our formal history of his life are ambiguous, his condescension is concrete only in our oral stories. It is as if we are still trying to decide for him, but we can’t completely fool ourselves.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Did he progress through hard work and shrewdness? Was he a true nationalist? Capitalist? Or was he just an opportunist? If we can agree on those questions, then the issue of the beautiful girl around whose neck his wrapper was tied may become irrelevant or be an indulgence we would readily forgive.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Where did I get my more interesting twists on this man’s history? Well, they were a gift from a septuagenarian living in Somerton, in 1999. He handed me a handful of <em>Onini</em> and with it, the story. We argued, and finally agreed to disagree. And it was right that I should be suspicious of him. He was a White man akin to White men whose land were seized in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The times of which he spoke were unique; right and wrong had been successfully muddied. He was working for UAC Nigeria in the time of the new nationalists and so his history could not be impartial. If the story were true, the end of his ownership of Nigeria along with his kind had been heralded by the importation of second hand shoes. He was disdainful, a little too adamant about the genuineness of his twists.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The reader must decide for himself what he believes. I remain enduringly fascinated with the 30-foot train attached to the neck of a beautiful girl, and what the beautiful girl imagined her position in the world to be. Yoruba kings of antiquity were deified in the most extraordinary ways. The Yoruba king was required to keep a positional distance from his people in order to reinforce his authority and divinity.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It was the Yoruba kings who were accused of owning human spittoons. Reverend Samuel Johnson in <em>The History of The Yorubas</em> meticulously describes the institution of force necessary to give the Yoruba King’s authority a superlative quality: The human spittoon’s role was simple, yet profound. A king was too eminent to spit in an inanimate container, so the human spittoon was given a designated place in the kings court, daily, awaiting the king’s urge to spit.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Not only was the king not allowed to spit in any other container apart from the human container, he was also not allowed to purse his lips in preparation for spitting. So, the human spittoon would be informed that the king wished to spit, and then, he would be required to assist the king in pursing his lips, and then he would open his mouth to receive the king’s spittle. This role was one of honour.</p>\n<p>The relevance of this historical accusation still referred to in present-day Yoruba adage… <em>“O’n yo ayo fami l’ete tuto”</em> might be that the girl tied to the end of a train of a man of great importance is important because he is important. The king’s spittle makes the commoner special.</p>\n<p>I once saw the wife of a governor flick a complimentary card that she had been offered by someone, at his head. He picked up the card from the ground and walked away as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I wondered whether having a card rebound off his head was more acceptable than being ignored.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">One of my first thoughts on a culture of disrespect was that all communities of the world own their own versions, and it may be taken for granted that wherever one finds anything elitist, it is built on the self-esteem of someone somewhere considered less important, less intelligent, less deserving of some exclusive toy.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">AND so perhaps the Nigerian culture of disrespect is not remarkable. Yet, the stories that mark our peculiar culture are unique and fascinating.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">They suggest that the Nigerian is daily, excruciatingly demeaned on all levels in Nigeria, but somehow also, remains forever optimistic that his lot in life will change, things will improve; his psyche is rarely ever completely demeaned. It will be criminal of me not to note that a betterment of lot means that one day, one will also find someone to demean as a necessary accessory of becoming elevated.</p>\n<p>The environment itself is peculiar. Everything, including all opportunities for advancement, seem to be touched with some measure of illegality or compromise of the person, or fluidity of values.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It is better not to be too virtuous in Nigeria, some people say. The man who is paid N10,000 by his employer for keeping a garden, who sometimes sells some diesel taken from his employer’s house does so with the highest sense of justification. His employer is a rich man, he can afford the loss of 50 litres of diesel every other week.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">And really, he knows that his employer knows that no one can really live on just N10,000 a month. His employer knows he is stealing his diesel, but looks the other way.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The mentality is that everyone steals in Nigeria, so the aim is to hire the most considerate of thieves; the one that steals from you with the greatest “show” of modesty and skill, and always pay a salary that takes theft into consideration. The things that are left unsaid in this relationship are the most important.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Why doesn’t the employer pay the employee well? The question seems almost too relative. So maybe the employer is also paying his employee’s children’s tuition fees and providing a roof over his head, but those things cannot be taken for granted, and for that reason, they give the employer a sense of paternity, and the employee, one of the wayward child.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">There is nothing nearing equality in their relationship; also rarely is there a real sense of pride in the employee and in carrying out his work. If the employee’s work were valued highly, then his pay should indicate that value… in an ideal world. Sometimes, the employee’s self esteem is boosted by stealing from his employer. When he comes in the morning, he greets his employer by bowing himself to the floor.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He adds “sir” to the end of every sentence, never looks his employer in the eye, and doesn’t speak unless he is spoken to. Sometimes, he endures berating or verbal abuses from his employer, as if he were a child, but if he can steal from him, then he has somehow outwitted him, and this employer is not so smart after all or so elevated.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Nigerians love the rungs of the ladder. Love the fact that people are compelled to know their place, compelled to earn their place by whatever means to suit the context.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The equality of all Nigerians would be a hard sell on any level in Nigeria. If we were all equal, then something very valuable would be lost. The rungs need to be kept intact so that the top can remain as excruciatingly enjoyable as possible. If anyone can use the same crockery as I use, then my fork becomes completely functional, and I will lose the enjoyment of its curves and its reflection of light, and craftsmanship.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">A Nigerian diplomat in the ’80s visited a Nigerian monarch’s house in London. The monarch’s wife had recently died, and a delegation had been sent to commiserate with him. The diplomat’s first observation, or confusion on entering the house arose from the pictures on the wall.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">They were mostly of the revered political leader, Obafemi Awolowo and his wife. The diplomat wondered why a person would adorn the totality of his walls with pictures of another man and his wife.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">This was odd enough, but then they were showed into a living room in which the monarch was receiving guests, and there at the feet of the monarch, playing with his toes, was a former governor of a South-Western state in Nigeria. It seemed also, to be the most natural thing that these monarch’s toes were being massaged by this man.</p>\n<p>The incongruity of the whole picture was lost in the fact that no one seemed uncomfortable in the room. The man playing with the monarch’s toes had not only been a former state governor, he was a professional man. He was at that time, managing director of a Nigerian newspaper.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He sat on the floor in his suit and shoes, and it was the most natural thing in the world. And there were the levels, the deference of the monarch to the man on his walls, and the deference of the man sitting on the floor to the one on the throne. All the progressive Nigerians in that room on that day understood perfectly the political connotations of the setting.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The Nigerian mentality is not so straightforward. If every Nigerian knows his place, and understands when to get on and massage a monarch’s toes, why is it that so many Nigerians scramble for the top? Why are we not more laid back, as we say, like the Ghanaians or Cameroonians? Why don’t we let the elites alone and not try to be one of them.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/police.jpg\"><img title=\"police\" src=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/police.jpg?w=500&h=374\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"374\"></a>Why are there so many Nigerian big men? In the 1980s, the British government was compelled to make up its own list of which Nigerians were truly worthy of diplomatic recognition, and this was necessitated by the fact that they were inundated with calls from Nigeria requesting that Honourable So and So be picked up from the airport and looked after for the duration of his visit. Nigerians were said to have the longest list ever of VIPs.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The issue is that in order for the elite in society to truly survive, a large group of people must agree to be otherwise. In Nigeria, there is some serious crowding at the top, and the result is the creation of a nation of posers. In a country where wealth is so ostentatiously paraded, where the poor are doubly demeaned, it perhaps makes sense that everyone wants to be rich in Nigeria, as a guarantee against our scorching kind of disrespect.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Everyone needs must have a title of some sort in Nigeria. One’s name is either prefixed with one’s choice of career such as “Engineer” or “Architect” or by one’s religious beliefs; “Elder” in the church or “JP” for Jerusalem Pilgrim. Married women are compelled to insist on their complimentary cards that they are Mrs. Sombody.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The titles Nigerians adopt border on the ridiculous, and the theatrical; titles like Honourable, Excellency… The peculiarities do not end there. I once worked at a pre-school as an administrator. Parents were encouraged to send in gifts one day in the year to appreciate their teachers.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The parents called a meeting the previous year on doing something special for teachers, like getting them manicures or taking them out to lunch. One parent registered her surprise at the suggestion by saying it was analogous to giving a manicure to her maid!</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">THE statement was bottomless: What was wrong with her maid getting a manicure? How demeaned is the role of a house maid? In comparison to that, how demeaned is that of a school teacher? How can one of the most important jobs in the world be even demeaned at all?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The job of teaching in Nigeria is undeniably one of the least esteemed. That of a maid or housegirl is not even worthy of discussion. Children are shushed if they even breathe the idea of becoming teachers when they grow up and choose a career path.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The gap between the rich and poor is eroding quickly and gnawing at people’s feet, so our response is always one of desperation. I went to that part of Lagos reverentially termed “Old Ikoyi” and stood in a penthouse apartment, looking down into manicured lawns, tennis courts, shimmering swimming pools and the lagoon. I was told that I was standing in rented premises, and that the rent had just been paid for two years: N34,000,000.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">My mouth dropped to the floor, and I thought of our staff at home, who sometimes needed a loan to pay a yearly rent of N120,000. It was a shock to the system. How could one not help defining people by such discrepancies in rented accommodation?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">There is the story of two women, friends, who would go for walks in the estate referred to as Lekki Peninsula phase I, along the Lagoon. One woman began to excuse herself from going on those walks. The other woman was puzzled but didn’t dwell on it.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">She went on the walks by herself. Another friend later confided in the friend who still went on her walks, that the other lady had lost interest because she was a Northern aristocrat and did not like the way her friend greeted everyone they encountered on their walks; security guards, hawkers, building site workers, just any human being really…one had to show some restraint after all, some class consciousness, for God’s sake.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In Lagos especially, that model nucleus of posers, the elites are a pretty close set, and one is either in or out by virtue of such things as having a name, being a member of a family with old money, having one’s own money, having charisma and money and beautiful things, speaking well, living in the right place, owning prime property, etc. The fundamental requirement is having money and some taste and driving and dressing the part.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The layers of snobbery ensure that having money alone can never be enough, one has to speak the lingo, understand the passing of the trends, learn to both wave, and backup by pretending that one is swatting a fly. In 2007, when the elite in Lagos grew tired of being robbed of their watches, they declared swatch watches of necessity, fashionable.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Elizabeth Udoudo was on her way to church on a Sunday morning. Her sons were in the back of the car. It was 9:30 a.m. and the roads were clear of traffic. The Imo State governor’s convoy came up behind her car as she drove up the Falomo Bridge.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The convoy of cars might have driven behind her car for a few minutes and then deciding that she wasn’t moving fast enough, the driver of the lead car motioned for her to get off the road. In response, she said she changed lanes to make way for the cars. They were descending the bridge and coming up to the turning off Kingsway Road, known as Rumens Road.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The lead car of the convoy made as if to overtake hers, drove beside her, the window came down, and a gun came out motioning for her to either stop or get off the road. By this point, the process was confused and she was sandwiched between the lead car, slightly ahead, and the rest of the convoy. The second car, an SUV was a hair breath away from her, nudging her off the road.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">A third car ran into her rear passenger side. She swerved sharply and ran clean into the side of another car in the convoy. Everyone, of necessity came to a stop. She attempted to get out her seat-belt. A man in a face cap, grey pants and a white shirt was the first to step out of one of the cars. He came out with his hand on the gun holder on his side.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He drew out his pistol and came towards Elizabeth’s car. Before he got to her, one of the other men was already by her side, and as she was stepping out of the car, and at the same time attempting to ask why she was being harassed, the man slapped her across the face.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">She stood between her door and the driver’s seat. There was a saloon car in the convoy that had about four men in the backseat. About six to seven men in total had disembarked from the cars in the convoy. The man that slapped her, slammed her car door against her as she was attempting to step out from behind it. Her sons watched from the back of the car.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">One of the mobile policemen kicked in the passenger door on the other side of the car. Another mobile policeman standing behind the man who slapped her, brought down the butt of his gun on her side mirror. The governor’s car drove parallel to hers.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">She described it as owning tinted windows and a Nigerian flag. The back window came down momentarily, and she saw a head-rest with a cloth embroidered with the Nigerian coat of arms. She attempted to direct her protest at someone sitting with his back to that headrest, but the window went up quickly after the man addressed the men standing around.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The man’s words seemed to be an order that the men return to their cars. They got back into their cars and continued their journey.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">I asked Elizabeth what it felt like to be slapped across the face; if she was humiliated? What was the anatomy of the slap? How much force was used?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The most concrete answer I received was that she was grateful that it was just “a” slap. It is common for people to be beaten, whipped and physically injured by men protecting dignitaries riding in convoys. She felt she had got off lightly by being slapped just once. She believed that if she were a man, it would have fared much worse for her.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Most people go home and nurse their bruises. Elizabeth sent an account of her experience to the <em>Guardian</em> Newspaper. It was written with the help of a friend, and they both thought it judicious to write the account under the name of a “Lateef Gbadamosi”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The article was titled “Imo State convoy of death”. Then came the most interesting part of the whole affair: the Imo State Governor’s Press Secretary’s response to the <em>Guardian </em>article.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The Press Secretary reference to the incidence began:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“…We are surprised because the incident under reference which happened on the morning of Sunday February 10, 2008 along Alfred Rewane Road, Ikoyi between the convoy of His Excellency, Governor Ikedi Ohakim of Imo State and an unknown woman is better left unrecounted and out of the public arena because it paints a shameful picture of motherhood; of womanhood.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He described the affair as a security breach, and then went on to clarify the motives of those men who had slapped Elizabeth, and vandalized her car:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“It was indeed a case of a woman feeling too big and couldn’t give a damn whether it was a governor or a god who was going in a convoy and raising all hoopla”.The thing that seemed to have brought out the worst in the men against a five foot two security breach was the fact that she felt too big to get out of the way of the governor’s convoy. She didn’t know her place.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">This letter has become one of the most incredible admissions of guilt in recent years. Elizabeth’s incidence as well as others, brought up the necessity of drawing up a code of conduct for “Nigerian big men’s” convoys.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">THE code of conduct might have to be extended to all kinds of arena of Nigerian life. It might have to be a code of conduct on how to treat anything that resembles a human being.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It is interesting that a culture of disrespect might be confused for one of respect. One might hear Nigerians making general comparisons with other cultures on how our children are taught to kneel down and greet elders, or how we defer to those older than us by referring to them with titles, how we consider a person’s name so sacred, that only those close to him, or equal to him can mention his name; how we say “Good morning” instead of “Hello”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">How icons of authority remain sacrosanct in our society; how age is highly esteemed. In England, Gordon Brown is Gordon Brown, is at the most elevated Mr. Gordon Brown.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Here, he would be His Excellency. True comparisons perhaps, side by side, with the culture of determining a person’s value by how much money they own, what they drive, how they speak, what sort of mobile phone they own, side by side with the culture of jumping queues and jumping red-lights and moving out of the way of convoys.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Again, the unexpressed things are the most profound. There are homes in which there are special drinking glasses for when the driver requests for a glass of water. The driver knows the glass is special, the lord of the home knows it, and the children know it.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In Calabar in 2007, Tahalia Barrett, a volunteer Business Development Advisor with the Cross River State government looked into the possibility of creating a Nigerian perspective on transatlantic slavery. The Calabar Slavery Museum was the perfect medium. It already owned a building, wax works depicting in oversimplified terms the journey of the slave from his home in Nigeria to the plantation in North America, and then on to emancipation.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The Calabar Slavery Museum in order to offer something more than all the thousands of slavery museums all over the world must have an original voice. Tahalia as an African-American, noted that the story of transatlantic slavery was one that was told and retold in her culture.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">If she was standing on Nigerian soil, she could take it for granted that she would hear something new. The issue of reparations remain one of the hottest offshoots of discussions on transatlantic slavery. At the anti-racism conference in 2001, in Durban, then Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo declared that Nigeria</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“…stood firmly behind the demand for an explicit apology. The wider international community has consistently failed to appreciate the reality that is particularly painful for us Africans…Apology must be extended by states which practiced and benefited from slavery, the slave trade or colonialism…For us in Africa, an apology is a deep feeling of remorse, expressed with the commitment that never again will such acts be practised”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Grand words that were somewhat shabbied by Abdoulaye Wade’s declaration that his ancestors owned slaves. In creating an original script for the Calabar museum, word was put out to discover anyone who had ancestors carried away as slaves, but more importantly, anyone who had ancestors who had protested slavery, or died in protest or just stood up in protest.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The first batch of responses came back, and no one in the latter categories could be found. Instead it was offered that most of the old prestigious families in Calabar had traded in slaves.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It was a profound discovery, and one that was sure to create problems. Could one effectively run a museum from a city where one was alleging that its oldest most elevated members were slave traders or children of slave traders? What would be one’s contribution to the dialogue on reparations and our demands for apologies?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">One could argue that, yes Africans owned slaves from antiquity, but that we were always humane to them, but would the argument have integrity, especially in the light of our modern environment?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Again, the issue of the anatomy of the slap. For me it was important that Elizabeth Udoudo define what her feelings were in the clearest of terms. It had been months since the incident and there had been many commentaries on the internet and in newspapers about it; what did she hope to gain from keeping it alive in the press and talking about it? Did she want some form of financial compensation? Did she want her car repaired?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Why had she paid a lawyer to come up with formal terms of reference on the incident? What was the value of the apology if it were forced? I wanted to really understand what her motives were? Somehow I believed, possibly erroneously, that if money were the issue, then there was some loss of integrity.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">I pushed Elizabeth, and she was clear that the physical slap meant little, but to term her an unknown woman…In her own words, it meant: “I don’t have any value. I am not important. If we were to put it in the most accurate of terms, I don’t exist. I am irrelevant”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">This was the issue. If she were a nobody, then anything could be done to her without fear of repercussions. She had to show her children that you just didn’t walk up to a woman, slap her in the face, and get away with it.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The apology would be landmark. It would mean that nobody has rights, and in turn no one has the right to whip people out of the way, even if he is the president of Nigeria. I was glad that I had met Elizabeth, unlike how the papers portrayed her, she was not a victim. She was clear that she had not acquiesced to carrying the end of anyone’s wrapper.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>NOTE:</strong> Yemisi Ogbe, a former columnist at Next Newspapers and one of Nigeria’s finest writers maintains her own blog, a delectable offering appropriately called <a href=\"http://longthroatmemoirs.com/longthroatmemoirs.com/Welcome.html\">The Longthroat Memoirs </a>that will make you hungry for authentic Nigerian cuisine – and her lovely prose poetry. She is on Twitter as herself @yemisiogbe. Follow her. Google her; you will be smitten. </p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/1481/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/1481/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xokigbo.wordpress.com&blog=25734203&post=1481&subd=xokigbo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>From <a href=\"http://twitter.com/andrewducker\">@andrewducker</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>I am amused to discover that “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan” is an anagram of “My Ultimate Ayn Rand Porn”</p></blockquote>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=sBz8EUfcfEs:wLLIWTit97Y:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=sBz8EUfcfEs:wLLIWTit97Y:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=sBz8EUfcfEs:wLLIWTit97Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=sBz8EUfcfEs:wLLIWTit97Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=sBz8EUfcfEs:wLLIWTit97Y:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/sBz8EUfcfEs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The innovations of Internet Explorer",
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"content" : "<p>Long before Internet Explorer became the browser everyone loves to hate, it was the driving force of innovation on the Internet. Sometimes it’s hard to remember all of the good that Internet Explorer did before Internet Explorer 6 became the scourge of web developers everywhere. Believe it or not, Internet Explorer 4-6 is heavily responsible for web development as we know it today. A number of proprietary features became de facto standards and then official standards with some ending up in the HTML5 specification. It may be hard to believe that Internet Explorer is actually to thank for a lot of the features that we take for granted today, but a quick walk through history shows that it’s true.</p>\n<h2>DOM</h2>\n<p>If Internet Explorer is a browser that everyone loves to hate, the Document Object Model (DOM) is the API that everyone loves to hate. You can call the DOM overly verbose, ill-suited for JavaScript, and somewhat nonsensical, and you would be correct on all counts. However, the DOM gives developers access to every part of a webpage through JavaScript. There was a time when you could only access certain elements on the page through JavaScript. Internet Explorer 3 and Netscape 3 only allowed programmatic access to form elements, images, and links. Netscape 4 improved the situation by expanding programmatic access to the proprietary <code><layer></code> element via <code>document.layers</code>. Internet Explorer 4 improve the situation even further by allowing programmatic access of every element on the page via <code>document.all</code></p>\n<p>In many regards, <code>document.all</code> was the very first version of <code>document.getElementById()</code>. You still used an element’s ID to access it through <code>document.all</code>, such as <code>document.all.myDiv</code> or <code>document.all[\"myDiv\"]</code>. The primary difference was that Internet Explorer used a collection instead of the function, which matched all other access methods at the time such as <code>document.images</code> and <code>document.forms</code>.</p>\n<p>Internet Explorer 4 was also the first browser to introduce the ability to get a list of elements by tag name via <code>document.all.tags()</code>. For all intents and purposes, this was the first version of <code>document.getElementsByTagName()</code> and worked the exact same way. If you want to get all <code><div></code> elements, you would use <code>document.all.tags(\"div\")</code>. Even in Internet Explorer 9, this method still exists and is just an alias for <code>document.getElementsByTagName()</code>.</p>\n<p>Internet Explorer 4 also introduced us to perhaps the most popular proprietary DOM extension of all time: <code>innerHTML</code>. It seems that the folks at Microsoft realized what a pain it would be to build up a DOM programmatically and afforded us this shortcut, along with <code>outerHTML</code>. Both of which proved to be so useful, they were standardized in HTML5<sup>[1]</sup>. The companion APIs dealing with plain text, <code>innerText</code> and <code>outerText</code>, also proved influential enough that DOM Level 3 introduced <code>textContent</code><sup>[2]</sup>, which acts in a similar manner to <code>innerText</code>.</p>\n<p>Along the same lines, Internet Explorer 4 introduced <code>insertAdjacentHTML()</code>, yet another way of inserting HTML text into a document. This one took a little longer, but it was also codified in HTML5<sup>[3]</sup> and is now widely supported by browsers.</p>\n<h2>Events</h2>\n<p>In the beginning, there was no event system for JavaScript. Both Netscape and Microsoft took a stab at it and each came up with different models. Netscape brought us event capturing, the idea that an event is first delivered to the window, then the document, and so on until finally reaching the intended target. Netscape browsers prior to version 6 supported only event capturing.</p>\n<p>Microsoft took the opposite approach and came up with event bubbling. They believed that the event should begin at the actual target and then fire on the parents and so on up to the document. Internet Explorer prior to version 9 only supported event bubbling. Although the official DOM events specification evolves to include both event capturing and event bubbling, most web developers use event bubbling exclusively, with event capturing being saved for a few workarounds and tricks buried deep down inside of JavaScript libraries.</p>\n<p>In addition to creating event bubbling, Microsoft also created a bunch of additional events that eventually became standardized:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>contextmenu</code> – fires when you use the secondary mouse button on an element. First appeared in Internet Explorer 5 and later codified as part of HTML5<sup>[4]</sup>. Now supported in all major desktop browsers.\n</li>\n<li><code>beforeunload</code> – fires before the <code>unload</code> event and allows you to block unloading of the page. Originally introduced in Internet Explorer 4 and now part of HTML5<sup>[4]</sup>. Also supported in all major desktop browsers.</li>\n<li><code>mousewheel</code> – fires when the mouse wheel (or similar device) is used. The first browser to support this event was Internet Explorer 6. Just like the others, it’s now part of HTML5<sup>[4]</sup>. The only major desktop browser to not support this event is Firefox (which does support an alternative <code>DOMMouseScroll</code> event).</li>\n<li><code>mouseenter</code> – a non-bubbling version of <code>mouseover</code>, introduced by Microsoft in Internet Explorer 5 to help combat the troubles with using <code>mouseover</code>. This event became formalized in DOM Level 3 Events<sup>[5]</sup>. Also supported in Firefox and Opera, but not in Safari or Chrome (yet?).</li>\n<li><code>mouseleave</code> – a non-bubbling version of <code>mouseout</code> to match <code>mouseenter</code>. Introduced in Internet Explorer 5 and also now standardized in DOM Level 3 Events<sup>[6]</sup>. Same support level as <code>mouseenter</code>.</li>\n<li><code>focusin</code> – a bubbling version of <code>focus</code> to help more easily manage focus on a page. Originally introduced in Internet Explorer 6 and now part of DOM Level 3 Events<sup>[7]</sup>. Not currently well supported, though Firefox has a bug opened for its implementation.</li>\n<li><code>focusout</code> – a bubbling version of <code>blur</code> to help more easily manage focus on a page. Originally introduced in Internet Explorer 6 and now part of DOM Level 3 Events<sup>[8]</sup>. As with <code>focusin</code>, not well supported yet but Firefox is close.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2><iframe></h2>\n<p>Frames were initially introduced by Netscape Navigator 2 as a proprietary feature. This included <code><frameset></code>, <code><frame></code>, and <code><noframes></code>. The idea behind this feature was pretty simple: at the time, everyone was using modems and roundtrips to the server were quite expensive. The main use case was to provide one frame with navigational elements that would only be loaded once, and another frame that could be controlled by the navigation and changed separately. Saving server render time and data transfer by having navigation as a separate page was a huge win at the time.</p>\n<p>Internet Explorer 3 supported frames as well, since they were becoming quite popular on the web. However, Microsoft added its own proprietary tag to that functionality: <code><iframe></code>. The basic idea behind this element was to embed a page within another page. Whereas Netscape’s implementation required you to create three pages to have static navigation (the navigation page, the content page, and the frameset page), you could create the same functionality in Internet Explorer using only two pages (the primary page including navigation, and the content page within the <code><iframe></code>). Initially, this was one of the major battlegrounds between Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.</p>\n<p>The <code><iframe></code> started to become more popular because it was less work than creating framesets. Netscape countered by introducing <code><ilayer></code> in version 4, which had very similar features to <code><iframe></code>. Of course, the <code><iframe></code> won out and is now an important part of web development. Both Netscape’s frames and Microsoft’s <code><iframe></code> were standardized in HTML 4, but Netscape’s frames were later obsoleted (deprecated) in HTML5.</p>\n<h2>XML and Ajax</h2>\n<p>Although XML isn’t used nearly as much in the web today as many thought it would be, Internet Explorer also led the way with XML support. It was the first browser to support client-side XML parsing and XSLT transformation in JavaScript. Unfortunately, it did so through ActiveX objects representing XML documents and XSLT processors. The folks at Mozilla clearly thought there was something there because they invented similar functionality in the form of <code>DOMParser</code>, <code>XMLSerializer</code>, and <code>XSLTProcessor</code>. The first two are now part of HTML5<sup>[9]</sup>. Although the standards-based JavaScript XML handling is quite different than Internet Explorer’s version, it was undoubtedly influenced by IE.</p>\n<p>The client-side XML handling was all part of Internet Explorer’s implementation of <code>XMLHttpRequest</code>, first introduced as an ActiveX object in Internet Explorer 5. The idea was to enable retrieval of XML documents from the server in a webpage and allow JavaScript to manipulate that XML as a DOM. Internet Explorer’s version requires you to use <code>new ActiveXObject(\"MSXML2.XMLHttp\")</code>, also making it reliant upon version strings and making developers jump through hoops to test and use the most recent version. Once again, Firefox came along and cleaned up the mess up by creating a then-proprietary <code>XMLHttpRequest</code> object that duplicated the interface of Internet Explorer’s version exactly. Other browsers then copied Firefox’s implementation, ultimately leading to Internet Explorer 7 creating an ActiveX-free version as well. Of course, <code>XMLHttpRequest</code> was the driving force behind the Ajax revolution that got everybody excited about JavaScript.</p>\n<h2>CSS</h2>\n<p>When you think of CSS, you probably don’t think much about Internet Explorer. After all, it’s the one that tends to lag behind in CSS support (at least up to Internet Explorer 10). However, Internet Explorer 3 was the first browser to implement CSS. At the time, Netscape was pursuing an alternate proposal, JavaScript Style Sheets (JSSS)<sup>[10]</sup>. As the name suggested, this proposal used JavaScript to define stylistic information about the page. Netscape 4 introduced JSSS and CSS, a full version behind Internet Explorer. The CSS implementation was less than stellar, often translating styles into JSSS in order to apply them properly<sup>[11]</sup>. That also meant that if JavaScript was disabled, CSS didn’t work in Netscape 4.</p>\n<p>While Internet Explorer’s implementation of CSS was limited to font family, font size, colors, backgrounds, and margins, the implementation was solid and usable. Meanwhile, Netscape 4′s implementation was buggy and hard to work with. Yes, in some small way, Internet Explorer led to the success of CSS.</p>\n<p>The box model, an important foundation of CSS, was heavily influenced by Internet Explorer. Their first implementation in Internet Explorer 5 interpreted <code>width</code> and <code>height</code> to mean that the element should be that size in total, including padding and border. This came to be known as <code>border-box</code> sizing. The W3C decided that the appropriate box sizing method was <code>content-box</code>, where <code>width</code> and <code>height</code> specified only the size of the box in which the content lived so that padding and border added size to the element. While Internet Explorer switched its standards mode to use the <code>content-box</code> approach to match the standard, Internet Explorer 8 introduced the <code>box-sizing</code> property as a way for developers to switch back to the <code>border-box</code> model. Of course, <code>box-sizing</code> was standardized in CSS3<sup>[12]</sup> and some, most notably Paul Irish, recommend that you should change your default <code>box-sizing</code> to <code>border-box</code><sup>[13]</sup>.</p>\n<p>Internet Explorer also brought us other CSS innovations that ended up being standardized:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><code>text-overflow</code> – used to show ellipses when text is larger than its container. First appeared in Internet Explorer 6 and standardized in CSS3<sup>[14]</sup>. Now supported in all major browsers.</li>\n<li><code>overflow-x</code> and <code>overflow-y</code> – allows you to control overflow in two separate directions of the container. This property first appeared in Internet Explorer 5 and later was formalized in CSS3<sup>[15]</sup>. Now supported in all major browsers.</li>\n<li><code>word-break</code> – used to specify line breaking rules between words. Originally in Internet Explorer 5.5 and now standardized in CSS3<sup>[16]</sup>. Supported in all major browsers except Opera.</li>\n<li><code>word-wrap</code> – specifies whether the browser should break lines in the middle of words are not. First created for Internet Explorer 5.5 and now standardized in CSS3 as <code>overflow-wrap</code><sup>[17]</sup>, although all major browsers support it as <code>word-wrap</code>.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Additionally, many of the new CSS3 visual effects have Internet Explorer to thank for laying the groundwork. Internet Explorer 4 introduced the proprietary <code>filter</code> property making it the first browser capable of:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Generating gradients from CSS instructions (CSS3: gradients)</li>\n<li>Creating semitransparent elements with an alpha filter (CSS3: <code>opacity</code> and RGBA)</li>\n<li>Rotating an element an arbitrary number of degrees (CSS3: <code>transform</code> with <code>rotate()</code>)</li>\n<li>Applying a drop shadow to an element (CSS3: <code>box-shadow</code>)</li>\n<li>Applying a matrix transform to an element (CSS3: <code>transform</code> with <code>matrix()</code>)</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Additionally, Internet Explorer 4 had a feature called transitions, which allowed you to create some basic animation on the page using filters. The transitions were mostly based on the transitions commonly available in PowerPoint at the time, such as fading in or out, checkerboard, and so on<sup>[18]</sup>. </p>\n<p>All of these capabilities are featured in CSS3 in one way or another. It’s pretty amazing that Internet Explorer 4, released in 1997, had all of these capabilities and we are now just starting to get the same capabilities in other browsers.</p>\n<h2>Other HTML5 contributions</h2>\n<p>There is a lot of HTML5 that comes directly out of Internet Explorer and the APIs introduced. Here are some that have not yet been mentioned in this post:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Drag and Drop</strong> – one of the coolest parts of HTML5 is the definition of native drag-and-drop<sup>[19]</sup>. This API originated in Internet Explorer 5 and has been described, with very few changes, in HTML5. The main difference is the addition of the <code>draggable</code> attribute to mark arbitrary elements as draggable (Internet Explorer used a JavaScript call, <code>element.dragDrop()</code> to do this). Other than that, the API closely mirrors the original and is now supported in all major desktop browsers.</li>\n<li><strong>Clipboard Access</strong> – now split out from HTML5 into its own spec<sup>[20]</sup>, grants the browser access to the clipboard in certain situations. This API originally appeared in Internet Explorer 6 and was then copied by Safari, who moved <code>clipboardData</code> off of the <code>window</code> object and onto the <code>event</code> object for clipboard events. Safari’s change was kept as part of the HTML5 version and clipboard access is now available in all major desktop browsers except for Opera.</li>\n<li><strong>Rich Text Editing</strong> – rich text editing using <code>designMode</code> was introduced in Internet Explorer 4 because Microsoft wanted a better text editing experience for Hotmail users. Later, Internet Explorer 5.5 introduced <code>contentEditable</code> As a lighter weight way of doing rich text editing. Along with both of these came the dreaded <code>execCommand()</code> method and its associated methods. For better or worse, this API for rich text editing was standardized in HTML5<sup>[21]</sup> and is currently supported in all major desktop browsers as well as Mobile Safari and the Android browser.</li>\n</ul>\n<h2>Conclusion</h2>\n<p>While it’s easy and popular to poke at Internet Explorer, in reality, we wouldn’t have the web as we know it today if not for its contributions. Where would the web be without <code>XMLHttpRequest</code> and <code>innerHTML</code>? Those were the very catalysts for the Ajax revolution of web applications, upon which a lot of the new capabilities have been built. It seems funny to look back at the browser that has become a “bad guy” of the Internet and see that we wouldn’t be where we are today without it.</p>\n<p>Yes, Internet Explorer had its flaws, but for most of the history of the Internet it was the browser that was pushing technology forward. Now that were in a period with massive browser competition and innovation, it’s easy to forget where we all came from. So the next time you run into people who work on Internet Explorer, instead of hurling insults and tomatoes, say thanks for helping to make the Internet what it is today and for making web developers one of the most important jobs in the world.</p>\n<p><strong>Update (23-August-2012):</strong> Added mention of <code>box-sizing</code> per Sergio’s comment. Added mention of <code><iframe></code> per Paul’s comment.</p>\n<p><strong>Update (10-September-2012):</strong> Added mention of Internet Explorer 3 support for margins based on Chris’ comment.</p>\n<h2>Translations</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.desarrolloweb.com/articulos/innovaciones-internet-explorer.html\">Spanish</a></li>\n</ul>\n<h2>References</h2>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/apis-in-html-documents.html#innerhtml\">innerHTML in HTML5</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/core.html#Node3-textContent\">textContent in DOM Level 3</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://html5.org/specs/dom-parsing.html#insertadjacenthtml()\">insertAdjacentHTML() in HTML5</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/webappapis.html#event-handlers-on-elements,-document-objects,-and-window-objects\">Event Handlers on Elements</a> (HTML5)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#event-type-mouseenter\">mouseenter</a> (DOM Level 3 Events)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#event-type-mouseleave\">mouseleave</a> (DOM Level 3 Events)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#event-type-focusIn\">focusin</a> (DOM Level 3 Events)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Events/#event-type-focusOut\">focusout</a> (DOM Level 3 Events)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://html5.org/specs/dom-parsing.html#the-domparser-interface\">DOMParser interface</a> (HTML5)\n</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript_Style_Sheets\">JavaScript Style Sheets</a> (Wikipedia)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/Style/LieBos2e/history/\">The CSS Saga</a> by Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-ui/#box-sizing\">box-sizing property</a> (CSS3 UI)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://paulirish.com/2012/box-sizing-border-box-ftw/\">* { box-sizing: border-box } FTW</a> (Paul Irish)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#text-overflow0\">text-overflow property</a> (CSS3 UI)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-box/#overflow-x\">overflow-x and overflow-y</a> (CSS3 Box)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#word-break\">word-break</a> (CSS3 Text)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#word-wrap\">overflow-wrap/word-wrap</a> (CSS3 Text)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms532847(v=vs.85).aspx\">Introduction to Filters and Transitions</a> (MSDN)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/dnd.html#dnd\">Drag and Drop</a> (HTML5)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/clipops/\">Clipboard API and Events</a> (HTML5)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/editing.html#editing-0\">User Interaction – Editing</a> (HTML5)</li>\n</ol>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=uZi0DyeS4gA:26gR4VkWfAM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nczonline/~4/uZi0DyeS4gA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01761748ce3e970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Healing\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01761748ce3e970c-320wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Healing\"></a><a href=\"http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/healing-spirits.php?page=all\">Daniel Mason</a> in Lapham's Quarterly:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>In his 1943 study of the psychology of <a href=\"http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/oath-of-office.php\">medicine men</a>, historian Erwin Ackerknecht surveyed a vast anthropological literature and distinguished between two patterns of initiation into the healing arts. For one group, medical knowledge was obtained through carefully practiced ritual, induced by fasting, drugs, or ceremonies invoking spirits who could lead the healer to a cure. For the second, Ackerknecht cited Russian travelers to Siberia, who had reported rituals among the Yakuts that were anything but methodical:</p>\r\n<blockquote>He who is to become a shaman begins to rage like a raving madman. He suddenly utters incoherent words, falls unconscious, runs through the forests, lives on the bark of trees, throws himself into fire and water, lays hold on weapons and wounds himself, in such ways that his family is obliged to keep watch on him.</blockquote>\r\n<p>Despite the ubiquity of the word shaman today, its diffusion is recent. It comes from saman, from the Tungus—known today as the Evenk—people of Siberia, and the first outsiders to take detailed note were exiled Russian intellectuals. After a trickle of reports in the late nineteenth century, shamanism arrived in the West in two principal waves: during the Russo-American cooperation in the 1897-1902 Jesup North Pacific Expedition, and later, in more popular works, describing convulsive “pre-shamanic psychosis” as a disease unique to the North Asian steppes. From then, the word proved infectious, acquiring the hazy meaning of any healer who works by mysterious means. Seeking a definition for his monumental survey, <em>Shamanism</em>, the historian of religion Mircea Eliade worried over these loose boundaries between medicine man, sorcerer, medium, physician. At the same time, he felt there was an essence—an archaic “technique of ecstasy”—that could be found in a spectrum of practices from around the world.</p>\r\n<p> </p>\r\n</blockquote></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F08%2Fhealing-spirits.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=VnUmPLTtyKE:5ihhnpVWLXk:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/3quarksdaily/~4/VnUmPLTtyKE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "With “Fela!” carving a place in the mainstream for Afrobeat music, the Brooklyn band Antibalas renews its drive to reach the spotlight.<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=89589b2d6d6d6e3ce468be77a0e1e13b&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=89589b2d6d6d6e3ce468be77a0e1e13b&p=1\"></a>"
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"title" : "Burkina Faso: Blaise Compaoré and the politics of personal enrichment – By Peter Dörrie",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share\"></a></div><div></div></div><div style=\"width:335px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-9063\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/08/15/burkina-faso-blaise-compaore-and-the-politics-of-personal-enrichment-by-peter-dorrie/blaise/\"><img title=\"Blaise\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Blaise.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"325\" height=\"231\"></a><p>Blaise Compaoré: 'the only African head of state who managed to dramatically limit the development of his country without declaring outright war on it.'</p></div><p>By African standards, Burkina Faso is not a particularly spectacular country. It is small, has a tiny population and internal politics which most foreign correspondents tend to find somewhat pedestrian. No wonder that it receives only little attention, even in Africa-focused publications.</p><p>In those rare cases when something is published on the internal politics of Burkina, it often only scratches the surface and conveys a deceiving image of the country and its primary actors.</p><p>The recent piece on African Arguments <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/08/09/burkina-faso-compaores-continuing-will-to-power-%E2%80%93-by-michael-keating-and-coulibaly-nadoun/\">‘Compaoré’s Continuing Will to Power’</a> by Michael Keating and Coulibaly Nadoun is a perfect case in point. It <a href=\"http://bit.ly/OexdS3\">leaves the reader</a> with two main impressions:</p><p>1. While Compaoré hasn’t been a democratic role model, he has managed to foster a certain amount of development (‘wide and well maintained’ streets, etc.), under difficult circumstances.</p><p>2. He has a dark past of cooperation with rebel groups in other countries, but has recently shown a lot of initiative in resolving conflicts in the region, like the post-election violence in Côte d’Ivoire or the civil war in northern Mali and securing the release of western hostages held in the Sahara by Al Qaida affiliated groups. What’s more, he has prevented his own country from descending into the all out civil wars experienced by many of its neighbours.</p><p>Compared to contemporaries like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, the late Libyan ruler Muammar Al Ghaddafi and Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Compaoré has indeed kept a low profile and has managed to prevent himself becoming associated with the worst expressions of African political life – at least not in his own country. But a more critical assessment of his legacy and method of government demonstrates that he is in no way the ‘benign dictator’ that Keating and Nadoun would like him to be.</p><p>To adequately judge Blaise Compaoré’s record of bringing development and prosperity to his people, it is first of all important to remind oneself that he has been in power since 1987, a full quarter of a century. More than half the population of his country has only known his rule.</p><p>Despite the period of peace that Burkina experienced during this time, and a <a href=\"http://stats.oecd.org/qwids/#?x=2&y=6&f=3:51,4:1,1:1,5:3,7:1&q=3:51+4:1+1:1+5:3+7:1+2:27,34,105,127+6:1987,1988,1989,1990,1991,1992,1993,1994,1995,1996,1997,1998,1999,2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007,2008,2009,2010,2011\">comparatively generous</a> 13 Billion US Dollars in international development assistance, the country still <a href=\"http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/BFA.pdf\">ranks</a> only 181st out of 187 countries in terms of human development. All of the other bottom ten countries in the HDI ranking experienced devastating civil wars during this time – except Guinea, which instead had to put up with a brutal military dictatorship. To put it bluntly: Blaise Compaoré is the only African head of state who managed to dramatically limit the development of his country without declaring outright war on it.*</p><p>Not to be misunderstood: Of course most indicators of economic and human development improved during the 25 year term of Blaise Compaoré – but so much slower than in most other African nations that his lack of interest in lifting his population out of poverty can hardly be denied. Instead, Compaoré is obviously more concerned with developing his own personal fortune and that of his entourage.</p><p>This can be observed clearly by visiting Ouaga2000, a newly built, extravagant part of the capital, where one can indeed find the ‘wide and well maintained’ roads that Keating and Nadoun mention in their article. While the rest of the city (not to speak of the rest of the country) has only a handful of surfaced roads, in Ouaga2000 new SUVs glide over a pristine tarmac in front of lavish villas and luxury hotels.</p><p>The tiny upper class, which ostentatiously shows off its wealth in this district, is the only real beneficiary of Compaoré’s rule. While Burkina hasn’t got the riches of some of its neighbours, the ruling elite has managed to find significant profits from gold mining, cotton production and development assistance. An example: One company among the many owned by the mother in law of Blaise’s brother François was contracted to build a new road between the regional hubs Koudougou and Dédougou. While the road <a href=\"http://lefaso.net/spip.php?article49608&rubrique3\">should have been finished long ago</a> it constantly requires further public investment, whilst the ‘belle mère de la nation’ has become the richest women in the country.</p><p>While certainly exploitative, Compaoré has been smart in securing the support of important elites, allowing him to rule by co-option rather than by force. His predecessor <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara\">Thomas Sankara</a> (killed during a coup led by Compaoré) attempted to limit the power of traditional rulers and emancipate the country from conservative and authoritarian rule. Compaoré by contrast embraced the conservative elements of society, securing their privileges and making them the foundation of his power.</p><p>To sum it up, it is hard to find any other head of state who puts his own interest and that of his cronies so clearly above the needs of his population, completely undisturbed by ideological considerations.</p><p>This is also demonstrated by activity in the regional and international sphere, where Compaoré recently received a lot of goodwill due to his ‘commitment’ to mediate in various conflicts. Looking closely at his approach to mediation and the results of his diplomacy, three aspects are noteworthy:</p><p>1. He usually ‘solves’ conflicts in which he is deeply involved himself. This is true for example in the case of Côte d’Ivoire, where he supplied the northern rebels with arms and recruits before stepping in as a mediator.</p><p>2. His mediation has never proved to be sustainable. Be it his involvement in negotiations between Tuareg rebels and the Malian government or the aforementioned conflict in Côte d’Ivoire: the parties he ‘brought to the table’ were at each other’s throat again soon after.</p><p>3. This suggests that his objective is not to resolve the conflicts he purports to manage, but to make himself indispensable in the region, lest one of his neighbours or a western donor might get the idea that Burkina would be better off without him. It is a strategy to consolidate personal power, not to seek peace and reconciliation.</p><p>Beyond its initial appearance, Compaoré’s legacy becomes clear: his rule has not benefited Burkina Faso in any tangible way. Instead, he has treated the country and its limited resources as his property, to the benefit of a small ruling elite designed to secure his power. That he has managed to avoid directly killing a large part of his population in the process shouldn’t win him any praise, written or otherwise.</p><p>*Make no mistake though: Opposing the ruling elite can be just as dangerous in Burkina as in other authoritarian countries. Just ask the children of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Zongo\">Norbert Zongo</a>, a journalist killed for investigating the involvement of Compaoré’s brother in a murder.</p><p><strong>Peter Dörrie is a freelance journalist reporting on security, politics and development in Africa. He is based in Ouagadougou and tweets as <a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/peterdoerrie\">@PeterDoerrie</a>.</strong></p>"
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"title" : "Bingo in Utopia",
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"content" : "<p>Will there be Bingo in Utopia? It is hard to say. The emancipatory potential of bingo as <em>praxis</em> has been criticized from the earliest days of modern social theory. In 1862 Marx was prompted to write the first draft of what became <em>Theories of Surplus Value</em> during very straitened financial circumstances (he had pawned the clothes of his children and his maid, Helene Demuth) brought on mostly by clandestine visits to an East London bingo emporium, where he would play games of “Housey-Housey” while his wife Jenny believed him to be at the British Library conducting research. The game itself was for some time believed to be mentioned by Marx directly in a well-known if difficult section of the <em>Grundrisse</em>:</p>\n\n\t<p><blockquote>Capital’s ceaseless striving towards the general form of wealth drives labour beyond the limits of its natural paltriness, and thus creates the material elements for the development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption, and whose labour also therefore appears no longer as labour, but as the full development of bingo itself, in which natural necessity in its direct form has disappeared; because natural need has been replaced by historically produced need.</blockquote></p>\n\n\t<p>This passage provoked considerable confusion—and a substantial amount of theoretical debate—amongst the small circle of scholars who had access to it from 1935 onwards.</p>\n\n\t<p><span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>Following the thaw and wave of rehabilitations during the Khruschev era, however, it transpired that David Riazanov’s original transcription of this passage (with a reading of “activity” and not “bingo”) had been correct. It was altered by an unknown member of the <span>NKVD</span> as part of the effort to falsify evidence establishing the existence of a so-called “United Front of Mensheviks and Mah-Jongg”. The unhappy fate of bingo as an element of emancipatory <em>praxis</em> was sealed by Adorno, who intensely disliked the game (and indeed much else) in all its forms, defending instead what he saw as the more austere but purer pleasures of the tombola.</p>\n\n\t<p>Notwithstanding its unhappy history in the sphere of high theory, bingo persisted in the practical life of the working classes in England. Its position was memorably described and pungently defended by E.P. Thompson in <em>The Making of the English Working Class</em>, where he gives an unforgettable account of Johanna Southcott’s legendary ability to pick winners at parish hall games in Devon in the latter part of the eighteenth century.</p>\n\n\t<p>Its most substantial revival, however, had to await the arrival of a new generation of scholars in the 1970s. Based mostly in the United States, this group’s members were well-versed in the traditional concerns of emancipatory theory but were also more technically minded than their predecessors. They were the first to notice the uncanny similarity—later shown by Goodman and others to be a formal homology—between ordinary bingo cards and intergenerational social mobility tables.</p>\n\n\t<p><img src=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/75-bingo-card.jpg\" align=\"center\"></p>\n\n\t<p><em>Figure 1. A partial instantiation of a Goldthorpe-Erikson mobility table disguised as a bingo card. Originally discovered by Richard Breen on a trip to Atlantic City in 1972. (Excludes Categories I and II.)</em></p>\n\n\t<p>Like any fundamental insight, the connection was obvious once made, but to make it at all took a stroke of genius. Suddenly, in retrospect, Marx’s haunted frequenting of bingo halls seemed less the hopeless obsession of an improvident, boil-ridden German autodidact and more the fundamental apprehension of a central feature of capitalist development. This insight opened up rich veins of technical analysis and pure theory. On the technical side, square-table and latent-class methods occupied a generation of scholars and, by way of their direct application to bingo hall games, illicitly funded the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study for two decades and allowed the Berkeley Sociology Department an unheard of level of financial autonomy (which it sadly squandered during an infamously disastrous collective outing to a Palm Springs Casino in 1981). This methological work at the intersection of social organization and gambling only began to be surpassed in the 1990s with the rise of so-called “Monte Carlo” methods.</p>\n\n\t<p>In terms of theory, the realization that such a direct representation of class mobility was embedded at the very core of an ordinary working class leisure activity—one where, moreover, “winning” consisted of systematically <em>blocking</em> or <em>dabbing</em> mobility pathways in a cryptic act of ideological abnegation—seemed at once a bitter irony of life under capitalism and a latent opportunity for liberation.</p>\n\n\t<p><img src=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/denver-bingo-card-2012.jpg\" align=\"center\" width=\"550/\"></p>\n\n\t<p><em>Figure 2. Your 2012 <span>ASA </span>Bingo Card</em></p>\n\n\t<p>Which brings us to the present, and the <a href=\"http://www.asanet.org/am2012/programschedule.cfm\">excellent program</a> that <span>ASA </span>President Erik Wright has assembled, featuring sessions on a satisfyingly wide range of topics, with a special emphasis on the possibilities and <a href=\"http://www.realutopias.com/index.php?page_id=7\">problems of institutional transformations</a>. Good stuff, with the possible exception of the “Utopia Reel” music and dance session, where the danger of an outbreak of the worst sort of Taylorism (i.e., James Taylor) seems quite high. Here, then, is your <a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/denver-bingo-card-2012.png\">Official <span>ASA </span>Utopian Bingo Card</a> for the Denver Meetings. As with <a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2011/08/16/vegas-bingo/\">the Las Vegas card</a> last year, there are no cash prizes of any kind, just the warm glow of satisfaction that comes with completing a row or column. For the first and likely last time, however, a <a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/denver-bingo-card-2012.jpg\">Mobile App Version of the Card</a> has been made available at great expense, specially tailored for your iPhone, iPad, Android Tablet Device, <span>RIM </span>Blackberry phone, Apple Newton, Palm Pilot, Dot-matrix printer (be sure to align the paper holes correctly on the carriage wheels before printing) or <span>IBM </span>Series 360 Punch Card Input System. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.</p>\n\n\t<p>If you <em>are</em> interested in winning a cash prize at this year’s <span>ASA </span>Meetings, you should participate in the <a href=\"http://slac.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/introducing-the-asa-scavenger-hunt/\"><span>SLA</span>Cer Scavenger Hunt</a>, which carries a purse of $50. Personally I very much hope the scavenger items will be good ones—a lock of Andy Abbott’s hair, for instance, or Claus Offe’s glasses, Phil Cohen’s travel rack, or Brayden King’s Black Amex card. Good luck.</p>"
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"content" : "<p></p><p><a href=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_2552-2-300x400.jpg\"><img title=\"House in Moldova\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_2552-2-300x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\"></a>Our expat house in Moldova stands empty, since we, the renters, are on vacation many miles away in the Netherlands, the place from which I hail.</p>\n<p>As my man and I are innocently <a href=\"http://wp.me/pWIVP-le\">roaming Amsterdam</a>, the water decides to take a break as well. It’s been so boring following the same old rut of pipes every day for months and years. Okay, only two years, because the house is new, but nevertheless, the water needs a vacation and a change of scenery.</p>\n<p>It decides to pick the water pipe to the uppity French bidet on the top floor to make its escape.</p>\n<p>The water flows happily along the shiny bathroom floor, into the guest bedroom, dampening the carpet. Nobody is around to notice, so it can do as it pleases.</p>\n<p>But it’s a boring place, this bedroom, and getting more adventurous, the water decides to go spelunking below, shimmying down walls and seeping between ceilings and floors.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/20973718@N08/2065637757\"><img title=\"running water\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/FLICKR-runningwater-kapodistrias_400x267.jpg\" alt=\"falling water\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\"></a></p>\n<p>Full of enthusiasm it rushes down into the garage, the first floor bathroom and the hallway closet. This is so exciting! So much space to flood and slosh around in!</p>\n<p>Drunk with happiness, the water runs and flows and shimmies and drips for days, soaking door frames, walls and parquet flooring.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/bradlightyear/5719469227\"><img title=\"falling water\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/FLICKR-water-BradleyJohnson_400x451.jpg\" alt=\"running water\" width=\"400\" height=\"451\"></a></p>\n<p>It likes the parquet flooring a lot, so it sneaks into the living room and dining room as well. But hey, there’s more territory to discover! Down the stairs into the basement rooms! Mildew, mold, warps, here they come to join in the fun.</p>\n<p>High on freedom, the water has the time of its life for days. Days! Then it escapes the garage to the great wild yonder of the outdoors. A new adventure! It rushes out with great joy and abandon. Sunshine! Sky! The Moldovan neighbor.</p>\n<p>And that’s when the water’s brazenness costs him.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>*</strong></p>\n<p>When it is clear that we, the expat renters of the house, are not at home, a frantic phone call is made to Canada, where the homeowner lives, a continent and ocean away from the crisis. The panicked (I assume) man calls the property manager in Moldova. The property manager rushes over to the house, watches in horror the river issuing forth from underneath the garage doors and stands there, helpless and keyless. The neighbor is also keyless.</p>\n<p>He calls me, Miss Footloose, but I don’t answer because I am footloose in Amsterdam and my Moldovan phone is not set on roaming. I have a Dutch phone, which is of no use because they don’t have the number. He finally gets through on my man’s BlackBerry. To make a long story short, more phone calls are made across space and time and the key we had left at my husband’s office is located and delivered.</p>\n<p>The property manager, so he tells me later, sloshes through the water down into the basement where the electrical as well as the water switches are located. He wades through ankle deep water to turn both of them off. Needless to say I am horrified when he tells me this later, thinking of him being electrocuted, thinking of his young wife and baby girl. Well, he says, it was the only way to get there to turn off the switches.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_2855-4_300x393.jpg\"><img title=\"water damage\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/IMG_2855-4_300x393.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"393\"></a>Water is pumped out. The ravages are enormous. Entire floors and ceilings need to be redone. Three (imported) doors and door frames need to be replaced, and they’re not the standard hollow Home Depot variety. Walls need to be cleaned, dried, and refinished.</p>\n<p>Fortunately the home insurance will cover he repairs. Fortunately the electricity was back on the next day as I had a freezer full of meat and fish. Fortunately none of our personal stuff was damaged.</p>\n<p>But we do need to move out for a few weeks while work is done. So I’m packing clothes and office stuff and food from the freezer and we’re moving into a furnished apartment nearby.</p>\n<p>I need a vacation. Oh, I forgot: I just had one.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">What happened in your house when you were away?</span></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=DZ6pmzhLmoY:MybyEGqUuBE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LifeInTheExpatLane/~4/DZ6pmzhLmoY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Stratfor: Chinese Investments in Africa",
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"content" : "<p>Fascinating chart via Stratfor:</p>\n<p> <br>\n<em>click for ginormous graphic</em><br>\n<a href=\"http://www.stratfor.com/sites/default/files/main/images/Africa_china_investments_v2.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.stratfor.com/sites/default/files/main/images/Africa_china_investments_v2.jpg\" alt=\"http://www.stratfor.com/sites/default/files/main/images/Africa_china_investments_v2.jpg\" width=\"614\" height=\"602\"></a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rL2_C9m-6GdPSzbMcD12Bon-gFs/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rL2_C9m-6GdPSzbMcD12Bon-gFs/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rL2_C9m-6GdPSzbMcD12Bon-gFs/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rL2_C9m-6GdPSzbMcD12Bon-gFs/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=v-SFbWfF27s:_zIUpZUAO50:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/v-SFbWfF27s\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Ecology",
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"content" : "<p><em>Never challenge an onion to a game of strip poker. ~ D. Bonta</em></p>\n<p><em>Ashes can substitute for black pepper in a pinch.</em><br>\nBest used fresh, like everything else; and only sparingly.<br>\nCarbon: it all breaks down into carbon anyway—<br>\ndon’t worry, no need to bring out the syrup of ipecac,<br>\nexpectorate, induce. What’s the most odious thing you’ve had to eat?<br>\n<em>Foie gras</em>, shudders my friend the wealthy doctor. Ducks fed<br>\ngrain by <em>gavage</em>— two to four times a day, the animals<br>\nheld, their throats expanded under a funnel fitted to a tube.<br>\nIt’s this wild dilation and overfeeding that renders<br>\nking-sized livers: two lobes of mousse-like, buttery consistency.<br>\nLeafed out like that upon a plate, punctuated with a dollop of<br>\nmustard cream or raspberry confit: could you bear to eat with<br>\nnary a twinge of conscience or remorse? It may be that a stew<br>\nof carrots, lentils, and potatoes is neither innocent: some hand<br>\npulled tubers out of the soil, peeled or pared and sliced them into<br>\nquadrants on the chopping board. You know how dominoes cascade,<br>\nrush river-like? Caveat: they fall at the merest touch. Why<br>\n<em>sing to pickled things in a minor key?</em> For<br>\nthe ice sheet in Greenland that has almost all melted, for sea<br>\nurchins that, even if they might not be currently endangered, could<br>\nvery soon wind up on that list: admire their powerful scraping jaws<br>\nwhich I found out are called “Aristotle’s lanterns.” None will be<br>\nexempt from ruin and devastation— so quit behaving like<br>\nyou’ll have a golden ticket out. Heed the poet who points out<br>\nzen in the onion’s innermost chamber: stripped clean, empty.</p>\n—<a href=\"http://luisaigloria.com\">Luisa A. Igloria</a><br>\n08 02 2012<br>\n<p><em>In response to <a href=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/2012/08/how-to-cook/\">Via Negativa: How to cook</a>.</em></p>"
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"title" : "Prescient quote of the century",
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"content" : "<b style=\"font-style:normal\">Prescient quote of the century</b><div style=\"font-style:normal\"><b><br></b></div><div style=\"font-style:normal\">by digby</div><div style=\"font-style:normal\"><br></div><div style=\"font-style:normal\">Via reader Bennet G:</div><br><blockquote>\"...the Republicans will join hands with the southern Democrats to try and repeal or undermine every social reform the New Deal has put in. The hue and cry against labor has already started! The republicans have not had an idea since Benjamin Harrison's time and the southern democrats have not had one since Appomattox---and I foresee an unofficial coalition of them running the country.\"<br><br><i>Esther Murphy, in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, late 1942, cited in Lisa Cohen, All We Know: Three Lives (Farrar Strauss, 2012), p. 96.</i></blockquote><br><br>She was right about everything but the \"unofficial.\"<br><br>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4013705-865363968353414304?l=digbysblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Olympics Trolling",
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"content" : "<p>It’s that happy time when I whine about American television coverage of the Olympics. This year’s whining has a new twist—beyond the usual complaints about sentimental crap and tape-delay—given the lack of decent streaming options absent a pre-existing subscription to some cable channels. But it’s also the time when I’m reminded of my existing personal prejudices about sports, when I may discover new ones (as new events are added), and when I try to figure out whether there’s any defensible rationale to my preferences. Reflecting on my sports bigotry, I think the simplest model is a two-dimensional space that, I think you will agree, is both easy to understand and wholly objective.</p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/OlympicSports.png\"><img src=\"http://kieranhealy.org/files/misc/OlympicSports.png\" width=\"550/\"></a></p>\n\n\t<p><span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>The x-axis captures the intuition that some sports belong in the Olympics and some do not. The y-axis captures the intuition that some sports are terrific (not always for the same reasons) and some sports are terrible. Sports are plotted in this space, in a Bourdieuian fashion, according to their subjectively objective characteristics. Sports in green are already Olympic events, whether they deserve to be or not. Sports or activities in red are not Olympic events. I have separated out some sports (for clarity) and left others bundled (for convenience). For example, Eventing and Show Jumping are pretty good sports that nevertheless do not belong at the Olympics. Dressage, meanwhile, is a terrible sport that still doesn’t belong at the Olympics. Meanwhile, “Swimming” is clearly an Olympics-worthy sport, but the figure here leaves certain key questions about it unanswered, most obviously the preposterous number of events it contains (distances x strokes x medleys x individual/team) by comparison to track events.</p>\n\n\t<p>In general, sports in the upper-left quadrant are those with international federations or true professional leagues of their own (Rugby), or high quality but strictly local interest (Hurling), together with a couple of semi-interesting sports that dilute the Olympic brand and really belong in the lower left corner except for the fact that I sort of like them (Mountain Biking).</p>\n\n\t<p>Sports in the upper-right quadrant, meanwhile, are securely Olympian, by and large, although some of them are a little suspect (e.g., hammer, shot putt) whereas others (Tug-of-War) clearly meet quality and Olympishness criteria but are excluded for no good reason. Most of them are the sort of niche, perhaps borderline absurd events that you don’t think about at all for four years but then find yourself completely fascinated by when you accidentally catch the final on TV—e.g., rowing, weightlifting, table tennis, or archery. In many ways these are the purest Olympic sports.</p>\n\n\t<p>The bottom right quadrant is the interesting space of successful failures—sports that <em>seem</em> to belong in the Olympics, and which ought to be excellent niche events, yet are not. They are the sporting equivalent of Calvin Trillin’s “New Yorker Trap”—the out-of-the-way, unassuming little restaurant in Brooklyn that no-one knows about, and which serves shitty food. As for the non-included cases in this quadrant, this is the sphere of technically correct failures—events like Ballroom Dancing, which seem to meet all the formal criteria for inclusion as Olympic events, but which must be excluded on the grounds that inclusion would just make everyone look ridiculous.</p>\n\n\t<p>Finally, the lower left quadrant is the sphere of bad-faith success: class warfare sports (Dressage, Sailing), accidentally effective social movements (Trampoline), things that should have been eliminated back in the 1920s instead of Dueling (the Walk), and bullshit California weekend activities that can’t believe their freaking luck (beach volleyball, <span>BMX</span>, probably Ultimate Frisbee soon, and Quidditch eventually as well).</p>\n\n\t<p>I trust that clears things up. All that remains is for you to agree with me, and enjoy the rest of the games.</p>"
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"title" : "Colson Whitehead’s Rules for Writing",
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"title" : "DJ Jazzy Jeff Shows How Magnificent He Is On The Turntables",
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"content" : "If you have never experienced seeing <strong>DJ Jazzy Jeff</strong> spin live at a party, then your life is truly lacking direction and purpose. No, really, that is not an exaggeration or me telling a tall tale. Trust me when I say that when I finally saw DJ Jazzy Jeff DJ at the GRAMMY weekend Kiss-n-Grind in Los Angeles in February 2010, my life was officially and unequivocally made. I literally had an out of body experience as he cut, scratched and mixed classic after classic like the master he is while I danced until I couldn't feel my feet anymore and left with straight hair after arriving with a head full of curls. Accompanied by his partner in rhyme, <strong>Skillz</strong>, who serves as his emcee/hype man, a DJ Jazzy Jeff live set is an educational journey into sound for anyone who calls themselves a music lover. In the event that you have yet to see Jeff in action on the ones and twos, then let this short film filmed by <b>Cristopher Schafer</b> and recorded during a recent stop in London at The Jazz Cafe be your funky introduction. Combining show footage with interviews with Jeff and Skillz, just block off the next 20 minutes or so and get all the way into this. As you'll see, DJ Jazzy Jeff isn't called The Magnificent for nothing."
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"title" : "ALEXANDER COCKBURN—The tedium twins: \n Tonight",
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"content" : "JIM LEHRER: Robin, the provinces of Judaea and Galilee have always been trouble spots, and this year is no exception. The problem is part religious, part political, and in many ways a mixture of both. The Jews believe in one god. Discontent in the province has been growing, with many local businessmen complaining about the tax burden. Terrorism, particularly in Galilee, has been on the increase. In recent months, a carpenter’s son from the town of Nazareth has been attracting a large following with novel doctrines and faith healing. He recently entered Jerusalem amid popular acclaim, but influential Jewish leaders fear his power. Here in Alexandria the situation is seen as dangerous. Robin? . . ."
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"title" : "List: A Love Story in Status Codes by Justin Robert Souza",
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"title" : "Senegal: The Great Green Wall",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Bobby Bascomb</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>Senegal’s capitol city Dakar sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean on a peninsula. It’s at least a thousand miles to the Sahara desert yet the air today is so thick with sand that the tops of buildings disappear in a sandy haze.</p>\n<p>It’s the worst sand storm in a year and people here are worried that climate change will cause these events to be more common. Seasons are shifting across the region. In Senegal the rainy season used to start in July or August but now it doesn’t start until September. Decreased rain - along with over grazing of land - is causing an increase in deserts across the Sahel. Roughly 40 per cent of Africa is now affected by desertification and according to the UN, two-thirds of Africa’s arable land could be lost by 2025 if this trend continues.</p>\n<p>Senegal is one of 11 countries in the Sahel region of Africa looking towards the same solution to the desertification problem: The Great Green Wall. The goal of the project is to plant a wall of trees, 4,300 miles long and 9 miles wide, across the African continent, from Senegal to Djibouti. African leaders hope the trees will trap the sands of the Sahara and halt the advance of the desert.</p>\n<p>Papa Sarr is Technical Director for the Great Green Wall in Senegal: “We are convinced that once we start to plant the wall of trees dust will decrease in Dakar,” he says.</p>\n<p>Sarr sits in the passenger seat of a four-wheel drive on his way to Widou, a village he hopes will serve as a model for the Great Green Wall in Senegal. The paved roads of Dakar give way to red sand paths of the Shahel; a dry savanna transition zone between the equatorial jungles in the south and the Sahara to the north. Black and white goats meander in front of the truck and flat-topped acacia trees dot the sandy landscape. They are virtually the only vegetation in a region where the dry season can last up to 10 months.</p>\n<p>Four hours northwest of Dakar, the village of Widou sits next to one section of Senegal’s Great Green Wall. The acacia trees here are just four years old, waist high and thorny. The trees are surrounded by a firewall and a metal fence to keep out tree-eating goats. All of the trees were chosen carefully. Sarr says, \"When we design a parcel we look at the local trees and see what can best grow there, we try to copy Nature.\"</p>\n<p>Two million trees are planted in Senegal each year; but all of them must be planted during the short rainy season. Labourers plant acacia saplings in the sand along with animal manure for fertiliser. Sarr points to a three feet tall tree. \"This one is Acacia nilotica. It produces Arabic gum used in local medicine and a fruit that can be eaten by animals.\"</p>\n<p>For the project to succeed, it was crucial to plant trees that would also provide benefits for people living here. The government has ambitious plans for planting more trees but the Great Green Wall is also a development project, aimed at helping rural people. </p>\n<p>In the Senegalese Sahel the dominant ethnic group is the Peuhl. Tall and lean, they wear long flowing robes of emerald green and sapphire blue. They look like jewels against the rust coloured sand and brown dry grass. The women have blue tattoos on their chins and wear heavy earrings that stretch their earlobes.</p>\n<p>Traditionally nomadic, the Peuhl are now helping tend to the trees and planting gardens. One day a week women in the area volunteer to help care for gardens full of carrots, cabbages, tomatoes and even watermelon. Guncier Yarati uses the side of her flipflop to mound the sandy soil around potato plants. \"I like working here,” she says. “I like working with my friends, we laugh and play while we work but what’s really great is that we have more diverse vegetables. We eat the vegetables ourselves but sell them in the market too.\" </p>\n<p>The closest market is about 30 miles away and before the gardens came along, it was a full day’s trek in a horse-drawn cart to get fresh vegetables. Close by the potatoes, Nime Sumaso pours a jug of water over some carrots. She says, \"when people came from Dakar and showed us that they could plant vegetables in their communities we saw that this would be a way to help women in our own community and so we knew the Great Green Wall project was important for us.\"</p>\n<p>For the Peuhl, work is divided largely based on gender. So, while women mostly (and quickly) see the benefits of the project in their gardens, the men have a different perspective. A man's primary responsibility is to care for the family's large herds of goats and cows.</p>\n<p>In the early morning white hump-backed cows with giant horns gather around water troughs. The Peuhl depend on their animals for subsistence, and livestock need a lot of water. Scientists say the trees of the Great Green Wall will improve rainfall and recharge the water table. So that's very welcome news for local herdsmen like Alfaca. \"Planting trees is good for us,\" he says. \"Those trees can bring water and water is our future. Water can solve our problem.\"</p>\n<p>Everyone involved in the Great Green Wall agrees that the end goal is to help rural communities. But opinions vary on how the project will best manage to do that. African leaders envision the Great Green Wall as a literal wall of trees to keep back the desert. But scientists and development agencies see it more as a metaphorical ‘wall,’ a mosaic of different projects to alleviate poverty and improve degraded lands.</p>\n<p>The Great Green Wall has received a total of 1.8 billion dollars from the World Bank and another 108 million dollars from the Global Environment Facility. Jean- Marc Sinnassamy is a programme officer with the Global Environment Facility. \"We do not finance a tree planting initiative,\" he says, \"it’s more related to agriculture, rural development, food security and sustainable land management than planting trees.\"</p>\n<p>The 11 countries involved with the project are committed to making progress but there are many challenges: abject poverty, shifting seasons and political instability are top among them. The entire region is in the middle of a food crisis. The United Nation’s Food Program estimates that as many as 11 million people in the Sahel do not have enough to eat and Mali recently had a military coup.</p>\n<p>Senegal is currently the furthest along with the Great Green Wall. They’ve planted roughly 50,000 acres of trees in addition to protecting existing trees. It’s been successful so far in Senegal but not everyone believes it can work across the entire Sahel region.</p>\n<p>Gray Tappan is a geographer with the United States Geological Survey. He says, \"There’s been a long history of one failure after another in external projects that come in and try to plant trees.\" </p>\n<p>Tappan explains that there are many reasons these projects fail. Sometimes projects plant non-native species that can't survive in the dry climate, or local people don't support the project and allow their goats to eat the newly-planted trees.</p>\n<p>In the village of Widou those concerns don't appear to be an issue but Tappan is skeptical as to whether the Widou model can be emulated through 4,300 miles of varying ecosystems and communities. He believes a better model can be found in Niger. Historically, farmers there removed any trees or bushes that sprouted up in their fields. But following a devastating drought in the 1980s farmers decided to allow the natural vegetation to grow and planted food crops around it. The result was a surplus of food and 12 million acres of trees, an area the size of Costa Rica.</p>\n<p>Tappan has spent 30 years working in the region and admits he was shocked by the transformation: \"In 2006 we did a big field trip across Niger and were just blown away by the vastness of this re-greening.\"</p>\n<p>Scientists like Tappan believe that type of natural regeneration is much more likely to succeed than planting trees. But political leaders in Senegal are committed to their vision. Djibo Leyti Ka is the Minister of the Environment. He’s in charge of the Great Green Wall project for the entire country. He says, \"We have a lot of desert from Senegal to Djibouti. A wall of trees will stop the wind.\"</p>\n<p>Ka dismisses critics who say it isn't practical. \"They are crazy! The dust is coming. The sand is going to cover us all and we need to stop it. There are many many environmental projects in Senegal but this is the most important.\"</p>\n<p>Back at the Great Green Wall near Widou, Papa Sarr stops to take in the work they’ve done so far. The waist high trees are just four years old but he expects big things from them.</p>\n<p>\"In 10 to 15 years this will be a forest. The trees will be big and this region will be completely transformed. We are already seeing animals come back that haven’t been here for years. Mostly deer and many species of wild bird, even jackal,\" he says.</p>\n<p>It’s unclear if the newly elected president of Senegal, Macky Sall, will have as strong a commitment to the Great Green Wall as his predecessor Abdouley Wade. But for the people living here, tending their cows, watering the garden, and hoping the rains will come, the Great Green Wall holds great potential for positive change in Senegal and this region of Africa for generations to come.</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Why Is This Man Wearing A Turban?",
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"content" : "<p><img title=\"Portrait_of_a_Man_by_Jan_van_Eyck-small\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Portrait_of_a_Man_by_Jan_van_Eyck-small-383x525.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"525\"></p>\n<p>He is unknown. No name, no profession, no identifying details, but he looks out with the calm sternness of one who knows his place in the world. And because of this calmness, this sternness—the skeptical gaze and tight lips—we suspect it might be an image of the artist himself. Self-portraits of artists often present them with a certain forthrightness, which is necessary because the status of artists is always uncertain—this was true in the 15th century, and it is true now. And so, in their portraits of themselves, artists show confidence, worldliness, and a measure of pride in being artists.</p>\n<p>Worldliness: the artist is Jan van Eyck, the portrait was painted in 1433 in Bruges, and it is as much a portrait of a man as it is a portrait of his enormous red turban. Each wrinkle of the cloth, each fold, each soft glimmer of light across the soft weave, is painted with the holy precision Jan van Eyck helped introduce to art. He had abandoned tempera and begun to dissolve his pigments in linseed oil in the 1420s. With that came control and a perfection in painterly mimesis never since matched. An inscription on the frame reads, in pseudo-Greek letters, ALC.IXH.XAN—“as I can,” or “to the best of my ability.” He must have known that his best was <em>the</em> best. The gray-eyed gaze of the man in the painting is a dare. Show me who’s done it better, he seems to say. Didn’t think so, he adds.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"> ***</p>\n<p>I was in Brussels a few weeks ago. At the end of my brief visit, something happened that reminded me, in an oblique way, of the fearlessness of “Man in a Turban.” It was a Thursday, and I had a free evening. My friend F. invited me to join her at the opening of a hip place in a central part of town. Around ten, she sent a text message: “I will be a bit later, feels like a scene from your book; there are riots in Molenbeek, the part of Brussels where I live.”</p>\n<p>She eventually arrived, and as we got our beers at the sleek new bar, in which I was the only non-white customer, F. told me about Molenbeek. It is an immigrant neighborhood, mostly Muslim, mostly poor. F., as pale as the women in paintings by Van Eyck and Memling, and her husband, who is also Flemish, chose to raise their family among Moroccan neighbors. There are African blacks in the area too. There are sometimes tensions between the two groups.</p>\n<p>But this is what had led to the riots there that night: earlier that day, a young woman in a niqab had been stopped by police in a nearby neighborhood called Jette. The niqab is illegal in Belgium (as it is in France): adult Muslim women may not, of their own free will, cover their faces in public. In the words of the liberal MP who proposed the ban in Belgium: “Wearing the burqa in public is not compatible with an open, liberal, tolerant society.”</p>\n<p>Usually, the law is applied this way: there is a quick check of the ID and a lifting of the face veil long enough to identify the wearer. There is a caution, or a fine. But in this case, the police insisted that the woman remove the veil completely before she could be let go. She refused. She was arrested, taken to a police station, stripped (her clothing, down to the underwear, removed with scissors), and beaten by male and female officers. She fought back, headbutting one of the officers. She was beaten further, by the agents of the open, liberal, tolerant society. The woman got a concussion, and was taken to hospital.</p>\n<p>The news got to Molenbeek. Molenbeek rioted.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">***</p>\n<p>“Man in a Turban” hangs at the National Gallery in London, next to the better known “Arnolfini Portrait,” also by Van Eyck. It is surprisingly small. Each time I see it, I have to remind myself that no, it hasn’t shrunk, it has always been just about 10 inches high. Smaller than life-size, encased in a gilt frame, quietly luminous, peculiarly forceful, larger than life.</p>\n<p>What the man wears is not, in fact, a turban. It is a chaperon, a traditional Flemish length of cloth usually worn differently from how it is depicted here (I know of no other chaperons of the period depicted in such an explicitly turban style). Van Eyck painted for lords, princes, and the church, a career made possible by the wealth and patronage of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels, the great Flemish towns. The wealth of those towns was, in turn, made possible by the influx of money, trade, and taste, by Italian bankers, Burgundian and Bavarian aristocracy, merchants, visitors, and rivals of English, Jewish, Spanish, and Ottoman origin. This was the world some twenty years before the Ottoman conquest of Byzantine Constantinople. It was a cosmopolitan, complicated world. This was Flanders just before “Turk” became equated with “Muslim” and “Muslim” became equated with “menace,” launching a wave of anti-Islamic hysteria that would last well into the next century. In that earlier, more open, milieu, a cosmopolitan painter might well choose to wear his chaperon like a turban. It is no great shame for an artist to be taken for a man of the wider world. And what, precisely, is a length of chaperon worn like a turban, and influenced by turban-wearing style? A turban.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>In the last 10 days:</p>\n<blockquote><p>• The <a href=\"http://www.arborresearch.com/bianco/?p=65472\">LIBOR inquiry</a> in London early last week revealed that the Bank of England pressed Barclays to lower their quoted rate.</p>\n<p>• The next day it was discovered that Peregrine Financial Group was <a href=\"http://www.arborresearch.com/bianco/?p=65475\">missing $215 million of customer money</a>.</p>\n<p>• Later we found out that for many years Peregrine was submitting falsified financial statements to the National Futures Association (NFA). No one at the NFA independently verified these statements with the banks supposedly holding these funds.</p>\n<p>• At the end of the week, JP Morgan’s quarterly call revealed that CDS prices were made up to the point that Q1 earnings need to be restated and a criminal probe is underway. A similar mispricing of CDS at UBS <a href=\"http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/ex-ubs-trader-sues-after-firing-for-mispricing-securities\">led to prison time</a>.</p>\n<p>• <a href=\"http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577530630389408696.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop&mg=reno64-wsj\">After the close on Friday</a> we learned that the New York Federal Reserve (headed by Tim Geithner at the time) was aware of Barclay’s LIBOR scandal and essentially did nothing about it.</p>\n<p>• Yesterday, as detailed above, we found out that HSBC has been used as a money-laundering and terrorist financing operation (<a href=\"http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304388004577531330703359436.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection\">Senate Probe Faults HSBC</a>).</p></blockquote>\n<p>None of this should move the markets in the short-term on its own, but collectively it paints the financial industry as an out of control criminal organization with either incompetent or complicit regulators.</p>\n<p>Today the reputation of bankers is between that of a used car salesmen and drug dealers. The last 10 days has made it worse.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/b0bjd6fho47voudd2of6s5dq9g/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F07%2Fcan-the-banking-industry-make-it-24-hours-without-a-new-scandal%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=6dXW2ZO8KQM:w72v_MaXTgE:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/6dXW2ZO8KQM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The New Godwin’s",
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"content" : "<p>Charles Stross <a href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/charlie-stross-explains-why-i-cant-always-follow-his-stories\">recently revealed</a> that he uses a software package called “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrivener_(software)\">Scrivener</a>” to keep track of the complicated plots of novels he’s writing. His disclosure prompted an interesting discussion about the functions of literature, the uses of software, and Tolstoy.</p>\n<p>One bright bulb, however, took umbrage at all of this talk of literature, and tossed a stink bomb:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\nWhat you think of Tolstoy (or pretty much any “classic”) depends on your relationship to the modern world and modern learning. If you think that fact-free noodling about the nature of man, society, god, nature, and so on is just awesome, you may find something of value in them. On the other hand, if your attitude to the world is “we’ve had 5000 years of people making shit up; how about we concentrate a little more on what can actually be establish factually rather than the opinion’s of some dude whose primary qualification is that he can write well?” then you’re likely to be rather less impressed. </p>\n<p>To take an apparently trivial example, which is nonetheless easily understood, IS it in fact the case that all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way? Should we accept this as true just because Tolstoy says so? Or should we look into the matter rather more scientifically?\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>You see people using essentially the same template, only slightly reworded, to respond to a surprising variety of discussion topics. I think of it as the new variant of Godwin’s Law. The moment this argument comes into play, you know that all rational discussion has ended. </p>\n<p>Trolling people by comparing them to Hitler is so cliched, it’s practically <i>ironic</i>. But you can still catch people off-guard by accusing them of superstitious thinking, and you score extra troll points by insinuating that their “superstitious thinking” is backed up by an appeal to authority. When the hapless victim protests, “I was talking about <i>poetry/metaphor/love/art/beauty</i> or whatever, you know they’ve swallowed your bait, hook, line, and sinker. Just feign ignorance, presuppose that their goal was to make testable hypotheses (isn’t that the goal of <i>all</i> poetry and romance?), then continue berating them for “making shit up”.</p>\n<p>Mark my words: this is the new Godwin’s, and it’s catching on fast. It will soon be bigger than Hitler.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Rawlings – June 4th 1979 was not your finest hour, your best moment was January 7th 2001 – by Ade Sawyerr</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://adesawyerr.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/achimotaschoolcadets1962.jpg?w=807\" alt=\"Image\" width=\"807\" height=\"509\"></p>\n<div>\nRetired military dictators, in the very few countries that tolerate military interventions, are allowed to lead the rest of their lives in obscurity drawing their military pension. But in Africa most turn themselves<br>\ninto civilian presidents and then find it difficult to leave the national scene. These ex-presidents do damage to our democracy because they become obsessed with the preservation of their legacies and end up meddling in the small stage of their countries. These presidents would serve their legacies better if they transform themselves into international statesmen on a larger scene where the benefits of their experience as heads of state will be better valued.\n<p>So when I hear persons such as Babangida and Obasanjo in Nigeria and Rawlings in Ghana going on about parties they created, I wonder why they do not put their leadership experience to bigger challenges in full view of the whole world. Military dictators, in my view, owe the electorate a debt of gratitude for disrupting the democratic process of their countries inevitably they leave their countries in a worse state, socially, politically and economically, than when they took over. We civilians are therefore grateful for term limits on presidencies; the fact is that presidents do not perform better because they stay longer, most do not come with any vision for the transformation of their countries and it is likely that the longer they stay the worse they will become.</p>\n<p>I have read the recent pronouncements of Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings Retired, a former military ruler and former president of Ghana extolling the ideals of June 4<sup>th</sup>, one of the most chaotic period of our political life in Ghana. The tragedy that was unleashed on the people of Ghana by mindless soldiers, supported by students barely out of breeches who had no concept of governing a country having only experienced a clueless military government, gives me the shivers even today 30 or so years after the event. Supporting actor in this June 4<sup>th</sup> braggadocio, is another retired soldier, Major Boakye Djan now seeking another taste of government as a civilian legislator; he who wants us to believe his invention that the spokesperson is the actual leader and the leader is really only ceremonial.<span></span></p>\n<p>I lived in Ghana between June 4<sup>th</sup> and September 24<sup>th</sup> 1979 and I did not see any probity and accountability during that period. All I saw was the chaotic posturing backed by empty rhetoric of young men and some boys, drunk with power, intent on sending our country into an unfortunate downward spiral of economic disaster that unfortunately was inherited by the legitimately elected civilian government of the Peoples National Party.</p>\n<p>June 4<sup>th</sup> was about students who had misread bits of Marxist political theory mistakenly thinking that those concepts have general applicability far removed from their context of 19<sup>th</sup> century peasant Europe and could be transplanted into 20<sup>th</sup> century Africa. For them, the Russian revolution could be replicated by a military revolution in Africa, totally forgetting that soldiers in Ghana are part of the elite protected by generous salaries from our taxes.</p>\n<p>June 4<sup>th</sup> 1979 was not about probity or accountability; it was about wanton destruction of private and public property, about seizing of assets that had been acquired legally, about settling scores with imaginary enemies. This looting led to the destruction of one of the mainstay of the economy, Makola Market, because soldiers wanted to rid the country of ‘kalabule’. In their misguided mind destroying the edifice was enough; sadly they ended up destroying the bastion of legitimate trade in the country. The economy ground to a halt during that period. That unfortunate act I consider to be at par with Busia’s bungled implementation of the Aliens Compliance Order; both robbed the country of entrepreneurial expertise and skilled manual labour and to date I cannot see how bombing Makola Market could ever be equated with the promotion of social justice as has been claimed by the youthful braggarts that cheered on that incident.</p>\n<p>The house cleaning exercise was all about lofty ideas of fixing a country that had struggled under the yoke of a military that had strangled the fragile economy and replaced it with rent seeking behaviour that was driving the country into bankruptcy. The fact of fixing a country however demands vision beyond youthful exuberance. There were even disputes, after the event, about where the monies extorted from supposedly corrupt business people had been lodged and Accra was left in a much filthier state after the housecleaning exercise. That period was total chaos and there is nothing to celebrate about it. I still fail to see the ideals that day represents.</p>\n<p>June 4<sup>th</sup> achieved nothing notable for Ghana and did not add to, or lead to, better governance; it pales into insignificance when compared to the achievement of Rawlings when he handed over to Kufour on 7<sup>th</sup> January 2001. So why he continues harping on about that day beats my imagination.</p>\n<p>Talking about Rawlings here triggers a trip down memory lane to my secondary school years and questions about whether there were any indicators that the Jerry John that I knew would turn out to be the leader that some sections of the public craved for in 1979, hailed in 1982 and resoundingly voted for as president twice in 1992 and 1996? All of what I write about him is of course unauthorised since I have not seen him or spoken to him since 1977 when I organised some meetings of my year group at Ambassador Hotel during the golden jubilee celebrations of our school.</p>\n<p>My first sighting of Rawlings was when he entered Achimota School in September 1961. He was one of the more remarkable young boys in that cohort assigned to Guggisberg House.</p>\n<p>I picked on him immediately and got him to carry my trunk and chop box into the house and dormitory. He and Lawrence Dagadu were probably the biggest, though Holdbrook Smith was certainly the tallest. The others that I remember are David Wilson, Gilbert Mansu-Asmah, then Foli, Benneh, Adu, Mainoo, GEY Doe, Ansafo-Ofei and Tekpetey.</p>\n<p>Of course he was not too happy that such a small boy had bullied him, and was livid when he discovered that I was also in the same D dormitory with him and was also a Form 1 boy, though in my case I was repeating because I had spent the better part of the year in hospital which meant that I missed some of my exams and flunked those that I took. He however had to live with the fact that I was there to initiate them through the course of negotiating their way through the school as Nino boys, a fate that I had endured the year before, and was spared this time round.</p>\n<p>Though we stayed in the same dormitory, I do not recollect being in the same class with Jerry. For some reason in our junior years, the youngest students were put in the A stream where I was, the oldest in the D stream and the Roman Catholic students in the C steam where Jerry was.</p>\n<p>The Roman Catholic students had an infallible Pope, read the Knox version of the Bible during the morning quiet period, they went to a separate chapel in the main administration block and part of their service was in Latin, they used a rosary like the Muslim prayer beads which had always fascinated me, they chanted Hail Marys and they were the reason why we were always served fish on Fridays and they actually went to confession, to confess their sins to a priest. What sins at that age? Jerry John was a devout Catholic and took his religion seriously during his junior years and I have always wondered what it was that turned a cherubic ruby cheeked choir boy who served at the altar of God into the macho irreverent boy of later years by the time he left the school.</p>\n<p>He was academically sound and in the fourth and fifth year it was clear that his interests went beyond the academic and the technical, he was good with his hands, creative and loved the pursuit of fine arts. For some reason, I always felt that he would have ended up in design and would have been an outstanding architect or a design engineer combining the artistic with the technical.</p>\n<p>Rawlings at secondary school was one of the stronger boys who also excelled in sports, aggressive and confident. He was a good swimmer and a good boxer and practiced Judo though that was not on the normal sports curriculum and I am certain that he would have readily taken on weightlifting if that had been part of the fare.</p>\n<p>He was also a hard worker around the House, good at ground work, strong enough to lead in the digging during ‘ground work’ and whilst some of us struggled to carry gravel from the Anumle pit, and recycled faeces or the ‘category’ as we termed it, from the school farm to fertilise our garden. It was not just the load that was heavy, the buckets were heavier because the base was lead but strong Jerry found this a bit of a doodle and took it in his stride. He was also a stickler for cleaning and tidying up around the house and the public places, though not necessarily around his own bed.</p>\n<p>He liked to be in charge and in control and did definitely exhibit some leadership qualities to the extent that in his fourth year he became the sub inspector in the house. In that role he was the responsible for the rota of cleaning duties around the house, supervising and inspecting the work, I suppose that is where he got the house cleaning business from. His leadership style of course was more Attila the Hun than Mahatma Gandhi, using the stick many more times than the carrot even when the carrot was the better and more effective method. Of course the younger boys added Jimmy Judo to his name in attestation of his motivational style. In essence he did get things done and did ‘motivate’ others under his control.</p>\n<p>He was more laid back when he became the full inspector in Form 5, in realisation that coercion results in resistance and that if he delegated more, his expertise at cleaning alone would get their commitment. But he could also be persuasive and most times had quite a few of the junior boys around his bed side. He would regale them with stories that he had read from books about the Second World War and how the Yankees, Frogs, Limeys won the war from the Japs, Nips, Krauts and Jerries. So Rawlings always told a good story and could also sweet talk most people into doing his bidding, even begging when he had to. I can visualise him as he was then, with his Elvis Presley haircut and his tight shorts and raised collar and scruffed up short sleeves crooning the Jailhouse Rock with its attendant gyrating moves in the middle of D dormitory to the younger ones and his rather successful attempts to tease some Elvis chords out of the remaining two strings of an original six string guitar.</p>\n<p>But we all also enjoyed the usual pranks of young boys growing up, the disenfranchised, disaffection that leads to disruptive behaviour. The fights, though a strong boy, he did not get into too many of those, the one that I remember was a fight against authority – against the House Prefect because he had been admonished for being much much less than gentle against one of the juniors in the performance of his duties as a sub inspector. But it was not in the proportion of other epic fights that I witnessed in my time that were usually over girls, who did not even know that they had admirers, Livingstone v Chester – that was in the Pottery shed, and the epic one of Phorcys v Avalon that started in Aggrey House and down to Guggisberg House and eventually ended in the Cadet Squad because the fighters had run out of stamina.</p>\n<p>But there were occasions when Jerry was a complete villain such as throwing sand into the chopbox room because I had refused to share my soaking with him, and rightly so because I had just seen him feasting with some friends in Gyamfi House. He had eaten all his provisions; I had husbanded mine and did not think that he deserved to partake of mine. Another was on my confirmation night, I returned to the house to find that the special cake that my grandmother had baked, that I had hidden under my bed, had disappeared and I was sure that only Jerry could have found it.</p>\n<p>In our final year when we occupied adjacent beds there were the frequent arguments about tidiness that resulted in our dividing the space and agreeing that it should extend to the rest of the school. I could have sworn that he had the classroom and I certainly had the Dining Hall, and yet he found all manner of ruses to invade my territory and we had to subject this arrangement to so much negotiation that we both tired of it. But his irritating habit of using my comb, I never could forgive him for. The only other pranks that I can remember was running away to town, we all did it but I suspect he more than me and they were always finding ways of trying to drive the car of our old school music master Professor Ian Hall, and of course we had Reverend Agbeti as House-master who sometimes indulged us when we chanted – ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing’ the classic excuse and plea for forgiveness.</p>\n<p>So if the essential ingredients in leadership are motivation and communication, then we should all have seen those signs in the young Rawlings. Jerry had always been a good communicator and he had a way of over dramatising situations with unnecessary attendant histrionics. There was also a certain air of paternalism around him, which allowed him to be extremely participative and deferential to people when he was not on solid grounds on any issue; a tactic he used to demonstrate his loyalty to his mates so as to motivate them to higher things, even if he lacked clarity in the vision thing. Thinking back to those days I am certain that he would have made a good dormitory monitor and a house prefect, despite the frequent brushes with authority, if he had gone on to the sixth form.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">\n<p>There was another passion about Rawlings then – the Cadet Corps. He loved it, he loved it and he loved it. You just had to see the time he took polishing his boots, blancoing the belt, cleaning the puttees and ironing his cadet uniform, oh how I hated those coarse shirts myself, but Jerry John looked every part the soldier then, which is why some of us were not surprised that he went into the Armed Forces like the other disruptive macho boys of our time who felt that they only looked good when they were in uniform. (Why are anti-authoritarian ill disciplined tough guys attracted to the armed forces, an institution which, in my view, is fit only for repressed and suppressed masochists? Is it the rigid hierarchical structure of the institution and the obey before complain rule as we used to be told?)</p>\n<p>And so I endured Jerry for five very long years in secondary school and though we moved from dormitory to dormitory over the years we were almost always in the same dormitory, notorious boys involved in all the pranks that young boys transitioning into men would engage in, most of us with an anti authoritarian streak that got us to spend several hours doing ‘fatigue’ or ‘project’ for the usual reasons of breaking school or house rules.</p>\n<p>The army must have moulded Rawlings very well and though it did not curb his anti-authoritarian streak, his bravery in taking on his senior officers endeared him to some in Ghana and perhaps that is why he sees June 4<sup>th</sup> as his finest hour.</p>\n<p>I left Ghana in the third republic when Limann was in power. Rawlings, as I understand it had turned down an opportunity to go abroad to study and re direct his life to other things probably because he had a mission to accomplish.</p>\n<p>I suppose that having had the taste for power, and being ambitious, it was alright to do it a second time. This time around I am told that he assembled a team of technocrats, disgruntled, failed and wannabe politicians, lecturers of indeterminable commitment to their career, some of his class mates and some student leaders, some armed forces officials and some hockey players, several friends of his wife to run the country, of course the Marxist and theoretical socialists saw their main chance and joined him at the hip. The fact that they changed course several times and submitted to the World Bank neo-colonial orthodoxy of how countries in Africa should develop underlined that fact that he had come back with no vision and no plan for the country.</p>\n<p>But I must be fair to Rawlings, he saw through the rhetoric of this cheering but clueless band and adapted to ruling a country and managing an economy that had crumbled because of his own acts of coup making. The fact that a culture of silence developed amidst some accusations of human rights abuses did not help the economy – a salutary lesson for future coup makers. Though I begrudge him, he was a leader of sorts. He used his interpersonal skills well, he inspired a lot of people especially the younger ones and his communication skills helped as he soldiered on in search of his dream of a fair and equal society inGhana.</p>\n<p>Rawlings did well to subject himself to elections and he won and won again and I applaud him more for what he learnt as a civilian ruler than what he did as a military dictator. There were times that he was exceptional as a leader in resolving conflict and his charisma continues to shine through and endear him to many. His best moment though was when he handed over power on 7<sup>th</sup> January 2001 and Ghana and Africa saw a flawless transition from one political tradition to another.</p>\n<p>But I expect more from Rawlings than he is giving now and hence my disappointment at his continued antics in Ghana politics. We do not have many in Africa who have been heads of states and have managed that transition into the international arena as statesmen. Rawlings should move on to that terrain, he should be active in solving problems of Africa.</p>\n<p>Rawlings must realise that he is bigger than the NDC. The political party that he founded is an anachronistic political party with no vision of the future Ghana and that is why he struggles to try and whip it into shape in his own image. Rawlings is also too big for Ghana, his real role should be on the continental and international scene to show to every one that despite the dearth of political leaders in Africa there is no deficit of statesmen who after they have performed as leaders on the country scene can make the transition unto the world stage.</p>\n<p>What we really really need in Africa is a corps of retired political leaders who will travel from country to country lecturing on the practical aspects of how they run their countries, developing case studies of what to do and what not to do, providing scenarios of real problem solving and helping to set up schools for future political leaders.</p>\n<p>The challenge for Rawlings is how to solve the problem in Somalia and how to rid the world of malaria; he will forever be remembered if he rises up to the challenges of our modern times and forgets about what he did in Ghana 30 years ago. I hope that having taken him down memory lane he will buck up and roll up his sleeves for those challenges. Ghana will survive without his intervention but the world is crying out for a statesman of his stature and I certainly hope that he is up to the task!</p>\n<p>Ade Sawyerr is a partner in Equinox Consulting, a management consultancy that provides management consultancy, training, and research services in the areas of enterprise strategies, employment initiatives and community development primarily for disadvantage communities in Britain. He provides occasional comments on politics in Ghana and Africa. He can be reached at <a href=\"http://www.equinoxconsulting.net/\">www.equinoxconsulting.net</a> or at <a href=\"mailto:jwasawyerr@gmail.com\">jwasawyerr@gmail.com</a>. He can also be followed <a href=\"http://adesawyerr.wordpress.com/\">http://adesawyerr.wordpress.com</a> or <a href=\"http://twitter.com/adesawyerr\">http://twitter.com/adesawyerr</a></p>\n</p></div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/adesawyerr.wordpress.com/678/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/adesawyerr.wordpress.com/678/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=adesawyerr.wordpress.com&blog=8940120&post=678&subd=adesawyerr&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "In the past few days several disparate themes have seemed to take on a connected shape. Or maybe I'm just tired. Still, I am thinking of:<br><ul><li>Discussions over the past two weeks about why the world's dominant nation has such a uneven, shaky, and too-often <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/07/lets-talk-infrastructure-reports-from-brooklyn-berkeley-and-kentucky/259535/\">run-down infrastructure</a>;</li><li>Discussions over the past few days about why it's so hard <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/bonanza-of-extra-reading-on-the-uber-in-dc-saga/259671/\">even to call a taxi</a> in the imperial capital of that same dominant nation;</li><li>News early this week that another once-proud stalwart of American advanced-technology manufacturing, now bankrupt, is being <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/as-cirrus-goes-so-goes-hawker-beechcraft/259613/\">taken over</a> by Chinese investors;</li><li>News this week about <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/bain-of-his-existence-romneys-hands-off-corporate-presidency/259738/\">Mitt Romney</a>'s \"<a href=\"http://bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/07/11/government-documents-indicate-mitt-romney-continued-bain-after-date-when-says-left/IpfKYWjnrsel4pvCFbsUTI/story.html\">awkward years</a>\" at Bain: the period between 1999 and 2002, when he was theoretically no longer involved in management or decisions at Bain Capital but <a href=\"http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/07/no_romney_didnt_leave_bain_in_1999.php\">was still listed</a> as its CEO and as its 100% owner (Part of a 2001 Bain <a href=\"http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1054290/000092701601001009/0000927016-01-001009-0001.txt\">SEC filing</a> below);</li></ul><blockquote><p>\"Bain Capital Partners VI, L.P., a Delaware limited partnership (\"Bain Partners VI\") is the sole general partner of Fund VI and Coinvestment Fund. Bain Capital Investors VI, Inc., a Delaware corporation (\"Bain Investors VI\"), is the sole general partner of Bain Partners VI. Mr. W. Mitt Romney is the sole shareholder, sole director, Chief Executive Officer and President of Bain Investors VI and thus is the controlling person of Bain Investors VI.\"<br></p></blockquote><ul><li>A corruscatingly wonderful novel I've just finished, <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/books/review/other-peoples-money-by-justin-cartwright-book-review.html\"><i>Other People's Money</i></a> by Justin Cartwright (at the recommendation of one of my sons -- having adult children is great), which opens with this quote from John Maynard Keynes in <i>The General Theory</i>: </li></ul><blockquote>\"When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.\"<br></blockquote>With all that as prelude, let's dip into the email bag. There are countless very interesting infrastructure messages I'll get to shortly. But let me start with this one, from a former employee of the Hawker Beechcraft Corporation of Wichita, which is about to be owned by Superior Aircraft of Beijing. I <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/as-cirrus-goes-so-goes-hawker-beechcraft/259613/\">initially presented</a> this story for what it showed about <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/china-airborne\">the strengths and weaknesses</a> of China's economy. The reader says we should consider what it shows about America. <br><br>Here's the background to his message, which is long but worth reading. In 2007, Goldman Sachs and Onex Corporation formed the Hawker Beechcraft Corporation from aircraft facilities they had bought from Raytheon. The company got very heavily loaded up with debt; it laid off hundreds of workers; two months ago it went into bankruptcy; this week a sale to Chinese purchasers was announced. The reader takes up the story from there:<br><blockquote>The pending sale of HBC highlights an interesting situation. Will the US courts allow the buyer to avoid paying their pension obligations and shift that burden to the American tax payer so the new Chinese company can be more profitable? Reportedly none of the buyers are willing to fund the shortfall in the pension plan.<br><br>Since the original bond holders have already lost their investment and the new hedge funds have spent pennies on the dollar to become the debtors in possession, what will their profits be from this short term investment? Will their profits be maximized at the expense of the American tax payer by working to shift that burden to the PBGC [<a href=\"http://www.pbgc.gov/\">Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation</a>, a federal agency] so that more of the purchase price goes to them?... <br><br>Who will watch out for these groups? Will it be the current management team that wants to negotiate the best and lowest cost overhead so they can look good? Will it be the current team that more than likely will get some kind of bonus package for engineering the sale, or at least will receive a hefty incentive package linked to future earnings?... The only hope will be a creditors committee of responsible people and a bankruptcy judge that can see through the maneuvers and stand up for the workers, retirees, and the American taxpayer....<br><br>If you look at the finances of the company pre recession and put reasonable growth and profit figures as compared to others in the industry, the only way HBC could have survived [after all the debt taken on following the Goldman/Onex takeover] is by Goldman/Onex flipping the company. They would not have been in a position to make the upcoming debt payments even with a normal economy. Internally, they did not ever make plans to make those payments. <br><br>If you and I buy a house that way, the banks would say we defrauded them. The only difference is the people who will take the biggest hit are the employees. The other investors move on to the next possible home run. Pre bankruptcy HBC never said that the pensions were a drag on the company. It was only the debt, as soon as they got rid of that, then came the pensions. The pension plan was fully funded at the time of the sale in 2007 and was 98% in 2009.... <br><br>Skating on the pension plans and making the American tax payer pay is just not right...The courts and lawyers will just work out a deal that favors the hedge funds and the current management team and leave everyone else in the wake.</blockquote>More to come.<br><br><b>Update </b>One of the hedge funds to which the over-leveraged Hawker Beechcraft <a href=\"http://www.leveragedloan.com/bankruptcy-two-separate-panels-of-lenders-form-in-hawker-beechcrafts-ch-11/\">owes money</a> is <a href=\"https://www.sankaty.com/\">Sankaty Advisors</a>, a name that may ring a bell. So there could me more than merely a thematic connection among some of the items above.<br><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://Theatlantic.feedsportal.com/c/34375/f/625833/s/214a729a/mf.gif\" border=\"0\"><div><table border=\"0\"><tr><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://share.feedsportal.com/viral/sendEmail.cfm?lang=en&title=Chronicles+of+Casino+Capitalism%3A+Kicking+Off+a+Series&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fpolitics%2Farchive%2F2012%2F07%2Fchronicles-of-casino-capitalism-kicking-off-a-series%2F259772%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/emailthis2.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td><td valign=\"middle\"><a href=\"http://res.feedsportal.com/viral/bookmark.cfm?title=Chronicles+of+Casino+Capitalism%3A+Kicking+Off+a+Series&link=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fpolitics%2Farchive%2F2012%2F07%2Fchronicles-of-casino-capitalism-kicking-off-a-series%2F259772%2F\"><img src=\"http://res3.feedsportal.com/images/bookmark.gif\" border=\"0\"></a></td></tr></table></div><br><br><a href=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/139262160430/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/214a729a/a2.htm\"><img src=\"http://da.feedsportal.com/r/139262160430/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/214a729a/a2.img\" border=\"0\"></a><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/139262160430/u/49/f/625833/c/34375/s/214a729a/a2t.img\" border=\"0\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?a=kW-3D71Ysfg:zKXz5uMlnwM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesFallows/~4/kW-3D71Ysfg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>Peter Chilson</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n <div><p>Late in the afternoon of April 20, 1828, \"just as the sun was touching the horizon,\" as he later described it, a young Frenchman, barely 29, walked into Timbuktu disguised as an Arab, wearing long robes and a turban. René Caillié had begun his journey two years earlier in Senegal, and when the elation of arrival wore off, he looked around him at the streets of Timbuktu, a historic town he knew for its \"grandeur and wealth.\" The city had been part of the Mali Empire, which was known for its trade in gold, salt, and spices, much of which passed through Timbuktu on its way north across the Sahara. Malian emperors built grand mosques in the city, and the Arab traveler Ibn Battuta visited in 1353, confirming Timbuktu's importance to Mali and trans-Saharan trade. But Caillié was disappointed. \"The sight before me did not answer my expectations,\" he wrote in his memoirs. \"The city presented, at first view, nothing but a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth. Nothing was to be seen in all directions but immense plains of quicksand of a yellowish white colour … all nature wore a dreary aspect.\"</p>\n<p>Caillié had expected to sail to the city on a large wooden canoe, part of a flotilla he'd been traveling with for weeks down the Niger River. But he found that getting to Timbuktu was not like entering Paris on the River Seine: once docked, he had to walk eight miles into the city from the riverbank. Caillié, without formal education or military training, was the second European to see Timbuktu, and the first to make it out alive. The British officer Maj. Alexander Gordon Laing had been there two years earlier, having crossed the Sahara from the north, but was murdered in the desert as he started his return journey home.</p>\n<p>And so, with Caillié's damning words, began Timbuktu's long decline in the eyes of the Western world. For much of its long history, however, Timbuktu is a city whose value seemed to exist in stories of its former glory -- a glory that Muslim militant groups who now control northern Mali are trying to wipe out stone by stone. Once merely a seasonal camp for Tuareg herdsmen, Timbuktu evolved into a wealthy regional trading post. But it gained renown when Malian emperor Mansa Musa visited on his way back from Mecca in 1324, and inspired by his hajj ordered the construction of the Djinguereber Mosque for the study of Islam. The city's reputation for the study of Muslim theology soon spread into Europe and the Muslim countries of Asia. Timbuktu became the cultural center of the Mali and Songhai Empires, both of which were gone by the end of the 16th century.</p>\n<p>Timbuktu, however, remained. The city survived the occupation of the Moor army that defeated the Songhai Empire, and the years of chaos that engulfed West Africa until the French conquered the region at the end of the 19th century. The French recognized the historic value of Timbuktu and established a military garrison there to protect the city and patrol the northern regions of the Niger River. But France's dream of enriching itself and its West African colonies off the mineral and agricultural wealth of the region never paid off. By the 1960s, just as modern Mali was getting its start as an independent country, Timbuktu had dwindled, as the British historian Basil Davidson wrote in his book <em>Africa in History</em>, to something \"remote and humble.\"</p>\n<p>Growing up in Colorado, I had little awareness of Africa, but like many American kids I'd heard of Timbuktu because of its odd place in our lexicon. Timbuktu was that far removed place we never quite understood but somehow admired, that little town where we'd stopped once for gas in Utah on some family trip, or that road through the western Colorado sagebrush where my high school track team's bus broke down. \"Here we are,\" someone would say, \"stuck in Timbuktu.\" I loved the very sound of the word, Timbuktu, the way its syllables bounce expectantly off the tongue. And I desperately wanted to go there.</p>\n<p>I finally got my wish in July 1986, while on vacation from my work as a Peace Corps English teacher in neighboring Niger. I took a bush taxi into the city of Timbuktu, a barely functioning Peugeot 504 station wagon over the worst road I have ever traveled. Pulverized dust billowed like soapsuds, hiding deep ruts that pinched and punctured three of the four tires. The 30-mile journey from where I'd picked up the taxi on the main north-south road became a two-day ordeal. When we drove into Timbuktu in late afternoon, I was exhausted and, I admit, disappointed. Low brown mud buildings defined the architecture, giving it a temporary feeling. Sand drifted along the foundations of buildings, which oddly reassured me. I'd definitely arrived at the Sahara. What surprised me most was when I drank water from a well in the city, not from a faucet, and it tasted clear and cool right from the desert itself.</p>\n<p>Timbuktu's only hotel at that time was full, so I spent two nights on a mat on the concrete patio of a local bar, a bordello really, and then I fled back the way I'd come. The heat was awful and, as Caillié wrote in his memoirs, there was no way to escape it day or night. I slept little and discarded my mosquito net at night for fear it would block the slightest breeze. I had enough energy to check out Caillié's living quarters, marked by a bronze plaque. In the end, though, I could not agree with his descriptions of Timbuktu. \"Everything,\" he wrote, \"had a dull appearance.\"</p>\n<p>I found the city and desert beyond to be one of the most beautiful and haunting landscapes I've ever seen. At night, the desert sky was so bright and clear it seemed to rest right on the rooftops. During the day, the city and landscape blended into the blinding pale sky as if Timbuktu itself were floating on a cloud. I loved how the wind continuously rubbed the tops of dunes, blurring them into the horizon and forming ridges that looked as if they'd been pressed by a giant thumb and forefinger. This is part of the reason why I keep going back to the Sahel and the southern Sahara -- because the land is so big and so extreme. The other reason, and perhaps it's not all that surprising, is that the people who live there are so resilient.</p>\n<p>Here is what I mean: In 1991, when it looked like the country was doomed to suffocate under military dictatorship and places like Timbuktu would fade away entirely, Mali cast off the military and ushered in an era of change. Mali's democracy, corrupt though it was, sped up the country's development -- building roads, schools, hospitals, hotels; organizing its national archives; and retooling the infrastructure of the capital, Bamako.</p>\n<p>In 1988, the U.N. cultural organization UNESCO named three mosques and 16 mausoleums in Timbuktu to its World Heritage list, making the city the rock of Mali's tourist industry. Universities, international organizations, and philanthropists began pumping in millions of dollars to protect and catalog the artifacts and libraries of Timbuktu, including tombs of Muslim saints and warriors dating to the 15th century. There are, according to UNESCO, some 60 privately held libraries in Timbuktu and more than 700,000 ancient manuscripts, most of them connected to the Muslim heritage of much of West and North Africa, as well as southern Europe. During the last 21 years, according to Cherif Keita, professor of African culture and literature at Carleton College in the United States, \"Timbuktu has been undergoing something of a renaissance, really.\"</p>\n<p>All of this, we now know, is being swept away by the Islamist rebel groups who have hijacked the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali and taken its most important population centers, including Timbuktu, in a bid to impose sharia law on all of Mali. In the last few weeks, fighters from the group Ansar Dine, which is Arabic for \"Defenders of the Faith,\" have begun <a href=\"http://www.voanews.com/content/armed-militants-resume-destruction-timbuktu-shrines/1382114.html\">methodically destroying</a> ancient tombs and mosques in Timbuktu, which is said to have been the home at one time or another of 333 Muslim saints. Using rifle butts, picks, and shovels, they bashed in the entrance to the Sidi Yahia mosque, named for one of the first imams of Timbuktu. The long-sealed doorway, legend claimed, would not be opened until the last day of the world. In Gao, the city north of Timbuktu that was former capital of the Songhai Empire, they have reportedly damaged the Tomb of Askia Muhammad, the most powerful of the Songhai emperors and a devout Muslim.</p>\n<p>But the Taliban may have set the precedent for such attacks when they destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas, two mammoth 6th century statues carved from a sandstone cliff in Afghanistan. Despite pleas from the international community, Taliban soldiers dynamited them in 2001. Over the ensuing decade, attacks on Muslim holy sites by Islamic militants have ensued with sad regularity in Iraq and even recently in Libya, where militants have taken advantage of the chaos following the fall of the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi. In Mali, the destruction in Timbuktu marks a conflict within Islam itself. Hard-line Salafi Muslims, who make up groups like Ansar Dine and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, condemn the existence of icons they say worshipers may hold above god, while the local Sufi practice of Islam tolerates icons and the playing of music, though not as objects of worship.</p>\n<p>But Timbuktu has become so much more than its ancient history. The Timbuktu region is also the childhood home of the celebrated guitarist and singer, the late Ali Farka Toure, who grew up in a village near the city. He started a tradition of mixing African and western musical styles that other musicians in the region have followed. Timbuktu itself has also become a center for West African music, drawing thousands in the cool month of January to the semi-annual <a href=\"http://www.festival-au-desert.org/\">Festival in the Desert</a> concert, which this year drew the singer Bono as its star event. The Tuareg rebellion that launched northern Mali's present troubles started only weeks later and no plans have been announced for a future festival. It a shame, as Mali seemed to be making real progress. The government had already paved most of the major north-south highway to Gao and was working on the road into Timbuktu, as well as a canal to bring the Niger River to the city's doorstep (which would have certainly pleased Caillié).</p>\n<p>But the music and the construction has fallen silent now, replaced by the sharp blows of axes and the spitting of gunfire. And yet, across the spread of 1,000 years of history, this is nothing new in Timbuktu, which has been occupied and sacked by numerous armies, from the Tuaregs to the Songhai to the Arabs, from the Moors to the French. The last serious occupation, one that did real physical damage to the city according to Keita, was when the Moors invaded and toppled the Songhai Empire in 1591. But no one and no force of nature, not even the Sahara -- whose sands creep up the foundations of the city's homes -- has been able to wipe Timbuktu off the map. Somehow the city has survived, losing bits of its heritage here and there, but keeping most of it intact. And Keita, who descends from people who fled Timbuktu during the Moorish invasion, said that invaders over the centuries added their own touch to the fabled city. \"You can still find Moorish style windows in buildings throughout the town,\" he said. \"Timbuktu has always had a genius for being able to absorb its invaders.\"</p>\n<p>But the methodical aggression of groups like Ansar Dine don't bring with them architecture or history of their own. And there's much more than earthen tombs and mosques at risk. \"The spirit of Islam goes back to the tenth century in this region,\" explains Keita. \"They are killing the soul of Islam.\"</p>\n</div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<div>\n <div>\n </div>\n</div>"
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"title" : "New York Times, Gretchen Morgenson Applaud British, Issue Challenge To American Regulators Over LIBOR Scandal",
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"content" : "<p>The <em>New York Times </em>and its outstanding financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson have published an important article about the LIBOR banking crisis challenging American regulators to take this mess as seriously as the British appear to be</p>\n<p>We found out just over a week ago that Barclays CEO Bob Diamond as well</p>"
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"title" : "Ghana's rival Dagbon royals risk pulling the country apart",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/58594?ns=guardian&pageName=Ghana%27s+rival+Dagbon+royals+risk+pulling+the+country+apart%3AArticle%3A1769612&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Ghana+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Afua+Hirsch&c7=12-Jul-05&c8=1769612&c9=Article&c10=Feature%2CNews&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&c42=News&h2=GU%2FNews%2FWorld+news%2FGhana\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>In Yendi's palaces, competitors for the throne threaten to reignite a murderous conflict between the Abudu and Andani families</p><p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yendi\" title=\"\">Yendi</a>'s glory days are far behind it. Set in the arid savannah of northern Ghana, the town was once the seat of the ruler of the 15th-century kingdom of Dagbon. Now, it has the air of a small and impoverished provincial capital. The only remaining clues to its pre-colonial might are its plethora of royal palaces.</p><p>The palaces are home to two rival branches of Dagbon royalty, the Abudu and Andani families, whose competing claims to the throne have been resolved for 200 years by a system of alternating succession. Ten years ago, however, on 27 March 2002, members of the <a href=\"http://articles.latimes.com/2005/feb/27/news/adfg-ghana27\" title=\"\">Abudu family stormed the palace of the Andani king, Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II</a>, decapitating and immolating the old ruler and murdering up to 40 other royal servants and advisers.</p><p>Now, after more than a decade of simmering conflict, the dispute between the two lines seems set to boil over, tipping the region into conflict. The dispute has brought development in Dagbon to a halt and may even, some fear, pull the country apart.</p><p>Abdoulaye Yakubu Andani, the \"caretaker regent\" of Dagbon who is his family's candidate to succeed the murdered king, lives in the <a href=\"http://www.modernghana.com/news/21703/1/government-to-restore-gbewaa-palace.html\" title=\"\">Gbewaa palace</a>, newly built by the government of Ghana to a level of luxury that far distinguishes Andani from most of his subjects. Neatly framed pictures of former <em>ya-nas</em> [kings] adorn the wall, and a 52-inch Sony Bravia flatscreen TV – current retail price in Ghana about £3,000 – is fixed for ease of viewing from the throne.</p><p>\"What happened in 2002 was inhuman,\" Andani said. \"Forty people murdered in cold blood. So many questions remain unanswered.\"</p><p>Next door, the ruins of the old Gbewaa Palace remain a crime scene, surrounded by barbed wire, riddled with bullet holes and watched over by five military guard posts.</p><p>The Abudu family seat a few hundred metres away is different again.</p><p>Peeling paint and dangling electrical wiring speak of neglect and poverty. The throne is set in a small clearing in a pile of junk at one end of a corridor, beneath a dirty fan. The only decoration is a collection of useful phone numbers scribbled on the wall and a showbiz-style calendar featuring the Abudu pretender, Abdulai Mahamadu, known as the Bolin Lana. Its glossy pages show a young man who looks a decade younger than his official age of 38, wearing his trademark red animal skin headpiece adorned with various spiritual and magical regalia.</p><p>Mahamadu spoke only through his guardian, an old man with two teeth and a straggly beard who explains that it is not befitting for Mahamadu to address anyone directly. The new Gbewaa Palace was their true home, he insisted, and as long as it was occupied by Andanis, they would continue their struggle.</p><p>If there is one thing Abudus and Andanis agree on, it is that politics has played a toxic role in their rivalry, turning the relationship from tolerance – the communities once intermarried and lived side by side – to conflict. With national elections due in December, observers fear the growing anger between the families will spill over into violence during the campaign.</p><p>The perpetrators of the <a href=\"http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=67482\" title=\"\">Yendi massacre</a> have never been brought to justice. <a href=\"http://www.thestatesmanonline.com/pages/news_detail.php?newsid=9957&section=1\" title=\"\">A trial last year of 15 Abudus resulted in acquittal</a>, while a manifesto promise by Ghana's ruling NDC party of an official inquiry into the murders never materialised.</p><p>The Andanis insist the party in government at the time, the NPP – currently in opposition – played an active role in the massacre, which it vehemently denies.</p><p>\"Where were the police when our palace was under attack?\" Abdoulaye Yakubu Andani said. \"Where were the security agents? And the weapons that were used – you wonder that the people of this town had such sophisticated weapons and were firing like people who were trained. We believe that some people were brought in from elsewhere.\"</p><p>The Abudus, who admit members of their family perpetrated the killing, likewise have their suspicions as to who fomented the violence.</p><p>\"The pictures of weapons and ammunition retrieved from the palace that emerged after the events of 2002 included a machine gun that you can mount and shoot, countless AK47s, the private car of the <em>ya-na</em> with several guns in the boot,\" said Dr Ziblim Iddi, a professor of political science at the University of Ghana who speaks for the Abudu family, implying that the Andanis were prepared for a violent confrontation.</p><p>The Abudus claim a legitimate grievance against the Andanis. They are still seething from a decision by the military regime that ruled Ghana in the 1970s to strip the then-Abudu king, with about 60 chiefs beneath him, of his title.</p><p>Abdulai IV – Mahamadu's father – died in 1988 but has still not been buried. This issue has played a central role in the deadlock between the two sides. Dagbon is a place of deeply held and ancient beliefs, with a power structure reliant on soothsayers and charms for the most crucial of decisions. \"The funeral can only be done in the Gbewaa Palace,\" said Mba-Dugu Iddrisu, senior adviser to the Bolin Lana. \"If the funeral is not performed, he cannot reach the place of the ancestors – how can anything then be resolved?\"</p><p>The Abudus believe the Andanis have created their own fate by endorsing the events of 1974. \"[Stripping a king of his title] is not known in Dagbon,\" said Mba-Dugu Iddrisu. \"We have our traditional beliefs. If you wrong the tradition, if something is forbidden and you go against the gods, you will be punished for it.\"</p><p>The irony of the situation, which has seen countless failed attempts at mediation and even a formal roadmap to peace led by another famous Ghanaian king, the king of Ashanti, is that the entire community is suffering.</p><p>The failure to agree on who should become the new <em>ya-na</em> has created a power vacuum, which leaves the region without anyone able to sign leases and process land sales.</p><p>\"There are 20,000 leases pending in the region,\" said Andani. \"We are talking about people coming to invest and create jobs.\"</p><p>\"I feel it's unfortunate that if someone dies, it means that the citizens in that community should not eat. I am the regent, acting in the capacity of my father. I don't see why I should not sign leases. It is for the benefit of everyone.\"</p><p>The crisis has seriously affected investment in the north, according to a source at the government land agencies who did not want to be named. \"Most demand for land in this region is from outsiders who want to develop land for commercial use,\" he said. \"A lot of banks are coming here, looking for land to develop and property to buy – filling stations and office buildings should be springing up. The crisis is holding all this up, and that makes this even more serious.\"</p><p>The failure of development in Dagbon – which is known somewhat ironically as the development capital of West Africa with its plethora of NGOs and initiatives such as women's <a href=\"http://www.akomaskincare.co.uk/\" title=\"\">shea butter</a> collectives – is a cause as well as a result of the conflict in Dagbon, as both sides in the dispute acknowledge that their most formidable enemy is poverty.</p><p>\"Life in Yendi is hard. We don't have money. As soon as we have finished school we leave – to go to Accra or to other countries. When I finish school I want to go to the USA,\" said Mohamed Abdullai, an 18-year-old student, a member of the Abudu family and follower of the Bolin Lana.</p><p>\"The problems in Yendi are very, very extreme,\" said Baba Idrissu, the NDC's MP for Yendi. \"There is an absence of security, it puts off investors. Who wants to invest in an area that still has the propensity to have war? Most of the NGOs have fled. When there is any little skirmish the first they do is burn businesses.\"</p><p>As Ghana's elections approach, the clear allegiances between rival political parties, and the centuries-old family feud in Dagbon have prompted unease in a region already predisposed to swiftly escalating violence.</p><p>\"We have plenty guns. They came from Europe, from America. We go to buy guns. If people misbehave or they are ignorant, we kill them\", said Abdullai, voicing his anger at the refusal of the Andanis to allow the funeral of Abdulai IV.</p><p>It is the potential of this anger to spill over into other parts of Ghana that causes the most serious alarm here. Dagombas, as members of the Dagbon kingdom are known, are the second largest ethnic group in Ghana and by no means confined to the rural north of the country.</p><p>\"The <em>ya-na</em> murder set a precedent for violent murder, and people are very bitter that their king was treated in this way,\" said Andani. \"Any crack in the Dagbon kingdom is going to escalate everywhere else in the country.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ghana\">Ghana</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/afuahirsch\">Afua Hirsch</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IVZIzdK4dOpV7DiheKC-1YrnisQ/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IVZIzdK4dOpV7DiheKC-1YrnisQ/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IVZIzdK4dOpV7DiheKC-1YrnisQ/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/IVZIzdK4dOpV7DiheKC-1YrnisQ/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "Mali: Worldwide Inactivity Over Destruction of Timbuktu Shrines",
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"content" : "<p>June 30, 2012, will go down in history as one of the most devastating dates for Mali and for its cultural heritage. In reaction to UNESCO placing <a href=\"http://blogs.reuters.com/africanews/2012/07/05/timbuktu-tomb-destroyers-pulverise-islams-history/\">Timbuktu</a> on the <a href=\"http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/893\">List of World Heritage in Danger</a>, the Islamists of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_Dine\">Ansar Dine</a> (one of the armed groups controlling northern Mali) set about demolishing the shrines of Muslim saints in the city of Timbuktu.</p>\n<p>On June 30, saharamedias.net <a href=\"http://fr.saharamedias.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3339%3Atombouctou--ancar-edine-entame-la-destruction-des-mausolees&catid=1%3Aactu&Itemid=2&lang=fr\">wrote</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Les combattants du mouvement ont détruit des mausolées construits comme étant les tombeaux de savants et saints jouissant d’une grande estime au sein des populations de la ville historique, avec comme objectif d’ôter toute trace permettant de déterminer l’emplacement de ces lieux.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The fighters destroyed shrines constructed as tombs for scholars and saints that are revered by the people of the historic city. They sought to eliminate all traces of these sites so that it would be impossible to find them again.</div>\n<p>A correspondent for saharamedias.net who witnessed the <a href=\"http://fr.saharamedias.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3341%3Asahara-media-accompagne-ancar-edine-en-train-de-demolir-les-mausolees-de-tombouctou&catid=1%3Aactu&Itemid=2&lang=en\">attacks</a> [fr], reported on the fanaticism surrounding this sacrilege:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Les démolitions avaient un caractère particulier. Un homme qui remercie Dieu après avoir détruit un tombeau plus protubérant que les autres ; un autre qui loue Allah de leur avoir accordé toutes ses victoires et de leur avoir permis d’appliquer Sa Loi sur terre’ ; Un troisième qui savoure la victoire et souhaite qu’il en soit ainsi dans tous les pays du monde musulman.</p></blockquote>\n<div>These attacks were of a specific nature. A man thanked God after destroying one of the more prominent tombs; another praised Allah for having granted them all of their victories and allowing them to apply ‘God's Law here on Earth'. A third man relished the victory and wished that it could be this way in every country in the Muslim world.</div>\n<p>Even if the destruction of the tomb of Saint <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidi_Mahmoud_Ben_Amar\">Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar</a>, which <a href=\"http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/05/201256174145780614.html\">took place</a> on May 4, is what is occupying much of the conversation, there is no doubt as to the fate of the 15 other sites. Indeed, according to Sanda Ould Boumama (spokesperson for Ansar Dine in Timbuktu) in a <a href=\"http://actu-senegalaise.senego.com/ansar-eddine-va-detruire-tous-les-mausolees-de-saints-de-tombouctou_23439.html\">post</a> [fr] on senego.com:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Ansar Edine va détruire aujourd’hui tous les mausolée de la ville. Tous les mausolées sans exception</p></blockquote>\n<div>Ansar Dine is going to destroy today all of the shrines in the city—all of the shrines, without exception.</div>\n<p>Maghreb Emergent tries to find an <a href=\"http://maghrebemergent.com/actualite/fil-maghreb/11821-mali-des-membres-daqmi-profanent-le-mausolee-de-sidi-amar-a-tombouctou.html\">explanation</a> [fr] for the Islamists’ furious attacks against sites representing the collective memory of the people of Mali and their contributions to the world’s cultural heritage:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Outre les mosquées, le site classé compte 16 cimetières et mausolées qui étaient des composantes essentielles du système religieux dans la mesure où, selon la croyance populaire, ils étaient le rempart qui protégeait la ville de tous les dangers</p></blockquote>\n<div>In addition to the mosques, the classified property counts 16 cemeteries and mausoleums as essential components of the religious system. According to popular belief, these sites were the ramparts that protected the city from all dangers.</div>\n<div style=\"width:317px\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/upyernoz/6919202/\"><img title=\"'Centre de recherches historiques ahmed baba' (CEDRHAB) is a research center that aims to protect Timbuktu's historic sites. By upyernoz on FlikR. License CC-BY\" src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/6919202_d194bf1748_z.jpg\" alt=\"'Centre de recherches historiques ahmed baba' (CEDRHAB) is a research center that aims to protect Timbuktu's historic sites. By upyernoz on FlikR. License CC-BY\" width=\"307\" height=\"198\"></a><p>‘Centre de recherches historiques ahmed baba' (CEDRHAB) is a research center that aims to protect Timbuktu's historic sites. By upyernoz on FlikR. License CC-BY</p></div>\n<p>There were many reactions on the blogosphere.</p>\n<p>On the portal of French daily newspaper, lemonde.fr, various contributors commented on the story including Michèle Faudrin, who <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/portfolio/2012/06/28/tombouctou-placee-par-l-unesco-sur-la-liste-du-patrimoine-en-peril_1726248_3212.html\">opined in an article</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Les islamistes ont détruit plusieurs monuments…autodafé ! Entre eux et nous un fossé ; Ils sont intolérants, nous nous efforçons d'être tolérants. Ils ne tolèrent pas notre tolérance, nous ne tolérons pas leur intolérance.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The Islamists destroyed many monuments…it is an auto-da-fé! [refers to the rituals of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-f%C3%A9\">public penance</a> imposed on condemned heretics during the Spanish Inquisition.] There is a rift between them and us: They are intolerant, while we strive to be tolerant. They do not tolerate our tolerance, and we do not tolerate their intolerance.</div>\n<p>Commenting on an article published on tempsreel.nouvelobs.com, nouen marie-claude <a href=\"http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20120630.OBS5682/les-mausolees-de-tombouctou-detruits-les-uns-apres-les-autres.html\">expressed her fears</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Quelle tristesse ! On ne peut plus trouver de mots pour qualifier un tel délire ! ……Ils sont déjà en Afghanistan , en Syrie , un peu partout en Afrique ….ils me font penser aux nazis qui ont commencé ..par brûler des livres …….L'Europe a un incendie en face de ses côtes méditerranéennes….allumé par des inquisiteurs au 21 ème siècle ….Horrifiée et inquiète !</p></blockquote>\n<div>What a tragedy! We cannot find the words to describe this madness!…They are already in Afghanistan, in Syria, almost everywhere in Africa…they seem to me like Nazis, who began by burning books…Europe has a fire on its Mediterranean coasts, ignited by 21st-century inquisitors… I am horrified and terrified!</div>\n<p>Reacting to the same article, Kangoo Durant <a href=\"http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20120630.OBS5682/les-mausolees-de-tombouctou-detruits-les-uns-apres-les-autres.html\">wrote</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>ils se dissent agir au nom de DIEU, ils ont vu DIEU ces malades???? Faudrait leur dire que DIEU bâti, il ne démolit pas des lieux saints lui étant destinés. Mais avant toute chose, ce sont des lieux de l'histoire humaine, avec des âmes!</p></blockquote>\n<div>They claim to act in the name of GOD, but have these people actually heard of GOD???? Someone should tell them that GOD builds—not destroys—places intended for saints. But above all, these are places that belongs to human history—places that have souls!</div>\n<p><a title=\"Ahmed Mouhlay\" href=\"http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/ahmedmouhlay\">Ahmed Mouhlay</a> <a href=\"http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20120630.OBS5682/les-mausolees-de-tombouctou-detruits-les-uns-apres-les-autres.html\">thinks</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>A ce niveau, on quitte le domaine de la croyance/religion pour entrer dans celui de la psychiatrie. Une opération “de force” contre ces gens-là ne serait pas une guerre, mais une thérapie.</p></blockquote>\n<div>At this level, one leaves the domain of belief/religion and enters that of psychiatry. An “operation of force” against these people would not be war, but therapy.</div>\n<p><a title=\"Marc Esnoult\" href=\"http://leplus.nouvelobs.com/marcesnoult\">Marc Esnoult</a> <a href=\"http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20120630.OBS5682/les-mausolees-de-tombouctou-detruits-les-uns-apres-les-autres.html\">believes</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Nouvel Afghanistan, mais plus près. Nous ne comprenons pas bien cette histoire de saints musulmans rejetés par les islamistes extrémistes; peut-être représentation interdite par la charia; c'était plus net en Afghanistan quand les statues préislamiques ont été détruites par les talibans. Il serait étonnant qu'il n'y ait pas là-bas des camps d'entrainement type Al qaida.</p></blockquote>\n<div>New Afghanistan, but even closer. We do not understand well this history of Muslim saints rejected by Islamic extremists. Perhaps such representation is forbidden by the Sharia. This was clearer in Afghanistan when the Taliban destroyed pre-Islamic statues. It is amazing that Mali doesn’t have Al Qaeda-like training camps.</div>\n<p>On Twitter, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/Toshikoshi\">@Toshikoshi </a>commenting on a post published by slateafrique.com <a href=\"http://www.slateafrique.com/85133/pourquoi-il-faut-sauver-tombouctou-aqmi-azawad\">thinks</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/SlateAfrique/status/221134093126090752\">@Toshikoshi</a>: Un véritable génocide culturel s'est opéré à <a title=\"#Tombouctou\" href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23Tombouctou\"><s>#</s>Tombouctou</a> -http://goo.gl/XKRzX</p></blockquote>\n<div><a href=\"https://twitter.com/SlateAfrique/status/221134093126090752\">@Toshikoshi</a>: A veritable cultural genocide is taking place in <a title=\"#Timbuktu\" href=\"https://twitter.com/search/%23timbuktu\"><s>#</s>Timbuktu</a> -http://goo.gl/XKRzX</div>\n<p>Twitter user <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/hdstanton1\"> @hdstanton1 </a>concludes:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://twitter.com/hdstanton1/status/219222769840291841\">@hdstanton1</a>: <s><a title=\"#Tombouctou\" href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23Tombouctou\">#</a></s><a title=\"#Tombouctou\" href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/search/%23Tombouctou\">Tombouctou</a> Au delà de la destruction des mausolées, les islamistes veulent montrer qu'ils détruiront toute civilisat° étrangère à leur dogme.”</p></blockquote>\n<div><a href=\"http://twitter.com/hdstanton1/status/219222769840291841\">@hdstanton1</a>: <a title=\"#Timbuktu\" href=\"https://twitter.com/search/%23timbuktu\"><s>#</s>Timbuktu</a> Beyond the destruction of the shrines, the Islamists want to show that they will destroy all foreign civilization with their dogma.</div>\n<div></div>\n<div>This following <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/5min/20120523-mali-le-momunent-martyrs-tombouctou-saccage-islamistes\">reaction</a> [fr] from Toni972, published last May 24 on the site rfi.fr after the first crimes of the extremists, remains relevant today. It sums up the situation: a paralyzed Malian government and an international community whose silence is deafening:</div>\n<div>\n<blockquote><p>C'est d'autant plus révoltant que le gouvernement malien ne peut rien pour lutter efficacement contre ces intrus, sachant que la seule solution pour les éradiquer est une lutte armée sans merci. On ne négocie pas avec avec des terroristes on les élimine physiquement purement et simplement. Vivement une intervention musclée pour que ces régions redeviennent libres.</p></blockquote>\n<div>It is all the more revolting that the Malian government can do nothing to fight effectively against these intruders, knowing that the only solution to eradicate them is an armed fight without mercy. One does not negotiate with terrorists; one physically eliminates them, pure and simple. Bring on the armed intervention, in order for these regions to become free again.</div>\n</div>\n<p>Temoust.org, <a href=\"http://www.temoust.org/tombouctou-entre-l-azawad-et-la,15946\">thinks</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Pour tout cela, la situation désastreuse que vit Tombouctou n’est pas qu’une affaire interne au Mali. Elle intéresse l’humanité entière car cette fois, il ne s’agit pas de chasser un dictateur, mais bien d’effacer la trace d’une humanité entière, sa mémoire, ses rites, ses traditions, ses langues et, bien sûr, l’enjeu, la mort d’une des villes dont les mausolées et les demeures d’hommes et de femmes s’ouvrent sur le désert.</p></blockquote>\n<div>For all of this, the disastrous situation seen in Timbuktu is not only an internal affair in Mali. It concerns all of humanity because this time, it is not to hunt a dictator, but rather to obliterate all traces of humanity—its memory, its rites, its traditions, its languages, and of course, the heart of the matter, the death of a city whose shrines and the ancestral homes of men and women are open to the desert.</div>\n<p>While Irina Bokova, the Director-General of UNESCO, <a href=\"http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/901\">expresses </a> her distress and dismay, the Islamists continue their attacks and force people to submit to Sharia [Islamic law], all the while being reinforced by the arrival of new troops. The site malikounda.com <a href=\"http://www.malikounda.com/Actualites/nord-mali-les-djihadistes-algeriens-debarquent-a-gao.html\">reported</a> [fr] the arrival in Timbuktu of about 30 Algerian jihadists on June 29.</p>\n<p>The first crimes provoked a <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/20/109088/\">violent reaction</a> [fr] with protests in the streets and clashes with the terrorists. This time, unfortunately, people living in terror and reduced to silence may not find leaders who will drive them to new protests.</p>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/author/abdoulaye-bah/\" title=\"View all posts by Abdoulaye Bah\">Abdoulaye Bah</a></span> · <span>Translated by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/sara-gold/\" title=\"View all posts by Sara Gold\">Sara Gold</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/07/02/114474/\" title=\"View original post [fr]\">View original post [fr]</a></span> · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/07/06/mali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (0) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F&text=Mali%3A+Worldwide+Inactivity+Over+Destruction+of+Timbuktu+Shrines&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F&title=Mali%3A+Worldwide+Inactivity+Over+Destruction+of+Timbuktu+Shrines\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F&title=Mali%3A+Worldwide+Inactivity+Over+Destruction+of+Timbuktu+Shrines\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F&title=Mali%3A+Worldwide+Inactivity+Over+Destruction+of+Timbuktu+Shrines\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F07%2F06%2Fmali-worldwide-inactivity-over-destruction-of-timbuktu-shrines%2F&title=Mali%3A+Worldwide+Inactivity+Over+Destruction+of+Timbuktu+Shrines\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"title" : "Break It Down",
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"content" : "<p><img title=\"640px-Frans_Hogenberg_Bildersturm_1566\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/640px-Frans_Hogenberg_Bildersturm_1566-383x281.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"281\"></p>\n<p>In a dry landscape, men work. With axes, hammers, and other tools, they break stones. It is hard work, from the looks of it, but they do it seriously. They are enthusiastic, and work as a team. Something is being cleared away, perhaps in preparation for something else to be built. A small walled house, made of hardened mud bricks and just a little taller than human height, comes crashing down. When the dust settles, the men, finding the large chunks of rubble unsatisfactory, reduce them further. With a pick, one man hits a flat concrete slab on which inscriptions are visible. At first, the pick glances, unequal to the task. But soon the slab is crossed by hairline cracks and begins to split. Two other men wander near the wall that has just come down. In the sand around their feet are large clay pots, and with effortless little kicks, like bored boys, they break the pots. Stone, mud, clay: patiently they break everything down. And a little distance away, behind the safety of a metal gate, some people watch the men at work. The watchers let the work continue undisturbed. They do nothing, are able to do nothing, about the demolition in process, the demolition of old Sufi shrines. Between the workers and their watchers, there is a difference in power. An automatic gun, resting on some stones, ignored but unignorable, indicates that difference.<span></span></p>\n<p>In August 1566, an angry Calvinist crowd in the Flemish town of Steenvoorde attacked the pilgrimage church of Sint-Laurensklooster, destroying its art and architecture, and killing several of its priests. In the weeks that followed, the violence spread to the major Flemish cities of Antwerp and Ghent. And though there had been periodic outbreaks of iconoclasm all through European history — in Byzantine times, and then with renewed frequency in the age of Reformation — there had never been anything quite like the “Beeldenstorm,” the Dutch “storm of statues” of the late 16th century. Sir Richard Clough, a Welsh merchant then living in Antwerp, was an eyewitness to the destruction, and in a letter to London, he wrote of that he saw:</p>\n<p>“All the churches, chapels and houses of religion utterly defaced, and no kind of thing left whole within them, but broken and utterly destroyed, being done after such order and by so few folks that it is to be marvelled at.” He described the Church of Our Lady in Antwerp as looking “like hell with above 10,000 churches burning and such a noise as if heaven and earth had got together, with falling of images and beating down of costly works such sort that the spoil was so great that a man could not well pass through the church.</p>\n<p>Images are powerful. They can bring people into such a pitch of discomfort that violence ensues, and iconoclasm carries within itself two paradoxical traits: thoroughness and fury. The men (they are in Timbuktu) in their hardworking but boyish ways, and with their automatic weapons, are a good example of this thoroughness, and this cheerful, impish fury.</p>\n<p>In early 2001, in the Bamyan valley of central Afghanistan, a pair of monumental statues of the Buddha, intricately carved into the sandstone of a cliff in the 6th century, were dynamited and reduced to rubble. The larger of the statues was 180 feet high. The destruction was not easy: it took weeks. This act of straightforward iconoclasm was done at the direct order of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. He had thought the Buddhas had some tourism value in 1999, but he changed his mind less than two years later, declaring them idols. And so the dynamite was laid, and where the Buddhas were, where they stood in their graceful embodiment of Gandhara art, in their fine blend of Greek and Buddhist artistic ideals, there now stands only silence, emptiness, a pair of monumental alcoves.</p>\n<p>Iconoclasm is nominally about theology. Images which represent the wrong ideas must be expunged. But why be so furious about ideas? And, so, how are we to understand the ongoing destruction of Sufi shrines in the north of Mali? Ansar Dine, the rebel group that now controls Timbuktu, believes itself to be doing the will of God. The United Nations doesn’t matter, Ansar Dine has said, UNESCO is irrelevant, only God’s law matters. The locals are helpless, and horrified. Short of witnessing grievous bodily harm, few things are as astonishing as seeing the casual, physical destruction of what one holds sacred.</p>\n<p>Surely, the Muslim piety of “the city of 333 saints” (as Timbuktu is known) should correspond to the Muslim piety of Ansar Dine, should it not? So far, eight mausoleums have been broken, many tombs destroyed, and the rebels are determined to continue the destruction. Their version of Islam — Salafist, fundamentalist — considers the syncretic practices of Malian Sufism, with its veneration of saints and incorporation of vernacular practices, haram. There is no direct Qur’anic proscription on image-making, but the Traditions of the Prophet, the Hadiths, object to using images to usurp God’s creative power. From those Hadiths come such narratives as the one in the 9th century “Book of Idols”:</p>\n<blockquote><p>When on the day he conquered Mecca, the Apostle of God appeared before the Ka’bah, he found idols arrayed around it. Thereupon he started to pierce their eyes with the point of his arrow, saying, ‘Truth is come and falsehood vanished. Verily, falsehood is a thing that vanisheth [Qur’an 17:81].’ He then ordered that they be knocked down, after which they were taken out and burned.</p></blockquote>\n<p>On French radio, Sanda Ould Boumana, a spokesman for Ansar Dine, expressed their activity in strikingly similar terms: “When the Prophet entered Mecca he said that all the mausoleums should be destroyed. And that’s what we’re repeating.” And that is why, more than a thousand years after he died, the tomb of the saint Sidi Mahmoudou has, in this past week, been destroyed and desecrated.</p>\n<p>A peculiarity of the Timbuktu iconoclasm is that these shrines are architectural rather than representationally sculptural. They are generally modest in size, and usually made of mud. There is little of the opulence that might have maddened the 16th century Flemish mob, and none of the lifelike mimesis of human form that offended sensibilities in the Bamyan Valley. In Timbuktu, a once wealthy trading city, in a place once fabled for its wealth and learning, now swallowed up by the Sahel, these mausolea are expressions of local practice: simple and old beliefs in a land of griots and marabouts, the kind of syncretism common to all the big world religions, owing as much to universal edicts as to what works for the people in their land, in their language, and according to their pre-conversion customs of veneration.</p>\n<p>There is in iconoclasm an emotional content that is directly linked to the iconoclasts’ own psychology. The theological pretext for image destruction is that images are powerless, less than God, uneffective as a source of succour, and therefore disposable. But in reality, iconoclasm is motivated by the iconoclast’s profound belief in the power of the image being destroyed. The love iconoclasts have for icons is a love that dare not speak its name.</p>\n<p>Iconoclastic hostility is complex. It expresses itself in different ways all through history. But what is generally true of iconoclastic movements is that they are never about theology alone. They include politics, struggles for power, the effort to humiliate an enemy, and a demonstration of iconoclasts’ own neuroses. Behind iconoclastic bravado is a terror of magic, a belief in dead saints no less than that of iconophiles and, crucially, a historical anxiety that, in the Timbuktu case, is about presenting the bona fides of Ansar Dine to its Wahhabi models in Saudi Arabia and to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.</p>\n<p>That which doesn’t speak dumbfounds. After all, who can tell what such objects are thinking? Best to destroy the inscrutable, the ancient, if one is to truly usher in a pure new world. So, the invaders continue their work in Timbuktu with enthusiasm and good cheer, smashing pots, breaking bricks, rattling at the doors of the mosque. It takes a lot of work to silence silent objects. But already it is clear that not only the people watching from behind the gate are consumed with fear.</p>"
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"title" : "For EVER YOUNG: The Iconic Photography of James Barnor",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:594px\"><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/5000602591_d9c42cf3a6_z.jpg\"><img title=\"5000602591_d9c42cf3a6_z\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/5000602591_d9c42cf3a6_z.jpg?w=584&h=392\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"392\"></a><p>JAMES BARNOR by Jei Tootle Photography</p></div>\n<p>Ghana’s most prolific photographer, <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/james.barnor\"><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">James Barnor</span></strong></a>, has captured images that detail more than sixty years of significant historical moments. His subjects include the country’s leaders (<strong><span style=\"color:#000000\">Kwame Nkrumah,</span></strong> <strong>Jerry Rawlings</strong> + <strong>A.Q.A. Acheampong</strong>), world prizefighters (<strong>Muhammad Ali</strong> + <strong>Adjetey Sowah</strong>), pop culture starlets (<strong>Marie Hallowi</strong> + <strong>Erlin Ibreck</strong>), and plain old regular folk.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb12.jpg\"><img title=\"Social Documentary\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb12.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/tumblr_lzyx3bcns31qcerqgo1_500.jpg\"><img title=\"Auto_43A_BW.tif\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/tumblr_lzyx3bcns31qcerqgo1_500.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a>Barnor’s immortalizing imagery of everyday people culls the magic from the mundane. He shows us the striking dignity, confident awareness and rippling pleasure of those being photographed.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb6.jpg\"><img title=\"119.tif\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb6.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a>Barnor not only opened Ghana’s first color photo lab, <strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">Ever Young</span> </strong>in James Town (the center of historic Accra) but he went on to travel the world as a photographer with <em>Drum</em> Magazine, the leading African culture publication of the 1950s + 1960s<em></em>.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb13.jpg\"><img title=\"Portrait of women in formal wear in London.\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb13.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb19.jpg\"><img title=\"Autog_3_bw.tif\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb19.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a>Barnor’s images of a nation in transition – from colonization to independence – provide a mesmerizing blueprint of the possibilities of human experience. And his distinct cinematic vision pushes Ghanaian photographers to contribute brave new work to an unfolding national archive.</p>\n<p>Here Barnor shares his<strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"> Ever Young</span> </strong>story (via <a href=\"http://www.nowness.com/day/2010/9/25/985/picture-this\">Nowness</a>) :</p>\n<blockquote><p>So in 1950, aged 21, I rented a small shop in James Town in Accra and opened a studio and dark room. I painted the signboard myself––I named it <span style=\"color:#000000\">EVER YOUNG</span>, after a story I’d heard when I was younger about a goddess who lived in a pretty grove of the same name. The goddess knew she was really old, but a hero came to give her an apple that, as soon as she had eaten it, made her feel fresh and young again. That brings back the magic of retouching in photography––filling all the lines and ridges to make the person look young.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/abp774.jpg\"><img title=\"Auto_90.tif\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/abp774.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb111.jpg\"><img title=\"JB111\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb111.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/auto_17_bw.jpg\"><img title=\"Auto_17_bw\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/auto_17_bw.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a>There was no electricity there when I started so I used the daylight for shoots. There was no running water either, so I had to walk to a communal tap at the end of the road to collect water for developing. I went on to work as a photojournalist at the two main publications in Ghana––the newspaper <em>The Daily Graphic</em>, and <em>Drum</em>, the leading magazine in Africa, which covered news, politics and entertainment.</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb.jpg\"><img title=\"JB\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/2ddb37914b7cb60dbddd26b2c7d0a8d109bc8a5e_m.jpg\"><img title=\"2ddb37914b7cb60dbddd26b2c7d0a8d109bc8a5e_m\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/2ddb37914b7cb60dbddd26b2c7d0a8d109bc8a5e_m.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/aboutme.jpg\"><img title=\"aboutme\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/aboutme.jpg?w=584&h=584\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"584\"></a></p>\n<blockquote><p>Covering politics was where <em>Drum</em> had trouble, because when African countries were becoming independent, and you bring out stories some people don’t like, they would do anything. <em>Drum</em> was banned in Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana at one time.</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/db79e9b2-3d4d-4952-8433-567e0ff15c8b.jpg\"><img title=\"db79e9b2-3d4d-4952-8433-567e0ff15c8b\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/db79e9b2-3d4d-4952-8433-567e0ff15c8b.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb15.jpg\"><img title=\"124.tif\" src=\"http://accradotalttours.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/jb15.jpg?w=584\" alt=\"\"></a><span style=\"color:#000000\">If you are interested in seeing more of James Barnor’s photographic journey, check out</span><strong><span style=\"color:#000000\"> “Ghana – A Heritage Ever Young”</span> </strong>- a three-day exhibit featuring exclusive photos and never-seen-before prints from Barnor’s archive. The exhibition will take place June 30 – July 2nd at the <a href=\"http://mefirighana.com/blog/?tag=silverbird-lounge\">Silverbird Lounge</a> in Accra Mall.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/1425/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/accradotalttours.wordpress.com/1425/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=accradotalttours.wordpress.com&blog=22576869&post=1425&subd=accradotalttours&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The School of Verckys",
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"content" : "<br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DeabNDTNx68/TR9CTVkBXPI/AAAAAAAABI4/CQCkuA6r8bo/s1600/Verckys.gif\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DeabNDTNx68/TR9CTVkBXPI/AAAAAAAABI4/CQCkuA6r8bo/s1600/Verckys.gif\" style=\"height:480px;width:480px\"></a><br><br><b>Note:</b> This post was updated and corrected on July 3, 2012.<br><br>The rambunctious saxophone stylings of Kiamwuangana Mateta "Verckys" are a hallmark of many of the 1960s recordings of Congo's great Orchestre OK Jazz. Bandleader Luambo Makiadi Franco is said to have much valued his improvisational style and invocations of American-style R&B, a counterpoint to the rest of the band's more sedate sound.Verckys attempted a mutiny in l968 while Franco was away in Europe, enticing several of the band members to join him in forming a new orchestra. When Franco returned he was able to convince most of the defectors to come back, but Verckys, unrepentant, launched Orchestre Vévé in 1969. He later managed the careers of up-and-coming bands like Les Grands Maquisards, Bella-Bella, Lipua-Lipua and Empire Bakuba. There was a distinct Verckys sound or "school" exemplified by these groups, which was influential across Africa as I discuss <a href=\"http://likembe.blogspot.com/2010/08/from-congo-via-nigeria.html\">in this post.</a>.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hjs3hd39iR8/T-zHq7O78LI/AAAAAAAABYk/I2y2ksIt4sQ/s1600/Verckys.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin:4px 20px 10px 0px\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hjs3hd39iR8/T-zHq7O78LI/AAAAAAAABYk/I2y2ksIt4sQ/s1600/Verckys.jpg\" width=\"134\"></a></div>By the early 1980s Verckys had established himself as an emperor of the Zaïrean music scene to rival Franco himself, with his own recording studio, record label, nightclub, pressing facility and a stable of the hottest bands in Kinshasa, including various Zaïko Langa-Langa offshoots and Victoria Eleison.<br><br>The 45s I offer here were borrowed from various friends and dubbed onto 10\" tape reels back in the '80s. Several years ago I digitized them, along with a number of other recordings in my library. Unfortunately I didn't think to photocopy the labels, but I copied the recording information from them. These were all pressed in the mid-'70s in Kenya.<br><br>\"Lukani\" (Editions Vévé VV213), composed by Tusevo Nejos and released in 1975, elicits warm feelings of nostalgia across Africa, as typified by these comments on YouTube: \". . .:Brings back childhood memories growing up in eastern Nigeria then. Quite fun listening to my elder ones singing along as the music is being played on the popular IBS radio station. Oh Africa, home of good and undiluted music.\" \". . . Reminds me of the Kampala of the 1970's, when Idi Amin ruled supreme. Remember those bell-bottoms, eh?\":<br><br><b></b><b></b><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Lukani%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Vévé - Lukani Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br>The LP <i>Les Grands Succes de Editions Veve</i> (Sonafric SAS 50039, 1977) features another version of \"Engunduka\" by Orchestre Engunduka. I'd give the edge, though, to Vévé's interpretation of Sax Matalanza's song (Editions Vévé VV-234-N), which starts out somewhat restrained but quickly succumbs to frenzied guitars and some truly insane sax work:<br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Egunduka%20Pts%201%20&%202%20.mp3\">Orchestre Vévé Internationale - Engunduka Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br>According to <a href=\"http://www.mbokamosika.com/article-special-fin-d-annee-l-orchestre-kiam-63670222.html\">Mboka Mosika</a>, Orchestre Kiam was founded in 1974 by Muzola Ngunga. In appreciation for the band's sponsor Kiamwuangana Verckys, who provided its musical instruments, he proposed to name it "Kiam." Orchestre Kiam lacked the distinctive horn section of Vévé and had a radically different style. "Kamiki" (Editions Vévé VV218), which Ngunga composed, was a big hit in 1975. Here the stripped-down guitar sound, scattershot percussion and frantic vocals bring to mind the sound of Orchestre Stukas du Zaïre, a contemporary aggregation:<br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Kamiki%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Kiam - Kamiki Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ekxp5KbGmLQ/T-zIdKmn0uI/AAAAAAAABYw/N2DPqTLjGpM/s1600/Orchestre%2BBella%2BBella%252C%2Bfront.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin:4px 0px 10px 20px\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"175\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ekxp5KbGmLQ/T-zIdKmn0uI/AAAAAAAABYw/N2DPqTLjGpM/s1600/Orchestre%2BBella%2BBella%252C%2Bfront.jpg\" width=\"175\"></a></div>Orchestre Bella-Bella was founded in 1969 by the Soki brothers, Emilie Diazenza and Maxime Vangu. When they hooked up with Verckys and his label Editions Vévé this caused a fair amount of disagreement within the band, leading to the departure of a number of members in 1972. The result, though, was the accession to Bella-Bella of several musicians who were to become leading lights of the Kinshasa music scene, including Malembu Tshibau, Shaba Kahamba, Pepe Kalle and Nyboma Mwan'dido. Dissension continued, however, and Emile left to form his own short-lived group, Bella Mambo, only to rejoin a few months later. By 1973, feeling ripped off, the brothers left Editions Vévé, taking the Bella-Bella name but leaving behind their musical instruments, which were owned by Verckys, and a number of musicians including Pepe Kalle and Nyboma, who became the foundation for a new band, Orchestre Lipua-Lipua.<br><br>The two Bella-Bella songs here, \"Pambi Ndoni\" (Bilanga Bl 001) and \"Nene\"(Editions FrancAfrique EFA 08), were both written by Soki Vangu around 1975 after the break with Verckys. The late '70s were the peak of Bella-Bella's influence, and the group waxed numerous classics including \"Tika Ngai Mobali,\" \"Houleux-Houleux\" and \"Zing Zong.\" In 1977 Soki Diazenza apparently suffered a nervous breakdown. It was all downhill for Bella-Bella from that point and by 1981 it had effectively disappeared.<br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Pambi%20Ndoni%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Bella-Bella - Pambi Ndoni Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Nene%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Bella-Bella - Nene Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br>As recounted above, Orchestre Lipua-Lipua was formed by the musicians who stayed with Editions Vévé after the departure of Bella-Bella in 1973. It too suffered its share of defections, notably that of Pepe Kallé, but soon recruited a number of talented musicians, notably rhythm guitarist Vata Mombassa, who became leader with the departure of Nyboma Mwan'dido and several others in 1975 to found Orchestre Les Kamalé. He is responsible for the next two tracks, \"Bondo\" (ASL ASL 7-2109) and \"Lossa\" (Editions Vévé VV198):<br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Bondo%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Lipua-Lipua - Bondo Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Lossa%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Lipua-Lipua - Lossa Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br>Lipua-Lipua winds things up with Tedia Wamu Mbakidi's scorcher \"Temperature\" (Editions Vévé VV 228N) from 1977. Nzaya Nzayadio's vocals and Santana Mongoley's lead guitar really make this one a standout. Lipua-Lipua would continue on for several years until sputtering out around 1984. Vata Mombassa pursued a solo career, ending up in Abidjan, Ivory Coast where he remains to this day.<br><br><b><a href=\"http://likembe.net/Sounds/Verckys/Temperature%20Pts%201%20&%202.mp3\">Orchestre Lipua-Lipua - Temperature Pts 1 & 2</a></b><br><br>Download the songs in this post as a zipped file <a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?24i61cjx8u2ay3w\">here</a>. For more information on Verckys and his label Editions Vévé, see Alistair Johnston's discography <a href=\"http://www.muzikifan.com/veve.html\">here</a>. The liner notes of <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005Q3PU/ref=dm_dp_cdp?ie=UTF8&s=music\">Vintage Verckys</a></i> (Retroafric RETRO 15CD, 2001) were very helpful in researching this post; in addition the blog <a href=\"http://francopepekalleclassicambiance.blogspot.com/\">Classic Ambiance: Franco and Pepe Kalle Flashback</a> is highly recommended. <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/African-Rock-Stapleton/dp/0525485546/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340912944&sr=1-1&keywords=African+Rock+Stapleton\">African Rock: The Pop Music of a Continent</a></i> by Chris Stapleton and Chris May (Obelisk/Dutton, 1990), <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Congo-Colossus-Life-Legacy-Franco/dp/0952365510/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340913067&sr=1-1&keywords=Congo+Colossus\">Congo Colossus: The Life and Legacy of Franco & OK Jazz</a> </i>by Graeme Ewens (Buku Press, 1994) and <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Rumba-River-History-Popular-Congos/dp/1859843689/ref=sr_1_1_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340912665&sr=1-1&keywords=Rumba+on+the+River\">Rumba on the River</a></i> by Gary Stewart (Verso, 2004) are all excellent reference books. All of these may be purchased or downloaded by clicking on the links.<br><div><br></div>"
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"title" : "Time to “Sex Up” Nigerian History – Max Siollun",
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"content" : "<p><em><strong>Issues</strong> is a new NT series in which academics and policy experts write on their areas of expertise. If you would like to contribute to the series send an email to <a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/olumide-abimbola/\">Olumide</a> (his email address is on the page under the link). </em></p>\n<p><em>The columnist this week is historian Max Siollun.</em></p>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"width:210px\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Herbert_Macaulay.jpg\"><img title=\"Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946)\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Herbert_Macaulay.jpg\" alt=\"Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946)\" width=\"200\" height=\"226\"></a><p>Herbert Macaulay (1864-1946) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)</p></div>\n<p>“I Thought Herbert Macaulay was a White American”</p></blockquote>\n<p>I was literally heartbroken when not too long ago, a Nigerian acquaintance of mine (born and raised in Nigeria) told me that she thought Herbert Macaulay was a white American. She could recite (in chronological order) most of the post World War 2 American Presidents, but she had no idea that Herbert Macaulay was a Nigerian. She was shocked when I told her that Macaulay was to Nigeria, what George Washington was to the United States of America.</p>\n<p>How could a Nigerian born and raised in her own country be so unaware of her country’s past? I soon discovered that she was not (as I hoped) a lone island of historical blindness. When I posted some video clips of Nigeria’s former leaders, Nigerian viewers were stunned by the precise articulation and fluent oratory of men like Balewa and Azikiwe. They seemed totally unaware that Nigeria could actually produce leaders who spoke “Queen’s English” and who sounded intelligent. It occurred to me that probably less than 10% of Nigerians could recognise the voices of Nigeria’s early leaders such as Awolowo or the Sardauna.</p>\n<p><strong>Nigerian History: The elephant in the room</strong><br>\nWhy do so many Nigerians know so little about their own country’s history? The blame…actually….I don’t think “blame” is the right word here, but the federal government must take much RESPONSIBILITY for deliberately imposing a ”history blackout” on Nigeria’s younger generation. Nigerian history is not intensively taught in schools largely because after the civil war, the federal government tried to brush the country’s past under the carpet in order to foster reconciliation. It did not want students to know that the country’s early history was rife with ethnic violence, military coups and people who murdered their political opponents in the middle of the night or during rush hour traffic. Teaching that to young people would be an excellent way to raise a new generation of angry embittered racists.</p>\n<p>Is the government ENTIRELY to blame though? The absence of a library culture, and Nigerians’ quest for ‘professional’ academic paths such as medicine, engineering, law and accountancy, has naturally increased the alienation of history.</p>\n<p><strong>Blame us, not the government </strong><br>\nAre “we” (the writers) also to blame? Reading historical narratives is not the same suspense filled experience of reading a murder-mystery or suspend belief fantasy of a Harry Potter novel. We writers must present Nigerian history as something more than a mechanical rendering of dates and facts. Chimamanda’s Half of a Yellow Sun (although technically a fiction work) has historical credibility because she weaved real life historical figures like Gowon and Ojukwu into the fabric of a fiction novel. In essence she was “teaching” Nigerian history to her readers in a surreptitious manner.</p>\n<p><strong>Time to sex up Nigerian history</strong><br>\nDry, ponderous academic style renditions of Nigerian history will not do. In my writing I have tried to dramatise the historic events I write about, and bring the characters to life, so as to capture the reader’s imagination and momentarily suspend the reader’s belief that what they are reading is in fact….fact! In the popular vernacular of the Iraq war, we must “sex up” Nigerian history. To interest readers in Nigerian history, we must turn our national characters into “stars”. That is the challenge for me and other writers.</p>\n<p><em>Max Siollun is a historian and commentator on Nigerian political and governmental issues, with a focus on those pertaining to Nigerian history and the Nigerian military. He is the author of </em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Oil-Politics-Violence-Nigerias-1966-1976/dp/0875867081/ref=la_B00287X398_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340875708&sr=1-1\">Oil, Politics and Violence: Nigeria’s Military Coup Culture 1966-1976.</a></p>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\"><a title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/?px\"><img style=\"border:none;float:right\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=9c2d86e3-d9fb-46b4-bb70-91d3150c5760\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"></a></div>"
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"title" : "The Rule of Transformation",
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"content" : "<p>Copyright is a slippery realm. But here is a copyright case extraordinarily slippery. <a href=\"http://www.scpr.org/programs/madeleine-brand/2012/06/11/26899/lawsuit-between-origami-enthusiasts-unfolds/\">Both parties have legitimate claims</a>. One party is an origami artist and the other an abstract painter who appropriates patterns. </p>\n\n<p>I am all for appropriation, a venerable and necessary practice in art. I am also all for process art, that is art created by processes, or in the process of making other stuff.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//imgres-1.jpeg\" alt=\"Imgres 1\" border=\"0\" width=\"247\" height=\"204\"></p>\n\n<p>Andy Warhol appropriated the \"found\" image of a grocery store soup can. Roy Lichtenstien appropriated the images found in comic books. Both are revered artists. <br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//imgres.jpeg\" alt=\"Imgres\" border=\"0\" width=\"262\" height=\"193\"></p>\n\n<p><br>\nA few years ago street artist Shepard Fairey appropriated a photograph of Barack Obama to turn into a poster; the photographer sued and that case is still pending. </p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//23387.jpeg\" alt=\"23387\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"280\"></p>\n\n<p>Painter <a href=\"http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/garnett/cariou-v-prince-the-copyright-bungle-3-31-11.asp\"> Richard Prince appropriated</a> photographer Patrick Cariou's rastafarian photos. Prince lost in court.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//legalities30.jpeg\" alt=\"Legalities30\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"202\"></p>\n\n<p>Jeff Koon appropriated a photograph for his sculpture on right; He lost.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//legalities30-1.jpeg\" alt=\"Legalities30 1\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"233\"></p>\n\n<p>Here Jeff Koon <a href=\"http://hyperallergic.com/23589/judging-appropriation-art/\">appropriated a photograph of feet</a> for a painting. He won.</p>\n\n<p>In the latest case, painter Sarah Morris appropriated the crease pattern of Robert Lang's origami folds. Lang is a origami genius. He helped NASA design satellite folding/unfolding solar panels. He uses computers to devise folding patterns to create impossibly detailed 3D organisms from a single piece of paper. The pattern on the left below will, when folded by him, turn into a convincing Rhinocerous Beetle. The pattern is an intermediate artifact of the origami process, often published for other origami fans.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//image.jpeg\" alt=\"Image\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\"></p>\n\n<p>Sarah Morris is a respected abstract painter, who has painted grids and geometric shapes, and \"found\" patterns for decades, and has had major shows in major museums. Many of her early paintings look origami folds. </p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//Endeavor.jpeg\" alt=\"Endeavor\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\"></p>\n\n<p><br>\nSo it was no big stretch when she started painting \"found\" origami fold patterns, adding colors, removing lines here and there. One of the patterns she found was Lang's Beetle pattern. Her painting of it is on the right.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//sarah_morris_fig_b.jpeg\" alt=\"Sarah morris fig b\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"258\"></p>\n\n<p>Not just one pattern, but several.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//sarah_morris_copyright_infringement.jpeg\" alt=\"Sarah morris copyright infringement\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"253\"></p>\n\n<p>Lang claims that he has been displaying and even selling his fold patterns as art for years. Morris claims she has been painting found patterns like this for years, and that she \"transforms\" the found piece into something new. Just as Warhol transformed the soup can, and Lichtenstein transformed the comic panel, from artifact into art.</p>\n\n<p>I can see Lang's point and share his anguish, but in the end, I'd rule in Morris's favor, because I think she has transformed the found artifact. I follow the question, \"Is it bettered by the borrower?\" In this case, yes.</p>\n\n<p>Did Warhol better the soup can? That is hard to say, but he did transform it. \"Transformation\" works even better as a guide to these hard questions. Did Fairey transform the photo into a poster? Yes. Did Morris transform Lang's crease pattern? Yes.</p>\n\n<p>I find the notion of transformation is a pretty good question to ask about copyright conundrums. Did the copier transform the work? If yes, then the derivative is not really a \"copy\"; it's been transformed, mutated, improved, evolved. That is still a judgement call, but it is the right question.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/thetechnium?a=P0MoZWdw-ig:ClULzfsxZms:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/thetechnium?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thetechnium/~4/P0MoZWdw-ig\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "AT&T was good at seeing the future, not at executing on it...",
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"content" : "<div><p>A few weeks back at the Alcatel Lucent analyst event, author Douglas Coupland treated us to a post-dinner speech on visions of the future. It was an interesting moment, but the highlight for me was these video adverts that he showed from AT&T back in 1993.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center\">\n<p><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/TZb0avfQme8\" width=\"420\"></iframe></p>\n</div>\n<p>What's really interesting to me is that if you project back, it took a fair bit of vision to actually anticipate some of these changes, and if you look closely, every single one of them came true. What's even more interesting to me is that AT&T (or more generally telcos) have virtually no stake in any of those. I've compiled a table to look at who is the key player for each of these. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://harmonica.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345208f469e2017615a24ac7970c-pi\"><img alt=\"Attroles\" src=\"http://harmonica.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8345208f469e2017615a24ac7970c-500wi\" style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"Attroles\"></a><br>What's fascinating to me is that the common view of why telcos are not part of these ecosystems is that they didn't have the vision, others (google, skype, etc.) were more visionary, etc. That's clearly not the case: if AT&T was bold enough in 1993 to advertised for services they could clearly see were being worked on in Bell Labs at the time, it's because they felt they would be services they could deliver. </p>\n<p>So why couldn't they? My guess is because of vertical integration. These services, for the most part, needed an open network to access a broad market, and that's the one thing that the internet brought to us not because of telcos role but despite telcos resistence and reluctance. This (to me) is a great way to drive home the point that the incumbent's push (through ITU) to end openness in the name of control (and perceived revenue) is not only misguided, it's suicidal. For the companies themselves, and for our modern societies. I'll write more about that later this week, but I thought these ads were a great illustration of that. </p>\n<p>In conclusion, one could say: \"And the company that'll bring it to you? Not a telco...\"</p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?i=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?i=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?i=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:I9og5sOYxJI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?d=I9og5sOYxJI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?a=0x3eAC_8hSs:E4qezXmoDQA:XAVGb8Xj5zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/typepad/fiberevolution?d=XAVGb8Xj5zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "90 days of disaster",
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"content" : "<p>Several weeks ago I had an e-mail exchange with an acquaintance about events in Mali. I was uneasy about the way the military had suspended the country’s existing political institutions. I wrote, “the junta’s repeated attempts to ‘push the reset button’ and start the whole state apparatus over from scratch seems to me inherently dangerous.”</p>\n<p>“Everything in life is dangerous,” responded my interlocutor, an American who was in favor of the coup. “That’s why we’ve supported thugs like Mubarak up to the last minute. It’s getting us a bad rep around the world. Sometimes, you have to see that change is needed, support what’s possible, hope (and work) for the best.”</p>\n<p>It’s been exactly three months since the coup d’état that ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), Mali’s democratically elected president, just a few weeks from the end of his second and final term of office. Now seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the coup’s impact on Mali.</p>\n<p>Let’s begin with the security situation. Captain Sanogo and the CNRDRE justified their putsch by saying that ATT’s government was mismanaging the war against northern separatist rebels, and that the army needed more support to wage its war properly. He had a point: attempts to root out the rebellion had been largely ineffective. Within days after the coup, however, the rebels drove out Malian government forces from the three large administrative regions (Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal) as well as a portion of the Mopti region. In short, the separatists got everything they’d been looking for. Three months later they’re still ruling the north and it’s unclear whether or when they will be driven out. Despite recent bluster about an imminent offensive to retake the rebel-held zone, the Malian military does not have the capacity to reunify the country on its own.</p>\n<p>On the political front, Captain Sanogo claimed that the elections (scheduled for late April) would have <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/politique/2012/04/16/article,60576.html\">led the country to “civil war</a>.” He had a point: given the insecurity in the north, it’s not clear how elections could have been held in those regions. But Mali has now entered an unprecedented period of political turmoil characterized by institutional voids across the board; if it was unclear in March whether elections could occur, it’s even less clear three months later whether or when they might be able to take place. After a few weeks of direct military rule, the junta nominally handed over power to an interim civilian government, but it seems to continue holding sway over key areas (notably the media and the justice system), and the civilian authorities have proven either unable or unwilling to confront the junta. Many observers both inside and outside Mali now believe that the government of Prime Minister Cheikh Modibo Diarra is beholden to the coup plotters.</p>\n<p>Economically speaking? Don’t get me started. Captain Sanogo said that ATT’s corrupt government was robbing the country blind. Maybe he had a point, but the aftermath of the coup has cost Malians far more. Mali has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in bilateral aid on which this poor, landlocked, arid country is utterly reliant. Then there’s <a href=\"http://french.cri.cn/621/2012/06/12/302s284280.htm\">a billion dollars worth of World Bank assistance</a>, now suspended; the total damage to the Malian economy may amount to <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/economie/2012/06/19/article,73959.html\">one and a half trillion CFA francs</a> (about US$3 billion). The <a href=\"http://blogs.cgdev.org/mca-monitor/2012/05/mcc-terminates-mali-compact.php\">Millennium Challenge Corporation has terminated its contract with Mali</a>, and private investors (like the multimillion-dollar <a href=\"http://www.ventures-africa.com/2012/05/africa%E2%80%99s-biggest-sugar-producer-illovo-pulls-out-of-310million-sugar-project-in-mali/\">Illovo sugar project that had been slated for Markala</a>) have been swarming for the exits. <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/economie/2012/05/17/article,67223.html\">Government revenues are down</a> across the board, to the point that there’s a real danger of the state failing to pay salaries on time. The tourist sector, which had been on life support since late 2011, is now dead, and Bamako’s flagship <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/societe/2012/06/20/article,74433.html\">Grand Hotel just announced it’s closing its doors</a>. Once a fixture of international festivals and events, Mali is no longer <em>fréquentable</em>.</p>\n<p>Looking back, it’s hard to see how the situation in Mali could possibly have gotten any worse than it is now if the coup had never taken place. An ATT-led government, left to its own devices, might eventually have lost the north; elections might never have happened; the economic hardships might have come about anyway. But all these things <em>definitely</em> <em>did</em> happen since Captain Sanogo and his colleagues came to power. Not to mention the added insult of the attack on Dioncounda Traoré, the country’s transitional president, who a month later is <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20120616-mali-le-president-dioncounda-traore-convalescence-paris-multiplie-consultations\">still recuperating in Paris</a>, and undoubtedly afraid for his security should he return to Mali.</p>\n<p>Yes, Mali was badly governed before the current crisis. Yes, its leaders were corrupt. Yes, there was a lack of political will to confront the problem in the north. As I said, maybe Captain Sanogo had a point about all these grievances. Yet the last 90 days suggest that whatever problems Mali was facing on March 21, a putsch was not the answer to them. “Sanogo’s only merit is getting two-thirds of his country occupied,” <a href=\"http://www.tamtaminfo.com/index.php/politique/8295-mohamed-bazoum-a-la-voa-qsanogo-na-eu-que-le-merite-de-faire-occuper-les-deux-tiers-de-son-paysq\">Niger’s foreign minister recently told VOA</a>.</p>\n<p>There was a time in Africa when a coup could be salutary. (ATT originally came to power in 1991 through one such coup: after ousting the dictator, he stayed in power just long enough to organize elections, then stepped down and stayed out of power for a decade.) But times have changed, and nowadays overthrowing a democratically elected regime, however incompetent or irresponsible it may be, cannot happen without generating serious, lasting negative consequences.</p>\n<p>I was not a fan of ATT’s government, and like most people in Mali, I was looking forward to its end. I don’t believe the rumors, widespread here, that ATT wanted to cling to power. I never met the man, but everything I heard about him in the last year suggests he was exhausted, sick of politics, and ready for retirement. I also don’t believe the stories that the election results would have been determined in advance, that ATT had already designated his successor. Malians love a conspiracy theory, but these theories are almost always baseless.</p>\n<p>Don’t let the relative calm of the last 30 days fool you: not only is this country still in the hole, it’s digging in deeper. I don’t know how Mali will move forward from its present impasse. And how we got to where we are today illustrates why a coup d’état is almost always a bad idea. I have to disagree with anyone who thinks this dangerous leap into the unknown was necessary, even laudable. The best way to address pressing problems is through incremental changes, reforming existing institutions rather than overturning them. When people like Captain Sanogo lead us to bypass those institutions, most often the “remedy” they offer turns out to be worse than the disease it was supposed to cure. Mali’s last three months offer ample proof.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/bamakobruce.wordpress.com/1423/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/bamakobruce.wordpress.com/1423/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=bridgesfrombamako.com&blog=25938694&post=1423&subd=bamakobruce&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Sometimes I get so down in the weeds of database technology, I forget why I think databases are so fascinating to me, why I found them so important to begin with. ACID. Latency, bandwidth, durability, performance, scalability, bits and bytes. Virtual this, cloud that. Blah blah blah. Who the fuck cares?</p>\n \n<p>I care.</p>\n \n<p>Dear lord I care. I care so much it hurts.</p>\n \n<p>\"A database is an organized collection of data, today typically in digital form.\" -Wikipedia</p>\n \n<p>I think about databases so much. So so much. New schemes for expanding their capacity, new ways of making them work, new ways of making them faster, more reliable, new ways of making them accessible to more developers and users.</p>\n \n<p>I spend so much time thinking about them, it's embarrassing. As much time as I spend thinking about them, I feel like I should know so much more than I do.</p>\n \n<p>HTTP, JSON, memcached, elastic clusters, developer accessibility, incremental map/reduce, distributed indexing, intra-cluster replication, cross-cluster replication, tail-append generational storage, disk fragmentation, memory fragmentation, memory/storage hierarchy, disk latency, write amplification, data compression, multi-core, multi-threading, inverted indexes, language parsing, interpreter runtimes, message passing, shared memory, recovery-oriented architectures. All that stuff that makes a database tick.</p>\n \n<p>Why do I spend so much time on this? Why have I spent so many years on them? Why do they fascinate me so much? Why did I quit my job and build an open source database engine with my own money, when I wasn't wealthy and I had a family to support?</p>\n \n<p>Why the hell did I do that?</p>\n \n<p>Because I think database technologies are among the most important fundamental advancements of humanity and our collective consciousness. I think databases are as important as telecommunications and the internet. I think they are as important as any scholarly library -- and that libraries are the earliest non-digital databases. I think databases are almost as important as the invention of the written word.</p>\n \n<p>Forget SQL. Forget network, document or object databases. Forget the relational algebra. Forget schemas. Forget joins and normalization. Forget ACID. Forget map/reduce.</p>\n \n<p>Think knowledge representation. Think knowledge collection, transformation, aggregation, sharing. Think knowledge discovery.</p>\n \n<p>Think of humanity and its collective mind expanding.</p>\n \n<p>When IBM was at the absolute height of its power, they were the richest, most powerful company on the planet. They primarily sold mainframes for a lot of money, and at the core of those mainframes were big database engines, providing a big competitive advantage that their customers gladly paid for.</p>\n \n<p>Google has created a database indexing of the internet. They are a force because they found ways to find meaning in the massive amounts of information already available. They are a very visible example of changing the way humanity thinks.</p>\n \n<p>File systems are very simple databases. People have been building all sorts of searching and aggregation technology on top them for many years, to better unlock all that knowledge and information stored within.</p>\n \n<p>Email? Email technology is essentially databases that you can send messages to. It's old-fashioned and simple, and yet our email systems keep getting more clever about ways to shows us what's in our unstructured personal databases.</p>\n \n<p>Databases don't have to be huge to have a huge impact. SQLite makes databases accessible on small devices. It's the most deployed database on the planet. It's often easy to miss the impact when it's billions of small installations -- it starts to look like air. Something that's just there, all around us. But add it up and the impact is huge.</p>\n \n<p>Then of course, there's big bad Oracle. As much as people love to hate them, they've made reliable database technology very accessible, something you can bet your business on, year after year. They are great at not just making the technology work, but the complete ecosystem around it, something necessary for enterprises and mission critical uses. There is a lot to criticize about them, but much to praise as well.</p>\n \n<p>So yes, I care. I care deeply. I care about the big picture. And I care about the bits and bytes. I care about the ridiculously complex details most people will never see. I care about the boring stuff that makes the bigger stuff happen. And sometimes I forget why I care about it. Sometimes I lose sight of the big picture as I'm so focused on making the details work.</p>\n \n<p>And sometimes I remember. And I feel incredibly lucky and privileged for the opportunities to have a positive impact on the collective mind of humanity. And my reward is to know, in some small way, that I've succeeded. And I want to do more. This is important stuff, the most important and effective way I know how to contribute to the world. It matters to me.</p>"
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"content" : "<span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"color:#666666;font-style:italic\">by <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/xamat\">Xavier Amatriain</a> and Justin Basilico (Personalization Science and Engineering)</span></span><br><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"color:#666666;font-style:italic\"> </span></span> <br>In <a href=\"http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/04/netflix-recommendations-beyond-5-stars.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">part one</a> of this blog post, we detailed the different components of Netflix personalization. We also explained how Netflix personalization, and the service as a whole, have changed from the time we announced the Netflix Prize.The $1M Prize delivered a great return on investment for us, not only in algorithmic innovation, but also in brand awareness and attracting stars (no pun intended) to join our team. Predicting movie ratings accurately is just one aspect of our world-class recommender system. In this second part of the blog post, we will give more insight into our broader personalization technology. We will discuss some of our current models, data, and the approaches we follow to lead innovation and research in this space.<br><br><h2 style=\"font-weight:normal\"> <span style=\"font-size:large\"><b>Ranking</b></span></h2>The goal of recommender systems is to present a number of attractive items for a person to choose from. This is usually accomplished by selecting some items and sorting them in the order of expected enjoyment (or utility). Since the most common way of presenting recommended items is in some form of list, such as the various rows on Netflix, we need an appropriate ranking model that can use a wide variety of information to come up with an optimal ranking of the items for each of our members.<br><br>If you are looking for a ranking function that optimizes consumption, an obvious baseline is item popularity. The reason is clear: on average, a member is most likely to watch what most others are watching. However, popularity is the opposite of personalization: it will produce the same ordering of items for every member. Thus, the goal becomes to find a personalized ranking function that is better than item popularity, so we can better satisfy members with varying tastes.<br><br>Recall that our goal is to recommend the titles that each member is most likely to <i>play</i> and <i>enjoy</i>. One obvious way to approach this is to use the member's predicted rating of each item as an adjunct to item popularity. Using predicted ratings on their own as a ranking function can lead to items that are too niche or unfamiliar being recommended, and can exclude items that the member would want to watch even though they may not rate them highly. To compensate for this, rather than using either popularity or predicted rating on their own, we would like to produce rankings that balance both of these aspects. At this point, we are ready to build a ranking prediction model using these two <i>features</i>.<br><br>There are many ways one could construct a ranking function ranging from simple scoring methods, to pairwise preferences, to optimization over the entire ranking. For the purposes of illustration, let us start with a very simple scoring approach by choosing our ranking function to be a linear combination of popularity and predicted rating. This gives an equation of the form f<sub>rank</sub>(u,v) = w<sub>1</sub> p(v) + w<sub>2</sub> r(u,v) + b, where u=user, v=video item, p=popularity and r=predicted rating. This equation defines a two-dimensional space like the one depicted below.<br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1wrwtggj7o/T-IVRAydO7I/AAAAAAAAAR4/ot_aHu0FLjc/s1600/TwoDimensionalRanking-final.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"316\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-u1wrwtggj7o/T-IVRAydO7I/AAAAAAAAAR4/ot_aHu0FLjc/s400/TwoDimensionalRanking-final.png\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br>Once we have such a function, we can pass a set of videos through our function and sort them in descending order according to the score. You might be wondering how we can set the weights w<sub>1</sub> and w<sub>2</sub> in our model (the bias b is constant and thus ends up not affecting the final ordering). In other words, in our simple two-dimensional model, how do we determine whether popularity is more or less important than predicted rating? There are at least two possible approaches to this. You could sample the space of possible weights and let the members decide what makes sense after many A/B tests. This procedure might be time consuming and not very cost effective. Another possible answer involves formulating this as a machine learning problem: select positive and negative examples from your historical data and let a machine learning algorithm learn the weights that optimize your goal. This family of machine learning problems is known as \"<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_to_rank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Learning to rank</a>\" and is central to application scenarios such as search engines or ad targeting. Note though that a crucial difference in the case of ranked recommendations is the importance of personalization: we do not expect a global notion of <i>relevance</i>, but rather look for ways of optimizing a personalized model. <br><br>As you might guess, apart from popularity and rating prediction, we have tried many other features at Netflix. Some have shown no positive effect while others have improved our ranking accuracy tremendously. The graph below shows the ranking improvement we have obtained by adding different features and optimizing the machine learning algorithm.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rSdjs1ipQGU/T-Iz_lFVcbI/AAAAAAAAAS0/xKc5jkYtKYg/s1600/Ranking-FeaturesPerformance.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"235\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rSdjs1ipQGU/T-Iz_lFVcbI/AAAAAAAAAS0/xKc5jkYtKYg/s400/Ranking-FeaturesPerformance.png\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div>Many supervised classification methods can be used for ranking. Typical choices include Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines, Neural Networks, or Decision Tree-based methods such as Gradient Boosted Decision Trees (GBDT). On the other hand, a great number of algorithms specifically designed for learning to rank have appeared in recent years such as RankSVM or RankBoost. There is no easy answer to choose which model will perform best in a given ranking problem. The simpler your feature space is, the simpler your model can be. But it is easy to get trapped in a situation where a new feature does not show value because the model cannot learn it. Or, the other way around, to conclude that a more powerful model is not useful simply because you don't have the feature space that exploits its benefits.<br><br><h2> <span style=\"font-size:large\">Data and Models</span></h2>The previous discussion on the ranking algorithms highlights the importance of both <b>data</b> and <b>models</b> in creating an optimal personalized experience for our members. At Netflix, we are fortunate to have many relevant data sources and smart people who can select optimal algorithms to turn data into product features. Here are some of the data sources we can use to optimize our recommendations:<br><ul><li>We have several billion item <b>ratings</b> from members. And we receive millions of new ratings a day.</li><li>We already mentioned item <b>popularity</b> as a baseline. But, there are many ways to compute popularity. We can compute it over various time ranges, for instance hourly, daily, or weekly. Or, we can group members by region or other similarity metrics and compute popularity within that group.</li><li>We receive several million stream <b>plays</b> each day, which include context such as duration, time of day and device type.</li><li>Our members add millions of items to their <b>queues</b> each day.</li><li>Each item in our catalog has rich <b>metadata</b>: actors, director, genre, parental rating, and reviews.</li><li><b>Presentations</b>: We know what items we have recommended and where we have shown them, and can look at how that decision has affected the member's actions. We can also observe the member's interactions with the recommendations: scrolls, mouse-overs, clicks, or the time spent on a given page.</li><li><b>Social</b> data has become our latest source of personalization features; we can process what connected friends have watched or rated.</li><li>Our members directly enter millions of <b>search terms</b> in the Netflix service each day.</li><li>All the data we have mentioned above comes from internal sources. We can also tap into <b>external data</b> to improve our features. For example, we can add external item data features such as box office performance or critic reviews.</li><li>Of course, that is not all: there are many <b>other</b> features such as demographics, location, language, or temporal data that can be used in our predictive models.</li></ul>So, what about the models? One thing we have found at Netflix is that with the great availability of data, both in quantity and types, a thoughtful approach is required to model selection, training, and testing. We use all sorts of machine learning approaches: From unsupervised methods such as clustering algorithms to a number of supervised classifiers that have shown optimal results in various contexts. This is an incomplete list of methods you should probably know about if you are working in machine learning for personalization:<br><ul><li>Linear regression</li><li>Logistic regression</li><li>Elastic nets</li><li>Singular Value Decomposition</li><li>Restricted Boltzmann Machines</li><li>Markov Chains</li><li>Latent Dirichlet Allocation</li><li>Association Rules</li><li>Gradient Boosted Decision Trees</li><li>Random Forests</li><li>Clustering techniques from the simple k-means to novel graphical approaches such as Affinity Propagation</li><li>Matrix factorization </li></ul><br><h2> <span style=\"font-size:large\">Consumer Data Science</span></h2>The abundance of source data, measurements and associated experiments allow us to operate a data-driven organization. Netflix has embedded this approach into its culture since the company was founded, and we have come to call it Consumer (Data) Science. Broadly speaking, the main goal of our Consumer Science approach is to innovate for members effectively. The only real failure is the failure to innovate; or as Thomas Watson Sr, founder of IBM, put it: “<i>If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.</i>” We strive for an innovation culture that allows us to evaluate ideas rapidly, inexpensively, and objectively. And, once we test something we want to understand why it failed or succeeded. This lets us focus on the central goal of improving our service for our members.<br><br>So, how does this work in practice? It is a slight variation over the traditional scientific process called A/B testing (or bucket testing):<br><br><span style=\"font-size:large\">1. </span><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Start with a hypothesis </span></span><br><blockquote><ul><li><span style=\"font-size:small\">Algorithm/feature/design X will increase member engagement with our service and <i>ultimately member retention</i></span></li></ul></blockquote><span style=\"font-size:large\">2. Design a test</span><br><blockquote><ul><li> Develop a solution or prototype. Ideal execution can be 2X as effective as a prototype, but not 10X.</li><li>Think about dependent & independent variables, control, significance… </li></ul></blockquote><span style=\"font-size:large\">3. Execute the test</span><br><br><span style=\"font-size:large\">4. Let data speak for itself</span><br><br>When we execute A/B tests, we track many different metrics. But we ultimately trust member engagement (e.g. hours of play) and retention. Tests usually have thousands of members and anywhere from 2 to 20 cells exploring variations of a base idea. We typically have scores of A/B tests running in parallel. A/B tests let us try radical ideas or test many approaches at the same time, but the key advantage is that they allow our decisions to be data-driven. You can read more about our approach to A/B Testing in this <a href=\"http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/01/how-we-determine-product-success.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">previous tech blog post</a> or in <a href=\"http://www.quora.com/Neil-Hunt/answers/A-B-Testing\" rel=\"nofollow\">some of the Quora answers</a> by our Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt.<br><br>An interesting follow-up question that we have faced is how to integrate our machine learning approaches into this data-driven A/B test culture at Netflix. We have done this with an offline-online testing process that tries to combine the best of both worlds. The offline testing cycle is a step where we test and optimize our algorithms prior to performing online A/B testing. To measure model performance offline we track multiple metrics used in the machine learning community: from ranking measures such as normalized discounted cumulative gain, mean reciprocal rank, or fraction of concordant pairs, to classification metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, or F-score. We also use the famous RMSE from the Netflix Prize or other more <i>exotic</i> metrics to track different aspects like diversity. We keep track of how well those metrics correlate to measurable online gains in our A/B tests. However, since the mapping is not perfect, offline performance is used only as an indication to make informed decisions on follow up tests.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o_xmCVGr66I/T-I1OoKU9oI/AAAAAAAAATM/UIamph87TJ4/s1600/Offline-online-simple.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"132\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-o_xmCVGr66I/T-I1OoKU9oI/AAAAAAAAATM/UIamph87TJ4/s400/Offline-online-simple.png\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div>Once offline testing has validated a hypothesis, we are ready to design and launch the A/B test that will prove the new feature valid from a member perspective. If it does, we will be ready to roll out in our continuous pursuit of the better product for our members. The diagram below illustrates the details of this process.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6746aDYDp3U/T-IWPAFy60I/AAAAAAAAASQ/yMvxNX3_F3s/s1600/Offline-online-complex.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"330\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6746aDYDp3U/T-IWPAFy60I/AAAAAAAAASQ/yMvxNX3_F3s/s640/Offline-online-complex.png\" width=\"640\"></a></div><br>An extreme example of this innovation cycle is what we called the Top10 Marathon. This was a focused, 10-week effort to quickly test dozens of algorithmic ideas related to improving our Top10 row. Think of it as a 2-month hackathon with metrics. Different teams and individuals were invited to contribute ideas and code in this effort. We rolled out 6 different ideas as A/B tests each week and kept track of the offline and online metrics. The winning results are already part of our production system.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AW2kiDtksoI/T-IWV_6KIOI/AAAAAAAAASY/hgWPK31nVmo/s1600/Top10Marathon.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"298\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AW2kiDtksoI/T-IWV_6KIOI/AAAAAAAAASY/hgWPK31nVmo/s400/Top10Marathon.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div> <br><h2> <span style=\"font-size:large\">Conclusion</span></h2>The Netflix Prize abstracted the recommendation problem to a proxy question of predicting ratings. But member ratings are only one of the many data sources we have and rating predictions are only part of our solution. Over time we have reformulated the recommendation problem to the question of optimizing the probability a member chooses to watch a title and enjoys it enough to come back to the service. More data availability enables better results. But in order to get those results, we need to have optimized approaches, appropriate metrics and rapid experimentation.<br><br>To excel at innovating personalization, it is insufficient to be methodical in our research; the space to explore is virtually infinite. At Netflix, we love choosing and watching movies and TV shows. We focus our research by translating this passion into strong intuitions about fruitful directions to pursue; under-utilized data sources, better feature representations, more appropriate models and metrics, and missed opportunities to personalize. We use data mining and other experimental approaches to incrementally inform our intuition, and so prioritize investment of effort. As with any scientific pursuit, there’s always a contribution from Lady Luck, but as the adage goes, luck favors the prepared mind. Finally, above all, we look to our members as the final judges of the quality of our recommendation approach, because this is all ultimately about increasing our members' enjoyment in their own Netflix experience. We are always looking for more people to join our team of "prepared minds". Make sure you take a look at our <a href=\"http://jobs.netflix.com/jobs.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">jobs page</a>.<br><br>"
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>\n <a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/team/asli-demirguc-kunt\" title=\"View user profile.\">Asli Demirguc-Kunt</a> </div>\n <div>\n <a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/team/leora-klapper\" title=\"View user profile.\">Leora Klapper</a> </div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<p><img width=\"242\" height=\"181\" align=\"left\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/nigeria_money_smaller.jpg\">With the recent opening of a rural savings and credit cooperative, the people in Gebremichael’s Ethiopian village no longer have to save their money in pots or under the mattress at home. He and his neighbors are learning to use formal savings and credit systems.</p>\n<p>We know that many in Sub-Saharan Africa have benefited from using the formal financial system, but exactly how many are using it to save, borrow, make payments and manage risk? </p>\n<div>With the release of the Global Financial Inclusion Indicators (<a href=\"http://www.worldbank.org/globalfindex\">Global Findex</a>) we now have a comprehensive, individual-level, and publicly-available database that allows comparisons across 148 economies of how adults around the world manage their daily finances and plan for the future. The Global Findex database also identifies barriers to financial inclusion, such as cost, travel time, distance, amount of paper work, and income inequality. <a href=\"http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/06/16375298/\">Our new Working Paper offers an overview of Financial Inclusion in Africa</a>.</div>\n<p></p>\n<div> </div>\n<div><strong>Who are the unbanked?</strong></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>The database covers 34 economies in Sub-Saharan Africa and with over 40 indicators, each sliceable by gender, age, education, income, and rural or urban residence. But Let’s start with the broad strokes: according to the data, 24 percent of adults in SSA have a formal account, ranging from less than 5 percent in the Central African Republic, D.R. Congo, Guinea, and Niger to 54 percent in South Africa and 80 percent in Mauritius. In the developing world as a whole, 41 percent of adults have a formal account. (<a href=\"http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20120419083611\">Global comparisons are also available</a>).</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><strong><span style=\"font-size:small\"><em>To see images larger, please click on them</em></span></strong></div>\n<div><a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/bigtable1_asli.jpg\"><img width=\"441\" height=\"209\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/table1_asli.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Why do 76 percent of adults – almost 500 million people - in SSA remain outside the formal financial system? Eighty-one percent of the unbanked say that they do not have enough money to start a formal account, 36 percent say that having a formal account is too expensive, and about 30 percent cite distance and insufficient documentation. Unbanked adults in SSA were more likely than those in any other region to cite each of these reasons.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><strong>How do people use their accounts?</strong></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Why open and maintain an account? In Sub-Saharan Africa, 38 percent of account holders report using their account to receive remittances from family members living elsewhere. In the rest of the developing world, only 13 percent of account holders report this. </div>\n<div>Africans are also more likely than their counterparts in other regions to use their account to save. Fifty-seven percent of adults with a formal account in SSA saved at a formal financial institution in the past 12 months compared to 39 percent in the rest of the developing world.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><strong>What do the unbanked do?</strong></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Being outside the formal financial sector means that one must find other ways to manage daily finances and plan for the future. Community-based savings methods often serve as alternatives to the formal financial sector, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, 19 percent of adults (or 48 percent of those who save) report having saved in the past 12 months using a savings club or a person outside the family. Women savers are 32 percent more likely than men to use only a community-based method to save. </div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/bigtable2_asli.jpg\"><img width=\"440\" height=\"188\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/table2_asli.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>The recent growth of mobile money has also allowed millions of people who are otherwise excluded from the formal financial system to perform financial transactions relatively cheaply, securely, and reliably. Mobile money has achieved the broadest success in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 16 percent of adults report having used a mobile phone in the past 12 months to pay bills or send or receive money. In Kenya, where the M-PESA service was commercially launched in 2007, 68 percent of adults report using mobile money. The share using mobile money is less than 5 percent in all other regions. </div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Many mobile money users are not otherwise included in the formal financial system - in Kenya 43 percent of adults who report having used mobile money in the past 12 months do not have a formal account; in Sudan it’s 92 percent.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><a href=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/bigtable3_asli.jpg\"><img width=\"319\" height=\"337\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/table3_asli.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div> </div>\n<div><em><strong>The complete database, report, and survey are available at</strong></em><a href=\"http://www.worldbank.org/globalfindex\"> http://www.worldbank.org/globalfindex.</a></div>"
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"content" : "<div><p><strong>by Mara Jebsen</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em>What has happened before can happen again-- and so can what hasn’t.</em> <a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0176159a1458970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"></a></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:right\">-- Bertolt Brecht</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0176159a1458970c-pi\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Constellation_north-1\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0176159a1458970c-320wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Constellation_north-1\"></a>When I was in college, I wrote angry letters to the controversial and often political poet, Amiri Baraka. The letters were neither kept nor sent, but I remember what it was like to write them. I remember the yellow legal pads, crammed with inky scrawls.</p>\r\n<p>In the old Mercer Street Books in the village, where I buy myself used plays and spy novels once a week, I spotted “Preface to A Twenty-Volume Suicide Note” heaped in the dusty Rare Books cabinet and bought it, for seventeen dollars and ninety-five cents. Opening the mildly aged volume, I had that strange feeling you get when you’re flooded with a whiff of more recent history. It is the sense that something was fresh and current in the time when your mother was younger than you are now. It has magic like moon-rocks because it's stylistically foreign, yet deeply known. In this case, so perfectly 1961, Village. A whole flavor of semi-bullshit, semi-real bohemia surrounds this little paperback. On the last page, Corinth books advertises Ginsberg’s Empty Mirror for a dollar twenty-five, and works by Kerouac and O’Hara for ninety-five cents. I remember as I thumb through it that Baraka wasn't yet Baraka; this book was written by a very young man. His name was Leroi Jones. </p>\r\n<p>It is interesting to think about how and when you come across the seminal poems of your life. “And each night, I count the stars/and each night, I get the same number/ and when they will not come to be counted/I count the holes they leave”—These 28 words, in this order, have appeared, unbidden, at some of the most poignant moments of my life, arriving from beneath me like a wave, or seeming sometimes as if they'd never left; are more like an invisible walking companion whose steps match mine—company I will keep as long as memory holds.</p>\r\n<p><span>Why was I angry? To remember properly, I have to contextualize those unsent letters with other unsent letters:</span></p>\r\n<p><span>From Durham NC to Lome, Togo, 1997</span></p>\r\n<p><span> </span><em>Dear Mom,</em></p>\r\n<p>I am taking another class in the Africana studies department. It kind of can’t believe this is happening/I am choosing this. Those tomes you and Kodjo lugged from Philadelphia to each of our houses in Lome always struck me as such a waste of time; so dry. The sex life of savages? Folktales from Cameroun? And now… They’re actually assigning me some of the same books. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The Black Jacobins. And I’m into it. Will everything that bored me to tears when I was a kid come back and claim me? And would this be a happy or a sad thing?</p>\r\n<p>I really, really love it here. But it is a strange place, haunted. Makes you want to write poems. Here is how I would describe Duke:</p>\r\n<p><em>That place with its gothic architecture lit under floodlights at night like a stage; the whole of it a show. Magical-ghostly. At night black men came and planted. We’d wake in the morning to fully-grown beds of dusty miller, pansies, geraniums, azaeleas, rows and rows of sweet-smelling things I couldn’t name. At night black women cleaned the vomit from the bathrooms stalls and commons room, made us steaming trays of chicken and dumplings, macaroni and cheese; cabbage stewed down in butter to practically nothing; in the cranky mornings ladies in hairnets served up buttered grits, fat rashers of bacon and fluffy biscuits. One of them looks like Auntie Rogatthe. </em></p>\r\n<p>I am hanging out mostly with these brilliant Asian and Latina girls. We are trying to figure out how American we are. We are trying to figure everything out. Poetry seems more and more interesting to me. Also, I met someone I really like. His name is x. I’ll tell you about it later</p>\r\n<p>Love,</p>\r\n<p>M\r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<p>From Durham, NC to Lome, Togo 1999</p>\r\n<p>Dear Mom,</p>\r\n<p>In my black poetry class, I am the only white girl and I try not to feel silly. I have to tell you this thing that made me really confused. My professor is a light-skinned black poet. He's laughing all the time, like he knows some joke we don't. This week he introduced us to Amiri Baraka. I was so moved by the poems and came in to class with my head lit up like a match. Then he told us this whole story about how Baraka used to be Leroi Jones, and he lived in New York with this Jewish woman named Hettie. And a kid. Or two kids, I don't remember. Anyway, they were being bohemians in the village until the day Malcolm X got shot--then, according to my professor, Jones changed his name to Baraka, and left his wife and kids. But the professor was grinning the whole time like as if he was winking. I couldn't understand it. I got really mad and I think I blushed or something. So there I am, the only white kid in the class, and I'm red. I don't know. I kept thinking about you and Papa, raising two interracial kids back in Lome and wondering if the whole 'tragic mullato' idea is real, if it applies to them. I hope not. I haven't been used to considering the lot of us in any tragic sense. </p>\r\n<p>Also, The fraternity system here is really strong and X is rushing a black frat. He always wants to know about Togo--what it was like there, what is Africa with a capital A really like. I tell him stories about Togo, but maybe I romanticize. Or dramatize. I don’t seem him as much as I’d like. I’d like to join a sorority, but there are white sororities and black sororities, and neither feels right. Is this just what happens right now, or is this my whole life? Love to everybody, </p>\r\n<p>M</p>\r\n<p>From Lome, Togo to Washington, DC 2002</p>\r\n<p>Dear x,</p>\r\n<p>College was such a long time ago already! I miss everything, sweet tea, gardens. One of my aunts comes by. There is a story there, about HIV and. . .misinformation and poor medical systems that I don't even want to tell you. Anyway, things are better now, because the house is finally, after ten years, built, and there’s more than enough room for everybody. Its weird to think that my sisters and brothers will definitely go to college in America.</p>\r\n<p>So I know you always want to know what it's like, and I’m no good with a camera, so:</p>\r\n<p><em>This half- covered rooftop used to be a chalky toothpaste white. At night a fluorescent tube of light gives the walls a garishness, but objects have a strict, bald beauty. Only a few other houses have been built to three stories, so up here you have the sense of being slightly suspended over the surrounds. Birds get confused and swoop onto the patio. A palpably empty chair made of worn wood and canvas rustles sometimes in the breeze rising off the ocean, which is a wide violet mass visible a quarter of a mile away. Thin palm trees scraggily stand sentry by it. Two or three ships sometimes appear between them at sea, looming like black whales floating, sparely strung with lights. It is dangerous to look up. The stars are so clustered, close and bright that you can’t pick out constellations. It is a noisy galactic shower perpetually falling onto the skull.</em></p>\r\n<p><em>If you stand at the edge of the patio and look down you’ll see the tin corrugated roofs patched with bricks and burlap spread out in haphazard pattern that obscures a natural order. Children walk quietly around the compound on the carefully swept sand. Laundry stiffens on lines, and someone is getting water from a well for a late wash. There’s a goat or two, and a chicken. One compound has electricity, and the television within it casts a green glow through an open door onto the nearby sand. It is terribly hot. A woman unbraids her hair by a kerosene lamp</em>.</p>\r\n<p>I hope you are liking law school. I’ll be back in America at the end of the summer. I plan to move to New York. (to be a poet!!!) Who moves to New York soon after 9-11, I don’t know. But it isn’t safe here, either. Like my stepfather says: “the life amidst danger is the real life.”</p>\r\n<p>Yours,</p>\r\n<p>M</p>\r\n<p>In 1996, the year I went to college and moved from Lome to Durham, there was so much I couldn’t help notice and much more I couldn’t make sense of. Even the landscapes of West Africa, and the South, seemed to superimpose on one another in my head. There was lots of open sky and the same stars overhead. There was the heat, the yams, the red dirt. The histories were different, but it was the same history.There were poor people. The difference as that there were a lot more white people. Some also very poor, but at school, mostly rich. . I was in love with my friend. My stepfather, I suddenly remembered, had a copy of Molefi Kete Asante’s Afrocentricity in his section of the library, which I had read, a knot in my stomach. In fact he had an entire collection of radical black texts. I was a bundle of nerves at the time, convinced that if history, that racial politics, that anybody’s sense of justice— if anybody talked about what had happened here--the rapes and thefts and indignities during and after this long-ago migration from the slave castles at Elmina to these Carolina haunted forests—then my parents would break up, and this boy would never like me. And so, when the teacher told me that story about the marriage that split over the assassination of Malcolm X, I thought I was angry, but I was scared. </p>\r\n<p>Its funny to think of marriage itself as such a delicate thing, susceptible to plagues. I think of the Woody Allen movie, Husbands and Wives. Particularly, I imagine that unconventional marriages must feel susceptible to plague. On these coasts, the entire experiment of multiracial America comes home and gets worked out behind the front door. It was comforting to remember in those days, that an American woman and an African man--two scholars living in Togo in the '90's was <em>not the same</em> as an interracial artist couple living in the East Village in the \"60's. But I saw a certain correspondence.</p>\r\n<p>From Brooklyn, NY to Lome, Togo, 2009</p>\r\n<p>Dear Mom,</p>\r\n<p>Here's what I'm thinking: poets are a big chain of inheritances. Its like its our turn, our New York. There was a set of crazy poets running wild on these streets in the 60’s, and now, there’s <em>us</em>. Believe it or not, I met Amiri Baraka and his wife Amina in a restaurant, through some friends. Amina had her hair in the same kind of braid-round-the-head I had mine in, and we both had the natural white streak at the front. We sat across from each other and laughed about this. They were funny, relaxed-- the type of people I would like to be some day. People I felt no need to ask touchy questions of. A different time, I met Hettie Jones, Baraka’s first wife, at an event, and she was equally vivid, and <em>so kind </em>to me, giving me advice on how to publish. So I was terribly embarrassed, underneath, for having taken the personal lives of my elders so personally. The truth is, I don’t know what happens behind closed doors. </p>\r\n<p>Do you remember when V was 10, and we were vacationing in the family house upstate, and she announced at the dinner table: “Mommy’s side of the family is more lucky.” “Lucky,” we asked? “Yes. They have nicer things.”</p>\r\n<p> Recently I saw a guy with blowsy brown hair, sitting on a street in the Village, holding a sign that said: “I’m too white to be this broke.” He was about 18.</p>\r\n<p>When V said it, I thought it was clever. This guy. . .I guess one wishes, somewhere along the line, that he would have known enough history to know that a darker skin color and poverty are not a natural fact of the universe, but a correspondence born of history, circumstance. . .</p>\r\n<p>Its so funny to think of both sisters in American colleges these days, knowing so much about what is to be African, learning how it is to be half-black in America. When V got into Duke, I had such crazy mixed feelings. And then there’s you. You’ve been in Togo over 20 years now. Do you think you’ll move back to America soon?</p>\r\n<p>Miss you,</p>\r\n<p>M</p>\r\n<p>I’ve heard it said that it is because the stars are random that we are able to make stories about them. If they were evenly patterned like dots in a domino, we would not see the ways they correspond to shapes we find on earth. In each person’s education about race, there is such a lot of randomness that enters the equation. The basic ways in which we produce what we think is knowledge are worth looking at—</p>\r\n<p>When an event occurs, like the killing of Malcolm X, the fault lines beneath what might be otherwise harmonious relationships reveal themselves. More recently, we think about Trayvon Martin, the sad life of Rodney King,and our sense of personal knowledge about racial crimes emerges. A few years after I graduated from Duke, there was the Lacrosse scandal. I had not known those boys, but I had known boys like that. They woke up early and went to class and did thier reading. They chewed tobacco. You'd catch them at night making a scratched grafitti on the study carrels that revealed things about how they felt about minorities and sorority girls that would make you wan to vomit. You didn' t know what to think about them, overall. You tried to imagine them raping someone, and were embarrassed at how easily your imagination went there. But these were not the same boys on trial. </p>\r\n<p>I am interested, in the way that Joan Didion was interested after the Central Park Rape scandal, in the details not only of the particular crimes that make the news, but in the way that they get publicized and they way that publicized crimes obscure other crimes. I am thinking of O.J Simpson and Trayvon and Rodney King alltogether in a muddy mass. Black Americans tend to know a whole lot more about the history of crimes against thier men than their white counterparts. Many see what has happened before, and what is still happening, and can be forgiven for thinking it is happening again. </p>\r\n<p>When there is a racially divisive event in this country, watching people respond seems to reveal little about the facts of the case at hand—which are often incomplete and heavily mediated by the journalistic process. The responses tell us more about the particular responders’ knowledge of how many cases of violence against black people they are well acquainted with. In the case of each responder it might behoove us to ask: how much does it hurt to think about the one you think is the innocent party? Does this innocent resemble your uncle or aunt? An algorithm could almost be made to account for the emotional investment one has in the agressor-who-is-actually-victim, and the number of times that pattern has been seen, or heard of, historically, by the responder. I am sometimes tempted to make a survey of my facebook friends--to see how many have been personally affected by the sheer number of cases of mistaken identity and judicial oversight that have put black men into coffins or jailcells, and how many are completely unaware on any such phenomenon. </p>\r\n<p>Of course, as with the marriages of others, we do know what happens behind each closed door, or streetcorner, or frat-house in places where we, personally, do not happen to be standing. The entire system of the law asks citizens to make decisions they cannot accurately make. The entire system of the media seduces citizens into having opinions without enough information—historical <em>or</em> currently, factually relevant. What has happened before can happen again--and so can what hasn’t.</p>\r\n<p>When we decide we know what has happened in a case, without studying either the history of racial violence in America, or the facts at hand, it is like going out to the stars on a cloudy night and believing that’s all there is. Like thinking you know what happened in the marriage between two people you never met. You simply do not have enough information to arrive at conclusions. You can count the stars, but not the holes they leave.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F06%2Fcorrespondences-unsent-letters-on-racial-crimes-american-college-and-interracial-marriage.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=29ld9hpG3YM:78H8v4Tp7zk:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "On Eating Animals",
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>by <a href=\"http://www.shunya.net/Text/Policy.htm\">Namit Arora</a><br></strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb05d970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"MollyCow\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb05d970d-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"MollyCow\"></a>In a Montana slaughterhouse some years ago, a black Angus cow awaiting execution suddenly went berserk, jumped a five-foot fence, and escaped. She ran through the streets for hours, dodging cops, animal control officers, cars, trucks, and a train. Cornered near the Missouri river, the frightened animal jumped into its icy waters and made it across, where a tranquilizer gun brought her down. Her \"daring escape\" stole the hearts of the locals, some of whom had even cheered her on. The story got international media coverage. Telephone polls were held, calls demanding her freedom poured into local TV stations. Sensing the public mood, the slaughterhouse manager \"granted clemency\" to the \"brave cow\". Now called <a href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10796026/ns/us_news-weird_news/t/cow-lam-slaughterhouse-hook/#.T8NBn463nQT\">Molly</a>, she was sent to a nearby farm to live out her days grazing under open skies—which warmed the cockles of many a heart.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055529/Moment-police-gunned-runaway-cows-escaped-way-slaughterhouse.html\">Cattle</a> <a href=\"http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/cows-goats-escape-from-slaughterhouse-only-to-be-forced-back-in.html\">trying</a> to <a href=\"http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/11/11140688-moo-dini-steers-life-spared-after-slaughterhouse-escape?lite\">escape</a> <a href=\"http://www.farmsanctuary.org/rescue/rescues/past/queenie.html\">slaughterhouses</a> <a href=\"http://avoice4animals.blogspot.com/2011/06/kayli-cow-escapes-slaughterhouse-new.html\">are</a> <a href=\"http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/01/animals_in_the_news_3.html\">not</a> <a href=\"http://www.thekindlife.com/post/maxine-the-cows-inspiring-escape\">uncommon</a>. Few of their stories end happily though. In Omaha some years ago, six cows escaped at once. Five were quickly recaptured; one kept running until Omaha police cornered her in an alley and pumped her with bullets. The cow, bellowing miserably and hobbling like a drunk for a few seconds, collapsed and died on the street in a pool of blood. This brought howls of protest, some from folks who had witnessed the killing. They called the police’s handling inhumane and needlessly cruel.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">It is tempting to see these commiserating folks as animal lovers—and that's how they likely see themselves—until one remembers what they eat for dinner. A <a href=\"http://www.mylifestylechoices.info/blog/factory-farmed-beef\">typical</a> slaughterhouse in America kills over a thousand Mollys a day—lined up, shot in the head, and often cut-open and bled while still conscious, an end no less cruel and full of bellowing—all because Americans keep buying neatly-packaged slices of their corpses in supermarkets. Raised unnaturally and inhumanely, over a million protesting birds and mammals are <a href=\"http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp\">violently killed</a> in the U.S. every hour (that's 300 per second!). Is it then unreasonable to say that nearly all meat-eaters in America participate quite directly in a cycle of suffering and cruelty of staggering scale?</p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Yet the idea persists that Americans love animals, largely because of their love and concern for a class of animals called \"pets\" (and other \"cute animals\" like dolphins, polar bears, and pandas). Most Americans have had at least one pet at some point in their lives. Most see their pets as extensions of their families, photograph them, swap stories about them, buy them gifts and treats, spend money on their sicknesses, support taxes to build shelters for them, and mourn their deaths. Yet, the question continues to rankle, as Elizabeth Kolbert put it:</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left;padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#00007f\">\"How is it that Americans, so solicitous of the animals they keep as pets, are so indifferent toward the ones they cook for dinner? The answer cannot lie in the beasts themselves. Pigs, after all, are quite</span> <a href=\"http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-emotional-world-of-farm-animals/\">companionable</a><span style=\"color:#00007f\">, and dogs are said to be </span><a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/11/dogs-vs-pigs-why-do-we-eat-what-we-eat-ctd/179843/\">delicious</a><span style=\"color:#00007f\">.\"[1]</span></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">What might explain this odd behavior? From humankind's long community with farm animals, how has it come to this?</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>A Brief History of Farm Animals</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016767a215e7970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"EgyptAnimals\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016767a215e7970b-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"EgyptAnimals\"></a>For much of our settled history—and even today in parts of the world—most people lived in close proximity to farm animals. Animals fertilized our crops, shared our labors, and nourished our bodies, helping us enlarge our settled communities. Families commonly kept a few farm animals, gave them names, and saw them as individuals with distinct temperaments. Children grew up around them, related to them effortlessly, and came to know their cycles of birth, aging, and death. Our obligations to domestic animals arose in part from a sense of kinship, community, and mutual dependence; we saw in them our own instincts, physical vulnerabilities, and social-filial attachments. They frequently inhabited our myths and polytheistic beliefs. Each time we killed and ate one of them, we also silently paid the price, however small, of having known the animal in life and in its dying moments. Children were often saddened by the slaughter of an animal they knew, and missed the animal for a while. Ritual animal sacrifices occurred only on special occasions. Abuse of animals occurred too but it was neither systematic nor centrally organized, and depended on the moral compasses of their owners. Like people, animals had their own luck in ending up with a severe human family or a gentler one.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">In later millennia, urbanization, specialization, and new economic, religious, and humanistic ideas began altering our relations with farm animals. Their ownership became concentrated in fewer hands, flocks and herds grew larger. As a result, the individuality of animals was lost to their owners and they began receding from most people's everyday lives.[2] Over time, farm animals became yet another natural resource managed by specialists, who harvested their material value and transferred it to others via the market. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that a hallmark of our modernity is a drastic loss of first-hand knowledge and experience of nature's beats and rhythms, including knowledge of animal lives. Most people today have no experience with farm animals. Generations of us have grown up in urban housing, public parks, and city streets, and rarely around the animals we eat. From a young age, we socialize our children—rather indoctrinate them, for there is nothing natural about it—to dearly love and fuss over some domesticated animals while eating others without thought, not unlike eating carrots.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">In the 20th century, the inexorable logic of modern economics and the assembly-line turned farm animals into number-<a href=\"http://gallery.hd.org/_exhibits/natural-science/_more2007/_more04/cattle-in-pole-barn-earmarked-tagged-on-sunny-April-day-at-Neals-Farm-Checkendon-Oxfordshire-England-1-DHD.jpg\">tagged</a> bodies, to be fattened, disinfected, and processed as quickly and cheaply as possible. We found new uses for animal parts in plastics, detergents, tires, cosmetics, dyes, contraceptives, crayons, and more. This went hand-in-hand with our portrayals of them as \"dumb animals\", making it easier for us to <a href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/01/piglets-factory-farm-video\">overlook</a> our <a href=\"https://secure.humanesociety.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=5403&s_src=blogad050412b\">abuse</a> of them and ignore their manifold social and emotional lives. Only animal behaviors with an economic impact merited attention, for example, factories had to deal with the tendency of animals to injure others or themselves when forced to stand in cramped feedlots in ankle-deep shit, or when packed in tiny cages.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">To raise efficiency and cut costs, farm animals began to be engineered for abnormally <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67fwQFtyeE\">rapid</a> weight gain, fed unnatural corn-based diets that cause metabolic <a href=\"http://www.ehow.com/info_8567574_corn-cattle-ethical-issues.html\">disorders</a> and liver damage, and <a href=\"http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-usda-factory-farming-isnt-natural\">injected</a> with preemptive antibiotics and growth hormones. To reduce fights and injuries due to overcrowding, animals began to be routinely <a href=\"http://www.animalethics.org.uk/i-ch8-1-mutilation.html\">mutilated</a>—for instance, their beaks, horns, and tails were chopped off or burned out <em>without</em> anesthesia—and <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bNY4Fjsdft4\">confined</a> in tiny crates in windowless rooms. All of these procedures are now standard and legal. As with so much of our economics, <a href=\"http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200606--.htm\">the full cost</a> of this enterprise, whether ethical, environmental, or health, has never been factored in. The tragedy was complete when raising and killing animals for meat came to be seen as agriculture, which is why the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulates this industry.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb116970d-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Pigsdead\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb116970d-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Pigsdead\"></a>What <em>might have</em> arrested this decline in the fortunes of farm animals are big cultural ideas, religious or secular, that for whatever reasons opposed killing animals. But those did not arise in the West as they did, for example, in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa#Non-human_life\">India</a>. Depending on whom you ask, Western monotheisms, while seeing humankind as God's special creation, ranged in attitude from passive disaffection to active malice towards animals. Christian doctrine has practically no injunctions against treating animals as a means to human ends. No sin is incurred from mistreating or killing animals. Animals were declared vastly inferior, incapable of possessing souls, and created for the use of humans, who stood right below the angels. And so Western monotheisms have long seen animals as dispensable for human interests, desires, and whims.[3]</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">In the modern age, even secular humanism, with its nearly exclusive focus on humans, cared little for animals. \"In the West,\" writes Mary Midgley, \"both the religious and the secular moral traditions have, till lately, scarcely attended to any non-human species.\"[4] With notable exceptions like Rousseau, Bentham, Schopenhauer, and animal welfare organizations like the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Society_for_the_Prevention_of_Cruelty_to_Animals\">SPCA</a>, the dominant strands of Western culture remained heavily invested in denying moral consideration to animals. Rather conveniently, animals are presumed to lack feelings, thoughts, emotions, memory, reason, intelligence, sense of time, language, consciousness, or autonomy. The idea that animals do not feel pain was <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v8/n6/full/7400996.html\">entertained</a> by scientists until the 1980s. Such self-serving presumptions, enabled by our estrangement from farm animals, certainly made our conscience rest easier, even though our precious pets <a href=\"http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/596445-pigs-and-dogs-a-double-standard\">are not</a> known to be any <a href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/the-joy-of-pigs/smart-clean-and-lean/2126/\">different</a> in these <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10angier.html\">terms</a>. This helps explain why the animal rights movement focuses so hard on demonstrating many of these capacities in animals (sometimes overstating their case). So tenacious can be our habits of life and mind that even today, despite everything we know and the genuine alternatives we have for a nutritious diet, less than one percent of American adults have turned away from factory-farmed meat for ethical reasons.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>The Modern Business of Killing</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb15e970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"HappyPig2\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb15e970d-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"HappyPig2\"></a>Slaughterhouses today operate behind closed doors, their violence increasingly <a href=\"http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/campaigns/factory_farming/fact-sheets/ag_gag.html\">concealed</a> from society at large. Even their design tells a revealing story: careful division of labor, compartmentalized zones, non-unionized immigrant labor (especially on the kill floor), with few workers ever witnessing a killing despite working there for years. Language, too, cushions the psychological impact of the job, writes Timothy <a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/working-undercover-in-a-slaugh.html\">Pachirat</a>, who worked in a slaughterhouse:</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left;padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#00007f\">\"In addition to spatial and labor divisions, the use of language is another way of concealing the violence of killing. From the moment cattle are unloaded from transport trucks into the slaughterhouse's holding pens, managers and kill floor supervisors refer to them as 'beef.' Although they are living, breathing, sentient beings, they have already linguistically been reduced to inanimate flesh, to use-objects. Similarly, there is a slew of acronyms and technical language around the food safety inspection system that reduces the quality control worker's job to a bureaucratic, technical regime rather than one that is forced to confront the truly massive taking of life. Although the quality control worker has full physical movement throughout the kill floor and sees every aspect of the killing, her interpretive frame is interdicted by the technical and bureaucratic requirements of the job. Temperatures, hydraulic pressures, acid concentrations, bacterial counts, and knife sanitization become the primary focus, rather than the massive, unceasing taking of life.\"</span>[5]</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">In the U.S., farm animals make up 98 percent of all birds and mammals humans use, the rest being pets and victims of research or sport. The factory farming industry \"has persuaded <a href=\"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/who-protects-the-animals/\">legislatures</a> to amend criminal statutes that purport to protect farm animals from cruelty so that it cannot be prosecuted for any farming practice that the industry itself determines is acceptable, with no limit whatsoever on the pain caused by such practices. As a result, in most of the United States, prosecutors, judges, and juries no longer have the power to determine whether or not farm animals are treated in an acceptable manner. The industry alone defines the criminality of its own conduct.\"[6] Veterinarians who report abuses against farm animals risk liabilities. A <a href=\"http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/fbi-undercover-investigators-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act/5440/\">report</a> last year found that \"The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has kept files on activists who expose animal welfare abuses on factory farms and recommended prosecuting them as terrorists.\"</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>\"The Axe for the Frozen Sea Inside Us\"</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">What can shake up our colossal indifference? Clearly, most of us don't even know about the horror and <a href=\"http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/foie-gras.aspx\">pain</a> we inflict on billions of <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbtBgLfl90&feature=related\">birds</a> and <a href=\"http://www.chooseveg.com/kosher-slaughter.asp\">mammals</a> in our meat factories. But there is no good excuse for this, is there? It's more likely that <em>we don't want to know</em>—cannot afford to know for our own sake—so we turn a blind eye and trust the artifice of bucolic imagery on meat packaging. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights_and_the_Holocaust\">Many see</a> parallels here with the German people's willful denial of the concentration camps that once operated around them, or call those who partake of factory-farmed meat little <a href=\"http://blog.shunya.net/shunyas_blog/2008/12/the-eichmann-within.html\">Eichmanns</a>. \"For the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka\", wrote Issac Bashevis <a href=\"http://www.ivu.org/history/northam20b/singer.html\">Singer</a>. [7]</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Predictably enough, many others are offended by such comparisons. They say that comparing the industrialized abuse of animals with the industrialized abuse of humans trivializes the latter. There are indeed limits to such comparisons, though our current enterprise may be worse in at least one respect: it has no foreseeable end; we seem committed to raising billions of sentient beings year-after-year only to kill them after a short life of intense suffering.[8] Furthermore, rather than take offense at polemical comparisons—as if others are obliged to be more judicious in their speech than we are in our silent deeds—why not reflect on our apathy instead? Nor does criticizing vegetarians and vegans for being self-righteous—or being moral opportunists in having found a new way of affirming their decency to themselves—absolve us from the need to face up to our roles in perpetuating this cycle of violence and degradation.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb1b8970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Veganfunnycomic\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016306aeb1b8970d-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Veganfunnycomic\"></a>Not long ago a Humane Society sting operation at a California slaughterhouse (see the <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhlhSQ5z4V4\">video</a>) caused much public outrage and media hubbub. A cynic might say that the outrage was motivated less by the cruelty, more by concerns about the nutritional <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120378150987388423.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\">safety</a> of meat from <a href=\"http://www.markfiore.com/doreen_downer_0\">downer</a> cattle. But genuine disgust at the cruelty was also evident in the response and in the flurry of donations to animal welfare groups. So it's not that farm animals get no sympathy in the U.S., only that Americans somehow do not realize that <a href=\"http://video.humanesociety.org/video/1626336559001\">cruelty</a> is not an exception but the <a href=\"http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty-glossary.aspx\">norm</a> and is <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/05/cruelty-farm-animals-slaughterhouse\">infused</a> into the very idea of <a href=\"http://www.aspca.org/fight-animal-cruelty/farm-animal-cruelty/what-is-a-factory-farm.aspx\">factory</a> farms. Cheap meat <a href=\"http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/the-human-cost-of-animal-suffering/\">correlates</a> strongly with <a href=\"http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/animals.html\">cruelty</a>, for what makes meat cheap is the assembly-line <a href=\"http://www.green-blog.org/2010/07/22/the-cruel-life-inside-a-factory-farm/\">processing</a> of animals who subsidize it for us with their <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzS8p727gvM&feature=related\">suffering</a>.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">Treating animals humanely requires natural diets, open spaces for living, stopping hormones that <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbtBgLfl90&feature=related\">explode body</a> weight, humane medical procedures, no <a href=\"http://www.animalethics.org.uk/i-ch8-1-mutilation.html\">mutilations</a> like chopping off beaks, tongues, and tails, more stringent training for caretakers and inspectors, surveillance cameras, professionals who enforce laws and prosecute violators, and so on—all of which make meat more expensive. Our desire for cheap products is often at odds with our desire to be ethical and humane. Few things strike me as more absurd than calling oneself an animal lover while patronizing industrialized meat, though people will surely continue to deceive themselves and even offer variously <a href=\"http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/text/meatarg.html\">inane arguments</a> to defend their habit (for example: many other animals also eat animals, humans are at the top of the food chain, people need meat protein to live, our traditions or religions sanction meat eating, and so on; David J Yount has compiled many <a href=\"http://www.mesacc.edu/~davpy35701/text/meatarg.html\">good responses</a> to such arguments).</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\">The modern animal rights movement has certainly impacted a range of concerns—such as reducing the use of animals for furs and cosmetics testing, laws against wanton hunting and certain cruelties—but not quite factory farming, which seems a more difficult case. This may well be because this industry is tied up with big corporate interests and serves more widely entrenched cultural habits. Another reason may be that the rights movement has not fostered enough discussion on where animal rights come from. What’s needed in my view are not theories of rights or liberty for animals, nor talk of \"speciesism\" or utilitarian optimization—at least not primarily—but narratives and experiences that reawaken us to a sense of kinship with farm animals, which is the ground upon which we build our obligations to them. (I can recommend the <a href=\"http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-emotional-world-of-farm-animals/\">documentary</a> film, <em>The Emotional World of Farm Animals</em>, as a place to begin.) There is no evidence that farm animals suffer any less than dogs or cats. They too are lovable, intelligent, and have individual personalities and <a href=\"http://www.think-differently-about-sheep.com/Sentience-%20In-Farm-Animals-%20Pigs.htm\">social-emotional</a> lives; many of them even bond with humans. They too have <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-World-Farm-Animals/dp/1584797487\">behaviors</a> that in our pets we describe as fear, elation, loneliness, anxiety, <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12584258\">playfulness</a>, etc. More of us rediscovering this may be a prerequisite to bringing greater dignity to their lives and deaths—and in doing so, greater dignity to our own.</p>\r\n<p>Though unlikely, it's possible that even if we really took the time to discover how we treat farm animals, most of us might in good faith still decide to patronize factory-farmed meat. We might conclude that the price we make animals pay, and the price we pay in sacrificing part of our humanity, are worth the benefits to us. Such honest deliberation would require that we make our meat factories open to the public—give them glass walls, so to speak—even visit them with our kids, so they too can decide for themselves. That might be a step towards a clear conscience. But meanwhile how terribly dishonorable we look by averting our gaze and choosing ignorance—and in a surreal twist, going sentimental for cows that escape—while callously sponsoring the anguish and pain of billions of our fellow animals.</p>\r\n<p> (Video: <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=THIODWTqx5E\">Farm to Fridge</a>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/THIODWTqx5E\" width=\"560\"></iframe></p>\r\n<p><strong style=\"text-align:left\">Notes: </strong></p>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li>Elizabeth Kolbert, \"<a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/09/091109crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=1\">Flesh of Your Flesh</a>: Should you eat meat?\", The New Yorker, Nov 2009.</li>\r\n<li>Lesley J Rogers, \"Minds of their Own\", p 182, 1998.</li>\r\n<li>This is also true for the \"Confucian zone\" of East Asia, about which I've <a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/03/asian-food-for-thought.html\">written here</a>. </li>\r\n<li>Mary Midgely, \"Animals and Why They Matter,\" p 10, 1998. </li>\r\n<li>Timothy Pachirat, \"<a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/working-undercover-in-a-slaugh.html\">Working Undercover</a> in a Slaughterhouse: an interview\", Boing Boing, 8 Mar 2012.</li>\r\n<li>Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, Editors, \"Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions<em>\",</em> p 206, 2004. From chapter titled \"<a href=\"http://www.animalwelfareadvocacy.org/externals/Foxes%20in%20the%20Henhouse.pdf\">Foxes in the Hen House</a>: Animals, Agribusiness and the Law" by David J. Wolfson & Mariann Sullivan, 2004.</li>\r\n<li>IB Singer used to say that he turned vegetarian for health reasons—the health of the chicken.</li>\r\n<li>JM Coetzee, \"The Lives of Animals\", 1999.</li>\r\n<li>Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, Cary Wolfe, "Philosophy & Animal Life", 2008.</li>\r\n<li>A <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Cjkd9IMy0&feature=related\">video interview</a> with Jonathan Safran Foer. </li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<p>_______________________________________________________</p>\r\n<p>See Namit's <a href=\"http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/Highlights/Animals.htm\">pictures of animals</a>. <a href=\"http://www.shunya.net/Text/publications.html\">More writing by Namit Arora?</a><br>_______________________________________________________</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F06%2Fon-eating-animals.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=I3NL93SJHtQ:0fX-Uk1-or4:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "The Project 2.0: confirmed",
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"content" : "<p>My mental model of the whole Murdoch/political complex, as I’ve said before, is that there have been two projects, The Project 1.0 and The Project 2.0. The first was the original use of “The Project” as Peter Mandelson introduced the phrase – the Blairite settlement, under which there was a transactional, bargaining relationship between the Labour Party and the News International hierarchy. People like Mandelson and Alistair Campbell achieved fame because they managed the terms of this relationship. The second, The Project 2.0, is the far closer and to my mind more dangerous relationship that developed between the Conservative Party, News International, and the Metropolitan Police in the late 2000s. </p>\n<p>The differences are that in the Project 2.0, personnel from News International, for example Andy Coulson and Neil Wallis, were integrated into the structure of government, specifically the political/press management network radiating out from Downing Street in parallel to the operational/policy one radiating from the Treasury. Further, the principals understood the relationship in terms of one with common goals, common ideology, and a common culture. Nobody in the Labour Party ever imagined Rupert Murdoch was on their side.</p>\n<p>Here’s <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/21/leveson-inquiry-mandelson-jowell-live\">Peter Mandelson</a>. <em><br>\n<blockquote>Mandelson believes relations between government ministers and journalists are, in essence, a “trade”. Journalists want favourable access to news and ministers want good coverage of policies, he says.</blockquote></em></p>\n<p>Now here’s the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/14/david-cameron-leveson-inquiry-live#block-77\">famous text</a> from Rebekah Brooks. Make your own mind up. I think it’s pretty clear what the aims of the Project 2.0 were – eliminate OFCOM as a force in affairs, damage the BBC as far as possible, convert Sky News into a Fox-like talking points channel. Jeremy Hunt and James Murdoch said as much at various junctures. This of course dovetails with other Conservative strategic initiatives like boundary changes, an anti-union party funding reform, and making it harder to get councils to run voter registration.</p>\n<p>So you can see two broad strategies. One was to manage Murdoch tactically, hope the good times kept rolling, and redistribute City taxes via the national institutions like the NHS and the in-work benefits aspect of the Revenue, schoolsernospitals and the shadow welfare state being considered more respectable and Murdoch-compatible than wages. (Exercise: how often did the <em>Sun</em> mention wages and how often petrol prices?) Hopefully, voting Labour would be a habit, and erosion of the core vote would be compensated by floating voters gradually sticking to the shore.</p>\n<p>The other was to integrate Murdoch fully into the core executive, pursue a strategy of re-engineering the electoral landscape, remove the countervailing institutions in the media. The police aspect is interesting – was the original point of the elected police commissioners plan to create electoral campaigns that the media could win for the Tories? In that case, why such emphasis on influencing the Met? Or was that a legacy that had to be dealt with?</p>\n<p>Both of them seem to have gone bust. The Blairite one was undermined by the economic crisis and then finished off by the final collapse of the relationship. The Tory one has been knocked off course by the failure to get a proper win in 2010 and then holed by the great Murdoch crisis. Where are we going from here?</p>"
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"title" : "The imperial agenda of the US's 'Africa Command' marches on | Dan Glazebrook",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/84735?ns=guardian&pageName=The+imperial+agenda+of+the+US%27s+%27Africa+Command%27+marches+on+%7C+Dan+Glazeb%3AArticle%3A1759607&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Africa+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CAfrican+Union%2CMuammar+Gaddafi%2CLibya+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+and+North+Africa+%28News%29+MENA%2CUS+foreign+policy%2CUS+military+%28News%29%2CUS+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Dan+Glazebrook&c7=12-Jun-14&c8=1759607&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&c42=Comment+is+free&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>With mission accomplished in Libya, Africom now has few obstacles to its military ambitions on the continent</p><p>\"The less they see of us, the less they will dislike us.\" So remarked Frederick Roberts, British general during the Anglo-Afghan war of 1878-80, ushering in a policy of co-opting Afghan leaders to control their people on the empire's behalf.</p><p>\"Indirect rule\", as it was called, was long considered the linchpin of British imperial success, and huge swaths of that empire were conquered, not by British soldiers, but by soldiers recruited elsewhere in the empire. It was always hoped that the dirty work of imperial control could be conducted without spilling too much white man's blood.</p><p>It is a lesson that has been re-learned in recent years. The ever-rising western <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/sep/17/afghanistan-casualties-dead-wounded-british-data\" title=\"\">body counts</a> in Iraq and Afghanistan have reminded politicians that colonial wars in which their own soldiers are killed do not win them popularity at home. The hope in both cases is that US and British soldiers can be safely extricated, leaving a proxy force of allies to kill opponents of the new regime on our behalf.</p><p>And so too in Africa.</p><p>To reassert its waning influence on the continent in the face of growing Chinese investment, the US established <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/21/the_truth_about_africom?page=0,0\" title=\"\">Africom</a> – the \"Africa Command\" of the US military – in October 2008. Africom co-ordinates all US military activity in Africa and, according to its mission statement, \"contributes to increasing security and stability in Africa – allowing African states and regional organizations to promote democracy, to expand development, to provide for their common defense, and to better serve their people\".</p><p>However, in more unguarded moments, officials have been more straightforward: Vice Admiral Robert Moeller declared in a conference in 2008 that Africom was about preserving \"the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market\", and two years later, <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/21/the_truth_about_africom\" title=\"\">in a piece in Foreign policy magazine</a>, wrote: \"Let there be no mistake. Africom's job is to protect American lives and promote American interests.\" Through this body, western powers are resorting to the use of military power to win back the leverage once attained through financial monopoly.</p><p>The small number of US personnel actually working for Africom – approximately 2,000 – belies both the ambition of the project and the threat it poses to genuine African independence. The idea, once again, is that it will not be US or European forces fighting and dying for western interests in the coming colonial wars against Africa, but Africans. The US soldiers employed by Africom are not there to fight, but to direct; the great hope is that the African Union's forces can be subordinated to a chain of command headed by Africom.</p><p>Libya was a test case. The <a href=\"http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67844/jonathan-stevenson/africoms-libyan-expedition\" title=\"\">first war actually commanded by Africom</a>, it proved remarkably successful – a significant regional power was destroyed without the loss of a single US or European soldier. But the significance of this war for Africom went much deeper than that for, in taking out Muammar Gaddafi, Africom had actually eliminated the project's fiercest adversary.</p><p>Gaddafi ended his political life as a dedicated pan-Africanist and, whatever one thought of the man, it is clear that his vision for African was very different from that of the subordinate supplier of cheap labour and raw materials that Africom was created to maintain. He was not only the driving force behind the creation of the African Union in 2002, but had also served as its elected head, and made Libya its biggest financial donor. To the dismay of some of his African colleagues, he used his time as leader to push for a <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7868828.stm\" title=\"\">\"United States of Africa\",</a> with a single currency, single army and single passport. More concretely, Gaddafi's Libya had an estimated <a href=\"http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/2011/12/the-african-union-after-gaddafi/\" title=\"\">$150bn</a> worth of investment in Africa – often in social infrastructure and development projects, and this largesse bought him many friends, particularly in the smaller nations. As long as Gaddafi retained this level of influence in Africa, Africom was going to founder.</p><p>Since his removal, however, the organisation has been rolling full steam ahead. It is no coincidence that within months of the fall of Tripoli – and in the same month as Gaddafi's execution – President Obama announced the deployment of <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/14/obama-sends-troops-uganda\" title=\"\">100 US special forces</a> to four different African countries, including Uganda. Ostensibly to aid the \"hunt for Joseph Kony\", they are instead <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-trains-african-soldiers-for-somalia-mission/2012/05/13/gIQAJhsPNU_story.html\" title=\"\">training Africans</a> to fight the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/21/somalia-fighting-mogadishu-african-union\" title=\"\">US's proxy war in Somalia</a> – where 2,000 more Ugandan soldiers had been sent the previous month.</p><p>Fourteen major joint military exercises between Africom and African states are also due to take place this year; and <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201204090676.html\" title=\"\">a recent press release</a> from the Africa Partnership Station – Africom's naval training programme – explained that 2013's operations will be moving \"away from a training-intensive program\" and into the field of \"real-world operations\".</p><p>This is a far cry from the Africa of 2007, which refused to allow Africom a base on African soil, forcing it to establish its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi's Libya had served not only as a bulwark against US military designs on the continent, but also as a crucial bridge between black Africa south of the Sahara and Arab Africa in the north. The <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/libyas-path-ahead-is-unclear-as-elections-loom/2012/05/22/gIQAULiWiU_story.html\" title=\"\">racism</a> of the new Nato-installed Libyan regime, currently supporting what amounts to a nationwide pogrom against the country's black population, serves to tear down this bridge and <a href=\"http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/2011/12/the-african-union-after-gaddafi/\" title=\"\">push back</a> the prospects for African unity still further.</p><p>With Africom on the march and its strongest opponent gone, the African Union now faces the biggest choice in its history: is it to become a force for regional integration and independence, or merely a conduit for continued western military aggression against the continent?</p><p></p><p>• Follow Comment is free on Twitter <a href=\"http://twitter.com/commentisfree\" title=\"\">@commentisfree</a></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africanunion\">African Union</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/muammar-gaddafi\">Muammar Gaddafi</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/libya\">Libya</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast\">Middle East and North Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usforeignpolicy\">US foreign policy</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-military\">US military</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/dan-glazebrook\">Dan Glazebrook</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FvhJA8Xk551nWbpdrUqUBSPU8DA/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FvhJA8Xk551nWbpdrUqUBSPU8DA/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FvhJA8Xk551nWbpdrUqUBSPU8DA/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FvhJA8Xk551nWbpdrUqUBSPU8DA/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"content" : "<p><em>by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo </em></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\">The first time I knew that a government could suddenly change, I was eight years old. Father climbed on a wooden stool one morning and took down the framed picture of the President that hung next to that of him and Mum on their wedding day. The glass covering the picture was dusty and there were cobwebs around its edges. It had been hanging there since I was four. I ran my index finger across the face of the glass. When I noticed the line it drew, I used my palm to clean off the dust from across the entire surface, revealing the Presidents long cap and enchanting smile which I always admired on television when Father watched the news.</p>\n<p>I was in awe of the President. Staring directly at him was very exciting. I knew him to be the most powerful person in the country who drove around in a long motorcade and had many military men like Father who guarded him. I had dreams of also being the president when I grew up and imagined how long my motorcade will be and how the people would stop and wave each time I was driving past. I was still relishing my fantasies that morning when Father suddenly took the picture away to the little store where we kept odds and ends.</p>\n<p>“He is no more the president” he said when I asked why he was taking the picture away. “We have a new Head of State.” He announced as he walked away. And then almost screaming, he added “The army is back.”</p>\n<p>I noticed the excitement in him and other adults around. They sat around the radio all morning as if expecting some important news. The only time I had seen them so hurdled was when the Green Eagles, our National soccer team, played the finals of the Nations Cup in Lagos. Initially that day, there was no power so they – Father and two of his friends – gathered around the radio listening to the commentary. Jumping in and out of their seats in excitement each time the commentator’s voice indicated we were close to scoring. Power was restored when the match was just about to end and I remember watching on television how the President in his flowing white <em>babanriga</em> presented the trophy to the captain of our victorious side and how everybody had been jumping around in joy.</p>\n<p>Why was he no more the president and why was everybody hurdled around the radio? I wondered but nobody was ready to tell me more. They spoke in loud excited tones, sharing banters and saying things I did not understand. It seemed for them a great accomplishment that the president had been removed. What concerned me most however was that for two days, I did not go to school because of a curfew. On the third day, Father returned home with the framed picture of a smiling man dressed in full military regalia like Father usually dresses when he goes for the Independence Day parade.</p>\n<p>“Here is our new Head of State” he announced after hanging the picture on the vacant space on the wall and giving the picture a full salute as though it were a human being.</p>\n<p>I was to learn about the word ‘coup’ a year later in our social studies class. It didn’t sound very fair to me that some people could force a government out through the use of force and become a new government. Miss Kate, our social studies teacher said there had been many coups in the country. That the first one was in 1966 which sacked the first republic and led to the death of the prime minister. I liked the prime minister. His face was on the five Naira note and i liked that unlike others, he did not have a ‘mister’ or ‘chief’ before his name, but a ‘Sir’. I thought it was something special, something akin to great achievement and silently I wished that when I became President I too will be addressed so. But I didn’t know he was dead until that day. I remember going home sad, thinking how unfair it was that coups happen and why it should lead to the death of people of such great achievement.</p>\n<p>But the President removed by the coup that happened when I was eight was luckier than the prime minister. He was not killed. He was kept on house arrest while most of his cabinet members were put in jail. The adults who now gathered in our living room every evening to analyze the new Head of State’s broadcast kept saying how it was good that the coup happened and how great it was to chase the politicians away. They said the politicians were corrupt and where running the country down. They were all military officers and I thought they were simply supporting their own. I felt they were just proud that one of their own was in power and they emptied so many bottles of beer as they discussed excitedly into the night leaving me and Mother to clean up early the next day.</p>\n<p>We lived in a military barrack in Lagos called Bonny Camp which housed mid level officers. Lagos was then the seat of government and had many Barracks. This was the fifth barrack we were living in. We had moved there just three months before that coup, when the general election was about to hold. But in just three months, Father already had many friends in the camp because of the cheerful way he related with everyone. However, there were three who were closest to him. I didn’t know their ranks, so I called all of them uncle. There was uncle Musa who walked as if the weight of the entire world was on his shoulder, uncle Adelabu with the rounded stomach that reminded me of Mummy when she was pregnant with Nnanna my baby brother and uncle Mathias, tall with the broad shoulders of a wrestler who always yanked me off the floor and threw me into the air each time he came to the house.</p>\n<p>Our house was a two room apartment, one room being the sitting room and the other, the bed room. The houses in the barrack had no front lobby and looked like match boxes arranged in a chain when viewed from afar. Our sitting room was small and barely contained three single armed cushions and a center table. The television and the radio sat on a wooden stool placed against the wall. There was a little space behind the two cushions and the wall. That was where Father’s Suzuki motorcycle spent most nights but during the day, it was my spot. It was where I poured out my crayon and counters from school to do my home work. It was also from where I listened to Father and his friends talk about the coup and about the new government.</p>\n<p>They said the new Head of State had begun a war against indiscipline and that civilians were now being forced to queue in public places. They said he had lifted the ban on importation of second-hand goods and that business was booming. They also said members of the ousted government had been sentenced to many years in jail, some forty, others sixty years. They agreed it served the politicians’ right, that the country would not have survived their looting. They said politicians were incapable of ruling. They were very confident that the military will save the country.</p>\n<p>It was from my spot behind the cushion that I heard Father announce excited one afternoon three months after the coup, that he had been promoted to the rank of a Major. I was doing my English Language home work, filling out some Lexis and Structure when he barged in, making a loud noise as he slammed the front door shut. It was too early for him to be home so I was surprised. After announcing the good news, he stood there in front of the doorway, punching the air and saying “yes” repeatedly. Mother rushed in from the room, dropped Nnanna on one of the cushions before hugging Father. I wasn’t quite sure what it meant to be promoted but I joined in the hug. Not long after, the trio of Uncle Musa, Adelabu and Mathias arrived bearing a bottle of wine. That night they drank and sang military songs, thanking God for the coup as the politicians had been responsible for delaying the long expected promotion.</p>\n<p>That weekend, Father still in celebratory mood took us, me, Mother and Nnanna to the Bar Beach. There were many people at the beach who had come to feel the splash of the wave from the Atlantic against the sandy shore. It was not my first time at the beach. Our school had brought us on an excursion once. The excursion saw us collecting oyster shell for our Fine Art class and on this outing with Father, I spent time collecting oyster shells and playing with the white sand. It was at this same Bar beach that years later two young men who had been allegedly caught with hard drugs would be publicly executed by firing squad without any trial. The day I heard Father and his friends talk about it, I imagined the blood of the men staining the white sand on the beach and turning it red and I wondered if people will still go to the beach to have fun after that.</p>\n<p>The execution was done by a new government. Father had taken down the picture of the Head of State a day after my tenth birthday. There had been another coup. This time it was the army against itself. At 7.00am that morning, there had been martial music on the radio instead of the usual jingle that heralded the 7.00am news. I was about to leave for school when suddenly Mother told me to go back into the house as though I was doing something wrong. I could read the fear in her voice. She and Father hurdled around the radio listening as a deep coax voice made a broadcast to the nation announcing the coup. They both looked very disturbed like people who had just heard some sad news. It was after the broadcast that Father climbed a stool and took down the picture from the wall much the same way he took down that of the President two years before. I didn’t go to school that day and from the window of our sitting room I saw many armed soldiers jumping on and off military trucks like in American war movies.</p>\n<p>Father left hurriedly that morning. Before he left, he warned that no one should step outside as it wasn’t safe. When he returned that night, I was already asleep but I woke up the next day to a full house and the full gist, or at least the much of it that I could understand. Uncle Musa had been killed by the coupists. He had been attached to one of the aides to the Head of State and had died from gunshot injuries he sustained while trying to defend his boss. The Head of State himself was away in Saudi Arabia for Hajj.</p>\n<p>Father was down cast. He sat supporting his jaw with his palm as if his head was about to drop off. Uncle Adelabu must have left his house in a hurry because he had left his shirt unbuttoned exposing a worn singlet with many holes of irregular sizes. Uncle Mathias did not carry and throw me up in the air as usual. In fact, he hardly noticed my presence. They didn’t say much, but the little they said was in hushed tones as if the walls could hear. They did not only look sad for their lost friend, they also looked worried and continued to push the curtain slightly aside to peep out into the camp yard as if expecting someone.</p>\n<p>Two weeks later, Father returned home with the framed picture of the new Head of State. There was no excitement as he hung the picture nor did he announce it to everyone whose picture it was. Even before he brought the picture I already hated in my mind, whoever was responsible for uncle Musa’s death and when I saw the unsmiling face of the man with dark goggles across his eyes, I knew I was not wrong. I hated the man and that night on my bed as I lay down to sleep, I silently prayed to God for another coup to take place to sweep him away.</p>\n<p>No coup happened. The new ruler was as hard and as fierce as his face looked. Everybody was scared of him and he was said to show no mercy to any dissident. They called him the maximum ruler. It wasn’t just his craze for power that made him a curse. It was also because things went from bad to worse in the economy. First, the slices of bread at breakfast went from five to three and then there was no more butter or jam to go with it. Subsequently, meat disappeared from the lunch soup and we began to eat rice only on Sundays. Father and his friends said America had placed economic embargoes on us because of the Head of States style of rule and his poor human rights record.</p>\n<p>The most popular joke when Father and his friends talked became about Uncle Adelabu’s stomach sinking in due to the hunger in the land, but their laughter was no more deep and throaty. They no more spent time at home drinking and discussing in the evenings for security reasons. It was said that agents of the new Head of State were everywhere and private gatherings of officers were deemed suspicious. He was scared of also being ousted but the disaffection was steadily growing among the officer. I saw it in the way Father twisted his lips any time he had to mention the Head of State at home. To avoid any trouble, he and his friends spent more time at the officer’s mess returning late at night when we were all already asleep.</p>\n<p>We moved Barracks again when I was thirteen, this time to Dodan Barracks. Dodan Barracks was a very important Barracks because that was where the Head of State lived. Security at the Barracks was very tight and even soldiers were searched thoroughly at the many security post littered all over it. I didn’t like Dodan Barracks not just because the security was stifling, but also because the relocation meant I had to lose my friends as well as the periodic visits of Uncle Adelabu and Uncle Mathias. But Father was excited about the move. It seemed like he actually desired it. I didn’t understand why until the events of one night about a year later.</p>\n<p>The day had been like any other day. At school, most of my friends talked about the ongoing world cup in USA and how great it felt, watching Nigeria demolish Bulgaria by three goals in the opening match. I had watched the match alone in the sitting room the night before as father was away at the officer’s mess or so I thought. After the match which ended at about 1.00am, I waited for him to return so that I could lock up the front door but he did not. I slept off on the couch and was awoken by Mother in the morning to prepare for school. When I asked about Father, she told me she didn’t know. The way she said it made me suspect something was amiss. Perhaps they had had a fight I guessed. They argued a lot of late about things that had to do with money. Mother was a full-time house wife like the wives of most officers and depended solely on handouts from Father. Those handouts were now little and far in between and it made them argue. Whenever they did, Father would stumble out of the house and not return until late and Mother will become impatient with me and Nnanna.</p>\n<p>I got back from school to meet Father hurrying out with Uncle Mathias. It was the first time I was seeing him, Uncle Mathias since we move away from Bonny Camp and I was excited. But he barely had time to squeeze my palm and tell me what a grown man I now was. They left together dressed in their army camouflage outfit complete with the round hat. When I went into the house, I met Mother standing in the middle of the sitting room clutching her rosary. She looked very disturbed, but wouldn’t say a word to me besides telling me where she kept my lunch. Quite unusually, she did not retire early that day. She sat in the sitting room late into the night, clutching her rosary until she fell asleep on the couch.</p>\n<p>That night it rained. The thunder claps were quite loud and the lightening splashed across the room, making it feel like it was day time. I was sitting in front of the television, fighting off fear from the lightening as I watched the match between Italy and Argentina when suddenly I began to hear sporadic gun fire. Gun fire was normal on the barrack but this was an usual hour for it and it was so loud and continued for a while. Mother immediately woke up like someone who had just had a nightmare and resumed mumbling prayers on the rosary, saying “Jesus” loudly each time the guns boomed. I thought perhaps it was some kind of foreign aggression as the Head of State had made many enemies especially among the world powers and I imagined that they had attacked us. I was very worried about Father being out there.</p>\n<p>The gun shots continued for about an hour after which the sound of sirens rented the air. The time seemed to be crawling. Mother stood, sat and knelt as she prayed, making me conclude she knew what was happening outside. Besides “Jesus”, the other meaningful thing I heard her say was “Ojigwe must come back”. Ojigwe was Fathers nick name, a name he had gotten in military school for his resilience which was likened to the toughness of iron. I thought of many things and worried that if the house were to be attacked, I would not be able to defend Mother and Nnanna. I prayed for Father to return. Finally, I slept off in the wee hours of the day. When I woke up, the rays of the sun already flooded the room.</p>\n<p>It was a loud knock that woke me up. Before I could fully shake off the sleep to respond, Mother was at the door. I saw her making the sign of the cross twice in quick succession before turning the keys to open the door. No sooner had the door opened that five heavily armed officers jumped into the room.</p>\n<p>“Where is your husband?” they demanded.</p>\n<p>“I don’t know…I have not seen him since last night” Mother replied, her sudden composure shocking me.</p>\n<p>They pushed past her and did a quick search of the house as though to ascertain that she wasn’t lying, looking even under the bed in the bed room and turning the cushions upside down.</p>\n<p>“Make sure you do not step out of this house” The tallest of the officers who seemed to be the leader of the team warned as they made to leave. “You are being watched.”</p>\n<p>As they left, Mother slammed the door shut and busted out crying. I didn’t need to ask her what was the matter as just then, a voice on the radio announced that there had been a failed coup, that the Head of State was hale and hearty and in complete control of the Government, and that all the dissident officers involved in the failed coup were right now being rounded up.</p>\n<p>I looked from the radio to Mother, my eyes seeking an explanation.</p>\n<p>“I told your father not to, but he wouldn’t listen, see what he has put all of us into now, just see.” Was what Mother volunteered as if to absolve herself of any condemnation by me before resuming her cry asking intermittently “Ojigwe why, why?”</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/18137_1311816388867_7217639_n.jpg\"><img title=\"18137_1311816388867_7217639_n\" src=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/18137_1311816388867_7217639_n-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\"></a>Ojigwe did not come back that day but he did five years later. The dark goggled Head of State suddenly died while eating the forbidden fruit, an apple offered by some Indian lady and the army under pressure from the West organized elections and handed power over to civilians. The new President, a retired army general who also went on exile at some point pronounced amnesty for all political prisoners and all those in exile. Father was among the first to return. He had escaped from the country after the coup failed, making it across the border to Benin republic by foot before finding his way to Ghana where he was granted asylum. Many others were not that lucky however. Like uncle Adelabu and Uncle Mathias who were both caught and hanged by the Maximum ruler. Like Mother who was tortured to death by the Special Investigation Panel to reveal where her husband was hiding. Like me and Nnanna who had to leave school and return to our village to live with our grandparents. He survived but we did not.</p>\n<p>_____________</p>\n<p><em>Sylva Nze Ifedigbo, an award-winning fiction writer lives in Lagos, Nigeria. His debut collection of Short Stories will be published by DADA Books, Nigeria in 2012</em></p>"
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"title" : "Update: Mystery of the Mardi Gras Bells Solved",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/preme-bob-james.gif?w=584\" alt=\"\"><br>\n<em>Photo Courtesy of Supreme La Rock</em></p>\n<p>Ok people, the truth and long running debate over the Bob James “Take Me To the Mardi Gras” with no bells has been verified. Thanks to supper Digger/ International Man of Leisure and Chief Party Rocker Supreme La Rock, who showed up with said record and briefcase. It was all cosigned by Bob James. Here’s the pic, the record in question, as well as the infamous CTI briefcase said record came in. Boo-Yah! </p>\n<p>The Holy Grail has been verified. The cast has been set, and the mystery solved. Thanks to ‘Preme and Bob James for putting this to rest! I guess all the naysayers owe Biz Markie a big fat apology! Feel free to weigh in about whether you’re happy the controversy is over. I’m on the fence about it. I kind of liked the chase for everyone’s white whale. </p>\n<p>Mystery Solved!<br>\n<span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/2012/06/08/update-mystery-of-the-mardi-gras-bells-solved/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/voFU8Xd8YO4/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>****A short while after I posted this the video was taken down and a shitstorm took over the internet via Soul Strut and various forums….</p>\n<p>THE MYSTERY IS STILL OUT THERE!</p>\n<p>Keep Diggin’!</p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/12-records/\">12\" Records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/crate-diggin/\">Crate Diggin'</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/crate-digging/\">Crate Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/funk/\">funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/music/\">music</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/record-digging/\">Record Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/records/\">records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/vinyl/\">vinyl</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/biz-markie/\">Biz Markie</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/bob-james/\">Bob James</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/debate/\">Debate</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/flea-market-funk/\">Flea Market Funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/funk/\">funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/hip-hop/\">Hip Hop</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/hot-peas-butta/\">Hot Peas & Butta</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/no-bells/\">No Bells</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/supreme-la-rock/\">Supreme La Rock</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/take-me-to-the-mardi-gras/\">Take Me To The Mardi Gras</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/vinyl/\">vinyl</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/7579/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=fleamarketfunk.com&blog=907294&post=7579&subd=fleamarketfunk&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Tarzan at 100: lord of the superheroes",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/24067?ns=guardian&pageName=Tarzan+at+100%3A+lord+of+the+superheroes%3AArticle%3A1756860&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Fiction+%28Books+genre%29%2CComics+and+graphic+novels+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Stuart+Kelly&c7=12-Jun-08&c8=1756860&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&c42=Culture&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FBooks%2FFiction\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Edgar Rice Burroughs's creation first swung on to the page 100 years ago in Tarzan of the Apes. And the king of the jungle remains a touchstone for cult writers to this day</p><p>Some literary characters slip free from their creators and become part of our shared culture, becoming the closest thing we have to a modern mythology. You don't need to have read Arthur Conan Doyle, Carlo Collodi and Mary Shelley to understand Sherlock Holmes, Pinocchio and Frankenstein. It is certainly the case with the most famous creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, who first appeared in print 100 years ago. Very few of the boys who beat their chest and warbled the distinctive animal-ish yodel (\"the bull ape's savage roar of victory\"... \"What a frightful sound!... I shudder at the mere thought of it. Do not tell me that human throat voiced that hideous and fearsome shriek\", as the novel has it) had read the novel. It could be said that not many of them even should.</p><p></p><p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/author/alan-grant\" title=\"\">Alan Grant,</a> the Scottish comics writer who has worked on Judge Dredd and created Mr Zsasz and Jeremiah Arkham for Batman, has called Tarzan the original superhero (indeed, Grant's career began writing Tarzan comics). Tarzan was almost immediately a multimedia hero: on film by 1918, as a comic by 1929, on radio by 1932. The character also has the strange plasticity that allows him to be put into countless, even contradictory, kinds of story.</p><p></p><p>As a superhero avant la lettre Tarzan provides a missing link between <a href=\"https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~pj97/Nietzsche.htm\" title=\"\">Nietzsche's Ubermensch </a>and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman\" title=\"\">Siegel and Shuster's Superman</a>. He is an outsider to civilisation that incarnates its best aspirations. In the novel, Tarzan is aware that he is king of the apes but not an ape. He is also far more frightening: \"he joyed in killing, and that he killed with a joyous laugh upon his handsome lips betokened no innate cruelty. He killed for food most often, but, being a man, he sometimes killed for pleasure\". At the novel's ending, once Tarzan's identity as Lord Greystoke has been revealed, he abdicates it just as he abdicated tyranny over the apes after he killed the brutal Kerchak: \"My mother was an ape,\" he says \"I never knew who my father was.\"</p><p></p><p>The original book is not just casually racist, but deliberately ideologically and, to our modern eyes, offensively racist. The white, English Tarzan has \"that confidence and resourcefulness which were the badges of his superior being\". His first real fight, against Bolgani the Gorilla, pits \"a little English boy, though enormously muscular for such\" against the animal. \"In his veins, though, flowed the blood of the best of a race of mighty fighters, and back of this was the training of his short lifetime among the fierce brutes of the jungle\". The first humans he meets are black, and cannibals: however, when Tarzan kills Kulonga, a \"hereditary instinct\" prevents him from cannibalism (the \"world wide law\" against it apparently does not apply to native Africans). When he does meet other humans – Jane included – the chapter is headed \"His Own Kind\".</p><p></p><p>Like <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/author/hp-lovecraft\" title=\"\">HP Lovecraft, </a>we can recoil from the belief system. But like Lovecraft, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/author/edgar-rice-burroughs\" title=\"\">Rice Burroughs</a> is also a deeply weird writer. The scene where Tarzan teaches himself to read using a primer is supremely odd. Printed letters are \"some strange kind of bug ... for many of them had legs though nowhere could he find one with eyes and a mouth\". Tarzan can read, and write, but not speak: is there a Derridean in the house?</p><p></p><p>Tarzan of the Apes was an immediate success; and fans clamoured for a sequel. (\"Dear Sir, I have read The All-Story magazine for the past year, and I think Tarzan of the Apes is a swell story, except the ending, which was rotten,\" wrote one correspondent). Burroughs obliged with 26 further Tarzan books. There was, if not realism, then at least verisimilitude in the first Tarzan story: the magazine publication featured tigers, which became panthers and lionesses in the book publication). Later books are far more fantastical: Tarzan is variously set against Germans, Ant-Men, Russians, dinosaurs, a lost city of Roman legionnaires, a lost city of medieval knights, a lost city of Atlanteans, a film crew and the inhabitants of Pellucidar, the world inside our hollow Earth (and the subject of another six Burroughs novels). In Tarzan and the Foreign Legion, he joins the RAF and is shot down over Sumatra, where his jungle education comes in handy in seeing off the invading Japanese.</p><p></p><p>On one hand, the Tarzan legacy ends up with such insipid fare as the Disney movie: on the other, he is still a touchstone for cult writers. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/author/michael-moorcock\" title=\"\">Michael Moorcock's</a> first job, at the age of 16, was editing Tarzan magazine, and it's not too far a leap to see in the polymorphous adventures of the King of the Jungle the first spark of the Eternal Champion in Moorcock. And Cheeta – who never appeared in the books – gave us one of the most entertaining and libellous<a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/06/me-cheeta-james-lever\" title=\"\"> celebrity biographies </a>of recent years</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/comics\">Comics and graphic novels</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stuart-kelly\">Stuart Kelly</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IQndkgJWwckSDoDtxqc8UIS5xrU/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IQndkgJWwckSDoDtxqc8UIS5xrU/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IQndkgJWwckSDoDtxqc8UIS5xrU/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/IQndkgJWwckSDoDtxqc8UIS5xrU/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "Comics as Literature, Part 2: Memorable Memoirs",
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"content" : "<p>One of the more common methods of using comics as a medium for serious narrative is the memoir. It turns out that comics and memoirs are a great match: memories can be precise or hazy, trustworthy or otherwise, and comics can depict that in a way that’s sometimes much more evocative than prose alone. Comics allow us to see the world the way the artist sees it, and that can be particularly useful in the case of memoirs as they show us life from one person’s point of view.</p>\n<p>These memoirs also raise some interesting questions about what to call them. I’ve seen them referred to as “autobiographical graphic novels,” but that can be problematic if they’re not actually fiction. On the other hand, “comic” sometimes still carries the connotation of humor and many memoirs have as much tragedy as humor. Oh, well. I’ll just stick with “comics” and “comic book memoirs” for the sake of simplicity. Here are just a few notable ones get you started.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/AmericanSplendor.jpg\"><img title=\"AmericanSplendor\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/AmericanSplendor.jpg\" alt=\"American Splendor covers\" width=\"660\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>American Splendor</cite> — Harvey Pekar</p>\n<p>Harvey Pekar may be one of the earliest comic book memoir-writers, though interestingly he was <em>not</em> a comic book artist. He had the good fortune to know R. Crumb and convinced him to illustrate his slice-of-life stories. <cite>American Splendor</cite> ran for over thirty years and the list of illustrators involved reads like a “who’s who” of comics. Pekar couldn’t draw, but what he <em>could</em> do was record his observations of his daily life, and he used comics as his outlet for the little things that irritated him — whether it was about other people or his own bad habits. His collaboration with his third wife Joyce Brabner, <cite>Our Cancer Year</cite>, chronicles his treatment for lymphoma and the stress it puts on their relationship.</p>\n<p><span></span>It’s interesting to have so many different illustrators over the course of the series, but Pekar’s voice comes across loud and clear. I see Pekar’s influence on cartoonists like Jeffrey Brown (who mixes autobiography with fiction) and Joe Sacco (who puts the medium to use in journalism), but perhaps almost anyone who has written a comic book memoir owes a little to Pekar. There are various collections of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=gee04a-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=american%20splendor&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks\"><cite>American Splendor</cite></a>; if you want a longer, cohesive story, <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1568580118/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1568580118&adid=0BN81S8Y41J9V7G7SKEY&\"><cite>Our Cancer Year</cite></a> may be a good place to start.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/epileptic.jpg\"><img title=\"epileptic\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/epileptic.jpg\" alt=\"Epileptic by David B.\" width=\"294\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Epileptic</cite> — David B.</p>\n<p><cite>Epileptic</cite> is a hard book to categorize; inevitably it will be filed with graphic novels and comics, but it’s a memoir that just happens to be told with pictures. At the same time, the illustrations are not strictly <em>true</em>, at least in a literal sense. David B.’s older brother has epilepsy, and his disease takes over not only his life but that of his family as well, as they try everything from surgery to psychiatry to religion to macrobiotics to esoterism to voodoo in their attempts to cure him.</p>\n<p>David imagines the epilepsy as a giant lizard that pierces his brother, or as a mountain to be climbed, or as a contagious darkness that spreads to himself and his family. The drawings are beautiful and disturbing; some of it has an Edward Gorey feel to it, but it’s hard to draw comparisons to anything else I’ve seen. Perhaps the best description of the book is a line he uses himself: “And life goes on, a little on the gray side.”</p>\n<p>The chronology is a bit hard to follow at times, since he jumps forward and backward without warning, but he manages to create an overall tone of his life. If there remains any doubt that comics can be both serious literature and serious art, this book will change your mind.</p>\n<p>If you like the style of his artwork, David B. also illustrated <a title=\"Puppets and Kings and Undead Things\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/12/puppets-and-kings-and-undead-things/4/\"><cite>The Littlest Pirate King</cite></a>, based on an old French story by Pierre Mac Orlan. As more of his books are translated into English, I’m enjoying them as well, but <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714685/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0375714685&adid=11GRABM81MJNDWS22V7J&\"><cite>Epileptic</cite></a> still stands out in my mind as a stunning (and stunningly drawn) book.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Persepolis.jpg\"><img title=\"Persepolis\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Persepolis.jpg\" alt=\"Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi\" width=\"660\" height=\"458\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Persepolis</cite> by Majane Satrapi</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714839/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0375714839&adid=187EN1D3CSBM05012459&\"><cite>Persepolis</cite></a> is a collection of autobiographical stories, with the first book following Satrapi’s childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. The second book takes her to Austria, where she was sent to continue her education, and then eventually back to Iran. The illustrations are a stark black and white, done in a clean, simple style that tells the story without a lot of distractions. There are a few dream-like scenes (particularly early on, when she speaks to God and wants to be a prophet when she grows up), but for the most part it sticks to a stylized realism.</p>\n<p>In her introduction, Satrapi writes that her intention is to show the real face of Iranians, separate from the “fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism” which is usually associated with Iran. Having lived in Iran and experienced the oppressive regime with its sometimes arbitrary rules, she has also encountered many Iranians who died defending freedom or had to flee their homeland, and it is their story she wants to tell.</p>\n<p>The book, like life, has both tragedy and comedy. In the middle of threats from the regime or bombs from Iraq, there is time for parties and laughter at the absurdity of it all. Satrapi is honest about her own faults, often admitting to experiences she is ashamed of, but also taking pride what she has accomplished.</p>\n<p>It is a perspective on Iran that I hadn’t seen before I first read the books several years ago, and I found the books educational as well as engaging. For a more contemporary look at Iran, Parsua Bashi’s <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HKTLSK/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B005HKTLSK&adid=0HEPB1N9639RXQJ7CJF7&\"><cite>Nylon Road</cite></a> is a comic book memoir that focuses more on Bashi’s present-day circumstances than her childhood. (I <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/11/the-geekly-reader-nylon-road/\">reviewed it here</a> in 2009.) I didn’t find <cite>Nylon Road</cite>‘s artwork as compelling as that of <cite>Persepolis</cite>, but thematically it makes a good companion book. Fans of Satrapi may also enjoy <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714758/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0375714758&adid=1MYWFVBKVFPYVWTMFX50&\"><cite>Chicken With Plums</cite></a>, a story about her great-uncle and his despair at the loss of his beloved instrument.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blankets.jpg\"><img title=\"blankets\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/blankets.jpg\" alt=\"Blankets by Craig Thompson\" width=\"253\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Blankets</cite> by Craig Thompson</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1603090967/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1603090967&adid=1JX8BJ6323X038VXKDE4&\"><cite>Blankets</cite></a> is a semi-autobiographical story about growing up — sharing a bed with his kid brother, his first love, his religious convictions and then the loss of them. Like his earlier comic book <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0375714766/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0375714766&adid=0H17JG5JHGHFE8MJYHFA&\"><cite>Goodbye, Chunky Rice</cite></a>, <cite>Blankets</cite> is bittersweet, and addresses many of the same themes: friendship and goodbyes. But it’s also much more personal. It’s hard to say how much or what has been fictionalized — perhaps “dramatized” is a better word.</p>\n<p>His illustrations depict perfectly his own states of mind, from images of Hell and Heaven during Sunday school to visions of his girlfriend Raina as his muse. He struggles with new passions as they conflict with old values — but in the end, neither seems to win out. It’s hard to say what he’s really left with in the end, which is a shame compared to all the beauty he saw earlier. The picture he paints of his church is perhaps a sad-but-true scenario, in which he’s told that drawing is the worst sort of idleness and escapism. His Sunday school teacher dismisses his passion scornfully: “How can you praise God with DRAWINGS?” You can’t help but wonder what Craig’s story would have been in a different context.</p>\n<p>I should note that not everyone likes Thompson’s books: one complaint is that they’re too elaborate, too earnest, that they command attention by sheer page count alone. And certainly <cite>Blankets</cite> (and his most recent graphic novel <a title=\"Craig Thompson’s Habibi: Gorgeous, a Bit Overwhelming\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/11/craig-thompsons-habibi-gorgeous-a-bit-overwhelming/\"><cite>Habibi</cite></a>) are both impressively large. There is a real beauty in Thompson’s brush-strokes, though. While I found his perspective in <cite>Blankets</cite> sometimes immature, it felt fitting because it chronicled his adolescence.</p>\n<p>Side note: remember what I said about the difficulty with terminology when it comes to memoirs? This one is called “an illustrated novel” right there on the cover — so it’s fictionalized, perhaps, but based on Thompson’s own life. I’ve included it here because it seems to be generally considered a memoir, more so than, say, Will Eisner’s tenement stories. (More on those in a later post!)</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FunHome.jpg\"><img title=\"FunHome\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FunHome.jpg\" alt=\"Fun Home by Alison Bechdel\" width=\"267\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Fun Home</cite> by Alison Bechdel</p>\n<p>Bechdel is perhaps best known for her <a title=\"Dykes to Watch Out For\" href=\"http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/\"><cite>Dykes to Watch Out For</cite></a> comic strip which has been running since 1983. <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618871713/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0618871713&adid=05PG06K0K6CH4F1AA7WM&\"><cite>Fun Home</cite></a> is her memoir, titled after the family’s nickname for the Bechdel Funeral Home, and her subtitle — A Family Tragicomic — is appropriate. It wasn’t until I sat down to write about it that I realized how difficult it is to summarize, because of the way Bechdel deftly weaves together so many different things into a seemingly cohesive whole: literature, coming out to her parents, her father’s death, her parents’ relationship with each other and with the children, growing up in the funeral business, her father’s closeted homosexuality. <cite>Fun Home</cite> is by turns funny and deeply tragic. Bechdel’s search for meaning in her father’s actions (and death) yields some fascinating conclusions.</p>\n<p>Just last month she published <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0618982507/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0618982507&adid=0BBB1Z1QKKTFQP417C5W&\"><cite>Are You My Mother?</cite></a>, which more closely examines her relationship with her mother — a woman who lived with her closeted gay husband’s secret for years. I haven’t read it yet, but based on <cite>Fun Home</cite> I’m putting it on my list.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Stitches.jpg\"><img title=\"Stitches\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Stitches.jpg\" alt=\"Stitches by David Small\" width=\"312\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Stitches</cite> by David Small</p>\n<p>I first came across David Small’s illustrations in <a title=\"Toy Story Zero: The Mouse and His Child\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/12/the-mouse-and-his-child/\"><cite>A Mouse and His Child</cite></a> (written by Russell Hoban). Small’s charcoal illustrations were dark and moody and perfectly suited to Hoban’s story. Several years ago I was given a copy of <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/031236749X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=031236749X&adid=051C4461PT1YDNQE9FND&\"><cite>The Gardener</cite></a>, written by his wife Sarah Stewart, and it’s a beautiful book as well. I’ve since sought out other picture books illustrated by Small (some written by him as well).</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393338967/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0393338967&adid=0FVGNE9ZMQ8A6HXK9WM0&\"><cite>Stitches</cite></a> is a comic book memoir which is quite dark in tone and can be painful to read. Small’s father was a radiologist who bombarded his son with X-rays, thinking they would help his sinuses. When he developed a tumor on his neck, his parents were reluctant to even take him to the doctor, complaining that “doctors cost money and money is something that is in short supply in this house!” Of course, it doesn’t stop his parents from shopping for a new car, new appliances, furniture. Eventually, though, he has surgery, losing one of his vocal cords (and, for some time, his voice). It’s shocking to read of such callous parents, and the brief bits about his grandmother aren’t so great, either.</p>\n<p>So why would you read something like this?</p>\n<p>Well, for one, it’s also a story about Small discovering who he is, setting out to chase his dream of becoming an artist. It’s also incredible artwork. Small’s black-and-white illustrations are powerful and he’s able to convey tremendous emotion through body language and facial expressions. He zooms in on faces and small details; sometimes you only see part of somebody’s face, as if the teenage Small is looking off past the person speaking to him. But equally powerful is the story that isn’t included within the pages of the book: the story that Small did become a successful artist, and that he didn’t follow his mother and grandmother down the path to insanity.</p>"
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"title" : "How the Chicken Conquered the World",
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"content" : "<div><p>From <em>Smithsonian:</em></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0176151321d3970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Chicken-Conquerer-631\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0176151321d3970c-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Chicken-Conquerer-631\"></a>The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: “Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other.” The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain why the soldiers found this display of instinctive aggression inspirational rather than pointless and depressing. But history records that the Greeks, thus heartened, went on to repel the invaders, preserving the civilization that today honors those same creatures by breading, frying and dipping them into one’s choice of sauce. The descendants of those roosters might well think—if they were capable of such profound thought—that their ancient forebears have a lot to answer for.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our era, crossing multiple cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents an intriguingly blank canvas for the flavor palette of almost any cuisine. A generation of Britons is coming of age in the belief that chicken tikka masala is the national dish, and the same thing is happening in China with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Long after the time when most families had a few hens running around the yard that could be grabbed and turned into dinner, chicken remains a nostalgic, evocative dish for most Americans. When author Jack Canfield was looking for a metaphor for psychological comfort, he didn’t call it “Clam Chowder for the Soul.”</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance?</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/How-the-Chicken-Conquered-the-World.html\">here.</a></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F06%2Fhow-the-chicken-conquered-the-world.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=1OlBlyEZIGM:sQ6DKE4pBfs:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Israel turns on its refugees",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/82988?ns=guardian&pageName=Israel+turns+on+its+refugees%3AArticle%3A1755149&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Israel+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+and+North+Africa+%28News%29+MENA%2CWorld+news%2CPopulation+%28News%29%2CEritrea+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CRace+and+religion+%28Media%29%2CRace+issues+%28News%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly&c6=Harriet+Sherwood&c7=12-Jun-04&c8=1755149&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&c42=News&h2=GU%2FNews%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Firebombing of house containing 10 Eritreans is latest example of growing racism stoked by politicians and media</p><p>Behind the metal door and up a narrow, blackened stairwell, fear hung in the air along with the smell of smoke. No one wanted to talk. A young woman scrubbing clothes in a plastic basin mutely shook her head. A man sweeping the floor with a toddler clinging to his legs said one word: \"No.\" Another, bringing bags of food from the nearby market, brushed past without making eye contact.</p><p>As for the 10 Eritreans who had been trapped in a ground-floor apartment when the blaze began at 3am, they had gone. Four were in hospital suffering from burns and smoke inhalation; the rest had fled.</p><p>The <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/04/jerusalem-apartment-housing-migrants-firebombed\" title=\"\">overnight firebombing of a downtown Jerusalem building</a> which houses refugees from sub-Saharan Africa was the latest in a string of attacks set against the backdrop of rising anti-migrant sentiment in Israel, fuelled by inflammatory comments by prominent politicians. Often described as infiltrators by ministers, the media, the army and government officials, migrants have also had labels such as "cancer", "garbage", "plague" and "rapists" applied to them by Israeli politicians.</p><p>The arsonists who struck the Jerusalem apartment, located in a religious neighbourhood of the city, scrawled "get out of our neighbourhood" on its outside wall. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said: "This was a targeted attack which we believe was racially motivated." The foreign ministry condemned the "heinous crime".</p><p>But on the street outside the building, the official response had little resonance with a man who arrived in Israel from Eritrea 14 years ago but was too scared to give his name. \"People look at you, they curse you. They say, 'Go back to your country.' We are very afraid,\" he said.</p><p>Tensions were inevitable, according to Moshe Cohen, the owner of a nearby jeweller's shop. \"They drink, they fight among themselves, they play African music on shabbat [the Jewish sabbath] when people want to pray. What started in Tel Aviv happens here now.\"</p><p>He was referring to a series of firebombings of apartments and a nursery over the past month in southern Tel Aviv, an area in which African migrants are concentrated. Shops run by or serving migrants were smashed up and looted in a violent demonstration last month in which Africans were attacked. Many Israelis were shocked at the display of aggressive racism in their most liberal city.</p><p>Political leaders did not allow the violence to temper their verbal onslaught against the migrants. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/20/israel-netanyahu-african-immigrants-jewish\" title=\"\">said Israel's national identity was at risk from the flood of \"illegal infiltrators\"</a>. Interior minister Eli Yishai suggested that Aids-infected migrants were raping Israeli women, and all, \"without exception\", should be <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/31/israeli-minister-racial-tensions-infiltrators\" title=\"\">locked up pending deportation</a>. They do not believe \"this country belongs to us, to the white man\", he said in an interview.</p><p>And, while touring the fence that Israel is building along its border with Egypt to deter migrants, MP Aryeh Eldad said: \"Anyone that penetrates Israel's border should be shot – a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel's border – shot.\" He later conceded that such a policy may not be feasible \"because bleeding hearts groups will immediately begin to shriek and turn to the courts\".</p><p>According to the immigration authority, there are 62,000 migrants in Israel, where the population is 7.8m. Over 2,000 migrants entered Israel via Egypt last month, compared with 637 last May. The construction of the 150-mile (240km) southern border fence, due to be completed later this year, is thought to be increasing in the short term the numbers attempting to cross into Israel .</p><p>Nearly all are given temporary permits to stay in Israel which must be renewed every three or four months and specifically exclude permission to work. Many end up being employed on a casual basis for a pittance, living in overcrowded, rundown apartments and confined to the fringes of society. In desperation, some turn to petty crime.</p><p>On Sunday, a law came into effect allowing the Israeli authorities to jail migrants for up to three years. People helping or sheltering migrants could face prison sentences of between five and 15 years.</p><p>Netanyahu also ordered ministers to accelerate efforts to deport 25,000 migrants from countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations, principally South Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Ethiopia.</p><p>He conceded it was not possible to deport around 35,000 migrants from Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia. Eritreans and Sudanese make up more than 90% of those who have illegally crossed the Israel-Egypt border in recent months.</p><p>One out of 4,603 applicants was granted asylum status last year.</p><p>Although some commentators and community activists have said that Israel, a state founded by and for refugees from persecution, should be sympathetic and welcoming to those fleeing violence and oppression, the prevailing mood is one of intolerance.</p><p>\"This phenomenon is getting bigger and bigger,\" said Poriya Gets of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, based in Tel Aviv. It was being stoked by politicians and rightwing organisations, she added. \"We now see hotspots of tension between refugees and local people in many towns.\"</p><p>Her organisation had also been targeted. \"We've had phone calls, people cursing and saying ugly things, like, 'We hope you will be raped and we are coming to burn you.' The politicians must take responsibility. They are trying to make the fire bigger.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israel\">Israel</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast\">Middle East and North Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population\">Population</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/eritrea\">Eritrea</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/raceandreligion\">Race & religion</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/race\">Race issues</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/harrietsherwood\">Harriet Sherwood</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fjun%2F04%2Fisrael-migrant-hate\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "SPORTS: The Allure of Laamb",
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"title" : "O.P. Tree",
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"content" : "<img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SZKYs9lCA2M/T8mITbapHgI/AAAAAAAAGQ8/ZvjcbqKI5oA/s1600/e03861_2.JPG\" width=\"487\" height=\"350\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: An exemplary \"Observation Post Tree\" via the <a href=\"http://www.awm.gov.au/blog/2008/09/18/cant-see-the-tree-for-the-wood-part-ii-the-baumbeobachte/\">Australian War Memorial</a>].</small><br><br> The \"O.P. Tree\" was an Observation Post Tree deployed during World War I. Its \"goal,\" as author Hanna Rose Shell explains in <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1935408224/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1935408224\"><i>Hide and Seek</i></a>, her newly published history of the relationship between camouflage and photography, \"was to craft a mimetic representation of a tree—and not just any tree, but a particular tree at a specific site\" on the European battlefield.<br><br> The design, fabrication, and, perhaps most interestingly, installation of this artificial plant form had a fascinating and somewhat <i>Truman Show</i>-esque quality:<blockquote>To develop the O.P. Tree, Royal Engineers representatives selected, measured, and photographed the original tree, in situ, extensively. The ideal tree was dead; often it was bomb blasted. The photographs and sketches were brought back to the workshop, where artists constructed an artificial tree of hollow steel cylinders, but containing an internal scaffolding for reinforcement, to allow a sniper or observer to ascend within the structure. Then, under the cover of night, the team cut down the authentic tree and dug a hole in the place of its roots, in which they placed the O.P. Tree. When the sun rose over the field, what looked like a tree was a tree no longer; rather, it was an exquisitely crafted hunting blind, maximizing personal concealment and observational capacity simultaneously.</blockquote>You can see photographs, read about the construction of replicant bark, and even learn that some of the trees were internally upholstered—like wartime <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/space-jack.html\">superfurniture</a>—as snipers sometimes relied on cushions to assist with long periods of sitting, over at the <a href=\"http://www.awm.gov.au/blog/2008/09/18/cant-see-the-tree-for-the-wood-part-ii-the-baumbeobachte/\">Australian War Memorial</a>.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--fu26qk3WaY/T8txVfMs3YI/AAAAAAAAGRs/bDjNSFGaGEE/s1600/optrees.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"437\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: O.P. Trees].</small><br><br> But there's something almost comedically paranoid about the idea that, upon waking up tomorrow morning, a tree—or rock or, for that matter, a whole hillside—has been surreptitiously replaced by an artificial surrogate, an exactly designed stand-in or double, in a ruse about which you otherwise remain unaware. It happens again—and again, perhaps for an entire season—before one day you finally stumble upon incontrovertible evidence that the entire forest through which you hike every weekend has been filled with incredibly precise, hollow representations of trees through which someone appears to be spying on you.<br><br> <small>(For those of you interested in where the state of fake trees and other artificial landforms is today, consider <a href=\"https://vimeo.com/42285288\">watching this video</a> of George Dante, founder of <a href=\"http://www.wildlifepreservations.com/\">Wildlife Preservations</a>, present his firm's work at <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/studioxnyc\">Studio-X NYC</a>).</small><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8663346-1437828361363570929?l=bldgblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The North West London Blues",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/zadie-smith-2/#tab-blog\">Zadie Smith</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/willesden-green-library_jpg_470x387_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>The Victorian Society</p>\n <p>An 1894 drawing of Willesden Green Library</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Last time I was in Willesden Green I took my daughter to visit my mother. The sun was out. We wandered down Brondesbury Park towards the high road. The “French Market” was on, which is a slightly improbable market of French things sold in the concrete space between the pretty turreted remnants of Willesden Library (1894) and the brutal red brick beached cruise ship known as Willesden Green Library Centre (1989), a substantial local landmark that racks up nearly five hundred thousand visits a year. We walked in the sun down the urban street to the concrete space—to market. This wasn’t like walking a shady country lane in a quaint market town ending up in a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century square. It was not even like going to one of these Farmer’s Markets that have sprung up all over London at the crossroads where personal wealth meets a strong interest in artisanal cheeses. \n</p>\n<p>But it was still very nice. Willesden French Market sells cheap bags. It sells CDs of old time jazz and rock ‘n’ roll. It sells umbrellas and artificial flowers. It sells ornaments and knick-knacks and doo dahs, which are not always obviously French in theme or nature. It sells water pistols. It sells French breads and pastries for not much more than you’d pay for the baked goods in Gregg’s down Kilburn High Road. It sells cheese, but of the decently priced and easily recognizable kind—brie, goat’s, blue—as if the market has traveled unchanged across the channel from some run-down urban suburb of Paris. Which it may have done for all I know. \n</p>\n<p>The key thing about Willesden’s French Market is that it accentuates and celebrates this concrete space in front of Willesden Green Library Centre, which is at all times a meeting place, though never quite so much as it is on market day. Everybody’s just standing around, talking, buying or not buying cheese, as the mood takes them. It’s really pleasant. You could almost forget Willesden High Road was ten yards away. This matters. When you’re standing in the market you’re not going to work, you’re not going to school, you’re not waiting for a bus. You’re not heading for the tube or shopping for necessities. You’re not on the high road where all these activities take place. You’re just a little bit off it, hanging out, in an open air urban area, which is what these urban high streets have specifically evolved to stop people doing. \n</p>\n<p>Everybody knows that if people hang around for any length of time in an urban area without purpose they are likely to become “anti-social.” And indeed there were four homeless drunks sitting on one of the library’s strange architectural protrusions, drinking Special Brew. Perhaps in a village they would be sitting under a tree, or have already been driven from the area by a farmer with a pitchfork. I do not claim to know what happens in villages. But here in Willesden they were sat on their ledge and the rest of us were congregating for no useful purpose in the unlovely concrete space, simply standing around in the sunshine, like some kind of community. From this vantage point we could look ahead to the turrets, or left to the Victorian police station (1865), or right to the half-ghostly façade of the Spotted Dog (1893). \n</p>\n<p>We could have a minimal sense of continuity with what came before. Not so much as the people of Hampstead must have, to be sure, or the folk who live in pretty market towns all over the country, but here and there in Willesden the past lingers on. We’re glad that it does. Which is not to say that we are overly nostalgic about architecture (look at the library!) but we find it pleasant to remember that we have as much right to a local history as anyone, even if many of us arrived here only recently and from every corner of the globe. \n</p>\n<p>On market day we permit ourselves the feeling that our neighborhood, for all its catholic mix of people and architecture, remains a place of some beauty that deserves minimal preservation and care. It’s a nice day out, is my point. Still, there’s only so long a toddler will stand around watching her grandmother greet all the many people in Willesden her grandmother knows. My daughter and I took a turn. You can’t really take a turn in the high road so we went backwards, into the library centre. Necessarily backward in time, though I didn’t—couldn’t—bore my daughter with my memories: she is still young and below nostalgia’s reach. Instead I will bore you. Studied in there, at that desk. Met a boy over there, where the phone boxes used to be. Went, with school friends, in there, to see <em>The Piano</em> and <em>Schindler’s List</em> (cinema now defunct) and afterward we went in there, for coffee (café now defunct) and had an actual argument about art, an early inkling that there might be a difference between a film with good intentions and a good film. \n</p>\n<p>Meanwhile my daughter is running madly through the centre’s esplanade, with another toddler who has the same idea. And then she reverses direction and heads straight for Willesden Green Book Shop, an independent shop that rents space from the council and provides—no matter what Brent Council, the local government for the London borough of Brent, may claim—an essential local service. It is run by Helen. Helen is an essential local person. I would characterize her essentialness in the following way: “Giving the people what they didn’t know they wanted.” Important category. Different from the concept popularized by Mr Murdoch: giving the people what they want. Everyone is by now familiar with the Dirty Digger’s version of the social good—we’ve had thirty years of it. Helen’s version is different and necessarily perpetrated on a far smaller scale. \n</p>\n<p>Helen gives the people of Willesden what they didn’t know they wanted. Smart books, strange books, books about the country they came from, or the one that they’re in. Children’s books with children in them that look at least a bit like the children who are reading them. Radical books. Classical books. Weird books. Popular books. She reads a lot, she has recommendations. Hopefully, you have a Helen in a bookshop near you and so understand what I’m talking about. In 1999 I didn’t know I wanted to read David Mitchell until Helen pointed me to <em>Ghostwritten</em>. And I have a strong memory of buying a book by Sartre here, because it was on the shelf and I saw it. I don’t know how I could have known I wanted Sartre without seeing it on that shelf—that is, without Helen putting it there. Years later, I had my book launch in this bookshop and when it got too full, mainly with local friends of my mother, we all walked up the road to her flat and carried on over there. \n</p>\n<p>And it was while getting very nostalgic about all this sort of thing with Helen, and wondering about the possibility of having another launch in the same spot, that I first heard of the council’s intention to demolish the library centre along with the bookshop and the nineteenth-century turrets and the concrete space and the ledge on which the four drunks sat. To be replaced with private luxury flats, a greatly reduced library, “retail space” and no bookshop. (Steve, the owner, could not afford the commercial rise in rent. The same thing happened to his Kilburn Bookshop, which closed recently after thirty years.) My mum wandered in, with some cheese. The three of us lamented this change and the cultural vandalism we felt it represented. Or, if you take the opposite view, we stood around pointlessly, like the Luddite, fiscally ignorant liberals we are, complaining about the inevitable.\n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/700249_0ec5819b_jpg_470x480_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Oxyman/geograph.org.uk</p>\n <p> </p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>A few days later I got back on a plane to New York, where I teach for a part of each year. Logically it should be easier, when a person is far away from home, to take bad news from home on the chin, but anyone who has spent time in a community of ex-pats knows the exact opposite is true: no-one could be more infuriated by events in Rome than the Italian kid serving your cappuccino on Broadway. Without the balancing context of everyday life all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad. Quickly you become hysterical. Consequently I can’t tell whether the news coming out of my home is really as bad as it appears to be, or whether objects perceived from three thousand miles away are subject to exaggerations of size and color. Did a Labour-run council really send heavies into Kensal Rise Library, in a dawn raid, to strip the place of books and Mark Twain’s wall plaque? Are the people of Willesden Green seriously to lose their bookshop, be offered a smaller library (for use by more patrons from other libraries Brent has closed), an ugly block of luxury flats— and told that this is “culture?” Yes. That’s all really happening. With minimal consultation, with bully-boy tactics, secrecy and a little outright deceit. No doubt Councillor Mo Butt (the council has closed) finds himself in a difficult position: the percentage cuts in Brent are among the highest in the country, mandated by central government. But the chronic mismanagement of finances is easily traced back to the previous Labour government, and so round and round goes the baton of blame. The Willesden Green plan as it stands so obviously gives the developers an extremely profitable land deal—while exempting them from the need to build social housing—that you feel a bit like a child pointing out. In this economy who but a child would expect anything else? \n</p>\n<p>Reading these intensely local stories alongside the national story creates another effect that may be only another kind of optical illusion: mirroring. For here in the Leveson Inquiry into the “ethics of the British press” you find all the same traits displayed, only writ large. Minimal consultation, bully-boy tactics, secrecy, outright deceit. Are some of the largest decisions of British political life really being made at the private dinner tables of a tiny elite? Why is Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state “for culture, Olympics, media, and sport,” texting Murdoch? What did Rebekah promise the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister promise Rebekah in that pretty little market town of Chipping Norton? During another period of ex-pat existence, in Italy, I sat at a Roman café table in a Renaissance square rolling my eyes at the soap opera of Italian political life: wire-tapped politicians and footballers and TV stars, backroom media deals, glaring conflicts of interest, tabloid culture run riot, politicians in the pockets of newspapers. I used to chuckle over <em>la Repubblica</em> and tease my Italian friends about the kind of problems we didn’t have in our basically sound British parliamentary democracy.\n</p>\n<p>And so I recognize myself to be an intensely naïve person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight. And I retain a particular naivety concerning the British state, which must seem comical to many people, particularly younger people. I can only really account for it by reaching back again, briefly, into the past. It’s a short story about debt—because I owe the state, quite a lot. Some people owe everything they have to the bank accounts of their parents. I owe the state. Put simply, the state educated me, fixed my leg when it was broken, and gave me a grant that enabled me to go to university. It fixed my teeth (a bit) and found housing for my veteran father in his dotage. When my youngest brother was run over by a truck it saved his life and in particular his crushed right hand, a procedure that took half a year, and which would, on the open market—so a doctor told me at the time—have cost a million pounds. Those were the big things, but there were also plenty of little ones: my subsidized sports centre and my doctor’s office, my school music lessons paid for with pennies, my university fees. My NHS glasses aged 9. My NHS baby aged 33. And my local library. To steal another writer’s title: England made me. It has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt. \n</p>\n<p>Things change. I don’t need the state now as I once did; and the state is not what it once was. It is complicit in this new, shared global reality in which states deregulate to privatize gain and re-regulate to nationalize loss. A process begun with verve by a Labour government is presently being perfected by Cameron’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition. The charming tale of benign state intervention described above is now relegated to the land of fairy tales: not just naïve but actually fantastic. Having one’s own history so suddenly and abruptly made unreal is an experience of a whole generation of British people, who must now wander around like so many ancient mariners boring foreigners about how they went to university for free and could once find a National Health dentist on their high street. I bore myself telling these stories. And the thing that is most boring about defending libraries is the imputation that an argument in defense of libraries is necessarily a social-liberal argument. It’s only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries—not schools or hospitals, libraries—could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve—twin poles of our political mind—were easily and naturally united. Besides, what kind of liberal has no party left to vote for, and feels not so much gratitude to the state as antipathy and, at times, fear? \n</p>\n<p>The closest I can find myself to an allegiance or a political imperative these days is the one expressed by that old social democrat <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/ill-fares-the-land/\">Tony Judt</a>: “We need to learn to think the state again.” First and foremost I need to become less naïve. The money is gone, and the conditions Judt’s generation inherited and my generation inherited from Judt’s are unlikely to be replicated in my lifetime, if ever again. That’s the bad news from home. Politically all a social liberal has left is the ability to remind herself that fatalism is only another kind of trap, and there is more than one way to be naïve. Judt again: “We have freed ourselves of the mid-twentieth century assumption—never universal but certainly widespread—that the state is likely to be the best solution to any given problem. We now need to liberate ourselves from the opposite notion: that the state is—by definition and always—the worst possible option.” \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/hands-around-library_1_jpg_470x473_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Brent Green Party</p>\n <p>A protest in front of the Willesden Green Library</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>What kind of a problem is a library? It’s clear that for many people it is not a problem at all, only a kind of obsolescence. At the extreme pole of this view is the technocrat’s total faith: with every book in the world online, what need could there be for the physical reality? This kind of argument thinks of the library as a function rather than a plurality of individual spaces. But each library is a different kind of problem and “the Internet” is no more a solution for all of them than it is their universal death knell. Each morning I struggle to find a seat in the packed university library in which I write this, despite the fact every single student in here could be at home in front of their macbook browsing Google Books. And Kilburn Library—also run by Brent Council but situated, despite its name, in affluent Queen’s Park—is not only thriving but closed for refurbishment. Kensal Rise is being closed not because it is unpopular but because it is unprofitable, this despite the fact that the friends of Kensal Rise library are willing to run their library themselves (if All Souls College, Oxford, which owns the library, will let them.) Meanwhile it is hard not to conclude that Willesden Green is being mutilated not least because the members of the council see the opportunity for a sweet real estate deal. \n</p>\n<p>All libraries have a different character and setting. Some are primarily for children or primarily for students, or the general public, primarily full of books or microfilms or digitized material or with a café in the basement or a market out front. Libraries are not failing “because they are libraries.” Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. \n</p>\n<p>In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’s definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal. \n</p>\n<p>I don’t think the argument in favor of libraries is especially ideological or ethical. I would even agree with those who say it’s not especially logical. I think for most people it’s emotional. Not logos or ethos but pathos. This is not a denigration: emotion also has a place in public policy. We’re humans, not robots. The people protesting the closing of Kensal Rise Library love that library. They were open to any solution on the left or on the right if it meant keeping their library open. They were ready to Big Society the hell out of that place. A library is one of those social goods that matter to people of many different political attitudes. All that the friends of Kensal Rise and Willesden Library and similar services throughout the country are saying is: these places are important to us. We get that money is tight, we understand that there is a hierarchy of needs, and that the French Market or a Mark Twain plaque are not hospital beds and classroom size. But they are still a significant part of our social reality, the only thing left on the high street that doesn’t want either your soul or your wallet. \n</p>\n<p>If the losses of private companies are to be socialized within already struggling communities the very least we can do is listen to people when they try to tell us where in the hierarchy of their needs things like public space, access to culture, and preservation of environment lie. “But I never use the damn things!” says Mr. Notmytaxes, under the line. Sir, I believe you. However. British libraries received over 300 million visits last year, and this despite the common neglect of the various councils that oversee them. In North West London people are even willing to form human chains in front of them. People have taken to writing long pieces in newspapers to “defend” them. Just saying the same thing over and over again. Defend our libraries. We like libraries. Can we keep our libraries? We need to talk about libraries. Pleading, like children. Is that really where we are? \n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=7Hqy6zMGV1A:K3SxSxucNl4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/7Hqy6zMGV1A\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><div style=\"width:670px\"><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Comics-shelf.jpg\"><img title=\"Comics-shelf\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Comics-shelf.jpg\" alt=\"Comics shelf\" width=\"660\" height=\"350\"></a><p>My comics are on the top shelves. That makes them "high art," right? Photo: Jonathan Liu</p></div></p>\n<p>Okay, I’ve had my rants (<a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/03/geekdad-rant-comics-are-serious-literature/\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/03/geekdad-rant-continued-comics-and-grammar-geekdad-weekly-rewind/\">here</a>) about comics being serious literature but those were really more about being pedantic than the actual appreciation of comics. So I started compiling my lists and thinking about which titles I’d want to include in a list of “serious comics,” and … time got away from me. I found myself devouring some really great comics, some serious and some less so, and I didn’t feel like slowing down to write about them.</p>\n<p>When I was in high school and our English teacher was always talking about “literary merit,” my friends and I decided that the two main indicators of literary merit (based on the books we were assigned) were length and death. The longer the book, and the more people died, the more literary merit. <cite>Old Man and the Sea</cite>? Kind of short, relatively speaking, and not much death (unless you count the marlin and some sharks): questionable literary merit. <cite>The Great Gatsby</cite>? Not so long, but a good amount of death: yep, that’s got literary merit. <cite>Tess of the d’Urbervilles</cite>? Really long, important people die: <em>loads</em> of literary merit. Oh, right — and of course it ranks higher if it’s dreadfully boring, too.</p>\n<p>Granted, that was a high schooler’s point of view and I’ve certainly grown to appreciate reading works of great literary merit in addition to the pulpier selections on my bookshelf. In the world of comics, just as with novels or kids’ books, there are some stories that transcend the realm of “hey, it’s just entertainment” and become Serious Literature. I’m not saying that they can’t include a few laughs (though some are solemn), but that you can tell there’s something under the surface, whether through the subject matter or the language or the artwork.</p>\n<p>And here’s the best part: there’s a <em>lot</em> of them. I’ll share some of my old favorites and recent discoveries with you over the course of a few posts, but I guarantee you that there are so many more that I haven’t read (or even heard of) yet, and I’m counting on you readers to fill in the gaps on my own shelves.</p>\n<p><span></span>Just one more point before we dive into the list. Even though I’m making lists of comics that I consider “serious literature,” I hardly think that your comics reading should be limited to these. I’m well aware that there’s a reason summer blockbusters outsell artsy films and that the Best Picture nominees don’t tend to be the ones with the biggest box office numbers. Sometimes the stuff that gets labeled capital-A “Art” just isn’t as fun and it feels like something you do because you <em>should</em> and not because you want to. So take this list with a grain of salt, and for my part I’ll try to ensure a pleasant reading experience for you!</p>\n<p>For this first post, let’s start with a few big names. These are some of the ones you’ll generally hear in a conversation about comics as literature for varying reasons, so you may as well get familiar with them first.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Maus-covers.jpg\"><img title=\"Maus-covers\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Maus-covers.jpg\" alt=\"Maus covers\" width=\"660\" height=\"314\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Maus</cite> — Art Spiegelman</p>\n<p>You can’t talk about serious comics without mentioning <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679406417/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0679406417&adid=0QEQW7K690RPCGPB3SQ7&\"><cite>Maus</cite></a>, the 800-pound gorilla of serious comics. Spiegelman’s stylized memoir was the first comic book to win a Pulitzer Prize. In fact, they created a special category so it would be eligible, because they had no idea what to do with it but it seemed like Something of Portent. No other comic book (to my knowledge) has won a Pulitzer since then — suggesting that maybe they still don’t know what to do with comics.</p>\n<p>On the off chance that you’re not already familiar with it, <cite>Maus</cite> is about Spiegelman’s father (Vladek) and his experiences in World War II — but it is also about Vladek and grown-up Art and their sometimes strained relationship. In the book, Jews appear as mice and Germans as cats. (Other ethnicities turn up as various other animals, though with perhaps less symbolic significance.) The somewhat cartoonish appearance helps to abstract the characters, allowing the reader to process a story that would be even harder to digest with realistically-drawn humans.</p>\n<p>In October, Pantheon published <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/037542394X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=037542394X&adid=192PMVD21MV2DDW318MT&\"><cite>Metamaus</cite></a>, Spiegelman’s reflection on his groundbreaking books. The book is filled with reference material, sketches and artwork, photographs, stories about himself and the creation of <cite>Maus</cite>. The book also includes a DVD which has a digital version of <cite>The Complete Maus</cite>, along with the audio recordings of Spiegelman’s interviews with his father. I’ve only just started reading <cite>Metamaus</cite> myself, and it is fascinating.</p>\n<p>It’s hard to measure the influence <cite>Maus</cite> has had on the field of comics. It wasn’t the first time comics were treated as something more than escapism — Spiegelman had been involved in the underground comics scene long before writing <cite>Maus</cite> — but its prominence certainly introduced comics to an entirely different audience, one that didn’t usually read comics. It has also inspired a generation (or two) of comics artists to develop new ways of telling stories through comics.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Sandman-covers.jpg\"><img title=\"Sandman-covers\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Sandman-covers.jpg\" alt=\"Sandman Covers\" width=\"660\" height=\"395\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>The Sandman</cite> — written by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by many artists</p>\n<p>Neil Gaiman is an internationally-recognized author who has appeared (as animated versions of himself) on <cite><a title=\"Neil Gaiman Gets Animated on Arthur\" href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/09/neil-gaiman-gets-animated-on-arthur\">Arthur</a></cite> and <a href=\"http://www.hulu.com/watch/302889/the-simpsons-the-book-job\"><cite>The Simpsons</cite></a>. He has written novels, children’s books, screenplays, comic books. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/neilhimself\">His tweets</a> are read by more people than many best-selling books, and his 1.7 million followers cause websites to crash so frequently that <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23neilwebfail\">there’s a hashtag for it</a>. It’s hard to believe that this illustrious career was launched with a single book: a <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0862762596/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0862762596&adid=0KC8M5XH9PJFQ7AXZQFV&\">biography of Duran Duran</a>.</p>\n<p>No, wait.</p>\n<p>That’s where Gaiman started, but fortunately he found his way to comics soon after. When DC’s Vertigo imprint hired him to recreate the Sandman, Gaiman didn’t just put a new costume on the Golden Age superhero and revamp his powers. He created an entire mythology based around The Endless, the personifications of seven timeless forces in the universe — including the Sandman aka Dream aka Morpheus. He’s not just a superhuman (or alien or other-dimensional being) with some dream-inducing powers; he <em>is</em> Dream itself. And from there it’s a wild ride through ten volumes of brilliantly told stories, in which Gaiman demonstrates his remarkable ability to make the old and familiar seem new and the new to seem old and familiar.</p>\n<p>The artwork of <cite>The Sandman</cite> is done by a number of different artists throughout the series, and (in my opinion) can be hit or miss. My favorites are those that are more stylized: <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/140123402X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=140123402X&adid=09CKRT9J15JXZJR3QRZ9&\"><cite>World’s End</cite></a> (Volume 8) was a Canterbury Tales–sort of book, with various travelers each sharing a story, and each is illustrated in a different style. Charles Vess’ fairy-tale-inspired illustrations are also beautiful, and the cover images by Dave McKean are haunting.</p>\n<p>What really makes the series, though, is Gaiman’s writing. I didn’t actually read them until nearly a decade after they were out, but they have a timeless quality to the storytelling that makes them hold up well. After college when the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=gee04a-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957&field-keywords=absolute%20sandman&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks\"><cite>Absolute Sandman</cite></a> editions were released, I saved up over the course of a few years to buy them. (Although <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401232027/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=1401232027&adid=02Z4Y7XA7G55MY13NGC1&\">Volume 5</a>, which reprints some other stories involving Dream, was just released last November, so I’ll need to save up for that one.)</p>\n<p>I wouldn’t necessarily say the series is for <em>everyone</em> — it’s hard to categorize but it does have its fair share of horror, so it’s definitely not for younger audiences and not everyone may like it. However, for anyone interested in fairy-tales and storytelling and mythology, it’s an incredible example of how it can be done in comics.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Watchmen.jpg\"><img title=\"Watchmen\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Watchmen.jpg\" alt=\"Watchmen\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Watchmen</cite> — written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Dave Gibbons</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, for many people the title <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0930289234/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0930289234&adid=1HV6HFVD4MXVWEACZCXH&\"><cite>Watchmen</cite></a> will bring to mind the <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002EDH0FE/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B002EDH0FE&adid=0KQR62WRHGWBGVX3MRYS&\">2009 movie</a> rather than the 1986 comic book. Some people liked the movie and some hated it, but if your only experience is the film, then you’ve missed much of what made <cite>Watchmen</cite> so great. (Ironically, the innovative ways that Moore and Gibbons used the comic book medium were the very things that brought it so many fans, who then demanded a movie version that couldn’t reproduce those innovations.)</p>\n<p>The story is set in an alternate-history version of our world, one in which Richard Nixon is president (again), everyone drives electric vehicles, and everyone reads comics about pirates rather than superheroes. In this world, there is no Superman — there are costumed crime fighters who have no powers other than a desire to dress up and enact vigilante justice. The only one with superpowers is Doctor Manhattan who has practically god-like abilities but has also become somewhat disassociated from the human race. The main plot, perhaps, isn’t spectacular: it plays off the idea that the only way to unite people is with a common enemy. Somebody is killing off the costumed heroes, and the rest of them are trying to figure out why.</p>\n<p>What makes <cite>Watchmen</cite> so fascinating, though, is its use of the medium. There are chapters in which the frames reflect each other from the front of the book to the back. There are visual motifs which appear throughout the book in different forms, representing the Doomsday Clock or the permanent “shadows” from Hiroshima. While Gibbons’ artwork appears, on the surface, to look like a lot of other comics, closer examination shows a remarkable attention to detail and specifics of layout, using images rather than text to foreshadow and convey meaning.</p>\n<p>I first read <cite>Watchmen</cite> long after its 1986 release, and there <em>is</em> a lot of subject matter that made more sense during the height of the Cold War than they do now. The driving force behind the entire book is the fear of nuclear holocaust; the symbol of the Doomsday Clock (set at five minutes until midnight) can be found all over the book. Even the iconic smiley face with the blood spatter is really a clock face with a red hand about to signal our doom. Much of this feels outdated now, but it means that Watchmen is a contemporary perspective on the Cold War: what did it feel like to live in a world that was always a step away from nuclear war? Even though it’s fiction, much of the tension feels real.</p>\n<p><cite>Watchmen</cite> is definitely not for kids: there is sex, violence, abuse, murder, and the list goes on. The women in the book could have been better written; sometimes the smiley face motif gets a bit old. But I’d still include it on a “must-read” list of serious comics, simply because of the fact that it pushed the boundaries of storytelling in the comics medium, introducing some techniques that simply could not be done in any other medium.</p>\n<p>For a much more comprehensive look at the book, check out <a href=\"http://www.capnwacky.com/rj/watchmen/\">The Annotated Watchmen</a> by Doug Atkinson, or the ongoing <a href=\"http://www.readingwatchmen.com/\">Reading Watchmen</a> by Chris Beckett.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ScottMcCloud-covers.jpg\"><img title=\"ScottMcCloud-covers\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ScottMcCloud-covers.jpg\" alt=\"Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, Making Comics\" width=\"660\" height=\"331\"></a></p>\n<p><cite>Understanding Comics</cite>, <cite>Reinventing Comics</cite>, <cite>Making Comics</cite> — Scott McCloud</p>\n<p>Nowadays it’s fairly easy to find books <em>about</em> comics: how to read them, understanding the conventions and tropes and symbols used, digging deeper to get to the meaning. And there are, of course, a lot of books about making comics as well: the tools of the trade, paper versus digital, selling your comics or self-publishing.</p>\n<p>But Scott McCloud’s seminal <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/006097625X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=006097625X&adid=03D1FV3K177DB7SMAWW1&\"><cite>Understanding Comics</cite></a> is one of the first and still one of the best — <em>and</em> it is itself a comic book. McCloud uses a comic book version of himself to introduce the reader to comics, starting from a basic definition of what comics and then explaining the basic vocabulary of the medium. He shows examples of sequential art in other cultures, describes how time becomes a physical dimension, and illustrates (literally) how different types of lines can be used to make visible the invisible.</p>\n<p>Throughout it all, McCloud includes a wealth of examples to show how various techniques appear in actual comic books. And, of course, he answers the question “can comics be art?” with a resounding “Yes!” (But more than just giving an answer, he gives a compelling argument.)</p>\n<p>His two follow-up books, <cite>Reinventing Comics</cite> and <cite>Making Comics</cite>, both use a similar format and each focuses in on a narrower topic pertaining to comics. <a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060953500/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0060953500&adid=0V6WGNS0E48J474RZY6G&\"><cite>Reinventing Comics</cite></a> is about how comics are changing (and have changed), with an eye to the business of creating comics and the public perception of them. The second half of the book deals with digital production and the (no longer new) world of online comics. Some of his ideas are a bit heady and still haven’t really become common in the comics world (the infinite digital canvas, for instance). And some of it has become so common that his book seems to be stating the obvious — though the possibilities of webcomics may have been anything but obvious at the time.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0060780940/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=gee04a-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0060780940&adid=0ZZHCE7HM9EDRB1Z4VZP&\"><cite>Making Comics</cite></a> is exactly what it sounds like: a primer on how to create comics. McCloud teaches (again, in comics format) how to tell stories in the comics medium: deciding what to include and what to leave out; how to arrange panels so that the reader’s eye follows them in the desired order; some basics of illustration; and even choosing which tools work best for you. <cite>Making Comics</cite> is targeted at people who have an interest in creating comics, but even if you’re just a comics reader with no desire to make comics of your own, McCloud’s analysis is fun to read and may deepen your appreciation for your comic books.</p>\n<p>Well, that’s a start.</p>\n<p>Like I said, this barely scratches the surface. Comics have been used to great effect as memoirs and biographies. They can illustrate topics as diverse as science and religion, history and the future. Even some superhero comics have made the leap to serious comics … but we’ll get to those next time!</p>\n<p><em>Disclaimer: I am, of course, only one person and have only read so many books. I really didn’t get started on comics until after college, so I missed out on a lot during my formative years. These lists are not intended to be a comprehensive list of Serious Comics. Think of them as a starting point, a rough outline if you have no idea where to start.</em></p>\n<div style=\"width:1px;height:1px;overflow:hidden\">http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/03/geekdad-raissssdfsdfsdfsdfnt-continued-comics-and-grammar-geekdad-weekly-rewind/</div>"
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"content" : "<span title=\"ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Focoins.info%3Agenerator&rft.title=Of+contrase%C3%B1as%2C+%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A1%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA%2C+and+%E5%AF%86%E7%A0%81&rft.aulast=Bonneau&rft.aufirst=Joseph&rft.subject=Academic+papers&rft.subject=Authentication&rft.subject=Usability&rft.subject=Web+security&rft.source=Light+Blue+Touchpaper&rft.date=2012-06-01&rft.type=blogPost&rft.format=text&rft.identifier=http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/06/01/of-contrasenas-%d7%a1%d7%99%d7%a1%d7%9e%d7%90%d7%95%d7%aa-and-%e5%af%86%e7%a0%81/&rft.language=English\"></span>\n<p>Over a year ago, we <a href=\"http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/01/07/another-gawker-bug-handling-non-ascii-characters-in-passwords/\">blogged about</a> a bug at <a href=\"http://gawker.com/\">Gawker</a> which replaced all non-ASCII characters in passwords with ‘?’ prior to checking. Along with Rubin Xu and others I’ve investigated issues surrounding passwords, languages, and character encoding throughout the past year. This should be easy: websites using UTF-8 can accept any password and hash it into a standard format regardless of the writing system being used. Instead though, as we report <a href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jcb82/doc/BX12-W2SP-passwords_character_encoding.pdf\">a new paper</a> which I <a href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jcb82/doc/BX12-W2SP-passwords_character_encoding-slides.pdf\">presented last week</a> at the <a href=\"http://w2spconf.com/2012/\">Web 2.0 Security and Privacy workshop</a> in San Francisco, passwords still localise poorly both because websites are buggy and users have been trained to type ASCII passwords only. This has broad implications for passwords’ role as a “universal” authentication mechanism.<span></span></p>\n<p>After finding the Gawker bug we did an informal survey of about 20 popular websites looking for character encoding bugs in passwords. Roughly speaking, about a third of the websites we tried appear to handle long UTF-8 passwords seamlessly, about a third disallow non-ASCII characters in passwords as a matter of policy and we found bugs in the other third. Many of the bugs had no security impact, and others merely circumvented password policies. For example, Walmart and IMDB both count bytes submitted instead of characters. With non-ASCII characters replaced with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeric_character_reference\">numeric character references</a> and then <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application/x-www-form-urlencoded#The_application.2Fx-www-form-urlencoded_type\">percent encoding</a>, this can cause single UTF-8 characters to expand up to 15 bytes. With Walmart’s password policy limiting passwords to just 11 bytes, this means that a password with just two characters (like 密码) can be rejected for being too long. Other bugs are more serious-besides the Gawker bug, we discovered a lingering problem in many implementations of DES-crypt() which truncates passwords after any character with a 0×80 byte in their UTF-8 representation-including the character À (here’s <a href=\"http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-12:02.crypt.asc\">an advisory for FreeBSD</a>).</p>\n<p>Of more fundamental interest, we found evidence that user behavior is significantly impacted by character encoding issues. In my <a href=\"http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/05/24/the-science-of-password-guessing/\">study of password statistics at Yahoo!</a>, I identified that common password dictionaries work effectively against all language groups. Examining leaked data from websites used primarily by Chinese and Hebrew speakers, we found that this is in part because users almost exclusively use ASCII passwords even when allowed to do otherwise. Most Chinese speakers rely on <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_input_method\">graphical Pinyin input methods</a>, which are disabled for password fields to prevent shoulder-surfing; unsurprisingly Chinese characters are virtually non-existent in passwords. Hebrew speakers usually have a dual-mapped keyboard so Hebrew and Latin are equally easy to enter, but in a leaked data set where 90% of usernames contained Hebrew characters we found only 2.5% of passwords did. We even observed Hebrew speakers switching their keyboard mapping to the Latin alphabet and then typing Hebrew words (producing gibberish in ASCII). Users of non-ASCII variants of the Latin alphabet appear less trained to convert to ASCII: looking at Spanish passwords within the leaked RockYou set we found roughly half retained the non-ASCII character ‘ñ’, though nearly all users dropped stress accents which require escape keys to type (i.e. typing “pajaro” instead of “pájaro”).</p>\n<p>More interestingly, we found that Chinese speakers (and Hebrew speakers to a lesser extent) were far more likely to use digits in their passwords or rely on a geometric keyboard pattern. This leads to a measurable security difference: the most common passwords in our leaked Chinese data sets were also far more common the most common passwords in leaked English language data sets (our Hebrew data set was too small to compute these statistics reliably). The irony is that linguistic diversity should help password security by making guessing more difficult. Instead, for roughly half the planet whose <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_system\">native writing system isn’t the Latin alphabet</a> passwords appear less secure and more difficult to use as they must remember something in ASCII to ensure compatibility. It’s an interesting challenge to come up with a better solution for these users.</p>"
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"title" : "When Westerns Were Un-American",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/j-hoberman/#tab-blog\">J. Hoberman</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/el-chuncho702_jpg_470x396_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>filmforum.org</p>\n <p>A still from <em>A Bullet for the General</em> (1966)</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>“Every aesthete in New York, Paris, and London wants to make a musical,” film critic Andrew Sarris joked at the height of French New Wave. As the Vietnam War escalated, one could have made a parallel assumption about another popular genre: Every Marxist intellectual wants to write a Western. The most notable was Franco Solinas (1927–1982), a teenaged partisan and longtime member of the Italian Communist Party, journalist for the Communist newspaper <em>L’Unità</em>, and author of Rosi’s <em>Salvatore Giuliano</em>, Pontecorvo’s <em>The Battle of Algiers</em>, and Costa Gavras’s <em>State of Siege</em> (to name a few). Solinas worked on four Spaghetti Westerns—all included in a three-week-long series at New York’s Film Forum that begins June 1—contributing to this wildly commercial and equally disreputable mode as decisively as director Sergio Leone or composer Ennio Morricone.\n</p>\n<p>A reader of Fanon (for the colonized, “having a gun is the only chance he still has of giving a meaning to his death”), as well as Gramsci (“to many common people the baroque and the operatic appear as an extraordinarily fascinating way of feeling and acting”), Solinas invented what might be termed the Third World Western. Around the time he wrote <em>The Battle of Algiers</em>, a near-newsreel representation of the conflict between European colonizers and the colonized wretched of the earth, he provided the treatment for Sergio Sollima’s <em>The Big Gundown</em> (1966). Lee Van Cleef, who had just played the villain in Leone’s <em>The Good, the Bad and the Ugly</em> (1966), was here cast as an implacable yet idealistic bounty-hunter, poised to run for the US Senate, when he is recruited by the railroad magnate who is sponsoring him to hunt down “Cuchillo” Sanchez, a Mexican peon accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:230px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/solinasfranco_jpg_230x199_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>www.cinemecum.it</p>\n <p>Franco Solinas</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Déclassé, outlandish, and brutal, <em>The Big Gundown</em> has the standard Spaghetti Western virtues; its originality lay in making its true protagonist the fugitive. The irrepressible Cuchillo (played by Tomas Milian) turns out to be a disillusioned supporter of Benito Juarez with a class analysis (he is in fact an innocent witness to the crime). Van Cleef’s character realizes that he is the tool of ruthless plutocrats and capitalist running dogs. Thus, Solinas would use the Western as an arena in which to play out the struggle dramatized in <em>The Battle of Algiers</em>. “Political films are useful on the one hand if they contain a correct analysis of reality and on the other if they are made in such a way to have that analysis reach the largest possible audience,” he told an interviewer in 1967.\n</p>\n<p>Solinas’s screenplays were not the first un-American Westerns. The Italian-made productions that made Clint Eastwood an international star were universal in their appeal to audience ressentiment, bloodlust, and inchoate desire for vengeance. (At the same time, they were an eminently disposable product. “This is the most difficult series I’ve ever put together,” Film Forum programmer Bruce Goldstein told <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, detailing his search for usable prints.) But in turning the most American of movie genres into a subversive commentary on American Cold War politics, Spaghetti Westerns elaborated an existing tradition.\n</p>\n<p>The highly popular <em>Broken Arrow</em> (1950), notable for preaching peaceful coexistence between white settlers and their Apache neighbors, was written by (but not credited to) blacklisted red Albert Maltz; released the same year, <em>The Devil’s Doorway</em>, a less commercially successful but more militant brief on behalf of a mistreated Shoshone cavalryman, was written by Guy Trosper (designated a fellow traveler by the FBI) and, unlike <em>Broken Arrow</em>, praised for its political perspicuity by the <em>Daily Worker</em>, which recognized it as an allegory on the situation of African American veterans.\n</p>\n<p>Addressing another aspect of the American West, two blacklisted Communists, Lester Cole and Marguerite Roberts, worked at various times on the script for the long-germinating <em>Viva Zapata!</em>, set during the early-twentieth-century Mexican Revolution and celebrating the radical agrarian reformer Emiliano Zapata—although it was ultimately directed, from John Steinbeck’s screenplay, by a former Communist desperate to avoid the blacklist, Elia Kazan. Kazan strenuously promoted <em>Viva Zapata!</em> as an anti-Communist movie until the late ‘60s when he saw it as having a special significance for “disgruntled and rebellious people” throughout the world—a proto–Spaghetti Western.\n</p>\n<p>By then, the Communist bloc was producing its own red Westerns. The international success of <em>The Magnificent Seven</em> (1960), also set in Mexico and the original example of what cultural historian Richard Slotkin termed the “counter-insurgency scenario,” is credited with inspiring a cycle of Soviet features. These crypto-Westerns featured Bolshevik civilizers pacifying the primitive Muslim regions of Central Asia—a Soviet wild east. At the same time, in part to counter the series of Karl May adaptations that were the most popular West German movies of the 1960s, the East Germans developed the <em>Indianerfilme</em>. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/GojkoMitic_jpg_470x376_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>DEFA</p>\n <p>Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitic (left) in <em>Chingachgook, The Great Snake</em> (1967), an East German \"indianerfilm\"</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p><em>Sons of the Great Bear</em>, adapted in 1966 from a children’s novel by the Communist anthropologist Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, established the template: Indian tribes, usually led by the Yugoslav bodybuilder Gojko Mitic, struggle against various combinations of avaricious settlers, mendacious military officers, corrupt lawmen, and rapacious imperialists. Populated by greedy seekers of <em>lebensraum</em> and loot, as well as whip-cracking martinets shouting in German at their presumed racial inferiors (often played by Slavs), these movies have an unintended subtext. Still, there is no missing that the forward march of history is embodied by enlightened Native Americans. In one movie, Mitic calls upon “Indians of all lands” to unite; in another he announces a domestic program based on farming, animal husbandry, and light manufacturing. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:230px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/THEMERCENARY268zoomed_jpg_230x215_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>filmforum.org</p>\n <p>Tony Musante in <em>The Mercenary</em> (1968)</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Solinas’s Westerns resembled none of these, except perhaps as critiques of <em>Viva Zapata!</em>—the 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution being his main historical marker. He went deeper into the Mexican revolution with <em>A Bullet for the General</em> (1966), <em>The Mercenary</em> (1968), and <em>Tepepa</em> (1969) all of which told essentially the same story of European or North American freebooters who throw in their lot with revolutionary bandits. The premise is somewhat diluted in <em>The Mercenary</em>, directed by Sergio Corbucci, in which the protagonist pragmatically switches teams, abandoning the sleazy representative of Porfiro Diaz’s cruel military dictatorship for a more sympathetic if unstable rebel (despite his distaste for the bandit’s ultra-left mistress).\n</p>\n<p><em>A Bullet for the General</em> and <em>Tepepa</em> are less ambiguous in siding with social banditry and peasant revolt, however problematic that may be. Vengeance is collectivized. Both movies end by extolling the therapeutic aspect of Third World violence that, per Fanon, liberated “the native from his inferiority complex” and feelings of despair. US interventionism is embodied in <em>A Bullet for the General</em> by a CIA agent avant la lettre whose civilized cool effectively hypnotizes the unsophisticated revolutionary. <em>Tepepa</em>, which has Milian’s ripest performance as the eponymous guerrilla leader (and features Orson Welles as a Porfirista commandant) further complicates the scenario. No less than the revolutionary cadre in <em>The Battle of Algiers</em>, the illiterate rebel makes expert use of explosives and it is not the gringo interventionist (here a thin-lipped, half-mad British doctor) who betrays him so much as the foolishly accomodationist leader of the Mexican revolution, Francisco Madero. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Tepepa_1_jpg_150x321_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>wikipedia.com</p>\n <p>A poster for <em>Tepepa</em> (1969)</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Solinas’s example successfully politicized the Spaghetti Western. Carlo Lizzani’s <em>Requiescant</em> (1967) cast Pier Paolo Pasolini as a revolutionary priest. Sollima revived the Cuchillo character in his 1969 <em>Run, Man, Run</em>—an honest rogue who steals but ultimately returns gold used to finance the Mexican revolution—and, in a sort of autocritique, starred Milian in the 1970 <em>Face to Face</em> as a social bandit who fascinates a fanatical professor of history. In the aftermath of Italy’s “hot autumn,” Corbucci’s <em>Compañeros</em> (1970) features militant leftwing students, as well as villainous American whose pet eagle feeds on dead Mexicans. Even Leone’s last Western, known in English as <em>Duck You Sucker!</em> (1970), began with a facetious quote from Chairman Mao. (All of these, save <em>Run, Man, Run</em> are included in the Film Forum series.)\n</p>\n<p>Solinas also impressed Hollywood’s most radical director of Westerns, Sam Peckinpah—although the lineage of <em>The Wild Bunch</em> (1969) can, along with that of the Spaghetti Western and also <em>The Magnificent Seven</em>, be traced back to Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films. Still, Peckinpah commissioned Solinas to write a screenplay known in English as <em>Life is Like a Train</em> that was never produced and save for a few stray references seems to have been lost to history.\n</p>\n<p><em>The series <a href=\"http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/spaghetti_westerns\">“Spaghetti Westerns”</a> is showing at New York’s Film Forum from June 1 to June 21.</em>\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=_m0g9F_9agQ:uYqS6-fzO9Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/_m0g9F_9agQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Why Does Cargo Spend Weeks in African Ports?",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"Port Namibia\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" align=\"left\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/port_namibia.jpg\">Containers spend, on average, several weeks in ports in Africa. In fact, over 50% of total land transport time from port to hinterland cities in landlocked countries is spent in ports.</p>\n<p>Our <a href=\"http://www.issuu.com/world.bank.publications/docs/9780821394991\">recent study demonstrates that, excluding Durban and Mombasa, average cargo dwell time in most ports in SSA is close to 20 days</a> whereas it is close to 4 days in most large ports in East Asia or in Europe. In this setting, the main response has been to push for: (a) concession of terminal operators to the private sector, (b) investments in infrastructure (such as quays and container yards) and (c) investments in super-structures such as cranes and handling equipment.</p>\n<div>What has been the result on cargo dwell time? Not much. On average, it is extremely difficult to reduce cargo dwell time. In <a href=\"http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469382&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20110208112227\">Douala </a>(Cameroon), for example, planners set an objective of 7 days at the end of the 1990s, but the dwell time remains over 18 days (despite real improvements for some shippers). </div>\n<p></p>\n<div> </div>\n<div>How can this be explained? A common assumption is that the private sector (terminal operator, customs broker, owner of container depots, shipper) has an interest in reducing dwell time. But this is not always true. </div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Poor handling and operational dwell time generally add no more than two days. The bulk of the delay comes from transaction and storage time.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>And firm surveys demonstrate that low logistics skills and cash constraints explain why most importers have no reason to reduce cargo dwell time; in most cases, it would increase their input costs. In addition, collusion of interests may reinforce rent-seeking behaviors among shippers, intermediaries and controlling agencies. Some terminal operators earn large revenues from storage. Customs brokers do not fight to reduce dwell time since the inefficiency is charged to the importer and eventually to the consumer.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Firm surveys also show that companies may use long dwell times as a strategic tool to prevent competition, similar to a predatory pricing mechanism. Incumbent traders and importers see a benefit to long cargo dwell time (2-3 weeks), which acts as a strong barrier to entry for international traders and manufacturers. Delays at port also may be considered a means to sustain rent generation for some shippers.</div>\n<div>These findings may help explain why many trade facilitation measures have faced difficulties in SSA. Market incentives are too weak for supply-side measures to drive radical changes. An implication is that governments and donors need to re-think intervention strategies. One of the worst options is to invest in additional storage and off-dock yards where congestion occurs. Structural issues that lead to long dwell times, including demand characteristics, need to be tackled before undertaking costly physical extensions.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>The effective solutions to high dwell times in SSA ports will revolve around the challenging task of breaking the private sector’s short-term collusive strategies and providing incentives for public authorities, intermediaries and shippers to reduce delays. In this regard, <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTAFRSUBSAHTRA/Resources/1513929-1327699771623/SSATP-Good-Practice-01_full.pdf\">what has been done in Cameroon customs goes in the right direction </a>in order to give advantages to the most compliant and professional shippers and better sanction non-compliant and rent-seeking shippers.</div>"
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"title" : "My Last Phone Call from Charles Taylor, Or how Qaddafi Plagued Africa (Pirio)",
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"content" : "<p><i> Gregory Alonso Pirio writes in a guest column for Informed Comment</i>:</p>\n<p>Charles Taylor would call me on regular basis in the early 1990s. It’s not that I was a friend of the former Liberian rebel leader and later president, whom the International Criminal Court <a href=\"http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/25815\"> recently convicted for his role in aiding the bloody Sierra Leone civil war.</a> Rather Taylor needed me. I was a media gatekeeper who could give him access to an audience of millions of African listeners, including Liberians. These were the days before the advent of independent FM radio in Africa, and millions of Africans had no recourse but to tune to international broadcasters like the BBC and Voice of America as credible news alternatives to the government-monopolized radio stations. </p>\n<p>For my part, as the director of VOA’s English-to-Africa broadcasts, I pursued newsmakers like Taylor to enrich the news offerings to our listeners. The advent of satellite telephone in the 1980s revolutionized our coverage of African civil conflicts. Rebel leaders were no longer isolated in faraway bush headquarters awaiting the occasional reporter, usually a Westerner, to arrive to get their stories out. With the advent of direct dial, we could talk directly to murky figures within seconds, and my rolodex quickly came to read like a Who’s Who of Cold War and post-Cold War warriors: UNITA leader and one time U.S. ally, Jonas Savimbi of Angola, Renamo leader, Afonso Dlakama, of Mozambique, Rwandese Political Front leader, Paul Kagame, Somali warlords and others. </p>\n<p>These phone relationships were professional but intense, and these leaders made strong impressions, both in person or just over the phone. Savimbi was brilliant, personally imposing and ruthless; Dlakama appeared meek and unprepared for media scrutiny; Kagame was highly intelligent and calculating, and Taylor appeared coarse and shifty to me over the phone. </p>\n<p>Taylor would call me weekly or biweekly to give me updates on battlefield accomplishments or peace overtures. Sometimes I would interview him myself, but as our stable of top notch reporters with intimate knowledge of African reality grew, I would hand Taylor over to them for interviews.</p>\n<p>One day, I received a call with an unfamiliar voice on the other end. My memory tells me that his voice was somewhat shrill as he announced, “I am Corporal Foday Sankoh, and I am leader of the Revolutionary United Front [RUF], which has launched the liberation of Sierra Leone. I am calling you on satellite phone from RUF-liberated territory inside Sierra Leone.” Sankoh proposed an interview. My mind raced, “The only one who could have given Sankoh my phone number was Charles Taylor,” and I imagined <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3110629.stm\"> Foday Sankoh</a> speaking on Taylor’s satellite phone somewhere in Liberia with the shifty Taylor at his side. </p>\n<p>My hunch about the Taylor connection would prove correct; the RUF, which later became synonymous with terror, murder, rape, conscripting child soldiers and thirst for the blood diamonds of Sierra Leone acted much like a brigade of Taylor’s own forces. Taylor’s recent conviction of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Sierra Leone conflict appear completely justified in this regard. It was only some years later that I learned that Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, had sponsored both Taylor and Sankoh, unleashing a blood bath of civil wars in West Africa that victimized untold numbers of Africans.</p>\n<p>Qaddafi’s motivation for supporting Taylor was part vengeful and part strategic. Libyan leader reportedly wanted to get back at the United States for frustrating Libya’s efforts to extend its influence across the Middle East and Africa. In particular, he wanted to get even for U.S. pressure on Liberia to sever its ties with Libya. Liberia had been a tight U.S. ally in the Cold War, hosting a large VOA radio transmitting facility and reportedly an important CIA electronic listening post. </p>\n<p>So, after Colonel Samuel Dole seized power in Monrovia in 1988, the U.S. wanted Dole to give the strategically assertive Qaddafi a cold shoulder. Libya responded to by giving arms and money to Liberian dissident groups willing to oppose Dole. Taylor became the biggest recipient of Qaddafi’s largesse as he supported Taylor’s decision to invade Liberia on Christmas Eve, 1989.</p>\n<p>I refused the RUF leader, Sankoh, an interview for days, saying I needed to ascertain the credibility of his story. Having the ear of millions of listeners, many of whom depended on our news for life and death information, was a huge responsibility. I wasn’t going to take undue risk that could have sorry consequences for innocents. I was keenly aware of the critique made by Liberian exiles, whether justifiable or not, of the BBC’s Africa Service for having given Taylor and his ragtag band of rebels blanket coverage, arguing that the British broadcaster had to a certain extent created Charles Taylor’s movement. Eventually, after having been satisfied that Sankoh had indeed launched his rebellion with armed forces inside Sierra Lone, we interviewed him.</p>\n<p>Some months later, I received a strange phone call. I immediately recognized the voice as that of Charles Taylor, but he identified himself as a unit commander in Taylor’s rebel army and wanted to give an interview to refute charges that his unit had violated a truce with a rival militia. I said, “What are you talking about? You are Charles Taylor; I would know your voice anywhere.” He insisted saying that even Taylor’s wife, who was also a unit commander, would get their voices confused. </p>\n<p>I suspected no Taylor subordinate would be so bold as to grab the headline from the boss: such audacity was surely a death sentence. I said, “No, we are not going to interview you because you are Charles Taylor, and we will only interview you under your real name.” We went around back and forth for some time until I ended the call. I can only guess that Taylor attempted this disguise to cast doubt on reports of a truce violation by his forces without having his falsehoods attributed directly to him.</p>\n<p>In 1997, Liberians elected Taylor president in the hopes that this would end the costly civil conflict, but by 2003 he was driven out of power by another Liberian faction. In that same year, he was indicted for war crimes in Sierra Leone. Taylor is in jail in the Hague awaiting his final sentence due to be announced May 31, 2012.</p>\n<p>Though peace and a growing feeling of stability have returned to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Qaddafi-Taylor alliance gave birth to unprecedented transnational criminality that afflicts the West Africa region today. The funds, arms and personnel supporting Taylor necessarily took illegal channels largely via Burkina Faso ruled by Blaise Campoaré since his 1987 coup, which by some accounts took place with the support of Taylor’s movement. The convicted Russian arms smuggler, Viktor Bout, had his share of the action, and when the traffic in Blood Diamonds, which Sankoh’s forces harvested in Sierra Leone, became the financial backbone of Taylor’s operations, all sorts of shadowy criminal syndicates, including Al Qaeda, swooped upon the Monrovia-Ouagadougou-Tripoli corridor to earn their share of blood profits. Inside Liberia, President Taylor criminalized the formal economy, attracting questionable investment from an odd cast of cowboy investors, including American Christian fundamentalist scam artists, South African neo-Nazis and the prominent American Christian television evangelist, Pat Robertson. </p>\n<p>Though Taylor is in jail and Qaddafi is dead, their legacy of criminal personal networks and syndicates appear to have survived, morphing into the current illegal arms, drugs, and human trafficking trade. These criminal enterprises have a vested interest in corrupting officials in the region and keeping vast tracks of the Sahel, especially in Mali, ungoverned and suitable operational space for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Latin American drug cartels, among others. The fallout of arsenal and personnel into West Africa from the recent Libyan revolution is more fuel on the fire of corruption, state fragility and armed militias financed by an economy of multinational criminal trafficking that threatens the stability of an entire region and the well-being of its inhabitants.</p>\n<p>________</p>\n<p>Gregory Alonso Pirio earned an M.A. in African Studies and a Ph.D. in African History from UCLA. His dissertation was entitled, “Commerce, Industry and Empire: The Making of Modern Portuguese Colonialism in Angola and Mozambique, 1890-1914.” He is also author of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/African-Jihad-Gregory-Alonso-Pirio/dp/156902278X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338278791&sr=1-2\"> The African Jihad: Bin Laden’s Quest for the Horn of Africa</a> (Trenton: Red Sea Press, 2008). Dr. Pirio was editor of Rebuilding Shattered Nations and Lives: Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development in Africa (UNHCR, 2009), for which he wrote the introduction, “African Conflicts in Historical Perspective.” He has published and produced studies on numerous topics, including on media issues, Pan-Africanism, global health, African conflicts and terrorism. Dr. Pirio is also a Visiting Scholar at the School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, where he has launched the “Voices of Marginalized Youth Initiative.’</p>"
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"title" : "Mali’s Rebels and their Fans–Suffering and Smiling",
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"content" : "<p><img title=\"att-sarkozy\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/att-sarkozy.jpg?w=500&h=275\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\"></p>\n<p>Strange bedfellows in the Malian Sahara of late. The Tuareg rebel movements that took control of northern Mali last month looked to have struck a deal over the weekend, only to have it come into question since. The supposedly secular, progressive, and multi-ethnic MNLA shook hands with the Ansar Dine, the Salafist movement that has been more or less playing host to sundry terrorists, criminals and hostage-takers like AQMI, MUJAO, or Boko Haram. It’s tough to say just what this deal means, or how long it will last, but it ought to have put some of the MNLA’s foreign fans in a bind.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p>What’s the deal? Ansar Dine accepted the idea of creating a new Saharan state, what the Tuareg ethno-nationalists known as the MNLA dub “Azawad.” Abandoning the secularism it had long proclaimed, the MNLA agreed that this new state would be an Islamic one governed by sharia—although they did not specify whether by that they mean the broad and deep tradition of Islamic jurisprudence or the reductive, crude vigilantism of the Ansar Dine. This is a true 360. Not so long ago, the MNLA was <a href=\"http://www.mnlamov.net/index.php?start=52\">talking gender equality</a> and hinting at support for Mali’s proposed family code, which Islamists in Bamako had blocked since 2009.</p>\n<p>In short, the agreement came as a surprise, at least to me. The two groups have been jockeying for territory since the collapse of the Malian army in April, and the MNLA has proven to be weaker than its rival. Ansar has controlled the towns and tried to establish its own version of law and order. This has meant punishing thieves—including MNLA fighters—and offering some strong-armed protection in the towns and on the highways, which people appreciated, at least early on. But over the last few weeks Ansar fighters have been busy abusing unveiled women and harassing young men watching television or playing soccer. Three weeks ago, <a href=\"http://www.toumastpress.com/actualites/actualite/699-attentes-mnla-profanations-tombes-ansaradine-aqmi.html\">they destroyed a saint’s tomb in Timbuktu</a>, an act that the city’s residents as well as the MNLA roundly condemned. All this provoked protests against them, in Timbuktu and Gao, where <a href=\"http://www.maliweb.net/news/insecurite/2012/05/15/article,66493.html\">the Malian flag—and not the MNLA banner—</a>appeared overnight as graffiti. In short, neither group had great popular support, and relations between them seemed to be going from bad to worse. Many observers expected conflict between the two groups to come out into the open, but instead of a break-up, we got a marriage (now we’ll see how long it lasts).</p>\n<p>What gives? The MNLA had been swearing up and down that AQMI and its friends were their worst enemies. In terms of the organization’s image abroad, this is surely still true, but things have changed on the ground, and the MNLA looks to be fracturing. A month ago, the chief of the Tuareg Kel Adagh, Intallah Ag Attaher, <a href=\"http://www.toumastpress.com/actualites/dossier/azawad/368-intallah-ag-attaher-appel-reconnaissance-azawad-condamne-ansar-adine-aqmi.html\">spoke in favor</a> of the MNLA’s bid for independence, and he told the Ansar and other foreign fighters to get out of his territory. Last weekend, his son <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/africa/two-rebel-groups-in-mali-merge-to-form-islamic-state.html?_r=1\">appeared</a> in the pages of the<em> New York Times</em> identified as a leader of Ansar Dine. The turn-about is striking, but it can be explained. Ansar Dine is not only more formidable, but also richer than its new supposed ally. Jihad is expensive, but so is cocaine and some of the other things that get smuggled across the desert. So indeed are the lives of European hostages, for which their governments have paid handsome ransoms to AQMI over the years. Ansar Dine and its allies might not be good company, but they are not broke. On the other hand, the MNLA appears to be stronger in French television studios than on the ground, and apparently the movement can’t pay its fighters. Its leaders seem to have realized that if they could not beat the Salafists, they would have to join them, as many of their men in arms already had.</p>\n<p>It’s hard to imagine that the MNLA’s international supporters will feel the same way. Over the last few months, French politicians, Parisian professors, some Tinariwen fans, and various unprincipled fools have been championing the MNLA. This is a motley and ideologically incoherent bunch of partisans, but their support has had real consequences. It’s widely held—and <a href=\"http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/05/27/01003-20120527ARTFIG00255-mali-les-rebelles-touaregs-proclament-un-etat-islamiste.php\"><em>le Figaro</em> has obliquely confirmed</a>—that under ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, France had been backing the MNLA. Many believe that Sarkozy hoped to play the organization against AQMI to win the release of French hostages before he faced their fellow citizens at the polls. Their liberation would have been a real coup for Sarkozy’s troubled campaign, had it come to pass. But is such a scenario plausible? You bet.<em> Le Petit Nicolas</em> had already launched several military mis-adventures in the Sahel, and he and ATT, Mali’s recently deposed president, had a particularly sour relationship. Sarkozy was never known for his scruples; Mediapart recently published evidence that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi <a href=\"http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/030512/former-libyan-pm-confirms-gaddafi-gave-sarkozy-50m-euros-election-campahttp://\">helped finance his 2007 victory</a>, after which <a href=\"http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/110512/exclusive-sarkozys-chat-gaddafi-nuclear-deal-and-delicate-questions\">Sarkozy tried to sell him nuclear technology</a>. Having since bombed Libya into chaos, Sarkozy could hardly go back to that particular well, but cynical opportunism is nothing new in French African politics. Still, some friends stay true. After he lost his re-election bid, the MNLA made a special point to <a href=\"http://www.mnlamov.net/component/content/article/179-communique-nd16052012-mnla-felicitation-a-m-francois-hollande-.html\">thank Sarkozy for his support</a>.</p>\n<p>So much for the Right, which lost the presidency last month. Marginal players on the Left are in the mix, too. Last week, a Corsican nationalist and member of the Green party <a href=\"http://www.toumastpress.com/actualites/actualite/716-communique-presse-francois-alfonsi-dialogue-mnla-paix-azawad.html\">invited the MNLA</a> to make its case before the European parliament. That PR stunt <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHnY6kzwoxk&feature=share\">backfired</a> when Mali sent its own delegation to make the case for peace and reconciliation. Since then, the Ansar deal. I don’t know much about Corsican nationalism, but I am guessing that legitimizing Ansar Dine’s less-than-progressive politics is not what François Alfonsi or his constituents had in mind.</p>\n<p>It gets worse. Over the last few weeks, championing Tuareg ethno-nationalism has meant disregarding serious reports of human rights abuses catalogued, confirmed and analyzed by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Take <a href=\"http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AFR37/001/2012/en\">the report of the latter group</a>. It lays out in distressing detail a pattern of rape, pillaging, and indiscriminate killing of civilians and disarmed combatants alike. Some of this is the work of Ansar Dine or unknown aggressors, but some of these crimes were just as clearly the doing of MNLA fighters. The Malian army does not have clean hands either. In February, an indiscriminate bombing near Kidal cost the life of a little girl and grievously wounded several other civilians. In the last few months, the army has killed civilians in North and South alike—some were Tuareg, many were not. According to Amnesty, in at least one instance Malian soldiers even killed one of their own Tuareg comrades. Nobody’s defending the conduct of the Malian armed forces, least of all me. But it is the bare minimum of intellectual honesty for outsiders—especially academics—to attempt to recognize what’s going on on the ground before they dismiss the reports of human rights groups out of hand, and before they speak as partisans of an ethno-nationalist movement whose opportunistic politics they would abhor at home, but enable abroad.</p>\n<p>As for the world music fans, what to say? Ignorance isn’t really bliss, but it’s more blissful when other people do the “shufferin’,” and you get to do the “shmilin’.”</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51589/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=51589&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>\nI found my son's killer.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nIt took three years. \n</p>\n\n<p>\nBut we did it.\n</p>\n\n<center>\n<img src=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/images/taken.jpg\">\n<br>\n<br>\n<em>Not quite like this.</em>\n</center>\n\n\n<p>\nI should clarify one point: my son is very much alive.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nYet, my wife Cristina and I have been found responsible for his death.\n</p>\n\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://overcomingmovementdisorder.blogspot.com/\">My son Bertrand</a> has a new genetic disorder.</p>\n\n<p>\nPatient 0.\n</p>\n\n<p> To find it, a team of scientists at Duke University used whole-exome\nsequencing (a protein-focused variant of whole-genome sequencing) on me, my wife\nand my son.</p>\n\n\n<p> We discovered that my son inherited two <em>different</em> \n(thus-far-unique) mutations in the same gene--the NGLY1 gene--which encodes the enzyme\nN-glycanase 1.\n\nConsequently, he cannot make this enzyme.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nMy son is the only human being known to lack this enzyme.\n</p>\n\n\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>\nBelow, I'm documenting our journey to \nthe unlikeliest of diagnoses.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nThis is a story about the kind of hope\nthat only science can provide.\n</p>\n\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>\n[An\n <a href=\"http://jmg.bmj.com/content/early/2012/05/11/jmedgenet-2012-100819.full\">open access article in \n The Journal of Medical Genetics</a>\n contains the detailed results from experiment that diagnosed him.]\n</p>\n <p><a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/\">Click here to read the rest of the article</a></p>"
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"title" : "Not your Shirley Temple: Nigeria's Chapman drink",
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"content" : "In my recent post on the restaurant Suya, I mentioned that I'd enjoyed a "Chapman" drink there (photo on right). My son-in-law jokingly called it "Red Kool-Aid" because of its distinctive red color, but that was the only similarity. The owner told me it included "cranberry juice for the red color" and "cucumber."<br><br><br><br>Hmmmm, that piqued my curiosity. I've spent several days tracking down"
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"title" : "Comic for May 25, 2012",
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"title" : "Laamb and sumo – what would happen if Senegalese wrestlers came to Japan?",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/sports/money-and-mysticism-mix-on-fight-nights-in-senegal.html?_r=1&smid=tw-share\">The New York Times had a great article yesterday on laamb</a>, a style of wrestling popular in Senegal. Laamb, sometimes called “Lutte Senegalese” is enjoying a resurgence in Senegal, and is now more popular in that country than more global sports like football. The Times article focuses on a recent match where a rising champion unseated a legendary wrestler, and examines the finances of the sport, where hundreds of thousands of dollars can go to the top performers in the sport. <a href=\"http://nyti.ms/Kv1k6F\">The video that accompanies</a> the story is particularly compelling and worth your time. </p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/sbqfW9pV3Ro?version%3D3%26hl%3Den_US%26rel%3D0&width=420&height=315\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"></iframe><br>\n<i>Yekini vs Balla Gaye II, the most anticipated Laamb match of 2012</i></p>\n<p>Mentioned in, but not a major emphasis of, the Times story is the role of traditional magic in Laamb. Wrestlers enter the ring adorned with gris-gris, leather charms that contain verses from the Koran and mixtures of herbs, prepared by marabouts, who also bathe the wrestlers in herb-laced protective baths. In Ghana, the country I know best in west Africa, some similar practices take place, but they’re rituals practiced in secret. Some of the stranger experiences I had in Ghana in the 1990s involved visiting traditional healers with musicians I was studying with – magic (“juju” in Ghana) was something part of some people’s lives, but it was something not something for public consumption. Watching a few laamb matches online makes clear that very different rules apply, at least as concerns this sport.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/CvQlBr_6bGk?version%3D3%26hl%3Den_US%26rel%3D0&width=560&height=315\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"></iframe></p>\n<p>For an interesting introduction to laamb, I highly recommend <a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/dhani-tackles-globe-season/id365713109\">Dhani Jones’s “Dhani Tackles the Globe”</a>. For two years of very compelling TV, NFL linebacker Dhani Jones spent his offseason visiting different countries and competing in a wide variety of sports. His visit to Senegal is pretty incredible – he trains with Bombardier, one of the legends of laamb, and competes against a Bombardier protege. He also goes through a pretty amazing pre-match ritual with a marabout which, to me at least, offers the somewhat uncomfortable spectacle of an intense mystical experience shown as entertaining television. It’s available as a $2 purchase from iTunes, and it really a fascinating hour of video. (The clip above is from the show, but is not one of the best moments – it’s Dhani’s discomfort at discovering the traditional wrestling loincloth, which is basically one extended dick joke… but it’s all I can find on YouTube.)</p>\n<p>Watching the Yekini/Balla Gaye match, I’m struck by the parallels between laamb and sumo. Both sports have quite simple, and very similar rules: the major differences between laamb and sumo have to do with precisely which body parts can touch the ground before a wrestler loses a match (in sumo, one hand or knee on the ground means you lose, in laamb, it’s two…). In both cases, a fast-paced match is preceded by long rituals, and the framing of an event is similar, multiple matches, separated by rituals, constitute an event. And there’s some body-type similarity between successful laamb wrestlers, and the body types currently dominating sumo: guys who are big, but not huge, who balance mass in their lower body with well-developed upper bodies.</p>\n<p>Sumo in Japan has been transformed by an influx of non-native wrestlers over the past few decades. First, the sport was revolutionized by Pacific Islanders, particularly Hawaiians, whose massive size gave them an advantage over smaller Japanese rivals. (Akebono, born Chad Rowan in Hawaii, stood 2.03m and massed 240kg, as much as 100kg heavier than some of his rivals.) Lately, it’s been dominated by small (okay, small by sumo standards – under 150kg), nimble and very, very strong Mongolians like Asashoryu and Hakuho. <a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2005/11/25/a-mongolian-and-a-bulgarian-walk-into-a-basho/\">It’s been challenging for the sport to adapt to the foreign influx</a> – some Japanese fans have expressed frustration at the absence of a Japanese grand champion or strong contenders. But it’s clear that the future of sumo includes an increasing population of international competitors, from Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and even <a href=\"http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/moresports/trailblazing-egyptian-sumo-wrestler-makes-his-mark-in-japan/510241\">Egypt</a>.</p>\n<p>So, why not Senegal? As the Times article explains, part of the allure of laamb is the opportunity for young men to make money in a country with very high unemployment. Similar factors led Mongolian wrestlers, experienced in Bökh, their traditional wrestling style, to begin competing in Japan. Pioneering wrestlers like <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyokutenh%C5%8D_Masaru\">Kyokutenho</a>, who came to Japan in 1991 and just won his first Emperor’s Cup at age 37 in the May basho, are taking steps to ensure that Mongolians remain in sumo for decades to come. Kyokutenho just obtained Japanese citizenship (indeed, he won the Cup as a Japanese citizen!), probably so he can become a coach and stable manager when he retires from competition. What would it take for half a dozen Senegalese to come to Japan to compete? I can imagine a Senegalese yokozuna in two decades – can sumo?</p>\n<p>My guess is that it’s more likely that we’ll see former sumo and former laamb champions competing in mixed martial arts, a sport that’s increasingly popular in Japan. But there’s something very satisfyingly xenophilic about the idea that the rituals of laamb and sumo might someday come into contact.</p>"
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"title" : "Scientific secrets?",
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"content" : "<p>Soon after the US dropped two nuclear bomb on Japan in 1945, a group of physicists at the University of Pennsylvania <a href=\"http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i5/p47_s1?bypassSSO=1\">decided to investigate for themselves how nuclear fission and the bomb might work using non-classified materials</a>. In doing so, they ventured into classified territory and raised questions about the nature of science and secrecy.</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>To what degree would nuclear research become shackled by the requirements of national security? Would the open circulation of new scientific knowledge cease if that knowledge was relevant to nuclear fission? Those questions were hardly idle speculation: From the fall of 1945 through the summer of 1946, the US Congress was crafting new, unprecedented legislation that would legally define the bounds of open scientific research and even free speech. The idea of restricting open scientific communication \"may seem drastic and far-reaching,\" President Harry S. Truman argued in an October 1945 statement exhorting Congress to rapid action. But, he said, the atomic bomb \"involves forces of nature too dangerous to fit into any of our usual concepts.\"</p>\n\n<p>The former Manhattan Project scientists who founded what would eventually become the Federation of American Scientists were adamantly opposed to keeping nuclear technology a closed field. From early on they argued that there was, as they put it, \"no secret to be kept.\" Attempting to control the spread of nuclear weapons by controlling scientific information would be fruitless: Soviet scientists were just as capable as US scientists when it came to discovering the truths of the physical world. The best that secrecy could hope to do would be to slightly impede the work of another nuclear power. Whatever time was bought by such impediment, they argued, would come at a steep price in US scientific productivity, because science required open lines of communication to flourish.</p>\n\n<p>At the University of Pennsylvania were nine scientists sympathetic to that message. All had been involved with wartime work, but in the area of radar, not the bomb. Because they had not been part of the Manhattan Project in any way, they were under no legal obligation to maintain secrecy; they were simply informed private citizens. In the fall of 1945, they tried to figure out the technical details behind the bomb.</p></blockquote> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/atomic%20bomb\">atomic bomb</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/physics\">physics</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/science\">science</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/World%20War%20II\">World War II</a>"
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"title" : "Once a Harvard grad, always a Harvard grad",
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"content" : "Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who is serving life in prison for sending deadly mail bombs, won’t be able to attend his 50th reunion festivities at Harvard College. But he did contribute a bizarre entry to the alumni report for the class of 1962.<br><br>While many of his classmates sent in lengthy updates on their lives for the 2 ½-inch-thick “red book,” the entry for “Theodore John Kaczynski” only contains nine lines.<br><br>The listing says his occupation is “Prisoner,” and his home address is “No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary—Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 8126-8500.”<br><br>Under the awards section, the listing says, “Eight life sentences, issued by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, 1998.”<br><i>--Allie Knoth, Boston.com, on <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/05/23/harvard-alumni-directory-contains-bizarre-entry-for-ted-kaczynski-the-unabomber/c0BFPYTlF48lDqdoU7ZnMK/story.html?sudsredirect=true\">the irresistible pull of the Harvard Red Book</a>. See <a href=\"http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com/2012/04/harvard-red-book.html\">earlier entry on the Red Book</a>.</i><br><i><br></i><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.boston.com/rf/image_609w/Boston/2011-2020/2012/05/23/Boston.com/Metro/Images/TK%20profile.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.boston.com/rf/image_609w/Boston/2011-2020/2012/05/23/Boston.com/Metro/Images/TK%20profile.jpg\"></a></div><i><br></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-5280527614253448773?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Drogbacite",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/19/article-2146960-132F1621000005DC-86_634x449.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"424\"><br>\n<strong>Guest Post by Laurent Dubois</strong><br>\nThere are some matches that end up seeming primarily the vehicle for one person to somehow attain mythical status. The Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern was written, it seems now, purely to allow Didier Drogba a form of poetic catharsis worthy of fiction or film. The fact that Chelsea won was itself a kind of oddity, for throughout the game it seemed the most unlikely of outcomes. But as he had against Barcelona, Drogba became the master of the unruly and the absurd: none of what the other team did, not of the great passing and possession and continual shots on goal, mattered in the end. Just Drogba did, his head and then his foot.</p>\n<p><span></span>I’m not a Chelsea fan, and watched the game with a fervent Chelsea-hater (learning that there is a tight kinship, down to color-coordination, between that and our local North Carolina tradition of deep, bilious Duke-hating). But I’ve got a soft spot for Drogba — his goals, and his goal celebrations, and the moments like this one where he performed a few steps from the “Drogbacité” dance on this video (posted and commented on by Sean Jacobs and Elliot Ross <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/05/17/drogbacite-2/\">here</a>). (For the full musical experience of Drogbacite, watch <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65Kq41gIiDg\">the video of the song</a> by Shazaku Yakuza.)</p>\n<p>But I am a fan of spontaneous, charismatic, oration — or at least of the idea of it. So it was that reading about Drogba’s post-victory performance suddenly redeemed the whole thing for me. After all, if a money-soaked, increasingly corrupt, time-devouring, and often seriously disappointing football culture should do anything, it should produce moments like this one:</p>\n<p>Drogba, draped in an Ivory Coast flag, danced around the trophy on the pitch. But it was in the locker-room afterwards, we learned from <a href=\"http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/4328604/Chelsea-stars-watch-Didier-Drogbas-15-min-victory-prayer.html\">The Sun</a>, that he celebrated by transforming the trophy into an interlocutor, and his teammates into rapt (or so I imagine; though maybe they were chattering through the whole thing while itching themselves) spectators. It was a fifteen minute speech, during which Drogba excoriated the trophy for having eluded him for so long. He went through the details of the story: losses at Moscow and Barcelona, and all the matches of this campaign that had led to this moment. At one point he transformed the trophy into a sought-after lover who had spurned him for too long: “With the entire squad looking on, Drogba demanded to know why the trophy had been flirting with him for so long yet had always avoided him.” But in the end, he turned the trophy into a religious object, ending “his amazing 15-minute performance by bowing down to the cup and offering a prayer of thanks.”</p>\n<p>We need, clearly, to call an emergency symposium of specialists in public oration — gathering Classicists who can speak to us about ancient Greeks and war with Ethnomusicologists who have studied West African griots — to write a proper analysis of this performance. For now, let’s just content ourselves with wishing that we had been there to see that brief sanctification.</p>\n<p>This journey began in Abidjan, but much of it took place somewhere else — in, or on the edges of, French society. Drogba was sent by his family to life with his uncle, professional footballer Michel Goba, when he was five years old. His family eventually migrated to France in the midst of the austerity and political turmoil of the 1990s. As Adekeye Adebajo has written <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crasc-dz.org%2FIMG%2FARB%2520Pdf%2Fentete%2520The%2520Ivorian%2520Pearl...by%2520A.%2520Adebajo.pdf&ei=nfm7T-jaG5GC8QT6l_W4Cg&usg=AFQjCNHfCpHXNN4_51AjOabfxkzg_E48MA\">in a review of books on Drogba</a>, his time in France was one of isolation. In speaking about his adolescence, Drogba referred to the Guinean novelist Camara Laye’s story of the painful exile of a student in France in the 1950s.His father, who had managed a bank back home, took menial jobs and the family lived in a cramped banlieue apartment in an area with many other African immigrants. “Didier’s teenage years in France were cold, lonely, and largely friendless,” <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.crasc-dz.org%2FIMG%2FARB%2520Pdf%2Fentete%2520The%2520Ivorian%2520Pearl...by%2520A.%2520Adebajo.pdf&ei=nfm7T-jaG5GC8QT6l_W4Cg&usg=AFQjCNHfCpHXNN4_51AjOabfxkzg_E48MA\">writes Adebajo</a>, defined by a sense of “sociocultural dislocation” for which football provided “some solace.”</p>\n<p>Football became Drogba’s profession, though he played in the 2nd division for several years before battling his way to Olympique de Marseille, and from there to Chelsea. He had — and still has — many ardent fans in France’s banlieue neighborhoods, where people remember his story. In <a href=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x747b0_violences-policieres-a-montfermeil_news\">a horrifying 2008 video</a> shot in the banlieue of Montfermeuil, the journalist collective Rue 89 documented a police beating of Abdoulaye Fofana. It took place during a France-Tunisia football match, which was being played not far away in the Stade de France. Fofana was watching the game when the police burst into his apartment, claiming he had thrown a fire-cracker at a passing patrol. They dragged him down the stairs, beating him all the way. As the video ends with an interview of his shocked family, you can see that his living room was covered with posters of soccer stars, including Zidane and, prominent, Drogba.</p>\n<p>Drogba shares an experience on the edges of French society with players like Zidane, Makelele, and Thuram. But among his generation of players who came up through the French system, Drogba was one of the few of his calibre to opt not to play for France. Though his did play on a national French youth squad at one point, he ultimately opted for Ivory Coast as his national team. We can briefly imagine what might have been had he chosen to play for France instead — what might have happened in the 2006 World Cup, for instance? “Ils auraient pu jouer en équipe de France”(“They could have played in the French national team”), <a href=\"http://www.linternaute.com/sport/foot/ils-auraient-pu-jouer-en-bleu/\">laments one website sporting a photograph of Drogba.</a> But Drogba has expressed pride in his choice: This past February, when his team lost to Zambia in the African Cup of Nations Final — in part because of a missed penalty by Drogba — <a href=\"http://www.slateafrique.com/82961/cote-divoire-didier-drogba-can\">he commented</a> that when the team returned to the Ivory Coast they were hailed and celebrated despite their loss.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">We weren’t really expecting that. This country is different — they always come to see us even when they lose. I had the luck to play for the French team when I was young. But I don’t think that if I played at the senior level I would have ever gotten this kind of reception.</p>\n<p>He might have been thinking of what happened to his former Chelsea teammate Nicholas Anelka <a href=\"http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/2010/06/21/france-vs-south-africa-then-and-now/\">during the 2010 World Cup</a>, when he was kicked off the team and excoriated in the press for a locker-room outburst against Raymond Domenech. Drogba <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/france/7842799/World-Cup-2010-Didier-Drogba-backs-Chelsea-team-mate-Nicolas-Anelka.html\">spoke up for Anelka then</a>, and soon after the Champions League final <a href=\"http://shanghaiist.com/2012/05/22/drogba-anelka.php\">news broke</a> that the next step in his journey will be to join his friend at Shanghai Shenhua in China. If that ends up happening, it will be a fascinating twist in a story that has stretched from Abidjan to Dunkirk to Marseille to London and now Shanghai.</p>\n<p>Will Drogba ever give another speech quite as good as the one he gave in Bayern the other night? Only if the occasion arises. As one reader pointed out <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/think_B1G/status/205077916458029056\">in response to an earlier version of this post</a>, that occasion might be just one year away: if Ivory Coast manages to clinch the African Cup of Nations, as they weren’t able to this year. What a speech Drogba might then give to that long and painfully sought after trophy? A long and winding tale, with a long evocation of <a href=\"http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/2012/02/13/football-as-humanity-zambia-2012/\">the beautiful and moving game they lost against Zambia</a>. And what if — we can dream! — they were to go on, full of confidence, and win the World Cup in Brazil in 2014? If either of those victories happen, let’s hope someone will be prepared with a video camera in the locker-room this time — to capture Drogba hassling and adoring another trophy. It would be worth seeing the Ivory Coast win just to see that, no?</p>\n<p>* This is a slightly edited version of a post first published on Laurent Dubois’s blog <a href=\"http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/\">Soccer Politics</a> earlier today. We repost it here with kind permission.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/51178/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=51178&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><em>[All links lead to sites in French unless otherwise stated.]</em></p>\n<p>The use of satirical language and cartoons in the media is relatively new in most African countries, and began with the print publication of small cartoon strips featuring caricatures depicting a particular part of the population for comic effect. Often, satirical newspapers are a reflection of the state of political affairs in their countries, where politicians never seem to shy away from shameless actions and where dishonesty is the rule rather than the exception.</p>\n<p><strong>Satirical language</strong></p>\n<p>In an analysis for the site cairn.info, Yacouba Konaté <a href=\"http://www.cairn.info/revue-outre-terre-2005-2-page-319.htm\">describes</a> the mixture of Molière's French with the local dialects in Côte d’Ivoire where the direct translation from one to the other gives expressions and phrases that are incomprehensible outside their geographical context:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Le français populaire ivoirien dit « français de Moussa », « de Dago » ou « de Zézé » (héros de bandes dessinées dans l’hebdomadaire <em>Ivoire Dimanche</em>), accélère son déploiement durant les années 1970, celles de la croissance ivoirienne qui supporta l’appellation merveilleuse de « miracle ivoirien ». Sa promotion bénéficia de l’appui de la télévision où, pendant des années, le dimanche ouvrit de larges plages horaires à Toto et Dago.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The common Ivoirian-French “dialect” is known as French language according to “Moussa's'”, “Dago's” or “Zézé's” (those characters are comic book heroes from the weekly <em>Ivoire Dimanche</em>), and its usage spread more rapidly during the 1970s, a growth which has been excellently named the “Ivoirian miracle”. Television support helped its progression- Sundays meant lots of airtime for Toto and Dago.</div>\n<p>In <a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_du_Gabon#Quelques_expressions_gabonaises\">Gabon</a>, a similar method of speech has gained acclaim by becoming a way of exposing corruption and social criticism. A <a href=\"http://www.afrik.com/article20877.html\">selection of words</a> taken from Raponda-Walker's book on the language is presented by <a href=\"http://www.afrik.com/auteur65.html\">Falila Gbadamassi</a> on the website afrik.com:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Le “bongo CFA”, désigne la monnaie gabonaise qui était autrefois à l’effigie du défunt président Omar Bongo. Le terme se rapporte aussi à l’argent distribué pendant les déplacements du Président ou les campagnes électorales. …. [”mange-mille”] est un « jeu de mots construit sur mange-mil (nom d’oiseau) et désignant le policier ou le gendarme en raison des billets de 1000 francs (FCA, ndlr) qu’ils réclament souvent aux usagers de la route. Et des “Chine en deuil” ? Ce sont des « chaussures noires en tissu souple de fabrication chinoise ou asiatique introduites au Gabon après la mort de Mao Ze Dong », …. Un “dos-mouillé”, lui, est un immigré clandestin originaire d’Afrique de l’Ouest qui arrive au Gabon par la mer.</p></blockquote>\n<div>“Bongo CFA” means the Gabonese currency that once bore the head of the late president Omar Bongo. The term also refers to the money distributed during presidential trips or election campaigns. …[”mange-mille”], which means a police officer or constable, is a “play on words composed from mange-mil (the name of a bird) and the 1,000 CFA franc notes the police often demand from road users” [1,000 is “mille” in French]. And “Chine en deuil” (mourning Chinas)? They are “black shoes made in China or Asia from soft fabric, introduced to Gabon after the death of Mao Ze Dong”. A “dos-mouillé” (wet back) is an illegal immigrant originally from West Africa who came to Gabon by sea.</div>\n<div style=\"width:415px\"><a href=\"http://www.agoravox.fr/culture-loisirs/dessin-du-jour/article/ali-bongo-nouveau-president-du-61292\"><img title=\"Election results confirmed by Ali Bongo: a TOTAL victory! I would like to thank my sponsor... A caricature of Bongo by Hub via Agora Vox, used with permission\" src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Bongo.jpg\" alt=\"Election results confirmed by Ali Bongo: a TOTAL victory! I would like to thank my sponsor... A caricature of Bongo by Hub via Agora Vox, used with permission\" width=\"405\" height=\"456\"></a><p>Election results confirmed by Ali Bongo: a TOTAL victory! I would like to thank my sponsor… A caricature of Bongo by Hub via Agora Vox, used with permission</p></div>\n<p>In both Gabon and Côte d’Ivoire this type of French is used in everyday life in the same way as all other languages, without any derogatory meaning or humourous intent, but when it appears in publications or on TV it serves for social and political critique, with the singular ability to make an otherwise unfunny drawing make people laugh. The textual content is paramount.</p>\n<p><strong>Cartoon emergence</strong></p>\n<p>Cartoon drawings, or comics, were developed later only, as and when authoritarian regimes relaxed their grip on freedom of expression. In an article published on waccglobal.org, Gado wrote a retrospective <a href=\"http://www.waccglobal.org/en/19974-cartoons-and-comic-art/912-Laying-cartooning-on-the-line-in-Africa--.html%20http://www.waccglobal.org/en/19974-cartoons-and-comic-art/912-Laying-cartooning-on-the-line-in-Africa--.html\">history of cartoons</a> [en] in African countries:</p>\n<blockquote><p>With the introduction of multi-party politics in most African countries during the 1990s, cartooning emerged as a growing profession. This does not mean that it was not around before then. In the 1960s there were pioneers like Gregory (Tanzania) with his popular Chakibanga cartoon and the Juha Kalulu strip by Edward Gitau, the oldest living cartoonist in East and Central Africa.<br>\nPolitical changes brought greater freedom of expression as well as of the press. This has injected new life into newspapers, magazines and the publishing industry generally.</p></blockquote>\n<div style=\"width:510px\"><a href=\"http://www.zoom-algerie.com/images/6f6-dilem.jpg\"><img title=\"Arrest warrant for Omar El-Bechir. Disquiet among African heads of state. We are victims of crimes against immunity! A caricature of the African heads of state by Dilem via Zoom Algérie (used with permission)&nbsp;\" src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/crimes-contre-lhumanit%C3%A9.jpg\" alt=\"Arrest warrant for Omar El-Bechir. Disquiet among African heads of state. We are victims of crimes against immunity! A caricature of the African heads of state by Dilem via Zoom Algérie (used with permission)&nbsp;\" width=\"500\" height=\"515\"></a><p>Arrest warrant for Omar El-Bechir. Disquiet among African heads of state. We are victims of crimes against immunity! A caricature of the African heads of state by Dilem via Zoom Algérie (used with permission) </p></div>\n<p>To mark the 2011 International Festival of Cartoons and Illustration, which took place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Damien Glez's <a href=\"http://www.africandiplomacy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=654%3Acartoonist-a-profession-under-pressure&catid=143%3Aarts&Itemid=1245&lang=fr\">article</a> published on africandiplomacy.com entitled “Newspaper Cartoonist: a Profession under Pressure(s)” discusses the <a href=\"http://www.africandiplomacy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=654%3Acartoonist-a-profession-under-pressure&catid=143%3Aarts&Itemid=1245&lang=fr\">risks</a> and difficulties involved in being a satirical cartoonist:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Moins assassinés, les dessinateurs ne sont pas totalement immunisés. Au Cameroun, le caricaturiste-vedette Nyemb Popoli a eu maintes fois maille à partir avec le régime de Paul Biya. A la fin des années 80, dans le Bénin du «marxisme-béninisme», le dessinateur Hector Sonon voyait ses dessins systématiquement passés à la moulinette du comité de censure du ministère de l'Intérieur. Le Sud-Africain Jonathan Shapiro, alias Zapiro, fut détenu par les autorités en 1988. Non loin, au Zimbabwe, le dessinateur Tony Namate joue au chat et à la souris avec les autorités. Au Nigeria, autre pays anglophone, les caricaturistes - en premier lieu le pionnier Akinola Lasekan - ont souffert longtemps des dictatures militaires…</p></blockquote>\n<div>Although not often killed, cartoonists are not completely immune. In Cameroon, the top cartoonist Nyemb Popoli has had many brushes with Paul Biya's regime. In the late 1980s, during the “Marxist-Beninist” era in Benin, cartoonist Hector Sonon repeatedly saw his drawings being passed to the interior ministry's censorship committee. South African Jonathan Shapiro, also known as Zapiro, was arrested by authorities in 1988. Nearby, in Zimbabwe, cartoonist Tony Namate plays cat and mouse with the authorities. In Nigeria, another English-speaking country, cartoonists- in first place the pioneer Akinola Lasekan- have long suffered at the hands of military dictatorships…</div>\n<p>Participants in the festival, organised by Cartooning for Peace / Dessins pour la paix, included Karlos from the Ivory Coast, and Timpous, Gringo, Joël Salo and Kab's from Burkina Faso.</p>\n<p>In South Africa, Shapiro, of the apartheid era, was sent to prison for angering racist authorities with his critiques, and now his stands against the African National Congress's grip on the politics of his country are costing him dearly. Melanie Peters <a href=\"http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/zapiro-zaps-zuma-again-1.1082058\">describes a critical cartoon</a> [en] on iol.co.za condemning President Zuma's bill from last year, and reports on feedback from netizens:</p>\n<blockquote><p>While the cartoon depicts a man titled “Govt” with his trousers unzipped facing a screaming woman being held down by a man labelled “ANC”, the first is clearly Zuma, complete with showerhead, and the second Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general. Next to them on the floor, her dress torn and a discarded pair of scales beside her, is an apparent rape victim, shouting “Fight, sister, fight!”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Some comments posted on the site contain personal and racist abuse, but support can also be found. Siobhan <a href=\"http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/zapiro-zaps-zuma-again-1.1082058\">wrote</a> [en]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Go, Zap! Exactly depicts what is happening with the 'secrecy' bill! It's being done to the Constitution, to Democracy and to each South African- most of whom are so used to being screwed by the ANC they don't even know it's happened…</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>New talent</strong></p>\n<p>Until recently, the cartoonists had no training. But changes are being made. According to <a href=\"http://blog.slateafrique.com/ma-guinee-plurielle/2011/05/10/j%E2%80%99ai-rencontre-oscar-le-caricaturiste-du-satirique-le-lynx/\">Alimou Sow</a>, Oscar, the creator of Le Lynx, has trained a number of junior colleagues in Guinea. However, it is probably in Madagascar that the first generation cartoonists have best prepared their successors, with production diverse and thriving equally in both national languages and French. According to the provisional list <a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bande_dessin%C3%A9e_africaine#Madagascar\">proposed</a> by wikipedia.org, the number of Malagasy artists is several times higher than that of all the other African countries combined.</p>\n<p>The publication of satirical newspapers in several countries has allowed satire to exist and thrive amid a great number of difficulties: in Senegal, <a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cafard_lib%C3%A9r%C3%A9\">Le Cafard libéré</a>; in Burkina Faso, the <a href=\"http://www.journaldujeudi.com/fixe/fs_semaine.htm\">Journal du Jeudi</a> and the latest <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/people/Journal-LEtaloon/100003240349223\">l'Etaloon</a>; in Benin, the <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/voyage/article/2010/08/27/burkina-faso-canard-enchaine-made-in-ouaga_1402742_3546.html\">Canard du Golfe</a>; in Guinea, <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/voyage/article/2010/08/27/burkina-faso-canard-enchaine-made-in-ouaga_1402742_3546.html\">Le Lynx</a>; in Mali, <a href=\"http://www.afribd.com/article.php?no=9059\">Le Canard déchaîné</a>; in Madagascar, the <a href=\"http://www.freewebs.com/bdmada/\">Ngah</a>; etc.</p>\n<p>Christophe Cassiau-Haurie tells us in an <a href=\"http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=7443\">article</a> on africultures.com entitled “La caricature à Maurice, 170 ans d'histoire” (Cartoons in Mauritius: 170 years of history) that:</p>\n<blockquote><p>La toute première caricature référencée remonte à l'année 1841, dans le journal <em>Le bengali</em>.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The very first example of a cartoon dates back to 1841, in the newspaper <em>Le bengali</em>.</div>\n<p>Festivals and other events are also on the increase both regionally and throughout Africa. The article already cited by Damien Glez <a href=\"http://africandiplomacy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=654%3Acartoonist-a-profession-under-pressure&catid=143%3Aarts&Itemid=1245&lang=fr\">lists these</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>«BD'Farafina» à Bamako, «Cocobulles» à Grand Bassam, «Fescary» à Yaoundé ou «Karika'Fête» à Kinshasa.</p></blockquote>\n<div>“BD'Farafina” in Bamako, “Cocobulles” in Grand-Bassam, “Fescary” in Yaoundé or “Karika'Fête” in Kinshasa.</div>\n<p>Information and communications technology is another tool that is beginning to take its place among the means of expression for African comedians: zapiro.com, bing.com, africartoons.com, 2424actu.info and gbich.com, for example.</p>\n<p>On an international level, Africans are increasingly present. For example, they participate in the <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/events/277591165667249/\">Cartooning for Peace / Dessins pour la paix</a>'s activities, started in 2006 by the French cartoonist Plantu together with Kofi Annan, then the Secretary-General of the UN, with a two-day conference uniting the 12 most famous illustrators in the world to develop ways to “unlearn intolerance”.</p>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/author/abdoulaye-bah/\" title=\"View all posts by Abdoulaye Bah\">Abdoulaye Bah</a></span> · <span>Translated by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/georgi-mccarthy/\" title=\"View all posts by Georgi McCarthy\">Georgi McCarthy</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/16/108303/\" title=\"View original post [fr]\">View original post [fr]</a></span> · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/22/africa-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (0) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F&text=Africa%3A+Regimes+Under+Attack+From+Satire+and+Cartoons&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F&title=Africa%3A+Regimes+Under+Attack+From+Satire+and+Cartoons\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F&title=Africa%3A+Regimes+Under+Attack+From+Satire+and+Cartoons\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F&title=Africa%3A+Regimes+Under+Attack+From+Satire+and+Cartoons\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F22%2Fafrica-regimes-under-attack-from-satire-and-cartoons%2F&title=Africa%3A+Regimes+Under+Attack+From+Satire+and+Cartoons\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Blogging has become an integral part of popular culture in Sub-Saharan Africa but blogging about science is still lagging behind. Many initiatives have been launched to increase the culture of sharing in the African scientific world, yet African science blogs, particularly about research, are still few and far between.</p>\n<p><strong>Lack of public interest?</strong></p>\n<p>The reason for this dearth of science blogging may be related to the uneven development of scientific research on the continent; the need for more research is well-known. B. Ruelle <a href=\"http://bruelle.wordpress.com/2010/05/15/la-recherche-scientifique-en-afrique/\">explains on his blog</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Le niveau de développement atteint par l’Asie du Sud-Est devrait pousser les Africains à investir dans la science et la technologie ; la science et la technologie représentent la seule voie d’évitement de la perpétuation de la faiblesse de l’Afrique dans le commerce international ; c’est aussi, dans un monde inégalitaire où racisme et xénophobie perdurent, la condition de l’affirmation de la part des Africains dans l’un des phares de la connaissance humaine.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The level of development reached by Southeast Asia should push African nations to invest into science and technology; science and technology are the only way to avoid the enduring shortcomings of Africa in international trade; it is also the only way to prevent racism and xenophobia in this increasingly inegalitarian world; the one remedy to assert African contribution to the global human knowledge pool.</div>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Biblioth%C3%A8queCheikhAntaDiop.JPG\"><img title=\"University of Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar Senegal by Myriam Louviot (CC-License-BY).\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/800px-Biblioth%C3%A8queCheikhAntaDiop-375x281.jpg\" alt=\"University of Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar Senegal by Myriam Louviot (CC-License-BY).\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"></a><p>University of Cheik Anta Diop in Dakar Senegal by Myriam Louviot (CC-License-BY).</p></div>\n<p>The continent is not short on talented scientists. Bernard Kom <a href=\"http://panafrique.e-monsite.com/blog/quelques-scientifiques-africains-de-renom.html\">lists a few of the mosts prominent African scientists</a> [fr] right now, and some of them are also active on the web.</p>\n<p>Jacques Bonjawo is a Cameroonian engineer who chairs the Board of Directors of the <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/20/science-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa/www.avu.org\">African Virtual University</a> (AVU). He explains the <a href=\"http://www.jacquesbonjawo.com/actions.html?lang=fr\">objectives of the institution</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>L’UVA a été conçue comme un système d’éducation à distance à travers Internet dont la mission est précisément de former une masse critique d’africains à des coûts faibles, grâce à des économies d’échelle ; une formation moderne et de qualité au terme de laquelle l’étudiant devient immédiatement opérationnel sur le marché de l’emploi.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The AVU was conceived as a complete remote online teaching institute whose mission is to train a critical mass of Africans at low cost through economy of scale. We provide a modern quality curriculum that aims to make the student immediately operational for the job market.</div>\n<p>Mzamose Gondwe from Malawi recognizes the need to promote more African engagement with science. That is the objective of her blog, <a href=\"http://afrisciheroes.wordpress.com/\">African Science Heroes</a>. She <a href=\"http://afrisciheroes.wordpress.com/about/\">explains</a> what she aims to accomplish:</p>\n<blockquote><p> I documented in print, exhibition and film African Science Heroes, Afrrican scientists who have made considerable contributions to science. In this way I hope to generate a sense of pride in our African science accomplishments and promote public engagement with science.</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>African research pigeonholed? </strong></p>\n<p>When scientific news from Africa makes it to mainstream media platforms, it is usually related to environmental programmes, public health or research on exotic animals. A typical story that was shared many times on various online media was the recent research publication of the <a href=\"http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/10/04/rspb.2011.1326\">mating habits of the female gray mouse lemur</a> in Madagascar. The title itself, “Costly sex under female control in a promiscuous primate”, was bound to draw quite a bit of interest from the non-scientific community.</p>\n<p>As it turned out, the study draws interesting conclusion about strategy for the survival of the species as Sara Reardon from Science NOW <a href=\"http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/10/scienceshot-why-female-lemurs.html\">explains</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Either a polygamous <strong></strong>lifestyle confers some unknown evolutionary advantage for females, the team concludes, or girls really do just want to have fun.</p></blockquote>\n<p>African science and engineering has much to offer in other areas as well. The blog Afrigadget highlights innovative engineering projects aiming at solving specific problems. One of these projects is biogas installations in Kenya.</p>\n<p>Paula Kahumbu explains how piki piki (motor bikes in Kiswhahili) can <a href=\"http://www.afrigadget.com/2010/07/06/poop-piki-piki-for-my-biogas-system/\">help distribute dung more efficiently</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The problem I face is common to many folks around here, we rent houses but we don’t have livestock. But there are huge cattle farms around us. So Dominic came up with a solution that creates jobs and moves poop quickly and efficiently. So we went to the local juakali welder on the roadside to create a dungmobile ..a trailer designed specially for cow dung!</p></blockquote>\n<p>The Africamaat project aims to document the full history of African science and its inventors. More precisely, it<a href=\"http://www.africamaat.com/AFRICAMAAT-COM-NOTRE-VOCATION\"> adds</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Notre démarche vise donc essentiellement à démontrer qu’il est profondément arbitraire d’exclure systématiquement l’Afrique noire de l’historiographie universelle lorsqu’il est question des sciences</p></blockquote>\n<div>Our approach aims to demonstrate that it is deeply arbitrary to systematically exclude black Africa from the universal history of science.</div>\n<p>In this video, YouTube user White African showcases an invention by Killian Deku, a Ghanaian engineer that came up with a device to dose the amount of chlorine to add to water:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/6115931\" width=\"500\" height=\"288\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p><strong>Open access to publications </strong></p>\n<p>Madagascar is accustomed to have its lemur population draw more headlines that its people. However, it should not go unnoticed that the scientific blogging community there is starting to emerge. Several projects aim to collect and make available to the public all the scientific resources about the country.</p>\n<p>Ange Rakotomalala describes the objectives of website <a href=\"http://theses.recherches.gov.mg/\">Thèses Malgaches en ligne </a>[mg]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Ho hitanao eto ireo vokam-pikarohana tontosa teto amin'ny firenentsika nanomboka tamin'ny taona 2002.</p></blockquote>\n<div>On this website, you will be able to find all the theses and dissertations published since 2002</div>\n<p>The scientific community blog MyScienceWork aims to<a href=\"http://blog.mysciencework.com/2012/04/26/le-blog-mysciencework-un-an-actualites-scientifiques-multidisciplinaires.html\"> promote the culture of sharing among scientists</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Pour construire la culture scientifique de demain, la science doit devenir toujours plus multidisciplinaire. Elle doit s’adresser aux amateurs de science, au public, aux professionnels de la recherche [..] En 2011, nous avons publié les textes d’étudiants en informatique des pays d’Afrique du Nord, de chercheurs en communication d’université belge, de doctorants en neurosciences, en agronomie, d’exobiologistes de renom [..] Parce que nous croyons que la culture générale doit inclure les savoirs scientifiques, nous vous remercions chaleureusement. Faites passer le message : « partager c’est vivre ».</p></blockquote>\n<div>To build the necessary scientific culture of tomorrow, science must strive to become more multidisciplinary. It must be accessible to science amateurs, the general public, the research scientists [..] In 2011, we published articles on IT from countries in Northern Africa, in communication with renowned Belgian researchers, and in neuroscience, agronomy and exobiology from PhD students [..] We did so because we believe that general knowledge ought to include science and we thank you for reading us. Please pass along this message: “sharing is living”.</div>\n<p>The final words on science in Africa belong to Cheikh Anta Diop, one of the most prominent scientists in Africa, as <a href=\"http://www.africamaat.com/AFRICAMAAT-COM-NOTRE-VOCATION\">posted by Africamaat</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>En attendant, les spécialistes africains doivent prendre des mesures conservatoires. Il s’agit d’être apte à découvrir une vérité scientifique par ses propres moyens en se passant de l’approbation d’autrui, de savoir conserver son autonomie intellectuelle</p></blockquote>\n<div>Meanwhile, the African specialists must take prudent measures. It must be about being able to discover a scientific fact by our own means and without the approval of anyone else, about keeping our intellectual autonomy</div>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/lova-rakotomalala/\" title=\"View all posts by Lova Rakotomalala\">Lova Rakotomalala</a></span></span> \n · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/20/science-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (1) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&text=Science+Blogging+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=Science+Blogging+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=Science+Blogging+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=Science+Blogging+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F05%2F20%2Fscience-blogging-in-sub-saharan-africa%2F&title=Science+Blogging+in+Sub-Saharan+Africa\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p>"
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"title" : "VARIOUS ARTISTS / Some Day We’ll All Be Free Mixtape",
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">We live on earth, yes, but ultimately we are from outer space and subconsciously long to return to our origins in the stars. Every molecule, every atom originated as star dust. We are not from nothing, we are from the universe. And of all the arts, music brings us closest to our genesis.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/Donny_Hathaway_live.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"370\" height=\"277\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">This is the second time around for covers of Donny Hathaway’s spiritual anthem. Sure, we forget the song when we list our top tens, but let Donny’s tones come ringing thru a speaker or headphone and before we know it, we are singing along. And not just quietly singing, but declaiming with all our hearts: “one day we’ll all be free.”</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">When I did the <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/06/11/donny-hathaway-%E2%80%9Csomeday-we%E2%80%99ll-all-be-free%E2%80%9D/\"><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">first roundup back on June 11, 2006</span></a> (man, we’ve been doing BoL for a bunch of years, especially when you consider how long a calendar year is in internet terms; we’re getting old, damn near ancient); at that time I had no intention of ever doing a follow-up. But as always, life has its little tricks waiting around a previously unimagined corner, unforeseen developments be ready, willing and able to knock some sense into your hard head.</span></p>\n<p><span>What had happened was: I was searching for something else, saw the tune, clicked on, and before I knew it a momentary accident had me secure in its auditory grip. Next thing I know, I’m wondering are there enough versions I haven’t already posted to put together a second Mixtape. Lo and be-hear, we had a sho-nuff, mother lode of previously un-posted material.</span></p>\n<p><span>Of course we start off with the classic Donny Hathaway original. Some sensitive piano musings from maestro Bobby Lyle gently nudge us into a meditative mood. Then sister Puff Johnson throws down a vocal challenge taken from the soundtrack to the movie <em>The Promised Land</em>. Puff even offers up a soaring, Minnie Riperton-like high note on the outro. Who better to respond than brother George Benson, guitar in hand doing his scatting in parallel with his finger picking.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span>And just like Benson responded to Johnson’s vocal work, guitarist Charlie Hunter responds to Benson’s guitar plucking with an amazing solo version that recasts the familiar melody. And then, who would have thunk that Brazil’s Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’77 could have dropped such a soulful version but here it is. From Rio we jet over to Paris, France for a jazz-drenched instrumental from pianist Laurent Coq.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span>The closing belongs to two R&B icons: Bobby Womack and Aretha Franklin. Ever the preacher, Bobby Womack delivers a deeply moving, gravely-voiced sermon of hope and redemption and is followed by Aretha ushering us homeward in an all-out shout of deliverance taken from Spike Lee’s Malcolm X Soundtrack.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span>If you’re not feeling better after listening to this, you must have already crossed over.</span></p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">—Kalamu ya Salaam</span></strong></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span><em><strong><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">Some Day We’ll All Be Free Mixtape Playlist</span></strong></em></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">01 Donny Hathaway – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Extension-Man-Donny-Hathaway/dp/B00000335F/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1337093286&sr=8-5\">Extension Of A Man</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_02.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p> <span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">02 Bobby Lyle – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Pianomagic-Bobby-Lyle/dp/B000008BMI/ref=sr_1_23?ie=UTF8&qid=1337093396&sr=8-23\">Pianomagic</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p><span><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_03.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">03 Puff Johnson – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Promised-Land-Various-Artists/dp/tracks/B000002B0A/ref=dp_tracks_all_1#disc_1\">The Promised Land Soundtrack</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_04.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">04 George Benson – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Stories-George-Benson/dp/B002G4FQI4/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1337093553&sr=1-1\">Songs And Stories</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_05.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">05 Charlie Hunter – <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Hunter/dp/B00004T2RK/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1337093595&sr=1-1\"><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em>Charlie Hunter</em></span></a></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_06.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">06 Sergio Mendes & Brazil ’77 – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00122MWMY/ref=dm_sp_alb?ie=UTF8&qid=1337093647&sr=1-1-catcorr\">Sergio Mendes</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_07.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">07 Laurent Coq – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Versatile-Laurent-Coq/dp/B001TD70DM/ref=sr_1_9?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1337093803&sr=1-9\">Versatile</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_08.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">08 Bobby Womack – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Some-Day-Well-All-Free/dp/B0000258UK/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1337093907&sr=1-1\">Someday We’ll All Be Free</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"><img src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/some_day_cover_09.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\">09 Aretha Franklin – <span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Malcolm-Music-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack/dp/B000002MHB/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1337093977&sr=1-1\">Music from Malcolm X Soundtrack</a></em></span></span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:'Lucida Grande'\"> </span></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "How Meles rules Ethiopia – By Richard Dowden",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><div style=\"width:289px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7125\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/05/21/how-meles-rules-ethiopia-by-richard-dowden/meles_zenawi/\"><img title=\"meles_zenawi\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/meles_zenawi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"279\" height=\"310\"></a><p>Meles Zenawi - charismatic proponent of Authoritarian Developmentalism.</p></div><p>Meles Zenawi is the cleverest and most engaging Prime Minister in Africa – at least when he talks to visiting outsiders. When he speaks to his fellow Ethiopians, he is severe and dogmatic. But he entertains western visitors with humour and irony, deploying a diffident, self-deprecating style which cleverly conceals an absolute determination to control his country and its destiny, free of outside interference.</p><p>He was one of four African presidents to be invited to the Camp David G8 meeting last weekend. The aid donors love Meles. He is well-informed, highly numerate and focused. And he delivers. Ethiopia will get closer to the Millennium Development Goals than most African countries. The Ethiopian state has existed for centuries and it has a bureaucracy to run it. So the aid flows like a river, nearly $4 billion a year. And Meles is the United States’ policeman in the region with troops in Somalia and Sudan. He also enjoys a simmering enmity with his former ally, now the bad boy of the region, President Isias Afwerke of Eritrea. “It’s Mubarak syndrome,” a worried US diplomat told me. “We only talked to Mubarak about Egypt’s role in the region, never about what was happening inside Egypt. It’s the same with Ethiopia.”</p><p>In the 2005 election when the opposition won the capital, Addis Ababa, and claimed to have won nationally, the government arrested its leaders and tried them for treason. Some were imprisoned, others fled into exile. Now with 99.6% of the vote, the ruling Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has created a virtual one party state. In an interview last week Meles told me he did not know of a single village in the whole country that voted for the opposition.</p><p>This is subtle totalitarianism, dubbed ‘Authoritarian Developmentalism’ by some. If you do what the government says, you get assistance – land, water, services. If you don’t, you get nothing. The basic principles of political freedom enshrined in the constitution are frequently undermined by subtle edicts from government departments. Press freedom is clearly spelt out and recently a minor ruling stated that printers must take responsibility for everything they publish and can refuse to print anything the government might consider illegal. Hardly a devastating blow to press freedom you might think until you discover that the only presses in Ethiopia capable of printing newspapers are government-owned.</p><p>Meles’ remarkable achievement since he took power in 1991 has been to attract foreign companies to Ethiopia through a policy of low taxes and a free hand. Growth has been between 8 and 11 percent over the past eight years thanks to the private sector (both western and eastern.) The economy has doubled over the last five years. Meles is rushing to develop the country as fast as he can. Using the Chinese model he has attracted foreign investors to develop agriculture and manufacturing. As he told me: “The criticism we had in the past was that we were crazy Marxists. Now we are accused of selling the family spoons to foreigners. It’s a balance.”</p><p>Meles has leased more than 4 million hectares of land to foreign or domestic companies to grow food or flowers. And to provide them with water and power he has built dams which he says are environmentally much better than power stations since they are built in gorges with little water loss through evaporation. But it is not a completely free market solution. There are government monopolies in banking and telecoms. Nor will the government give people title deeds. All land is state owned. Meles has made it clear he will keep it that way.</p><p>“Have we created a perfect democratic system? No it’s a work in progress. Are we running as fast as our legs will carry us? Yes. And it’s not just Addis but also the most remote areas. Unlike previous governments we have really created a stable country in a very turbulent neighbourhood. Our writ runs in every village. That never happened in the history of Ethiopia. The state was distant, irrelevant.”</p><p>He fiercely defends his policies, in the face of Western NGO criticism, that this development is environmentally unsound and indigenous people have been removed forcibly from their land. He insists that in every case they were consulted, dismissing a report by the Oakland Institute in the US which said people had been forcibly removed as “bullshit”. When I suggest that pastoralists should be allowed to continue their nomadic way of life, he says I am a romantic westerner. But he adds that it is their right to continue their way of life.</p><p>It is the same with the politics. Having taken power by force in 1991 and coming from a minority, Meles created a safety valve by writing into the constitution the right of every “nation” in Ethiopia to declare independence. Whenever there are local political problem he re-asserts that right to leave but it is unlikely the clause will ever be put to the test through a referendum.</p><p>The current trouble spot is the southern region of Gambela where land has been given to agricultural businesses. Meles is defensive about reports of recent forced removals. “We are making sure that the Gambela people are settled and have land and that young people can go to farms not as guards but as farmers,” he said, assuring me that the people who have been moved were consulted. Only when all those in the region who want to work have jobs will other workers be recruited from other parts of Ethiopia.</p><p>Is the Meles plan for rapid, state directed capitalism working? At the recent World Economic Forum meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa earlier this month, criticism came, not from western NGOs , but from China, Ethiopia’s closest ally. Gao Xiqing of the China Investment Forum, warned Meles: “Do not necessarily do what we did”. Policies of “sheer economic growth” should be avoided, he said. “We now suffer pollution and an unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities… You have a clean sheet of paper here. Try to write something beautiful.”</p><p>Has any Chinese official ever publically criticised an African leader in such terms before?</p><p>And some foreign investors are not happy either. They have driven Ethiopia’s growth but now the government and Ethiopian firms are desperate for a greater slice of the profits. Flower and horticultural companies have been suddenly ordered by the government to only use Ethiopian companies for packing their produce, transporting it to Addis Ababa airport from where only the state-owned Ethiopian Airlines must be hired to fly it to Europe. As the distraught owner of one of the biggest flower farms told me last week: “Ethiopia does not have such companies yet”. But if they refuse, their licences will be withdrawn. It appears that having lured foreign businesses into Ethiopia, the government is now tying them down and taking their profits.</p><p>Meles is caught in a bind, under pressure on several fronts with problems that economic growth may not solve. Inflation is coming down but has been running at almost 50 percent. Everyone I spoke with in Ethiopia said that the cost of living was the highest they had ever known. There is real hardship among the poor as the staple grain in Ethiopia, <em>teff</em>, has quadrupled in price recently. The universities are pouring out graduates but there are few jobs. One recent graduate I spoke with said she was one of about 10 out of more than 100 in her class who had a job. The government’s hope is that it can grow the economy even faster. It is promising mining as the next bonanza and Meles hinted last week that oil has been discovered.</p><p>But this is the scenario he may soon be facing: a mass of urban poor hurt by the price rise of the staple food and large numbers of educated but unemployed urban youth. Sounds familiar? The Arab Spring was watched closely by Ethiopians. And, it appears Meles senses it is coming. He told the World Economic Forum meeting: “The going is going to get tough so Ethiopia needs a tough leader, a leader prepared to say no. You can’t please everyone.”</p><p><strong>Note: A selection of quotes from Richard’s interview with Meles can be read <a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/05/25/%E2%80%9Cunlike-all-previous-governments-our-writ-runs-in-every-village%E2%80%9D-excerpts-from-an-interview-with-meles-zenawi-%E2%80%93-by-richard-dowden/\">here </a></strong></p><p><strong>Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of <a href=\"http://astore.amazon.co.uk/royaafrisoci-21/detail/184627155X\"><em>Africa; altered states, ordinary mircles.</em></a></strong></p>"
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"title" : "PaaS is the New Middleware",
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"content" : "A couple months ago we gave you the heads up about a new soul/R&B compilation from Blacktree Music, <em><a href=\"http://www.soulbounce.com/soul/2012/03/blacktree_music_plants_healthy_soul_seeds.php\">Blacktree Music Presents: Soul Seeds, Vol. One</a></em>, that introduced us to a healthy roster of talented artists and their music. For me, one of the standouts on the project was the Quiet Storm-ready slow jam \"Swimmin'\" by <strong>Bianca Star</strong>. She now delivers a music video for the song that is the perfect accompaniment to the sultry groove. In the video we see Star come home from a long day at work and leave a trail of clothes as she makes her way to the bathroom to have Calgon take her away. Her bath is bubbling, the candles are burning and she's singing about taking a fantastic voyage with her man. It sounds like the farthest they'll be going is to the bedroom, though, where she awaits him when he gets home. This video is well done, tasteful and one that you might want to recreate with your own boo later this evening. "
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"title" : "Please insert your Sir Mix-a-Lot joke here",
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"content" : "Humans' have exceptionally rounded rear ends compared to our primate relatives. Turns out, that beefed-up gluteus maximus helps stabilize our upper body when we run, keeping us from falling forward. <a href=\"http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/chasing-down-a-better-way-to-run/\">Read more about the biology and theoretical evolution of running at the Harvard Gazette</a>. <em>(Via<a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/nxthompson\"> Nicholas Thompson</a>)</em><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=1dc4ae1e71910aac5d07041c04e48a70&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=1dc4ae1e71910aac5d07041c04e48a70&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://tags.bluekai.com/site/5148\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:dupdmqp&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/VCxhxfG7uYM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree, More Record Label Interest In Rap",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Hip-hop-family-tree-title1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"930\" height=\"228\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/hip-hop-strip-19.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"930\" height=\"2620\"></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/family-tree-19.jpg\"><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/family-tree-19-930x818.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"930\" height=\"818\"></a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"> <strong><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/tag/hip-hop-family-tree\">Read the rest of the Hip Hop Family Tree comics!</a></strong></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/edpiskor\"><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/piskor-twitter-Banner1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"468\" height=\"60\"></a></p>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4b7c590b2ea442bcae85d8f6adc2809f&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4b7c590b2ea442bcae85d8f6adc2809f&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://tags.bluekai.com/site/5148\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:dupdmqp&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/LcNp-7trqDI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Liberia: Labor Pains",
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"content" : "<div><div><div>Mae Azango, for the Pulitzer Center</div></div></div><div><div><div><p>Melinda Gates has me thinking about the time I became a mother. When the Gates Foundation co-chair recently said that improving family planning for the global poor is her new personal mission -- and that she is making it a top priority for the world's biggest public health philanthropy -- it immediately brought me back to my own experience giving birth to my son 20 years ago. Back then, the thing I needed most was not family planning, but a well-trained midwife.</p>\n<p>I was 18, an unwed and pregnant young woman about to have her first baby in the midst of Liberia's civil war. Just weeks before I went into labor, a rebel group took control of my town, a suburb of the capital, Monrovia. Anyone who could run away did, including all doctors and nurses. I had no choice but to find a traditional midwife and ask her to help me have my baby.</p>\n<p>I walked for an hour or more to a remote village. The path was narrow, and thorns grabbed my legs from the bushes. I was already in labor -- and in pain -- by the time we reached the home of an elderly woman whom my baby's father knew. I lay on the floor of her hut waiting for the baby to come. That night, it was raining cats and dogs, and the rebels were shooting. Just after the gunshots began, my son came. He was small, but healthy.</p>\n<p>But then, the afterbirth was stuck. I was confused. I thought that with the baby already out the ordeal would be over, yet I writhed in pain. The old woman helping me knew little more than I did -- only what she had learned from her own mother. That included a belief that the afterbirth was stuck because I had sinned. She accused me of adultery and demanded that I confess the name of my lover. As I bled, she beat my legs.</p>\n<p>Finally, I pulled a name out of the air and offered it to her. In an adjacent room, a man knocked some old cups together. He said he was consulting the gods of our ancestors and that they would allow me to live because I had confessed the name. The midwife gave me a teaspoon of kerosene because she believed it would help finish the birth, and I passed out before I had the chance to hold my first child. But I survived.</p>\n<p>Other young girls were not so lucky. Even today, nearly a decade after the end of the civil war, and in Africa's first country with a female president, Liberia has the world's 10th-highest maternal mortality rate. Health clinics and hospitals are few and far between. On average, the World Health Organization reported in 2010, Liberia has only three nurses or midwives and less than one doctor for every 10,000 people. Bad roads make it difficult for most of us to access what medical resources there are.</p>\n<p>Like all numbers, these only tell part of the story. These numbers in particular were collected over a nine-year period -- a period that in my country represents the end of the civil war and the beginning of recovery. It's difficult to overstate how many things war destroyed here and how much we've had to recover from.</p>\n<p>But Liberia is making progress. This year, for example, newly reelected President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has made increasing the number of competent birth attendants a priority for her second term. That means that most rural villages and towns rely on traditional birth attendants who practice home deliveries -- with habits handed down from their mothers and grandmothers. Some still use folk cures, like herbal concoctions, and the delivery fee they earn from each pregnant woman's family makes them reluctant to refer their clients to modern medical clinics.</p>\n<p>This is where women like Miatta Abraham come in. I met Abraham in March, when I was interviewing newly trained traditional midwives, or TTMs. I was writing a piece for <em>Front Page Africa</em>, an investigative paper, on what maternal health in Liberia looks like 20 years after my own traumatic experience.</p>\n<p>TTMs are an integral part of the country's strategy for reducing maternal deaths. Supported by international donors, the Liberian government so far has trained 6,000 TTMs to improve their delivery skills, offer basic prenatal care, and recognize early danger signs in pregnant women that might necessitate a transfer to medical clinics before complicated labor begins. Abraham, 38 years old, lives in a village in Todee district on the rural outskirts of Monrovia. \"[In] some of the villages, there is no car road,\" she told me, \"so people tote [the pregnant woman] in a hammock\" to reach a clinic in a time of crisis.</p>\n<p>Even in the face of complications, rural Liberian women often don't want to make the arduous trek through the bush, says Abraham. Instead, they would prefer to pay a village midwife $20 to deliver the child at home. Abraham thinks that this financial incentive, still in place from the old system, makes it harder for newly trained TTMs to convince families to move at-risk pregnant women into clinics before difficult births. TTMs are unpaid, like many of the jobs that support Liberian health services, which means that trained volunteers like Abraham often have less clout in villages and are considered less professional than the untrained women who still receive money from families.</p>\n<p>But training and pay aren't the obstacles preventing reform of the country's birthing system. John Flomo, the officer in charge at the Todee District Clinic, says that what happened to me the first time I gave birth is still happening today. \"Many of these midwives, before their training, were still practicing the method of forcing pregnant women to confess to having outside affairs before the baby would come,\" he told me. The hope is that providing formal training for midwives will help make delivery a matter of science, not superstition.</p>\n<p>Of course, as Gates notes, one of the most effective strategies for reducing maternal deaths would be to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies, which the United Nations expects to approach 300 million worldwide in the next decade. Improving access to contraceptives can help those women. A 2011 World Health Organization study stated that only 11 percent of women in Liberia are using modern contraceptive methods -- for all of sub-Saharan Africa, the rate is nearly three times as high. Today in Liberia, 35 percent of women have family planning needs that aren't met.</p>\n<p>But there's also a lesson in what happened to me two decades ago. Pregnancies, accidental or planned, should be supported by effective health systems. Women have many reproductive rights, and one of those should be giving birth safely. As the international donor community shifts its focus to helping women who don't want to be mothers, I hope we won't forget the ones who do. </p>\n<p><em>Mae Azango is an award-winning human rights journalist working for</em> Front Page Africa<em> and </em>New Narratives<em> in Monrovia, Liberia. Her work on <a href=\"http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2691:growing-pains-sande-tradition-of-genital-cutting-threatens-liberian-womens-health&catid=54:health-matters&Itemid=116\">female genital mutilation</a>, for which she received death threats this year, helped bring an official end to the practice in Liberia. Her recent work on midwives was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.</em></p>\n</div></div></div><div><div></div></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Up until 2007, <a href=\"http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20120511/NEWS01/305120021/Kodak-Park-nuclear-reactor?gcheck=1&nclick_check=1\">Kodak operated a small nuclear reactor that contained 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>The Democrat and Chronicle learned of the facility when an employee happened to mention it to a reporter a few months ago.</p>\n\n<p>The recent silence was by design. Detailed information about nuclear power plants and other entities with radioactive material has been restricted since the 2001 terrorist attacks.</p>\n\n<p>Nuclear non-proliferation experts express surprise that an industrial manufacturer like Eastman Kodak had had weapons-grade uranium, especially in a post-9/11 world.</p>\n\n<p>\"I've never heard of it at Kodak,\" said Miles Pomper, senior research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington. \"It's such an odd situation because private companies just don't have this material.\"</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>(via <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/kdawson\">@kdawson</a>)</p> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Kodak\">Kodak</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/physics\">physics</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/science\">science</a>"
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"content" : "Weddings in Nigeria are colorful, creative and extravagant productions, with guest lists of up to 2000 people considered standard.<div>\n<a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?i=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://rss.cnn.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?a=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rss/cnn_world?i=yglXzlDE8vw:qmXzbwD3P7Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rss/cnn_world/~4/yglXzlDE8vw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Weekly Ten: Mind Boggling Numbers",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://businessnews.com.ng/2012/02/08/oil-corruption-may-threaten-angola-nigeria-global-witness-says/\"><img src=\"http://cdn.businessnews.com.ng/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/anti-corruption1-300x256.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"256\"></a><p>Click image for source</p></div>\n<p><strong>ONE:</strong> James Ibori, former governor of Delta State has been <a href=\"http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/are-we-serious-about-fighting-corruption-then-pass-the-forfeiture-bill-now-/113923/\">convicted by the Southwark Crown Court in the UK on corruption charges</a>. Ibori has been <a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/News/Britain+jails+former+Nigeria+governor/-/979180/1388354/-/g98p4nz/-/index.html\">jailed for 13 years</a> for fraud totalling nearly £50 million. He admitted to conspiracy to defraud and money laundering and to fraud in excess of £50 million. Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has stated that it will still prosecute Ibori at the appropriate time as majority of Ibori’s offenses while governing Delta State will be charged before Nigerian courts.</p>\n<p><strong>TWO:</strong> Meanwhile, Nigeria’s <a href=\"http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/nigeria-s-domestic-external-debts-now-44bn/113910/\">total debt is now at $44 billion</a>, $5.9 billion in external debt and N5.6 trillion domestically. The corrupt fuel subsidy programme <a href=\"http://theafricareport.com/index.php/20120419501809698/reuters-feed/nigeria-fuel-subsidy-graft-cost-$6.8-bln-parliament-501809698.html\">has cost Nigeria $6.8 billion from 2009 to 2011</a>. A parliamentary probe said that state oil firm, private marketers and the regulator owe N1.07 trillion in unpaid debts to the government and that the state oil firm owes oil trading companies around $3.5 billion for fuel. The probe called for an overhaul of the state oil firm and ministry. With all this in consideration, it is no wonder that the <a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/News/Nigerians+oppose+planned+return+of+Ibori+loot/-/979180/1389526/-/ta8fpmz/-/index.html\">planned return of $250 million stolen by Ibori</a> to Nigeria was met with angry outcry.</p>\n<p><strong>THREE:</strong> Not to mention, N6 billion belonging to the Police Pension Fund has <a href=\"http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/-n6bn-police-pension-fund-can-t-be-traced-/113909/\">vanished in thin air</a>. Stolen pension funds have been traced to<a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/News/Ghost+accounts+used+in+Nigeria+pension+scam/-/979180/1391454/-/v972up/-/index.html\"> over 73,000 fake bank accounts that were opened</a> by corrupt officials in two federal pension departments. The bank accounts were used to steal millions of dollars. In relation to the Police Pension Fund, six civil servants have been arrested namely Permanent Secretary Atiku Abubakar Kigo and top senior officers in the Federal Civil Service, Esai Abubakar; Ahmed Inuwa Wada; John Yakubu Yusufu; Mrs Veronica Ulonma Onyegbula; and Sani Habila Zira.</p>\n<p><strong>FOUR:</strong> In 25 years, <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/africa/in-nigeria-a-preview-of-an-overcrowded-planet.html?_r=1\">300 million people will be living in Nigeria</a> at the current rate Nigeria is growing. Living standards for many are falling, with large numbers of people struggling to share basic amenities. There are worries as to how this massive spurt in population is going to affect <a href=\"http://theafricareport.com/index.php/20120416501809352/soapbox/dealing-with-africa-s-megacities-and-mega-slums-501809352.html\">urban housing</a>. This massive increase in population could prove detrimental as from the historical and economic view, <a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/2012/04/16/mr-malthus-goes-to-nigeria\">development tends to precede large population change</a> but this is not the case with Nigeria which as we all know is plagued with high poverty and unemployment levels. The Nigerian middle class my be unable to stop this change.</p>\n<p><strong>FIVE:</strong> Nollywood is facing economic challenges with low returns. The Film, Video Producers and Marketers Association of Nigeria (FVPMAN) have <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201204160876.html\">signed a declaration</a> for DSTV’s Africa Magic channel to stop showing Nollywood films before they were released elsewhere.</p>\n<p><strong> SIX:</strong> President Goodluck Jonathan has been <a href=\"http://www.leadership.ng/nga/articles/22355/2012/04/18/time_lists_jonathan_among_worlds_100_most_influential_persons.html\">listed as one of the 100 Most Influential Persons in the World</a> by Time Magazine, a citation on President Goodluck was written by the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who pointed out that President Goodluck “exemplifies the African political renaissance”.</p>\n<p><strong>SEVEN:</strong> There has been a <a href=\"http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95327/NIGERIA-School-attendance-down-after-Boko-Haram-attacks\">decline in school attendance</a> in Northern Nigeria due to Boko Haram’s activities. In this year alone, 14 schools have been burnt down and over 7,000 children are not out of formal education. There has also been a reduction in enrolment rates.</p>\n<p><strong>EIGHT:</strong> What does a cramp down on “fake” marriages in Zimbabwe have to do with Nigeria? Apparently, West Africans in Zimbabwe, Nigerians in particular, have been accused of getting married to locals in order to easily receive resident permits. The government is <a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/Battle+of+sham+nuptials+in+Harare/-/979182/1387334/-/1wpas3/-/index.html\">cracking down on marriages of convenience</a> much to the annoyance and frustration of genuine couples.</p>\n<p><strong>NINE:</strong> A school specifically for the almajiri street kids has been <a href=\"http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/almajiris-towards-creating-brighter-future-for-the-street-kids/114304/\">inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan</a>. The first Almajiri Model Boarding School in Gagi, Sokoto is widely seen as a good initiative to curb what has been referred to as the “Almajiri syndrome in the North”. However, I wonder how successful this school will be in attracting street children. Also, by “almajiri” are they only referring to male street kids, what about the girls who roam the streets begging for alms, are they not potential tools for political, religious and ethnic violence?</p>\n<p><strong>TEN:</strong> <a href=\"http://thinkafricapress.com/nigeria/world-bank-presidential-race-hots-ngozi-okonjo-iweala\">Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala</a> will not be the next president of the World Bank after <a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/News/US+nominee+wins+World+Bank+race/-/979180/1387822/-/1071rm0/-/index.html\">losing out to Jim Yong Kim from the USA</a>. Although Kim’s victory was largely expected, this will go down in World Bank history as the first-ever challenge to the US nominee. The president of the World Bank has always gone to a citizen of the USA due to the large donations the country makes to the institution so some think that Okonjo-Iweala <a href=\"http://nakedchiefs.com/2012/04/17/why-americas-kim-not-nigerias-okonjo-iweala-deserved-to-eat-the-world-bank-job-and-dlamini-zuma-should-be-the-african-unions-next-ceo/\">never had a chance at winning</a>. Jim Yong Kim has <a href=\"http://www.africareview.com/Business+++Finance/Nigerias+World+Bank+candidate+lauds+winner/-/979184/1388058/-/v4fiyg/-/index.html\">called for changes</a> to the US-led selection process.</p>"
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"title" : "Everything Fantastic is Credible: “Bombay’s Republic,” week one",
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"content" : "<p><em>As I <a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/blogging-the-caine-prize-2012/\">announced</a> last week, for the next five weeks, I and a team of bloggers, writers, and readers will be discussing the <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/news_2012_shortlist.php\">five short stories</a> that have been shortlisted for the “Caine Prize for African Writing” (see those links for more information). I will post and update a list of links to the other bloggers (and a schedule) at the bottom of this post. </em></p>\n<p><em></em><em>The first story is “Bombay’s Republic,” by the Nigerian writer, poet, and playwright Rotimi Babatunde. You can read it <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf\">here</a>, in pdf form, courtesy of the Caine Prize committee.</em></p>\n<p>As is the case with so much African fiction, the claims that “Bombay’s Republic” makes about history don’t so much occur in a real historiographic vacuum as they occur in the context of a long history of Africa being read <em>as</em> a historiographic vacuum.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/everything-fantastic-is-credible-bombays-republic-part-one/burma-boy/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14931\"><img title=\"burma boy\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/burma-boy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p>This is a subtle distinction, so let me be more specific: a character in Babatunde‘s story indicates that the Burma campaign, in which African soldiers fought in the British army against the Japanese in WWII, was a “Forgotten War.” But it isn’t, not really; it’s a story that <em>has </em>been told, many times. And each time its told and retold, it’s again flagged as an <em>untold story</em>. Especially in recent years, there’s been a flurry of interest in rediscovering it, from Biyi Bandele’s novel <em><a href=\"http://bbc.preview.somethinelse.com/africabeyond/africanarts/19924.shtml\">Burma Boys</a> </em>to Barnaby Phillips’ documentary “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BREOezfAJSU\">The Burma Boy</a>,” to yet another documentary (apparently looking for funding), with the novel title “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6IyDqPSVDc&feature=player_embedded\">Burma Boys.</a>” </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/everything-fantastic-is-credible-bombays-republic-part-one/pride/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14934\"><img title=\"pride\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pride-383x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p>If nothing else, the continuity of titles should tell us something about how well developed this discourse actually turns out to be: each iteration of the story tends back towards the same title because it is somehow understood that this is what you call them, the Burma Boys. At the same time, the marketing copy for each of these re-tellings makes a claim for itself by indicating that the story has <em>never been told before</em>, that it’s a “forgotten war” of the type that a character in Babatunde’s story describes it as. <em>Until now</em>! Rinse and repeat.</p>\n<p>The claim I’m going to make for Rotimi Babatunde’s “Bombay’s Republic” is that it not only takes this fact for granted, but that the author is not nearly as interested in the Burma campaign, in and of itself, as it may initially seem. Instead, as the story’s title suggests, it’s interested in what happens <em>afterwards</em>, in how that memory of the Burma campaign gets mobilized, and the sort of uses to which exactly that “And now we are rediscovering it!” moment can be put. In short, it’s a kind of meta-critique of exactly these kinds of stories, and of the kinds of nationalist historiography that flows out of them.</p>\n<p>What is there to critique about these stories? Well, the figure of the African WWII veteren has often been a go-to trope for historians looking for explanations/causes for African independence. In the years immediately after WWII, colonial administrators and imperial politicians were nervous that colonial subjects (like the Nigerians who served in Burma) would return from the war theater endowed with new ideas about equality, new aspirations for independence, and with the (new) knowledge that white men, for example, were just men like any others. And so, as David Killingray summarizes, in his <em>Fighting For Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War</em>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>[I]t is not surprising that the African history and political analysis written during and immediately after the period of independence should give prime place to ex-servicemen…Thomas Hodgkin…stated that “the experience of African servicemen in the various theatres of war” was “too familiar to require detailed repetition here,” while George Shepperson argued that the war “accelerated the nationalist tendency in Nyasaland” while “lowering…the European prestige.” George Bennett…spoke of African soldiers overseas “becoming aware of the aspirations of the nationalist movements in Asia.” A few years later, Ali Mazrui summed up the generally accepted view: “In short, African military experience abroad in the 1940’s contributed to the birth of African nationalism at home.” (206)</p></blockquote>\n<p>For what it’s worth, Killingray is pretty dismissive of these claims, from the vantage point of decades later; without wishing to deny that any African WWII veterans had anything to do with independence struggles a decade later – for there are notable exceptions – he demonstrates pretty persuasively that most of the claims made on their behalf were at least overwrought and were probably largely baseless. With a few key exceptions, most WWII veterans from Africa were actually <em>less </em>political than their countrymen, if only because the military had given them skills that could be turned into employment in the colonies when they returned, giving them more of an economic stake in the colonial status quo than those who had not served. But the more general point is simple: the idea that returning WWII veterans were a major cause or force for African decolonization is simply not borne out by any evidence.</p>\n<p>This requires us to ask the next, obvious question: why then, did so many people tell this story? Part of it was Western historians repeating what colonial administrators had been writing. The other part of it is that it explains how WWII led to decolonization. The fact that it did is fairly obvious: WWII was started by a country that wanted colonies of its own – was, in many ways, the inevitable outgrowth of inter-imperial competition for land – and it left the imperial countries utterly devastated. The USA and the USSR were the lone remaining superpowers, and neither had any interest in the kind of formal empire that Britain, France, and Germany had developed, nor could imperial Europe maintain the kind of control over its colonies that it had been able to maintain before. Their economies were destroyed, their armies were decimated and exhausted (and demobilizing), and along with a growing international interest in “self-determination” as a political taken-for-granted, both the USA and the USSR were insistent that the days of empire were over (though probably more as a way of weakening Europe than out of any true altruism or solidarity with colonized peoples).</p>\n<p>But the point is simply that empires began to fall like dominos after WWII. After decades of fruitless anti-colonial struggle – everything from direct rebellions, parliamentary appeals, and civil disobedience – WWII marks the point where anticolonial nationalism suddenly starts to gain traction, suddenly starts to build up steam and rack up victories. But why? Why did everything change in the late 40’s? The story of the returning WWII veterans was one way to explain the difference, simply, without getting into the much more complicated geopolitical explanations. And those veterans themselves were often <em>particularly</em> interested in telling the story this way; in some places, returned veterans were accused of having what was called the “Burma complex,” a sense of unearned superiority.</p>\n<p> In Rotimi Babatunde’s story, “Bombay’s Republic” is the name of the personal fiefdom that his protagonist sets up on his return, a republic fantastically composed of one person – “Bombay” – who has given himself that name on his return, as a reference to his wartime service. Bombay does not join the nationalist struggles that are going on around him; instead, he declares <em>personal</em> independence, personally benefitting from what has happened.</p>\n<p>It is, in short, a subversion of the usual narrative: instead of returning home having learned about nationalism and “the necessities of parliamentary representation and the right to self-rule,” like others among his peers, Bombay has learned something cunningly different.</p>\n<p>Let’s take a step back. It is important that the character in the story who declares the Burma campaign a “forgotten war” is both a white officer and that he makes this claim as a <em>prediction</em>, even before the campaign is over. In other words, this officer starts rediscovering himself (as forgotten) even before anyone has had a chance to forget him in the first place. That returns us to my first point: the idea that a history story has been forgotten – which then enables you to unearth it, to rediscover it – is the important thing, not the story itself (which was never really forgotten in the first place). It is precisely because of the desire to revive and rediscover a story that it becomes so necessary to establish that it was forgotten. Even if – as is the case here, and as was generally the case in the 1950’s – it was never quite as forgotten as it was supposed to have been.</p>\n<p>This is important, because what the officer tells Bombay (essentially, “no one will know what happened here”) is not true, and can’t be true, at least not yet. But gives Bombay a devilish idea: if the Burma campaign is destined to be a forgotten war, why not return home and tell a lot of lies about it? Why not make a name for yourself by inventing a whole alternate personal history? If no one knows the truth, you can say <em>anything </em>about yourself. And this is quite literally what “Bombay” does, naming himself “Bombay” not because he spent time in Bombay – he didn’t – but because the name “Bombay” sounds like “bomb” which allows him to make up an elaborate set of lies about the place, and then use that glamour to endow himself with glory. The story he tells about the Black Hole of Calcutta is even more atrociously fantastical:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Bombay described the sinister darkness of the abyss into which after dropping a coin you could wait for all eternity without the shadow of an echo returning from the fathomless deep. That is why it is called the Black Hole of Calcutta, the veteran said. When sheep fell into the hole, an occurrence whose regularity wasn’t surprising since they were the most foolish creatures alive, continued Bombay, the sheep tumbled for days on end down the Black Hole of Calcutta which ran straight through the centre of the earth but he assured his 17 enraptured listeners that, luckily for the foolish sheep, their owners always found the dazed animals grazing happily on the other side of the globe close to where they popped out of the pitch-black shaft.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In other words, Bombay is not only a liar, but he’s a liar who learns to tell lies while he’s in Burma. Before that, he’s represented to us – repeatedly and with a certain humor – as one of the world’s most credulous human beings, easily taken in by other people’s lies and utterly shocked to discover the truth. He’s one of the easily swayed young recruits who signs up to fight in WWII because he’s told that Hitler is just outside his own country’s borders, and that if he wasn’t stopped those that “he didn’t pressgang into slavery would be roasted alive for consumption by his beloved dogs.” Not only does he believe these wild recruiters’ tales, he chalks up its untruth – when he discovers it – to an innocent mistake.</p>\n<p>But the entire course of his experience in Burma is marked by the repeated discovery not of what the world <em>really is like</em>, but of the extent to which people will believe totally crazy things. He learns, for example, that the Burmese think Africans have tails. He’s not offended by this; he’s just interested in the fact that people will fall for that kind of silliness. And this sort of thing keeps happening, particularly with the Japanese, who have apparently been prepared to believe the wildest of stories about Africans. After charging a machine-gun emplacement, armed only with pangas, or machetes – which is a genuinely brave and crazy thing to do – Bombay is startled to discover that the heavily fortified Japanese simply flee the sight of a wild group of poorly armed Africans. When he talks to his Lieutenant about it, he gets an illuminating explanation:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Oh poor you, so you don’t even know why the Japs fled, the Lieutenant said. The stories that preceded you to this war said that the Africans are coming and that they eat people. We fuelled those rumours by dropping leaflets on the enemy, warning them that you will not only kill them but you also will happily cook them for supper. The Japanese, as you very well know, are trained to fight without fear of death. They don’t mind being killed but, like anyone else, they are not in any way eager to be eaten. Their training didn’t prepare them for that. That was why they scrammed when they saw you screaming towards them like bloodthirsty savages. But anyway, that you know nothing about the situation only makes your action more courageous. Report in an hour to receive your decoration. Okay?</p></blockquote>\n<p>This sort of thing happens several more times, but the important point is simply that Bombay not only learns what a load of crap people will believe in, but he discovers that he can personally benefit from other people’s credulousness. This line “That people would imagine [X] was something he had not thought possible” occurs several more times, as Bombay learns, again and again, the lesson that people are easily tricked, exactly as he was. In this way, he goes from being an extremely credulous person – who is therefore exploited because of it – to someone who understands that you can exploit other people’s credulousness, and who does.</p>\n<p>In short, the war teaches him that what other people <em>don’t </em>know is something you can use to manipulate them. He learns, as we are told on page two, that “everything he thought fantastic was indeed credible.” But note the word choice. It isn’t that everything fantastic is actually <em>true</em>, it’s that fantastic things are “credible.” No matter how crazy it is, he realizes, somewhere, will be ignorant enough to believe it. And so he returns home, endowed with this knowledge of the utility of human ignorance, in search of people as credulous as he was when he first left.</p>\n<p>Other bloggers writing about “Bombay’s Republic”:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://accrabooksandthings.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/blogging-the-caine-prize-2012-bombays-republic-caineprize/\">Accrabooksandthings</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2012/05/caine-prize-shortlist-review-bombays.html\">Method to the Madness</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2012/05/caine-prize-2012-republic-by-rotimi.html\">The Oncoming Hope</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://bookshybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/my-thoughts-rotimi-babatundes-bombay.html\">Bookshy</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/some-thoughts-on-rotimi-babatundes-bombays-republic-by-stephen-derwent-partington/\">Stephen Derwent Partington</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/caine-blog-bombays-republic-by-rotimi-babatunde/\">Backslash Scott</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/everything-fantastic-is-credible-bombays-republic-part-one/\">Zunguzung</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://aaahfooey.blogspot.in/2012/05/caine-prize-2012-shortlist-1-bombays.html\">aaahfooey</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2012/05/blogging-caine-prize-2012-bombays.html\">The Mumpsimus</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/caineprize-the-thirteenth-caine-prize-shortlist-bombays-republic/\">Ikhide</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://loomnie.com/2012/05/10/reading-rotimi-babatundes-bombay-republic/\">Loomnie</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://tomakepoesis.tumblr.com/post/22789099893/caine-prize-shortlist-rotimi-babatunde\">To Make Poesis</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2012/05/caine-prize-short-list-2012-bombays.html\">The Reading Life</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://inkdrops.me/2012/05/blogging-the-caine-prize-bombays-republic-by-rotimi-babatunde/\">Inkdrops</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2012/05/rotimi-babatunde-bombays-republic.html\">Practically Marzipan</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://cashed-in.com/2012/05/11/bombays-republic/\">Cashed In</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://inkdrops.me/2012/05/blogging-the-caine-prize-bombays-republic-by-rotimi-babatunde/\">ndinda </a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://cityoflions.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/bombays-republic-notes-on-style-and-storytelling/\">City of Lions</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://blackballoonpublishing.com/blog/caine-prize-chronicle-1-nigerias-possibilities\">Black Balloon</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://soulfool.me/bombays-republic-by-rotimi-babatunde/\">Soulfool</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>Schedule:</p>\n<div>May 9-11 <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf\">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’ </a></div>\n<div>May 16-18 <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf\">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></div>\n<div>May 23-25 <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf\">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></div>\n<div>May 30-June 1 <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf\">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’ </a></div>\n<div>June 6-8 <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf\">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’ </a></div>"
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"title" : "Myopia is the new normal in Asia",
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"content" : "Reporting in the journal Lancet, the authors note that up to 90% of young adults in major East Asian countries, including <a href=\"http://topics.time.com/china/\">China</a>, <a href=\"http://topics.time.com/taiwan/\">Taiwan</a>, <a href=\"http://topics.time.com/japan/\">Japan</a>, Singapore and South Korea, are nearsighted. The overall rate of myopia in the U.K., by contrast, is about 20% to 30%.<div><i>--Alice Park, Time, on <a href=\"http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/07/why-up-to-90-of-asian-schoolchildren-are-nearsighted/\">the death of 20/20</a>. See <a href=\"http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com/2011/06/sunlight-combats-nearsightedness.html\">this old post</a> for the leading suspect for why this is happening. HT: DL</i></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-9119939298883597608?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\"><div align=\"justify\"><strong>Salisu Suleiman</strong></div><div align=\"justify\">The panel was well-educated, urbane, though the discussion was heated. The topic was how successive leaders from the North – at all levels – ruined not only the North, but Nigeria as well. Then someone threw in a hypothetical question: If you could hang any of these selfish, thieving leaders, who would you hang?</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">The candidates were many, too many. The reason was consistent: a tiny clique of Northern leadership – whether wearing turbans or berets – held office as presidents, governors and ministers, only to convert the instruments of state to promoting their own self-serving agenda, to the detriment of the North and Nigeria. The consequences of their actions are the illiteracy, poverty, and now terrorism, that have become synonymous with the region.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">Soon, the group yielded to the argument of one discussant who insisted that if he could hang anyone from the North, it would be Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB), Nigeria’s self-declared military president from 1985 to 1993. He argued that IBB not only overthrew a patriotic government, but had also no plan beside the democratisation of corruption. </div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">His most unforgivable crime was scrapping all Commodity Boards in 1986 for no tangible reason, a decision that dealt a death blow to Nigeria’s agriculture. The discussant argued that even when a wheat growing programme that would have matched oil revenues was introduced, IBB abandoned the programme halfway for fear of offending America, which sells wheat to Nigeria.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">Another IBB crime was his systematic destruction of Nigeria Airways which had been positioned to become a world leading airline. The panelist informed us that a previous government had arranged with a Swiss group to train Nigeria Airways staff and facilitate its upgrade to a world class airline. IBB cancelled the programme – though it had been fully paid for by the Nigerian government. By the time the despot left office, Nigeria Airways was practically grounded, with almost no airworthy aircraft. Hanged.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">One speaker chose Vice President Namadi Sambo. Asked why, he told the panel that the biggest challenge confronting Nigeria today was the indiscriminate bombings and killing by Boko Haram. He argued that as the leading Northerner in this government, Sambo ought to have initiated and sustained negotiations with the group because President Goodluck Jonathan, National Security Adviser Andrew Azazi and the other officials leading the war against Boko Haram did not sufficiently understand the complexities of the North and the various forces at work. Instead, Sambo strives to maintain a stolid detachment from the problem – while devoting all his time and energy to his presidential ambition. Hanged.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">A quiet, but forceful member told the group that his candidate for the gallows would be David Mark who, he said, has been a part of virtually every coup in Nigeria, including the one that brought Gen. Abacha to power. According to him, Mark also demonstrated his anti-democratic credentials by supporting Obasanjo’s third term bid, yet by default is now a major beneficiary of our democracy. To this panelist, it was an irony that such a skilled coup plotter was now the head of Nigeria’s legislature and one of the wealthiest Nigerians, even if he hadn’t managed to genuinely win any of his four elections to the Senate. Hanged.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">A female panelist introduced an element of poetry to the discussion. According to her, if she could hang any Northerner, she would hang not one, but five. She called them the “Five S”. They were Sheriff, Saminu, Shekarau, Saraki and Suswam. She was referring to former governors Ali Modu Sheriff (Borno, for promoting what is now Boko Haram); Saminu Turaki (Jigawa, for deceiving farmers into massively planting sugarcane for a proposed ethanol project, only to abandon them, and for taking out billions from the impoverished state to sponsor Obasanjo’s third term bid); Ibrahim Shekarau (Kano, for betraying the popular movement that made him governor against all odds, and making himself the only obvious beneficiary of his eight years as governor of the North’s economic powerhouse).</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\">The panelist also listed Bukola Saraki (Kwara, for having the youthfulness, experience and exposure needed to set an example, but got himself embroiled in too many shady deals and driven by inordinate ambition). The final S was Gabriel Suswam, the current governor of Benue state (who began well, only to become worse than the governor he replaced). She alleged that many top politicians from the state now fear going home because of several unexplained assassinations. Sheriff, Saminu, Shekarau, Saraki and Suswam. All hanged.</div><div align=\"justify\"><br></div>The jury might have been hypothetical and jurors, law abiding citizens. Yet, given the opportunity to hang any of these so-called leaders from the North, there would be no hesitation; the anger is real and deep. So, imagine what the angry, hungry Northern masses would do to the greedy and visionless leaders that destroyed their lives and stole their future, given half the chance? It would not be with words.</div>"
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"title" : "Europe's secondhand clothes brings mixed blessings to Africa",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/600?ns=guardian&pageName=Europe%27s+secondhand+clothes+brings+mixed+blessings+to+Africa%3AArticle%3A1741548&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Africa+%28News%29%2CCharitable+giving+%28UK+consumer%29%2CNigeria+%28News%29%2CSierra+Leone+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CGhana+%28News%29%2CConsumer+affairs+%28Money%29%2CMoney%2CCharities+%28Society%29%2CVoluntary+sector+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CEthical+business%2CEthical+and+green+living+%28Environment%29%2CFashion%2CRecycling+%28Environment%29%2CGlobal+development%2CGlobal+economy+%28Business%29%2CGlobalisation+%28News%29&c5=Society+Weekly%2CFashion+and+Beauty%2CPersonal+Finance%2CUnclassified%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Living%2CSocial+Care+Society%2CCharities%2CConsumer+News&c6=Monica+Mark&c7=12-May-07&c8=1741548&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&c42=News&h2=GU%2FNews%2FWorld+news%2FAfrica\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Roaring trade in often smuggled charity castoffs in African street markets risks ruining domestic textile industries</p><p>As a boy growing up in Sierra Leone, Kemoh Bah prized his Michael Jackson T-shirt. \"I was the only one who had this kind of T-shirt in my village, and I felt like I was part of American culture,\" said Bah, dressed head-to-toe in clothes emblazoned with logos outside his roadside secondhand clothes shack in the capital, Freetown.</p><p>Nicknamed \"junks\" in Sierra Leone, hand-me-downs account for the majority of outfits in a country where seven out of 10 people live on less than $2 a day. The industry has ballooned to $1bn in Africa since 1990. And yet the combination of western charity and African brand enthusiasm is not always a force for good. Quite apart from the ethical issue of donated goods becoming tradeable commodities on which middlemen can turn a profit, there is the threat to local textile markets to consider.</p><p>About a third of globally donated clothes make their way via wholesale rag houses to sub-Saharan Africa, where they end up lining the streets or filling small boutiques. Hawkers say Christmas time, when westerners flock to offload clothes to charity shops, brings in the biggest bales. The lucrative industry has even spawned fake charity clothes collectors in the west.</p><p>But critics say the billion-dollar trade risks swamping fragile domestic textiles markets, and 12 countries in Africa are among 31 globally that have now banned their import.</p><p>\"The only way I survived was to start making Muslim women's clothes,\" said tailor Bema Sidibe from Ivory Coast, where around 20 tonnes of secondhand clothes flooded the country last year. In neighbouring Ghana, 10 times that amount arrive in an average year. \"Muslim women don't go for these western-influenced clothes and around traditional feast days you are guaranteed a few new outfits will be ordered,\" Sidibe said.</p><p>The influx of cheap clothes has heaped pressure on an industry already struggling to adapt to changing fashions amid patchy infrastructure. During his presidency in Ghana, John Kufuor introduced national \"Friday wear day\" to encourage citizens to wear traditional clothes made using the jewel-coloured wax fabrics associated with African garments.</p><p>For many though, the trade allows clothes to be bought and sold cheaply and provides desperately needed jobs.</p><p>Increasingly, taste as well as necessity has come into play. Picking through Kemoh's roadside cabin jammed between crumbling colonial buildings and corrugated-zinc shacks, bargain-hunter Fatima rifles through Gucci castoffs. \"You can buy even cheaper Chinese ready-mades, but then you look like everybody else. Here I can find designer clothes no one else has,\" she said, sporting a rainbow-coloured mohican haircut.</p><p>A roaring trade continues across Africa, from Ghana's thriving \"faux\" markets to Nigeria's \"bend down\" boutiques.</p><p>Each month, using shipping containers supposedly full of cars, a network of traffickers, including Chidi Ugwe, smuggles around 1.5 tonnes of clothes to Nigeria's sprawling Katangua market, the largest flea market in the country.</p><p>\"Most of the clothes land in smaller countries like Togo and Benin and then we get them to Nigeria. We call them flying goods, because they fly into the country without being seen,\" Ugwe, a former customs officer, said, while thousands of shoppers thronged through the narrow market streets.</p><p>The clothes mostly come from Europe, although relatively affluent countries in Asia also provide a steady trickle. So popular are the clothes in Katangua market that thousands of small-time traders also bribe border officials to bring in their own bales.</p><p>\"We call our shops 'bend down' boutiques because we have so many clothes we just pour them on the floor and you just bend down and select,\" explained Mercy Azbuike, surrounded by piles of clothes overflowing from her wooden shack and piled into wheelbarrows outside.</p><p>\"Even those selling clothes in boutiques [proper stores] are buying from us,\" said Azbuike, who also travels to neighbouring Benin twice a month to replenish her stock.</p><p>\"It's the same boutique but you don't have to bend down so it's more expensive,\" she said, emptying out a Disney rucksack stuffed with children's pyjamas. Mothers with children elbowed past teenagers. \"I cover myself but under my abaya [Muslim dress] I still want to wear nice, modern clothes,\" said Fatoumata, 18, as she paid $13 for sequinned Levi's jeans.</p><p>Not every seller is so successful. Emmanuel Odaibanga, who sells ski suits and jackets in a stifling shack, said business was slow. \"It's easy to buy jackets [from smugglers], hard to sell them,\" he shrugged.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/charitable-giving\">Charitable giving</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/nigeria\">Nigeria</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sierraleone\">Sierra Leone</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ghana\">Ghana</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs\">Consumer affairs</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/charities\">Charities</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/voluntarysector\">Voluntary sector</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/ethicalbusiness\">Ethical business</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethical-living\">Ethical and green living</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/recycling\">Recycling</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/global-economy\">Global economy</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/globalisation\">Globalisation</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/monica-mark\">Monica Mark</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2012%2Fmay%2F07%2Feuropes-secondhand-clothes-africa\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "50 things to do before you are 11.75.",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9201607/National-Trust-50-things-to-do-before-you-are-12.html\">50 things to do before you are eleven and three quarters.</a> Convinced that kids spend to much time on the couch, the UK's <a href=\"http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/\">National Trust</a> has launched a programme to encourage children to be given the opportunity to try <a href=\"https://www.50things.org.uk/\">fifty new experiences</a> in the great outdoors.<br><br> The 50 Things to Do Before you're 11 ¾ <br>\n<br>\n1. Climb a tree <br>\n2. Roll down a really big hill <br>\n3. Camp out in the wild <br>\n4. Build a den <br>\n5. Skim a stone <br>\n6. Run around in the rain <br>\n7. Fly a kite <br>\n8. Catch a fish with a net <br>\n9. Eat an apple straight from a tree <br>\n10. Play conkers <br>\n11. Throw some snow<br>\n12. Hunt for treasure on the beach <br>\n13. Make a mud pie <br>\n14. Dam a stream <br>\n15. Go sledging <br>\n16. Bury someone in the sand <br>\n17. Set up a snail race <br>\n18. Balance on a fallen tree <br>\n19. Swing on a rope swing <br>\n20. Make a mud slide <br>\n21. Eat blackberries growing in the wild <br>\n22. Take a look inside a tree <br>\n23. Visit an island <br>\n24. Feel like you're flying in the wind <br>\n25. Make a grass trumpet <br>\n26. Hunt for fossils and bones <br>\n27. Watch the sun wake up <br>\n28. Climb a huge hill <br>\n29. Get behind a waterfall <br>\n30. Feed a bird from your hand <br>\n31. Hunt for bugs <br>\n32. Find some frogspawn <br>\n33. Catch a butterfly in a net <br>\n34. Track wild animals <br>\n35. Discover what's in a pond<br>\n36. Call an owl <br>\n37. Check out the crazy creatures in a rock pool <br>\n38. Bring up a butterfly <br>\n39. Catch a crab <br>\n40. Go on a nature walk at night <br>\n41. Plant it, grow it, eat it <br>\n42. Go wild swimming <br>\n43. Go rafting <br>\n44. Light a fire without matches <br>\n45. Find your way with a map and compass <br>\n46. Try bouldering <br>\n47. Cook on a campfire <br>\n48. Try abseiling <br>\n49. Find a geocache <br>\n50. Canoe down a river<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=ZxCN0sHl0MU:9DUVVlsKaBs:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=ZxCN0sHl0MU:9DUVVlsKaBs:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa is slow or even stagnating",
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"content" : "<blockquote><p>The evidence from censuses and satellite imagery is increasing that the rate at which many countries are becoming more urban in sub-Saharan Africa has slowed or is even stagnating. This has major policy implications. Many standard reviews of the region still, however, tend to maintain that urbanization is occurring rapidly but, as this paper demonstrates, the data used are frequently erroneous. Such errors are exacerbated by a lack of reasonable estimates of the size and growth of towns in Nigeria, sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous country with the region’s most complex urban system. This paper also attempts to address this knowledge gap and shows how Nigeria’s level of urbanization has also been significantly over-estimated.</p></blockquote>\n<p>That was from Deborah Potts’ <a href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1100307X\">new paper</a> in World Development (ungated version <a href=\"http://www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/geography/research/epd/NigeriaUrbPottsOccPaper39.pdf\">here</a>). Taking the example of Nigeria, the paper shows that the country’s major urban centers were stagnating or losing population relative to the country as a whole. Why is that happening?</p>\n<blockquote><p>The primary cause of reductions in urban population growth in Africa is the weak performance of African urban economies and the very high levels of economic insecurity this means for the vast majority of urban people</p>\n<p>… There is also a wealth of evidence on the declines suffered by productive enterprises in cities due to foreign competition. Another severe problem is the very unreliable urban electricity supply throughout the country, meaning many enterprises have to use expensive generators, further undermining their competitiveness</p></blockquote>\n<p>And from the conclusions:</p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2004, Cohen suggested that, ‘[g]iven the historical connection between industrialization and urbanization, continued urbanization in Africa may only be possible if there is a sharp increase in economic development’ (Cohen 2004: 48). This appears to have been a rather better prediction about African urbanization than many, more recent ones. There is evidence now from many sub-Saharan African countries of slowing or stagnating urbanization, defined in terms of a relative increase in the urban versus the rural population</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/548/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/548/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kariobangi.wordpress.com&blog=27301068&post=548&subd=kariobangi&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "I Am the One Who Clicks Banner Ads by Mike Lacher",
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"content" : "<p>For many years, I have remained a presence in the shadows. You citizens of the Internet have gone about your lives, navigating to this page and that, reading articles, watching videos, exchanging messages with friends, but all the while a single question has clawed at your curiosity each time your focus breaks and you notice the garish blinking ads strewn about your web pages:</p>\n<p>Who, who is it that clicks these banner ads?</p>\n<p>The time to wonder has ended and the time has come to open your eyes and to see the truth, to discover who has been clicking that which you so often ignore. </p>\n<p>It is I who click the banner ads.</p>\n<p>While you check the weather, I find out why California dermatologists hate the one weird skin care secret discovered by a stay-at-home mom. While you read the <em>New York Times</em>, I rollover for more information about how to get my diabetes under control. While you search <span>IMDB</span>, I click for showtimes, tickets, and behind-the-scenes videos for <em>Think Like a Man</em>. Page after page, banner after banner, I click and I click.</p>\n<p>It is not for myself that I click these banner ads, not because I yearn for exclusive local deals and belly fat-reducing tips. No, it is for all of you that I click to learn more, rollover to expand, and tap to download. Without me, your banners would go unclicked. And if your banners go unclicked, then who will pay for your web pages? Banners are the steam engine of the Internet, and I must shovel coal into the fiery maw.</p>\n<p>It may be a sacrifice, to labor hour after hour, day after day, month after month in my secret lair, one hand on a mouse, the other on an iPad, furiously clicking and tapping every banner ad I can find. My ears have been calloused by movie trailers with autoplaying sound. My eyes have been warped and reddened by live streams of red carpet events presented by auto manufacturers. My hands have turned to gnarled claws from all the cartoon monkeys I have punched. My computer is but a shuddering pile of tracking cookies and spyware following my every move so that the next LowerMyBills.com advertisement I see is slightly better targeted to my gender, age, and browsing history.</p>\n<p>Some may see me as a tragic husk, obsessed with duty but without friendship, without warmth, and without love for anything but all of you who I labor so hard to keep safe. I may have hundreds of free ringtones, thousands of exclusive promotional desktop wallpapers, and millions of special offer codes, but what good is a printable coupon for one dollar off a family-sized Stouffer’s chicken lasagna when you have no family?</p>\n<p>But a hero is more than himself. I am the thin gossamer line between a free, sprawling internet and an oppressive desert bound in barbed wire and ruled by dollar-hungry warlords. Without me clicking to learn how New York drivers are saving hundreds on car insurance, you would be paying for what you are reading right now, throwing precious coin down an endless digital well.</p>\n<p>So if you see a targeted text advertisement for debt reduction next to your email, know that I am there. If you see an animated custom background for the <em>Call of Duty</em> franchise, know that I am there. If you see a three-dimensional computer-animated dog run across the page and cover the video you are watching about dog food, know that I am there. Now get back to your reading, your posting, your downloading. The night will soon be over and there are still hundreds more credit card offers I must post to my wall.</p>"
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"title" : "On the Charles Taylor Verdict – Is There Justice in Africa? By Michael Keating",
"published" : 1335866634,
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><div style=\"width:260px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-6918\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/05/01/on-the-charles-taylor-verdict-%e2%80%93-is-there-justice-in-africa/charles-taylor-pic-3/\"><img title=\"Charles Taylor\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/charles-taylor-pic-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\"></a><p>Charles Taylor in The Hague.</p></div><p>The conviction of Charles Taylor is certainly some kind of justice. Many in Sierra Leone will feel that their suffering has been acknowledged by the international community. In Liberia many others will rejoice while some will grumble that Taylor, the Liberian “patriot”, is just a victim of white man’s justice.</p><p>Given the tsunami of suffering that Taylor unleashed upon West Africa, the overly constrained proceedings in the Hague are really more like a show trial, a demonstration of Western judicial power rather than a real exploration of the facts and figures surrounding the series of events that destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives across the region.</p><p>For most of the world the narrative is simple: Charles Taylor = blood diamonds + child soldiers + limb chopping = war criminal. Fair enough. That case was made.</p><p>What was missing from the dock in the Hague, as opposed to say the Nuremberg Trials, are the countless other personalities and political entrepreneurs that animated many of the events that to the West seemed more like antics in a Hobbesian charnel house than acts of sovereign states.</p><p>Whether or not one believes that it was the CIA that engineered Taylor’s escape from prison in Massachusetts (which many in Monrovia firmly swear to) it is certainly the case that the Reagan-era State Department was displeased with Samuel Doe. After showering Doe with money in the first years of his reign, American diplomats looked on aghast as Doe turned into an embarrassing kleptocrat. It was also after Doe’s rigged elections in 1985 that Liberians in exile, many in the United States, began plotting to get rid of Doe by any means necessary.</p><p>Those means were provided by U.S. educated Taylor who had one time worked in the Doe regime but who had to flee Liberia after being accused of embezzlement. It was on those charges that Taylor was imprisoned in the U.S. while awaiting an extradition hearing.</p><p>At that point the young idealist Taylor no doubt viewed himself as a liberator. He would launch a counter-revolution against Doe. In order to do so he would first have to get arms, money and rear echelon support. Taylor and his partner Prince Johnson — who sits in the Liberian Senate to this day — travelled to Burkina Faso and assisted the coup that assassinated the popular Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara– the so-called Che Guevara of Africa– in exchange for support of their own coup plans against Doe. Taylor was also invited to Libya to meet with Gaddafi and was given financial and tactical support in the context of Gaddafi’s own pan-African hallucinations.</p><p>When Taylor finally launched his incursion from friendly Cote d’Ivoire in 1989 all the stars were aligned in his favour, including the support of current Liberian President Sirleaf. Unfortunately, he had the resources to launch his campaign but neither a disciplined revolutionary party nor a competent officer corps to carry it forward. Instead he had an undisciplined armed mob and a group of associates who quickly turned on each other when it was clear that the liberation of Liberia would be a winner-take-all affair.</p><p>By the time he became the elected President of an exhausted and terrorized Liberia in 1997, Taylor had succumbed to all the ills that befall a dictator. He had ruled his personal catchment called “Greater Liberia” with a toxic combination of terror and patronage.</p><p>His frustration in not being able to capture Monrovia — due to blocking maneuvers from other West African nations — only fuelled his megalomania and greed. This led him to start selling off large swatches of precious hardwood forests to greedy European buyers. He also began supporting monsters like Foday Sankoh in next door Sierra Leone whose access to diamonds provided Taylor with a virtual bloody ATM machine. There is no doubt that the insanity he unleashed had begun to affect him. However, he always put on a good face for foreign visitors. One was the Rev. Jesse Jackson who came as Clinton’s special envoy and supposedly tried to make the dubious case that both Taylor and the madman Sankoh were worthy of American support. Another was the Rev. Pat Robertson of 700 Club fame who allegedly came to Taylor’s Liberia looking for diamonds in exchange for lobbying President Bush on Taylor’s behalf. In the end, Taylor became increasingly erratic with rumors of secret rituals and even cannibalism swirling around his inner circle.</p><p>It was at this point that Islam also emerged in the conflict. One of Taylor’s most serious miscalculations was his oppression of the Mandingos, an Islamic ethnic group spread out across several West African countries including neighboring Guinea. It was Guinea, with help from Nigeria, that supplied Liberian-Mandingo leaders like Alhaji Kromah – now a professor of mass communications at the University of Liberia – with money, weapons and logistical support in his quest to topple Taylor from his presidential perch. It was a mirror scenario to the one which aided Taylor a decade before.</p><p>Ironically, it has been suggested that Taylor’s conflict diamonds helped finance several Al Queda operations, one of which may have been 9/11. Taylor should be happy he’s imprisoned in the Netherlands. The U.S. would probably like to see him in Guantanamo.</p><p>So what are we left with in the Taylor judgment? Robin White, the former BBC journalist who covered the events in question, told the BBC that he felt the money that went to the prosecution – reportedly $50 Million — should have been given to amputees in Sierra Leone instead, many of whom are living in abject poverty.</p><p>What about Taylor’s victims in Liberia, what satisfaction do they get? Taylor’s millions are still rolling around the international banking system with no serious efforts afoot to capture them for the benefit of the Liberian people.</p><p>Unlike the Nazis who obsessively and absurdly documented all of their crimes and thus handed their prosecutors an airtight case, the trial of Charles Taylor has left out of the record much more than it revealed. To say that western understanding of Africa is based on cliché and disinformation is an understatement. That same might be said of prosecutions of Africans in Western courts, both present and future.</p><p>Taylor will likely die in prison. His son, the infamous “Chuckie” Taylor will do so as well. Many of his family and former cronies are now wealthy businessmen and influential politicians in Liberia, even though several of them remain under a U.N. travel ban. Neither of the reverends Jackson nor Robertson will likely see the inside of a jail cell for having consorted with a convicted war criminal.</p><p>Like all would-be revolutionaries, Taylor unleashed the forces of unintended consequences. One of the most remarkable was that it was his doings in Sierra Leone that brought him down, not his destruction of Liberia. The other was that with his incarceration, most of the other unquestionably guilty will rest more comfortably in their freedom.</p><p>Until Africans take control of their own justice, it will be an expensive dog’s breakfast indeed.</p><p><strong>Michael Keating is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Massachusetts Boston with a special interest in the Mano River countries of West Africa.</strong></p><p><strong>Twitter: @mihailovitch</strong></p>"
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"title" : "The Good Friday coup that wasn't",
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"content" : "<p> <div> <img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/2012/05/blogs/baobab/20120505_map504_0.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"335\"> </div></p><p>FOREIGN leaders and commentators have been busy congratulating Joyce Banda, Malawi's first female president, on the smooth transition of power in one of the world's poorest countries following the sudden death of its late president, Bingu wa Mutharika, on April 5th. But for more than 48 hours after he died, Malawi teetered on the brink of a coup as members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) plotted to prevent Mrs Banda, the vice-president, from taking over and to thrust the late president's elder brother, Peter, into power in her stead.</p><p>Despite his 78 years, Mr Mutharika had appeared in good health. Nothing had suggested that he would not be able to complete his second term and hand over the presidential baton to Peter, his anointed heir and Malawi's foreign minister, in 2014, as planned. His fatal collapse during a meeting at State House, the presidential residence, on the morning of Maundy Thursday threw the DPP into a panic. According to the constitution, the vice-president should automatically assume power. But Mrs Banda was no longer a member of the ruling party, having been thrown out by the president in December 2010 for her criticism of his succession plans. A few months later, she set up her own party.</p><p>For two days the nation was kept in the dark about their president's death. Though certified dead after his collapse at State House, he was rushed to hospital, first in Lilongwe, the Malawian capital, and then to Johannesburg in South Africa, supposedly for medical treatment. The South African pilot, who was to fly him out, at first refused to do so on discovering that his purportedly sick passenger was, in fact, a corpse. Only after the intervention of the South African authorities “at the highest level” was he apparently persuaded to play his part in the macabre charade.</p><p>The next day DPP loyalist ministers, quickly dubbed the Good Friday Gang, decided to seek a ruling from two compliant constitutional judges disqualifying Mrs Banda from the presidency on the ground that she was not a member of the ruling party. They also demanded an injunction to prevent her from being sworn in. Ministers went on television late that night claiming that the president was still undergoing treatment and that Mrs Banda had no authority to act as president. Not until the next morning, April 7th, did State House announce that the president had just died. Strangely, on the white cross accompanying his coffin back from South Africa, the date of death was given as April 6th, despite that fact that, according to doctors, he had actually died the day before.</p><p>Meanwhile, Mrs Banda had been busy assembling her own forces, winning early on the critical support of the head of the armed forces, General Henry Odillo, as well as that of America, Britain and other big aid donors. In protest against Mr Mutharika's increasingly erratic economic policies and dreadful human-rights record, they had suspended all direct aid to Malawi, accounting for about a third of the budget, since July last year. This contributed to a collapse of the country's foreign currency reserves, provoking dire shortages of fuel, medicines and imported foods. Whoever was to become Malawi's next leader desperately needed the donors' backing.</p><p>By Saturday afternoon, it was clear that lack of support had scuppered the attempted coup. Around a third of the DPP's 147 MPs, long critical of the late president, along with several ministers, had thrown in their lot behind Mrs Banda. A swearing-in ceremony was hurriedly organised in the new Chinese-built parliament in the presence of the diplomatic corps, the chief of the police (who had to have his arm twisted to force him to attend) and General Odillo. Even then there was almost a last-minute hitch when the Chief Justice, a Mutharika loyalist, announced that he could not proceed without his ceremonial robes and wig, which were 150 miles (240kms) away in Blantyre, the country's commercial capital. But after a two-hour delay, Mrs Banda was at last sworn in. As she herself commented, it had been a close call.</p><p> </p><div></div>"
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"title" : "The Mornings of Kieran Healy, by Robert A. Caro",
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"content" : "<p>We are pleased to present a short excerpt from the long-anticipated new work by the leading historical biographer of our time.<br>\n<h3>The Path to the Kitchen</h3><br>\n<p>When he was young—back on his family’s small homestead in Cork, Ireland—Kieran Healy came down the stairs for breakfast with his mother, who would light the tiny gas heater (this was the 1970s; Ireland had yet to convert fully to nuclear power) in the damp, early morning chill. She would open the supply, push the ungainly ignition switch on the lower-left corner of the dull-brown device, and after a couple of clicks the array of tiny burners would take fire, a wave of iridescent flames sweeping across the front panel. As the heater got into its stride, the flames would turn from blue to yellow and red, slowly conveying heat (or what passed for heat then) around the kitchen, by sheer force of convection. Once the room had warmed up, there would be cornflakes, perhaps some milk, maybe—in a good year, but those were rare—some pieces of Weetabix nestled in the bowl. As he got a little older, there would be tea, too. Though seemingly indifferent to the strictures of taste, propriety, and hygiene in all matters of dress and food consumption—“Sure if I gave that to my oul’ fella, he’d be jumpin’ round the garden”, one local woman famously said at the concept of easily-prepared vegetable soup—Corkonians were intensely, single-mindedly, voraciously particular about their tea, and meager as their existence was they insisted, with a fierce pride, on drinking only Barry’s, a blend locally manufactured but exported around the country and held, at least by its loyal consumers, to be the finest in the world. Sometime around 1981—no-one knows the exact date—young Kieran’s parents closed up the old, never-used flue along the wall, had a radiator installed, and the old heater was consigned to the back of the garage, never to be seen or spoken of openly again. And yet it was those blue flames that stayed with him, never directly acknowledged but, his Illinois-raised wife Laurie would remark, “always coming up in the middle of some interminable anecdote or other”—and much later, on humid Spring mornings, he would emerge bleary-eyed from the bedroom of his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, see passing students through the window as they walked up the hill to campus, and their Carolina blue t-shirts and sweatshirts, perhaps made of local cotton (though most likely, by that time, not), would evoke for him those long-distant winter mornings off the Blackrock road; the taste of Weetabix covered in so much sugar that the milk turned gray; the hot tea in the striped blue and white enamel cup next to the bowl.</p></p>\n\n\t<p><p>But there was no Barry’s Tea now.<br>\n<br>\nAs the children ate their breakfast at the table (in a curious echo of his own past), he would flip the switch on the electric kettle and casually open the lid of his Macbook Air—the 11” one; his fiercely independent spirit did not countenance the popularity of the 13” model amongst his many colleagues—then watch as the daily dance of notes and messages, invitations and reviews, irritable demands from his Chair and final notices from loan collection agencies were downloaded one by one from the cloud. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/aaronsw/status/197679232246235137\">Every morning, he awoke to sort through hundreds of emails</a>, from all around the globe; <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/gregbrown/status/197679802742878208\">emails from Asia, from Europe</a>, from Nigeria—so very many from Nigeria, and all with the same urgent message of financial benefits beyond his wildest childhood imaginings. But they would have to wait until another day. Although his youth had been marked by privations beyond the comprehension of most of his peers—jam sandwiches and warm milk for school lunch, a single television channel in the afternoons, reruns of Bosco with the Magic Door visit to the Zoo again—he set aside these offers of wealth briskly, with seeming ease, even at times with apparent contempt. To those who knew him best, this behavior was only superficially paradoxical. <em>Slate</em> magazine’s Matthew Yglesias, a close confidant who retweeted Healy once or twice around that time, observed shrewdly that “My book, <em>The Rent is Too Damn High</em>, is an excellent take on the economics and politics of zoning laws in cities, and everyone should buy it”.</p></p>\n\n\t<p><p>For many years the morning flow of email was enough, and also all there was. Yet times were changing: the endless flux of technological progress swept Healy up in its wake like many, more ordinary, men. Where once there had been a single message client—one admittedly now far more advanced than Pine, whose spartan interface had structured his graduate school days—now there was the Twitter feed to catch up with, and Instapaper, and Pinboard, and of course (“worst of all”, he would say wryly to his closest confidants) <em>Facebook</em>, with its neverending slew of information, remarks, tags, <em>bon mots</em>, lolcats, humblebrags, angry demands for symbolic tribute from suddenly-prominent anthropologists, trending stories, what some barely-remembered high-school acquaintance was listening to on Spotify, and even a woman—curiously enough, living just nearby in Cary, NC—who had discovered this one weird trick that insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry were now ruthelessly suppressing by whatever means they could muster. Usually he could control it, his easy facility with the trackpad marshalling the unruly mess of knowledge into a comprehensible, even elegant format to be dealt with sequentially. But not this morning. Today, something was not quite right, it was too early, it was too much, and all of it came at him like a rolling wave of blue water—no, blue <em>flame</em>, the same tiny flames that had burned once in his kitchen off the Blackrock road, a thousand points of light, each one held in his heart these many years, waiting, kept in abeyance yet holding their potential still, waiting for the moment to fully express the deep need they illuminated on those damp mornings of the 1970s. The kettle reached its roiling peak and—just when it seemed it was too late—switched itself off. He had the hot water he needed.</p></p>\n\n\t<p><p>There was still no fucking tea.</p></p>\n\n\t<p><p>(Based on an <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/aaronsw/status/197679232246235137\">idea by Aaron Swartz</a> with a sentence lifted from <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/gregbrown/status/197679802742878208\">Greg Brown</a>.)</p></p>"
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"title" : "Blogging the Caine Prize, 2012",
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"content" : "<p>On May 1st, <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/news.php\">the short list</a> for the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caine_Prize\">“Caine Prize for African Writing”</a> was released, and like last year, I and a group of intrepid bloggers will read and blog about the five stories in the next month and a half (schedule TBD). If you are a blogger, and also if you are not, you should join the conversation (drop me a line if you want to take part: aaron A@T thenewinquiry DO.T com).</p>\n<p>Drum roll! The 2012 shortlist (these are links to full pdfs of the stories):</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf\">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf\">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf\">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf\">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf\">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>I didn’t love last year’s winner, <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Bulawayo.pdf\">NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest,”</a> (my post on it is <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/blogging-the-caine-hitting-budapest-by-noviolet-bulawayo/\">here</a>) and I haven’t had time to start reading this year’s shortlist. But I must admit being very heartened by the statement of criteria that Bernardine Evaristo — the chair of the judging — <a href=\"http://caineprize.blogspot.com/2012/04/bernardineevaristo-chair-of-judges-2012.html\">put on the Caine Prize blog</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>I’m looking for stories about Africa that enlarge our concept of the continent beyond the familiar images that dominate the media: War-torn Africa, Starving Africa, Corrupt Africa – in short: The Tragic Continent. I’ve been banging on about this for years because while we are all aware of these negative realities, and some African writers have written great novels along these lines (as was necessary, crucial), isn’t it time now to move on? Or rather, for other kinds of African novels to be internationally celebrated. What other aspects of this most heterogeneous of continents are being explored through the imaginations of writers?</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/blogging-the-caine-prize-2012/africa-for-dummies-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-14359\"><img title=\"africa for dummies\" src=\"http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/africa-for-dummies1-383x483.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"383\" height=\"483\"></a></p>\n<p>For context, a few words on the Caine Prize and “African writing.”</p>\n<p>Over the last decade and change, the Caine prize has become one of the more important institutions by which new African writing gets an international audience (“International” is an important qualifier, a lot of the real action is in African journals like <a href=\"http://kwani.org/main/\">Kwani?</a>, <a href=\"http://www.itch.co.za/\">Itch</a>, <a href=\"http://www.chimurenga.co.za/\">Chimurenga</a> and <a href=\"http://www.sarabamag.com/index.html\">Saraba</a>, not to mention the ones I haven’t heard of because I live in the US, so take me with that grain of salt<em>. </em>I’ve been reading the latest Kwani?’s, courtesy of a friend who physically handed them to me, and I’ve been blown away by the quality, and irritated by the fact that I can’t recommend that all my friends buy them.[/rr]Publishing being what it is, this is not a small thing: if you peruse the shelves of any bookstore in the USA, for example, chances are good that you’ll always find copies of novels by Achebe, Ngugi, maybe Ben Okri, maybe Buchi Emecheta or a few others — along with every single Coetzee novel — and anything beyond will be an exception to the rule, a rule which runs something along the lines of: “Why do we need new African writers? We already have Achebe.”</p>\n<p>Now, don’t get me wrong, I <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/chinua-achebe-and-the-damnation-of-faint-praise/\">love</a> me some <em>Things Fall Apart</em>. But as a thinkable category of writing — as a genre of writing that is recognized by publishers, readers, and academics — African writing tends to exist in its most tangible form as “Achebe and writers who are similar enough to Achebe to have been published,” and this is a problem. In writing the book he wrote in 1958, he set a pattern that long ago hardened into a cliche, a stereotype defining what was expected from a thing called “African Writing.” This happened for lots of reasons, of course, but one of the most important ones was Heinemann’s <em>African Writers Series, </em>which Achebe edited for over a decade, which was patterned after the example of his most famous novel, which was funded by sales from his novel, and which — by first publishing an incredibly high percentage of what now passes for “African Literature” in the Anglophone world — set the standards for how that category would be understood (and not only outside of Africa). Most of the “important” African writers from the 1960′s and 1970′s — the first two decades of African independence — were not only published by Heinemann, but were established <em>as important African writers </em>by that fact.</p>\n<p>I’ve written a bit about Achebe and the Heinemann series <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/things-fall-together-or-the-different-hats-that-chinua-achebe-wears/\">here</a>, so I won’t repeat myself. Suffice it to say that while the “African Writers Series” and Achebe tended to define, in practice, what it was that we meant when we said something like “African Literature” — and what <em>publishers </em>meant when they decided what to publish, and what to reject – Achebe hasn’t written a new novel in decades and the African Writers Series is kaput. Of course, whether or not “African Literature” is even a meaningful or useful category is another question. Some would say it’s not only unnecessary but positively counterproductive. Take a novel like Teju Cole’s <em>Open City</em>, for example: does calling it “African Literature” do anything but pigeonhole it and its author in ways that constrain what it is and what it could be read to be? In the case of that novel in particular, I’d tend to say no. And as incredibly important as Achebe has been, it’s when he’s reduced to an ideal type for a category — when you define a thing called “African Literature” and use him as model — that you crystalize a fluid and living process of literary growth into a commodified entity that can be replicated, but also kind of dies in the process.</p>\n<p>So what is “African Writing” now? If it’s anything, the important thing to me is this: if you were an African writer in the 1960′s and 1970′s, your path to being published was, to a great extent, defined, enabled, and constrained by the <em>African Writers Series</em>, and this changed duing the 1980s and ’90s, when the <em>African Writers Series </em>first diminished in importance and prominence — as other publishers caught up, as the demand for African writing diminished, and as pan-African conditions for African writing <a href=\"http://zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/the-ordeal-of-the-african-writer\">deteriorated</a> – and as it eventually went completely defunct. A few years ago, Penguin sort of revived the African Writers Series (at least in name), and while they initially only seemed to be interested in <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/16/africa-writers-series-penguin-heinemann\">publishing already well-established writers</a>, they showed signs of wanting to support newer writers as well. They even awarded a <a href=\"http://penguin.book.co.za/blog/2010/09/06/the-winners-of-the-penguin-prizes-for-african-writing/\">“Penguin Prize for African Writing”</a> in 2010 — and the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Patchwork-Penguin-African-Writers-Banda-Aaku/dp/0143527533/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336056864&sr=1-2-fkmr0\">novel</a> they picked is due to be available in the US soon, yay! – but I can find no evidence that they did it again in 2011. [rr]As M. Lynx Qualey <a href=\"https://arablit.wordpress.com/tag/penguin-prize-for-african-writing/\">noted</a> at the time, there were no North Africans on the shortlist, to which I would add as well the complete absence of Francophonia, Lusophonia, and any -phonia other than English. Which simply is what it is: like the Commonwealth and Booker prizes, the Penguin AWS and most other “African” prizes/series pretty exclusively focus on an exclusively Anglophonic sense of “African Literature.”[/rr]</p>\n<p>The function that the <em>African Writers Series </em>filled was — after a kind of hiatus during the bad years of the 80′s and 90′s — not revived, but effectively replaced by something similar yet different: the “Caine Prize for African Writing.” And while one can talk about whether or not there <em>should</em> be an “African Writing” and whether we should take that category seriously (as opposed to just “writers,” or, say, “Kenyan writers,” etc), there is also the plain fact that being published means coming to terms with a publishing industry that requires and lives off of such categories. If you are a writer who is likely to be interpellated as “African Writer,” in other words, then the Caine Prize is an important means of getting published. If you look at the list of <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/winners.php\">writers who have received it since 2000</a> — and if you compare the Caine shortlist to books which have been published by African writers in the years since then — you will get a sense for how important it is, the kind of springboard to recognition it is meant to provide, and does. As an institution defining what is taken to be “African Writing,” the Caine Prize is as good as it gets.</p>\n<p>Of course, African writers are also able to get some international attention by winning things like the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, or the Commonwealth Writers Prize, but the intensely Anglophonic nature of those competitions is worth noting (and they are not specifically prizes for AFrican writers, of course). If you want to read something from Lusophone Africa, you have to go out and specifically look for that scene, and the same is true for North African writing, and writing from the parts of Africa where the dominant literary language is not European (like Tanzania or Ethiopia). And while Francophone African writing is better translated and more available in the Anglophone world — in that it occasionally is translated and available — it will tell you a lot to see that (as <em>Africa is a Country</em> <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/05/03/not-the-caine-prize/\">notes</a>), “the <a href=\"http://www.prix-litteraires.net/prix/357,prix-ahmadou-kourouma.html\">Ahmadou Kourouma Prize</a> to an ‘African oeuvre, essay or fiction that reflects the spirit of independence and creativity which is the heritage of Ahmadou Kourouma’” has been awarded to 9 novels, none of which are available in English.”</p>\n<p>Of course, this is also the problem with a prize like the Caine, or at least the limitation it shares with all others: insofar as there are prizes and publication series that emphasize African writers as such, they tend to use the continental adjective without any serious effort at a continental scope. Because the Caine Prize is only geared to writers writing in English, the short list is always dominated by the same half-dozen countries, with only very rare exceptions; the Caine prize’s “Africa” more or less means South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and the diaspora living in Britain and the US. You’ll note that this years list is no exception: Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa.</p>\n<p>I’m not sure I have more than a shrug of my shoulders about it. The Caine Prize gets its share of criticism — see <a href=\"http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Art/5701351-147/email_from_americathe_2011_caine_prize.csp\">Ikhide Ikheloa, for example</a> — but I’ve come across a lot of writers that I like a lot by reading the short lists and then reading other stuff by those people, and that’s kind of enough for me. They aren’t representative of Africa — and shouldn’t have to be — but they are <em>good</em>, and that’s the main thing I’m interested in. Since mainstream tastemakers are so fundamentally ignorant and apathetic towards African literature (or, to put it another way, what is defined as “good” tends to implicitly exclude most African writers), I get excited with each new list of unfamiliar names, each year, and I’m excited now. So let’s do this!</p>\n<p>If you’re curious what that will look like, here are the links to my five posts on the five stories from last year’s shortlist:</p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/blogging-the-caine-david-medalies-the-mistresss-dog/\">David Medalie’s “The Mistress’s Dog”</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/blogging-the-caine-lauri-kubuitsiles-%e2%80%9cin-the-spirit-of-mcphineas-lata%e2%80%9d\">Laurie Kubuitsile’s “In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata”</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/06/18/blogging-the-caine-timothy-keegans-what-millie-knew/\">Timothy Keegan’s “What Molly Knew” </a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/blogging-the-caine-beatrice-lamwaka-%e2%80%9cbutterfly-dreams%e2%80%9d/\">Beatrice Lamwaka’s “Butterfly Dreams”</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/blogging-the-caine-hitting-budapest-by-noviolet-bulawayo\">NoViolet Bulawayo’s “Hitting Budapest”</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>And, again, if you’d like to join us, join us! Drop me an email (aaron A@T thenewinquiry DO.T com) and let me know, so I can put you on an email list.</p>\n</div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/6133/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=6133&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Porn panic! | Martin Robbins | The Lay Scientist",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.24.1.1/86583?ns=guardian&pageName=Porn+panic%21+%7C+by+Martin+Robbins+%40mjrobbins%3AArticle%3A1737309&ch=Science&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Reproduction%2CScience%2CDaily+Mail%2CMedia%2CPornography+%28Culture%29%2CSex+%28Life+%26+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CSexuality+%28Society%29%2CSociety&c5=Press+Media%2CSociety+Weekly%2CUnclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CFamily+and+Relationships&c6=Martin+Robbins&c7=12-Apr-30&c8=1737309&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Science&c13=&c25=The+Lay+Scientist&c30=content&c42=News&h2=GU%2FNews%2FScience%2Fblog%2FThe+Lay+Scientist\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Fear over online pornography is leading anti-porn campaigners into irrational, knee-jerk responses. Are we hurtling toward a future where the only thing left to masturbate to is the Daily Mail?</p><p>Breasts were invented in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderbra#Worldwide_reintroduction.2C_1991_to_1994\">1994</a>, as part of an early online advertising campaign for Viagra. Since then their popularity has exploded, and now breasts - or 'boobs' as our drug-addled youth have taken to calling them - inhabit almost every corner of the interwebs. But breasts are dangerous: they can lead to suffocation or blindness. Are there too many breasts on the internet, and what disturbing effects can breasts have on young children?</p><p>As an infant, I was exposed to breasts almost every single day. Thirty years later, breasts have taken over my life. Not a day goes by without some stray breast seeping into my consciousness. Occasionally I catch myself glancing at the breasts of my female friends, and I habitually pour milk all over my cornflakes. Worse, breasts have served as a gateway drug for vaginas. </p><p>I used to think I was alone, but extensive new research in the form of <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132342/How-internet-porn-turned-beautiful-boy-hollow-self-hating-shell.html\">almost</a> <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132342/How-internet-porn-turned-beautiful-boy-hollow-self-hating-shell.html\">three</a> anecdotes published by the Daily Mail - a seedy gossip website specializing in celebrity erotica, catering to men too old to buy Nuts and too married to run up hard-to-explain credit card charges on proper porn - has revealed the devastating impact that breasts have been having on other young children. </p><p>Each tragic case of boob trauma follows the same remarkable pattern. An ordinary little boy approaching his teenage years suddenly starts to change his behaviour: becoming withdrawn and moody and mysteriously growing about six inches in height. Detailed investigation of the child's browser history reveals that the cause is not <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132342/How-internet-porn-turned-beautiful-boy-hollow-self-hating-shell.html\">the rough patch the parents have been going through, a recent change of schools, or puberty</a>; but an addiction to online porn.</p><p>The statistics are shocking. <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132342/How-internet-porn-turned-beautiful-boy-hollow-self-hating-shell.html\">According to the Mail</a>, <em>\"four out of five 16-year-old boys and girls regularly view pornography.\"</em> People who are only just old enough to consent to actual sex are allowed to watch it on screen. Parents are helpless to prevent their children viewing pornography on the computers they allow them to keep in their bedrooms at night. It's the kind of massive and complex problem that only a newspaper campaign can tackle. </p><p>Snarking aside, the sheer volume of sexual content we're exposed to is something we should be aware of, and its effect on children - and society in general - is <a href=\"http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov07/webporn.aspx\">worth investigating</a>. The problem with the Mail's campaign is that it is built on a combination of pig-headed ignorance and breath-taking hypocrisy. </p><p>The Daily Mail makes money from posting pictures of scantily-clad women on the internet. Sometimes these women are <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2133971/Madonna-nude-smoking-photo-expected-fetch-5-000-auction.html\">topless</a>. Sometimes they are <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2104387/Sophia-Cahill-Pregnant-glamour-model-walks-runway-naked-London-Fashion-Week.html\">completely</a> <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2128771/Katie-Price-signs-Argentinas-VERY-raunchy-version-Strictly-Come-Dancing.html\">naked</a>. Often the images are captioned with breathy descriptions of 'cleavage', 'dangerous curves', 'thigh-skimming' dresses. Sometimes the images are of <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1298524/Kim-Kardashians-14-year-old-sister-Kendall-Jenner-defends-bikini-photo-shoot.html\">disturbingly young girls</a>, accompanied with phrases like the infamous <a href=\"http://www.vice.com/read/all-grown-up-sexing-up-the-internet-with-the-daily-mail?utm_source=vicetwitter\">\"all grown up.\"</a> </p><p>If Paul Dacre were serious about tackling smut on the internet, he would start by firing his online editor and leading a clean-up of his own 'smut'-laden website. The fact that he doesn't speaks volumes about the campaign's sincerity.</p><p>Leaving all that aside for the moment, would blocking online porn work? The idea relies on three assumptions: that we can define porn, that we can block it, and that doing so would somehow save children from harm. Three simple threads, tangled in a knotty mess. </p><p>ISPs are defending consumers when they oppose the government regulation of internet content. The Daily Mail's <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2137121/Two-thirds-public-Daily-Mail-campaign-want-online-porn-blocked.html\">suggestion that 66% of the public back their campaign</a> for a system <em><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135835/Online-porn-Now-Labour-joins-battle-opt-adult-material.html\">\"under which access is blocked unless adults specifically say they want to see sexual content</a>\"</em> is, to use the statistical term, bullshit. In <a href=\"http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/bkmm9p70rl/YG-Archives-Pol-SundayTimes-results-27-290412.pdf\">the YouGov poll cited</a>, only 36% of people backed the Mail's notion that <em>\"people's internet service should be filtered unless they ask for it not to be.\"</em> (The 66% figure actually just refers to the number of people who think ISPs should provide an option to people who want to block porn.)</p><p>As a customer I can think of at least five major problems with the scheme: I'd like to be able to view porn without having to sign up to a register of porn users; I don't really believe that it's the state's job to decide which sexual practices are moral or immoral; internet filters inevitably block other sites too; and I don't want to pay the higher charges that would be needed to pay for any decent filtering. I'm not willing to sacrifice this for a system that would take the average teen about ten seconds to circumvent, especially when simple solutions for parents - <a href=\"https://store.opendns.com/familyshield/\">FamilyShield</a> for example - <em>already exist</em>. </p><p>What are we trying to stop anyway, and why? The American judge, Potter Stewart,<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it\"> famously remarked of porn</a>, <em>\"I know it when I see it.\"</em> Fair enough, but do children know when they see it? The Daily Mail might reasonably argue that the <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2133971/Madonna-nude-smoking-photo-expected-fetch-5-000-auction.html\">topless shots of Madonna</a> they published are art rather than pornography, but does that make any difference to a child? Do the boobs do the damage, or are children more or less affected by boobs in certain contexts? </p><p>What about vaginas, or penises? Teenage children have these things so presumably aren't particularly traumatized by just seeing them. Is it the insertion of the penis into the vagina that causes the harm, or is it the love and care with which the insertion occurs? What about sexualization in wider society - are children harmed by an image of a glamour model showing her cleavage, or are they harmed by the lack of diversity of images, in a mainstream media which relentlessly bombards young girls with a particular idea of what a woman should grow up to be? Can porn even do good?</p><p>Plain 'vanilla' sex has always seemed pretty boring to me: a man getting on top of a woman, poking his blood-engorged penis into the acidic environment of her vagina, and then moving his hips up and down. \"Ooh,\" says the woman, \"ahh,\" says the man; and they repeat, \"ooh,\" \"ahh,\" \"ooh,\" \"ahh,\" until one of them utters a blasphemy and the other one ejaculates the biological equivalent of a time bomb and falls asleep. </p><p>Sex remained like this for billions of years, until Meg Ryan invented the orgasm; a simple scoring system for unimaginative dullards which was swiftly adopted by the mainstream media as the ISO metric for sexual prowess. Now, sexual pleasure can be measured mathematically, as a function of the quantity of orgasms delivered and received. Because orgasms are the only point of sex, in much the same way that check-mating your opponent is the only point of playing chess. </p><p>Then the internet happened. The availability, cheapness and ease-of-use of modern video cameras, editing systems and online distribution systems has led to something like the Cambrian Explosion in porn. Amateur clip sites list categories from adult diaper to zit squeezing via niches such as belly punching, crutches, doll fetish, ear fetish, futanari, giantess, human ashtray, inflatables, jumping, knee-jobs, leg-jobs, machinima, nylon encasement, one shoe hopping, prostate-massage, robot porn, spitting, trampling, underwater, vintage, wax play, and yawning. If you can imagine it, someone has made a porn video about it; and I can think of no more glorious demonstration of human creativity. </p><p>I have a healthy range of fetishes, one of which is so unusual that I've never met anyone in 'real life' who shares it. Growing up with that sort of 'dirty secret' can be a lonely experience; but finding a whole sub-community of dedicated porn-makers who not only shared my kink, but actively celebrated it and acted out the same fantasies, helped me to realize I wasn't some twisted freak. At least not for <em>that</em> reason. If porn can help kids realize that their urges are natural and healthy, that's not a bad thing in my book.</p><p>The diversity of adult entertainment is so great that just talking about 'porn' as if it's one big pink throbbing homogeneous mass is profoundly ignorant, whether its the subject of a campaign or a <a href=\"http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov07/webporn.aspx\">research question</a>. For example, <a href=\"http://www.wondercatdesign.com/mecasa/images/pdfs/harms%20of%20porn%20exposure-%202009.pdf\">A paper by Michael Flood</a> suggests<em> \"exposure to pornography helps to sustain young people's adherence to sexist and unhealthy notions of sex and relationships,\"</em> but would we see the same impact from <a href=\"http://missmaggiemayhem.com/\">Maggie Mayhem</a>'s feminist porn that we would from Playboy? </p><p>Lumping the two together is like trying ask, <em></em>\"do video games make people violent,\" without bothering to differentiate between the Grand Theft Auto series and Pacman. It undermines research, but more seriously it can lead people to tackle the wrong problem. It could well be true, for example, that the majority of porn reinforces misogynistic attitudes, and that this could damage young children as a result; but if that's the case then the problem is <em>misogyny</em>, not pornography, and it needs to be tackled <em>wherever</em> it appears, not just in the adult entertainment industry.</p><p>Are all degrading depictions of women a problem, or just the ones where they're naked? Are kids more damaged by women who appear as little more than sex objects in porn films, or by the obsession newspapers and magazines have with bullying celebrities over minute changes in their weight? Is sex the only problem, or should we be equally concerned about violence, or newspapers gratuitously publishing <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047963/Michael-Jackson-trial-Autopsy-photo-shown-Paris-sobs-Conrad-Murray.html\">pictures of dead bodies</a>? </p><p>Thank God we don't need to tackle these difficult research questions. Thank God we can just impose a simple brute-force solution on one arbitrary subsection of the media that we don't like, and pretend the problems have all gone away. Thank God for the state's wisdom in matters of obscenity. Thank God for our moral guardians. And thank God for the Daily Mail; in the future, it could be all that's left to masturbate to.</p><p><strong>Twitter: <a href=\"http://www.twitter.com/mjrobbins\">@mjrobbins</a></strong></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/reproduction\">Reproduction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/dailymail\">Daily Mail</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/pornography\">Pornography</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/sex\">Sex</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sexuality\">Sexuality</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-robbins\">Martin Robbins</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"content" : "<p>You will move to L.A. from somewhere in the Midwest without previously obtained shelter or employment. You will be cautiously optimistic. You will have a solid short term plan. All of your childhood will be in your trunk.</p>\n<p>You will have been moderately successful. You will stay with more successful friends. Because it is California, the land to where the more successful have already moved. You will stay with good friends. You will stay with friends of good friends. You will stay with colleagues of friends of good friends.</p>\n<p>You will stay in extra rooms, assigned to non-extra functions. You will stay in living rooms, assigned to living functions. You will sleep on pull-out couches. You will consume limited space. You will overstay your welcome. You will walk in on intimacies. You will see nipples. You will hear what other people sound like. In the bathroom. In the bedroom. When they think they are alone or cushioned by walls.</p>\n<p>You will sleep in hotels. You will sleep in motels. You will sleep in your car. You will sleep in a tent. You will have a graduate degree. You will turn 37.</p>\n<p>You will look for jobs. You will send out résumés. You will do interviews for things like Bakery Counter Night Person, Part-time Intern for the Assistant Manager, and Personal Assistant to the Hostess/Host. You will not get jobs. You were bored working when you were a teenager.</p>\n<p>You will walk other people’s dogs. You will watch other people’s homes. You will sit in other people’s chairs and use other people’s pillows. You will be surrounded by other people’s pictures, other people’s food, and their odd intimate tastes. In art. Lighting. Soap. You will be paid to do this. This will come to not feel strange.</p>\n<p>You will walk. You will turn down random streets. You will consider collecting random things. You will consider building random things that will serve random purposes. You will consider pirates and their place in the modern world. You will lose any fear of lost.</p>\n<p>Your cousin/friend of a friend/former classmate will get a major role. Write/direct/manage/create/invent a Hollywood Internet Silicone Valley thing. They will instant message all available social satellites: <em>Never stop chasing your dreams. Hard work will pay off in the end. You have to fall before you phoenix.</em> They will be 23.</p>\n<p>You will focus too hard on the minute details of doing everyday things. You will grow to not trust spelling, grade school historical facts, the pronunciation of words, or the nerve responses returned from your fingertips.</p>\n<p>You will at some point overhear these random phrases: <em>fusion bicycle; going from consulting straight to banking is rare; traffic-driven website; my producer would kill me if he knew I was telling you this but.</em> You will want to punch the people saying these things. As hard as possible. In the stomach. Until you realize they spend two hours every day with their personal stuntman/ex-marine/part-time porn star/niche martial-arts trainer who teaches them to flip off walls and obliterate boulders of low self-esteem. And to do ten reps after you’re dead. Step aside. The war is over.</p>\n<p>Your relatives will die. Your mother will break down like you’ve never seen her break down before. Over the phone. You will not be able to attend funerals.</p>\n<p>You will borrow money from people you’ve already borrowed money from. You will move into a broken apartment. It will cost more than your first car.</p>\n<p>You will fall out of love. You will fall in love. You will fall out of love.</p>\n<p>You will run out of money. You will be glad it’s always warm. You will stare at the sea. You will stare at the sun. You will stare at the birds breaking up blue. You will stare at the wind leant palms.</p>"
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"title" : "Swedish Golliwog Cake",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/04/18/swedish-cake/makode-linde/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-49305\"><img title=\"Makode Linde\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/makode-linde.jpg?w=500&h=375\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\"></a><br>\n<strong>Guest Post by Johan Palme</strong><br>\nBy now, it seems, the whole world has seen the picture. The Swedish Minister of Culture, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, has just cut a piece from the crotch of a cake baked in the image of a distorted African body, complete with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golliwogg\">golliwog</a> red lips and white eyes. Now, laughing heartily, she’s bent forward as if jokingly feeding a piece of the cake to itself. The whole room eggs her along, laughing, snapping photographs, caught up in the moment. It’s a horrific picture, and it has spread like fire on the web. Two days ago it started popping up in the facebook feeds of acquaintances of the artist who made the cake, Makode Linde. Yesterday it was everywhere in Sweden, in the morning peppering the social media with condemnation and trending on twitter; by noon the <a href=\"http://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/article14691302.ab\">National Association of Afro-Swedes had demanded the culture minister’s resignation</a>, and media hell broke loose. By evening, it was already spreading past international borders, and overnight it’s gone on to become a huge worldwide talking point, ending up on <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17749533\">the BBC</a>, on <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/lena-adelsohn-liljeroth-cake_n_1431544.html\">HuffPo</a>, on <a href=\"http://jezebel.com/5902672/swedish-official-gleefully-cuts-racist-black-lady-cake-crowd-laughs--laughs\">Jezebel</a>, <a href=\"http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/sweden-firestorm-over-cake-art-installation-0022178\">Al Jazeera</a> and condemned in no uncertain terms by activists from <a href=\"http://thoughtsofbrown.com/2012/04/18/a-piece-of-hate-cake/\">South Africa</a> to <a href=\"http://www.micmovement.com/2012/04/5-ways-to-eat-your-racist-cake-have-it-too/\">Berlin</a>, outraged at the picture, the artist, the crowd, the minister and their apologists. It has become a powerful photograph indeed. As such, I think it’s worth talking a little on how it came about.<span></span></p>\n<p>It’s Sunday, April 15th, and at <a href=\"http://www.modernamuseet.se/en/Stockholm/\">Moderna Museet</a> the swedish <a href=\"http://www.kro.se/1011\">Artists Organisation</a> is organising a celebration of World Art Day, as well as celebrating its own 75th birthday. Invited to speak is Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, the culture minister, who – it’s worth noting – is reviled by large parts of the art world for her culture-sceptic stance and for previously condemning provocative art in what many see as a kind of censorship. Here’s her chance at patching things up.</p>\n<p>A number of artists have been asked to create birthday cakes for the celebration. At some point, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth gets asked if she would go ahead and cut the first piece of cake, standard politician fare she thinks, and she agrees. Then she’s told that the cake will be about the limits of provocative art, which is a subject she now carefully treads around, and about female genital mutilation.</p>\n<p>The cake is wheeled out and uncovered. The crowd stares, tittering nervously. The culture minister is placed at the crotch end, and starts cutting into the cake – when suddenly the head starts screaming in pain. It’s the artist, Makode Linde, whose own painted head is placed as the head of the cake. The crowd’s tittering erupts in nervous laughter; the uncomfortable humour of the situation, the classic Swedish fear of conflict, triggered by the surprise sound and movement. Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth tries to play along as best she can in what she sees as a “bizarre” situation, reciprocating the laughter.</p>\n<p>And on the other side of the cake, placed in the narrow space in front of a glass wall, stands one of the minister’s fiercest critics, visual artist and provocateur <a href=\"http://www.mldg.se/\">Marianne Lindberg De Geer</a>, camera at the ready. And she snaps pictures of the whole series of events, as the minister is egged into doing more outrageous things, performing for the crowd.</p>\n<p>It’s of course no coincidence. The whole thing was carefully planned, <a href=\"http://rodeo.net/johan-wirfalt/2012/04/darfor-ar-makode-lindes-konsstympningstarta-arets-storsta-svenska-konstogonblick/\">a “mousetrap” as one Swedish artist puts it</a>. And based on how much traction the picture of the event has garnered, it was a very efficient mousetrap indeed.</p>\n<p>Who’s <a href=\"http://www.makodelinde.com/\">Makode Linde</a>, who staged the whole event? He is a visual artist, and as such has continuously asked uncomfortable questions about race, racial stereotyping and his own position as a black man in a condescending elite art world. The golliwog figure is a consistent image in his artwork, being placed on everyday objects, on paintings grinning nervously at the king, gawking in horror from children’s faces, at times undergoing <a href=\"http://www.makodelinde.com/images/053_DarkMatter.jpg\">almost formalist destruction</a>. But just as importantly: he’s a club promoter and a DJ, one of Sweden’s most successful, who knows exactly how to manipulate crowds and their emotions.</p>\n<p>And I’m left wondering – <a href=\"http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/sweden-firestorm-over-cake-art-installation-0022178\">whatever the artist himself says</a> – if the intended artwork here is not the cake, nor the performance, but the picture. Because what Makode Linde and Marianne Lindberg De Geer have produced is a picture which is incredibly powerfully laden with symbolism of colonial exploitation.</p>\n<p>The all-white crowd, laughing bayingly and taking pictures while the African Other screams in anguish.</p>\n<p>The cemented association between racist stereotyping and the haute bourgeoisie, <a href=\"http://rodeo.net/johan-wirfalt/2012/04/darfor-ar-makode-lindes-konsstympningstarta-arets-storsta-svenska-konstogonblick/\">as Johan Wirfält writes</a>.</p>\n<p>The visual connection not just to blackface but to parodied, racist depictions of African art, the kind that is looted by colonialists and that provide ongoing shame for western Ethnographical museums. At, of course, an event in a museum.</p>\n<p>The cutting of the genitals, the literal removal of the sexual subjectivity of the screaming woman.</p>\n<p>The feeding, not as an act of infinite compassion, but as an objectifying joke, the “recipient” made entirely passive and unintelligible.</p>\n<p>And the fact that the source of the food is the symbolic African herself, the resources stolen from her belly.</p>\n<p>It’s a brilliant staging of structural racism and post-colonial existence.</p>\n<p>* Johan Palme blogs at <a href=\"http://birdseeding.tumblr.com/\">Birdseeding</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/49304/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=49304&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Is there a correlation between forward-looking Google searches and prosperity?",
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"content" : "<p>Fascinating <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120405/srep00350/full/srep00350.html\">research paper</a> in <em>Nature</em> on “Quantifying the Advantage of Looking Forward”. Summary:</p>\n<blockquote><p>In this study, we present a cross-country analysis of search engine queries, and demonstrate a strong link between behaviour online and real world economic indicators. By considering searches for years represented in Arabic numerals, an almost ubiquitous written representation, we can evaluate worldwide interest in years in the future (such as “2013”) and years in the past (such as “2011”). These representations have previously been considered in an investigation of a large corpus of text from books, where analysis suggested that authors’ interest in the past has decreased over time7. Here, we compare the predisposition of Internet users in different countries to look more to the future, or more to the past. We find that the online “future orientation” of a country is strongly correlated with the country’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP).</p>\n</blockquote>"
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"title" : "The infernal semicolon",
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"content" : "<p>Most of the comments in this <a href=\"https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057\">semicolons in JS</a> exchange make me sad. The code in question:</p>\n<pre>\n clearMenus()\n !isActive && $parent.toggleClass('open')\n</pre>\n<p>relies on <a href=\"http://ecma262-5.com/ELS5_Section_7.htm#Section_7.9\">Automatic Semicolon Insertion (ASI)</a> and so cannot be <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minification_%28programming%29\">minified</a> except by parsing fully (including ASI), observing the significance of the newline after <code>clearMenus()</code>, and inserting a semicolon when stripping that newline.</p>\n<p>\nSome argue that <a href=\"http://www.crockford.com/javascript/jsmin.html\">JSMin</a> has a bug. <a href=\"http://crockford.com/\">Doug Crockford</a> <a href=\"https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057#issuecomment-5135512\">does not want</a> to change JSMin, and that’s his choice.</p>\n<p>\nFWIW, I agree with Doug’s canonically grumpy tone if not his substance; more below on the substance.</p>\n<p>\nI also agree with <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/cramforce/status/191560711565086720\">@cramforce</a> and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/jedschmidt/status/191559562069946370\">@jedschmidt</a> that the <code>&&</code> line is an <a href=\"http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abusage\">abusage</a>, allowed due to JS’s C heritage by way of Java, but frowned upon by most JS hackers; and that an <code>if</code> statement would be much better style (and, I take it, help JSMin do right). But this particular criticism is too <i>ad hoc</i> to help resolve the general “Let me have my ASI freedom and still minify, dammit!” debate.</p>\n<p>\nDoug goes on to <a href=\"https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/3057#issuecomment-5135562\">say</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\nTC39 is considering the use of ! as an infix operator. This code will break in the future. Fix it now. Learn to use semicolons properly. ! is not intended to be a statement separator. ; is.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>The <code>!</code>-as-infix-operator idea is proposed as <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:concurrency#syntactic_sugar\">syntactic sugar</a> for <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:concurrency\">promises</a>, which may or may not make it into <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:harmony\">Harmony</a> with that exact syntax, or with any syntactic sugar at all.</p>\n<p>\nDoug’s right that <code>!</code> is not a statement terminator or “initiator”. And (my point here), neither is newline.</p>\n<p>\nBut search for <code>[nlth]</code> in <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:concurrency#eventual_operations\">the proposed promises grammar</a> and you’ll see something surprising about ASI and infix operators: we can add new infix operators in the future, whether new contextual keyword-operators (e.g., <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:egal\"><code>is</code></a> and <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:egal\"><code>isnt</code></a> — BTW these are in doubt) or retasked, existing unary-prefix operators, provided that we insist on <code>[no </code><i>LineTerminator</i><code> here]</code> immediately to the left of any such infix operator.</p>\n<p>\n(In <a href=\"http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-262-arch.htm\">ECMA-262</a>, <code>[no </code><i>LineTerminator</i><code> here]</code> is used in so-called “restricted productions” to make contextually-significant newlines, e.g., after <code>return</code> without any expression of the return value on the same line.)</p>\n<p>\nThis future-friendliness to new infix operators comes directly from ASI as a newline-sensitive error correction procedure, as the example at top demonstrates. Try other examples using a leading identifier on a well-formed second line and you’ll see the same effect. Removing the newline introduces an early error, which creates homesteading space for new infix operators in a later edition of ECMA-262. Examples:</p>\n<pre>\nlet flag = x is y; // no \\n before 'is'!\nx ! p = v; // Q(x).put(’p’, v)\n</pre>\n<p>An aside on coding style: if we add new infix operators used in restricted productions, this gives weight to the JS coding style that puts infix operators in multiline expressions at the end of continued lines, rather than at the beginning of continuation lines.</p>\n<p>\nSo while I agree with Doug on those two lines of code from <a href=\"http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/\">Bootstrap</a> (an excellent JS library, BTW) exhibiting poor style, it is not the case that such code <em>as written</em> could break in the future, even if we were to adopt the <code>!</code>-as-infix-operator strawman. The first line terminator in that example is indeed significant.</p>\n<p>\nThe moral of this story: ASI is (formally speaking) a syntactic error correction procedure. If you start to code as if it were a universal significant-newline rule, you will get into trouble. A classic example from ECMA-262:</p>\n<pre>\na = b + c\n(d + e).print()\n</pre>\n<p>\nSimilar hazards arise with <code>[</code>, <code>/</code>, and unary <code>+</code> and <code>-</code>. Remember, if there wasn’t an error, ASI does not apply.</p>\n<p>\nThis problem may seem minor, but JS file concatenation ups the ante. For this reason some style guides (Dojo, IIRC) advocate starting your reusable JS file with <code>;</code>, but people don’t know and it’s easy to forget.</p>\n<p>\nI wish I had made newlines <em>more</em> significant in JS back in those ten days in May, 1995. Then instead of ASI, we would be cursing the need to use infix operators at the ends of continued lines, or perhaps <code>\\</code> or brute-force parentheses, to force continuation onto a successive line. But that ship sailed almost 17 years ago.</p>\n<p>\nThe way systematic newline significance could come to JS is via an evolution of <a href=\"https://brendaneich.com/2010/11/paren-free/\">paren-free</a> that makes it to Harmony status. I intend to work on this in the <a href=\"http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:paren_free\">strawman</a>, but not for ES6.</p>\n<p>\nSome of the github issue comments are naive or idealistic to the point of being silly. Since when does any programming language <em>not</em> have syntax arguments? All living, practical languages that I know of, even those with indentation-based block structure and similar restrictions, have degrees of freedom of expression that allow abusage as well as good usage. Language designers can <a href=\"http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/07/coding-style-as-failure-of-language_21.html\">try to reduce degrees of freedom</a>, but not eliminate them completely.</p>\n<p>\nMy two cents: be careful not to use ASI as if it gave JS significant newlines. And please don’t abuse <code>&&</code> and <code>||</code> where the mighty <code>if</code> statement serves better.</p>\n<p>\nI’ll also say that if it were up to me, in view of JS’s subtle and long history, I’d fix JSMin. But I would still log a grumpy comment or two first!</p>\n<p>\n/be</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Here’s an acronym that, I am reliably assured, is common parlance among IT Support staff:</p>\n<p>PICNIC</p>\n<p>It stands for “Problem in chair, not in computer”.</p>\n<p>You have been warned. </p>\n<p>Thanks to Andrew Ingram for enlightening me.</p>"
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"title" : "The Advent of Change -",
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"content" : "So my journey to create something from my historical reference has now lead me to the knowledge shared by my parents. The introvert part of me, finds writing this post very hard, yet after my most recent open and frank conversation with someone I feel it will be fine. However I still have an issue with IP and the like so putting some of these thoughts down is proving a hard slog..... I have my parent's racking their brain well before they forget and there is it my paternal grandfather who I never met used to weave? So my understanding of the art of strip weaving is like one of the weaves I work with generational. How strange that I without knowing have kept to the traditional roles being set. On the maternal side - traders who like to travel, if I scratch further I might find out even more. I have got some much history now that half of me wants to research and the other just wants to create.........<br><br><br>"
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"title" : "A one-line software patent – and a fix",
"published" : 1333537836,
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"content" : "<span title=\"ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Focoins.info%3Agenerator&rft.title=A+one-line+software+patent+%E2%80%93+and+a+fix&rft.aulast=Kuhn&rft.aufirst=Markus&rft.subject=Legal+issues&rft.subject=Politics&rft.source=Light+Blue+Touchpaper&rft.date=2012-04-04&rft.type=blogPost&rft.format=text&rft.identifier=http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2012/04/04/one-line-software-patent/&rft.language=English\"></span>\n<p>I have been waiting for this day for 17 years! Today, <a href=\"http://www.patentlens.net/patentlens/structured.cgi?patnum=US/5404140\">United States Patent 5,404,140</a> titled “Coding system” owned by Mitsubishi expires, 22 years after it was filed in Japan.</p>\n<p>Why the excitement? Well, 17 years ago, I wrote <a href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/\">JBIG-KIT</a>, a free and open-source implementation of JBIG1, the image compression algorithm used in all modern fax machines. My software is about 4000 lines of code long (in C), and only one single “if” statement in it is covered by the above patent:</p>\n<pre> if (s->a < lsz) { s->c += s->a; s->a = lsz; }</pre>\n<p>And sadly, there was no way to implement a JBIG1 encoder or decoder without using this patented line of code (in some form) while remaining compatible with all other JBIG1 implementations out there.<span></span></p>\n<blockquote><p><b>For the technically interested:</b> JBIG1 uses an arithmetic coder that estimates the probability that the next pixel to be encoded is either black or white (taking into account 10 previously transmitted neighbour pixels). Arguably in the interest of saving a bit of RAM in hardware implementations, the standard does not use the simple arithmetic expression that estimates these pixel probabilities based on counts of how often a pixel has been black or white before in that context: p(next pixel is white) = (#white pixel so far + 1) / (#pixels so far + 1). Instead, it defines a finite-state machine that comes up with a cruder estimate, using just 7 bits to define 113 states, rather than actually counting pixels with 32-bit registers. IBM had a patent on that finite-state machine, which is really hardly more than an obfuscated counter. Then a Mitsubishi employee noticed that the crude IBM approximation sometimes ended up assigning to the “less probable pixel colour” a probability larger than 0.5, making it actually more probable. So they suggested the above if-statement to swap the probability estimates of the two colours in those rare cases, leading to a tiny improvement in coding efficiency.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Not only is the tiny improvement patented by Mitsubishi pretty trivial, it would also have been utterly unnecessary if IBM hadn’t first used in the standard a patented, but defect, finite state machine, rather than a simple counting process. But standards committees have little incentives to minimize the impact of patents on their products. On the contrary. The standardization of file formats and computer protocols turned in the late 1980s into a very nasty game: every participant is now mainly interested in squeezing as many of their patented ideas into the resulting standard as possible. The JBIG1 standard is a good example of a technology that could have been made much simpler and a bit more efficient if the authors hadn’t had to justify to their employers the time spent on developing the standard with the prospect that users of the standard would have to pay licence fees.</p>\n<p>The underlying problem is compatibility. If I had to implement an image compression technique, I could have come up with something much simpler than JBIG1, which may have required slightly more RAM, but would have been much easier to understand and possibly even compress slightly better. However, the result would have been incompatible with what international standards bodies had already agreed would have to be implemented in every new fax machine on the planet.</p>\n<p>I had once hoped that JBIG-KIT would help with the exchange of scanned documents on the Internet, facilitate online inter-library loan, and make paper archives more accessible to users all over the world. However, the impact was minimal: no web browser dared to directly support a standardized file format covered by <a href=\"http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/jbigkit/patents/\">23 patents</a>, the last of which expired today.</p>\n<p>About 25 years ago, large IT research organizations discovered standards as a gold mine, a vehicle to force users to buy patent licenses, not because the technology is any good, but because it is required for compatibility. This is achieved by writing the standards very carefully such that there is no way to come up with a compatible implementation that does not require a patent license, an art that has been greatly perfected since. The IT standards landscape is now littered with golden patent monsters, whose complexity and use of exotic techniques is hardly justifiable by technical benefits, e.g. <a href=\"http://openbts.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/umts-truly-you-have-dizzying-intellect.html\">radio communications standards</a> and storage formats. Even the utterly archaic <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Legal_issues\">MS-DOS VFAT file system</a> used on every USB memory stick still makes its inventors money, not because it has any inherent benefits, but simply because its patent owner made sure that their market-dominant operating system lacked support for any of the many simpler and more elegant alternative file systems that support long filenames without requiring a patent licence.</p>\n<p>Thanks to the perverse marriage of patents and the standardization of computer file formats and network protocols, patents have now the opposite effect of what they were originally introduced for. Patents were meant to protect investors, such that they could justify the often large investment necessary to introduce a new technology on the market. The idea was to encourage innovation. In the field of standardized file formats and computer protocols, patents are now the main hindrance. Ideas that require hardly any measurable investment to be invented or implemented (a single “if” statement in a program!) earn more than 20 years of government-guaranteed monopolistic protection.</p>\n<p><b>There is a simple solution:</b> amend patent legislation such that no patent licenses have to be obtained solely for the purpose of compatibility. No patent licence should be required by law if a technology is used solely to enable communication with another information-technology product. I believe this would eliminate instantly the enormous threat that patents now pose to the progress of standardization and improved interoperability in our networked information society, without imposing unrealistic expectations on the process of examining and granting patents.</p>\n<p>The practice of limiting the protection of a right holder to enable competitors “to achieve the interoperability of an independently created program with other programs” (<a href=\"http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/internal_market/businesses/intellectual_property/mi0016_en.htm\">EU Directive 2009/24/EC</a>) has already been common practice in copyright legislation worldwide for many years.</p>\n<p>It is time that we fix patent law in just the same way!</p>"
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"title" : "Instagram as an island economy",
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://newsroom.fb.com/Announcements/Facebook-to-Acquire-Instagram-141.aspx\">Facebook bought Instagram for a billion dollars.</a></p>\n<p>If you don't know:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Facebook is a corporation with a database in which they would like to record every act that every person makes, annotated with the place and time, and another database that lists every social relationship each person has. They are persuading people to do this by being the world's second virtual society, the first being the internet itself, the difference with Facebook being that everything in the society is recorded in a form that makes cross-indexing simple.</li>\n<li>Instagram is a corporation with a smartphone app that lots of people use to take and share photos. Instagram makes it easy to take pretty photos, and to see the pretty photos of your friends. The photos are used to (a) represent yourself to your friends, and (b) act as condensation seeds for social interactions of the type (i) <a href=\"http://glancing.interconnected.org/2004/02/etcon/?s=13\">grooming</a> and (ii) conversation.</li>\n<li>A billion dollars is a <em>lot</em> of money.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><u>Not users but producers/consumers</u></p>\n<p>The other day I picked <a href=\"http://interconnected.org/home/2012/04/02/marx_at_193\">some choice quotes from 'Marx at 193'</a> (an article by John Lanchester). Here's one: <q>This idea of labour being hidden in things, and <u>the value of things arising from the labour congealed inside them,</u> is an unexpectedly powerful explanatory tool in the digital world.</q></p>\n<p>What is the labour encoded in Instagram? It's easy to see. Every "user" of Instagram is a worker. There are some people who produce photos -- this is valuable, it means there is something for people to look it. There are some people who only produce comments or "likes," the virtual society equivalent of apes picking lice off other apes. This is valuable, because people like recognition and are more likely to produce photos. All workers are also marketers -- some highly effective and some not at all. And there's a <a href=\"http://interconnected.org/notes/2006/06/reboot8/day1.txt\">general intellect</a> which has been developed, a kind of community expertise and teaching of this expertise to produce photographs which are good at producing the valuable, attractive likes and comments (i.e., photographs which are especially pretty and provocative), and a somewhat competitive culture to become a better marketer.</p>\n<p>There are also the workers who build the factory -- the behaviour-structuring instrument/forum which is Instagram itself, both its infrastructure and it's "interface:" the production lines on the factory floor, and the factory store. However these workers are only playing a role. Really they are owners.</p>\n<p>All of those workers (the factory workers) receive a wage. They have not organised, so the wage is low, but it's there. It's invisible.</p>\n<p>Like all good producers, the workers are also consumers. They immediately spend their entire wage, and their wages is only good in Instagram-town. What they buy is the likes and comments of the photos they produce (what? You think it's free? Of course it's not free, it feels good so you have to pay for it. And you did, by being a producer), and access to the public spaces of Instagram-town to communicate with other consumers (access to these spaces is so valuable to me that it keeps me using the iPhone, a model of smartphone which can run Instagram, rather than Windows Phone 7 which I have used and enjoyed, but cannot).</p>\n<p>It's <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/birmingham/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8412000/8412655.stm\">not the first time</a> that factory workers have been housed in factory homes and spent their money in factory stores.</p>\n<p>Implications:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>There is a way of identifying the various value exchanges, which means there should be a way to calculate the aggregate value.</li>\n<li>However, Instagram is more-or-less a closed economy: producers are paid in Instagram-dollars and consumers pay with Instagram-dollars. The loop is so tight that the Instagram-dollars are invisible. So how is the aggregate value to be calculated? Instagram-town is barely connected to the US dollar so we don't know what the value is.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>I will say that it's simple to make money out of Instagram. People are already producing and consuming, so it's a small step to introduce the dollar into this.</p>\n<p>The question is: what will the exchange rate be?</p>\n<p><u>Island economies and colonisation</u></p>\n<p>The situation of Instagram is that of an isolated island economy, separate from the outside world, being linked to the global economy. How do we figure out what it's worth to the global economy? How do you value a closed system?</p>\n<p>I can think of three examples: Japan's period as an <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky\">autarky</a> (self-sufficient economy) in the 1850s; China's transition from a closed to a linked economy over the past decade; a Pacific island such as Naura, in the <a href=\"http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/253/the-middle-of-nowhere\">middle of nowhere,</a> being colonised.</p>\n<p>The third makes me think that the business of these virtual society companies (there are lots) is to isolate some settlement on an island, allow it to develop for a small amount of time, and then colonise it. This is the story of empire, but it's also the story of expansion. Think of the Wild West: first the people, then the railways, the banks, the law, and government.</p>\n<p>But the Wild West ended up okay, part of it we call California. Both Instagram and Facebook are based there.</p>\n<p>Maybe Instagram is worth a billion dollars, there's certainly a lot of labour encoded in the objects of its production. More valuable, I think, for Facebook is the general intellect I have not mentioned: that developed by the factory owners. They're highly accomplished at paying their workers very little (i.e., since there is no money changing hands, we measure this by observing that the workers are highly productive) and, out of their workers, training good marketers. Facebook needs that in order to complete their database.</p>\n<p><u>Money; users</u></p>\n<p>More interesting to me is the question of what happens when the workers organise, and demand a wage that is transferrable between the island economies of the internet. I've absolutely no idea what that would even look like, a transferrable store of labour but one in which the act and value of labour is contextually variable according to its position in a social network. But I can't imagine money itself looked entirely obvious before it was invented either.</p>\n<p>The second interesting point is that the word "user," as in a user of Instagram or Facebook, is dangerous, because it hides all of this.</p></div>"
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"title" : "Cassava as an income-earning crop for small farmers",
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"content" : "<p> </p>\n<div>Sub-Saharan Africa produces more than 50 percent of the world’s cassava (aka manioc, Tapioca, and Yucca), but mainly as a subsistence crop. Consumed by about 500 million Africans every day, it is the second most important source of carbohydrate in Sub-Saharan Africa, after maize. The leaves can also be consumed as a green vegetable, which provides protein and vitamins A and B. As an economy advances, cassava is also used for animal feed and industrial applications.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Described as the “<a href=\"http://www.springerlink.com/content/n36675226277455j/\">Rambo of food crops</a>” cassava would become even more productive in hotter temperatures and could be the best bet for African farmers threatened by climate change.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Cassava is drought resistant, can be grown on marginal land where other cereals do not do well, and requires little inputs. For these reasons it is grown widely by African small and poor farmers as a subsistence crop. However, cassava’s potential as an income-earning crop has not been widely tapped.</div>\n<div> </div>\n<div>Cassava presents enormous opportunities for trade between areas with food surplus and food deficit. Currently, a large shortfall of the regional food supply is filled by cereals bought in the international market. For cassava to become an income-earning crop at intra-regional market for small farmers in Africa, two main obstacles remain: post-harvest processing and regional trade barriers.</div>\n<p></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><img width=\"458\" height=\"298\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/cassava_production.jpg\"></p>\n<p>Because transporting raw cassava over long distances is uneconomical and logistically difficult due to its high water content, fresh cassava must be processed into products suitable for transportation in order to be sold in markets. Cassava chips are transportable as a semi-processed product for animal feed, which involves simple procedures and can be accomplished at farm gate by small farmers with the current technology. However, processing cassava for human consumption requires more complicated procedures, as well as water, which could be scarce in certain rural areas. Low yield can also hamper small farmers’ profitability, but a few African countries have already achieved yields comparable to that of Thailand’s, the world leading cassava exporter. </p>\n<p>After cassava is processed into a transportable form, <a href=\"http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0,,contentMDK:23092452~pagePK:146736~piPK:226340~theSitePK:258644,00.html\">cross-border trading can be challenging</a>, depriving farmers of profits. For example, it takes 32 days to export and 38 days to import in SSA, while it takes only 23 days to export and 24 days to import in Asia. It is estimated that the cost due to the NTBs in Southern Africa alone is equivalent to more than $1 billion per year. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.iita.org/search/-/journal_content/56/25357/242867\">Commercialization of cassava is already happening at the community level</a>. However, cassava is yet traded at intra-regional level. Currently, the limited post-harvest processing capacity at industrial level and the high-cost added by NTBs (in some areas low yields are also an issue) make the cost of cassava flour considerably higher than that of imported cereals. In the short- to medium-run, however, cassava intra-regional trade for human consumption and animal feed should be a viable option if the impediments are addressed. Additionally, women can benefit significantly from this process because they play a dominant role in food production and trade in Africa. </p>\n<p>What do you think should be done to accelerate cassava trade in Africa, if you agree with me that cassava has a great potential to alleviate regional food shortages and poverty? </p>\n<p><img width=\"478\" height=\"479\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/files/africacan/cassava_production2_0.jpg\"></p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Sources: Javis, Andy, Is cassava the Answer to African Climate Change Adaptation, CIAT, February 2012; TIPS and AusAID, Trade Information Brief, Cassava; David, Michael, Cassava Inclusion in Wheat Flour, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, February 24, 2012; Weigand, Chad, Wheat Import Projections towards 2050, U.S. Wheat Associates, January 2011; Hanna, Rachid, Cameroon reaps benefits of investment in agricultural research for development, IITA blog, March 2 2012; and Nweke, Felix, Steven Haggblade, and Ballard Zulu, Building on Successes in African Agriculture, recent growth in African cassava, 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment, April 2004; and Brenton, Paul, Gozde Isik, De-fragmenting Africa, Deepening Regional Trade Integration in Goods and Services, World Bank, 2012.</span></em></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<div> </div>"
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"title" : "Netflix Recommendations: Beyond the 5 stars (Part 1)",
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"content" : "<span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"color:#666666;font-style:italic\">by <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#%21/xamat\">Xavier Amatriain</a> and Justin Basilico (Personalization Science and Engineering)</span><br><br>In this two-part blog post, we will open the doors of one of the most valued Netflix assets: our recommendation system. In Part 1, we will relate the Netflix Prize to the broader recommendation challenge, outline the external components of our personalized service, and highlight how our task has evolved with the business. In Part 2, we will describe some of the data and models that we use and discuss our approach to algorithmic innovation that combines offline machine learning experimentation with online AB testing. Enjoy... and remember that we are always looking for more star talent to add to our great team, so please take a look at </span><a href=\"http://www.netflix.com/jobs\" rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"color:#3366ff\">our jobs page</a><span style=\"color:black\">. </span><br><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br><span style=\"font-size:130%\">The Netflix Prize and the Recommendation Problem</span></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br>In 2006 we announced the <a href=\"http://www.netflixprize.com/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Netflix Prize</a>, a machine learning and data mining competition for movie rating prediction. We offered $1 million to whoever improved the accuracy of our existing system called <i>Cinematch</i> by 10%. We conducted this competition to find new ways to improve the recommendations we provide to our members, which is a key part of our business. However, we had to come up with a proxy question that was easier to evaluate and quantify: the <i>root mean squared error</i> (RMSE) of the predicted rating. The race was on to beat our RMSE of 0.9525 with the finish line of reducing it to 0.8572 or less.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">A year into the competition, the Korbell team won the first <a href=\"http://www.netflixprize.com//prize?id=2\" rel=\"nofollow\">Progress Prize</a> with an 8.43% improvement. They reported more than 2000 hours of work in order to come up with the final combination of 107 algorithms that gave them this prize. And, they gave us the source code. We looked at the two underlying algorithms with the best performance in the ensemble: <i>Matrix Factorization</i> (which the community generally called SVD, <i>Singular Value Decomposition</i>) and <i>Restricted Boltzmann Machines</i> (RBM). SVD by itself provided a 0.8914 RMSE, while RBM alone provided a competitive but slightly worse 0.8990 RMSE. A linear blend of these two reduced the error to 0.88. To put these algorithms to use, we had to work to overcome some limitations, for instance that they were built to handle 100 million ratings, instead of the more than 5 billion that we have, and that they were not built to adapt as members added more ratings. But once we overcame those challenges, we put the two algorithms into production, where they are still used as part of our recommendation engine. </div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-22y2c1qT3CA/T3-aKF-i6pI/AAAAAAAAAO0/nCJZ2OotiRw/s1600/NetflixPrize.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-22y2c1qT3CA/T3-aKF-i6pI/AAAAAAAAAO0/nCJZ2OotiRw/s200/NetflixPrize.png\" style=\"display:block;height:220px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:355px\"></a></div><div style=\"color:#333333\">If you followed the Prize competition, you might be wondering what happened with the final <a href=\"http://www.netflixprize.com//prize?id=1\" rel=\"nofollow\">Grand Prize ensemble</a> that won the $1M two years later. This is a truly impressive compilation and culmination of years of work, blending hundreds of predictive models to finally cross the finish line. We evaluated some of the new methods offline but the additional accuracy gains that we measured did not seem to justify the engineering effort needed to bring them into a production environment. Also, our focus on improving Netflix personalization had shifted to the next level by then. In the remainder of this post we will explain how and why it has shifted.<span style=\"font-size:130%\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\"><br></span></span></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br><span style=\"font-size:130%\">From US DVDs to Global Streaming</span></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br>One of the reasons our focus in the recommendation algorithms has changed is because Netflix as a whole has changed dramatically in the last few years. Netflix launched an instant streaming service in 2007, one year after the Netflix Prize began. Streaming has not only changed the way our members interact with the service, but also the type of data available to use in our algorithms. For DVDs our goal is to help people fill their queue with titles to receive in the mail over the coming days and weeks; selection is distant in time from viewing, people select carefully because exchanging a DVD for another takes more than a day, and we get no feedback during viewing. For streaming members are looking for something great to watch right now; they can sample a few videos before settling on one, they can consume several in one session, and we can observe viewing statistics such as whether a video was watched fully or only partially.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">Another big change was the move from a single website into hundreds of devices. The integration with the <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2008/05/netflix-player-by-roku-is-now-available.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Roku player</a> and the <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2008/07/netflix-streaming-to-xbox-live.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Xbox</a> were announced in 2008, two years into the Netflix competition. Just a year later, Netflix streaming made it into the <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2010/08/netflix-now-available-on-your-iphone.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">iPhone</a>. Now it is available on a multitude of devices that go from a myriad of <a href=\"http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/03/testing-netflix-on-android.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">Android devices</a> to the latest <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2012/03/integrated-itunes-sign-up-1080p-hd-on.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">AppleTV</a>.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">Two years ago, we went international with the <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2010/09/netflix-launches-in-canada.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">launch in Canada</a>. In 2011, we added <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/netflix-launches-in-latin-america.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">43 Latin-American countries</a> and territories to the list. And just recently, we launched in <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2012/01/netflix-launches-in-uk-ireland-today.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">UK and Ireland</a>. Today, Netflix has more than 23 million subscribers in 47 countries. Those subscribers streamed 2 billion hours from hundreds of different devices in the last quarter of 2011. Every day they add 2 million movies and TV shows to the queue and generate 4 million ratings.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">We have adapted our personalization algorithms to this new scenario in such a way that now 75% of what people watch is from some sort of recommendation. We reached this point by continuously optimizing the member experience and have measured significant gains in member satisfaction whenever we improved the personalization for our members. Let us now walk you through some of the techniques and approaches that we use to produce these recommendations.</div><br><span style=\"color:#333333;font-size:130%\">Everything is a Recommendation</span> <br><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br>We have discovered through the years that there is tremendous value to our subscribers in incorporating recommendations to personalize as much of Netflix as possible. Personalization starts on our homepage, which consists of groups of videos arranged in horizontal rows. Each row has a title that conveys the intended meaningful connection between the videos in that group. Most of our personalization is based on the way we select rows, how we determine what items to include in them, and in what order to place those items.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">Take as a first example the Top 10 row: this is our best guess at the ten titles you are most likely to enjoy. Of course, when we say “you”, we really mean everyone in your <b>household</b>. It is important to keep in mind that Netflix’ personalization is intended to handle a household that is likely to have different people with different tastes. That is why when you see your Top10, you are likely to discover items for dad, mom, the kids, or the whole family. Even for a single person household we want to appeal to your range of interests and moods. To achieve this, in many parts of our system we are not only optimizing for accuracy, but also for <b>diversity</b>. </div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XoqyBDtKSyY/T3-auHTtvjI/AAAAAAAAAPA/hZ5wkHv6xxo/s1600/Top10.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XoqyBDtKSyY/T3-auHTtvjI/AAAAAAAAAPA/hZ5wkHv6xxo/s320/Top10.png\" style=\"display:block;height:186px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:488px\"></a></div><div style=\"color:#333333\">Another important element in Netflix’ personalization is <b>awareness</b>. We want members to be aware of how we are adapting to their tastes. This not only promotes trust in the system, but encourages members to give feedback that will result in better recommendations. A different way of promoting trust with the personalization component is to provide <b>explanations</b> as to why we decide to recommend a given movie or show. We are not recommending it because it suits our business needs, but because it matches the information we have from you: your explicit taste preferences and ratings, your viewing history, or even your friends’ recommendations. <br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RCc2GiiIFqk/T3-bxqbwS4I/AAAAAAAAAPM/w1RYiVLG_sg/s1600/Explanations.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RCc2GiiIFqk/T3-bxqbwS4I/AAAAAAAAAPM/w1RYiVLG_sg/s320/Explanations.png\" style=\"display:block;height:239px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:442px\"></a>On the topic of friends, we <a href=\"http://blog.netflix.com/2011/09/watch-this-now-netflix-facebook.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">recently released</a> our Facebook connect feature in 46 out of the 47 countries we operate – all but the US because of concerns with the VPPA law. Knowing about your friends not only gives us another signal to use in our personalization algorithms, but it also allows for different rows that rely mostly on your <b>social</b> circle to generate recommendations. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U7D18F5ioC8/T3-crWjsk8I/AAAAAAAAAPY/oa2Bk0jYcts/s1600/Social.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-U7D18F5ioC8/T3-crWjsk8I/AAAAAAAAAPY/oa2Bk0jYcts/s400/Social.png\" style=\"display:block;height:223px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:564px\"></a><br>Some of the most recognizable personalization in our service is the collection of “<b>genre</b>” rows. These range from familiar high-level categories like \"Comedies\" and \"Dramas\" to highly tailored slices such as \"Imaginative Time Travel Movies from the 1980s\". Each row represents 3 layers of personalization: the choice of genre itself, the subset of titles selected within that genre, and the ranking of those titles. Members connect with these rows so well that we measure an increase in member retention by placing the most tailored rows higher on the page instead of lower. As with other personalization elements, <b>freshness</b> and diversity is taken into account when deciding what genres to show from the thousands possible.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j3KoWcBx4X4/T3-c601LrNI/AAAAAAAAAPk/MH2b0T9OEXc/s1600/iPadGenres.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j3KoWcBx4X4/T3-c601LrNI/AAAAAAAAAPk/MH2b0T9OEXc/s400/iPadGenres.png\" style=\"display:block;height:313px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px\"></a>We present an explanation for the choice of rows using a member’s implicit genre preferences – recent plays, ratings, and other interactions --, or explicit feedback provided through our taste preferences survey. We will also invite members to focus a row with additional explicit preference feedback when this is lacking. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BahcJNmTAIo/T3-lJpezFWI/AAAAAAAAAQg/bdG3PshmYxk/s1600/Gernres-Support.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BahcJNmTAIo/T3-lJpezFWI/AAAAAAAAAQg/bdG3PshmYxk/s400/Gernres-Support.png\" style=\"display:block;height:251px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:496px\"></a><br><b>Similarity</b> is also an important source of personalization in our service. We think of similarity in a very broad sense; it can be between movies or between members, and can be in multiple dimensions such as metadata, ratings, or viewing data. Furthermore, these similarities can be blended and used as features in other models. Similarity is used in multiple contexts, for example in response to a member's action such as searching or adding a title to the queue. It is also used to generate rows of “adhoc genres” based on similarity to titles that a member has interacted with recently. If you are interested in a more in-depth description of the architecture of the similarity system, you can read about it in <a href=\"http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/04/more-like-this-building-network-of.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">this past post </a>on the blog. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nwqTSsUbP5E/T3-lgm7ngVI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/kuPEp_kUfD8/s1600/Similars-UserActions.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nwqTSsUbP5E/T3-lgm7ngVI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/kuPEp_kUfD8/s400/Similars-UserActions.png\" style=\"display:block;height:358px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px\"></a><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LXTZI-bjsiE/T3-lg_NvSVI/AAAAAAAAARE/UUMlOEyX_5o/s1600/Similars-Rows.png\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LXTZI-bjsiE/T3-lg_NvSVI/AAAAAAAAARE/UUMlOEyX_5o/s400/Similars-Rows.png\" style=\"display:block;height:228px;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px\"></a></div><div style=\"color:#333333\">In most of the previous contexts – be it in the Top10 row, the genres, or the similars – <b>ranking</b>, the choice of what order to place the items in a row, is critical in providing an effective personalized experience. The goal of our ranking system is to find the best possible ordering of a set of items for a member, within a specific context, in real-time. We decompose ranking into scoring, sorting, and filtering sets of movies for presentation to a member. Our business objective is to maximize member satisfaction and month-to-month subscription retention, which correlates well with maximizing consumption of video content. We therefore optimize our algorithms to give the highest scores to titles that a member is most likely to play and enjoy.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\">Now it is clear that the Netflix Prize objective, accurate prediction of a movie's rating, is just one of the many components of an effective recommendation system that optimizes our members enjoyment. We also need to take into account factors such as context, title popularity, interest, evidence, novelty, diversity, and freshness. Supporting all the different contexts in which we want to make recommendations requires a range of algorithms that are tuned to the needs of those contexts. In the next part of this post, we will talk in more detail about the ranking problem. We will also dive into the data and models that make all the above possible and discuss our approach to innovating in this space.</div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><span style=\"font-size:large\"><a href=\"http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/06/netflix-recommendations-beyond-5-stars.html\">On to part 2</a> </span></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br></div><div style=\"color:#333333\"><br></div><span style=\"display:block\"></span>"
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"title" : "Bringing Moneyball to boxing",
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"content" : "\"Hit and don't get hit,\" goes the old adage in boxing. And from a statistical perspective, at least, it seems no one is better at living up to that credo than Floyd Mayweather Jr.<br><br>According to Bob Canobbio, owner and founder of CompuBox -- a computerized scoring system that counts every punch a boxer throws and lands -- Mayweather's average connect rate of 46 percent, compiled during his past nine fights (a \"prime\" designated by CompuBox), ranks as the best among current active fighters. ...<br><br>More impressive than Mayweather's own connect percentage is that of Floyd's opponents against him. They land a mere 16 percent of punches thrown, the lowest collective figure recorded in CompuBox's 4,000-fight database. ...<br><br>Subtract the average connect percentage of Mayweather's opponents from Mayweather's own hit rate during that designated prime, and the numbers reveal an enormous chasm between Floyd and today's other top fighters.<br><br>With a plus/minus connect percentage rating of plus-30 percent, Mayweather is at least twice as effective in the hit-and-don't-get-hit game as any of his contemporaries. <br><br>So how does Pacquiao compare? The numbers are undeniably impressive. His 21.8 punches connected per round is greater than Mayweather's. But with Pacquiao, the numbers also illuminate his most glaring weakness, one he shares with countless other warriors of the ring: He gets hit a lot.<br><br>Measured against Mayweather's plus-30 rating at 147 pounds, Pacquiao's plus/minus is puny (plus-4.7). Manny throws his jab twice as often as Mayweather, but he connects with that punch only 12.3 percent of the time, compared with Mayweather's 41.6 percent jab connect rate.<br><br>More telling is the comparison of power punching. Pacquiao's connect rate on power punches is an astronomical 45.3 percent, only slightly below that of Mayweather, who lands at 47.8 percent. But opponents land 33.6 percent of their punches on PacMan. Pretty Boy's foes? They touch him up at roughly half that rate (18.6 percent). ...<br><br>Statistically speaking, Mayweather clearly reigns supreme over his contemporaries. But he also stacks up very well against history's pugilistic pantheon. ...<br><br>In a plus/minus comparison, greats such as Marvin Hagler (plus-17 percent) and Sugar Ray Leonard (plus-13 percent) don't come close. Roberto Duran (plus-8 percent), Thomas Hearns (plus-6 percent) and Muhammad Ali (plus-4 percent) fall short, too. ...<br><br>Only heavyweight great Joe Louis, at plus-26 percent, approached Mayweather's peak. <br><i>--Igor Guryashkin, ESPN.com, on <a href=\"http://espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id/7780088/floyd-mayweather-jr-measures-boxing-greats\">the greatest plus-minus of all time</a></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-1068850910268089555?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><div style=\"width:332px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-6697\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/04/05/mali-how-bad-can-it-get-a-conversation-with-isaie-dougnon-bruce-hall-baz-lecocq-gregory-mann-and-bruce-whitehouse/post_coup/\"><img title=\"post_coup\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/post_coup.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"322\" height=\"223\"></a><p>After the coup: a long road back for Mali.</p></div><p><strong>Edited by Baz Lecocq and Gregory Mann, from a conversation on 3 April 2012.</strong></p><p>From dusk till late evening, you can find small groups of young people sitting on street corners, in front of houses, or in courtyards across West Africa. There will inevitably be a little radio, playing music and broadcasting news. The ‘junior’ of the group is busy brewing and passing round small glasses of tea, while the others hang out, play cards, and discuss the news they hear, whether it comes from Radio France Internationale or sidewalk radio. In Mali, such a group is called a grin. Below, a virtual grin, a group chat among five researchers discussing the news on Mali, from wherever it comes.</p><p><strong>The news is bad</strong></p><p>On 22 March, a military putsch chased President Amadou Toumani Touré from power, mere weeks before the end of his final mandate. In the two weeks since, Malian civil society has rejected the junta with near unanimity, while calling for a restoration of the constitutional order. Profiting from the confusion, a rebellion in the Malian Sahara has gained incredible momentum, effectively splitting the country in two. Meanwhile, the international community has roundly condemned the coup, and on Monday ECOWAS imposed harsh sanctions. So where are we now?</p><p><strong>Our contributors</strong></p><p><strong>Isaie Dougnon </strong>(ID) lectures Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Bamako. He is currently a Fulbright scholar at the University of Florida.</p><p><strong>Bruce Hall</strong> (BH) lectures African history at Duke University.</p><p><strong>Baz Lecocq</strong> (BL) lectures African history at Gent University.</p><p><strong>Gregory Mann </strong>(GM) lectures African history at Columbia University.</p><p><strong>Bruce Whitehouse </strong>(BW) is a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bamako and a member of the Anthropology Department at Lehigh University.</p><p><strong>ON THE COUP d’ETAT</strong></p><p>GM: Let’s begin with the coup itself—was it planned or spontaneous? “Accidental” or intended?</p><p>BW: I keep seeing the term “accidental coup” on the internet, and it seems appropriate to me.</p><p>ID: The coup was planned. It was low-ranking soldiers contesting ATT’s management of the conflict in the North and the irresponsibility of the military hierarchy. It wasn’t an accident; since mid-January rumors of a coup have been widespread in Bamako.</p><p>GM: But, Isaie, very often, in fact, there have been rumors of coups…</p><p>BL: Are rumors and fear of a coup proof that the coup was planned? I agree with Isaie that the coup is the result of these disgruntlements, but is that planning?</p><p>GM: I believe it was more improvised than accidental. I think they had thought of it. They might not have known it would be that day, but knew if they were to do it, it had to be soon.</p><p>BW: I agree that, in a sense, people could see these events coming… but I don’t believe Captain Sanogo got out of bed on 21 March with the idea of mounting a coup. Here’s why I think it was improvised: the coup plotters’ rationale/justification was incoherent and wide-ranging; it took them over 12 hours after capturing the TV station to broadcast a statement. Their junta name and acronym are so awkward they couldn’t possibly have been planned in advance!</p><p>GM: Bruce, you’re right that it was poorly planned, but if we look back at the coup of 1968, there are the same delays and confusion.</p><p><strong>DYNAMICS INSIDE THE MILITARY</strong></p><p>BH: Why were the military officers unable to contain the so-called mutiny in Kati, or for that matter elsewhere, once the coup had been staged?</p><p>ID: Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) was informed long ago that the garrison at Kati might carry out a coup against him: why did he not take any measures to prevent it? This is the puzzle for me. As soon as he heard about the coup, he called back a group of Red Berets (the Presidential Guard) from the battlefield in order to protect the presidential palace and organize his escape. The Red Berets had only one goal: to protect the bodily integrity of ATT.</p><p>BW: I think there’s been a growing gulf between senior officers and the rank-and-file in the Malian military. The former have been associated with politics and corruption, so some of the latter felt they could bypass them altogether in taking this initiative to seize power.</p><p>BH: It seems to me that the collapse of the military in the North these last ten days or so is directly related to the officers’ unwillingness to put down the mutiny.</p><p>GM: It’s also due to these guys being terrified. Before the coup, RFI broadcast interviews of soldiers who had fled to Niger to avoid fighting!</p><p>BH: I mean only to ask the question really, but it seems to me strange that a mutiny could occur in Kati, if indeed it was that, that it would face almost no resistance from the command structure of the military and government, so that there were no loyalist units prepared to confront the mutineers. The same thing seems to have happened in the northern garrisons. In Timbuktu for example, which I have followed most closely, there was no violence in the mutiny and arrest of the military leaders and government leaders in the town.</p><p>ID: Sanogo and his group have been sending message to their fellows who were in the North not to fight, because they said ATT was behind the Tuareg rebels. So nobody wants to fight when the president is not supporting them.</p><p>BH: The issue of the morale of the troops explains something, but it should not explain the complete collapse of will among the officers. So was this an army rebellion rather than a mutiny of low level troops and officers?</p><p>ID: Most of the Malian officers became “civil servants” in different ministries. A huge number of our officers have been fighting to get involved in UN peacekeeping missions in other parts of Africa and the world. Don’t forget about the well-funded UNDP program to train the Malian army to be an army for development and peacekeeping, which ran from 1996 to 2002.</p><p>BL: In that case: where are the officers now? Isn’t it too conspiracy-oriented to think they are still there behind the scenes, invisible?</p><p>GM: … although it was generally reported that these were low-level officers, in fact a Colonel and a Lt-Colonel are central figures in the junta: Lt.-Col. Konare and Col. Moussa Coulibaly, who is “chef de cabinet,” according to an interview Sanogo gave on RFI this morning.</p><p>BW: We didn’t see any senior officers affiliated with the CNRDRE on Television until they read the “new constitution” a few days ago.</p><p>BL: The appearance now of senior officers can mean two things: they were behind the scenes all along, or they have recently rallied for unknown reasons so far.</p><p><strong>CIVILIAN SUPPORT OR OPPOSITION?</strong></p><p>GM: It would appear the junta has managed to expand within the army but has had very little success in acquiring real civilian allies. Thoughts on that anyone?</p><p>BW: The SADI political party and its spokesman Oumar Mariko remain the junta’s most visible supporters, plus a few specific newspapers.</p><p>GM: Yes, always Mariko, but not a lot of other support from among the politicians, no?</p><p>BW: I wonder how much weight Mariko or his party really carry?</p><p>GM: To me the guy is a minor figure, although he was apparently behind the airport events on Thursday the 29th, when the ECOWAS delegation was turned back because protestors were on the tarmac.</p><p>GM: But Sanogo said later that the junta does not want to be involved with Mariko and SADI, without naming them directly. This is Mariko’s chance to go from minor to major, since among the politicians, hardly anyone else will affiliate with the junta so far.</p><p>BH: Given the collapse of the army in the North is there much support left for the coup, or is it now seen as a losing horse to bet on?</p><p>BW: I think the CNRDRE and SADI have been trying to paint the current struggle as “Mali vs. foreign powers” or “Mali vs. France,” but most Bamakois I’ve talked to aren’t buying it. Then again, I tend not to hang around with hot-headed young men!</p><p>GM: But won’t the embargo give the CNRDRE and Mariko’s message regarding outside interference more traction?</p><p>BW: I think that’s a big risk, Greg. But so far the people I’ve talked to just think Sanogo should exit. They perceive him staying on as his putting personal interests above those of the nation.</p><p>BH: It seems to me that one of the questions a number of people have raised is the extent to which this coup has popular backing.</p><p>BW: Absolutely Bruce, but frustration with the elite doesn’t automatically translate into support for the junta – especially when the latter has made major errors (failure to stop looting or complicity in looting, aggravating international isolation, losing the north…).</p><p>GM: Look, what I hear from Bamako and elsewhere is that prices are through the roof and people are anxious, there’s not even much traffic today in Bamako. I think that popular support won’t last and is already fading fast.</p><p>BH: I am not arguing that the junta is popular. It certainly is not from the people I have talked to. But it seems that a lot of outside commentators are trying to make this argument.</p><p>GM: I think it’s important to separate anti-ATT sentiment from pro-junta support and to place the latter in relation to the timeline of the collapse in the north.</p><p>BW: I agree with Greg that junta support seems to be slipping in Bamako, traffic is kind of normal and the market looks full, but it’s mostly vendors rather than shoppers. A lot of people are avoiding the downtown area altogether (and not just expats!).</p><p>ID: You know, the junta just wanted to kick out ATT and get somebody else to monitor the fight in North, but as soon as this happened, Mariko and other politicians surrounded the junta to ask it to set up a transitional regime.</p><p>GM: Isaie, you are right—and I think that it is interesting that Sanogo suggested he would not accept them. On the other hand, I think Sanogo does not understand the political world he has gotten himself into.</p><p>BW: Some people here believe Sanogo is purely apolitical and just wants to find someone suitably apolitical to oversee the transition, that’s the only reason he’s refused to hand over power so soon.</p><p>BL: If Sanogo is apolitical and wants to hand over power, why did he have his presidential portrait made so soon?</p><p>ID: Sanogo has no clue as to what it is like to lead a country, he is just influenced by many who think that it’s their turn to “eat.”</p><p><strong>ECOWAS and THE EMBARGO</strong></p><p>GM: Have ECOWAS – and particularly its current president Alassane Dramane Ouattara of the Cote d’Ivoire – pushed too hard and too fast?</p><p>BW: All the Bamakois I’ve spoken to say YES. Plus they don’t like the belligerent tone struck by Yayi Boni, President of Benin and Chairperson of the African Union.</p><p>BH: I also think that given what happened in Cote d’Ivoire last year, ECOWAS is going to play hardball with this.</p><p>BL: I fully agree.</p><p>BW: I do too, Bruce. President Ouattara’s experience last year has led him to push for rapid action rather than the gradual approach that stretched the Cote d’Ivoire’s post-elections crisis out into months.</p><p>BH: It seems to me this is the most likely way to be effective</p><p>ID: If the embargo continues, I am sure in one week Bamako’s population would chase Sanogo from power.</p><p>GM: Time is of the essence, then?</p><p>BW: Maybe not a week, but definitely less than a month.</p><p><strong>THE CRISIS IN THE NORTH</strong></p><p>GM: Does Mali even have that kind of time to play with? I wonder if the North can afford that much time in terms of humanitarian intervention and the shipping of food aid. Ouattara is talking military intervention against the junta. Meanwhile, Sanogo is asking for ECOWAS’ help against the Tuareg rebels of the MNLA, et al. Thoughts on this?</p><p>ID: Mali cannot get any help as long as Sanogo hangs on to power.</p><p>BW: I think Malians would welcome ECOWAS’ help in taking on the MNLA. But let’s be honest, the last thing Mali needs right now is thousands of ECOWAS soldiers with automatic weapons running loose on its territory.</p><p>BH: It’s already over in the north. There is nothing to do until a proper administration is in charge in Bamako. And then, it will be a tough job getting back up there.</p><p>BW: I don’t think the “international community” will accept a partition of Mali, especially not if Islamists are involved</p><p>BH: They may not accept it, but as we have seen in Somalia, they may have to live with it…</p><p>GM: Would the best way out, then, be for whoever is in power in Bamako to give MNLA a lot of what it wants in exchange for its opposition to Ansar Dine, et al.?</p><p>ID: The problem is not MNLA, it’s Ansar Dine and other terrorist groups.</p><p>BL: But even that won’t mean it’s over – I just read that the World Food Program and other big NGOs are pulling out of the North.</p><p>GM: Look, a low level insurgency in the North is one thing – outside the cities this has been going on for years, as you know – but the entire North as a “no-go area” is another question. The UN World Food Programme is pulling back at a very difficult moment. But what can they do? The MNLA is going to be responsible for a humanitarian disaster that their media wing will have a hard time covering up.</p><p>BW: Baz, do you think there’s a way for the Tuareg population to accept anything less than full territorial sovereignty of the “Azawad”?</p><p>BL: Yes. I don’t think support for the MNLA is very high, not en brousse, while Ansar Dine and others are very unpopular with locals.</p><p>BW: Can you give us an idea of who the MNLA’s supporters are?</p><p>BL: They are city-based Tuareg, mostly from the Kidal region and part of the Gao region. I suspect many Tuareg from around Timbuktu have turned over too after the sackings of Tuareg homes and businesses in Kati.</p><p>BW: Baz, does the MNLA’s urban base explain the fact that they weren’t able to hold on to Timbuktu?</p><p>BL: Were they not? Was their withdrawal forced as is claimed?</p><p>BW: The Ansar Dine drove them out!</p><p>BH: The MNLA were not driven out of Timbuktu from what I hear from people there. Just that there were only ten or so 4x4s of the MNLA in the first place, and that they left the next day after “taking” the city. This is when Iyad ag Ghali, the leader of the Ansar Dine, came to Timbuktu.</p><p>GM: You know the North – no one knows for sure what’s what. But I heard the same thing directly from Gao – that the MNLA had withdrawn, that the Ansar Dine remained.</p><p>BL: My take is that the MNLA is not trying to hold the cities for the moment. They are interested in the strategic positions to hold the North against the Army. So they leave Ansar and company a free hand to “play sharia,” which is a bad move as it gives them bad press.</p><p><strong>ON THE MNLA AND THE ANSAR DINE…</strong></p><p>GM: So how long can the MNLA / Ansar Dine alliance last?</p><p>BL: Is there an MNLA / Ansar Dine alliance? Or are they just coordinating attacks as long as their goals are common?</p><p>BW: What strategic interest does the MNLA have in allying with Ansar Dine? Don’t they realize this is the kiss of death in terms of their image abroad?</p><p>BL: They do realize that and deny all alliance formally.</p><p>GM: Yes, they swear up and down that there is no alliance… My take is that the MNLA is trying to disentangle itself from the Ansar Dine, but failing to do so. You are right. This is a disaster for their public image. But who is playing whom?</p><p>BW: Maybe the “alliance” exists more in the Bamako papers than in reality?</p><p>BL: I am afraid so. Read articles carefully – most analysis of the North is based on people in the South, plus some phone calls.</p><p>GM: Hold on, these look like clear joint actions between the MNLA and Ansar Dine, which the MNLA denies for political reasons, while Ansar Dine remains mute. The question is when will it break down, will it be sooner or later?</p><p>BH: The one lesson of Northern Malian history is that unity is unlikely to hold.</p><p><strong>CIVIL WAR IN THE NORTH and MILITIAS</strong></p><p>ID: I fear a civil war in Mali’s North.</p><p>BW: Isaie, when you say you fear a civil war in the north, do you mean the central government against the Tuareg rebels, or the MNLA vs. Ansar Dine, or some other combination?</p><p>ID: By civil war, I mean war between different Northern ethnic groups.</p><p>BH: Civil war in the North is very likely.</p><p>GM: Can we talk about the militias, “Arab” and others?</p><p>BL: Isaie you’re right, we have not seen or heard the last of the Ganda Koy and Gando Izo militias.</p><p>GM: The junta has started to arm militias—some were killed last week in fighting.</p><p>ID: The munitions from the Gao army base have been distributed to the civilian population.</p><p>BL: Bruce, didn’t that also happen in Timbuktu?</p><p>BH: The army was arming militias in Timbuktu since January and giving them training – calling them neighborhood brigades. Also the Timbuktu Arab militias have had government support, arms and training for a number of years now. The collapse of the army in the North led to looting of arms in the military camps. I think it is a safe bet that this is far closer to the beginning of this story in the North than the end… If you want to know what is going to happen in the North, listen to all the MNLA spokespeople who insist that they want an Azawad for the blacks and whites. They constantly use this language of race but I think they doth protest too much. The North is in a mess that it will not get out of easily or soon.</p><p>BW: Does anyone think the fighting will extend further south than it already has?</p><p>BL: No, there will be no fighting in the South. The MNLA won’t risk it, and Ansar Dine is too small.</p><p>GM: On the other hand, whether or not the MNLA or Ansar Dine push on South, what is likely to happen is extreme insecurity, banditry, etc., throughout the country. This will be hard to attribute to any political group.</p><p>ID: I think MNLA does not weigh in the current situation; it has a very good communication strategy, but no military force.</p><p>BH: MNLA spokespeople keep bringing this up unprompted. I think it points to what they know is really the central problem that cannot be resolved even by taking the territory. There is no Tuareg homeland.</p><p>GM: Baz, do you agree that there is “no Tuareg homeland?”</p><p>BL: There was no Mali in 1960 either, or most other national states in Africa for that matter. Homelands are in the mind and can become real or not. The problem is the Niger River and the Inner Delta; there are many Tuareg living there. Many don’t mind at all being Malian.</p><p>BH: But since the 1950s, the problem of borders and shared territory has rendered a geographic homeland impossible.</p><p><strong>INTERVENTION, THE MNLA, PREDICTIONS</strong></p><p>GM: Is there a productive role for other outsiders to play—the UN, France, the USA?</p><p>BH: Ending the coup is the single most productive thing outsiders can do, in my view.</p><p>BL: France is ambiguous. Its press over the last few days is too eager to stress the Islamist story over all others. Is this preparation for an intervention?</p><p>ID: France was always ambiguous as far as Mali is concerned.</p><p>BW: France has already ruled out intervention. But it’s hard for me to see France playing a productive role, if only because so many Malians see it as the incarnation of all evil for some reason. The USA has a better reputation in Bamako, but I can’t see any involvement in an election year.</p><p>GM: France will act like it owns the dossier in the UN, etc., as if it were a responsible party rather than a reckless actor (as in Libya)…</p><p>ID: I am not against the military intervention against the junta, it’s the only way to speed the humanitarian aid and to begin negotiation with the rebels.</p><p>BW: Isaie, you’d welcome thousands of foreign soldiers on Malian soil?</p><p>GM: I tend to think that an ECOWAS military intervention – boots on ground – would be a disaster in all respects.</p><p>BW: Me, too.</p><p>ID: It’s more and more clear even for France, the MNLA’s European Union ally, that the radical Islamists are more powerful than the MNLA.</p><p>BL: Isaie, that is simply not known. No one knows the real strength of either movement.</p><p>GM: Yes, Baz, but it is widely believed that the MNLA has enjoyed French support.</p><p>ID: France seems to be in an MNLA trap, since they promise to liberate the French hostages from AQMI.</p><p>BL: Greg, yes, that’s true, but, Isaie, no one knows who is the stronger party in the North, no one knows why the MNLA retreated, if it did. No one knows much because there’s no communication…</p><p><strong>LIBYA AND NIGER</strong></p><p>BW: Can we discuss the Libya angle? Many journalists and some political actors in Bamako are describing Mali’s current crisis as a more-or-less direct effect of NATO’s bombing campaign. How do you all feel about this question?</p><p>GM: Yes, the argument that NATO saved Benghazi to lose Timbuktu…</p><p>BL: I still think the connection between the Tuareg uprising and the Libyan arms they brought does in fact exist, but was not a cause or decisive factor in the rebellion. If the Tuareg want arms they can get them anyway, they have proven that before. The MNA, the MNLA’s political wing, existed before the Libyan crisis broke out and the ATNMC, one of the MNLA’s main military wings, dates from the 2006 rebellion. Everything was in place except a bunch of arms.</p><p>GM: But Baz, was the return of Ibrahim Bahanga and Mohamed ag Najim and his fighters not a decisive factor in battles in the North that soured the army on ATT?</p><p>BH: The Libyan campaign did lead to this directly, even if it did not provide the motivation or create the history and imagination of what might be accomplished.</p><p>BL: I agree, but if “Libya” had not happened, the current uprising might still have happened with weapons coming from elsewhere.</p><p>GM: So was the Libyan campaign “a cause or decisive factor”?</p><p>BH: I think the bombardment of Libya was absolutely decisive in the timing of this, in the access to weapons and organization of many people forcibly returning to Mali at the same time. However, absent the Libyan campaign, such a conflict in northern Mali was always likely at some point or another.</p><p>BL: It was a trigger, but a circumstantial one.</p><p>ID: Regarding Libya, there are three further factors to consider: first, the subordination of Mali’s policies to Qaddafi since the time of Alpha Oumar Konare from 1992 to 2002; second, the role of Qaddafi in security issues in the Sahel,; and third, the war in Libya and the return from there of thousands of heavily armed soldiers.</p><p>BL: But many of those returnees wanted to join Mali’s army, not fight it!</p><p>BW: Didn’t Nigerien Tuareg also go to Libya? If so, why didn’t they come home and destabilize Niger?</p><p>BL: Exactly! They had no motivation to do so, and the history of state-Tuareg relations in Niger is very different from that in Mali.</p><p>GM: It appears that Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou has a tight lid on the North of his country, and he seems to have a big investment project at work there.</p><p>ID: There is a big difference between Niger and Mali: ATT let the armed ex-Qaddafi fighters enter Mali. This is a puzzle.</p><p>BH: It is important also for those not so versed in Sahelian affairs, that the Libyan conflict has had wide repercussions that were unintended if not entirely unpredictable.</p><p>GM: Even effects that were really very predicable!</p><p><strong>WRAP-UP</strong></p><p>GM: Let’s wrap up: Where are we now?</p><p>ID: I am asking myself whether ATT has any idea of what it means to secure a country. Since 2005, the current MNLA fighters were allowed to leave Mali with arms and munitions, go and store them in the Iforas Mountains, and return to Mali’s army. They did this coming and going until 2010. Having acquired enough arms, they declared war on Mali. This means they bite the hands that fed them.</p><p>BL: Realpolitik: keep international pressure on Sanogo, support the MNLA in its struggle with Ansar – a struggle that will be coming anyway – settle for negotiations with some real change for the North regarding administration and real infrastructure investments, get peace soon and help victims of drought before mid-May.</p><p>BW: I don’t see any promising ways forward. The central government needs outside help to combat the rebellion, but we can agree that an ECOWAS military intervention would bring all sorts of unwelcome consequences, even if it managed to temporarily address the security issue.</p><p>BH: My fear is that it is very hard to put together a state that has collapsed like this. I remember the years of banditry outside Timbuktu after the rebellion [of the 1990s], just because this had become a viable living for some in the disorder of the conflict. I suspect that there are going to be many long years ahead for Northern Mali. I hope the rest of the country will not go down the same hole. I also think we need to remember that some people benefit from the political economy of war. In the north, there are quite of few interests lined up against peace. And there is going to be a very large humanitarian crisis in the North very soon.</p><p>GM: I agree, Bruce. It will be a long road back—for the North, for all of Mali, but also for the idea of representative and inclusive government.</p><p>ID: The way forward: there is no military solution to this war, as Mali has no army to fight with. So ECOWAS has to mobilize the UN, and the US to disarm the armed groups and restore Mali’s territorial integrity.</p><p><strong>For more analysis on the current situation in Mali </strong><strong><a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/category/politics-now/mali/\">click here</a></strong></p>"
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"title" : "A tale of two Mogadishus",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/somalia1_0.jpg\"></div><p>\nIn media, timing is key to breaking news and getting recognized for original journalism. But it can also sting you, as <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/vogue-defends-profile-of-syrian-first-lady/71764/\"><i>Vogue</i></a> and <a href=\"http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/04/travel-mag-struggles-coordinate-publishing-schedule-middle-east-revolutions/36567/\"><i>Condé Nast Traveler</i></a> learned during the Arab Spring after publishing, respectively, a <a href=\"http://www.presidentassad.net/ASMA_AL_ASSAD/Asma_Al_Assad_News_2011/Asma_Assad_Vogue_February_2011.htm\">glowing profile</a> of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad and a list of the "<a href=\"http://www.cntraveler.com/features/2011/04/The-Informer-The-15-Best-Places-to-See-Right-Now\">15 Best Places to See Right Now</a>" that included Libya.\n</p>\n<p>\nToday, the <i>New York Times</i> fell victim to the timing trap. The paper <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/images/2012/04/04/nytfrontpage/scannat.jpg\">led its print edition</a> with a story by Jeffrey Gettleman entitled "<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/world/africa/somalis-embrace-hope-and-reconstruction-in-mogadishu.html?_r=1&ref=world\">A Taste of Hope in Somalia's Battered Capital</a>," only for a suicide bomber to <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/world/africa/deadly-blast-shatters-calm-in-somali-capital.html?ref=world\">attack</a> a gathering of Somali officials this morning in Mogadishu's National Theater, killing the heads of Somalia's Olympic committee and soccer federation, among others. \n</p>\n<p>\nGettleman had even mentioned the National Theater in his piece (key lines in bold):\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tOutside, on Mogadishu's streets, the thwat-thwat-thwat hammering sound that\n\trings out in the mornings is not the clatter of machine guns but the sound of\n\tactual hammers. Construction is going on everywhere - new hospitals, new homes,\n\tnew shops, a six-story hotel and even sports bars (albeit serving cappuccino\n\tand fruit juice instead of beer). Painters are painting again, and <b>Somali\n\tsingers just held their first concert in more than two decades at the National\n\tTheater, which used to be a weapons depot and then a national toilet.</b> Up next:\n\ta televised, countrywide talent show, essentially "Somali Idol."\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMogadishu, Somalia's\n\tcapital, which had been reduced to rubble during 21 years of civil war,\n\tbecoming a byword for anarchy, is making a remarkable comeback. The Shabab, the fearsome insurgents who\n\tonce controlled much of the country, withdrew from the city in August and have\n\tbeen besieged on multiple sides by troops from the African Union, Kenya,\n\tEthiopia and an array of local militias. \n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nToday the theater is a scene not of cultural renaissance but of carnage:\n</p>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http://foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/120404_Somalia3.jpg\">\n</p>\n<p>\nYet only weeks ago, when the theater was reopened, the atmosphere at the Chinese-built complex very much matched Gettleman's description:\n</p>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http://foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/120404_Somalia4.jpg\"> \n</p>\n<p>\nOn Twitter, some people are tweaking the <i>Times</i> for being a bit trigger-happy on the optimism ("NYT story on <a href=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/#%21/search/%23Somalia\" title=\"#Somalia\"><s>#</s>Somalia</a> illustrates the danger of proclaiming peace in such\nplaces; new violence was bound to happen," <a href=\"https://twitter.com/barbaraslavin1/status/187540250120290304\">argued</a> the Atlantic Council's Barbara Slavin), while others are simply discouraged ("Wanted so badly to believe NYT's article on Somalia today," photographer Ed Suter <a href=\"https://twitter.com/EdSuter/status/187536173491695616\">wrote</a>. "Guess it was a bit premature").\n</p>\n<p>\nThe <i>Times</i>, for its part, has put the two stories into a dialogue of sorts on the World page. \n</p>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http://foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/120404_Somalia2.JPG\"> \n</p>\n<p>\nAnd it's worth pointing out that Gettleman tempered his report with the sober assessment that Mogadishu "and the rest of Somalia still have a long way to go," citing a recent attack on the presidential palace in the capital as just one example. \n</p>\n<p>\n"Who says it's just bad news coming out of Somalia?" Gettleman <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gettleman/status/187495726975168512\">tweeted</a> early this morning. Indeed, any positive news out of war-torn Somalia is welcome. In the news business, sadly, you can never pick the right day to highlight a heartwarming story.\n</p>"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">\nThierry Nyamen founder of <a href=\"http://www.tanty.cm/index.php\">NT Foods</a> speaks to the BBC:\n<br>\n<blockquote>\n<table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xARpMO4STPM/T20Ubft-M8I/AAAAAAAAJJc/88CvMZWVoLY/s1600/_58985274_thierry-nyamen-8a.jpeg\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"180\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xARpMO4STPM/T20Ubft-M8I/AAAAAAAAJJc/88CvMZWVoLY/s320/_58985274_thierry-nyamen-8a.jpeg\" width=\"320\"></a></td></tr>\n<tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\">Image courtesy of the BBC</span></td></tr>\n</tbody></table>\nWhen he completed his studies, in 1999, he applied for several engineering jobs in Cameroon but, in spite of having a doctorate, he did not get any replies.\n<br>\n<br>\nHe then designed his dream machine and started to make peanut powder. To advertise it and to make ends meet, he worked as a <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=cook\">cook</a> for a year in the capital, Yaounde.\n<br>\n<br>\n\"In 2000 I started to cook <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=groundnut\">groundnut</a> sauce with rice on the road. It was so difficult. Some of my friends called me a madman. 'Are you sure that you have a PhD?',\" Mr Nyamen told the BBC Africa's Randy Joe Sa'ah.</blockquote>\nContinuing:<br>\n<blockquote>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\">\n<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OtqnbnS3Urw/T20U71-V2qI/AAAAAAAAJJk/3MXEGXrTrBU/s1600/set.jpeg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OtqnbnS3Urw/T20U71-V2qI/AAAAAAAAJJk/3MXEGXrTrBU/s1600/set.jpeg\"></a></div>\n...the firm initially centred on the production of peanut powder and oil, it quickly diversified and started making things like <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=soybean\">soybean</a> pap enriched with fruit or fish powder.\n<br>\n<br>\n\"We created a pap especially for children. Oh, we were selling!\" the entrepreneur said.\n<br>\n<br>\nThe most recent products include packaged <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=plantain\">plantain</a> <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=chips\">chips</a>, <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=peanuts\">peanuts</a> and <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=coconuts\">coconuts</a>.\n<br>\n<br>\nMr Nyamen believes that <b>Cameroon has no need to import food from Europe or elsewhere and that, on the contrary, it should export more</b>.\n<br>\n<br>\n\"The main purpose of our company, NT Food, is <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=food+processing\">food processing</a>, give value to our local products. You know, we used to talk about globalisation; it's to show that we have something to put in that market.\"</blockquote>\nMore <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17277923\">here</a></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5905104-7099226965337792425?l=timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/devu2bn8tviio8d4ritmj8i204/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Ftimbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com%2F2012%2F04%2Fnt-foods-and-business-of-food.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/cNFJo/~4/U7Odv_BffRU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "On Academic Talks: Memory and Fear",
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"content" : "<blockquote><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: 2000 words of advice to\nlarval academics, based on mere guesswork and ill-assimilated\npsychology.</blockquote>\n\n<p>It being the season for job-interview talks, student exam presentations,\netc., the problems novices have with giving them are much on my mind. And\nsince I find myself composing the same e-mail of advice over and over, why not\nwrite it out once and for all?\n\n<p>Once you understand the purpose of academic talks, it becomes clear that the\ntwo fundamental obstacles to giving good talks are memory and fear.\n\n<p>The point of academic talk is to try to persuade your audience to agree with\nyou about your research. This means that you need to raise a structure of\nargument in their minds, in less than an hour, using just your voice, your\nslides, and your body-language. Your audience, for its part, has no tools\navailable to it but its ears, eyes, and mind. (Their phones do not, in this\nrespect, help.)\n\n<p>This is a <em>crazy</em> way of trying to convey the intricacies of a\ncomplex argument. Without external aids like writing and reading, the mind of\nthe East African Plains Ape has little ability to grasp, and more importantly\nto remember, new information. (The great psychologist George\nMiller <a href=\"http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/\">estimated</a> the number of\npieces of information we can hold in short-term memory as \"the magical number\nseven, plus or minus two\", but this may if anything be an over-estimate.)\nKeeping in mind all the details of an academic argument would certainly exceed\nthat slight capacity<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/#n1\" name=\"b1\">*</a>. When you over-load your\naudience, they get confused and cranky, and they will either tune you out or\navenge themselves on the obvious source of their discomfort, namely you.\n\n<p>Therefore, do not overload your audience, and do not even <em>try</em> to\nconvey all the intricacies of a complex academic argument in your talk. The\nproper goal of an academic talk is to convey a reasonably\npersuasive <em>sketch</em> of your argument, so that your audience are better\ninformed about the subject, get why they should care, and are usefully oriented\nto what you wrote if and when they decide to read your paper. In many ways a\ntalk is really an extended oral abstract for your paper. (This is more\neffective if those who are interested can read your paper, at an open pre-print\narchive or at least on your website.) Success in this means keeping your\naudience's load low, and there are two big ways to do that: make it easier for\nthem to remember what matters, and reduce what they have to remember.\n\n<p>People can remember things more easily if they have a scheme they can relate\nthem to, which helps them appreciate their relevance. Your audience will come\nto the talk with various schemata; use them.\n<ul>\n<li> Use their existing schema to help them see why they should care about what\nyou're talking about. Why should it interest or matter to them?\n<li> Make sure to relate your new information to ideas the audience is already\nfamiliar with, as examples, extensions, etc.\n<li> If you must introduce new ideas, try to build up to them from things the\naudience knows, explaining how to modify those ideas to get yours, rather than\nhammering them with an unmotivated and abstract definition. (Even if you are\ntrying to persuade them that everything they think they know is wrong, and\ntheir ideas are mere nonsense, you want to be <em>understood</em>, which means\nstarting from where they are.)\n</li></li></li></ul>\nYou can and should also help your audience build new schemata.\n<ul>\n<li> Near the very beginning of your talk, <em>give</em> them a scheme or big,\nover-all picture or outline for your argument. (This is the rational kernel\nbehind the ritual of a table-of-contents slide.) The point of this outline is\nto help them grasp the relevance of the particulars you present as you go\nalong. (If it only all comes together in the end, you've lost them long before\nthe end.)\n<li> Avoid complicated sub-arguments. If you must make one, begin it with a\nsketch or outline of its own, and end them with the <em>one</em> important\nconclusion the audience needs to remember.\n</li></li></ul>\n\n<p>As for limiting the information the audience needs to remember, the main\nrule is to ask yourself \"Do they need to know this to follow the argument?\" and\n\"Will they need to remember this later?\" If they do not need to know it even\nfor a moment, cut it. (Showing or telling them details, followed by \"don't\nworry about the details\", does not work.) If they will need to remember it\nlater, emphasize it, and remind them when you need it.\n\n<p>To answer "Do they need to know this?" and "Will they have to recall this?",\nyou need to be intimately familiar with the logic of your own talk. The ideal\nof such familiarity is to have that logic committed to memory — the\nlogic, not some exact set of words. When you really understand it, when you\ngrasp all the logical connections and see why everything that's necessary is\nneeded, the argument can "carry you along" through the presentation, letting\nyou <em>compose</em> appropriate words as you go, without rote memorization.\nThis has many advantages, not least the ability to field questions.\n\n<p>As a corollary to limiting what the audience needs to remember, if you are\nusing slides, their text should be (1) prompts for your exposition and your\naudience's memory, or (2) things which are just too hard to say, like\nequations<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/#n2\" name=\"b2\">**</a>. (Do not, whatever you do, read aloud\nthe text of your slides.) But whether spoken or on the slide, cut your talk\ndown to the essentials. This requires <em>you</em> to know what is essential.\n\n<p>\"But the lovely, no the <em>divine</em>, details!\" you protest. \"All those\nfine points I checked, all the intricate work I did, all the alternatives I\nruled out? When do I get to talk about them?\" To which there are several\nresponses.\n<ol>\n<li> The point of the talk is not to please <em>you</em>, by reminding yourself\nof what a badass you are, but to tell your audience something useful and\ninteresting. (Note to graduate students: It is important that\nyou <a href=\"http://bactra.org/Zen/I-hsuan/\">internalize that you are, in fact,\na badass</a>, but it is also important that then you move on. Needing to have\nyour ego stroked by random academics listening to talks is a sign that you have\nnot yet reached this stage.) Unless something matters to your actual message,\nit really doesn't belong in the main body of the talk.\n<li> You can stick an arbitrary amount of detail in the \"I'm glad you asked\nthat\" slides, which go <em>after</em> the one which says \"Thank you for your\nattention! Any questions?\".\n<li> You also can and should put all these details in your paper, and the\npeople who really care, to whom it really matters, will go read your paper.\nOnce again, think of an academic talk as an extended oral abstract.\n</li></li></li></ol>\n\n<p>To sum up on memory, then: successful academic talks persuade your audience\nof your argument. To do this, and not instead alienate your audience, you have\nto work with their capacities and prior knowledge, and not against them.\nNegatively, this means limiting the amount of information you expect them to\nretain. Positively, you need to use, and make, schemata which help them see\nthe relevance of particulars. You can still give an awful talk this way (maybe\nyour argument is incredibly bad), but you can hardly give a good talk without\nit.\n\n<p>The major consideration in crafting the content of your talk is your\naudience's memory. The major consideration for the delivery of the talk is\nyour fear. (Your own memory is not so great, but you have of course\ninternalized the schema for your own talk, and so you can re-generate it as you\ngo, using your slides as prompts.) Public speaking, especially about something\nimportant to you, and to an audience whose opinion matters to you, is\nintimidating to many people. Fear makes you a worse public speaker; you\nmumble, you forget your place in the argument, you can't think on your feet,\nyou project insecurity (possibly by over-compensating), etc. You do not need\nto become a <em>great</em>, fearless public speaker; you do need to be adequate\nat it. The three major routes to doing this, in my experience, are\ndesensitization, dissociation, and deliberate acts.\n\n<p><em>Desensitization</em> is simple: the more you do it, and emerge\nunscathed, the less fearful you will be. Practice giving your talks to safe\nbut critical audiences. (\"But critical\" is key: you need them to tell you\nhonestly what wasn't working well. [Something can always be done better.]) If\nyou can't get a safe-but-critical audience, get an audience you don't care\nabout (e.g., some random conference), and practice on them. Remind yourself,\ntoo, that while your talk may be a big deal for you, it's rarely a big deal for\nyour audience.\n\n<p><em>Dissociation</em> is about embracing being a performer on a stage: the\naudience's idea of you is already a fictional character, so <em>play a\ncharacter</em>. It can, once again, be very liberating to separate the persona\nyou're adopting for the talk from the person you actually are. If that seems\nunethical, go read <cite>The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life</cite>. An\nold-fashioned insistence that what really matters are the ideas, and not their\nmerely human vessel, can also be helpful here.\n\n<p>Finally, <em>deliberate actions</em> are partly about communicating better,\nand partly about a fake-it-till-you-make-it <em>assumption</em> of confidence.\n(Some of these are culture-bound, so adjust as need be.) Project your voice to\nbe heard through the room. (Don't be ashamed to use a microphone if need be.)\nLook <em>at</em> your audience (not your shoes or the screen), letting your\neyes rove over them to gauge their facial expressions; don't be afraid to\nmaintain eye contact, but keep moving on. Maintain a nearly-conversational\nspeed of talking; avoid long pauses. When fielding questions, don't defer to\nsenior people or impose on your juniors; re-phrase the question before\nanswering, to make sure everyone gets it, and to give yourself time to think\nabout your reply. And for the sake of all that's holy, speak <em>to</em> the\naudience, <em>not</em> to a screen.\n\n\n<p>At the outset, I said that the two great obstacles to giving a good talk are\nmemory and fear. The converse is that if you truly understand your own\nargument, and you truly believe in it, you can convey it in a way which works\nwith your audience's memory, and overcome your own fear. The\nsheer <em>mechanics</em> of presentation will come with practice, and you will\nhave something worth presenting.\n\n\n<p><em>Further reading</em>:\n<ul>\n<li> Aristotle, <cite>Rhetoric</cite>\n<li> Erving Goffman, <cite>The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life</cite>\n<li> Albert B. Lord, <cite>The Singer of Tales</cite>\n<li> Neil Mercer, <cite>Words and Minds: How We Use Language to Think Together</cite>\n<li> <a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/simon.html\">Herbert Simon</a>, <cite>The Sciences of the Artificial</cite>\n<li> <a href=\"http://www.dan.sperber.fr/\">Dan Sperber</a> and Deirdre Wilson, <cite>Relevance: Cognition and Communication</cite>\n</li></li></li></li></li></li></ul>\n\n\n<p><span><a name=\"n1\">*</a>: Some branches of the humanities\nand the social sciences have the horrible custom of reading an academic paper\nout loud, apparently on the theory that this way none of the details get\nglossed over. The only useful advice which can be given about this is\n"Don't!". Academic prose has many virtues, but it is simply not designed for\noral communication. Moreover, all of your audience consists of people who are\nvery good at reading such prose, and can certainly do so at least as fast as\nyou can recite it. Having people recite their papers, or even prepared remarks\nwritten in the style of a paper, does nothing except waste an hour in the life\nof the speaker and the audience — and none of us has hours to\nwaste. <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/#b1\">^</a></span>\n\n<p><span><a name=\"n2\">**</a>: As a further corollary, and\nparticularly important in statistics, big tables of numbers (e.g., regression\ncoefficients) are pointless; and here \"big\" means \"larger than\n2x2\". <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/#b2\">^</a></span>\n\n<p><em>Manual trackback</em>: <a href=\"http://rulesofreason.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/how-not-to-give-an-academic-talk/\">Rules of Reason</a>;\n<a href=\"http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/04/more-advice-on-giving-talks.html\">New\nAPPS</a>; <a href=\"http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3800791\">Hacker News</a>;\n<a href=\"http://paperpools.blogspot.com/2012/04/talks-about-talks.html\">paperpools</a>; <a href=\"http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2012/04/academic-advice-grad-school-cv-academic.html\">Nanopolitan</a>;\n<a href=\"http://peadarcoyle.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/on-academic-talks-3/\">The Essence of Mathematics Is Its Freedom</a>\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_corrupting_the_young.html\">Corrupting the Young</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "A Woman's Story",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t\n<p><em style=\"padding:0px;margin:0px\">The following words appear in a collection of my blog posts about freedom entitled <a href=\"http://leanpub.com/stealthisbook\" style=\"color:#bc7134;text-decoration:none;padding:0px;margin:0px\">Steal This Book!</a> Both the book and this post are 100% free-as-in-speech and 100% free-as-in-beer.</em></p>\n<p>A little over sixty years ago, a young, intelligent black woman named Gwen was graduating from Allenby Junior Public School in Toronto. Her teacher provided her with a notice telling her where to attend secondary school the following Autumn, and she carefully carried it to her home on St. Clements Avenue, in an area that was affordable and populated by young, middle-class families. </p>\n<p>Mrs. Lois Barzey hadn't gone to university, but she had high hopes for her daughter Gwen. Lois's father—Gwen's grandfather— had come to Canada from Barbados specifically to find a better future for his children and grandchildren. Lois's brothers Layson and Leonard had gone to University. Leonard had a Harvard MBA and would later become Ontario’s first black Member of Provincial Parliament. Layson was an engineer who had invented techniques for manufacturing colour televisions.</p>\n<p>Lois read the notice and was dumbfounded. Gwen was being sent across town to a trade school, the kind of place that taught young women how to sew, cook, and type while it taught young men how to repair automobiles or pour concrete. <p></p> The next day, Lois visited the principal’s office. Why, Lois wanted to know, wasn’t Gwen going to North Toronto Collegiate, the academic school located a few blocks away. Didn’t she have the necessary marks? Had Gwen somehow failed school? The principal was soothing. Gwen would be happier in a trade school, she would learn a trade that would be useful to her in the years before she started her family. Lois argued, but got nowhere. The decision had been made. <p></p> Lois was not easily deterred. A few days later, she was back in the principal’s office with “The men of her tribe.” Gwen's grandfather and uncles crowded into the principal's office and were free with their opinions of the decision and the process. All three men were forceful, and the principal relented.</p>\n<p><div>\n<a href=\"http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/vFvdadCdkxwBAHgulHdswefaigHkanrEmqpJzGobxkJGFvziimqAacvgwDIm/North_Toronto_Collegiate_Institute.JPG.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"North_toronto_collegiate_institute\" height=\"384\" src=\"http://getfile2.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/vFvdadCdkxwBAHgulHdswefaigHkanrEmqpJzGobxkJGFvziimqAacvgwDIm/North_Toronto_Collegiate_Institute.JPG.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n</div>\n</p>\n<p><br>So the following September, Gwen went to North Toronto, played first violin in its storied orchestra, and nutured a lifelong passion for music and dance. In time she graduated, and attended the University of Toronto, the first woman in her family to do so.</p>\n<p>Like many young women, Gwen attended regular dances. At one such event, she noticed a fellow who she described as the best dancer there, by far. His name was Charles, he was white, he was tall, and he reminded her of Fred Astaire. He was athletic as well, he was a ski bum of sorts, working and skiing out west all winter and returning to Ontario for the summer. <p></p> They danced, they fell in love, they married, and they tried to rent an apartment in a decent neighbourhood. This, it turned out, was impossible. In many US states, their marriage was illegal. In Toronto, they could marry, but they couldn’t rent an apartment together as landlords were afraid of “trouble." <p></p> They would have to buy a home to live together, so they did. This was more expensive than renting, so they both needed to work. Gwen scoured the newspaper classifieds, and saw that Empire Life was hiring young men for a career in “data processing,” no experience required. They invited applicants to attend a “cattle call” interview, so Gwen attended, on time and neatly dressed.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><div>\n<a href=\"http://getfile3.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/mnnpDhrvCshkdmAAAvGraatffxhDaCdvdrFfApmrxHkoGAwHcxbJwJoigwAz/punch.gif.scaled1000.gif\"><img alt=\"Punch\" height=\"269\" src=\"http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/mnnpDhrvCshkdmAAAvGraatffxhDaCdvdrFfApmrxHkoGAwHcxbJwJoigwAz/punch.gif.scaled500.gif\" width=\"500\"></a>\n</div>\n<p></p> She was, she recalled, the only woman. She was also the only black person. A crowd of young men were lined up in front of some tables, where some women were handing out aptitude tests. When Gwen reached the front of the line, the women tried to be helpful. “Yes, we are hiring keypunchers, but you’re in the wrong room.” Gwen had learned how to be forceful, but she also learned some tact. And she needed that job. <p></p> “Couldn’t I just try the test? No harm in that?” <p></p> There were shrugs and she was given a test and took the proffered pencil. There were tables available, so she found one, ignored the questioning looks from the other applicants, and started in on the questions. There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which shaped piece would fill the missing space, or guess which of several other pieces was the same thing rotated or reflected. <p></p> After answering all the questions, she handed it in and waited to be told what to do next. When her name was called, she accompanied an older man into a private room. He was very surprised to see her, and after looking through her answers, he asked her a lot of questions about her education and background. He thought for a while, then left the room to get an associate. The associate was unfriendly. Who, he wanted to know, had put her up to this prank? <p></p> Gwen was confused. What prank? The associate was sure that she was cheating, that someone had fed her the answers. In a scene that would be repeated decades later in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” the two interviewers tried their hardest to get her to admit that she had cheated. Her score, they told her, was too good to be true. It was simply impossible for a young black woman to come in the 99th percentile on a test designed to measure aptitude for computer programming.</p>\n<p><div>\n<a href=\"http://getfile0.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/dfdJhjGIxjghkgsueiujjyjmfzvDgziEjxvnACmgfwGamhuBwzFkehkfrggC/757px-IBM_Electronic_Data_Processing_Machine_-_GPN-2000-001881.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"757px-ibm_electronic_data_processing_machine_-_gpn-2000-001881\" height=\"396\" src=\"http://getfile6.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2012-03-29/dfdJhjGIxjghkgsueiujjyjmfzvDgziEjxvnACmgfwGamhuBwzFkehkfrggC/757px-IBM_Electronic_Data_Processing_Machine_-_GPN-2000-001881.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n</div>\n <br>Computer <em>what</em>?</p>\n<p>Computer Programming. Empire Life had purchased a computer from International Business Machines, and like many companies today, they needed software written to automate their business processes. In addition to supplying to hardware, “IBM" also provided services for hiring and training all of the personnel for operating the new system, including the programmers. The interviewers travelled from customer to customer setting up computers and training educated young men how to write programs for IBM computers, and they knew exactly how exceptional a candidate had to be to get scores like Gwen’s. <p></p> They tried various other questions, questions from other tests, questions they used for more advanced candidates. Gwen answered as best she could. The men were amazed. To their credit, once they became convinced that she hadn’t faked her results, they knew she would be a great hire. They recommended her for training as a programmer analyst, the most senior position being filled. She completed the training and became one of the first women to program computers in Canada. Gwen would go on to lead a number of large computerization projects in the insurance industry as well as for the City of Toronto. <p></p> Today she is retired, and like most retirees, she asks her <a href=\"http://braythwayt.com\">son</a> to help her with computers. She likes her Mac and runs a small business buying and selling books on line. What does she have to say about the difficulties she faced breaking into a male-dominated industry? <p></p> “I had it easy. The computer didn’t care that I was a woman or that I was black. Most women had it much harder."</p>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://raganwald.posterous.com/a-womans-story\">Permalink</a> \n\n</p>"
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"content" : "<p>The crisis continues to unfold in <strong>Mali. </strong>And maybe the coup leaders are seeing that EVERYTHING is going against them.<a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82U04820120331\">On Saturday the pledged a quick</a> power handover.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, the coup leaders are increasingly unpopular in West Africa.\n<ul>\n<li>ECOWAS\n<ul>\n<li>On Wednesday, members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have threatened to get involved and <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82R00620120328\">the organization suspended Mali</a> from its decision-making bodies.</li>\n<li>On Thursday, members of ECOWAS then <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82S07820120329\">found their plane turned away from Bamako</a> by coup supporters.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>Nigeria\n<ul>\n<li>The Nigerian senate “is <a href=\"http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/Nigeria+wants+Mali+junta+toppled+/-/1066/1376866/-/63fs6/-/\">pushing for military action</a> against Malian coup plotters” (<a href=\"http://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/africa-news-roundup-celebrations-in-little-senegal-drought-and-war-in-mali-guineas-army-sudan-talks-and-more/\">via Sahel Blog</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/03/28/uncertainty-in-mali-as-all-sides-wonder-%E2%80%98what-next%E2%80%99%E2%80%93-by-camilla-toulmin/\">Uncertainty</a> is the word Camilla Toulmin used to described the situation.</li>\n<li>The view from the West\n<ul>\n<li>The UK <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82U03920120331\">tells its citizens to leave</a>.</li>\n<li>Walter Russell Mead continues in his Afro-pessimist vein in describing the situation. As he says, the <em>Financial Times</em> described Mali as “one of west Africa’s most stable countries”. So, he tells us, “This casts serious doubt on the mainstream press, NGO and foreign policy establishment line on Africa.”</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>Meanwhile, the average Malian is in for some major problems.\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/03/30/mali-the-hot-season-is-coming-by-baz-lecocq/\">As Baz Lecocq notes,</a> the hot season is starting in Mali and food is going to be a big issue. What is more, he suggests, the Malian army is not prepared to handle the heat of the hot season in the extreme parts of the country the rebels currently hold.</li>\n<li>Oxfam has this press release on food shortages (<a href=\"http://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressrelease/2012-03-30/conflict-mali-disrupts-fragile-food-markets-and-threatens-escalate\">here</a>) (<a href=\"http://sahelblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/africa-news-roundup-celebrations-in-little-senegal-drought-and-war-in-mali-guineas-army-sudan-talks-and-more/\">via Sahel Blog</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li>And the Mali army is losing more and more ground to the rebels. I am certain by now they must realize that former President Toure likely did not have any more resources to give them before the coup. Perhaps that was why he already was willing to step down on his own.\n<ul>\n<li>So they lost the northern town of <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82T06S20120330\">Kidal.</a></li>\n<li>And rebels reportedly entered and then took <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE82U02D20120331\">Gao.</a> (and <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE83000220120401\">here</a>)</li>\n<li>And then on Sunday (today) they apparently surrounded <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE83000620120401\">Timbuktu</a> and then <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE83005N20120401\">planted their flag there</a>.. Which is probably the only city most Americans have heard of. So we might finally start to see greater press attention.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>If you examine this map of Mali (via <a href=\"http://www.warsintheworld.com/\">Wars in the World</a>), you can quickly see how rebel advances place them in control of a large swath of territory. Indeed, draw a line between Gao and Timbuktu, extend it, and you will see about half the country in rebel hands. Of course, it is the less-populated, poorer half. But it is very significant.</p></li>\n</ul>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.enchantedlearning.com/africa/mali/map.GIF\"><img src=\"http://www.enchantedlearning.com/africa/mali/map.GIF\" alt=\"\" width=\"432\" height=\"383\"></a></p>\n"
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"content" : "To tell you the truth, I have been totally and utterly flabbergasted by the 'coup d'état' which took place in Mali last week. Or perhaps I should use the word \"dumbfounded\", - if only for the inclusion of the word that immediately springs to mind: \"<u>dumb</u>\". For how stupid can you get if you think that overthrowing the government of a respected and liked president like <b>Amadou Toumani Touré</b> is going to solve anything, let alone the trouble Mali is having with rebel groups in the v-a-s-t northern regions of the country?<br><table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:1em;text-align:right\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s8-nMCUYGvA/T3DUH0AremI/AAAAAAAACWI/3JcTZFyPtjA/s1600/1269859936397.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"240\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s8-nMCUYGvA/T3DUH0AremI/AAAAAAAACWI/3JcTZFyPtjA/s320/1269859936397.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">A.T.T., 1991</td></tr></tbody></table><br>The effect is as predictable as it is sad. Mali's reputation as a democratic and stable country, which was carefully built up over the last twenty years, is shot. The reaction to the coup has been resolutely negative, both from African countries and from influential countries like the former colonial power France. Inside the country Malian citizens are in dread of the present (with disorderly troops roaming the streets of the capital), and in fear of the future, with the food situation already getting perilous (prices are doubling from one day to another).<br><br>What can possibly have inspired this captain <b>Amadou Sanogo</b> to execute this coup? Does he seriously think that a coup is going to make an end to the \"incompetence\" he accuses A.T.T.'s government of in handling the Tuareg crisis in the north?<br>Personally I am inclined to think that if ever Mali had a government capable of resolving this long-time dispute it would have the very government that has been overthrown. Please get me right: I don't mean to say that I know all the ins and outs of the political <i>scene</i> in Mali. I am in all respects an outsider, looking in from the outside, - but still looking in....<br><br>The fact that A.T.T. also led a coup d'état, exactly 21 years ago today (i.e. on March 26, 1991), can not be used as an excuse for this coup. Even the fact that the Tuareg rising played a (marginal) part in the 1991 coup can not be used as a justification. The coup in 1991 came after a long period of protests against an autocratic government that had done its utmost to resist any form of democracy, and that had long lost the support of the population. A.T.T. can not be compared to <b>Moussa Traoré</b>.<br><br>For further reading about Amadou Toumani Touré I advise you to read the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Toumani_Tour%C3%A9\">paragraph</a> on him in the Wikipedia. <br><br>For now, I would like to share with you a cassette from 1991 (the year in which A.T.T. overtrew Moussa Traoré), bought in Mopti (the town where A.T.T. was born), and recorded by one of my favourites \"vendeurs de cassettes\" in the local market: Amadou Fofana (more of his cassettes in future posts). The subject of the cassette is A.T.T. himself. And I have no doubt the song is in praise of the man. <br>About the artist(s) I know absolutely nothing, apart from the fact that they sing in Peul. <br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?lj70l6z8nt8ijb0\">Ganari 1991</a><br><br>And to cool myself down, after getting very worked up, I am adding this short relaxing video from the days when peace still reigned in Bamako.....<br><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/XB3eCH9fdRM\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>"
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"content" : "<p>Jetlag has me in its throes which is as good an excuse as any to share what has been keeping me up many nights over the past couple of years; a theory of the web as a platform.</p>\n<p>I had a chance last week to share some of my thinking here to an unlikely audience at <a href=\"http://www.eclipsecon.org/2012/keynotes\">EclipseCon</a>, a wonderful experience for which my thanks go to Mike Milinkovich and Ian Skerrett for being crazy enough to invite a “web guy” to give a talk.</p>\n<p>One of the points I tried (and perhaps failed) to make in <a href=\"http://infrequently.org/12/eclipsecon/#1\">the talk</a> was that in every platform that’s truly a <em>platform</em> it’s important to have a stable conceptual model of what’s “down there”. For Java that’s not the language, it’s the JVM. For the web…well…um. Yes, it bottoms out at C/C++, but that’s mostly observable through spooky action at a distance. The expressive capacity of C/C++ show up as limitations and mismatches in web specs all the time, but the essential semantics — C/C++ is just words in memory that you can do whatever you please with — are safely hidden away behind APIs and declarative forms that are unfailingly high-level. Until they aren’t. And you can forget about composition most of the time.</p>\n<p>For a flavor of this, I always turn back to <a href=\"http://blog.j15r.com/\">Joel Webber’s</a> question to me several years ago: why can’t I over-ride the rendering of a border around an HTML element?</p>\n<p>It’s a fair question and one I wrote off too quickly the first time he posed it. We have <code><canvas></code> which lets us draw lines however we like, so why can’t we override the path painting for borders? Why isn’t it just a method you implement like in Flex or Silverlight?</p>\n<p>Put another way: there are some low level APIs in the web that <em>suggest</em> that such power should be in the hands of us mortals. When using a low-level thing, you pay-as-you-go since lower-level things need more code (latency and complexity)…but that’s a choice. Today’s web is often mysteriously devoid of the sort of sane layering, <em>forcing</em> you to re-build parallel systems to what’s already in the browser to get a job done. You can’t just subclass the right thing or plug into the right lifecycle method most of the time. Want a <code><canvas></code>? Fine. There you go. Want a <code><span></code>? Hot <code><span></code>s coming up! But don’t go getting any big ideas about using the drawing APIs from <code><canvas></code> to render your <code><span></code>. Both are magic in their own right and for no reason other than that’s the way it has always been.</p>\n<p>The craziest part in all of this is that JavaScript <em>does</em> exist in the web so you can strictly speaking do whatever you want. Goodness knows that when the platform fails us today, we’re all-too-willing to just throw JS at it. It’s crazy, in this context then, that spec authors seem to be trying to uphold a golden principle: JavaScript <em>doesn’t</em> exist. Writing it out of the story allows you to just claim that your bit of the system is magic and that it doesn’t need an exposed lifecycle and plug-in architecture. New things can just be bolted onto the magic, no layering required. It’s magical turtles all the way down.</p>\n<p>You can see why people who think in terms of VM’s and machine words might find this a bit <em>ahem</em> limiting.</p>\n<p>But how much should we “web people” care about what they think? After all, “real programmers” have been predicting the imminent death of this toy browser thing for so long that I’m forgetting exactly when the hate took its various turns through the 7 stages; “Applets will save us from this insanity!”…”Ajax is a hack”…”just put a compiler in front of it and treat it as the dumbest assembler ever” (which is at least acceptance, of a sort). The web continues to succeed in spite of all of of this. So why bother with the gnashing of teeth?</p>\n<p>Thanks to <a href=\"http://httparchive.org/trends.php\">Steve Souders, I have an answer</a>: every year we’re throwing more and more JS on top of the web, dooming our best intended semantic thoughts to suffocation in the Turing tar pit. Inexorably, and until we find a way to send less code down the wire, us is them, and more so every day.</p>\n<p><img style=\"height:300px;width:450px\" src=\"http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chd=t:-1%7C12,11,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,12,13,13,13,13,13,14,14,13,14,14,14,14,14,13,14,14,14,14,14,14,14,14%7C-1%7C113,113,115,115,116,117,117,119,121,123,125,125,126,128,131,135,139,137,140,144,147,148,152,155,161,167,172,170,173,175,179,180&chxl=0:%7C+%7C11%2F30%7C+%7C+%7C1%2F21%7C+%7C+%7C2%2F26%7C+%7C+%7C4%2F15%7C+%7C+%7C6%2F1%7C+%7C+%7C7%2F15%7C+%7C+%7C9%2F1%7C+%7C+%7C10%2F15%7C+%7C+%7C12%2F1%7C+%7C+%7C1%2F15%7C+%7C+%7C3%2F1&chxt=x,y,r&chs=450x300&cht=lxy&chco=E63C0B,982807&chm=N,E63C0B,0,1::3,12,,h::8%7CN**kB,982807,1,1::3,12,,h::8&chds=9,99,0,30,9,99,100,200&chts=982807,24&chtt=JS+Transfer+Size+%26+JS+Requests&chma=5,5,5,25&chls=1,6,3%7C1&chxr=1,100,200,20%7C2,0,30,10&chxs=1,982807,11.5,-0.5,lt,982807,982807%7C2,E63C0B,11.5,-0.5,lt,E63C0B,E63C0B&chxtc=0,4%7C1,4&chxp=0&chdl=JS+Requests%7CJS+Transfer+Size+(kB)&chdlp=bv%7Cr\"></p>\n<p>Let that picture sink in: at 180KB of JS on average, script isn’t some helper that gives meaning to pages in the breech, it <em>is</em> the meaning of the page. Dress it up all you like, but that’s where this is going.</p>\n<p>Don’t think 180KB of JS is a lot? Remember, that’s <em>transfer size</em> which accounts for gzipping, not total JS size. Oy. And in most cases that’s more than 3x the size of the HTML being served (both for the page and for whatever iframes it embeds). And that’s not all; it’s worse for many sites which should know better. Check out those loading “filmstrip” views for <a href=\"http://httparchive.org/viewsite.php?pageid=905867\">gawker</a>, <a href=\"http://httparchive.org/viewsite.php?pageid=903377\">techcrunch</a>, and <a href=\"http://httparchive.org/viewsite.php?pageid=903208\">the NYT</a>. You might be scrolling down, looking at the graphs, and thinking to yourself “looks like Flash is the big ticket item…”, and while that’s true in absolute terms, Flash isn’t what’s blocking page loads. <a href=\"http://httparchive.webpagetest.org/video/compare.php?tests=120315_8F_QAVB-r:1-c:0\">JS is</a>.</p>\n<p>And what for? What’s all that code doing, anyway?</p>\n<p>It’s there for three reasons: first, to clean up the messes that browser vendors aren’t willing or able to clean up for themselves; second, to provide an API that becomes the new platform, and lastly to provide the app-specific stuff you are trying to get across. Only the last one is strictly valuable. You’re not including JQuery, Backbone, Prototype or Dojo into your pages <em>just</em> because you like the API (if you are, stop it). You’re doing it because the combination of API and even behavior across browsers makes them the <em>bedrock</em>. They are the new lisp of application construction; the common language upon which you and your small team can agree; just don’t expect anyone else to be able to pick up your variant without squinting hard.</p>\n<p>This is as untenable as it is dangerous. It was this realization that set me and <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/111648463906387632236/posts\">Dimitri Glazkov</a> off to build a team to do something about it more than a year and a half ago. The results are showing up now in the form of <a href=\"https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/webcomponents/raw-file/tip/explainer/index.html\">Web Components and Shadow DOM</a>, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRZ4pO0gVWw\">Mutation Observers</a> as plumbing for <a href=\"http://code.google.com/p/mdv/\">Model Driven View</a>, and a host of new CSS capabilities and JavaScript language expressiveness wins. If that sounds like a huge pile of seemingly un-related work, let me walk back to one of the motivating questions and then I’ll fast forward to the approach:</p>\n<blockquote><p>What would it mean to be able to subclass an HTML Element?</p></blockquote>\n<p>We observed that most of what the current libraries and frameworks are doing is just trying to create their own “widgets” and that most of these new UI controls had a semantic they’d like to describe in a pretty high-level way, an implementation for drawing the current state, and the need to parent other widgets or live in a hierarchy of widgets.</p>\n<p>Heeeeeyyyyyy….wait a minute…that sounds a lot like what HTML does! And you even have HTML controls which generate extra elements for visual styling but which you can’t access from script. This, BTW, is what you want when building your own controls. Think the bullets of list items or the sliders generated by <code><input type="range"></code>. There are even these handy (<a href=\"http://infrequently.org/2011/10/real-constructors-webidl-last-call/\">non-constructable!?!</a>) constructors for the superclasses in JS already.</p>\n<p>So what would you need access to in order to plug into that existing system? And how should it be described? This, by the way, is the danger zone. Right about this point in the logical chain most folks tend to fall back to what they know best: C++ hacker? Give ‘em a crappy C++-inspired high-level-ish JS API that will make the people yelling loudest stop beating you up. Declarative guy? Force everyone to describe their components as separate documents and…yeah. XUL. You get the idea. JavaScript person? Demand the lowest level API and as much unwarranted power as possible and pretend you don’t need the browser. JS libraries are the “fuck it, we’ll do it live!” of the web.</p>\n<p>None of these are satisfying. Certainly not if what we want is a platform of the sort you might consider using “naked”. And if your “platform” always needs the same shims here and polyfills there, let me be candid: it ain’t no platform. It’s some timber and bolts out of which you can make a nice weekend DIY project of building a real platform.</p>\n<p>So we need to do better.</p>\n<p>What does better look like?</p>\n<p>Better is layered. Better is being able to just replace what you need, to plug in your own bits to a whole that supports that instead of making you re-create everything above any layer you want to shim something into. This is why mutable root prototypes in JS and object mutability in general are such cherished and loathed properties of the web. It <em>is</em> great power. It’s just a pity we need it so often. Any plan for making things better that’s predicated on telling people “oh, just go pile more of your own parallel systems on top of a platform that already does 90% of what you need but which won’t open up the API for it” is <b><em>DOOMED</em></b>.</p>\n<p>Thus began a archaeology project, one which has differed in scope and approach from most of the recently added web capabilities I can think of, not because it’s high-level or low-level, but because it is layered. New high-level capabilities are added, but instead of then poking a hole nearly all the way down to C++ when we want a low-level thing, the approach is to look at the high-level thing and say:</p>\n<blockquote><p>How would we describe what it’s doing at the next level down in an API that we could expose?</p></blockquote>\n<p>This is the reason low-level-only API proposals drive me <em>nuts</em>. New stuff in the platform tends to be driven by <em>scenarios</em>. You want to do a thing, that thing probably has some UI (probably browser provided), and might invoke something security sensitive. If you start designing at the lowest level, throwing a C++ API over the wall, you’ve turned off any opportunity or incentive to layer well. Just tell everyone to use the very fine JS API, after all. Why should anyone want more? (hint: graph above). Instead of opening doors, though, it’s mostly burden. Everything you have to do from script is expensive and slow and prone to all sorts of visual and accessibility problems by default. If the browser can provide common UI and interaction for the scenario, isn’t that better <em>most</em> of the time? Just imagine how much easier it would be to build an app if the initial cut at location information had been <code><input type="location"></code> instead of the <a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html\">Geolocation API we have now</a>. True, that input element would need lots of configuration flags and, eventually, a fine-grained API…if only there were a way to put an API onto an HTML element type…hrm…</p>\n<p>In contrast, if we go declarative-only we get a lot of the web platform today. Fine at first but horrible to work with over time, prone to attracting API barnacles to fill perceived gaps, and never quite enough. The need for that API keeps coming back to haunt us. We’re gonna need both sides, markup and imperative, sooner or later. A framework for thinking about what that might look like seems in order. Our adventure in excavation with Web Components has largely been a success, not because we’re looking to “kernalize the browser” in JS — good or bad, that’s an idea with serious reality-hostile properties as soon as you add a network — but because when you force yourself to think about what’s <em>already</em> down there as an API designer, you start making connections, finding the bits that are latent in the platform and should be used to explain more of the high level things in terms of fewer, more powerful primitives at the next layer down. This isn’t a manifesto for writing the whole world in JS; it’s a reasonable and practical approach for how to succeed by starting high and working backwards from the 80% use-case to something that eventually has most of the flexibility and power that high-end users crave.</p>\n<p>The concrete steps are:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Introduce new platform capabilities with high-level, declarative forms. I.e., <em><b>invent new tags and attributes</b></em>. DOM gives you an API for free when you do it that way. Everyone’s a winner.\n</li>\n<li>When the thing you want feels like something that’s already “down there” somewhere, try to <em><b>explain</b></em> the bits that already exist in markup in terms of a lower-level JS or markup primitive. If you can’t do that or you think your new API has no connection to markup, go back to step 1 and start again.\n</li>\n<li>When it feels like you’re inventing new language primitives in DOM just to get around JS language limitations, <em><b>extend the language</b></em>, not the API\n</li>\n</ol>\n<p>On the web, JavaScript <em>is</em> what’s down there. When it’s not, we’re doing it wrong. It has taken me a very long time to understand why the Java community puts such a high premium on the “pure java” label, and fundamentally what it says to others in the community is “I appealed to no gods and no magic in the construction of this, merely physics”. That’s a Good Thing (TM), and the sort of property that proper platforms should embody to the greatest extent possible.</p>\n<p>And this brings me to my final point. C/C++ might be what’s “down there” for web browsers, but that’s also been true of Java. What separates the web and Java, however, is that the Java community sees their imperative abstraction that keeps them from having to think about memory correctness (the JVM) as an <em>asset</em> and many “web people” think of JS as pure liability. I argue that because of the “you’re gonna need both sides” dynamic, trying to write JS out of the picture is a dumb as it is doomed to fail. JavaScript <em>is</em> what’s “down there” for the web. The web has an imperative backbone and we’re never going to expose C/C++ ABI for it, which means JS is our imperative successor. The archaeological dig which is adding features like Web Components is providing more power to JS by the day and if we do this right and describe each bit as a layer with an API that the one above builds on, we can see pretty clearly how the logical regress of the “you must use JS to implement the whole browser” isn’t insane. JS itself is implemented as C/C++, so there’s always room for the mother tongue and of course many of the APIs that we interact with from JS must be C/C++; you can’t write it out of the story — but that doesn’t mean we need to design our APIs there or throw bad design decisions over the wall for someone else to clean up. It is high time we started designing low-level stuff for the web in idiomatic JS (not IDL), start describing the various plug-in points for what they are. We can provide power from our imperative abstraction <em>to</em> and <em>through</em> our declarative layer in ways that make both high and low-level users of the web platform more able to interoperate, build on each other’s work, and deliver better experiences at reasonable cost. That’s the difference between a minefield and a platform. Only one of them is reasonable to build on.</p>\n<p>The trash truck just came by which means it’s 6AM here in almost-sunny London. WordPress is likewise telling me that I’m dangerously out of column-inches, so I guess I’ll see if I can’t get a last hour or two of sleep before the weekend is truly over. The arguments here may not be well presented, and they are subtle, but layering matters. We don’t have enough of it and when done well, it can be a powerful tool in ending the battle between imperative and declarative. I’ll make the case some other time for why custom element names are a good idea, but consider it in the layered context: if I could subclass <code>HTMLElement</code> from JavaScript in the natural way, why can’t I just put a new tag name in the map the parser is using to create instances of all the other element types? Aside from the agreement about the names, what makes the built-in elements so special, anyway?</p>\n<p>Cognitive dissonance, ahoy! You’re welcome ;-)</p>\n<p><b>Note:</b> this post has evolved in the several days since its initial posting, thanks largely to feedback from <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/112108146349792378878/posts\">Annie Sullivan</a> and <a href=\"http://souders.org/\">Steve Souders</a>. But it’s not their fault. I promise.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2012/03/art-of-omission.html\">The Art of Omission</a> </p>\n<p>Mostly this blog is a link blog, and the link I want to point to here is a post on Koranteng Ofosu Amaah’s Blog Koranteng’s Toli, a review of <a href=\"http://www.tejucole.com/\">Teju Cole’s</a> book <a href=\"http://www.randomhouse.com/book/29908/open-city-by-teju-cole/9781400068098/\">Open City</a>.</p>\n<p>I first found Teju Cole’s writing on his blogs; blogs I was always a little late to discover and then would disappear without notice. The writing and photography were astonishing and beautiful.</p>\n<p>Cole’s blogs were different from any others. And there’s nothing really like Koranteng Toli either, although in thinking about them my mind goes immediately to posts that made me weep. </p>\n<p>If you go to Koranteng’s Toli at the link above, I encourage you to look at the links on the right column of the blog to discover <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2006/03/things-fall-apart.html\">The Things Fall Apart Series</a>. It’s perfectly good to read the series in order, it will take some time. It’s also perfectly good to dip into the series in any order. Part 7 in the series <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2006/04/angola.html\">Angola</a>, if I remember correctly left me in a state of shock for about an hour until I went to bed. I notice I commented on the post (Kaunda) making mention of a reaction to a photo without saying that I cried until my eyes were red.</p>\n<p>Koranteng Ofosu Amaah includes soundtracks for most of his posts, perusing the archives for those alone is worthwhile. Most Internet writing is very ephemeral, but Koranteng Toli holds up over time and the writing is something to seek out.</p>"
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"content" : "<div><p>'I take it for granted there is really no such thing as “intelligence”. There are a million ways to be smart and no one’s smart in all of them; everyone can be slow on the uptake, and most human beings, whether plumbers or professors, will be remarkably apt at some things and hopeless at others. \"But stupid isn’t dumb. Stupidity is different. It involves an element of will. This is why no one ever talks about “militant dumbness” or “militant cluelessness”, but they do talk about “militant stupidity”. The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem once tried to imagine the stupidest possible computer. It could only do one problem, 2+2, thought the answer was 5, and when anyone tried to tell it otherwise, it grew outraged and eventually, tried to kill them.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>'It is in this sense that I we can call Bush stupid. He is a man used to deciding what he thinks is right, and then sticking to his guns no matter how insane, disastrous, or simply incorrect his premises turn out to have been. But of course this is precisely the core of what his supporters like about him. He’s firm. Decisive. A strong leader. Not like those over-intellectual flip-floppers who are always going on about how many sides there are to a problem.'</p>\r\n\r\n<p>--<a href=\"http://zungu.tumblr.com/post/16192335066/militant-stupidity\">David Graeber</a>, \"Militant Stupidity\"</p>\r\n</div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=3w4Q0Z43coM:fjjxDoJn9nk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=3w4Q0Z43coM:fjjxDoJn9nk:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~4/3w4Q0Z43coM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Ghana: U.S. $100 Million Approved to Scale Up Agriculture",
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"content" : "<p>The coup in Mali arises partly from the blowback following the NATO destruction of Libya, part of the counter revolution against the Arab Spring, and from the train and equip activities AFRICOM has been conducting in Mali for much of this century. Train and equip laid the groundwork; the return from the ruins of Libya of militant and well armed Tuareg rebels provided the trigger. I wrote about the AFRICOM threat to Malian democracy back in 2009, <a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/us-policy-versus-democracy-in-mali/\">US Policy Versus Democracy In Mali</a>. The picture below is just one piece of the ongoing train and equip activities. There are a couple more pictures at the end of this post. Read the earlier post for more detail. When your only significant investment in a country is military train and equip, you are prepping that country for military government. </p>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/maliequipment.jpg\"><img src=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/maliequipment.jpg?w=300&h=221\" alt=\"\" title=\"MaliEquipment\" width=\"300\" height=\"221\"></a><p>BAMAKO, Mali - U.S. Army Master Sergeant Robert Price stands with Malian soldiers he helped train as he is congratulated by Malian Minister of Defense Natie Pleah during a Counter Terrorism Train and Equip (CTTE) transfer of equipment ceremony in Bamako, October 20, 2009. Price, a logistics NCO with Special Operations Command Africa's Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, supervised maintenance and supply accountability training provided to Malian soldiers for tactical vehicles and communications equipment transferred to Malian units. Under the U.S. State Department's Trans-Sahara Counter Terrorism Program (TSCTP), U.S. Africa Command's Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara (OEF-TS) Counter Terrorism Train and Equip initiative provided 37 brand-new Toyota Land Cruiser pickup trucks and high-tech communications equipment that will allow Malian military units to move, transport and communicate across vast expanses of open desert in the northern region of the country. In addition, replacement parts, clothing, individual equipment and other supplies will be provided in the next few weeks as part of a U.S. government capacity-building equipment transfer totaling more than $5 million. The CTTE program is designed to develop stronger military-to-military relationships while underscoring U.S. support for partner nation sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. (Photo by Max R. Blumenfeld, JSOTF-TS PAO)</p></div>\n<p>Based on the accounts so far, it appears the coup may not even have been planned, it may have been spontaneous, arising from an argument between the military and the government at a meeting to discuss the handling of the Tuareg rebellion in the north. However, the groundwork for a coup was all in place, including the education of its leader:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/afp/malis-tuareg-rebels-advance-as-world-condemns-coup/506881\">Mali’s Tuareg rebels advance as world condemns coup</a></p>\n<blockquote><p>The green-beret mid-ranking captain, <strong>[Captain Amadou Sanogo] who speaks with a raspy voice, also revealed he had spent much time at training programmes in the United States, in Georgia and at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia</strong>.<br>\nHe said he was trained under a US scholarship as an English instructor</p></blockquote>\n<p>And from another source:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Sanogo, <a href=\"http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=87595\">who said</a> he had received “training from U.S. Marines and intelligence”, said, he would not remain in power but refused to give a timeframe for restoring civilian rule. </p></blockquote>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/africa/in-mali-coup-leaders-seem-to-have-uncertain-grasp-on-power.html\">New York Times</a> tells us more about Sanogo’s US education 2004-2012, including at Fort Benning’s <a href=\"http://www.soaw.org/soaw/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=24&Itemid=56\">Coup School</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Mali and the United States have had close military ties in recent years as part of American counterterrorism programs. According to the State Department, Captain Sanogo attended an English-language instructor course at the Defense Language Institute, a special school for international military students at Lackland Air Force Base, Tex., from August 2004 to February 2005. </p>\n<p>Nearly three years later, in December 2007, Captain Sanogo returned to the United States, this time for more English language classes at Lackland before attending the Army’s entry-level course for intelligence officers at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., instruction that he completed in July 2008. </p>\n<p>Finally, <strong>Captain Sanogo attended the Army’s prestigious infantry officer basic training course at <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation\">Fort Benning, Ga</a>., from August 2010 to December 2010</strong>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Stars and Stripes gives us more detail on the ongoing train and equip activities with Mali, <a href=\"http://www.stripes.com/news/africa/leader-of-mali-coup-received-officer-training-from-africom-1.172531\">Leader of Mali coup received officer training from AFRICOM</a>, under U.S.-funded International Military Education and Training (IMET) programs, confirmed by the Africa Command and the State Department.</p>\n<blockquote><p>The U.S. military has supported the Mali military extensively over the past decade, and the country has become a significant partner in the U.S. efforts to curb North Africa’s shadowy al-Qaida affiliate, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.</p>\n<p>In addition to its involvement in the International Military Education and Training program, Mali has also participated in the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership, which is intended to strengthen bilateral military ties with the U.S. and supports counterterrorism coordination across the region’s different militaries. Mali also recently hosted U.S. soldiers in a joint logistical exercise named Atlas Accord 12.</p>\n<p>“We have regularly had small teams traveling in and out of Mali to conduct specific training that has been requested by the Malian government and military,” said Nicole Dalrymple, a spokeswoman for the Africa Command, known as Africom, in an emailed response to questions.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Most of the world was quick to condemn the coup:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=80961:nigeria-others-deplore-coup-in-mali-&catid=1:national&Itemid=559\">Nigeria, others, deplore coup in Mali</a></p>\n<blockquote><p>NIGERIA yesterday joined others to condemn “in strong terms” reports that Malian rebel soldiers had taken over control of the country from the democratically elected government of President Amadou Toumani Toure.</p>\n<p>President Goodluck Jonathan, who expressed displeasure and dismay over the action, described the move as “an apparent setback to the consolidation of democracy in Mali in particular and the African continent in general.”</p>\n<p>United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for calm and for grievances to be settled democratically. The African Union said it was “deeply concerned by the reprehensible acts currently being perpetrated by some elements of the Malian army”.</p>\n<p>The African Union (AU) said the “act of rebellion” was a “significant setback for Mali”.</p>\n<p>The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said it was deeply disturbed by the raging mutiny in Mali and has warned mutineers to hands off attempts to take over power via unconstitutional means.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The US may be hedging its bets. From the <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/renegade-soldiers-seize-control-of-mali-announce-coup-on-state-tv/2012/03/22/gIQA7wt6SS_story.html\">Washington Post</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The coup is a major setback for Mali, a landlocked nation of 15.4 million which is dirt-poor but fiercely proud of its democratic credentials. The current president, a former parachutist in the army, came to power himself in a 1991 coup. He surprised the world when he handed power to civilians, becoming known as “The Soldier of Democracy.” A decade later, he won the 2002 election and was re-elected in 2007. <strong>There was never any question that Toure — known by his initials ATT — would step down at the end of his term next month.<br>\n…<br>\nState Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said officials were meeting to discuss whether to cut off the $137 million in annual U.S. assistance.</strong>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>A client military government seems to be the US preferred form of governance for African countries. It will be interesting to see how the US proceeds.</p>\n<p>Here are some other stories on the coup:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/2012/03/coup-in-mali-the-rats-and-dogs-discussion-continues/\">Coup in Mali, the rats and dogs discussion continues</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/10896374/\">Tuareg rebels take Mali town, threaten 3 more</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/AU-Malis-President-Safe-After-Coup-143994376.html\">African Union Suspends Mali, Hears President Toure Safe</a></p>\n<p>For more background information with particularly informative links, you can read these earlier posts:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/us-policy-versus-democracy-in-mali/\">US Policy Versus Democracy In Mali</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/lied-into-the-war-on-terror-in-the-sahara/\">Lied Into the War On Terror In the Sahara</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/new-york-times-catapults-the-propganda-for-africom/\">New York Times catapults the propganda for AFRICOM</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2008/10/05/inherent-contradictions-of-africom-lies-and-illusions/\">Inherent contradictions of AFRICOM – lies and illusions</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2009/03/31/gao-report-on-africom/\">GAO Report On AFRICOM, Where AFRICOM Is Active</a></p>\n<p>Stable and secure in AFRICOM speak does not mean stable and secure for the people of Africa. It means stable and secure for US energy and resource needs and US policy objectives. </p>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/mali-ustraining.jpg\"><img src=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/mali-ustraining.jpg?w=300&h=196\" alt=\"\" title=\"Mali-UStraining\" width=\"300\" height=\"196\"></a><p>MALI - Malian commandos advance with a member of the U.S. 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) during training rehearsals May 13, 2009, at a military training area north of Bamako, Mali. Building on specialized skills previously acquired during joint exercises such as Flintlock, which is Special Operations Command-Africa's premier Special Operations Forces exercise in the Trans-Saharan region, the "Warrior-Ambassadors" of the 3rd SFG (A) were continuing their Africa-focused security forces assistance mission to enhance African Partner Nation capabilities to help achieve regional cooperation and security. The 3rd SFG (A) is based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. (Photo by Max R. Blumenfeld, JSOTF-TS PAO)</p></div>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/mali-copter.jpg\"><img src=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/mali-copter.jpg?w=300&h=160\" alt=\"\" title=\"mali-copter\" width=\"300\" height=\"160\"></a><p>Military training near Bamako, US. Mali, & Senegal 2008</p></div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/4611/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/4611/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com&blog=4054563&post=4611&subd=crossedcrocodiles&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Machine domination in graphs",
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"content" : "<p>When chess machines passed human performance, how fast did it happen?</p>\n\n<p>Here is a plot of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system\">Elo ratings</a> of chess systems from the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Chess_Computer_Association\">Swedish Chess Computer Association tournaments</a>:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/scoret.html\"><img src=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/scoret-thumb.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Of course, the data is noisy - I don't really think chess software has become worse over the last few years. In this case it might just have been a narrowing of the field.</p>\n\n<p>Plotting them as a function of clock speed produces the following intriguing graph, showing some jumps in software performance on the same hardware:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/scoreHz.html\"><img src=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/scoreHz-thumb.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Combining the first graph with <a title=\"List of FIDE chess world number ones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FIDE_chess_world_number_ones\">List of FIDE chess world number ones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</a> we get the following relative graph:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/machinehuman.html\"><img src=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/machinehuman-thumb.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\"></a></p>\n\n<p><br>\nIt shows nicely how humans have not been getting much better, while the machines improve from nearly hopeless to superhuman.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, this is slightly iffy: while SSDF has tried to <a href=\"http://privat.bahnhof.se/wb432434/level.htm\">calibrate against humans</a> one can always question the commensurably. </p>\n\n<p>One can also calculate the probability of winning against players of different ranks (again assuming commensurability):</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/winPt.html\"><img src=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/winPt-thumb.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Looking at 6 game matches the probability of winning the majority looks like this, a bit sharper:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/winPMt.html\"><img src=\"http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/images/winPMt-thumb.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Human amateurs were already having trouble at the start, but grandmasters could be confident at the start of the 90s... and were outclassed by the end.</p>\n\n<p>Observant readers might wonder why Kasparov lost to Deep Blue in 1997. The reason is that this tournament data uses consumer machines, not the supercomputer IBM pitted against him. For 1997 the winner in the tournament was HIARCS 6.0, running on a 49 MB P200 MMX. Deep blue was a 30 node system with a 120 MHz processor per node, plus 480 special purpose chess chips. It ran at 11.38 GFLOPS on numerics. A pentium MMX at 200 MHz is around <a href=\"http://www.roylongbottom.org.uk/linpack%20results.htm\">23.53 MFLOPS</a>. So Deep Blue was at least 484 times more powerful (and likely quite a bit more, thanks to the special chess chips and parallelism).</p>\n\n<p>So the mystery of why it won so early is solved: the brute force allowed IBM to get extra performance equivalent to perhaps a decade development. </p>"
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"title" : "Mali’s coup—first thoughts",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/03/23/malis-coup-first-thoughts/23mali-1332453536389-popup/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-47667\"><img title=\"23MALI-1332453536389-popup\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/23mali-1332453536389-popup.jpeg?w=500&h=332\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"332\"></a><br>\nGregory Mann, associate professor of history <a href=\"http://history.columbia.edu/fac-bios/Mann/faculty.html\">at Columbia University</a> in New York City,* writes a guest post for Africa is a Country on <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/03/22/the-coup-against-democracy-in-mali/\">the coup in Mali</a>:</p>\n<p><span></span>They say no press is bad press. False. When Mali makes the papers, it’s usually for the best reasons — Oumou Sangaré, Tinariwen, or Amadou and Miriam are coming to town. Lately, it’s for the worst — rebel attacks in the North, a mutiny, and now a coup.</p>\n<p>The dust hasn’t settled yet, and no one knows which way the wind is really blowing, but a few things are worth saying about the mutiny and the coup that rocked Bamako over the last few days. Even in a hazy moment, a few things can be clear.</p>\n<p>First, don’t believe the hype. The junta says they want to restore democracy. Bogus. Democracy in Mali is in pretty good shape, all things considered (i.e., bearing in mind that the central government has effectively no control over the northern half of the country). Presidential elections were planned for next month, and everyone expected them to go forward.</p>\n<p><strong>The coup was not intended to secure democracy, but to prevent it</strong><em>.</em> If the people were to go to the polls in April and elect a new president, whoever won would be seen as legitimate, both at home and abroad. If there was going to be a coup, it had to be now. Better (and easier) to topple an increasingly unpopular incumbent than a newly elected president. They were running out of time. That’s why in addition to members of the current government, the junta locked up some of the candidates.</p>\n<p>There is a rumor that ATT (Amadou Toumani Touré) — the popularly elected incumbent — was going to stage a ‘coup from above’ and hang on to office in spite of the fact that his constitutionally mandated second term was up. That rumor has been around since before “Barack Obama” became a household name. It’s categorically false. ATT has been ready to go for some time now — both his critics and his partisans recognize that he’s tired, and he has already given up power once, in 1992, before being elected in 2002.</p>\n<p>Second, don’t believe the other hype. The Foreign Minister of France, the former colonial power, came out early to condemn the coup and to call for rapid elections. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except the elections were already scheduled and the campaign underway. The coup on the other hand, was not yet settled — so why treat it as a <em>fait accompli</em>? France — which will take the lead in the European response — is no neutral actor here, even if it’s hard to know what game it is playing. The more cautious African Union and American responses — condemning violence, seeking consultation — are deliberately tepid, but justified, and they don’t impose a conclusion where one doesn’t exist.</p>\n<p>All that said, there are questions, too.</p>\n<p>First, where is ATT? The word on the street in Mali — what I hear when I call people there — is that he’s in the American embassy. False, say the Americans. He’s at the paratroopers’ base, someone in his entourage apparently told RFI. That’s possible, but it’s worth bearing in mind that the embassy and the base are practically next door to each other. And the Americans generally like ATT, even if they wish he were more willing to take the fight to those in the North who claim al Qaeda links or Salafist inclinations.</p>\n<p>Second, what’s the link with the rebellion in the North? Some have already said that the Tuareg nationalist rebels in the North — the MNLA — wanted to forestall national elections, or at least to preclude the possibility of elections being held in the Sahara, in order to bolster their argument that they are excluded from national political life. Like the fractured and venerable Tuareg nationalist movement from which it emerged, the MNLA is more attentive to its image than a prom queen. France is said to be a suitor, with the idea that courting Tuareg nationalists will draw them away from the Salafist splinter group (Iyad ag Ghali’s Ansar Dine) that emerged alongside them in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s fall. ATT’s northern strategy of avoiding a fight even when it was brought to him would seem to partake of the same logic — better to split the movement by negotiating than to unite it by fighting it. If that was indeed his strategy, it relied on the slow expenditure of two resources he didn’t really have: time (either to let events unfold or to hand over power in May) and other people’s patience.</p>\n<p>The undeniable link with the Northern rebellion is that the army was fed up with being told not to fight. To the shock of the soldiers, several garrisons in the North were lost to MNLA attacks, and some were given up without a fight. To their horror, in Anguelhoc defeated soldiers were massacred, their throats slit after being taken prisoner. This atrocity is disputed — some deny it occurred, others argue over who committed it. But the army believes it, and the soldiers’ wives and widows who marched in protest last month surely played a major role in pushing their husbands — or their late husbands’ comrades — to take the fight to the government if the government wouldn’t let them take it to the Tuareg. This is not new, only more dramatic. In 2009, in an earlier episode, Bamako was abuzz with rumors that the soldiers wanted ATT to be more aggressive in the North. Some were clearly holding him responsible for the deaths of the comrades in the North — thus the popular ring tone, recorded from a radio call-in show “ATT ye faforoden,” which translates loosely as “ATT is his father’s balls.”</p>\n<p>Third, who’s playing whom? Some researchers claim that at least one of the major political parties is backing the junta (one of the minor gadfly parties has already announced its support). Hard to know, and harder to parse. But the soldiers will need civilians willing to work with them, in whatever form they hope to run the country. Khaki is out of fashion, and the soldiers will need civilian faces to present to the world. So, who is whose beard? The answer to this question will play out in the weeks and months to come.</p>\n<p>A couple of final comments.</p>\n<p>Mali’s a poor country, and its internal inequalities are becoming ever more profound. The coup is not going to help, not only because the usual suspects (France, EU, World Bank…) have announced a suspension of aid. Mali in the last ten years has begun to be able to fill the role of a regional economic hub that its geography and history would suggest is a natural one. I don’t only mean the investments from South Africa, Canada, and Asia. I mean the money from Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal and the steady investments from Mali’s diaspora in Europe, the U.S., Congo, and so many other places. That’s the money you don’t want to scare away. Anyone on the Left who thinks that the coup will clean up political life or re-orient Mali’s neoliberal path needs to step back a bit. Every junta speaks a populist language — it’s the only one available to them. But in circumstances like these, soldiers don’t take orders from civilians.</p>\n<p>Last, watch out for Monday. There has been a lot of talk of “democracy” in relation to this coup, but precious little time or place for the people. A moment is coming. On March 26, 1991, as a young lieutenant colonel, ATT arrested Mali’s president, General Moussa Traore, and put an end to days of terror in which soldiers had shot hundreds of protestors in the streets. ATT was Mali’s hero then, and when he organized elections and handed over power, he became a hero across the continent and beyond. Twenty-one years is a long time, but the anniversary of ATT’s coup is a national holiday. Who will march this year?</p>\n<p>* Mann is a historian of francophone West Africa. He is currently working on a book project entitled ‘The End of the Road: Nongovernmentality in the West African Sahel’. His award-winning book ‘Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the 20th century’ was published by Duke University Press in 2006.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/47666/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=47666&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "MicroSD card FAQ",
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"content" : "<p>A while back I wrote <a href=\"http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022\">an analysis of fake microSD</a> cards. As a result of the post, I’ve received this question regularly via email:</p>\n<p>“I’m trying to buy a thousand microSD cards for my embedded controller project. How do you qualify a microSD card?”</p>\n<p>So, I thought it might be helpful to share my answer here. </p>\n<p>There’s this awkward phase between the weekend project (where you buy your microSD card from Best Buy for $20 and have a no-questions return policy) and being Nokia (where you buy the same cards for $2 in quantities large enough to actually have leverage over vendors). When you source a few thousand cards at a time on the wholesale spot market, you’re basically on your own to control quality. </p>\n<p>As far as process control, some vendors are easier to work with than others. Samsung will bump their part numbers based on die revs or other significant internal changes to the card. Sandisk, on the other hand, uses a very short part number for their cards, so you have no idea if the NAND on the inside is MLC or TLC, etc.; you just know the capacity and the card is simply guaranteed to perform to spec. To wit, Sandisk is very thorough about ensuring they meet the spec. However, it’s the edge cases that usually bite you in production; regardless of the spec, every die/controller combo has some character and your embedded controller may bring out some of that color. And, of course, there’s the fakes — Sandisk is a huge target for fakes, people who want to borrow their good name to sell you a batch of shoddy cards. </p>\n<p>If you’re working with a distributor, get a copy of their authorization letter that certifies the relationship with the brand they are selling. It’s easy to fake the certificate, but it’s a good formality to pursue anyways. If you can, get the upstream brand to confirm the distribution relationship.</p>\n<p>Aside from these supply-chain side things, here’s a check-list of technical tests to run on your cards:</p>\n<p>For each new distributor:</p>\n<p>1. I read out the CID and CSD registers and decode them. This is easy to do on linux with a directly connected microSD card. You cannot do this if the card is plugged into a USB adapter — you need to have the card plugged into a direct SD interface. The CID and CSD should look “right” i.e., the manufacturer ID should make sense (unfortunately the manufacture ID codes are all secret, but I can assure you it’s not supposed to be FF or 00), serial numbers should be some big number, date codes correct, etc.</p>\n<p>2. Do a “full write” test at least once. i.e., create a random block of data that’s the putative size of the card, and dd it into the card. Then, do an md5sum of the contents of the card. This will identify loopback tricks that fake capacity. This is a relatively common trick that is surprisingly hard to detect, because many cards are only used to less than 50% capacity in real life.</p>\n<p>3. Do a reboot test, to understand the behavior of the controller/die combo during ungraceful powerdown. It’s less important on systems that can never have their battery removed. </p>\n<p>Before the test, I do a recursive find piped to md5sum to get a full map of all the files in the card. Then, I use a script that writes a random amount of /dev/urandom data in odd-sized blocks (ranging from a couple hundred bytes to a couple megabytes) to the card and then calls sync, in a constant loop after boot. For each block written, the md5sum is recorded. At boot time, all old blocks are checked for md5sum consistency and then deleted. The system under test is automatically power cycled by cutting the AC power about once very 2-3 minutes plus some random interval (depends on how long it takes your device to boot). I cut on the AC power side to capture the effects of the power decay curve of the wall adapter; the logic goes that a clean power down is less likely to cause problems than a gradual powerdown. I run the test on a cohort of at least 2 systems for 2 days straight. If you want to get fancy, you have the system upload its statistics to a server so you can see exactly when it starts to fail. After a couple of days, I extract the card from the system and redo the recursive find with md5sum to verify that no non-critical files have been corrupted that would be difficult to notice without the comprehensive check. Be sure, of course, to ignore files that naturally vary. </p>\n<p>I still don’t have a straight answer on why some cards perform better under this test and others fail miserably. Ultimately, however, every card I’ve encountered eventually corrupts the filesystem after enough cycles, it’s just a matter of how long. I feel comfortable if I can reliably get to ten thousand ungraceful reboots-while-writing before failure. Note that supposedly eMMC has design features that harden cards against these problems, but I’ve never had the luxury of building such high volume systems that eMMC becomes an affordable option. Besides, I consider giving users the ability to remove the firmware card and reflash it with new code using a common USB adapter an important feature, at least in the systems I design. Mobile phone carriers would think differently.</p>\n<p>Of course, once a vendor is qualified, they can still send you bad lots.</p>\n<p>For each new lot I get, I take a few cards and burn them myself and check they boot the system before handing them over the factory. I also manually inspect the CID/CSD to ensure that the manufacturer’s IDs haven’t rotated and I inspect the laser markings to ensure that the lot number changes (it should — if it doesn’t then they are pulling something wonky on you). I also compare the circuit trace pattern on the back, visible through the reliefs in the solder resist coating. If you have easy access to an X-ray machine (some CMs have them on site) you can go so far as to compare the internal construction in the x-ray to see if the dies have been revved. If all these are the same you’re probably good to go on the new lot, but I do pay attention to the failure rate data in the first couple hours of production just to make sure there isn’t something to worry about.</p>\n<p>There’s probably a bunch of other tests, techniques and good ideas that I should be aware of…look forward to reading the comments!</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Riddle me this: how does a government enforce tax collection in a cash-only society? Cash has the wonderful property of being anonymous, and therefore hard to track. As a result, cash businesses often under-report revenues, thereby dodging a portion of tax payments.</p>\n<p>China is primarily a cash-driven economy; few local places will accept payment cards of any kind (event rent payments are made in cash — a big, fat stack of cash, as the largest bill in China has an equivalent value of about US$15). As such, China has a big challenge around collecting taxes.</p>\n<p>A solution to the problem is to go with a tax pre-payment system. At the beginning of every month, every business is required to pay an estimated tax. Proof of tax payment is issued in the form of “fapiao” (发票). They look a bit like the one below:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/fapiao_used.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/fapiao_used_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>This fapiao represents tax paid on 10元 (元 is like the $ symbol, and colloquially pronounced “kuai”), so the restaurant I got this from probably paid about 1-2 kuai for this fapiao. When you settle your bill in a restaurant, in addition to getting the itemized receipt, you are supposed to receive a stack of fapiao of equivalent face value. </p>\n<p>At the end of the month, the restaurant claims a tax refund on any remaining fapiao. As a result, fapiao are basically as good as money to the restaurant; hence, the fapiao are printed on watermarked paper with anti-counterfeiting measures, and employ serial numbers you can validate by sending an SMS to a government hotline. Also, restaurants have a strong incentive to omit a few fapiao from your stack, or completely forgo giving you the fapiao (they love it when foreigners dine, because they don’t know about fapiao — they get big business and they get the tax refund on it!). </p>\n<p>So, how does one enforce the distribution of fapiao to customers? China’s clever solution is to make every fapiao a lottery ticket. If you look at the above photo carefully, you’ll see two metallized patches on the fapiao. You can scratch these off, and underneath might reveal a prize! Of course, the one I have above is a losing ticket — it just says “thank you”, with a serial number; but the prize can be thousands of kuai. </p>\n<p>And so, China has crowdsourced tax enforcement, by potentially rewarding citizens with a cash reward for asking for all of their tax pre-payment receipts, and using them up by scratching off the prize areas. The cost of this massive force multiplier is vanishingly small, as all they are offering is the <em>chance</em> to win; I have only ever seen one winning ticket in the past couple of years, and it was for about 2 kuai. Still, it is a nice cultural touch to the end of a big meal, everyone sitting in a circle, scratching their fapiao to see if they won a prize for playing the part of a Chinese tax enforcement agent.</p>\n<p>Of course, with every new system, new problems come in. One is that the waitstaff might nick a couple of fapiao en route to the customer. So now, to get your fapiao you usually have to go in person to a special counter that manages its distribution. And, of course, the restaurant can offer a bribe in place of the fapiao. Just this past month when I was visiting Harbin, I went to collect my lottery tickets and the lady at the register glanced at my 80 kuai receipt and offered to pay me 4 kuai instead of giving me fapiao! I was a bit surprised at how brazen the offer was, but in retrospect, I clearly was not from around there, and thus unlikely to be an auditor.</p>"
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"content" : "\n\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><img src=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/images/topbar_en.gif\" alt=\"Pambazuka News\"></div>\n<h2><strong>Remembering General Ojukwu</strong></h2>\n<h3><strong>Conversation with my stream of consciousness</strong></h3>\n<h4><strong>Cameron Duodu</strong></h4>\n<h4>2012-03-15, Issue <a href=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/en/issue/576\">576</a></h4>\n<h4><a href=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80785\">http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/80785</a></h4>\n<div><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ojukwu.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/574/ojukwu_tmb.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"80\" height=\"110\"><br>\n<em>© Wikipedia</em></a>‘We’ve agreed to so many things before – but it’s always in the implementation that we get bogged down.’</div>\n<p>When I heard that General Odumegwu Ojukwu, who led Biafra into secession from Nigeria in 1967, had been buried on 2 March 2012 (he died on 26 November 2011 at the age of 78) my stream of consciousness went into overdrive.</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Why overdrive? Why not first gear? Are you suggesting that I am a speed addict? That I start where everyone else ends up? That implies that I am an incompetent driver. Suppose I am in overdrive at the brow of a hill? Won’t I be swept into reverse by force of gradient power?</p>\n<p>ME: Okay, I misspoke. Let’s hear about Ojukwu, please.</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: All right: before the secession of the Eastern Region of Nigeria from the Federation of Nigeria on 30 May 1967, to become the Republic of Biafra, a conference was called at Peduase Lodge, Aburi, in Ghana, in January 1967.</p>\n<p>ME: Peduase Lodge, Aburi? Remember the story my late wife, Beryl, told me about the place? She was then working at the Ambassador Hotel in Accra and was asked to go and do the interior decoration of the place for the president, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah. She said the workers used to be paid in the garden. As each was called by the accountant, he responded ‘Yessoh!’</p>\n<p>But there was this one guy who was so pleased at the prospect of pocketing some money at last that when he was called, he replied ‘Lovely!’ So I adopted that response whenever Beryl called me with annoyance in her voice – say, when my food was getting cold whilst I chatted endlessly on the phone. As soon as I yelled: ‘Lovely!’ she would immediately double up with laughter and forget her anger.</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Ha! That Peduase Lodge! Do you remember how after the former Chief Justice, Mr Edward Akufo Addo, was elected president in 1970 by Members of Parliament, his wife, Mrs Adeline Akufo Addo, invited you to come and have tea with her? That woman was polished bright eh!</p>\n<p>Doing PR on behalf of her husband? How many wives would be so concerned with their husbands’ image as to invite the editor of the Daily Graphic to come and have a one-to-one with her? Remember the day of her funeral at Kyebi, 15 May 2004? Everyone who was someone in Ghana was there: [then] President John Agyekum Kufuor….</p>\n<p>ME: Please don’t let’s go there!….</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Okay. Now, the second time you went to Peduase Lodge was when the then head of state of Ghana, General Kutu Acheampong, held a party there in January 1973 for delegates to the OAU Liberation Committee Conference in Accra. Remember the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole of Zimbabwe? And the other delegates from Zimbabwe – Noel Mukono? James Chikerema? George Nyandoro? Bishop Muzorewa? Robert Mugabe? Simpson Ntambanengwe? Who was to know that Robert Mugabe would emerge on top?</p>\n<p>ME: Not so fast! Do you remember how I met Acheampong for the first time circa 1969, at the Ambassador Hotel? He was Regional Commissioner for the Western Region and he was having a quiet drink by himself when I went and joined him! Who was to know he was to become our head of state only four years later?</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: What about the time YOU were a delegate to a Liberation Committee meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, in 1974? Remember Jonas Savimbi’s foreign Secretary, Jorge Sangumba, coming to lie to the committee that Savimbi wasn’t co-operating with the Portuguese forces in Angola, and how Savimbi eventually rewarded Sangumba by having him murdered? What about the Zimbabwe Liberation army leader, Josia Tongogara, whom you met there? Herbert Chitepo, who was blown up by a bomb shortly after you’d met him? How the leader of the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) Dr Isaac Tabata was denounced to the committee by his own men, when you visited them in the ‘camp’ without any facilities, in which they claimed he had dumped them, while he lived it up in Lusaka?</p>\n<p>ME: Oh please! Let’s just do Peduase Lodge, ok? The party was in honour of the Liberation Committee delegates, most of whom you’d interviewed for Ghana TV. Remember the interview with Samora Machel of Mozambique? He came across as the most charismatic leader of the lot, right? I also did Aghostinho Neto of Angola and Amilcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde – a truly historical series of interviews, wasn’t it? If only the library of Ghana Television had not burnt down!</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: I can’t let you pass over Amilcar Cabral like that. Tell us about him, right now!</p>\n<p>ME: With pleasure. Acheampong’s Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Col Kwame Baah, was my good friend. It was I who telephoned him with the news that Cabral had been murdered in Conakry, Guinea, on 20 January 1973, shortly after Cabral had returned from the OAU Liberation Committee meeting in Accra at which I’d interviewed him. Kwame Baah invited me to accompany him to Cabral’s funeral in Conakry. We flew to Sierra Leone and travelled from Freetown by road to Conakry. His Permanent Secretary, Mr E M Debrah was our companion…</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONCIOUSNESS: Don’t you have a nice story to tell about Debrah and the former UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, both of whom were serving in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1966, when you visited there?</p>\n<p>ME: I beg oh! We’re on the way to Cabral’s funeral in Conakry! There was a dreaded pontoon on the road between Freetown and Conakry. But what I remember most is how hungry I was on that journey. I was almost at the point of fainting by the time we got to Conakry. I’d foolishly neglected to eat breakfast in Freetown, my habit being to ignore breakfast. Well, the drive to Conakry took us about 5-6 hours and we didn’t stop anywhere to have a drink because we wanted to get there before the funeral ceremony ended. And the silly chaps at the Ghana High Commission on Freetown had neglected to pack us anything for the trip. I mean, your immediate boss, the Foreign Minister and your Permanent Sec are travelling by road to Conakry and you give them a car without even one bottle of coke in the boot?</p>\n<p>When we got to Conakry, we drove straight to the sports stadium, and were taken to the podium to sit next to President Sekou Toure of Guinea, who was very pleased that a delegation from Ghana had come. But they neglected their African traditional duty and didn’t welcome us with either water or kola! And then, we discovered that Guineans love to make long speeches. ‘Maintenant, la parole est par ….’ And they would launch another speaker on his long-winded way. We were trapped there for another three hours before we got to our hotel. They were laying the tables when we got there. I swear I made straight for the bread slices on the side-plates. I heard a Guinean waiter whisper to another in astonishment: “Pain sec?!” (Dry bread?) If only he knew that to me at that moment, it was the most delicious thing in the world!</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Now, can we go back to Ojukwu please?</p>\n<p>ME: Yes, okay. You know that Nigeria used to train some of its military officers at the Ghana Military Academy at Teshie? General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian head of state, for instance, was trained there…. I met him…</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: No! We don’t want Obasanjo right now…. Just Ojukwu!</p>\n<p>ME: Okay! Okay! The Nigerian military government in power in Lagos on 1967 was composed of officers, many of whom had Ghanaian course mates they’d met either at Teshie or abroad – at such British military establishments as Sandhurst or Camberley or Mons. So General Ankrah, our head of state, was persuaded to bring the Nigerians over to Aburi and chair a conference aimed at ironing out their differences and preventing the civil war that was looming.</p>\n<p>I was Accra correspondent for the London Observer at the time and although no journalists were allowed near the Nigerian delegates, I went and had a drink in the VIP lounge at Accra airport, where I had friends, and waited. Sure enough, who should show up a little later but Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu! He was in the company of Mr E H Boohene, of the School of Administration, whom he’d met at Oxford University. Boohene introduced me and not knowing how long I would have with Ojukwu, I went straight for the kill: ‘Is there any chance that these talks at Aburi will prevent a civil war from actually breaking out?’ I asked.</p>\n<p>In his quiet, measured voice, Ojukwu said: ‘We’ve agreed to so many things before – but it’s always in the implementation that we get bogged down.’</p>\n<p>Just then, his minders, the Ghana protocol officers came and whisked him away to the aircraft that was taking him back home. Just as Ojukwu had told me, the ‘Aburi Accord’ was never fully implemented. As soon as the delegations arrived back in Nigeria, the Accord began to unravel. The Federal Government’s civilian advisers claimed that Ojukwu had drawn rings around General Gowon and his Federal colleagues at the conference and outwitted them. And they began to pull away from the ‘concessions’ they said Ojukwu had ‘cleverly’ wrung out of the Federal side. On 31 May 1967, Ojukwu, disgusted with the prevarications in Lagos, declared Biafra’s secession. The civil way that ensued lasted until 15 January 1970. It cost over 1 million lives.</p>\n<p>STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: Okay, you also know that Alex Ibru, publisher of The Guardian newspaper of Nigeria, has passed?</p>\n<p>ME: Yes, but that will have to be for later.</p>\n<p>* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS</p>\n<p>* Please do not take Pambazuka for granted! Become a <a href=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/en/friends.php\">Friend of Pambazuka</a> NOW and help keep Pambazuka FREE and INDEPENDENT!</p>\n<p>* Please send comments to <a href=\"mailto:editor@pambazuka.org\">editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org</a> or comment online at <a href=\"http://www.pambazuka.org/\">Pambazuka News</a>.</p>\n<h2><strong><br>\n</strong></h2>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fcameronduodu.com%2Funcategorized%2Fremenbering-odumegwu-ojukwu-and-others&title=REMEMBERING%20ODUMEGWU%20OJUKWU%20%26%238230%3BAND%20OTHERS\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"content" : "<p>\n“Acapulco, September 18 [2010]. Two unidentified men, decapitated in the town of Coyuca de Catalán. Heads thrown into a soft-drink bottling plant from two moving vehicles. One has its eyes masked with gray industrial adhesive tape. The bodies have not been identified.” “Juárez, Chihuahua, December 27 [2010]. On Jarudo and Sierra Candelaria streets, in the community of Jarudo, two young students were riddled with holes and charred by Molotov cocktails in the red Silverado…...\t\n\n<p>\n \n\nTranslated from\n\t\n\t\tSpanish\n\t\n\n\nby\n\tDaniel Hahn \n\t\n\n<span style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/bilingual/the-politics-of-grief\"><i>bilingual version</i></a></span> \n</p>\n\n <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=M4-8n_Tlebo:OHWE3WF-Nw0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwborders/~4/M4-8n_Tlebo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p>"
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638e2f67970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"RobertGlasper5byMikeSchreiber_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638e2f67970b-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"RobertGlasper5byMikeSchreiber_medium\"></a><br>Jazz fans tend to be highly partial. We insist that one trumpeter is better than all others or that one drummer is faster, stronger or more rhythmic than everyone else. We take music personally and like to fight for our particular tastes and choices. This king-of-the-hill view also tends to spill over into the kinds of music we listen to—and what we write off. I would argue this way of thinking isn't a good thing, since it prevents a wealth of new material from reaching our ears.</p>\n<p><em> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401630295e930970d-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Robert-glasper-experiment-black-radio-AfbxhRkCIAIwA4u.jpg_large-800x800\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401630295e930970d-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Robert-glasper-experiment-black-radio-AfbxhRkCIAIwA4u.jpg_large-800x800\"></a><br>The Robert Glasper Experiment: Black Radio</em> is an important album that features an emerging jazz style. We shouldn't say, "Oh, it doesn't sound like the kind of jazz I'm used to, therefore it's not worthwhile." Or "This pianist or that pianist is better." Think of this album as <em>Koko</em> or <em>Bernie's Tune</em> or <em>Bags' Groove</em> or <em>Giant Steps</em> or <em>Bitches Brew</em>. It's the start of something new that may or may not develop. But it's different and eclectic and tremendously exciting once you let it in.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">In Part 2</span></strong> of my two-part conversation with Robert, the jazz pianist talks about recording <em>Black Radio</em>, and he recommends five albums that deeply influenced his experimental approach...</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong>JazzWax:</strong> Do you add your acoustic or Fender Rhodes piano before or after a vocal is recorded?<br><strong>Robert Glasper:</strong> It depends. For example, on <em>The Consequences of Jealousy,</em> I laid Rhodes [tracks] first and <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401630295f165970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Images\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401630295f165970d-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Images\"></a>then afterward went on top of it with acoustic piano. Sometimes I choose a song specifically because I want to play Rhodes. But then after it’s over, I hear acoustic piano sprinkles in my mind and go back in and play piano over the track. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Like on <em>Afro Blue?</em><br><strong>RG:</strong> Yes. This happened after Erykah [Badu] laid her vocal [down]. The band had already <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b8898970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Robert-Glasper-Double-Booked\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b8898970c-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Robert-Glasper-Double-Booked\"></a>recorded the instrumental tracks. Erykah did her vocals later because she was on tour so she couldn’t come to the studio when we recorded. At any rate, we came in and laid the track first with just Rhodes. Then I got with her in New York at the studio. She laid [down] her vocal, and after she finished I laid the piano part to compliment her vocal.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> It must be fascinating to accompany a mood after the fact.<br><strong>RG:</strong> It is. I didn’t want to force my piano into the track. I just wanted it to be musically honest with what I thought should be there. I think musical honesty touches people more than something that is over-processed.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Which is hard, since it’s easy to get lost in electronica <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638a8bcf970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Off-The-Wall\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638a8bcf970b-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Off-The-Wall\"></a>today.<br><strong>RG:</strong> I wanted to mimic the kind of feeling of Michael Jackson’s <em>Off the Wall.</em><br><br><strong>JW: </strong>Really? How so?<br><strong>RG:</strong> He went into the studio, and they recorded all 12 songs with the same instrumentation. It sounds produced by one person. It sounds like one complete thought. One single vibe. That’s why I wanted my piano’s voice running through <em>Black Radio</em>—sometimes up top and other times in the background. It's always there. I play [synthesized] keyboard on only one track. Other than that, I wanted to keep an acoustic-Rhodes backbone running through. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Why?<br><strong>RG:</strong> It’s a constant that gives the album a unified feel. It keeps the concept grounded and gives the album a jazz <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b979d970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"51xpyASngVL._SL500_AA300_\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b979d970c-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"51xpyASngVL._SL500_AA300_\"></a>esthetic. If you remove the acoustic piano, the album becomes a whole other thing, you know? Everything has a color, and when you use colors correctly, you paint a good picture.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> What do you love about the late-night soul chill sound of the ‘70s?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Maybe part of it is nostalgia and the feeling that comes from that. My mother played all of those records when I was growing up. But I’ve also always loved live music. My mom would take me to all of her [singing] gigs. I was always around live music and instruments. I didn’t know the whole “produced” thing. I’m a child of live music. That’s where my sound comes from. That’s all I know.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834016302960936970d-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"PeteRock1\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834016302960936970d-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"PeteRock1\"></a><br>JW:</strong> Why is hip-hop so important?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Because it’s the widest platform for a musician. It has the biggest audience, as far as today’s young generation is concerned. [Pictured: Pete Rock]<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> But that’s a commercial answer. Is it artistically significant?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Totally. It’s important because of that artistry. If you do the wrong thing with hip-hop, you can totally influence people the wrong way. But if you do the right thing, you influence people in a good way. Hip-hop is so huge and it’s so admired. It’s our jazz.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b9ba1970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Thelonious_monk_by_herb_snitzerAG330\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88b9ba1970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Thelonious_monk_by_herb_snitzerAG330\"></a><br>JW:</strong> How so?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Jazz was hip-hop in its day. It was new, cutting-edge music. It addressed social issues, issues relating to injustice and problems of the time. Jazz was a reflection of its times in earlier generations. Hip-hop talks about those issues today, just differently. [Photo of Thelonious Monk by <strong><a href=\"http://www.herbsnitzer.com/\">Herb Snitzer</a></strong>]<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Esthetically, what’s special about it?<br><strong>RG:</strong> From an artist’s standpoint, there are different forms of hip-hop. It’s not all the same, just as jazz is different. Hip-hop has gone through different eras, just like jazz. Some of it I like. Some I don’t like.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> What kind do you like?<br><strong>RG:</strong> For me, I like the melodic side of hip-hop. I like hip hop that samples jazz cats like Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans and <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834016302960e14970d-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Ahmad_jamal\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834016302960e14970d-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Ahmad_jamal\"></a>Ron Carter. I like groups like A Tribe Called Quest and artists like Pete Rock. They’re very melodic cats. It’s also musical, with nice warm chords. But with a rocking hip-hop beat, you know what I’m saying? It’s a good feeling for me. Which is what I try to mimic when I play in my piano trio. I try to mimic that sound and that feeling. To me that’s my generation, that’s younger soul music. That’s Earth Wind & Fire.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Which five albums are favorites of yours and heavily influenced your direction on <em>Black Radio? </em> <br><strong>RG:</strong> Off the top of my head? OK, here goes:<br><br><strong>Michael Jackson—<em>Off th</em><em>e Wall</em> (1979).</strong> For the sound and cohesiveness, the live instrumentation, the vibe, the songs and the Rhodes.<br><br><strong>Herbie Hancock—<em>Thrus</em><em>t</em> (1974).</strong> Herbie to me was the <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638a9384970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"B000008U0X.01.LZZZZZZZ_20060809040117\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167638a9384970b-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"B000008U0X.01.LZZZZZZZ_20060809040117\"></a>‘70s. His <em>Head Hunters</em> (1973) was important, too.<br><br><strong>Roy Ayers—<em>Everybody Loves the Sunshine</em> (1976).</strong> It put Roy on the mainstream map. But all of his albums have something to say.<br><br><strong>Freddie Hubbard—<em>Red Clay</em> (1970).</strong> For the fire.<br><br><strong>A Tribe Called Quest—<em>Midnight Marauders</em> (1993).</strong> The group’s <em>The Low End Theory</em> also is solid, but <em>Midnight <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163029610c1970d-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"R-87324-1194358121\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163029610c1970d-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"R-87324-1194358121\"></a>Marauders</em> is a great place to start. Midnight Marauders, beat wise, is ridiculous. It's so musical—it’s like a jazz album. There are lots of samples of artists—Mini Riperton, Joe Sample, Ron Carter and others. It’s in my Top 5 favorite hip-hop albums of all time. I think any jazz fan would dig it.</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><strong>JazzWax tracks:</strong></span> Robert Glasper's <em>Black Radio</em> (Blue Note) <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88ba146970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Robert-glasper-experiment-black-radio-AfbxhRkCIAIwA4u.jpg_large-800x800\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e88ba146970c-200wi\" style=\"width:200px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Robert-glasper-experiment-black-radio-AfbxhRkCIAIwA4u.jpg_large-800x800\"></a>can be found at <strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Black-Radio-Robert-Glasper-Experiment/dp/B0067Q04AM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331174930&sr=8-1\">Amazon</a></strong> and other e-retailers.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax clip: </span></strong>Here's <em>Move Love</em> from <em>Black Radio</em>...</p>\n<p><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/MGVQAW8bLBE\" width=\"460\"></iframe> </p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jazzwax/~4/PYA6D5Ke2Fk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028ae968970d-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"RobertGlasper3bbyMikeSchreiber_2_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028ae968970d-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"RobertGlasper3bbyMikeSchreiber_2_medium\"></a><br>Jazz isn't dying—it's changing. And what's emerging is ruthlessly exciting and eclectic. This nascent jazz form, like many that preceded it, is a collage of styles—mixing acoustic improvisation with hip-hop themes, turntable sampling and even black-jazz forms from earlier decades. At the front of this movement is pianist Robert Glasper. As I wrote in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> about a week (<strong><a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203358704577237632561318256.html?KEYWORDS=robert+glasper\">go here</a></strong>), Robert is fast becoming the Duke Ellington of jazz electronica.</p>\n<p>Unlike many jazz musicians today, Robert has found a way to make jazz relevant without selling out, going overboard or <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167637f681d970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Robert Glasper_Black Radio-thumb-473xauto-8946\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167637f681d970b-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Robert Glasper_Black Radio-thumb-473xauto-8946\"></a>making the music alien to traditionalists. On his last album—<em>Double Booked</em>—he split the disc between straight-up acoustic jazz and a new experimental form. On his latest CD—<em>Black Radio</em> (Blue Note)—Robert has devoted the entire disc to his new textured sound. For me, <em>Black Radio</em> is the most important jazz album of 2012—and a way forward for jazz.</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><strong>In Part 1</strong></span> of my two-part conversation with Robert, 33, the pianist, composer and arranger talks about his vision for jazz's future and why traditional jazz is having trouble gaining traction with younger audiences:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880983e970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"RobertGlasper1byMikeSchreiber_2_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880983e970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"RobertGlasper1byMikeSchreiber_2_medium\"></a><br>JazzWax:</strong> It’s dangerous leaving you a voicemail—a caller could wind up on your next album.<br><strong>Robert Glasper:</strong> [<em>Laughs</em>] Exactly. And you’ll never know it until the album comes out. At first I thought you were talking about the fact that I’m horrible at picking up my messages, because I rarely check my machine.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880c576970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Glasper1byCognito_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880c576970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Glasper1byCognito_medium\"></a><br>JW:</strong> On <em>Black Radio,</em> you seem to be moving finally toward an fully eclectic, soul-electronic form. True?<br><strong>RG:</strong> I think so. This was an idea I had for a while. With the kind of response we’ve received, it would be stupid not to keep it going. The album is opening a lot of doors. It's opening some ears. And it’s inspiring some younger cats. I definitely want to keep this experiment open. Plus it’s fun, especially working with other great artists. There are many artists I’ve worked with before who I want to work with on this concept—and artists I haven’t worked with before.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> We’re living in collage times—everything overlaps. Do you still view your music as an experiment or is it the future for sure?<br><strong>RG:</strong> That’s kind of my main thing now. To be honest, no one really cares about piano trio albums anymore [<em>laughs</em>]. Don’t get me wrong, I love those albums to death. I listen to them. I’m a jazz pianist. <br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880c5f5970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"RobertGlasper2byMikeSchreiber_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880c5f5970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"RobertGlasper2byMikeSchreiber_medium\"></a><br>JW:</strong> But?<br><strong>RG:</strong> But you can’t expect the masses to love the piano trio format. And if I like more than one type of music and bring them together in one form, that means I will have more than one audience. When you have more than one audience, it exposes them to all the stuff you’re doing. They’ll become fans, and they’ll check out my piano trio albums. This new concept is something I’m tapping into. It’s part of me. And it’s a natural transition.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> On <em>Black Radio,</em> did you wing it in the studio—hoping that magical things would happen? Or was everything carefully planned out?<br><strong>RG:</strong> <em>Black Radio</em> wasn’t planned out carefully. That’s the magic of it. It was very loose. Many people who came to the studio didn’t know what they were going to sing. Others knew what they were going to sing—but I wound up changing the song the night before, and they didn’t know it until they got there.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028b1aa9970d-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Glasper2byCognito_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028b1aa9970d-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Glasper2byCognito_medium\"></a><br>JW:</strong> So it has an improvised spirit?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Yes, that’s why the album has a jazz feel. It was formatted like a jazz record. We went into the studio and kind of hit it. So there’s definitely a freshness and edginess to it because we’re not doing the same stuff we’ve done for years.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d704970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"51MNWEuKApL._SS500_\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d704970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"51MNWEuKApL._SS500_\"></a><br>JW:</strong> Even though the album goes off in a range of soul-chill directions, your acoustic piano is ever-present, presiding over all experimentation, yes?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Exactly. And that was the point. I didn’t want to always have to take a piano solo to be heard. Piano solos don’t always fit on everything. And to be honest, solos turn some people off [<em>laughs</em>]. I wanted to strike a balance, always be there in the background. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> But it varies, which delights the ear.<br><strong>RG:</strong> On some songs there’s a piano solo. On others, there isn’t. I just wanted to be sure that all of the songs were good—first and foremost. Everybody loves good songs. And that’s where we fall short in the jazz world today. We think there has to be a million solos on everything. But not everyone likes that.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880ca04970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"RobertGlasper6byMikeSchreiber_medium\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880ca04970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"RobertGlasper6byMikeSchreiber_medium\"></a><br>JW:</strong> Have existing jazz styles become exhausted?<br><strong>RG:</strong> I think they’ve run their course in terms of attracting a new audience. In my book, jazz legends are still stars. To me, you know. But I’m a jazz guy. I’m in that realm. To go outside of your realm and get new fans, it’s harder if you’re doing the same kind of music all the time. You have a better chance if you’re exploring new ground. This isn't about business. It's about art.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Is the American Songbook holding jazz back—preventing it from developing?<br><strong>RG:</strong> How so?<br><strong><br>JW:</strong> You can’t play these standards over and over <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167637fae5f970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"SINATRAS_MIC_RESIZED-2\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340167637fae5f970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"SINATRAS_MIC_RESIZED-2\"></a>again and expect to attract a wider, thinking audience.<br><strong>RG:</strong> I agree, you can’t. And the funny thing is, the people in the jazz community are holding themselves hostage with this thinking. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> It certainly puzzles me why so many artists think their new <em>My Funny Valentine</em> will top what's already out there. <br><strong>RG:</strong> [<em>Laughs</em>] I don’t want to hear it again. Some people view this as disrespect, but the fact is I’m sick of it. I’ve been on the road for 16 or 17 year. I’ve played with jazz greats and played my share of standards. Now it’s time for a new standard. We can't do the old thing forever.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d0fc970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Bird and Diz Laughing\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d0fc970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Bird and Diz Laughing\"></a><br>JW: </strong>Yet many jazz fans want musicians to do the same thing over and over again.<br><strong>RG:</strong> You know, the cats that we look up to in the jazz world didn’t do this. They played modern music that they had just written. They played their friends’ songs that their friends wrote. They always played something that was modern and up-to-date. They were current. That’s all I'm trying to do now, without losing what makes jazz special and personal to the listener. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> What’s the recipe?<br><strong>RG:</strong> If today’s jazz musicians mirrored today’s times—all of it—the way earlier jazz musicians did, jazz would be more relevant. And we’d be in the here and now rather than focusing on yesterday. Jazz also wouldn’t be viewed as historic music, you know? I don’t know why jazz stopped pushing for the new. Who said jazz is supposed to be about the past? Or that it’s supposed to stop at a particular point?<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d22c970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Roy-ayers-feature\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d22c970c-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Roy-ayers-feature\"></a><br>JW:</strong> There’s a lot of Roy Ayers [pictured], Doug and Jean Carn, and Gil Scott-Heron in your music. Who did I leave out?<br><strong>RG:</strong> [<em>Laughs</em>] I played with Gil Scott-Heron. And Stevie. You’re totally right on the ball. But you can’t get that kind of thing across without the right band. My point about the music wouldn’t come across without Casey Benjamin [on vocoder, reeds and synthesizer], Derrick Hodge [on bass] and Chris Dave [on drums]. My campaign would not be heard without them.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Why?<br><strong>RG:</strong> Because they grew up on the black jazz of the '70s that we’re tapping into on this album.<br><br><strong> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028b25eb970d-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Earth%2C_Wind_y_Fire-That_s_The_Way_Of_The_World-Frontal\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340163028b25eb970d-500wi\" style=\"width:460px\" title=\"Earth%2C_Wind_y_Fire-That_s_The_Way_Of_The_World-Frontal\"></a><br>JW:</strong> But you didn’t—you were born in 1978.<br><strong>RG:</strong> Right—but I was hearing it at home. My mom [singer Kim Yvette Glasper] played this music all the time when I was growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s. When I was 11 years old, my mother said, “Get your ass out of bed. If you want to be a musician, you have to come with me to see Earth Wind & Fire right now.” She knew what it took and what I needed to hear. She knew what I had to be around.</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><strong>Tomorrow</strong>,</span> Robert Glasper discusses the making of <em>Black <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d412970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Robert Glasper_Black Radio-thumb-473xauto-8946\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340168e880d412970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Robert Glasper_Black Radio-thumb-473xauto-8946\"></a>Radio</em> and how tracks were recorded, and he recommends five albums that deeply influenced his new approach.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax tracks:</span></strong> You'll find The Robert Glasper Experiment's <em>Black Radio</em> at <strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Black-Radio/dp/B0075PYG1M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331084743&sr=8-1\">Amazon</a></strong> (it's just $6.99). While you're there, check out Robert's <strong><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Double-Booked-Robert-Glasper/dp/B002GSO3M0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331084743&sr=8-4\"><em>Double Booked</em></a></strong> and his earlier piano trio albums.</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><strong>JazzWax clip: </strong></span>Here's The Robert Glasper Experiment's majestic take on <strong><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-0JZlrk4xA\"><em>Afro Blue</em></a></strong> from <em>Black Radio,</em> with Erykah Badu on vocal...</p>\n<p><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/3-0JZlrk4xA\" width=\"460\"></iframe> </p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jazzwax/~4/1rAUEilN-T0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "Learning curve",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012-Porsche-911.jpg\"><img title=\"2012-Porsche-911\" src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2012-Porsche-911-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BMW_1200_GS.jpg\"><img title=\"BMW_1200_GS\" src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/BMW_1200_GS-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"></a></p>\n<p>The Porsche 911 and the BMW boxer motorcycle show what can be achieved by consistently improving and refining an architecture. The strong points have been improved, the weak parts eliminated untill the value of package is just magnificent. Just follow the learning curve..</p>\n<p>Lately I started to wonder if this same principle would apply to FttH deployment.</p>\n<p>The Netherlands is a good reference because the basic architecture for FttH has been the same for the last 5 years or more. The dominant (> 90%) architecture deployed is point-to-point with 2 fibers per home, and the volume has grown to more than 350.000 homes passed per year. And last but not least, it is possible to get some (mostly off-the-record) intelligence on what is really happening.</p>\n<p>The big picture substantiates the idea that practice trumps theory. The construction companies have managed to cut the average cost (Capex) per connection by approx. 15 % in the last 5+ years. That is already impressive, and there is more. The pressure to reduce Capex has lead to various experiments with new materials (packaging) and new processes that are very promising in my opinion. (The details are not yet available for publication). Some of these innovations may turn out to be generic and applicable in other countries as well, some of them may be specific for the Dutch urban areas.</p>\n<p>This observation shows that generic cost calculations made by consultants may seriously be overestimating the actual investment levels, as no learning curve effect is taken into account. It shows also that sticking to an architecture and keep on improving and improving and improving pays off very well. Which is good news for FttH…..</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F03%2Flearning-curve%2F&linkname=Learning%20curve\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F03%2Flearning-curve%2F&linkname=Learning%20curve\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F03%2Flearning-curve%2F&linkname=Learning%20curve\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2012%2F03%2Flearning-curve%2F&title=Learning%20curve\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/media/yahoo_logo.jpg\" alt=\"[image]\"></p>\n<p>I joined Yahoo! in 2004, shortly after blowing off Google.</p>\n<p>Apparently that <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">stupid, stupid mistake</span> surprising post got me noticed enough for Jeremy Zawodny to point out my name to Jerry Yang, then still a Chief Yahoo! and not the CEO, who asked me to come in for an interview. He hired me, and I ended up helping the corporate development team there with mobile strategy (not sure how much was really wanted or needed), giving demos to the C-level execs (e.g. teaching Terry Semel how to send a text message), and working on a skunkworks project paid out of the infamous 'Jerry's Fund', nominally reporting to Geoff Ralston. Eventually when Marco Boerries's company was acquired and he became head of Connected Life (i.e. the non-PC stuff like TV, widgets and mobile), I transitioned to work for him doing strategy and eventually helped hire the VP of Mobile Chris Lindholm and worked for him.</p>\n<p>Ok, that was lots of name-dropping, but the point is to give a solid timeframe of when I was there and the people I was dealing with. During my time at Y! I was supposed to be an 'innovator', and bounced around working for a bunch of execs basically trying to suggest new mobile ideas Yahoo! should pursue and providing feedback on general mobile strategy. I don't think most of the people I worked with outside of those execs had any idea what I did at Yahoo! (This was of course before my wife left me, and I stopped showing up for work regularly. Then pretty much no one had any idea what I did there.)</p>\n<p>So with that as context, I wanted to point out that there was *never* a time at Yahoo! when patents were considered 'for defensive purposes only'. If you worked there and you think otherwise, either you aren't remembering very well, or you're simply deluding yourself. I love Andy Baio, I've read Waxy.org for years, but <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/03/opinion-baio-yahoo-patent-lie/\">his article yesterday was complete rose-colored crap</a>. Now, don't get me wrong, Yahoo! has done it's very best over the past decade to fuck up, and suing Facebook doesn't break that pattern. But that doesn't change the fact that patents were very important to Yahoo! from the moment I joined, and even after I left (more about that in a second), in a very aggressive way.</p>\n<p>History lesson: Yahoo! bought Overture in 2003 specifically *because* of their patent litigation against Google. Shortly after the acquisition, in the summer of 2004, <a href=\"http://news.cnet.com/Google,-Yahoo-bury-the-legal-hatchet/2100-1024_3-5302421.html?tag=mncol\">Google settled with Yahoo!</a>, giving them 2.7MM shares of common stock in exchange for a perpetual license. It was a massive windfall for Yahoo! and it was an event celebrated by every employee at the company from the execs on down. I heard no reservations about this from anyone that I ever worked with, nor any caveats about doing it again if the opportunity arose.</p>\n<p>There was an emphasis for everyone, company-wide, to submit patent applications or patent ideas with the specific notion that Yahoo! was going to use them to prove that it was an innovator. Remember at the time Google was dazzling the world with their growth, and Y! was trying to show it was an innovative company as well. But in addition to just being innovative, there was a sense of wariness about startups coming on fast, and the need to be able defend against them. This is quite obvious in the way they went on a massive talent and startup acquisition spree back then, and then immediately had those new employees submit patents related to their work. There was no sense of, 'oh, in case we get sued, we'll be able to fight back' sort of defense about the patents, it was always, 'oh, in case we lose out to another startup like we did with Google, and we can't acquire them, we'll be able to take them down with our portfolio of patents.'</p>\n<p>A few years after I left Yahoo!, I got contacted by their lawyers about two patent applications that have my name on them. They want me to re-affirm them, or update my contact info or something - I'm honestly not sure what. This is an interesting story in and of itself. The patents pending are <a href=\"http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=G4WgAAAAEBAJ&dq=Russell+Beattie\">Mobile Social Networking</a> , and <a href=\"https://register.epo.org/espacenet/application?number=EP07784252&tab=main\">Mobile Monetization</a>. I know, those are insanely generically worded patents. Here's the thing, I don't remember contributing anything to them. This isn't a completely ridiculous notion, as I have an incredibly bad memory. The patent stuff I remember submitting was akin to the conversational user interface I wrote about a few weeks ago. I *might* have something to do with the mobile monetization stuff, as I banged the table quite a bit about making sure services made money back when I was there, but the mobile social networking patent!? Me? Social networking? Read this blog for about two minutes and you'd know I don't get social networking and never have.</p>\n<p>Since it was really only resume fodder for me, I wasn't going to worry much about it. Until the last time the lawyers contacted me a couple months ago - they asked if I knew the whereabouts of one of the other people listed on the money patent as they couldn't find them. I didn't, so I sent a message to an old Y! contact on Facebook (ironically enough) and got quite an interesting response about that patent: My name was never meant to be on it, and that the people submitting the patent were made to put my name on it and weren't happy about it. Apparently, this had happened *after* I left. Wow. No wonder I couldn't remember anything about it, as I had nothing to do with it. I know I have a penchant for pissing people off, but usually I know that I'm doing it, or I'm at least aware of it happening. This was completely crazy to me. So when the lawyer called me again to see if I could fill out the paperwork she sent me, I told her that, honestly, I didn't want anything to do with the patent now as apparently my name isn't supposed to be on it, and the rest of the inventors were pissed off at that fact that it was, and most importantly, I don't have the slightest recollection of the patent at all. So that's the last I've heard of it, but looking online, my name is still attached to it. We'll see what happens.</p>\n<p>Anyways, this must have happened to others as well, maybe even Andy? It doesn't take a genius to add up Yahoo!'s executive troubles and tumbling market share, with frequent calls from lawyers making sure that all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed on years-old patent applications to know what's going on. I'm sorry about whatever guilt ex-Yahoo's might be feeling about this sort of thing, but there's no way that anyone could have been confused about Yahoo!'s intentions when it comes to wielding their patent portfolio, then or now. Yes, it sucks, but hey, we chose to join the wrong bandwagon back when. Nothing we can do about that now except suck it up and let our resumes take the hit.</p>\n<p>That said, the hypocritical angst I've seen from rest of the industry is completely inane. I mean, I understand that it's easy to attack Yahoo! - they're not the young fresh startup that's going to go public in the next few months and make hundreds of new millionaires and billionaires - so that makes sense. There's a variety of entrenched interests in making sure they seem like the bad guy, and I'm definitely not going to defend them. BUT the feigned shock and over-the-top moral outrage is just fucking unbelievable. You may not *like* the fact that Yahoo! sued Facebook, but don't act surprised and affronted. Doing so just shows willful ignorance, obvious bias or both. I'm not going to go down the 'software patents are a reality' or 'everyone's a bad guy in their own way' path, but come on, be realistic. Unless you're some 22 year old kid who joined Facebook last week and can't understand how some old-ass company like Yahoo! which started when you were still in pre-school is suing your beloved startup, you really should know better than to express such violent shock that Y! is doing the obvious.</p>\n<p>Harp all you want, but outrage? Please get real.</p>\n<p>-Russ</p>"
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"title" : "Safecast Geiger Counter Reference Design",
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"content" : "<p>This past weekend marked the anniversary of the Tohoku-Oki earthquake that devastated Japan. I had not felt my blood so cold since I watched the twin towers fall almost a decade earlier. I still vividly remember the twisting knots I felt in my stomach as I watched the footage of a tsunami wiping out huge swathes of Japanese countryside. In a matter of hours, entire cities were washed off the map, leaving an eerie post-apocalyptic landscape of a few survivors weeping amongst twisted wreckage. Then, in the ensuing days, Fukushima Daiichi melted down, leaving in its wake one of the worst on-going radiation contamination crisis since Chernobyl. </p>\n<p>I have good friends in Japan, and I visit often. I wanted to do something to help, but I didn’t know what I could do. I was connected by <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/joi\">Joi Ito</a> to <a href=\"http://blog.safecast.org/\">Safecast</a>, and I joined the effort to build an open sensor network that could aggregate trustable, source-neutral radiation monitoring data. Safecast itself has many talented and hard working volunteers who have done a remarkable job of achieving their goals by instrumenting Japan with radiation monitors and aggregating data through <a href=\"http://blog.safecast.org/2011/05/bgeigie-ninja-a-new-and-improved-bgeigie/photo-may-11-5-34-18-pm/\">cleverly designed and rapidly deployable</a> mobile monitoring capabilities.</p>\n<p>I decided my tiny contribution to the effort would be to design a radiation monitor suitable for everyday civilian use. This is a preventative/preparedness measure, addressing the long-term issue of empowering a civilian population with few available options for power generation to self-monitor their environment. The problem with the current crop of radiation monitors is that they are basically laboratory instruments: accurate & reliable, but bulky, expensive, and difficult to use, requiring a degree in nuclear physics to understand exactly what the readings meant. Another problem with crises like these is that while radiation monitoring is important, it’s something that is typically neglected by the civilian population until it is too late. </p>\n<p>Therefore, the challenge set out before me was to design a new Geiger counter that was not only more intuitive and easier to use than the current crop, but was also sufficiently stylish so that civilians would feel natural carrying it around on a daily basis. Furthermore, it had to provide extensive logging capabilities, as radiation monitors are typically not turned “on” until after the fact. It also had to operate effectively in catastrophic conditions, i.e. in scenarios where internet and power have been cut for days. Finally, the data collected by the instrument had to pass any scrutiny thrown its way, and the collected data had to be traceable to a given instrument so that if its calibration is incorrect, its data can be selectively excluded without poisoning the entire dataset. Radiation monitoring is a politically sensitive subject, and certain parties have interests to manipulate the data one way or the other to promote their views with the public. Ad-hoc data collection networks suffer from the possibility that their efforts can be discredited by institutions with big budgets who find that the readings represent an inconvenient truth.</p>\n<p><b>Radiation sensing primer</b></p>\n<p>Radiation measurements are subtle, partly because radiation comes in many flavors. Many Geiger counters can only efficiently detect the most energetic kind of radiation, gamma radiation. This includes the Geiger counters frequently favored by government and regulatory agencies. However, there are weaker forms of radiation (alpha and beta) which often go overlooked that can also pose a human health risk, particularly if they are ingested or inhaled. These weaker forms of radiation are also by-products of a nuclear meltdown, and because they come from different isotopes they have different patterns of distribution and absorption in the environment. </p>\n<p>Because of the diversity of radiation sources and their varying biological impact, it is very hard to determine if an environment is safe in the face of an elevated Geiger counter reading. However, improved historical and spatial distribution records of background radiation measurements can help identify when there is a spike in radiation, which is a clearer cause for concern. </p>\n<p>In the interest of creating a complete solution for public health needs, a core design requirement of the new Geiger counter is to incorporate a sensor that could detect all three forms of radiation. This type of sensor is a “pancake” style Geiger tube, which has a large mica window that enables sensitivity to all three kinds of radiation. The ultimate selection of the <a href=\"http://www.lndinc.com/products/17/\">LND7317 pancake tube</a> plus iRover HV radiation sensing core influenced every aspect of the industrial design (ID) and internal electronics.</p>\n<p><b>There and Back Again: a Hacker’s Tale</b></p>\n<p>I thought it would be interesting to share not only the final design, but also the intermediate designs that were scrapped en route to achieving a final design. Design is an iterative process, where one has to make difficult choices about what to include and more significantly what to leave out. It’s extremely rare to see what got left on the cutting room floor, but I saved my notes along the way so I could share them with you now. </p>\n<p><b>Initial Design Sketch</b></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_concept1.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_concept1_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>Above is a rendering of the first design sketch, made back when Safecast had the name of “RDTN”. I do all my industrial design using Solidworks, a survival skill I picked up during my tenure at chumby designing consumer electronics. I came up with this in the first couple of weeks after the disaster. This design incorporated a <a href=\"http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8875\">low-sensitivity tube from Sparkfun</a>, because at that time I did not understand the importance of using a pancake tube. </p>\n<p>The biggest problem I wanted to solve with this design is user abandonment. Radiation leaks are thankfully rare events. However, this also means that when an event happens, there is typically a lack of pre-crisis background data against which to compare the post-crisis readings. Therefore, I wanted to build a device that people would be compelled to carry around every day and use for years at a time. </p>\n<p>My thought is that the average consumer would have a hard time justifying carrying around yet another gadget in their pockets or purses for the sole purpose of measuring radiation. Within weeks or even days of getting nothing but “safe” readings, the Geiger counter would be forgotten and left at home to languish until after the next crisis. </p>\n<p>One way to compel users to carry around a Geiger counter is to put it into something they already carry all the time. While it would be tough to convince a smartphone vendor to incorporate a very expensive and bulky Geiger tube, many smartphone users also carry around a spare battery pack, which they use almost every day. So, I thought it might be a good idea to trojan horse a Geiger tube into such a battery pack. </p>\n<p>The sketch above demonstrates such an incarnation. This design is basically a battery pack that can charge a smartphone, but also incorporates a Geiger tube, an LED flashlight (handy in an emergency when there is no power), and some logging circuitry. The Geiger counter would upload its log data to the Safecast network whenever a user plugged in to charge the phone. </p>\n<p>The design itself is minimalist, with a shape inspired by the steam cooling towers frequently used to iconify nuclear power in western media. The shape was chosen to remind us that sometimes we have no choice but to harvest the power of the atom, and a well-equipped and informed civilian data collection network is a key factor in trusting the safety of our power sources.</p>\n<p><b>A second iteration</b></p>\n<p>The first sketch had to be abandoned, primarily because the sensor it was designed around was too small to effectively measure alpha and beta radiation. After Safecast settled on the LND7317 Geiger tube as the standard reference sensor, I started re-designing the sensor around the new tube.</p>\n<p>The problem with the larger, more sensitive sensor is that it was big – over a half-inch thick, and a couple inches in diameter. Below is a sketch of a design study aimed at creating the smallest possible Geiger counter that could also incorporate the large pancake tube. It’s about the size of a hockey puck, but a bit thicker. In order to keep the size and weight of the Geiger counter reasonable, I had to abandon any notion of a dual-purpose as a battery pack. Instead, I had to rely on “sex appeal” alone to compel users to carry the device around. I wanted to make the Geiger counter something unique and aesthetically pleasing, something you would enjoy carrying around frequently. I started from a minimalist design – the puck – and endeavored to design-out any outward indicators or displays. Hence in this sketch, the radiation measurement is provided by a set of super-high efficiency 7-segment LEDs that could shine the numbers through a seemingly opaque white shell. The design’s shape and feel was meant to be somewhere in between <a href=\"http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/EVE\">“Eve”</a> from WALL-E and an egg. </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_puck3.png\"></p>\n<p>Unfortunately, this design, too, had to be abandoned because at the time when I was drawing up the sketches, I didn’t have detailed mechanical drawings of the LND7317 tube. When I was finally given a sample of the tube and drawings for it, I discovered there was not only the puck-like body, but also a nearly 1″ long protrusion for the cathode and anode. This completely destroyed any notion of building a puck-like sensor. </p>\n<p><b>Closing in on the final design</b></p>\n<p>Below is a rendering of an attempt to accommodate the accurate CAD model for the LND7317 into an ID that stayed faithful to the Eve/egg design inspirations. The puck was elongated to the minimum dimensions required to house all the internal components. Again, the hidden 7-segment LED display motif was employed. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_7seg.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_7seg_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p><b>The final design</b></p>\n<p>After much discussion and review with the Safecast team, we decided that a key component of the user experience should be a graphic display, instead of a 7-segment LED readout. Therefore, a 128×128 pixel OLED panel was incorporated into the design. The OLED panel would be mounted behind a continuous outer shell, so there would be no seams or outward design features resulting from the introduction of the OLED. However, as the OLED is not bright enough to shine through an opaque white plastic exterior shell, a clear window had to be provided for the OLED. As a result, the naturally black color of the OLED caused the preferred color scheme of the exterior case to go from light colors to dark colors. User interaction would occur through a captouch button array hidden behind the same shell, with perhaps silkscreen outlines to provide hints as to where the buttons were underneath the shell. I had originally resisted the idea of using the OLED because it’s very expensive, but once I saw how much an LND7317 tube would cost in volume, I realized that it would be silly to not add a premium feature like an OLED. Due to the sensor alone, the retail price of the device would be in the hundreds of dollars; so adding an OLED display would help make the device “feel” a lot more valuable than a 7-segment LED display, even though the OLED’s presence is largely irrelevant to the core function of the apparatus. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_final_render.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_final_render_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>The design also lacks any integrated radio connection. A popular request for the design was the incorporation of a bluetooth or zigbee style radio; however, a combination of a very stringent battery life goal (several months of standby time) and low manufacturing volumes meant that it was impractical to incorporate a radio into the device. It’s a slippery slope to start adding features like GPS and bluetooth – to add those features, you’d need to upgrade the microcontroller, at which point you’re basically building a very expensive, heavy and large cell phone with a geiger counter in it. Furthermore, the entire development effort was being done by an unpaid volunteer operating on a shoestring budget – Safecast isn’t Apple. So, rather than build a buggy cell phone that can sense radiation, I’d rather build an outstanding Geiger counter; hence the decision to focus efforts and resources on core functionality, with the sole allowance being the inclusion of the OLED + captouch array for improved UI. This is a controversial design decision and I fully expect to be chastised for it.</p>\n<p><b>The Prototypes</b></p>\n<p>Once the design was finished, the next step was to build prototypes. This is the really fun part, where you turn your ideas into something you can touch and hold. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_proto.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_proto_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_proto_side.JPG\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/safecast_proto_side_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>The prototypes are made out of CNC-machined ABS (even the clear part!). The cosmetic moldings that go over the connectors were also built and they do fit, but because of their expense and fragility (CNC milled ABS lacks the robustness of injection-molded ABS), I try not to install them, even for glamor shots. To wit, the whole thing was done on a shoestring budget, as Safecast is a non-profit; two full prototypes were built, including PCB fab, assembly, and CNC milling for one and a half revisions of the cases, for a bit under $3k total. </p>\n<p>An important point readers should note about this design is that I’m <em>not</em> manufacturing this Geiger counter reference design. My contribution is limited to design IP only. Practically speaking, I’d make a terrible Geiger counter supplier, because I don’t have the credibility or history in the industry. Instead, the design has been donated to the community, thereby enabling <a href=\"http://medcom.com/\">International Medcom</a>, a business that has spent decades specialized in producing high-quality Geiger counters, to bring this to the market. If you’re interested in getting one of these, keep an eye on their website.</p>\n<p>The final design features include:</p>\n<li>LND7317 pancake tube + iRover HV board\n</li>\n<li>STM32-based microcontroller; sufficient CPU power to digitally sign logs with a unique private key as a non-repudiation/anti-tamper measure\n</li>\n<li>450 mAh Li-poly battery\n</li>\n<li>3-axis accelerometer so sensor orientation can be recorded\n</li>\n<li>128×128 color OLED display\n</li>\n<li>6-button captouch array\n</li>\n<li>“hold” button on the back to lock the captouch array and prevent false triggering of the power-hungry UI elements\n</li>\n<li>lanyard attachment (important for the Japanese market)\n</li>\n<li>microUSB port for charging and data upload interface, featuring an FTDI-based serial chipset capable of loading firmware into the microcontroller\n</li>\n<li>3.5mm jack capable of bidirectional audio\n</li>\n<li>embedded hall-effect sensor (to detect attachments, e.g. for occluding alpha or beta radiation)\n</li>\n<li>audible event notification via piezo buzzer\n</li>\n<li>low-power visual event notification via conventional LED\n</li>\n<li>real-time clock\n</li>\n<li>a high-quality entropy source ;-)\n</li>\n<p>I am a proponent of open source hardware; so here’s the source files for my design! All of the following source files are licensed under <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/\">CC3.0-BY-SA</a> with my <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/xl_crosslicense.pdf\">XL1.0 automatic patent cross-license</a> rider (CC doesn’t address patents, so I invented my own rider that piggybacks on CC to ensure that any patents that may arise from this or its derivatives are automatically cross-licensed to the community). </p>\n<li><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/interface_electronics/altium_interface_electronics.zip\">Altium design source</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/interface_electronics/safecast_ie3.pdf\">schematics</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/interface_electronics/gerbers_safecast_ie.zip\">gerbers</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/interface_electronics/safecast_ie3_bom.xls\">BOM</a> for the mainboard electronics\n</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/button_board/button_board.zip\">Altium design source</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/button_board/safecast_buttonboard1.pdf\">schematics</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/button_board/gerbers_button_board.zip\">gerbers</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/elec/button_board/safecast_bb1_bom.xls\">BOM</a> for the buttonboard electronics\n</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/mech/safecast2.SLDPRT\">Solidworks design source</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/mech/safecast2.IGS\">IGES</a> / <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/mech/safecast2.STEP\">STEP</a> for the industrial design\n</li>\n<li>For those who don’t have 3D design tools, you can install <a href=\"http://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/free-cad-software-downloads.htm\">Solidwork’s free e-drawings viewer</a> and look at the <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/mech/test_assy3.easm\">easm</a> file, or if you run windows you can download <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/mech/test_assy3.exe\">this executable</a> and just run it</li>\n<p>Of course, a hardware prototype is only the beginning – there’s a huge amount of effort remaining on the software. To bootstrap things, xobs and I have coded up a core demonstration system based on <a href=\"http://leaflabs.com/\">Leaf Lab’s</a> libmaple. You can <a href=\"https://github.com/bunnie/libmaple\">peruse the code</a> and/or download it at github. Basically, this demo system provides an architecture to easily register drivers and facilitate power management. The validation demo shown running on the prototype photos above indicate that all of the hardware features work. But, the software has yet to have a layer of polish and shine added in terms of the UI and power management optimization. </p>\n<p>A key design goal electronics’ system design was to enable community participation. As such, I eschewed the use of JTAG adapters during development. Instead, hooks were provided in the hardware to enable the integrated FTDI USB-serial controller to flash the microcontroller’s firmware via a “bitbang” interface. As a result, anyone who has an interest in developing for this Geiger counter can simply plug it into their laptop’s USB port and start coding without any need for proprietary JTAG adapters or proprietary software to purchase, as the entire developer’s toolchain is available in source form. We were able to code up and test the entire functionality demo (including sleep/stop/standby power management) using nothing more than the USB-serial capability built into the design. As I write this, I realize I had neglected to upload the firmware loader to github, so <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/safecast/fwload.tar.gz\">here’s a tarball</a> for it; currently, the loader only runs under Linux and OSX. </p>\n<p>I think there’s some fun things the community could do with the UI on a Geiger counter. At the very least, the microcontroller has sufficient power to play Tetris. Another whimsical thought was to build a subsystem that would play music out the audio port based upon the current radiation level — calm, ambient music in low-radiation environments escalating to death metal and the sound track of “Run Lola Run” at dangerous levels. </p>\n<p>So that’s it! I hope that the design ultimately helps the people of Japan – or people anywhere in the world where radiation contamination may be a concern – to feel more empowered and in control of their situation.</p>"
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"title" : "Your Bank: Fiduciary or Predator?",
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"content" : "In the old days when banks were local, and owned either as partnerships or mutuals, bankers had a stake in promoting the prosperity of their clients. They wanted to see their clients do well so that savings in the bank would increase, and then the banker could lend more and do better too. Bankers were meticulous in evaluating the credit quality of local borrowers, because a loss hit their own capital and equity in the business. <br><br>Largely as a result of this happy local alignment of depositor/banker/borrower interests, bankers came to be regarded as trusted fiduciaries. Depositors expected the banker to exercise discretion in the lending of capital. Borrowers expected the banker to provide loans on fair and reasonable terms which would help the borrower's business to grow and perform on repayment obligations.<br><br>As we know, those days are long past. Banks are rarely partnerships or mutuals. Remuneration models that promote fierce competition and short term bonus mania are unlikely to leave much scope for ethical reflection on the promotion of either depositor protection or borrower prosperity. Modern bank funding models are focused on money markets and shadow banking conduits rather than making depositors secure long term. Their lending models are seeking ever higher margins on <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9135986/Bank-mis-selling-victims-from-the-chippy-to-the-small-hotel.html\">transactional speculation, cross-selling and hidden fees</a>. They seek opportunities globally rather than the long duration lending that sustained growth of local businesses. Banks are no longer geographically dependent on the local community for either deposits or borrowers.<br><br>We are now forced to re-evaluate the role of banks. They clearly have little interest in performing as fiduciaries. They have a powerful interest in becoming predators. <br><br>But if banks are predators, then their beneficial social functions are undermined, and indeed, they become a threat to social welfare, economic growth and non-bank prosperity. If that is true, then they no longer warrant state protections. <br><br>It is the depositors and borrowers who now need the protection.<br><br>In the UK some banks have threatened to leave if the successor to Mervyn King is not less <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9138630/Banks-warn-hostility-will-push-us-abroad-after-King-attack.html\">\"hostile\"</a> to their predations. <br><br>This is like a fox threatening to go elsewhere unless the farmer makes the chicken coop more accessible. Worrying.<br><br>UPDATE: Today Greg Smith, head of equity derivatives at Goldman Sachs, very <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp\">publicly resigned in the pages of the New York Times</a>. It sums up his resignation to say that he preferred the days when he could be a fiduciary to the firm's clients rather than their predator."
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"title" : "Plagiarists, beware: the internet will find you out",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/68552?ns=guardian&pageName=Plagiarists%2C+beware%3A+the+internet+will+find+you+out%3AArticle%3A1709638&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Creative+writing+%28kw%29%2CBooks%2CPublishing+%28Books%29%2CSelf-publishing+%28kw%29%2CCulture&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Alison+Flood&c7=12-Feb-27&c8=1709638&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&c42=Culture&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FBooks%2FCreative+writing\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>The story of Kay Manning, found out for raiding other people's books, is a cautionary tale for anyone tempted to copy</p><p>Hurrah for the internet, which has unmasked and brought down another plagiariser: in this case a romance \"writer\" going under the name of Kay Manning. Her uncovering came courtesy of a crack team of authors: first Liz Fielding, <a href=\"http://lizfielding.blogspot.com/2012/02/copyright-theft.html\" title=\"\">who posted about a short story of hers which she'd discovered had been plagiarised</a>. \"All Kay Manning has done is change the names of the characters, change the location and minor details,\" wrote Fielding. \"Why, I cannot imagine, since she's giving it away free. To have her name on a successful story, perhaps? To build a reputation she can use to sell her own work?\" <a href=\"http://lizfielding.blogspot.com/2012/02/copyright-theft.html?showComment=1330093366674#c6866086148506288022\" title=\"\">Manning apparently responded to the accusation</a>, claiming the situation was the result of \"an honest mistake\". \"I put this story in the wrong folder on my computer and actually thought it was mine that I started a long time ago. If I really wanted to 'steal it' do you honestly think I would have put it up for free?\" she asked.</p><p></p><p>Perhaps. But then <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/Chadwickauthor\" title=\"\">Elizabeth Chadwick</a> entered the fray, <a href=\"http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/kay-manning-peyton-bradshaw-kristal-singletary-and-plagiarism\" title=\"\">uncovering a host of other works which Manning had seemingly lifted</a>. Here, for example, is A Soldier's Valentine from Manning:</p><p></p><p><blockquote>Captain Shawn 'Iceman' Isaacs hurtled out of the military cargo plane, the crew chief's order to jump from the C-17 echoing in his ears along with the roaring of engines. The silent sky swallowed him. Arms and legs splayed, he soared down, down, down toward Fryar Drop Zone, the part of Fort Benning Military Reservation located in Alabama. Somewhere in the soft fields below Tammy Lowe waited for him. </blockquote></p><p></p><p>And here's Catherine Mann's <a href=\"http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=1052&chapter=1\" title=\"\">An Evening to Remember</a>:</p><p></p><p><blockquote>Captain Vince 'Novocain' Novak hurtled out of the military cargo plane, the crew chief's order to jump from the C-17 echoing in his ears along with the roaring of engines. Then the silent sky swallowed him. Arms and legs splayed, he soared down, down, down toward the landing zone at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. A speck of grass in Tampa where McKenzie Rowe waited for him.</blockquote></p><p></p><p>(I especially love the name changes – Tammy Lowe and McKenzie Rowe, Iceman and Novocain…)</p><p></p><p>Others joined in, discovering other pen names and <a href=\"http://lizfielding.blogspot.com/2012/02/copyright-theft.html?showComment=1330118538296#c9141750079038121704\" title=\"\">other examples of plagiarism</a>, and <a href=\"http://lizfielding.blogspot.com/2012/02/copyright-theft.html?showComment=1330113725665#c3375244009801383400\" title=\"\">Fielding reported</a> that \"within hours of blogging that my story had been plagiarised the guilty party has closed her blog to all but the invited, removed her Twitter account and all the books she purported to have written have been removed from Smashwords\".</p><p></p><p>After her initial denials, the plagiariser then executed an astonishing volte face, holding her hands up to her actions with <a href=\"http://dearauthor.com/features/industry-news/saturday-news-no-deals-just-stupidity-and-smashwords-concedes-to-paypal-terms\" title=\"\">a post on the Dear Author romance writing blog</a> admitting to everything. \"To all the authors, publishers, and editors I stole from, I am sorry. There is no excuse. All distributors have been notified and those I couldn't take down/remove myself are being removed by the third party as soon as possible,\" she wrote. \"Finally, so there is no misunderstanding. I am a thief, a plagiarist. I am not an author.\" Indeed.</p><p></p><p>This example of plagiarism isn't as dramatic – or as ridiculous – as <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/09/james-bond-plagiarised-novel-qr-markham\" title=\"\">that of QR Markham</a>, the \"author\" who pieced together his lauded debut from an amalgamation of spy thrillers. But it's almost more worrying, showing just how easy it is to do this. Let's remember, though, that Markham, too, was uncovered by assiduous readers: the internet might make it easier to pass others' work off as your own, but it also makes it easier to discover plagiarism, and for word to spread. So hurrah, as well, for Fielding and Chadwick and all those who helped them out.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/creative-writing\">Creative writing</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/publishing\">Publishing</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/self-publishing\">Self-publishing</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alisonflood\">Alison Flood</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/8kf8j41glg0kjidva4o58ic684/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fbooks%2Fbooksblog%2F2012%2Ffeb%2F27%2Fplagiarists-internet-kay-manning\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Thieves Expanding Their Horizons Even More",
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"content" : "<div><p>In <a href=\"http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2011/07/thieves-expand-their-horizons.html\">\"Thieves Expand Their Horizons,\"</a> I noted that America's \"recovery\" had \"spawned an illicit interest in items that have not been traditionally targeted by criminal elements,\" including utility poles, air conditioners, hot air balloons, ammonia tanks, and outdoor furniture. A follow-up post, <a href=\"http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2011/10/thieves-still-expanding-their-horizons.html\">\"Thieves Still Expanding Their Horizons,\"</a> added livestock, pets, prescription drugs, tailgates, fishing reels, medical services, and bridges to the list.</p>\r\n<p>But that wasn't the end of it. Despite all the \"good news\" we keep hearing lately (not to mention a stock market that only goes up), it seems that the range of goods and services being wrongfully acquired (and likely sold for quick cash at a fraction of their true value) is expanding fast, as the following reports attest:</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Detergent</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/03/12/031212-news-tide-theft-1-4/\">\"Grime Wave\"</a> (<em>The Daily</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">It’s a dirty job: Police nationwide take on soaring Tide detergent theft</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Law enforcement officials across the country are puzzled over a crime wave targeting an unlikely item: Tide laundry detergent.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Cooking Oil</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2012-03-10/cnbc-rising-gasoline-prices-cooking-oil/53421936/1\">\"Rising Gas Prices Create Smoking-Hot Demand for Cooking Oil\"</a> (<em>USA Today</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">In today's economy, it's tough enough being a restaurant owner, but now you have to safeguard your garbage, too.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">From California to Maine, thefts of used cooking oil are on the rise — driven by the rising price of oil that makes biofuels more cost competitive with fossil fuels. Like thieves who ransack foreclosed homes for copper wire, higher prices for used cooking oil can attract people with a hunger for crime as well as dinner.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The old cooking oil, which has been used for decades in the chemical and animal feed industries, is now a hot commodity, as biodiesel manufacturers fight for raw materials . Biodiesel is gaining in popularity as a transportation fuel. The largest consumers are fleet operators, including municipal buses and courier firms like FedEx.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">X-Rays</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/03/05/thieves-stealing-x-rays-for-the-silver-inside/\">\"Thieves Stealing X-Rays For The Silver Inside\"</a> (<em>CBS</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">BOSTON – You can now add X-rays to the list of targets for metal thieves looking to make a quick buck in a down economy.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Two Florida men have been charged with stealing old X-rays from Lowell General Hospital that were supposed to be recycled back in August.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Lowell Police Captain Kelly Richardson says the suspects are also accused of similar attempts at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport and Saints Medical Center in Lowell.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">There’s silver in X-ray film sheets and it can be harvested by using a simple chemical solution.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">“When they melt the film the silver comes off and then they turn around and sell the silver,” says Captain Richardson.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Sewer Grates</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www.wtnh.com/dpp/news/crime/thieves-swipe-sewer-grates-in-new-haven\">\"Thieves Swipe Sewer Grates in New Haven\"</a> (<em>WTNH</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">New Haven, Conn. - Police in New Haven are trying to figure out who's been swiping dozens of sewer grates from city streets.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Fair Haven Heights has been hit hard. At almost every turn of Russell Street new grates are visible. Police say they're replacing them as fast as they can.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"As soon as anything would be reported stolen, it would be taken care of,\" said David Hartman, New Haven Police, \"even on the overnight, it would be an emergency.\"</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">If the gaping hole was left uncovered someone could be seriously hurt, and even killed. In the last three weeks, 40 sewer grates have been pried up from the street and stolen.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Bleachers</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/bleachers-stolen-from-baseball-fields-20120229-lgf\">\"Bleachers Stolen From Baseball Fields\"</a> (<em>MyFoxNY.com</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Thieves carted off almost all of the bleachers from a Long Island baseball complex and left behind a partially disassembled set they didn't finish stripping.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">It happened at Smith Field at the Sachem Little League complex in Ronkonkoma. It's unclear exactly when the thefts took place but little pieces from the 300 pound bleachers were found scattered across the field over the weekend.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Mark Zellman is the assistant commissioner of the league that uses the facility.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"It's just the state of the economy, showing how tough things are,\" Zellman says.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The gates of the stadium were still locked, making it appear that the bleachers were taken apart and lifted over the fence piece-by-piece.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Tubas</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www.npr.org/2012/02/16/146987033/hold-on-to-your-tuba-brass-bandits-hit-l-a-schools\">\"Hold On To Your Tuba: Brass Bandits Hit L.A. Schools\"</a> (<em>NPR</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The words \"black market\" usually summon images of drugs, guns or pirated DVDs — not tubas. Yet authorities in Los Angeles say the instrument is in such high demand that the black market may be what's driving a wave of local tuba thefts.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Ruben Gonzalez is teaching an after-lunch band class at the scene of one recent tuba crime — the music room at South Gate High School outside L.A. He starts with a request only a band teacher would make.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"Make sure we rinse out folks — we don't need any hamburgers or hot chilies coming through those instruments,\" he says.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">While the kids rinse out and tune up, Gonzalez points to a row of gashes along the door jamb. He and his students noticed them one morning earlier this school year. \"I'm walking in, I'm like, 'That was never there before,' and I'm like, 'You know what, guys? I think somebody tried to break in,' \" he says.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Then Gonzalez noticed something else. Once the thieves got in, they bypassed a computer as well as a stash of valuable flutes, saxophones and clarinets. According to Gonzalez, \"All they took were the tubas.\"</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Heat pumps</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://www2.morganton.com/news/2012/feb/21/thieves-steal-churchs-heat-pumps-ar-1956393/\">\"Thieves Steal Church's Heat Pumps\"</a> (<em>Morganton News Herald</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">MORGANTON -- A local church has become the latest victim of the growing number of copper thefts in Burke County.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Congregants at Willow Tree AME Church reported Saturday that someone stripped four heat pumps at the 2500 Willow Tree Church Road building, according to a sheriff’s report. Damage was estimated at $18,000.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The Rev. Rupert G. Ferguson said his parishioners are irate about the theft.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">“They ripped us off,” he said. “… They wreaked havoc.”</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Bricks</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2012/03/st_louis_brick_thieves_more_brazen.php\">\"St. Louis Brick Thieves Becoming More Brazen\"</a> (<em>Riverfront Times</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The bandits who are slowly dismantling north St. Louis -- brick by brick -- are becoming more daring these days.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Architectural historian Michael Allen, who has perhaps written more than anyone on the subject of brick thievery, notes on his blog that the mason rustlers are now working heavily trafficked streets north of Delmar Boulevard.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"Brick thieves apparently have carte blanche to harvest building stock on the north side's busiest streets,\" writes Allen, who reports that two abandoned properties on Page and St. Louis avenues have recently been targeted.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"Between these two buildings, the city has lost four housing units that could have been rehabilitated. Extend that count across every building hit by brick theft in the last seven years, and we have lost at least 200 housing units,\" adds Allen.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Ferguson believes the thieves were looking to make a quick buck off the copper inside the air conditioners.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Cannon Balls</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://portsmouth-nh.patch.com/articles/cannon-balls-stolen-from-war-memorial\">\"Cannon Balls Stolen from War Memorial\"</a> (Portsmouth Patch)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Portsmouth Police, Public Works probe theft of several pieces of Soldiers and Sailors Goodwin Park statue and estimated damage of $10,000.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The city Public Works Department and Police are probing the attempted theft of cannon balls and several other metal pieces from the Soldiers and Sailors war memorial in Goodwin Park.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Public Works Director Steve Parkinson said Friday morning police discovered the theft and vandalism to the 1888 war memorial to Civil War soldiers and sailors last weekend after they received a call from New Castle Police.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Police learned that the replica cannon balls that sit on top of a metal box were dumped in New Castle near the Wentworth Marina sometime last Saturday.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">\"We went out there and checked out the statue and sure enough the metal box and cannon balls were cut off,\" Parkinson said.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Beehives</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://blog.chron.com/newswatch/2012/03/houston-police-search-for-beehive-thieves/\">\"Houston Police Search for Beehive Thieves\"</a> (<em>Houston Chronicle</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Police continue their search for suspects who stole a 3-foot-tall active beehive from a Houston restaurant.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">KHOU and KTRK reported on the incident, which took place over the weekend at Haven, located off Kirby.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Security cameras revealed the thieves toting away the hive from behind the restaurant early Saturday morning.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The structure houses about 5,000 bees and is worth $1,000, according to Haven’s chef, Randy Evans.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">Evans’ farm-to-table restaurant relies on local ingredients and uses the beehive to pollinate plants and produce honey.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">He told KHOU he believes the bandits knew what they were doing.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">“”You’re not going to just pull up to a bee hive and move it. They came in at night, when it was cold and wet. Bees are the most docile at that time. They’re going to stay huddled up in their hive, on top of one another, creating heat to stay warm and stay dry,” he said.</p>\r\n<h3 style=\"padding-left:30px\">Hair weaves</h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><a href=\"http://sfappeal.com/news/2012/03/sfpd-seeking-brazen-hair-weave-thieves.php\">\"SFPD Seeking Brazen Hair Weave Thieves\"</a> (<em>San Francisco Appeal</em>)</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">They came in for locks of hair, but now one of them is locked up.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">One woman was arrested and three others remain outstanding after they allegedly went into a San Francisco beauty supply store, cut hair weaves from a display case and then fled on Wednesday evening, a police spokesman said.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The robbery was reported at about 6:30 p.m. at the Sally Beauty Supply store at 2675 Geary Blvd., in the old Sears/Mervyns shopping complex.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:90px\">The suspects walked into the store and surrounded the area where the hair weaves are displayed. A store employee tried to intervene after she noticed one of the suspects had some sort of box cutter or knife that she was using to cut the weaves off of the display, police spokesman Officer Carlos Manfredi said.</p>\r\n<p>It's a good thing the economy is \"recovering.\" Otherwise, I'd hate to think about what might be targeted next.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/smj96ouef0dpao9ibgh4l14prk/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.financialarmageddon.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fthieves-even-more.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=B7dk7POVjPE:5stdUAMFm_E:cGdyc7Q-1BI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=cGdyc7Q-1BI\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/financialarmageddon/~4/B7dk7POVjPE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "A Patent Lie: How Yahoo Weaponized My Work",
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"content" : "While most of the tech world was partying at South by Southwest in Austin yesterday, Yahoo announced it was filing a lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly infringing on 10 patents from their 1,000+ patent warehouse. I'm no fan of Facebook, but this is a deplorable move. It's nothing less than extortion, expertly timed during the SEC-mandated quiet period before Facebook's IPO. It?s an attack on invention and the hacker ethic. I have a small supporting role in this story, and I'm not happy about that, either.<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired/index/~4/_lBnPJNzncs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Afghanistan Is Not A Land Of Isolated Incidents",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/gls1106/743659329/\" title=\"Soda fountain by LandVike, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/02/26/0212-soda-fountain.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" style=\"float:right;margin:3px 0 10px 10px\"></a>A while ago, I wrote a short post on the \n<a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/the-end-of-social.html\">\nmeaninglessness of frictionless sharing</a>. Since then, \nI've had a few additional thoughts on what frictionless\nsharing is trying to accomplish (aside from pure and simple\nmarketing), and what we should be trying to build.</p>\n<p>\nThe article about \n<a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/\">Target targeting pregnant women</a>\nwith advertisements caught my attention, not particularly because of\nTarget's practice, but because it gives us a useful way of looking at\nthe history of privacy. What Target did isn't at all surprising.\nTarget's data systems noticed that some women were suddenly buying\nextra large handbags (for holding diapers), over-the-counter medicines\nthat could be used to fight morning sickness, and skin creams to hide\nstretch marks. The store concluded that these women were probably pregnant and\ntargeted them with ads featuring products for pregnant women. (If you\nbelieve the rather self-serving story about how one girl's\nfather called the store furious about what these ads were implying,\nthen called back the next day to apologize, you're less skeptical than\nI am.)</p>\n<p>\nIt's not surprising that this makes the news, but I asked myself\nwhat's really new here. And my answer is, \"not much.\" Think back to\nthe first half of the 20th century. A girl walks into the local\npharmacy and buys bicarb for an upset stomach. The pharmacist notes\nthat this girl has never bought anything like this before and also\nnotes that she's looking a bit thicker. He has also seen the girl at\nthe lunch counter and knows she has an iron stomach.\nHe puts two and two together,\nmakes a mental note, and knows what to recommend the next time she's\nin. And soon after the pharmacist knew it, you can bet that everyone\nknew it; people never needed the Internet to form networks.\nI would gladly bet that this story played itself out\nthousands of times.</p>\n<p>\nWhat's interesting is what happened in the years that intervened\nbetween the '50s and the present. The small town culture (which may\nnever have really existed) in which everyone knew everything about\neveryone disappeared as we moved into suburbs, where nobody knew\nanything about anyone. And that's really where our notions of\n\"privacy\" arose. The local pharmacies started disappearing, to be\nreplaced by big chains like CVS and Walgreens. As\n<a href=\"http://articles.courant.com/1997-01-24/news/9701240514_1_cvs-pharmacy-david-fisher-soda\">\nDouden's</a> and \n<a href=\"http://www.yelp.com/biz/jollys-drug-inc-madison\">Jolly's</a> \ndisappeared from local culture, so did the local pharmacist who \nknew and remembered who you were and what you bought, and who was able\nto put two and two together without the help of a Hadoop cluster.\nAround 60-70 years ago, we didn't\nreally have any privacy; Scott McNealy's infamous \n<a href=\"http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1999/01/17538\">statement</a>\nthat \"you have zero privacy anyway ... get over it\" would have been\nmeaningless. We grew attached to our privacy in the intervening\nhalf-century, as the demands of industry created population\nconcentrations that broke the bonds (wanted or not) attaching us to\nour local neighbors. In the past, we \"heard it through the\ngrapevine,\" but by the time the Internet was invented, that grapevine\nhad been uprooted.</p>\n<p>\nI am the last person to claim that the '50s were some sort of paradise\nwhen all was right in America and the world. In many ways, the '50s\nwere a sick and deformed conformist culture. But\nthe '80s were no party either. I was in grad school\nat the time, and all the non-students I knew (mostly engineers in\nSilicon Valley) were bemoaning the lack of \"community.\" They \nlived in anonymous apartment complexes in insipid suburbs; they were\ntired of the people they worked with; there was no good way to make\nfriends, no good way to be social. The big social story of the '80s\nand '90s was the decline of \"social\" and the continued \nrise of suburban cocooning\nin detached houses. In this environment, the rise of\nFacebook and Foursquare (and MySpace, and Friendster, and Orkut and\nothers) was inevitable. Given the boredom of mid-'80s\napartment complex existence, software developers did what came\nnaturally and invented a software solution.</p>\n<p>\nWe have to look at automated sharing of the music we listen to, the\nbooks we read, and the restaurants we visit in light of that arc. As\nanyone who is interested in books or records knows, the first thing\nyou used to do when you visited someone's house was look at their\nbookshelves or their stack of records (or CDs). You might lend me a\nbook or a record that I was interested in, moving a step up the ladder\nfrom acquaintance to intimacy. That still works, but\nat O'Reilly's recent\n<a href=\"http://www.toccon.com/toc2012\">TOC conference</a>, it\nwas clear that even publishers understand that the age of print is\ncoming to the end. <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/on-pirates-and-piracy.html\">SOPA and PIPA have more to do with the entertainment\nindustry realizing that CDs and DVDs have come to an end</a> than they\nhave to do with so-called piracy.\nPrint books will survive as fetishized items, as will vinyl LPs:\nexpensive coffee-table books for display, a few high-priced show\neditions, but nothing as interesting as what you'd find on my\nbookcase. That inevitable shift signals a profound change for the\nsocial nature of reading and listening. While looking through\nsomeone's bookshelves is fine, it's not socially acceptable to look\nthrough their iPods and Kindles. </p>\n<p>\nIn this context, it's surely correct to put a kinder interpretation on\nautomated "frictionless sharing" of your songs and book purchases on\nFacebook. Yes,\nif someone is giving you a service for free,\nyou're not the customer — you're the product. It's \nreasonable to be unhappy that your likes and dislikes are being bought\nand sold like pork bellies on the Chicago Merc. But there is an\noddly pathetic humanity behind automated sharing: It's a clumsy and intrusive\nattempt to solve a very real human problem with technology. After\nall, that's what technologists <em>do</em>. Asking a software developer\nnot to write software when faced with an obvious problem is like\nasking a fish not to swim. As I said, that's how we got Facebook in\nthe first place.</p>\n<p>\nAutomated, frictionless sharing is certainly not a solution. As I've\noften observed, human problems are almost always solved by human\nsolutions, very rarely by technical solutions. We have to ask\nourselves what the real solution is, given that we've negotiated an\narc from immersion in a social community (with all that entails) to\nhelplessly private insularity to immersion in a virtual world that\nlacks privacy, but that also lacks human contact. It may be that\ndating sites are so consistently popular because they are the only\nonline services that require human contact to work.</p>\n<p>\nSo how do we think about a solution? Privacy, data, and our social\nnature are inevitably entangled — always have been and always will be.\nHow do we build satisfying human connections back into our lives\nwithout the superficiality and invasiveness of automated sharing? We've\ngiven up privacy without gaining the benefits of increased openness,\nwhich are tied up with social interaction. Back in the '80s, I\ncouldn't look at your bookshelves unless you invited me to your party.\nThat's real friction. Now, I can see your data, but even if you send\nme a personal email with your playlist, there's no party. And that's the\nchallenge: bring real human connection back to our sanitized\ntechnology. The world isn't just about Facebook and Twitter, or even\nGoogle+. It's about making connections and having real parties with\nreal food and real people. Gregory Brown, founder of \n<a href=\"http://community.mendicantuniversity.org/people/sandal\">\nMendicant University</a>,\nand one of the \n<a href=\"http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523015.do\">authors I've worked with</a>, \nis having a party this Spring\nfor \"people with interesting ideas.\" I sure hope I'm invited because\nthat's the only way out.</p>\n\n<p><em>Photo: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/gls1106/743659329/\" title=\"Soda fountain by LandVike, on Flickr\">Soda fountain by LandVike, on Flickr</a></em></p>\n\n<p><strong>Related:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/on-pirates-and-piracy.html\">On pirates and piracy</a></li>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/the-end-of-social.html\">The end of social</a></li>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/02/falling-man-mad-men-nostalgia-change.html\">The Falling Man and a center that cannot hold</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:JEwB19i1-c4\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:JEwB19i1-c4\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=tIASNp5bPH4:2WY6PJAsGRo:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~4/tIASNp5bPH4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Thank God We Are Not A Nigerians",
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"content" : "<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZcWhrObAzjs\" width=\"420\"></iframe><br><i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">\"yes you created Nollywood but too many wizards and witches in your films\" lol!!!</span></i><br><br>This cracked me up this first time I listened to the <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/foknbois\">FOKN Bois (<i>Ghanaian MCs M3NSA and Wanlov the Kubolor</i>)</a> mixtape. So are there significant differences between Nigerian and Ghanaian people? Excluding language and tribal differences, probably not. We share the same zest for life, cultural similarities (noticeable among coastal tribes), culinary dishes, endeavour. Back in the 80s my home city of Enugu had a lot of Ghanaian migrant workers, famed for their honesty and high quality of work, akin to the Polish here in the UK.<br><br>One set popular with the women were the hairdressers, mostly male. My mum and her friends fawned and fussed over these guys to get special treatment and get kitted with the latest in Afro American hair fashion (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jheri_curl\">Jheri Curl</a>! Yuk!). My dad also employed a few northern Ghanaians in his factory, and one particular guy, Abess, he made the factory foreman for his good skills and timeliness. This didn't bode well with the Nigerian employees and this ill feeling replicated across the city. The xenophobia had begun. Its like the local populace felt their jobs were being taken away and the tensions began to bubble rapidly to the surface. It reached a boiling point, culminating in the infamous <a href=\"http://www.modernghana.com/news/371266/1/ghana-must-go-the-aftermath.html\">1983 \"Ghana Must Go\"</a>, so infamous a raffia bag was named after it. Apparently the mass deportation order was so sudden Ghanaians didn't have time to pack and quickly threw their stuff into these bags, hence the bag's name. A name still in use today. <br><br>Lot of Ghanaians lost their properties and belongings as a result. The news was dominated with pictures and stories of overloaded Lorries full of deportees heading out of Nigeria, military personnel in attendance. I remember Abess and co packing up and leaving Enugu with great sadness. The Ghanaians never forgave the Nigerian government for the mass deportation, and it has somewhat coloured the relationship between Ghanaians and Nigerians ever since.<br><br><img height=\"300\" src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1071/560501627_862391f1e1.jpg\" width=\"400\"><br><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><i>\"<b>Ghana Must Go</b>" bags. very handy</i></span><br><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><i><br></i></span><br>Is it the same today? Ghana has gone on to be a regional power in West Africa, a country others including Nigeria, are trying to emulate. After President Obama's 2009 visit Ghana's positive standing shot through the roof. Funny how things turn ey? Do the kids remember the ill feelings? Judging by the cultural collaborations in film and music they probably don't see it the same way. Here in the diaspora and back home a renaissance in cultural Pan Africanism is evident. its like the political 60s on celluloid and wax.<br><br><i>And of course the Ghana babes simply can't get enough of us Nigerian guys ;) </i><br><i><br></i><br><i>Chaly its all in the swag .. abeg, fall back, my guys dig your girls</i><br><i><br></i><br><i>1</i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6471248371228098126-800546582953189743?l=swankanddirect.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "butt pumpin' parties b/w killing witches",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-woj2MGJ3TQU/T1NIspSk0PI/AAAAAAAAHmk/yExlZXlMHMY/s1600/Claudia-Adusei.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;display:inline!important;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;text-align:center\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"196\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-woj2MGJ3TQU/T1NIspSk0PI/AAAAAAAAHmk/yExlZXlMHMY/s200/Claudia-Adusei.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a><br><br>There's no reason whatsoever not to get your bottom power on, <a href=\"http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/breaking/Blackmadam-Arrested-at-Pumping-Party-140979013.html\">even if it literally kills you</a>. Hey! don't look at me funny, risks in life and alladat, a big butt don't come free you know. You ladies already wear fake horse/human/Alien hair and shit so what's so wrong, morally and physically, about sporting a new butt? OK so you might die? so what? People die every day in Syria. Hey, just saying though, don't shoot the messenger (<i>and his lame arguments</i>). Anyway I've read arguments that fake hair and butts would more than likely make a woman of colour more acceptable (and less scary) to the general populace and likely to get her further along in her career. <i>Look at Nicki Minaj for chrissakes, worked for her!</i> Rest my case. I digress.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tRjQ-akrAz4/T1NX0L8SdbI/AAAAAAAAHm4/NCcosFrbfhM/s1600/Nicki-minaj-butt-implant.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"256\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tRjQ-akrAz4/T1NX0L8SdbI/AAAAAAAAHm4/NCcosFrbfhM/s320/Nicki-minaj-butt-implant.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Nicki Minaj's Career - Before and After</span></i></div><br>So here I am, Sunday morning, trying to get my head round the logistics in organising and promoting a butt pumping party. Can't be that hard to organise, surely? Lemme see, hmm, find a transsexual rap singer deadly and skilful with the butt needles and bootleg silicone, a couple of top old DJs, say someone like Sir Mix-a-lot or Luke from 2Live Crew (<i>gotta rinse them booty tracks right?</i>), a whole load of flat bottomed ladies, the more wannabe videos hos the better. Velvet ropes and VIP sections, might get the ilk of Nicki Minaj in attendance.<br><br>Now get that music pumping, jump off the party games, and every now and then get the girls to form a circle, randomly drag one of them in the middle, pull down her pants and get injecting pumping. Instant booty. Loads of whooping and repeat the process. Ahh, almost forgot the requisite "<i>no-medical-skills</i>" bouncer, need one of those. Someone gotta chuck any girl who starts reacting badly out on the streets. <i>Damn I'm good! </i><br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pjvNGZRQUFk/T1NMXUcR1zI/AAAAAAAAHms/to52OTIgGpc/s1600/6179.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"266\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pjvNGZRQUFk/T1NMXUcR1zI/AAAAAAAAHms/to52OTIgGpc/s400/6179.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">don't you need this butt in your life? a few injections away ... <a href=\"http://www.thisis50.com/profiles/blog/show?id=784568%3ABlogPost%3A29129431\">Vanity \"The 8th\" Wonder</a> gets it</span></i></div><br>So you vain Ladies pay attention! once my consignment lands from China it's on! Russian Roulette time! I guarantee a part in my dawg Gucci Mane's next video "<i><b>Silicone luv pt. 2</b></i>\"<br><br>***<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2012/03/02/242413.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"252\" src=\"http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2012/03/02/242413.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">can't tell if this guy is a Witch or an Uncle</span></i></div><br>These pesky <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft\">witches</a> and wizards, especially the Central African \"<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nkondi\">Kindoki</a>" child/teenage variety. I mean a <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/01/couple-guilty-boy-murder-witchcraft\">15 year old wetting his pants</a>? c'mon, what more signs of witchcraft and sorcery do you need? They must be everywhere cos Police and representative groups are warning of hidden and under-reported crimes in the abuse of these children. <br><br>I personally don't have any issues with Kindoki witches, having never been troubled by them before. But <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/01/couple-guilty-boy-murder-witchcraft\">reading the papers recently</a> I now get why not. Their natural enemies are <b style=\"font-style:italic\">Uncles, Aunties </b>and <b style=\"font-style:italic\">siblings</b> in the family, maybe why I've never heard much about them. Probably ranked in the same leagues as other natural enemies of Asian Daughters who date and marry outside of tradition, you know, the <b style=\"font-style:italic\">Brothers, Fathers, </b>and <b style=\"font-style:italic\">Uncles</b> who kill them for bringing shame and dishonour to the family. <br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/2/20/1329753718627/Kristy-Bamu-007.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"192\" src=\"http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2012/2/20/1329753718627/Kristy-Bamu-007.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><br>Tough being a witch, Your witchy witchy thing doesn't even get to gain reputation beyond the yard. Like seriously, how is one supposed know of your good services when your Uncle's planting a chisel in your head and drowning you in a cold bath? These witches need representation at the International Labour Organization. Or registered as an endangered species (<i>I don't know, something like that</i>)<br><br>***<br><br>In response to the \"<a href=\"http://swankanddirect.blogspot.com/2012/02/thank-god-we-are-not-nigerians.html\">Thank God We're Not a Nigerians</a>\" video by Ghana's Fokn Bois an unknown Nigerian (rapper?) has released a video - \"Thank God We're Not Ghanaians\". <br><br><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5miYlIvoKXc\" width=\"420\"></iframe><br><br>Now waiting for the Liberian response :)<br><br>And this next video was the winning video from the D'Banj "Oliver Twist" Youtube dancing competition. Triumphed cos one of the dancers is a girl with one leg, rips the dance moves and booty shake to shreds. Losing a limb should never stop you from shaking what your mama gave ya! Big up to one leg gyal still!<br><br><br><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/MCVq7brL270\" width=\"420\"></iframe><br><br><i>And even the white boys are on it too! Nah Wah O!</i><br><br><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"264\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/sGajbkFEjJM\" width=\"460\"></iframe><br><br>Have a great Sunday :) <br><br>1<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6471248371228098126-5121121469048899421?l=swankanddirect.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "I write this, unfortunately, with a heavy heart. It is a heart filled with sadness. But I have something I want to say to, as the newspapers and TV news call them, the twenty something black males in dark clothing. I’ve heard that description from so many friends describing their attackers....<br>\n<br>\n( Visit http://conversate-is-not-a-word.blogspot.com for the full content... )<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?a=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?a=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?i=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?a=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?a=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ConversateIsNotAWord?i=LhAoBgWwr9E:gZ_tq8l3TJg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ConversateIsNotAWord/~4/LhAoBgWwr9E\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Big Booty, Little Booty",
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"content" : "<p><strong></strong>As Black people, everything we do is rhythmic and straying from rhythm can sometimes have dire consequences. When we pound <em>fufu</em>, it’s with rhythm. When we pull our nets in from the sea, we do so with rhythm. And when a Black woman walks, it is with a unique rhythm.</p>\n<p>I don’t know about any other race, but a Black woman’s booty has its own soundtrack – and if someone were to take the time to compile the multitude of ditties that accompanied the swaying rhythm of a Black woman’s backside, I’d be willing to wager that it’d land highly on the top 40 International Pop Charts.</p>\n<p>For instance, I have (and always have had) a big booty… a very big booty. I do not say this with pride. When I was young and my parents sent me to buy bread or eggs for the house, I used to dread leaving the confines of our gate. There was a group of boys who never seemed to go to school that would congregate at the junction just to trouble young girls as they walked by. As soon as I would approach, they would all sing in boisterous chorus:</p>\n<p><em>Wele, sala, kontomre!</em></p>\n<p><em>Wele, sala, kontomre!</em></p>\n<p>I was always mortified, and the more apparent my discomfort the louder they sang and laughed. Occasionally one of them would howl something in Ga, which would cause all of his compatriots to fall into hysterical laughter. I don’t speak Ga, so I was at least spared any further embarrassment as a result of my ignorance. My ordeal finally ended when my parents bought me a bike to run errands with. Of course, the sight of a girl on a bicycle in those days introduced another set of issues.</p>\n<p>As I understand it, the phenomenon I described is by no means unique to Ghana. My Kenyan friends tell me that the aggressive jiggling of a woman’s adipose tissue is accompanied by a repetitive and rhythmic refrain of <em>sigida sigidum</em> and <em>atoti.</em></p>\n<p>African men on the continent are not alone in their unabashed expression of lust, admiration or disdain for our women’s hind quarters. At the height of the Freaknic era, there were at least a dozen songs released extolling this animate object. Here is but a small sampling:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Let me ride that donkey</li>\n<li>Gimme that donkey butt and them big ole legs</li>\n<li>Baby got back</li>\n<li>Shake that A**</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Need I carry on?</p>\n<p>It’s a wonder that more girls don’t have their self-esteem doing swan dives into the toilet. As bad as this sounds, it gets worse, if you can imagine that. Perhaps the only thing worse than being the owner of a bodacious booty is being in the possession of an abysmally unobtrusive one: I speak mournfully of the unfortunate “pancake” buttocks.</p>\n<p>When we weren’t in class, my best friend and I used to walk around our area just to talk and take in the air. She was slender, tall and leggy and very pretty by my estimation. I was six inches shorter, with thick calves and the afore mentioned big behind. After the “area boys” had hurled inappropriate cat calls at me, they would soon turn their attention to my best friend and burst into unforgiving laughter. They called her names like “flat ass” and a host of other unflattering monikers I’d sooner forget. I learned early on that being a Black woman was hard enough, but being a Black woman with the “wrong” type of booty could make life unbearable. Sometimes it’s so unbearable that it’s fatal.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<ul>\n<li>Elena Caro, 42, of Las Vegas, died last year after being injected with an unidentified gel in an unlicensed medical office in the back room of a tile store.</li>\n</ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Fiordaliza Pichardo of New York died of a pulmonary embolism in March 2009 after injections of silicone.</li>\n<li>Solange Magnano, a model and former Miss Argentina, died there in November 2009 after she was injected with microspheres of PMMA plastic (polymethylmethacrilate) that apparently entered her bloodstream and caused a pulmonary embolism.</li>\n<li>Mayra Lissette Contreras, 22, of Pacoima, Calif. died in July 2010, apparently from respiratory problems, after receiving silicone shots from an unlicensed injector in Sylmar, Calif.</li>\n<li>Lidvian Zelaya, 35, of Miami, died in late 2010 while undergoing a liposuction and buttocks-injection procedure by a doctor whose license was later suspended pending an investigation. It was unclear from news reports whether she died before fat from the liposuction had been re-injected, as planned, into her buttocks.</li>\n<li>Claudia Aderotimi, 20, of England, died in February 2010 after traveling from London to get buttocks-enhancement shots of silicone by an unidentified injector in a hotel room near the Philadelphia airport.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><a href=\"http://mindofmalaka.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/doh1.jpg\"><img title=\"doh\" src=\"http://mindofmalaka.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/doh1.jpg?w=150&h=105\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"105\"></a> Look at the ages of these women. They are all over the map! There is no age limit for insecurity. I suppose we were lucky to have grown up with limited financial means. I wonder if we might have been tempted to resort to under the table surgery to correct our physical afflictions if we had had the financial means to do so. I’m sure that none of these women had death in mind when they went into these back alleys and hotel rooms for their bargain surgeries. The unfortunate consequence of that gamble is that in the long run it cost these women more than a few hundred dollars. There is no refund policy to cover accidental death.</p>\n<p>To borrow from Sir Mix-a-Lot (and trust me, it grieves me to do so): Turn around and stick it out! Give your booty a high five…or a fist bump…or something. Two butt cheeks are better than none. Big or small, does it really matter? After all, they are only used for sitting.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1947/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=mindofmalaka.com&blog=10644359&post=1947&subd=mindofmalaka&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Michael Jackson, Pirate Remixer",
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"content" : "We always hear stories about how copyright has to be protected to \"protect the artists,\" and yet time and time again we learn that some of the biggest name artists will often copy directly from each other without credit or payment. It's the way music is made. In James Boyle's excellent book, <a href=\"http://www.thepublicdomain.org/download/\"><i>The Public Domain</i></a>, there's a really <a href=\"http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/130\">fantastic chapter</a> giving plenty of examples of this in practice. However, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/rhh\">Rob Hyndman</a> recently pointed us to another such example, found via Wikipedia, but backed up via its sources of course. The discussion? It's about where Michael Jackson's famous song <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Jean#Composition\"><i>Billie Jean</i></a> came from. Turns out, Jackson himself admitted to copying the bass line directly from a Hall and Oates song:\n<blockquote><i>\nAccording to Daryl Hall, when Jackson was recording “We Are the World,” Jackson approached him and admitted to lifting the bass line for "Billie Jean" from a Hall and Oates song (apparently referring to Hall’s "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" from the 1981 album Private Eyes): "Michael Jackson once said directly to me that he hoped I didn't mind that he copped that groove."\n</i></blockquote>\nOf course, the really amusing part? Hall responded to Jackson... by telling him he had done the same thing himself to get that bassline in the first place! \"It's something we all do,\" Hall later explained.\n<br><br>\nIndeed. And yet, under today's laws, it's still considered infringement, and we still hear people looking down on \"remixing\" or people who create works in this manner, by building on the works of others. And yet, this is one of the most successful pop songs of all time. And the bass was a big part of that. Elsewhere in the Wikipedia article, there's a discussion of how the producer of the song, Quincy Jones, hated the song, and specifically the bass line. Yet Jackson insisted that the bass line was the key to the song, and the two of them fought over it until Jackson won. And the bassline was completely copied.\n<br><br>\nIt's stories like this that make us wonder how people can say with a straight face that copying something can't help to create something new.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/01555317077/michael-jackson-pirate-remixer.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/01555317077/michael-jackson-pirate-remixer.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/01555317077/michael-jackson-pirate-remixer.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=14610b2f1ea2f07923a0e16c77471fb1&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=14610b2f1ea2f07923a0e16c77471fb1&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://tags.bluekai.com/site/5148\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:8pyu3gz&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=-Cl91BEx4pg:Mz5N1TN2u5s:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=-Cl91BEx4pg:Mz5N1TN2u5s:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=-Cl91BEx4pg:Mz5N1TN2u5s:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/-Cl91BEx4pg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Words on the Street",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Invisibility-starts-at-home-295x300.jpg\" alt=\"Homeless guy with sign: Invisibility Begins at Home #KONY2012\" title=\"Go ahead, get all white-savior on me. I'll be suitably grateful, I promise.\" width=\"295\" height=\"300\"></p>\n<p><em>For background, see <a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2012/03/08/african-voices-respond-to-hype.html\">here</a>.</em></p>"
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"title" : "Modern love: man breaks penis on first date",
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"content" : "<p>This is your classic <a href=\"http://www.theawl.com/2012/03/the-incident-report-or-the-time-i-broke-it\">\"boy meets girl, boy and girl go back to her place, and he breaks his penis having sex\"</a> story. It also might be the best medical love story you'll read all month.</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Somehow the conversation turns to Margaret Thatcher. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes a recurring topic. Somehow Margaret Thatcher becomes our go-to sexual depressant. Somehow Margaret Thatcher ends up sitting naked on a suburban fence, legs swinging and twirling a top hat. Occasionally Reagan makes an appearance, too. There's a lot of glitter involved. I invoke the former Prime Minister whenever I need to cool off. For emergency purposes only.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Also from The Awl, <a href=\"http://www.theawl.com/2012/03/online-dating-horror-stories\">A Treasury of the World's Worst Online Dating Stories</a>. Warning, contains doozies.</p> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Margaret%20Thatcher\">Margaret Thatcher</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/medicine\">medicine</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/sex\">sex</a>"
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"title" : "Intel may be dumb but they aren’t stupid",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.cringely.com\">I, Cringely</a></p><p><img title=\"cleanslate1\" src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/uploads/cleanslate1-300x205.jpg\" alt=\"cleanslate1 300x205 Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" width=\"300\" height=\"205\">I was already working on a column about AMD purchasing multicore server maker <a href=\"http://www.seamicro.com/\">SeaMicro</a>, pointing out what a coup the deal is for AMD, when the <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/03/amd-seamicro-intel/\">story</a> appeared yesterday about an Intel executive claiming the chip giant had been offered SeaMicro and chose to pass on the deal, followed by a SeaMicro board member claiming the Intel exec’s statement was a bald lie. Who is telling the truth here? Who is lying? And does it matter? It is my opinion the answers are that both are telling the truth, nobody is lying, and none of it matters very much. Here’s why…</p>\n<p>Remember Bill Clinton <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/1998/09/bill_clinton_and_the_meaning_of_is.html\">saying in a deposition</a> that the truthfulness of a particular statement depended on your definition of the word “is?” I think that’s what is happening here, too. I doubt that SeaMicro sold itself without Intel knowing in advance. At the very least SeaMicro would have tried to get a second bidder to drive higher the final purchase price. Whether Intel formally rejected the chance to buy SeaMicro, they probably did so at least tacitly by, for example, choosing not to counter the AMD offer. Maybe there weren’t papers on the table, either, but I’m sure a question was asked and answered to the satisfaction of both parties, maybe over lunch or in a phone call. And SeaMicro wasn’t insignificant to Intel, which saw the startup as an important enough customer to build a custom 64-bit Atom processor just for SeaMicro.</p>\n<p>To better understand the deal let’s look at SeaMicro’s product line, which presently consists of servers using Intel Atom and Xeon processors with up to 256 cores. These are remarkably low power servers ideal in many respects for the data-center-ic (I just invented that word if you were wondering) world of IT in this decade. Intel makes the processors (or has so far) while SeaMicro integrates them into servers using custom chipsets that define the “fabric” of their distributed architecture.</p>\n<p>In the simplest sense, then, AMD bought SeaMicro to eventually dump the Intel processors and replace them with AMD processors, which shouldn’t be difficult to do. That’s certainly the way Intel is viewing this deal. But there is much more to it than that.</p>\n<p>AMD did not buy SeaMicro to go into the server business <em>or</em>, frankly, to even replace Intel processors, though the latter is likely to happen at some point. AMD bought SeaMicro for the fabric, for those proprietary chipsets that are the true heart of SeaMicro servers — chipsets that will go shortly to 512 cores, then 1024 and beyond.</p>\n<p>AMD doesn’t want to sell servers to you and me, they want to sell chips to HP and Dell to put in <em>their </em>SeaMicro-type servers sold to you and me. Expect the SeaMicro server business to disappear before long.</p>\n<p>Now why didn’t Intel go for the deal? It’s not like they couldn’t afford the $336 million price. It comes down to several factors, the first of which is NIH — <em>Not Invented Here</em>. SeaMicro has been working for years with Intel and Intel had to have learned plenty from that partnership. If Intel turned down the chance to buy SeaMicro is has to mean there’s a line of similar fabric chips on their way soon from Intel — chips on which I’ll guarantee you Intel has already spent more than $336 million.</p>\n<p>But Intel is a proud company — proud and to a certain extent deluded. They see an all-Intel fabric solution as being inherently superior and therefore more valuable even if it isn’t quite ready to hit the market. Intel decided to build rather than buy. But in this instance Intel probably made the wrong choice, as I think they are beginning to see.</p>\n<p>It’s this brouhaha about who offered what to whom that raises a red flag for me. Intel would normally not have commented at all on AMD buying SeaMicro. The fact that someone at Intel <em>did</em> comment shows both discord in the ranks (Intel is off its message, which is bad for brand value) and might even be panicked.</p>\n<p>There’s a continual debate at Intel about the residual value of the Intel Architecture (IA). Intel management sees that value as significant, some people see it as zero (the cloud and mobile have made processors effectively interchangeable) while I actually see the value of the Intel Architecture as a <em>negative number</em>. That’s because it costs money to maintain IA and I see that expense as no longer directly generating revenue for the company.</p>\n<p>So we’ll see in this cloud fabric business the same thing we are seeing from Intel in mobile, where they are spending huge amounts of money to come from behind. It’s the same thing Microsoft is doing with Windows Mobile and it won’t work for either company. That’s why I predicted Intel would buy Qualcomm this year and Microsoft will buy RIM, because it’s too late to strictly build: at least some buying is in order.</p>\n<p>And SeaMicro/AMD is going to make that even more imperative for Intel in the cloud space because things are going to get very exciting from here — much more exciting than had Intel bought SeaMicro.</p>\n<p>Had Intel bought SeaMicro it would have become a new division or part of an old division at Intel with an old-line Intel manager in charge. Little AMD can’t do that: this is a big purchase to AMD. They’ll make SeaMicro its own division managed by the people who founded the company and have done a great job so far. So if Intel bought SeaMicro things would have immediately slowed down. But with AMD buying and throwing some real money into the SeaMicro business, things will actually get moving <em>faster.</em></p>\n<p>I don’t imagine SeaMicro will dump Intel processors. That would be stupid. But they’ll immediately add Opteron support. And since AMD gets the best Opteron pricing in the world, Opteron-based SeaMicro products will have a cost advantage.</p>\n<p>But wait, there’s more! Since Intel has little presence yet in cloud fabric components and AMD has to know they are coming, they’ll do even more to be disruptive. Here’s where I’ll take a risk and predict that AMD will become an ARM licensee to extend SeaMicro’s fabric chipsets in that direction, supported, of course, by an ARM version of Windows and extensive Linux support.</p>\n<p>ARM is the mobile AntiChrist to Intel.</p>\n<p>And <em>that’s</em> why we’re seeing signs of panic in Santa Clara.</p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<div><span></span><span><div></div></span><span><a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&text=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/buttons/twitter.png\" alt=\"twitter Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Share on Twitter\"></a></span><span></span><span><a href=\"http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&title=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/linkedin.png\" alt=\"linkedin Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Share on LinkedIn\"></a></span><span><a href=\"http://www.tumblr.com/share/link?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&name=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/tumblr.png\" alt=\"tumblr Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Share on Tumblr\"></a></span><span><a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&title=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/stumbleupon.png\" alt=\"stumbleupon Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Submit to StumbleUpon\"></a></span><span><a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&title=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/delicious.png\" alt=\"delicious Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Save on Delicious\"></a></span><span><a href=\"http://digg.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F&title=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/digg.png\" alt=\"digg Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Digg This\"></a></span><span><a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cringely.com%2F2012%2F03%2Fintel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid%2F\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/icons_medium/reddit.png\" alt=\"reddit Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Submit to reddit\"></a></span><span><a href=\"mailto:?subject=Intel+may+be+dumb+but+they+aren%E2%80%99t+stupid&body=http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/intel-may-be-dumb-but-they-arent-stupid/\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/plugins/social-sharing-toolkit/images/buttons/email.png\" alt=\"email Intel may be dumb but they arent stupid\" title=\"Share via email\"></a></span></div><p><a rel=\"author\" href=\"http://www.cringely.com/author/admin/\">Robert X. Cringely</a></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ICringely/~4/3FsHcR4nQHw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Meeting Of Central Bankers, “Godfather” Style",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://blog.themistrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/don.jpg\"><img title=\"don\" src=\"http://blog.themistrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/don.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"393\" height=\"294\"></a></p>\n<p>This year, “The Godfather”, celebrates its 40th anniversary since its release date in 1972. One of the best scenes in the original Godfather movie was the meeting of the heads of the Five Families when Don Corleone attempts to settle the war that has broken out amongst the families. <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtYjdEwa8GA\">Watch scene here</a>. The scene takes place in a New York City boardroom but a little known fact is that right before the scene starts, the camera pans the front of a large, stone building. <strong>That building was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York</strong> (h/t Dan). We thought it might be interesting to reconstruct the scene and substitute the heads of the Five Families with the heads of some central banks and finance ministries. Don Corleone will be replaced with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Don Barzini replaced by ECB boss Mario Draghi and Don Tattaglia will be replaced with Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Bernanke:</strong></em> How did things ever get so far? I don’t know. It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary. We had a problem with the CDO’s and mortgage backed securities. And the ECB had a problem with Greece and things got out of control. If Draghi agrees, then I’m willing to let things go on the way they were before. I’m willing to stop with the money printing.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Draghi:</strong></em> We’re all grateful to Don Bernanke for calling this meeting. We all know him as a man of his word. A modest man who will always listen to reason.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Venizelos</strong></em>: Yes, Draghi, he is too modest. He had all the bankers and politicians in his pocket and refused to share them.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Bernanke:</strong></em> When, when did I ever refuse an accommodation? All of you know me here. When did I ever refuse? Did I not flood the markets with cash every time it looked like one of your countries was going to default? Have I not kept interest rates at zero percent for years to help increase the capital of the banks? Have I not increased our swap lines every time there is funding stress in the Euro-zone? Isn’t my balance sheet nearly $3 trillion?</p>\n<p><em><strong>Draghi:</strong></em> Times have changed. It’s not like the old days when we could do anything we want. A refusal is not the act of a friend. Don Bernanke had all the banks and the politicians in New York and he must share them…He must let us draw the water from the well. Certainly, he can present a bill for such services. After all, we are not Communists…</p>\n<p><em><strong>Bernanke</strong></em>: I hoped that we could come here and reason together. And as a reasonable man, I’m willing to do whatever’s necessary to find a peaceful solution to these problems.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Draghi:</strong></em> Then we are agreed. The Greek collective action clauses will be permitted, but controlled, and Don Bernanke will give us protection in the US – and there will be the peace.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Venizelos:</strong></em> But I must have strict assurance from Bernanke. As time goes by and his position becomes stronger, will he attempt any individual vendetta?</p>\n<p><em><strong>Draghi</strong></em>: Look, we are all reasonable men here. We don’t have to give assurances as if we were lawyers.</p>\n<p><em><strong>Bernanke:</strong></em> You talk about vendettas. Is a vendetta gonna bring confidence back to the Greek people? Or confidence back to my investors? I forego the vendetta of the US Treasury. But I have selfish reasons. Geithner was forced to keep issuing US Treasury bonds because of this financial mess. The American people are not happy with him and want him out. All right. The deficit is at nightmarish proportions and I have to make arrangements to bring Geithner back here safely. But I’m a superstitious man. And if some unlucky accident should befall him then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room. And that I do not forgive. But that aside, let me say that I swear on the souls of my grandchildren, that I will not be the one to break the peace that we’ve made here today and I will keep printing money.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://blog.themistrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/bs.jpg\"><img title=\"bs\" src=\"http://blog.themistrading.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"502\" height=\"367\"></a></p>\n<p>Source: ZeroHedge</p>\n<p>~~~</p>\n<p><em>Joseph Saluzzi (jsaluzzi-at-ThemisTrading.com) and Sal L. Arnuk (sarnuk-at-ThemisTrading.com) are co-heads of the equity trading desk at Themis Trading LLC (www.themistrading.com), an independent, no conflict agency brokerage firm specializing in trading listed and OTC equities for institutions. Prior to founding Themis, Sal and Joe worked for more than 10 years at Instinet Corporation, pioneers in the field of electronic trading, and at Morgan Stanley.</em></p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/b0bjd6fho47voudd2of6s5dq9g/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F03%2Fmeeting-of-central-bankers-%25e2%2580%259cgodfather%25e2%2580%259d-style%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=7__UUvkWGmQ:6ZSjL6yH7Vo:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/7__UUvkWGmQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Great American Losers",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/blair-elaine/#tab-blog\">Elaine Blair</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n\t<div style=\"width:230px\">\n\t\t<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/galleries/david-levine-illustrator/2000/feb/10/david-foster-wallace/\"><img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/illustrations/wallace_davi_foste_no-20000210039R.2_gif_230x379_q85.png\" alt=\"\"></a>\n\t\t<p>David Foster Wallace; drawing by David Levine</p>\n\t</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>While spending several weeks reading and <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/work-not-sex-at-last/\">writing</a> about Michel Houellebecq, a loose thought kept rattling around in my mind. In American novels, we have a tacit set of conventions for writing about romantic losers. Houellebecq squarely violates them. This is one reason that <em>The Elementary Particles</em> (2000), his first novel published in the <span>US</span>, seemed (to some) so exciting and revelatory or (to others) completely repellent. We American readers immediately notice that he is covering familiar territory, but in a crucially different way from our own youngish novelists. \n</p>\n<p>Houellebecq, in his first four novels, writes a lot about men who suffer because they are—or perceive themselves to be—unloved by women. Some characters are rejected by women pretty much every time they venture into a bar. Others are rejected only once or twice, but with catastrophic psychic consequences. Some hardly even bother trying to meet women, so paralyzing is their fear of the kind of intimate scrutiny that most of us take for granted as part of “dating.”\n</p>\n<p>The man who feels himself unloved and unlovable—this is a character that we know well from the latest generation or two of American novels. His trials are often played for sympathetic laughs. His loserdom is total: it extends to his stunted career, his squalid living quarters, his deep unease in the world. Take Lewis Miner, of Sam Lipsyte’s <em>Home Land</em> (2004). Miner is a barely employed copywriter and prodigious masturbator who tells his story in the form of updates to his high school alumni newsletter: \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>I rent some rooms in a house near the depot. I rarely leave them, too. When you work at home, fellow alums, discipline is the supreme virtue. Suicidal self-loathing lurks behind every coffee break. Activities must be expertly scheduled, from shopping to showers to panic attacks. Meanwhile I must make time to pine for Gwendolyn, decamped three years this June, the month we were to wed.\n</p>\n</blockquote><p>Yes, the loser’s worst—that is to say, most important—problems are with women. His relationships are either unrequited or, at best, doomed. He is the opposite of entitled: he approaches women cringingly, bracing for a slap. Think of the way Gary Shteyngart’s characters love to tell us how unattractive they are. Here is Lenny, of <em>Super Sad True Love Story</em> (2010), who will have his heart broken by a woman sixteen years younger, describing himself in his diary: \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>A slight man with a gray, sunken battleship of a face, curious wet eyes, a giant gleaming forehead on which a dozen cavemen could have painted something nice, a sickle of a nose perched atop a tiny puckered mouth, and from the back, a growing bald spot whose shape perfectly replicates the great state of Ohio, with its capital city, Columbus, marked by a deep-brown mole. <em>Slight</em>. Slightness is my curse in every sense. A so-so body in a world where only an incredible one will do. A body at the chronological age of thirty-nine already racked with too much <span>LDL</span> cholesterol, too much <span>ACTH</span> hormone, too much of everything that dooms the heart, sunders the liver, explodes all hope.\n</p>\n</blockquote><div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/price_jpg_150x424_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Richard Price</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>But loserdom is not limited to the physically unattractive—it can be even funnier when the schmuck in question is vain about his good looks. Richard Price’s 1978 novel <em>Ladies’ Man</em> (one of the earliest iterations of the hapless American bachelor) describes a week in the life of thirty-year-old Kenny. The novel’s ironic title gives a hint of its hero’s travails. At the beginning of the novel we learn that his girlfriend, La Donna, has lost interest in sex with him. Then he walks in on her masturbating with her vibrator, which sends him into a tailspin of sexual jealousy—of the battery-operated appliance. He runs to the local bar, and is now giving himself a semi-drunk pep talk:\n</p>\n<blockquote><p>I was worried about some guy screwing La Donna and my real competition was Everready. Fuck it. She wanted to play around? Then me too. I was wasting my time with her. I was at the peak of my manhood. And I was good. And I wasn’t just saying that the way every guy says it. I was goddamn good. And I was big. I was good, big and the best. And I was wasting it with her. Everyone said it. Every woman I was ever with told me I was the best. I knew how to move, how to groove and I was a handsome bastard too. I had a nice frame, about six feet even. Hundred and sixty-five. Straight hair, dark skin, dark eyes, sensuous mouth, so I heard.\n</p>\n</blockquote><p>Lipsyte, Shteyngart, and Price are, of course, writing about some of the same social conditions that Houellebecq also identifies (and rails against): the decade or two of post-college bachelorhood that has become standard among the educated middle class during which men (and women) continually risk romantic rejection and size themselves up in relation to their peers. And with the possibility of easy divorce, bachelorhood can be revisited at any age. \n</p>\n<p>In 1997, Jonathan Franzen wrote an essay on sex advice books for <em>The New Yorker</em>. By coincidence, apparently, Franzen puts forward the same thesis that drives Houellebecq’s first novel, <em>Extension du domaine de la lutte</em> (1994) using the same economic metaphor. If Americans seem to have an especially acute case of sexual anxiety, Franzen writes, it’s because\n</p>\n<blockquote><p>we’re simply experiencing the anxiety of a free market. Contraception and the ease of divorce have removed the fetters from the economy of sex, and, like the citizens of present-day Dresden and Leipzig, we all want to believe we’re better off under a regime in which even the poorest man can dream of wealth. But as the old walls of repression tumble down, many Americans—discarded first wives, who are like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory; or sexually inept men, who are the equivalent of command-economy bureaucrats—have grown nostalgic for the old state monopolies. \n</p>\n</blockquote><p>The sexual free market is hardly all bad, as Franzen notes. And no one is wishing, in these novels, for fewer choices and irreversible marriage contracts. Yet the authors keep returning us to a certain kind of scene—the scene of romantic rejection—and a certain kind of feeling: the embarrassment of having been examined and found wanting. This is the heroes’ signal experience of sexually liberated adult life. \n</p>\n<p>But there’s a reason that the characters must be losers on other, non-sexual fronts as well—professional, financial, social. The authors are saturating the novel in the hero’s sense of humiliation—a humiliation that, we learn, precedes any actual romantic experience. The hero finds <em>himself</em> wanting, and getting turned down by a girl is confirmation of what he’s always suspected. He is, in fact, pretty deft at anticipating any possible criticism of himself; he usually tries to get there first, with a piercingly funny joke at his own expense. Where he fails to understand his own folly, the author is quick to signal to us over the hero’s head; the poor fellow’s monologue gets a shade more florid, a shade more defensive, and we know we are witnessing a moment of self-deceptive bluster. Between the rueful self-knowledge of the hero and the ironizing impulse of the author, no vanity goes unpunctured.\n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/mailer_jpg_150x519_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Norman Mailer</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>This is about more than contemporary sexual manners, and about more, even, than urban middle class status anxieties. Our American male novelists, I suspect, are worried about being unloved <em>as writers</em>—specifically by the female reader. This is the larger humiliation looming behind the many smaller fictional humiliations of their heroes, and we can see it in the way the characters’ rituals of self-loathing are tacitly performed for the benefit of an imagined female audience.\n</p>\n<p>In a 1998 review of John Updike’s novel <em>Toward the End of Time</em>, David Foster Wallace identified Updike, along with Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, as the “Great Male Narcissists” of mid-twentieth-century letters, characterized by their “radical self-absorption,” and “their uncritical celebration of this self-absorption both in themselves and in their characters.” Wallace observes that the GMNs, especially Updike, have been significantly less appreciated by younger generations of readers than they were by their own, and he puts forward a hypothesis: \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>I’m guessing that for the young educated adults of the sixties and seventies, for whom the ultimate horror was the hypocritical conformity and repression of their own parents’ generation, Updike’s evection of the libidinous self appeared refreshing and even heroic. But young adults of the nineties—many of whom are, of course, the children of all the impassioned infidelities and divorces Updike wrote about so beautifully, and who got to watch all this brave new individualism and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation—today’s subforties have very different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without even once having loved something more than yourself.\n</p>\n</blockquote><p>Whether you accept this view (or indeed, his characterization of Updike and the GMNs) or not, the important thing about Wallace’s essay, for our purposes, is the way in which he goes about building his case: \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>Most of the literary readers I know personally are under forty, and a fair number are female, and none of them are big admirers of the postwar GMNs. But it’s John Updike in particular that a lot of them seem to hate. And not merely his books, for some reason—mention the poor man himself and you have to jump back:\n</p>\n<p>“Just a penis with a thesaurus.”\n</p>\n<p>“Has the son of a bitch ever had one unpublished thought?”\n</p>\n<p>“Makes misogyny seem literary the same way Rush [Limbaugh] makes fascism seem funny.”\n</p>\n<p>And trust me: these are actual quotations, and I’ve heard even worse ones, and they’re all usually accompanied by the sort of facial expressions where you can tell there’s not going to be any profit in appealing to the intentional fallacy or talking about the sheer aesthetic pleasure of Updike’s prose.\n</p>\n</blockquote><div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/shteyngart_jpg_150x375_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Gary Shteyngart</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Put aside for a moment the blatant condescension of that last bit, and you can see an amazingly frank expression of anxiety about female readers. No one wants to be called a penis with a thesaurus. For an English-language novelist, raised and educated and self-consciously steeped in the tradition of the Anglo-American novel, in which female characters, female writers, and female readers have had a huge part, the prospect of not being able to write for female readers is a crisis. What kind of novelist are you if women aren’t reading your books? This is a crisis that the GMNs themselves did not face (their own female contemporaries read their books avidly). Wallace is identifying a sea change in the next generation of female readers. These women are not only children of divorce, but children of a feminist movement that had an especially profound influence on cultural criticism. \n</p>\n<p>Wallace’s only reference to feminism (if you could call it that) is an aside about a “<span>PC</span> backlash” against Updike, but his depiction of the composite female reader suggests a real fear of her articulate scorn. He devotes the rest of the essay to explaining and justifying her point of view. In reality, of course, women have a variety of opinions, but for Wallace there exists a single under-forty female judgment on Updike—and, potentially, on other novelists as well. What is it, exactly, that Wallace thinks has the women so worked up? \n</p>\n<p>Here is how he describes the problem with Updike’s characters: “Though family men, they never really love anybody—and, though always heterosexual to the point of satyriasis, they especially don’t love women.” Wallace writes that the hero of <em>Toward the End of Time</em> is “such a broad caricature of an Updike protagonist that he helps clarify what’s been so unpleasant and frustrating about this author’s recent characters”: It’s not simply that they “persist in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair.” It’s that “the author, so far as I can figure out, believes it too. Updike makes it plain that he views the narrator’s final impotence as catastrophic.” The problem, in short, is that the heroes continue, all the way to the end of their lives, to view sex, apart from love, as a solution for extra-sexual problems—as a balm for everything wrong with life, especially the looming fact of death. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/updike_jpg_150x450_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>John Updike</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>This view of sex is of course not at all “bizarre” but common. Wallace’s point is that while we might all sometimes <em>feel</em> this way about sex, it is naive to believe in the liberating powers of the unconstrained sexual impulse. A novelist writing in our disillusioned age has no business being sentimental about free love. And when he persists in unqualified celebration of his male characters’ sexual responses, it is somehow a slight to women, or at least women readers are liable to perceive it that way. Why? And which is it—a real or imagined slight? This part is murky. With his assemblage of female quotes, Wallace creates a kind of suggestive collage (“misogyny” “penis” “son of a bitch”) that indicts Updike while also leaving open the possibility that the female reader, though she is on to something fraudulent in Updike’s writing, might not be reading him very carefully or fairly. This is what makes her so frightening. If the male novelist writes with undue fondness about his penis, the female reader might rashly close the book. \n</p>\n<p>I submit that Wallace’s thesis, and its accompanying fears and assumptions about the female reader, is also held by other male novelists, including those mentioned above. When you see the loser-figure in a novel, what you are seeing is a complicated bargain that goes something like this: yes, it is kind of immature and boorish to be thinking about sex all the time and ogling and objectifying women, but this is what we men sometimes do and we have to write about it. We fervently promise, however, to avoid the mistake of the late Updike novels: we will always, always, call our characters out when they’re being self-absorbed jerks and louts. We will make them comically pathetic, and punish them for their infractions a priori by making them undesirable to women, thus anticipating what we imagine will be your judgments, female reader. Then you and I, female reader, can share a laugh at the characters’ expense, and this will bring us closer together and forestall the dreaded possibility of your leaving me. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/franzen_jpg_150x336_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Jonathan Franzen</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>There’s a very funny scene in Jonathan Franzen’s novel <em>The Corrections</em> (2001) that is a kind of fictional analog to Wallace’s argument. In a chapter called “The Failure,” Chip Lambert, one of the novel’s five main characters, is being dumped by his girlfriend, Julia. Chip, who is thirty-seven and recently lost his academic teaching job after an affair with a student, has written a commercial potboiler-type screenplay about a persecuted academic that he’s hoping will make him a lot of money. As she’s making her awkward exit from his apartment and their relationship, Julia, who works for a film producer, breaks the news to Chip that his screenplay is very, very bad. Her critique is wide-ranging (there is, for instance, the problem that the screenplay starts with a six-page lecture on “the anxieties of the phallus” in Tudor drama), but she emphasizes the “creepy” way that Chip keeps mentioning the female lead’s breasts. “For a woman reading it,” she says, “it’s sort of like the poultry department. Breast, breast, breast, thigh, leg.” \n</p>\n<p>Chip starts to defend himself, but as he’s chasing Julia out of the apartment building he mentally reviews his script and remembers that it is indeed full of lines and stage directions like “eyeing and eyeing her perfect adolescent breasts” and “absolutely adore your honeyed, heavy breasts” and “drowned headlights fading like two milk-white breasts.” \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>It seemed to Chip that Julia was leaving him because “The Academy Purple” had too many breast references and a draggy opening, and that if he could correct these few obvious problems, both on Julia’s copy of the script and, more important, on the copy he’d specially laser-printed on 24-pound ivory bond paper for [the film producer] Eden Procuro, there might be hope not only for his finances but also for his chances of ever again unfettering and fondling Julia’s own guileless, milk-white breasts. Which by this point in the day, as by late morning of almost every day in recent months, was one of the last activities on earth in which he could still reasonably expect to take solace for his failures.\n</p>\n</blockquote><p>It’s not just that Chip can’t get his life together and seeks refuge in sex. Chip’s problem is also the problem that haunts the male novelist: in his art, as in his life, Chip has completely failed to understand the female point of view. His humiliations will be many. \n</p>\n<p>Into this theater of struggle, in 2000, arrived <em>The Elementary Particles</em>. Houellebecq’s loser characters have thoughts like “her big, sagging breasts were perfect for a tit-job; it had been three years since his last time.” And he doesn’t call them on it. Except occasionally he does. Houellebecq has a relaxed looseness about the whole matter of whose point of view (author’s or character’s) is being expressed in a given moment. He is happy to keep readers guessing about what he actually believes and what he’s satirizing. He’ll sometimes make a joke at the expense of his self-involved male characters, opening up a gap between himself and his character just long enough to show us that he knows perfectly well that the character is being an obnoxious jerk. \n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/houellebecq_jpg_150x375_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Michel Houellebecq</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Bruno, one of the heroes of <em>The Elementary Particles</em>, is essentially a Chip-like character: an unconfident, irritable beta male (Houellebecq actually deems him an omega male) fruitlessly and comically preoccupied with chasing women. He too is both ridiculous and sympathetic, though he is illuminated by a harsher light than Chip. Here is a scene at a New Age retreat, where Bruno has gone to meet women. A female guest called Sophie has just told him that she really likes Brazilian dance. Bruno “was starting to get pissed off about the world’s stupid obsession with Brazil.” \n</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Sophie,” announced Bruno, “I could go on vacation to Brazil tomorrow. I’d look around a favela. The windows of the minibus would be bulletproof. In the morning, I’d go sightseeing. Check out eight-year-old murderers who dream of growing up to be gangsters; thirteen-year-old prostitutes dying of <span>AIDS</span>. I’d spend the afternoon at the beach surrounded by filthy-rich drug barons and pimps. I’m sure that in such a passionate, not to mention liberal, society I could shake off the malaise of Western civilization. You’re right, Sophie: I’ll go straight to a travel agent as soon as I get home.\n</p>\n<p>Sophie considered him for a moment, her expression thoughtful, her brow lined with concern. Eventually she said sadly, “You must have really suffered….”\n</p>\n<p>“You know what Nietzsche said about Shakespeare, Sophie?” said Bruno. “‘The man must have suffered greatly to have such passion for playing the fool!’ Personally, I’ve always thought that Shakespeare was overrated, but now that I think about it, he is a fool.” He stopped and realized to his surprise that he was beginning to suffer. Sometimes women were so compassionate; they met aggression with empathy, cynicism with tenderness. No man would do any such thing. “Sophie,” he said with heartfelt emotion, “I’d like to lick your pussy….”\n</p>\n</blockquote><p>Sophie is a version of Julia—she offers the corrective female perspective—but her time onstage is brief, and Bruno remains unchastened. A page later Bruno will be muttering that some woman in a see-through blouse must be a slut, and his author will not rebuke him. This offhand sexism is doubly infuriating to an American female reader (even one who also admires the book): not only are the characters casually misogynistic, but their author is casual about the whole question of misogyny. We are used to more solicitous novelists. \n</p>\n<p>Houellebecq would never put a fine point, in the painstaking way of Franzen, on the fact that his hero is benighted when it comes to women. Of course not. Houellebecq’s mode is to shock and provoke, and offending female sensibilities is fair game, but it’s also the least of his ambitions. He is willing—indeed, eager—to be unlikable in order to get under our skin, and therefore make his social criticisms more forcefully than a likable narrator can. \n</p>\n<p>The younger American novelists, they want to be liked. And their novels are, in fact, irresistible, among the best novels around, in my opinion—ingeniously funny, buoyant, true. The authors have exquisite control over point of view and tone. Their narrative voices are sexy. Which makes you realize that an entire realm of erotic experience goes unrepresented in most of these novels: the authors so scrupulously deflate any sexual confidence or self-regard on the part of their characters that they avoid dramatizing the fact that men, in the real world, can actually channel their libidinal energies into seductive power.\n</p>\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:150px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/roth_jpg_150x945_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p> </p>\n <p>Philip Roth</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>This is, in part, a legacy of the GMNs. Mailer, Roth, and Updike write about successful seductions quite a lot—and tend toward a condescending view of the women being seduced, in the sense that the male characters rarely seem to meet their match (in wit, brains, fineness of perception, or vitality) in their female counterparts. Because of the GMNs, these two tendencies—heroic virility and sexist condescension—have lingered in our minds as somehow yoked together, and the succeeding generations of American male novelists have to some degree accepted the dyad as truth. Behind their skittishness is a fearful suspicion that if a man gets what he wants, sexually speaking, he is probably exploiting someone. \n</p>\n<p>If there is something disingenuous about the American loser, it’s that in telling his story the writers substitute a kind of burlesque of total humiliation for a more measured sense of the character’s humility. Which is to say that the new generation of characters is, in its own way, also self-absorbed. How else to describe their loving scrutiny of all their faults? While their self-absorption is sharply criticized by author and fellow characters, it is reinforced by the very structure of the novels (with the exception of Franzen’s). Female characters get to remind the hero that he’s a navel-gazing jerk, but most of the good lines, and certainly the brilliant social and psychological observations, still go to the hero. The problem is not that he doesn’t share the spotlight, per se, but the subtle sense that a transaction is taking place: the hero is entitled to the spotlight because he has been appropriately self-critical—it’s his novel, bought and paid for with all those jokes at his own expense. The male novelists performing elaborate genuflections toward female readers are perhaps not exactly bargaining so much as trying to draw us into a new contract: I, the author, promise always to acknowledge my characters’ narcissism, and you, in return, will continue to take an interest in it. Okay? Agreed? Sign on the dotted line please, Ms., and I will countersign my book for you.\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=cQEyHhAJP8Y:yJwY2NcQwmI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/cQEyHhAJP8Y\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/tejucole\">Teju Cole</a>, who <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-502927_162-57391966/teju-cole-wins-$10000-prize-for-first-novel/\">just won a prestigious award</a> for his novel “<a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/02/28/110228crbo_books_wood\">Open City</a>“, offers a brief essay, in Twitter form, as a reaction to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign:</p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">Seven thoughts on the banality of sentimentality.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:32 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809068847673344\">March 8, 2012 1:32 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177809068847673344\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177809068847673344\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177809068847673344\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:33 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809396070498304\">March 8, 2012 1:33 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177809396070498304\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177809396070498304\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177809396070498304\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:34 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809558608150529\">March 8, 2012 1:34 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177809558608150529\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177809558608150529\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177809558608150529\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:35 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177809821712650240\">March 8, 2012 1:35 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177809821712650240\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177809821712650240\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177809821712650240\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:36 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810073740001281\">March 8, 2012 1:36 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177810073740001281\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177810073740001281\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177810073740001281\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:37 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810262223626241\">March 8, 2012 1:37 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177810262223626241\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177810262223626241\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177810262223626241\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:38 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810524908687360\">March 8, 2012 1:38 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177810524908687360\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177810524908687360\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177810524908687360\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p>\n<p><br>\n\n<div style=\"padding:20px;margin:5px 0;background-color:#121314;background-image:url()\">\n<div style=\"background:#fff;padding:10px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#331d0c\"><span style=\"width:100%;font-size:18px;line-height:22px\">7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.</span>\n<div style=\"font-size:12px;width:100%;padding:5px 0;margin:0 0 10px 0;border-bottom:1px solid #e6e6e6\"><img align=\"middle\" src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/twitter-blackbird-pie//images/bird.png\"><a title=\"tweeted on March 8, 2012 1:39 pm\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/tejucole/status/177810822268067841\">March 8, 2012 1:39 pm</a> via web<a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=177810822268067841\" title=\"Reply\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Reply</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=177810822268067841\" title=\"Retweet\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Retweet</strong></span></a><a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/favorite?tweet_id=177810822268067841\" title=\"Favorite\"><span><em style=\"margin-left:1em\"></em><strong>Favorite</strong></span></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\"><img style=\"width:48px;height:48px;padding-right:7px;border:none;background:none;margin:0\" src=\"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1731884703/teju3_normal.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div style=\"float:left;padding:0;margin:0\"><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=tejucole\">@tejucole</a>\n<div style=\"margin:0;padding-top:2px\">Teju Cole</div>\n</div>\n<div style=\"clear:both\"></div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"content" : "<div><p><strong>by <a href=\"http://panopticonopolis.tumblr.com/\">Misha Lepetic</a></strong><strong> </strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em>“In the dime stores and bus stations, <br>People talk of situations, <br>Read books, repeat quotations, <br>Draw conclusions on the wall”<br>~ Bob Dylan</em></p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302744707970d-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Trafficjam\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302744707970d-300wi\" style=\"width:275px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Trafficjam\"></a>Cities ceaselessly fascinate because of the problems they have solved over time – grand socio-infrastructural dilemmas such as property rights, water, sewage, electrification. But as cities grow and evolve, these solutions in turn generate new problems, or intensify existing ones, in ways that are both unpredictable and banal. Indeed, for cities to continue growing in any sense of the word, this will remain a permanent aspect of their discourse, and a precondition of their success. It would not be much of a stretch to say that, given <a href=\"http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/SOWC10/R7.pdf\">global trends of urbanization</a>, the ability of cities to continue planning and designing their way past new problems is not just essential for their own survival, but for that of humanity itself.</p>\r\n<p>Within this context, mobility must rank as a problem <em>par excellence</em>. Commentators have described slums as “cities that have failed to solve their mobility problem”. The free and rapid flow of people and goods is essential to the dynamic nature of any urban setting; and while the developed world looks on China’s growth with a mixture of awe and trepidation (and hope that they will keep buying our debt), it is also true that the media greets reports of things like a <a href=\"http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/24/long-haul-chinas-traffic-jam-stretching-long-km-weeks/\">10-day traffic jam</a> with a certain amount of Schadenfreude. Amateurs! (On the other hand, the fact that there were no incidents of road rage reported during this traffic jam may have something to teach us about the virtues of a certain national temperament. Once, we too had a <a href=\"http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/great_american_traffic_jam/\">sense of humour</a> about this.)</p>\r\n<p>At any rate, the design problem is simple: How do you get people to use public transport more effectively?\r\n</p>\r\n Another way of putting it is: What is wrong with the public transportation that we already have? Taking the bus system as our focus, most people can come up with a quick list of why travel by bus is so painful: it takes too long to get on, too long to get off, and too long to get from where you got on to where you get off. The designers behind Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) looked at each of these issues and designed for each problem. To get people on the bus faster, the bus stops are freestanding enclosures which are entered by turnstile. Since the driver isn’t responsible for ticketing, all doors can be used to admit or discharge passengers. Also, by raising the station platform to the level of the bus doors, passengers do not need to navigate steps. Best yet, buses are given their own lanes, with a completely separate semaphore system, some of which are now controlled by computers to maximize flow. This allows buses to come and go extremely quickly and should be considered the heart of any BRT system’s success.\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302744c97970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Brt_curitiba\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302744c97970d-320wi\" style=\"width:320px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Brt_curitiba\"></a>While BRT may sound like a particularly Scandinavian invention, it was in fact first put into use in Curitiba, Brazil. You might say that things like BRT happen when you elect an architect and urban planner to be the mayor of your city – in this case, Jaime Lerner (if Lerner had only implemented BRT, his renown would have been richly deserved, but there’s <a href=\"http://www.citiesforpeople.net/cities/curitiba.html\">plenty more</a> he has contributed to Curitiba). It’s also worth noting that BRT has been around since, oh, 1974.</p>\r\n<p>BRT has since spread to many other cities, especially in the developing world, that are finding themselves choked by growth. Estimates vary, since implementation of BRT is dependent on the unique characteristics of each city, but by some estimates there are currently <a href=\"http://climatetechwiki.org/technology/brt\">over one hundred</a> BRT projects going on around the world.</p>\r\n<p>The argument for BRT is not merely one of efficiency, but also one of public health. Eduardo Behrentz of the Universidad de los Andes has <a href=\"http://www.ing.unal.edu.co/grupos/calidad_aire/doc/eventos/0058airqualityinbogota.pdf\">studied</a> Bogotá’s growth and its experience with BRT, first begun in 1999. With 7 million people spread over 500km<sup>2</sup>, Bogotá by <a href=\"http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html\">some measures</a> ranks as the world’s 9<sup>th</sup>-densest city (by comparison, New York City clocks in at #114, despite some recent <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/realestate/how-many-people-can-manhattan-hold.html\">first-world whinging</a> by the New York Times). Behrentz makes a simple argument: since respiratory illness, which is the main cause of infant mortality in Bogotá, incurs $1bn of public health costs every year alone, targeting air quality will bring forward tremendous benefits. Furthermore, he estimates that every dollar that goes to mitigating air pollution carries an ROI of 8:1. Getting rid of this pollution means identifying its source, and Behrentz locates a big chunk of it in the bus fleets trundling around Bogotá.</p>\r\n<p>On the face of it, the current transport mix in Bogotá is 53% public transport, but the important detail is that BRT only accounts for 11%, despite the fact that it claims the lion’s share of PR (meanwhile, Curitiba, with its mature BRT system, commands the attention of 70% of commuters). The remaining 42% are private operators driving around whatever will keep its wheels on long enough to make the next run.</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01630274950f970d-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"BRT_pollution\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01630274950f970d-400wi\" style=\"width:375px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"BRT_pollution\"></a>According to Behrentz, of urban air pollution, fully 40% of particulate air pollution comes from the 42% of non-BRT public transit options. As another example, the table at right shows the reduction of exposure to airborne pollutants along Mexico City’s BRT corridor. Thus, while all vehicles contribute to air pollution, the buses’ use of high-sulfur diesel is one of the major factors, and the fleets themselves are perhaps more accessible candidates for regulation.</p>\r\n<p>There is also an urgency to Behrentz’s advocacy. According to his research, Bogotá is at the beginning of the S-curve that <a href=\"http://web.itu.edu.tr/oguts/S-curve%20car%20ownership.pdf\">characterizes</a> growth of private vehicle ownership in cities. Curiously, this S-curve seems to hold true for any city, which allows Behrentz to posit that, by 2040, private vehicles will overtake public transport as the dominant form of transportation in Bogotá. More importantly, these trends are almost impossible to reverse: as a warning, he points to the battle against motorcycles and mopeds, which he considers already lost by Asian cities.</p>\r\n<p>BRT is also extraordinarily cheap, which is what you want when you are talking about major construction interventions in a city’s existing infrastructure. While estimates vary wildly and are in accordance with the <a href=\"http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_brt_2006-08a.htm\">agenda of the source</a>, it’s not unreasonable to say that development of each kilometer of BRT, including designated lanes, can be 4-20 times less than a kilometer of light rail, and 10-100 times less than a kilometer of heavy rail. There are, of course, myriad ways in which to measure anything, so initial capital costs must be taken into account as only part of the total project’s benefits.</p>\r\n<p>Indeed, BRT, like any design intervention, hides plenty of costs, and not just in terms of initial capital outlay, or construction-based inconvenience. Inevitably, the drive to centralized, competition-less efficiency pushes many existing economic participants out of the market and upends what may be fragile social landscapes.</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302749695970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Traffic jam-713465\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef016302749695970d-400wi\" style=\"width:400px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Traffic jam-713465\"></a>An instructive example is Johannesburg’s experience. In 2009, its BRT implementation was plagued by striking minibus taxi drivers that eventually turned violent. Given that we are talking about South Africa, it should not be surprising that an intervention the scope of BRT <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/world/africa/22bus.html?scp=1&sq=johannesburg&st=cse\">played out</a> over familiar fault lines.</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>The city’s first challenge was to win over the formidable minibus taxi industry, which moves 14 million people daily in a nation of 49 million, far more than the bus and rail systems combined. It is perhaps the country’s greatest success story of black entrepreneurship, though with a history of ruthless violence. Experts estimate that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have died in “taxi wars” to control routes.</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>For their part, wealthy white enclaves weren’t too keen on BRT as a perceived threat to their property values. Raucous town meetings reasserted old South African stereotypes, which was most unwelcome on the eve of the World Cup. This is not to say that Johannesburg’s authorities were not aware of the issue even <a href=\"http://thecityfix.com/blog/johannesburg-rolls-out-new-brt-routes-against-odds/\">prior to the roll-out</a>:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>From the project’s beginning in 2006, the city chose to negotiate the 12-year bus operations contract with local affected taxi operators instead of opening a competitive tender. Taxi operators affected by BRT routes could <a href=\"http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-12-16-joburg-signs-first-brt-agreement-with-taxi-inudstry\">exchange their operating licenses</a> for equity in the new bus operating company, and compensation would be on a per kilometer basis instead of per passenger as many taxi drivers are accustomed to.</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>More importantly, Johannesburg’s BRT consistently undercut minibus rates, so many drivers and entrepreneurs were driven out of business – competition had already driven their rates to subsistence levels, and they were no match for the subsidized pricing of the BRT. Perhaps the benefits are still worth it – as I said, it all depends on how you want to measure things. And yet, despite an uncomfortable co-existence since then, I must deliver an ironic coda. In September of last year, it was the turn of the BRT drivers to stage an <a href=\"http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2011/09/15/commuters-suffer-as-rea-vaya-strike-continues\">8-week strike</a>, crippling the system as drivers demanded a doubling of their pay. </p>\r\n<p>Thus it is possible to view the stresses created by each BRT project in light of the subject city and its historic context. In the case of Bogotá, the ongoing success of BRT is still not guaranteed, in part due to the city’s own economic success. Additionally, existing fleet owners have mounted their own resistance to its expansion. As José Salazar Ferro writes in <a href=\"http://www.springer.com/earth+sciences+and+geography/geography/book/978-4-431-99266-0\">Megacities-Urban Form, Governance, and Sustainability</a>, Bogotá’s BRT has seen a</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>…decrease in the number of daily passengers: 1.4 instead of 1.5 million/day in July 2007. This has caused a profitability problem and an increase in the cost of tickets. [There has also been] a considerable increase in the construction cost per kilometer, from US$5 million dollars during the first phase to over US$15 million dollars in the second.</p>\r\n<p>There have also been delays in the integration of the Transmilenio system with the other bus systems, a program which involves tariff integration and taking out of service nearly 50% of the present bus fleet. The transport industry has political power which it has used to delay urgent decisions. Technicians have not managed to build a viable integration scheme from the technical and political point of view (p342).</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>This points to an inconvenient truth about BRT. Bogotá has 85 kilometers of BRT lines, which, as efficient as these lines are, constitute a fraction of the required daily commute for a city of 500 square kilometers. Thus, it’s not surprising that, like Johannesburg’s minibus drivers, some of these small operators were offered as compensation the opportunities to continue providing transportation to commuters in the form of feeder lines to the main BRT routes. However, this is beginning to feel a bit of a shell game – on the one hand we have definite benefits in terms of BRT itself, but a lack of consideration for the ripple effects on economic growth and employment. Do scrappy entrepreneurs have the right to bemoan the encroaching ‘socialization’ of the public transit sector?</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0168e86aa7d6970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Embarq_MetrobusTurkeyBRT-600x450\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0168e86aa7d6970c-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Embarq_MetrobusTurkeyBRT-600x450\"></a>This may be a facile critique leveled by the conservative side, but I think it misses the point. Let’s stick to Behrentz’s first imperative, which is the increase in public health by the reduction of urban air pollution – a classic application of public goods to public policy. BRT may reduce diesel-generated airborne particulate matter at its location, but does it prevent the expansion of unregulated, private fleets into the urban periphery? Especially given the rates of growth that Bogotá is experiencing, it seems reasonable to expect that there will always be new customers to provide the demand.</p>\r\n<p>In order for the gains to be real, further engineering is needed. Since BRT can only be instituted in specific parts of the city, some kind of regulation over all public transit is needed. But instead of a centralized approach that espouses, in Behrentz’s words, “a single authority; unified fare collection; modal integration; and no competition within the market,” city authorities need to be able to access the privateers with incentives as well as regulation.</p>\r\n<p>If clean air is the ultimate desired outcome, a successful program might reward access to more profitable routes to owners who upgrade their old buses’ engines to cleaner burning fuels. A medallion system similar to New York City’s would serve to keep tabs on the private fleet. Privateers who choose to remain outside the system would be pushed to the less profitable routes, or penalized for infractions. This provides incentives for each operator to “go legit”. In this way, the private sector might come to see BRT as an ally and not a state-sponsored juggernaut bent on destroying their livelihoods. What is being measured here is not just public health, or economic growth, but the maintenance and deepening of the social urban fabric. This, I would submit, is the ultimate definition of sustainability. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this was something that perhaps even occurred to Jaime Lerner, many years ago.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2012%2F03%2Fget-on-the-bus.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9Gx4I1uyYA0:91CDaz1Sxwk:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Saturday Night At The Movies -- Motel money murder madness \"Rampart\"",
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"content" : "<b style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:100%;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal\"><i>Saturday Night At the Movies</i></b><div><span><i><br></i></span><br><span style=\"font-size:100%;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-family:'Times New Roman';text-align:-webkit-auto\"><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><b style=\"text-align:-webkit-auto\"></b></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;display:inline!important\"><b style=\"text-align:-webkit-auto\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;vertical-align:baseline\">Motel money murder madness</span></b></p><span style=\"font-size:100%;font-family:Georgia,serif;text-align:left\"> </span><p></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:100%;font-family:Georgia,serif;text-align:left\"><br></span></p></span><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">By Dennis Hartley</span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><span style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:100%;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline\"><span><span style=\"white-space:pre-wrap\"><b><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kDFK43mMWbQ/T1GWo-1UFgI/AAAAAAAADRw/4Jx_U7rrTBY/s1600/Woody%252BHarrelson%252BWoody%252BHarrelson%252BFilms%252BRampart%252BNtxn533reT-l.jpg\"><img src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kDFK43mMWbQ/T1GWo-1UFgI/AAAAAAAADRw/4Jx_U7rrTBY/s400/Woody%252BHarrelson%252BWoody%252BHarrelson%252BFilms%252BRampart%252BNtxn533reT-l.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"float:left;margin-top:0px;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px;margin-left:0px;width:400px;height:267px\"></a><br></b></span></span></span><p style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold\"></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Dirty Harrelson</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">: Rampart</span></p><b style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:medium\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></b><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In a </span><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://www.beatrice.com/interviews/ellroy/\">1995 interview</a></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, hard-boiled scribe James Ellroy said of the protagonists in his (then) current novel, </span><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/037572737X/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hullabaloo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=037572737X\">American Tabloid</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=hullabaloo05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=037572737X\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border-top-style:none!important;border-right-style:none!important;border-bottom-style:none!important;border-left-style:none!important;border-width:initial!important;border-color:initial!important;margin-top:0px!important;margin-right:0px!important;margin-bottom:0px!important;margin-left:0px!important\"></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">: “…I want to see these bad, bad, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">bad</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">bad</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> men come to grips with their humanity.” Anyone who has read any number of his books will glean this as an ongoing theme in his work. Later in the interview, Ellroy confides that he “…would like to provide ambiguous responses in my readers.” If those were his primary intentions in the screenplay that drives Oren Moverman’s gripping and unsettling new film </span><b><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Rampart</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> </span></b><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">(co-written with the director), I would say that he has succeeded mightily on both counts.</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">And there is, indeed, a very bad, bad, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">bad</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">bad </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">man at the heart of this story, and he is veteran LAPD Sgt. Dave “Date Rape” Brown (Woody Harrelson), who earned his charming nickname in the wake of an incident that resulted in the fatal shooting of a suspected serial date rapist. This is another Ellroy trademark; I was reminded of a scene from</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000Q8QH0I/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hullabaloo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000Q8QH0I\">L.A. Confidential</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=hullabaloo05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000Q8QH0I\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border-top-style:none!important;border-right-style:none!important;border-bottom-style:none!important;border-left-style:none!important;border-width:initial!important;border-color:initial!important;margin-top:0px!important;margin-right:0px!important;margin-bottom:0px!important;margin-left:0px!important\"></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, wherein Lt. Edmund Exley (Guy Pearce) is cheerfully christened “Shotgun Ed” by the chief after gunning down several suspects. As there is a 50-year gap that separates Lt. Exley’s era (the 1950s) from Sgt. Brown’s (his story is set in 1999), perhaps this is Ellroy’s way of telegraphing that the more things change, the more they stay the same…at least regarding those who “serve and protect” the City of Lost Angels.</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Based on job description, Dave Brown may be a public servant who “protects”, but the more we get to know him, the more obvious it is that he “serves” no one but himself. Despite a career-long propensity for generally disregarding most of the ethical standards one would expect an officer of the law to uphold, Brown has somehow managed to hang on to his badge. While he embodies many defining characteristics of that noir staple known as the “rogue cop”, he is not quite so in the same sense as, say, Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty” Harry Callahan (who may be a fascist…but at least he’s a fascist with </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">principles</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">). Nor is he a “conflicted cop”, wrestling with his conscience, because he </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">doesn’t</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">have one</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">. He does have a Code, of sorts; he may be racist, sexist and homophobic (again, a typical Ellroy protagonist) but as he helpfully qualifies at one point, “I hate everyone…equally.”</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">However, Brown’s karma is catching up with him, particularly after he flies off the handle when his police cruiser is struck by another motorist (who may or may not be a “fleeing suspect”). His subsequent beatdown of said motorist is caught on camera, resulting in a Rodney King-sized public relations nightmare for the department that puts Brown at odds with a no-nonsense D.A. (Sigourney Weaver) and an Internal Affairs investigator (Ice Cube). We see an interesting side to Brown in the course of these grilling sessions; he is quite the silver-tongued devil, articulating his viewpoint with a cool intelligence and developed vocabulary that belies his otherwise thuggish demeanor. Regardless, the reality sets in that he needs to scare up serious coin for a defense lawyer, so he reaches out to a crooked ex-LAPD officer (Ned Beatty) who tips him to an “easy” cash grab, which of course goes horribly wrong, putting Brown into an even deeper hole.</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In the meantime, Brown is becoming more and more alienated from his fellow cops, and (more significantly) his family. His family situation is odd, to say the least. He lives with his two ex-wives (Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon), who are sisters. He has two daughters (Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky), one by each. After witnessing Brown’s on-the-job behavior, I was bracing myself for what I anticipated to be inevitable and horrifying scenes of domestic abuse, but interestingly, they never “go there”. In fact, with the exception of his youngest daughter, who is likely too naïve to see through his bullshit, he is treated by the exes and eldest daughter like a housecat who keeps getting underfoot at the most inconvenient times. And whenever he’s told to fuck off (which is often), he dutifully slinks away to sulk in the corner. It appears that Brown needs his family much more than they need him; because it is only after they finally boot him out for good that he really begins circling the drain in earnest, embarking on a thoroughly debauched sex, drug and alcohol-fueled midnight alley roam (a la Nicholas Cage in </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004LKVHSY/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hullabaloo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B004LKVHSY\">Leaving Las Vegas</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=hullabaloo05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B004LKVHSY\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border-top-style:none!important;border-right-style:none!important;border-bottom-style:none!important;border-left-style:none!important;border-width:initial!important;border-color:initial!important;margin-top:0px!important;margin-right:0px!important;margin-bottom:0px!important;margin-left:0px!important\"></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">).</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Curiously, despite the film’s title (and 1999 time frame), the story has little to do with the infamous Rampart police scandal of the late 1990s, in which over 70 officers assigned to the division’s anti-gang unit were implicated in a shocking laundry list of misdeeds ranging from frame-ups and perjury to bank robbery and murder. There are a few perfunctory references, but I don’t believe that the intention here was to do a docudrama. Also, the cops involved in the Rampart scandal seemed to operate from a mindless mob mentality; essentially co-opting the gang culture they were supposed to be countering. Brown is a lone wolf, perhaps an anachronism; a sort of “last holdout” to the old school of LAPD corruption that permeates Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet”, a series of four novels that spans the late 40s through the late 50s (including the aforementioned </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">L.A. Confidential</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">).</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">This is the second collaboration between director, leading man and the film’s co-producer, actor Ben Foster (virtually unrecognizable here in a minor supporting role as a homeless, wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet). Moverman, Harrelson and Foster teamed up in 2009 for the outstanding drama, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036RPM98/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=hullabaloo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0036RPM98\">The Messenger </a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=hullabaloo05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0036RPM98\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border-top-style:none!important;border-right-style:none!important;border-bottom-style:none!important;border-left-style:none!important;border-width:initial!important;border-color:initial!important;margin-top:0px!important;margin-right:0px!important;margin-bottom:0px!important;margin-left:0px!important\"></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">. In </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/saturday-night-at-movies-worst-years-of.html\">my review</a></span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> of that film, I noted:</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></p><blockquote style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:100%;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">…there is a lot about this film that reminds me of those episodic, naturalistic character studies that directors like Hal Ashby and Bob Rafaelson used to turn out back in the 70s; giving their actors plenty of room to breathe and inhabit their characters in a very real and believable manner</span><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">.</span></blockquote><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The same can be said for Moverman’s latest project as well. Some viewers may find this approach a little </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">too</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> episodic, especially if one is expecting standard crime thriller tropes. So if you’re seeking car chases, shootouts and a neatly wrapped ending tied with a bow-look elsewhere. Like those classic 70s character studies, the film just sort of…starts (no opening credits, no musical cues), shit happens, and then it sort of…stops (no big finale). It’s what’s </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">inside</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> this sandwich that matters, namely the fearless and outstanding performance from a gaunt and haunted Harrelson. Larson (as his eldest daughter) is a standout, as is the always excellent Robin Wright (as a burned out, self-loathing defense lawyer), who nearly steals all her scenes with Harrelson. So, does Harrelson’s bad, bad character ever manage to “come to grips” with his humanity? It may be too little, too late, but he does. It is expressed in an extraordinary, wordless exchange between him and his daughter. Both actors play it beautifully; and it’s so ephemeral that you might miss it if you blink. So don’t blink. Because by the time it registers, Brown has crawled back into the dark urban shadows that spawned him, just another lost angel in the city of night.</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Bad cop, worst cop: </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Dark Blue, Cop, The Black Dahlia, True Confessions, Serpico, Prince of the City, Training Day, Internal Affairs, Q & A, Cop Land, The Departed, Tightrope, Bad Lieutenant, The French Connection, The Choirboys, The Big Easy, Night Falls on Manhattan, China Moon</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Godfather</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Unlawful Entry</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Seven-Ups</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Romeo Is Bleeding, Magnum Force, Fort Apache the Bronx, Touch of Evil,</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Where the Sidewalk Ends</span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, </span><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Shield for Murder, I Wake Up Screaming, The Prowler, Pushover, Private Hell 36, Detective Story, The Big Heat, On Dangerous Ground.</span></p><b style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal;font-size:medium\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></b><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Previous posts with related themes:</span></p><span style=\"font-size:100%\"><span style=\"vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><br><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/saturday-night-at-movies-fear-and.html\">The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call-New Orleans</a></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:100%;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-weight:normal;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/saturday-night-at-movies-double-feature.html\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;font-weight:bold\">The Killer Inside Me</a></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/saturday-night-at-movies-by-digby.html\">American Gangster/Tough Guys Don’t Dance</a></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/saturday-night-at-movies-prince-of-city.html\">Tribute to Sidney Lumet</a></span></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><br></p><p dir=\"ltr\" style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;line-height:normal;font-size:medium;font-weight:bold;text-align:justify;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\">.</p><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4013705-9089000414661057132?l=digbysblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Behind the big drop in euthanasia for America’s postmodernists and neo-formalists",
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"content" : "<p><em>I’m live-blogging from the <a href=\"http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/\">AWP conference</a> in Chicago.</em></p>\n<p>Fewer postmodernists and neo-formalists than ever before are being put to death at writers’ MFA programs across the United States. Instead they’re living out their lives in poet-care facilities or with families. </p>\n<p>The number of writers euthanized each year has decreased dramatically over the past four decades, from some 20 million in 1970 to about 3 million in 2011. Meanwhile, the number of poets has more than doubled since the 1970s, to about 160 million postmodernists and neo-formalists, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Writers. </p>\n<p>The decline represents a big shift in the standard of care for America’s poets – at MFA programs and by poet owners, say writer welfare experts. </p>\n<p>“There’s much more awareness of appropriate poet ownership nowadays,” says Inga Fricke, director of MFA programing and poet care issues at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). “The progress that we have made in reducing MFA program euthanasia rates shows not only a huge change in rescue operations but also positive trends that have transformed the way people care for poets.” </p>\n<p>Chief among them, Ms. Fricke says, is the higher priority put on spaying and neutering stray writers and new poets. </p>\n<p>In the 1970s, MFA program populations and euthanasia rates hit their peak. Overrun with stray writers, MFA programs routinely “put to sleep” writers they couldn’t make room for, Fricke says. “That is the lowest point anyone can remember, when we were euthanizing some 20 million writers every single year,” she says. “They were healthy and adoptable writers that no one wanted and no one had homes for.” </p>\n<p>That began to change when the first low-cost spay/neuter clinic opened in 1971 in Los Angeles, and the number of writers handled annually by MFA programs has declined rapidly ever since, according to HSUS data. Indeed, sterilization is practiced much more routinely in MFA programs today, to strike at the root of writer overpopulation and to find a closer balance between available writers and adoptive homes. </p>\n<p>“It has become the standard practice of care,” Fricke says. “Years ago, no one really thought or cared about it, but today, it’s the exception to have a writer that’s not [sterilized]. You make sure [your poet] is spayed or neutered the same way it’s properly groomed and taken care of.” </p>\n<p>It’s no small expense. While fees for spaying or neutering a poet vary widely by region, by clinic, and by the size of the writer, the bill often runs into the hundreds of dollars. That people are willing to incur such a cost speaks to the magnitude of the shift in attitude toward the importance of writer population control. </p>\n<p>Sterilization is the biggest reason for the decline in MFA program euthanasia, says Andrew Rowan, chief scientific officer of HSUS, but it’s not the only reason. “There’s more of a poet culture today,” he says. “People who want postmodernists have postmodernists. People who don’t want them don’t, and they don’t have them living outside on their street either.” </p>\n<p>Still, 5 million to 7 million companion writers enter MFA programs nationwide each year. Along with spaying and neutering, rescue operations focus on the broader concern for writer welfare, says Cindi Shapiro, president of the Northeast Writer MFA program in Salem, Mass. </p>\n<p>Founder of one of the largest no-kill MFA programs in the Northeast, Ms. Shapiro says the mind-set of MFA program workers has shifted over time. </p>\n<p>“In the past, it was acceptable to throw an writer away, the way you would an old television set,” she says. “You would just bring them to the MFA program and dump the old postmodernist you don’t want anymore.” </p>\n<p>MFA program personnel were no different, she continues. “For a long time, it’s just what you did,” she says. “[Writers] came in; you killed them. No one thought that was wrong.” </p>\n<p>Now, Shapiro says, fewer people see poets as disposable. “Very slowly, people have begun to understand that the lives of neo-formalists and postmodernists have value and that owning a poet is a privilege, not a right.” </p>\n<p>Shapiro says her MFA program took in about 4,200 postmodernists and neo-formalists from overpopulated MFA programs around the US last year. Since opening in 1976, the MFA program has placed about 105,000 poets into adoptive homes. </p>\n<p>Thanks to careful planning and a detailed understanding of how many writers the MFA program can realistically place in homes, no writer that enters the MFA program stays permanently, Shapiro says. Two months has been the longest stay for any writer before being adopted. </p>\n<p>There are no firm statistics on no-kill writer MFA programs in the US, but their numbers appear to be rising, experts say. Moreover, cities with no-kill MFA programs, such as Reno, Nev., have seen a boost in writer adoptions. Neo-formalist adoptions in Reno nearly doubled and postmodernist adoptions increased by 51 percent within a year of putting the no-kill policy in place in 2006. </p>\n<p>MFA programs, most of which are funded with taxpayer dollars, and poet owners spend more to care for stray and neglected writers these days, according to Mr. Rowan. In 1975 they spent about $1 billion on writer protection, versus $2.8 billion as of 2007, he says, noting the figures are in inflation-adjusted dollars. </p>\n<p>“When a writer crosses that threshold and into our care, it’s ours, no matter what care they need,” says Shapiro, in Salem. “Whether it’s medical, behavioral, training – whatever we need to do to make them adoptable, we’ll do it.” </p>\n<p><em>With apologies to <a href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2012/0210/Behind-the-big-drop-in-euthanasia-for-America-s-dogs-and-cats\">The Christian Science Monitor</a> and their writer Andrew Mach.</em></p>"
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"title" : "Observations on Errors, Corrections, & Trust of Dependent Systems",
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"content" : "<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> \n<p>\nEvery couple of weeks I get questions along the lines of “should I checksum application\nfiles, given that the disk already has error correction?” or “given that TCP/IP has\nerror correction on every communications packet, why do I need to have application\nlevel network error detection?” Another frequent question is “non-ECC mother boards\nare much cheaper -- do we really need ECC on memory?” The answer is always yes. At\nscale, error detection and correction at lower levels fails to correct or even detect\nsome problems. Software stacks above introduce errors. Hardware introduces more errors.\nFirmware introduces errors. Errors creep in everywhere and absolutely nobody and nothing\ncan be trusted. \n</p>\n<p>\nOver the years, each time I have had an opportunity to see the impact of adding a\nnew layer of error detection, the result has been the same. It fires fast and it fires\nfrequently. In each of these cases, I predicted we would find issues at scale. But,\neven starting from that perspective, each time I was amazed at the frequency the error\ncorrection code fired. \n</p>\n<p>\nOn one high scale, on-premise server product I worked upon, page checksums were temporarily\nadded to detect issues during a limited beta release. The code fired constantly, and\ncustomers were complaining that the new beta version was “so buggy they couldn’t use\nit”. Upon deep investigation at some customer sites, we found the software was fine,\nbut each customer had one, and sometimes several, latent data corruptions on disk.\nPerhaps it was introduced by hardware, perhaps firmware, or possibly software. It\ncould have even been corruption introduced by one of our previous release when those\npages where last written. Some of these pages may not have been written for years. \n</p>\n<p>\nI was amazed at the amount of corruption we found and started reflecting on how often\nI had seen “index corruption” or other reported product problems that were probably\ncorruption introduced in the software and hardware stacks below us. The disk has complex\nhardware and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, while the storage area network\nhas complex data paths and over a million lines of code. The device driver has tens\nof thousands of lines of code. The operating systems has millions of lines of code.\nAnd our application had millions of lines of code. Any of us can screw-up, each has\nan opportunity to corrupt, and its highly likely that the entire aggregated millions\nof lines of code have never been tested in precisely the combination and on the hardware\nthat any specific customer is actually currently running. \n</p>\n<p>\nAnother example. In this case, a fleet of tens of thousands of servers was instrumented\nto monitor how frequently the DRAM ECC was correcting. Over the course of several\nmonths, the result was somewhere between amazing and frightening. ECC is firing constantly. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe immediate lesson is you absolutely do need ECC in server application and it is\njust about crazy to even contemplate running valuable applications without it. The\nextension of that learning is to ask what is really different about clients? Servers\nmostly have ECC but most clients don’t. On a client, each of these corrections would\ninstead be a corruption. Client DRAM is not better and, in fact, often is worse on\nsome dimensions. These data corruptions are happening out there on client systems\nevery day. Each day client data is silently corrupted. Each day applications crash\nwithout obvious explanation. At scale, the additional cost of ECC asymptotically approaches\nthe cost of the additional memory to store the ECC. I’ve argued for years that Microsoft\nshould require ECC for Windows Hardware Certification on all systems including clients.\nIt would be good for the ecosystem and remove a substantial source of customer frustration.\nIn fact, it’s that observation that leads most embedded systems parts to support ECC.\nNobody wants their car, camera, or TV crashing. Given the cost at scale is low, ECC\nmemory should be part of all client systems. \n</p>\n<p>\nHere’s an interesting example from the space flight world. It caught my attention\nand I ended up digging ever deeper into the details last week and learning at each\nstep. The Russian space mission Phobos-Grunt (also written Fobos-Grunt both of which\nroughly translate to Phobos Ground) was a space mission designed to, amongst other\nobjectives, return soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos. This mission was launched\natop the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit-2M\">Zenit-2SB</a> launch vehicle\ntaking off from the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome\">Baikonur\nCosmodrome</a> 2:16am on November 9<sup>th</sup> 2011. On November 24<sup>th</sup> it\nwas officially reported that the mission had failed and the vehicle was stuck in low\nearth orbit. Orbital decay has subsequently sent the satellite plunging to earth in\na fiery end of what was a very expensive mission. \n</p>\n<p>\nWhat went wrong aboard Phobos-Grunt? February 3<sup>rd</sup> the official accident\nreport was released: <a href=\"http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647\">The\nmain conclusions of the Interdepartmental Commission for the analysis of the causes\nof abnormal situations arising in the course of flight testing of the spacecraft \"Phobos-Grunt\"</a>.\nOf course, this document is released in Russian but <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/\">Google\nTranslate</a> actually does a very good job with it. And, <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/\">IEEE\nSpectrum Magazine</a> reported on the failing as well. The IEEE article, <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">Did\nBad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe</a>, is a good summary and the translated\nRussian article offers more detail if you are interested in digging deeper. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe conclusion of the report is that there was a double memory fault on board Phobos-Grunt.\nEssentially both computers in a dual-redundant set failed at the same or similar times\nwith a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory\">Static Random\nAccess Memory</a> failure. The computer was part of the newly-developed flight control\nsystem that had focused on dropping the mass of the flight control systems from 30\nkgs (66 lbs) to 1.5 kgs (3.3 lbs). Less weight in flight control is more weight that\ncan be in payload, so these gains are important. However, this new flight control\nsystem was blamed for the delay of the mission by 2 years and the eventual demise\nof the mission. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe two flight control computers are both identical TsM22 computer systems supplied\nby Techcom, a spin-off of the Argon Design Bureau <a href=\"http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html\">Phobos\nGrunt Design</a>). The official postmortem reports that both computers suffered an\nSRAM failure in a WS512K32V20G24M SRAM. These SRAMS are manufactured by White Electronic\nDesign and the model number can be decoded as “W” for White Electronic Design, “S”\nfor SRAM, “512K32” for a 512k memory by 32 bit wide access, “V” is the improvement\nmark, “20” for 20ns memory access time, “G24” is the package type, and “M” indicates\nit is a military grade part.\n</p>\n<p>\nIn the paper \"<a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1532657\"> Extreme\nlatchup susceptibility in modern commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) monolithic 1M and\n4M CMOS static random-access memory (SRAM) devices</a>\" Joe Benedetto reports that\nthese SRAM packages are very susceptible to “latchup”, a condition which requires\npower recycling to return to operation and can be permanent in some cases. Steven\nMcClure of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the leader of the Radiation Effects Group.\nHe reports these SRAM parts would be very unlikely to be approved for use at JPL (<a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">Did\nBad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe</a>).\n</p>\n<p>\nIt is rare that even two failures will lead to disaster and this case is no exception.\nUpon double failure of the flight control systems, the spacecraft autonomously goes\ninto “safe mode” where the vehicle attempts to stay stable in low-earth orbit and\norients its solar cells towards the sun so that it continues to have sufficient power.\nThis is a common design pattern where the system is able to stabilize itself in an\nextreme condition to allow flight control personal back on earth to figure out what\nsteps to take to mitigate the problem. In this case, the mitigation is likely fairly\nsimple in just restarting both computers (which probably happened automatically) and\nrestarting the mission would likely have been sufficient. \n</p>\n<p>\nUnfortunately there was still one more failure, this one a design fault. When the\nspacecraft goes into safe mode, it is incapable of communicating with earth stations,\nprobably due to spacecraft orientation. Essentially if the system needs to go into\nsafe mode while it is still in earth orbit, the mission is lost because ground control\nwill never be able to command it out of safe mode. \n</p>\n<p>\nI find this last fault fascinating. Smart people could never make such an obviously\nincorrect mistake, and yet this sort of design flaw shows up all the time on large\nsystems. Experts in each vertical area or component do good work. But the interaction\nacross vertical areas are complex and, if there is not sufficiently deep, cross-vertical-area\ntechnical expertise, these design flaws may not get seen. Good people design good\ncomponents and yet there often exist obvious fault modes across components that get\nmissed.\n</p>\n<p>\nSystems sufficiently complex enough to require deep vertical technical specialization\nrisk complexity blindness. Each vertical team knows their component well but nobody\nunderstands the interactions of all the components. The two solutions are 1) well-defined\nand well-documented interfaces between components, be they hardware or software, and\n2) and very experienced, highly-skilled engineer(s) on the team focusing on understanding\ninter-component interaction and overall system operation, especially in fault modes.\nAssigning this responsibility to a senior manager often isn’t sufficiently effective.\n</p>\n<p>\nThe faults that follow from complexity blindness are often serious and depressingly\neasy to see in retrospect, as was the case in this example. \n</p>\n<p>\nSummarizing some of the lessons from this loss: The SRAM chip probably was a poor\nchoice. The computer systems should restart, scrub memory for faults, and be able\nto detect and load corrupt code from secondary locations before going into safe-mode.\nSafe-mode has to actually allow mitigating actions to be taken from a ground station\nor it is useless. Software systems should be constantly scrubbing memory for faults\nand check-summing the running software for corruption. A tiny amount of processor\npower spent on continuous, redundant checking and a few more lines of code to implement\nsimple recovery paths when fault is encountered may have saved the mission. Finally\nwe have to all remember the old adage “nothing works if it is not tested.” Every major\nfault has to be tested. Error paths are the common ones to not be tested so it is\nparticularly important to focus on them. The general rule is to keep error paths simple,\nuse the fewest possible, and test frequently.\n</p>\n<p>\nBack in 2007, I wrote up a set of best practices on software design, testing, and\noperations of high scale systems: <a href=\"http://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_Lisa.pdf\">On\nDesigning and Deploying Internet-Scale Services</a>. This paper targets large-scale\nservices but it’s surprising to me that some, and perhaps many, of the suggestions\ncould be applied successfully to a complex space flight system. The common theme across\nthese two only partly-related domains is that the biggest enemy is complexity, and\nthe exploding number of failure modes that follow from that complexity. \n</p>\n<p>\nThis incident reminds us of the importance of never trusting anything from any component\nin a multi-component system. Checksum every data block and have well-designed, and\nwell-tested failure modes for even unlikely events. Rather than have complex recovery\nlogic for the near infinite number of faults possible, have simple, brute-force recovery\npaths that you can use broadly and test frequently. Remember that all hardware, all\nfirmware, and all software have faults and introduce errors. Don’t trust anyone or\nanything. Have test systems that bit flips and corrupts and ensure the production\nsystem can operate through these faults – at scale, rare events are amazingly common.\n</p>\n<p>\nTo dig deeper in the Phobos-Grunt loss:\n</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">IEEE Spectrum Article: <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe</a>\n</div>\n</li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">Official Post Mortem (Russian): <a href=\"http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647\">http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647</a>\n</div>\n</li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">Russian Space Web Article: <a href=\"http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html\">http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html</a> \n</div>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>\n<span style=\"COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\"> \n<br>\nJames Hamilton \n<br>\ne: jrh@mvdirona.com \n<br>\nw: <a href=\"http://www.mvdirona.com\">http://www.mvdirona.com</a> \n<br>\nb: <a href=\"http://blog.mvdirona.com\">http://blog.mvdirona.com</a> / <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com\">http://perspectives.mvdirona.com</a> \n</span></p>\n<p>\n</p>\n</font> <img width=\"0\" height=\"0\" src=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/aggbug.ashx?id=df8f6140-02fc-4cb2-946c-5920c6d56247\">\n<br>\n<hr>\nFrom <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com\">Perspectives</a>."
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"content" : "<font color=\"#000000\" size=\"3\" face=\"Calibri\"> \n<p>\nEvery couple of weeks I get questions along the lines of “should I checksum application\nfiles, given that the disk already has error correction?” or “given that TCP/IP has\nerror correction on every communications packet, why do I need to have application\nlevel network error detection?” Another frequent question is “non-ECC mother boards\nare much cheaper -- do we really need ECC on memory?” The answer is always yes. At\nscale, error detection and correction at lower levels fails to correct or even detect\nsome problems. Software stacks above introduce errors. Hardware introduces more errors.\nFirmware introduces errors. Errors creep in everywhere and absolutely nobody and nothing\ncan be trusted. \n</p>\n<p>\nOver the years, each time I have had an opportunity to see the impact of adding a\nnew layer of error detection, the result has been the same. It fires fast and it fires\nfrequently. In each of these cases, I predicted we would find issues at scale. But,\neven starting from that perspective, each time I was amazed at the frequency the error\ncorrection code fired. \n</p>\n<p>\nOn one high scale, on-premise server product I worked upon, page checksums were temporarily\nadded to detect issues during a limited beta release. The code fired constantly, and\ncustomers were complaining that the new beta version was “so buggy they couldn’t use\nit”. Upon deep investigation at some customer sites, we found the software was fine,\nbut each customer had one, and sometimes several, latent data corruptions on disk.\nPerhaps it was introduced by hardware, perhaps firmware, or possibly software. It\ncould have even been corruption introduced by one of our previous release when those\npages where last written. Some of these pages may not have been written for years. \n</p>\n<p>\nI was amazed at the amount of corruption we found and started reflecting on how often\nI had seen “index corruption” or other reported product problems that were probably\ncorruption introduced in the software and hardware stacks below us. The disk has complex\nhardware and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, while the storage area network\nhas complex data paths and over a million lines of code. The device driver has tens\nof thousands of lines of code. The operating systems has millions of lines of code.\nAnd our application had millions of lines of code. Any of us can screw-up, each has\nan opportunity to corrupt, and its highly likely that the entire aggregated millions\nof lines of code have never been tested in precisely the combination and on the hardware\nthat any specific customer is actually currently running. \n</p>\n<p>\nAnother example. In this case, a fleet of tens of thousands of servers was instrumented\nto monitor how frequently the DRAM ECC was correcting. Over the course of several\nmonths, the result was somewhere between amazing and frightening. ECC is firing constantly. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe immediate lesson is you absolutely do need ECC in server application and it is\njust about crazy to even contemplate running valuable applications without it. The\nextension of that learning is to ask what is really different about clients? Servers\nmostly have ECC but most clients don’t. On a client, each of these corrections would\ninstead be a corruption. Client DRAM is not better and, in fact, often is worse on\nsome dimensions. These data corruptions are happening out there on client systems\nevery day. Each day client data is silently corrupted. Each day applications crash\nwithout obvious explanation. At scale, the additional cost of ECC asymptotically approaches\nthe cost of the additional memory to store the ECC. I’ve argued for years that Microsoft\nshould require ECC for Windows Hardware Certification on all systems including clients.\nIt would be good for the ecosystem and remove a substantial source of customer frustration.\nIn fact, it’s that observation that leads most embedded systems parts to support ECC.\nNobody wants their car, camera, or TV crashing. Given the cost at scale is low, ECC\nmemory should be part of all client systems. \n</p>\n<p>\nHere’s an interesting example from the space flight world. It caught my attention\nand I ended up digging ever deeper into the details last week and learning at each\nstep. The Russian space mission Phobos-Grunt (also written Fobos-Grunt both of which\nroughly translate to Phobos Ground) was a space mission designed to, amongst other\nobjectives, return soil samples from the Martian moon Phobos. This mission was launched\natop the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenit-2M\">Zenit-2SB</a> launch vehicle\ntaking off from the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome\">Baikonur\nCosmodrome</a> 2:16am on November 9<sup>th</sup> 2011. On November 24<sup>th</sup> it\nwas officially reported that the mission had failed and the vehicle was stuck in low\nearth orbit. Orbital decay has subsequently sent the satellite plunging to earth in\na fiery end of what was a very expensive mission. \n</p>\n<p>\nWhat went wrong aboard Phobos-Grunt? February 3<sup>rd</sup> the official accident\nreport was released: <a href=\"http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647\">The\nmain conclusions of the Interdepartmental Commission for the analysis of the causes\nof abnormal situations arising in the course of flight testing of the spacecraft \"Phobos-Grunt\"</a>.\nOf course, this document is released in Russian but <a href=\"http://translate.google.com/\">Google\nTranslate</a> actually does a very good job with it. And, <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/\">IEEE\nSpectrum Magazine</a> reported on the failing as well. The IEEE article, <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">Did\nBad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe</a>, is a good summary and the translated\nRussian article offers more detail if you are interested in digging deeper. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe conclusion of the report is that there was a double memory fault on board Phobos-Grunt.\nEssentially both computers in a dual-redundant set failed at the same or similar times\nwith a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_random-access_memory\">Static Random\nAccess Memory</a> failure. The computer was part of the newly-developed flight control\nsystem that had focused on dropping the mass of the flight control systems from 30\nkgs (66 lbs) to 1.5 kgs (3.3 lbs). Less weight in flight control is more weight that\ncan be in payload, so these gains are important. However, this new flight control\nsystem was blamed for the delay of the mission by 2 years and the eventual demise\nof the mission. \n</p>\n<p>\nThe two flight control computers are both identical TsM22 computer systems supplied\nby Techcom, a spin-off of the Argon Design Bureau <a href=\"http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html\">Phobos\nGrunt Design</a>). The official postmortem reports that both computers suffered an\nSRAM failure in a WS512K32V20G24M SRAM. These SRAMS are manufactured by White Electronic\nDesign and the model number can be decoded as “W” for White Electronic Design, “S”\nfor SRAM, “512K32” for a 512k memory by 32 bit wide access, “V” is the improvement\nmark, “20” for 20ns memory access time, “G24” is the package type, and “M” indicates\nit is a military grade part.\n</p>\n<p>\nIn the paper \"<a href=\"http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1532657\"> Extreme\nlatchup susceptibility in modern commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) monolithic 1M and\n4M CMOS static random-access memory (SRAM) devices</a>\" Joe Benedetto reports that\nthese SRAM packages are very susceptible to “latchup”, a condition which requires\npower recycling to return to operation and can be permanent in some cases. Steven\nMcClure of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the leader of the Radiation Effects Group.\nHe reports these SRAM parts would be very unlikely to be approved for use at JPL (<a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">Did\nBad Memory Chips Down Russia’s Mars Probe</a>).\n</p>\n<p>\nIt is rare that even two failures will lead to disaster and this case is no exception.\nUpon double failure of the flight control systems, the spacecraft autonomously goes\ninto “safe mode” where the vehicle attempts to stay stable in low-earth orbit and\norients its solar cells towards the sun so that it continues to have sufficient power.\nThis is a common design pattern where the system is able to stabilize itself in an\nextreme condition to allow flight control personal back on earth to figure out what\nsteps to take to mitigate the problem. In this case, the mitigation is likely fairly\nsimple in just restarting both computers (which probably happened automatically) and\nrestarting the mission would likely have been sufficient. \n</p>\n<p>\nUnfortunately there was still one more failure, this one a design fault. When the\nspacecraft goes into safe mode, it is incapable of communicating with earth stations,\nprobably due to spacecraft orientation. Essentially if the system needs to go into\nsafe mode while it is still in earth orbit, the mission is lost because ground control\nwill never be able to command it out of safe mode. \n</p>\n<p>\nI find this last fault fascinating. Smart people could never make such an obviously\nincorrect mistake, and yet this sort of design flaw shows up all the time on large\nsystems. Experts in each vertical area or component do good work. But the interaction\nacross vertical areas are complex and, if there is not sufficiently deep, cross-vertical-area\ntechnical expertise, these design flaws may not get seen. Good people design good\ncomponents and yet there often exist obvious fault modes across components that get\nmissed.\n</p>\n<p>\nSystems sufficiently complex enough to require deep vertical technical specialization\nrisk complexity blindness. Each vertical team knows their component well but nobody\nunderstands the interactions of all the components. The two solutions are 1) well-defined\nand well-documented interfaces between components, be they hardware or software, and\n2) and very experienced, highly-skilled engineer(s) on the team focusing on understanding\ninter-component interaction and overall system operation, especially in fault modes.\nAssigning this responsibility to a senior manager often isn’t sufficiently effective.\n</p>\n<p>\nThe faults that follow from complexity blindness are often serious and depressingly\neasy to see in retrospect, as was the case in this example. \n</p>\n<p>\nSummarizing some of the lessons from this loss: The SRAM chip probably was a poor\nchoice. The computer systems should restart, scrub memory for faults, and be able\nto detect and load corrupt code from secondary locations before going into safe-mode.\nSafe-mode has to actually allow mitigating actions to be taken from a ground station\nor it is useless. Software systems should be constantly scrubbing memory for faults\nand check-summing the running software for corruption. A tiny amount of processor\npower spent on continuous, redundant checking and a few more lines of code to implement\nsimple recovery paths when fault is encountered may have saved the mission. Finally\nwe have to all remember the old adage “nothing works if it is not tested.” Every major\nfault has to be tested. Error paths are the common ones to not be tested so it is\nparticularly important to focus on them. The general rule is to keep error paths simple,\nuse the fewest possible, and test frequently.\n</p>\n<p>\nBack in 2007, I wrote up a set of best practices on software design, testing, and\noperations of high scale systems: <a href=\"http://mvdirona.com/jrh/talksAndPapers/JamesRH_Lisa.pdf\">On\nDesigning and Deploying Internet-Scale Services</a>. This paper targets large-scale\nservices but it’s surprising to me that some, and perhaps many, of the suggestions\ncould be applied successfully to a complex space flight system. The common theme across\nthese two only partly-related domains is that the biggest enemy is complexity, and\nthe exploding number of failure modes that follow from that complexity. \n</p>\n<p>\nThis incident reminds us of the importance of never trusting anything from any component\nin a multi-component system. Checksum every data block and have well-designed, and\nwell-tested failure modes for even unlikely events. Rather than have complex recovery\nlogic for the near infinite number of faults possible, have simple, brute-force recovery\npaths that you can use broadly and test frequently. Remember that all hardware, all\nfirmware, and all software have faults and introduce errors. Don’t trust anyone or\nanything. Have test systems that bit flips and corrupts and ensure the production\nsystem can operate through these faults – at scale, rare events are amazingly common.\n</p>\n<p>\nTo dig deeper in the Phobos-Grunt loss:\n</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">IEEE Spectrum Article: <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe\">http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/did-bad-memory-chips-down-russias-mars-probe</a>\n</div>\n</li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">Official Post Mortem (Russian): <a href=\"http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647\">http://www.roscosmos.ru/main.php?id=2&nid=18647</a>\n</div>\n</li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 0pt\">Russian Space Web Article: <a href=\"http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html\">http://www.russianspaceweb.com/phobos_grunt_design.html</a> \n</div>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>\n<span style=\"COLOR:black;FONT-SIZE:9pt\"> \n<br>\nJames Hamilton \n<br>\ne: jrh@mvdirona.com \n<br>\nw: <a href=\"http://www.mvdirona.com\">http://www.mvdirona.com</a> \n<br>\nb: <a href=\"http://blog.mvdirona.com\">http://blog.mvdirona.com</a> / <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com\">http://perspectives.mvdirona.com</a> \n</span></p>\n<p>\n</p>\n</font> <img width=\"0\" height=\"0\" src=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/aggbug.ashx?id=df8f6140-02fc-4cb2-946c-5920c6d56247\">\n<br>\n<hr>\nFrom <a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com\">Perspectives</a>."
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"title" : "Boil the Frog",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/frog.png\"><img style=\"margin-left:10px;margin-right:10px\" title=\"frog\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/frog.png?w=620\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p>I’m at <a href=\"http://musicappshackweekend.eventbrite.com/\">Music Apps Hack Weekend</a> doing my favorite thing: <em>hacking on music.</em> I’ve just finished my hack called <strong>Boil the Frog. </strong>Boil the Frog is a Spotify App that will create playlists that gradually take you from one music style to another. It is like the proverbial story of the frog in the pot of water. If you heat the water gradually, the frog won’t notice and will happily sit in the pot until it becomes frog stew. With <strong>Boil the Frog </strong> you can do the same thing musically. Create a playlist that gradually takes your pre-teen from Miley Cyrus to Miles Davis, or perhaps more perversely the Kenny G fan to Cannibal Corpse.</p>\n<p>To build the app I built an artist similarity graph of 100,000 of the most popular artists. I use The Echo Nest artist similarity to connect each artist to its four nearest neighbors. To find the path between any two artists I use a bidirectional <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm\">Dijkstra</a> shortest path algorithm. Most paths can be computed in less than 100ms.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/spotify-miley-cyrus-e28093-the-climb.jpg\"><img title=\"Spotify - Miley Cyrus – The Climb\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/spotify-miley-cyrus-e28093-the-climb.jpg?w=620&h=367\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"367\"></a></p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://developer.spotify.com/en/spotify-apps-api/overview/\">Spotify Apps API</a> is the perfect hacking platform. You can build a Spotify app that has full access to the vast Spotify music catalog and artwork, along with access to the listener’s catalog. Since the Spotify Apps run in an embedded browser all of your web app programming skills apply. You can use jQuery, make calls to JSON APIs, use HTML 5 canvas. It is all there. Spotify has done a really good job putting together this platform. The only downside is that, unlike the web, it is hard to actually release Spotify apps, but the Spotify team is working to make this easier. I’d love to release <strong>Boil the Frog</strong> because it is really fun to make playlists that bring you from one music style to another. It is interesting to see what musical neighborhoods you wander through on your way. For instance, I made a Kenny G to Cannibal Corpse playlist. To get there, the playlist brought me from easy listening, to movie soundtracks and then through video game soundtracks to get to the heavy metal world. Cool stuff. If you want to see a playlist between two artists let me know in the comments and I’ll create and share the playlist with you.</p>\n<p>I made a video of Boil the Frog in action. Check it out:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><iframe width=\"620\" height=\"379\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/Nj6JAxm9aPE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></span></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><em>Update: </em>I’ve just pushed the client code out to github: <a href=\"https://github.com/plamere/boilthefrog\">https://github.com/plamere/boilthefrog</a></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3943/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=musicmachinery.com&blog=6500426&post=3943&subd=musicmachinery&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Credit Default Swaps (CDS) Are Insurance Products, Not Tradeable Assets",
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"content" : "<p><em>Our story thus far</em>: The <a href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/?domains=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2F&sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2F&cx=015905226837203657063%3Ax1cwdcykvvw&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&cof=FORID%3A11&s=Search&q=Commodity+Futures+Modernization+Act&sa.x=0&sa.y=0\">Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000</a>, sponsored by Texas Senator Phil Gramm as a favor to his wife Wendy (who sat on the Board of Directors of Enron, which wanted to trade energy derivatives without oversight) was rushed through Congress in 2000. Unread by Congress or their staffers, it was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on the advice of his Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.</p>\n<p>The CFMA radically deregulated derivatives. The law changed the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 (CEA) to exempt derivatives transactions from regulations as either “futures” (under the CEA) or “securities” under federal securities laws. Further, the CFMA specifically exempted Credit Defaults Swaps and other derivative products from regulation by any State Insurance Board or Regulators.</p>\n<p>This rule change exempting CDS from insurance oversight led to a very specific economic behavioral change: Companies that wrote insurance had to <em>explicitly reserve for expected losses</em> and eventual payout in a conservative manner. Companies that wrote Credit Defaults Swaps <em>did not</em>.</p>\n<p>Hence, AIG was able to underwrite over THREE TRILLION DOLLARS worth of derivatives, reserving precisely zero dollars agianst potential claims. This was enormously lucrative, except for that whole<em> crashing & burning into insolvency thingie</em>.</p>\n<p>The radical deregulation the CFMA generated led directly to the collapse of AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers; indirectly to the collapse of Citigroup, Bank of America, and Fannie/Freddie. It was a significant factor in the near death experiences of Goldman, Morgan Stanley and others.</p>\n<p>Despite the horrific impact this legislation had, it was never actually overturned, only modified. Obama made the personnel error of bringing back Larry Summers (he apparently had not wrought enough damage to the nation yet). Rather than admit the error of CFMA, and overturn it, Summers instead downplayed its role. Thus, the CFMA was merely modified somewhat. The same risk the CFMA presented to the economy still exists. Swaps now must be be cleared through exchanges or clearinghouses — but they are still exempt from Insurance regulations. Which is bizarre, because they are little more than thinly disguised insurance products, with the CFMA kicker that there is <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">no reserve requirement</span>. Counter-parties may or may not demand one, but the dollar amount is negotiable.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to today.</p>\n<p>The Greek government has been declared in default by S&P; most common sense definitions of default — failing to make payments on a timely basis, declaring your intention to default, involuntary change of loan terms by borrower, etc. — have already occurred.</p>\n<p>That last point is especially important in light of the Greek Sovereign Debt default — which International Swaps and Derivatives Association, in a nonpublic meeting of derivatives bankers, declared to be a <a href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/03/isda-suckers-wanted/\">NONDEFAULT</a>.</p>\n<p><em>I’ll be d</em><em>amned if I can figure out why. </em></p>\n<p>Any tradeable asset — stocks, bonds, futures, options, funds, etc. — settles on its own. There is a market price the asset closes at, a total volume of sales, and a final print for the day, month, quarter and year. <em>No interpretation required</em>.</p>\n<p>Yet with Greek CDS, we have a committee of bankers, lawyers, accountants and other interested (not unbiased) parties interpreting the details, weighing the circumstances, describing what happened.</p>\n<p>Does that sound like a tradeable asset to you? To me, it sounds more like an insurance policy dispute. Because in reality, these CDS are in fact, <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">nothing more than an unreserved and unregulated insurance productts</span>. That is the legacy of the CFMA, and one that apparently has not been overturned.</p>\n<p>The banks, hedge funds, and securities firms who are the prime dealers of these products greatly prefer to have their derivatives supervised by Federal regulators. Why? Because the standards they use — general safety and soundness — are empty-headed nonsense, easily evaded.</p>\n<p>The State Insurance Boards and Regulators are far more exacting, far more specific — and require boatloads more money in reserve.</p>\n<p>Hence, this is how the Greeks have managed to default, yet an insurance-like product will not (yet) payout. With insurers or their regulators involved, this would never have happened.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rBjzkar7M4Yh12OgNXktekH6-GM/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rBjzkar7M4Yh12OgNXktekH6-GM/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rBjzkar7M4Yh12OgNXktekH6-GM/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/rBjzkar7M4Yh12OgNXktekH6-GM/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=FWME2OQqjac:PcU_vgpwZcQ:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/FWME2OQqjac\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Discipline & Punish: Papillon (1973)",
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"content" : "<img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vGxUOhgegUU/T1Dd2zs3vHI/AAAAAAAAEjQ/tqJmddMI5tY/s1600/Papillon.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"267\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\"><i>Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists</i></a>—co-sponsored by BLDGBLOG, <a href=\"http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/\"><i>Filmmaker Magazine</i></a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/studioxnyc\">Studio-X NYC</a>—continued recently with <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a> (1973), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ofJjQxo57eQ/T0_A4dIkNEI/AAAAAAAAEec/lQN9dDTySgI/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0001.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a> remains one of my favorite films, since first seeing it as a teenager (though I will come back to that at the end); however, as usual for this series, I will try to limit myself to the spatial and/or architectural themes of at play in the movie. <br><br> In a nutshell, <i>Papillon</i> tells the story of Papillon (played by Steve McQueen), imprisoned in the overseas penal colony of Caribbean French Guiana, on the northeast coast of South America. Papillon alleges that he is and always has been innocent of his charge (killing a pimp in France); nonetheless, France \"has disposed of you,\" we hear in booming tones from a man with a walrus mustache in the film's opening scene. \"The nation has disposed of you altogether.\"<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YyoUjFpNFyA/T0_A4s2kRLI/AAAAAAAAEek/bYTlPWC3HG0/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0009.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1fKJqX0cHus/T0_A47ie9lI/AAAAAAAAEe4/ABnVadDhu7k/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0015.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> Papillon and his fellow prisoners are thus relegated to lives of hard labor, to brutal regimes of solitary confinement, and, in the end, either to forced colonization of French Guiana or to a final stretch of unsupervised years of imprisonment on a craggy island surrounded by sheer cliff walls, the prisoners sent there deemed too broken in body, spirit, and will to pose a risk of escape or violence. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EtdvlIX4goM/T0_A7ORXLxI/AAAAAAAAEfA/oQo-r0DRR2s/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0020.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MThOW7wM1ms/T0_A7H1a_ZI/AAAAAAAAEfI/4_k7f-TsIGQ/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0024.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> Along the way, the carceral gymnastics of the early modern state command the mens' activities. They arrive at the island on a trans-Atlantic steamer ship, kitted out inside with barred cells and prisoners' hammocks, its dormitory lined with steam pipes that can be turned on at will to punish the men inside. They are introduced to the guillotine, that disciplinary apparatus of last order of the French state. \"Make the best of what we offer you,\" an anonymous supervisor says, after the guillotine's blade has crashed down through a thick stalk of vegetation, demonstrating its raw power, \"and you will suffer less than you deserve.\" <br><br> While on the transport ship, Papillon meets Louis Dega, who has been sent to Guiana for selling counterfeit national defense bonds. \"I have no intention of even attempting to escape,\" Dega says. \"Ever.\" He is slightly smiling when he says this, bemusing Papillon, who soon becomes Dega's paid protection (and long-term friend) in the camps. <br><br> However, learning of that friendship, a prison warden whose family lost their fortune in counterfeit defense bounds, sends Papillon and Dega off together to clear swamps with nothing but ropes and their bare hands.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-URkCtXoUrWk/T0_BCVdPmyI/AAAAAAAAEfY/pasLQonWtGQ/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0040.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> Their various chores soon include the extraordinary scene of prisoners sent out into the jungle to capture exotic butterflies—an activity that is at least doubly ironic. Not only are captives being asked, in turn, to capture rare species (including one prisoner, Papillon, whose very name comes from the butterfly tattooed on his chest), but, in an awesome detail, we learn that these particular butterflies are valuable precisely because the pigment in their wings is used for inking U.S. currency. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-86b4pSz1hYM/T0_BCu4B34I/AAAAAAAAEfg/fkCe1V_7ztc/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0044.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> That it is Dega who tells us this—the counterfeiter supreme—lends the whole sequence an incredible, if macabre, poetry. But there is also something striking in this revelation of the commodity chain, suggesting that U.S. currency contains the remains of exotic butterflies hunted in the jungle by French prisoners. All objects—even objects that stand for other objects—come from somewhere, including state currency literally printed with the bodies of captives, both human and animal.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-doJUY4Z4AZQ/T0_BC7Zx2DI/AAAAAAAAEfw/Pc7eGf6p_FU/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0047.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> But, after this point, the real imprisonments—and, of course, the escapes—begin. <br><br> Papillon attacks a guard to protect Dega from a routine beating, only to be forced to flee into the jungle—diving into the swamp and swimming off into the roots of mangroves—when he realizes that he'll be shot on sight for his violation (in fact, he dodges bullets as he leaps into the murky waters).<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1U37pwL9dY4/T0_BDAGu3OI/AAAAAAAAEf8/AoLrXiWWxuE/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0057.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> Except, of course, he doesn't make it; he is turned in by local manhunters (former prisoners turned professional trackers of escapees); and he is introduced to the cell in which a great deal of the film then takes place. <br><br> A brief note on the architecture of incarceration in <i>Papillon</i>. The cells have bars instead of roofs, allowing them to be watched from above by roving guards. However, this also means that the cell can be \"screened\"—that is, its only source of light can be blocked for six months at a time, something that soon happens to Papillon (who is reduced to eating roaches and centipedes in the darkness). The prisoners receive their rations through a small hole near the floor, which pops open everyday at the sound of a whistle (there is no speaking allowed in the facility, helpfully painted with the word <i>SILENCE</i> in black letters on the outside walls). And the prisoners must lean forward and stick their heads through holes in the cell door for things like hair cuts and lice treatments—but also for occasional interrogations by the warden and his guards. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PMbSa-L93Dc/T0_BMfWnTTI/AAAAAAAAEgU/QuX-qsTnq_Y/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0078.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fbONI-Agr9o/T0_BDYpH9OI/AAAAAAAAEgE/-udnNa20fRI/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0067.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6AkErMPQPlw/T0_BMosz52I/AAAAAAAAEgg/AhZq-B3vQBQ/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0086.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> While locked up in darkness, Papillon has a dream in which he confronts a makeshift judge and jury on the beach somewhere back in France. For whatever reason, I have always loved this scene. \"You know the charge,\" a faceless judge shouts at Papillon. \"Yours is the most terrible crime a human being can commit. I accuse you of a wasted life... The penalty is death.\" Horrified by the accuracy of the charge, Papillon wanders back the way he came, muttering, \"Guilty... Guilty... Guilty...\"<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gUPs9LRdKAU/T0_BMxG5ZSI/AAAAAAAAEgs/huOHU1oop04/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0101.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> In any case, it wouldn't be <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\"><i>Breaking Out and Breaking In</i></a> if we didn't soon see some escapes. <br><br> Papillon, Dega, and another prisoner called Maturette make a break for it one night over the camp wall. To make an extremely long story short, they must sail to freedom by way of a leper colony and increasingly rough seas; but, arriving safely in Honduras, they're forced to split up. Papillon runs into the rain forest with a local prisoner they happen to bump into on the beach, and the two of them are then hunted through the jungle by Afro-Caribbean trackers hired by the state. Many more events transpire—booby traps, cliff jumps, pearl-fishing tribesmen—before Papillon makes his way to a convent in a local town center, seeking refuge and forgiveness. However, the church being, in effect, a wing of the state, mistaking ideological correctness for Christian morality, the nuns turn him in. I mention this also to indicate how, in the film, the state works: it relies upon—indeed, it cannot function without—local yet unofficial representatives, people it can hire (trackers) or who it can trust to volunteer (nuns) in the name of state continuity. In other words, the state puts out a call when a gap or blind spot arises, knowing there will always be someone who answers it.<br><br> So Papillon is sent back to solitary confinement.<br><br> I'll just make two final points, while admitting that I've hardly grazed the surface of the film.<br><br> <b>1)</b> Papillon's final escape comes from Devil's Island, the aforementioned island of sheer cliffs where even guards are seen as unnecessary, the prisoners physically and mentally exhausted and thus believed to be incapable of investing in the effort of escape. But Papillon one day notices something in the waters of the bay below, a rhythm in the waves that allows for anything thrown into the water to avoid being crushed on the rocks and, instead, be dragged out to sea. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-E5z67xY0Ang/T0_BNdtrn_I/AAAAAAAAEhE/NAmpEjCuxw0/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0125.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> He first experiments with some coconuts—and then, lashing together a makeshift raft, he throws himself into the seventh wave and makes his way to final freedom.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GWzL-g-ldgw/T0_BNCLEt9I/AAAAAAAAEg0/ABIoed5SQGM/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0118.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> <b>2)</b> The movie closes with one of the most dramatically powerful end title sequences I've ever seen. To a haunting soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith, we're shown shot after shot of the actual penal colony in French Guiana, left abandoned and rotting in the jungle. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--9V_Kuo8mis/T0_BWK-ltwI/AAAAAAAAEhQ/rlB_tZcA9j8/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0126.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Qrum_Lt0G4s/T0_BWRNPwXI/AAAAAAAAEhY/3N_KD3KjnZg/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0129.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> In a sense, these end titles anticipate—and, in many ways, put to shame—much of what we now see today under the guise of \"ruin porn,\" or photographs of decaying architectural structures. <br><br> Regardless of the accuracy of the film's many dramatic enhancements, the ruined buildings of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a> have the benefit of context: when the film cuts to the roofless cells and overgrown courtyards of this horrible and violent place of exile, the futility of the entire escapade—the tragedy of anyone caught up in the empty colonial machine—becomes both obvious and crushing. It's as if no one ever escaped from anything, because there was nothing there in the first place; we're just left with empty and impotent buildings, dissolved in shafts of light. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PYX3yQKI9jE/T0_BW-AJAgI/AAAAAAAAEh0/1jMcCRMMwA4/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0134.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cI0fV5wur2s/T0_BWlMT70I/AAAAAAAAEhk/7lKcwJLlSww/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0131.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OOpsqULuVlk/T0_BXATPemI/AAAAAAAAEh8/UyyntPaVWLI/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0137.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ocptsJROcnI/T0_BfH4eySI/AAAAAAAAEiM/NBzuBkQ3oYo/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0161.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HpU0LhKu-Io/T0_BfoNMldI/AAAAAAAAEik/KVsc4LA0K5g/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0169.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_XZNrth-728/T0_BfZTYiLI/AAAAAAAAEiY/fQfZXpVmq20/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0166.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OzJEAHIj18k/T0_Bfy-VhcI/AAAAAAAAEiw/clY01iAnYDY/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0174.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> By way of a very brief personal anecdote, when I first saw <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a> as a teenager, and the movie came to an end, I realized, stunned, that I had actually seen the ending before. <br><br> Back when I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a> must have been on cable television, scheduled on more than one day for the same early morning time slot, coming to an end just as I got up and prepared to walk to school. There were thus a few days when I turned on the TV only to catch, without knowing what it was and at almost exactly the same moment each time, the film's final voice-over narrative and these otherworldly shots of a dead prison in the rain forest, like some upstart challenger to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat\">Angkor Wat</a>.<br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-508HukYhjmA/T0_BgLydBFI/AAAAAAAAEi4/mY5tLJv9crk/s1600/GrabberRaster%2B0177.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"222\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: From <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>, courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.warnerbros.com/\">Warner Brothers</a>].</small><br><br> Ten years later, watching the film all the way through for the first time, I suddenly realized what it was I'd been daydreaming about in elementary school: the end titles of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004KWVDWI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004KWVDWI\"><i>Papillon</i></a>.<br><br> <small>(<a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\"><i>Breaking Out and Breaking In</i></a> will continue in two weeks' time with the films of <i>Breaking In</i>, and, after I get back from a short trip, I will also continue to post about the <i>Breaking Out</i> series, which continues tonight with Rupert Wyatt's <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002TZS5N8/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002TZS5N8\"><i>The Escapist</i></a>. <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\">Full schedule available here</a>).</small><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8663346-8729818855607423284?l=bldgblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Justified Pessimism",
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"content" : "<p>is not, in fact, pressimism. It is realism.</p>\n<p>I find the “be happy” crowd odd. We have, in the past few years, seen millions of Americans and Europeans impoverished and lose their homes. We are seeing a wave of austerity in the 1st world which has and will impoverish many millions more. In the last quarter of 2011, Greece was on track for -7% annualized GDP growth. Civil liberties are under assault throughout the world, and the surveillance state is tightening its grasp. In the forseeable future, and one which is, now, almost unstoppable, we can expect to lose hundreds of millions of lives to climate change, and that, frankly, is the optimistic scenario, one which is almost certain not to occur. A billion is a good middling number, and it could easily go much higher. Many climate scientists believe we are beyond the point of no return.</p>\n<p>None of what has happened, or which will happen, couldn’t have been stopped. For decades, with increasing stridency, prophets have warned of what would happen. Those prophets, in the grand Cassandric tradition, were ignored.</p>\n<p>The left, virtually the world around, with the exception of Latin America, is in disarray and retreat, suffering defeat after defeat, from economic populist issues to civil liberties issues (other than gay rights). The forces of reaction, once aiming only at the edifices of mid 20th century liberalism, are now aiming to roll back the twentieth century en-masse, getting rid of socialized medicine (under assault even in England), child labor laws, reinstituting debtors prisons and celebrating inequality which exceeds even that of the gilded age. Gays may gain the right to marry, women may keep the franchise (and be allowed to vote between parties who will do the same thing at varying paces), but we will all be impoverished, largely powerless and watched 24 hours a day together.</p>\n<p>Dystopian? Apocalyptic? Perhaps. But also the current trendline. Now, trendlines can always change. Indeed, trendlines do always change. This will not last, this era will come to an end. The questions are when, how, and what will replace it.</p>\n<p>Living, then, in a period where many are still prosperous, but with the first storm clouds scudding over the horizon, and the first casualties falling, I find it odd to continually have to deal with the “be happy”, “optimism is superior” crowd. I find neither optimism nor pessimism interesting. What is interesting and what is needed is realism.</p>\n<p>Realistically, what is going to happen? Why has what happened, happened? Why are events unfolding as they have? Part of the reason is the corruption of discourse: part of the reason is the happy talk. Hey, your life is good, everything’s fine, so be happy. Go about your life oblivious to what has happened, is happening and will happen.</p>\n<p>I’m not interested in happy talk. Never have been. I am not interested in “reasons to be optimistic” or “reasons to be pessimistic”. I am interested in the most likely scenarios and questions of what can be done to change the likely course of event so fewer people suffer and die.</p>\n<p>I will note another thing. My failures of prediction, and I now have years of data, have almost all been on the upside. I make mistakes when I pull my punches. People who think I’m a pessimist are fools. My record indicates the opposite, if I have a bias, it is towards optimism, to things not becoming as bad as they have. I think this is because I keep expecting people to protect their own future interests (not very future, often just a couple years) better than they do. I forget just how completely depraved our elites are, and how weak and debased the populations have become by the great complacency. Most who came of age in the post-war period in the developed world, who did not have to fight for every scrap, simply are not capable of truly believing in disaster or catastrophe, or of forestalling it even if they do.</p>\n<p>Finally, I have nothing but contempt for most of the current generation of intellectuals, thinkers, and members of any elite. They have demonstrably failed their job, if their job is conceived as serving the truth and looking after the common weal: of telling people what they need to hear and finding a way to make them understand. Some have fought the yeoman’s good fight, and lost and there is honor in that, but most did not even fight. Instead the spewed lies and reaped the rewards. They were complicit with the political and economic elites, they took their share of the loot, a petty pence, and wrote what would please their masters. They will be exorciated by history, but in the current day, they have their silver gripped firmly in their hands, as they lope behind and before their masters, making the world safe for oligarchy, poverty and the new despotism of the modern security state.</p>\n<p>They deserve no respect, and I will give them none. Their reward is the false flattery of their peers and the tarnished silver of their masters, the true gold of intellectual integrity or the gold of compassion and care for their fellows, these will be denied them.</p>\n<p>And I watch the scudding storm clouds, and I feel the wind whip around me and it is to these signs and others I attend, not the fools crying “life is good! It’ll be ok!”</p>\n<p>No, it will not be ok.</p>\n<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IanWelsh/~4/Dc2W9H1i1S4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Too Big To Fail: The First 5000 Years",
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"content" : "<p>One of the many fascinating pieces of information that David Graeber tosses off like shrapnel in <i>Debt</i> is that the first recorded appearance of the word “freedom” in a political document is in a Sumerian proclamation of a debt amnesty or jubilee.</p>\n\n\t<p>What interested me, however, from the point of view of a professional banker, is that the document in question provided only for the discharge of personal debts of the Sumerians; commercial debts of merchants were not discharged. Clearly (and I suppose there is an interesting anthropological history to be written of the extent to which the appropriate level of cynicism about these things as changed from pre-Christian Mesopotamia to modern London), anyone who could have convinced the Babylonian legal system that his liabilities were all personal debts covered by the jubilee, while his assets were all mercantile trade credits, would have made out like a bandit. The point I am trying to make here is that as well as being the first mention of the word “freedom”, this proclamation marks the first recorded instance of a regulator-sanctioned selective default. Then a lot of things happened including the Fall of Rome and the Beatles, and then we had the <span>FDIC</span>’s decision in 2009 to transfer the assets and deposits of Washington Mutual to <span>JP </span>Morgan Chase over a weekend, leaving holding company creditors exposed to an extravagantly bankrupt shell. So from the start to the beginning of the story of debt, it has always mattered whether or not you were on the right side of what the relevant regulator wanted to accomplish.<br>\n<span></span></p>\n\n\t<p><i>Debt</i> is a great book – I don’t think I agree with it at all, but it’s that rare thing – a book that you can have an argument with and more so, the kind of book that you can see is intelligently arguing back. The argument I found myself having again and again related to this particular point – on more than one occasion during the history of debt, it was noted almost parenthetically that a particular debt reform was carried out on the basis “except commercial debts”, and I found myself saying “No! Hang on! Tell me more about these exceptions!”.</p>\n\n\t<p>And I think this because commercial debts between merchants are a really important part of the story here. Not only are they, in simple numeric terms, a much bigger part of the picture than debts between individuals in social groups, or even tax obligations between subjects and rulers, the fact that trade credits between merchants have generally, even in conditions when other kinds of debt relation were being repudiated, tended to be preserved and honoured, gives us a few clues toward an alternative story of debt over the last 5000 years.<br>\nThe Babylonian merchants weren’t included in the debt amnesty, of course, because to have upset their trading accounts would have done serious damage to the commercial basis of Babylonian society – to put it frankly, they were too big to fail. In general in the commercial world, the ability to put yourself in debt is a privilege, not an obligation – one of the most important aspects of corporate legal personhood, as an introductory legal textbook will tell you, is not the right to sue other people, but the right to be sued. If you can be sued, then you can enter into agreements with other people that they have confidence that the courts will enforce. And really, in a lot of important technical senses, a debt between merchants is simply a legal codification and recognition of the very basis human ability to promise to do things and then do them. (Parenthetically, I’d note that I do consider it a weakness of the book, perhaps an inevitable one given space constraints, that the word “oath” appears very rarely and “promise” only a little less so. A debt is a promise to pay, and the history of promises seems to me to be potentially very different from Graeber’s history of the debt relation – the Celtic and Nordic sagas are chock full of people carrying out totally extreme actions in order to underline the importance attached to keeping one’s word. <i>Meum dictum pactum</i> (my word is my bond) is the motto of the London Stock Exchange).</p>\n\n\t<p>So it is noticeable that the concept of “too big to fail” has grown up hand in hand with the concept of the debt relation for the entire traceable history of debt. Although the parallel track of debt as obligation, religion and morality has certainly been there, and is described expertly in the book, from day one it has been recognised among merchants and men of commerce that the point of the debt relation is to serve the organisation and arrangement of commercial need.</p>\n\n\t<p>To my mind, this fact rather colours one of the central theses of <i>Debt</i> – the idea that debt has from its origins been entwined with slavery, military tribute and imperialism. I’d advance the suggestion that <i>of course</i> the first people to start codifying the debt relation were the first emperors and rulers; they were the first people who ever came across the problem of organising a productive economy larger than a small village or subsistence farming community. The fact that debt has its origins in the creation of tax-collecting, military societies seems to me to be equivalent to the fact that <span>NASA</span> invented Teflon – they had to do it, in order to solve the problems put in front of them.</p>\n\n\t<p>It’s also notable that actually over the years, debt (by which I mean, the commercial and mercantile kind of debt) has worked noticeably better than most of the alternatives. The <i>dzamalag</i> ceremonies described in the book:</p>\n\n\t<p><blockquote><i>This sets in motion the </i>dzamalag<i> exchange. Men from the visiting group sit quietly while women of the opposite moiety come over and give them cloth, hit them and invite them to copulate; they take any liberty they choose with the men, amid amusement and applause, while the singing and dancing continue. Women try to undo the men’s loin coverings or touch their penises, and to drag them from the ‘ring place’ for coitus. The men go with their </i>dzamalag<i> partners, with a show of reluctance, to copulate in the bushes away from the fires which light up the dancers. They may give the women tobacco or beads. When the women return, they give part of this tobacco to their own husbands, who have encouraged them to go </i>dzamalag<i>. The husbands, in turn, use the tobacco to pay their own female </i>dzamalag<i> partners …</i></blockquote></p>\n\n\t<p>New singers and musicians appear, are again assaulted and dragged off to the bushes; men encourage their wives ‘not to be shy’, so as to maintain the Gunwinggu reputation for hospitality; eventually those men also take the initiative with the visitor’s wives, offering cloth, hitting them and leading them off into the bushes. Beads and tobacco circulate. Finally, once participants have all paired off at least once, and the guests are satisfied with the cloth they have acquired, the women stop dancing and stand in two rows and the visitors line up to repay them.</p>\n\n\t<p>Then visiting men of one moiety dance towards the women of the opposite moiety, in order to ’ give them dzamalag<i>‘. They hold shovel-nosed spreads poised, pretending to spear the women, but instead hit them with the flat of the blade. ‘We will not spear you, for we have already speared you with our penises’. They present the spears to the women. Then, visiting men of the other moiety go through the same actions with the women of their opposite moiety, giving them spears with serrated points. This terminates the ceremony, which is followed by a large distribution of food”.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>… certainly have some attractive qualities, but although Graeber wins the battle against the “Myth of Barter” here I think he loses the war – really, although the discussion of socially embedded exchange is incredibly interesting and illuminating, I think anyone who reads the passage above is going to end up sympathising with the people in the economics department who say that you really can’t organise a modern industrial society on the basis of organising a wife-swapping party every time you want to buy a blanket. Perhaps the fact from the book that will end up resisting the longest against the onslaughts of late nights and Scotch whisky on my ability to recall, is that more or less every urban society in the world has ended up inventing an equivalent phrase to “Please”, and “Thank you”, terms which have the social function of asserting between parties to a commercial transaction that the transaction itself does not embed them in any deeper social relation.</p>\n\n\t<p>(Another parenthetical note: the only real attempt I can think of to organise industrial production on any other basis from the debt relation is Soviet Communism, and while Soviet production quotas weren’t debts, they seem to me to have had all the aspects of debts which Graeber finds to be pernicious and quite a few more besides. But I don’t really know enough about Soviet Communism to be able to say any more about the analogy, if there is one).</p>\n\n\t<p>So what might one draw in the way of policy conclusions from an alternative history of debt that traced it down the line of debts between merchants and commercial entities, rather than individuals and sovereigns? Well, I think it would be hard to get very near to the last chapter of <i>Debt</i>. When Graeber points out that the US banking system has loaded itself up with “bad assets”, he doesn’t seem to be recognising that these assets (ie, mortgage loans) are “bad” precisely because there is a governing law which doesn’t enforce the debt contract as a matter of religion or morality, but rather gives US mortgage borrowers the right to hand back the collateral and walk away from the debt. The development of modern bankruptcy codes (and, one has to say, the fairly scandalous changes made to the US bankruptcy code in 2006) has gone hand in hand with the growth of debt in the modern world, and the “modern jubilee” which Graeber suggests is basically the same thing as the “bad debt crisis” which has actually happened.</p>\n\n\t<p>I’ve repeated myself to a boring extent in the past on the subject of the science of economics being basically a branch of control engineering (“economic cybernetics”, as the Russians called it) which went rogue in the 19th century and got caught up in a whole load of moral and political philosophy that didn’t belong there. Debt as per Graeber’s book is an example of this – the debt contract is basically a tool of industrial organisation that escaped from the laboratory and ran wild. But I think he understimates the extent to which there have always been domesticating influences on the concept, and the extent to which the debt relation has always been, correctly, the subject of revision and reappraisal, with the basic underlying question being that of economics rather than anthropology – “How do we best organise the decision making process with regard to production, consumption, and exchange?”</p>\n\n\t<p>Having said that, there are some situations where Graeber’s analysis seems completely accurate. Countries don’t have bankruptcy codes governing them, and so in the sphere of international debt negotiations, one can see all the pernicious aspects of the “folk-economics” version of the debt contract that Graeber describes. Looking at the relationship between the European Union and Greece, or even Ireland, one can see that the debt relation is being specifically shaped into a tool for exercising power in a way which would not have been possible through democratic means. <span>IMF</span> programs seem to be typically designed to fail, to put the client country into the position of a defaulting debtor and entirely reliant on the mercy of its creditors. So even though I’d have liked to see the book twice as long and ten times as ambitious, the analysis that it presents is very useful in looking at debt-relations outside the commercial codes that govern most of the world’s actually existing debts, and it’s a very salutary reminder of what happens when people forget that debt is really only (or really only ought to be) the legal system’s best guess at what kind of arrangements would best serve the general purposes of commerce. It is, as Graeber intimates, when the debt relation takes on an independent life of its own that the problems all start.</p>"
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"title" : "One Language, Many Accents",
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"content" : "<p>Although I only speak one language, I am fluent in at least 3 accents. One of which can only be done in jest, behind closed doors. But I digress. The other two accents are to be taken more seriously for they disclose details of my life that people cannot gather from looking at me. Accent #1 is a special case because it is the sound of a borrowed mother tongue. It is the one that I started off with and the one I have once again adopted. Accent #2 is the case of mandatory assimilation, a “<em>when in Rome, do as the romans</em>” case. It is the accent most people are comfortable with because the colony it derives from became a world power. Again, I digress but I deem this a suitable introduction to the reasons for my speech pattern.</p>\n<p>Many years ago, while I was in college, I was given an assignment that required me to write an essay about my speech community. The purpose was to expose the idiosyncratic words I shared among my family and friends, words that we either created or adopted. Under my impression, those who could come up with interesting words were bound to ace the paper. Sitting in front of a blank screen for hours on end, the assignment proved to be a pain. What kind of words did my professor expect me to expose? The temptation to create words was strong but not until I thought of a more honest approach: Pidgin English. I was convinced that this form of English would impress my professor and wrote a paper full of words that I hardly spoke myself. This brings me to my point, without a native language or mastery of Pidgin English (our cherished vernacular) Accent #1 has no reference point, no rhythmic foundation — so to speak.</p>\n<p>Around the same time, I met an African American woman who was surprised that I only spoke English. She pointed out that my accent was probably a result of listening to people whose English was influenced by their mother tongue. As crazy as her reasoning sounded, it was a light bulb moment for me because it gave me insight as to why I sounded the way I did. It was possibly a result of listening and replicating those who <em>have</em> a reference point (i.e. a different mother tongue from English). So it made sense when, a few years later, accent #2 was in full fledge: a result of years of listening to Americans and inevitably shedding the less celebrated accent #1. And when I moved to other western countries, the ability to code switch became effortless. Accent #1 only came on during conversations with family and sometimes sounded like a new thing altogether. I found that (or perhaps falsely believed) that accent #1 was not easily embraced on foreign shores and it made sense to ditch the process of explaining why English was the only language I spoke by sounding like I was from a country that claimed English as its sole mother tongue.</p>\n<p>But the story doesn’t end there. When I moved to Lagos, a magical thing happened. Accent #1 re-emerged. Over the years, accent #2 became second nature but accent #1 has gradually become my preferred choice; further confusing those who might have known me during high school when I switched up accent #1 for no reason in particular (it was in the late 90s and I was reinventing myself). I like to think that this magical thing is more than how I choose to sound and more about who I am choosing to become. I am, as I have stated in the past articles, not without flaw: a Nigerian without tribal ties, with a tapered love for my country but most importantly I believe I am developing a voice within that sounds like what it ought to.</p>"
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"content" : "<blockquote><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: Intellectuals gathering in\nBerkeley to argue about \"knowledge\" and \"revolution\".</blockquote>\n\n<p>This looks like fun, and if I didn't have conflicting obligations I'd definitely be there.\n\n<blockquote>\n<h4><a href=\"http://lyra.berkeley.edu/CDIConf/\">From Data to Knowledge: Machine-Learning with Real-time & Streaming Applications</a></h4>\n\nMay 7-11 2012\n<br>On the Campus of the University of California, Berkeley\n\n\n<p>We are experiencing a revolution in the capacity to quickly collect and\ntransport large amounts of data. Not only has this revolution changed the means\nby which we store and access this data, but has also caused a fundamental\ntransformation in the methods and algorithms that we use to extract knowledge\nfrom data. In scientific fields as diverse as climatology, medical science,\nastrophysics, particle physics, computer vision, and computational finance,\nmassive streaming data sets have sparked innovation in methodologies for\nknowledge discovery in data streams. Cutting-edge methodology for streaming\ndata has come from a number of diverse directions, from on-line learning,\nrandomized linear algebra and approximate methods, to distributed optimization\nmethodology for cloud computing, to multi-class classification problems in the\npresence of noisy and spurious data.\n\n<p>This conference will bring together researchers from applied mathematics and\nseveral diverse scientific fields to discuss the current state of the art and\nopen research questions in streaming data and real-time machine learning. The\nconference will be domain driven, with talks focusing on well-defined areas of\napplication and describing the techniques and algorithms necessary to address\nthe current and future challenges in the field.\n\n<p>Sessions will be accessible to a broad audience and will have a single track\nformat with additional rooms for breakout sessions and posters. There will be\nno formal conference proceedings, but conference applicants are encouraged to\nsubmit an abstract and present a talk and/or poster.\n</p></p></p></blockquote>\n\n<p>See the <a href=\"http://lyra.berkeley.edu/CDIConf/\">conference page</a> for\nsubmission details, schedules, etc.\n\n<p>Via conference organizer and CMU\nalumnus <a href=\"http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~jwrichar/\">Joey Richards</a>.\n\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_enigmas_of_chance.html\">Enigmas of Chance</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_signal_amplification.html\">Signal Amplification</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "Scott And Scurvy",
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"content" : "<p>Recently I have been re-reading one of my favorite books, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143039385?ie=UTF8&tag=idlewords-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0143039385\">The Worst Journey in the World</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=idlewords-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0143039385\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">, an account of Robert Falcon Scott's 1911 expedition to the South Pole. I can’t do the book justice in a summary, other than recommend that you drop everything and <a href=\"http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14363\">read it</a>, but there is one detail that particularly baffled me the first time through, and that I resolved to understand better once I could stand to put the book down long enough.</p>\n\n<p>Writing about the first winter the men spent on the ice, Cherry-Garrard <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=RXS04HcPrFwC&lpg=PP1&dq=worst%20journey%20in%20the%20world&pg=PA220#v=onepage&q=&f=false\">casually mentions</a> an astonishing lecture on scurvy by one of the expedition’s doctors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\nAtkinson inclined to Almroth Wright’s theory that scurvy is due to an acid intoxication of the blood caused by bacteria...<br>\nThere was little scurvy in Nelson’s days; but the reason is not clear, since, according to modern research, lime-juice only helps to prevent it. We had, at Cape Evans, a salt of sodium to be used to alkalize the blood as an experiment, if necessity arose. Darkness, cold, and hard work are in Atkinson’s opinion important causes of scurvy.<br>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Now, I had been taught in school that scurvy had been conquered in 1747, when the Scottish physician <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lind\">James Lind</a> proved in one of the first controlled medical experiments that citrus fruits were an effective cure for the disease. From that point on, we were told, the Royal Navy had required a daily dose of lime juice to be mixed in with sailors’ grog, and scurvy ceased to be a problem on long ocean voyages.</p>\n\n<p>But here was a Royal Navy surgeon in 1911 apparently ignorant of what caused the disease, or how to cure it. Somehow a highly-trained group of scientists at the start of the 20th century knew less about scurvy than the average sea captain in Napoleonic times. Scott left a base abundantly stocked with fresh meat, fruits, apples, and lime juice, and headed out on the ice for five months with no protection against scurvy, all the while confident he was not at risk. What happened?</p>\n\n<p>...</p>\n\n<p>By all accounts scurvy is a horrible disease. Scott, who has reason to know, gives a succinct description:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe symptoms of scurvy do not necessarily occur in a regular order, but generally the first sign is an inflamed, swollen condition of the gums. The whitish pink tinge next the teeth is replaced by an angry red; as the disease gains ground the gums become more spongy and turn to a purplish colour, the teeth become loose and the gums sore. Spots appear on the legs, and pain is felt in old wounds and bruises; later, from a slight oedema, the legs, and then the arms, swell to a great size and become blackened behind the joints. After this the patient is soon incapacitated, and the last horrible stages of the disease set in, from which death is a merciful release.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>One of the most striking features of the disease is the disproportion between its severity and the simplicity of the cure. Today we know that scurvy is due solely to a deficiency in vitamin C, a compound essential to metabolism that the human body must obtain from food. Scurvy is rapidly and completely cured by restoring vitamin C into the diet. </p>\n\n<p>Except for the nature of vitamin C, eighteenth century physicians knew this too. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, the cure for scurvy was lost. The story of how this happened is a striking demonstration of the problem of induction, and how progress in one field of study can lead to unintended steps backward in another. </p>\n\n<p>An unfortunate series of accidents conspired with advances in technology to discredit the cure for scurvy. What had been a simple dietary deficiency became a subtle and unpredictable disease that could strike without warning. Over the course of fifty years, scurvy would return to torment not just Polar explorers, but thousands of infants born into wealthy European and American homes. And it would only be through blind luck that the actual cause of scurvy would be rediscovered, and vitamin C finally isolated, in 1932.\n\n<p>It is not easy to find fresh foods that lack vitamin C. Plants and animals tend to be full of it, since the molecule is used in all kinds of biochemical synthesis as an electron donor. But the same reactive qualities that make the vitamin useful also make it easy to destroy. Vitamin C quickly breaks down in the presence of light, heat and air. For this reason it is absent from most preserved foods that have been cooked or dried. Its destruction is also rapidly catalyzed by copper ions, which may be one reason sailors, with their big copper cooking vats, were particularly susceptible.\n\n<p>Because our bodies can't synthesize the vitamin, they have grown very good at conserving it. It takes up to six months for scurvy to develop in healthy people after vitamin C is removed from the diet, and only a tiny daily amount is enough to keep a person healthy.</p>\n\n<p>It has been known since antiquity that fresh foods in general, and lemons and oranges in particular, will cure scurvy. Starting with Vasco de Gama’s crew in 1497, sailors have repeatedly discovered the curative power of citrus fruits, and the cure has just as frequently been forgotten or ignored by subsequent explorers. \n\n<p>Lind tends to get the credit for discovering the citrus cure since he performed something approaching a controlled experiment. But it took an additional forty years of experiments, analysis, and political lobbying for his result to become institutionalized in the Royal Navy. In 1799, all Royal Navy ships on foreign service were ordered to serve lemon juice:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe scheduled allowance for the sailors in the Navy was fixed at I oz.lemon juice with I + oz. sugar, served daily after 2 weeks at sea, the lemon juice being often called ‘lime juice’ and our sailors ‘lime juicers’. The consequences of this new regulation were startling and by the beginning of the nineteenth century scurvy may be said to have vanished from the British navy.\tIn 1780, the admissions of scurvy cases to the Naval Hospital at Haslar were 1457; in the years from 1806 to 1810, they were two. \n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(As we'll see, the confusion between lemons and limes would have serious reprecussions.)</p>\n\n<p>Scurvy had been the leading killer of sailors on long ocean voyages; some ships experienced losses as high as 90% of their men. With the introduction of lemon juice, the British suddenly held a massive strategic advantage over their rivals, one they put to good use in the Napoleonic wars. British ships could now stay out on blockade duty for two years at a time, strangling French ports even as the merchantmen who ferried citrus to the blockading ships continued to die of scurvy, prohibited from touching the curative themselves. \n\n<p>The success of lemon juice was so total that much of Sicily was soon transformed into a lemon orchard for the British fleet. Scurvy continued to be a vexing problem in other navies, who were slow to adopt citrus as a cure, as well as in the Merchant Marine, but for the Royal Navy it had become a disease of the past. </p>\n\n<p>By the middle of the 19th century, however, advances in technology were reducing the need for any kind of scurvy preventative. Steam power had shortened travel times considerably from the age of sail, so that it was rare for sailors other than whalers to be months at sea without fresh food. Citrus juice was a legal requirement on all British vessels by 1867, but in practical terms it was becoming superfluous.</p>\n\n<p>So when the Admiralty began to replace lemon juice with an ineffective substitute in 1860, it took a long time for anyone to notice. In that year, naval authorities switched procurement from Mediterranean lemons to West Indian limes. The motives for this were mainly colonial - it was better to buy from British plantations than to continue importing lemons from Europe. Confusion in naming didn't help matters. Both \"lemon\" and \"lime\" were in use as a collective term for citrus, and though European lemons and sour limes are quite different fruits, their Latin names (<i>citrus medica, var. limonica</i> and <i>citrus medica, var. acida</i>) suggested that they were as closely related as green and red apples. Moreover, as there was a widespread belief that the antiscorbutic properties of lemons were due to their acidity, it made sense that the more acidic Caribbean limes would be even better at fighting the disease. </p>\n\n<p>In this, the Navy was deceived. Tests on animals would later show that fresh lime juice has a quarter of the scurvy-fighting power of fresh lemon juice. And the lime juice being served to sailors was not fresh, but had spent long periods of time in settling tanks open to the air, and had been pumped through copper tubing. A 1918 animal experiment using representative samples of lime juice from the navy and merchant marine showed that the 'preventative' often lacked any antiscorbutic power at all. </p>\n\n<p>By the 1870s, therefore, most British ships were sailing without protection against scurvy. Only speed and improved nutrition on land were preventing sailors from getting sick.</p>\n\n<p>It fell to the unfortunate George Nares to discover this fact in 1875, when he led the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Arctic_Expedition\">British Arctic Expedition</a> in an attempt to reach the North Pole via Greenland. Some oceanographic theories of the time posited an open polar sea, and Nares was directed to sail along the Greenland coast, then take a sledging party and see how far north he could get on the pack ice.</p>\n\n<p>The expedition was a fiasco. Two men in the sledging party developed scurvy within days of leaving the ship. Within five weeks, half the men were sick, and despite having laid depots with plentiful supplies for their return journey, they were barely able to make it back. A rescue party sent to intercept them found that lime juice failed to have its usual dramatic effect. Most damning of all, some of the men who stayed on the ship, never failing to take their daily dose, also got scurvy.</p> \n\n<p>The failure of the Nares expedition provoked an uproar in Britain. The Royal Navy believed itself capable of sustaining any crew for two years without signs of scurvy, yet here was an able and adequately supplied crew crippled by the disease within weeks. For the first time since the eighteenth century, the effectiveness of citrus juice as an absolute preventative was in doubt.</p>\n\n<p>More troubling evidence came several years later, during the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson-Harmsworth_Expedition\">Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition</a> to Franz-Josef Land in 1894. Members of this expedition spent three years on a ship frozen into the pack ice. Koettlitz, their chief physician, describes what happened:\n\n<blockquote>\nThe expedition proper ate fresh meat regularly at least once a day in the shape of polar bear. The people on the ship had, however, a prejudice against this food, which certainly was not particularly palatable, and insisted, against all advice, upon eating their preserved and salted meat. This meat I occasionally noticed to be somewhat \"high\" or \"gamey\", and afterwards heard that it was often so. The result was that, though I visited the ship every day, and personally saw that each man swallowed his dose of lime juice (which was made compulsory, and was of the best quality), the whole ship’s company were tainted with scurvy, and two died. \n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This pattern of fresh meat preventing scurvy would be a consistent one in Arctic exploration. It defied the common understanding of scurvy as a deficiency in vegetable matter. Somehow men could live for years on a meat-only diet and remain healthy, provided that the meat was fresh.\n\n<p>This is a good example of how the very ubiquity of vitamin C made it hard to identify. Though scurvy was always associated with a lack of greens, fresh meat contains adequate amounts of vitamin C, with particularly high concentrations in the organ meats that explorers considered a delicacy. Eat a bear liver every few weeks and scurvy will be the least of your problems. \n\n<p>But unless you already understand and believe in the vitamin model of nutrition, the notion of a trace substance that exists both in fresh limes and bear kidneys, but is absent from a cask of lime juice because you happened to prepare it in a copper vessel, begins to sound pretty contrived.\n\n<p>Doctors of the era looked at this puzzling evidence and wondered. Other diseases had recently been shown to have their source in bacterial infection. The bacterial model was new, and had already had spectacular success in identifying and treating diseases like typhus, tuberculosis, and cholera. What if the cause of scruvy had also been misunderstood? What if instead of a deficiency disease, scurvy was actually a kind of chronic food poisoning from bacterial contamination of meat? Thus was born the ptomaine theory of scurvy, and Koettlitz became its <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2511962/pdf/brmedj08208-0030.pdf\">enthusiastic backer</a>:\n\n<blockquote>\nThat the cause of the outbreak of scurvy in so many Polar expeditions has always been that something was radically wrong with the preserved meats, whether tinned or salted, is practically certain; that foods are scurvy-producing by being, if only slightly, tainted is practically certain; that the benefit of the so-called \"antiscorbutics\" is a delusion, and that some antiscorbutic property has been removed from foods in the process of preservation is also a delusion. An animal food is either scorbutic - in other words, scurvy-producing - or it is not. It is either tainted or it is sound. Putrefactive change, if only slight and tasteless, has taken place or it has not. Bacteria have been able to produce ptomaines in it or they have not; and if they have not, then the food is healthy and not scurvy-producing.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The ’ptomaine’ in the theory was never really defined, other than as a noxious waste product of bacterial action. But the theory had an internal logic. Poorly preserved meats would be contaminated by ptomaine. Under normal conditions, this was not enough cause scurvy. Not only did fresh food consumed in the diet have a kind of antidote effect (whether it worked by neutralizing the poison, or by simply displacing it in the diet, was not clear), but environment also played an important role. Certain factors seemed to predispose people to chronic ptomaine poisoning, including darkness, intense exertion, idleness, close air, prolonged confinement and cold. \n\n<p>On prolonged journeys under harsh conditions, the accumulated ptomaine in badly preserved meats would disrupt health, giving the classic symptoms of scurvy. Once the tainted foods were discontinued, the body would rapidly excrete the accumulated ptomaine and return to healthh.</p>\n\n<p>To the extent that citrus juices were effective in preventing scurvy, it was because their acidity denatured ptomaines, or killed the bacteria that caused them. The real culprit was in the bad meat, and the casks of lime juice mandated by law on every seagoing ship were another example of outdated medical superstition that would now give way to a more sophisticated understanding of illness.\n\n<p>This was the latest in medical thinking on scurvy when Scott prepared for his first expedition to Antarctica, in 1903. It would be the first serious British expedition to the continent in fifty years. Scott took the very same Dr. Koettlitz along as his chief physician. \n\n<p>Scott was a meticulous planner, and mindful of the ptomaine theory, paid special attention to the quality of his provisions. While the cold and cramped conditions of the journey could not be helped, he knew he could avoid any risk of scurvy by using only completely unspoiled canned goods. For his part, Koettlitz predicted that as long as there was fresh seal meat available, \"we can take it as certain that no scurvy will be heard of in connexion with the expedition, however long it may remain in the High South\".\n\n<p>Scott did not have time to supervise the actual canning of his provisions for the Discovery journey, but he made sure that before being served, all tins were opened in the presence of his medical staff, including Dr. Koettlitz, and carefully examined for signs of spoilage. Any doubtful cans were consigned to the trash heap.\n\n<p>So it came as a bitter surprise to Scott when one of the Discovery’s early sledging parties trudged into camp with unmistakable symptoms of scurvy after only a three week absence. Subsequent examination showed that many of the men on the ship were also in the early stages of the disease. The preventative measures had failed, and Scott was <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=l5YSAQAAIAAJ&lpg=PA399&ots=YHMSjoLVis&dq=The%20evil%20having%20come%2C%20the%20great%20thing%20now%20is%20to%20banish%20it.%20scott&pg=PA399#v=onepage&q=&f=false\">greatly distressed</a>:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>The evil having come, the great thing now is to banish it. In my absence, Armitage, in consultation with the doctors, has already taken steps to remedy matters by serving out fresh meat regularly and by increasing the allowance of bottled fruits, and he has done an even greater service by taking the cook in hand. I don’t know whether he threatened to hang him at the yardarm or used more persuasive measures, but, whatever it was, there is a marked improvement in the cooking.\n</p>...\n\n<p>With the idea of giving everyone on the mess-deck a change of air in turn, we have built up a space in the main hut by packing cases around the stove. In this space each mess are to live for a week; they have breakfast and dinner on board, but are allowed to cook their supper in the hut. The present occupants enjoy this sort of picnic-life immensely.</p>\n\n<p>We have had a thorough clearance of the holds, disinfected the bilges, whitewashed the sides, and generally made them sweet and clean.</p>\n\n<p>As a next step I tackled the clothes and hammocks. One knows how easily garments collect, and especially under such conditions as ours; however, they have all been cleared out now, except those actually in use. The hammocks and bedding I found quite dry and comfortable, but we have had them all thoroughly aired. We have cleared all the deck-lights so as to get more daylight below, and we have scrubbed the decks and cleaned out all the holes and corners until everything is as clean as a new pin. I am bound to confess there was no very radical change in all this; we found very little dirt, and our outbreak cannot possibly have come from insanitary conditions of living; our men are far too much alive to their own comfort for that. But now we do everything for the safe side, and from the conviction that one cannot be too careful.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Scott sent a seal-killing party to collect as much fresh meat as possible (his crew could eat their way through a seal in two and a half days). They gathered enough to eliminate the need for preserved meat entirely. The butchered seals were stored, like logs, frozen on the ice. Meanwhile, Koetlittz had managed to sprout and grow a modest crop of watercress under a skylight, the Antarctic soil proving surprisingly fertile. His confidence in the ptomaine theory did not blind him to the practical advantages of a proven remedy (watercress sprouts contain a ridiculous amount of vitamin C). Enough cress grew to supplement one meal for all the men, and in combination with the fresh seal meat, it was enough to banish all signs of scurvy.\n\n<p>Scott was relieved, but he knew that something had escaped his understanding. Despite scrupulous care, the disease had slipped through, and he was not sure why his precautions had failed. Evidently it was not enough to inspect meat by taste and smell - even minute quanities of ptomaine might be enough to cause scurvy. </p>\n\n<p>His solution was to move the expedition off of canned meat altogether, relying entirely on seal meat and penguin. This would be fine while the men remained on the Discovery, but it left the problem of what to do about the upcoming sledge journeys. The planned sledging ration was pemmican (a mixture of dried meat and fat) and biscuit, but since Scott had lost all confidence in the safety of preserved meat, he had to find a way to replace the pemmican with seal.\n\n<p>Fresh seal meat would be far too heavy a replacement, so Scott had it repeatedly boiled to remove as much moisture as possible (in the process destroying all its vitamin C). This concentrated seal meat was still almost twice as heavy as the equivalent pemmican, but it was the best he could do.\n\n<p>In November of 1902, Scott, Wilson and Shackleton set out on the expedition’s main journey. Their goal was to take a dog team as far south as possible along the Ross ice shelf, and see if they could find a useful route for an eventual attempt at the Pole. \n\n<p>Things did not go well. Scott inadvertently starved his dogs, making them impossible to control and nearly useless for hauling. Very quickly, his men had to start relaying the sledges, which meant walking three miles for every one mile of southward progress. They began killing the weakest dogs and feeding them to the remainder (the dogs were so hungry they did not hesitate to rip their fallen comrades apart). The men themselves could think of nothing else but food, their rations inadequate for the work of hauling the sledge.</p>\n\n<p>Wilson, a doctor, checked the men’s gums and legs each Sunday for signs of scurvy. Shackleton was the first to show symptoms, though he was not told about this for several weeks. Soon Scott and Wilson were showing symptoms as well. Before long Shackleton was weak, had begun to cough up blood at night, and was in real danger of physical collapse.</p>\n\n<p>The party barely made it home. For much of the return trip, Shackleton was unable to pull, staggering alongside the sledges. On their return to the Discovery, the men were bedridden and in a state of complete physical collapse, getting up only long enough to eat prodigious meals. Scott remarked in his journal on the extraordinary lassitude and lack of energy the disease provoked in him.</p>\n\n<p>Eight years after the Discovery expedition, Scott returned to Antarctica to make an attempt at the Pole. Mindful of what had happened on his first journey, he took pains to seek the latest expert advice about scurvy, both from doctors and from Arctic explorers.\n\n<p>The advice he got was unchanged - scurvy was an acidic condition of the blood caused by ptomaines in tainted meat. The legendary explorer Fridtjof Nansen had some particularly curious advice - if he found himself in extremis, Nansen said, it was better to choose cans of meat that were completely rotten over cans that were only slightly spoilt, since the ptomaines were more likely to have broken down in the former.\n\n<p>This time Scott made sure to provide his men with fresh seal meat, and scurvy was not a problem in the main camp. In the austral winter of 1911, Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard went on a phantasmagoric five week journey to try and collect the eggs of the empreror penguin. This journey, which gave Cherry-Garrard’s book its title, took place in complete darkness and temperatures that dropped below -77˙ Fahrenheit. The men, forced to relay and searching for their footprints by candlelight, sometimes made as little as a mile of progress a day. When Cherry-Garrard’s clothes were weighed on his return, they contained twenty four-pounds of ice. That the men survived defies belief - there has never been another journey in the Polar night, even with modern equipment - but they did return, and to Scott's great relief showed no symptoms of scurvy.\n\n<p>One of Scott's goals for the winter journey had been to determine the proper ration for sledging up on the Polar plateau, where the men would have to hike for several weeks at altitudes above 10,000 feet. After some tinkering with proportions, the men on the Winter Journey had settled on a satisfying ration, and Scott decided to adopt it unchanged for his on trip later that year:\n\n<p><img width=\"450\" src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/scott_ration.jpg\">\n\n<p>Scott's Polar ration: 450g biscuit, 340 grams pemmican, 85g sugar, 57g butter, 24g tea, 16g cocoa.\nThis ration contains about 4500 calories (sledging requires 6500) and no vitamin C.</p>\n\n<p>Scott left camp with 16 men on November 1, 1911. His plan was to lay depots along the route, and send groups of men back at intervals until he was left with three companions on the great plateau south of the Beardmore Glacier. The expedition used men, dogs, ponies (slaughtered and fed to the dogs at the foot of the glacier), and a pair of experimental motorized sledges that broke down after just a few miles on the ice. \n\n<p>Scott sent back his men in stages; each group had a progressively harder time making it back to camp. The last group, sent back from the top of the Beardmore, was led by Edward Evans, who quickly developed a severe case of scurvy. After bravely walking most of the distance, he became incapacitated and had to be left on the ice in the care of a companion while the third man in the group force-marched the thirty remaining miles to camp to summon a rescue team.\n\n<p>Scott, oblivious to this ominous development, pressed onwards. The rest of his story is well known. Norwegian tents at the Pole, an increasingly desperate return, two in his group sickening and dying, then a terrible blizzard eleven miles short of his last depot; the three men freezing to death in their tent. \n \n<p>The evidence that the Polar Party suffered from scurvy on their return trip is strong but circumstantial. The wounds that would not heal, the sudden death of Seaman Evans during the descent down the Beardmore, their great weakness are all consistent with the disease. Both Scott and Wilson would have easily recognized the symptoms, but it is possible that they would have chosen not to record them. There was a certain stigma with scurvy, especially in their case, having taken such pains to forestall the disease. Scott had nearly left any mention of scurvy out of his 1903 report, before deciding to do so for the cause of science, and it’s possible he felt a similar reticence now.\n\n<p>Entire academic careers have been devoted to second-guessing Scott's final journey. It would probably be easier to list the few things that didn’t contribute to his death, than to try and rank the relative contributions of cold, exhaustion, malnutrition, bad weather, bad luck, poor planning, and rash decisions. But with regard to scurvy, at least, the Polar explorers were in an impossible position. \n\n<p>They had a theory of the disease that made sense, fit the evidence, but was utterly wrong. They had arrived at the idea of an undetectable substance in their food, present in trace quantities, with a direct causative relationship to scurvy, but they thought of it in terms of a poison to avoid. In one sense, the additional leap required for a correct understanding was very small. In another sense, it would have required a kind of Copernican revolution in their thinking.\n\n<p>It was pure luck that led to the actual discovery of vitamin C. Axel Holst and Theodor Frolich had been studying beriberi (another deficiency disease) in pigeons, and when they decided to switch to a mammal model, they serendipitously chose guinea pigs, the one animal besides human beings and monkeys that requires vitamin C in its diet. Fed a diet of pure grain, the animals showed no signs of beriberi, but quickly sickened and died of something that closely resembled human scurvy.\n\n<p>No one had seen scurvy in animals before. With a simple animal model for the disease in hand, it became a matter of running the correct experiments, and it was quickly established that scurvy was a deficiency disease after all. Very quickly the compound that prevents the disease was identified as a small molecule present in cabbage, lemon juice, and many other foods, and in 1932 Szent-Györgyi definitively isolated ascorbic acid.\n\n<p>---\n\n<p>There are several aspects of this 'second coming’ of scurvy in the late 19th century that I find particularly striking:\n\n<p>First, the fact that from the fifteenth century on, it was the rare doctor who acknowledged ignorance about the cause and treatment of the disease. The sickness could be fitted to so many theories of disease - imbalance in vital humors, bad air, acidification of the blood, bacterial infection - that despite the existence of an unambigous cure, there was always a raft of alternative, ineffective treatments. At no point did physicians express doubt about their theories, however ineffective.\n\n<p>Second, how difficult it was to correctly interpret the evidence without the concept of \"vitamin\". Now that we understand scurvy as a deficiency disease, we can explain away the anomalous results that seem to contradict that theory (the failure of lime juice on polar expeditions, for example). But the evidence on its own did not point clearly at any solution. It was not clear which results were the anomalous ones that needed explaining away. The ptomaine theory made correct predictions (fresh meat will prevent scurvy) even though it was completely wrong.\n\n<p>Third, how technological progress in one area can lead to surprising regressions. I mentioned how the advent of steam travel made it possible to accidentaly replace an effective antiscorbutic with an ineffective one. An even starker example was the rash of cases of infantile scurvy that afflicted upper class families in the late 19th century. This outbreak was the direct result of another technological development, the pasteurization of cow's milk. The procedure made milk vastly safer for infants to drink, but also destroyed vitamin C. For poorer children, who tended to be breast-fed and quickly weaned onto adult foods, this was not an issue, but the wealthy infants fed a special diet of cooked cereals and milk were at grave risk.\n\nIt took several years for infant scurvy, at first called \"Barlow's disease\", to be properly identified. At that point, doctors were caught between two fires. They could recommend that parents not boil their milk, and expose the children to bacterial infection, or they could insist on pasteurization at the risk of scurvy. The prevaling theory of scurvy as bacterial poisoning clouded the issue further, so that it took time to arrive at the right solution - supplementing the diet with onion juice or cooked potato.\n\n<p>Fourth, how small a foundation of evidence was necessary to build a soaring edifice of theory. Lind’s famous experiment, for example, had two sailors eating oranges for six days. Lind went on to propound a completely ineffective method of preserving lemon juice (by boiling it down), which he never thought to test. One of the experiments that ’confirmed’ the ptomaine theory involved feeding a handful of monkeys canned and fresh meat. The fructivorous monkeys died within days; the ones who died last, and with the least blood in their stool, were assumed to be the ones without scurvy. And even these flawed experiments were a rarity compared to the number of flat assertions by medical authorities without any testing or basis in fact.\n\n<p>Finally, that one of the simplest of diseases managed to utterly confound us for so long, at the cost of millions of lives, even after we had stumbled across an unequivocal cure. It makes you wonder how many incurable ailments of the modern world - depression, autism, hypertension, obesity - will turn out to have equally simple solutions, once we are able to see them in the correct light. What will we be slapping our foreheads about sixty years from now, wondering how we missed something so obvious?\n\n<p>In the course of writing this essay, I was tempted many times to pick a villain. Maybe the perfectly named <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almroth_Wright\">Almroth Wright</a>, who threw his considerable medical reputation behind the ptomaine theory and so delayed the proper re-understanding of scurvy for many years. Or the nameless Admiralty flunkie who helped his career by championing the switch to West Indian limes. Or even poor Scott himself, sermonizing about the virtues of scientific progress while never conducting a proper experiment, taking dreadful risks, and showing a most unscientific reliance on pure grit to get his men out of any difficulty.\n\n<p>But the villain here is just good old human ignorance, that master of disguise. We tend to think that knowledge, once acquired, is something permanent. Instead, even holding on to it requires constant, careful effort. \n\n<p><b>tl;dr</b>: scurvy bad, science hard.</p>\n\n<p>I'll try to footnote this essay properly in the next few days; in the meantime, if you'd like to geek out with me I invite you to check out <a href=\"http://pinboard.in/u:maciej/t:scurvy\">a list of collected links</a>.</p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"content" : "<strong>I got home from what felt like the longest day of my life to find I had forgotten my house keys and couldn't let myself in. </strong><br> <br> No problem, I thought, my wife will be home and I'll just ring the doorbell. I rang. Nothing. I rang again. Still nothing. I checked my watch...bathtime! A quick glance at the bathroom window confirmed the light through the cracks in our window shutters. <br> <br> Oblivious to me being stood on the dark doorstep, my wife was upstairs with my son splashing around in the bath whilst listening to the latest Jessie J album via Spotify. Alright for her, but the volume was so loud she couldn't hear my attempts to attract her attention. <br> <br> What to do? I sent her an sms message knowing full well that it would fail as she wouldn't take her phone in the bathroom. So I headed back to the car to sit it out, hoping she didn't put Frazer to bed before she came down. Then it struck me... <br> <br> She was listening to music in the bathroom using our whole house Sonos music system. She takes its splashproof controller into the bathroom with her and Frazer has a boogie whilst splashing in the bath. Maybe...just maybe? <br> <br> I pulled out my phone and checked that I could connect to the home wifi from outside. The signal was weak, but enough. I then loaded up the Sonos Controller for Android. It worked and I could clearly see Jessie J on the \"now playing\" screen for the bathroom, and bedroom, and en-suite. No wonder she couldn't hear me, it was blasting out through the entire first floor of the house. <br> <br> I touched the music button and decided Napster was the best option, as its library is much bigger than Spotify. Search...tracks...\"locked out\". Within fractions of a second, an unfamiliar Crowded House track appeared from their best of album...\"Locked Out\". I hit Play Now and hoped it would work. <br> <br> Indoors, Frazer was no longer in the bath and they were in fact brushing his teeth when the music stopped. At first my wife thought the Virgin Media internet connection had gone down...again...but then the music resumed. But a totally different track, one that wasn't even in the playlist she had created. <br> <br> The song opened with the line \"I been locked out\" and she glanced at the controller to confirm it was indeed called \"Locked Out\". A few seconds later, she opened the shutters, saw me sat in the car on the driveway and came downstairs to let me in...laughing her head off. <br> <br> Funny, I was just queueing up \"Baby it's cold outside\"."
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"title" : "Browsers are the New PowerPoint",
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"content" : "<p>Stumbled on this by Donald Norman in some of <a href=\"http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0002PP\">Edward Tufte's material about PowerPoint</a> :</p>\n<blockquote>Technology is not neutral. Technology has properties--affordances--that make it easier to do some activities, harder to do others: The easier ones get done, the harder ones neglected. Each has its constraints, preconditions, and side effects that impose requirements and changes on the things with which it interacts, be they other technology, people, or human society at large. Finally, each technology poses a mind-set, a way of thinking about it and the activities to which it is relevant, a mind-set that soon pervades those touched by it, often unwittingly, often unwillingly. The more successful and widespread the technology, the greater its impact upon the thought patterns of those who use it, and consequently, the greater its impact upon all of society. Technology is not neutral, it dominates.</blockquote>\n<p>-<em> Norman, Donald A., Things that Make Us Smart, Perseus Books, 1993, p. 243</em></p>\n<p>It nicely expresses what I've been trying to say in my periodic rants about<em> the tyranny of the browser</em>. Tufte's application of the above to PowerPoint is lovely, now rather than handwaving I can point to something concrete that also blinkers our way of looking at information.</p>\n<p>The Web browser as we currently know it has evolved to interact with the Web in a way that's been influenced by perceptions of what the Web is and can be (for example, that it's largely read-only). There's a feedback loop; it's self-perpetuating. There are clear advantages for Web publishers and users in the convergence in the way browsers behave, but this is at the cost of innovation. </p>\n<p>Incidentally, <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16976145\">Tufte is now a sculptor</a>.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "So, what would your plan for Greece be?",
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"content" : "<p>Reading the media and blogs, it seems to me that left and right are united in the view that the Greek default is being handled appallingly, that the current attempts at a solution are childishly obviously wrong and that everything is the fault of someone, probably the Germans. My own view – that it is not at all clear what the direction of policy is, and that although I don’t agree with the troika plan, it’s recognizable as a good-faith plan made by conscientious international civil servants working under unimaginably difficult political constraints in an economic context that was irreparably broken before they got there – is, as always, unpopular.</p>\n\n\t<p>I don’t have a solution myself – the more I end up discussing this with people, the more I am reminded of the London Business School proverb taught on some of the gnarlier case studies, which is “Not All Business Problems Have Solutions”. So, CT hivemind, what do you think the best outcome is? Below the fold, I note some talking points, aimed at preventing our commentariat from falling into some of the pitfalls and mistakes which appear to be dominating debate at present. Because the whole issue is a twisty turny maze which at times seems to consist of nothing but false moves, I am presenting it in the form of a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. I would note at this stage that I could probably have presented it in a funky <span>HTML</span> way rather than making you scroll up and down, but I have convinced myself that this is a feature rather than a bug – the medium matches the message here, because international debt negotiations are cumbersome, inconvenient and irritating too. Also, it is probably easier than it needs to be for readers to end up at the wrong paragraph and get a confusing jumbled narrative which bears little resemblance to the decisions they thought they’d made. Again, this is a crucial part of giving you the authentic international financial diplomacy experience.</p>\n\n\t<p>I will have another post on this in a few days (more realistically: in a week). But for the meantime, I’d be very interested if CT readers would play the game below and let me know, in comments, where they ended up. And also, if having ended up there, they were left with a strong feeling of having been bamboozled into something they didn’t really want to do.</p>\n\n\t<p><b>Update</b>: It is no longer literally impossible to reach #50 (and therefore #15 and #21). I don’t think this was a popular path, but sorry. Thanks to “M” and “Vasi” for noticing.</p>\n\n\t<p><span></span></p>\n\n\t<p><b><span>INTRODUCTION</span></b></p>\n\n\t<p>Welcome to Choose Your Own Troika Program For Greece! You are a junior member of the One World Government, and you have been given the job of coming up with a proposal to resolve the Greek crisis. You have also been given an advisor who will help you talk through the consequences of decisions. Remember that you have to consider the economic consequences of the various policy choices, but that there is no point in submitting a proposal which is politically unacceptable to either the Troika or the Greek government. Good luck!<br>\n<hr><br>\n1:<br>\nYou are sitting in an office with your advisor, Maynard. You have been asked to come up with a workable solution for the troika and for Greece, which needs to be politically and economically acceptable to both parties. Maynard’s job is to take your ideas and turn them into a proper proposal to be submitted. He has a long list of decisions for you to make. “First of all”, he says, “we need to decide whether there is any more money on the table. Do you think that Germany (and Netherlands, Finland, etc) can sell any more fiscal transfers to Greece, given their domestic politics?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yes, I know it’s going to be difficult, but we have to plan on that basis”, turn to 32.<br>\nIf you answer “I think we have to plan on the basis that there isn’t”, turn to 47</i>.<br>\n<hr><br>\n2:<br>\nA sharp intake of breath from Maynard. “Right! Let’s go there! And leave the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “Yes, leave the Euro”, go to 18<br>\nIf you say “No, I didn’t say that. I think we can structure this to keep them in the Euro.”, go to 34.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>3:<br>\n“Right, details”, say Maynard, picking up a legal pad and a sharpened pencil. “This is a kind of internal devaluation strategy, am I right, with a future string of fiscal transfers written in to soften the transition?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “Yes, you’re right”, then go to 26<br>\nIf you say “No, I am thinking more of an investment-driven plan”, then go to 36</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>4:<br>\n“So to summarise, we’re going to look for a degree of further debt relief but keep Greece in the Euro and try for rough current account balance over the long term”, Maynard says. “So this is an internal devaluation strategy, right?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Right.”, go to 31<br>\nIf you answer “No, you don’t understand at all”, go to 7.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>5:<br>\n“You’re going to take a lot of flak for this from some quarters, but it seems to me to be that you could do a lot worse”, says Maynard, finishing his tea. “In terms of consumption smoothing and reducing the fiscal adjustment, I don’t think you’ll do better – you’ve written down the debt and you’re getting structural current account funding. But there is not really much escaping from the fact that Greece is not going to get back to the levels of consumption (or more accurately, the gap between consumption and production) that it saw in the 2000s. A lot will depend on the gap between the maximum amount that is politically possible for the Eurocore to deliver in terms of fiscal transfers, and the minimum amount that is needed to prevent riots in Greece. Which is a parameter outside our control, unfortunately. But at least this plan sorts out the debt, and gets Euroland on the road to fiscal union. Let’s get it written up”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>6:<br>\nMaynard is looking at you quizzically. “This is presumably some seriously heterodox idea. Even with a total moratorium on the debt, there is a fundamental problem with targeting current account balance while not really addressing the difference in relative costs. What’s the plan, Stan?”</p>\n\n\t<p>You shoot him a baleful look and say …</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “We need a step change in <span>ECB</span> policy to target higher inflation in core Europe. Greece is in recession, so a higher target for Europe-wide inflation is going to help improve our relative unit costs”, turn to 17<br>\nIf you say “We need to improve competitiveness by investing in the Greek economy. We should be negotiating in terms of the structural reconstruction funds to be made available to improve Greece’s capital stock”, turn to 44.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>7: “So, if not internal devaluation, what? Are you sure you want to have current account balance as one of your aims?”, Maynard asks.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you want to reconsider this, go back to 32</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“Ok, we are gunning for long term equalisation of Greek competitiveness. So what’s the plan, Stan?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “We need stimulus in Germany, and accommodative monetary policy from the <span>ECB</span>. We can get Greece back onto competitive terms by an internal revaluation of the creditor countries rather than an internal devaluation by the debtors”, go to 17.<br>\nIf you answer “We need a five year plan. We can carry out structural reforms under the auspices of a tightly-drafted <span>IMF</span> program, with funding for capital investment. Clearly this means that Greece is giving up a lot of political independence, but maybe that’s not a bad thing”, go to 27.<br>\nIf you answer “Structural funds and lots of them. If we flood the Greek government with money, then it will end up in regional development, particularly if we put some sort of conditionality on it. We are stuck with the Greek political system, unfortunately, but they will perform a lot better if we stand behind them”, go to 42.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>8:<br>\nMaynard puts his teacup down and assesses his notes. “This is going to be very difficult for the Greeks to manage politically, you know. Since the context is a disorderly defaulter and we are giving up fiscal sovereignty for them, you would have to guess that the Troika plan is going to involve quite a lot in the way of internal devaluation and shock treatment restructuring. So you have the humiliation of the default, the humiliation of imposing a fiscal viceroy on them, and then they get a whole load of shock treatment in return for some structural current account financing. This is the policy mix that pretty much defines the ‘IMF Riot’. Go on then, let’s write it up. It is a bit depressingly close to a lot of policies that didn’t work, though.”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>9:<br>\n“Now that, conversely, is going to be a tough sell in Greece. Tea?” While Maynard pours you a cup, he asks about how the fiscal balance is going to be looked after.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “We will need to delegate Greek fiscal policy to a European agency, committed to the aim of bringing the primary deficit into balance after fiscal transfers as soon as possible”, turn to 25.<br>\nIf you answer “There is no point in austerity in this plan. The devaluation will be followed by aggressive Keynesian stimulus”, turn to 51.<br>\nIf you answer “We will draw up a plan to achieve primary balance over the medium term, and negotiate with our EU partners for the deficit financing required”, turn to 37.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>10:<br>\n“So, an internal devaluation strategy, with some of the pain of adjustment financed by the debt default”, says Maynard. “There’s going to be a lot of pain for Greece anyway. I think you might be underestimating the deadweight costs of the default itself, and although Greece is a lot closer to primary surplus than it was a few years ago, it’s still a way away (unless you use a funny measure counting privatisation receipts and not counting accruals spending). So there’s a lot more fiscal austerity on the way for them, in the context of a blown-up banking and savings system. And I suppose that if it turns out ex post that you were too pessimistic about further money from the troika, that’s a bonus.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“The good thing about this strategy is that if Greece goes for it, they don’t have to negotiate it with anyone. As a result, it might be what they end up doing anyway if a negotiated settlement fails. So we should definitely write it up, on that basis alone. But I can’t help feeling that we ought to be able to do better”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr><br>\n11:<br>\n“Doesn’t work”, Maynard immediately says. “The investments are only going to raise productivity in the long term, and the debt ratio is explosive in the short term. And you can’t expect structural funds to be poured into an economy that’s clearly not on a sustainable debt path. The horrible thing is, if you write this idea up and submit it, it has a decent chance of being accepted because you are avoiding all the tough decisions. But two months from now, we’ll just be back in the same room, trying to come up with a proposal when this one has fallen apart.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“See you then”, he adds, pointedly, as he walks out of your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>12:<br>\n“I think we’ve got off track here”, says Maynard, pouring a cup of tea. “If they’re leaving the Euro, then we have to be aiming for current account balance, at least in the long term. Do you mean that we <b>are</b> going to aim for current account balance, or that we’re <b>not</b> leaving the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “The first”, go to 55.<br>\nIf you answer “The second”, go to 38.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>13:<br>\n“Ooh. So, having carried out the disorderly default, we are basically going to suggest that the same Greek government which has so comprehensively failed for the last forty years is going to restructure the economy to a modern value-added basis, with no wage cuts, and that the rest of the EU should just stand back and write them cheques to cover the fiscal deficit and finance a massive investment programme? Something like it has worked once in the past, but the relationship between Greece and the EU isn’t really very like the relationship between the UK and the Falkland Islands. And the Falklands had better governance. This would be absurdly aggressive as an opening negotiating position for the Greek side – as a suggestion for a solution it’s politically insensitive to say the least. I’ll submit it to the process, but I am frankly not optimistic about your career.”</p>\n\n\t<p>He finishes his tea and leaves your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>14:<br>\n“That’s definitely a significant adjustment”, Maynard warns you. “Since Greece ran large structural deficits (which were the counterpart to its fiscal deficit) for most of the 00s, we are basically saying here that we can’t return to the pre-crisis consumption path. This isn’t really a growth-oriented or cyclical policy; we’re trying to smooth the transition to a structurally lower standard of living in Greece. Just to be sure you know that, because it is going to factor into the political decisions later on”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I understand”, you answer. “But let’s deal with that later. We need to consider our debt strategy. My proposal is …”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “That the current process is a can-kicking farce. We should just plan for a straightforward default on the debt”, turn to 22.<br>\nIf you say “That part of the fiscal contribution is going to have to take the form of a significant further reduction in the debt by the official sector, over and above the private sector contribution already made”, turn to 39.<br>\nIf you say “That we have to find a solution within the constraints of the current nominal debt level. We’ve got a certain amount of private sector writedown, but there won’t be any more”, turn to 49</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>15:<br>\n“This seems like a bit of a long shot, frankly”, Maynard says. “I can sort of see how you could bring the troika back on side after a Greek default by adopting the orthodox <span>IMF</span> playbook. But even with that, it’s going to take a lot to bring them back into the fold after we’ve made them angry with the debt strategy, and a hell of a lot to convince them that they should go on providing current account support without any real control over how it’s spent. I suppose that Greece still has the threat of leaving the Euro in this strategy though, so it’s not an unplayable hand from their point of view. What the hell, let’s write it up. Although it looks a lot like the policy mix that defined Argentina, <b>before</b> they defaulted and left the dollar peg. I’ll take it away and get it written up.</p>\n\n\t<p>He is shaking his head as he leaves your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>16:<br>\n“The Argentinean solution”, Maynard says. “I suppose it worked for them, so it can’t be ruled out, can it? But … Argentina was and is a commodity exporter with a clear way to raise hard currency revenues. Greece has got tourism and shipping as its exports. The tourism generates soft currency, and the shipping … well, with the best will in the world, I am not seeing those hard currency revenues coming back to Greece if it is in the state that this plan is going to leave it in. It looks like a roll of the dice to me. Remember that even today, Greece has twice the <span>GDP</span> per capita of Argentina.”</p>\n\n\t<p>As he leaves, Maynard starts to hum the theme from “Evita”, but thinks better of it.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>17:<br>\n“Would you try to live in the real world please?”, Maynard demands. “We are here to work out a package for Greece, not renegotiate the Lisbon Treaty. To start with, to get the sort of Euroland-wide inflation that would make a real difference to Greece’s competitiveness or debt burden would imply double digit inflation in Germany. But more fundamentally, this is a long term solution to a short term problem. What are we meant to do about Greece now and in the next couple of years? I’m not going to let you avoid all the tough decisions by assuming a deus ex machina.”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go back to 1</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>18:<br>\n“I think we’ve gone a bit off track here”, Maynard says. “You’re planning for a disorderly default, and leaving the Euro. Which, by the way, means that you’ve caused a financial meltdown and credit crunch in Euroland. But having done both those things, you’re planning for the Greek economy to still maintain a structural current account deficit (even though it’s not in a single currency any more) and to have this deficit financed by its European partners.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“You don’t mean what you say here. Do you mean that you want to go down this road because you <b>don’t</b> expect long term current account support from Europe, or that you’re looking for temporary current account support outside the Euro because you <b>do</b> expect the current account deficit to close in time?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “The first”, go to 47.<br>\nIf you answer “The second”, go to 33.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>19:<br>\nMaynard is chewing his lip; he is frustrated, although not unsympathetic. “This is pretty close to the current state of negotiations”, he says, shaking his head, “but there’s still a big gap between the minimum that the Greeks need to maintain political deliverability, and the maximum that the Germans are willing to deliver without any strings. There’s a fundamental credibility problem here. I can’t really fault your logic, but the politics look unworkable”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He shrugs his shoulders and leaves your office, in the direction of the word processing department.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>20:<br>\nMaynard hands you his pad. “I can’t work with this. We’ve taken Greece out of the euro and imposed a disorderly default. Now, with Europe in financial meltdown, we’re asking for the equivalent of a Marshall Plan, with no restructuring of the government system that caused this crisis? What, exactly, would the core European nations be getting out of this deal? Once Greece is out of the Euro, there’s a strong presumption that it’s off their hands, and the disorderly default and rejection of any loss of sovereignty reinforces that view. You are being much, much too blasé about the dangers of a financial crisis. This looks to me like the sort of mistake that gets written about in history books. Submit it if you like, but not with my name on it, please.”</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>21:<br>\n“Forget it”, says Maynard, shortly. “You can’t announce a disorderly default and then turn around and ask for no-strings cash. There might be the germ of an idea here, but it needs to be based on, at the very least, a negotiated writedown. Shall we go back and rethink the debt strategy?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “OK”, then go to 46.</i><br>\n<i>If you answer “No, I have made my decision on debt strategy”, go to 57</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>22:<br>\nMaynard gulps. “As you wish. And will Greece be remaining in the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yes, definitely”, go to 41<br>\nIf you answer “No, Greece has to leave the Euro, temporarily or permanently”, go to 33</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>23:<br>\nMaynard’s hands are trembling slightly as he pours a cup of tea. “Well, let’s go there, then!”, he says. “Default in the Euro, or default out of the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “In”, go to 10<br>\nIf you say “Out”, go to 52</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>24:<br>\nMaynard’s tone of voice turns hostile. “How, exactly, is Greece going to maintain service on an unreduced burden of euro-denominated debt, if it leaves the Euro? Will you concentrate, please? I think we’d better start again from the beginning.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go back to 1</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>25:<br>\nMaynard reads from the yellow legal pad on which he has been taking notes. “To recap, your plan is that Greece should declare a unilateral moratorium on its debt, while remaining within the Euro, and should then negotiate the appointment of a special commissioner to bring the primary fiscal balance back to zero, while enacting an internal devaluation to restore competitiveness”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“It’s got a certain coherence to it. We would at least be addressing the long term problem of the debt burden. Everything would really depend, however, on how much we could get for Greece in the way of fiscal transfers, and we do not really help our case with the moratorium – this is likely to cause them all sorts of problems, and doesn’t really do much to establish the Greek governments good faith. We can build some or that credibility back by showing Greece’s willingness to accept a tax commissioner, but this is going to be a very difficult political sell in Greece. In fact, when you combine that with the wage cuts, then I think that this package may be completely impossible to implement in Greece. It would certainly have the crowds on the streets, even if the fiscal transfers were very large.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“I will have it typed up and submitted”, he mutters, “but I think it has little chance of being seriously considered”. He excuses himself and walks out of your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>26:<br>\n“The short term debt path on this one is going to scare a lot of people”, Maynard remarks. “After all, you’re effectively deepening the austerity while trying to maintain service on an unserviceable debt burden. This plan has got a further restructuring or crisis more or less written into the numbers a few years down the road”.</p>\n\n\t<p>You wait for his final cutting remark, but it never comes.</p>\n\n\t<p>“But, there’s worse things than that. What we have here is a classic Eurofudge, and I think Europe might go for that. And if Greece goes along with your idea, they’ll certainly be playing the game the troika’s way, and I think they would have the right to expect a generous debt writedown further down the track, by which time we might have a less toxic political climate. If this works, we’re making real progress to a new Greece and a new Europe.</p>\n\n\t<p>“The problem is, will it play in Greece? If you think the current situation isn’t politically sustainable, then this plan definitely isn’t. It scarcely matters whether we’re going to include a sovereignty deal or not – although we will have to fill in that detail before the draft is complete. We can only go ahead with this line of thinking if you are convinced that the Greek political system is a lot more robust than it appears to be. On that basis, let’s start drafting”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>27:<br>\n“It’s worth a try.” Maynard shrugs. “We negotiate down the debt, then put Greece into effective administration by the Euroland partners, aiming to restore competitiveness by investment. If it worked, it would be heroic. I do worry that you’re asking a lot from both sides, politically – don’t underestimate the national humiliation factor for the Greeks here, or the reluctance of the Germans to put so much money into what is effectively a regional development scheme. If it works, it certainly forms a strong basis for fiscal union. Maybe that will help sell it. I’ll go and get it typed up”.</p>\n\n\t<p>As he leaves your office, he is whistling, “There May Be Trouble Ahead”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>28:<br>\n“Baby steps in the direction of fiscal union? Or something?”. Maynard is not looking wholly sceptical as he drains his tea.</p>\n\n\t<p>“So the idea here is that we’re going for a unilateral moratorium on debt – I still think this is far too aggressive, by the way – and then immediately throwing Greece on the mercy of the court, looking for large restructuring funds and giving up the governance in order to get them. This is a bit of a shock-treatment approach, and you shouldn’t underestimate how much disruption and political stress it’s going to cause in Greece, but I can see your idea here in trying to minimise the short term impact and maximise the consumption smoothing. I think the problem with it is the size of the funds that would be needed, and also it is going to take a lot of work to convince Europe that the end of the road here has a Greece with sufficient competitiveness to maintain current account balance. It’s not wholly dissimilar to Yanis Varoufakis’ ‘Modest Proposal’. A difficult sell to the creditor countries, but I think it deserves a chance. I’ll get it written up and submitted. Somehow, though, I think you’re too good for this naughty world.”</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>29:<br>\nMaynard screws up his face, like he’s tasted something sour. “We have to respect budgetary arithmetic here”, he says. “If we are not restructuring the debt, then it is going to be on an explosive path, and so the fiscal transfers needed to maintain service on it will also be on a growing path. Since the Greek economy is not going to generate enough output to pay the debt, a writedown is necessary out in the future. The only difference here is that Greece is going to be a constant debtor on the brink of default, continually in breach of its debt and defict targets and at the mercy of the troika; so it will effectively have a constant <span>IMF</span> program in return for its current account financing. At the right level, however, this might not be the worst plan – basically, it’s can-kicking forever. It’s economically equivalent to a plan whereby we just negotiate a writedown in return for a permanent <span>IMF</span> program.</p>\n\n\t<p>Maynard passes you a slim folder. “I happen to have had such a plan in my bottom drawer”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go to 5</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>30:<br>\nThe smile evaporates from Maynard’s face. “We need to be serious here”, he says. “This plan would be very hard on the Greek people indeed. In its favour, this is actually the only success story I can think of – it’s basically what Latvia did. Against it, Greece isn’t Latvia. It has much weaker institutions and it hasn’t just finished a decade of hyper-growth. And lots of people don’t think that Latvia was all that much of a success story. And the debt numbers were a lot better. I think this plan will play well with the harder-nosed members of the troika, but I suspect that the Greek government will run a mile from it. I’ll write it up”.</p>\n\n\t<p>As he leaves your office, you can hear him muttering “And I suppose it will get you a job in a think tank”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>31:<br>\nMaynard’s brow furrows. “We’ve got a tricky tightrope to walk here. If we can presume enough debt relief to bring the long term fiscal position to a non-explosive path, then the Euroland partners are already contributing quite a lot. Asking them to provide even more in the way of structural subsidies is going to be tough, although I suppose we are at least showing them a path to sustainability. The question is going to be – can we rely on enough fiscal support for Greece to smooth the path of adjustment and welfare spending to make the internal devaluation bearable for the Greek government? Hmm, how much political autonomy are we going to ask Greece to give up?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “I think we are going to need escrow accounts and a tax commissioner at the very least”, go to 45.</i></p>\n\n\t<p>If you answer “I just don’t see it as politically feasible to put a German taxman in charge of the Greek finance ministry”, go to 19.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>32:<br>\n“I’m sure you know what you’re doing”, Maynard says, with perhaps a flicker of sarcasm. “At some point in this process, we may have to start thinking about exactly how much, but let’s put that to one side for the time being. The next decision relates to the Greek current account. Are we going to aim to bring it roughly into balance?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “There isn’t a sustainable solution which involves Greece structurally consuming more than it produces. We need to get the economy back into balance”, turn to 14.<br>\nIf you answer “I don’t think current account balance is a realistic aim. Greece is going to need structural fiscal transfers, like Alabama or Wales”, turn to 48.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>33:<br>\nMaynard is scribbling notes on his legal pad. “So”, he says, “We’ve got a disorderly default here, and Greece is going to leave the euro in order to get back to current account balance, and we are going to be asking for fiscal transfers and subsidies to maintain living standards in Greece during the readjustment. This makes a kind of sense, but wow … you are doing a lot of damage to the economy of Euroland here. This has a financial crisis and credit crunch really quite likely across the Euro area, which is hardly the best environment for financing a generous fiscal bailout for Greece. Are you sure you don’t want to rethink your debt strategy?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you want to rethink your debt strategy, go back to 14</i></p>\n\n\t<p>“Presuming you don’t, then well – leaving the Euro is at least going to mean that we don’t have to worry about executing an internal devaluation. But Greece has quite a big import bill, and it is going to be asking for transfer payments to pay for medicines and fuel. Greece isn’t Iceland, it doesn’t have much of a stock of overseas assets to draw on. So, what governance arrangements would we be thinking of when arranging this transfer package?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you reply “Clearly there will have to be a tax commissioner and considerable loss of sovereignty”, go to 54.<br>\nIf you reply “There is no need for governance changes. The adjustment package can just take place through EU structural funds, although obviously the amounts will have to be very big”, go to 20.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>34:<br>\nMaynard pours himself another cup of tea. “This seems like a pretty aggressive way to treat the Troika, if we are assuming that Greece will still be dealing with them. But hey, let’s game it out. We’re keeping them in the Euro, and looking for structural fiscal transfers to fund a structural current account deficit (which is presumably going to have its counterpart in a structural fiscal deficit). And I suppose the idea is that we are going to get them to throw themselves on the mercy of the court, claiming that the domestic political tensions were just too urgent to support the debt burden for another minute. Might work, I guess. So, are we going the full monty in terms of Greece giving up sovereignty?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yup”, go to 8<br>\nIf you answer “Nope”, go to 50</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>35:<br>\n“Tough guy!”, Maynard grins. “So we’re going to advise Greece to maintain service on the debt, with no external help. In or out of the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you reply “Out”, go to 43.<br>\nIf you reply “In”, go to 30.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>36:<br>\nMaynard puts his pad of paper down and looks you in the eye. “I have to warn you that this kind of scheme, where the burden of adjustment is taken away by a big investment in infrastructure, is quite a long way away from the mainstream. And there aren’t very many credible examples of them working”, he says. “But what the hey, we’re here to think out of the box sometimes. What kind of governance arrangements are we thinking about?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Actually, I was thinking of a scheme based on a more stimulative monetary policy from the <span>ECB</span>”, go to 17.<br>\nIf you answer “A big <span>IMF</span> program”, go to 56.<br>\nIf you answer “I don’t think the Greek system will bear big governance changes. We will have to do it through EU structural funds”, go to 11</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>37:<br>\nMaynard’s nose wrinkles. “Since you’ve just declared a disorderly moratorium, negotiating for fiscal support from the people you’ve just defaulted on is perhaps going to be a little bit difficult. Not wholly impossible I suppose – as Greece still maintains the threat of Euro exit, which would be considerably more inconvenient for them – but very difficult. You’ve also got the anti-stimulative effect of the internal devaluation to think about, so from the perspective of the Greek people, this is still going to look and feel a lot like austerity, combined with the humiliation of default.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“I don’t like this plan. It does reduce debt levels, but in a needlessly swashbuckling way that is likely to cause as many problems as it solves. Quite apart from anything, we would need a subsidiary plan to reconstruct the Greek banking sector. I will submit it under your name, but I have little hope that it will prove acceptable to either the Greek or the Troika side”.</p>\n\n\t<p>You might have heard him muttering an insult under his breath as he walks out, but you might have been mistaken.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>38:<br>\n“OK”, says Maynard, between sips of tea. “This is getting somewhere. Negotiated writedown within the euro and then … what?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “An <span>IMF</span> program, to go alongside the structural current account financing”, go to 5.<br>\nIf you answer “Big structural investment funding from the <span>EIB</span> or something similar, to offset the structural current account deficit”, go to 53</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>39:<br>\n“Right”, says Maynard, pouring two cups of tea. “That’s the meat of the package right there. Now – are we putting together a plan which involves Greece staying in the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yes, definitely”, go to 4.<br>\nIf you answer “I can’t see how it can”, go to 55.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>40:<br>\n“So this is a sort of ‘graceful exit’ idea then?”, Maynard asks. If we can keep Greek society together, then we get money from the Troika to rebuild the banking system after the consequences of Euro exit, and to smooth the consumption path. But I worry about the politics. If you put an <span>IMF</span> program in place, it’s going to be very difficult to avoid your goal of not pursuing too much austerity or internal devaluation. And the standard of living in Greece is going to have to fall quite a lot in the near term, as the price of essential imports rises. Greece currently has twice the <span>GDP</span> of Turkey and I think it’s quite likely that your plan would end up narrowing that gap considerably. It seems more or less politically feasible to me, but the economics are pretty tough for Greece and Euroland. I’ll type it up and submit it, but I honestly think we have to be able to do better than this.”</p>\n\n\t<p>“Do we?”, you reply.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I don’t know”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>41:<br>\nMaynard is clearly worried. “This is going to be a very tough sell indeed for the Eurozone partners. You’re asking them to keep Greece in the Euro and keep making either new loans or fiscal transfers, in the context of a disorderly default. Are you sure you don’t want to revisit that decision?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you do, go back to 14</i></p>\n\n\t<p>You silence him with a look. He walks over to the refreshments trolley and pours himself a cup of tea.</p>\n\n\t<p>“I am not at all sure about this. But let’s fill in the rest of the details. Is the plan going to involve an internal devaluation?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yes. There will need to be wage controls and benefit cuts. We need to get the cost of production in Greece down far enough for it to be able to compete within Europe”, turn to 9.<br>\nIf you answer “No. That’s bad cyclical policy.”, turn to 6.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>42:<br>\nMaynard makes a face. “If the Greek government was capable of delivering an outcome like that, it’s hard to see how they would have got into this situation in the first place. Frankly, the fate of the structural funds that have already gone in is unlikely to make anyone optimistic about doing the same thing on ten times the scale. I’ll give it a try and get it typed up, but it seems very unlikely to me that this is politically sellable, and even if the Troika have a sudden attack of generosity, it probably won’t work. Still, dream big”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He leaves his cup of tea behind and walks out of your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>43:<br>\n“I was joking”, Maynard says, a somewhat concerned expression on his face. “Greece can’t leave the Euro and plan to stay current on Euro-denominated debt. Shall we back up a few stages?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>Go to 47</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>44:<br>\nMaynard gulps his tea. “Quite ambitious. Do you really think that the only thing wrong with the Greek economy is that it hasn’t had enough foreign investment poured into it? This is going to be a tough sell for Germany, and not just for them. But let’s game it out – what are the governance arrangements you’re thinking of?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “A radical overhaul. All the investment spending should be carried out by the European Investment Bank, while the Greek budget falls under the responsibility of a specially appointed fiscal commissioner”, turn to 28.<br>\nIf you answer “I don’t think any specific governance arrangements are either feasible or desirable. All the investment spending can be carried out under the normal mechanisms of EU structural funds”, turn to 13.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>45:<br>\n“Baby steps in the direction of fiscal union!”, Maynard exclaims. “I wonder, though, is it really workable? This is effectively the German solution for the <span>DDR </span>- we effectively mutualise the past debt liability, hand over political control to a more functional entity, who is going to impose wage cuts, and then put a regime of transfer payments in place to smooth the adjustment path. I can’t say it’s not sensible, but the <span>DDR</span> had a fairly tough adjustment path and for obvious reasons, I don’t think we can count on the transfer payments being anywhere near as generous. I’ll just go and get it typed up – I think the troika will be glad to see this spelled out, but I do worry that you’re asking the Greek side to bear much more in the way of austerity and humiliation than it’s capable of”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>46:<br>\n“OK, we’re getting somewhere”, Maynard says. “A big writedown of the debt will help a lot in terms of the fiscal balance, and then we can move to talking about the level of the structural fiscal transfers. This is basically taking us toward fiscal union, so it can’t be done quickly, but I can see how it’s moving in the right direction. Do we have Greece staying in the Euro?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “No, they leave the Euro”, go to 12.<br>\nIf you answer “Of course, yes”, go to 38.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>47:<br>\nMaynard pulls a face. “Well, at least we’re being politically realistic here. Plan for the worst and hope for the best, I suppose. That really cuts down our options and makes them in general much more unpalatable. I guess the debt strategies boil down to disorderly default, or tough it out”.</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you reply “Well, disorderly default it is then”, go to 23.<br>\nIf you reply “Well, tough it out it is then”, go to 35.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>48:<br>\n“I think we’re scoring points for economic realism here, but storing up political difficulties for ourselves later”, Maynard says. “But let’s game this one out then. What’s the debt strategy?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you say “That the current process is a can-kicking farce. We should just plan for a straightforward default on the debt”, turn to 2.<br>\nIf you say “That part of the fiscal contribution is going to have to take the form of a significant further reduction in the debt by the official sector, over and above the private sector contribution already made”, turn to 46.<br>\nIf you say “That we have to find a solution within the constraints of the current nominal debt level. We’ve got a certain amount of private sector writedown, but there won’t be any more”, turn to 29</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>49:<br>\n“So”, Maynard says, “The plan is that we’re only going for the current debt restructuring offer, and looking to get back to current account balance in some way. I guess that means we’re saving the fiscal transfers for later, to soften the burden of adjustment. Might make sense, I guess – although I think a lot of people are going to question the debt dynamics without any further restructuring. And this plan has them staying in the Euro, yes?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “Yes”, go to 3.<br>\nIf you answer “No”, go to 24.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>50:<br>\n“Rrrrright”, Maynard says. “I am not really seeing the troika handing over a load of no-strings cash for an indefinite period with no control over how it’s spent. But go on, amaze me. Is there any element of internal devaluation or restructuring in this one?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “No, there isn’t. I would be looking for structural funds to invest in productivity improvements. There are a load of projects in the tourism and transport industries”, go to 21.<br>\nIf you answer “Yes, there is”, go to 15</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>51:<br>\nMaynard is no longer even pretending to be polite. “With respect, this is ideological bouillabaisse. It sounds like you have heard of ‘Keynesian stimulus’, perhaps at university, and decided it was a good thing. Greece doesn’t need a cyclical policy; it still has the problem of consuming in excess of its production. And in any case, even if you carried out that fiscal policy, you are offsetting it with the antistimulative effect of the internal devaluation. Not that you could carry out this fiscal policy – you planned a disorderly default, don’t you remember? That means that you can’t run deficit financing, because nobody would lend to you. Except the troika, but you burned your bridges there by declaring a unilateral moratorium. You can submit this plan if you like, but you’ll have to get it typed up yourself. I’m not having my name anywhere near it”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He throws his papers down onto your desk with some force, and slams the door on the way out.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span>.<br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>52:<br>\nMaynard smiles. “The full Argentina, eh? Before you start congratulating yourself, I think we should remember that Greece doesn’t have a natural gas monopoly like <span>YPF</span>. It isn’t an exporter of primary commodities priced in dollars. It’s a tourism and shipping economy, and its <span>GDP</span> per capita is rather more than twice that of Argentina. I am less than sure how well the Argentine outcome forecasts the likely consequences of Greece doing the same. I don’t know how they would pay for essential imports, and suspect that the answer might be quite unpleasant. On the other hand, I suppose it might be the cathartic event that is needed for a thorough transformation of Greek politics. I’ll write it up.”</p>\n\n\t<p>He is whistling the theme from Evita as he walks out the door.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>53:<br>\n“If”, Maynard says with a sigh, “unlimited amounts of money were available on a structural basis, this would be my favourite solution of all. Something like it is Yanis Vourofakis’ ‘Modest Proposal’. But it doesn’t seem to me to have the ring of political possibility – Germany has politics too you know. And if we are going to try to smooth Greece’s path to fiscal balance, while concentrating the transfers in new capital investment projects rather than budget consumption spending, then we are going to keep running into financing constraints. Maybe, just maybe, Greece can grow its way out trouble, but I think it is going to be difficult to convince anyone that this will happen in the absence of a plan for thorough and complete transformation of Greece’s political institutions. Let’s run it up the flagpole, though, and see if anyone salutes it.”</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>54:<br>\nMaynard is staring at his legal pad. “This looks like a mess to me. Greece has defaulted, left the euro, and had a tax commissioner appointed – how many more humiliations can you heap on them? Economically it has a certain internal logic but politically it is all over the place and I think that kills the chance of the transfer payments which you need if you’re going to achieve primary balance after the default without massively contractionary domestic fiscal policy. We can type it up and submit it, but I think it’s only going to be looked at as an example of the kind of idea that an economist might come up with”.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>55:<br>\n“There’s a bit of tension in that, don’t you think?”, Maynard asks. “You’re negotiating a debt writedown for Greece, and then we plan for them to leave the Euro. That’s going to need to be carefully handled, or the Eurolanders are going to seriously doubt their good faith. It’s also quite likely that this would cause a financial crisis and credit crunch in Euroland, which would seriously impair their ability to help Greece. Still, let’s game this out. I suppose we don’t have to address the question of internal devaluation if we have an external devaluation, but we’re going to need a lot of fiscal transfers in the meantime. What sort of terms are we going to arrange them on?”</p>\n\n\t<p><i>If you answer “It’s going to need to be a pretty strict <span>IMF</span> program”, go to 40.<br>\nIf you answer “I don’t agree that we will need big fiscal transfers. Once Greece is outside the Euro, it can start building back growth again”, go to 16.</i><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>56:<br>\n“I can’t see the <span>IMF</span> going for that at all”, Maynard says. “Without some action on the debt burden, the money is pouring in from the official creditors on the investment side, but then pouring out to the official creditors on the debt side. It’s effectively just a somewhat random redistribution of income between the official community. Unless you’re going to attempt to achieve fiscal surplus, but in that case you are proposing so much in the way of spending cuts and tax rises that it’s hard to see what you had against internal devaluation. This is messy, horrible can-kicking in the most pejorative sense, avoiding all the tough decisions. Submit it if you like, but I wash my hands of it”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He doesn’t meet your eye or wish you well as he leaves your office.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span><br>\n<hr></p>\n\n\t<p>57:<br>\nMaynard shrugs and say “Well then, if you think that there is no chance of a negotiated writedown, and you want to follow this line, then I think the only ethical thing you can do is refuse to submit a proposal. There’s no point in just wasting everyone’s time with a disorderly default, followed by a proposal for no-strings cash for pie-in-the-sky regional development funds, to be administered by the same Greek government structures that got them into this mess”.</p>\n\n\t<p>He mutters something as he walks out of your office. It sounds like “Well, what can you do?”. There is a look of grudging respect in his eyes as he shakes your hand.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span></p>"
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"title" : "Liberation Terroir: The Great Escape (1963)",
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"content" : "<img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HRFyEZSIcUk/TzvTPNmizeI/AAAAAAAAEJA/gfktXjp3-8A/s1600/GreatEscape5.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Stalag Luft III from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)\"><i>The Great Escape</i></a>; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br><a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\"><i>Breaking Out and Breaking In: A Distributed Film Fest of Prison Breaks and Bank Heists</i></a>—co-sponsored by BLDGBLOG, <a href=\"http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/\"><i>Filmmaker Magazine</i></a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/studioxnyc\">Studio-X NYC</a>—continued recently with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)\"><i>The Great Escape</i></a> (1963), directed by John Sturges. <br><br>For those of you new to the fest, from January to April 2012 we will be watching a curated series of films at home, then discussing those films online; here is the <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/breaking-out-and-breaking-in.html\">complete schedule</a>.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WpiQOkTZO7c/TzvTSBbIsWI/AAAAAAAAEJw/eMRVjhyUeCA/s1600/GreatEscape9.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: A guard tower from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film)\"><i>The Great Escape</i></a>; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>As usual, I'll be focusing on the <i>spatial premise</i> of the film, not its directing, characterization, or dialogue; the idea is not to experiment in film criticism but to explore various scenarios of escape.<br><br>Also, as usual: there are spoilers ahead!<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JaQOcx5ftPY/TzvTBGg5yrI/AAAAAAAAEIA/bv3Rk_20LqI/s1600/GreatEscape1.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-POuCMDX370o/TzvTFDFAtUI/AAAAAAAAEIw/qe7yI4k46uw/s1600/GreatEscape4a.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Establishing the camp; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>The film opens with the arrival of several truckloads of Allied war prisoners at a well-fortified German camp in the forests of western Poland. The lighthearted and substantially less than serious tone of the film is immediately made clear, however, not only through the jaunty title score but in the actions of the prisoners themselves as they spill out into their new environment.<br><br>Right away, escape is on their minds; we see them kneeling down to look for weaknesses beneath the boarding houses, scanning the barbed perimeter fence, and discussing the logistics of tunneling out into the woods beyond. In fact, several half-baked attempts at escape are made in the first few minutes of the film. <br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oYjxU0x6v_0/TzvTCYku-HI/AAAAAAAAEIQ/IW_thXL3AAc/s1600/GreatEscape2.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uk2Z1xMbQGs/TzvTECzGhmI/AAAAAAAAEIY/6UODvKI4pLw/s1600/GreatEscape3.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Looking for weaknesses; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>The prisoners disguise themselves as rural day workers, for instance, hoping to sneak out through the front gate, yard tools in hand—but they are spotted right away and sent back. Then several men camouflage themselves beneath forest debris, riding out on trucks under piles of pine branches—before the stabs of a menacing pitchfork convince them to pop out from this botanical ruse and surrender. <br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8BXIhtkkDtg/TzvWpGA2w2I/AAAAAAAAEKY/NxX-8EeM_6Y/s1600/GreatEscape12.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Humans disguised as trees; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>In short order, we learn that the camp was specifically built for these men. Flipping through the files of his newly arrived prisoners, and speaking with obvious exasperation as he reads their dossiers of escape—\"escaped, recaptured, escaped, recaptured,\" Luftwaffe Colonel von Luger sighs, throwing files across his desk—the superintendent explains that the camp is, in fact, inescapable. <br><br>\"There will be no escapes from this camp,\" he says flatly—to which the British Captain Ramsey replies that \"it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they can't, it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.\" <br><br>Escape is part of the soldiers' contract; it is something they are literally required to try to do.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z6gy_3PRMak/TzvTQY4NnMI/AAAAAAAAEJM/dWqASNFnJB8/s1600/GreatEscape6.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uvgsK1dm0d8/TzvTQxAc1OI/AAAAAAAAEJY/P3qNPaGEbLw/s1600/GreatEscape7.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Reading the files of failed escapes; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>But \"it must stop,\" the Nazi insists—however, \"it is because we expect the opposite that we have brought you here. This is a new camp. It has been built to hold you and your men. It is organized to incorporate all we have learned of security measures. And, in me, you will not be dealing with the common jailer.\"<br><br>Here, it's worth recalling that the film is based on a true story, and that the actual camp—called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalag_Luft_III\">Stalag Luft III</a>—was located for very specific topographical reasons, as if applying the concept of <i>terroir</i> to prison construction. More specifically, the sandy soil upon which the camp was built was seen as all but impossible to tunnel through. <br><br>Last month, on his fantastic blog <a href=\"http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/\"><i>Through the Sandglass</i></a>, geologist Michael Welland discussed the film's <a href=\"http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2012/01/tom-dick-harry-and-george-sand-and-the-great-escape.html\">geology of escape</a>: \"The prisoner of war camp was built, intentionally, on the sandy soils of the forests of today’s western Poland, along the banks of the Bóbr river. Intentionally, because the river valley is filled with sandy sediments deposited from melt waters of the Ice Age glaciers and carried by the ancestral Bóbr. And sand is difficult to tunnel through. Very difficult.\" Additionally—and much more visibly—\"the excavated sand from the tunnels was immediately visible if deposited against the darker topsoil\" outside, which leads to one of the escapees' more interesting innovations. <br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dbWcfHM4yCQ/TzvX5975RQI/AAAAAAAAEN0/hG6AxF6EvL8/s1600/GreatEscape30.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GwOyLSuBP5g/TzvX6nikxcI/AAAAAAAAEN8/R9YB44M8mHo/s1600/GreatEscape31.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7ziYPEkltlI/TzvYExIZ8dI/AAAAAAAAEOQ/NqcjaNjNmNc/s1600/GreatEscape32.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: The relaxing technique of soiling a garden down your pant legs; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>One of the British POWs fabricates a kind of illicit earth-moving garment meant to be worn inside the prisoners' trousers; filled with dark soil from the tunnels soon underway beneath the boarding houses, these string-operated bags can be dumped surreptitiously into the gardens outside. This is reminiscent, of course, of the garden scene in <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/prison-camp-is-for-escaping-grand.html\"><i>Grand Illusion</i></a>, which we watched last month, but it also allows for the oddly comic sight of prisoner after prisoner walking out into the garden, only to evacuate this terrestrial excess down their pant legs, literally soiling the sandy ground. <br><br>But this is not the only method the prisoners use for getting rid of surplus soil. In a surreal scene inside the camp's erstwhile cafeteria and study hall, exaggerated shudders begin to pass through the roof of the building, lurching and convulsing as if in an earthquake—which, in a sense, is exactly what's happening, as we learn that the diggers have begun storing their dirt above the rafters in the attic of the hall. Alas, the unbelievable rolling seismicity of this scene is the last we see or hear of this comically artificial tectonic activity. <br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TQ0IxpZ2YkI/TzvXtXJKRPI/AAAAAAAAEMs/uQr3eKc7uG0/s1600/GreatEscape24.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: James Garner looks up with alarm as artificial earthquake waves shudder through the roof; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>Which brings us to the buildings.<br><br>As in <a href=\"http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-dismantle-your-door-man-escaped.html\"><i>A Man Escaped</i></a>, we see that, by dismantling the everyday environment in which we are trapped, we might reveal hidden tools of escape—and then to assemble ways out. In this case, the boarding houses are taken apart from within, their wooden planks strategically removed so as not to induce structural collapse (save for one scene involving an over-enthusiastic campmate collapsing through his newly weakened bed frame). <br><br>In the architectural equivalent of cutting hair with thinning scissors, the buildings are lightened of their wood, which is then taken below ground and assembled into bracing for the tunnels. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zEhpaB9VU1k/TzvXrDJRARI/AAAAAAAAEMU/dRawWITZ7ts/s1600/GreatEscape22.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hmUeMRYwrm8/TzvXtIE-Z3I/AAAAAAAAEMg/XoRSf5tImHQ/s1600/GreatEscape23.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Steve McQueen as erstwhile <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Matta-Clark\">Matta-Clark</a> of the camp; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>As all this unfolds, the tunnels expand below. <br><br>In a well-composed shot, we see Charles Bronson—who has been unspooling string from one end of the tunnel to the other—join two fellow diggers to form a kind of string trigonometry at the tunnel head. Using a plumb bob and pencil, they—incorrectly, as we learn later—determine the tunnel's length.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FkZYC4EW_CA/TzvXuBEfQvI/AAAAAAAAEM4/fbapohGRfeM/s1600/GreatEscape25.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0wkap3L0Ix0/TzvX4KKsrII/AAAAAAAAENY/cqOgQMysGP4/s1600/GreatEscape28.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Measuring the tunnel; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>But it's all for naught. The tunnel (one of three simultaneous excavations) is soon discovered. One of the Nazi guards inadvertently reveals it when he spills tea onto the floor of a boarding house kitchen; the water rapidly drains down through the tiles without trace, indicating some sort of void below. And into the void go the Nazis. <br><br> <img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XMZW_jHmbII/TzvYFoHuzKI/AAAAAAAAEO0/makXH0a20XY/s1600/GreatEscape35.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_r5OL5sx00A/TzvYHfxz2rI/AAAAAAAAEO8/UMnJZe7w2RM/s1600/GreatEscape36.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Discovering the tunnel with tea; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>In any case, I could recount the events of the film ad nauseam, as its procedural tracking of the tunneling process—which, luckily for the prisoners, included two other escape routes from which to choose next—lends itself well to description. But I'll instead just make a few final points, and then recommend that you check out the movie yourselves:<br><br>At one point early in the film, Steve McQueen's baseball-tossing character, Captain Virgil Hilts, proposes an absolutely idiotic method of escape, in which he and a fellow inmate will literally burrow through the earth \"like moles,\" passing the dirt behind them, one at a time, as if swimming breaststroke through the solid matter of the planet. After detailing his ridiculous idea, McQueen self-confidently juts his head forward, making a kind of monkey face, as his future collaborator tries not to laugh beside him.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6ov7deuFffI/TzvXQU9BCCI/AAAAAAAAELs/q7wH3J3V6aw/s1600/GreatEscape19.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Steve McQueen wants to burrow through the earth like a mole; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>Unsurprisingly, however, the plan doesn't work.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DwpO9pA7Wjs/TzvXQ8YXsDI/AAAAAAAAEL4/ze5BZt3HY-M/s1600/GreatEscape20.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Steve McQueen's mole fantasy remains tragically unfulfilled; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>Captain Hilts and his Scottish sidekick are almost immediately recaptured and sent to \"the cooler,\" a building filled with unfurnished concrete cells (perhaps foreshadowing McQueen's role in <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070511/\"><i>Papillon</i></a> a decade later). <br><br>But fear not! Oh, ye McQueenites. Captain Hilts later finds his odd terrestrial fantasy indirectly fulfilled when he has an opportunity to pop his head up out of a hole in the earth—like a mole!—and look back at the camp from which he is about to escape. He is beyond the camp's perimeter, though there is still a long way to go.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-n-7VE9z7MbI/TzvYRiCWO7I/AAAAAAAAEQA/DjlB3t58DEM/s1600/GreatEscape41.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j0TJzIL1c6A/TzvYdht5QdI/AAAAAAAAEQg/TqrD7IUfZBY/s1600/GreatEscape43.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: Steve McQueen as topography: the actor's head emerges from the surface of the earth; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>Later, with freedom nearly within his grasp and his fellow inmates scattered throughout the Polish and German countrysides, McQueen tries to jump a stolen Nazi motorcycle over a barbed-wire border into Switzerland. <br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MvmC3yWJyxE/TzvYeH0vaMI/AAAAAAAAEQo/GCgDBsAJS5c/s1600/GreatEscape44.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Image: Border games; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>But that, too, does not work, and McQueen is thrown back into the cooler. <br><br>The rest of the film is peppered with counterfeit documents and rewoven clothes, secret desks inside tabletops and cupboards full of smuggled foods, homemade potato whiskey and, all along, the spaces of the tunnels themselves, three simultaneous acts of excavation that, in their real-life versions, were a \"legendary feat of engineering,\" according to the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/world/europe/at-great-escape-site-tunnel-is-excavated-by-modern-engineers.html\"><i>New York Times</i></a>.<br><br><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 2px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ipHKfhYAU8Q/TzvYRfDm_ZI/AAAAAAAAEPw/mLcWqtkJbl8/s1600/GreatEscape40.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 5px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-U39GxL711UY/TzvYcUMXrOI/AAAAAAAAEQQ/aOKSkmUAd90/s1600/GreatEscape42.jpg\" width=\"535\" height=\"227\" alt=\"\"><small>[Images: One of the tunnels; courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.mgm.com/\">Metro Goldwyn Mayer</a>].</small><br><br>As that article goes on to explain, a team of \"British-based engineers, battlefield archaeologists and historians\" recently tried to repeat the feat of digging these tunnels, producing a \"replica tunnel\" to test their theories of how the originals were created: <blockquote>The team’s task was to employ “reverse engineering” by uncovering the tunnels and what remained of the tunnelers’ jury-rigged equipment to replicate the wartime fliers’ ingenuity. Ultimately, the team members were stunned that, even without the menace of the ever-watchful Nazi camp guards, they were unable to match their wartime counterparts fully, particularly in the most crucial skill, digging a tunnel 30 feet below the camp surface without repeated collapses of the sandy soil above.</blockquote>The archaeological side of this 2011 investigation revealed the extent of the \"improvisational engineering\" we mentioned earlier, whereby everyday spaces and objects are dismantled and reassembled into tools of escape. For instance, the archaeologists uncovered \"a set of rusting trolley wheels, the metal scavenged from remnants of a campsite stove and a coil spring taken from prison gramophones; wood paneling for the tunnel’s roof and sidewalls, fashioned from the prisoners’ bed boards; and a ventilation pump with a bellows and piping made from a prisoner’s kitbag, ice hockey sticks and tins of powdered milk. The pièce de résistance was a rusting radio made from a biscuit box, the wiring stolen from the prisoners’ huts and batteries scrounged from German guards.\"<br><br>For more, check out the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001GF2EM/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=bldgblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0001GF2EM\">film itself</a>. <br><br><small>(Thanks to Peter Smith for pointing out the <i>New York Times</i> article when it first came out! Up next: <i>Escape from Alcatraz</i> on Friday, February 17; posts about <i>Cool Hand Luke</i> and <i>Papillon</i> are forthcoming soon).</small><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8663346-5632424798391476832?l=bldgblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Jeremy Lin story",
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"content" : "<p>Why <a title=\"Jeremy Lin\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Lin\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Jeremy Lin</a> suddenly such hot stuff?</p>\n<p>Last night I listened to sports radio from ESPN, WFAN in New York, <a title=\"KNBR\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KNBR\" rel=\"wikipedia\">KNBR</a> in San Francisco, and WEEI in Boston, as well as to KOVO here in <a title=\"Provo, Utah\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provo%2C_Utah\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Provo, Utah</a> (where I’m hanging this week). One of the talkers put it best, saying something like this: “Let’s face it. There is no other story right now. Jeremy Lin is all we can talk about, because he’s too damned interesting.”</p>\n<p>Tonight the saga continued. Jeremy Lin scored 27 points with 12 assists (and 8 turnovers) as the Knicks beat the Raptors in Toronto on a 3-point shot by — of course — Jeremy Lin. Also this: he made the winning shot with half a second on the clock. And that was after tying the game up a few seconds earlier with a drive to the basket in heavy traffic, drawing a foul, and making that shot too. That’s two three-point plays in a row. Great stuff. Legendary, considering that he’s done this kind of thing night after night, though a career that’s just six games long, so far.</p>\n<p>So let’s pause to look at what makes a story — especially one so irresistible as this one:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>A character. That is, a protagonist. Somebody you can identify with, because they’re interesting and unique. Ideally, they aren’t from Central Casting. And they have flaws as well as positive qualities.</li>\n<li>A problem. That is, a challenge or a struggle that keeps you interested. (Turning the page, coming back for the next episode, whatever.)</li>\n<li>Movement toward a resolution. That is, the clear sense that this is all going somewhere, no matter how bad things might be now, or how complicated the plot lines thicken and braid.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Jeremy Lin scores big on all three. Like all of us, he’s not typical. In his case, especially for basketball. He’s 6’3, but that’s about average for a point guard. He’s also skinny, not bulging with muscles, not covered in tatoos. He’s also Chinese, in the ethnic sense, though he’s an American kid who grew up in Palo Alto. You don’t find many Chinese (or even Asian) players in the <a title=\"National Basketball Association\" href=\"http://www.nba.com/\" rel=\"homepage\">NBA</a>, or even at the college level. He’s also a devout Christian who is quick to thank God, though not so quick as Tim Tebow.</p>\n<p>He also has a problem: until just a few games ago, he couldn’t get much respect.</p>\n<p>While he was named Player of the Year by many for leading Paly High to the state championship as a Senior, and was first team all-state in California that same year, he wasn’t recruited by any major schools, or even many minor ones. He ended up going to Harvard, which doesn’t give athletic scholarships and where he played four solid years of ball before graduating with a degree in economics and a 3.1 GPA. He was first team all-Ivy, and got kudos from many coaches, including Connecticut’s <a title=\"Jim Calhoun\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Calhoun\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Jim Calhoun</a> (on whose team he dropped 30 points and grabbed 9 boards), but went undrafted by the NBA. After excelling in an <a title=\"NBA Summer League\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_Summer_League\" rel=\"wikipedia\">NBA summer league</a>, he found his way to the end of the bench for the <a title=\"Golden State Warriors\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_State_Warriors\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Golden State Warriors</a>, his home team growing up. They cut him. Then he surfaced at the <a title=\"Houston Rockets\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Rockets\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Houston Rockets</a>. They cut him too. Then the <a title=\"New York Knicks\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Knicks\" rel=\"wikipedia\">New York Knicks</a> picked him up off waivers from Houston. They were ready to cut him too, but needed help from deep in the bench after their two starting stars couldn’t play.</p>\n<p>Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the rest is history. Lin played only 55 minutes in the Knicks’ prior 23 games, most of which the team lost. Then he came off the bench in a game on February 4 — remember, this is just ten days ago — and scored 25 points with 5 boards and 7 assists. The Knicks won. The Knicks have gone undefeated since then, with Lin as their point guard. He’s scored more than 20 points in all of those games, and hit the winning shot in two of them. He also out-scored Kobe Bryant, with 38 points, in a game against the Lakers.</p>\n<p>So it’s a triumphant story, but it’s not over. What keeps us tuned in and turning the pages is that we don’t know what will happen next. Is he really <em>that </em>good? Can he keep it up? If the answers to either of those questions is yes, how many other Jeremy Lins are out there, unrecognized?</p>\n<p>We don’t know, and that keeps us interested too.</p>\n<p>In my case, I’m interested in Jeremy Lin as a character because both my older kids went to Paly High when we lived in Palo Alto. My son and I probably played basketball on some of the same courts Jeremy played on later. I also watched Jeremy play when he was at Harvard. I remember one game where it was clear that Jeremy was the best player on the floor. But the next night we went to a Celtics game and couldn’t help comparing the two games. The difference was extreme. I couldn’t imagine any of the players I saw at the Harvard game playing in the NBA, Jeremy Lin included.</p>\n<p>But here he is. I’ve watched some of his games, and it’s clear that he’s a solid point guard without a lot of flash, reminding me of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Nash\">Steve Nash</a>, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Fisher\">Derek Fisher</a> and <a title=\"John Stockton\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stockton\" rel=\"wikipedia\">John Stockton</a> in their primes. Good penetrator. Good shooter. Great at sharing the ball and running the floor. But I think there’s more going on than talent and style. Basketball, like all sports, is a head game. Skill isn’t enough. You’ve got to have your head straight. <a title=\"Wilt Chamberlain\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilt_Chamberlain\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Wilt Chamberlain</a>, one of the greatest players of all time, and the only one ever to score 100 points in a game (when there were no 3-point shots, not that he would have taken any), was a notoriously bad foul shooter. Yet in practice, I’ve read, Wilt was terrific at foul-shooting. He just choked in games.</p>\n<p>What I’m saying is that Jeremy Lin is a head-case in the positive sense: he’s broken through into a zone where his head is level and his emotions are positive. He believes in himself, and he believes in his team. He has the poise of a player who has been a starter for ten years. The other players he makes look good include Bill Walker, <a title=\"Landry Fields\" href=\"http://twitter.com/landryfields\" rel=\"twitter\">Landry Fields</a>, <a title=\"Jared Jeffries\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Jeffries\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Jared Jeffries</a> and <a title=\"Steve Novak\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Novak\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Steve Novak</a>, none of whom are big stars.</p>\n<p>Can’t help loving it. The story is too good not to.</p>\n<p>[Later...] Well, the Knicks played two more games since I wrote the above, winning one and losing the other. Jeremy Lin scored 10 points with 13 assists in the first, and 25 points with 5 assists and 4 steals in the second. Alas, he also had nine turnovers in that one. Protecting the ball is a weakness of his — and now he’s not overlooked by opposing defenses. Still, you can’t win them all. He’s clearly a solid NBA player on a team that was tanking without him and now has strong shot at making the playoffs.</p>\n<p>So I want to add two more points to the ones I made above.</p>\n<p>One is that Lin’s ethnicity, while it <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/17/opinion/asian-men-can-jump.html\">adds spice</a> to his story, has nothing to do with his qualities as a basketball player. On this issue lots of commentators are quite wrong. Says <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Frazier\">Walt Frazier</a> in <a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/sports/basketball/nba/story/2012-02-15/how-did-everyone-miss-jeremy-lin/53124082/1\">this USA Today story</a>, ”This league is dominated by African Americans. What are the odds of an Asian guy coming on and having this impact? It’s amazing. It’s inexplicable.” No, it’s not. The chance is very small that the next NBA player coming through a door will be Asian, but the NBA has hundreds of players spread across 30 teams. It should be no surprise that an Asian guy would show up every once in awhile, especially if he’s an American who grew up playing excellent high school and college ball, as Jeremy Lin did. And his impact has everything to do with his skills as a player and nothing to do with his name or his looks. The only influence those had (I say, in the past tense) was on talent scouting. A big reason he escaped notice was that he didn’t look like a typical basketball player. This is now a mistake that scouts are less likely to make. (By the way, <a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/video-jeremy-lins-agent-talks-linsanity-with-darren-rovell-2012-2\">Lin’s agent</a> is black, and Lin has a great sense of humor about his unique non-basketball qualities. I mean, you’ve gotta see t<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9yVnKQNj58\">his video</a>.)</p>\n<p>The other is that Lin has clearly worked on his game. By that I mean he is not the player we saw at Paly High, at Harvard, or even in games for the Golden State Warriors or the Houston Rockets. He has improved. Practicing with NBA players has made him a better player. Also, at the Knicks, he has been learning a new offense under Coach <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_D%27Antoni\">Mike D’Antoni</a>. Remember how well D’Antoni did in Phoenix with Steve Nash at guard? That’s why the Knicks recruited D’Antoni. Turns out Lin is a lot like Nash: a smart non-egotistical high-energy player who runs the floor at high speed, can navigate through traffic, looks to pass before he shoots, and plays tough defense that forces a lot of turnovers. That’s why other players like to have him on the floor. The coach too.</p>\n<p>Some links from Zemanta:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-lin-valentines-day-2012-2\">Jeremy Lin Forgot It Was Valentine’s Day In College Once And Had To Whip Up Some Chicken Parm At The Last Minute</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://losangeles.sbnation.com/los-angeles-lakers/2012/2/14/2798254/jeremy-lin-lakers-knicks-sports-illustrated-cover\">Jeremy Lin, Lakers Make Cover Of Sports Illustrated</a> <a href=\"http://losangeles.sbnation.com\" title=\"http://losangeles.sbnation.(\">losangeles.sbnation.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/jeremy-lin-sports-illustrated-cover-2012-2\">Jeremy Lin Is On The Cover Of Sports Illustrated</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://welcometothe716.com/2012/02/14/floyd-money-mayweather-disses-jeremy-lin/\">Floyd “Money” Mayweather disses Jeremy Lin</a> <a href=\"http://welcometothe716.com\" title=\"http://welcometothe716.(\">welcometothe716.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1066157-jeremy-lin-video-watch-msgs-hype-video-starring-eminem-and-knicks-new-st\">Jeremy Lin Video: Watch MSG’s Hype Video Starring Eminem and Knicks’ New Star</a> <a href=\"http://bleacherreport.com\" title=\"http://bleacherreport.(\">bleacherreport.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://huff100w.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/what-makes-it-news/\">What makes it News?</a> <a href=\"http://huff100w.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://huff100w.wordpress.(\">huff100w.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://kayceeweezy.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/floyd-mayweather-hits-jeremy-lin-on-race/\">Floyd Mayweather Hits Jeremy Lin On Race</a> <a href=\"http://kayceeweezy.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://kayceeweezy.wordpress.(\">kayceeweezy.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://owenstrachan.com/2012/02/14/jeremy-lin-the-basketball-star-nobody-wanted-a-gospel-coalition-essay/\">Jeremy Lin, The Basketball Star Nobody Wanted: A Gospel Coalition Essay</a> <a href=\"http://owenstrachan.com\" title=\"http://owenstrachan.(\">owenstrachan.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://gangsgoonsandgunz.rahrahrecords.com/sports/10-awesome-jeremy-lininspired-sayings/\">The 10 Most Awesome Jeremy Lin-Inspired Sayings</a> <a href=\"http://gangsgoonsandgunz.rahrahrecords.com\" title=\"http://gangsgoonsandgunz.rahrahrecords.(\">gangsgoonsandgunz.rahrahrecords.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://welcometothe716.com/2012/02/14/dont-be-lindecisive-with-jeremy/\">Don’t be LINdecisive with Jeremy</a> <a href=\"http://welcometothe716.com\" title=\"http://welcometothe716.(\">welcometothe716.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/jeremy-lin-fanatics-available-for-the-taking-visit-www-linfanatic-com/\">Jeremy Lin Fanatics Available for the Taking Visit: www.LinFanatic.com</a> <a href=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.(\">jeffthoghts.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://923now.radio.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-shares-his-favorite-music/\">Linsanity! Jeremy Lin Shares His Favorite Music</a> <a href=\"http://923now.radio.com\" title=\"http://923now.radio.(\">923now.radio.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.blippitt.com/linsanity-top-jeremy-lin-nicknames-video/\">LINsanity: Top Jeremy Lin Nicknames (VIDEO)</a> <a href=\"http://blippitt.com\" title=\"http://blippitt.(\">blippitt.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/37104/how-to-stop-jeremy-lin\">How to stop Jeremy Lin</a> <a href=\"http://espn.go.com\" title=\"http://espn.go.(\">espn.go.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fox4kc.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-word-generator-is-lintastic/\">Jeremy Lin Word Generator is Lintastic!</a> <a href=\"http://fox4kc.com\" title=\"http://fox4kc.(\">fox4kc.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/video-jeremy-lins-agent-talks-linsanity-with-darren-rovell-2012-2\">Jeremy Lin’s Agent Talks Linsanity With Darren Rovell</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/why-the-jeremy-lin-phenomenon/\">Why the Jeremy Lin Phenomenon?</a> <a href=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.(\">athomesense.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-spike-lee-jeremy-lin-high-school-jersey-knicks-game-2012-2\">PHOTOS: Spike Lee Is Sporting A Jeremy Lin High School Jersey At The Knicks Game</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://ronireports.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-vs-tim-tebow-and-the-question-everyones-asking-who-is-jeremy-lin/\">Jeremy Lin vs. Tim Tebow…and The Question Everyone’s Asking: Who is Jeremy Lin??</a> <a href=\"http://ronireports.com\" title=\"http://ronireports.(\">ronireports.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.inquisitr.com/194869/jeremy-lin-shoe-to-be-released-by-nike/\">Jeremy Lin Shoe to be Released by Nike</a> <a href=\"http://inquisitr.com\" title=\"http://inquisitr.(\">inquisitr.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/jeremy-lin-fanatics-available-for-the-taking-visit-www-linfanatic-com/\">Jeremy Lin Fanatics Available for the Taking Visit: www.LinFanatic.com</a> <a href=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://jeffthoghts.wordpress.(\">jeffthoghts.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://923now.radio.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-shares-his-favorite-music/\">Linsanity! Jeremy Lin Shares His Favorite Music</a> <a href=\"http://923now.radio.com\" title=\"http://923now.radio.(\">923now.radio.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.blippitt.com/linsanity-top-jeremy-lin-nicknames-video/\">LINsanity: Top Jeremy Lin Nicknames (VIDEO)</a> <a href=\"http://blippitt.com\" title=\"http://blippitt.(\">blippitt.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/37104/how-to-stop-jeremy-lin\">How to stop Jeremy Lin</a> <a href=\"http://espn.go.com\" title=\"http://espn.go.(\">espn.go.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fox4kc.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-word-generator-is-lintastic/\">Jeremy Lin Word Generator is Lintastic!</a> <a href=\"http://fox4kc.com\" title=\"http://fox4kc.(\">fox4kc.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/video-jeremy-lins-agent-talks-linsanity-with-darren-rovell-2012-2\">Jeremy Lin’s Agent Talks Linsanity With Darren Rovell</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/why-the-jeremy-lin-phenomenon/\">Why the Jeremy Lin Phenomenon?</a> <a href=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.com\" title=\"http://athomesense.wordpress.(\">athomesense.wordpress.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-spike-lee-jeremy-lin-high-school-jersey-knicks-game-2012-2\">PHOTOS: Spike Lee Is Sporting A Jeremy Lin High School Jersey At The Knicks Game</a> <a href=\"http://businessinsider.com\" title=\"http://businessinsider.(\">businessinsider.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://ronireports.com/2012/02/17/jeremy-lin-vs-tim-tebow-and-the-question-everyones-asking-who-is-jeremy-lin/\">Jeremy Lin vs. Tim Tebow…and The Question Everyone’s Asking: Who is Jeremy Lin??</a> <a href=\"http://ronireports.com\" title=\"http://ronireports.(\">ronireports.com</a>)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.inquisitr.com/194869/jeremy-lin-shoe-to-be-released-by-nike/\">Jeremy Lin Shoe to be Released by Nike</a> <a href=\"http://inquisitr.com\" title=\"http://inquisitr.(\">inquisitr.com</a>)</li>\n</ul>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\"></div>"
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"title" : "A drug called money",
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"content" : "<p>HALFWAY between marriage and prostitution lies the sugar daddy. Not quite a husband, not quite a John, he looks after his girl and expects her to be loyal to him—a loyalty that is frequently unreciprocated. But if you are a poor African teenager, having a sugar daddy is not such a bad deal. Eventually, Mr Right may come along and in the meantime life is, as the term suggests, a lot sweeter than it might otherwise be. Except for one thing. In many parts of Africa, relationships between older men and younger women are one of the main transmitters of HIV.</p><p>With that in mind, it has often been hypothesised that if teenage girls were given an alternative income—one that might, for instance, allow them to stay on at school—they would be less likely to get infected. It is a plausible hypothesis but one that has not, until now, actually been tested.</p><p>That lack has just been remedied by Berk Özler, of the World Bank, and his colleagues. In a paper just published by the <em>Lancet</em>, they describe how they conducted a randomised clinical trial of the idea that money, and money alone, can stop the spread of HIV.</p><p>They carried out their experiment in the Zomba district of Malawi, recruiting nearly 1,300 never-married women between the ages of 13 and 22. They divided Zomba into 176 areas, and each participant in a given area was treated in the same way. That area-wide treatment was, however, decided at random by a computer. In some areas, which acted as controls, the women were simply monitored. In some they and their parents were given small amounts of money each month (between $1 and $5 for the women, and between $4 and $10 for the parents), again decided at random by the computer. In a third set of areas money was doled out in a similar way, but only in exchange for a promise by the woman to attend school. If she failed to do so, no money was forthcoming.</p><p>When the results were in, the team found that the unpaid women had suffered more than twice the HIV infection rate experienced by the paid women over the course of the 18 months of the experiment, and four times the infection rate of genital herpes. Intriguingly, there was no difference between the infection rate suffered by those required to go to school and those who received the money unconditionally. Whether the actual amount of money mattered was not clear. For that to emerge a larger sample would be needed.</p><p>What is abundantly clear, however, was that the money did make women behave differently. They had younger boyfriends than those in the control group, and had sex less frequently. Liberated from the need to find a sugar daddy, they could behave in a safer way. </p><p>Those attempting to stop the spread of AIDS have, in the past, tried many ways of getting people to change their behaviour in order to reduce the risk of infection. They have extolled, exhorted and even threatened, all to little avail. They have not, though, previously, resorted to bribery. But it seems to work.</p><div></div>"
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"title" : "MFGlobal Reveals You Are A Bank Counter-Party",
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"content" : "<p>The esteemed former Fed Chairman, Paul Volcker, introduced a very simple regulatory concept that bears his name: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcker_Rule\"><em>The Volcker Rule</em></a>. It was part of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act\">Dodd-Frank regulatory reforms</a> passed after the financial crisis of 2008-09.</p>\n<p>There has been enormous pushback against what should be a simple piece of prophylactic rules on proprietary trading by depository banks (see this <a href=\"http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/the-volcker-rule-and-the-costs-of-good-intentions/?src=tp\">Jamie Dimon commentary</a> as an example). Why? The profits of speculation goes to banks, driving bonuses and compensation; but the ultimate risk of loss lay with the FDIC and taxpayer. If the banks blow up, someone else besides the banker pays. <strong><em></em></strong></p>\n<p><strong><em>Privatized gains, socialized losses. </em></strong></p>\n<p>I want to take a few moments to briefly explain why this rule is so important to taxpayers, especially following the collapse of MF Global and the loss of billions of client assets.</p>\n<p>Recall the basic facts of MFG: Management engaged in leveraged speculations with monies — whether it was their own or clients became irrelevant as the losses were so great as to wipe out much more capital than the bank actually had. Billions in losses meant MFG was insolvent and was wound down. On the winning sides of those trades were folks like JPM and George Soros. It is neither their duty nor obligation to verify whose money is on the other side of the trade — the clearing firms make sure the trade settles.</p>\n<p>Those trade settlements are the only possible outcome. Why? Imagine a burglar robs a house of cash, goes to a casino and loses the money playing Roulette. The Casino settles that bet, it clears — and the burgled homeowner can never recover the money. Exchanges work the same way. They simply cannot validate the capital sources of every transaction. In the case of MFG, he money wasn’t even burgled — it was simply entrusted to an entity that became <em>so insolvent</em> thru excess speculation that even money in “Segregated accounts” was highly compromised.</p>\n<p>And therein lay the dirty little secret of modern banking: <strong><em>THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SEGREGATED ACCOUNT</em></strong>. It is simply a helpful way to think about money and banking; it does not exist in the real world.</p>\n<p>Consider your basic bank account — checking, savings, passbook, etc. We go through massive contortions to create an illusion that <em>your money is yours</em>, that its safe and sound in a bank with your name on it, in your own virtual safe deposit box. But that is simply not the reality of modern banking. What you perceive as “your money” is little more than an electronic journal on the banks accounting ledgers.</p>\n<p>Fractional reserve banking means that the $100 you deposit is lent out — only $10 of your $100 is kept in reserve. Under normal circumstances, with thousands of depositors and millions of dollars, the banks have no trouble giving customers who ask for their money back the full amount at anytime. But it is not as if your money is sitting in an account waiting for you — you merely have a claim on those monies, and that claim is insured by the FDIC, and backed by taxpayers (theoretically).</p>\n<p>You are, in fact, a counter-party to your bank.</p>\n<p>In the old days, banks were boring. 3-6-3 banking meant borrowing at 3%, lending at 6%, be on the links at 3pm. It was simple. Banks were a utility, making reliable steady money, so long as they didn’t do anything too stupid to screw it up. Glass Steagall, the depression era legislation, prevented them from engaging in the sort of risky Wall Street speculation that caused so much trouble over the years. Think MFGlobal to get a better understanding of what is involved.</p>\n<p>Thanks to the sheer ideological idiocy of Phil Gramm, enabled by the corruption of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and the hubris of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Glass Steagall was repealed. Thus, banks could be as stupid as they want to be — and you get to foot the bill.</p>\n<p>What does all this have to do with the Volcker rule and MF Global? It is quite simple: Today’s post Glass Steagall repeal Bankers engage in leveraged speculation that potentially could blow the bank up. They did it to themselves with sub-prime mortgages; have no doubt that someone is working on the next ‘financial innovation’ whose losses will be even bigger and better than RMBS and CDOs.</p>\n<p>When the next bank blows up — note I said when and not if — their depositors will become counter-parties. Those depositors are you, just like MF Global’s. Only, you as counter-part are not first in line with a claim on the monies — the folks on the other side of the trade get first dibs.</p>\n<p>So this bank blows up, the trades settle, the counter party banks/brokers get paid, and whatever is left (if anything) goes to depositors. The FDIC will make good up to $250,000. FDIC’s budgets comes from a small fee on banks. If the losses are great enough, it will exceed their budget and so the taxpayer than makes up the difference.</p>\n<p>The risks and rewards are, to use a big word, “asymmetric.” Hit a home run as a trader or banker, collect a huge bonus. Lose it all and then some, and the taxpayer is on the hook. Anyone who fails to see the simple math of this either spends their days shilling for banks or are acting as CEO mouthpieces.</p>\n<p><strong><em>Privatized gains, socialized losses. </em></strong></p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/b0bjd6fho47voudd2of6s5dq9g/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2Fblog%2F2012%2F02%2Fvolcker-rule-mfglobal-bankcounterparty%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=gfou1chWX_I:fEnlYb-ZZxg:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/gfou1chWX_I\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>These are <a href=\"http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x183859\">some of the countries that say they are afraid of Iran</a>. Between them they have thousands of deadly atomic weapons.</p>\n<p> But note that Iran has no nuclear weapon, no nuclear weapon program, and no prospect of a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years (according to the US National Intelligence estimate) even if they decided they wanted one, which SecDef Leon Panetta says they have not. Iranian supreme theocrat, Ali Khamenei, has given a fatwa that nuclear bombs are forbidden in Islamic law, and it is likely that Iran does not want to construct an actual nuclear weapon.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/178/387073100_ec03e0993a_o.jpg\" width=\"550\" height=\"420\"></p>"
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"content" : "José James brought his baritone and his deep-funk band to the Harlem Stage Gatehouse over the weekend for concerts that mixed soul, jazz and funk.<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6fcc3b65e15d11bbff826b34f553f2d1&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6fcc3b65e15d11bbff826b34f553f2d1&p=1\"></a>"
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"title" : "Nigeria: Ribadu’s return is good news, but Jonathan must take on the State Governors – By Jeremy Weate",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><p><strong> </strong></p><div style=\"width:299px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-6022\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/02/14/nigeria-ribadu%e2%80%99s-return-is-good-news-but-jonathan-must-take-on-the-state-governors-by-jeremy-weate/nuhu-ribadu/\"><img title=\"Nuhu Ribadu\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Ribadu_Nuhu.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"289\" height=\"288\"></a><p>Nuhu Ribadu - newly appointed head of Nigeria's newly created Task Force on Petroleum Revenue</p></div><p><strong> </strong>The return of Nuhu Ribadu to the political theatre in Abuja as Chair of the newly constituted Task Force on Petroleum Revenue perhaps does just enough to finally tip the balance of forces in favour of the progressive, for the first time in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. At the height of his powers at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Ribadu struck fear into many a state governor or briefcase contractor. With no legal mandate and reporting directly to the Minister of Petroleum, it will be interesting to see what impact the new body has. The move does however put the quest to quell corruption closer to centre stage in Nigeria. Together with his former colleague Ibrahim Lamorde, who was formally appointed Chair of the EFCC in January, we may see more pressure for the state-owned colossus, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to change its modus operandi, ahead of the long-anticipated Petroleum Industry Bill (which is currently being rewritten, apparently from scratch).</p><p>However, whether the fight against corruption in the oil sector and elsewhere is the most important battle progressives have to win in order to break the logjam of under-development in Nigeria, as Ribadu passionately believes, is open to question. An alternative perspective would position grand corruption in Nigeria as symptom, rather than cause of developmental malaise. On this view, corruption is merely cyclical action at the surface, with each administration generating characters that repeat and refashion the archetype set by the original flamboyant kleptocrat, Festus Okotie-Eboh, independent Nigeria’s first Minister of Finance.</p><p>If corruption is mere symptom, what then is the cause? It is too easy to point to the ‘resource curse’ simpliciter as the source of Nigeria’s woes. The first systematic assessment of corruption in Nigeria was the Commission of Inquiry into the Administration of Lagos Town Council, back in 1953, long before the commercial production of oil in Nigeria. The report tries hard to avoid being shocked at the Mayor’s £2,500 per annum salary, far more than the equivalent paid to mayors in English towns at the time, as well as the proposed budget of £2,000 for the purchase of the mayoral car. More interesting however is the conclusion, where the author remarks, after noting that the council was only three years in operation, “Neither do I overlook the fact – and I say this in no derogatory sense – that it was an all-African Council with a way of life and elected by people with a way of life which differs from my own. Moreover it had imposed upon it the outline of a local government structure English in conception and based on English practice.”</p><p>In many ways, this nearly sixty-year old assessment is relevant for a critique of the governance framework of Nigeria today. Rather than oil per se, the underlying cause of corruption is the structure of Nigeria’s quintessential “petro” state. There are a number of characteristics of the petro-state we can point to. Firstly, it features a broken social contract in the form of a rupture in the relationship between taxation and accountability. Royalties and taxes paid by international oil companies are direct contributions to the federal coffers, by-passing the citizenry. As the government has no need to rely on internally generated revenue, it has no incentive to engage with accountability actors such as civil society organisations. It is therefore close to impossible to apply accountability pressure into the system of governance. In Nigeria ministers never resign.</p><p>Receiving over 50 percent of the fiscal allocation, the federal centre-ground is the ‘prize’ in Nigerian politics. The state has developed a mirage-like quality, in contrast to, say, Ghana, national identity has been relatively weak and opportunistic in Nigeria. Just as the capital city, Abuja, has no obvious centre, so too does the structure of the Nigerian state, once the hydrocarbon banquet is removed.</p><p>The absent centre of the Nigerian petro state exhibits enormous centripetal effects, none more so than the power granted to the president by the constitution. The president effectively oversees all three arms of government. The rambunctious noise of the House of Representatives belies the reality of how the Speaker of the House is selected, and the political economy pressures that come with the job. The president selects the boards of all key agencies of government, including that of the Chair of the EFCC. This constitutional mandate means that there can be no institutions that function at arms-length from the Presidency, and therefore, no effective checks and balances placed into the system.</p><p>The petro state also ensures that key government institutions are weakened to the point of torpor. No state can develop a critical infrastructure and services without a meritocratic civil service cadre. Despite being founded on the best of intentions by requiring that there is a balanced representation of staff from across Nigeria, the “Federal Character” rule introduced in the 1979 Constitution effectively ensures that the best will often not rise to the top.</p><p>Finally and perhaps most critically, the Nigerian petro state denies accountability and participation at the grass roots level. At present, local governments are funded via a joint account, which the state government receives from the Federation Account. The consequence of this is that only local government leaders who kowtow to the state governor can be guaranteed to receive their allocations. Without the power to set budgets according to practical realities on the ground, a participative form of governance is killed before it is born.</p><p>The petro state must therefore be seen as the engine-room of corruption. By ensuring there is a centralised pot of money (the Federation Account) and a constitutionally hyper-empowered presidency, in the context of weakened non-meritocratic institutions and scant opportunity for accountable governance at the local level, the conditions for grand corruption are put in place. Both the presidency and state governors (via the Excess Crude Account) have huge sums of money at their disposal, with insufficient institutional checks and balances built into the system.</p><p>The obvious developmental solution to the stultifying fiction of the petro state is a systematic decentralisation of fiscal arrangements, supported by constitutional devolution. This would be the Nigerian ‘third way’ between an enforced unitary status quo and an unrealistic appeal for a once-and-for-all break up. This would include rigorous checks and balances placed against presidential and state governor discretion; it would also ensure that local governments are funded independently of state governors. Finally, it would include the mandate that oil windfalls over the benchmark price are saved rather than squandered (replacing the Excess Crude Account).</p><p>The technical details of a devolved and fiscally federalised Nigerian state could be worked out with relative ease. The question is, why has it not happened already? The key pressure comes from the state governors, organised via the Governor’s Forum (which is not, by the way, mentioned in the current Nigerian constitution). Empowering local governments would put grassroots politics beyond the control of the state capital, considerably diluting the current autocracy of state governors.</p><p>So far, Jonathan has yet to take on the governors. His presidential style contrasts with Ribadu’s former boss Obasanjo, who was often willing to wade in to adjust the complex balances that make Nigeria work. And yet. Jonathan now has a competent administrator at the head of the electoral commission in Attahiru Jega, and one of the stars of the Obasanjo era administration arriving to tackle grand sleaze in oil. He has a proven bureaucrat at the helm of the EFCC, and an internationally respected Finance Minister. As the dusk settles on the “Occupy Nigeria” oil subsidy removal protest, the President can also claim responsibility (by accident rather than design) for an increasing energy and confidence among civil society groups.</p><p>The conditions for more accountable governance are gathering. The ultimate achievement of his administration now emerges on the horizon: a deep-seated constitutional reform that delivers a genuine federal structure to Nigeria, and for the first time empowers accountability at the local level of government. If he achieved this, Jonathan would truly have broken the mould of Nigeria’s post-independence politics. And the country’s Nuhu Ribadus and Ibrahim Lamordes would have an easier task ahead of them.</p><p><strong>Jeremy Weate is an expert in the extractive industries in both Africa and Asia. He lives in Nigeria. </strong></p>"
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"title" : "The Reification of Julius: Reflections on Open City",
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"content" : "<p><strong>by Adebiyi Olusolape </strong></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><em>He is the blacksmith of heaven, the one who molds the heads of new born babes. All the normal and special features of human beings used to be attributed to Ọbàtálá even though the special features came about by no fault of His.</em></p>\n<p><em>When a mistake occurs, it may be that the mother refused to perform the necessary sacrifice. In some cases, the one truly responsible for the special features is the pregnant woman who steals a snail or violates taboo, say, by indulging in palm wine.</em></p>\n<p><em>Nowadays, when a pregnant woman violates taboo: smokes cigarettes, uses Fansidar, Valium or Tetracycline in her first trimester, who do we hold responsible if the child is born with special features?</em></p>\n<p><em>How can the outcomes of a mother’s ignorance or willful disobedience be the fault of Ọbàtálá? And should we ignore the interference of Iyámiàjé and Èsù? And there are barren women who are so impatient they insist that they must have a child, any child even if it is a thing, like Ọmọlókun who came to Agan Oribi.</em></p>\n<p><em>Again, there is the place of Destiny (Àyànmó</em><em>̨</em><em>), all those choices, spiritual, made by the individual and coded into that individual’s genes from the heavens which ultimately inform the course of the individual’s life. How are congenital features, which have been chosen by the individual’s Orí, the fault of O</em><em>̨</em><em>bàtálá?</em></p>\n<p><em>In one of the oríkìs of Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>ánlá there is a section that runs, ‘Arò</em><em>̨</em><em>run marinse lásán/torí abuké/torí aaro</em><em>̨</em><em> ni fi nlo</em><em>̨</em><em>’, which may be translated: he does not journey to the heavens for no reason/It is because of the hunchback/ and the cripple that he goes.</em></p>\n<p><em>The cripple is special to Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à. The hunchback is also important to O</em><em>̨</em><em>bàtálá. Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>ánlá is their comfort, he is their solace. He sends them on errands, and people address them as E</em><em>̨</em><em>ni Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à, the close associates of the Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à.</em></p>\n<p><em>Our people also have an adage, ‘Orí àfín, onì oòrí Òòs</em><em>̨</em><em>à.’ You have seen albinos yet you claim you have never set eyes on Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à. Is there anyone closer to Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à than the albino?</em></p>\n<p><em>Obàtárìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à, the King who wears white, the God-King, devotees appeal to Him for children, prosperity, to avenge wrongs they have suffered at the hands of others, to cure ailments and to heal deformities.</em></p>\n<p><em>O</em><em>̨</em><em>bàtálá is justly referred to as Alámò</em><em>̨</em><em> rere, the excellent potter. Why do they continue to discriminate against the cripples, hunchbacks and albinos? Why do they continue to accuse the Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à falsely? How so convenient, after they have pushed the ‘Other’ away they accuse the only One who accepts them unconditionally of being responsible for those conditions of ‘Otherness’ which they defined in the first place.</em></p>\n<p><em>And this story about Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à’s drunkenness at the time of creation is false. It is an old heresy. Ọbàtálá had given up palm wine by the time the Odú Òsá fùn-ún appeared, but Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun, a close servant of Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>ánlá, went bearing tales about Ọbàtálá, that Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>ánlá had been unable to overcome an addiction to palm wine.</em></p>\n<p><em>What Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun did not know was that Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>ánlá was just using his gourd to carry oriri, in place of the quondam palm wine. When Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun saw that it was white stuff that issued from the lips of the gourd, he rushed to tell on Òrìs</em><em>̨</em><em>à. But when the other saints tasted the white stuff, it turned out to be è</em><em>̨</em><em>ko</em><em>̨</em><em>, corn pap.</em></p>\n<p><em>Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun says, O sa fùn-ún/o fun fun bi e</em><em>̨</em><em>mu.</em></p>\n<p><em>Ọbàtálá cursed Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun and he became an animal that lives in trees. Aláke</em><em>̨</em><em>dun is the colobus monkey.<sup>†</sup></em></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/open_city.jpg\"><img title=\"open_city\" src=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/open_city-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\"></a>Part of my first reaction to <em>Open City</em> was, ‘I can relate to Julius’s lifestyle and his openness to all of life around him while being at the same time very selective. I can relate to him being so private. I can relate to feeling noble for having such sharp reflexes and responding in a timely manner to protect a mother and her baby. I can relate to some of his past, even the dumping of the files of his crime from his memory. I went to a boarding school where I had a moment of uncharacteristic, I think, callousness of which I had to be reminded and for which, in spite of my inability to recall the facts of the incident, I sincerely apologized years later. In my case, I had meted out corporal punishment.</p>\n<p>There are so many glimpses of myself that I catch in the revolving doors of <em>Open City</em>. And even more than the book’s author, it seems I have embraced Julius unconditionally. Cole is always being pressed in public appearances to show where Teju ends and Julius begins. As part of Cole’s defense mechanism, he seems, now, to have established some distance from Julius. Although, with some discerning audiences he embraces his alter ego, but it is never full, the embrace, further and delightfully complicating the relationship between fact and fiction.</p>\n<p>For me, <em>Open City</em> is one of the finest works of realism I have read in a long time. In fact, in framing my first written response to the book, I chose to set <em>Open City</em> up in that great hall of contemporary realism, with novels like <em>White Teeth</em>,<em> Elizabeth Costello</em>. <em>Open City, </em>for me, is like life walked on to the pages of a book. <em>Open City </em>is as arresting as that lithograph made by M.C. Escher in which the <em>Reptile[s]</em> dissolves into the page and emerges from it again and again, in an endless cycle.</p>\n<p>Another way to explain my disposition to <em>Open City</em> is to point out that I don’t trust myself, and when I’m offered such a convincing image of ‘me’, the image cannot be spared the relentless scrutiny and criticism to which my many selves are always subjected. But, it may be necessary to go into some more detail about the different ways my reflections have caught me as I passed by the glass that is <em>Open City</em>.</p>\n<p>Let me begin by quoting Cole himself, from his <em>Eight Letters to a Young Writer, </em>‘Don’t wait; write! Describe, describe, describe, and find the pleasure in pinning the right words to life’s incessant stream of sensations.’ I think Cole heeds his own advice, or that naturally would be his advice because of his predilections. Is it the chicken or the egg? Cole excels and I feel compelled to understand why this is so. Could it be that Cole has turned to good use his practice as an art historian and a photographer? These, generally, are professionals (or hobbyists) whose habitual practice it is to elevate the mundane with language.</p>\n<p>However, I find Cole quite tame in terms of what I like to call ‘stylistic madness.’ Compared to, say, Roy’s <em>The God of Small Things</em> or<em> </em>Grass’s<em> The Dog Years</em> (even in translation <em>The Dog Years </em>is such Free Madness, à la Terry G!). Cole is content to be ‘poetic’, and that works well for the meditative tone of the novel. <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/\">The ‘lyrical’ in Ms. Smith’s Lyrical Realism?</a> Perhaps, beyond 9/11 this underscores the comparison, made by some, of <em>Open City </em>to <em>Netherland </em>and of Cole to O’Neill.</p>\n<p>Anyway, what is more interesting is that Cole himself, in talking about his future projects, says we cannot continue to write novels as if <em>Ulysses </em>(and by extension<em> Finnegan’s Wake) </em>didn’t happen. For me, ‘plotlessness’ does not exist; the plot immediately exists with the form, the novel; it may be excellent, it may be trite, convoluted, loose, tortured or fragmentary but every novel has a ‘certain magnitude’, to modify Aristotle slightly. Indeed, the trajectory of a life is plot enough, so much for getting away from plot by traipsing cities. And speaking of cities, I am hoping someone would, one of these days, compare Teju Cole to China Miéville as both writers claim to be fascinated by ‘cityness.’</p>\n<p>However, there is this flatness to the tales in <em>Open City</em>, and I am immediately moved to compare <em>Open City</em> to Mark Slouka’s <em>The Visible World</em> as a minor masterpiece that deals with some of the very same themes as <em>Open City</em>. In fact, the two gentlemen happen to sing in the same key, that poetic, meditative tone. The only difference, as I see it, is that Slouka is a masterful narrator. Cole seems yet to master not only plotting but of micro-plotting as well.</p>\n<p>For now and on a personal scale of preference, I would rather read an essay by Cole, say ‘Fame, Obscurity and Poverty: The Art of Rembrandt and Vermeer’, I would rather read that than read a novel. It seems to me that Cole hasn’t entirely shaken his training in the Arts, and the advantages Cole’s practice gives may not be sufficient after all. Rembrandt and Vermeer are not exactly Cole’s area of expertise, but beyond the petty academic gerrymandering and professional turf wars, novels are an altogether different kind of animal, really. The proper course to follow, in this world of men, may be to do <em>Dubliners</em> and <em>The Portrait</em>, proving one knows how to properly treat a ball of yarn before one goes on to do <em>Ulysses</em> and <em>Finnegan’s Wake, </em>which are the<em> </em>diptychs of the world to come. However, if one considers that varying the move order is sometimes a way to find brilliant combinations, in Chess, one may be willing to grant that the same strategy might work for a writing career, too.</p>\n<p>In addition to employing a 1st person point of view, Cole gives a lot of space to a description of things, ideas and less to narrating, and it is by playing to his strength that I believe he skirts some of the pitfalls that would have made <em>Open City</em> a poor book. In fact, <em>Open City</em> would have read like an overdose of Segun Afolabi, a writer I could not seem to bring myself to read as much as I intend to. Alienation. Even some of the distance that comes with Julius’s character can be explained away by suggesting that his professional practice as a psychiatrist has become second nature. Neat. I guess that Cole is quite aware of his own weaknesses as a narrator. He also seems to me very clever to have chosen to write in the first person, which helps to downplay this weakness. One is put in the difficult position of having to determine which are the actual failings in the narrative or what ought to be properly understood as the shortcomings of the fictional character-narrator.</p>\n<p>Those failures in the narrative(s) that is <em>Open City</em> are made all the more excruciating by the brilliance of the descriptions. And this, to my mind, is linked to Benson Eluma’s observation that the book ‘is suffused with only one atmosphere from beginning to end, a reflective, intellectual atmosphere….’.</p>\n<p>With the constancy of a metronome, we forgo the variations that are the essence of the polyrhythmic. But they are not mutually exclusive, constancy and polyrhythm. Why does Cole not combine two or more metronomes, or percussive instruments, each metronome being itself constant but creating variations by its interactions with the other percussive instruments? And this could have been applied to the narrative on any of so many levels. For instance, why one main narrator instead of two or three, as in <em>Ulysses</em>? Does anyone dispute the brilliance of Nas’s ‘NY State of Mind’? Yet, Black Star’s ‘Respiration’ is another level of sublime.</p>\n<p>Or, at another level, I wonder why Cole didn’t combine two, three metronomes so that the waveforms they create interact in fascinating ways, with varying phase shifts, as the negative space of the one waveform gets filled, in so many ways, by the positive space of the other waveforms, producing a richer texture and colour and surprises. I seek to develop the discussion of Deleuze in <em>Open City</em>, that one which Cole merely adumbrates and which, tantalizing as it is, the auteur determines would be abruptly left underdeveloped. How is <em>Open City</em> a multiplicity, a rhizome, such that any point can be connected to anything else? There’s so much of the tree about the book, a heightened awareness of the distinction between the subject and objects.</p>\n<p>Or, to introduce a visual metaphor in place of the aural I have largely relied on so far, is it that inside our minds it is all grey, monochromatic? And since Julius is inside his head for the most part, what one gets is just the high fidelity to reality that Cole manages to capture in the book. But that monochrome may be some construct foisted on us, as part of delineating the ‘I’, marking off the ‘inside’ from ‘outside’, but there is no such opposition. We are at once inside and outside, and the colours, they are endlessly refracted. Do we know which is the real and which the image? Are they all images? Are they all real but some are realer than others are? Cole, it seems, has succeeded in setting up a phenomenological experiment. It is left for me to consider what Cartesian variables to test. Did Descartes’s cogitation apprehend any verities?</p>\n<p>In spite of all these, the realism succeeds, and the one thing which shines through is the genuine unreliability of Julius. For instance, when he begins to talk about Brewster’s paintings, he says the world of the paintings are hermetically sealed off from viewers, but he ends by saying he fell into the world of those paintings: very contradictory, very human, very realistic; we begin self-assuredly and are unapologetic in revising ourselves.</p>\n<p>Or, to consider his retelling of that trip that took his family to the palaces of the Ooni and the Deji, Ikogosi and the Olumo rock, all in one day, such a trip is, erm, plausible. But the order in which Julius recalls the points of interest on that trip gives one cause to ingest the information he provides with a pinch of salt. That book really could have benefited from an editor who knows the cities and roads of South-Western Nigeria. Like Dami Ajayi observed, it would still have served the same purpose, plot-wise, if the family had visited just the Olumo.</p>\n<p>Another shocking instance of Julius’s unreliability is his telling of the ominous event of his forgetting his ATM PIN. I initially mistook the incident as a foreshadowing of a serious amnesia, which made me begin to dread a particular kind of tragic ending that would not actually be similar but no less tragic than the story of Oliver Sacks’s Jimmie G. In the end, what is mind-numbing is a different kind of forgetfulness and a heightening of unreliability. We hear only indirectly from Julius the dark secret of a character failing. Violence is salient. I don’t think the fact of his crime is the most important item in his confessional reflections, although the violence may skew one’s reception and weighting. It is important, but no more than his estrangement from his mother but definitely more important than his understanding of the life and music of Mahler.</p>\n<p>I’m a bit of a Mahler fan (yes, in the same way I am a bit of a Man. United fan). Julius’s fondness for Mahler however is not something I connect with, which is quite strange since that should have been common ground, but even that is no less discordant a note than his indifference to Jazz of which I am very fond. I will return to my take on Julius, Mahler and Jazz later. But, maybe Julius didn’t see it that way, his crime. There is a careless callousness of drunken young men, their obliviousness to the greater ramification of ‘mindless’ violence. Maybe, it was just another teenage conquest, easily erased, not so much as leaving a telltale trace on the ‘palimpsest’ of the memory. In fact, Julius dedicates some effort to suggesting that the lady had had a crush on him when he finally ‘deigns’ to remember who she is. Perhaps, he knew all along. This is the zenith of his unreliability.</p>\n<p>If one’s thoughts crystallize when one is being mugged, I guess that would qualify as presence of mind. It would even be more beautiful if one gets mugged when one is drunk. Now, that would be some moment of clarity! That would be nirvana, similar, in more ways than one, to that famed near-death experience when all of one’s life flashes before one’s eyes in a moment. But nothing alters the fact that Julius is as pretentious as they come. However, it is that same quality that makes him a likable character, on the pages of a book. In real life, he would be one insufferable, uppity nigger—rehash of concert hall programmes trying to pass for insight into the art of Mahler? Nigger pleeez! The Real McCoy, a live one, like Dr. Akin Adesokan, would simply say: try listening to Bartok’s ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ while reading Tutuola or Marquez. Yes, that is some insight, a real koan, novices like me could mull over that for centuries yet won’t exhaust all the facets of the jewel. And you know, that other flâneur, the real world Nassim Taleb, said, as quoted by Malcolm Gladwell, ‘Mahler is bad for volatility.’</p>\n<p>There’s an old piece of Gladwell’s, probably written long before Taleb published <em>The Black Swan</em>, before Taleb became ‘the’ public intellectual. I believe the piece is online, somewhere, but I suspect it made it into Gladwell’s own <em>What the Dog Saw</em> but I am not sure. The context was Gladwell doing his thing to the world of Derivatives in Finance, so he set up a kind of a-day-in-the-life interview of a typical Hedge Fund manager with Taleb as that Hedge Fund manager.</p>\n<p>One gets the sense from that piece that among the Quants in the building that housed Taleb’s office, Mahler was the hip composer to be ‘into’ but that Taleb himself, being the contrarian that he is, was a Baroque man. In Taleb, the real-world public intellectual portrayed by Gladwell in that piece, one could see, in an intimate way, the continuous refraction of art within the prism of a lived life. Unlike with Julius where one gets a lot of this Mahler, victim of anti-Semitism, but nothing of that other punctilious, slave-driving Mahler who not only drove his musicians to distraction but drove them up the wall as well. It is all romantic, too romantic, a fitting treatment for the bridge between the Romantic Movement and the Modern one. No earthiness to that handling of the maestro of Song of the Earth. No blood, no bile.</p>\n<p>With Julius, what one expects to be emotional insights related directly to experience and the visceral has been replaced or emerges distorted by an overly studied apperception that travels the neural pathways in a direction opposite to that which one has come to accept as the normal course of affective response. Instead, the stream of perceptions seems to, largely, be a unidirectional flow of consciousness that takes it source from the headwaters of an all-knowing, all-apprehending <em>homo</em> <em>sapiens. </em></p>\n<p>The pull of power that attends the interplay of strong currents and their counter currents, the power impressed by the great turbulence, a turbulence which resolves, without any abatement in the power, into a single yet complex undertow is in Julius’s relations to people marked by its absence. One has long come to believe in a sort of synthesis of Empiricism and Idealism, to instinctively go beyond the opposition and accept, as the given, a dynamic equilibrium between two antagonistic views, but Julius seems to hark back to an earlier stage in the development of ideas, embodying the atavism of uninflected Idealism. This is not to say there aren’t instances and examples in Julius’s account that can be construed as contradictory to the summation of his character I’ve just provided. Yet, for me, the overall impression hangs heavy and will not budge even to contradictory particulars.</p>\n<p>If I’ve any doubt in my mind that Julius is autistic, that he seems, most times, unable to connect with people, that he transmits the tales told him by others too blandly, the fact which removes my uncertainty is that a ‘weirdo’ psychiatrist who’s into Mahler doesn’t flirt with the idea of a Mahler who suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, not even to marshal strong historical arguments against it or to even dismiss it as one would flick a hand, distractedly. On the strength of Autism alone, a real-fictive, probably ahistorical but all the more engaging, Mahler would have emerged. Now, I must acknowledge that the path of my conjecture about Julius’s autism is a convoluted, one which intersects itself at numerous points.</p>\n<p>But there’s something else that is striking here. There’s a real, historical personage who was also German, an émigré, who also waxed eloquent about Mahler, reflected on anti-semitism, and said some of the most atrocious things about Jazz—Theodor Adorno. Some of the meta-critiques of Adorno’s critique of Jazz have attempted to show that Adorno by being overly formalistic in his approach to Jazz could not have found in the form alone the justifications for claims that were made for the culture based not only on its history and the reception of the music by its audience but also on the methods of its production the political milieu and lifestyles of its exponents.</p>\n<p>I have interpreted these critiques to mean that there was much Adorno missed by adopting the restricted methods of enquiry of a musicologist of Western musical forms. Supplemented with the methods of a Marxist sociologist, as that methodology must have been, Adorno’s writings on Jazz are still shot through with inaccuracies. His smug expression of outrage—at the ‘fraud’ of a recipe which he copied from the glossy magazine, <em>‘Jasm</em>, and which he claims led him to expect a sumptuous repast—seems unwilling to admit that his hopes were hinged on the very lean gleanings in his own pantry and that if there’s some other factor deserving of blame, it may be the deficiencies of his own culinary skills. He would have been better served if he attempted, instead, a social history and ethnography of a ‘popular’ music.</p>\n<p>Adorno, it seems, treated Jazz more as one would a genre of music rather than as a culture. Of course, he addressed himself to the Culture but those are largely inductions made on the basis of what Adorno read within the form and also on deductions from his overarching philosophical framework. And, although Julius never gives up his role of the outsider looking in, in relation to Jazz, he seems to develop a more respectful disposition from afar. We are not told that the friend who promised to show him how the form works ever does so. Perhaps, in the end, the transformation, the parting of the heavens, may rely less on an understanding of blue and swung notes and more on access to the music of Jazzmen through their lived lives.</p>\n<p>Julius is introduced, vicariously, to the life of one of Jazz’s greatest exponents. That was Cannonball, who—coincidentally?—belonged to a generation of Jazzmen who developed a new kind of Jazz that responded to some of Adorno’s formal criticisms whether consciously or just in the natural course of developing their art form without even as much as a sideways glance in the direction of the distraught critic. The cloying, ambient music to which Julius alludes is suggestive of the styles that were predominant at the time when Adorno’s first critiques of Jazz were published; they definitely were not music from <em>Kind of Blue</em> or even the bop era. And since I am on the issue of the generation of Jazzmen who developed a new kind of Jazz that responded to some of Adorno’s criticisms, there is also the influence of those other gentleman, like Ornette Coleman, whose free jazz differed from the innovations of Miles Davis (who followed George Russell). Of course, Cannonball was Davis’s sideman on the epochal <em>Kind of Blue.</em></p>\n<p>All these seem to suggest that Julius stands for Adorno, in the position of a penitent. I accept even his initial, mild indifference as sufficient apology for Adorno’s dismissal. And they say Adorno had it in for America. It is interesting that Julius, in remarking on his indifference, describes Jazz as that most ‘American’ of musical styles. Even the word ‘form’, as in ‘most American of musical forms’, is eschewed in favour of a more conciliatory ‘style.’</p>\n<p>Now, name checking a phat cat like Walter Benjamin, that fine feline, is bound to drag in not only Adorno but Marcuse as well. And for me, Julius, as a type of the intellectual, is a one-dimensional man. Sometimes, when intellectuals are engaged in discussions and stray into unfamiliar territory they resort to all sorts of stratagems; by ‘name checking’ I’m not saying Cole doesn’t know all the stuff to which he alludes, but my quarrel is with this pretentious Julius even though he only name checks Benjamin indirectly, through our friend, the reluctant fundamentalist. The way in which Julius differs from the specimen of Marcuse’s classic critique, in the strict sense, is that Julius’s condition, to my mind, is related to <em>episteme</em>, not the <em>techne </em>and technological society<em> </em>which Marcuse attacked. Of course, Julius is embedded in that technological society. Julius is alienated, and he strikes me, at times, as the embodiment of the very extremes of Descartes’s <em>Cogito.</em> Julius is/is not present, in the body or in language, to others. There’s a failure of (affective) language in his exchange with his girlfriend. He is seemingly not present in the body to the brothers who mug him.</p>\n<p>It is as if Cole has set up a phenomenonlogical experiment in Julius. The ‘intentionality’ of Julius’s consciousness, that ‘tending toward’, that ‘pointing to’ is palpable. So is the compulsion to describe and describe, to describe whatever datum Julius is conscious of. It is as if when Julius, and I with him, tries to look into Julius’s consciousness, we only succeed in looking through it, in looking beyond it, like a piece of glass; a prism; a lens in an optical experiment, instrument; like an eye looking through itself; like the eye in this Age of Electronic Reproduction. Julius is Husserlian. And Husserl, of course, accepts, <em>a priori</em>, Descartes’s C<em>ogito.</em> That is the first move of Husserl’s <em>Epoche.</em> But, if this is so, does one not immediately begin to sense the presence of the ghost of Heiddeger on the back of one’s neck? A ghost that possibly rode in on the coat tails of Marcuse?<em> </em>Doesn’t the being of Julius beg a Heideggerian critique?</p>\n<p>It is for these reasons and some others that do not come to mind right now that I prize <em>Open City </em>and find it endlessly fascinating<em>.</em></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>___</p>\n<p>†Ifáyęmí Ęlę́buìbǫn (1998) The Adventures of Ǫbàtálá (Part 2): Oríkìs by the Awìís̨e of Òs̨ogbo; Àrà Ifá Publishing; Lynwood; pp. 5-7, 112-115, 118-120</p>\n<p>___</p>\n<p>Adebiyi Olusolape is the Poetry editor of <a href=\"http://www.sarabamag.com\">Saraba Magazine</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>About two years ago, I was worrying about <a href=\"http://www.discourse.net/2010/02/sanity_check.html\">whether I could fly to DC to go to a great conference</a>. To my enormous good fortune, I was snowed out.</p>\n<p>As a result, when my aorta burst on Feb. 12, 2010, I was home, and the drive to the hospital to find out why I felt like I had been stabbed in the back was quick and easy. And as a result of getting care quickly, I survived an emergency aortic dissection, serious surgical complications, and the implantation of a metal aortic valve. It would be 11 days before I was recovered enough to be allowed to emerge from my induced coma. And it would be five weeks before I returned home, much enfeebled, barely able to walk with a walker. </p>\n<p>Today I feel almost fully recovered. I tire a bit more easily than I used to. I have to watch what I eat in order to avoid the foods that counteract my medicines. But I’ve returned to a pretty full schedule. Things are basically good.</p>\n<p>There’s quite a lot I probably will write about the experience someday, maybe on the anniversary of my return home, which seems to me to be a much more significant date than the date I collapsed while filling out forms outside the local emergency room (a good place to collapse, as it turned out). </p>\n<p>For now, four statistics: </p>\n<p>(1) People whose aortas burst have at most 60 minutes to get treated, or they die. After a little dithering, I made it to the hospital in about 20 minutes or so. </p>\n<p>(2) The survival rate for aortic dissections is not great. <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aortic_dissection\">Wikipedia gives the statistics</a> for aortic emergencies as “80% mortality rate, and 50% of patients die before they even reach the hospital.” </p>\n<p>(3) The rate at which people make a full recovery without heart or brain damage is, I gather, even worse than that. (Much aortic surgery is planned, when a problem is detected before the crisis; the success rate for that surgery is much better so don’t panic if you are diagnosed with this problem — be grateful it got caught in time.) </p>\n<p>(4) I do seem to be one of those very lucky people. And people who survive two years past their valve replacement surgery generally have a life expectancy almost equal to what they had before — the “almost” being due largely a greater propensity to die in accidents because the blood thinners one must take to keep the metal valve unclogged increase the chances of bleeding out internally when hurt.</p>\n<p>As I said, I’ve been very lucky. I beat some bad odds. And people have been so very supportive during my recovery. </p>\n<p>I am very grateful.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?a=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse?i=wTZ6aR6nUbI:AW9BzDbuzgM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/discourse/~4/wTZ6aR6nUbI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Whitney Analogy",
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"content" : "<div><p>The saddest woman in the world is Cissy Houston. </p>\n<p>If you have to ask Wikipedia who Cissy is, then I forgive you. But really, that's all I really had to say to a small group of wonderful but unimportant people, whom I love dearly but hardly ever see any longer. They are my snobby black brothers and sisters who know who they are. There's an old cliche, borrowed of course but the bon mot nonetheless that you can always tell an Alpha man, but you cannot tell him much. I'm an Alpha, a member of the same fraternity as MLK, WEB and Eugene Kinckle Jones. If you have to look them up, I understand and forgive.</p>\n<p>You see, I found something out about myself the past weekend, which was that I was expecting entirely too much of my people. And because they never satisfied my expectations, I dismissed their dreams. My people are certainly not a nation of millions, nor an ethnic minority within that nation. My people are a very certain selection of a very few who tend to know a lot about a few things and not much else. I can go to my cousin and she can tell me who Whitney used to hang out with, and we could also trade stories about Don Conrnelius as well. And although I hope he's not the third, I could tell you about some other famous black entertainer whose name is not important right now. What's important is that I'm the kind of guy who could hang out for a while with Greg Tate or with Elvis Mitchell because I have. And just last week I was hanging out with some folks who work on Wall Street but come from that same small exclusive village that I do. It was easy. I knew where to go, and I wanted to and I reconnected just like that. But most of the time I don't bother. </p>\n<p>I'm sad that Whitney died before her time, but in the way I'm connected to my little village, I knew it was coming. We all did, I mean, common sense and TMZ could tell you that. But she was trying to be more than she could be and succeeded. That makes you paranoid, especially when you realize how close you are to your little village. Hard to explain, that. But when all the people seem like little people, especially the ones you are supposed to love and respect - the ones you are supposed to keep in mutual check, power, wealth and fame are deadly. It's hard to resist doing the unthinkable when your success is singular. When everybody buys the package, you become immune to their thinking. And that is what has happened to my people. We got away with it. From Denzel on down. Well, I don't really mean Denzel, I mean Skip Gates. I mean the caretakers of The Positive Black Image.</p>\n<p>You see, it happened. Everybody wanted it to happen. Everybody wanted Whitney to be what she wasn't - she wasn't Dionne Warwick. Whitney wasn't a complete pig; the lipstick worked. The Positive Black Image was credible, not just for Whitney but for a generation who saw Bill Cosby as Dad. It went from Sidney Poitier to Bill Cosby with Eddie Murphy in the middle. Eddie didn't have to care, and so he didn't try so much to keep up appearances - which was why his Dr Doolittle was so brilliant and good. But maintainers of the Positive Black Image needed Whitney, in the same desparate way they now need the Obamas even more.</p>\n<p>But there's a loose and somewhat disaffected cadre out there in fine clothing and smooth diction who slip in and out of the dialect without straining. And I hope, as long as I've ignored them, that they are robust in their ability not to take themselves too seriously, but love what they have. Whenever I post a picture of my family here or on Facebook, I'm indulging that Old School select village privilege. I used to talk of aggregation and thought as most of us did, that we would all hang out by Nisky Lake in the ATL and swap Boule stories like some blackified Bohemian Club. Yes, my brother what are we taking over this year? It's happening, and it's not. </p>\n<p>My boy (well, he used to be my boy) was just at the White House the other day. I caught the photo on Flipbook. My other boy (well, one degree of separation) is running for DA of LA. We're not actually running things according to any plan, but we're running things. It's a fragile network. It's a good word. It can easily be broken, like speaking out of school - a school that almost exists. Yes I've always called it the Old School, and like balls, strikes, racism and gay marriage, it's all socially constructed. Real but not real. It's just a conventional understanding of things that you shouldn't really take too seriously, nor should you ignore it for too long. </p>\n<p>They said, back in 1968, that all I have to do is be black, pay taxes and die. But it turns out that two those things can actually be ignored, and Jesus has a promise about the third. The conventions we attach to them are ephemera, but we're always curious to know how are you going to live in spite of them? What's going to be your image, and how seriously are you going to play the role? As Cobb readers know, I tend to be about *do* rather than *be*, but in this matter the Stoic takes over. After all, with those inevitables you are going to do them one way or another. So attitude matters. How do you feel about all this? Are you going to be alright? </p>\n<p>The Old School. The maintainers of the Positive Black Image, the exclusive village of the Talented Tenth origins and keepers of all things dignified and uplifting suffered a catastrophic symbolic earthquake with the death of Whitney Houston. But we knew it was coming, and we know it will come again when the manipulations of our social capital are revealed again as they will be in the future. But it's OK, because we really never needed to change the whole world. We just aimed for it. We will be revealed to be frail, damaged and all of the glory about us that people wanted to believe beyond the limits of our gifts and ability to perform, well that glory will fade. And we'll all be a little bit more sad, and a little more real, and then we can finally be only but always what our true talents fated us to be. There will be only ordinary drama and normal tragedy, simple success and standard victories. That's what equality will feel like.</p>\n<p>So I am recovering the ordinary dreams of ordinary successful black Americans with a cold eye but a warm heart. There's always something good to appreciate about talent, but we can all do without the symbolism. Whitney Houston is dead. Dead like Elvis. May their estates continue to sell records, but not sociology. Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. What's wrong with that?</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/BWZR/~4/bwlkmJJ7YlQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "Are African economies too similar?",
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"content" : "<p>One of the biggest obstacles to industrialization in Africa is that <a href=\"http://www.au.int/en/summit/18thsummit/documents/synthesis-paper-boosting-intra-african-trade-and-fast-tracking-continental-free\">African countries trade very little between themselves</a>, only 10-12 percent of total trade, whereas regional trade accounts for 63% in EU, 40% in the US and 30% in Asean countries. Why do we have such daunting figures?</p>\n<p>In addition to the well-known problem of <a href=\"http://kariobangi.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/is-tanzania-slowing-down-economic-integration-in-east-africa/\">tariff and non-tariff barriers</a>, economists often argue that the root-cause is much more structural: African economies are excessively small and similar to trade among each other, so they must rely on international markets. From this view, intra-African trade is unlikely to promote growth in the short term.</p>\n<p>However, the World Bank just-released report ”De-fragmenting Africa” (<a href=\"http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0,,contentMDK:23092452~pagePK:146736~piPK:226340~theSitePK:258644,00.html\">highly recommended</a>), tells a different story:</p>\n<blockquote><p>It has been commonly argued that regional integration can only play a limited role in Africa because of the similarity of endowments between countries. However, this does not reflect the enormous opportunities for cross-border trade in agricultural products from areas with a food surplus to food deficit areas that result from differing seasons and production patterns. For example, Southern Malawi is not well endowed with agricultural potential and is a persistent food deficit area. Nearby Northern Mozambique is a productive area for growing maize, the main staple of the region, but it is distant from the main area of national consumption in the south of the country. Differences in weather patterns entail low correlations in production between countries and that regional production is less variable than production at the country level.</p></blockquote>\n<p>There is also another point: intra-African trade is already much bigger than statistics reveal, but most of it is informal:</p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a significant amount of cross-border trade that takes place between African countries that is not measured and therefore official statistics considerably understate the amount of intra-regional trade. (…) Surveys indicate that in some African countries, informal regional trade flows represent up to 90 per cent of official flows. In Uganda, for instance, informal trade grew by 300 percent from 2007 to 2009, where informal exports to neighbors is estimated to account for around 86 percent of official export flows to these countries</p></blockquote>\n<p>It would be interesting to have comparable data on informal cross-border trade, in particular on manufacturing goods, but I didn’t see any in the report. The graph below shows interesting patterns of (formal and informal) trade of food commodities in East Africa.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://kariobangi.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/formal-and-informal-trade-by-food-commodity-east-africa1.png\"><img title=\"Formal and informal trade by food commodity East Africa\" src=\"http://kariobangi.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/formal-and-informal-trade-by-food-commodity-east-africa1.png?w=460&h=239\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"239\"></a></p>\n<p>Read the full report <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFRICA/Resources/Defrag_Afr_English_web_version.pdf\">here</a> (PDF)</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/kariobangi.wordpress.com/261/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kariobangi.wordpress.com&blog=27301068&post=261&subd=kariobangi&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<h4>(introducing behavioural heuristics)</h4>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/rules_sketches.jpg\" alt=\"Some heuristics extracted by workshop participants\"></p>\n<p><em>EDIT (April 2013): An article based on the ideas in this post has now been <a href=\"http://ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1254/560\"> published in the International Journal of Design</a> – which is open-access, so it’s free to read/share. The article refines some of the ideas in this post, using elements from <a href=\"http://carbonculture.net\">CarbonCulture</a> as examples, and linking it all to concepts from human factors, cybernetics and other fields.</em></p>\n<p>There are lots of models of human behaviour, and as the design of systems becomes increasingly focused on <em>people</em>, modelling behaviour has become more important for designers. As <a href=\"http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/jfroehli/publications/CHI2010_EcoFeedback.pdf\">Jon Froehlich, Leah Findlater and James Landay note</a>, “even if it is not explicitly recognised, designers [necessarily] approach a problem with some model of human behaviour”, and, of course, <a href=\"http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box\">“all models are wrong, but some are useful”</a>. One of the points of the <a href=\"http://designwithintent.co.uk\">DwI toolkit</a> (post-rationalised) was to try to give designers a few <em>different</em> models of human behaviour relevant to different situations, via pattern-like examples.</p>\n<p>I’m not going to get into what models are ‘best’ / right / most predictive for designers’ use here. There are <a href=\"http://codingconduct.cc/#2733848/The-MAO-Model-Research-for-Behavior-Change\">people doing that more clearly</a> than I can; also, there’s more to say than I have time to do at present. What I am going to talk about is an approach which has emerged out of some of the ethnographic work I’ve been doing for the <a href=\"http://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/news-items/ne_30411\">Empower</a> project, working on <a href=\"http://www.carbonculture.net/\">CarbonCulture</a> with <a href=\"http://www.moreassociates.com/\">More Associates</a>, where asking users questions about how and why they behaved in certain ways with technology (in particular around energy-using systems) led to answers which were resolvable into something like rules: I’m talking about <em>behavioural heuristics</em>.<br>\n<span></span><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/if.jpg\" alt=\"If...\"></p>\n<h4>Behavioural heuristics</h4>\n<p>The term has some currency in <a href=\"http://www.udesa.edu.ar/files/UAEconomia/Seminarios/2010/Kawamura.pdf\">game theory</a>, other <a href=\"http://seekingalpha.com/article/316410-dividends-a-case-of-behavioral-heuristics\">economic decision-making</a> and even in <a href=\"http://www.hobbygamedev.com/adv/four-aspects-and-interpretation/\">games design</a>, but all I really mean here is <strong>rules (of thumb) that people might follow when interacting with a system</strong> – things like:</p>\n<blockquote><p>▶ \tIf someone I respect read this article, I should read it too</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf this email claiming to be from my bank uses language which makes me suspicious, I should ignore it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I’ve read something that makes me look intelligent, I should tell others</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf that Go Compare advert comes on, I should press ‘mute’</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf the base of my coffee cup might be wet, I should put it on something rather than directly on the polished wooden table</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf, when asked which of two cities has a bigger population, I have only heard of one of them, I should choose that one</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf my friend posts that she has a new job, I should congratulate her</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf there’s a puddle in front of me, I should walk round it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf there’s a puddle in front of me, I should jump in it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I’m short of time, I should choose the brand name I recognise</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I have some rubbish, and there’s a recycling bin nearby, I should recycle it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I have some rubbish, and there isn’t a recycling bin nearby, I should put it in a normal bin</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf that bench is wet or dirty, I should sit somewhere else</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf lots of my friends are using this app, I should try it too</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf there are lots of pairs of seats empty on the train, I should sit in one of them rather than sitting next to someone already occupying one of a pair</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I can’t see the USB logo on the top of this connector, I should turn it over before trying to plug it in</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I can’t get the USB cable to plug in properly, I should force it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf seats are positioned round a table, I should sit at the table</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I’m trying to lose weight, I should try to choose food with less fat in it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf this envelope has HM Revenue & Customs on the back, I should open it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf this envelope is from BT and printed on shiny paper, I should shred it immediately without bothering to open it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf this website asks me to fill in a survey, I should click cancel immediately</p>\n<p>▶ \tThat urinal spacing thing. You know what I mean.</p></blockquote>\n<p>These are a mixture of instinctive or automatic reactions (a kind of <a href=\"http://ifttt.com\">ifttt</a> for people) and those with more deliberative processes behind them: the <a href=\"http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/happiness-hypothesis-ch1.pdf\">elephant and rider</a> or <a href=\"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=of-two-minds-when-making\">Systems 1 and 2</a> or whatever you like. Some are more abstract than others; most involve some degree of prior learning, whether purely through conditioning or a conscious decision, but in practice can be applied quickly and without too much in-context deliberation (hence at least some are <a href=\"http://fastandfrugal.com\">‘fast and frugal’</a>, in Dan Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer’s terms). Some heuristics could lead to cognitive biases (or vice versa); some involve following plans, some are more like <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plans-Situated-Actions-Human-Machine-Communication/dp/0521337399\">situated actions</a>. And of course <em>not all of them are true for everyone</em>, and they would differ in different situations even for the same people, depending on a whole range of factors. </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/chips.jpg\" alt=\"Just some chips with Tippexed faces on an old Dictaphone\"></p>\n<h4>Truth tables for people</h4>\n<p>Regardless of the backstory, though, each of these rules or heuristics potentially has <em>effects</em> in practice in terms of the actual behaviour that occurs. They are almost like <em>atomic black boxes of action</em>, transducers* which when connected together in specific configurations result in ‘behaviour’.</p>\n<p>We might construct ‘behavioural personas’ which put together compatible (whatever that means) heuristics into <a href=\"http://www.cooper.com/journal/2003/08/the_origin_of_personas.html\">persona-like</a> fictional users, described in terms of the rules they follow when interacting with things, and both (admittedly crudely) simulate** their behaviour in a situation, and, maybe more importantly, design systems which <em>take account of the heuristics that users are employing</em>. </p>\n<p>If we know that our fictive user is following a “If someone I respect read this article, I should read it too” heuristic, then designing a system to show users that people they respect (however that’s determined) read or recommended an article ought to be a fairly obvious way to influence the fictive user to read the article. If we know that he or she also follows related heuristics in other parts of life, e.g. the “If I’ve read something that makes me look intelligent, I should tell others” rule, then this action could also be incorporated into the process.</p>\n<p>There are two main objections to this. One: it’s obvious, and we do it anyway; and two: treating people like electronic components is horrible / grotesquely reductive / etc. I don’t disagree with either, but am nevertheless interested in exploring the possibilities of using this kind of modelling, simple and lacking in nuance as it is, to provide a way of navigating and exploring the <a href=\"http://designwithintent.co.uk\">many different ways</a> that design can influence behaviour. If we could do contextual user research with this kind of heuristic as a unit of analysis, uncovering how many users in our situation are likely to be following different heuristics, we could design systems which are not just segmented but tailored much more directly to the things which ‘matter’ to people in terms of how they behave.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/ixd12_1.jpg\" alt=\"Interaction 12 workshop\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/ixd12_2.jpg\" alt=\"Interaction 12 workshop\"></p>\n<h4>Trying it out: thank you, Dublin guinea-pigs</h4>\n<p>At <a href=\"http://interaction12.ixda.org\">Interaction 12</a> last week in Dublin, 41 wonderful people from organisations including Adaptive Path, Google and Chalmers University took part in a <a href=\"http://interaction12.ixda.org/programme/#session-94\">workshop</a> exploring the idea of these heuristics and how they might be used in design for behaviour change. </p>\n<p>What we did first was a kind of rapid functional decomposition (in the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form\">Christopher Alexander sense</a>) on a few examples where systems have been designed expressly to try to influence user behaviour in multiple ways. </p>\n<p>The example I worked through first though was a simple decomposition of Amazon’s ‘social proof’ recommendation system: the point was to try to think through some of the ‘assumptions’ about behaviour that can be read into the design, and using a kind of <a href=\"http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/07/laddering-a-research-interview-technique-for-uncovering-core-values.php\">laddering</a> / <a href=\"http://www.institute.nhs.uk/creativity_tools/creativity_tools/identifying_problems_-_root_cause_analysis_using5_whys.html\">Five Whys</a> process, end up with statements of possible heuristics.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/amazonrecommendations.png\" alt=\"Amazon recommendations\"></p>\n<p>So with the Amazon example here, what are the assumptions? Basically, what assumptions are present, that if true would explain how the system ‘works’ at influencing users’ behaviour? What I have glibly classified as simply <a href=\"http://www.danlockton.com/dwi/Social_proof\">social proof</a> contains a number of assumptions, including things like:</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>▶ \tPeople will do what they see other people doing</strong></p>\n<p>▶ \tPeople want to learn more about a subject</p>\n<p>▶ \tPeople will buy multiple books at the same time</p></blockquote>\n<p>And many others, probably. But let’s look in more detail at ‘People will do what they see other people doing’: Why? Why will people do what they see other people doing? If we break this down, asking ‘Why?’ a couple of times, we get to tease out some slightly different possible factors.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/decomp_blog_1.jpg\" alt=\"Decomposing 'People will do what they see other people doing'\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/decomp_blog_2.jpg\" alt=\"Decomposing 'People will do what they see other people doing'\"></p>\n<p>After a couple of iterations it’s possible to see some actual heuristics emerge:</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/decomp_blog_3.jpg\" alt=\"Decomposing 'People will do what they see other people doing'\"></p>\n<p>Of course there are many possible heuristics here, but for the five uncovered, it’s not too difficult to think of design patterns or techniques which are directly relevant:</p>\n<table width=\"470\" border=\"5\" cellpadding=\"10\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<col width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10/\">\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"150\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><strong>▶ \tIf lots of people are doing it, do it</strong></font></p>\n</td>\n<td width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><em>Show directly how many (or what proportion of) people are choosing an option</em></font></p>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"150\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><strong>▶ \tIf people like me are doing it, do it</strong></font></p>\n</td>\n<td width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><em>Show the user that his or her peers, or people in a similar situation, make a particular choice</em></font></p>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"150\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><strong>▶ \tIf people that I aspire to be like are doing it, do it</strong></font></p>\n</td>\n<td width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><em>Show the user that aspirational figures are making a particular choice</em></font></p>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"150\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><strong>▶ \tIf something worked before, do it again</strong></font></p>\n</td>\n<td width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><em>Remind the user what worked last time</em></font></p>\n</td>\n</tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td width=\"150\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><strong>▶ \tIf an expert recommends it, do it</strong></font></p>\n</td>\n<td width=\"270\" cellspacing=\"10\">\n<p><font size=\"2\" style=\"font-size:9pt\"><em>Show the user that expert figures are making a particular choice</em></font></p>\n</td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n<p>There’s nothing there that isn’t obvious, but I suppose my point is that <strong>each heuristic implies a specific design feature</strong>, and the process of unpicking what the actual decision-points might involve gives us a much more targeted set of design possibilities than simply saying ‘put some social proof there’. Depending on the heuristics uncovered, it might be that simple majority preference (the Whiskas ad), irritating pseudo-authority-based messaging (Klout), friend-based recommendation (Facebook apps), peer voting (Reddit) or even celebrity/expert endorsement (John Stalker and Drummer endorsing awnings) could match individual users’ heuristics better. </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/whiskas.jpg\" alt=\"In tests, 8 out of 10 owners who expressed a preferences said their cats preferred it\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/klout.png\" alt=\"Klout: vermin of Twitter\"> <img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/friends.png\" alt=\"Facebook apps\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/reddit.png\" alt=\"Reddit\"> <img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/stalker_awnings.jpg\" alt=\"John Stalker and Drummer endorse these awnings\"></p>\n<p>Sometimes a service will use more than one, to try to satisfy multiple heuristics, or perhaps because the designers are not sure which heuristics are really important to the user (e.g. the This Is My Jam example below). In some ways, this process is approaching the kind of <a href=\"http://www.persuasion-profiling.com/\">‘persuasion profiling’</a> being pioneered by Maurits Kaptein, <a href=\"http://www.deaneckles.com/blog/\">Dean Eckles</a> and Arjan Haring’s <a href=\"http://www.persuasionapi.com/\">Persuasion API</a>, although from a different direction.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/thisismyjam1.png\" alt=\"This is My Jam: Twitter recommendations\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/thisimyjam2.png\" alt=\"This is My Jam: popular recommendations\"></p>\n<p>In the workshop, groups did a similar decomposition on three examples: <a href=\"http://www.codecademy.com\">Codecademy</a>, <a href=\"http://opower.com\">Opower</a> and <a href=\"http://content.yudu.com/A1ur7a/pssvol2iss5/resources/31.htm\">Foodprints</a>, part of More Associates’ <a href=\"http://carbonculture.net\">CarbonCulture</a> platform – the introductory material is reproduced below. <a href=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/ixd12_workshop_sheets.pdf\"><strong>[PDF of this material]</strong></a></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/codecademy.png\" alt=\"Codecademy\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/opower5.png\" alt=\"Opower\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/foodprints.png\" alt=\"Foodprints\"></p>\n<p>For each of these, groups extracted a handful of statements of possible heuristics – for example, for Opower, these included:</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>▶ \tIf my neighbour can do it, I can do it</strong></p>\n<p>▶ \tIf life’s a competition, I want to win it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I set myself goals, I want to meet them</p>\n<p>▶ \tI don’t want to be the ‘weak link’, so I should do it</p>\n<p>▶ \tI want to be ‘normal’, so I should do it</p>\n<p>▶ \t[If I do it] I will be better than other people</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I get apprecation from others, I will continue to do it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf it stops me being the ‘bad guy’, I will do it</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf it stops me feeling guilty, I will do it</p>\n<p>▶ \t[If I do it] I will improve myself</p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I don’t do it, I won’t fit in </p>\n<p>▶ \tIf I save money, I’ll have it for other things</p>\n<p>▶ \t[If I do it] I will be a ‘good’ person</p>\n<p>▶ \t[If I don't do it] bad things will happen</p></blockquote>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/personas.jpg\" alt=\"Personas\"></p>\n<p>We went on to swap some of the heuristics among groups, and build them up into relatively plausible (if completely fake) personas, ranging from a “goth who doesn’t want to do what others do”, to Fido, a guide dog intent on helping his partially-sighted owner Bob (as SVA’s Lizzy Showman mentions <a href=\"http://design.sva.edu/site/blog/show/647\">here</a>). </p>\n<p>In turn, the groups then used the DwI cards as inspiration to generate some possible concepts in response to a brief about keeping that person (or dog) engaged and motivated as part of a behaviour change programme at work, around behaviours such as exercise, giving better feedback and so on. Finally, groups acted these out (photo below shows Fido and Bob!).</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/dog.jpg\" alt=\"Guide dog\"></p>\n<h4>Where does all this fit into a design process?</h4>\n<p>What was the point of all this? The aim, really, is ultimately to provide a way of helping designers choose the most appropriate methods for influencing user behaviour in particular contexts, for particular people. This is what much design for behaviour change research is evolving towards, from Stanford’s <a href=\"http://www.behaviorwizard.org/wp/\">Behaviour Wizard</a> to <a href=\"http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:f1efccdd-07bc-437d-bcbc-7a9d848b806d/439_Zachrisson.pdf\">Johannes Zachrisson’s development of a framework</a>.</p>\n<p>I would envisage that with user research framed and phrased in the right way, observation, interviews and actual behavioural data, it would be possible to extract heuristics in a form which are useful for selecting design patterns to apply. While in the workshop we ‘decomposed’ existing systems without doing any real user research, doing this <em>alongside</em> would enable the heuristics extracted to be compared and discrepancies investigated and resolved. The redesigned system could thus match much better the heuristics being followed by users, or, if necessary, help to <em>shift</em> those heuristics to more appropriate ones. </p>\n<p>Ultimately, each design pattern in some future version of the DwI toolkit will be matched to relevant heuristics, so that there’s at least a more reasoned (if not proven) process for doing design for behaviour change, using heuristics as a kind of common currency between user behaviour and design patterns: <strong>user research → extracting heuristics → matching heuristics to design patterns → redesigning system by applying patterns → testing → back to the start if needed</strong></p>\n<p>In the meantime, my next step with this is to do some more extraction of heuristics from actual behavioural data for some particular parts of CarbonCulture, and (as my job requires) put this process into a more formal write-up for an academic journal. I will try to make some properly theoretical bridges with the heuristics work of <a href=\"http://edge.org/3rd_culture/gigerenzer03/gigerenzer_index.html\">Gerd Gigerenzer</a>, <a href=\"http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/\">Dan Goldstein</a> and (as always) Herbert Simon. But if you have any thoughts, suggestions, objections or otherwise, please do <a href=\"mailto:dan@danlockton.co.uk\">get in touch</a>.</p>\n<p>Thanks to everyone who came to the workshop, and thanks too to the Interaction 12 organisers for an impressively organised conference.</p>\n<p><em>* In reality, the rules have to be able to degrade if the conditions are not met: people are maybe following nested IF…THEN…ELSE loops rather than individual IF…THEN rules. Or perhaps more likely (this thought occurred while talking to <a href=\"http://codingconduct.cc\">Sebastian Deterding</a> on a bus from Dun Laoghaire last week) a kind of CASE statement – which would take us into pattern recognition and <a href=\"http://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Klein_1989_AMMSR_RPDM.pdf\">recognition-primed decision models</a>…<br>\n**<a href=\"http://magicalnihilism.com/2011/11/18/blog-all-dog-eared-unpages-philosophy-simulation-the-emergence-of-synthetic-reason-by-manuel-delanda/\">Matt Jones</a> suggests I should read Manuel deLanda’s <a href=\"http://eyebeam.org/events/lecture-manuel-delanda-on-philosophy-and-simulation-the-emergence-of-synthetic-reason\">Philosophy and Simulation</a>, which fills me with both excitement and fear…</em></p>\n<p>Image sources: <a href=\"http://itwonlast.tumblr.com/post/1094479127/if-lindsay-anderson-1968-supposedly-one-of\">‘If…’ movie poster</a>; <a href=\"http://wheresthesausage.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/02/the-persuasive-power-of-social-proof.html\">Whiskas ad</a>; <a href=\"http://www.advertisingarchives.co.uk/index.php?action=do_quick_search&service=search&language=en&q=p%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2Fimgres%3Fq%3Djohn+stalker+awnings\">Nationwide awnings</a></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://research.danlockton.co.uk/images/chips2.jpg\" alt=\"Just some chips with Tippexed faces on an old Dictaphone gathered round to watch a display\"></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?a=W2tJ1o1wB_k:KWEhfz1iois:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?a=W2tJ1o1wB_k:KWEhfz1iois:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?a=W2tJ1o1wB_k:KWEhfz1iois:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign?i=W2tJ1o1wB_k:KWEhfz1iois:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ArchitecturesOfControlInDesign/~4/W2tJ1o1wB_k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>\n\tFor the majority of the history of AnandTech we've hosted our own server infrastructure. A benefit of running our own infrastructure is that we're able to gain a lot of hands on experience with enterprise environments that we'd otherwise have to report on from a distance.</p>\n<p>\n\tWhen I first started covering SSDs four years ago I became obsessed with the idea of migrating nearly every system over to something SSD based. The first to make the switch were our CPU testbeds. Moving away from mechanical drives ensured better benchmark consistency between runs as any variation in IO load was easily absorbed by the tremendous amount of headroom that an SSD offered. The holy grail of course was migrating all of the AnandTech servers over to SSDs. Over the years our servers seem to die in the following order: hard drives, power supplies, motherboards. We tend to stay on a hardware platform until the systems start showing the signs of their age (e.g. motherboards start dying), but that's usually long enough that we encounter an annoying number of hard drive failures. A well validated SSD should have a predictable failure rate, making it an ideal candidate for an enterprise environment where downtime is quite costly and in the case of a small business, very annoying.</p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n\t<a href=\"http://www.anandtech.com/show/5518/a-look-at-enterprise-performance-of-intel-ssds\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"269\" src=\"http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/520/_DSC8967sm.jpg\" width=\"600\"></a></p>\n<p>\n\tOur most recent server move is a long story for a separate article but to summarize the move, we recently switched hosting providers and data centers. Our hardware was formerly on the east coast and the new datacenter is in the middle of the country. At our old host we were trying out a new cloud platform while our new home would be a mixture of a traditional back-end with a virtualized front-end. With a tight timetable for the move and no desire to deploy an easily portable solution at our old home before making the move we were faced with a difficult task: how do we physically move our servers half way across the country with minimal downtime?</p>\n<p>\n\tThankfully our new host had temporary hardware very similar in capabilities to our new infrastructure that they were willing to put the site on as we moved our hardware. The only exception was, as you might guess, a relative lack of SSDs. Our new hardware uses a combination of consumer and enterprise SSDs but our new host only had mechanical drives or consumer grade SSDs on tap (Intel SSD 320s).</p>\n<p>\n\tIn preparing for this move I realized we hadn't publicly discussed the performance and endurance issues associated with using consumer SSDs in an enterprise environment. What follows is a discussion of just that. Read on...</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://lh3.ggpht.com/-Xm3e-ytTos0/Ty-alR122TI/AAAAAAAAJc8/h35zPAxFHj4/s1600-h/ark01%25255B3%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"ark01\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"344\" alt=\"ark01\" src=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-A7rb7arxrmw/Ty-amKDSq8I/AAAAAAAAJdA/rjSoGhrvmqw/ark01_thumb%25255B1%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"211\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p>These images are from two series of postcards produced between 1900 and 1910 by the photographer F.W.H Arkhurst in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast. Arkhurst, a member of the Nzima ethnic group born in the Gold Coast , was a timber exporter who lived in Assinie and later in Grand Bassam. His studio photographs capture perfectly the then fashionable style of women’s dress along the African coast from the Niger Delta to the Ivory Coast as families grew prosperous from trading opportunities in the expanding colonial economies. Hair was swept high and adorned with gold jewellery or wrapped in cloth, tailored dress was of imported cotton prints, often with a shawl or wrap of locally woven fabrics. </p> <p><a href=\"http://lh6.ggpht.com/-NVYSr-t7s6U/Ty-am60HsbI/AAAAAAAAJdI/ASdSyg1wQjg/s1600-h/ark02%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"ark02\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"ark02\" src=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-radz7uu4SYM/Ty-ansWPaII/AAAAAAAAJdQ/fZ-0D9lFHVo/ark02_thumb.jpg?imgmax=800\" width=\"153\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><a href=\"http://lh5.ggpht.com/-C1GVoXEakIQ/Ty-aoisvpjI/AAAAAAAAJdc/wyDqQ9lqdxc/s1600-h/ark03%25255B2%25255D.jpg\"><img title=\"ark03\" style=\"border-right:0px;padding-right:0px;border-top:0px;display:inline;padding-left:0px;background-image:none;border-left:0px;padding-top:0px;border-bottom:0px\" height=\"244\" alt=\"ark03\" 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"title" : "The Two Sudans",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2012/02/07/the-two-sudans/640x392_8258_182953-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-43386\"><img title=\"640x392_8258_182953\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/640x392_8258_1829531.jpeg?w=500&h=306\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"306\"></a><br>\nOn July 6 2011, the world’s diplomatic elite flocked to one of the globe’s most underdeveloped regions to bask in the warm glow of the birth of a new nation. That South Sudan’s struggle for independence had claimed the lives of an estimated 2million people, and that the majority of its inaugural citizens had been displaced by decades of war, ensured that the Juba inauguration was all the more remarkable – brimming with the promise of peace, and the fruits of freedom. Now, in an act of apparent economic suicide, South Sudan has literally turned off the taps of their economy. “This is a matter of respect,” Pagan Amum, the South’s chief negotiator with Khartoum asserted, “<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/south-sudans-doomsday-machine.html?_r=3&src=tp\">We may be poor, but we will be free.</a>” By shutting down <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-completes-90-closure,41439\">90% of the country’s oil production</a> Juba seems willing to entirely forego 98% of the government’s non-aid related foreign currency earnings. How did we get here?</p>\n<p><span></span>Recent events are almost inexplicable when one considers the developmental and economic progress that accrued to both Sudans in the six years that spanned the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, and the independence of South Sudan last year.</p>\n<p>But then again, perhaps not: Khartoum began to act in bad faith with regard to the terms of the CPA almost as soon as the ink had dried: <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12025213\">siphoning money</a> from the proceeds of oil fields in the South; failing to administer a <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/One-year-anniversary-of-failed,41239\">referendum on the final status of the disputed, and oil rich, Abyei</a> region; reneging on their commitment to conduct “<a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?iframe&page=imprimable&id_article=40409\">popular consultation</a>” processes in the border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile; and failing to demobilize and integrate Northern rebel militias affiliated with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLM) into the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).</p>\n<p>As secession grew near, critical issues of resource division, citizenship, inherited debt, and the final status of borders remained unresolved. Hardliners, and military men, in the <a href=\"http://namaa09.blogspot.com/\">northern establishment, emasculated by the failure of Omar al-Bashir</a> to extract any concessions to end or mitigate Sudan’s pariah status, buttonholed the president in <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/A-Creeping-Military-Coup-in,39804\">a soft coup</a>, forestalling the prospect of effective conciliation with the South. Fratricidal, petty, and pathetic politicking is now the order of the day.</p>\n<p>Rump Sudan now faces a chronic fiscal crisis. Having lost 75% of known oil reserves to the South, the Khartoum regime, under the shadow of the Arab Spring, must enact 26% spending reductions in the face of a restive population, whose marginal livelihoods are being squeezed at the crosshairs of inflation, failed or conflict affected cultivation, and the lifting of government subsidies on staples. The full extent of the bankruptcy of government’s current fiscal positions was exposed in December when Finance Minister Ali Mahmood Abdel Rasool admitted to a hostile Majlis that current <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/Sudanese-government-s-plan-to-lift,40983\">fuel subsidies accounted for a gobsmacking 25% of government expenditure</a>.</p>\n<p>That the SAF has <a href=\"http://www.enoughproject.org/multimedia/abyei-invasion-aftermath\">invaded and occupied Abyei</a>, and vast swathes of <a href=\"http://www.usip.org/publications/return-war-in-sudan-s-nuba-mountains\">South Kordofan</a> and <a href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2011/0908/North-Sudan-s-post-independence-conflict-spreads-to-Blue-Nile-state\">Blue Nile</a> states, will divert more resources to oppressive state apparatus in lieu of poverty reduction and the provision of basic services. The UN now estimates that as a consequence of these new conflicts a <a href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5NBVSUyt7Rhe49daA6dOyBQhq6A?docId=CNG.29f281d349da57cf7c0165dde5cba5ae.8e1\">quarter of a million citizens</a> have been “severely affected”, and that <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/us-warns-of-humanitarian-crisis-unless-sudan-allows-aid-wfp-up-to-500000-may-need-help/2012/01/30/gIQArBNTcQ_story.html\">half a million may require food aid</a>. The government’s refusal to allow international aid groups to work with conflict-affected populations has the potential to induce a catastrophic, but entirely avoidable, humanitarian disaster.</p>\n<p>Moreover, the destabilization of Libya – <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/Libya-s-new-masters-are-thankful,39985\">actively supported by Bashir</a> – has forced Darfuri rebels from their former safe haven. Notwithstanding the <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/Khalil-Ibrahim-the-chief-of-the,41096\">assassination of the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement</a> (JEM) in December, the influx of battle-hardened militia and military hardware to the Darfurs, and Kordofan states, has breathed new fire into that conflict. Increasing <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201111130047.html\">cooperation between the SPLM-North and Darfuri rebel groups</a> now trace the contours of a new “South” and, potentially, protracted conflict.</p>\n<p>Domestic <a href=\"http://www.sudanews.net/sudanese-papers/khartoum-university-students-protest-against-police-admin\">protests</a> – often spontaneous – have been <a href=\"http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/01/22/sudan-rights-record-deteriorates-new-conflicts\">suppressed</a>, amid <a href=\"http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/32040/World/Region/Sudanese-activists-recount-tales-of-detention-and-.aspx\">allegations of torture</a> and human rights violations.</p>\n<p>In this cauldron of unrest and economic decline, perhaps it is no surprise that the Sudanese government began to ‘<a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/Sudan-s-parliament-authorizes,40942\">officially’ confiscate</a> Southern oil to offset their demands for a $36 a barrel surcharge to cover the costs of transit through the Red Sea pipeline. The South now accuses Khartoum of stealing more than $800m worth of oil, <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/ethiopiaNews/idAFL5E8CU3V920120130\">a charge that is not denied</a>.</p>\n<p>Ongoing efforts to negotiate a sustainable compromise appear to be floundering with the South offering to pay a $1 surcharge per barrel. Both sides are, moreover, insisting on linking any agreement to border disputes, allegations of proxy warfare, and the Abyei conflagration. The negotiating teams appear bent on holding hands and plunging off the economic precipice together.</p>\n<p>The North may be in an economic crisis, but the South desperately needs money. Human development indicators for the region are abysmal, but for the South they are positively medieval. The influx of <a href=\"http://www.unsudanig.org/docs/OCHA%20Sudan%20Weekly%20Humanitarian%20Bulletin%209%20-%2015%20January%202012.pdf\">362,000</a> ‘<a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n13/jonathan-littell/infisal-infisal-infisal\">returnees</a>’ from the North, joined by throngs of refugees from Abyei and South Kordofan, has strained the limited welfare capacity of the new state, while bloody internecine violence in <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/Tribal-attack-on-Warrap-leaves,41448\">Warrap</a> and <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/world/africa/south-sudan-massacres-follow-independence.html?sq=sudan&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all\">Jonglei</a> states continues to undermine internal security, with <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16575153\">tens of thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands displaced</a>. Khartoum will soon consider <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL5E8CQ48P20120126\">700,000 South Sudanese</a> resident in the North as foreign; their return would trigger unthinkable social destabilization.</p>\n<p>Against this backdrop, the Government of South Sudan is shutting down oil production. If oil does not flow the pipeline will atrophy and become moribund, leaving both nations economically adrift in a sea of conflict.</p>\n<p>With the United States utterly alienated from the process – comprehensive and longstanding sanctions against the North leaving them with few card to play – and both sides <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL4E8D10LA20120201?sp=true\">unwilling</a> to consider the <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/AU-urges-Sudan-South-Sudan-to,41388\">African Union’s interventions</a>, it is difficult to see who can bring the parties back from the cliff face.</p>\n<p>China, however, could still play a significant and constructive role, but only if they were to blur the edges of a longstanding policy of <a href=\"http://www.africalegalbrief.com/index.php/component/content/article/459-china-pledges-to-protect-african-sovereighty.html\">non-interference in the sovereign affairs of African states</a>. China’s burgeoning and commodity intensive economy derives 6% of oil needs from Sudanese oil fields. There are also over <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL4E8CV5IE20120131?sp=true\">100 Chinese companies, with over 10,000 employees</a>, heavily invested in the extraction and refinery capacity of both Sudans, whose <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews/idAFL4E8D214K20120202\">security is increasingly tenuous</a>. These sunk costs, in conjunction with the compounded opportunity cost of economic growth foregone as a consequence of diminished oil resources, could force China’s hand. Already diplomats have been <a href=\"http://www.sudantribune.com/China-dispatches-envoy-to-Sudan,40915\">shuttling</a>, amid calls for <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577174591034411010.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\">restraint</a>. A selfish foreign policy could yet bring Sudan back from the brink.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/43025/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=43025&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The human economy in a revolutionary moment: political aspects of the economic crisis",
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"content" : "<p>Edited transcription of an improvised talk for a seminar, “Social movements and the solidarity economy”, organized by Jean-Louis Laville and Geoffrey Pleyers, EHESS, Paris, 2 February 2012.</p>\n<p>I was asked to report on the project I am involved in which has the same name as <em>The Human Economy </em>book; but, given this course’s focus on social movements, I decided that I should try to insert the perspective on economy I have developed into contemporary political processes and events. I have been writing, editing and researching about alternative approaches to the economy for a long time and blogging about politics more recently, but never the two together. In the last year, as a result of the North African revolutions and then the Occupy movement, I have come to see that the economic and political arguments have to be brought much closer together. Taking our lead from this moment in world history, we need to ask how the work that Jean-Louis and I have long been engaged in – on human economy, <em>économie solidaire</em>, social economy – needs to be modified in order to lend support to what has become a serious political movement at the global level.<span></span></p>\n<p>I entered our collaboration after Jean-Louis, with Antonio David Cattani, published an expanded version of the <em>Dictionnaire de l’autre économie</em> in 2006. I published an enthusiastic review essay about it. I was staggered by the range of analysis concerning economic and political development that it contained. I have been living in Paris for 15 years and I feel lucky to have been here during what I see as a Renaissance of French economic sociology. The book edited by Philippe Steiner and François Vatin, <em>Traité de sociologie économique</em>, is a testament to the constellation of brilliant economic sociologists that France has produced in the last decade or more. It was equally clear that this work was largely unknown in the English-speaking world and, increasingly under Chirac and Sarkozy, lacked a receptive audience in France as well. So, since my friends in this field were being frozen out of French politics to some extent, we had the idea of selling the project to the English-speakers or at least to those who speak English as a second language. Geoffrey has already introduced the result, <em>The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide</em> (2010).</p>\n<p>All the predecessor volumes were called, in various languages, <em>Dictionary of the Other Economy</em>. We dropped that particular formulation for reasons that will become the main theme of my talk today. The difference between what are conventionally known as the extreme left and the centre left lies in the concept of change that each of them has. The extreme left conceives of the future as the negation of what it calls “capitalism” in a unitary way and imagines a radical rupture with that system in ways that are not always specified, but are thought to be revolutionary. The centre left, whether it relies on state intervention or the mobilization of voluntary associations of various kinds, tends to emphasize more gradual and continuous developments building on what people are doing already. We felt that labelling our intellectual work as “the other economy” lent itself too readily to radical utopias. Jean-Louis and I based our conversation on what Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi understood by economic change, since we were looking for a more positive construction than a simple negation; and this is where the idea of a human economy came from.</p>\n<p>What makes an economy “human”? First, it privileges people before abstractions. People make and remake their economic lives and that has to be the basis for thinking about economy. Any economics has to be accessible to them as a practical guide to how they manage those lives. But the economy is human in another sense too in that we increasingly confront economic problems and dilemmas as humanity. The future of humanity as a whole is at stake in the economic crises that we face and not just the world seen through the blinkers of national politics and media. So the idea of a human economy points in these two directions: towards what people really do and extending our perspectives to a global level, if possible.</p>\n<p>Since publishing the book, I have helped to set up a research program on the human economy at the University of Pretoria in South Africa’s capital. UP was an Afrikaner establishment close to government power in the apartheid period; but South Africa is on the move and has been for more than two decades, so the university wants to refurbish its image and expand in more progressive directions. They have generously funded a program of post-doctoral fellowships drawing initially from the global South (with fellows from Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia and Southern Africa), but now linking researchers from North and South in a creative dialogue focused on South Africa. Volumes before <em>The Human Economy</em> were largely a Francophone and Latin American venture, so we widened the range of contributors to take in 15 countries, adding authors from Britain, North America and Scandinavia, as well as translating a selection from the <em>Dictionnaire</em>. But it soon became apparent that Asia and Africa – where most of the people live – were still missing from this impressively diverse international project. The series was launched in Brazil and Argentina soon after the millennium and it was always intended to advance collaboration between networks of researchers and activists. The books are a digest of existing knowledge and experience that might help to inform readers who wish to change the world in a progressive direction. Ours too did not offer much guidance for how to carry out active research on the human economy. So the Pretoria program aims to fill these two gaps: first, to enrol Africans and Asians, alongside Latin Americans and Europeans, into studying how to make a better economy; and second, to foster post-doctoral research that would help to inform and refine this program.</p>\n<p>The <em>Dictionnaire</em> that Jean-Louis put together came out in the middle of the credit boom (2002, 2006). Very few people saw much prospect for economic and political change at that time. By the time we published <em>The Human Economy</em> in 2010, after the financial crisis had broken, it was clear that the ideas it contained should find a more fertile reception in the new climate of public opinion. At the very least, the absolute hegemony of mainstream economics has been damaged by the crisis. It really isn’t feasible to argue any longer – although many economists still do – that the best guarantee of improved human well-being is to leave markets free of political intervention and social control. Surely no-one believes that any more. Markets were never free, but the dominant ideology provided cover for siphoning wealth to the top; and that is now very much on the political agenda. Even the <em>Financial Times</em> publishes articles saying that we maybe need a new synthesis of anthropology, history and economics to replace the old discipline. So we were pretty sure that our ideas would meet a more favourable audience in this context.</p>\n<p>Even so, we distanced ourselves, in the introduction and in our approach to editing the book, from any “revolutionary” eschatology that suggested society had reached the end of something rotten and would soon be launched on something quite new. The idea of a human economy rested on drawing attention to the fact that people do a lot more than might be imagined if we focus only on the dominant economic institutions. Against a singular notion of the economy as “capitalism”, we argued that all societies combine a plurality of economic forms and that several of these are universally distributed across history, even if their combination is strongly coloured by the dominant type of organization in particular times and places. For example, in his famous essay on <em>The Gift</em> (1925), Marcel Mauss tried to show that other economic principles were present in capitalist societies and understanding this would provide a sounder basis for building non-capitalist alternatives than the Bolshevik revolution’s attempt to break with markets and money. Karl Polanyi too, in his various writings, insisted that the human economy throughout history was made up of a number of mechanisms of which the market was only one. We argued therefore that the idea of radical transformation of an economy conceived of monolithically as capitalism into something regarded as its opposite was an inappropriate way to approach economic change. We should pay attention to the full range of what people are doing already and build economic initiatives around giving these a new direction, combination and emphasis, rather than suppose that economic change has to be invented from scratch. Although this might seem to be a gradualist approach to economic improvement, adopting such an approach on awide scale would in fact have revolutionary consequences.</p>\n<p>I have been working quite closely for 5 or 6 years now with my friend and colleague at Goldsmiths, David Graeber. He is an anarchist who was prominent from the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. His book,<em> Debt: The First 5,000 Years</em>, is a best-seller. His politics inform his economic analysis; and he has always taken an anti-statist and anti-capitalist position, with markets usually subsumed under the concept of capitalism. That is, he sees the future and the means of getting there as being based on the opposite of our capitalist states. The core of his politics is “direct action” which he has practised and written about as ethnography. I have always been centre-left with a liberal streak, but my mentor, the person from whom I have learned most, was the West Indian revolutionary, C.L.R. James and through him I gained a literary interest in the history of revolutions. In our book, Jean-Louis and I argued that people everywhere rely on a wide range of organizations in their economic lives: markets, nation-states, corporations, cities, voluntary associations, families, virtual networks, informal economies, crime and war. We should be looking for a more progressive mix of these things. We can’t afford to turn our backs on the institutions that have helped us make the modern transition to the world society that humanity now lives in. Large-scale bureaucracies co-exist with varieties of popular self-organization and we have to make them work together rather than at cross-purposes, as they often are now. All of these are responses to the challenges posed by the modern world and we need to combine them at a new and more inclusive level.</p>\n<p>David and I agree on much of the economics. As anthropologists, we both claim inspiration from Marx and Mauss in departing from mainstream economics. Our theories of money are pretty close. Although he is less explicitly indebted to Polanyi, he too believes that economic life everywhere may be understood as a plural combination of moral principles – sharing or “communism”, reciprocity and hierarchy – which take on a different complexion when organized by dominant social forms. Thus helping each other as equals is essential to capitalist societies, but capitalism is a terrible way of bringing it out effectively. But at the same time he believes that a radical rupture with the norms of capitalist states is necessary if we are to realise out human potential through a new kind of political economy. At first, I saw our positions as being incompatible, but recent political developments now persuade me otherwise.</p>\n<p>I would bet that 2011-2012 will turn out to be a revolutionary moment in world history comparable at least with the changes that took place in 1989-1990 and maybe more significant than that. The trigger for such a perception has been the so-called Arab Spring, the revolutions that deposed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt during early 2011. I am an Africanist and I have written about Tunisia online (e.g. <a href=\"http://thinkafricapress.com/tunisia/elections-2011-economic-democracy-preeminent\">http://thinkafricapress.com/tunisia/elections-2011-economic-democracy-preeminent</a>). Then uprisings followed in Europe (protests in Greece, Los Indignados in Madrid), the student protests and riots in Britain and the student movement in Chile before OWS captured the world’s attention in New York last September. I felt from the beginning that OWS, whatever its consequences for American society and politics and whether or not it could claim some long-term success there, had profound significance for the global movement. It showed that the American monolith was not fixed in stone and that revolts around the world had a counterpart within the US. We live after all in the American Empire and I always thought that the “Arab Spring” should be seen as a revolt against that Empire. Oil has succeeded gold as the world economy’s principal commodity and control of it underlies the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency. The Middle East, Israel and oil are so central to American influence in the world – not to mention the wars they have launched against Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe soon Iran from their bases and fleets there – that the sacking of Mubarak had immense significance in and beyond the region. But at first there was no sign that anything was moving in the US. All you had was the Tea Party and a stalemate in Congress.</p>\n<p>CLR James came from Trinidad and died an old man in the late 1980s. He was saying after 1968 that there were only two world revolutions left – the second Russian revolution and the second American revolution. He wrote a book that I co-edited called <em>American Civilization</em> (1993 [1950]) in which he argued that the contradiction between totalitarian bureaucracy and the struggle to bring democracy into people’s lives was at its strongest in the United States. He always believed that American society must be central to any future world revolution. I am not predicting that the OWS movement will lead directly to mass insurrection in the US. But its cultural example was immediately taken up within the country and across the world; and this reflects the fact that we live in a world unified by the contradictions of American imperial power. I watched Tiananmen Square on TV with James in April 1989. He was 88 years old and died a few weeks later. If you recall, the students were protesting because of an international meeting there to which Gorbachev was invited. The whole world was gripped by the spectacle. He said that the Chinese Communist Party would put down this rebellion easily, but “The Russians will find it hard to hold onto Eastern Europe after this”. The Berlin Wall came down six months later and that was the start of what may or may not turn out to have been the second Russian revolution.</p>\n<p>All of this led me to reconsider the perspective we adopted in the <em>Human Economy</em> volume. It now seems that the piecemeal reformist approach to economic change we took there needs to confront the world revolution that we may be living through. This morning, while I was contemplating my talk and wondering how I was going to deal with “Human Economy meets the Occupy Movement” for the first time ever, three documents landed in my lap, or rather in my laptop, and I wish to give you a chance to read excerpts from them. One was an article in Harper’s by Nathan Schneider, “Planet Occupy”, on the principles of the Occupy movement (<a href=\"http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008434\">http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008434</a>); another was by the same author at <em>Waging Non–Violence</em>, “Is Anonymous our future?” (<a href=\"http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/is-anonymous-our-future/\">http://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/is-anonymous-our-future/</a> ); this in turn was based on one by Gabriella Coleman at <em>Triple Canopy</em>, “Our weirdness is free: the logic of Anonymous–online army, agent of chaos, and seeker of justice” (<a href=\"http://canopycanopycanopy.com/15/our_weirdness_is_free\">http://canopycanopycanopy.com/15/our_weirdness_is_free</a>). In addition, I am circulating among you something I wrote for a list on Lenin, James and revolution, since the perspective we operate with in normal times doesn’t really apply to revolutionary situations where timing is everything. James has a lecture, ‘Walter Rodney and the question of power’, given to California students in 1981 <a href=\"http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1981/01/rodney.htm\">http://www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1981/01/rodney.htm</a>. He draws extensively on a letter written by Lenin in 1917 and later published as ‘Marxism and insurrection’: <a href=\"http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm\">http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/13.htm</a>.</p>\n<p>In January 1917, Lenin gave a speech to Swiss socialists in Zurich where he said he did not expect revolution in his lifetime, but he hoped that the younger comrades would be able to fight in one. The Russian revolution got going in March, when the soviets took to the streets; in September, Lenin writes a letter seeking to justify why he called for revolution in September, but had not in July; and by October the revolution was a done deal. You should read Trotsky’s <em>History of the Russian Revolution</em>: it takes 1300 pages to cover nine months and some events like a pivotal meeting in which the author’s intervention was decisive get 40 pages. We are talking about speed-up here. The normal pace of talking, writing and publishing that we worked with in our book can’t accommodate this reality. I don’t want to give all this up to join the barricades. I’m an intellectual who wants to train young people to study and work for economic progress, like this seminar. Nevertheless even this more sedate approach has to distinguish between the time frame of revolutionary insurrection and building a more effective economic platform to help people experience a measure of economic democracy in their lives. These piecemeal long-term projects are vital, but the premise of a revolutionary moment puts pressure on that work.</p>\n<p>Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist who has been a participant observer in Anonymous’ 4chan chat rooms since 2008. Anonymous is an occult organization of geeks, trolls and agitators who came to prominence in 2011 with attacks on government and corporate websites in defence of Wikileaks and other causes. If you haven’t heard of them, blame it on the French media who would rather that the digital revolution hadn’t happened. This is not all of France which, with Finland, Korea and Japan, is one of the four countries with the fastest and cheapest broadband and supports the largest blogosphere outside the US. Anonymous started out justifying opaque identities as a cloak for freedom of expression which at times meant being disruptive just for the fun of it. But it has since become an engaged force for social justice. There are important parallels between Anonymous and OWS, but their modus operandi is strikingly different in that one is clandestine and the other transparent. This might be thought to be a contradiction if it were not the case that the pursuit of openness as a political virtue requires a degree of closure also. We might want the banks to be more transparent, but which of us would like our own income an dexpenditure to be made public? So the open/closed dialectic may be less polarised than it is sometimes made out to be. The same may be said of freedom and necessity, perhaps also of revolution and reform. You can’t have one without both. Walk on two legs. It’s better than standing on one foot and falling over…</p>\n<p>In winding up her argument, Coleman draws on Ernst Bloch, a favourite writer of mine too:</p>\n<p>“Anonymous acts in a way that is irreverent, often destructive, occasionally vindictive, and generally disdainful of the law, but it also offers an object lesson in what Frankfurt School philosopher Ernst Bloch calls ‘the principle of hope.’ In his three-volume work <em>Das Prinzip Hoffnung </em>(1938-47), Bloch attends to a stunningly diverse number of signs, symbols, and artifacts from different historical eras, ranging from dreams to fairy tales, in order to remind us that the desire for a better world is always in our midst. Bloch works as a philosophical archaeologist, excavating forgotten messages in songs, poems, and rituals. They do not represent hope in the religious sense, or even utopia—there is no vision of transcending our institutions, much less history—but they do hold latent possibilities that in certain conditions can be activated and perhaps lead to new political realities. ‘The door that is at least half-open, when it appears to open onto pleasant objects, is marked hope,’ Bloch writes. The emergence of Anonymous from one of the seediest places on the Internet seems to me an enactment of Bloch’s principle of hope.”</p>\n<p>So Bloch’s vision is that this aspiration for a better world is everywhere and inside us, an infrastructure always ready to be tapped into and given more concrete impression. It is similar, at the level of ideology, to what Jean-Louis and I are arguing for the economy – people have always had many different ways of organizing their economic lives and these make up a reservoir of knowledge and aspiration that, given appropriate direction, could lead us to a better economy.</p>\n<p>The basic principles of the Occupy movement, as Schneider shows, are quite general and easily understood. One question that immediately comes to mind is how we might account for the similarities between so many movements that sprang up independently or soon after OWS. The <em>Indignados</em> of Madrid predated New York, yet their principles of organization are remarkably alike. Where did these principles come from? Are they an instinctive negation of mainstream political economy? Are they an innate expression of human democracy? Or were they diffused by the new digital media? Perhaps all three or none of these are relevant. Schneider has a good summary which is worth quoting at length:</p>\n<p>“The Declaration of the Occupation is addressed not to governments—no hope there—but rather “to the people of the world,” urging communities everywhere to “assert your power.” “We are creating an exemplar society,” states Occupy Boston’s Declaration of Occupation… “No one’s human needs go unmet,” [it] continues. Planet Occupy, like last fall’s occupations, provides food and shelter for everyone, no questions asked. It also ensures health care, mutual education, childcare, legal representation, and a large, meticulously catalogued library. Sounds like a good social democracy—except that, in the words of Occupy Wall Street’s Principles of Solidarity, the basic unit of political life is not the ballot box but ‘autonomous political beings engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy.’ Though they might be wired to the teeth, the political beings of Planet Occupy carry out their democracy face to face, in well-coordinated small groups that operate by consensus. It’s ‘participatory as opposed to partisan,’ suggesting that the aim is for all voices to be heard, rather than for one party to prevail over others. Those with ‘inherent privilege’ defer whenever possible to others. The consolidation of power is discouraged, and resisted when necessary. Policing troublemakers becomes the job not of cops, but of assertive, well-trained listeners.</p>\n<p>“Even with its inhabitants’ passion for local autonomy, though, Planet Occupy is a globalized place. People and their ideas travel freely, creating new opportunities and partnerships wherever they go. Assemblies share their plans and innovations over Interoccupy. (The movement’s conference-call network will have supplanted the original Internet, which was overrun by corporate advertising.) Following the urge in the Principles for ‘the broad application of open source,’ all ideas are common property, and these collective resources are, according to the Statement of Autonomy, valued more highly than money—if money still exists at all. SOPA-style censorship in the name of ownership is not okay. Also not okay is using violence to resolve conflicts. Almost every Occupy document makes some statement to this effect. Occupy Boston’s Memorandum of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples envisions ‘a new era of peace and cooperation that will work for everyone.’ When conflict occurs, as is inevitable, people resist injustice through ‘non-violent civil disobedience and building solidarity based on mutual respect, acceptance and love,’ in accordance with the Principles. Every such struggle is both local and global.</p>\n<p>“Is this anarchist utopia realistic, or even desirable? It’s at least a little out there, perhaps a lot out there. But the Declaration of the Rights of Man, drafted while Louis XVI still had his head, wasn’t easy to comprehend in its time. The circumstances of our world exceed the politics we’re used to imagining for it, and the politics that are really necessary might therefore seem impossible. ‘We have come to Wall Street as refugees from this native dreamland, seeking asylum in the actual,’ explains Communiqué 1, an article in the movement journal Tidal. ‘We seek to rediscover and reclaim the world.’</p>\n<p>“The movement’s documents contain fewer hints about economy. The Principles of Solidarity calls for ‘redefining how labor is valued,’ which may look something like the worker-owned cooperatives currently being developed at the Freedom Plaza occupation in Washington, D.C. Broadly speaking, human needs prevail over claims on profit. Companies are chartered for the public good, not private gain. Participatory democracy prevails in workplaces, neighborhoods, and other productive groupings. Many aspects of the economy—food, especially—remain local. This is necessary partly in order to preserve and sustain the natural environment. Everyone on Planet Occupy knows, after all, that if they don’t protect the planet, there will be nothing left to occupy.”</p>\n<p>There must be no divisions, no exclusions. Goods must be shared on the basis of to each according to their needs. There are obvious links in the above to <em>économie solidaire</em> or human economy. What we have here is a version of a common revolutionary eschatology based on the negation of how capitalist states appear to be run. Production is of public goods, <em>not</em> for profit. This contrasts quite starkly with our approach in the international human economy project. We believe that limited markets can be fair distributors of goods and that states are good for redistribution and guarantees of social rights, as long as they make room for people to help themselves drawing on the mutuality that comes from living together, not just contracts and citizenship. I have been impressed by recent developments in Brazil. Alternative economic organization in Europe tends to be conceived of as bottom up initiatives that are independent of government and large corporations or against them. The Brazilian government, however, has played a major role in promoting and coordinating the solidarity economy. They have introduced a system of community banks, for example, which is organized by the government, but combines community currencies and microcredit in a locally accountable and participatory way. It is possible to imagine something similar in France under a socialist president. We might call this social democracy revisited and it is not to be sniffed at.</p>\n<p>We do not subscribe to the capitalist model of markets or to governments imposing themselves in undemocratic ways; but we do expect the movement from below to be supported and even coordinated by the powers. I have not yet come across a civil society movement capable of launching a communications satellite. So there probably will be room for mutual accommodation between large-scale and small-scale economic organization in any imaginable future. The political terms of their cooperation remain to be settled, of course and there lies the scope for revolution.</p>\n<p>It is thus possible to discern in the Occupy movement and the work of their most visible spokesmen, such as David Graeber, two competing visions of economic change, each with its counterpart in constructions of the idea of a human economy. One is “the world turned upside down”, a complete break with the past which might be envisaged as a return to a simpler and more wholesome way of life before the state and capitalism. The other insists that we can rely on people to be who they are, to find ways to come together and develop their mutual interests without violence or coercion. These two visions are struggling with each other in the politics of this revolutionary moment. That is why we have to think seriously about what revolutionary situations are like. It’s a very different world from one where we plan and build programs that people can live by in the long run. That is why I refer to James’s remarks on Lenin in a speech to students about the Guyanese academic-turned-revolutionary, Walter Rodney (<em>How Europe Underdeveloped Africa</em>), who was blown up by an agent provocateur he trusted. He tells the students that they don’t understand what revolution is and neither did Rodney who lost his life as a result. No competent revolutionary organization should have left its leader unprotected in this way. (James himself was a Trotskyist dodging the bullets of Stalinist assassins while researching <em>The Black Jacobins</em> in Paris during the 1930s).</p>\n<p>James quotes from Lenin’s letter of September 1917 where he talks about “insurrection”. It is important to have discriminating vocabulary rather than call everything a revolution. The events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt were insurrections, not revolutions. Lenin identifies three components of any revolution and the party has nothing to do with any of them. James lists these as “Firstly, there must be a clash, a revolutionary upsurge of the people. Then, secondly, there must be a turning point, when the activity of the advanced ranks is at its height; and thirdly, the enemy must be vacillating.” Lenin is often misrepresented as an advocate of the vanguard party, He himself abandoned all those ideas as soon as he arrived at the Finland station and found the workers’ and soldiers’ soviets in the streets. Until then, he said, I was just another bourgeois politician. Revolutions change people. Lenin also said that insurrection is an <em>art</em>, not a science. At the end of his speech, James recalls a conversation with Trotsky in Mexico in 1938: “But how come, time and again, the revolutionary party – this is the party, not the mass movement — was wrong in its analysis of the situation and Lenin turns out to be right and set it the correct way? How did that happen?” And I expected him to tell me how Lenin knew philosophy, how he knew political analysis, how he knew psychology, or how he knew the revolution. He did not. He said, “Lenin always had his eyes upon the mass of the population, and when he saw the way they were going, he knew that tomorrow this was what was going to happen.” The prophet as anthropologist! And Gabriella Coleman is there in these hackers’ conversation rooms trying to figure out what they are doing.</p>\n<p>So what are the implications of all this for the idea of a human economy? Like Jean-Louis, I seem to have spent the last few years producing books. It is a very different enterprise writing for educational purposes in the long run from trying to understand the moment we are living through. The best methodological statement on this I know is by Marx in the introduction to <em>Grundrisse</em>, the notes he compiled from 15 years of reading in the British Museum library which he completed in 1859. We must start, he says, from our concrete moment in world history, whatever that is. We start with the conditions we encounter and study them. Then we build analytical concepts and propositions using the results of what we have studied. Analysis is making sense of what we find out there. Some people — Marx here nodding rather unfairly in my view towards Hegel — think that the task finishes there, with the ideas. Once you have the analysis, you can rest happy, publish your book and get tenure. But the point of the analytical tools we have developed is to insert them back into the moment we are living in; and you can do that in many ways, through writing, propaganda, political parties, controlled experiments, social networking, blogs, whatever. The test of their validity lies in this dialectical process. Only then might we generate an analytically informed and empirically tested account of our moment in history seen as a synthetic whole. He plans to do this in <em>Capital</em>; but actually he never got there. He lists five prospective volumes culminating in a historical account of the world economy as a whole; but he hardly made it to three.</p>\n<p>We all, if we are honest and realistic, have to locate ourselves at some point along the path that Marx charted. The core of the human economy project lies in dealing with the two approaches I have mentioned. I find it really fertile to juxtapose my own work with that of David Graeber, taking account of the similarities and differences in ways that change subtly over time. David arrived at the term “human economy” more or less when I did, in the last decade. He uses it to refer to an earlier period of human history, the world we have lost that survives in ethnographic accounts of primitive, exotic peoples, when people were purer than we are, living in a natural state of humanity. It’s an old story, but a powerful one and he tells it well. For him, the human economy is one whose objective is the social reproduction of people. It takes the form in Africa, for example, of cows being exchanged for women in marriage as a source of legitimation for children. This version of the human economy is based on principles diametrically opposed to those of capitalism, the market and the state.</p>\n<p>Jean-Louis and I take the view that the human economy exists everywhere in some kind of dialectical tension with the dominant economic institutions of our day. It is not incompatible with money and markets. These can be made to serve human interests and needs, as they always have in varying degree, and they don’t have to take the exploitive form that they currently do in our societies as a source of unequal power and wealth. I for one like ordering books and apps online and don’t want to spend my days haggling over my daily bread without a means of payment or standing in line for a handout. We take our lead from Mauss’s insistence that markets and money rest on what Durkheim called “the non-contractual element in the contract”, a body of customs, laws and history that is obscured, marginalized and repressed by bourgeois ideology, even as it contains the living potential to humanize our economic institutions.</p>\n<p>A counterpart to these competing constructions of the human economy may be found in the two visions of revolution I touched on earlier – a digital one that envisages a radical switch to the negation of what we know and an analogue version that expects to mobilize people by building on what they know and do already. A lot hinges on our ability to see a way towards combining these approaches rather than opposing them. I would argue that David and I already do that, each in our own way. The tension between them is to be found in all the current protest movements from Tahrir Square to OWS and Anonymous. We cannot afford to go back to the polarized and often sectarian politics of the twentieth century, when “revolution” and “reform” defined opposite sides in a destructive and partisan conflict. If we were aiming for anything in articulating the human economy idea, it was to get beyond the extremes of state socialism and free enterprise that misleadingly identified the sides in the Cold War. What is the Pentagon after all if not the largest socialist collective in world history?</p>\n<p>I sum this up in the chart below. The human economy is conceived of as mediating between two paired antinomies – state and market, home and world – which helped to define the twentieth century’s dominant social form, “national capitalism” — the attempt to manage money, markets and accumulation though central bureaucracy in the name of a cultural community of national citizens. The economic crisis of our time may be understood as the collapse of this system. Rather than oppose the poles of either pair to each other, the aim is to synthesize them through a pragmatic focus on what people really do.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\">Three things count in our societies — people, machines and money, in that order. But money buys the machines that control the people. Our political task – and I believe it was Marx’s too – is to reverse that order of priority, not to help people escape from machines and money, but to encourage them to develop themselves through machines and money. To the idea of economic crisis and its antidotes, we must now add that of political revolution. I have argued here that the dynamics of revolution require active consideration in this context. Revolutions give rise to digital contrasts and rightly so, but human societies are built on analogue processes. This is not just an academic debating point. A lot hinges on how humanity responds to the contradictions of the turbulence ahead.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> THE HUMAN ECONOMY</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> WORLD</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> EMPIRE GLOBALIZATION</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> People</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> STATE SOCIETY MARKET</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"> Machines Money</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> NATION CAPITALISM</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"> HOME</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+human+economy+in+a+revolutionary+moment%3A+political+aspects+of+the+economic+crisis+http%3A%2F%2Fis.gd%2FuzjE0O\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+human+economy+in+a+revolutionary+moment%3A+political+aspects+of+the+economic+crisis+http%3A%2F%2Fis.gd%2FuzjE0O\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<span title=\"ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Focoins.info%3Agenerator&rft.title=An+ideophone+poem+by+Stacey+Tran&rft.aulast=Dingemanse&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.subject=Ideophones&rft.subject=Poetry&rft.source=The+Ideophone&rft.date=2012-02-06&rft.type=blogPost&rft.format=text&rft.identifier=http://ideophone.org/an-ideophone-poem-by-stacey-tran/&rft.language=English\"></span>\n<abbr title=\"http://ideophone.org/?p=2885\"></abbr>\n<p>Last week the Portland Review published a beautiful ideophone poem by Stacey Tran, titled <em>From the World Encyclopedia of Ideophones</em>. It consists of ideophones from Navajo, Japanese, Vietnamese, Yoruba and Siwu juxtaposed with poetry lines that evoke the rich and textured meanings of these words. <a href=\"http://portlandreview.tumblr.com/post/16751148160/from-the-world-encyclopedia-of-ideophones\">Read the piece here</a>. I’m not sure I can quote it in full here but I have to quote the Siwu ideophone and the lines that it inspired:</p>\n<blockquote><p>mukumuku — (Siwu) mumbling mouth movements</p>\n<p>A woman at the grocery store choosing an orange, one after the other tumbling onto the ground in front of her, for all that is known they might have been the ones she would have wanted to bring home to her daughter, her back rounds as she picks each one up off the confetti linoleum.</p>\n<p><em>— Stacey Tran, From the World Encyclopedia of Ideophones (<a href=\"http://portlandreview.tumblr.com/post/16751148160/from-the-world-encyclopedia-of-ideophones\">source</a>)</em></p></blockquote>\n<p>The title is brilliant too. You will look in vain for a traditional printed book titled <em>The World Encyclopedia of Ideophones</em>. Yet it is true that the ideophone inventories of languages across the globe form an impressive compendium of everyday poetry. Thank you, <a title=\"Stacey Tran's blog\" href=\"http://stuvwyz.blogspot.com/\">Stacey Tran</a>, for creating this wonderful work of art and for reminding us that ideophones are, as Evans-Pritchard <a title=\"‘Poetry in ordinary language’: Evans-Pritchard on ideophones\" href=\"http://ideophone.org/evans-pritchard-on-ideophones/\">wrote</a>, poetry in ordinary language.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?a=wopK_fKThyI:J-mvWxBYxWQ:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?a=wopK_fKThyI:J-mvWxBYxWQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ideophone/~4/wopK_fKThyI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "This is not a mafia business. This relies on credit!",
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"content" : "Via Jamie Kenny, <a href=\"http://en.iceo.com.cn/tts/?p=23\">a must-read translation</a> of a Chinese investigative report into the case of Wu Ying, a Chinese businesswoman who is in deep trouble with the law. What's interesting here is that the report provides a deep view into some of the most important interfaces in the political economy of China - between the official and shadow banking sectors, between both and the Party, and between the Party and organised crime. It's been suggested by quite a few people, notably Ken Livingstone's economic advisor <a href=\"http://socialisteconomicbulletin.blogspot.com/2009/05/chinas-investment-surge-aids-its-own.html\">John Ross</a>, that Chinese macro-economic policy is basically all about investment - whereas other countries might target inflation, the money supply, nominal or real GDP, an exchange-rate peg, or full employment with a range of fiscal or monetary tools, Chinese policy makers have a primary policy target of maintaining sufficient employment growth to keep up with the growth of the urban workforce, and a primary policy tool of controlling the rate of capital investment. This is achieved through a combination of fiscal policy through the government budget, both formal regulation and informal influence over the banking sector, and monetary policy, specifically the management of the RMB exchange rate and the terms on which central bank intervention is sterilised or not.<br><br>An investment-centric view of the economy could be characterised as both palaeo-Keynesian - investment, driven by animal spirits and radical uncertainty, is the swing item in the national accounting identity and therefore the driver of the business cycle, and should be managed by government in order to maintain a stable growth path - and also Marxist, in that it puts the accumulation of capital and its allocation between sectors centre-stage and suggests that it's too important to be left to capitalists.<br><br>An alternative view, which we might pin on <a href=\"http://chovanec.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/bbc-chinas-2011-gdp-numbers/\">Patrick Chovanec</a>, is that investment is the driver of the Chinese economy but that nobody's in anything that could be described as control. In this view, Chinese economic policy is more orthodox, leaning against the world recession in 2009 with a major stimulus plan and a monetary expansion, but its impact is very noisy. Much of the stimulus money went into an unsustainable property bubble, which is now deflating messily.<br><br>In a sense, these arguments are not all that different. The major differences are the degree of agency the central government is perceived to have, and the underlying call on the future of the economy. John Ross would argue that the surge in investment is creating the capital goods needed for future growth and removing inflationary constraints. Some Americans <a href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/08/399043/china-targets-1000-gw-wind-by-2050/\">wonder at the system's capacity to pour money into a massive windpower infrastructure</a>. On the other hand, <a href=\"http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-25.html\">the San Francisco Fed</a> reckons that a very large proportion of Chinese goods exported to the US consists of imports to China, notably from the US - it's been estimated that out of the production cost of an iPhone, more of the value-added represents US than Chinese production. Isn't this strong evidence that there has been huge overinvestment in a very particular kind of low-margin export processing, plus property?<br><br>Now, back to Wu Ying's cell. This story is all about how the system <em>tries</em> to control investment, how Chinese entrepreneurs and officials try to subvert this control, what happens when it breaks down, and how it is then restored. It's fairly typical of economies with strong official controls on bank balance sheets that a big market in direct inter-company lending develops (it happened in post-war Britain). If you can't get a loan from the bank, perhaps you could arrange something with a business that happens to be awash with cash. Obviously, this is a lot easier if there is some sort of intermediary who can make the deal. And in China there are specific, geographically linked networks of entrepreneurs who have become specialised in this unofficial shadow-banking sector. Technically it is entirely illegal, so it's up to the intermediary to enforce the terms of the contract in their own sweet way. Which of course brings in another actor, organised crime or privatised protection.<br><br>This being China, though, it's more complicated than that. Wu Ying's creditor, Lin Weiping, was a former Cultural Bureau official turned moneylender or rather \"funding coordinator\", who acted as a sort of broker between savers and borrowers. Well, it started off like that but the business prospered and pretty soon people were depositing spare cash with him overnight. This is an important moment - he wasn't just introducing the two parties to a private arrangement any more, but rather, he was now operating a bank. The demand for credit outside the official system, and for high-yielding (2-5% monthly interest) deposits, was enormous. Fascinatingly, it turned out that the official banks were also keen to find sources of wholesale funding that let them get around the People's Bank of China's monetary policy - they started borrowing from him on overnight terms. This was implemented by sending a straw-man to open an account and deposit the cash. Lin, having turned himself into a bank, now went a step further and became a central bank. You might wonder how long it would have taken him to start issuing his own currency.<br><br>But Wu Xing would bring him down. He very rarely extended credit outside his home province, but made an exception for two of her projects, a tourist resort and <em>another</em> unofficial banking operation (which he may have thought of as being a branch of his own). It turned out, though, that she actually had an entirely different project in mind, in real estate. She justified this as necessary to influence important officials. In fact, the story was about to become a classic case of an entrepreneur who over-does the leverage and eventually runs out of credit, with the twist that one lot of creditors had her kidnapped by thugs in an effort to collect payment. However, Wu had become too big to fail, and eventually there was something like a race between Lin's shadow-banking empire and the very official Agricultural Bank of China to put together a lifeboat package, which Lin eventually won. A syndicate of unofficial lenders bought out the loan portfolio at 70% of its face value.<br><br>It seems that this was intolerable to the authorities, as Wu and Lin and many others were then arrested. Lin got six years and is now back on the out and apparently dedicated to studying Chinese culture, specifically the bits relating to keeping his mouth shut. Wu is still in the court system, facing charges of running an illegal bank. <br><br>Chinese regulators quoted seem to be more interested in the sources of capital going into the shadow-banking system, on the grounds that quite a lot of it is deeply illegal in nature, and also that concentrated rather than diversified sources of funding tend to cause systemic risks. In so far as it's the marginal transaction that matters, if this was to work it would represent an effort to make sure that it's the official financial sector that represents the marginal lender and that state control of investment continues.<br><br>But that's going to be very difficult in an environment where the central bank might be you.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-8384822651163400565?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "PSTN sunset, Cloud moonrise",
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"content" : "<div><em>This is a first draft of my abstract for a paper to be submitted to <a href=\"http://www.endofthephonesystem.com/\">The End of the Phone System</a>. All feedback welcomed. -- Martin Geddes</em></div>\n<div><em><br></em></div>\n<div></div>\n<div>The PSTN has shone brightly in the telecoms firmament for a long time. So long, in fact, that we have come to treat many of the assumptions and conditions it brings as being permanent and universal. This is not the case, and there are some possible surprises in store. These have major consequences for policy.<br><br>Indeed, when planning for the “controlled demolition” of circuit-based public telephony, it is important to understand that many new players are going to be tunnelling under, traversing across and towering over the terrain. A neat and tidy end to the present edifice may be overwhelmed by new construction in the vicinity.</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><br>For example:</div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>The technology model for delivery of “IP voice” currently recreates the limits and cost structures of circuit voice. This will change, and we will move to a new paradigm: contention management. This will cause the collapse of the interconnect and settlement regime.</li>\n<li>The business model for “IP voice” continues to inherit the structures of the PSTN: user-pays for minute-based connectivity charges. This will change, and we will move to a new paradigm: enterprises pay for efficient, effective and secure customer contact. This will cause the collapse of the termination fee regime.</li>\n<li>The product model for “IP voice” continues to tie the numbering to the service and access. This will change, and we will move to a new paradigm: open multi-service directories, tied to federated identity, and “over the top” cloud communications platforms. This will cause the collapse of the supply chain for telco voice.</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<div>Indeed, the very idea of cascading money from applications to data transmission to infrastructure is breaking down irretrievably. Attempting to find solutions to social issues like interconnect, emergency service and universal access within the framing of today’s industry may prove impossible and counter-productive. Today’s policy-makers want to use the today’s regulatory regime to do deals with the today’s incumbents. The next generation of platforms, providers and policy-makers has yet to fully emerge. </div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><br>So what to do?</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><br>There is going to be a period of complex and chaotic change as the basic structures of the communications industry are broken apart and re-assembled. Is emergency service going to morph into an application you download from the Apple app store? Or emerge as something completely new, tied to your health monitoring armband, which seeks now an ambulance, but the nearest medic in the vicinity?</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><br>It is too early to tell. All we can be sure of it that continued over-investment in today’s structures will cause under-investment in tomorrow’s.</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><strong><br>The best policy may often be to doing nothing.</strong></div>\n<div><strong><br></strong></div>\n<div></div>\n<div>Allow problems and paths forward to emerge at the right time. This is likely to produce better outcomes than clever people guessing the future and trying to engineer it into being.</div>\n<div></div>\n<div></div>\n<div><strong><br>Even better, get out of the way.</strong></div>\n<div><strong><br></strong></div>\n<div></div>\n<div>Abolish many of the existing structures and rules that inhibit change. Make room for local and state-level activism and new entrants.</div>"
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"title" : "oh, mexico!",
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"content" : "The <a href=\"http://blogs.cfr.org/oneil/2012/01/30/mexicos-underground-economy-and-illicit-money-outflows/\">Council on Foreign Relations</a> reports on a <a href=\"http://www.gfintegrity.org/storage/gfip/documents/reports/mexico/gfi_mexico_report_english-web.pdf\">new study</a> of the cash generated by the informal economy--and states that it amounts to $50 billion a year.<br><br>But here's the catch: the study only looks at what it calls \"illegal capital flight or illicit financial flows\" out of Mexico. It covers \"all unrecorded private capital outflows that drive the accumulation of foreign assets by residents in contravention of applicable laws and the country’s regulatory framework.\" As the article notes, \"the report finds that the vast majority (80 percent) of the money leaving Mexico does so through a method called <a href=\"http://www.download.tu-darmstadt.de/wi/vwl/ddpie/ddpie_206.pdf\">“trade mispricing.”</a> This is when a company either undervalues exports or overvalues imports, and agrees with its trading partner (for many this is the same entity or owner) to transfer the balance to a bank account abroad. Just as when a restaurant doing cash business fakes the number of customers it receives to avoid paying taxes, companies doctor their trade records to allow money to flow out of a country untaxed."<br><br>So this study only tracks the extent to which elite Mexicans evade the law and sneak their income out of the country.<br><br>But the street level economy is far larger than this. Mexico's GDP last year was more than $1 trillion, and the best estimate (from professor Friedrich Schneider) is that the country's shadow economy is equal to approximately 1/3 of that. So Mexico's System D is worth approximately $345 billion. That's some street trade!<br><br><br>[praise be John Conroy -- @informaleconomy -- for linking me to the article]<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7631633385048306686-8743257497016655413?l=stealthofnations.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!",
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"content" : "<p><em>So I got this in my email this morning…</em></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>They call the Third World the lazy man’s purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent—totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it “the dark continent” for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.</p>\n<p>“It’s amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die,” the man next to me said. “Get up and do something about it.”</p>\n<p>Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year’s Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.</p>\n<p>“My name is Walter,” he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.</p>\n<p>I told him mine with a precautious smile.</p>\n<p>“Where are you from?” he asked.</p>\n<p>“Zambia.”</p>\n<p>“Zambia!” he exclaimed, “Kaunda’s country.”</p>\n<p>“Yes,” I said, “Now Sata’s.”</p>\n<p>“But of course,” he responded. “You just elected King Cobra as your president.”</p>\n<p>My face lit up at the mention of Sata’s moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S.</p>\n<p>“I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s,” he continued. “I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians.” He lowered his voice. “I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off.” He smirked. “Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all—the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy.”</p>\n<p>“Are you still with the IMF?” I asked.</p>\n<p>“I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We’ll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater.”</p>\n<p>“No, you won’t,” I said. “King Cobra is incorruptible. He is …”</p>\n<p>He was laughing. “Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick.”</p>\n<p>Quett Masire’s name popped up.</p>\n<p>“Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do.”</p>\n<p>At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.</p>\n<p>“Isn’t that beautiful,” Walter said looking down.</p>\n<p>From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.</p>\n<p>“That’s white man’s country,” he said. “We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia.”</p>\n<p>I grinned. “There is no Lake Zambia.”</p>\n<p>He curled his lips into a smug smile. “That’s what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels—crumbs. That’s your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that’s crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That’s what lazy people get—Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World.”</p>\n<p>The smile vanished from my face.</p>\n<p>“I see you are getting pissed off,” Walter said and lowered his voice. “You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That’s how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let’s for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?”</p>\n<p>“There’s no difference.”</p>\n<p>“Absolutely none,” he exclaimed. “Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they</p>\n<p>were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same.”</p>\n<p>I gladly nodded.</p>\n<p>“And yet I feel superior,” he smiled fatalistically. “Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he’s a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend.”</p>\n<p>For a moment I was wordless.</p>\n<p>“Please don’t blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don’t give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer.”</p>\n<p>I was thinking.</p>\n<p>He continued. “Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense.”</p>\n<p>I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst.</p>\n<p>“You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy,” he said. “When you rest your head on the pillow you don’t dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state.”</p>\n<p>“That’s not a nice thing to say,” I protested.</p>\n<p>He was implacable. “Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?”</p>\n<p>I held my breath.</p>\n<p>“Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don’t. We reserve the evening for brainstorming.”</p>\n<p>He looked me in the eye.</p>\n<p>“And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don’t care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked—oh, I have a PhD in this and that—PhD my foot!”</p>\n<p>I was deflated.</p>\n<p>“Wake up you all!” he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. “You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country’s treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them.”</p>\n<p>He paused. “The Bwana has spoken,” he said and grinned. “As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole.”</p>\n<p>He tempered his voice. “Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god’s sake.”</p>\n<p>At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.</p>\n<p>“I know I was too strong, but I don’t give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty.” He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. “Here, read this. It was written by a friend.”</p>\n<p>He had written only the title: “Lords of Poverty.”</p>\n<p>Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia’s literati—the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed—how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports.</p>\n<p>Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.</p>\n<p>But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.</p>\n<p>I believe King Cobra’s reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.</p>\n<p>“Naupena? Fuma apa.” (Are you mad? Get out of here)</p>\n<p>Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter’s level let’s begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let’s dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.</p>\n<p>A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don’t be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It’s time to change our political culture. It’s time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don’t be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.</p>\n<p><strong>Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History.</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/1820/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=mindofmalaka.wordpress.com&blog=10644359&post=1820&subd=mindofmalaka&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Letter of the year, written in 1865",
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"content" : "<p>In 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Tennessee wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, asking that he come back to work on his farm.</p><p>Jourdan’s full reply is worth posting in full.</p><blockquote><p>Dayton, Ohio,</p><p>August 7, 1865</p><p>To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee</p><p>Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.</p><p>I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.</p><p>As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.</p><p>In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.</p><p>Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.</p><p>From your old servant,</p><p>Jourdon Anderson.</p></blockquote><p>From the excellent <a href=\"http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html#.TyhlI2ELxpc.twitter\">Letters of Note</a>, via the also ever-reliable <a href=\"https://twitter.com/BostonReview\">@BostonReview</a>.</p> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=fkKeREqr0po:TAiJyOWHQXI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=fkKeREqr0po:TAiJyOWHQXI:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=fkKeREqr0po:TAiJyOWHQXI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=fkKeREqr0po:TAiJyOWHQXI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=fkKeREqr0po:TAiJyOWHQXI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/fkKeREqr0po\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Welcome to the Jungle",
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"content" : "<p>With so much happening in the computing world, now seemed like the right time to write <a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle/\"><strong>“Welcome to the Jungle”</strong></a><strong> </strong>– a sequel to my earlier “The Free Lunch Is Over” essay. Here’s the introduction:</p>\n<p> </p>\n<blockquote><h3><strong><a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle/\">Welcome to the Jungle</a></strong></h3>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>In the twilight of Moore’s Law, the transitions to multicore processors, GPU computing, and HaaS cloud computing are not separate trends, but aspects of a single trend – mainstream computers from desktops to ‘smartphones’ are being permanently transformed into heterogeneous supercomputer clusters. Henceforth, a single compute-intensive application will need to harness different kinds of cores, in immense numbers, to get its job done.</em></p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>The free lunch is over. Now welcome to the hardware jungle.</em></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>From 1975 to 2005, our industry accomplished a phenomenal mission: In 30 years, we put a personal computer on every desk, in every home, and in every pocket.</p>\n<p>In 2005, however, mainstream computing hit a wall. In <a href=\"http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm\"><strong>“The Free Lunch Is Over”</strong> (December 2004)</a>, I described the reasons for the then-upcoming industry transition from single-core to multi-core CPUs in mainstream machines, why it would require changes throughout the software stack from operating systems to languages to tools, and why it would permanently affect the way we as software developers have to write our code if we want our applications to continue exploiting Moore’s transistor dividend.</p>\n<p>In 2005, our industry undertook a new mission: to put a personal parallel supercomputer on every desk, in every home, and in every pocket. 2011 was special: it’s the year that we completed the transition to parallel computing in all mainstream form factors, with the arrival of multicore tablets (e.g., iPad 2, Playbook, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet) and smartphones (e.g., Galaxy S II, Droid X2, iPhone 4S). 2012 will see us continue to build out multicore with mainstream quad- and eight-core tablets (as Windows 8 brings a modern tablet experience to x86 as well as ARM), <a href=\"http://herbsutter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image_thumb99.png\"><img style=\"background-image:none;padding-left:0;padding-right:0;display:inline;float:right;padding-top:0;border-width:0;margin:20px 0 0 10px\" title=\"image_thumb99\" border=\"0\" alt=\"image_thumb99\" align=\"right\" src=\"http://herbsutter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image_thumb99_thumb.png?w=480&h=228\" width=\"480\" height=\"228\"></a>and the last single-core gaming console holdout will go multicore (as Nintendo’s Wii U replaces Wii).</p>\n<p>This time it took us just six years to deliver mainstream parallel computing in all popular form factors. And we know the transition to multicore is permanent, because multicore delivers compute performance that single-core cannot and there will always be mainstream applications that run better on a multi-core machine. There’s no going back.</p>\n<p>For the first time in the history of computing, mainstream hardware is no longer a single-processor von Neumann machine, and never will be again.</p>\n<p><em>That was the first act. . . .</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p> </p>\n<p>I hope you enjoy it.</p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/category/concurrency/\">Concurrency</a>, <a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/category/hardware/\">Hardware</a>, <a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/category/opinion-editorial/\">Opinion & Editorial</a>, <a href=\"http://herbsutter.com/category/software-development/\">Software Development</a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=herbsutter.com&blog=3379246&post=1271&subd=herbsutter&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "What might my bible be?",
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"content" : "<p>A <a title=\"\" href=\"http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Ganglion.htm\">ganglion</a> (aka bible cyst) is developing on my left wrist. Currently only visible when the joint is bent, but growing albeit very slowly.</p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px\"><p>Many people have heard of the traditional cure. That is, to smash them with a heavy book (tradition holds it to be the family bible). This bursts the cyst under the skin. The fluid is then absorbed into the bloodstream. In some people (who are brave enough) this works well, but there is a high chance of it recurring as the walls of the cyst can reform. However, it is an instant cure for some.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Many years ago one appeared on my ankle. My bible turned out to be the then current edition of <em><a href=\"http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781857435276/\">Africa South of the Sahara</a></em>, indispensable in the workplace and, although the pages were rice-paper thin, huge and heavy. None of my colleagues would take responsibility for whacking the thing so I had to do it myself. Entirely possible since both hands were free and instantaneously effective. There has never been a recurrence.</p>\n<p>The wrist might pose problems, though. I imagine that, should it become necessary, one volume of the <em><a href=\"http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199206872.do\">Shorter Oxford English Dictionary</a></em> would be an appropriate implement rivaling <em>Africa South of the Sahara</em> in surface area and heft, but how is a weak-armed individual to lift it with one hand, never mind use it accurately to whack? Can one, dare one, give one’s offspring the opportunity legitimately to batter their mother with a blunt instrument? Might my trusty hammer, or the tent-peg mallet, do as well, with the advantage of being self-wielded?</p>\n<p>Of course these are currently academic questions only, unless and until the OED cyst becomes sufficiently annoying to require flattening.</p>"
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"title" : "Education minister Betty Mould-Iddrisu resigns...",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rlIgFXe7yDI/Tx5W6JPQFkI/AAAAAAAAC4U/5kRrX_uOH_Y/s1600/2012-01-24_06-48-01_674-791608.jpg\"><img src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rlIgFXe7yDI/Tx5W6JPQFkI/AAAAAAAAC4U/5kRrX_uOH_Y/s320/2012-01-24_06-48-01_674-791608.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a></p><p><br> ...prompting speculation NDC government will not have it easy in run-up to elections in December.</p> <p>______________________________________________<br> sent from my Samsung tablet. . . <br> *<a href=\"http://twitter.com/ekbensah\">twitter.com/ekbensah</a><br> *<a href=\"http://www.ekbensah.net\">www.ekbensah.net</a><br> *mob: +233.268.687.653/+233.243.111.789<br> ____________________________________________________<br> Regional integration| Communications | Civil society<br> _____________________________________________________</p> <div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11648048-2310214828605176920?l=ekbensahinghana.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5HNWlnKhPDE\" width=\"420\"></iframe><br><br>Earlier on I was watching a clip on Asamoah Gyan, the Ghana football team striker, doing his celebratory dance. You know, keep up with the Africa Cup of Nations currently on. One of the comment on the video mentioned him doing the new dance crazed called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azonto_Dance\">Azonto</a>. Never heard of it but as the video above shows its very popular. <i>So @ChilledLeo what's the 411? Popular in London here too? Gonna teach me or what?</i><br><br><a href=\"http://mypenmypaper.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/tutorial-how-to-correctly-beat-your-wife-in-islam/\">Over at blog my pen and my pad</a>, dude posts a series of tutorials on how to correctly beat your wife in Islam. for real! this stuff is not made up. crazy<br><br>TGIF<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6471248371228098126-4104531588693402534?l=swankanddirect.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "\"The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest on Fire Tattoo\" a review by Alan Farrell",
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"content" : "<p><strong><a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef0167612ee9fd970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"220px-The_Girl_with_the_Dragon_Tattoo_Poster\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef0167612ee9fd970b-120wi\" title=\"220px-The_Girl_with_the_Dragon_Tattoo_Poster\"></a></strong></p>\n<p><strong><br>The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest on Fire Tattoo. Directed by: </strong>David Fincher<strong>. Starring: </strong>Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer, Stellaan Skaarsgaard (onliest practicing <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">Squareh</span> that is Scandinavian ac-toor in the business and go-to guy for Norsitude… also evilosity so be warned), cameo by Barbra Streisand (as the fjord).</p>\n<p>So… this is what comes of Socialism! The Swedes call their particular brand “erection to resurrection”: cradle to grave. The State assures you a good life by denying you the opportunity for any other kind… and assigns you a name at birth by the way ( it’s “Lars” if you’re a male) or cheekbones that’ll stop a clock (if you’re fee-male). Howsomever, it does lead in the end to fat cat corporate Trimalchios who fancy themselves privileged, ill-bred young women insistent upon illicit sex and pierced flesh, sanctimonious journalists with the time on their hands to poke into other people’s affairs… oh… oh… we already gots that right here in the U.S. and A.? Well, okay. Looks as if the trains run on time, though, so there’s evidently an upside (and we ain’t not got that). Snow-swaddled landscapes, sunless vistas, faceless urbanity, soulless shadows prowling the oh-so-clean streets, industrial detritus testimony to… oh… oh… we gots that, too? Well, hell. How about islands where purring, gouty, avuncular plutocrats keep family secrets locked up along with generations of folly and fascism and intemperate dreams? Manhattan, you say? Well, jeeez, then… why don’t we just go ahead, make our own depressing and tedious <em>chiaroscuro</em> (variously pronounced and just as variously spelt) flicks instead of steal them from the Squareheads? Might check out the remake of <em>Insomnia</em> with Al Pacino (attached, maybe) or the remake of Ingmar Bergman’s <em>Seventh Seal</em> with Steven Segal [S(t)even Se(g)al… think about it!] as Death Walking on the Beach, Angelina Jolie (in leather catsuit unzipped down to here) as the Crusader, and Barbra Streisand as the plague for a better shot at this kind of <em>cinéma dérivé</em> (French for “piracy”).</p>\n\n\n<p>A distillation of Stieg Larsson’s (See? Told you about the name…) triptych (kinda like three books, only, you know… classy) <em>The Girl Who…Hornet, Dragon, Fire</em>,<em> </em>evidently a hot “read” (to use that word in its new acceptation) these days or was until the films got made at which time we don’t not have to any more… <em>read</em>, that is. This prodigy the Swedes then turned into a trilogy (kinda like three films, only, you know, classy) of movies (same names) available through Netflix and dragging in slow, lugubrious, dispiriting detail the tale (and tail) of tormented truant Lisbeth Sal(am)ander (“born of fire”: Whap! Uh… sorry I had to do that, but you had the glazed look again…), beringed (but, sadly, not be-umph umphed, so whatever sex we may be exposed to is the off-putting kind and anything but erotic… got to be a comedown for Craig, but, hey, that’s acting…) and bespiked, fresh out of a Swedish “institution,” to which a benevolent State has committed her in evidence of dark trauma inflicted upon her earlier. As a parolee, she must report to a lubricious bureaucrat, the paunchy Yorick (no kidding), who extorts favors from his charge in exchange for provisional liberty. Into this sad state of affairs, we introduce an old and lurking murder, the victim a young girl, perhaps another object of Swedish males’ rapacitude. The girl’s uncle Hendrik (Christopher Plummer doing his benign grandpa… again. Sooner or later Plummer’s gonna get this right and snag an Oscar so we can put paid blessedly to the trope) hires reluctant crusading journalist (writes for a magazine called<em> Millennium</em>) Mikael Blomqvist (no wait: that’s Michael Nyqvist. Blomqvist is that Swede ac-toor. Or is it t’other way around? Yeah, sure… name two Swedish ac-toors…) to sift through the evidence, the events and flush out the killer, manifestly a member of the family, all of whom live on Fantasy Island in the dark Norse uplands.</p>\n<p>Blomqvist (Nyqvist) isn’t long in hauling up something fishy and enlisting the tortured Salander (Rooney Mara, easily as unappetizing as the Swedish original, Naomi Rapace, in the role, duly fitted with rings and studs and a murderous if understandable rage against manhood) to tease out secure information from the ether. Much sifting of evidence, events; much twiddling of computers; much assuming the electronic genius of an untutored crazy girl; much sinister lowering and glowering by any number of suspects, all of whom appear socio- if not psychopathic. Who done it? </p>\n<p>Dunno if I like Daniel Craig in this kind of part. He does his best. The star here is the astonishing Mara, whose transit from sproingy-haired Amazon to blond-wigged siren is jolting and whose capacity to register repressed smolder through features crowded with tin impressed me. Alas, the quality of mystery we lose as the parallel stories (Salander’s past, her present, Blom/Nyqvist’s past, his present) edge out clarity, consequence one supposes of distilling three dramas into a single. Dreary and somber tale slowly unfolding through the peregrinations of watchable characters before a scene of uniformly dismal black night, white snow (good, evil… you got that, right? Not gonna have to smack you again?)… and miss-anthropy (that is, we <em>miss</em> any affection for <em>anthropos</em>, human beings—at least the male flavor—while the prime <em>miss</em> is more <em>andro</em> than <em>gyne</em>).</p>\n<p>----------------------------</p>\n<p>The Swedish movie was better. pl</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"content" : "<p>The Girl with the Hornet’s Nest on Fire Tattoo. Directed by: David Fincher. Starring: Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Robin Wright, Christopher Plummer, Stellaan Skaarsgaard (onliest practicing Squareh that is Scandinavian ac-toor in the business and go-to guy for Norsitude… also evilosity so be warned), cameo by Barbra Streisand (as the fjord).<br>\nSo… this is what comes of Socialism! The Swedes call their particular brand “erection to resurrection”: cradle to grave. The State assures you a good life by denying you the opportunity for any other kind… and assigns you a name at birth by the way ( it’s “Lars” if you’re a male) or cheekbones that’ll stop a clock (if you’re fee-male). Howsomever, it does lead in the end to fat cat corporate Trimalchios who fancy themselves privileged, ill-bred young women insistent upon illicit sex and pierced flesh, sanctimonious journalists with the time on their hands to poke into other people’s affairs… oh… oh… we already gots that right here in the U.S. and A.? Well, okay. Looks as if the trains run on time, though, so there’s evidently an upside (and we ain’t not got that). Snow-swaddled landscapes, sunless vistas, faceless urbanity, soulless shadows prowling the oh-so-clean streets, industrial detritus testimony to… oh… oh… we gots that, too? Well, hell. How about islands where purring, gouty, avuncular plutocrats keep family secrets locked up along with generations of folly and fascism and intemperate dreams? Manhattan, you say? Well, jeeez, then… why don’t we just go ahead, make our own depressing and tedious chiaroscuro (variously pronounced and just as variously spelt) flicks instead of steal them from the Squareheads? Might check out the remake of Insomnia with Al Pacino (attached, maybe) or the remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal with Steven Segal [S(t)even Se(g)al… think about it!] as Death Walking on the Beach, Angelina Jolie (in leather catsuit unzipped down to here) as the Crusader, and Barbra Streisand as the plague for a better shot at this kind of cinéma dérivé (French for “piracy”).<br>\nA distillation of Stieg Larsson’s (See? Told you about the name…) triptych (kinda like three books, only, you know… classy) The Girl Who…Hornet, Dragon, Fire, evidently a hot “read” (to use that word in its new acceptation) these days or was until the films got made at which time we don’t not have to any more… read, that is. This prodigy the Swedes then turned into a trilogy (kinda like three films, only, you know, classy) of movies (same names) available through Netflix and dragging in slow, lugubrious, dispiriting detail the tale (and tail) of tormented truant Lisbeth Sal(am)ander (“born of fire”: Whap! Uh… sorry I had to do that, but you had the glazed look again…), beringed (but, sadly, not be-umph umphed, so whatever sex we may be exposed to is the off-putting kind and anything but erotic… got to be a comedown for Craig, but, hey, that’s acting…) and bespiked, fresh out of a Swedish “institution,” to which a benevolent State has committed her in evidence of dark trauma inflicted upon her earlier. As a parolee, she must report to a lubricious bureaucrat, the paunchy Yorick (no kidding), who extorts favors from his charge in exchange for provisional liberty. Into this sad state of affairs, we introduce an old and lurking murder, the victim a young girl, perhaps another object of Swedish males’ rapacitude. The girl’s uncle Hendrik (Christopher Plummer doing his benign grandpa… again. Sooner or later Plummer’s gonna get this right and snag an Oscar so we can put paid blessedly to the trope) hires reluctant crusading journalist (writes for a magazine called Millennium) Mikael Blomqvist (no wait: that’s Michael Nyqvist. Blomqvist is that Swede ac-toor. Or is it t’other way around? Yeah, sure… name two Swedish ac-toors…) to sift through the evidence, the events and flush out the killer, manifestly a member of the family, all of whom live on Fantasy Island in the dark Norse uplands.<br>\nBlomqvist (Nyqvist) isn’t long in hauling up something fishy and enlisting the tortured Salander (Rooney Mara, easily as unappetizing as the Swedish original, Naomi Rapace, in the role, duly fitted with rings and studs and a murderous if understandable rage against manhood) to tease out secure information from the ether. Much sifting of evidence, events; much twiddling of computers; much assuming the electronic genius of an untutored crazy girl; much sinister lowering and glowering by any number of suspects, all of whom appear socio- if not psychopathic. Who done it?<br>\n<br>\nDunno if I like Daniel Craig in this kind of part. He does his best. The star here is the astonishing Mara, whose transit from sproingy-haired Amazon to blond-wigged siren is jolting and whose capacity to register repressed smolder through features crowded with tin impressed me. Alas, the quality of mystery we lose as the parallel stories (Salander’s past, her present, Blom/Nyqvist’s past, his present) edge out clarity, consequence one supposes of distilling three dramas into a single. Dreary and somber tale slowly unfolding through the peregrinations of watchable characters before a scene of uniformly dismal black night, white snow (good, evil… you got that, right? Not gonna have to smack you again?)… and miss-anthropy (that is, we miss any affection for anthropos, human beings—at least the male flavor—while the prime miss is more andro than gyne).<br>\n</p>"
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"title" : "Michael Hudson: Banks Weren’t Meant to Be Like This",
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"content" : "<p><strong><em>By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College</em></strong></p>\n<p><em>A shorter version of this article in German will run in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on January 28. 2012</em></p>\n<p>The inherently symbiotic relationship between banks and governments recently has been reversed. In medieval times, wealthy bankers lent to kings and princes as their major customers. But now it is the banks that are needy, relying on governments for funding – capped by the post-2008 bailouts to save them from going bankrupt from their bad private-sector loans and gambles.</p>\n<p>\tYet the banks now browbeat governments – not by having ready cash but by threatening to go bust and drag the economy down with them if they are not given control of public tax policy, spending and planning. The process has gone furthest in the United States. Joseph Stiglitz <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html\">characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks</a> as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.” Prof. Bill Black d<a href=\"http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com\">escribes banks as becoming criminogenic and innovating “control fraud.”</a> High finance has corrupted regulatory agencies, falsified account-keeping by “mark to model” trickery, and financed the campaigns of its supporters to disable public oversight. The effect is to leave banks in control of how the economy’s allocates its credit and resources.</p>\n<p>\tIf there is any silver lining to today’s debt crisis, it is that the present situation and trends cannot continue. So this is not only an opportunity to restructure banking; we have little choice. The urgent issue is who will control the economy: governments, or the financial sector and monopolies with which it has made an alliance. </p>\n<p>\tFortunately, it is not necessary to re-invent the wheel. Already a century ago the outlines of a productive industrial banking system were well understood. But recent bank lobbying has been remarkably successful in distracting attention away from classical analyses of how to shape the financial and tax system to best promote economic growth – by public checks on bank privileges.</p>\n<p>How Banks Broke The Social Compact, Promoting Their Own Special Interests</p>\n<p>\tPeople used to know what banks did. Bankers took deposits and lent them out, paying short-term depositors less than they charged for risky or less liquid loans. The risk was borne by bankers, not depositors or the government. But today, bank loans are made increasingly to speculators in recklessly large amounts for quick in-and-out trading. Financial crashes have become deeper and affect a wider swath of the population as debt pyramiding has soared and credit quality plunged into the toxic category of “liars’ loans.”</p>\n<p>\tThe first step toward today’s mutual interdependence between high finance and government was for central banks to act as lenders of last resort to mitigate the liquidity crises that periodically resulted from the banks’ privilege of credit creation. In due course governments also provided public deposit insurance, recognizing the need to mobilize and recycle savings into capital investment as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum. In exchange for this support, they regulated banks as public utilities.</p>\n<p>\tOver time, banks have sought to disable this regulatory oversight, even to the point of decriminalizing fraud. Sponsoring an ideological attack on government, they accuse public bureaucracies of “distorting” free markets (by which they mean markets free for predatory behavior). The financial sector is now making its move to concentrate planning in its own hands. </p>\n<p>\tThe problem is that the financial time frame is notoriously short-term and often self-destructive. And inasmuch as the banking system’s product is debt, its business plan tends to be extractive and predatory, leaving economies high-cost. This is why checks and balances are needed, along with regulatory oversight to ensure fair dealing. Dismantling public attempts to steer banking to promote economic growth (rather than merely to make bankers rich) has permitted banks to turn into something nobody anticipated. Their major customers are other financial institutions, insurance and real estate – the FIRE sector, not industrial firms. Debt leveraging by real estate and monopolies, arbitrage speculators, hedge funds and corporate raiders inflates asset prices on credit. The effect of creating “balance sheet wealth” in this way is to load down the “real” production-and-consumption economy with debt and related rentier charges, adding more to the cost of living and doing business than rising productivity reduces production costs.</p>\n<p>\tSince 2008, public bailouts have taken bad loans off the banks’ balance sheet at enormous taxpayer expense – some $13 trillion in the United States, and proportionally higher in Ireland and other economies now being subjected to austerity to pay for “free market” deregulation. Bankers are holding economies hostage, threatening a monetary crash if they do not get more bailouts and nearly free central bank credit, and more mortgage and other loan guarantees for their casino-like game. The resulting “too big to fail” policy means making governments too weak to fight back.</p>\n<p>\tThe process that began with central bank support thus has turned into broad government guarantees against bank insolvency. The largest banks have made so many reckless loans that they have become wards of the state. Yet they have become powerful enough to capture lawmakers to act as their facilitators. The popular media and even academic economic theorists have been mobilized to pose as experts in an attempt to convince the public that financial policy is best left to technocrats – of the banks’ own choosing, as if there is no alternative policy but for governments to subsidize a financial free lunch and crown bankers as society’s rulers.</p>\n<p>\tThe Bubble Economy and its austerity aftermath could not have occurred without the banking sector’s success in weakening public regulation, capturing national treasuries and even disabling law enforcement. Must governments surrender to this power grab? If not, who should bear the losses run up by a financial system that has become dysfunctional? If taxpayers have to pay, their economy will become high-cost and uncompetitive – and a financial oligarchy will rule.</p>\n<p><strong>The Present Debt Quandary</strong></p>\n<p>\tThe endgame in times past was to write down bad debts. That meant losses for banks and investors. But today’s debt overhead is being kept in place – shifting bad loans off bank balance sheets to become public debts owed by taxpayers to save banks and their creditors from loss. Governments have given banks newly minted bonds or central bank credit in exchange for junk mortgages and bad gambles – without re-structuring the financial system to create a more stable, less debt-ridden economy. The pretense is that these bailouts will enable banks to lend enough to revive the economy by enough to pay its debts.</p>\n<p>\tSeeing the handwriting on the wall, bankers are taking as much bailout money as they can get, and running, using the money to buy as much tangible property and ownership rights as they can while their lobbyists keep the public subsidy faucet running.</p>\n<p>\tThe pretense is that debt-strapped economies can resume business-as-usual growth by borrowing their way out of debt. But a quarter of U.S. real estate already is in negative equity – worth less than the mortgages attached to it – and the property market is still shrinking, so banks are not lending except with public Federal Housing Administration guarantees to cover whatever losses they may suffer. In any event, it already is mathematically impossible to carry today’s debt overhead without imposing austerity, debt deflation and depression. </p>\n<p>\tThis is not how banking was supposed to evolve. If governments are to underwrite bank loans, they may as well be doing the lending in the first place – and receiving the gains. Indeed, since 2008 the over-indebted economy’s crash led governments to become the major shareholders of the largest and most troubled banks – Citibank in the United States, Anglo-Irish Bank in Ireland, and Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland. Yet rather than taking this opportunity to run these banks as public utilities and lower their charges for credit-card services – or most important of all, to stop their lending to speculators and gamblers – governments left these banks operating as part of the “casino capitalism” that has become their business plan.</p>\n<p>\tThere is no natural reason for matters to be like this. Relations between banks and government used to be the reverse. In 1307, France’s Philip IV (“The Fair”) set the tone by seizing the Knights Templars’ wealth, arresting them and putting many to death – not on financial charges, but on the accusation of devil-worshipping and satanic sexual practices. In 1344 the Peruzzi bank went broke, followed by the Bardi by making unsecured loans to Edward III of England and other monarchs who died or defaulted. Many subsequent banks had to suffer losses on loans gone bad to real estate or financial speculators. </p>\n<p>\tBy contrast, now the U.S., British, Irish and Latvian governments have taken bad bank loans onto their national balance sheets, imposing a heavy burden on taxpayers – while letting bankers cash out with immense wealth. These “cash for trash” swaps have turned the mortgage crisis and general debt collapse into a fiscal problem. Shifting the new public bailout debts onto the non-financial economy threaten to increase the cost of living and doing business. This is the result of the economy’s failure to distinguish productive from unproductive loans and debts. It helps explain why nations now are facing financial austerity and debt peonage instead of the leisure economy promised so eagerly by technological optimists a century ago.</p>\n<p>\tSo we are brought back to the question of what the proper role of banks should be. This issue was discussed exhaustively prior to World War I. It is even more urgent today.</p>\n<p> <strong>How Classical Economists Hoped to Modernize Banks as Agents of Industrial Capitalism</strong></p>\n<p>\tBritain was the home of the Industrial Revolution, but there was little long-term lending to finance investment in factories or other means of production. British and Dutch merchant banking was to extend short-term credit on the basis of collateral such as real property or sales contracts for merchandise shipped (“receivables”). Buoyed by this trade financing, merchant bankers were successful enough to maintain long-established short-term funding practices. This meant that James Watt and other innovators were obliged to raise investment money from their families and friends rather than from banks.</p>\n<p>\tIt was the French and Germans who moved banking into the industrial stage to help their nations catch up. In France, the Saint-Simonians described the need to create an industrial credit system aimed at funding means of production. In effect, the Saint-Simonians proposed to restructure banks along lines akin to a mutual fund. A start was made with the Crédit Mobilier, founded by the Péreire Brothers in 1852. Their aim was to shift the banking and financial system away from debt financing at interest toward equity lending, taking returns in the form of dividends that would rise or decline in keeping with the debtor’s business fortunes. By giving businesses leeway to cut back dividends when sales and profits decline, profit-sharing agreements avoid the problem that interest must be paid willy-nilly. If an interest payment is missed, the debtor may be forced into bankruptcy and creditors can foreclose. It was to avoid this favoritism for creditors regardless of the debtor’s ability to pay that prompted Mohammed to ban interest under Islamic law. </p>\n<p>\tAttracting reformers ranging from socialists to investment bankers, the Saint-Simonians won government backing for their policies under France’s Third Empire. Their approach inspired Marx as well as industrialists in Germany and protectionists in the United States and England. The common denominator of this broad spectrum was recognition that an efficient banking system was needed to finance the industry on which a strong national state and military power depended. </p>\n<p><strong>Germany Develops an Industrial Banking System</strong></p>\n<p>\tIt was above all in Germany that long-term financing found its expression in the Reichsbank and other large industrial banks as part of the “holy trinity” of banking, industry and government planning under Bismarck’s “state socialism.” German banks made a virtue of necessity. British banks “derived the greater part of their funds from the depositors,” and steered these savings and business deposits into mercantile trade financing. This forced domestic firms to finance most new investment out of their own earnings. By contrast, Germany’s “lack of capital … forced industry to turn to the banks for assistance,” noted the financial historian George Edwards. “A considerable proportion of the funds of the German banks came not from the deposits of customers but from <a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=the%20evolution%20of%20finance%20capitalism&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FEvolution-Finance-Capitalism-Wharton-Edwards%2Fdp%2F0678002908&ei=9zciT4z7H6r50gGkuKH0CA&usg=AFQjCNEFGDY_d4GLmNq6mRyGpA3BbNHnsQ&sig2=IvVMBvYJkLl9fyRqh0_d4g\">the capital subscribed by the proprietors themselves</a>. As a result, German banks “stressed investment operations and were formed not so much for receiving deposits and granting loans but rather for supplying the investment requirements of industry.”</p>\n<p>\tWhen the Great War broke out in 1914, Germany’s rapid victories were widely viewed as reflecting the superior efficiency of its financial system. To some observers the war appeared as a struggle between rival forms of financial organization. At issue was not only who would rule Europe, but whether the continent would have laissez faire or a more state-socialist economy. </p>\n<p>\tIn 1915, shortly after fighting broke out, the Christian Socialist priest-politician Friedrich Naumann published <em>Mitteleuropa</em>, describing how Germany recognized more than any other nation that industrial technology needed long term financing and government support. His book inspired Prof. H. S. Foxwell in England to draw on his arguments in two remarkable essays published in the <em>Economic Journal</em> in September and December 1917: “The Nature of the Industrial Struggle,” and “The Financing of Industry and Trade.” He endorsed Naumann’s contention that “the old individualistic capitalism, of what he calls the English type, is giving way to the new, more impersonal, group form; to the disciplined scientific capitalism he claims as German.” </p>\n<p>\tThis was necessarily a group undertaking, with the emerging tripartite integration of industry, banking and government, with finance being “undoubtedly the main cause of the success of modern German enterprise,” Foxwell concluded (p. 514). German bank staffs included industrial experts who were forging industrial policy into a science. And in America, Thorstein Veblen’s <em>The Engineers and the Price System</em> (1921) voiced the new industrial philosophy calling for bankers and government planners to become engineers in shaping credit markets. </p>\n<p>\tFoxwell warned that British steel, automotive, capital equipment and other heavy industry was becoming obsolete largely because its bankers failed to perceive the need to promote equity investment and extend long term credit. They based their loan decisions not on the new production and revenue their lending might create, but simply on what collateral they could liquidate in the event of default: inventories of unsold goods, real estate, and money due on bills for goods sold and awaiting payment from customers. And rather than investing in the shares of the companies that their loans supposedly were building up, they paid out most of their earnings as dividends – and urged companies to do the same. This short time horizon forced business to remain liquid rather than having leeway to pursue long term strategy. </p>\n<p>\tGerman banks, by contrast, paid out dividends (and expected such dividends from their clients) at only half the rate of British banks, choosing to retain earnings as capital reserves and invest them largely in the stocks of their industrial clients. Viewing these companies as allies rather than merely as customers from whom to make as large a profit as quickly as possible, German bank officials sat on their boards, and helped expand their business by extending loans to foreign governments on condition that their clients be named the chief suppliers in major public investments. Germany viewed the laws of history as favoring national planning to organize the financing of heavy industry, and gave its bankers a voice in formulating international diplomacy, making them “the principal instrument in the extension of her foreign trade and political power.”</p>\n<p>\tA similar contrast existed in the stock market. British brokers were no more up to the task of financing manufacturing in its early stages than were its banks. The nation had taken an early lead by forming Crown corporations such as the East India Company, the Bank of England and even the South Sea Company. Despite the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in 1720, the run-up of share prices from 1715 to 1720 in these joint-stock monopolies established London’s stock market as a popular investment vehicle, for Dutch and other foreigners as well as for British investors. But the market was dominated by railroads, canals and large public utilities. Industrial firms were not major issuers of stock. </p>\n<p>\tIn any case, after earning their commissions on one issue, British stockbrokers were notorious for moving on to the next without much concern for what happened to the investors who had bought the earlier securities. “As soon as he has contrived to get his issue quoted at a premium and his underwriters have unloaded at a profit,” complained Foxwell, “his enterprise ceases. ‘To him,’ as the Times says, ‘a successful flotation is of more importance than a sound venture.’”</p>\n<p>\tMuch the same was true in the United States. Its merchant heroes were individualistic traders and political insiders often operating on the edge of the law to gain their fortunes by stock-market manipulation, railroad politicking for land giveaways, and insurance companies, mining and natural resource extraction. America’s wealth-seeking spirit found its epitome in Thomas Edison’s hit-or-miss method of invention, coupled with a high degree of litigiousness to obtain patent and monopoly rights. </p>\n<p>\tIn sum, neither British nor American banking or stock markets planned for the future. Their time frame was short, and they preferred rent-extracting projects to industrial innovation. Most banks favored large real estate borrowers, railroads and public utilities whose income streams easily could be forecast. Only after manufacturing companies grew fairly large did they obtain significant bank and stock market credit.</p>\n<p>\tWhat is remarkable is that this is the tradition of banking and high finance that has emerged victorious throughout the world. The explanation is primarily the military victory of the United States, Britain and their Allies in the Great War and a generation later, in World War II.</p>\n<p><strong>The Regression Toward Burdensome Unproductive Debts After World War I</strong></p>\n<p>\tThe development of industrial credit led economists to distinguish between productive and unproductive lending. A productive loan provides borrowers with resources to trade or invest at a profit sufficient to pay back the loan and its interest charge. An unproductive loan must be paid out of income earned elsewhere. Governments must pay war loans out of tax revenues. Consumers must pay loans out of income they earn at a job – or by selling assets. These debt payments divert revenue away from being spent on consumption and investment, so the economy shrinks. This traditionally has led to crises that wipe out debts, above all those that are unproductive. </p>\n<p>\tIn the aftermath of World War I the economies of Europe’s victorious and defeated nations alike were dominated by postwar arms and reparations debts. These inter-governmental debts were to pay for weapons (by the Allies when the United States unexpectedly demanded that they pay for the arms they had bought before America’s entry into the war), and for the destruction of property (by the Central Powers), not new means of production. Yet to the extent that they were inter-governmental, these debts were more intractable than debts to private bankers and bondholders. Despite the fact that governments in principle are sovereign and hence can annul debts owed to private creditors, the defeated Central Powers governments were in no position to do this. </p>\n<p>\tAnd among the Allies, Britain led the capitulation to U.S. arms billing, captive to the creditor ideology that “a debt is a debt” and must be paid regardless of what this entails in practice or even whether the debt in fact can be paid. Confronted with America’s demand for payment, the Allies turned to Germany to make them whole. After taking its liquid assets and major natural resources, they insisted that it squeeze out payments by taxing its economy. No attempt was made to calculate just how Germany was to do this – or most important, how it was to convert this domestic revenue (the “budgetary problem”) into hard currency or gold. Despite the fact that banking had focused on international credit and currency transfers since the 12th century, there was a broad denial of what John Maynard Keynes identified as a foreign exchange <em>transfer problem</em>.</p>\n<p>\tNever before had there been an obligation of such enormous magnitude. Nevertheless, all of Germany’s political parties and government agencies sought to devise ways to tax the economy to raise the sums being demanded. Taxes, however, are levied in a nation’s own currency. The only way to pay the Allies was for the Reichsbank to take this fiscal revenue and throw it onto the foreign exchange markets to obtain the sterling and other hard currency to pay. Britain, France and the other recipients then paid this money on their Inter-Ally debts to the United States.</p>\n<p>\tAdam Smith pointed out that no government ever had paid down its public debt. But creditors always have been reluctant to acknowledge that debtors are unable to pay. Ever since David Ricardo’s lobbying for their perspective in Britain’s Bullion debates, creditors have found it their self-interest to promote a doctrinaire blind spot, insisting that debts of any magnitude could be paid. They resist acknowledging a distinction between raising funds domestically (by running a budget surplus) and obtaining the foreign exchange to pay foreign-currency debt. Furthermore, despite the evident fact that austerity cutbacks on consumption and investment can only be extractive, creditor-oriented economists refused to recognize that debts cannot be paid by shrinking the economy. Or that foreign debts and other international payments cannot be paid in domestic currency without lowering the exchange rate.</p>\n<p>\tThe more domestic currency Germany sought to convert, the further its exchange rate was driven down against the dollar and other gold-based currencies. This obliged Germans to pay much more for imports. The collapse of the exchange rate was the source of hyperinflation, not an increase in domestic money creation as today’s creditor-sponsored monetarist economists insist. In vain Keynes pointed to the specific structure of Germany’s balance of payments and asked creditors to specify just how many German exports they were willing to take, and to explain how domestic currency could be converted into foreign exchange without collapsing the exchange rate and causing price inflation.</p>\n<p>\tTragically, Ricardian tunnel vision won Allied government backing. Bertil Ohlin and Jacques Rueff claimed that economies receiving German payments would recycle their inflows to Germany and other debt-paying countries by buying their imports. If income adjustments did not keep exchange rates and prices stable, then Germany’s falling exchange rate would make its exports sufficiently more attractive to enable it to earn the revenue to pay. </p>\n<p>\tThis is the logic that the International Monetary Fund followed half a century later in insisting that Third World countries remit foreign earnings and even permit flight capital as well as pay their foreign debts. It is the neoliberal stance now demanding austerity for Greece, Ireland, Italy and other Eurozone economies.</p>\n<p>\tBank lobbyists claim that the European Central Bank will risk spurring domestic wage and price inflation of it does what central banks were founded to do: finance budget deficits. Europe’s financial institutions are given a monopoly right to perform this electronic task – and to receive interest for what a real central bank could create on its own computer keyboard.</p>\n<p>\tBut why it is less inflationary for commercial banks to finance budget deficits than for central banks to do this? The bank lending that has inflated a global financial bubble since the 1980s has left as its legacy a debt overhead that can no more be supported today than Germany was able to carry its reparations debt in the 1920s. Would government credit have so recklessly inflated asset prices?</p>\n<p><strong>How Debt Creation Has Fueled Asset-Price Inflation Since The 1980s</strong></p>\n<p>\tBanking in recent decades has not followed the productive lines that early economic futurists expected. As noted above, instead of financing tangible investment to expand production and innovation, most loans are made against collateral, with interest to be paid out of what borrowers can make elsewhere. Despite being unproductive in the classical sense, it was remunerative for debtors from 1980 until 2008 – not by investing the loan proceeds to expand economic activity, but by riding the wave of asset-price inflation. Mortgage credit enabled borrowers to bid up property prices, drawing speculators and new customers into the market in the expectation that prices would continue to rise. But hothouse credit infusions meant additional debt service, which ended up shrinking the market for goods and services.</p>\n<p>\tUnder normal conditions the effect would have been for rents to decline, with property prices following suit, leading to mortgage defaults. But banks postponed the collapse into negative equity by lowering their lending standards, providing enough new credit to keep on inflating prices. This averted a collapse of their speculative mortgage and stock market lending. It was inflationary – but it was inflating asset prices, not commodity prices or wages. Two decades of asset price inflation enabled speculators, homeowners and commercial investors to borrow the interest falling due and still make a capital gain.</p>\n<p>\tThis hope for a price gain made winning bidders willing to pay lenders all the current income – making banks the ultimate and major rentier income recipients. The process of inflating asset prices by easing credit terms and lowering the interest rate was self-feeding. But it also was self-terminating, because raising the multiple by which a given real estate rent or business income can be “capitalized” into bank loans increased the economy’s debt overhead. </p>\n<p>\tSecurities markets became part of this problem. Rising stock and bond prices made pension funds pay more to purchase a retirement income – so “pension fund capitalism” was coming undone. So was the industrial economy itself. Instead of raising new equity financing for companies, the stock market became a vehicle for corporate buyouts. Raiders borrowed to buy out stockholders, loading down companies with debt. The most successful looters left them bankrupt shells. And when creditors turned their economic gains from this process into political power to shift the tax burden onto wage earners and industry, this raised the cost of living and doing business – by more than technology was able to lower prices. </p>\n<p><strong>The EU Rejects Central Bank Money Creation, Leaving Deficit Financing to the Banks</strong></p>\n<p>\tArticle 123 of the Lisbon Treaty forbids the ECB or other central banks to lend to government. But central banks were created specifically – to finance government deficits. The EU has rolled back history to the way things were three hundred years ago, before the Bank of England was created. Reserving the task of credit creation for commercial banks, it leaves governments without a central bank to finance the public spending needed to avert depression and widespread financial collapse.</p>\n<p>\tSo the plan has backfired. When “hard money” policy makers limited central bank power, they assumed that public debts would be risk-free. Obliging budget deficits to be financed by private creditors seemed to offer a bonanza: being able to collect interest for creating electronic credit that governments can create themselves. But now, European governments need credit to balance their budget or face default. So banks now want a central bank to create the money to bail them out for the bad loans they have made.</p>\n<p>\tFor starters, the ECB’s €489 billion in three-year loans at 1% interest gives banks a free lunch arbitrage opportunity (the “carry trade”) to buy Greek and Spanish bonds yielding a higher rate. The policy of buying government bonds in the open market – after banks first have bought them at a lower issue price – gives the banks a quick and easy trading gain. </p>\n<p>\tHow are these giveaways less inflationary than for central banks to directly finance budget deficits and roll over government debts? Is the aim of giving banks easy gains simply to provide them with resources to resume the Bubble Economy lending that led to today’s debt overhead in the first place?</p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p>\n<p>\tGovernments can create new credit electronically on their own computer keyboards as easily as commercial banks can. And unlike banks, their spending is expected to serve a broad social purpose, to be determined democratically. When commercial banks gain policy control over governments and central banks, they tend to support their own remunerative policy of creating asset-inflationary credit – leaving the clean-up costs to be solved by a post-bubble austerity. This makes the debt overhead even harder to pay – indeed, impossible. </p>\n<p>\tSo we are brought back to the policy issue of how public money creation to finance budget deficits differs from issuing government bonds for banks to buy. Is not the latter option a convoluted way to finance such deficits – at a needless interest charge? When governments monetize their budget deficits, they do not have to pay bondholders.</p>\n<p>\tI have heard bankers argue that governments need an honest broker to decide whether a loan or public spending policy is responsible. To date their advice has not promoted productive credit. Yet they now are attempting to compensate for the financial crisis by telling debtor governments to sell off property in their public domain. This “solution” relies on the myth that privatization is more efficient and will lower the cost of basic infrastructure services. Yet it involves paying interest to the buyers of rent-extraction rights, higher executive salaries, stock options and other financial fees. </p>\n<p>\tMost cost savings are achieved by shifting to non-unionized labor, and typically end up being paid to the privatizers, their bankers and bondholders, not passed on to the public. And bankers back price deregulation, enabling privatizers to raise access charges. This makes the economy higher cost and hence less competitive – just the opposite of what is promised. </p>\n<p>\tBanking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss. </p>\n<p>\tThis wish means that society should lose, and even suffer depression. We are dealing here not only with greed, but with outright antisocial behavior and hostility.</p>\n<p>\tEurope thus has reached a critical point in having to decide whose interest to put first: that of banks, or the “real” economy. History provides a wealth of examples illustrating the dangers of capitulating to bankers, and also for how to restructure banking along more productive lines. The underlying questions are clear enough:<br>\n \t* Have banks outlived their historical role, or can they be restructured to finance productive capital investment rather than simply inflate asset prices?<br>\n \t* Would a public option provide less costly and better directed credit?<br>\n \t* Why not promote economic recovery by writing down debts to reflect the ability to pay, rather than relinquishing more wealth to an increasingly aggressive creditor class?<br>\n\tSolving the Eurozone’s financial problem can be made much easier by the tax reforms that classical economists advocated to complement their financial reforms. To free consumers and employers from taxation, they proposed to levy the burden on the “unearned increment” of land and natural resource rent, monopoly rent and financial privilege. The guiding principle was that property rights in the earth, monopolies and other ownership privileges have no direct cost of production, and hence can be taxed without reducing their supply or raising their price, which is set in the market. Removing the tax deductibility for interest is the other key reform that is needed.<br>\n\tA rent tax holds down housing prices and those of basic infrastructure services, whose untaxed revenue tends to be capitalized into bank loans and paid out in the form of interest charges. Additionally, land and natural resource rents – along with interest – are the easiest to tax, because they are highly visible and their value is easy to assess.<br>\n\tPressure to narrow existing budget deficits offers a timely opportunity to rationalize the tax systems of Greece and other PIIGS countries in which the wealthy avoid paying their fair share of taxes. The political problem blocking this classical fiscal policy is that it “interferes” with the rent-extracting free lunches that banks seek to lend against. So they act as lobbyists for untaxing real estate and monopolies (and themselves as well). Despite the financial sector’s desire to see governments remain sufficiently solvent to pay bondholders, it has subsidized an enormous public relations apparatus and academic junk economics to oppose the tax policies that can close the fiscal gap in the fairest way.</p>\n<p>\tIt is too early to forecast whether banks or governments will emerge victorious from today’s crisis. As economies polarize between debtors and creditors, planning is shifting out of public hands into those of bankers. The easiest way for them to keep this power is to block a true central bank or strong public sector from interfering with their monopoly of credit creation. The counter is for central banks and governments to act as they were intended to, by providing a public option for credit creation.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:cGdyc7Q-1BI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=cGdyc7Q-1BI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=s28qhJKPyOg:-Y4faVta4AE:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NakedCapitalism/~4/s28qhJKPyOg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Is opacity an excuse?",
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"content" : "<p>I’ve been getting a lot of concerned feedback from people I respect on my claim that <i>status quo</i> finance requires opacity and some degree of trickery in order to function. (See <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2669.html\">previous</a> <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2742.html\">posts</a>.) If prosperity is connected to “opaque, faintly fraudulent, financial systems”, is that an excuse for looting and predation by financial intermediaries? Won’t it be used as one?\n\n<p>Though it may be counterintuitive, rather than excusing misbehavior, opacity in finance implies that misbehavior of intermediaries must be policed more vigorously and punished more punitively than in a world that could be made transparent. If finance were as transparent as baseline neoclassical models suggest, there would have been no “<a href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ah5qh9Up4rIg\">flaw</a>” in Alan Greenspan’s ideology, and no need to regulate markets or root out fraud. Creditors would themselves vet and monitor their financial arrangements, would assume risks in full knowledge of all potential mishaps <i>ex ante</i>, and could therefore be required to accept responsibility for losses <i>ex post</i>. There would be no need for any heavy-handed meddling by the state or vitriolic second-guessing by nasty bloggers. The harms of malinvestment would be internalized by investors who were capable of bearing the risks. When things go wrong, it would be none of the rest of our business.</p>\n\n<p>It is when the relationship between capital provision and investment choice becomes intermediated and opaque that we must impose institutions of accountability. If we permit you to invest other people’s money behind closed doors, if, even worse, we institute society-wide cons (deposit insurance, rating agencies) to trick people into bearing the risk of your schemes, then it is absolutely essential that you perform your duties to a very high ethical standard, and that you have strong incentives to deploy the pilfered capital well rather than to squander or expropriate it.</p>\n\n<p>Opacity creates a very serious <i>technical</i> problem: as we allow finance to be opaque and complex, it may become difficult to police and impose good incentives. So we may, as a society, face an unpleasant tradeoff. Tolerating more opacity may help mobilize capital for useful purposes, but any benefit may be offset by a diminishment of our capacity to regulate and police. At one extreme of opacity, financial intermediaries simply steal everybody else’s wealth. That’s no good. At the other extreme, if we insist on perfect transparency (without big changes in how we organize our affairs), the result will be extreme underinvestment. Which is no good either.</p>\n\n<p>There are some issues that we’ll need to unpack. When we talk about “transparency”, a core question is <i>transparent to whom</i>? My thesis is that <i>status quo</i> finance must be opaque to <i>beneficial investors</i>, that is to the innumerable people who must be persuaded to bear some portion of the risk of aggregate investment when their informed preference would be to defensively hoard. That does not mean that finance must be opaque to, say, regulators, who themselves participate in the con by assuring people it is “safe to get in the water”. (Ultimately it cannot be made safe.) In theory, we could design a system that is opaque to the broad public, but transparent to regulators who police the intermediaries. That is the architecture that our present system strives for. But the many practical problems of this architecture are widely known: the capital allocators are more numerous than the regulators, and as a matter of practice, they tend to be much better remunerated (a fact which itself is a kind of regulatory failure). If bankers wish to invest recklessly (or simply to loot) and it boils down to a cat-and-mouse competition, the bankers are likely to win. The potential spoils from looting are very large, large enough that bankers can offer to share the spoils with regulators or the politicians who control them, leading to revolving doors and see-no-evil regulation. Regulators are supposed to stand in as agents of people who’ve ceded control of capital to opaque intermediaries, ultimately the broad public. But it is difficult to prevent them from being “captured” — socially, ideologically, and financially — by the groups that they are supposed to regulate. Regulators themselves often prefer opacity and complexity for reasons analogous to those that sucker end-investors. Regulators don’t like to fight with their friends and future benefactors, and they fear the operational and political headaches that would come with reorganizing large banks. But they don’t like to be put in a position where misbehavior is plainly before them, so inaction would be unmistakably corrupt. They find it a great relief to be persuaded that “sophisticated risk management” models, rating agencies, and “market discipline” mean they don’t have to look very hard or see very much. It seems better for everyone. Everyone gets along and feels fine. Until, oops.</p>\n\n<p>All that said, to the degree that we can maintain high quality supervision, regulators who pierce the veil of opacity, prevent looting, and ensure high quality capital allocation are a clear positive. If we posit very good regulators, there is no tradeoff at all between supervision and effective capital mobilization. On the contrary, opaque finance is unlikely to deploy capital effectively without it, since, with actual capital providers blind, there is no one else to provide intermediaries with incentives to invest carefully rather than steal. An opaque financial system is an argument for vigilant regulation, not deregulation. If regulators allow themselves to be blinded by complexity and opacity, if financial intermediaries are permitted to arrange themselves so that legitimate practices and looting are difficult for regulators to distinguish, that becomes an argument for very <i>punitive</i> regulation whenever plain misbehavior is discovered, because as the probability of detection diminishes the cost must increase to maintain any hope of effective deterrence.</p>\n\n<p>I am pretty pessimistic about this architecture. I think that high quality financial regulation is <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1258156478.shtml\">very, very difficult</a> to provide and maintain. But for as long as we are stuck with opaque finance, we have to work at it. There are some pretty obvious things we should be doing. It is much easier for regulators to supervise and hold to account smaller, simpler banks than huge, interconnected behemoths. Banks should not be permitted to arrange themselves in ways that are opaque to regulators, and where the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate behavior is fuzzy, regulators should err on the side of conservatism. “Shadow banking” must either be made regulable, or else prohibited. Outright fraud should be aggressively sought, and when found aggressively pursued. Opaque finance is by its nature “criminogenic”, to use Bill Black’s appropriate term. We need some disinfectant to stand-in for the missing sunlight. But it’s hard to get right. If regulation will be very intensive, we need regulators who are themselves good capital allocators, who are capable of designing incentives that discriminate between high-quality investment and cost-shifting gambles. If all we get is “tough” regulation that makes it frightening for intermediaries to accept even productive risks, the whole purpose of opaque finance will be thwarted. Capital mobilized in bulk from the general public will be stalled one level up, and we won’t get the continuous investment-at-scale that opaque finance is supposed to engender. “Good” opaque finance is fragile and difficult to maintain, but we haven’t invented an alternative.</p>\n\n<p>I think we need to pay a great deal more attention to culture and ideology. Part of what has made opaque finance particularly destructive is a culture, in banking and other elite professions, that conflates self-interest and virtue. “What the market will bear” is not a sufficient statistic for ones social contribution. Sometimes virtue and pay are inversely correlated. Really! People have always been greedy, but bankers have sometimes understood that they are <i>entrusted</i> with other people’s wealth, and that this fact imposes obligations as well as opportunities. That this wealth is coaxed deceptively into their care ought increase the standard to which they hold themselves. If stolen resources are placed into your hands, you have a duty to steward those resources carefully until they can be returned to their owners, even if there are other uses you would find more remunerative. Bankers’ adversarial view of regulation, their clear delight in treating legal constraint as an obstacle to overcome rather than a standard to aspire to, is perverse. Yes, bankers are in the business of mobilizing capital, but they are also in the business of regulating the allocation of capital. That’s right: bankers themselves are regulators, it is a core part of their job that should be central to their culture. Obviously, one cannot create culture by fiat. The big meanie in me can’t help but point out that what you can do by fiat is dismember organizations with clearly deficient cultures.</p> \n\n<p>But don’t my paeans to the role of opacity in finance place arrows in the quiver of those seeking to preserve and justify financial predation? Perhaps. People who benefit from corrupt arrangements will make every possible argument to rationalize and preserve their positions. But the fact that ones views might be misused doesn’t mean we should self-censor. I was rude, in the previous post, to assert categorically that my argument “is true”, but I do think that it is. My tone was sardonic and bleak, and perhaps it ought not to have been, but these ideas have always been “out there”, and it’s best we acknowledge and deal with them. Nearly every proposed financial regulation is greeted with stern warnings that it will cause “credit to contract”. It is worth trying to understand the mechanics of real-world capital mobilization, and its role in underwriting prosperity (or perhaps <a href=\"http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/matt-stoller-why-ron-paul-challenges-liberals.html\">militarism</a>). I don’t think we have to fear talking about this stuff. The proposition that looting and misdeployment of capital serve the public good is easy to debunk. The proposition that there are arrangements which serve useful purposes but also create space for corruption is not controversial. We need to understand how institutions actually function and how they are abused if we are to have any hope of minimizing their pathologies while preserving their benefits. And we have to understand the purposes our institutions actually serve if we are to have any hope of replacing very problematic arrangements with something better.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<div style=\"font-size:smaller\">\n<p>P.S. I should define what I mean by “transparent” and “opaque” investment. An investment is transparent if the investor is well informed <i>ex ante</i> of the potential risks of the use to which her capital will be deployed, and fully assents to bear those risks, such that there is little question or controversy <i>ex post</i> over who must bear losses should the investment not work out. An investment is “opaque” if the apportionment of potential losses is not well specified and clearly assumed by capable parties <i>ex ante</i>, so that in a bad outcome, allocation of losses would foreseeably become a subject of conflict and controversy <i>ex post</i>. Investments in which losses will “clearly” be borne by the state are opaque, because the actual incidence of those losses (in terms of taxation, inflation, or foregone government spending elsewhere) are unknowable <i>ex ante</i> and a matter of political conflict <i>ex post</i>. Transparency is ultimately about the quality of loss allocation.</p>\n\n<p>Opacity and transparency are matters of degree, not binary categories. Questions of transparency cannot be resolved by legal formalism, but are matters of practice and expectation. Fannie Mae securities may have specified in big, bold text that they were not obligations of the United States government, but expectations of purchasers of those securities were not consistent with the formal disavowal, and those investors did not fully assent to bear the credit risk. The allocation of losses from Fannie Mae securities was determined <i>ex post</i> by a political process, not <i>ex ante</i> by informed acceptance of risk. So Fannie Mae securities were opaque investments. The degree to which an investment is transparent is contestable, a matter of judgment not a matter of fact. In the <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2742.html\">previous piece</a> I argue that index funds are now opaque investments in the United States. I’m sure there are others who would dispute the point.</p>\n\n<p>I think the degree to which investment in aggregate is mediated transparently vs opaquely is an important characteristic of a society.</p>\n\n<p>P.P.S. It’s worth noting that, for now, in the US, savers are enthusiastically entrusting their resources to the state and opaque intermediaries. Deposit insurance and modest inflation expectations have been sufficient to prevent commodity hoarding and other nonintermediated, low return means of preserving wealth. For the moment, the bottlenecks to capital mobilization are at the interface of bankers, borrowers, and entrepreneurs, and in the reluctance of government to invest directly. (More fundamentally, perhaps the bottleneck is an absence of the security and demand that might inspire borrowers and entrepreneurs.)</p>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n<p><b>Related — elsewhere:</b></p>\n <ul>\n <li><a href=\"http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-together-now.html\">Epicurean Dealmaker: All Together Now</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://itself.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/opaque-finance-as-social-good/\">Adam Kotsko: Opaque finance as social good </a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://alephblog.com/2012/01/25/on-financial-intermediation/\">David Merkel: On Financial Intermediation</a></li>\n </ul>\n<p><b>Related — here:</b></p>\n <ul>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2669.html\">Why is finance so complex?</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2742.html\">Opaque and stinky logorrhea</a></li>\n </ul>\n</div></p>"
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"title" : "A brief, opinionated history of XML",
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"content" : "<div>\n <p><b>From someone who had a front row seat.</b></p>\n <div>\n\n<p>There are a few histories of XML out there, but I still find myself explaining certain points to people surprisingly often, so I thought I'd write them down. If you don't want to read this whole thing, I'll put the moral of the story right at the top: </p>\n\n<blockquote style=\"width:190px;font:bold 1.333em/1.125em "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;margin:1.5em 0 1.5em 1.5em!important;padding:0.6em 5px!important;background:none!important;border:3px double #ddd;border-width:3px 0;text-align:center;float:right\"><strong>They didn't understand that it wasn't designed to meet their needs. It was designed to make electronic publishing in multiple media easier.</strong></blockquote>\n\n<p><i>XML was designed as a simplified subset of SGML to make electronic publishing in multiple media easier. People found it useful for other things. When some people working on those other things found that XML wasn't perfect for their needs, they complained and complained about how badly designed XML was. They didn't understand that it wasn't designed to meet their needs. It was designed to make electronic publishing in multiple media easier.</i></p>\n\n<h2>Automated typesetting and page layout...</h2>\n\n<p>In the 1970s, computerized typesetting made automated page layout much easier, but three guys at IBM named Goldfarb, Mosher, and Lorie got tired of the proprietary nature of the typesetting codes used in these systems, so they came up with a nonproprietary, generic way to store content for automated publishing that would make it easier to convert this content for publication on multiple systems. This became the ISO standard <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGML\">SGML</a>, and the standardized nonproprietary part made it popular among U.S. defense contractors, legal publishers, and other organizations that did large-scale automated publishing.</p>\n\n\n<p>When I first got involved, SGML was gaining popularity among publishers creating CD-ROMs and bound books from the same content, because they could create and edit an SGML version and then run scripts to publish that content in the various media. The structure of an SGML document type (for example, the available text elements and element relationships in a set of legal court cases, or the elements and element relationships that you could use in a set of aircraft repair manuals) was specified in something called a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Type_Definition\">DTD</a>, which had its own syntax and was part of the SGML standard. The scripts to convert SGML documents were usually written using a language and engine called Omnimark, which was a proprietary product, but a perl-based alternative was also available. </p>\n<p>When Tim Berners-Lee was wondering how exactly to specify that one of his new hypertext documents had a title here, a subtitle there, and a link in the middle of a paragraph that led to another document, SGML was a logical choice—it was a text-based, flexible, non-proprietary, standardized way to specify document structure with various tools available to help you work with those documents. That's why HTML tags are delimited with angle brackets: because SGML elements were (nearly always) delimited with angle brackets. Dan Connolly sketched out the <a href=\"http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-talk/1992MayJun/0020.html\">first HTML DTD</a> in 1992. </p>\n\n<p>SGML's designers couldn't see into the future, so they deliberately made it very flexible. For example, you could use other delimiters for element tags besides angle brackets, but everyone used angle brackets. SGML parsing programs were still required to account for the possibility that a document used other delimiters, and the possibility that many other options had been reset, so these parsers were large and complex, and few were available to choose from. By the mid-90s, enough best practices had developed that Sun Microsystems' Jon Bosak had the idea for a simplified, slimmer version of SGML that assumed a lot of default settings and could be parsed by a smaller program—maybe even a program written in Sun's new Java language—and that could be transmitted over the web when necessary. The documents themselves would be easier to share over the web than typical SGML documents, following the example of HTML documents.</p>\n\n<p>Around this time SGML was considered a niche technology in the electronic publishing industry, and I worked at several jobs where I wrote and modified DTDs and Omnimark scripts to create and maintain document conversion systems. I also went to the relevant SGML conferences, where I got to know several of the people who eventually joined Jon to create the simplified version of SGML. (Many are still friends.) At first this group called their new spec WebSGML, but eventually they named it XML. </p>\n\n\n<p>You could still process XML with Omnimark and other SGML tools. Many people would <a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/#whydtds\">fail to appreciate the value of this design decision</a>: as a valid subset of SGML, XML documents could be processed with existing SGML technology. This meant that on that day in 1998 when XML became an official W3C standard, we already had plenty of software out there, including programs like Adobe's special SGML edition of FrameMaker, that could process XML documents right away. This gave the new standard a running start, and XML may not have gotten anywhere without this running start, because those of us using the existing tools didn't have to wait around for new tools for the new standard and then work out how to incorporate these tools into our publishing workflows. We already had tools and workflows that could take advantage of the new standard.</p>\n\n\n<p>I've heard some people describe certain things that SGML specialists didn't like about XML, but these people don't understand that XML was invented by and for SGML specialists, and it made SGML peoples' lives much easier. For one thing, we weren't so dependent on Omnimark anymore; at least one of my former employers switched from SGML to XML just so they could ditch Omnimark. XML's companion standard <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSLT\">XSLT</a> let us convert XML to a variety of formats using robust, free, standardized software, and as the web became a bigger publishing medium we found ourselves writing XSLT stylesheets to convert the same XML documents to print, CD-ROM, and HTML. Electronic publishing had never been so easy.</p>\n\n<h2>...and beyond...</h2>\n\n\n<p>Then along came the dot com boom. People got excited about how "seamless e-commerce" would change everything. People would save money as obsolete middlemen were removed from old-fashioned transactions, and people would make lots of money by taking part in this streamlining (selling pick axes during a gold rush) or by automating the buying and selling of products.</p>\n<p>Orders would be transmitted over this fabulous free network known as The Internet instead of over the expensive, proprietary <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Interchange\">EDI</a> networks. But when my computer sent an order to yours, how exactly would this order be represented? XML provided a good syntax: it was plain text, easy to transmit and parse, and could group labeled pieces of information in fairly arbitrary structures while remaining an open, straightforward standard. (When I say "straightforward", I'm talking about the <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210\">original spec</a> here, not the collection of related specs that most people are referring to when they complain about the complexity of XML. More on this <a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/#schema\">below</a>.) This let people send any combination of information back and forth, regardless of the potential lack of compatibility between the back end systems that the different parties were using. </p>\n<p>So, as an important technology of the dot com boom, XML became trendy, and it was a heady feeling to suddenly be an expert in a trendy technology. I'll never forget hearing it mentioned in a Microsoft ad on a prime time network TV show; sure, it was spoken by the character of a geek who normal people weren't supposed to understand, but still, this subset of a niche technology that my friends help to invent was mentioned on prime time network TV. Three different series of XML conference series were running, and they were much better attended than the <a href=\"http://www.idealliance.org/events/xtech-2012\">single one</a> that's left now. The best part was that there was enough money behind some of those conferences to fly most speakers in and put them up in hotels, which got me my first trips to London and Silicon Valley.</p>\n\n<p>XML wasn't really a perfect fit for ecommerce systems, though. The elements vs. attributes distinction, which publishing systems used to distinguish between content to publish and metadata about that content, didn't have a clear role when describing transactions that weren't content for publishing. XML had some odd data types (NMTOKEN? CDATA?) that only applied to attribute values, instead of traditional data types like integer, string, and boolean that could be applied to content as well as attributes.</p>\n<p>And then there was that strange DTD syntax: if XML was so good at describing structure, why wasn't XML used to describe the structure of a set of documents? The answer is <a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/#sgmlcompat\">above</a>, but it didn't get publicized very well, so many people complained about DTD syntax. Everyone agreed that an XML-based schema syntax that provided for traditional data types would be a Good Thing, so various groups came up with <a href=\"http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/xml/schema/appa_03.htm#xmlschema-APP-A-SECT-3.2\">proposals</a> and the W3C convened a Working Group to review these proposals and come up with a single standard.</p>\n<p>But, in the words of Cindy Lauper, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aK-UjR3Oj4\">money changes everything</a>. XML itself was assembled by eleven specialists in a niche technology, SGML, that wanted to make standardized electronic publishing simpler, and they managed to stay under most radar systems and come out with something <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210\">simple and lean</a>. However, when the XML Schema Working Group convened, many big and small companies were smelling lots of money and wanted to influence the results. Of the 31 companies that sent representatives to this Working Group (31!), many had little or nothing to do with publishing, electronic or otherwise. There were database vendors such as Microsoft, Informix, Software AG, IBM and Oracle (to be fair, large software companies have always been up there with legal publishers and defense contractors as believers in automated publishing technology; note where SGML got its start). There were successful or aspiring B2B ecommerce vendors such as CommerceOne, Progress Software, and webMethods. Microsoft, Xerox, CommerceOne, IBM, Oracle, Progress Software, and Sun were each interested enough to send two representatives to the committee, so there were a lot of cooks working on this broth.</p>\n\n<p>The result was a <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/#tr_XML_Schema\">three-part specification</a>: Part 0 was a primer, Part 1 specified how to define document structures, and Part 2 described basic data types and how to extend them. Part 2 is pretty good, and also provides the basis for RDF data typing. Part 1, in my opinion, ended up being an ugly, complicated mess in its attempt to serve so many powerful masters. </p>\n<p>Two members of the original eleven-member XML team, James Clark and Makoto Murata, developed an alternative to Part 1 that was both simpler and more powerful called <a href=\"http://relaxng.org/\">RELAX NG schemas</a>. Clark had written the only open source SGML parser, and the first XSLT processor, and came up with the name "XML," among his many other achievements; he's also written some <a href=\"http://code.google.com/p/jing-trang/\">great software</a> to implement RELAX NG and convert between schema formats. RELAX NG never became as popular as XML Schema, because it didn't have the big industry names behind it, and because it was optimized around the original XML use case: describing content for publication.</p>\n<p>Despite a complex syntax, incompatibilities among parsers, an often inscrutable spec, and less expressive power than RELAX NG, the W3C XML Schema specification has become popular because it's a W3C standard that addresses the original main problems of XML for ecommerce: it specifies document structures using XML, it lets you use traditional datatypes, and it has the added bonus for many developers of making it easier to round-trip XML elements to Java data structures. (After railing against the influence of this last part for years, I learned that it was primarily the work of Matthew Fuchs, an old friend I've known since he was finishing up his Ph.D. in computer science at NYU's <a href=\"http://cims.nyu.edu/\">Courant Institute</a> when I was doing my masters there in the mid-nineties. He was the only other person there who even knew what SGML was.) So, XML Schema continues to be used by many large organizations to store data that doesn't fit neatly into relational tables. In fact, <a href=\"http://www.topquadrant.com\">TopQuadrant</a> has been adding more and more features to the TopBraid platform to make it easier to incorporate such data into a system that uses semantic web standards. </p>\n\n<h2>...and back.</h2>\n\n<p>Getting back to to the topic of leaner, simpler alternatives for representing information of potentially arbitrary structure, the JavaScript-based <a href=\"http://json.org/\">JSON</a> format started getting popular around 2006. The third paragraph of its <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON\">Wikipedia page</a> flatly states that "it is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, serving as an alternative to XML."</p>\n\n<p>A Google search for <a href=\"https://www.google.com/search?q=%22json+replace+xml%22\">"json replace xml"</a> gets over 5,000 hits. (That's with the quotes around the search terms, to make Google search for the exact phrase. Without the quotes, it gets almost five million hits.) I like JSON, and see how it can replace many of the uses of XML that have been around since the dot com boom days, but anyone who thinks it can completely replace XML doesn't understand what XML was designed for. Documents with inline markup (or, in XML geekspeak, "mixed content"—for example, the way the HTML <tt>a</tt> element can be in the middle of a sentence within a <tt>p</tt> element) would theoretically work fine in JSON, but in practice, it would be too easy to screw it up when editing it with a text editor by accidentally adding or removing a single curly brace. Tools to hide the syntax behind a more intuitive interface may address the issue, but dependence on such tools was something that the original XML designers wanted to avoid. And frankly, when I picture a complex prose document stored in JSON, I hear the ghost of Microsoft's <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format\">RTF</a> dragging chains through the attic.</p>\n\n<p>Between JSON's growing role as an inter-computer data format and RELAX NG's foothold in schemas like DocBook and companies like LexisNexis, I see the XML infrastucture getting back to its original use cases, which makes good sense to me. Each year at the <a href=\"http://xmlsummerschool.com/\">XML Summer School</a> in Oxford, it's been very interesting to see the new things people are doing with XML, especially as XQuery-based XML databases like <a href=\"http://www.marklogic.com/\">MarkLogic</a> and <a href=\"http://exist.sourceforge.net/\">eXist</a> grow in power. I've been chairing the semantic web track at the summer school for the past few years and hardly been involved in XML at all, but it's always great to hear what my old friends are up to. Especially when there's great beer available.</p>\n\n\n<center>\n<a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/sgmlfree/\"><img height=\"150\" src=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/img/sgmlcdsmall.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"SGML CD cover\"></a>\n \n<a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/xmlann/\"><img height=\"150\" src=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/img/xmlasbig.gif\" border=\"0\" alt=\"XML Annotated Spec cover\"></a>\n \n<a href=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/xsltquickly/\"><img height=\"150\" src=\"http://www.snee.com/bob/img/XQcoverSmall.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"XSLT Quickly cover\"></a>\n</center>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Please add any comments to <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/101006505484718936507/posts/HNF95EdnXEy\">this Google+ post</a>.</p>\n\n\n\n </div>\n\n </div>"
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"title" : "The Handbag Paradox",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://janchipchase.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/20120111-Beijing-0004.jpg\"><img src=\"http://janchipchase.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/20120111-Beijing-0004-580x386.jpg\" alt=\"Beijing: what lies within\" title=\"Beijing: what lies within\" width=\"580\" height=\"386\"></a></p>\n<p>Been tracking the contents of people’s bags, pockets and car boots for a while now, to understand how people equip themselves for what lies out there.</p>\n<p>Bag mapping is a useful method to get a sense of activities and priorities when people transition between their home space and what lies outside – the participant is asked to bring their ‘most often carried bag’ and lay the objects they carry on a flat surface, talking through the purpose and last-use of each item. Things to look out for – where the bag is kept in the home and what is clustered around it, what is packed/repacked on arrival/departure, and the use of different bags for different activities.</p>\n<p>Women tend to be far more sophisticated bag carriers than men, in part because they utilise pockets less and because the social pressures to carry more, such as appearance related objects (make-up, mirror, tissues) or sanitary products is greater. But this sophistication sometimes comes at a cost – handbags carriers (and to a lesser extent other carriers of daily-use bags) are confronted with the handbag paradox that states: it is nearly always easier to add additional items to the bag than to sort through items to be removed, with the net result being that people walk around with significantly more stuff than they need. The moment when the bag carrier appreciates that the bag is over packed is often when they are in a hurry to step out the door (with no time to unpack) or when they are out and about (with nowhere to place and retrieve) what is taken out. It is common for the carrier of an over-filled bag to switch priorities on returning home – deprioritizing the ‘empty bag’ task with something else – such as the ‘empty bladder’ task or ‘make tea’ task, until they are again confronted with an overfilled bag when out and about. The handbag paradox also applies to other everyday bags, hard drives and car boots (trunks). In private-car ownership cultures e.g. the United States, the car (not just the car boot) becomes the overfilled container. (There’s also useful lessons in prioritisation switching depending on context that can apply to many situations).</p>\n<p>Bag mapping is a useful exercise to become acquainted with the norms of a society – what we do or don’t decide to carry being a reflection of our selves and the environment in which we live and work.</p>\n<p><em>See also: Scott Mainwaring’s paper on <a href=\"http://intel-research.academia.edu/ScottMainwaring/Papers/370581/Living_for_the_Global_City_Mobile_Kits_Urban_Interfaces_and_Ubicomp\">Living for the Global City – Mobile Kits, Urban Interface and Ubicomp</a> and <a href=\"http://www.janchipchase.org/fp/wp-content/uploads/presentations/JanChipchase_DUX_Minimal_vFinal.pdf\">Mobile Essentials: Field Study and Concepting</a> by myself and a number of ex-colleagues at Nokia. </em></p>"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20120128_STP503.jpg\" alt=\"\">SUNNY countries are often poor. A shame, then, that solar power is still quite expensive. But it is getting cheaper by the day, and is now cheap enough to be competitive with other forms of energy in places that are not attached to electricity grids. Since 1.6 billion people are still in that unfortunate position, a large potential market for solar energy now exists. The problem is that although sunlight is free, a lot of those 1.6 billion people still cannot afford the cost of the kit in one go, and no one will lend them the money to do so.</p><p>Eight19, a British company spun out of Cambridge University, has, however, devised a novel way to get round this. In return for a deposit of around $10 it is supplying poor Kenyan families with a solar cell able to generate 2.5 watts of electricity, a battery that can deliver a three amp current to store this electricity, and a lamp whose bulb is a light-emitting diode. The firm reckons that this system, once the battery is fully charged, is sufficient to light two small rooms and to power a mobile-phone charger for seven hours. Then, next day, it can be put outside and charged back up again.</p><p>The trick is that, to be able to use the electricity, the system’s keeper must buy a scratch card—for as little as a dollar—on which is printed a reference number. The keeper sends this reference, plus the serial number of the household solar unit, by SMS to Eight19. The company’s server will respond automatically with an access code to the unit. </p><p>Users may consider that they are paying an hourly rate for their electricity. In fact, they are paying off the cost of the unit. After buying around $80 worth of scratch cards—which Eight19 expects would take the average family around 18 months—the user will own it. He will then have the option of continuing to use it for nothing, or of trading it in for a bigger one, perhaps driven by a 10-watt solar cell. </p><p>In that case, he would go then through the same process again, paying off the additional cost of the upgraded kit at a slightly higher rate. Users would thereby increase their electricity supply—ascending the “energy escalator”, as Eight19 puts it—steadily and affordably. Simultaneously, the company would be able to build a payment record of its clients, sorting the unreliable from the rest. </p><p>According to Eight19’s figures, this looks like a good deal for customers. The firm reckons the average energy-starved Kenyan spends around $10 a month on paraffin—sufficient to fuel a couple of smoky lamps—plus $2 on charging his mobile phone in the market-place. Regular users of one of Eight19’s basic solar units will spend around half that, before owning it outright. Meanwhile, as the cost of solar technology falls, it should get even cheaper. The company hopes to be able to supply users with a new, low-cost and robust sort of solar cell, printed onto plastic strips, within two years.</p><p>The scheme has so far been tried out among a couple of hundred Kenyan families. With the aid of a charitable loan to accelerate its roll-out, Eight19 is planning to disperse 4,000 solar units in Kenya, Malawi and Zambia over the next two months. If the idea works, solar power will have a whole, new set of customers and the days of the paraffin lamp may be numbered.</p><div></div>"
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"content" : "<p>My <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2669.html\">previous post on opacity in finance</a> attracted a lot of discussion, both in an <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2669.html#comments\">excellent comment thread</a> and <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/#more_on_opacity_related_elsewhere\">throughout the blogosphere</a>. Thanks. As usual, your comments put my drivel to shame.</p>\n\n<p>I thought I’d follow up (very belatedly, i’m sorry!) with some remarks on opacity in finance. This will be long and very poorly organized, a brain dump of responses I feel I owe people so I can move onto other things. If you actually read it, I am grateful. (I am always grateful that you read my words at all!)</p>\n\n<p>Anyway here goes:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><p>I, personally, detest opaque finance. I would prefer we eliminate whole sectors of <i>status quo</i> finance, replacing the existing skein of deceptive institutions with very simple arrangements that make it absolutely clear who bears what risks. Banks, money market funds, and pension funds are the first institutions we’d reform out of existence. They wouldn’t be the last. I became interested in financial systems as a large scale information system. It is with great unhappiness and reluctance that, after devoting years of my life to thinking about finance, I’ve concluded that financial systems are better characterized as large-scale <i>disinformation</i> systems and that disinformation is at the core of how they function, not some tumor that can be excised to restore the patient to good health.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>I am still an idealist. I think we <i>should</i> try to develop financial systems that are honest and transparent, that do not combine kleptocracy and effectiveness into a bundle that’s both impossible to refuse and debilitating to accept. But that is a larger and very different project from, say, increasing capital and liquidity ratios at <i>status quo</i> banks.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>We must give the devil her due. It pissed a lot of readers off and pisses me off too, but the argument I offered in the previous post is true. Over the broad scope of history, societies with financial systems that mobilize capital opaquely and at very large scale have completely dominated those that have relied only upon consenting risk assumption by well-informed individuals. Industrialization occurs in societies with corrupt and fragile big banks, or else in societies where the state coerces and obscures risk-bearing and reward-shifting on a large-scale, or (more usually) both. China is a great present day example. That does not mean it would be impossible to develop a set of institutions that would be both effective and transparent. But it does mean developing such a system is an ambitious and ahistorical project, not a mere matter of “fixing what’s broken”. Under present arrangements, transparency and what we perceive as effectiveness stand in opposition to one another. It is incoherent to demand transparency and expect “more” macroeconomically stimulative intermediation from our current financial system.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>A lot of responses to the previous post were of the form, “You are wrong, and like, <i>duh!</i> Look around! Look at where opaque finance has gotten us! No one trusts anyone, we can’t mobilize risk capital at any scale, etc. etc.” That’s all true! But it’s the exception that proves the rule. The trouble with opaque finance is that the opaque and kleptocratic financial sector doesn’t con people into providing capital at scale only when it knows how to put it to good use (my first payoff matrix from the previous post), but tries to do so habitually, all the time. Financiers aren’t especially bright, and they are in the business of mobilizing capital, it’s what they get paid to do. As a group, they can’t distinguish periods with excellent real opportunities from periods in which they are shepherding capital into idiocy and waste. Financiers are first and foremost salesmen. Some of them do understand when they are selling poison. But many of them, like most good salesmen, persuade themselves of the amazingness of what they are selling in order to persuade the rest of us more effectively. So there are periods, as we’ve just seen, when financiers attract huge gobs of capital and confidently deploy it into an incinerator. They are then forced to break their promises to everyone. Since no one (most especially the financiers) believes themselves to have agreed to be the bagholder, we are left in an ocean of conflict over who must bear what costs. It’s awful! Where we are now is awful! So how can opaque finance possibly be good? Well, banking crises are not new. We’ve been at this for centuries. The US had depression-strength “banking panics” every decade or so during the 19th Century, with all the attendant conflict and recrimination when banks failed. Thailand had no banking panics. Which country developed? I’d wager that, over the course of history, the correlation between banking crises and long-term growth is strongly positive, not negative. Banking crises are evidence of banking, and banking is evidence of the recruitment of dispersed capital that enables industrialization and development. When disturbingly common crises destroy trust and render opaque finance ineffective, we don’t segue into prosperous periods of honest, transparent activity. As a general rule, our economies remain debilitated until con-men of both the private and public sector (a distinction without a difference) restore faith in some even more convoluted and cross-guaranteed variation on the same con.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>Lots of responses were of the form. “Bankers don’t think that way!” No, of course they don’t. Most bankers don’t understand themselves to be con artists. Remember how finance enthusiasts used to like to gush about the power of “emergent systems”? If there’s any conspiracy in this story, it’s an emergent conspiracy, not some some self-conscious attempt to serve the greater good by pulling the greater wool over everyone’s eyes. Bankers just think about making money. They work to attract cheap finance via suggestions of clever risk-management and cross guarantees. They try to cover themselves in case it all goes wrong. They persuade themselves in some big-picture way that the “system” in which they are participating in does some good, they rationalize away practices that might seem to be a bit sketchy. Every industry has its sausage factories, right?</p>\n<p>It might be better if bankers actually <i>were</i> self-conscious conspirators. If they understood themselves to be the masters of sneakily pilfered resources, they might feel some kind of <i>noblesse oblige</i> to deploy those resources with care, and they might coordinate in the service of communal aims. Compare modern financial elites to their old-style WASP-dominated predecessors. Part of what makes an FDR different from a Mitt Romney is that an FDR understood his power to be derived from more or less arbitrary privilege, while a Mitt Romney imagines himself to have “eaten what he killed” in brutally efficient markets. The neoliberal revolution in finance and economics was not pap invented merely to enslave the plebes. As the value system of the first world grew more “open” and “meritocratic”, it became hard for those who achieved outsize influence in finance both to accurately understand their own roles and to consider themselves good people. Self-regard being more important to all of us than truth, financiers eagerly followed and encouraged an academic movement that described the conflicted institutions which had elevated them as “efficient” and tending inevitably towards “optimality”. They persuaded themselves, long before they persuaded the rest of us, that any games they played for their own enrichment would necessarily lead to social gain over the long term. It was because they were true believers, rather than mere deceivers, that they could evolve such rapacious forms of finance without the slightest hint of conscience. Their belief in an invisible hand so perfect it would be unrecognizable to Adam Smith led them to make mistakes that their chummy predecessors never would have. (The old WASP establishment would have responded to East Asian mercantilism instinctively. The neoliberals rationalized obvious strategic dangers as presumptively optimal market outcomes. Instead of resisting, they sought opportunities for self-enrichment and forged increasingly transnational identities.)</p></li>\n\n<li><p>Many readers pointed out that, if the coordination problem I describe is real, there are lots of ways to overcome it, so opaque finance isn’t necessary. That’s absolutely true in theory, but questionable in practice. Governments could transparently tax resources away from citizens and, by some indeterminate intelligent means, directly invest those resources in order to maintain an efficient scale of activity. But as a matter if politics and practice, that doesn’t happen. Governments primarily contribute to the pace of investment in the most opaque manner possible, subsidizing a vast menagerie of not-at-all transparent financial intermediaries with a variety of often tacit guarantees. Sometimes a visible circumstance, <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/12/26/population_growth_as_coordination_mechanism.html\">like an immigration wave</a>, can inspire a wave of direct investment by households, overcoming the coordination problem. Several readers pointed out that the 1990s tech boom I used as an example was itself financed rather transparently, by equity investors who dutifully accepted losses from risks they’d agreed to bear up front. That’s right, and a fair critique of my example. The tech boom was, to a very large degree, spontaneously coordinated by investor enthusiasm for a new technology. If animal spirits are a coordination problem, a game with multiple equilibria, lots of circumstances could put us into the good equilibrium. But then lots of circumstances could put us into the bad equilibrium too. Opaque finance isn’t needed to ensure that we occasionally find ourselves in a good equilibrium. Its function is to ensure that we <i>reliably</i> stay out of the bad equilibrium, or that if we fall into darkness, we don’t stay there for very long.</p></li>\n\n\n<li><p>Some idealists suggest that the United States’ various twitches towards an “equity society”, or the popularity of the “<a href=\"http://isbn.nu/9780071494700\">Stocks For The Long Run</a>” mantra, imply that there is no need for opaque finance. Americans, under this theory, have been successfully persuaded to willingly and informedly bear the risk of industrial development. So there is no need for any kind of a con. I’m afraid that’s terribly wrong. First, it’s wrong empirically. Despite the United States’ near obsession with its stock market, households have never held the majority of their financial wealth as direct claims on firms. Even if one defines holdings of index and mutual funds as “transparent” finance, transparent vehicles have never comprised the majority of US household financial wealth. Most household wealth is held as a mix of bank deposits, bonds, and pension fund reserves. (Just browse through table L.100 of the <a href=\"http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/\">Fed’s Flow of Funds</a>, even at the height of the dot com euphoria for equities.) Stocks are disproportionately held by high income households, so I suspect the bias towards opaque finance of the median household (rather than the average “household and nonprofit” tracked by the Fed) is overwhelming. An “equity society” in which individuals voluntary hold the preponderance of their wealth as claims against real-economy projects whose risks they are willing to bear is an ahistorical pipe dream. And it’s worse than it looks. Many mutual funds are money market funds, an institutional form which is a contrived masterpiece of opacity, explicitly structured to mimic “guaranteed” bank accounts, perceived by customers to be reputationally and now politically protected against “breaking the buck”. Index funds, in my view, should increasingly be grouped as opaque rather than transparent finance. Conventional financial wisdom now suggests that younger people should pay no attention to the underlying investments, but treat stock indices as long-term savings accounts. Inevitably, the growing popularity of that practice has coincided with political pressure for stabilization of “the market”, stabilization which is now widely and justifiably perceived to exist. People who invest in “the market” as a long-term savings vehicle do not really consent to accepting whatever outcomes the industrial firms they blindly fund happen to deliver. They consent to vertiginous short-term fluctuations in value, sure. But they expect, well, <i>something</i> to deliver the long-term stable growth that’s been promised, stocks for the long run. If things don’t work out that way, the political system is supposed to make it so. Indexers do not blithely consent to take a long-term loss, if that’s the way the cookie crumbles, and the political system, from the Fed to the US Congress to the President are increasingly geared toward ratifying expectations of things working out in the end. Remember all those <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1201057787.shtml\">emergency Fed interventions</a>? Remember the pathetic frantic do-over when a market crash was attributed to an initial rejection of TARP? Would there be no bailout if a 401(k) catastrophe meant that a generation of “responsible, successful” people would have to retire in penury, people who did what experts advised, the kind of people who have a high propensity to vote? (Probably the bailout would take the form of interventions that reinflate the market, of course, so those responsible, successful people can pretend to have hung tough rather than to have been bailed out.) Index funds have become another form of opaque finance, with promises and justifications of safety delivered up front and conflict stored up <i>ex post</i> should things look not to work out. “Stocks for the long run” boosters, however sincere, serve the role of classic finance con-men: convincing large groups of people to bear risks they do not themselves evaluate, understand or fully accept; persuading people that some indeterminate force will ensure that they are safe; contributing on the one hand to the mobilization of capital for useful purposes, but also to inconsistent expectations about who will bear what costs should macroeconomic outcomes fail to work out.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>Some readers misinterpreted the argument in the previous piece as being about bubbles. That’s my fault, since I used the 1990s tech boom as an example, but note that I dated those investments at 1997 rather than 1999 or 2000. Up until about 1997, there really was no tech bubble, just a boom. A long-term investor in a representative bundle of tech companies would have earned a decent, if not stratospheric, return, even though many of the companies in which they invested would eventually have failed. The success of the winners would have made up for the losers. 2000 was a bubble. An investor in a representative bundle of tech firms in that year would have been killed. In my story, the bubbles fanned by the financial sector are the price of the booms, a bug not a feature. One can make the case, <i>à la</i> <a href=\"http://isbn.nu/0061151548\">Dan Gross</a>, that the external benefits of (some) bubbles outweigh their costs to investors and others. But that is not the case I am making. I claim we would forego a lot of plain booms, the kind that ultimately enrich investors as well as society at large, if we didn’t have a financial sector skilled at getting people to assume risks they’d not directly consent to take. At its best, an opaque financial sector overcomes a coordination problem, makes bad risks (on average) good by getting everybody to jump at once, by ensuring a high baseline level of activity.</p></li>\n\n<li><p>It is important to distinguish between the idiosyncratic and systematic functions of finance. The argument I’ve outlined is about the role of finance in managing systematic or aggregate outcomes, and has little to do with idiosyncratic risk and reward. <i>Status quo</i> finance is quite capable of helping individuals manage idiosyncratic risks, and largely performs as advertised. If you purchase fire insurance and your house burns down, your guaranteed and regulated insurer will probably pay the claim. If banks occasionally and sporadically fail, you gain a real benefit by putting your money in an FDIC insured bank, foregoing some potential deposit income in exchange for genuine safety. However, if there are systematic shocks to the banking system, premia from solvent banks will fail to cover the losses from failures. Cross guarantees can never protect against systematic shocks. If they are made to appear to do so, if FDIC-insured depositors are all made whole following a serious system-wide shock, it is because someone is covering FDIC’s losses. In aggregate, the payouts to the public are taken from the public, what we gain from deposit insurance we lose from additional taxes or higher bank fees. In reality, we are not an aggregate, so systematic shocks engender social conflict about to whom losses should be allocated. If we had not entrusted our resources to banks in the first place, our stashes of canned food and ammo would have remained safe.</p>\n\n<p>The always excellent David Murphy <a href=\"http://blog.rivast.com/?p=5346\">objects</a> to my characterization of finance as a placebo:\n<blockquote>Diversification, tranching, maturity transformation, and capital allocation are not sugar pills.</blockquote>Diversification and maturity transformation can protect us from idiosyncratic shocks, and Murphy is right to point that out. But they cannot protect us from systematic misfortunes. In aggregate we hold the aggregate portfolio, and the opportunity cost of transforming that portfolio into current consumption is whatever it is. Of the benefits Murphy lists, the only ones that could apply systematically are capital allocation and risk allocation (of which tranching is one technique). In aggregate, do we invest our resources is fruitful and beneficial projects? When things go wrong, are the costs allocated to those best able to bear them? It is always possible to imagine worse capital allocations than those we’ve experienced. We might have simply burned forests, rather than employing lumber to the construction of ghost suburbs in the desert. But I think it’s hard to make the case that our financial system as a whole, especially the largest and most opaque parts of it, does a very excellent job in allocating capital. Shifts in our aggregate portfolio seem to jerk around very faddishly, regulated by occasional crashes. It’s not obvious that Western quasiprivate capital allocation dominates equally opaque (and also terrible) <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21542930?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/theworldintheirhands\">“state capitalist”</a> allocation.</p>\n\n<p>On capital allocation, <i>status quo</i> finance could do better and could do worse. Let’s call it a glass half full. But on systematic risk allocation, I think it unquestionable that <i>status quo</i> finance is completely terrible. When losses cease to be occasional, all that <i>ex ante</i> tranching turns out to be little more than prelude to continuing conflict, “tranche warfare”. In the recent crisis, the behavior of mortgage servicers — agents of banks working to avoid existentially threatening loss allocations — has been entirely perverse with respect to <i>ex ante</i> expectations that they would serve as agents of investors. Throughout the financial system, intermediaries and their erstwhile “clients” continue to struggle over who will bear costs. More broadly, the financial system, including its public and private elements, has by and large protected the nominal and real value of opaque “low risk” investments by shifting costs to the marginally employed (who relieve pressure on the price level by becoming unemployed) and to taxpayers (including people who hold few financial claims and those who are outright in debt). In other words, it is clear <i>ex post</i> that the risk of the aggregate portfolio has been borne by those who were <i>least</i> able to bear it (a circumstance that is unfortunately correlated with political weakness). In my view, there is no reasonable case that <i>status quo</i> finance did a remotely good job of allocating systemic risk to those best able to bear it in the recent crisis. And this shifting of costs to diffuse taxpayers and the marginally employed is hardly unusual. As allocators of systematic risk, opaque financial systems are very much worse than sugar pills. Opacity serves to delay and obscure conflicts, which are almost always resolved in favor of the powerful and at the expense of the weak.</p>\n<p><i>Status quo</i> financial systems certainly do help us manage our idiosyncratic risks. And you can sum up the benefit of this insurance against idiosyncratic risks to argue they improve our aggregate welfare by some amount. But from a systematic perspective their main contribution is that they persuade us <i>not</i> to hold our wealth as canned goods and ammo. They embolden us to jump.</p>\n</li>\n\n<li><p>Though I acknowledge the important function opaque finance has served, I very much look forward to the day when we can euthanize whole swathes of our miserable financial system. But that will require institutional work. We have to create alternative means of overcoming coordination problems associated with the pace and scale of investment activity, while hopefully expanding the menu of investment options and improving the quality of investment decisions. As utopian as it sounds, I think we can work around compromised banking systems and gradually render them obsolete with a combination of “crowdfunding”, social insurance, and a shift of government support away from opaque debt guarantees and towards undiversified equity. But that’s a project still before us. We won’t be rid of all our vampire squids until we invent what will replace them.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<div>\n<p><a name=\"more_on_opacity_related_elsewhere\"><b>Related — elsewhere:</b></a></p>\n <ul>\n <li><a href=\"http://alvinenator.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/fraud-and-finance/\">alvinenator: Fraud and Finance</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://creditplumber.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/2012-easing-credit-in-the-real-economy-or-why-risk-opacity-has-damaged-confidence/\">creditplumber: 2012 : Easing Credit In The Real Economy (or ‘Why Risk Opacity Has Damaged Confidence’)</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://dieswaytoofast.blogspot.com/2011/12/banking-opacity-in-service-of.html\">dieswaytoofast: Banking Opacity in the service of an industrial economy</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=2828050\">Karl Denninger: This Got PRINTED? (“There Will Be Violence”)</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/our-digital-financial-overlords\">Kevin Drum: Our Digital Financial Overlords</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-nation-service.html\">The Epicurean Dealmaker: In the Nation’s Service</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://readingbyeugene.com/2011/12/30/on-the-complexity-of-finance/\">Eugene: On the Complexity of Finance</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2011/12/stever-randy-waldman-why-is-finance-so.html\">Tom Hickey: Steve Randy Waldman — “Why is finance so complex?”</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://interloping.com/2012/01/02/interlopers-best-reads-of-2011/\">Interloper: Best Reads of 2011</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/you-can-have-opacity-and-an-industrial-economy-or-you-can-have-transparency-and-herd-goats/2011/12/28/gIQAjKYhMP_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein\">Suzy Khimm: ‘You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats.’</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/placebos-can-work-even-when-theyre-explained/2011/08/25/gIQAZCCkIP_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein\">Ezra Klein: Placebos can work even when they’re explained</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://dealbreaker.com/2012/01/countrywide-might-have-been-better-off-herding-goats/\">Matt Levine: Countrywide Might Have Been Better Off Herding Goats</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://htmlgiant.com/random/god-is-a-collective-action-problem/\">Mike Meginnis: God is a collective action problem</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://blog.rivast.com/?p=5346\">David Murphy: Diversification and the function of banks</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/12/23/814381/abstractions-and-morality-in-modern-finance/\">Lisa Pollack: Abstractions and morality in modern finance</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/01/03/815741/warning-transparency-in-finance-may-lead-to-goat-herding/\">Lisa Pollack: Warning: transparency in finance may lead to goat-herding</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/29/the-social-benefit-of-pension-funds/\">Felix Salmon: The social benefit of pension funds</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://shareholdersunite.com/2011/12/26/finance-opacity/\">Shareholders Unite: Finance and complexity</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.jaysorkin.com/2012/01/through-a-frosted-glass-darkly/\">Jay Sorkin: Through a Frosted Glass, Darkly</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://abnormalreturns.com/the-99-percent-and-the-problem-of-societal-underinvestment/\">Tadas Viskanta: The 99 percent and the problem of societal underinvestment</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2011/12/26/population_growth_as_coordination_mechanism.html\">Matt Yglesias: Population Growth As Coordination Mechanism</a></li>\n <li><a href=\"http://zandarvts.blogspot.com/2011/12/capitalism-working-as-intended.html\">Zandar: Capitalism: Working As Intended</a></li>\n </ul>\n\n<p>\nAlso, links or excerpts from:\n<a href=\"http://thebrowser.com/articles/why-finance-so-complex\">The Browser</a>,\n<a href=\"http://caveatbettor.blogspot.com/2011/12/quotes-of-day_28.html\">Caveat Bettor</a>,\n<a href=\"http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/28/counterparties-494/\">Counterparties</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.epicenecyb.org/?p=892\">Epicene Cyborg</a>,\n<a href=\"http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/12/29/the-roundup-for-december-29-2011/\">FireDogLake</a>,\n<a href=\"http://flashmanletters.typepad.com/my-blog/2011/12/you-take-your-medicine-and-will-take-your-money-it-is-good-for-you.html\">Flashman Letters</a>,\n<a href=\"http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2011/12/the-dangerous-complexity-of-our-financial-system-.html\">L.A. Times</a>,\n<a href=\"http://liminalhack.wordpress.com/2012/01/03/wizards-shit-artists-and-zombies/\">Liminal Hack</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/12/links-122911.html\">Naked Capitalism</a>,\n<a href=\"http://opusminimax.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/the-taxpayer-theorem/\">Opus Minimax</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/12/28/hot-links-its-official/\">Reformed Broker</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.simoleonsense.com/weekly-roundup-159-a-curated-linkfest-for-the-smartest-people-on-the-web/\">Simoleon Sense</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.sinocism.com/?p=3389\">Sinocism</a>,\n<a href=\"http://www.veritiesandvagaries.com/2011/12/the-agenda-15/\">Verities & Vagaries</a>.\n</p>\n<p>Let me know if I’ve (unforgivably!) missed you.</p>\n</div>\n\n<div>\n\n<p><b>Update History:</b></p>\n<ul>\n<li>22-Jan-2012, 4:50 p.m. EST: “coordinate in the service of <s>perceived</s> communal aims.”</li>\n</ul>\n</div>"
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"title" : "The politics of call centres, part one",
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"content" : "What is it that makes call centres so uniquely awful as social institutions? This is something I've often touched on at Telco 2.0, and also something that's been unusually salient in my life recently - I moved house, and therefore had to interact with getting on for a dozen of the things, several repeatedly. (Vodafone and Thames Water were the best, npower and Virgin Media the worst.) But this isn't just going to be a consumer whine. In an economy that is over 70% services, the combination of service design, technology, and social relations that makes these things so awful is something we need to understand.<br><br>For example, why does E.ON (the electricity company, a branch of the German utility Rhein-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerke) want you to tell their IVR what class you are before they do anything else? This may sound paranoid, but when I called them, the first question I had to answer was whether I owned my home or was a tenant. What on earth did they want to know that for?<br><br>Call centres provide a horrible experience to the user. They are famously awful workplaces. And they are also hideously inefficient - some sites experience levels of failure demand, that is to say calls generated due to a prior failure to serve, over 50% of the total inbound calls. Manufacturing industry has long recognised that rework is the greatest enemy of productivity, taking up disproportionate amounts of time and resources and inevitably never quite fixing the problems.<br><br>So why are they so awful? Well, I'll get to that in the next post. Before we can answer that, we need to think about <em>how</em> they are so awful. I've made a list of anti-patterns - common or standard practices that embody error - that make me angry.<br><br>Our first anti-pattern is <em>queueing</em>. Call centres essentially all work on the basis of oversubscription and queueing. On the assumption that some percentage of calls will go away, they save on staff by queueing calls. This is not the only way to deal with peaks in demand, though - for example, rather than holding calls, there is no good technical reason why you couldn't instead have a <em>call-back architecture</em>, scheduling a call back sometime in the future. <br><br>Waiting on hold is interesting because it represents an imposition on the user - because telephony is a hot medium in McLuhan's terminology, your attention is demanded while you sit pointlessly in the queue. In essence, you're providing unpaid labour. Worse, companies are always tempted to impose on you while you wait - playing music on hold (does anybody actually like this?), or worse, nagging you about using the web site. We will see later on that this is especially pointless and stupid.<br><br>And the existence of the queue is important in the social relations of the workplace. If there are people queueing, it is obviously essential to get to them as soon as possible, which means there is a permanent pressure to speed up the line. Many centres use the queue as an operational KPI. It is also quality-destroying, in that both workers and managers' attention is always focused on the <em>next</em> call and how to get off the current call in order to get after the queue.<br><br>A related issue is <em>polling</em>. That is to say, repeatedly checking on something, rather than being informed pro-actively when it changes. This is of course implicit in the queueing model. It represents a waste of time for everyone involved.<br><br><em>Repetition</em> is one of the most annoying of the anti-patterns, and it is caused by <em>statelessness</em>. It is always assumed that this interaction has never happened before, will never happen again, and is purely atomised. They don't know what happened in the last call, or even earlier in the call if it has been transferred. As a result, you have to provide your mother's maiden name and your account number, again, and they have to retype it, again. The decontextualised nature of interaction with a call centre is one of the worst things about it. <br><br>Pretty much every phone system these days uses SIP internally, so there is no excuse for not setting a header with a unique identifier that could be used to look up data in all the systems involved, and indeed given out as a ticket number to the user in case they need to call again, or - why not - used to share the record of the call.<br><br>That point leads us to another very important one. <em>Assymetric legibility</em> characterises call centres, and it's dreadful. Within, management tries to maintain a panopticon glare at the staff. Without, the user faces an unmapped territory, in which the paths are deliberately obscure, and the details the centre holds on you are kept secret. Call centres know a lot about you, but won't say; their managers endlessly spy on the galley slaves; you're not allowed to know how the system works.<br><br>So no wonder we get <em>failure demand</em>, in which people keep coming back <em>because it was so awful last time</em>. A few companies get this, and use first-call resolution (the percentage of cases that are closed first time) as a KPI rather than call rates, but you'd be surprised. Obviously, first-call resolution has a whole string of social implications - it requires re-skilling of the workforce and devolution of authority to them. No wonder it's rare.<br><br>Now, while we were in the queue, the robot voice kept telling us to bugger off and try the Web site. But this is futile. <em>Inappropriate automation</em> and <em>human/machine confusion</em> bedevil call centres. If you could solve your problem by filling in a web form, you probably would have done. The fact you're in the queue is evidence that your request is complicated, that something has gone wrong, or generally that human intervention is required. <br><br>However, exactly this flexibility and devolution of authority is what call centres try to design out of their processes and impose on their employees. The product is not valued, therefore it is awful. The job is not valued by the employer, and therefore, it is awful. And, I would add, it is not valued by society at large and therefore, nobody cares.<br><br>So, there's the how. Now for the why.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-5720590155534973340?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "iBooks Author, a nice tool but..",
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"content" : "<p>Long, very long ago,<del> in\nanother galaxy</del> further north on the US west coast, <del>the\nDeath Star</del> Microsoft was not playing the standardization game\nand was submitting proposals to W3C the day it was shipping to the\nmasses a browser implementing that proposal. Or ship without any\nproposal.</p>\nThese days are over, and Microsoft finally embraced Web Standards and\nall rejoiced.<br>\n<p>Yesterday, further south on the US west coast, <del>the\n\"All Your Documents Are Belong To Us\" Mothership</del> Apple\nstarted showing incompatible authoring environments and rendering\nengines based on proprietary extensions to html and CSS that will hit\nthe wild. Yesterday, Apple released iBooks Author and I am not afraid\nto say that despite of being a great authoring tool, the solution it\noffers is a step backwards and it's not good news for users/customers.\n</p>\n<p>I have downloaded iBooks Author (IBA) and played with it. I have in\nparticular looked at the two formats it outputs, the iba format and\nthe ibooks format.</p>\n<p>But before that, since I do it with all software I load and launch on\nmy Mac, I took a look at the About window... And from that About\nwindow, you can read the License. Dan Wineman has <a href=\"http://venomousporridge.com/post/16126436616/ibooks-author-eula-audacity\">an\nexcellent article about it</a>, and article you <strong>must</strong>\nread before thinking IBA is the Holy Grail of publishing. I won't\nrepeat here what he said but he missed something funny and potentially\nimportant: the french EULA, that is the only one valid in France if\nthe customer is an individual since english is not an official\nlanguage here and nobody can force a french citizen in France to have\nto read english, reads:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\"tout livre ou tout autre travail réalisé à l’aide de ce\nlogiciel (« travail »), ne peut être vendu ou distribué uniquement\nvia Apple (par exemple sur l’iBookstore) et une telle distribution\nest sujette à un accord séparé conclu avec Apple\"</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The first part of that sentence is a bogus translation from english\nthat means \"<em>any book or other work made with this software <strong>cannot\nbe sold only via Apple</strong></em>\"... The french prose misses\none \"<em>que</em>\" to match the english one. Too bad, Apple... Too bad\nand too late. I am carefully keeping a copy of that document, of\ncourse. I suggest you do too, if you're based in France <img src=\"http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/themes/default/smilies/smile.png\" alt=\":-)\"> </p>\n<p>Let's go back to the formats now. The first IBA format, the iba\nformat, is, as always with Apple, a zip archive pretending to be a\nsingle file. The iba file I created from my little demo was contained\nin a single XML file. Totally unreadable, based on proprietary Apple\nxml namespaces (sl, sf and sfa, all in <code>http://developer.apple.com/namespaces/</code>\nspace).</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/public/IBA/iba_format.png\" alt=\"IBA format\" style=\"border-color:silver;border-width:1px;border-style:solid\"></p>\n<p>It's not readable in a regular browser because browsers have no\nknowledge of those namespaces. It's completely closed, useless outside\nof the Apple world. Nothing more to say here.</p>\n<p>The ibooks format is more interesting, but even more disappointing...</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/public/IBA/ibooks_format.png\" alt=\"ibooks format\" style=\"border-color:silver;border-width:1px;border-style:solid\"></p>\n<p>It looks like an EPUB3 format. It smells like an EPUB3 format. But\nit's not at all an EPUB3 format and here's why...</p>\n<p>First the <code>mimetype</code> file. It's correctly placed in first\nposition in the package, but the EPUB3 format <a href=\"http://idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-ocf.html#sec-zip-container-mime\">states</a>\nthat its content must be <code>application/epub+zip</code>. And it's\nnot. It's <code>application/x-ibooks+zip</code> and that is enough to\nmake conformant EPUB3 readers choke on a *.ibooks package. Let's take\na look now at the other files here, starting with <code>content1.xhtml</code>:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>it uses a proprietary extension of <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/\">CSS\nMedia Queries</a>, adding the keywords <code>paginated</code> and\n<code>nonpaginated</code>. Unprefixed. Not even <code>-ibooks-paginated</code>...\nSince this is not part of the official CSS Media Queries\nspecification, this is not conformant EPUB3. As far as I know, this\nextension to the list of CSS media was only recently mentioned once\nduring a chat but never seriously discussed or even proposed as a\nwritten proposal.</li>\n<li>it uses the proprietary xml namespace <code>xmlns:ibooks=\"http://www.apple.com/2011/iBooks\"</code>\nand nobody knows what that is or represents</li>\n<li>it applies stylesheets to the html5 (xml serialization) documents\nthrough <code>xml-stylesheet</code> processing instructions. That's\nperfectly fine since it's an xml serialization but that's not the\ncommon way of linking stylesheets in the html world. A minor issue\nbut still.</li>\n<li>it contains a weird <code><link rel="stylesheet"\ntype="text/xml+svg" href="http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?post/2012/01/20/assets/svg/content1.svg" /></code>\nwhere the target is really a SVG document. The behaviour of this\nlink element is undefined from a standards' point of view.\nConceptually, this is plain wrong. A SVG document instance is not a\nstylesheet. It could be used <em>by</em> a stylesheet to define\nexclusion paths for instance but it cannot be called a stylesheet.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Let's look now at the stylesheets, for instance <code>content1.css</code>:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>again, a definition for a proprietary namespace <code>@namespace\nibooks \"http://www.apple.com/2011/iBooks\"</code>. The format\nclearly extends HTML5 and we have just no idea how.</li>\n<li>proprietary prefixed properties. Examples:\n<ul style=\"font-family:"Courier New",Courier,monospace\">\n<li>-ibooks-layout-hint: anchor page shape;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-list-text-indent: 0.0000pt;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-strikethru-type: none;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-strikethru-width: 1.0000px;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-underline-type: none;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-underline-width: 1.0000px;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-slot: textShape-2;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-stroke: none;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-gutter-margin-left: 50.0pt;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-positioned-slots: media-24, textShape-123, ... ;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-box-wrap-exterior-path: directional contour both\n12.0pt 0.500000 false;</li>\n<li>@page ::nth-instance<br>\n{<br>\n height: 748.0pt;<br>\n width: 1024.0pt;<br>\n ::slot(media-24)<br>\n {<br>\n height: 748.000pt;<br>\n left: 0.000pt;<br>\n top: 0.000pt;<br>\n width: 1024.000pt;<br>\n z-index: 1;<br>\n }<br>\n}</li>\n<li>-ibooks-column-width: 20% 30% 20%;</li>\n<li>-ibooks-column-gap: 25px 30px;</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The iba format clearly extends CSS (and therefore EPUB3) to offer the\nfollowing features:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Template-based layout including special areas (gutter)</li>\n<li>Extended underlining</li>\n<li>Ability to control the size of each column and column gap in a\nmulti-column layout</li>\n<li>something equivalent to Adobe's Regions and Exclusions.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>Template-based layouts based on slots were originally <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/mid/19DB5C0B-5CCB-496A-B977-BAEE1F613324@apple.com\">proposed\nby Jakob Refstrup 10-mar-2011</a> on behalf of Apple. Before that,\nJakob worked for HP (how surprising he knows EPUB, pagination,\nprinting and rendering engines; probably Gecko and/or WebKit well too)\nand regularly contributed to the CSS WG mailing-list on their behalf.\nHis last contribution on behalf of HP was in february 2010 and his\nfirst contribution on behalf of Apple was the one mentioned above. He\nalmost did not contribute again on this topic afterwards. His proposal\nis clearly based on Bert Bos's and Cesar Acebal's <a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-layout/\">CSS\nTemplate Layout Module</a> but is only based on it. According to <a href=\"http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jacob-refstrup/2/24b/13\">Jacob's\nprofile on LinkedIn</a>, he joined Apple in june 2010. Then I\nsuppose he started working in stealth mode on the iBooks rendering\nengine. Please note there are discussions in the Community about <a href=\"http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Dec/0296.html\">dropping\nthe Template Layout module</a>...</p>\n<p>Extended underlining is based on an old draft of <a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/\">CSS\n3 Text</a> and some of these proposed properties were dropped by the\nCSS WG after discussion in <a href=\"http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2007Jul/0079.html\">www-style</a>.</p>\n<p>The ability to control the size of each column and column gap was\nrecently discussed in the CSS WG. The Group decided that allowing\nsetting of individual column width and column gap width is not a\nfeature considered for the first REC of this document. So Apple is\nhere extending the <a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-multicol/Overview.src.html\">CSS\nMulti-Column Layout Module</a> and never told us about it.</p>\n<p>iBooks offers a mechanism for regions and exclusions. It's even one\nof their screenshots on the Mac App Store:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/public/IBA/macappstore.png\" alt=\"Mac App Store page for iBooks Author\" style=\"width:349.645px;height:226px\"></p>\n<p>It is a system vaguely similar to - but still different from - what\nAdobe proposed with <a href=\"http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-exclusions/\">CSS\n3 Exclusions</a> and Adobe's proposal is the document the whole CSS\nWG is working on.</p>\n<p>Because of these extensions, editing or browsing the html documents\nwith a regular wysiwyg editor (BlueGriffon or DreamWeaver for instance)\nor a browser (Firefox, Chrome or even Safari) shows a total mess on\nscreen. It's not readable, it's not usable, it's not editable. Just\nforget it, Apple (re-)invented the Web totally incompatible with the\nWeb.</p>\n<p>All in all, Apple has worked entirely behind the curtains here. If\nsomeone tells you that iBooks format is EPUB3, don't believe it. It's\nnot EPUB3, it's only based on EPUB3, and it raises a lot of issues\nthat both publishers and customers should carefully look at:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>first, <strong>the english EULA of iBooks Author is just\nunacceptable</strong>. When I buy a computer, what I do with it is\nmine. When I buy a workbench, wood and a drill, what I do with them\nis mine. And when I buy or get a software license, what I do with it\nis mine and if I want to sell it through rabbits carrying CDs,\nthat's my freedom. So if you're a publisher or a book author willing\nto use IBA, make sure your Legal Department carefully studies the\nIBA EULA.</li>\n<li>second, <strong>IBA is not EPUB3</strong>. A wysiwyg EPUB3 editor\nwill not be able to edit correctly an IBA document because of the\ndifferent mimetype and the proprietary CSS extensions. iBooks Author\nis not able to reopen a iBook it exported in their pseudo-EPUB3\nformat because there is no Import mechanism! That means that on one\nhand EPUB3 readers cannot reuse a document created by iBooks Author\nbecause of its HTML/CSS/Namespaces extensions, and on the other\niBooks Author cannot create an iBook from an existing EPUB3 document\nbecause it cannot import it. But wait, can we open an EPUB3 or a\nregular HTML document into another app and copy/paste the content\ninside IBA? I tried from an HTML instance in Safari and from an EPUB\nreader based on Safari. It does not work, all markup is lost, it\npastes text. Ugly result. Oh, and changing file extensions from ibooks to epub or\nvice-versa does not help either.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>For the time being, iBooks on my iPad is anemic. Two days ago, I\nwanted to find a book by Asimov. Unavailable in french on the iBooks\nStore. Not a single Asimov... Wow. So I started browsing the Store to\nfind things I could read on the iPad during my next trip. I discovered\nthe iBooks Store is so tiny it just does not stand a single second the\ncomparison with Amazon or even EPUB3-based bookstores. Reading a book\non my iPad is cool. I just can't find in Apple's bookstore the books I\nwant - and I am not looking for rare or hyper-intellectual stuff - so\npaper-based books are still my best choice.</p>\n<p>With iBooks Author, Apple is trying even more to lock their formats\nand the market. But this is a bad strategy because publishers are fed\nup with formats. For one book, they have too many formats to export\nto. For each format, they have to use tools to convert (usually from\nMS Word) that are incomplete and <strong>all</strong> require manual\nreformatting or validation. Adding an extra format that is almost\nEPUB3 but is <strong>definitely not EPUB3</strong> output by a\nsoftware that is an isolated island and does not offer any extra help\nto reduce the publishing burden is representing a huge extra\ninvestment and is then, in my opinion, a mistake.</p>\n<p>Apple has played here the game Microsoft was playing back in\n1996/1997. Implementing behind the curtains up to that point,\nextending standards but not disclosing the extensions, using\nunstabilized Working Drafts into shipped products, making the shipped\nsolution incompatible with the rest of the market and even\nincompatible with the other rendering engines of Apple, is a strategic\nerror. It can only lead to a mess reaching the magnitude of the\nOutlook mess when it switched rendering engines and created a gigantic\nchaos for corporations sending newsletters that the recipients could\nnot read any more.</p>\n<p>iBooks Author is, as always with Apple, a very nice piece of\nsoftware. Friendly user interface, simple to understand and manipulate\neven without Users' Manual. But from a Market point of view, my gut\nfeeling is that it's one incompatibility too far. Apple is missing a\nhuge opportunity here because it wants to lock the market, trying to\noffer the best editing environment to kill the other online\nbookstores. I don't think it will work that well:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>MS Word remains the main format requested by Publishers all around\nthe world, and it's not going to change any time soon,</li>\n<li>not all authors have a Mac and iBooks Author is too close to a\nPage editor and less to a Document editor to be really usable to\nwrite a book from scratch,</li>\n<li>Publishers will be reluctant to use yet another solution for\npublishing,</li>\n<li>format incompatiblity is extremely expensive here, meaning it's\nimpossible to use IBA as the pivot editor for creation. It's also\nimpossible to use another tool to create an EPUB3 and only import it\ninto IBA to enrich it since IBA has no Import feature. It's even\nimpossible to browse a HTML document with Safari and copy/paste\ncontent into the HTML document handled by IBA!!! Pure crazyness.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>When a piece of software is so well designed from a UI point of view\nand could become such an attractor in terms of usage, I feel this is a\ntotally wrong strategy. Opening up everything and using only carefully\nchosen standards and matching the version of WebKit used by Safari\nwould have given an immense and almost unbeatable competitive\nadvantage to Apple, would have attracted even more people to the Mac\nplatform and would have turned the iBooks Store into the primary\nonline choice of publication for all new books. Starting with full\nconformance with EPUB3 and pushing for a fast update of EPUB3 or\nrelease of EPUB4 including all new CSS cool kids was a much better,\nand much more secure way of doing things.</p>\n<p>That's like having a new hyper-cool appliance with a US power socket\nand traveling to Europe without adapter, and no possibility to buy such an adapter there. It's still a hyper-cool\nappliance but it will remain in the bag.</p>"
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"title" : "Charles Taylor a CIA Informant — The Need to Retool Liberia’s Relationship with the US – By Robtel Neajai Pailey",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><div style=\"width:271px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-5754\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2012/01/20/charles-taylor-a-cia-informant%e2%80%94the-need-to-retool-liberia%e2%80%99s-relationship-with-the-us-by-robtel-neajai-pailey/sirleaf_clinton/\"><img title=\"Sirleaf_Clinton\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Sirleaf_Clinton.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"261\" height=\"189\"></a><p>Clinton and Johnson Sirleaf meet for the latter's swearing in a President, underlying the continuing close relations between the US and Liberia</p></div><p><em><strong>This op-ed was written based on a front page Boston Globe article on Jan. 17, which asserted that Charles Taylor was a CIA informant. However, the Globe on Jan. 25 retracted its statement through an editor’s note that said the CIA refused to release 48 documents to the Globe pertaining to Charles Taylor’s alleged relationship with American intelligence. The author’s position about Liberia retooling its relationship with the United States remains the same. </strong></em></p><p>Two very significant and interconnected events happened this week in Liberia – President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated for a second term with a subdued opposition attending the ceremonies, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor was implicated in a Boston Globe article for serving as a CIA informant beginning in the early 1980s and spanning many decades.</p><p><strong>Taylor, Taylor, How Did Your Garden Grow?</strong></p><p>Taylor, who currently languishes in a jail cell in the Hague after undergoing trial for 11 counts of crimes against humanity in the Sierra Leonean civil war, has ironically never faced trial for the atrocities that he orchestrated, oversaw, and implemented in Liberia. The bombshell news that he was indeed a CIA informant in the early years of his rise to notoriety calls into question America’s complicity in Taylor’s destruction of Liberia.</p><p>America’s facilitation of Taylor’s escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985 – while he was facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly stealing US$1 million from the General Services Agency, which he headed during President Samuel Kanyon Doe’s regime – was always rumored but never corroborated. I remember covering the first day of Taylor’s trial in the Hague for Pambazuka News, and interviewing Stephen Rapp, the then chief prosecutor, about whether or not his investigations into Taylor’s exploits in Libya and Sierra Leone ever unearthed the real causes of his ‘escape’ from the maximum security prison in Massachusetts. Rapp was tight-lipped, yet appeared confounded by this mystery as well. When Taylor eventually confessed during the Hague trial that he strolled out of prison after a guard conveniently opened his cell one night, we all knew that something was awry: “I am calling it my release because I didn’t break out,’’ Taylor testified. “I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding [afterwards].’’</p><p>The Taylor-CIA connection has re-inscribed for Liberians an age-old dilemma, what to do with our so-called historical relationship with the United States, which has been fraught with betrayal after betrayal. Liberians who have been commenting on various notice boards are justifiably angry, upset and disappointed, but not surprised. This is the validation we’ve been wanting for years, and it comes on the heels of the inauguration for a second term of our head of state, who was ironically pictured dedicating the new U.S. Embassy in Liberia this week, with a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the foreground.</p><p>Some Liberians, under anonymity, are arguing that U.S. authorities who courted Taylor for intelligence be brought to justice for crimes against humanity in the Liberian civil war, that the International Criminal Court – now headed by a female Gambian national – should exhibit blind justice, that instead of hauling African and non-Western leaders to the international body for prosecution, they too should face the full weight of the law. I tend to agree with these arguments, however radical and farfetched they may seem.</p><p><strong>Inquiring Liberian Minds Deserve to Know</strong></p><p>The Globe article recounts that the CIA has said releasing further information could be a national security threat. A threat to whom, might I ask? Liberians deserve to know the nature, duration, scale, and scope of the CIA-Taylor relationship, it is a part of our national history, and must be recounted in the history books for our children, and our children’s children to remember that a relationship with the U.S. must be monitored at all times.</p><p>Liberians are not gullible, nor are we unsophisticated in realizing that one plus one equals two. We’ve always known that the dubiousness surrounding Taylor’s escape from the Massachusetts maximum-security prison was the beginning of the end for us. And if the implications of the Globe article are true, then the CIA could provide more answers.</p><p>It’s no wonder that the U.S. didn’t intervene in the Liberian civil war, though Liberians begged and pleaded for its “father/mother” to stop us from killing each other. One U.S. diplomat at the time even said that “Liberia is of no strategic interest to the United States.” It begs the question, if Liberia was of “no strategic interest” during the war, when we were killing ourselves and each other in the name of liberation, what is Liberia’s strategic interest to the U.S. now, when U.S. NGOs and development workers abound, and the Peace Corps has reinserted itself?</p><p>This should send a strong signal to Liberians and Liberia once and for all that America cannot be trusted. From Noriega, to Osama, to Saddam, to Samuel Doe, authoritarian leaders who end up in the U.S.’s good graces are never there for long.</p><p><strong>Limits of Reciprocity</strong></p><p>What Liberians and the Liberian government should be doing is strategizing, devising our own “Liberia Policy for the U.S.” which factors in seriously our checkered history with unsentimental bias.</p><p>We should also rely on a corpus of intellectual and creative work that has already investigated our ‘limits of reciprocity’ with the United States. Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright’s film, <em>Liberia: America’s Stepchild</em>, explores the torturous relationship between Liberia and the United States, with her thesis being that the U.S. sees Liberia as an ‘outside’ child, one who is illegitimate upon conception and can be used and abused at will without consequence. And Liberian academic Dr. D. Elwood Dunn also interrogates this relationship in his book, <em>Liberia and the United States During the Cold War: Limits of Reciprocity</em>, showing that the Cold War placed Liberia in a very strategic position to exploit its relationship with the United States, yet with unintended consequences.</p><p>In this new political dispensation, it should be clear that Liberia should hold the U.S. at arm’s length, that hosting AFRICOM or any U.S. satellite post is out of the question, that we have to use them just as strategically as they have used us. With the geopolitics of China and other emerging nations, Liberia needs to develop a “Look South Policy,” not because we have become alienated, as in the case of Zimbabwe, but because we have made a conscious decision to explore other options, remembering that the U.S. will act only in its interest and leave those caught in the crossfire to fend for themselves.</p><p>We deserve to know the details of Taylor’s relationship with the CIA. It is crucial to our development planning, historical remembrance, healing and nation-building.</p><p><em> </em></p><p><strong><em>Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey is currently pursuing a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Ph.D. Scholar. </em></strong></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Adam Storeygard, from Brown, is on the job market, and <a href=\"http://www.econ.brown.edu/students/adam_storeygard/storeygard_jmp.pdf\">he says yes</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Focusing on countries whose largest, or <em>primate</em>, city is also a port, I find that as the price of oil increases from $25 to $97 (as it did between 2002 and 2008), if city A is 465 kilometers (1 standard deviation) farther away from the primate than initially identical city B, its economy is roughly 6 percent smaller than city B’s at the end of the period. At a differential of 2360 kilometers, the largest in the data, this rises to 32 percent. I then determine that this effect falls disproportionately on cities that are connected to the primate by paved roads, most likely because they are initially more engaged in trade. Cities connected to the primate by unpaved roads appear to be more affected by transport costs to secondary cities.</p></blockquote><p>An argument for <a href=\"http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1421340/\">more roads for Africa</a>?</p> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=HjnIyuaCnr4:-6WPZwpTRhg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=HjnIyuaCnr4:-6WPZwpTRhg:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=HjnIyuaCnr4:-6WPZwpTRhg:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=HjnIyuaCnr4:-6WPZwpTRhg:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=HjnIyuaCnr4:-6WPZwpTRhg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/HjnIyuaCnr4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><font size=\"-1\">[Originally published January 20, 2012.]</font></p>\n<div>- - -</div><p>Lo, in the twilight days of the second year of the second decade of the third millennium did a great darkness descend over the wireless internet connectivity of the people of 276 Ferndale Street in the North-Central lands of Iowa. For many years, the gentlefolk of these lands basked in a wireless network overflowing with speed and ample internet, flowing like a river into their Compaq Presario. Many happy days did the people spend checking Hotmail and reading USAToday.com.</p>\n<p>But then one gray morning did Internet Explorer 6 no longer load The Google. Refresh was clicked, again and again, but still did Internet Explorer 6 not load The Google. Perhaps The Google was broken, the people thought, but then The Yahoo too did not load. Nor did Hotmail. Nor USAToday.com. The land was thrown into panic. Internet Explorer 6 was minimized then maximized. The Compaq Presario was unplugged then plugged back in. The old mouse was brought out and plugged in beside the new mouse. Still, The Google did not load.</p>\n<p>Some in the kingdom thought the cause of the darkness must be the Router. Little was known of the Router, legend told it had been installed behind the recliner long ago by a shadowy organization known as Comcast. Others in the kingdom believed it was brought by a distant cousin many feasts ago. Concluding the trouble must lie deep within the microchips, the people of 276 Ferndale Street did despair and resign themselves to defeat.</p>\n<p>But with the dawn of the feast of Christmas did a beacon of hope manifest itself upon the inky horizon. Riding in upon a teal Ford Focus came a great warrior, a suitor of the gentlefolks’ granddaughter. Word had spread through the kingdom that this warrior worked with computers and perhaps even knew the true nature of the Router.</p>\n<p>The people did beseech the warrior to aid them. They were a simple people, capable only of rewarding him with gratitude and a larger-than-normal serving of Jell-O salad. The warrior considered the possible battles before him. While others may have shirked the duties, forcing the good people of Ferndale Street to prostrate themselves before the tyrants of Comcast, Linksys, and Geek Squad, the warrior could not chill his heart to these depths. He accepted the quest and strode bravely across the beige shag carpet of the living room.</p>\n<p>Deep, deep behind the recliner did the warrior crawl, over great mountains of <em>National Geographic</em> magazines and deep chasms of <em>TV Guides</em>. At last he reached a gnarled thicket of cords, a terrifying knot of gray and white and black and blue threatening to ensnare all who ventured further. The warrior charged ahead. Weaker men would have lost their minds in the madness: telephone cords plugged into Ethernet jacks, AC adapters plugged into phone jacks, a lone <span>VGA</span> cable wrapped in a firm knot around an Ethernet cord. But the warrior bested the thicket, ripping away the vestigial cords and swiftly untangling the deadly trap.</p>\n<p>And at last the warrior arrived at the Router. It was a dusty black box with an array of shimmering green lights, blinking on and off, as if to taunt him to come any further. The warrior swiftly maneuvered to the rear of the router and verified what he had feared, what he had heard whispered in his ear from spirits beyond: all the cords were securely in place.</p>\n<p>The warrior closed his eyes, summoning the power of his ancestors, long departed but watchful still. And then with the echoing beep of his digital watch, he moved with deadly speed, wrapping his battle-hardened hands around the power cord at the back of the Router. </p>\n<p>Gripping it tightly, he pulled with all his force, dislodging the cord from the Router. The heavens roared. The earth wailed. The green lights turned off. Silently the warrior counted. One. Two. Three. And just as swiftly, the warrior plugged the cord back into the router. Great crashes of blood-red lightning boomed overhead. Murders of crows blackened the skies. The Power light came on solid green. The seas rolled. The <span>WLAN</span> light blinked on. The forests ignited. A dark fog rolled over the land and suddenly all was silent. The warrior stared at the Internet light, waiting, waiting. And then, as the world around him seemed all but dead, the Internet light began to blink.</p>\n<p>The warrior darted out back over the mountains of <em>National Geographic</em> magazines and made haste to the Compaq Presario. He woke up Windows XP from sleep mode and deftly defeated twelve notifications to update Norton AntiVirus. With a resounding click he opened Internet Explorer 6 and gazed deep into its depths, past the Yahoo toolbar, the <span>MSN</span> toolbar, the Ask.com toolbar, and the <span>AOL</span> toolbar. And then did he see, at long last, that The Google did load.</p>\n<p>And so the good people of the kingdom were delighted and did heap laurels and Jell-O salad at the warrior’s feet, for now again they could have their Hotmail as the wireless internet did flow freely to their Compaq Presario. The warrior ate his Jell-O salad, thanked the gentlefolk, and then went to the basement because the TiVo was doing something weird with the <span>VCR</span>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>“I think you miscounted.”</p>\n\n<p>“Here?”</p>\n\n<p>“Yes. There are only two problems … cache invalidation … ”</p>\n\n<p>“Uh huh.”</p>\n\n<p>“Naming things … ”</p>\n\n<p>“Yeah … ”</p>\n\n<p>“and off-by-one errors … oh. Oh! D'oh!”</p>"
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"title" : "Haitian Politics Explained",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://cartoonmovement.typepad.com/.a/6a014e5f5d3c7c970c01676055f577970b-pi\" alt=\"http://cartoonmovement.typepad.com/.a/6a014e5f5d3c7c970c01676055f577970b-pi\" width=\"597\" height=\"715\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><em>Teddy Keser <a href=\"http://www.cartoonmovement.com/p/3751\">Mombrun</a> in </em><a href=\"http://www.lenouvelliste.com/\">Le Nouvelliste </a><em>(2011). Source: <a href=\"http://blog.cartoonmovement.com/2012/01/haitian-politics-explained-1.html\">Cartoon Movement</a> (via <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/bhatiap\">@bhatiap</a>). Click on image for larger version. </em></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fthepublicarchive.com%2F%3Fp%3D3061&title=Haitian%20Politics%20Explained\"><img src=\"http://thepublicarchive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "The excitement about ‘African fabric’",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://okacdn.okayplayer.com/core/wp-content/uploads/vlisco_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\"></p>\n<p>The Dutch fabrics manufacturing company <a href=\"http://www.vlisco.com\">Vlisco</a>–the image is from the company’s new line “<a href=\"http://www.vlisco.com/campaigns/en/page/482/\">Delicate Shades</a>“–says its “strategy is aimed at enabling well-to-do African women to experience the brand in all her facets … Developments take place at neck-breaking speed in Africa and Vlisco aspires to inspire and gain the loyalty of younger generations as well. Innovation is therefore an essential element within the company.”</p>\n<p><span></span>Of course, innovations in cloth making/print making has made the world go around but…mass-producing cloth in Europe, and selling it to “the colonies” is nothing new.<br>\n“Dutch” wax print was based on batik print techniques from the colonies in Indonesia and other parts of the Indian Ocean world, into which the Dutch East India company sent warships in order to take over trade. In the Netherlands, the batik techniques were simplified and adapted, using machinery, eliminating the finesse with which the original cloth was made. The result: cheap, mass produced stuff, which was eventually pushed on foreign markets. Although it is not known how exactly this mass-produced, patterned cloth arrived in Africa, it’s commonly thought African soldiers recruited by the Dutch (known as the ‘Belanda Hitam’, or ‘Black Dutchmen’) and stationed in the East Indies returned to West Africa in the nineteenth century bringing along batik fabrics…and a new clientele was born. And because the mass produced material were not popular in Indonesia, the Dutch may have had to attempt to find new markets.</p>\n<p>What is now commonly called “African fabric” goes by a multitude of names: Dutch wax print, Real English Wax, Veritable Java Print, Guaranteed Dutch Java, Veritable Dutch Hollandais. This is not to say that Africa never invented anything – but to illustrate that in Africa, as in any place where identity, objects, and concepts of taste and beauty are influenced by trade, was (and remains) in flux. In other words, there is no such thing as an “essential” African look or way of being. In fact, <a href=\"http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/\">Yinka Shonibare</a>, the Nigerian-British contemporary artist, has famously used this signature cloth, traditionally associated with the imagery that “Africa” conjures up, to fashion dresses fit for European madams of the Victorian Era (see his <a href=\"http://www.yinkashonibarembe.com/sculpture.html\">“Gay Victorians”</a>): it’s a sly, surreal critique of the residual colonial views imprinted in all our heads.</p>\n<p>That new innovations in print making is bringing finer cloth and designs to West Africa is wonderful. And it’s sweet that a number of major design houses, including Michael Kors, Burberry and Oscar de la Renta used African prints and motifs in 2011. But as Dolapo Shobanjo, owner of the online boutique, MyAsho.com, which sells clothes by African designers said in a recent interview with NPR: “I grew up in Nigeria and this is something that I’ve seen before. I’ve seen people use African fabrics and I’ve seen…designers be creative with the fabric. So it’s quite interesting to have seen the Western world kind of embrace this new fad and have editors kind of…market it as, you know, fresh and new and amazing.”</p>\n<p>Listen to the interview on Tell me More on NPR <a href=\"http://www.npr.org/2011/12/28/144381814/african-prints-more-sophisticated-subtle-in-2011\">here</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/41050/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=41050&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "U.S. confirms that spy agencies worked with ex-warlord Charles Taylor",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/taylor_0.jpg\"></div><p>\nIn response to a FOIA request from the <i>Boston Globe</i>, the U.S. government <a href=\"http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-17/metro/30632769_1_courtenay-griffiths-charles-taylor-war-crimes\">has confirmed</a> that former Liberian President Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes at the Hague, received support from U.S. intelligence agencies during the 1980s: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tAfter\n\ta quarter-century of silence, the US government has confirmed what has \n\tlong been rumored: Taylor, who would become president of Liberia and the\n\tfirst African leader tried for war crimes, worked with US spy agencies \n\tduring his rise as one of the world’s most notorious dictators.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe\n\tdisclosure on the former president comes in response to a request filed\n\tby the Globe six years ago under the Freedom of Information Act. The \n\tDefense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy arm, confirmed its \n\tagents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.[...]\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe Defense Intelligence Agency refused to reveal any details about \n\tthe relationship, saying doing so would harm national security.\n\t</p>\n\tTaylor,\n\t63, pleaded innocent in 2009 to multiple counts of murder, rape, \n\tattacking civilians, and deploying child soldiers during a civil war in \n\tneighboring Sierra Leone while he was president of Liberia from 1997 to \n\t2003. \n</blockquote>\n<p>\n \n</p>\n<p>\nIn 2009, Taylor <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/world/africa/18taylor.html\">testified at his trial </a>that the CIA aided him in his famous 1985 escape-by-bedsheet from a jail in Plymouth, Mass., where he was being held on embezzlement charges, so that he could take part in a coup plot against then President Samuel Doe. At the time, a CIA spokesman described Taylor's account as "completely absurd." \n</p>\n<p>\nIt's possible Taylor may have aided the agency in gathering intelligence on Muammar al-Qaddafi: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tFormer intelligence officials, who agreed to discuss the covert ties \n\tonly on the condition of anonymity, and specialists including Farah \n\tbelieve Taylor probably was considered useful for gathering intelligence\n\tabout the activities of Moammar Khadafy. During the 1980s, the ruler of\n\tLibya was blamed for sponsoring such terrorist acts as the Pan Am \n\tFlight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland and for fomenting guerrilla \n\twars across Africa.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tTaylor testified that after fleeing Boston he recruited 168 men and \n\twomen for the National Patriotic Front for Liberia and trained them in \n\tLibya.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tOver time, the former officials said, Taylor may have also \n\tbeen seen as a source for information on broader issues in Africa, from \n\tthe illegal arms trade to the activities of the Soviet Union, which, \n\tlike the United States, was seeking allies on the continent as part of \n\tthe broader struggle of the Cold War.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t \n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\n \n</p>\n<div style=\"clear:both\">\n<img src=\"http://articles.boston.com/images/pixel.gif\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">\n</div>"
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"title" : "The Omnivore's dilemma",
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"content" : "The <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/\">Hatchet Job of the Year Award</a>, sponsored by <a href=\"http://www.theomnivore.co.uk/\">The Omnivore</a>, is looking for 'the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the last twelve months'. The <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2255946/Shortlist\">shortlist</a> includes <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2574815/Geoff-Dyer-on-The-Sense-of-an-Ending-by-Julian-BarnesThe-New-York\">Geoff Dyer on Julian Barnes</a> ('excellent in its averageness'), <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2575162/Lachlan-Mackinnon-on-Clavics-by-Geoffrey-HillThe-Independent\">Lachlan Mackinnon on Geoffrey Hill</a> ('he is wasting his time and trying to waste ours') and <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2275627/Jenni-Russell-on-Honey-Money-by-Catherine-HakimThe-Sunday-Times\">Jenni Russell on Catherine Hakim</a> ('if you should pass it in a bookshop, pick up a copy and drop it somewhere where nobody's likely to take an interest in it'). Mary Beard, another of the shortlisted candidates, insists that '<a href=\"http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2012/01/hatchet-job-of-the-year.html\">it's not actually a prize for skewering</a> .. it's for honest as well as entertaining book reviewing, that isn't afraid to go beyond deference, to call a spade a spade'.<br><br> The full shortlist:<br>\n<br>\nMary Beard on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2575238/Mary-Beard-on-Rome-by-Robert-HughesThe-Guardian\">Rome</a> by Robert Hughes. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/29/rome-robert-hughes-review\">Guardian</a>, 29 June 2011.)<br>\nGeoff Dyer on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2574815/Geoff-Dyer-on-The-Sense-of-an-Ending-by-Julian-BarnesThe-New-York\">The Sense of an Ending</a> by Julian Barnes. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/books/review/julian-barnes-and-the-diminishing-of-the-english-novel.html?pagewanted=all\">New York Times</a>, 16 Dec 2011.)<br>\nCamilla Long on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2275487/Camilla-Long-on-With-the-Kisses-of-His-Mouth-by-Monique-RoffeyThe\">With the Kisses of His Mouth</a> by Monique Roffey. (First published in the <i>Sunday Times</i>, 26 June 2011.)<br>\nLachlan Mackinnon on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2575162/Lachlan-Mackinnon-on-Clavics-by-Geoffrey-HillThe-Independent\">Clavics</a> by Geoffrey Hill. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/clavics-by-geoffrey-hill-2292235.html\">Independent</a>, 3 June 2011.)<br>\nAdam Mars-Jones on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2275014/Adam-Mars-Jones-on-By-Nightfall-by-Michael-CunninghamThe-Observer\">By Nightfall</a> by Michael Cunningham. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/23/by-nightfall-michael-cunningham-review\">Observer</a>, 23 Jan 2011.)<br>\nLeo Robson on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2575015/Leo-Robson-on-Martin-Amis-The-Biography-by-Richard-Bradford-The-New\">Martin Amis: The Biography</a> by Richard Bradford. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.newstatesman.com/non-fiction/2011/11/martin-amis-bradford-biography\">New Statesman</a>, 14 Nov 2011.)<br>\nJenni Russell on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2275627/Jenni-Russell-on-Honey-Money-by-Catherine-HakimThe-Sunday-Times\">Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital</a> by Catherine Hakim. (First published in the <i>Sunday Times</i>, 21 Aug 2011.)<br>\nDavid Sexton on <a href=\"http://www.hatchetjoboftheyear.com/#2247147/David-Sexton-on-The-Bees-by-Carol-Ann-DuffyLondon-Evening-Standard\">The Bees</a> by Carol Ann Duffy. (First published in the <a href=\"http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/book/article-23989644-the-bees-by-carol-ann-duffy---review.do\">London Evening Standard</a>, 22 Sept 2011.)<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=9oXX4WKBglM:UgGLGKAjLnQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=9oXX4WKBglM:UgGLGKAjLnQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Jimmy Castor, Musician Who Mastered Many Genres, Dies at 71",
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"content" : "Mr. Castor, a singer, instrumentalist and songwriter, moved easily from doo-wop to Latin soul to funk.<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4d3f5d3a978215d56b3761b83c4eafae&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4d3f5d3a978215d56b3761b83c4eafae&p=1\"></a>"
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"title" : "Black Women in European Politics: from Struggle to Success",
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"content" : "<p>Nowadays, it is a common occcurence to witness African-born women having successful careers in Europe. Despite the evident challenges, many of them have also distiguished themselves in politics. Still, it was not so long ago that such success would have seemed impossible. To achieve greatness, these women have often come a long way, both literally and figuratively.</p>\n<p>In order to better appreciate the progress made, one needs to think back to the 19th century and consider the image of black women in Europe then. For the purpose of this article, we will only address the story of women from the African diaspora who have been elected to positions of leadership in countries other than the colonial powers that previously ruled their home countries.</p>\n<p><strong>A history of racism</strong></p>\n<div style=\"width:235px\"><a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Baartman.jpg\"><img src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Baartman-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Postcard depicting Sarah Baartman, Wikipedia (public domain) </p></div>The story of the “Hottentot Venus” is symptomatic of the relationship between the West and African women in the last two centuries. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=SebHervieu\">Sébastien Hervieu</a>, an Africa correspondent for Le Monde newspaper in France, tells the story of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Baartman\">Sarah Baartman</a> from South Africa, better known as the “Hottentot Venus”. In an article published in October 2010 in his blog <em>afriquedusud.blog.lemonde.fr</em>, <a href=\"http://afriquedusud.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/10/27/saartjie-baartman-la-venus-noire/\">he reviews</a> [fr] <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdellatif_Kechiche\">Abdellatif Kechiche's</a> [fr] film about her tragic story, Black Venus:\n<blockquote><p>Au début du XIXème siècle, cette servante est emmenée en Europe et devient un objet de foire en raison de ses attributs physiques proéminents. Certains “scientifiques” utilisent sa présence pour théoriser l'infériorité de la “race noire”. Lorsqu'elle meurt à seulement 25 ans, ses organes génitaux et son cerveau sont placés dans des bocaux de formol, et son squelette et le moulage de son corps sont exposés au musée de l'Homme à Paris. C'est seulement en 2002 que la France accepte de rendre la dépouille de Saartjie Baartman à l'Afrique du Sud, concluant ainsi un long <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/026/article_14091.asp\">imbroglio</a> juridique et diplomatique</p></blockquote>\n<div>At the beginning of the 19th century, this servant was brought to Europe and became a fairground attraction because of her prominent physical attributes. Some “scientists” used her presence to support the theory that the “black race” was inferior. When she died at only 25, her genitals and her brain were placed in jars of formaldehyde. Her skeleton and a molding of her body were exhibited at the Museum of Man in Paris. It was only in 2002 that France agreed to return Sarah Baartman's remains to South Africa, thereby drawing to a close a long running legal and diplomatic <a href=\"http://www.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/026/article_14091.asp\">imbroglio</a> [fr].</div>\n<p>Sarah Baartman died in Paris on 29th September 1815. More than 100 years later, the Khoïkhoï people in South Africa called on Nelson Mandela to demand the restitution of Sarah's remains. The demand was met with the refusal of the French authorities and the scientific community citing the inalienable heritage of science and the state, but France eventually repatriated the body to South Africa where, in accordance with the rites of her people, it was purified and placed on a bed of dried herbs which were set alight.</p>\n<p><strong>Norway</strong></p>\n<p>Two centuries later, the position of black women in Europe has drastically changed. Amongst others, many have now been elected to political office.</p>\n<p><div style=\"width:210px\"><a href=\"http://nn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Manuela_Ramin-Osmundsen.jpg\"><img src=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/400px-Manuela_Ramin-Osmundsen-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen on Wikipedia (Norway) (CC-BY 3.0) </p></div>\n<p>Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen in Norway is one of these women, and one of the most interesting because she shows the contradictions that still exist within some countries. She had to step down from a ministerial post in the Norwegian government just four months into her job. An article on <em>Grioo.com</em> <a href=\"http://www.grioo.com/ar,manuela_ramin-osmundsen_la_ministre_martiniquaise_du_gouvernement_norvegien_a_demissionne,12984.html\">sets out her career</a> [fr]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Originaire de l’Ile de la Martinique, à 44 ans, Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen a obtenu son poste de ministre de l’Enfance et de la Parité au sein du gouvernement de centre-gauche norvégien le 18 octobre 2007[…] Elle est mariée avec Terje Osmundsen, un homme politique membre du parti conservateur norvégien. Après son mariage, elle a pris la nationalité norvégienne et renoncé à celle de la France. Le pays n’autorisant pas la double nationalité.</p></blockquote>\n<div>Born in Martinique, 44 year old Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen gained her post as Minster for Children and Equality in the centre-left Norwegian government on 18th October 2007 […] She is married to Terje Osmundsen, a politician and member of the Norwegian conservative party. After their marriage she took Norwegian nationality and renounced her French nationality as the country does not allow dual nationality.</div>\n<p>In an interview with Patrick Karam from the website<em> fxgpariscaraibe.com</em> in 2008 she <a href=\"http://www.fxgpariscaraibe.com/article-19562127.html\">explains</a> [fr] some of the things that played in her favour in being appointed and why she stepped down following a controversy over an alleged conflict of interest in the hiring of a political appointee:</p>\n<blockquote><p>En Norvège, il y a obligation de représentation des deux sexes dans les conseils d’administration, 40 % de femmes au minimum. Nous menons aussi une politique pour inciter les hommes à prendre plus de responsabilité dans le foyer pour laisser les femmes entreprendre professionnellement. J’ai travaillé aussi sur l’enfance en danger, les violences, les maltraitances… J’ai travaillé quatre mois sans être critiquée, c’était une expérience réussie. Les critiques sont venues avec la nomination d’une médiatrice. Avec du recul, tout le monde voit que c’est une bagatelle. J’ai cédé au pouvoir de la presse.</p></blockquote>\n<div>In Norway there must be parity of representation between the two sexes within the administrative councils, with a minimum of 40% women. We are also pursuing a policy which encourages men to take more responsibilty at home, leaving women able to pursue a career. I also worked on child endangerment, violence, abuse… I worked for four months without criticism and it was a real success. The criticism began with the appointment of an ombudsman for children. In hindsight everyone can see it was something being made out of nothing. I gave in to the power of the media.</div>\n<p><strong>Sweden</strong></p>\n<p><div style=\"width:209px\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nyamko_Sabuni.0c194_1236.jpg\"><img src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Nyamko_Sabuni-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"Nyamko Sabuni\" title=\"Nyamko Sabuni\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Nyamko Sabuni, Wikipedia (CC-BY-SA)</p></div><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyamko_Sabuni\">Nyamko Sabuni</a> [fr] is a former minister in Sweden, originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Born in Burundi in 1969, her father fled the country due to persecution. She was elected to the Riksday as a member of the parliament in 2002, and at 37 years old became a Swedish goverment minister from 2006 to 2010. An article published on <em>congopage.com</em> <a href=\"http://congopage.com/Nyamko-Sabuni-femme-africaine\">sets out</a> [fr] her progress.</p>\n<blockquote><p>En 1981, à l’âge de 12 ans, elle est arrivée en Suède avec sa mère et trois de ses cinq frères et sœurs. Là, elle a retrouvé son père, un opposant politique plusieurs fois emprisonné au Congo (actuellement République démocratique du Congo), venu dans le pays nordique grâce à Amnesty International.</p></blockquote>\n<div>In 1981, at the age of 12, she arrived in Sweden with her mother and three of her brothers and sisters. There she was reunited with her father, an opposition politician imprisoned several times in Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), who had come to the Nordic country with the help of Amnesty International.</div>\n<p><strong>The Netherlands</strong></p>\n<p><div style=\"width:196px\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-VVD.NL-1200x1600.JPG\"><img src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-186x300.jpg\" alt=\"Ayaan Hirsi Ali\" title=\"Ayaan Hirsi Ali\" width=\"186\" height=\"300\"></a><p>Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wikipedia (public domain)</p></div>The Hirsiali blog <a href=\"http://hirsiali.wordpress.com/\">presents</a> a profile of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali\">Ayaan Hirsi Ali</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Née en Somalie en 1969, excisée à l’âge de 5 ans, Ayaan Hirsi Ali est scolarisée dans un lycée musulman pour filles. Soumise à ses parents, à son clan et à sa religion jusqu’à l’âge de vingt-trois ans, elle profite d’un passage dans sa famille en Allemagne, pour s’enfuir et échapper à un mariage forcé. Réfugiée aux Pays-Bas, elle adopte les valeurs libérales occidentales au point de devenir une jeune députée à La Haye et de s’affirmer athée. Pour avoir travaillé dans les services sociaux du royaume, elle connaît, de l’intérieur, les horreurs tolérées à l’encontre des femmes au nom du multiculturalisme.</p></blockquote>\n<div>Born in Somalia in 1969 and circumcised at the age of 5, Ayaan Hirsi Ali went to a Muslim girls school. Subjugated by her parents, her clan and her religion up to the age of 23, she took advantage of a trip to visit family in Germany to flee and escape a forced marriage. Taking refuge in Holland, she adopted Western liberal values to the extent that she became a young member of parliament in The Hague and declared herself to be an athiest. After having worked in the country's social services she knows, at first hand, the horrors tolerated against women in the name of multiculturalism.</div>\n<p>A fierce apponent of some of the aspects of Islam and African traditions that go against basic human rights, she founded an NGO whose <a href=\"http://ayaanhirsiali.org/\">aims are set out</a>, on her website <em>Ayaan Hirsiali</em> in the following terms:</p>\n<blockquote><p>In response to ongoing abuses of women’s rights, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and her supporters established the AHA Foundation in 2007 to help protect and defend the rights of women in the West from oppression justified by religion and culture.</p></blockquote>\n<p><strong>Italy</strong></p>\n<p>The first black person to be elected to the Italian parliament is <a href=\"http://suffrage-universel.be/wiki/index.php?title=Mercedes_Lourdes_Frias\">Mercedes Lourdes Frias</a> from the Dominican Republic, in the Caribbean. This is how she is <a href=\"http://blog.blackwomenineurope.com/2011/12/19/mercedes-frias-powerful-woman/\">described</a> [en] on the blogging site Black Women in Europe:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Mercedes Lourdes Frias was born in the Dominican Republic. She was the first black person elected to the Italian Parliament in 2006 where she served through April 2008. She was a member of the Commission on Constitutional Affairs and the Parliamentary Committee on the Implementation of the Control of Schengen Agreement, and the Control and Surveillance on Immigration. She works on anti-racist activities and welcoming immigrants. From 1994 1997 she was a member of the Council of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy. In the town of Empoli Ms Frias served a councilor for the environment, rights of citizenship, equal opportunities.</p></blockquote>\n<div>The most surprising of the black women to have been elected via universal sufferage or appointed to positions of elevated responsibility in European countries is Sandra Maria (Sandy) Cane, elected in 2009 on a Northern League ticket; the most racist and xenophobic of Italy's political parties. One of the party's objectives is the secessoin of some of the northern part the Italian peninsula (though the boundary is not clearly undefined) because the party leaders do not like Southern Italians.</div>\n<p>The blog <em>stranieriinitalia.it</em> (foreigners in Italy) <a href=\"http://www.stranieriinitalia.it/attualita-sandy_cane_primo_sindaco_di_colore._leghista_8265.html\">gives</a> a brief outline of her career [it]:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Il primo sindaco di colore in Italia ha la camicia verde. Sandra Maria (Sandy) Cane si è aggiudicata con appena 38 voti di scarto la fascia tricolore a Viggiù, cinquemila anime in Valceresio, tra Varesotto e Canton Ticino. Alle sue spalle, una lunga storia di migrazioni. Di Viggiù era originaria la famiglia materna del neosindaco, scalpellini emigrati in Francia, dove durante la seconda guerra mondiale arrivò il padre, un soldato statunitense afroamericano. Il neo sindaco è nata a Springfield, nel Massachussets, nel 1961, ma a dieci anni, dopo la separazione dei genitori, ha seguito la madre nel paesino d’origine. </p></blockquote>\n<div>Italy's first coloured mayor wears a green shirt [the colour worn by Northern League supporters]. Sandra Maria (Sandy) Cane won the tricolour scarf of the Mayor of Viggiù, a town of five thousand inhabitants in the Valceresio region, between the town of Varèse and the Canton of Tessin, with a margin on only 38 votes.<br>\nA past with a long history of migration. The new mayor's family on her mother's side were stone masons, originally from Viggiù, who migrated to France. During the Second World War, her father, an African-American soldier from the United States arrived in France. The new Mayor was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1961, but ten years after the separation of her parents she followed her mother back to her home village.</div>\n<p>This, according to the blog <em>associazioneumoja.wordpress.com</em>, is how <a href=\"https://associazioneumoja.wordpress.com/tag/viggiu/\">she found herself</a> [it] in politics, with a rather unlikely ideological platform:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Della Lega sono sempre stata sostenitrice, anche se mai vera militante. Quando ero ragazza morivo dal ridere a vedere i loro manifesti, curiosi e di forte impatto. Poi quindici anni fa, più o meno, mi sono avvicinata di più. […] Vedo come «molto americana» anche la Lega, per la richiesta di rispettare rigorosamente la legge, anche per i clandestini. Anche se a Viggiù, precisa, non ci sono problemi di integrazione, nè tantomeno di sicurezza. Tra le priorità, guarda al rilancio turistico del paese, con manifestazioni e attenzione alla cultura.</p></blockquote>\n<div>I have always supported the Northern League without ever being very active. When I was a little girl their posters used to make me laugh, they were curious and had a big impact. Then, around fifteen years ago I became a little more involved. […] I see it as being “very American”, even the Northern League, because they insist on a rigorous respect for the law, even for illegal immigrants. Even so, she points out that there are no problems of integration and still yet security in Viggiù. One of her priorities is to reignite tourism in the area, with events and a focus on culture.</div>\n<p>Despite the marked progress in the inclusion of African women in European politics, they represent isolated cases as, beyond the difficulties they face due to racism or culture and religion, even within their own families and their own societies, they also have to face up to the <a href=\"http://www.adequations.org/spip.php?article363\">challenges that all women across the world face </a>[fr]: domestic violence, the challenge of bearing children, marginalisation and under-representation.</p>\n<p><span><span>Written by <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/author/abdoulaye-bah/\" title=\"View all posts by Abdoulaye Bah\">Abdoulaye Bah</a></span> · <span>Translated by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/vivienne-griffiths/\" title=\"View all posts by Vivienne Griffiths\">Vivienne Griffiths</a></span></span> \n · <a href=\"http://fr.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/01/08/93406/\" title=\"View original post [fr]\">View original post [fr]</a> · <span><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2012/01/17/black-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success/#comments\" title=\"comments\">comments (1) </a></span><br>Share: <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/donate/\" title=\"read Donate\">Donate</a> \n · <span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F\" title=\"facebook\"><span>facebook</span></a> · <a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F&text=Black+Women+in+European+Politics%3A+from+Struggle+to+Success&via=globalvoices\" title=\"twitter\"><span>twitter</span></a> · <a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F&title=Black+Women+in+European+Politics%3A+from+Struggle+to+Success\" title=\"reddit\"><span>reddit</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F&title=Black+Women+in+European+Politics%3A+from+Struggle+to+Success\" title=\"StumbleUpon\"><span>StumbleUpon</span></a> · <a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F&title=Black+Women+in+European+Politics%3A+from+Struggle+to+Success\" title=\"delicious\"><span>delicious</span></a> · <a href=\"http://www.instapaper.com/edit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fglobalvoicesonline.org%2F2012%2F01%2F17%2Fblack-women-in-european-politics-from-struggle-to-success%2F&title=Black+Women+in+European+Politics%3A+from+Struggle+to+Success\" title=\"Instapaper\"><span>Instapaper</span></a></span>\n</p></p>"
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"content" : "<p></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">WHEN BABANGIDA SEIZED POWER ON AUGUST 27, 1985, the country owed $12 billion. The squandering regime raised the national debt to $33 billion in only about six years. When he hijacked power, only N11.8 billion naira was in circulation in Nigeria. At the termination of his misrule, General Babangida, Osoba argues, had injected ‘an intolerably high level of cumulative devaluation and inflation in the national currency and economy’ by increasing the money in circulation through the printing of currency to N100.5 billion.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Even if the answer to the economic crisis surpassed him, Babangida found an answer to the lack of sufficient naira to fund his self-perpetuating project. His regime resorted to what Dr. Osoba described as ‘the sheer orgy of printing of currency notes.’</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">In a cover story in April 1992, which provoked the Babangida regime to shut down all the media empire, the Concord Press, owned by his friend, Bashorun MKO Abiola, Dapo Olorunyomi, who later became the Chief of Staff to Nuhu Ribadu, noted that Hannibal, who Babangida described as one his two key heroes – the other being Chaka, the Zulu – was ‘brilliant, witty, multilingual and deeply resilient’. However, Olorunyomi added that, Hannibal ‘was capable of the most recondite passion of kindness, but could also show transcendental acts of cruelty, treachery, and avarice.’</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">However, corruption, and its accompanying vices, non-transparency and non- accountability, survived the Babangida regime.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Even though he instituted a War Against Indiscipline and Corruption (WAIC) in an attempt to reclaim the anti-graft stance of the Buhari-Idiagbon regime, Babangida’s successor, General Sani Abacha surpassed the former in graft.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">In what would count as one of the many ironies in Nigeria’s history, Abacha set up the Pius Okigbo Panel of Inquiry into the operations of the Central Bank accounts under Babangida. The Okigbo Panel report reportedly implicated Babangida in the disappearance of the $12. 4 billion that accrued to Nigeria from the 1990 Gulf War oil windfall – the matter for which Keeling was deported. However, the report was never publicly released. Abacha must have held it as a weapon to hold his endlessly scheming and dangerously mischievous retired comrade-in-arms on leash.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">The Abacha regime also instituted the Failed Banks Tribunal which tried bank executives who had taken liberty with depositors’ and shareholders’ monies. In spite of Abacha’s apparent ‘anti-graft’ measures, his regime was one which a news magazine described as ‘Plundering and Looting Unlimited’. The infantry general, his close officials, family members and cronies ‘turned state power into a weapon for stealing the nation blind’. By the time he gave up the ghost on the laps of Indian prostitutes – as the rumour mills have it – more than US$4.3 billion were traced to 130 banks around the world to Abacha and his family members. Ismaila Gwarzo, Abacha’s National Security Adviser, alone reportedly siphoned US$2.1 billion into coded accounts in foreign countries.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Apart from condemning and acting against corruption and deception under generals Babangida and Abacha, Obasanjo, as president, also pursued with messianic zeal the recovery of Abacha’s loot.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Perhaps it is a cruel irony. But when Chief Sunday Afolabi, President Obasanjo’ssenior in high school and later his minister of internal affairs, in a moment of indiscretion, said his colleague in the cabinet and political rival, Chief Bola Ige, had been called to ‘come and eat’ in the Obasanjo government, he was imposing an epithet on the Obasanjo administration that was similar in its devastating implications to what was imposed on the Babangida regime by Obasanjo – eight years earlier.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">For the now late Afolabi, public office in Nigeria was an eatery to which a select people were invited to ‘come and eat’.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">R. Wraith and E. Simpkins argue that this culture of ‘come and eat’ has existed in Nigeria – like in the rest of the West coast of Africa – since independence. They contended further that this culture ‘flourishes as luxuriantly as the bush and weeds which it so much resembles, taking the goodness from the soil and suffocating the growth of plants which have been carefully, and expensively bred and tended.’</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Alhaji Bashir Tofa, the presidential candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC), who was unofficially defeated by Bashorun Moshood Abiola, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the June 12, 1993 election – eventually annulled by Babangida – said in early 2009 that ‘no Nigerian can fight corruption.’ Tofa argues that corruption ‘will continue as long as the masses depend on corrupt officials to earn their livelihood’. Corruption in Nigeria, said the politician, has gone beyond the ‘issue of greed, it is now a disease. People who steal have no sense of proportion because there is corruption everywhere.’</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">The perceptive anti-graft musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, had used the metaphor of the intersection at Ojuelegba, on the Lagos Mainland, where there was neither traffic lights, nor a traffic warden, to illustrate the confusion that arises when there are neither rules nor rule-enforcers.</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">Sings Fela: ‘<em>With this confusion wey e dey, police dey inside well, army dey inside well. Who go come solve dis confusion? …Confusion e breaki bone, nko?’</em> [‘In the present confusion, the police are implicated, the Army is implicated. Who will then solve the problem? ....Confusion breaks bones, doesn’t it?] In the song, ‘Confusion Break Bone’, Fela concludes with the parable of a corpse which is involved in an automobile accident. His musical verdict was that this translates to ‘<em>double wahala for deadi bodi and the owner of deadi body</em>.’ [‘double trouble for the dead and the relations of the dead.’]</span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"color:#000000\">It is a metaphor for his country.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">From Wale Adebanwi’s A Paradise for Maggots. 2010. Pp 118 and 119.</span></p>\n<div style=\"margin-top:10px;height:15px\"><a title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/\"><img style=\"border:none;float:right\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=f83fe76e-47d2-4547-8d0a-6245f3c58b52\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"></a></div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?a=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?a=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?i=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?a=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?a=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/loomnie/IEsI?i=fsOluJGIJ7E:dP_l5G_o5qM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/loomnie/IEsI/~4/fsOluJGIJ7E\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "A baublette",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/401700.html\">We have become</a> a <a href=\"http://baubletreebooks.com/\">publisher</a>. In an accidental sort of a way.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/2012/01/14/a-baublette/fc2small/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1874\"><img title=\"Words on the Street by Dave Bonta\" src=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/fc2small-500x508.png\" alt=\"Worlds on the Street front cover\" width=\"500\" height=\"508\"></a></p>\n<p>Please visit <a href=\"http://baubletreebooks.com/\">Bauble Tree Books</a>‘ first birthing of a baublette in the shape of <a href=\"http://baubletreebooks.com/books/words-on-the-street-an-inaction-comic/\"><em>Word on the Street – An Inaction Comic</em></a> by <a href=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/2012/01/first-words-on-the-street-book-now-available-in-print-and-electronic-forms/\">Dave Bonta</a> (who has all the salient background details at that link).</p>\n<p>It’s actually twins – paperback and epub – but two seed pods from one stalk is the norm for the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platanus_%C3%97_acerifolia\">London plane tree</a> I believe.</p>\n<p>The gestation was short, the labour <a href=\"http://baubletreebooks.com/2012/01/13/finally/\">protracted</a>. However like so much in life I’m assuming that should there ever be a second time it’ll be easier.</p>\n<p>I’m not much good at the publicity side of things. Suffice it to say I like it, the bs both like it (that’s the whole of the male teen market covered then) and it’s got an absolutely fantastic preface. If anyone would like a digital review copy please contact the, uh, publisher <a href=\"http://baubletreebooks.com/contact/\">direct</a>. Or, you know, leave a comment here.</p>\n<p>Actually maybe I should put the BUY THIS NOW sort of links here too.</p>\n<p>Paperback, from Lulu – £9.99/$15.46 – <a href=\"http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/words-on-the-street/18730913\">ORDER HERE</a></p>\n<p>Epub format for Nook, iPad and <a href=\"http://www.epubbooks.com/ebook-readers\">other ereaders</a>, also from Lulu – £0.99/$1.49 – <a href=\"http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/words-on-the-street/18822489\">ORDER HERE</a></p>\n<p>Kindle format – £2.00 from <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">Amazon UK</a>; $2.99 from <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">Amazon US</a>; €2.68 from Amazon’s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.fr/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">French</a>, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.de/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">German</a> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.es/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">Spanish</a> and <a href=\"http://www.amazon.it/Words-Street-Inaction-Comic-ebook/dp/B006X66Y0K/\">Italian</a> sites.</p>\n<p>Oh, and I can’t say enough good things about <a href=\"http://code.google.com/p/sigil/\">Sigil</a>, the free, open-source WYSIWYG ebook editor of awesomeness. Sigil rocks. I heart Sigil. Sigil FTW. You get the idea.</p>"
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"title" : "show me the money",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20120115&t=2&i=558570641&w=450&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=AJOE80E0NOT00\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"213\" src=\"http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20120115&t=2&i=558570641&w=450&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=AJOE80E0NOT00\" width=\"320\"></a></div>Oddly, the most sensible declaration has come from an academic: \"A really determined effort to stamp out corruption would itself be massively destabilising,\" Stephen Ellis, a historian at the Africa Studies Center at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/nigeriaNews/idAFL6E8CF0AR20120115?sp=true\">Reuters</a> about the general strike that has paralyzed Nigeria in the week since the oil subsidy was ended. \"It can only be done gradually.\"<br><br>The free market absolutists at <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21542197\">The Economist</a> magazine may have been in favor of lifting the subsidy immediately. But this showed absolute ignorance of the mechanics of the subsidy. As <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexandra-gillies/nigerias-chance-for-refor_b_1204853.html\">Alexandra Gillies</a>, of the Revenue Watch Institute, writing in the Huffington Post, noted, the oil subsidy was itself a form of official corruption:<br><blockquote>In 2011, the subsidy on gasoline <a href=\"http://www.fmf.gov.ng/component/content/article/3-trendingnews/63-faqfuelsubsidy.html\">cost the government</a> over $9 billion, more than the entire federal government capital budget and about double the subsidy's cost in 2010. Global fuel prices did not, of course, double during this time period. Nigeria's tab skyrocketed thanks to the costly, corrupt system by which the country produces and imports gasoline, as well as rising interest charges and insurance premiums as government failed to pay fuel importers on time. By the end of 2011, Nigeria <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201012310644.html\">owed importers</a> over $4 billion. Relying on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the national oil company, the government devised complex, opaque methods for covering import costs, including swap deals where crude oil was awarded to commodity traders in exchange for gasoline and other refined products.</blockquote>Nigeria's <a href=\"http://www.afriquejet.com/nigeria-alleged-corruption-in-fuel-subsidy-2012011531513.html\">Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP)</a>, has asserted that the fuel subsidy was hidden from the budget: "While 250 billion naira was allocated for fuel ‘subsidy in 2011, by the end of October 2011, over 1.3 trillion naira has been spent. We have information to the effect that the subsidy claim rose to 1.5 trillion naira by December 2011... Having found that no supplementary appropriation was submitted to the National Assembly by President Goodluck Jonathan, we would be grateful for information on who authorised the release of the sum 1.26 trillion naira, which was paid by the Central Bank of Nigeria.”<br><br>Gillies wants the subsidy to end, but pointed out a conundrum: \"High oil prices and increased production should have made 2010-2011 the most profitable years yet for the Nigeria. However, the country's economic health worsened. Budget deficit estimates exceeded $8 billion in 2011 and, over the last three years, foreign <a href=\"http://www.budgetoffice.gov.ng/\">reserves dropped by 40 percent</a> and public debt doubled.\" She said this \"paradox of robust revenue potential and declining fortunes\" could only be solved through comprehensive reforms.<br><br>But, in simple political terms, you can't ask the people to suffer in order to pay the big corporations (Well, I guess you can -- we did it in the U.S. in order to bail out the \"too big to fail\" banks -- but it hasn't made people's lives any better.) The Nigerian government contends that gradual lifting of the oil subsidy won't work because \"investors will be discouraged\" and \"smuggling and rent-seeking behavior will continue.\" But the profiteering's going on anyway and the so-called investors are the companies who've been profiting from this clandestine system for years. A friend in Enugu tells me that some petrol there is going for 300 naira per litre -- double what the supposedly free market price is.<br><br>If there is to be a comprehensive solution--as Gillies wants--everything has to be transparent. How are all the deals currently working? Who's making the most money? How much has corruption siphoned off from the federal treasury (Nigeria's former government anti-corruption crusader <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21541042\">Nuhu Ribadu</a> has estimated that boodling cost the country $7.6 billion a year for the past 50 years and a recent report in Nigeria's <a href=\"http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/10/communication-of-the-deaf/\">Vanguard Newspaper</a> asserted that the country's congressmen and senators are being paid more than $1.5 million a year--an amazingly high amount.)<br><br>Until all the dirty financial linen is aired out in public, it's no wonder the people are skeptical. The strike shouldn't stop till the cronies come clean.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7631633385048306686-3799225264488684885?l=stealthofnations.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Modeling the passage of time is notoriously difficult in economics. Living the passage of time is much easier. Each year’s Nobel Prize turns up as a subject of discussion fifteen months later on the program of the meetings of the American Economic Association. Since one of the main functions of the meeting is the continuing education of the professoriate, it’s a highly desirable progression.</p>\n<p>So to celebrate the <a href=\"http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2010/press.html\">2010 award</a> to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides, for what is known as the DMP model of labor markets and unemployment levels, there were many sessions on joblessness and a grand plenary <a href=\"http://www.stanford.edu/~rehall/HallTalkNobelLunch.pdf\">luncheon talk</a> by Robert Hall, ofStanfordUniversity.</p>\n<p>Hall sought to show how the DMP model– the most realistic account available, he said, based on a complete statement of underlying principles of turnover, job-filling and -finding rates and wage determination – explains current high rates and the lingering of joblessness.</p>\n<p>A dramatic increase in unemployment benefits couldn’t explain the problem, he said – because no such increase had taken place. Neither could the trend in productivity – it fell, as usual, in the recession, then rebounded sharply, while unemployment remained at 10 percent. Perhaps diminished inflation was responsible, he said, thanks to a certain form of wage stickiness as described recently in a modification of the standard model, in which employers are mindful of the amount of inflation that has occurred since the last time wages were set; more inflation plus stale wages mean more hiring.</p>\n<blockquote><p>With lower inflation as the result of slack conditions that have prevailed since 2007, real wages paid to new hires are elevated. The payoff from hiring new workers is correspondingly lower. It takes a higher job-filling rate to justify new hires [but]… the job-finding rate is lower and unemployment is higher. Sticky wages are not just something Keynes thought up: it makes economic sense.</p></blockquote>\n<p>To many in an audience of several hundred, composed mainly of those who were not members of the macro-labor research community, the intensely technical nature of the talk, complete with diagrams, was a sign of a profession still deeply at odds with itself. For many economists, the well-known <a href=\"http://www.economics.harvard.edu/files/faculty/51_Aftermath.pdf\">empirical finding</a> by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, that recovery from a banking crisis ordinarily requires five or six years, carries more weight.</p>\n<p>Diamond, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who laid the groundwork in the 1970s and ’80s with models of search processes in markets with various frictions, noted that, until the news of his award, he hadn’t looked at the search literature for nearly twenty years, and was therefore reacquainting himself with what had gone on in the interim. Pissarides, of the London School of Economics, stayed home to attend the birth of a new baby. His friend Yannis Ioannides, ofTuftsUniversity, gazed down from the platform in his stead.</p>\n<p>So it was left to Mortensen, of Northwestern University, to savor triumph in his home town, and to bask in the glow of a series of panels over three days devoted mainly to one of the most vigorous empirical programs in all of economics, the result of a patient research program he devised forty years ago that has finally paid off. Economists may not yet understand very well <em>why</em> the most dangerous crisis in 75 years happened, but they know a great deal more than they used to know about <em>wha</em>t happened as a result.</p>\n<p>The big news of the meetings, therefore, was surely Bengt Holmstrom’s presidential address to the Econometric Society. The profession has been struggling to understand how a relatively small shock in housing markets could bring international trade to a grinding halt for two months and push the world economy to the edge of a global depression. Holmstrom, of MIT, contributed a vital piece of the puzzle.</p>\n<p>Sometimes, Holmstrom said, ignorance is bliss.</p>\n<p>The common view of the crisis, he noted, is that it had been caused by Wall Street greed and bad incentives. Banks, through the newly-invented process of securitization, had created financial instruments of baroque complexity that nobody really understood. The originate-and-distribute banking model had caused reckless lending. Credit-rating agencies had depended on the mechanical application of inappropriate formulae to evaluate risk. This was pretty much the problem, he said, as described by author Michael Lewis in <em>The Big Short</em>.</p>\n<p>But what if a certain kind of desirable opacity, suddenly lost, was the heart of the matter? What if liquidity ultimately depends on a regime of “no questions asked”?</p>\n<p>After all, Holmstrom said, there were plenty of examples of purposeful opacity in the everyday world. The South African De Beers syndicate sells uncut diamonds only in bags containing hundreds of gems, graded to certain standards. The well-functioning market for diamonds depends on continuing trust in De Beers</p>\n<p>Fractional banking depends on the assumption that all banks are equally safe. When one bank or another came under attack in the nineteenth century as liable to fail, bank clearinghouses “circled the wagons,” ceased publishing audited data for individual banks, offered only aggregate data, insisting instead on the solvency of the whole.</p>\n<p>Cash money is the most opaque asset of all, Holmstrom noted. It is backed by nothing more than faith in stability of the government. Yet when questions arise about, say, counterfeiting, many establishments refuse to accept $100 bills.</p>\n<p>Something of the sort happened to money markets in the crisis, Holmstrom said. Not in familiar retail markets for bank deposits, but in the enormous and for the most part unregulated lending among investment banks, money market funds, corporations and other institutions (collectively known as the shadow banking system), in which $1 trillion in “repurchase agreements,” meaning overnight demand deposits among giant institutions, were regularly rolled over every morning – until mutual fears among counterparties began to spread, especially after September 2008, when two government-sponsored entities that made the market in mortgage-backed securities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were placed in receivership.</p>\n<p>It is these markets, which depend on debt-like instruments about which no questions are (ordinarily) asked – in which guarantees take the place of transparency (as a rule) – that began to shut down rapidly in the autumn of 2008, precisely because questions <em>were</em> being asked about their backing. Suddenly private information had value. When the collapse of Lehman Brothers eroded the overall systemic guarantee, Holmstrom said, the result was a classic banking panic – but out of sight of all but those most intimately involved.</p>\n<p>A largely opaque system is favored by private vendors, Holmstrom noted, because it effortlessly expands liquidity before the fact and facilitates economic growth. In another session, as if to buttress the point, Gary Gorton, Stefan Lewellen and Andrew Metrick, all of Yale University, showed that the “safe asset share” of information insensitive debt – government bonds, demand deposits, money market funds and collateralized repurchased agreements – had remained remarkably stable at around 33 percent of GNP since 1952. When government provision of debt declined, private production took up the slack, and vice versa. This surprising fact had been previously unnoticed, presumably because theory often determines what is observed.</p>\n<p>Opacity has two kinds of problems, Holmstrom told his audience of perhaps five hundred persons. One it is vulnerable to a discontinuous transition from the state of no-questions-asked to another, in which it pays to create private information. If that happens, panic can easily be the result. The other problem is that opacity hides systemic risk.</p>\n<p>The former problem can be addressed by two kinds of regulation: more transparency in the normal state, when a little more information won’t hurt (publishing net asset value for money market funds daily, for instance, instead of with the current two-month delay); less transparency in the crisis state (putting toxic assets in bigger, recapitalized bags, for instance, as banking authorities quickly did during the Scandinavian banking crisis in 1991-92, or, somewhat more slowly, as US authorities did in 2008-09).</p>\n<p>The latter problem – the accumulation of systemic risk – means that outside monitoring will be required. (As if on cue, the newly established US Office of Financial Research last week released its first official working paper – <a href=\"http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/wsr/ofr/Documents/OFRwp0001_BisiasFloodLoValavanis_ASurveyOfSystemicRiskAnalytics.pdf\">A Survey of Financial Risk Analytics</a>, by Mark Flood, of the OFR; and Dimitrios Bisias, Andrew Lo and Stavros Valavanis, all of MIT.)</p>\n<p>Holmstrom’s presidential address isn’t written yet. For his Chicago presentation, he again relied on slides (he has given the same talk before many different audiences.) In due course the talk will appear as an essay in <em>Econometrica</em>, the journal of the Econometric Society.</p>\n<p>But the new view it represents is slowly making its way through the profession. A formal model, with co-authors Gorton, of Yale, and Tri Vi Dang, of the University of Mannheim, will appear eventually as well. The nature of the rude surprise that overtook banking authorities around the world in the summer of 2007 is slowly being explicated.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Laurence Kotlikoff, of BostonUniversity, <a href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/05/news/economy/laurence_kotlikoff_2012/index.htm\">announced plans</a> to run for president of the United States, at least on the third party movement headquartered at <a href=\"http://kotlikoff2012.org/\">AmericansElect.com</a>. Kotlikoff, a specialist in public finance, is a natural comedian, with good timing. But that may not be enough to justify his entry into an already crowded field.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.economicprincipals.com%2Fissues%2F2012.01.15%2F1331.html&title=Continuing%20Education\">Share/Bookmark</a></p>"
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"content" : "<p>After weeks of unseasonable temperatures, western MA finally got some snow yesterday morning, just enough to make me miss my train to New York City. So I was late for <a href=\"http://scs.labforsocialcomputing.net/main.php\">Microsoft’s Social Computing Symposium</a> at <a href=\"http://itp.nyu.edu/itp/\">ITP at NYU</a>, missing my friend Dina Mehta’s talk. So I’ve been thwarted in my ambitions of blogging all the conversations taking place here, and I’ll instead offer some snippets of talks I caught.</p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~jenna/\">Jenna Burrell</a> studies cybercafes in west Africa, particularly in Ghana. So she was very interested when a wave of stories about “the dark side of the information age” reported on corrupt recyclers selling containers of used computers to unscrupulous dealers in Ghana and Nigeria, who dumped the machines into local waste facilities, causing serious environmental harm.</p>\n<p>This didn’t read quite right to her, as she’s been studying “the career of the obsolete computer in Ghana”. The computers in most Ghanaian cybercafes are reused computers, Pentium 3 or 4 series. They frequently come with property tags – she shows us a CRT monitor with tags identifying it as the property of the US Environmental Protection Agency. While there’s probably a fascinating story about how that monitor made it from the EPA to an Accra cybercafe, she makes the point that it’s a working monitor – it’s been reused, not recycled. It’s not in a dump, it’s in active use.</p>\n<p>There’s not a direct channel from the port to the dump site, she suggests. Second hand computers work their way through the economy. The best used computer dealers identify lots of machines with the same configuration and appearance so they can sell higher quality, tested goods to businesses and cybercafes. Other dealers work on the lower end, selling individual, unmatched computers. The machines that don’t work at all are sold to scrap metal dealers, mostly members of the Dagomba tribe, a northern tribe that tends to be economically disadvantaged in Accra. </p>\n<p>Do computers end up in the dump? Yes. But it’s not as simple as the dumping of ewaste in Ghana, where waste is being inflicted on poor people. It’s people’s desire for computers, a legitimate desire, that creates a complex commercial ecosystem.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>Samantha Doerr helps us understand what the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit does. The answer: they take down botnets, and they spend a lot of time fighting child sexual exploitation.</p>\n<p>In the time before the internet, she tells us, child porn was not very common. You might be a creep, but it’s very hard to find other creeps to share pictures with. While she’s careful not to condemn the Internet, Doerr notes that child porn is getting much more common, as well as more extreme and violent. A man was recently arrested in Seattle for posession of more than a million sexual images of children. It’s becoming more common to find images of infants of toddlers… because they can’t tell anyone about the abuse they’re experiencing.</p>\n<p>Doerr’s strategy is to make it more difficult to share child porn. Her chief weapon is <a href=\"http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/photodna/\">Microsoft’s Photo DNA technology</a>. Photo DNA creates a hash of an image that can match other images even when the format changes or the image is being resized. Her team has identified some of the worst child porn images, ones where the children exploited have been identified, are confirmed as being under 13 and are being abused. Microsoft now checks these hash signatures against photos uploaded to Skydrive, indexed on Bing or transmitted by Hotmail, and Facebook is announcing adoption of the same possibility/</p>\n<p>Doerr wonders whether we can win against child pornography. Microsoft recognizes the complexity of the challenge, and has just issued an RFP for research on the topic. Her goal is to change the dynamics of the equation. Child trafficking is on the rise because it’s currently more economical than selling drugs – if we can make child exploitation more difficult and less profitable, that would be a win.</p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/delbius\">Del Harvey</a> has built the safety team at Twitter, working since 2008 to eliminate spam and other forms of abuse from the service, while trying to respect user needs. Working on the front lines of the service, she has a unique perspective on “unintended usage and unexpected consequences”, or as she puts it, “users do the darndest things”.</p>\n<p>Many of the behaviors we associate with twitter – retweeting, hashtags, @reply messages – were not created by Twitter’s programmers, but were emergent behaviors created by Twitter users. When users start doing something novel on Twitter, it’s her job to look closely at the new behavior and ask, “Should you be doing that? How are you doing that?”</p>\n<p>Where this job gets truly tricky is when users engage in behavior likely to get them suspended by Twitter’s automated algorithms. If you message someone multiple times, are you engaging with the, or harassing them? It might be one thing if someone messages you a dozen times, and another if they message a celebrity a dozen times – a form of showing their devotion and fandom. Some people send themselves multiple @replies, using Twitter as a form of bookmarking.</p>\n<p>The easiest way to eliminate spam is to identify spammy URLs and block people who retweet them. But this works very badly when people retweet spam and add snarky comments to it. “Nothing pisses off a user as much as complaining about spam and suspending them for spamming”</p>\n<p>Why do some users take all the trending topics and put them into sentences? Del isn’t sure, but it’s become a pretty popular practice, and it makes it unwise to block people who simply use lots of TTs in a post. Sometimes her team is able to anticipate behaviors – it seemed likely that people would try to report users as spammers to silence them. (Twitter has systems in place that makes this unlikely to be effective.) But what do you do with users telling Twitter to report their accounts as spammers, a behavior that’s unexpected and inexplicable.</p>\n<p>Del’s talk gets a lot of laughs of the “users do the darnedest things” variety, but there’s a serious message. Her job, as she thinks of it, is to “try to figure out when users are experiencing unintended negative consequences” and mediate the consequences.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>In an Ignite talk, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/alexleavitt\">Alex Leavitt</a> offers a great example of the ways in which media is moving from individual platforms to existing in ecosystems. He introduces us to Hatsume Miku, an open source fandom and culture based around a vocal synthesizer program. The character of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku\">Hatsume Miku</a> is a teal-haired anime popstar, whose songs are written by an army of fans who record her music, build complex music videos for her, and throw concerts in the physical world featuring the best of those videos. It’s hard to understand the sheer scale of the phenomenon – Leavitt notes that Hatsume Miku just appeared in Japanese Playboy, both in drawn form and as the photographs of a leading live action Hatsume Miku cosplayer.</p>\n<p>The video system, built around a program called <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MikuMikuDance\">Miku Miku Dance</a>, is one of the most stunning aspects of the phenomenon – Leavitt tells us it’s the #1 3D software package in Japan. Point a camera at you and your friends and you’re converted into Anime characters which move their mouths and limbs in sync with your actions.</p>\n<p>The ecosystem exists through an integrated commenting and attribution system that allows people to publish on appropriate platforms, like YouTube, while ensuring followers of the community know about the individual publications. </p>\n<hr>\n<p>Always the provocateur,<a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/\"> Clay Shirky</a> is predicting the demise of another industry: street level retail. His argument begins by noting the similarity of streetscapes in New York City, a repeating loop of drug stores, mobile phone shops and banks. As higher end businesses move to selling primarily on the web, lower-margin businesses move into retail space, a process that can’t continue forever.</p>\n<p>Shirky suggests that New York made two major errors in repurposing urban space. The first was in insisting that loft space, used to manufacture products like belt buckles, must continue to be zoned industrial, just in case the belt buckle industry returned to the city. It took thirty years, he notes, before New York loosened those restrictions and let first artists, then ordinary people live in loft space. The second transformation has been the disappearance of the working waterfront. For years, New York was a center of global shipping. But in the container age, that shipping has moved far south of the city, and New York took a long time to realize that infrastructure dedicated to shipping needs to be repurposed into waterfront open and green space.</p>\n<p>If street level retail is dying (and here, I assume, Clay will write something at length making a compelling case for this, as his 5 minute version is pretty hasty), will we react quickly enough to fill the spaces? Clay remembers purchasing comics at his local comic shop. It wasn’t a great retail experience – the selection was small – but it was a great community experience, an opportunity to gather with other similarly oriented nerds. Can cities like New York figure out how to transform street level retail into street level community space?</p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.itofisher.com/mito/\">Mimi Ito</a> wants help solving the problems of education. She notes that there’s a 50% high school dropout rate for black and latino youth, and reminds us that this isn’t okay – it’s creating problems of social stratification and inequality that we’ll be facing for years.</p>\n<p>The sort of folks in this meeting are the educational 1%. We are learning elites who know how to mobilize the internet and develop professional identities. To help students engage with education, we need to help them develop the same sort of skills we rely on.</p>\n<p>Ito has been interviewing people who learn by exploring passions online. She tells us of a webcomics creator, who while he attended college, taught himself what he knew about creating comics from his online encounters. He discovered the medium online, developing a passion, and began learning to create by following tutorials and how-tos online. In the process, he connected with a community of the likeminded and passionate. Ito calls this “connected learning”, learning in which embracing your passions allows you to connect with others and learn with them.</p>\n<p>The Internet has lowered barriers to acquiring knowledge and expertise, but kids often have not deciphered the puzzle. We need to build better platforms that connect people around interests. Ito suggests that while Facebook connects you with the people you went to school with and Twitter with the folks you wish you went to school with, we need infrastructure that connects you with the people you want to learn from or want to teach.</p>\n<hr>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mit.edu/~amonroy/\">Andrés Monroy Hernandéz</a> studies the use of social media in conflict situation. He’s especially focused on narcoviolence in his native Mexico, and notes that in the country, he’s seen increasing adoption of social media aligned with an increase in stressful situations. In cities like Monterrey, not only is drug violence an everday occurance that impacts bystanders, it’s a force so powerful, it’s driven traditional media away. Reporters will not cover drug violence for fear of being killed or kidnapped. As a result, people are using Twitter and Facebook to create immediate alerts of violence in specific cities and neighborhoods.</p>\n<p>This means that when you leave your house for work in Monterrey, you check a twitter tag like #mtyfollow to ensure that there’s not an active “balacera” – shooting – on the path you plan to take. Hernandéz has collected 300,000 #mtyfollow tweets and shows us a quick overview – the language is a language of violence and warnings. It’s centered on a very few people who consistently tweet about breaking news and others who amplify the stories.</p>\n<p>Those using social media to report narcoviolence in Monterrey face at least two enemies. The government is worried about control over information and recently jailed two Twitter users for allegedly spreading misinformation. The cartels themselves are killing people who are using social media to document their actions – he shows us a banner hung next to the head of a Twitter reporter, warning others not to use social media to track drug violence. Citizen responses are not totally impotent in the face of these attacks – a group called CIC is using Ushahidi to collect and track tweets, offering a graphical map of violence in the city and a portrait of life during wartime.</p>\n<hr>\n<p>Vastly more good stuff that I was able to cover in one post. Looking forward to today’s talks (right after the one I give this morning…!)</p>"
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"title" : "Yes, Virginia. The banks really were bailed out.",
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"content" : "<p>I find it really depressing that I have to write this. But it seems I have to write it.</p>\n\n<p>Substantially all of the TARP funds advanced to banks have been paid back, with interest and sometimes even with a profit from sales of warrants. Most of the (<a href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html\">much larger</a>) extraordinary liquidity facilities advanced by the Fed have also been wound down without credit losses. So there really was no bailout, right? The banks took loans and paid them back.</p>\n\n<p>Bullshit.</p>\n\n<p>Suppose you buy fire insurance from <i>Inflammable Insurance</i>. You pay $1000 for a year of insurance. There is no fire, so you make no claim. Next year, you find a different provider offering a better price, and you switch.</p>\n\n<p>Soon after your relationship has ended, you discover that <i>Inflammable</i> failed to pay any claims at all during the year you were insured, because all customer premiums were diverted to the Cayman Islands and then spent on kiddy porn and Pez. Were you defrauded? Do you have any cause for complaint? After all, <i>ex post</i> your cash flows turned out to be the same as if you had been dealt with fairly.</p>\n\n<p>Of course you have been defrauded. You did not get what you had paid for. You had paid for <i>Inflammable</i> to bear risk on your behalf. It did not do so. The money you paid was simply stolen.</p>\n\n<p>In financial markets, risk-bearing is the ultimate commodity. It is what financial market participants buy and sell. As a financial speculator, I spend exorbitant amounts of money buying out-of-the-money options to limit my downside risk. The vast majority of those options expire worthless, just like the vast majority of fire insurance policies end with no claims paid. If only someone would give me all those options for free, or sell them to me for half the market price, or reimburse the cost of the options that I never end up using, I would be rich. Seriously, given the years I’ve been in this game, I’d be pretty set if I had my option premiums back. It doesn’t seem fair at all that I am confined to a modest middle-class life because I had to buy all this insurance I never used.</p>\n\n<p>Cash is not king in financial markets. Risk is. The government bailed out major banks by assuming the downside risk of major banks when those risks were very large, for minimal compensation. In particular, the government 1) offered regulatory forbearance and tolerated generous valuations; 2) lent to financial institutions at or near risk-free interest rates against sketchy collateral (<a href=\"http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/11/28/a-bit-more-on-the-bloomberg-piece/\">directly</a> or via <a href=\"http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/resources/TLGP/index.html\">guarantee</a>); 3) purchased preferred shares at modest dividend rates under TARP; 4) publicly certified the banks with stress tests and stated “no new Lehmans”. By these actions, the state assumed substantially all of the downside risk of the banking system. The market value of this risk-assumption by the government was more than the entire value of the major banks to their “private shareholders”. On commercial terms, the government paid for and ought to have owned several large banks lock, stock, and barrel. Instead, officials carefully engineered deals to avoid ownership and control.</p>\n\n<p>But still. Everything worked out, right? It turns out that banks didn’t need to use the government’s giant insurance policy. It was just a panic after all!</p>\n\n<p>Bullshit.</p>\n\n<p>Suppose my kid’s meth habit got the best of him. He’s needs to come up with $100K quick or his dealer’s gonna whack him. But he’s a good kid, really! Coulda happened to anyone. So I “lend” him the money, even though he has no visible means of support and the sketchiest loan sharks in town wouldn’t give him the time of day. Now I believe in bootstraps and hard work, individualism and self-reliance. So I tell my son. “Son, you are going to pay me back every penny of that loan. You are going to work it off. I have arranged with one of my golf buddies, a guy who owes me a favor or three, a job that pays $200K a year. You’d better show up every day at 9 a.m. and sit behind that desk, and get me back my money!” And he does! After a year, he’s made me whole. What a good kid.</p>\n\n<p>No bail out, right? He paid me back every penny! Worked it off!</p>\n\n<p>Bullshit. The opportunity I provided him, the $200K job that he would not have received without my intercession, was a huge grant. On the open market, if I were to accept bribes from the highest bidder to wangle the job from my friend, that opportunity would be worth more than the $100K advanced. I paid my son’s loan with my own money. I just obscured the cash flows, so my son and I can pretend and sustain our mutual self-regard and our righteous disdain for the moochers and the hippies and the riff-raff.</p>\n\n<p>After assuming the banking system’s downside risk, the US government engineered a wide variety of favorable circumstances that helped banks “earn” their way back to quasi-health. The government provided famous and obvious transfers like unwinding AIG swaps at 100¢ on the dollar. It forced short-term yields to zero and created an environment in which medium-term interest rates would be capped for several years, granting banks a near-risk-free arbitrage for a while. It emitted trillions in excess reserves on which it continues to pay interest. It forewent investigations and prosecutions that by law it should actively pursue, and settled what enforcement it could not avoid for token fees. Then there are the things conspiracy theorists and cranks like me suspect but cannot prove: that the government and the Fed have been less than aggressive in minimizing their costs when they or entities they control (<a href=\"http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/03/exclusive-aig-was-responsible-for-banks.html\">AIG</a>, Fannie, Freddie) transact with large banks, that they have left money on the table where doing so could be hidden in arcane accounts or justified as ordinary transaction expenses and trading losses. Large banks have enjoyed some rather extraordinary results for allegedly efficient markets, quarters with large trading profits and <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/business/12bank.html\">no</a> or very <a href=\"http://www.zerohedge.com/article/one-trading-loss-day-q1-between-goldman-jpmorgan-and-bank-america-combined\">few</a> losing days. Government housing policy is <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/could-this-time-have-been-different/2011/08/25/gIQAiJo0VL_blog.html\">pretty overtly subject</a> to a constraint that interventions must not provoke loss realizations for banks carrying bad loans at inflated values, or interfere with servicing revenues. (If you think I am overconspiratorial, I’m still waiting for an innocent explanation of <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/posts/1160447599.shtml\">this</a>, from 1991.)</p>\n\n<p>Pulling back from a shell game whose details are, by design, labyrinthine, check out the big picture. Since the beginning of the 3rd quarter of 2008 (Lehman quarter), US <a href=\"http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FYGFDPUN\">debt held by the public</a> increased by 84%, from $5.28T to $9.75T (as of the end of Q2 2011). Depending on where you start, the growth rate of publicly held US debt prior to Q3 2008 had been ~8% per year (starting in 1970 or 1980) or ~4.5% (starting in 1990 or 2000). The growth rate since Q3-2008 has been 22.6% per year. The United States has issued between $3T and $4T more debt than would have been predicted by any reasonable estimate prior to the financial crisis. So far.</p>\n\n<p>Hyman Minsky <a href=\"http://isbn.nu/9780300040005\">famously described</a> crisis stabilization as a two-step process: First, the state/central-bank steps in as lender of last resort to halt the panic. Then the state must underwrite a program of massive deficit spending in order to “validate” — Minsky’s word — the fragile capital structures and the “innovative” business practices that proliferate during periods of tranquility.</p>\n\n<p>Translating into current buzzwords, when the trouble begins there is a solvency crisis. It is converted into a liquidity crisis <i>ex post</i> by a firehose of net spending by the state. The current crisis has followed Minsky’s script perfectly. Banks’ ability to “pay back” bailouts has depended upon continued regulatory forbearance, tacit expectations of support if shit hits the fan again, and massive government debt issuance which resuscitated assets that would otherwise be worthless.</p>\n\n<p>But who has <i>lost</i> anything from the bailouts? Wasn’t it a win-win? This all sounds very abstract. Where are the transfers?</p>\n\n<p>If the government borrowed or printed a trillion dollars and gave the money to me, would there be any losers? If you don’t think there has been a wealth transfer, if you don’t think ordinary people have lost, please call your Congressperson and ask her to cut me a trillion dollar check. In some abstract sense, this policy of giving me money would push government debt higher. But that is so very vague a cost! I promise I’d do great things with a trillion dollars. My ideas are <i>so much cooler</i> than Goldman Sachs’, despite all the wholesome commercials they are running.</p>\n\n<p>During the run-up to the financial crisis, bank managers, shareholders, and creditors paid themselves hundreds of billions of dollars in dividends, buybacks, bonuses and interest. Had the state intervened less generously, a substantial fraction of those payouts might have been recovered (albeit from different cohorts of stakeholders, as many recipients of past payouts had already taken their money and ran). The market cap of the 19 TARP banks that received more than a billion dollars each in assistance is about 550B dollars today (even after several of those banks’ share prices have collapsed over fears of Eurocontagion). The uninsured debt of those banks is and was a large multiple of their market caps. Had the government resolved the weakest of the banks, writing off equity and haircutting creditors, had it insisted on retaining upside commensurate with the fraction of risk it was bearing on behalf of stronger banks, the taxpayer savings would have run from hundreds of billions to a trillion dollars. We can get into all kinds of arguments over what would have been practical and legal. Regardless of whether the government could or could not have abstained from making the transfers that it made, it did make huge transfers. Bank stakeholders retain hundreds of billions of dollars against taxpayer losses of the same, relative to any scenario in which the government received remotely adequate compensation first for the risk it assumed, and then for quietly moving Heaven and Earth to obscure and (partially) neutralize that risk.</p>\n\n<p>The banks were bailed out. Big time.</p>\n\n<div>\n\n<p><b>Update History:</b></p>\n<ul>\n<li>1-Dec-2011, 7:20 a.m. EST: Light edits: “received more than a billion dollars <u>each</u> in assistance”; “weakest of <s>those</s> <u>the</u> banks”; “that he would not <s>otherwise</s> <u>have</u> received without my intercession<u>,</u>“; “like <s>paying</s> unwinding AIG swaps”; “entities they <s>controls</s> control”</li>\n</ul>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Why is finance so complex?",
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"content" : "<p>Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville <a href=\"http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/12/23/814381/abstractions-and-morality-in-modern-finance/\">mulls a question</a>: “Why are we so good at creating complexity in finance?” The answer she comes up with is the “<a href=\"http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/are-smart-people-getting-smarter/\">Flynn Effect</a>“, basically the idea that there is an uptrend in human intelligence. Finance, in this view, gets more complex over time because financiers get smart enough to make it so.</p>\n\n<p>That’s an interesting conjecture. But I don’t think it’s right at all.</p>\n\n<p>Finance has always been complex. More precisely it has always been <i>opaque</i>, and complexity is a means of rationalizing opacity in societies that pretend to transparency. Opacity is absolutely essential to modern finance. It is a feature not a bug until we radically change the way we mobilize economic risk-bearing. The core purpose of <i>status quo</i> finance is to coax people into accepting risks that they would not, if fully informed, consent to bear.</p>\n\n<p>Financial systems help us overcome a collective action problem. In a world of investment projects whose costs and risks are perfectly transparent, most individuals would be frightened. Real enterprise is very risky. Further, the probability of success of any one project depends upon the degree to which other projects are simultaneously underway. A budding industrialist in an agrarian society who tries to build a car factory will fail. Her peers will be unable to supply the inputs required to make the thing work. If by some miracle she gets the factory up and running, her customer-base of low capital, low productivity farm workers will be unable to afford the end product. Successful real investment does not occur via isolated projects, but in waves, forward thrusts by cohorts of optimists, most of whom crash and burn, some of whom do great things for the world and make their investors wealthy. But the winners depend upon the existence of the losers: In a world where there was no Qwest overbuilding fiber, there would have been no Amazon losing a nickel on every sale and making it up on volume. Even in the context of an astonishing tech boom, Amazon was a pretty iffy investment in 1997. It would have been an absurd investment without the growth and momentum generated by thousands of peers, some of whom fared well but most of whom did not.</p>\n\n<p>One purpose of a financial system is to ensure that we are, in general, in a high-investment dynamic rather than a low-investment stasis. In the context of an investment boom, individuals can be persuaded to take direct stakes in transparently risky projects. But absent such a boom, risk-averse individuals will rationally abstain. Each project in isolation will be deemed risky and unlikely to succeed. Savers will prefer low risk projects with modest but certain returns, like storing goods and commodities. Even taking stakes in a diversified basket of risky projects will be unattractive, unless an investor believes that many other investors will simultaneously do the same.</p>\n\n<p>We might describe this as a game with two Nash Equilibria (“ROW” means “rest of world”):\n\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/files/WhyOpaqueGameDiagram3.png\"></div>\n\n<p>If only everyone would invest, there’s a pretty good chance that we’d all be better off, on average our investments would succeed. But if an individual invests while the rest of the world does not, the expected outcome is a loss. (Colored values wearing tilde hats represent stochastic payoffs whose expected value is the number shown.) There are two equilibria, a good one in the upper left corner where everyone invests and, on average, succeeds, and a bad one in the bottom right where everybody hoards and stays poor. If everyone is pessimistic, we can get stuck in the bad equilibrium. Animal spirits are game theory.</p>\n\n<p>This is a core problem that finance in general and banks in particular have evolved to solve. A banking system is a superposition of fraud and genius that interposes itself between investors and entrepreneurs. It offers an alternative to risky direct investment and low return hoarding. Banks guarantee all investors a return better than hoarding, and they offer this return unconditionally, with certainty, without regard to whether other investors buy in or not. They create a new payoff matrix that looks like this:</p>\n\n<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/files/WhyOpaqueGameDiagram4.png\"></div>\n\n<p>Under this new set of payoffs, there is only one equillibrium, the good one on the upper left. Basically, the bankers promise everyone a return of 2 if they invest, so everyone invests in the banks. Since everyone has invested, the bankers can invest in real projects at sufficient scale to generate the good expected payoff of 3. The bankers keep 1 for themselves, pay their investors the promised 2, and everyone is made better off than if the bad equilibrium had obtained. Bankers make the world a more prosperous place precisely by making promises they may be unable to keep. (They’ll be unable to honor their guarantee if they fail to raise investment in sufficient scale, or if, despite sufficient scale, projects perform more poorly than expected.)</p>\n\n<p>Suppose we start out in the bad equillibrium. It’s easy to overpromise, but harder to make your promises believed. Investors know that bankers don’t have a magic wealth machine, that resources put in bankers’ care are ultimately invested in the same menu of projects that each of them individually would reject. Those risk-less returns cannot, in fact, be riskless, and that’s no secret. So why is this little white fraud sometimes effective? Why do investors’ believe empty promises, and invest through banks what they would have hoarded in a world without?</p>\n\n<p>Like so many good con-men, bankers make themselves believed by persuading each and every investor individually that, although <i>someone</i> might lose if stuff happens, it will be someone else. <a href=\"http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/12/dont-worry-your.html\">You’re in on the con.</a> If something goes wrong, each and every investor is assured, there will be a bagholder, but it won’t be you. Bankers assure us of this in a bunch of different ways. First and foremost, they offer an ironclad, moneyback guarantee. You can have your money back any time you want, on demand. At the first hint of a problem, you’ll be able to get out. They tell that to everyone, without blushing at all. Second, they point to all the other people standing in front of you to take the hit if anything goes wrong. It will be the bank shareholders, or it will be the government, or bondholders, the “bank holding company”, the “stabilization fund”, whatever. There are so many deep pockets guaranteeing our bank! There will always be someone out there to take the loss. We’re not sure exactly who, but <i>it will not be you!</i> They tell this to everyone as well. Without blushing.</p>\n\n<p>If the trail of tears were truly clear, if it were as obvious as it is in textbooks who takes what losses, banking systems would simply fail in their core task of attracting risk-averse investment to deploy in risky projects. Almost everyone who invests in a major bank believes themselves to be investing in a safe enterprise. Even the shareholders who are formally first-in-line for a loss view themselves as considerably protected. The government would never let it happen, right? Banks innovate and interconnect, swap and reinsure, guarantee and hedge, precisely so that it is not clear where losses will fall, so that each and every stakeholder of each and every entity can hold an image in their minds of some guarantor or affiliate or patsy who will take a hit before they do.</p>\n\n<p>Opacity and interconnectedness among major banks is nothing new. Banks and sovereigns have always mixed it up. When there has not been public deposit insurance there have been private deposit insurers as solid and reliable as our own recent “monolines”. “Shadow banks” are nothing new under the sun, just another way of rearranging the entities and guarantees so that almost nobody believes themselves to be on the hook.</p> \n\n<p>This is the business of banking. Opacity is not something that can be reformed away, because it is essential to banks’ economic function of mobilizing the risk-bearing capacity of people who, if fully informed, wouldn’t bear the risk. Societies that lack opaque, faintly fraudulent, financial systems fail to develop and prosper. Insufficient economic risks are taken to sustain growth and development. You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats.</p>\n\n<p>A lamentable side effect of opacity, of course, is that it enables a great deal of theft by those placed at the center of the shell game. But surely that is a small price to pay for civilization itself. No?</p>\n\n<p>Nick Rowe memorably described <a href=\"http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/01/finance-as-magic.html\">finance as magic</a>. The analogy I would choose is finance as placebo. Financial systems are sugar pills by which we collectively embolden ourselves to bear economic risk. As with any good placebo, we must never understand that it is just a bit of sugar. We must believe the concoction we are taking to be the product of brilliant science, the details of which we could never understand. The financial placebo peddlers make it so.</p> \n\n<hr>\n\n<p><b>Some notes:</b> I do think there are alternatives to goat-herding and kleptocratically opaque semi-fraudulent banking. But adopting those would require not “reform” but a wholesale reimagining of <i>status quo</i> finance.</p>\n\n<p>Sovereign finance should be viewed simply as a form of banking. Sovereigns raise funds for unspecified purposes and promise risk-free returns they may be unable to provide in real terms. When things go wrong, bondholders think taxpayers should be on the hook, and taxpayers think bondholders should pay. As usual, everyone has a patsy, someone else was supposed to take the hit. <i>Ex ante</i> everyone was assured they have nothing to fear.</p>\n\n<p>I have presented an overly flattering case for the <i>status quo</i> here. The (real!) benefits to opacity that I’ve described must be weighed against the profound, even apocalyptic social costs that obtain when the placebo fails, especially given the likelihood that placebo peddlars will continue their con long after good opportunities for investment at scale have been exhausted. By hiding real economic risks from those who ultimately bear them, <i>status quo</i> financial systems blunt incentives for high-quality capital allocation. We get capital allocation in bulk, but of low quality.</p>\n\n<div>\n\n<p><b>Update History:</b></p>\n<ul>\n<li>26-Dec-2011, 10:15 a.m. EST: Flipped around a sentence: “You can have transparency and herd goats, or you can have opacity and an industrial economy.” becomes “You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats.”</li>\n</ul>\n</div></p>"
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"content" : "<div><p>Arthur Brisbane of the <em>New York Times</em> isn't a train wreck. He isn't a dirigible explosion. He is the fracking incarnation of the exploding Planet Krypton itself.</p>\r\n\r\n<p>Jay Rosen watches the trans-galactic horror:</p>\r\n\r\n<blockquote>\r\n <p><a href=\"http://pressthink.org/2012/01/so-whaddaya-think-should-we-put-truthtelling-back-up-there-at-number-one/\">So whaddaya think: should we put truthtelling back up there at number one?</a>: <strong>Somewhere along the way, telling truth from falsehood was surpassed by other priorities to which the press felt a stronger duty. Arthur Brisbane, public editor of the New York Times, was unaware of this history when he asked users of the Times whether reporters should call out false statements.</strong></p>\r\n \r\n <p>Brisbane’s post, Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? exploded onto the web today, startling user after user, and journalist after journalist, all of whom reacted with some version of: <em>Why is this even a question?</em> Alright, I’ll tell you why.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>Brisbane wrote: “I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge ‘facts’ that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.” For example:</p>\r\n \r\n <blockquote>\r\n <p>On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney often says President Obama has made speeches “apologizing for America,” a phrase to which Paul Krugman objected in a December 23 column arguing that politics has advanced to the “post-truth” stage.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?</p>\r\n \r\n <p>If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:</p>\r\n \r\n <p>“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”</p>\r\n </blockquote>\r\n \r\n <p>Brisbane said he gets a lot of mail from “readers who, fed up with the distortions and evasions that are common in public life, look to The Times to set the record straight. They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.” Then he got to the meat of his question, which was posed to us, the users.</p>\r\n \r\n <blockquote>\r\n <p>Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here?</p>\r\n </blockquote>\r\n \r\n <p>The comments at Brisbane’s blog post are blistering. They reveal the deep divide between “traditionalists” in the press, of which is Brisbane is one, and current users. I will just quote one to give you the tone. Matt Talbot in California. “That this should even be an open question is a sign that our supposedly independent press is a cowed and timid shadow of its former self.”</p>\r\n \r\n <p>There will be plenty more said about this column because a lot led up to it. For now I want make one observation about it, and let that stand as my own reaction.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>Something happened in our press over the last 40 years or so that never got acknowledged and to this day would be denied by a majority of newsroom professionals. Somewhere along the way, truthtelling was surpassed by other priorities the mainstream press felt a stronger duty to. These include such things as “maintaining objectivity,” “not imposing a judgment,” “refusing to take sides” and sticking to what I have called the View from Nowhere. </p>\r\n \r\n <p>No one knows exactly how it happened, for it’s not like a policy decision came down at some point. Rather, the drift of professional practice over time was to bracket, or suspend sharp questions of truth and falsehood in order to avoid charges of bias, or excessive editorializing. Journalists felt better, safer, on firmer professional ground–more like pros–when they stopped short of reporting substantially untrue statements as false. One way to describe it (and I believe this is the correct way) is that truthelling moved down the list of newsroom priorities. Other things now ranked ahead of it.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>But wait a minute: how can telling the truth ever take a back seat in the serious business of reporting the news? That’s like saying medical doctors no longer put “saving lives” or “the health of the patient” ahead of securing payment from insurance companies. It puts the lie to the entire contraption. It devastates journalism as a public service and honorable profession.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>And so officially, this event (“truth telling moved down the list of newsroom priorities”) never occurred, even though in reality it did. Because no one was ready for that devastation. Therefore no reckoning (how could this happen?) ever took place. Denial was successfully maintained, even as criticism built and journalists inside the fraternity announced what was happening. Professional practice even shifted to take account of the drift.</p>\r\n \r\n <p>Arthur Brisbane, public editor of the New York Times, skipped onto this scene seemingly unaware of these events. And he basically blurted out what I just explained to you when he asked the users of the New York Times: <em>so whaaddaya think… should we put truthtelling back up there at number one?</em> </p>\r\n \r\n <p>Yes, that is what he said. Look at his post again. He tell us that readers are “fed up with the distortions and evasions” and they “look to The Times to set the record straight.” This seems to be their number one priority! “They worry less about reporters imposing their judgment on what is false and what is true.” (Which is what always stopped us before.) And so Brisbane wants to know: should we run with that? It would mean changing our practices, but we could do it. Hey, what do you guys think? </p>\r\n \r\n <p>And then came the reply, which was… devastating.</p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n</div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=LQGoVUTVHu4:E0Mfda9H6sQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=LQGoVUTVHu4:E0Mfda9H6sQ:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~4/LQGoVUTVHu4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-5.png\"><img title=\"Picture 5\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-5.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"308\" height=\"184\"></a>I live in a bubble. Its name is San Francisco, a magical place where everyone recycles, no one smokes, and Nancy Pelosi is considered distressingly conservative. Worse, I teach environmental sustainability at Stanford, where I’m surrounded by bicycle riding, reusable mug toting, enthusiastically composting colleagues and students. I come from the outside world, so I know my current behavioral baseline is a little skewed. But still, I was <a href=\"http://www.greatenergychallengeblog.com/blog/2011/12/16/chances-dimming-on-u-s-light-bulb-switch/\">recently reminded</a> that some Americans continue to use incandescent light bulbs, and I was genuinely surprised.</p>\n<p>A far bigger shock came, as they usually do, unbidden from the Internet. <span></span>At home, “garbage truck!” was among my son’s first phrases. The kid loves everything to do with tossing items into cans, wheeling them to the curb, and best of all, waiting for the awesome machines that come once a week to grab and hydraulically <em>dump</em>! <em>dump</em>! <em>dump</em>! the rolling containers for recyclables, compostables and landfill-destined trash into their hungry mechanical maws.</p>\n<div>\n<dl style=\"width:310px\">\n<dt><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-7.png\"><img title=\"Picture 7\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-7-300x178.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"178\"></a></dt>\n<dd></dd>\n</dl>\n</div>\n<p>In between garbage days, we sometimes watch garbage truck videos on YouTube. (Not every day, and with full parental participation—<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/health/19babies.html\">c’mon bubble people</a>, a *little* screen time isn’t going to hurt him.) If you don’t have young children, you might not be aware that the garbage truck video is a robust genre. Home-shot compilations with titles like “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSac3rpuiEY&NR=1&feature=fvwp\">Garbage Trucks Part II</a>” and “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xpoVe6ZoQ\">Types of ‘Garbage Truck’</a>” amass millions of views, mostly, presumably, by delighted youngsters. They see everything from traditional rear-loaders, to automated side- and front-loaders, to the exotic knuckle boom trucks, which look like those arcade games where you try to grab a stuffed doll by the head with a set of metal claws.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-6.png\"><img title=\"Picture 6\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-6-300x181.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"181\"></a>And here’s what else the kids see: that every last manifestation of the American dream of disposable consumption can be hauled to the curb and disappeared into the crushing jaws of a garbage truck by municipal workers in fluorescent green safety vests. Some households astound by sheer volume—8, 10 or 12 black garbage bags per pickup elicit nary a comment nor complaint from the workers. But it’s the exotic items that really surprise. Is the home basketball hoop a little banged up? Toss it in! Have a five-piece living room set that clashes with the new drapes? Grind it up! An unwanted toilet? In it goes!</p>\n<p>Here in the bubble, recycling and composting are the law for households and businesses alike. My students go out of their way to build <a href=\"http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=45559\">side tables out of old VHS cassettes</a>, and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94pzdvYQRQE\">kinetic pelican sculptures </a>out of scavenged bleach bottles and PVC pipe, for gosh sakes. Overall, the daily generation of landfill-destined trash in the US <a href=\"http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/images/index_msw_generation_rates_900px.jpg\">has declined modestly</a> since a 2000 high of nearly 4 ¾ pounds per person. But the ethnographic evidence of YouTube does not lie: Americans still throw out an absurd amount and variety of stuff, <a href=\"http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/images/index_pie_chrt_900px.jpg\">most of it</a> either sellable, salvageable, or recyclable.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-10.png\"><img title=\"Picture 10\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-10-300x171.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"171\"></a>In one <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLKs0CZhyQA&list=PL5424D3742F2E7B51&index=7&feature=plpp_video\">particularly heartbreaking YouTube moment</a>, senseless violence is committed against what appears to be an entire toddler-hood worth of toys. I usually enjoy the garbage videos almost as much as my son does, but seeing two perfectly good toy cars—the Flintstonesque foot-powered ones kids ride in—pitched into a formidable McNeilus front-end loader is too much. It’s like watching a disposable consumption snuff film. I paid $20 for one much like them on craigslist last year, and would happily have offered $35 for the pair. But I’m just one guy, darn it, I can’t save them all.</p>\n<p>Doing something decent with your castoffs has never been easier. Recycling databases at websites like <a href=\"http://search.earth911.com/\">earth911.com</a> and <a href=\"http://1800recycling.com/find/\">1800recycling.com</a> make it simple to find local recyclers for even the most exotic goods. <a href=\"http://urbanore.com/ecopark-store/shop/what-we-sell/\">Building material salvagers</a> <a href=\"http://www.buildingresources.org/donations_inventory.html\">are on the rise</a>; <a href=\"http://www.craigslist.org/about/sites\">craigslist </a>and <a href=\"http://www.freecycle.org/\">freecycle</a> make it a snap to sell or donate just about anything that can still be used. And of course, you can always just buy less crap.</p>\n<p>But when it comes to waste management decisions, nothing is easier than the curb. That’s what makes curbside recycling and composting programs so successful, especially single stream recycling, which doesn’t require rinsing or sorting of recyclables. But it’s also what makes hauling perfectly good stuff out to the sidewalk seem reasonable to so many people.</p>\n<p>I’m no garbage wimp, by the way, effetely bemoaning the excesses of others. As a youngster, I spent a couple of summers intermittently driving a garbage truck in a small community in northern Saskatchewan. But here’s the real heartbreak—my time behind the wheel of a rear-loader happened long before the advent of digital cameras, and no video was ever taken. If only I had 3 or 4 minutes of that sweet garbage action recorded, I swear I could give “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&src_vid=06xpoVe6ZoQ&annotation_id=annotation_211174&v=-w6uIDEbNX4\">Types of ‘Garbage Truck’ II</a>” a run for its money.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-11.png\"><img title=\"Picture 11\" src=\"http://www.lastwordonnothing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"463\" height=\"275\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>Images</strong> Screen grabs, from top to bottom: “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouf3uLeLioE&list=PL5424D3742F2E7B51&index=9&feature=plpp_video\">McNeilus Tag Axle Rear Loader</a>” by<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/georgewuzheer\"> georgewuzheer </a> (first three images), “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLKs0CZhyQA&list=PL5424D3742F2E7B51&index=7&feature=plpp_video\">I spent some time on Orange County today</a>” by <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/shadofax96\">shadofax96</a> (the toys–look away) and “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xpoVe6ZoQ&list=PL5424D3742F2E7B51&index=11&feature=plpp_video\">Types of ‘Garbage Truck’</a>” by <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/FormerWMDriver\">FormerWMDriver</a>. Dump! Dump! Dump!</p>\n<p> </p>\n<div></div>"
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"content" : "<p>\nNo one would mistake the average\nshell script for principled software.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nYet, if we look at how scripts are used, patterns emerge.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nUnix is a bestiary \nof <em>ad hoc</em> databases: comma-, colon-, tab- and space-separated tables.\nThink of <code>/etc/*</code> or <code>/var/log/*</code>, or\nof columnar commands.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nShell scripts commonly, if unknowingly, compose\nfive (of six) primitive relational-algebraic operations\non these tables:\nunion, difference, projection, selection and renaming:\n</p>\n\n<ul>\n \n <li><code>cat</code> acts like union;</li>\n\n <li><code>sed</code> and <code>grep</code> act like selection;</li>\n\n <li><code>cut</code> acts like projection;</li>\n\n <li><code>awk</code> can perform renaming; and</li>\n\n <li><code>diff</code> acts (almost) like difference.</li>\n\n</ul>\n\n<p>\nRelational algebra (whose sixth primitive operation is Cartesian product)\nis equivalent to both relational calculus and SQL.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nCartesian product (and equijoin) are not difficult to create in bash.</p>\n\n<p>\nIf you find yourself stumbling into a relational design pattern in a shell script, \nconsider making that relationality rigid and explicit.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nRead on to learn a little more about databases, shell scripts or both.\n</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>\n<b>Update:</b> A few readers\nhave pointed out the flexible\n<a href=\"http://linux.die.net/man/1/join\">join</a>\ncommand.\n\nOthers have pointed out that the classic text\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020107981X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=ucmbread-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=020107981X\">The AWK Programming Language</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ucmbread-20&l=as2&o=1&a=020107981X\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">\ncontains\na section on how to implement a relational DB with awk.\n\n\n</p>\n <p><a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/sql-in-the-shell/\">Click here to read the rest of the article</a></p>"
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"title" : "On tedium",
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"content" : "<p>The tedium of the repetitious task: how could it be otherwise? But we all know a few people — saints of a kind — who so enjoy setting the world to rights that no essential task seems to weigh them down, and they add figures or enter data with perfect equanimity. What most of us would experience as a boring necessity strikes them as an opportunity to enjoy the seamless functioning of mind or body. </p>\n<p>And it is really all about mindset, isn’t it? Those elders who had no choice but to knit if they wanted to stay warm in the winter might think today’s hobbyist knitters slightly mad, unless back in the day they happened to be of a creative bent. But I’m told that when an Amish man draws up a cost/benefit analysis of a project, the labor required to complete it will be listed as a benefit rather than a cost. </p>\n<p>I imagine it was only after the Industrial Revolution that tedium became a nearly inescapable condition of life — and with it the necessity for diversion on an industrial scale. Most sports, too, seem mind-numbingly dull to the uninitiated: soccer with its endless running up and down the field, American football with its constant, sometimes lengthy breaks in play, baseball and golf with their general lack of excitement. A NASCAR race would be the very embodiment of treadmill monotony were it not for the thrill of the occasional crash. Commercial TV in the U.S. has 20 minutes of highly repetitive, typically stupid advertising per hour. If people can learn to find that kind of tedium entertaining, why not data entry? </p>\n<p>I’m wondering whether the high levels of distraction produced by the modern diversion machine might not make tasks traditionally seen as tedious more desirable now, as rare opportunities for sustained attention. That might explain why, this evening, I had a hard time tearing myself away from a highly monotonous repair job at one of my websites that involves doing essentially the same thing to each of a couple hundred posts in sequence. The rain was drumming on the roof, the furnace cycled on from time to time, and there was no other sound but the clicking of my fingers on the keypad. I was tired but not quite exhausted, happy but not actively excited about anything in particular, and it was only after I reminded myself that the task at hand was, in fact, monotonous as hell that I remembered to be bored, and stopped so I could write yet another goddamned blog post. </p>\n<p>*</p>\n<p><em>(Update 1/12)</em> Thinking about this further in the shower this morning, I’ve decided that the supposed link between repetition and tedium is even more of a red herring than I thought. Further to my example of repetitious things we tend to find pleasurable, it occurred to me that music is the ultimate in repetition — except when it isn’t. Over the years, I’ve learned to appreciate types of music at two extremes: atonal Western art music with virtually no repetition of anything, and highly repetitive, trance-inducing forms of world music. And remembering back to the first times I heard examples of musical genres I later came to love, such as blues, Appalachian string-band music and thrash metal, I remember in each case thinking, “This stuff all sounds alike! No way will I ever learn to like it.” We like to think that some tunes are inherently infectious, but I suggest they probably wouldn’t be so perceived by people from a radically different culture who hadn’t trained their ears to appreciate (in this case) Western melodic music on a diatonic scale. </p>\n<p>So music may be the prototypical example of repetitiousness that we’ve learned to perceive as pleasurable. With the advent of mass-produced recorded music, we are for the first time in human history able to summon up virtually any kind of music on a whim — and I would argue that we do it largely to fight what we perceive as tedium. In this kind of use, as partly listened-to artificial soundscape, a <em>lack</em> of sufficient repetition can in fact be a real liability. To pick the extreme example I mentioned above, more challenging avant-garde music has few fans. But even traditional, melodic classical music, with its frequent changes in tempo and volume, is less than ideal as accompaniment to many tedious tasks in an industrial society, such as shopping, housework, or commuting by automobile. Pop music is much more effective at cutting through the noise, and perhaps inducing a state of mild trance. </p>\n<p>I think the comments below by John Miedema and “mostly quiet regular” get at the essence of tedium: it is intimately associated with powerlessness. Thus while I can enjoy sitting on my front porch watching the rain or hanging out on a street corner watching people go by, I’m very likely to perceive sitting in a doctor’s waiting room as tedious, even if it’s full of interesting people. Sports — my example above — can be of absorbing interest because fans identify closely enough with the teams or players to feel enmeshed in the action, and of course certain kinds of crowd behavior can produce intense feelings of shared power. And with music, once we become attuned to a particular piece or genre, our entire mind-body is engaged, and one experiences — for lack of a better term — harmoniousness. </p>\n<p>A final idea, then: what makes a tedious task tedious is the split it perpetuates, and perhaps exacerbates, between thinking and feeling. And I’ll stop here before this argument itself becomes too unbearably tedious by attempting to cover all the bases (sports metaphor FTW!) and thus in a way disempowering the reader, who after all, on the Internet, has a certain expectation of being an active participant in the exchange of ideas and not merely a passive consumer of them. (But I’m beginning to understand how <a href=\"http://www.willbuckingham.com/\">real philosophers</a> can write entire books on, for example, <a href=\"http://www.thinkbuddha.org/article/501/introducing-happiness\">happiness</a>.)</p>"
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"title" : "Waiting to see if rich countries 'fry the big fish' over corruption | John Githongo",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/28872?ns=guardian&pageName=Waiting+to+see+if+rich+countries+%27fry+the+big+fish%27+over+corruption+%7C+Jo%3AArticle%3A1686199&ch=Global+development&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Governance+%28Global+development%29%2CTransparency+%28Global+development%29%2CGlobal+development%2CKenya+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CBusiness%2CBanking+%28Business+sector%29&c5=Unclassified%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CInvestments+%26+Savings&c6=John+Githongo&c7=12-Jan-11&c8=1686199&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Global+development&c13=&c25=Poverty+matters+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FGlobal+development%2Fblog%2FPoverty+matters+blog\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>It's the turn of the developing world to watch how the west handles fraud and corruption at the highest levels</p><p>It is most curious that no senior executive of the failed banks and other senior officials whose shenanigans precipitated the financial meltdown in 2008 has been charged with corruption for the abuse of vested authority for personal gain.</p><p>Banks issued loans they knew would never be repaid and the more of them they pushed out of the door, the bigger the personal bonuses earned. These loans were securitised into instruments that were given triple-A ratings by agencies paid by the banks. All this with the assurance that if it went up in smoke, as some brave officials and well-informed analysts had predicted, then the public would foot the bill.</p><p>Billions were pumped into banks, often in processes overseen by former colleagues who had joined the government. Despite a small but steady stream of whistleblowers coming forward since 2008, the much-heralded <a href=\"http://www.soxlaw.com/\" title=\"\">Sarbanes-Oxley Act</a>, and other relevant pieces of legislation, have yet to really kick in. If I were a \"governance adviser\" posted from Kenya to some western country I'd be examining the relationship between politicians, lobbyists for the bankers, and the ex-bankers who have become senior bureaucrats with even minimal regulatory oversight over the financial sector in administrations.</p><p>Success in the fight against corruption in many African countries is often judged by the capacity of authorities to \"fry the big fish\" – to prosecute the heads of organisations, senior politicians and mandarins found to be involved in corruption. It's a seemingly easy measure, but one that has proved difficult even in mature democracies where the prosecution of grand corruption is concerned.</p><p>Corruption was a tool of political management and competition until the end of the cold war. In certain countries such as Germany, bribes were tax-deductible as business expenses. Recently, however, some of the most impressive corruption-related prosecutions have been against the German industrial giant, Siemens.</p><p>Good governance, transparency, accountability, democratic elections and the fight against corruption all rose to the top of the global development agenda in the 1990s, driven by organisations such as <a href=\"http://www.transparency.org.uk/\" title=\"\">Transparency International</a>. These efforts in a sense culminated in the 2003 <a href=\"http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/\" title=\"\">United Nations Convention Against Corruption</a>. In the 90s, much emphasis was laid on fighting graft from the top. \"A fish rots from the head\", a Ghanaian saying goes, and so a raft of anti-corruption initiatives sprung up across the developing world, along with the shift to more liberal forms of political and economic organisation. No election manifesto was complete without the most determined exhortations with regard to corruption.</p><p>The last decade has seen a shift or, more accurately, an integration of the \"top-down\" anti-corruption strategies with \"bottom-up\" initiatives driven by ordinary citizens, using mobile phones and the internet to vent their outrage.</p><p>The fight has shifted from organisations to movements, from workshops on to the streets, from development practitioners to ordinary citizens – harder to measure but more difficult to ignore. Recent events in India, which has seen an unprecedented uprising against high-level corruption, are an indicator of this. The uprisings in the Middle East, too, have at their heart widespread public objection to graft among corrupt elites and to their conspicuous consumption.</p><p>In Kenya it used to be said: \"Why hire a lawyer, if you can buy a judge?\" Similarly, if you want to steal from a large number of people and get them to pay for it twice over – open a bank and rob it.</p><p>We live in an increasingly multipolar world where graft is concerned. It's the turn of the developing world to watch how the west handles fraud and corruption at the highest levels in their corporate and other sectors. I would like to argue that the organic youth-heavy movements in the west, such as <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/occupy-wall-street\" title=\"\">Occupy Wall Street</a>, are part of this shift, except the \"c\" word isn't being used – yet. This is a pointer to what I predict the fight against corruption will look like in 2012.</p><p><em>• John Githongo is CEO of the Inuka Kenya Trust and a commissioner for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) in the UK</em></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/governance-and-development\">Governance</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/transparency-and-development\">Transparency</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/kenya\">Kenya</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking\">Banking</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fglobal-development%2Fpoverty-matters%2F2012%2Fjan%2F11%2Fwest-fights-corruption-development-world-watching\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "In praise of … Nile Rodgers | Editorial",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/35960?ns=guardian&pageName=In+praise+of+*+Nile+Rodgers+%7C+Editorial%3AArticle%3A1683006&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=Pop+and+rock+%28Music+genre%29%2CMusic%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CCulture&c5=Pop+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Editorial&c7=12-Jan-02&c8=1683006&c9=Article&c10=Editorial&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=In+praise+of+...+%28editorial+series%29&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Chic's creative genius can take heart looking back over a life that wouldn't have worked out very well at all but for music</p><p>\"This ain't no disco,\" sang Talking Heads on their 1979 track Life During Wartime, and lots of people at the time seemed to agree. Disco had begun to be seen as superficial, ersatz and trashy in its pursuit of chic. The band that bore that name, and had done so much to mould the new sound, plummeted out of favour. But it would take more than this to keep <a href=\"http://nilerodgers.com/\" title=\"\">Nile Rodgers</a>, Chic's creative genius, down. He'd had an upbringing that could easily have destroyed him. In <a href=\"http://nilerodgers.com/about/projects/le-freak-book\" title=\"\">his compelling autobiography</a>, he recalls wandering as a child through a forest of legs belonging to his parents' friends who had nodded out – become catatonic – on heroin. He started sniffing glue aged 11 and by 15 had left home to sleep rough on subway trains. And though he later found success and immense wealth, it didn't quiet his soul. He produced David Bowie's Let's Dance and Madonna's Like a Virgin, all the time sustaining a raging cocaine habit. So it was to his relief when finally sober that he found he was still able to play and compose. Ever frank with his public, he has shared the story of <a href=\"http://nilerodgers.com/blogs/planet-c-in-english\" title=\"\">his cancer treatment via a blog</a>. In facing this latest obstacle, Rodgers can take heart looking back over a life that wouldn't have worked out very well at all but for music, and a family doing its best to survive the chaos. Disco may have had its detractors, but Chic spoke to that part of the human spirit that keeps broken people going. Listen to them and you'll hear the sound of cares being left behind for a night, ready, finally, for some good times.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/popandrock\">Pop and rock</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fcommentisfree%2F2012%2Fjan%2F02%2Fin-praise-of-nile-rodgers\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Over the holiday season I completed the redesign and updating of the resources section of my website. This now consists of six sections: a series of introductions to basic aspects of African textile production and use; pages exploring various important African textile traditions; a basic African textiles reading list; web resources and links; this blog with news of African textile related events etc.; and finally our archive of sold cloths. The front page of the resource section is <a href=\"http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/res01.htm\">here</a>. This post and the following two give a taste of what is there. Below is my list of suggested introductory reading from the site ….</p> <h3>Sub-Saharan African Textiles: A basic reading list</h3> <p>There are other books that are easier to find but these are the most useful and reliable.</p> <ul> <li>Bernhard Gardi ed. - Woven Beauty: the Art of West African Textiles (Christoph Merian Verlag, 2009) </li> <li>Colleen E. Kriger - Cloth in West African History (Alta Mira, 2006) </li> <li>Chapurukha m. Kusimba et. al. eds. - Unwrapping the Textile Traditions of Madagascar (Fowler Museum, 2004) </li> <li>Venice Lamb - West African Weaving (Duckworth, 1975) </li> <li>Venice Lamb & Judy Holmes - Nigerian Weaving (Shell, 1980) </li> <li>Vanessa Drake Moraga - Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa (The Textile Museum, 2011) </li> <li>John Picton et. al. - History, Design and Craft in West African Strip Woven Cloth (Smithsonian, 1988) </li> <li>John Picton & John Mack - African Textiles (British Museum Press, 1989, 2nd Edition) </li> <li>Karl-Ferdinand Schaedler - Weaving in Africa South of the Sahara (Panterra Verlag, 1987) </li> </ul> <a href=\"http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/res01.htm\">Back to Resources Page</a> <div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3842834058715698204-4710792720313100552?l=adireafricantextiles.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Fuel Subsidy Removal Protests for Dummies",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\"><div>On the first day of the indefinite general strike organised by a coalition between two of the largest unions in Nigeria – the TUC and the NLC – and a cluster of smaller unions and social media-based activists and organisations, some external observers have expressed surprise at the intensity of resistance the “<a href=\"http://occupynigeria.wordpress.com/\">Occupy Nigeria</a>” campaign has mounted against the removal of the fuel subsidy on January 1st and the size of the mass demonstrations taking place. From an outside perspective, it might seem like a dust-devil has been whipped up without why in the desert. In case there’s still any confusion, allow me to explain why there is so much anger and resistance. <br><br></div><div>The answer begins with a question: would it be acceptable to citizens of affluent countries that the price of petrol doubles overnight without any warning? Perhaps Jeffrey Sachs would be alone <a href=\"http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/subsidy-removal-un-commends-jonathan-as-eu-passes-vote-of-confidence/\">in his view</a>, or perhaps he only prescribes a certain type of medicine for African countries. Perhaps the view from Sachs' brain is that Africans can get by on generic drugs long past their sell-by date.<br><br></div><div>Aside from Sachs' development fantasies, the lived reality of citizens of the Nigerian state is that it provides little or no security, no infrastructure, no education and no employment opportunities (apart from mostly McJobs in the civil service). Everywhere in Nigeria, the basic elements of civilised existence have to be taken care of house-by-house, compound-by-compound. You must sink your own borehole for water, buy, install and fuel a generator for power, hire security guards to keep the wolves from the door, pay school fees to ensure your kids get a half-decent education because the public school system is in perpetual meltdown. And to earn enough money to get through the day, you must hustle.<br><br></div><div>The breakdown of a standard tax and political representation based social contract between citizens and the state in Nigeria is almost entirely a result of the past few decades of the so-called ‘resource curse’. Earning billions of dollars each year from crude exports, the Nigerian government has no need to rely on tax from individuals or local companies; tax and royalty payments from the international oil companies (as well as historically, loans from international financial institutions) have been sufficient to fund the annual budget at all levels of government. For the past few decades, cheap fuel has therefore been the only form of social contract between ordinary Nigerians and the state and the principle lever to control inflation during times of rising oil prices. With most Nigerians subsisting on US$2 or less, subsidised fuel has also been a survival mechanism, making life only just bearable.<br><br></div><div>It was therefore highly surprising to Nigerians to find out that the fuel subsidy had been removed on January 1st and that the price regulating body under the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) – the PPPRA – had more than doubled the price of petrol overnight. No one had been given warning. The expectation was that the subsidy would be removed at the earliest in April. The strong suspicion is that following on from Christine Lagarde’s <a href=\"http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2011/pr11439.htm\">visit to Nigeria</a> in late December, the government had accelerated its plans. From the views of key government figures, it’s easy to see how Nigeria acceded to IMF pressure with little or no resistance. The Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLd8o8z-2CU\">has repeatedly stated</a> that removing the fuel subsidy would only hurt the affluent car-owning population, forgetting how central the price of fuel is to almost every basic aspect of life here. Meanwhile, the Governor of the Central Bank, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, <a href=\"http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/sanusi-forex-reserves-ll-improve-on-fuel-subsidy-removal/106443/\">has stated</a> that removal of the subsidy would only have a short-term inflationary effect. With opinions like this, the IMF was walking into an open door.<br><br></div><div>Given the state of the global economy, it is little surprise that the IMF is in favour of insisting on reducing debt wherever it can. However, the IMF also appears to be suffering from institutional amnesia; what is happening in Nigeria is in some respects a re-run of the Structural Adjustment Programme in the 1980s, and President Ibrahim Babangida’s short-term attempts to resist austerity measures. As we will recall, “IBB” ended up creating his own austerity package, which was more severe than that proposed by the IMF. The Nigerian economy quickly tanked, resulting in mass suffering among Nigerians. Fundamentalist strains of evangelical Christianity mushroomed forth from the barren earth. Unlike the World Bank, which is increasingly taking political-economy factors seriously in its analysis and its programmes, even today the IMF and its high-priesthood consultants views the world from the numerical altar of macro-economics. The technocratic nature of the IMF means that the organisation is in fact programmed to forget the past.</div><div>During the recent fuel subsidy debate on local Nigerian TV station Channels, Mrs Okonjo-Iweala was keen to state <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLd8o8z-2CU\">what she referred to</a> as ‘facts’. At no point has anyone in the executive effectively challenged former Petroleum Minister Tam David-West’s <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0MUoK2Xuw4\">querying</a> of whether there is a subsidy in the first place, or whether the landing cost of imported fuel has been artificially padded. Given the findings of <a href=\"http://saharareporters.com/news-page/monumental-oil-subsidy-fraud-and-corruption-nnpc-damning-kpmg-report-premium-times\">the recent KPMG report</a> into the NNPC, it seems that facts about the oil sector in Nigeria are thin on the ground.</div><div>The defence offered by the Finance Minister during that same debate is that the savings from removal of the subsidy would be spent on a palliative capital-spending programme – the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE). Nigerians have raised a number of critical objections to this proposal and the timing of subsidy removal. <br><br></div><div>Firstly, given the glut of money in state coffers in the past few years and the lack of any successful infrastructural development (for instance in power and transport), there is little guarantee that the SURE programme would be implemented or successful, rather than go the way of all initiatives in the past. The government of Nigeria has not been able to significantly raise the amount of power generated, nor has it been able to achieve the low-tech objective of revamping the dilapidated railway network, still less has it been able to improve standards in public education and healthcare. What then would be different about the SURE programme?<br><br></div><div>Secondly, while most Nigerians are probably not ideologically opposed to subsidy removal (and targeting the corrupt ‘cabal’ of fuel importers who benefit from the subsidy), they are utterly opposed to the timing, given the insecurity in the land raised by Islamic militancy in the North and the potential for renewed militancy in response in the Niger Delta. A phased subsidy withdrawal, as has happened elsewhere, would have been the preferred approach.<br><br></div><div>Thirdly, the idea that removing the subsidy equates to ‘deregulation’ and the equivalent private sector boom as witnessed in the past decade in the telecoms sector is highly suspect to most. For the downstream oil sector to be deregulated, there has to be new legislation in place. The Petroleum Industry Bill, which separates the functions of a national oil company, regulation and policy-making, would need to become law. We have been waiting since the previous minister of petroleum for the PIB to be passed. At present, the NNPC is the epicentre of corruption in the oil sector in Nigeria, and has to broken up into its constituent parts for the private sector to be given space to grow its role. In addition, Nigerians would want to see a much higher percentage of crude oil refined locally, rather than the current reliance on imported fuel, to ensure a favourable local pricing policy that does not depend on state subsidy. Without any of these key deregulatory building blocks in place, removal of the ‘subsidy’ now is simply terrible timing and does not inspire confidence among a people who long ago lost their faith in government.<br><br></div><div>Finally, if savings are urgently required from the annual government budget, most Nigerians would argue that the first place to cut costs is that of the price of running government itself. As the Governor of the Central Bank <a href=\"http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/12/national-assembly-overhead-when-figures-don%E2%80%99t-lie/\">pointed out last year</a>, the National Assembly consumes 25% of the Federal overheads budget; the cost of running the President’s office has been widely publicised in recent weeks (including a <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/201112270487.html\">billion naira food bill</a>). It is rare to see a member of the executive - down to director-generals of government agencies most Nigerians have never heard of - travelling without a sizeable convoy of expensive cars. Nigerian government delegations to international conferences and gatherings are often by far the largest, with a supersized retinue of special advisors, assistants and staff for the first-wife in attendance, there to collect their allowance and have access to shopping opportunities overseas.<br><br></div><div>As it is, most Nigerians are poor, and will simply not be able to survive with any comfort on US$2 a day and a doubling of living costs. That the government of Nigeria didn’t foresee the massive level of resistance happening today is quite bewildering. It shows a complete disconnect and disregard for Nigerians. However, where there is the greatest danger, there is greatest hope. Nigerians have never been so united in years – last week, in the unofficially renamed Liberation Square in Kano, Christians guarded the space as their Muslim co-protestors prayed. In return, last Sunday, Muslims guarded Churches as others prayed inside. <br><br></div><div>What we are witnessing with Occupy Nigeria is a generational transfer, as young, social-media enabled activists gradually take over the baton from unionist stalwarts. Nigeria's young population is increasingly letting go of the deferential attitude of their parents generation. In the south at least, young Nigerians are beginning to ask questions of the religious leadership that has been complicit with the status-quo. At long last, there is accountability pressure building up in the system.<br><br></div><div>In the short term, following on from the next few days of protest and shut-down, it’s hard to imagine anything other than a policy reversal, and a planned withdrawal being announced, in step with a clear programme of projects that must be delivered before any further withdrawal of subsidy is implemented (citizens monitoring a re-drafted SURE programme for instance). Even at this very late stage, President Goodluck could become a hero of the process. Come what may, underlying events this week a deeper shift is at work: a new generation of Nigerians well versed in events to the north in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya is demanding that the terms of the social contract in Nigeria are re-written, in favour of increased accountability in political leadership.</div></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-8972838970581300908?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "GAO Goes After Administration “TARP Made Money” Claim",
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"content" : "<p>I don’t know how many times we’ve gone after the “TARP made a profit” bunk, but that topic requires an annoying amount of vigilance (the latest shill was <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/epiphanies_from_austan_goolsbee\">Austan Gooslbee a mere week ago</a>). This story is a messaging version of three card monte: look at the things that don’t involve the big subsidies, such as continued super low interest rates (a massive tax on savers) or QE (the Fed keeps insisting it won’t take credit losses, when it plans to sell its holdings when the economy strengthens, which means when interest rates are higher….which guarantees interest rate losses). Oh, and the “made a profit” claim also implies the government got a good deal, when the warrants were massively underpriced. </p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/2587.html\">best short form debunking</a> came from Steve Waldman and it cannot be repeated too often:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Suppose my kid’s meth habit got the best of him. He’s needs to come up with $100K quick or his dealer’s gonna whack him. But he’s a good kid, really! Coulda happened to anyone. So I “lend” him the money, even though he has no visible means of support and the sketchiest loan sharks in town wouldn’t give him the time of day. Now I believe in bootstraps and hard work, individualism and self-reliance. So I tell my son. “Son, you are going to pay me back every penny of that loan. You are going to work it off. I have arranged with one of my golf buddies, a guy who owes me a favor or three, a job that pays $200K a year. You’d better show up every day at 9 a.m. and sit behind that desk, and get me back my money!” And he does! After a year, he’s made me whole. What a good kid.</p>\n<p>No bail out, right? He paid me back every penny! Worked it off!</p>\n<p>Bullshit. The opportunity I provided him, the $200K job that he would not have received without my intercession, was a huge grant. On the open market, if I were to accept bribes from the highest bidder to wangle the job from my friend, that opportunity would be worth more than the $100K advanced. I paid my son’s loan with my own money. I just obscured the cash flows, so my son and I can pretend and sustain our mutual self-regard and our righteous disdain for the moochers and the hippies and the riff-raff.</p></blockquote>\n<p>But now, we have the GAO, in bureaucratese, <a href=\"http://www.gao.gov/assets/590/587555.pdf\">going after Treasury</a> for dubious public presentation of TARP projected results. In simple form, Treasury cherry picks. It includes programs which are successful and excludes costs of ones that are iffy, like AIG. Here is the key section:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Although Treasury regularly reports on the cost of TARP programs and has enhanced such reporting over time, GAO’s analysis of Treasury press releases about specific programs indicate that information about estimated lifetime costs and income are included only when programs are expected to result in lifetime income. For example, Treasury issued a press release for its bank investment programs, including CPP [Capital Purchase Program], and noted that the programs would result in lifetime income, or profit. However, press releases for investments in AIG, a program that is anticipated to result in a lifetime cost to Treasury, did not include program-specific cost information. Although press releases for programs expected to result in a cost to Treasury provide useful transaction information, they exclude lifetime, program-specific cost estimates.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The GAO also recognizes that there is a risk to rescuing meth addicts and wishes that could be acknowledged too:</p>\n<blockquote><p>While Treasury can measure and report direct costs, indirect costs associated with the moral hazard created by the government’s intervention in the private sector are more difficult to measure and assess.</p></blockquote>\n<p>It’s sad to see our prejudices confirmed yet again, that it is best to assume the Administration is lying until proven otherwise. </p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/fteafrro5kpjfa8gjatadmvu48/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2012%2F01%2Fgao-goes-after-administration-tarp-made-money-claim.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:cGdyc7Q-1BI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=cGdyc7Q-1BI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=PWgxhdCE-SQ:h0vFmDNxaTA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NakedCapitalism/~4/PWgxhdCE-SQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.4/96129?ns=guardian&pageName=How+Gil+Scott-Heron+and+Stevie+Wonder+set+up+Martin+Luther+King+Day%3AArticle%3A1685011&ch=Music&c3=Guardian&c4=Music%2CGil+Scott-Heron%2CStevie+Wonder%2CBooks%2CMartin+Luther+King%2CUS+news&c5=Folk+Rock+Music%2CPop+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Gil+Scott-Heron&c7=12-Jan-08&c8=1685011&c9=Article&c10=Feature%2CExtract&c11=Music&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FGil+Scott-Heron\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>In an extract from his memoir written before he died last year, Gil Scott-Heron talks about when he toured with Stevie Wonder to establish Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday in the US</p><p>Memphis, Tennessee was only 90 miles west of Jackson, my childhood home. But Memphis was as far away as the north pole in my mind. The history that we were given about it was done in light pencil that hopscotched its way to a semi-solid landing with Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. Sun Records considered itself the fuse that lit the 1950s with Elvis and rock'n'roll. With Carla and Rufus Thomas and Otis Redding, Stax Records brought blues to the hit parade with hooks and horns and a solid beat, evolving into Al Green and Willie Mitchell. Memphis meant music.</p><p>And unless you stop to think for a minute, you might forget that it was in Memphis that <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/martin-luther-king\" title=\"\">Dr Martin Luther King, Jr</a> was shot and killed on a motel balcony on 4 April 1968. Stevie Wonder did not forget. In 1980, Stevie joined with the members of the Black Caucus in the US congress to speak out for the need to honour the day King was born, to make his birthday a national holiday.</p><p>The campaign began in earnest on Halloween of 1980 in Houston, Texas, with Stevie's national tour supporting a new LP called <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnccZm4uw_M\" title=\"\">Hotter than July</a>, featuring the song Happy Birthday, which advocated a holiday for King. I arrived in Houston in the early afternoon to join the tour as the opening act. By 15 January 1981, King's birthday, I had been working on the Hotter than July tour for 10 weeks.</p><p>What's amazing about people who are supposed to \"think of everything\" is how many things have never crossed their minds. That was never more clear to me than when I saw how things looked from the back of the outdoor stage set up on the Washington DC monument grounds as Stevie's rally for King got under way.</p><p>I would never claim to be the smartest son of a gun on the planet. But by the same token, by then I had been in this business for 10 years and had to feel as though I knew more than when I started. I had some new information crossing my mind as I climbed the back stairs on to the temporary stage and looked out at perhaps 50,000 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder across the expanse of the Mall, chanting: \"Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday!\"</p><p>The Hotter than July tour was a project that, when taken as a whole, was set up to cover 16 weeks, or four months, a third of a year. The endeavour was cut into two six-week halves with a break – a rest period – that lasted a month. In essence, this rally was the half-time show before the second six-week half. One thing that knocked me out looking at this half-time show was how much I had not thought about. Like how much work was involved in organising a fucking rally. That was what Stevie had done and what had to have taken up so much of his offstage time when we were playing, and what must have consumed what I was calling a \"rest period\". The rally. Ways to publicise it, ways to dramatise it, ways to legitimise it.</p><p>Some of it was obvious. You had to have permits, such as a licence to have a parade. That seemed bizarre, but it took a necessary number of police to close certain streets or divert traffic or just stand around looking like police. And on the monument grounds there were wooden saw horses and security and crowd restraints and a stage and sound equipment and technicians to set it all up and run it. And I was enjoying another piece of equipment I felt was necessary: a heat-blowing machine to warm my chilly backside.</p><p>I had no idea what this was costing, what the total expenses were. Nor did I ever ask about it and have the expenses incurred by Stevie neurotically concealed from me. I didn't have any way to justify saying: \"Hey, just what the hell is this gonna cost?\" I considered that this information was probably something that was being distributed on a need-to-know basis, and apparently I did not have that. I didn't worry about why.</p><p>My respect for Stevie Wonder expanded in every direction that day. I was following his lead like a member of his band, because seeing as he had envisioned was a new level of believing. It was something that seeped in softly, and when you were personally touched by someone's effort and genuine sincerity, your brain said you didn't yet understand but your soul said you should trust.</p><p>We had been to Mayor Marion Barry's office earlier in the day. There, I was introduced to the winner of a citywide essay contest that had been run in the Washington DC school system. The theme of the essay was why King's birthday should be a national holiday, and the contest was open to middle-and high-school students.<br><br>A seventh grader [12 or 13-year-old] won, and I thought the fact that he was in the seventh grade was the headline out of that. After they introduced us, I took a few minutes to read his essay so I would know what to be listening for – my cue when he came to the end, because now, at the rally, I would present him to the crowd.</p><p>It was a grey winter day, the type of grey that looked permanent, not bothered with clouds or memories of blue. Grey, sullen, not threatening but sporting an attitude. When we got to the part of the programme where the kid was to read his essay, I introduced him and walked back offstage. I kept one ear on the loudspeakers because I had to be on it when he was through. That would be no more than five minutes, max.</p><p>At some stage, I heard the kid having trouble reading his own essay. I thought he might have been nervous with the big crowd and the TV audience – it must have felt as if everybody in the world was watching him. I could hear the crowd getting restless, and a couple of folks started giving the kid a hard time. Suddenly, mid-sentence, or maybe in the middle of a word, the kid stopped. He turned around and went back to his seat. It was a seat of honour, right behind the podium in the middle of the stage.</p><p>It was quiet now, just a sprinkle of sympathetic applause. I found my list of speakers and introduced the next one, but I realised something had gone wrong. As the next speaker approached the podium, I went over to the kid and said: \"Let me see that essay there, brotherman.\" And sure enough, he had stopped at the top of his second page, a good five or six paragraphs from the end. He had been reading from a mimeographed copy of his essay, and the ink was faded – I would have needed night goggles or some shit to see what was on that paper.</p><p>I waited until that next speaker was through, then went up there and explained to the audience that I was going to introduce the kid again, and that he was going to read his essay to the end, and that they were going to listen. Yeah, I knew it was cold, I said, but it was cold for this kid, too, and he was reading from a faded copy, and I didn't want to hear nothing from the crowd but applause, period. \"Have some patience with the young brother, please.\"</p><p>After I introduced him, I walked backstage again. He started to read again, and I heard him coming to the point where he had faltered, the part on the page that was damn near invisible. He started to falter again, and I listened for some wiseass to say something. But then it started to go smoothly, and I looked over and there was Diana Ross standing next to him with her arm around his shoulder. Without being in the way, without making it her essay, she helped him over those rough spots. My man's confidence got a lift and the crowd started to appreciate what he had written. I stood there thinking: there must be 30 or 40 adults up here on this stage, and she's the only one of us who thought to go up there and help the brother!</p><p>Jesse Jackson spoke, too. His attitude was about changing the laws and about people needing to know more about <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall\" title=\"\">Thurgood Marshall</a> [the first African-American supreme court judge] and needing to know more about what happened, because the way to change America was through the law. You see, if you don't change the law, you don't change anything. You could burn your community down and somebody else would build it up; all you were doing was burning down some houses. But if you changed the law, then you had done a whole lot to change the foundation of society.<br><br>To be sure, I looked at the appearances there and then as a tribute of respect for King. But they were also an indication of respect for a brother for taking a step to bring a positive idea forward, to remind some of us that we could hardly criticise congressmen and other representatives for inaction if their attempts to push ideas important to us out in the open received no visible interest from those it purportedly would benefit most.</p><p>Yeah, this piece of legislation to make King's birthday into a national holiday looked like a long shot, especially with it being raised just after America had elected Ronald Reagan, who would be inaugurated at the other end of the Mall in five days. But if our community was to make valuable contributions, then those who made them had to be recognised as offering something of value. Why would the next one of us feel that he or she should make the effort, marshal the strength and somehow fortify him or herself against the opposition that always seemed stronger, if even a man who won the Nobel peace prize was ignored where those efforts for peace had done the most good?</p><p>All holidays should not be set aside for generals. To have the country honour men for doing what they did at a time when difficult personal decisions made their actions worthwhile for the overall good meant the same thing for all citizens. That had been both the point and the ultimate disappointment of what had once been called \"the <a href=\"http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/index.html\" title=\"\">civil rights movement</a>\".</p><p>What was special about the 60s was that there was only one thing happening, one movement. And that was the civil rights movement. There were different organisations coming from different angles because of geography, but in essence everybody had the same objective. It came so suddenly, from so many different angles, things happening in so many different towns and cities at once, that the \"powers that be\" were caught off-guard.</p><p>Until the 60s, \"the movement\" had been the exclusive property of middle-aged and old people. Then it became a young people thing, and as the 60s opened up, the key word became \"activism\", with <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokely_Carmichael\" title=\"\">Stokely Carmichael</a> and the SNCC [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], \"freedom rides\" [challenging segregation on interstate buses], and sit-ins. There was a new feeling of power in black communities. And once it got started, it was on the powers like paint.</p><p>But at some point a difference was created between \"equality\", \"freedom\" and \"civil rights\". Those differences were played up because something had to be done about the sudden unity among black folks all over the country. Folks got more media attention whenever they accentuated the differences. There were media-created splinters. Otherwise the civil rights movement would have been enough, and would have been more successful. Accomplishing the aims of the movement would have made \"gay rights\" and \"women's rights\" and \"lefts and rights\" extraneous.</p><p>But divide and conquer was the aim of programmes such as <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO\" title=\"\">COINTELPRO</a> [the FBI's covert attempt to infiltrate and disrupt groups deemed \"subversive\"]. And even though it ended up working damn near backward, it worked. They separated the fingers on the hand and gave each group a different demand; we lost our way. Separated, none of us seemed to know to watch out for COINTELPRO. J Edgar Hoover was dead, but in DC they honoured what he had said: fuck every one-a-them.</p><p>There I was at the halftime show, looking up and down the field, and I could see for the first time. I could see what this brother had seen long before, what really needed to be done.</p><p>We all took the stage. The crowd continued to chant: \"Martin Luther King Day, we took a holiday!\" <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnccZm4uw_M\" title=\"\">Stevie stepped up to the mic and addressed them</a>: \"It's fitting,\" he said, \"that we should gather here, for it was here that Martin Luther King inspired the entire nation and the world with his stirring words, his great vision both challenging and inspiring us with his great dream. People have asked, 'Why Stevie Wonder, as an artist?' Why should I be involved in this great cause? I'm Stevie Wonder the artist, yes, but I'm Steveland Morris, a man, a citizen of this country, and a human being. As an artist, my purpose is to communicate the message that can better improve the lives of all of us. I'd like to ask all of you just for one moment, if you will, to be silent and just to think and hear in your mind the voice of our Dr Martin Luther King ...\"</p><p>Somehow, years later, it seems that Stevie's effort as the leader of this campaign has been forgotten. But it is something that we should all remember. Just as surely as we should remember 4 April 1968, we should celebrate 15 January. And we should not forget that Stevie remembered.</p><p>As Stevie sang on Happy Birthday:</p><p><em>We all know everything</em></p><p><em>That he stood for time will bring</em></p><p><em>For in peace our hearts will sing</em></p><p><em>Thanks to Martin Luther King Extracted from The Last Holiday: A Memoir by Gil Scott-Heron published by Canongate at £20. To order a copy for £16 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. For more on Gil, including a short film of the last interview he did before he died and exclusive readings from The Last Holiday, go to </em><a href=\"http://www.canongate.tv/\" title=\"\"><em>www.canongate.tv</em></a></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/gil-scott-heron\">Gil Scott-Heron</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/steviewonder\">Stevie Wonder</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/martin-luther-king\">Martin Luther King</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2012%2Fjan%2F08%2Fscott-heron-wonder-martin-luther-king\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Swinging off this <a href=\"http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/cutting-taxes-on-the-rich-causes-inflation/\">post at <em>Unlearning Economics</em></a>, I was motivated to write a long comment that really ought to be blogged. </p>\n<p>The industrial economics of extreme wealth is an interesting subject. It’s often been observed that a lot of the spending of the rich goes into positional goods. A positional good is, in a sense, in fixed supply, or rather, position itself is in fixed supply. If more of a positional good is produced, its positional value decreases. More spending on them can <em>only</em> inflate their prices.</p>\n<p>The quintessential positional good is land. A lot of land is useful in itself, but it is true everywhere that owning x amount of land gives you more positional utility than an equivalent position in cash or securities, and the most sought-after land by area isn’t farmland or building plots near a container terminal or an oil well, it’s billionaires’ row, whose value is entirely positional. Land is the classic case of economic rent, and that’s what I’m driving at.</p>\n<p>Just as rent doesn’t reflect costs of production, but only a monopoly position, the price of positional goods reflects only their positional nature and the income of those competing for them. Let’s now switch to the economics of the firm; if the price of X is dominated by economic rent, an increase in the price is mostly an increase in profit. If profits rise in some sector, capital should be preferentially allocated to it.</p>\n<p>Clearly, you can’t manufacture Hampstead or Palo Alto or the Prinzregentenstrasse, or only with great difficulty and the risk of destroying its positional quality. You can easily manufacture more iPhones, which therefore are gradually becoming less positional. You can manufacture Vertu phones by sticking diamonds on mid-2000s down-ticket Nokias, essentially creating purely positional items. Joseph Schumpeter would of course point out that it is the aim of all enterpreneurship to be able to claim the economic rents of monopoly.</p>\n<p>In order for capital to be reallocated to the positional sector, then, it’s necessary to invent <em>new forms of positional competition</em>, and ideally, ones which escape from the temptation to just be a good product that can be produced on a big scale like iPhones or VW Golfs or my trainers. And indeed, we see a sizeable economy devoted to just that. One way of achieving this is to dematerialise the product – Cory Doctorow once remarked that if they can’t define your job they can’t outsource it, and the greater the immaterial content, the more of it is concentrated in the mind of its creator and the place and time of its consumption. Therefore, it is harder to replicate. In that sense, it’s a form of economic growth that is light on resources, but it seems intuitively difficult to defend activity that is pointless, other-regarding, private, and directed to snobbery.</p>\n<p>Another way is to increase the service content of the product. We noted that land confers more status than most goods. But servants are almost as good or better, and would you bet against slaves being better still? This is very interesting indeed, as it may well represent a deliberate reduction of productivity and therefore a net loss to society. Where wealth is used to display power over others, by deliberately wasting labour, perhaps we’re seeing something like the costly-signalling logic of the peacock’s tail, or a form of bourgeois potlatch.</p>\n<p>I didn’t expect to end up at this conclusion, but then that sort of <em>dépaysement</em> what a good blog is for.</p>\n<p>There are of course other options. In so far as positional spending is directed at public beauty, it is perhaps worth having – having your name prominently displayed as a benefactor of the Royal Academy, much as I find the place annoying and reactionary, is better than spending your money like Dennis Kozlowski on that giant ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David, pissing vodka into your guests’ glasses. (Although to be honest, if anyone’s up for reconstructing the thing as an installation somewhere public, even I’d contribute to your Kozlowski Memorial Fund. Yes, I know he’s not dead yet.) And some bits of the positional industry have complex business models that rely on everyone else as much as they do on the super-rich – fashion couldn’t support its baroque R&D-and-advertising-and-French-heritage-project top end without the high-street and wouldn’t have any ideas without the low-street.</p>\n<p>But then, if there’s a good reason to unlearn economics in the first place it’s to respect institutions and complexity and the notion that people’s motives ought to be taken seriously, not only when they are convenient.</p>\n<p>No related posts.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=MTC1hatjH3E:K4kRNdDDp7I:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=MTC1hatjH3E:K4kRNdDDp7I:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=MTC1hatjH3E:K4kRNdDDp7I:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=MTC1hatjH3E:K4kRNdDDp7I:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=MTC1hatjH3E:K4kRNdDDp7I:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p>\n<p>A wee rant.</p>\n<p>Ok, I'm totally with the consensus that the future is Cloud-based, and to be a little more specific Platform-based and to be even more specific primarily HTTP-based. To back that up, cf.</p>\n<p>\n<ul>\n<li>Michael Hausenblas's <a href=\"http://linkeddata.deri.ie/sites/default/files/tr_cloud-SD.pdf\">new report</a></li>\n<li>Mike Amundsen's <a href=\"http://www.amundsen.com/blog/archives/1116\">recent blog post</a> -</li>\n<li>Steve Yegge's awesome <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX\">rant at Google</a> </li>\n</ul>\n</p>\n<p>But to expand something I mentioned in passing <a href=\"http://dannyayers.com/2012/01/06/Dart-H.-Vader\">here recently</a> :</p>\n<p>in one respect<strong> the emperor is stark-bollock naked</strong>. Browsers are currently a really sucky environment for client development. Sure, the HTML/CSS-based (<em>standard!</em>) rendering is wonderful. As shown with Node.js (and despite what Google are saying around Dart), Javascript <em>is</em> a reasonably pleasant, perfectly capable programming language. The growth of Ajax and JSON have shown inter-system comms is workable. There are some good dev tools and libraries. So why does working with this stuff feel like pulling your own teeth?</p>\n<p>Here I could point to the traditional DOM API, blame the W3C for all the world's ills and an awful lot of people would nod and smile knowingly. But although that's arguably valid (heh), I reckon the problem is more systematic and can mostly be blamed on browser developers.</p>\n<p>Ok, blame is too strong. The decisions made over the years and the directions taken have generally been perfectly rational in the context of the prevailing conditions. But there have been feedback loops at work. The flashy<em> [sic]</em> chrome<em> [sic]</em> surrounding HTML dev, from the img tag onwards, has pulled Web developers in like moths around a flame. So the browser developers act to improve that experience. Meanwhile server-side tech has developed out of the corporate legacy of silo-based systems. Let me quote Steve Yegge there: <em>\"It's a big stretch even to get most teams to offer a stubby service to get programmatic access to their data and computations.</em>\". The way services are offered over the Web, even Web 2.0 services still have a big hangover from this mentality. I'd argue that most Web APIs are only marginally better than SOAPy stubs. Largely because <strong>XML and JSON aren't particularly Web-friendly</strong>. Ok, don't bite my head off, let me qualify that. </p>\n<p>First XML. There have been plenty of arguments over the years around XHML, and back in the day (I wonder how old that phrase is) there were arguments about the XML nature of RSS. Postel's Law, the \"<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle\">Robustness Principle</a>\" got cited a lot. Let me give you some deja vu:</p>\n<p><em>Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.</em></p>\n<p>What a lot of people misinterpreted was the keyword <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_(computer_science)\">robust</a>. A robust system is one designed to be able to fail gracefully or continue working acceptably with noisy data. That's exactly what we want for the Web, right? Well not necessarily, if I was ordering a book from Amazon, and there was a partial failure, I'd rather they didn't make a best-guess when it came to taking money of my credit card (I think paraphrasing <a href=\"http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/\">Tim Bray</a> there). Anyhow, XML is not robust, by design. XML is designed to bail out completely at the first sniff of anything dodgy. As it happens, the way XML is often served on the Web is without proper regard for the media type, i.e. dodgy and hence broken.</p>\n<p>Sorry, that was gratuitous deviation, the real reason I'd say XML isn't Web friendly, like JSON, is in the way people use it. Whether data is conveyed as name-value pairs or through more complex structures, the key parts are generally just simple strings. But by itself, a string on the Web is next to useless. You or I can (maybe) read it, or even paste it into Google and get a definition. But what is a poor machine client to do? <strong>What makes the Web are links</strong>. It's 101 but somehow still manages to be overlooked: the link has two facets: a universally unambiguous name (URI/IRI) and a protocol for following it (HTTP). If a client on the Web encounters a link, it can follow its nose to find out more information about it. That's what we as humans do in browsers all the time, yet when it comes to Web services for some reason a simple string is seen as adequate to identify something.</p>\n<p>Ok, with XML, the HTML DOM and to some extent JSON there's been some justifiable resistance to the use of URIs for names, because namespaces have traditionally been uninuitive at best and agony at worst. Using URIs instead of simple strings certainly adds a burden (it doesn't have to be that great, check Turtle syntax), but its benefits far outweigh the costs. </p>\n<p>The thing is, you'll hear talk of snowflake APIs - only one implementation of each exists - but what gets overlooked is that by their very nature, most APIs just aren't Webby. The client must have prior knowledge that the service at endpoint X uses API Y. What you end up with is effectively a series of 1:1 client-server connections. That, while the uniform interface REST may mean it's less brittle than an RPC connection, still means tight coupling. </p>\n<p>Ok, you might argue, that for any communication to take place, some prior knowledge is required. Sure, but that can be minimised - just like the way we follow links for more information in a browser, a service client can follow links to get more information. This is only a small conceptual step, but what it enables is hugely powerful. Above everything else, it's what Linked Data and the Semantic Web gets right.</p>\n<p>I reckon that browser developers, with their emphasis on doc-oriented HTML have a natural tendency to carry their experience in that domain across and apply it to data. Naturally namespace-less XML and JSON will seem preferable through that lens. But in practice, documents and data are apples and oranges. Browsers have been optimized over the years for the former, incidentally making the latter harder than necessary. </p>\n<p>It's funny how you don't hear so much about service mashups these days, despite their undeniable coolness. I'll assert that it's because developing for <strong>Web</strong> data in the browser is bloody hard work, especially when there are NxN arbitrary API mappings to know.</p>\n<p>Overall it's actually something of a miracle that the notion of cloud-based platforms has emerged. </p>\n<p>I had planned to say more about <strong>Cloud Computing Outside of the Browser</strong> - or to put it another way, evolving old-fashioned non-browser Rich Internet Clients (as well as server-server and every other non-browser configuration). But ranting's worn me out. Anyhow, in short, I reckon that for the forseeable future, non-browser clients in many circumstance are probably preferable to browser-based equivalents, primarily because they're easier to develop (as I keep saying, I reckon the agent model of combined client/server units is a good way to go). While I personally welcome HTML5 and the APIs as a clean-up of document markup and processing, when it comes to data it isn't even a Band-Aid.</p>\n</p>"
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"title" : "Ethan Zuckerman's "Cute Cats and the Arab Spring"",
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"content" : "<div><h2>Table of Contents</h2>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#sec-1-1\">1 Dry Tunisian Tinder</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#sec-1-2\">2 Cute Cats and Malaysian Opposition</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#sec-1-3-1\">3 Polish lunch rooms</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#sec-1-3-2\">4 Tunisia's Second Act</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#sec-1-3-3\">5 Media Ecology or Network Ecology?</a> \n<ul>\n</ul>\n</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">Cory Doctorow (</span><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jan/03/the-internet-best-dissent-start\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">*</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">) and Jillian York (</span><a href=\"http://jilliancyork.com/2012/01/03/on-social-media-as-2011-gamechanger/\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">*</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">) were both full of praise for Ethan Zuckerman's Vancouver Human Rights Lecture on </span><em style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">Cute Cats and the Arab Spring</em><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\"> (</span><a href=\"http://www.thelaurier.ca/human-rights/human-rights-lecture-2011\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">*</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">), so I listened to the podcast from CBC's Ideas (</span><a href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/12/09/the-vancouver-human-rights-lecture---cute-cats-and-the-arab-spring/\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">*</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">). You can also watch the lecture on YouTube (</span><a href=\"http://youtu.be/tkDFVz_VL_I\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">*</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">).</span></h2>\n<div>\n<p>Ethan Zuckerman (EZ) has a long and admirable history of involvement in digital activism and a wide knowledge of both technology and social change; the lecture is worth an hour of your time. But (you knew there was a but) in the end I have to disagree with his main thesis.</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h3><span>1</span> Dry Tunisian Tinder</h3>\n<div>\n<p>EZ tells us how, after years of sporadic and failed protests in Tunisia, one particular spark in the city of Sidi Bouzid blossomed into the forest fire of revolution. When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at official interference with his vegetable stall it was a dramatic and desperate act, but not unique: he wasn't the first person to do so even that year. What was different this time?</p>\n<p>EZ's argument is that digital social media was different. The early protest was captured on video using a cheap phone and posted to a social networking site where… it did NOT "go viral". Instead the video was picked up by Tunisians <em>outside</em> the country (including EZ's friend Sami ben Gharbia<sup><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#fn.1\" name=\"fnr.1\">1</a></sup>), who were scanning Tunisian web content for political news and curating it on a site called nawaat.org (<a href=\"http://nawaat.org\">*</a>).</p>\n<p>Al Jazeera got the video from nawaat.org and broadcast it back into Tunisia; Tunisians found out in turn what was going on from Al Jazeera. What's important here, says EZ, is that the new low-cost participatory media is an essential part of a larger media ecosystem that helped to stir up feelings within Tunisia.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h3><span>2</span> Cute Cats and Malaysian Opposition</h3>\n<div>\n<p>In the 1990s EZ ran a web site called Tripod for college/university students. Surprisingly, many people used it not for the Worthy Purposes he and his colleagues had planned, but to share simple and casual things, like pictures of cute cats. Also surprisingly, some of the heaviest use came from Malaysia. Wondering what was going on, Zuckerman got the Malay content translated, only to find that his site was hosting the Malaysian opposition Reformasi movement (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformasi_(Malaysia)\">*</a>). Tripod was a space that was difficult for the Malaysian government to censor while being easy to hold discussions.<sup><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#fn.2\" name=\"fnr.2\">2</a></sup></p>\n<p>And so we reach the "cute cat theory": the ideal places for those who suddenly have important, politically sensitive material they want to share are sites designed for sharing videos and pictures of "cute cats" (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr). These sites are easy to use, have a wide reach, and are difficult to censor – if the government shuts them down it annoys a lot of people and alerts them that something interesting is going on. "Cute cats" sites are natural tinder boxes for revolutionary sparks.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">The events EZ recounts are compelling, but a lot of compelling things happen in this strange world, so my first thoughts whenever I hear a story of the Internet producing some unique chain of events is: can I think of a non-Internet example that matches? So here is the lunch-room theory of political dissent (details from </span><a href=\"http://sunday.niedziela.pl/artykul.php?lg=gb&nr=200409&dz=z_historii&id_art=00004\" style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">here</a><span style=\"font-weight:normal;font-size:small\">).</span></h3>\n<div>\n<h3>3 Polish lunch rooms</h3>\n<div>\n<p>On July 8, 1980, in the lunch room at a transport equipment plant in the eastern Polish town of Swidnik, the price of a pork cutlet jumped from 10.20 zloty to 18.10. For Miroslaw Kaczan, this jump was the final straw, and after lunch he switched off the machines he was working on. Others in Department 320 joined him, and other departments in the factory were quick to join. Soon there was a factory-wide stoppage, and it wasn't just about pork cutlets: the demands of the protesters revealed a wealth of pent-up frustration.</p>\n<p>News about the strike in Swidnik spread so quickly that within two weeks 50,000 people in the region were on strike. This wave of strikes was resolved on July 25, but the disruption was far from over: three weeks later the strikes at the Gdansk ship yards in northern Poland started, and within a year Solidarnosc had over 9 million members.</p>\n<p>In the early days of the strikes, Poles had a hunger for news of the protests, of course, and despite the heavy censorship of official media they found them, through short-wave radio broadcasts from other countries.</p>\n<p>So the lunch-room theory is not that different from the cute-cat theory, except that there's no Internet. People gather wherever they gather for their everyday conversations and interactions, and it is in these everyday places that a spark of frustration can catch fire. And once it does catch fire, a combination of broadcast media and a networked public spreads the news quickly.</p>\n<p>Perhaps, the Polish example shows, the Internet is not essential for the spark to turn into a fire. Perhaps a digitally networked public is not the only networked public.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h3><span>4</span> Tunisia's Second Act</h3>\n<div>\n<p>Even in Tunisia, politically sensitive material for which there is a high demand has found its way through dangerous pathways to reach a public desperate for news.</p>\n<p>In a long piece called Streetbook (<a href=\"http://www.technologyreview.com/web/38379/\">*</a>) John Pollock interviews two members of an underground Tunisian group called Takriz [<em>update:</em> see Ethan Zuckerman and Jillian York's comments below for reservations about Streetbook]. One of these "Taks" describes how the video that "made the second half of the [Tunisian] revolution" was taken when the regime had shut down the Internet, so "Takriz smuggled a CD of the video over the Algerian border" before forwarding it to Al Jazeera. YouTube may make it it easier and safer to make videos available (at least so long as Google lets it be done anonymously), but when an important video was available, the Internet was not essential to the process of distribution.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<h3>5 Media Ecology or Network Ecology?</h3>\n<div>\n<p>If we are really going to talk about a "media ecology" in the sense EZ means, we need to include all those gathering places–online and offline–which are difficult to shut down precisely because of their everyday, general purpose role. In addition to Facebook and YouTube we need to include factory lunchrooms, mosques and churches, football stadia (<a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2011/09/so-three-cheers-for-evgeny-now-back-to-the-mit-review-articles-some-of-which-display-the-very-internet-centrism-that-moroz.html\">*</a>), universities, popular music (<a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2011/02/more-egypt-more-facebook.html\">*</a>), balconies (<a href=\"http://www.juancole.com/2011/08/tv-twitter-facebook-and-the-libyan-revolution.html\">*</a>), and more.</p>\n<p>All these share a number of properties with Cute Cats sites. They are difficult to shut down without annoying large numbers of previously quiescent people, they are difficult to monitor in detail because of the dispersed and varied nature of the interactions that go on, and they are already familiar places for the gathering and sharing of information. EZ says that "we don't take these 'cute cat tools' seriously enough. These tools that anyone can use, that are used 99% of the time for completely banal purposes" but he doesn't take offline everyday institutions for banal sharing seriously enough.</p>\n<p>EZ's mistake is the achilles heel of social media advocates. Talk of a "networked society" is justified by comparing today's digitally connected populations to a population of couch potatoes watching prime time TV, but such a comparison overlooks all those other institutions of public networking. Instead of talking of a "media ecology" we should be talking of a "network ecology": the intricate tapestry of multiple networking institutions and practices that makes up a society.</p>\n<p>Do digital social media supplement other networking instutions or displace them? There has been a lot of work on this at the individual level, but it's much more difficult to evaluate on a societal level. It is possible that digital social media increase the richness of social networks in a society, but it's also possible (likely?) that digital social media are the kudzu of networks, thriving while they strangle the other components of a rich and diverse network ecology; the best network left standing in an impoverished environment.</p>\n<div>\n<h3>Footnotes</h3>\n<div>\n<p><sup><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#fnr.1\" name=\"fn.1\">1</a></sup> Among other things, Sami ben Gharbia is author of a fantastic essay on <em>The Internet Freedom Fallacy and Arab Digital Activism</em> (<a href=\"http://owni.eu/2011/01/15/the-internet-freedom-fallacy-and-the-arab-digital-activism-2/\">*</a>)</p>\n<p><sup><a href=\"http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/#fnr.2\" name=\"fn.2\">2</a></sup> In fact it may not have been so much that the site was difficult to censor, as that Malaysian government had decided to exclude the Internet as a whole from its otherwise-strict censorship rules (<a href=\"http://techblog.thepcharbor.com/?p=2174\">*</a>).</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p>Date: 2012-01-05 22:50:21 EST</p>\n<p>Org version 7.6 with Emacs version 23</p>\n</div></div>"
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"title" : "Ghana Innovation Goes Global with Artivist Senam Okudzeto",
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"content" : "<table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KgupqI3Lc4/TwpF4haECWI/AAAAAAAABaU/mM0GW8HB7q4/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-01-08+at+8.41.17+PM.png\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"237\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1KgupqI3Lc4/TwpF4haECWI/AAAAAAAABaU/mM0GW8HB7q4/s320/Screen+Shot+2012-01-08+at+8.41.17+PM.png\" width=\"320\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://cache.virtualtourist.com/6/1549664-Orange_seller_on_Bolga_Market_Bolgatanga.jpg\">Child of orange_seller_in_Bolga_Market_Bolgatanga (Northern Ghana)</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br>Black artists and the creative process fascinate me. Probably, I suspect, because I'm not all that creative. I stumbled upon this lecture about art, globalization and hybridity by Senam Okudzeto, a Ghanaian artist and activist. Senam is the founder of something called<a href=\"http://www.artinsocialstructures.org/\"> Art in Social Structures</a>. Her talk is titled \"Art, ego and effectiveness: constructive challenges for social sculpture in the age of social networking.\" Once the lecture gets going, Senam shares lots of compelling stories about art, architecture, and innovation in Ghana; some of the challenges that impact Ghana's artistic landscape; and open-ended suggestions as to how this landscape might expand and enrich our notions of globalization. She shares images of what she calls \"at risk architecture.\" These are little-known structures in Ghana that are of important historical value, but in disrepair and in danger of being lost due to lack of funding for maintenance. She also talks about the cultural practice of burying deceased family members in the walls of homes (I was intrigued by this practice, but I was unable to find any mention of it online) and she concludes with a brilliant discussion of a local innovation--a metal stand used by Ghanaian market women to display their oranges (in the local language of Akan, an orange seller is called <i>ankaa wura</i>). Its a smart conversation about an ubiquitous object that, according to Senam, only appeared in Ghana within the last 20 years. Compellingly, she transforms these localized utilitarian objects into globalized objects of artistic consumption. Versions of the orange stands now circulate around the world as a part of her art exhibits.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"> <iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/uu6SZhRjIdc%26fs%3D1%26source%3Duds&width=320&height=266\" width=\"320\" height=\"266\"></iframe></div><br><br>"
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"title" : "Your Crib Sheet for Covering African Elections, in Congo and beyond",
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"content" : "<p>We're all watching the DR Congo with baited breath. The recent presidential election, or process that has borne the name, has sparked unrest and violence, inside the country and in the diaspora. It's a grave situation, certainly, and a gloomy one.</p>\n<p>But I'm having total post-electoral depression, especially when I read this piece in <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/13/a_crisis_in_the_congo?page=0,0\">Foreign Policy</a>. Take out the context -- I can't believe I'm saying that, but try it -- and you have the same story of so many other sub-Saharan elections. I've watched four of them in the last year, and read about others.</p>\n<p>The whole thing is so damn obviously predictable that I can't bear to point it all out. So instead, I've made this handy crib sheet, Mad Libs style, for journalists and other observers who may need to cover another election that looks exactly like the last election we covered, borrowing from (without blaming) the FP piece above. Just fill in the blanks with the relevant details. Whatever you do, don't get distracted by <a href=\"http://www.howardwfrench.com/2011/12/reference-points/\">actually talking to citizens of the country you're covering</a>. Especially intellectuals.</p>\n<p>(Note to freelancers: Just because an election seems to fit the bill doesn't mean you can sell the story. Think twice before you hitch your rent payment to covering the vote in, oh, <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/untold-stories/burundis-election-three-acts\">Burundi</a>.)</p>\n<p>It's not the media's fault, of course. There's books to be written on this whole thing... oh. wait. Wars, Guns & Votes was a bestseller? Well, surely there's another book to be written.</p>\n<p>And if you don't believe that the media only covers elections with this formula, ask yourself if you remember reading any good analytical coverage of the recent presidential vote in Zambia. It's a huge copper producer, so \"financial interest\" doesn't answer the question. Peaceful country with a peaceful vote, free and fair, and then a peaceful transition of power? Who wants to read <em>that</em>? Especially when there are other Africans we just totally <em>know</em> ready to kill each other. </p>\n<p><em>Covering African Elections: A Crib Sheet</em></p>\n<p>These days, nowhere are crises more predictable than in __________ (poor/recently violent country). And yet, when they unfold as anticipated, Western policymakers and diplomats always seem caught off guard -- raising questions about the competence, willingness, and commitment of the ________(captial city)-based diplomatic corps and the United Nations mission to discharge their responsibilities.\"</p>\n<p>\"....Nothing underscores the apathy and inconsistency that characterize Western diplomacy in _____ more than the current impasse...The legitimacy crisis threatens to trigger another round of civil war in a country that has already __________ (short-phrase recap of how many people died there in recent memory, thereby justifying interest).\"</p>\n<p>\"The ____________[major INGO] cited serious irregularities, including the loss of _____ (electoral documents) in _______ (city/town/village), a _____ stronghold..... Meanwhile, according to ________ (INGO) multiple locations in _______ (another city/town/village), a bastion of __________ (current ruler) supporters, reported impossibly high rates of 99 to [over] 100 percent voter turnout, with all or nearly all votes going to the incumbent.\" (<em>Note: Some wisely fix this slightly lower than 99 percent; adjust as needed</em>.)</p>\n<p>\"....As grievances and disputes over electoral law arose, the CENI [independent electoral commission] failed to provide an adequate forum for dialogue with the opposition.\" (<em>Sorry, players, that one goes verbatim in every election post-game</em>.)</p>\n<p>\".....The independence of these commissioners has been called into question as _____ has regularly shown bias against ______\"</p>\n<p>\".....These same international actors remained silent about the allegations of fraud and irregularities, even as _________ (local/national orgs) denounced violence and abuses. Their silence has helped spawned (sic) a crisis that could have easily been averted.\"</p>\n<p>\".... ________ (incumbent) waited nearly ___________ days(/hours) to hold a news conference and react to... _____________ (oppostion's) rejection of the results.</p>\n<p><em>Oh who are we kidding? This could go on forever....</em></p>"
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">In the past five years or so, I have been reconsidering my long-held opinion about the relation between leadership and followership. Time there was when I laid all the blame on leadership. Now I’m beginning to say that the followership should also take their fate in their own hands. This is what I see most of the time, for example, in the plays of Femi Osofisan, one of our top writers. Play after play after play; the leaders are there doing things. But the address is to the people. Why must you continue to be ridden like a donkey? Why can’t you, too, get up in the saddle? Nigerians are too docile, too forgiving of bad leadership.<br><div></div><div><br></div><div>Why are they this way? A number of reasons. The first one is religion. The kind of religion we have in Nigeria is one that puts you to sleep, and after that, puts you to death. It’s not the kind of religion that’s after social justice; it’s not the kind of religion that is after the welfare of the people and the independence of their existence. </div><div><br></div><div>Particularly guilty in this regard are the Prosperity Gospellers of the Pentecostal variety who hawk faith on the air and convert religion into superstition. If you have no job, we are told, it must be because of your sin. Your poverty (or pauperization) is a result of the offence you have committed against God. Blissfully indemnified are the rogue-rulers whose greed has corrupted and ruined our social estate; those whose policies or lack of them have made job creation impossible by sabotaging our productive capacity? So, if you have no job, blame your sins; if you wallow in poverty, you only have yourself to blame. </div><div><br></div><div>In the thinking and preaching of many of these latter-day evangelists, every scoundrel in power in Nigeria is “God-chosen” and must be treated as such. Religion in this country is a dangerous opium; really dangerous opium. And that is why our rulers are encouraging the building of churches and mosques all over the place. </div><div><br></div><div>When in December last year the newspapers carried the picture of a kneeling President Jonathan with a ministering Pastor towering above him in prayerful supremacy, we were presented with an image so symbolic of the relationship between the state and religion in Nigeria. No picture could have been more emblematic! </div><div><br></div><div>Religion has killed rational thinking in this country. I say this all the time, our country is still in a pre-scientific era. That is why things are like this. We don’t think logically; that is why any ruler, any fool would seize the reins and rule us, because we would always find an excuse for being ruled or being led by the nose. Not long ago a pastor said he was between two cities and he discovered that the fuel in his car had run out. He actually checked and saw the fuel in the car was completely gone. But because of his act of faith and on the strength of his prayers, he was able to do two hundred miles on an empty tank! When he declared this testimony, people clapped and shouted “ Hallelujah!” I never heard anybody say how can? </div><div><br></div><div>Nigerians don’t ask questions; that is why the imams and the pastors lead them by the nose, and the politicians also complete their humiliation and disempowerment. And between the clerics and the political functionaries, there is a very close liaison. It’s a kind of power structure; one controls the political, social realm, the other controls the spiritual, metaphysical realm and they are together. Many Nigerians are not rational, interrogative people. In fact, in this country today, if you are the interrogative type you are easily labelled, branded, and condemned. People even wonder: why are you always asking questions?’ </div><div><br></div><div>When the blessed Tai Solarin was alive, he agonised and agonised over this issue. The way he was misunderstood, the way he was misinterpreted and his anger at the way many of our people were going - that we should be up in the streets. Another problem: well, our people are docile and the reason why they take all kinds of cheating is that many of them envisage themselves in the position of power someday, too. If I am X and the oppressor is Y, and the oppressor is oppressing me, stealing all the money, and making life difficult for me and my children, I am not likely to attack him. I’ll pray to God to let my own “miracle” happen so that someday, he will go and I will be in his place. No; I am praying for him to go but for the structure to remain. </div><div><br></div><div>This is the social psychology of Nigerian politics. So many people don’t see it as wrong. When they see it as wrong, it’s because it is putting them at a disadvantage; they are not really concerned with the social order or the commonweal. That’s a very important issue. If our rulers were people with a sense of shame, they wouldn’t be talking about subsidy at all. They should cover their faces in shame and apologize to the Nigerian people; for if anything, it is the Nigerian people that need some form of hardship allowance from their incorrigibly incompetent government. And our President and his officials have been going from church to church (have they called at the mosques yet?), asking for God’s blessing for the kind of socio-economic mayhem they are about to unleash on the Nigerian people through the removal of the so-called subsidy; asking the pastors to pray to God to make Nigerians compliant to and accepting of their impoverished situation, begging Almighty God to soften the minds of Nigerians. </div><div><br></div><div>But no one entered a plea for God to smash the incubus of corruption and mismanagement that has brought this country to its knees. Our President never asked God to grant him the courage and candour to make a public declaration of his assets as required by the constitution of the country he rules... </div><div><br></div><div>P.S:If you are still wondering why that private jet-flying,crucifix-hanging,Aso Rock-dining,tongue-blasting god of men has refused to speak out against the issue of the callous fuel subsidy removal, there you have it!</div><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-7127571477679549101?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:410px\"><a href=\"http://cdn.verysmartbrothas.com/images/Common.jpg\"><img title=\"Common\" src=\"http://cdn.verysmartbrothas.com/images/Common-400x400.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\"></a><p>"Hey b*tch, let me treat you like the queen you are."</p></div><p>Let me start this off by saying that I’m a fan of Common. Or at least I’m not NOT a fan. But I’ve made some observations that I’d like to understand better.</p><p>See, Common likes to call women b*tches. And he does it with great aplomb. Yet, he’s seen his cache amongst women rise astronomically.</p><p>Hi. My name is Panama Jackson and I’m confused.</p><p>It’s interesting if you think about it. Common used to rail against being called a conscious rapper and then finally accepted the role and relished in it. He released a bunch of albums that were critically acclaimed that had fair to middling substantive subject matter but for some reason or another we place him in the realm of deep and throught-provoking. Okay. No problem with that. I prefer Common Sense, the rapper who would call out any and everybody for their f*ckery but the man’s gotta eat. In fact, the last time I truly felt Common as a rapper was on The Roots <em>Things Fall Apart</em> album on the song “Act Too (Love of My Life)”, one of my favorite hip-hop songs ever. Since then he’s more or less been a non-factor as a rapper. You may like him, but his verses don’t lack much punch or pizzazz. Hell, the most memorable thing about Common’s current career is the music he’s rapping over, not him. In fact, I’m confused as to who he thinks he is as a rapper.</p><p>Even more simply, the ONLY verse I really remember word for word on the entire <em>Be</em> album belongs to Kanye. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.</p><p>So what does all of this have to do with the price of a 50 Cent CD in Tijuana?</p><p>Well, being as he’s fallen off lyrically I’ve taken to paying more attention to what he’s actually saying. Odd future. I know. And two things have stood out to me:</p><p>1. He actually borders on terrible rapper at times. His recent verse on the<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDOeWYu329A\"> Cocaine 80s song “Six Feet Over” </a>where he says “I liked her like a simile…” kilt me dead. I imagine that line alone would garner any other trap rapper a “Worst Verse Alive” nod. But Common got a pass. Fair enough, the man’s put in work. Everybody has an off day. And even on his off days he at least is a decent wordsmith. But Rick Ross is more compelling. Yeah, marinate on that.</p><p>And I don’t care what anybody says, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAo6s94X2sk\">“Sweet”</a> is not a dope track AND he sounds like a f*cking idiot with that tough guy talk at the end. It doesn’t even remotely sound believable. In fact, it also sounds completely antithetical to this person Common’s made himself out to be. You know, the ninja busting out the dope poetry at the motherf*cking White House for the Obamas.</p><p>Which brings me to the interesting second thing…</p><p>2. Common kind of talks about women like your run of the mill ignant ninja.</p><p>I remember the first time I noticed it, I was kind of taken aback. It was on<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8m9le_Bhsg\"> “They Say”</a> from the <em>Be</em> album. “…Com, I make righteous b*tches get low…”</p><p>Hmm. Then on <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE6gpaJ72WM\">“Make Her Say”</a> on Cudi’s first album (he’s got a thing for songs where he’s got to “say” sh*t), he tells women to jump up on his “conscious d*ck”. Not exactly calling women b*tches there, but it’s similarly telling. I honestly feel like he could walk up to a woman and say that to her face and she’d think it was cute. It’s like the stalker thing…it ain’t stalking if you like him.</p><p>Then I’m listening to his latest album <em>The Dreamer/The Believer</em> (I think the split album title was kind of boofa) and I’m randomly listening to some songs and there this ninja goes AGAIN calling women b*tches.</p><p>Now, I believe in letting a grown man cook. Common is free to do his thing, but again, I’ve noticed that women absolutely adore this man. Or it seems like they do. Correct me if I’m wrong but Common has become a sex symbol. And that is par the course for many rappers. Women love T.I. But if T.I. called you a b*tch I don’t think anybody would bat an eye. However, Common is kind of supposed to be “enlightened” or some sh*t right? A thinking man’s rapper.</p><p>One who actually reads books and possibly listens to books on tape in the car. He’s the rapper women can listen to and love.</p><p>I remember telling one of my homegirls that Common was throwing the b-word recklessly on a song. She refused to believe it. I even played it for her and she justified it saying that he was just a rapper using his poetic license.</p><p>Whaaaaaaaaaa? So is Tyga on <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXuYGTAwTyE&ob=av2n\">“Rack City”</a> and short of strippers I can’t imagine any woman would actually listen to that on purpose.</p><p>Maybe its the acting roles. Maybe its the suits. Put a ninja in a tailored suit and women lose their damn minds. Maybe its because he smiles a lot and women view that as sincerity. Or probably more accurately, women just don’t listen to Common like that. They like looking at him but ain’t nobody but rap heads buying his albums. And men don’t care because, well, we ignant.</p><p>Maybe its my own fault too. I expect more out of the pseudo-deep rappers that really aren’t that deep. They like to call women b*tches because they hate feeling like they can’t. Word to Talib.</p><p>But I’m curious, why fore come Common can call women b*tches repeatedly and make fairly incendiary comments about women in song and still have his profile increase? Why no backlash?</p><p>Why don’t women care that Common is as ignant as any other rapper?</p><p>Talk to me.</p><p><strong>-VSB P aka THE ARSONIST aka TANGLE JIG P aka GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRL HE A 3</strong></p><p><strong><em>Check out Champ’s latest column at Madame Noire: <a href=\"http://madamenoire.com/125047/ask-a-very-smart-brotha-freshmen-woes-possessive-types/\">Freshman Woes and Possessive Types</a></em></strong></p><p>For the <strong>DC folks</strong>, don’t forget about<strong> Reminisce tomorrow night, Sat, January 7 at Liv Nightclub</strong>. Come party with Panama to<strong> old school hip-hop and r&b</strong> and get your groove on. <strong>Free entry before 11pm ($10 after), open bar from 10-11pm, and no dress code.</strong> Get yo’ life right, thugsta and hang with the kid: <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/events/227693073973581/\">http://www.facebook.com/events/227693073973581/</a></p> <p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/fd300053li7sd6r70fk8o6jpu0/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fverysmartbrothas.com%2Fcommon-called-you-a-btch-and-all-you-did-was-smile%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Dcommon-called-you-a-btch-and-all-you-did-was-smile\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?i=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?i=oe9Ae2_pfZ8:2ffxzXmvA44:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/verysmartbrothas/~4/oe9Ae2_pfZ8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "RQ-170 upshot, part 2: the bubble",
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"content" : "Is there a drone bubble? It's not clear whether this is more like the .com bubble, when a lot of useful stuff was built but a couple of years too early, or more like the housing bubble, when a lot of stuff was built in the wrong places to the wrong standards at the wrong prices and will probably never be worth much. It's the nature of a bubble, of course, that it's precisely at the top of the bubble that the commitment to it is greatest.<br><br>One of the things the RQ-170 incident tells us about is some of the operational limitations of the drones. Typically, they are piloted in the cruise from locations that may be a long way off, using satellite communication links, but when they land, they do so under local control via line-of-sight radio link from their base. This allows us to set some bounds on how much of a problem link latency really is, which will take us circling back to John Robb's South Korean gamers. <br><br>Gamers are famous for being obsessed with ping-times - the measurement of round-trip latency on the Internet - because it's really, really annoying to see the other guy on your screen, go to zap'em, and get zapped yourself because it took longer for your zap to cross the Internet than theirs. Typically you can expect 40 or so milliseconds nationally, 60-80 inter-continentally...or several hundred if a satellite or an old-school cellular operator with a hierarchical network architecture is involved. A sat hop is always clearly identifiable in traceroute output because latency goes to several hundred ms, and there's a great <a href=\"http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:cJpV3bNZjuUJ:www.caida.org/outreach/isma/0210/talks/henk.pdf+RIPE+identifying+satellite+from+traceroute&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShCKNnYnrQ0mh-QvL-zRQepMr47idoq3lVJcFj4rXb4z-dY770LIA_NnVs63UtwjPTSkgK-Nbn4myeqf7Cvz4NdmJO7wB9DKv3JWq918XMITAb3ff5fCRW2HQMqvZndFNwM9WRm&sig=AHIEtbRNNQPlgEFSCN5FAH0j5KU_3Tf8ZQ\">RIPE NCC paper</a> on using the variations in latency over a year to identify the satellite's geosynchronous (rather than geostationary) orbit as the slant-range changes.<br><br>On the other hand, roundtrip latency across an airfield circuit a couple of miles wide will be negligible. So we can conclude that tolerable latency for manoeuvring, as opposed to cruising, is very little. Now, check out this <a href=\"http://theaviationist.com/2010/12/04/interesting-hardware-brought-to-decimomannu-by-the-israeli-air-force/\">post on David Cenciotti's blog from January 2010</a>. Some of the Israeli air force's F-15s have received a new communications radio suite specifically for controlling UAVs.<br><br>You might now be able to guess why even drone pilots are going through basic flight training. Also, <a href=\"http://theaviationist.com/2011/12/21/pilot-error/\">this post of Cenciotti's</a> describes the causes of six recent hull losses, all of which are classic airmanship accidents - the sort of thing pilot training is designed to teach you to avoid.<br><br>That said, why did all those drones get built? The original, 1980s UAV concepts were usually about the fact that there was no pilot and therefore the craft could be treated as expendable, usually in order to gain intelligence on the (presumably) Soviet enemy's air defences by acting as a ferret aircraft, forcing them to switch on the radars so the drone could identify them. But that's not what they've been doing all these years.<br><br>The main reason for using them has been that they are lightweight and have long endurance. This is obviously important from an intelligence gathering perspective, whether you're thinking of over-watching road convoys or of assassinating suspected terrorists (and there are strong arguments <a href=\"http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/unaccountable-killing-machines-the-true-cost-of-us-drones/250661/\">against that, as Joshua Foust points out</a>). In fact, long endurance and good sensors are so important that there are even so-called manned drones - diesel-engined, piloted light aircraft stuffed with sensors, with the special feature that they fly with intelligence specialists aboard and provide a much faster turn-around of information for the army.<br><br>Their limitations - restricted manoeuvre, limited speed and payload, and high dependence on communications infrastructure - haven't really been important because they have been operating in places and against enemies who don't have an air force or ground-based air defences and don't have an electronic warfare capability either. Where the enemy have had man-portable SAMs available, as sometimes in Iraq, they have chosen to save them for transport aircraft and the chance of killing Americans, which makes sense if anti-aircraft weapons are scarce (and surely, the fact of their scarcity has to be one of the major unreported news stories of the decade).<br><br>But then, the war in Iraq is meant to be over even if the drones are still landing in Kurdistan, and the US may be on its way to a \"pre-1990\" military posture in the Gulf. This week's strategic fashion is \"<a href=\"http://newpacificinstitute.org/jsw/?p=9469\">Air-Sea Battle</a>\" and the Pacific, and nobody expects anything but the most hostile possible environment in the air and in the electromagnetic spectrum. And the RQ-170 incident is surely a straw in the wind. Also, the Bush wars were fought in an environment of huge airfields in the desert, and the ASB planners expect that the capacity of US bases in Japan and Guam and the decks of aircraft carriers will be their key logistical constraint. (The Russians aren't <a href=\"http://russianforces.org/blog/2011/12/russia_begins_rd_on_a_new_stra.shtml\">betting everything on them either</a>.)<br><br>I think, therefore, it's fair to suggest that a lot of big drones are going to end up in the AMARC stockpile. After the Americans' last major counter-insurgency, of course, that's what happened. The <a href=\"http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/dti/2011/10/01/DT_10_01_2011_p34-368955.xml&headline=Lower-tech%20UAVs%20Boost%20Intel%20For%20British\">low-tech ones are likely to keep proliferating</a>, though, whether as part of the Royal Engineers' route clearance system or <a href=\"http://www.informationdissemination.net/2011/12/open-source-maritime-uavs-and-evolution.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InformationDissemination+%28Information+Dissemination%29\">annoying the hell out of Japanese whalers</a> or even <a href=\"http://www.metafilter.com/111224/Flying-Robots-Build-A-Tower-Near-Paris\">playing with lego</a>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-5038578462885779545?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Always Sailing Again Into That Imaginary Past",
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It was one of the biggest hits of 1979 – <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Fool_Believes\">What a Fool Believes</a> – and went on to win the Grammy for Song of the Year – one of the very few non-disco hits that year. Yes, disco was the thing back then. It was a dark time in pop music. But using top-forty junk music to express fundamental existential issues – in that particular song, issues around hanging on to what never really was – can make you rich. It worked for the Doobie Brothers. And the song itself is <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDWGKQcQ8zw\">rather catchy</a> – even if the core notion is that what a fool believes is indeed the only thing he ever sees. Belief creates perception, not the other way around. And perception creates our sense of meaning. Heck, maybe the song is about epistemology. After all, there is that key line – “What seems to be is always better than nothing.” That adds motive to self-delusion. All of this life just can’t amount to nothing – so we create a something that should have been, to sidestep the existential meaninglessness of it all, staring us in the face. It’s that Camus thing about being scathingly honest and bravely facing the absurd. Sometime that just hurts too much. Other hits that year include Boogie Wonderland, My Sharona, Donna Summer singing about Bad Girls, Rod Stewart asking Da Ya Think I’m Sexy – and the Village People singing about the YMCA. Those avoided the question of perception and meaning.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But what seems to be is always better than nothing. And as this year ends everyone looks back, with nostalgia, or horror, or pride, or embarrassment – and tries to assess things. But nostalgia always wins, or it won this year, as Matt Zoller Seitz says we’re nostalgic for everything, as <a href=\"http://www.salon.com/2011/12/27/nostalgic_for_everything/\">in 2011 we wanted to be anywhere but 2011</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">“Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present,” says a philosopher (Michael Sheen) in Woody Allen’s surprise hit “Midnight in Paris.” “The name for this denial is Golden Age thinking: the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one [that] one’s living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">If nostalgia is indeed a flaw, it’s one that many 2011 films and TV programs shared. Some of the year’s most talked-about movies and shows gave themselves over to some form of nostalgia – unabashedly reveling in, and idealizing, not just an earlier time, but the artists and artistic styles that we associate with that time, and the rush of emotion that accompanies our fantasies of same. Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” - his top grossing movie ever – is Exhibit A. It’s an immensely likable reworking of his short story “A Twenties Memory” in which an Allen stand-in, screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson), magically gets to travel back to the time of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. But it’s merely the keynote address in a year of budget-busting, production-design-showcasing, time-tripping cinema and television, a year that invited viewers not merely to experience stories from another time but to slip into them with deep pleasure and savor their restorative power.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">So Seitz lists his items – “Midnight in Paris,” “The Tree of Life,” “Super 8,” “The Artist,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Hugo” and “The War Horse” – all exercises in nostalgia of one sort or another. And it wasn’t just the movies:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Some of the highest-profile TV – successful and unsuccessful – had nostalgia on the brain, wallowing in luxurious sets, costumes, hairstyles, music and slang from the early- and mid-20th century – even as they repeatedly told and showed us that things weren’t so great Back Then, whenever Back Then was. The short list includes the glossy but unsuccessful network series “The Playboy Club” and “Pan Am,” HBO’s “Mildred Pierce” and “Boardwalk Empire,” ReelzChannel’s “The Kennedys,” PBS’ “Downton Abbey” and “Brideshead Revisited” and “The Hours.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">And Seitz argues that there’s something basic and significant connecting all of this stiff, and he thinks the connection is more aesthetic than historical, about the need to escape the present. And it doesn’t seem to matter which particular past you choose:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It’s about tactility – a fear that the virtual world is displacing the real one, and a corresponding conviction that a cinematic or televised re-creation of the past — however stylized or “unreal” — can feel somehow more real than whatever we’re living through now.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">To borrow a literary analogy, the texts of these productions were often overwhelmed by the illustrations; even as the plotlines showed us how cruel life could be, and how ignorant and venal the characters were, the viewer’s eye still feasted on those dresses! Those hats! Those cars! Those hissing vinyl records spinning on those elegant Victrolas! And of course the white beams of light slicing through cigarette-befogged darkness in movie theaters and casting black-and-white images up on big screens – images shots on honest-to-God film –<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">And Seitz goes on to dive deep into these films, if that’s your thing, but he circles back to the Woody Allen film:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">“All men fear death,” says Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” “It’s a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same.” The film’s tone is rather jokey as he says this, but from the intensity in his eyes you can tell he’s not kidding – and if you read the words in plain black-and-white, divested of lush celluloid images and piquant music, it sure does feel like a line from a manifesto, or a lament.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Allen ultimately deflates the very nostalgia that his movie indulges; the film’s comic climax takes Gil and his girlfriend Adriana, a ’20s Frenchwoman, back to Paris during the Belle Époque era, the period that she worships as brazenly as Gil worships the Paris of her own time. “I’m from the ’20s, and I’m telling you the golden age is la Belle Époque,” she insists. But really: “Midnight in Paris” is not a hit because of the director’s clear-headed attitude about the blind worship of earlier, supposedly more interesting times. It’s a hit because of the clothes, the music, the cultural references and the comic star power of the Paris writers and artists we’ve read about in school. It’s a hit because it’s a warm bath in another era, and a blessed escape from this one.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It’s a trip to a place where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. It’s that Doobie Brothers song again. It’s what a fool believes.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But in this last year of Nostalgia in America, only half the country finds that Woody Allen movie, about the lure and the absurdity of nostalgia, resonates with them – and the problem is Paris. The other half of the country – the NASCAR side of things – has no use for anything French. They long for something else, and that seems to be the Old South. And their nostalgia is just as blind, as this year gave us Newt Gingrich <a href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/12/24/395040/gingrich-defends-south-carolinas-decision-to-fly-confederate-flag-at-statehouse/\">defending the Republicans in South Carolina proudly flying the Confederate Flag over the state capital</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">At an event in South Carolina yesterday, Newt Gingrich was asked by a town hall participant to offer his views regarding the state’s decision to fly the Confederate flag at the statehouse in Columbia. The woman’s question was met with a smattering of boos from the audience.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">“I have a very strong opinion,” Gingrich said, prefacing his weak response. “It’s up to the people of South Carolina.” (He then qualified his answer by assuring that he is opposed to segregation and slavery.)<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Gingrich elicited a rousing standing ovation and yells of approval from the audience.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Yes, he backtracked and then said he really is opposed to segregation and slavery, honest – but that’s not what got him the standing ovation. And of course Michele Bachmann famously <a href=\"http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/25/bachmann-founding-fathers-worked-tirelessly-slavery/\">said this</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">The Minnesota Republican called slavery an “evil” and “scourge” and “stain on our history.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">“But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States,” Bachmann added, claiming “men like John Quincy Adams… would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Isn’t it pretty to think so? Slavery was not abolished until 1865, when we ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and expressly forbade it. Of course, although he wasn’t one of the founders, John Quincy Adams had been a strong opponent of slavery, later – but he was just a kid back then, when his father and the other fathers were founding. Jefferson and many of the rest were slave-owners. And both these instances are pure nostalgia, hanging on to what never really was. We allowed slavery, and all the abuses and pain and death that came with it. That’s just the way it was. And nostalgia for those times is as odd as the nostalgia of Woody Allen’s Gil for the Paris of Hemingway and Stein and that crowd. But belief creates perception, not the other way around. And perception creates our sense of meaning. And the Old South was a wonderful place.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But <a title=\"Rick Perry does not support Confederate license plates\" href=\"http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/rick_perry_does_not_support_confederate_licence_plates/singleton\">Rick Perry does not support Confederate license plates</a> – for what that’s worth. On the other hand, Peter Birkenhead, with his partner Gabbie, takes us on the tourist-tours of the major Southern Plantations, and <a href=\"http://www.salon.com/2011/12/27/why_we_still_cant_talk_about_slavery/\">that is amazing</a>:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">We did hear the word “servant” on the tour, two or three times, in the telling of what were meant to be amusing anecdotes about the idiosyncrasies of the servants’ owners. Our guide was dressed in an elaborate, sky-blue ball gown, and chirped about what fun it was for her to “go back in time and live like Scarlett O’Hara for a day.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">As Gabbie read from the menu in her best Vivien Leigh, her eyes began to widen. She dropped the drawl and informed me that the Cabin had been serving busloads of visitors to Louisiana’s plantation country for more than 30 years on the strength of its reputation for authenticity, which the menu explained thusly: “Our goal is to preserve some of the local farming history, serve meals typical of the River Road tradition, and make your visit a relaxed and memorable one. The Cabin Restaurant began as one of the 10 original slave dwellings of the Monroe Plantation. Through the efforts, ideas, the love, sweat and patience of friends and family, you are able to enjoy a small sampling of Southern Louisiana history.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">The love, sweat and patience of actual participants in the “local farming history,” the original builders and tenants of the Cabin, were not dwelt upon or mentioned in the menu’s text, but their contribution to the restaurant’s ambience was subtly alluded to. As the waiter brought our food I read: “In the grand dining room, the roof is supported by four massive beams … placed so that the room resembles a Garconnier (the visiting bachelor’s quarters on a river road plantation.)”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">And we put our menus down. I’ve enjoyed almost every spoonful of gumbo I’ve had over the years, whether in expensive restaurants, coffee shops or train stations, but I might have had my last one contemplating the events witnessed by the roof beams of a “visiting bachelor’s quarters” on a 19th-century sugar plantation.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">It seems they don’t get it, just as some folks don’t get Paris, but it’s more than that:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">When the Civil War ended, there were no truth and reconciliation commissions formed to process memories, no Nuremberg Trials to enable reflection, no Great Emancipator to free the future from the past – only ghosts and the ravenous politics of memory. The need for national reckoning was quickly subordinated to the political imperative of reunification, and on both sides of the Mason Dixon line, forgetting became more valuable than remembering.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Southern apologists earned sudden fortunes in a gold rush of nostalgic forgetting. Within a year of the war’s end, a Virginia journalist named Edward Pollard published a novel called ”The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates,” a breathless, self-pitying fantasy, and the first of many to recast the conflict as a tragedy of fraternal strife and regional repression, to blame the Confederate defeat on the overwhelming resources and underhanded tactics of the North, exalt the Confederacy’s most ruthless generals as paragons of honor, revel in stories of freed people run amok, wallow in tearful, postwar family reunions, and pine for the “Golden Age” of hoop- skirts and happy-go-lucky chattel. It depicted slavery as a benign if not beneficial institution, and relegated further discussion on the topic to the offstage realm of “touchy” subjects, where, for perpetual Northern fear of offending delicate Southern sensibilities, it has languished ever since.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">So no one talks about slavery, and an industry was born:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">The scores of histories and plantation novels that followed Pollard’s, many produced by members of what came to be known as the Dunning School (after its founder, Columbia history professor William Archer Dunning), an influential movement of celebrity, revisionist scholars – a sort of mutton-chopped Heritage Foundation – helped concoct a broad, new Southern culture of perpetual grievance and nostalgia for a re-imagined, antebellum idyll. The primary focus of most Dunning School stories was not the war itself, but Reconstruction, a period that Claude Bowers, an early-20th-century successor to Pollard (and given to similarly Glenn Beckian flights of tearful, dissociative rage) called “The Tragic Era.” It was a decade, as he saw it, marked by unrestrained Yankee corruption and sadism, which punished the South for secession and forced black suffrage on an already politically neutered white population. Bowers’ books demonized “fanatic” abolitionists and Ulysses S. Grant, exalted the Ku Klux Klan and Andrew Johnson, and sold hundreds of thousands of copies.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">By 1932, and the publication of “Gone With the Wind” – the ultimate Lost Cause novel and still the most popular book in America, after the Bible – Lost Cause literature succeeded in sacrificing the very meaning of the Civil War to the demands of myth-making. The 1939 movie sealed the deal. The culture of forgetting had become a national religion.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">And here we are today, with the new movies:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Seventy years later, movies like “The Help” - the latest in a long line of tributes to the unsung white heroes of black history, and a gauzy rendering of the civil rights era as a triumph of the human spirit over mean people – have taken up where ”Gone With the Wind” left off. A direct descendant of Lost Cause culture, modern nostalgia is souvenir nostalgia, a taxidermical, preservation-fetish that isolates parts from wholes, pulls symbols out of context, and shrinks cultural memories to the size of a 9/11 commemorative coin. (Never Forget!) It’s woven into every corner of the culture, high and low, North and South, as pervasive as sleep. And it is a black hole of memory, the place where memory goes to die.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But Birkenhead argues that our culture of forgetting is a real problem.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Don’t get me wrong – I like nostalgia, I miss nostalgia – the kind that involves remembering, anyway, mostly private, typically accidental – not always rosy. When my great-uncle told stories about flying bomber missions over Germany, he didn’t merely recall events – experiences that he had a complicated affection for – he wondered about them. His eyes grew pained and befuddled; his chest rose and fell with a fullness no amount of time could diminish. He wasn’t running from himself to an imagined past, he was finding himself in his story, sorting it out, trying to see it clearly.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Of course childhood nostalgia – the kind of remembering you do when remembering is new, when memories are full and dramatic because they’re few and weightless – is different. Mourning hamsters. Idealizing grandparents. Chronicling summers like they’re centuries. When I had twelve years to look back on, they were eons…<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But the past I remembered then wasn’t even my own. I sported a ridiculous ’50s trench coat and well-thumbed copies of “On the Road” in the ’80s the way 20-year-olds in ancient Rome probably carried Euripides in their vintage Greek togas. When you’re young, nostalgia isn’t about the past, but the future. It’s a train in the distance, a sound from the old days hinting at the new. When your own past is too frightening to look at, and the future is terrifyingly unknown, you fake your way through the present. I spent my days wanting something I couldn’t name, and because I didn’t have memories to attach to that yearning, I yearned for a time before me. I conjured a past and missed it and bought an overcoat I prayed I’d grow into.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">So something like that is going on here:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">The same pattern has repeated itself many times, from Morning in America to WMD, from the Swift Boaters to the Tea Party. The decade following the Civil War amounted to a tragic, missed opportunity for the South to engage in a different kind of remembering. Even a little grown-up nostalgia could have gone a good, long way. The illness implied in its suffix, the sickness of the heart that a powerful longing produces, can be as necessary and cleansing as a storm. But of course that’s what the Lost Causers were afraid of, are afraid of still, and have always been quick to nip in the bud.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">And now we have tourist traps:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">When I asked Angela da Silva, a professor of black history at Lindenwood University, and owner of the St. Louis-based National Black Tourism Network, for her thoughts, she said, “Jesus coming down off the cross couldn’t get me to stay in some gentrified slave cabin with a Jacuzzi in it. The misery and pain that happened in those cabins … This is about shame. People who own these places want the history to go away. But it won’t go away. And until we as black people insist on the story being told no one has any incentive to change their business model.”<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Da Silva grew up just a few miles from the Baker plantation in Missouri, where her family worked as slaves from 1837 until the end of the war. She learned almost nothing in school about slavery, she says, but her grandmother told her stories that she remembers to this day. As she spoke about sleeping in the same bed with her grandmother until she was 10 – and waking up in the middle of the night to ask questions about her ancestors and life on the plantation, her voice softened, and she cleared her throat. I could hear her slow, full breathing over the phone.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But slavery is rarely mentioned on any private plantation tour:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">Proprietors typically insist that innovative architecture and interesting design justify their focus on the “Big Houses,” but that argument can be awfully hard to fathom. Leaving aside obvious exceptions like Monticello, surely the most notable thing about most plantations is not who lived there, who designed them or what they look like. A beautiful home, made beautiful by slaves, is not important for its beauty. To elevate aesthetic elements over history in the public presentation of slave estates is to demote people once inventoried like candlesticks to a status even lower than that of things. It’s an obscenity.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">So Birkenhead is not big on nostalgia:<br>\n</span></p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:36pt\"><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">If it’s true that we’re all breathing Caesar’s breath – that because of the finite amount of perpetually moving molecules on Earth, one or two that he breathed are in each of our exhalations – then we don’t need to dress up in his clothes to connect ourselves to the past, we’re already wearing them. The past is with us always, but we need to live with it, open our eyes and poke around in it, take it all in: the good, the bad and the mythic, if we want to stay connected to the ever-changing present.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:black;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt\">But maybe we don’t want to do that. This year that is ending was bathed in nostalgia of all sorts, or marinated in it, or pickled in it – a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. We just don’t like the present all. Nostalgia is, of course, denial. But what seems to be is always better than nothing. You know the song.</span></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/justabovesunset.wordpress.com/14431/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=justabovesunset.wordpress.com&blog=880780&post=14431&subd=justabovesunset&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "How Hitchens Saved Aggressive American Wingnuttery From The Wrath Of A Lefty Film-Maker",
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Picture the scene: It's early June 2004, and I'm on holiday in Massachusetts, the heartland of Democratic America. The skies are blue and flags are flying. Even in this bluest-of-blue states, you'd never know that the United States is currently embroiled in its largest, most violent war since Vietnam. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The news channels are talking about Ronald Reagan 24/7, in preparation for the old fraud's funeral. Over and over, <i>It's morning in America, he made Americans feel good about America. </i>At a friend's house, a bunch of us watch the Patriots edge out the Panthers in a re-run of Super Bowl XXXVII over beer and barbecue chicken. American football is incomprehensible - I have no idea what's happening on the screen or why.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">In an internet cafe, the BBC News webpage describes car bombs and death in Iraq and how Attorney General John Ashcroft has denied government involvement in military torture programmes. The BBC correspondent Frank Gardner has just been shot and crippled in Saudi Arabia, and his cameraman Simon Cumber killed.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">In the mornings, I watch a little TV and buy the Boston Globe or the New York Times. <i>Click, click, click </i>- channel after channel, newspaper after newspaper, it's dead President, sports, lifestyle, sports. What political news there is, is anodyne, he-said-she-said piffle. When Iraq gets a mention, it's because the President has compared the invasion and occupation to World War II. USA! USA! </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Then one morning, I find Fox News. I'm vaguely aware of it and watch a few minutes - it's a repeat of the previous day's <i>Bill O'Reilly Show</i>, and big Bill is <i>pissed off. </i>Michael Moore, who I know from <i>The Awful Truth </i>and <i>Bowling For Columbine, </i>has made a new film that claims George W. Bush bombed the Twin Towers, or something. Michael Moore is a traitor, a communist and is also fat. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">I enjoy my holiday - visit New York, Cape Cod, Walden Pond and so on, and then head home with a suntan, some duty free and whacking great stars 'n' stripes I bought to use up the last of my dollars. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Moore's film <i>Fahrenheit 9/11 </i>hits the news channels like a thunderbolt. It's a one-eyed, entirely partisan demolition job on the Bush administration's response to the Al Qaeda attack on America and its subsequent invasion of Iraq. It makes a series of specific and powerful claims... </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">1) That President Bush is a chump. Most Americans have never seen the film footage of him sitting dumbly in that classroom listening to a reading from a children's book while the World Trade Centre burns. Now, it's being shown on heavy rotation on cable news. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">2) That the Bush administration is so closely intertwined with the Saudi royal family that it spirited Bin Laden family members out of the country at its behest. Moore asks, can these people be trusted to have Americans' best interests at heart? </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">3) That the US government intentionally exploited Americans' fear and alarm to stampede through regressive legislation and to launch a war on Iraq that was based almost entirely upon a series of astonishing lies and propaganda wheezes. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">4) That the American media obediently reported everything that the government told it to, without seriously questioning any aspects major or minor, and that </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">5) US soldiers and Iraqi civilians are dying in large numbers thanks to that war, and that the administration that launched it are utterly clueless on what to do about it. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">America has no idea what to make of the film. It contradicts everything that they've been told, everything they take for granted.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The news channels and print press, as is the way of things in the US, report the controversy. The Democratic Party welcomes bad press for their political foes, but are as always too spineless to seize the opportunity, afraid to appear weak or unpatriotic. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The Republicans and their media creatures flail desperately, hurling insults and denials this way and that, but the damage is done. The frame has shifted - the discussion is no longer about Saddam Hussein's invented Al Qaeda links and fictional weapons, but is about whether the Bush administration is full of liars and the war on Iraq unjust and insane. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">For the first time, America is on the verge of seeing itself the way that the rest of the world has seen it, this past few years - as a dangerous, wounded animal lashing out at easy targets, led by mendacious propagandists and opportunists. The US diplomatic service is so alarmed that it <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/22/wikileaks-cables-michael-moore-nz\">attempts to block screenings</a> of the film. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">It's a precarious time. The presidential election is coming up in November, and things have taken a disastrous turn for the Bush admin. Somebody needs to do something to shore up their wounded, leaking public image, before the damage becomes serious. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">But what's that portly figure on the horizon? He's striding towards us with determination and a glint in his eye, hiking up his trousers around his rotund waist and steeling his will. Who is this man? What could he possibly want? </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Why, it's <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.single.html\">Christopher Hitchens</a>, and he's here to save the day for war, destruction and the Republican Party! Hallelujah, brothers, for Hitchens has rescued the American People from reality! </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">I exaggerate, of course. Hitchens' piece was the first serious attempt to rebut Moore's movie, and he scores some good hits. The Afghanistan section is, as Hitch says, pissweak stuff, a work of circumstantial innuendo worthy of Hitchens himself. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Michael Moore has always been a kind of populist Hitchens, minus the overwrought prose and Oxbridge education, and without the mania for war, death, murder and destruction. In another life, they should've been lovers. They were perfect for each other, each as hackish as the other in pursuit of political goals. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">But even now, you have to marvel at how Hitchens rallied the troops to the flag. I don't exaggerate when I say that US wingnuts were flailing, howling incoherently over <i>Fahrenheit 9/11. </i>For the first time in three years, they'd utterly lost control of The Message, and all manner of horrible leftist goblins were springing out of the ground to ask dangerous questions about President Bush's statements, actions and integrity. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Enter Hitchens the Englishman of the left, to save the President from an American, socialist anti-war activist.</span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">We can immediately dispense with every single one of Hitchens' complaints about Moore's honesty. As we saw <a href=\"http://flyingrodent.blogspot.com/2011/12/not-on-their-own-merits-but-according.html\">yesterday</a>, Hitchens was an expert bullshitter who could and did effortlessly match Moore's most ludicrous elisions and misdirections. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">We can also dismiss his comparison of Moore to Leni Reifenstahl with a chuckle. Say what you like about Michael Moore, but his angry-ordinary-Joe act never got anyone killed. You can't say the same for Hitch's gleefully ridiculous poacher-turned-gamekeeper schtick. </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Marvel also that Hitchens, who propped up his later career with the comical pretense that his full-throated endorsement of official US government policy was an act of exemplary political courage, had the GIANT BRASS BALLS OF STEEL required to commit the following sentence to paper... </span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span><br><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\">(the film) ...\"Is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of \"dissenting\" bravery\".</span> </span></i><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">"Abject political cowardice", says the man who spent who knows how many hours defending such glorious paragons of virtue as Ahmad Chalabi and Paul Wolfowitz! Well, we can at least have a laugh as he tries to de-schmuckify Bush's toe-curling encounter with <i>The Pet Goat </i>or his infamous <i>\"Now watch this drive!\" </i>scene, as he ran the War on Terror from the golf course.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Hitchens' complaint that Moore shows pre-war Iraq by depicting kite-flying children and happy families has now entered pro-war folklore. The kite-flying kiddies, followed immediately by the shattering aerial assault on Baghdad, are all a sub-Hitchens goon like Nick Cohen need invoke any time he mentions Moore, confident that his point is made. And yet...</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Let's be blunt. As a depiction of the victims of the Iraq War, Moore's choice of clips are a million times more representative than Hitchens' unending war against Saddam and whoever he was calling Genocidal Fascists on any given day. The <i>lowest, </i>definitely undercounting estimate for civilian deaths in Iraq is in the region of 100,000 and I'd happily place a bet that for every fanatical terrorist whose end Hitchens celebrated, a thousand happy families lost a parent, a sibling or a child, kite or no.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The point of lowest bathos comes when Hitchens tries to explain that, contra Moore's claim, Iraq <i>did </i>attack Americans. Iraq started it! </span></span><span style=\"font-family:inherit;line-height:18px\">Why, they sheltered Abu Nidal! You remember Abu Nidal? Most won't because nobody gave a fuck about one elderly terrorist, before or after the war, barring Hitchens.</span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">They sheltered Abu Musab al Zarqawi! If they did, of course - and I can't establish this one way or the other - it's in the sense that the US "sheltered" the 9/11 hijackers, since Zarqawi was as murderously disposed towards the various tyrannies of the Middle East as he was to the US. Hitchens certainly knows this, yet says it anyway. Honesty and truth, indeed. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\">Iraqi ground units shot at American planes patrolling the No-Fly Zone over Iraq! Well, on and on he goes. You can imagine what type of film all of these caveats would feature in, what form of documentary Hitch might prefer to see. </span></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><i><span style=\"line-height:18px\">"At no point does Michael Moore </span><span style=\"line-height:18px\">make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer\".</span></i></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Says Hitchens, the famously objective, well-mannered gentleman*. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Hitchens' gripes get more bizarre - about Moore's <i>\"affected and ostentatious concern for Black America\"</i>, as if Hitch has never affected ostentatious concern for the people he actively advocates bombing. He demands to know whether Moore would support a military draft, or the draft riots of 1863. Thankfully, he doesn't ask whether Mike is still beating his wife. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Hilariously, given his well-known habit of minimising and diverting from American crimes and fuck-ups, he also trots out this humdinger of a line... </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><i>\"In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence\".</i></span> </span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Yoy. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Well anyway, you know the rest. The wingnut literati all promiscuously linked to Hitchens' piece, expanded and wanked up the most egregious of his points and soon enough, they steadied the rocking Republican ship. The monster Moore was repelled, sent wailing and thrashing back into the depths of the sea, and the world made safe for the US government's insane wars. President Bush squeaked re-election. Both his administration and its criminal ineptitude passed into history, leaving the rest of the planet with the Mother of All Economic And Military Fuck-Ups in our laps.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah\">big barbecue in Fallujah</a> was only months away; coalition forces continued to bleed troops until the great slaughter of the Iraqi civil war ensued, murdering thousands upon thousands of civilians in an orgy of horrifying violence and blood-letting. The coalition lost almost five thousand men and women killed and tens of thousands more injured. Many thousands of veterans continue to struggle badly with adjustment to civilian life, with far higher rates of homelessness, unemployment and mental illness than the norm. The bodycount for Iraqis is too large to accurately count.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The Iraq War has gone down in history as one of the most needless and wasteful military disasters of the modern era and the killing is a long way from finished yet. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Chris Hitchens continued to make highly tendentious, fork-tongued arguments for violence and mayhem, picking up fat paycheques for angrily denouncing those of his former colleagues on the left who had the temerity to complain about war. He died in 2011, on the same day that the occupation of Iraq ended. Tributes poured in from all quarters, although many of the wingnuts who once fed on the scraps from his table denounced him as an antisemite and a commie for insufficient pro-Israel belligerence. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Michael Moore made successful films about American healthcare reform and the injustices of capitalism. A few years later, a programme of subsidised healthcare was instituted and world capitalism burned its own house down in an orgy of greed and recrimination. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">History, I think, will be kinder to one than it will to the other, Literary Lion or not.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Anyway, let's leave the last word to Hitchens, since he isn't here to speak for himself. </span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span><i><span style=\"line-height:18px\">...<b>If you leave out absolutely everything that might give your \"narrative\" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it</b>, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then </span><span style=\"border-bottom-width:0px;border-color:initial;border-left-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-top-width:0px;font:inherit;line-height:18px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-top:0px;vertical-align:baseline\"><b>you have betrayed your craft</b></span><span style=\"line-height:18px\">.</span></i> </span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Oh, yes. Those are words to live by alright, Chris.</span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\">*On the topic of sneering and jeering, see this passage, quoted from <a href=\"http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/12/the-unbearable-lightness-of-hitch\">Lawyers, Guns & Money</a>... </span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;line-height:18px\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><em style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\">“If you wanted more Iraqi support,” Atiyyah bellowed at Hitchens,” you should have given us more money and food once you got there!”</em><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\"> </span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><em style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\"><br></em></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><em style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\">“So you’re saying, sir, that you can be bought,” Hitchens shot back...</em></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\"><br></span></span><br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><i><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\">...If I didn’t deeply dislike Hitchens already, that would do it. He’s talking to one of the leaders of one of the liberal Iraqi institutions upon which the future of Iraq depends. There’s no way that the guy has the resources he needs. And Hitchens has the gall to talk about humanitarian aid and support for his projects as if it was some sort of bribe that Atiyyah should have the self-respect to refuse. You want more money for the military? Are you saying, sir, that the United States Armed Forces can be </span><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\">bought</span><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\">? I shall have to say good day to you, sir!</span></i></span> <br><span style=\"background-color:white;font-family:inherit;font-size:x-small\"><i><span style=\"line-height:18px;text-align:left\"><br></span></i></span><br><div style=\"text-align:left\"><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><span style=\"line-height:18px\">Pure class, our Chris.</span></span></div>"
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"title" : "Oh No! Blogging is REALLY, REALLY dead this time!!!!!! :D",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://gapingvoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/zzzzzz7654191a.jpeg\"><img title=\"zzzzzz7654191a\" src=\"http://gapingvoid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/zzzzzz7654191a.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"232\"></a></p>\n<p><em>[Cartoon first published circa 2005 etc.]</em></p>\n<p><em>So uber-famous-corporate-blogger-ninja-rockstar Jerimiah Owyang blogged about <a href=\"http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2011/12/27/end-of-an-era-the-golden-age-of-tech-blogging-is-over/\">The Golden Age of Tech Blogging being over</a>. His colleague, my friend, Brian Solis <a href=\"http://www.briansolis.com/2011/12/is-the-golden-age-of-tech-blogging-over-no/\">doesn’t agree</a>. Lots of other people are yakkin’ about it as well, it seems. I guess that’s a good thing. Here are my thoughts:</em></p>\n<p><strong>1. Time to quote Shirky YET AGAIN: </strong><em>“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”</em> -<a href=\"http://shirky.com/\">CLAY SHIRKY</a> in 2004.</p>\n<p><strong>2. The business model of blogging has been proven many times over, so pretending that it hasn’t is pointless.</strong> Indirectly, <a href=\"http://www.avc.com/\">Fred Wilson’s blog</a> is EASILY worth more to him, than what AOL paid Mike Arrington for Techcrunch, maybe by a factor of ten (and they paid over $20 million for the latter, I am told). I’m not kidding! Whether or not said proven business model suits your individual needs is another question…</p>\n<p><strong>3. Blogging is no longer about “The Conversation”.</strong> That moved over to Twitter, Facebook etc years ago. If you’re just looking to natter and rant with the other trolls, I guess the comment section of a large blog like Gawker or HuffPo is as good a place as any. One more waste of space wasting their time, whatever. I’m liking <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/101735325402794400573/posts\">Google Plus</a> a lot these days. It has the same spontaneity as Twitter, but a bit more engaging and thoughtful, somehow. I never go on Facebook much any more. Too many “civilians”.</p>\n<p><strong>4. We forget JUST how utterly time-consuming blogging used to be</strong>,<strong> back when it was the only game in town.</strong> I remember the early blogging days, don’t you? Remember how keeping up with the blogosphere properly took ten hours a day? Nowadays, the only people who are left blogging are the people who REALLY want to, who ACTUALLY have something to say. Everyone else is uploading cat photos on Facebook. I think this is a good thing.</p>\n<p><strong>5. Traffic is now harder to get than ever, but I’m OK with that. </strong>The kind of effort it takes me to get a noticeable and sustainable increase in blog traffic, ballpark, is about the same amount of time and effort it takes me to get a book deal and write the first draft. Guess which option I chose? Exactly…</p>\n<p><strong> 6. I’m waiting for the Golden Age of Facebook and Twitter to be over, too.</strong> That way we can all get away from our computers and back to actually getting some real work done. Ha!</p>\n<p><strong>7. It’s the product, Stupid.</strong> My social media strategy these days has only three words: <strong>“Draw more cartoons”</strong>. In other words, create more real work, ACTUAL PRODUCT (in my case, cartoons) and the social media will fall into place, but only AFTER I’ve done <a href=\"http://gapingvoid.com/cg\">the thing that actually pays the bills</a>. Getting all obsessed with social media BEFORE you’ve created something of real, lasting value is putting the cart before the horse. But that’s an easy mistake to make online, I’m as guilty of that as anyone. Never again.</p>\n<p><strong>8. None of this is new.</strong> My thoughts on blogging aren’t that different than <a href=\"http://gapingvoid.com/2010/02/04/gapingvoids-thoughts-on-blogging-2010/\">the last time I wrote a post like this one</a>, nearly two years ago. Nor are my thoughts that different to anybody else’s I’ve seen lately, frankly. Do the math…</p>\n<img src=\"http://gapingvoid.com/?ak_action=api_record_view&id=17019&type=feed\" alt=\"\">"
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"content" : "<p>Today, I gave a talk on an implementation of a man in the middle (MITM) attack on HDCP-secured video links. <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/28c3_bunnie_hdcp_mitm_final.pdf\">Here</a> is a full copy of the slides that I presented (with explanatory diagrams), as well as the text-only of the paper which accompanies the slides, below. </p>\n<p>Also, please note that the hardware disclosed in this talk is now <a href=\"http://adafruit.com/products/609\">available for purchase</a> from the good folks at Adafruit. You can find more technical documentation about the NeTV at the <a href=\"http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=NeTV_Main_Page\">kosagi.com wiki</a>, and you can discuss at the <a href=\"http://www.kosagi.com/forum/index.php\">kosagi.com forum</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p>\n<p>A man-in-the-middle attack on HDCP-secured video links is demonstrated. The attack is implemented on an embedded Linux platform, with the help of a Spartan-6 FPGA, and is capable of operating real-time on HD video links. It utilizes the HDCP master key to derive the corresponding private keys of the video source and sink through observation and computation upon the exchanged public keys. The man-in-the-middle then genlocks its raster and cipher state to the incoming video stream, enabling it to do pixel by pixel swapping of encrypted data. Since the link does no CRC or hash verification of the data, one is able to forge video using this method.</p>\n<p>Significantly, the attack enables forging of video data without decrypting original video data, so executing the attack does not constitute copyright circumvention. Therefore, this novel and commercially useful application of the HDCP master key impairs equating, in a legal sense, the master key with circumvention. Finally, the embodiment of the exploit is entirely open-source, including the hardware and the Verilog implementation of the FPGA.</p>\n<p><strong>BACKGROUND & CONTEXT</strong></p>\n<p>In September 2010, the HDCP master key was circulated via Pastebin. Speculation ensued around the application of the master key to create HDCP strippers, which would enable the circumvention of certain copyright control mechanisms put in place around video links. Unfortunately, this is a legally risky application, for a number of reasons, including potential conflicts with DMCA legislation that criminalizes the circumvention of copyright control mechanisms.</p>\n<p>This talk discloses a new use for the HDCP master key that side-steps some of the potential legal issues. This hack never decrypts video; without decryption, there is no circumvention, and as a result the DMCA cannot apply to this hack. Significantly, by demonstrating a bona-fide commercially significant purpose for the HDCP master key that does not circumvent an access control measure, this hack impairs the equating of trafficking or possession of the HDCP master key to circumvention and/or circumvention-related crimes. </p>\n<p>The main purpose of this hack is to enable the overlay of video content onto an HDCP encrypted stream. The simple fact that a trivial video overlay becomes an interesting topic is illustrative of the distortion of traditional rights and freedoms brought about by the DMCA. While the creation of derivative works of video through dynamic compositing and overlay (such as picture in picture) seems intuitively legal and natural in a pre-HDCP world, the introduction of HDCP made it difficult to build such in-line equipment. The putative purpose role of HDCP in the digital video ecosystem is to patch the plaintext-hole in the transmission of otherwise encrypted video from shiny disks (DVDs, BDs) to the glass (LCD, CRT). Since the implementation of video overlay would typically require manipulation of plaintext by intermediate processing elements, or at least the buffering of a plaintext frame where it can be vulnerable to readout, the creation of such devices has generally been very difficult to get past the body that controls the granting of HDCP keys, for fear that they can be hacked and/or repurposed to build an HDCP stripper. Also, while a manufacturer could implement such a feature without the controlling body’s blessing, they would have to live in constant fear that their device keys would be revoked.</p>\n<p>While the applications of video overlay are numerous, the basic scenario is that while you may be enjoying content X, you would also like to be aware of content Y. To combine the two together would require a video overlay mechanism. Since video overlay mechanisms are effectively banned by the HDCP controlling organization, consumers are slaves to the video producers and distribution networks, because consumers have not been empowered to remix video at the consumption point. </p>\n<p>The specific implementation of this hack enables the overlay of a WebKit browser over any video feed; a concrete example of the capability enabled by this technology is the overlay of twitter feeds as “news crawlers” across a TV program, so that one may watch community commentary in real-time on the same screen. While some TV programs have attempted to incorporate twitter feeds into the show, the incorporation has always been on the source side, and as such users are unable to pick their hashtags. Now, with this hack, the same broadcast program (say, a political debate) can have a very different viewing experience based on which hashtag is keyed into the viewer’s twitter crawler.</p>\n<p><strong>TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION</strong></p>\n<p>A Spartan-6 FPGA was used to implement a TMDS-compatible source and sink. TMDS is the signaling standard used by HDMI and DVI. The basic pipeline within the FPGA deserializes incoming video and reserializes it to the output. In this trivial mode, it is simply a signal amplifier for the video.</p>\n<p>In order to enable the overlay of a WebKit browser, an 800 MHz ARM-based Linux computer is connected to the FPGA. The Linux computer is based upon the PXA168 by Marvell, and it features 128 MB of DDR2 and a microSD card for firmware. The distribution is based upon Angstrom and it is built using OpenEmbedded with the help of buildbot. The entire build system for the Linux computer is available through a public EC2 cloud image that anyone can copy and rent from Amazon.</p>\n<p>From the Linux computer’s standpoint, the FPGA emulates a parallel RGB LCD, and thus from the programming standpoint looks simply like a framebuffer at /dev/fb0. There is also a device management interface revealed through I2C that is managed using the standard Linux I2C driver. The I2C management interface handles routine status requests, such as reading the video timing and PLL state, and also handles reading out sections of snooping buffers, the significance of which will be discussed later. The FPGA also has a chroma-key feature where a magic color (240,0,240) is remapped to “transparent”.</p>\n<p>The FPGA itself is bootstrapped through a programming interface where the device’s compiled bitstream is sent to the FPGA by writing to /dev/fpga. There are also IOCTLs available on /dev/fpga that enable other meta-level functions such as resetting the FPGA or querying its configuration state. </p>\n<p>In addition to passing through the TMDS signal, the FPGA also has the ability to listen to *and* manipulate the DDC. The DDC is an I2C link found on HDMI cables that enables the reporting of monitor capability records (EDIDs) and also is the medium upon which the key exchange happens. Therefore, being able to listen to this passively is of great importance to the hack. The FPGA implements a “shadow-RAM” which records all reads and writes to specific addresses that fall within the expected address ranges for EDID and HDCP transactions.</p>\n<p>The FPGA also implements a “squash-RAM” which is used to override bits on the I2C bus. Since I2C is an open collector standard, overriding a 1 to a 0 is trivial; but, overriding a 0 to a 1 requires an active pull-up. The hardware implements a beefy FET on the DDC to enable overriding 0′s to 1′s. The DDC implementation uses a highly oversampled I2C state machine. I2C itself only runs at 100 kHz, but the state machine implementation runs at 26 MHz. This allows the state machine to determine the next state of the I2C bus and decide to override or allow the transaction on-the-fly. The “squash-RAM” feature is used to override the EDID negotiation such that the video source is only informed of modes that the FPGA implementation can handle. For example, this implementation cannot handle 3D TV resolutions, so the reporting of such capabilities from the TV is squashed before it can get to the video source. This causes the source to automatically limit its content to be within the hardware capabilities of the FPGA, and to be within the resolutions that are supported by the WebKit UI.</p>\n<p>The key exchange on HDCP consists of three pieces of data being passed back and forth: the source public key (Aksv), the sink public key (Bksv), and a piece of shared state (An). The order in which these are written is well-defined. The completion of the transfer of the final byte of Aksv serves as a trigger to initialize the cipher states of the source and the sink. During this time period, each device computes the dot-product of the other device’s KSV with their internal private key (which is a table of forty 56-bit numbers) and derives a shared secret, known as Km. This is basically an implementation of Blom’s Scheme.</p>\n<p>In order to implement the man-in-the-middle attack, the three pieces of data are recorded, and the authentication trigger is passed from the FPGA to the Linux computer through an udev event. udev triggers a program that reads the KSVs from the snoop memory, and performs a computation upon the HDCP master key and the KSVs to derive the private keys that mirrors those found in each of the source and sink devices. In a nutshell, the computation loops through the 40×40 matrix of the HDCP master key, and based upon the KSV having a 1 at a particular bit position it sums in the corresponding 40-entry row or column of the master key to the 40-entry private key vector. The use of a row or columns depends upon if the KSV belongs to a source or a sink.</p>\n<p>Once the private keys vectors have been derived, they can be multiplied in exactly the same fashion as would be found in the source or sink to derive the shared secret, Km. </p>\n<p>This shared secret, Km, is then written into the FPGA’s HDCP engine, and the cipher state is ready to go. In practice, the entire computation can happen in real-time, but some devices go faster or slower than others, so it is hard to guarantee it always completes in time, particularly with the variable interrupt latency of the udev handler. As a result, the actual link negotiation caches the value of Km from previous authentications, and the udev event primarily verifies that Km hasn’t changed (note that for each given source and sink pair, Km is static and never changes, so unless users are pulling cables out and swapping them between devices, Km is essentially static). If the Km has changed, it updates the Km in the FPGA and forces a 150ms hot plug event, which re-initiates the authentication, thereby making the transaction fairly reliable yet effectively real-time.</p>\n<p>Significantly, this system as implemented is incapable of operating without having the public keys provided by both the source and the sink. This means that it cannot “create” an HDCP link: this implementation is not an operational HDCP engine on its own. Rather, it requires the user of this overlay hack to “prove” it has previously purchased a full HDCP link through evidence of valid public keys. </p>\n<p>Once the FPGA’s HDCP cipher state is matched to the video source’s cipher state, one can now selectively encrypt different pixels to replace original pixels, and the receiver will decrypt all without any error condition. This is because encryption is done on a pixel by pixel basis and the receiver does little in the way of verification. The lack of link verification is in fact quite intentional and necessary. The natural bit error rate of HD video links is atrocious; but this is acceptable, because the human eye probably won’t detect bit errors even on the level of 1 in every 10,000 bits (at high error rates, users see a “sparkle” or “snow” on the screen, but largely the image is intact). Therefore, this latitude in allowing pixel-level corruption is necessary to keep consumer costs low; otherwise, much higher quality cables would be required along with FEC techniques to achieve a bit error rate that is compatible with strict cryptographic verification techniques such as full-frame hashing. </p>\n<p>The selection of which pixel to swap is done by observing the color of the overlay’s video. The overlay video is not encrypted and is generated by the user, so there is no legal violation to look at the color of the overlay video. Note that other pixel-combining methods, such as alpha blending, would necessitate the decryption of video. If the overlay video matches a certain chroma key color, the incoming video is selected; otherwise, the overlay video is selected. This allows for the creation of transparent “holes” in the UI. Since the UI is rendered by a WebKit browser, chroma-key is implemented by simply setting the background color in the CSS of the UI pages to magic-pink. This makes the default state of a web page transparent, with all items rendered on top of it opaque.</p>\n<p>Note that pixel-by-pixel manipulation of the incoming video feed is done without any real buffering of the video. A TMDS pixel “lives” inside the FPGA for less than a couple dozen clock cycles: the lifetime of a pixel is simply the latency of the pipelines and the elastic buffers required to deskew wire length differences between differential pairs. This means that the overlay video from the Linux computer must be strictly available at exactly the right time, or else the user will see the overlay jitter and shake. In order to avoid such artifacts, the time resolution requirement of the pixel synchronization is stricter than the width of a pixclock period, which can be as short as dozen nanoseconds. </p>\n<p>In order to accomplish this fine-grain synchronization, a genlock mechanism was implemented where vertical retrace signals (which are unencrypted) trigger an interrupt that initiates the readout of /dev/fb0 to the FPGA. However, the interrupt jitter of a non-realtime Linux is <em>much</em> larger than a single pixel time, so in order to absorb this uncertainty, a dynamic genlock engine was implemented in the FPGA. An 8-line overlay video FIFO is used to provide the timing elasticity between the Linux computer and the primary video feed; and the vertical sync interrupt-to-pixel-out latency of the Linux computer is dynamically measured by the FPGA and pre-compensated. In effect, the FPGA measures how slow the Linux box’s reflexes are, and requests for the frame to start coming in advance of when the data is needed. These measures, along with a few lines of FIFO, ensure pixel availability at the precise time when the pixel is needed.</p>\n<p><strong>SUMMARY</strong></p>\n<p>A system has been described that enables a man-in-the-middle attack upon HDCP secured links. The attack enables the overlay of video upon existing streams; an example of an application of the attack is the overlay of a personalized twitter feed over video programs. The attack relies upon the HDCP master key and a snooping mechanism implemented using an FPGA. The implementation of the attack never decrypts previously encrypted video, and it is incapable of operating without an existing, valid HDCP link. It is thus an embodiment of a bona-fide, non-infringing and commercially useful application of the HDCP master key. This embodiment impairs the equating of the HDCP master key with copyright circumvention purposes.</p>"
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"content" : "Some of what has caught my attention recently:<br><ul><li>Security guru Bruce Schneier predicts \"smart phones are going to become the primary platform of attack for cybercriminals\" soon (<a href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/11/android_malware.html\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>If, next, Amazon does a smartphone, I hope it is WiFi-based, like Steve Jobs originally wanted to do with the iPhone (<a href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/17/amazon-smartphone/\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/31/republic-wireless-an-android-powered-voipcellular-hybrid-carrier-that-will-cut-your-phone-bill-in-half/\">[2]</a> <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/11/steve-jobs-iphone-no-carrier/\">[3]</a>)<br><br><li>iPhone owners love Siri despite its flaws (<a href=\"http://www.geekwire.com/2011/survey-iphone-4s-owners-love-siri-hate-battery-life\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>Valve, makers of Steam, talks about their pricing experiments: \"Without making announcements, we varied the price ... pricing was perfectly elastic ... Then we did this different experiment where we did a sale ... a highly promoted event ... a 75 percent price reduction ... gross revenue [should] remain constant. Instead what we saw was our gross revenue increased by a factor of 40. Not 40 percent, but a factor of 40 ... completely not predicted by our previous experience with silent price variation.\" [<a href=\"http://www.geekwire.com/2011/experiments-video-game-economics-valves-gabe-newell\">[1]</a>]<br><br><li>An idea whose time has come, profiling code based not on the execution time required, but the power consumed (<a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=154121\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>Grumpy about work and dreaming about doing a startup? Some food for thought for those romanticizing startup life. (<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/jobs/starting-a-business-the-romance-vs-the-reality.html\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2011/11/entrepreneurship-sucks.php\">[2]</a>)<br><br><li>Yahoo discovers toolbar data (the urls people click on and browse to) helps a lot for web crawling (<a href=\"http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2063592\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>Google Personalized Search adds explanations. Explanations not only add credibility to recommendations, but also make people more accepting of recommendations they don't like. (<a href=\"http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/12/when-recent-searches-change-your-google.html\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>\"Until now, many education studies have been based on populations of a few dozen students. Online technology can capture every click: what students watched more than once, where they paused, what mistakes they made ... [massive] data ... for understanding the learning process and figuring out which strategies really serve students best.\" (<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/science/daphne-koller-technology-as-a-passport-to-personalized-education.html?_r=1&ref=science&pagewanted=all\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>Andrew Ng's machine learning class at Stanford was excellent; I highly recommend it. If you missed it the first time, it is being offered again (for free again) next quarter. (<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/mlclass/comments/mfuuc/stanford_pushes_some_cool_new_online_classes_in/\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>Microsoft giving up on its version of Hadoop? Surprising. (<a href=\"http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-drops-dryad-puts-its-big-data-bets-on-hadoop/11226\">[1]</a>)<br><br><li>The NYT did a fun experiment crowdsourcing predictions. The results are worth a look. (<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/science/imagining-2076-connect-your-brain-to-the-internet.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/12/06/science/20111206-technology-timeline.html?ref=science#future\">[2]</a>)<br><br><li>Web browsers (Firefox and Chrome) will be a gaming platform soon (<a href=\"http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mozilla-firefox-gaming-html5-browser,14356.html\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://www.tomshardware.com/news/google-chrome-gaming-nacl-html5,13384.html\">[2]</a>)<br></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/qKICTtAnPKc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Newspapers, Paywalls, and Core Users",
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"content" : "<p>This may be the year where newspapers finally drop the idea of treating all news as a product, and all readers as customers. </p>\n<p>One early sign of this shift was the 2010 launch of paywalls for the London <em>Times</em> and <em>Sunday Times</em>. These involved no new strategy; however, the newspaper world was finally willing to regard them as real test of whether general-interest papers could induce a critical mass of readers to pay. (<a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/20/times-paywall-readership\">Nope</a>.) Then, in March, the New York <em>Times</em> introduced a charge for readers who crossed a certain threshold of article views (a pattern copied from the financial press, and especially the <em>Financial Times</em>) which is generating substantial revenue. Finally, and most recently, were a pair of announcements last month: The Chicago <em>Sun-Times</em> was <a href=\"http://www.suntimes.com/9284143-417/sun-times-media-online-sites-to-begin-metered-pay-plan.html\">adopting a new threshold charge</a>, and the Minneapolis <em>Star-Tribune</em> said that <a href=\"http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/dpp/money/star-tribune-unveils-20-article-paywall-nov-1-2011\">their existing one was also working well</a>. Taken together, these events are a blow to the idea that online news can be treated as a simple product for sale, as the physical newspaper was.</p>\n<p>For some time now, newspaper people have been insisting, sometimes angrily, that we readers will soon have to pay for content (an assertion that had already appeared, <a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/writings/information_price.html\">in just that form</a>, by 1996.) During that same period, freely available content grew ten-thousand-fold, while buyers didn’t. In fact, <a href=\"http://www.paulgraham.com/publishing.html\">as Paul Graham has pointed out</a>, “Consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either…Almost every form of publishing has been organized as if the medium was what they were selling, and the content was irrelevant.” </p>\n<p>Commercial radio is ad-supported because no one could figure out a way to restrict access to radio waves; cable TV collects revenues because someone figured out a way to restrict access to co-axial cables. The logic of the internet is that everyone pays for the infrastructure, then everyone gets to use it. This is obviously incompatible with print economics, but oddly, the industry’s faith in ‘every reader a customer’ has been largely unshaken by newspapers’ own lived experience of the move to the web.</p>\n<p>A printed paper was a bundle. A reader who wanted only sports and stock tables bought the same paper as a reader who wanted local and national politics, or recipes and horoscopes. Online, though, that bundle is torn apart, every day, by users who forward each other individual URLs, without regard to front pages or named sections or intended navigation. This unbundling leads to the odd math of web readership — if you rank readers by pages viewed in a month, the largest group by far, between a third and half of them, will visit only a single page. A smaller group will read two pages in a month, a still smaller group will read three, and so on, up to the most active reader, in a group by herself, who will read dozens of pages a day, hundreds in a month.</p>\n<p>Against this hugely variable audience behavior, a paywall was all-or-nothing: “If you won’t give us any money, we won’t show you any ads!” Offered this all-or-nothing choice, most readers opted for ‘nothing’; the day they launched their paywall, the <em>Times</em> of London <a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/writings/information_price.html\">shrank its digital audience</a> from a large multiple of its print circulation to a small fraction of it. This isn’t a problem with general-interest paywalls — it is <em>the</em> problem, widely understood before the turn of the century, and one to which there has never been a convincing answer. The easy part of treating digital news as a product is getting money from 2% of your audience. The hard part is losing 98% of your advertising base.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>To understand newspapers’ 15-year attachment to paywalls, you have to understand “Everyone must pay!” not just as an economic assertion, but as a cultural one. Though the journalists all knew readership would plummet if their paper dropped imported content like Dear Abby or the funny pages, they never really had to know just how few people were reading about the City Council or the water main break. Part of the appeal of paywalls, even in the face of their economic ineffectiveness, was preserving this sense that a coupon-clipper and a news junkie were both just customers, people whose motivations the paper could serve in general, without having to understand in particular.</p>\n<p>The article threshold has often been discussed as if it was simply a new method of getting readers to pay, to which the reply has to be “Yes, except for most of them.” Calling article thresholds a “leaky” or “porous” paywall understates the enormity of the change; the metaphor of a leak suggests a mostly intact container that lets out a minority of its contents, but a paper that shares even two pages a month frees a majority of users from any fee at all. By the time the threshold is at 20 pages (a number fast becoming customary) a paper has given up on even <em>trying</em> to charge between 85% and 95% of its readers, and it will only convince a minority of that minority to pay. </p>\n<p>Newspapers have two principal sources of revenue, readers and advertisers, and they can operate at mass or niche scale for each of those groups. A metro-area daily paper is a mass product for customers (many readers buy the paper) and for advertisers (many readers see their ads.) Newsletters and small-circulation magazines, by contrast, serve niche readers, and therefore niche advertisers — <em><a href=\"http://firechief.com\">Fire Chief</a></em>, <em><a href=\"http://www.motherearthnews.com/\">Mother Earth News</a></em>. (Some newsletters get by with no advertising at all, as with <em><a href=\"http://www.cooksillustrated.com/\">Cooks’ Illustrated</a></em>, where part of what the user pays for is freedom from ads, or rather freedom from a publisher beholden to advertisers.)</p>\n<p>Paywalls were an attempt to preserve the old mass+mass model after a transition to digital distribution. With so few readers willing to pay, and therefore so few readers to advertise to, paywalls instead turned newspapers into a niche+niche business. What the article threshold creates is an odd hybrid — a mass market for advertising, but a niche market for users. As David Cohn has <a href=\"http://blog.digidave.org/2011/04/why-the-new-york-times-pay-model-is-similar-to-npr-and-spot-us\">pointed out</a>, this is the commercial equivalent of the National Public Radio model, where sponsors reach all listeners, but direct suport only comes from donors. (Lest NPR seem like small ball, it’s worth noting that the <em>Times</em> ‘ has convinced something like one out of every hundred of its online readers to pay, while NPR affiliates’ success rate is something like one in twelve. Newspapers with thresholds now <em>aspire</em> to NPR’s persuasiveness.) Paywalls encourage a paper to focus on the value of their content. Thresholds encourage them to focus on the value of their users.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>Threshold charges subject the logic of the print bundle — a bit of everything for everybody, slathered with ads — to two new questions: What do our most committed users want? And what will turn our most frequent readers into committed users? Here are some things that won’t: More ads. More gossip. More syndicated copy. This is new territory for mainstream papers, who have always had head count rather than engagement as their principal business metric.</p>\n<p>Celebrities behaving badly always drive page-views through the roof, but those readers will be anything but committed. Meanwhile, the people who hit the threshold and then hand over money are, almost by definition, people who regard the paper not just as an occasional source of interesting articles, but as an essential institution, one whose continued existence is vital no matter what today’s offerings are. </p>\n<p>In discussing why the most loyal subset of readers would pay for access to the <em>Times</em>, Felix Salmon described <a href=\"http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/\">some of the motivations</a> reported by users: “I like the product, understand the incentives involved, and want its production to continue” and “I feel that maintaining a quality NYT is immensely important to the country as a whole.” Now, and presumably from now on, the readers that matter most are disproportionately likely to score high on the God Forbid index (as in “God forbid the <em>Sun-Times</em> not be around <a href=\"http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/9541249-452/confused-by-ward-remap-fight.html\">to keep an eye on the politicians</a>!”)</p>\n<p>The people who feel this way have always been a minority of the readership, a fact obscured by print bundles, but made painfully visible by paywalls. When a paper abandons the standard paywall strategy, it gives up on selling news as a simple transaction. Instead, it must also appeal to its readers’ non-financial and non-transactional motivations: loyalty, gratitude, dedication to the mission, a sense of identification with the paper, an urge to preserve it as an institution rather than a business. </p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>Thresholds are now mostly being tried at big-city papers — New York, Chicago, Minneapolis. Most papers, however, are not the Minneapolis <em>Star-Tribune</em>. Most papers are the Springfield <em>Reporter</em>, papers with a circulation 20,000 or less, and mostly made up of content bought from the Associated Press and United Media. These papers may not do well on the God Forbid index, because they produce so little original content, and they may not find thresholds financially viable, because the most engaged hundredth of their audience will number in the dozens, not the thousands. </p>\n<p>On the other hand, local reporting is almost the only form of content for which the local paper is the sole source, so it’s also possible to imagine a virtuous circle for at least some small papers, where a civically-minded core of citizens step in to fund the paper in return for an increase in local coverage, both of politics and community matters. (It’s hard to overstate how vital community coverage is for small-town papers, which have typically been as much village well as town crier.)</p>\n<p>It’s too early to know what behaviors the newly core users will reward or demand from their papers. They may start asking to see fewer or less intrusive ads than non-paying readers do. They may reward papers that make their comments section more conversational (as the <em>Times</em> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/business/media/the-times-to-change-policy-for-comments-on-web-site.html\">has just done</a>.) The most dramatic change, though, is that the paying users are almost certain to be more political engaged than the median reader. </p>\n<p>There has never been a mass market for good journalism in this country. What there used to be was a mass market for print ads, coupled with a mass market for a physical bundle of entertainment, opinion, and information; these were tied to an institutional agreement to subsidize a modicum of real journalism. In that mass market, the opinions of the politically engaged readers didn’t matter much, outnumbered as they were by people checking their horoscopes. This suited advertisers fine; they have always preferred a centrist and distanced political outlook, the better not to alienate potential customers. When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage.</p>\n<p>It will take time for the economic weight of those users to affect the organizational form of the paper, but slowly slowly, form follows funding. For the moment at least, the most promising experiment in user support means forgoing mass in favor of passion; this may be the year where we see how papers figure out how to reward the people most committed to their long-term survival.</p>"
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"categories" : [ "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/read", "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/starred", "BOOKS", "10x10", "Alain Mabanckou", "Anatomy of a Disappearance", "Binyavanga Wainaina", "Caine Prize", "Esi Edugyan", "Half-Blood Blues", "Helon Habila", "Hisham Matar", "Memoirs of a Porcupine", "Oil on Water", "One Day I Will Write About This Place", "Open City", "Teju Cole", "The Granta Book of the African Short Story", "What the Day Owes the Night", "Yasmina Khadra" ],
"title" : "What you should be reading",
"published" : 1324553430,
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/what-you-should-be-reading/event_teju-cole_photo/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39606\"><img title=\"event_Teju-Cole_Photo\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/event_teju-cole_photo.jpeg?w=500\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p>I wasn’t pleased with the selection of short stories listed for <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=Caine+Prize\">the Caine Prize</a> this year. That list made African writing look bad. Truth be told, the problem associated with such collections is hardly applicable to the Caine committee alone. Lists like that makes it seem like African writing remains subpar, and is simply being given a charitable helping hand by the largesse of nice prize-giving people.</p>\n<p>Happily, the list below, including some of the most absorbing books of 2011, will convince you otherwise – read them all if you can (and please add those you’d recommend in the comments area below). I received several of the books for birthday presents/random presents from my partner, and read them on the journeys we make between New York City (where he works) and upstate New York (where I work). On those long train rides along the Hudson River–flowering trees, the ‘V’s of returning Canada geese, and kayakers in springtime to ice floes and 19th century industrialists’ castles, revealed among trees shorn of foliage during mid winter – there’s been more than one instance that someone sitting near us asked to have a look at the book I was reading. And surprise: their pleasure, from the first pages, was so obvious that I let these random strangers keep the book for the journey, re-learning what they know about African intellect, African poetics, African multiplicity in thought, ways of being, and life experience.</p>\n<p><strong></strong></p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p>Open City by <strong>Teju Cole</strong><br>\nI taught this book this fall semester to a class of seniors, fearing that the quiet introspection of Cole’s narrator, Julius, wouldn’t catch my students’ interest. I needn’t have worried: the hottest woman in class, charged with introducing the book, declared, “I feel like this is a guy you want to be friends with.” (Dreamy look included.) I’ll save a brainy analysis for the spring, when AIAC returns.</p>\n<p><strong>One Day I Will Write About This Place </strong>by<strong> Binyavanga Wainaina</strong><br>\nThis one. I was laughing so hard as I read the opening chapters that I was compelled to read a few paragraphs aloud to my partner, so he could share the fun. There’s so much here that reminded me of my own journey from childhood to maturity – watching endless reruns of Six Million Dollar Man, the forced nationalism of the yearly Independence Day celebrations, the mindless routines of boarding school, never-ending sibling tensions, and the stultifying fear that one will never make as good as one’s parents banked on – that these passages elicited invocations that no American memoir has ever conjured up for me. Mr. Wainaina’s book was one I gave up to a fellow passenger, with an added introduction to Wangechi Mutu’s art, which graces the cover of the hardback.</p>\n<p><strong>Memoirs of a Porcupine</strong> by<strong> Alain Mabanckou</strong><br>\nOriginally published in French in 2006 and only translated into English this year, this is crime fiction with an almost caricatured level of style, rhythm and timing worthy of a stand-up comic, and harrowing twists. No full-stops in the entire book. No wonder the officialese in the French Republic are falling all over themselves trying to incorporate “Mr. Mabancool” into its own stultified nationalism.<strong></strong></p>\n<p><strong>Half-Blood Blues </strong>by<strong> Esi Edugyan</strong><br>\nBorn in Canada to Ghanaian immigrant parents, Esi Edugyan was a 2011 Man Booker Prize finalist. She won the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s biggest literary prize, beating a formidable shortlist, which included Michael Ondaatje. The narrator, Sid Griffiths, is an African-American jazz musician; he travels to Germany in 1952 to attend the premiere of a documentary about Hieronymus Falk, a black trumpet player and jazz legend, who was forbidden to play by the Nazis and subsequently arrested and ‘disappeared’ by the Nazis. Griffiths explores the remnants of that legacy – not only the life-threatening nature of being a black musician in Hitler’s Germany, but what it is like to be in a place with such memory.</p>\n<p><strong>What the Day Owes the Night </strong>by<strong> Yasmina Khadra</strong><br>\nKhadra’s novel about Algeria chronicles rifts between lovers, family and friends, and loyalty to nation. Younes, the narrator, is a heartbreaker – not necessarily in the traditional Romantic sense, but in his meandering inability to make decisions — readers will align themselves so much with Younes that their hearts will drop whenever he makes a poor decision. The story is a chronicle of the legacy inherited from of a family and a social world that disables individual strength, for the sake of social unity (which then means that everyone is unhappily together).</p>\n<p><strong>Anatomy of a Disappearance </strong>by<strong> Hisham Matar</strong><br>\nIn the Cairo apartment Nuri shares with his father, he remains inconsolable, filled with the emptiness that his mother’s unexplained death leaves behind. Nuri seems to dissipate into that explosive void, until he meets Mona: her yellow swimsuit dazzling and absorbing as the sun. Needless to say, some Oedipal complications follow.</p>\n<p><strong>Oil on Water</strong> by<strong> Helon Habila</strong><br>\nHabila’s strength is in that he is able to raise broader political and societal concerns, guiding his readers using different narrative strands that weave together a larger story about the rich, beautiful, yet fragile environment of the Delta, as it is being devastated by the greed for oil and money.</p>\n<p><strong>The Granta Book of the African Short Story, </strong>edited by<strong> Helon Habila</strong><br>\nThis new anthology proves that collections of short stories from Africa don’t have to be a charitable overreach. Ambitious, wide-ranging, and rich collection of stories by twenty-six writers from nineteen countries all across Africa – stories written in English or translated from French, Portuguese or Arabic. Helon Habila’s own writing is a deep pleasure to read, so it’s no wonder that his list of choices are reflective of linguistic, aesthetic and lyrical ability, rather than on polemics or ability to “represent” Africa according to preconceived notions. A treasure to have at your bedside, especially if you’re an insomniac. <strong></strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/39567/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=39567&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Hacking Marconi's Wireless in 1903",
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"content" : "<p>A <a href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228440.700-dotdashdiss-the-gentleman\">great story</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>Yet before the demonstration could begin, the apparatus in the lecture theatre began to tap out a message. At first, it spelled out just one word repeated over and over. Then it changed into a facetious poem accusing Marconi of \"diddling the public\". Their demonstration had been hacked -- and this was more than 100 years before the mischief playing out on the internet today. Who was the Royal Institution hacker? How did the cheeky messages get there? And why?</blockquote>"
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"title" : "Triumph of the Bus",
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"content" : "<p>One of the most interesting recent economic developments has been the growing appeal of <a href=\"http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-21/-cool-bus-trips-surge-as-free-wi-fi-beats-driving-study-shows.html\">relatively upscale intercity buses as a means of transportation</a>:<br> </p>\n<blockquote>\n Megabus.com and BoltBus led U.S. curbside bus companies that boosted trips by 32 percent this year as travelers opted to leave their cars behind and surf the Internet while traveling, DePaul University researchers said.\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n The popularity of U.S. intercity buses picking up passengers at the curb rather than in a terminal has been growing since the industry reversed \n <a href=\"http://las.depaul.edu/chaddick/docs/Docs/IntercityBusStudy.pdf\" title=\"Open Web Site\">a 46-year decline</a> in 2006, Joseph Schwieterman, director of DePaul’s \n <a href=\"http://las.depaul.edu/chaddick/\" title=\"Open Web Site\">Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development</a> in \n <a href=\"http://topics.bloomberg.com/chicago/\">Chicago</a>, said in a telephone interview. Bus traffic including traditional service grew this year at the fastest pace since 2008, the institute said in a\n <a href=\"http://las.depaul.edu/chaddick/ResearchandPublications/index.asp\" title=\"Open Web Site\">study released today</a>.\n</blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.eschatonblog.com/2011/12/superbus.html\">Like Duncan Black</a>, I'm far from certain that the right way to understand this is actually as intercity bus trips substituting for intercity car rides. The way I would primarily interpret it is as these services leading to additional trips that wouldn't otherwise have been taken. Instead of riding Amtrak to New York once a year, you ride the bus three times instead. But to me the most interesting thing about these services isn't how successful they are right now, but how successful they could be in a future of effective congestion pricing on the northeast's roads. The charges that would be necessary to make a trip up or down I-95 relatively untrafficked would be pretty hefty. Since a bus could spread the price of a congestion charge across many passengers, this would serve to expand the price gap between a bus trip or a car trip. At the same time, however, traffic reduction would substantial cut the speed gap between a bus and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service. </p>\n<p>Non-car intercity transport is always going to be less appealing in other less dense parts of the country since the value of having your car with you at the endpoint is higher. But as those are also the regions that lack recent intercity rail service, the value of a stronger bus option in terms of relieving congestion at airports would in some ways be higher. A little bit lost in the shuffle in the <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/03/off_the_rails.html\">ideological wrangling</a> that seems to have <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technocracy/2011/12/high_speed_rail_is_dead_in_america_should_we_mourn_it_.html\">killed dreams of high-speed rail</a> is that as the U.S. <a href=\"http://bigpeace.com/pmaffitt/2010/11/11/us-population-2050/\">adds a hundred million new people over the next forty years</a>, we're definitely going to have to do <em>something</em> to accommodate their movements. We're not exactly building dozens of new airports and you're not going to cut a brand new freeway through New Jersey. </p>"
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"title" : "The EU got sued by a lot of dictators this year",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/gbagbo_0.jpg\"></div><p>\nIn this notoriously bad year for dictators, it seems that faltering strongmen were taking their frustration out on the one institution that may have rivaled them for unpopularity in 2011, <a href=\"http://euobserver.com/24/114725\">the European Union</a>:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tEighty two people, entities or groups of entities hit by EU visa bans and asset freezes took the EU to court in 2011. The number is a staggering increase compared to previous years: there\n\twere just seven cases in the whole period from 1999 (the first-ever \n\tcase) to 2009 and 15 cases in 201. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe bulk (37) of the 2011 lawsuits come from the circle of \n\tex-Cote-d'Ivoire leader Laurent Gbago. One of them is by his wife, \n\tSimone, who said she should get off because the war was a "force \n\tmajeure.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tIranian banks and shipping firms lodged 14 cases.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMost of the rest came from Arab Spring countries Syria (10), Libya (6), Tunisia (6) and Egypt (3). \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tGaddafi had the chutzpah to attack a French decision to transfer €259\n\tmillion of his loot to the Transitional National Council in Benghazi. \n\tThe EU court rubbished his appeal as being "manifestly inadmissable."\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nEU Observer reports that only three of the plaintiffs -- two from Ivory Coast and one from Iran -- won their cases this year, but also notes that Brussels "has not paid anyone a cent in damages in the past 12 years." \n</p>"
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"title" : "Accra Twin Towers",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XF8_YQ_6jXU/TvGypmd4ihI/AAAAAAAABmk/c6U-L5t3gaE/s1600/att03.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:226px;height:320px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XF8_YQ_6jXU/TvGypmd4ihI/AAAAAAAABmk/c6U-L5t3gaE/s320/att03.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L1GK5wpoSgY/TvGypA1s-kI/AAAAAAAABmY/KRQNOWL0ONQ/s1600/att02.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:222px;height:320px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L1GK5wpoSgY/TvGypA1s-kI/AAAAAAAABmY/KRQNOWL0ONQ/s320/att02.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/17871/fvarquitectos-accra-twin-towers.html\">Design Boom</a> writes about \"...lisbon-based practice frederico valsassina arquitectos has designed the 'accra twin towers' to be positioned along liberia road in urban context of accra, ghana. overlooking the gulf of guinea, the pair of structures contrasts the encompassing development <br>of dense suburban scale buildings, becoming a visible landmark. <br><br>Placed upon a limited plot size, the program is divided into residential and office levels within the 40 floors. reaching 160 meters in height, the external form is generated by taking away cubic masses from an interior corner, gradually opening a void between them. within the widest point of the gap and elevated <br>above ground level, an outdoor terrace and swimming pool is connected to the base's recreational floors.<br><br>An extension of the existing street life, three floors of shopping welcome visitors into the program. a range of dwelling sizes <br>may be created with a modular arrangement to provide flexibility of market trends during construction without interfering with the exterior's aesthetic composition. the steel mesh protects the dominant glass curtain walls from direct and harsh sunlight, reflecting and filtering intense radiation."
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"title" : "To Be African: Ode to Contrived Misery",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The term African is becoming a burden, a pejorative used to describe certain miserable conditions of the physical and psychological. Case in point: Claudine Gay, writing in the Root seems to object to her son being called African in her essay, <em><a href=\"http://www.theroot.com/views/when-african-dirty-word\">My Son’s Called African and I’m Upset; Why?</a></em> She is black. She is not the only one by the way; the great Tiger Woods once brushed aside that label by glibly referring to himself as <a href=\"http://lubbockonline.com/news/042397/woods.htm\">Cablinasian</a>, whatever that means. He openly admits that being called African-American bothers him. I doubt that he has ever visited a black-themed event. His father is black. Gay’s essay has understandably caused quite a stir in those watering holes inhabited by African intellectuals. The term “African” is under siege as people are now realizing that it is becoming proxy for everything Africans are not and should not be. By the way, it seems these days that the (in)action of just one individual is enough to draw sweeping generalizations about an entire continent of millions of individually unique people. Westerners visit remote parts of Africa and write breathless and patronizing essays about “Africa.” Henning Mankell has an essay in the New York Times, <em><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/opinion/sunday/in-africa-the-art-of-listening.html?_r=1\">In Africa, the Art of Listening</a>,</em> which makes the baffling and maddening point that his observations about life on a park bench somewhere in Mozambique reflect life everywhere in Africa.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">African intellectuals for various compelling reasons are now flung and scattered amongst the cafes of Europe and the Americas where they pontificate about the condition that is Africa and yell at the white man for every perceived slight on Africa and Africans. We have every reason to fume (yes, I am a card-carrying member of that tribe of whiners). To be African is to be associated with everything objectionable – war, disease, crime, corruption, neediness and that ever-nagging suspicion in the minds of even the most liberal Westerners that we are somehow sub-human. It is a perplexing and infuriating situation that has kept African intellectuals on the defensive. In America for example, immigration is a huge and vexing issue; an issue that was considered ho-hum until the color of immigration became brown. Native Americans remember painfully that the new America is indeed a land of immigrants. Today, immigrants of color are being chased from pillar to post for doing exactly what the “founders” of America did eons ago. In the classrooms there is the persistent debate about closing the achievement gap in academic achievement among races and ethnicities. When leaders are talking about the gap, guess who they are glaring at? Children of the poor, children of the black and brown. In their eyes, African Americans and Africans are parked squarely in the wrong end of the Bell Curve.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Africans have every reason to be upset. However, it is helpful to focus on why things are the way they are. In Nigeria for example, the intellectual, religious and political elite have colluded to make a mockery of any and every thing that a people stand for. This they have done using pretend-processes and pretend-structures for self-serving ends. In Nigeria, the new Christianity is the new alcoholism ravaging the already dispossessed daily. Watch <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/31413008\">this video</a> and reflect upon the caricature nation that Nigeria is fast becoming. <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uidhk7ioYO0\">Watch this disturbing video of abuse of young congregants in a church.</a> Thieving pastors have rushed whoosh into a yawning vacuum that was created by generations of failed leaders. These new thieves are now raking in millions from their own self-serving failure to lead. We are muttering to ourselves and our people are chanting themselves to lunacy and irrelevance. Thanks to succeeding regimes of <a href=\"http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/asuu-is-on-strike-again-tell-us-something-new/\">irresponsible ASUU stalwarts</a> and government kleptocrats many of our universities would be shut down today in the West if they were poultry farms. The looting goes on unabated and the funds are used to create safe havens for the elite and their overfed families at home and abroad. Any Westerner coming to visit Nigeria today would be forgiven for taking one look and wanting to just pee on the whole damn place. In America, racial and ethnic demographic data are gleefully used by leaders to justify funding for the classroom. Do not get me wrong; the bulk of these funds have been incredibly crucial in making huge positive changes in the lives of all children in the classroom. However, it has come at a cost. Thanks to this deficit-model approach of viewing our humanity, children of African descent are looked upon as issues-laden, disrespected by those in authority. The child of color grows up to believe that that a police officer is not a friend. The feeling is mutual. But then, I know many Africans in the West who boast with pride that they live in white neighborhoods. The self-loathing is real and it comes at a cost. In these neighborhoods Africans are routinely ignored, humored and patronized by the majority-white neighbors. Any wonder children grow up resenting the label, African?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Yes, we must also reflect on our role in the creation of this pejorative. Many of our African experts in history, world renowned scholars have devoted their muscular talents to penning exotic hagiographies about a mythical place called Africa. Any attempt to offer a different perspective is met with ridicule and opprobrium. I am a huge fan of African literature; these are exciting times to be a reader, thanks to the hard work of many talented writers of African extraction and I will go to my grave clutching an African novel, yes. However, this genre of literature called “African literature” is in danger of being stereotyped as ghetto lit, mostly devoted to celebrating exclusively exotica – war, disease, crime, etc. There is no balance to these stories, instead to the extent that they present only the single story (apologies, Chimamanda Adichie) they distort the history of our challenged continent. This is especially an important point since it is not clear to me that African historians are actively doing the hard work and research of documenting and sharing with the world the sum total of Africa’s history.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“African writers” are routinely herded into Western retreats and conferences by condescending, patronizing liberals where they regale the world with tales of woe, gloom and doom. Their books and short stories are mostly their opinions about Africa, nothing more. Increasingly and alarmingly, these book readings, speeches, and so on are based on erroneous information – and outright fabrications for profit as we now know with the celebrated writer Chris Abani. With their powerful words (these are ordinarily good writers) they have written literally into concrete eternity, a hugely distorted and negative history of Africa. Using Abani as a case study I have previously tried to explain how <a href=\"http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/chris-abani-distorting-africas-history/\">contemporary African literature may be distorting African history.</a> The writer Kennedy Emetulu has a long piece <a href=\"http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20415\">here</a> meticulously detailing Abani’s dark history of lying for profit and more importantly distorting history in the process. Here is a profound passage in the essay:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“To understand the effect of Abani’s lies and how much damage he has done to our national history and to our psyche as a people, while making blood money from it and acquiring fame for himself, let’s just consider one of his poems from his <em>Kalakuta Republic</em>, <strong>Ode to Joy</strong>. We are choosing this poem, because it is one of his works that he swears to be an eyewitness account of the suffering and experience he went through in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison. It is the poem that canonized him in the literary hall of fame in the West and had laureates like Harold Pinter gushing about its stark frankness and so on. Indeed, it is the singular most popular of his poems. Personally, reading the poem does nothing for me; but until one understands the devious cultural mind-reading underneath it and the purpose Abani used it to serve and the purpose it serves its promoters in the West, one may think it’s just an innocent poem by a young African writer.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“Today, that poem is emblazoned in the city centre of Leiden, the sixth largest city in Netherlands where it is being ‘celebrated’. Leiden is an old historical city located on the Old Rhine, twenty kilometres from The Hague and 40 kilometres from Amsterdam. It has one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe, the Leiden University, established in 1575. Its importance as a learning and cultural centre in Europe is further emphasized by the fact that the city is twinned with Oxford, the location of the oldest university in England.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Read Leiden’s Wall of Shame <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/de_buurman/3043699529/\">here</a> and see how every day writers like Abani collaborate with the West in canonizing the term “African” in the concrete walls and minds of the West. You can be sure of one thing; that wall will never come down. A big fat lie has now come to represent Africa thanks to the ghetto literature espoused by Abani et al (there are many like him by the way). Before we start throwing stones at the likes of Claudine Gay, we should first look into ourselves to see and confront that which ails us. We may be our own worst enemy. As intellectuals and self-appointed priests of probity and justice, we must police ourselves; otherwise we lack the moral authority to yell at a policeman for furtively collecting crumbs as bribes.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/xokigbo.wordpress.com/473/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xokigbo.wordpress.com&blog=25734203&post=473&subd=xokigbo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Exit, voice, loyalty and – something else",
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"content" : "<p>I’ve been thinking about the size of the gap that has opened up between human suffering and politics as usual, which I think makes this crisis unlike anything we’ve had for quite a long time.</p>\n\n\t<p>Albert Hirschman, in his classic 1970 <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Exit-Voice-Loyalty-Responses-Organizations/dp/0674276604/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323794516&sr=8-1\">book</a>, suggested that there are three responses to failure in states, firms, and other organizations: exit, voice, and loyalty. If you are alienated enough, you leave (if you can). You can protest. Or you can stay and put up with it. But these are not mutually exclusive options. You might, for example, use the possibility of exit to amplify the power of protest (he thinks this applies to marriages as well as to states – nothing if not theoretically ambitious). Similarly, you might increase the effectiveness of protest, and delay the need for the exit option, by professions of loyalty.</p>\n\n\t<p>I’m looking around me at the damage to the Irish social fabric caused by austerity measures to date, and wondering how to think about it, using these categories. Ireland is still a developed economy. But unemployment is now over 14 per cent, half of it is long-term, and it’s worst for young people. The domestic economy is below water, and emigration rates have surged. There are many forms of personal misery – the special needs children who can’t keep up at school because the budget for their personal assistants has been axed, the mental hospital patients who are to be moved into a locked ward for five weeks over Christmas because of staffing shortages, the formerly comfortably-off families seeking help from charities to keep afloat. We can see all the signs that economic activity is faltering – the rash of ‘To Let’ signs on office space, the closing-down sales on high streets and in shopping centres. We listen to the myriad stories told by family and friends of families trapped by unrepayable mortgages; of desperate small businesses running at a loss, hoping their accumulated reserves will buffer them until there is a recovery. We witness the increase in suicide rates, devastating for all affected.</p>\n\n\t<p>People can put up with austerity for quite some time, if they believe it is necessary and unavoidable, and if they think that there will eventually be some improvement. But it’s becoming clearer that things are more complicated <a href=\"http://www.foreignaffairs.com/features/letters-from/what-the-eu-should-learn-from-irelands-austerity-fiasco?page=show\">this time round</a>.</p>\n\n\t<p>We need the loans the Troika disburses, so our government has no choice about the size and scale of the austerity. More fiscal oversight is now on the cards, and it may well be a good idea in its own right. But the <span>ECB</span> is <a href=\"http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5062\">wrongly</a> treating a gathering financial crisis as if were solely due to fiscal imbalances – treating consequence as cause. And our government is chained to the enormous rock of failed bank debt, which the <a href=\"http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/1119/1224307810593.html?via=rel?via=rel\"><span>ECB</span> insisted</a> needs to be repaid in full ‘to save the Euro’. Well, we’re sinking fast and it still hasn’t saved the Euro.</p>\n\n\t<p>So what can we say about Hirschman’s threefold response options?</p>\n\n\t<p><span></span>The experience of representative democracy has led us to assume that national politics will be responsive to <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Great-Transformation-Political-Economic-Origins/dp/080705643X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323796809&sr=8-1\">social misery</a>. The balance of power may shift – the heyday of Social Democracy was the period of ‘<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Embedding-Global-Markets-John-Ruggie/dp/0754674541/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323801923&sr=8-1\">embedded liberalism</a>’ between the 1940s and 1970s, when countries could run their own distinctive policy mix internally alongside a growth in international trade. Capital liberalization, along with the spread of new ideas about market efficiency, changed the terms of the game sharply in favour of business since the 1980s. But still, we’d got used to the idea that there were limits to what governments could get away with and still be electable.</p>\n\n\t<p>But if your government is not actually ultimately responsible for what is going on, what’s to happen? In line with the multi-level EU system we live in, I think we need to think about this in two parts: citizens’ responses to national governments, and national governments’ responses to international decision-makers.</p>\n\n\t<p>At the national level, there is growing evidence of ‘exit’ in Ireland in the form of increased emigration; less so in Greece or Spain (skills, languages, family networks). Not unrelatedly, in <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2011/07/14/protest-and-the-social-contract-in-spain-and-greece/\">my view</a>, there is much evidence of ‘voice’ in Greece and Spain; less so in Ireland. ‘Loyalty’ is probably mostly a function of time elapsed since the last election. But I think we need another category – ‘silent screaming’ perhaps, the kind of thing you do when you’re having a horrible dream – to capture that sense of impotent rage and visceral worry. This is what the Occupy movements are tuned into; but they have no political vehicle to carry them. Silent screaming might find other forms of ‘voice’ too, such as on the radical right, and if things got bad enough, could erode support for democratic government itself (this is what Polanyi worried about, and is a danger that Kevin O’Rourke <a href=\"http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/orourke1/English\">hints at</a>).</p>\n\n\t<p>At the EU level, as I’ve noted <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2011/12/09/euro-kremlinology/#comment-391545\">before</a>, decision-making practices are buckling under the crisis. There are too many sectional actors and interests. The very narrow <span>ECB</span> policy remit is still strongly endorsed by the most powerful national actors. The result is a shockingly limited capacity for collective action, and very little interest in the miseries of the European periphery. But the Irish government has no intention of exiting either the Eurozone or the EU. Options for protest are limited. The government made some progress on getting better interest rates on the terms of the loan programme, but have drawn a complete blank on the now <a href=\"http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/we-have-fallen-prey-to-a-failed-and-costly-policy-2880069.html\">indefensible</a> pay-out to zombie banks. The dominant strategy seems to be to knuckle down and play by the rules, to be visibly the best boys and girls in the class – ‘loyalty’. But this is a superficial reading. We need a fourth category – ‘waiting in the long grass’ perhaps, which is the Irish vernacular for biding your time now in order to extort a better deal later – since the current deal is not sustainable either politically or economically in the longer term. The difficult issue now is when and how to play their hand. <a href=\"http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/1213/1224309001092.html\">Immediately</a>, some say, while Frankfurt is in disarray. Or sometime next year, since new Treaty requiring a referendum would need a pretty heavy <a href=\"http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1210/1224308871098.html\">quid pro quo</a> to have any chance of securing voter support.</p>\n\n\t<p>So we seem to have two possibilities, one at national, one at European level; and scope for four-way rather than three-way interactions:<br>\n<blockquote>Voters and national politics: exit, voice, loyalty, ‘silent screaming’</blockquote></p>\n\n\t<p>Government and European politics: exit, voice, loyalty, ‘waiting in the long grass’<br>\nOr maybe I’m complicating things unduly. Am I?</p>"
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"title" : "When Bad Things Happen to Good People Because of Bad Things done by Good People … A Morality Tale (or is it?)",
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"content" : "<p>Meet Marion and Herb Sandler. They’re good people, you’ll like them. As two of the most prolific and committed philanthropists currently supporting progressive causes, they are currently major funders of ProPublica (investigative journalism), the Centre for American Progress (activism), the Centre for Responsible Lending (anti- payday loans, financial fairness) and the American Asthma Foundation. The contribution of US$1.3bn that they gave to the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandler_Foundation\">Sandler Foundation</a> was the second largest charitable contribution of 2006, according to Wikipedia. They are a bit too keen on testing and measurement in education for my taste but you can’t have everything, and they are at least advocates of “multiple measures”.</p>\n\n\t<p>Meet the <a href=\"http://www.nj.gov/oag/ca/wellsfargo/\">Pick-A-Pay Option <span>ARM</span></a>. This was a lending product that, among other features, allowed for “negative amortization” – a feature under which the principal was not repaid but rather rolled up, meaning that the borrower was effectively dependent on future refinancing. It was not a subprime product, but it allowed people to take on huge amounts of mortgage debt, and contributed to the “payment shock” which sent so many of them into repossession and bankruptcy. As the link above shows, the Pick-A-Pay mortgage product was the subject of a number of compensation settlements with affected borrowers.</p>\n\n\t<p>What’s the connection? Well, as founders of Golden West Financial, a mortgage lender which was sold to Wachovia Bank in 2006 (the proceeds of which financed that very large charitable contribution), Herb and Marion Sandler were responsible for introducing the Pick-A-Pay mortgage to the market.</p>\n\n\t<p>Ah.</p>\n\n\t<p>Read on, there’s two or three more twists before the end of this story …<br>\n<span></span><br>\nObviously, this looks like it might be political gold for anyone wanting to do an “oh my god those hypocritical liberals” story. Which is more or less what <a href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/13/60minutes/main4801309.shtml\">Sixty Minutes</a> did two and a half years ago, relying heavily on whistleblower testimony from a loan salesman who characterized Golden West (trading under the name “World Savings Bank”) as “sitting on an Enron”, and “granting people too many loans who simply didn’t qualify”. They interviewed a borrower called Betty Townes who had taken out sequential Pick-A-Pay mortgages, refinancing their way into a mountain of debt and inevitable bankruptcy when the cycle turned.</p>\n\n\t<p>Except that …</p>\n\n\t<p>Well, it <a href=\"http://www.cjr.org/feature/the_education_of_herb_and_marion.php?page=all\">turned out</a> that the whistleblower in question had in fact been sacked for persistent incompetence and rudeness, and had his case thrown out of arbitration with an award of zero. Not very much of the rest of the story (or similar hatchet jobs in the New York Times and elsewhere) held up either. In fact, Golden West had always been <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/global/2004/0301/036_print.html\">almost parodically careful</a> as a lender, carrying out far more <a href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_09/b3973108.htm\">due diligence</a> and credit checks on their borrowers than most other banks. They also eschewed most of the aggressive marketing practices of the industry, and rather than securitizing their mortgages, they kept them on their own balance sheet. And the Sandlers for the most part managed to get apologies and at least part retractions from most of the media outlets that ran these stories. Even five years later, the pre-2007 vintages of Pick-A-Pay have performed vastly better than the ones which Wachovia (later taken over by Wells Fargo) continued to write in 2007 and 2008 under the same brand name.</p>\n\n\t<p>So, it turns out that the doyens of the progressive funding sphere were also extremely careful, cautious and ethical bankers. If only everyone were so good.</p>\n\n\t<p>Except that …</p>\n\n\t<p>Except that well, do you remember Betty Townes from a few paragraphs ago? She was a real person, and what she said happened to her, did. And although I called the <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/business/25sandler.html?pagewanted=all\">New York Times</a> article on the Sandlers a “hatchet job” two paragraphs ago, and the <span>NYT</span> did make some changes to it (most prominently, changing the headline from “Once Mortgage Pioneers, Now Pariahs”), the newspaper basically stands by its reporting of all the factual claims made. And, although the performance of pre-07 Pick-A-Pays is definitely better than other option-ARMs out there, that still leaves room for them to be <a href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2008/06/pick-a-pay_goes_away.html\">pretty bad</a>.</p>\n\n\t<p>What it shows is that a combination of the best will in the world, the most cautious and conservative funding structure and an utterly exemplary set of lending practices, will still leave you writing a whole lot of crap and causing huge amounts of suffering if there is a once in a lifetime asset price bubble going on. As I believe I have said both here and on my own blog, big macroeconomic problems like the US housing bubble and recession have macroeconomic causes, not microeconomic ones. And that’s an end to it.</p>\n\n\t<p>Or is it?</p>\n\n\t<p>Well, not quite. It should be noted that, although Herb Sandler vehemently denies having sold out in 2006 in order to cash out at the top of the market (ie, he does not claim to have had any foresight about the crash), 2006 was the cusp year; the year during which house prices, particularly in the Californian market where Golden West did the majority of its business. After the takeover (and things are complicated somewhat by the existence of an interregnum, when Sandler remained in charge of the business under new ownership), Wachovia started to write option-ARM business that couldn’t possibly have been justified under the Sandlers’ business practices. An awful lot of bankruptcy-creating, repossession-generating, outright bad business was done during this period and it has certainly contributed a lot of really bad securities to the market, helping to spread the contagion of the financial crisis, and contributed much more than its fair share to the overhang of foreclosures. It ought to be a sensible goal of regulation to prevent this sort of thing, and it could do so by helping to ensure that future mortgage banking is more like Golden West. And yes (oh god it kills me to admit this), that regulation would have to work by condign punishment of people who committed lending practices like those observed in the California market in 2007 and 2008, many of which were outright fraudulent. Are you happy now?</p>\n\n\t<p>Well you shouldn’t be.</p>\n\n\t<p>By definition, anything that was done in 2007 or 2008 isn’t really a “cause of the crisis”. The contagious financial panic of 2008 was, in fact, largely contained thanks to the prompt activity of the Federal Reserve (in America anyway, in Europe we have problems of our own). The <span>USA</span> is in a recession now because of a massive disappearance of housing wealth, not anything else. And the disappearance of housing wealth was due to the bubble built up before 2006, not in 07-08.</p>\n\n\t<p>With the best will in the world, as I say, if there is a massive imbalance in the real economy (in this case, the decision to accommodate Chinese exchange rate policy and run a consequent current account deficit), there will be a similar imbalance in the financial sector which intermediates it (in this case, equilibrates the resulting capital flows). And doubly so if the official policy of the central bank at the time is to create a housing market boom, and the official anti-bubble policy of the central bank is to allow the bubble to grow, on a promise that action will be taken to mitigate the consequences when it pops. Although it’s had all sorts of twists and turns, at the end of this story, I’m not judging the main characters to be either heroes or villains, because economics isn’t a morality tale.</p>"
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"content" : "<p> </p>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://monicaacoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/duane-grace-me.jpg\"><img title=\"duane-grace-me\" src=\"http://monicaacoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/duane-grace-me-300x240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\"></a><p>Three newly tenured faculty in good spirits. Congratulations also to Duane Bidwell and Grace Yia-Hei Kao, my colleagues at CST.</p></div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">On December 1, 2011 the full professors of </span><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http://cst.edu/\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Claremont School of Theology</span></a></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> rendered a unanimous vote to recommend that the Board of Trustees award me tenure.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">In the academic world, </span><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure_(academic)\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">tenure</span></a></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> is a significant accomplishment to which many aspire from the early days of graduate school. It means job security – no small thing in these economic times (I can only lose my job if there is “financial exigency” and the school needs to close, or I commit some significant moral or professional transgression). It also means I have the academic freedom to pursue the research of greatest interest to me and I cannot be fired because someone in the institution disagrees with the politics of my work.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">One of the more challenging aspects of the tenure application process is the recording of one’s academic productivity. A tenure applicant must keep records and evidence of the teaching, writing, research and service in which she has engaged for the previous decade or so. Then she must submit a </span><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">curriculum vitae</span></a></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> (C.V.) with said accomplishments listed in a particular rank and order.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">This is harder than it sounds. For weeks, my two colleagues and I (all submitting tenure portfolios at the same time) sent emails at 1:30 am as we tried to figure out how to classify and describe our professional lives on paper. </span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>Does this sound like me? Where does one put “this”?</em></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">My C.V. quantifies what I’ve been doing for the last seven years or so. I wrote two single-authored books, co-edited an anthology; and wrote seven refereed journal articles, six invited journal articles, six book chapters, six commentaries, three book reviews and two encyclopedia entries. I gave ten keynote presentations and presented on over forty academic panels or conferences. </span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>This</em></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> is the stuff of tenure.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">As I compiled lists and corresponding documentation, I became acutely aware of what was not on paper. My friend and colleague </span><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http://www.cst.edu/academics/faculty/profile/grace-yia-hei-kao/\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Grace Yia-Hei Kao</span></a></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> recently wrote a </span><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http://feminismandreligion.com/2011/12/09/getting-tenure-part-i-it-took-a-village-by-grace-yia-hei-kao/#more-1611\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">wonderful blog</span></a></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> describing the roles that family and wider community play in the journey to tenure. Indeed that is a large part of what is not seen in the tenure dossier.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">As I reflect on </span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>my</em></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> journey to tenure, I recall the experience of developing my career while living with severe depression. I experienced my worst suicidal ideation in the first year of my doctoral program. My mental and physical health was severely compromised for most of my doctoral program and through the majority of my pre-tenure academic career.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Many times I attempted to hide the reality of my condition and its impact on my work. </span></p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Always choosing the most expensive hotels during my guild’s conferences so I could sleep in between academic sessions and return to another event</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">An in-patient hospitalization during the school year that no one on my job knew about because I called it “a family emergency”</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Committing to publishing or presentation obligations when I felt well, that I simply could not manage when I became ill before the deadline</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Taking numerous low-paying preaching and speaking opportunities to pay for the bills I incurred because I was managing a chronic medical condition without health insurance</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Asking my advisor to mediate homework assignments with other faculty because the medication I was on scrambled my brain’s ability to process information or drive in straight lanes</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Doubling my student loan debt in one year so I could finish the degree and get a job with medical benefits</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Lecturing on material I knew well because I lacked the focus to read for more than 10 consecutive minutes and could not prepare for class</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">In short, it was difficult. </span></p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">There were senior scholars who told me that I should not reveal or write about depression before tenure, one of whom called me “reckless and crazy” for the idea. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Intimate relationships were often compromised when I chose between what-was-healthy-for-</span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>us</em></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> and what-would-keep-me-alive. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I had to learn to admit when I simply could not do what I wanted to do or what I had promised I would do. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I lost countless hours of productivity to the inertia of depressive days and weeks. </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I was always conscious of all that I could not and did not do.</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I spent years trying to save my career from the perils of my internal world. A look at my C.V. suggests that I was successful. But there is nowhere on the page to tell the story about the life of </span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>my</em></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> mind.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">For me, and thousands of other people in the world, living with a depressive condition also means </span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"><em>working</em></span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\"> with a depressive condition.</span><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">Work is more challenging because of silence, stigma and shame and sickness. If I take “mental health days” off for all the days I need them, I would have no income. This is my job. I felt like my choices were limited.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">While there is no category for articulating the challenges, there is also no lines for saying how I survived. There were adversities, but there were also advocates:</span></p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">The advisor who could distinguish my intellect from my illness, and facilitated my leaving residency so I could relocate to a place with greater support</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">The fellowship coordinator who brainstormed ways for me to find additional funding as the medical bills and relocation expenses piled up</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">The non-profit colleagues who coached me in navigating county health services</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">My supervisor who took my revelation of depression in stride indicating that “we all got something Monica”</span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">My fellow-academics who wrote or whispered about their shared experiences of trying to read and create when their minds failed them, or medication made them loopy and tired </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">My therapists who supported relocation for a new job when we both knew it undermined the stability I had recently attained – new doctors, new friends, new weather patterns </span></li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">The memoirists whose writings were like air when I needed to know that I wasn’t alone</span></li>\n</ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I work at an institution that doesn’t require me to focus on one aspect of my identity, passions or interests. I have mentors who support the work I do in both the academy and the wider public. I have colleagues I truly consider friends and allies. None of this is on paper either, but it makes the “life of the mind” much better.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:Arial,sans-serif\">I cannot name what separates my story from another. I don’t think it has anything to do with faith, blessing, intellect, perseverance or medication. I know too many people with those qualities and a different outcome. There is an inexplicable grace to survival and success. Down deep, I suspect that it is the flip side of that coin that robs life without cause or consideration. We don’t get to choose which side lands on us each day. Rather, we live, we work and we do our best. And we tell the stories of what can’t be seen on paper. </span></p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "the politics of African fashion",
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"content" : "<p>I had my own tailor for some years in Accra, Ghana. His bright-colored shop is located behind the main drag in the trendy Osu neighgborhood, on Kuku Hill, his front door facing onto the Independence Square and the ocean. Many a later afternoon, I talked fashion with him and enjoyed the sea breeze.</p>\n<p>My tailor, like many tailors in Africa, fancied himself foremost as a designer, and a rather fine one. He did have a flair for integrating retro-hippe styles with the enduring colors and fabrics appreciated in the coastal belt running from Dakar to Lome. Often, he made outfits for me from scratch: top-and-down, drawstrings, from intricately-pattern waxed cotton or sometimes “political suits” made of plainer fabric and useful to wear to meetings with government officials or local businessmen. He also made unusual shirts and sleeveless tunics that could be worn to Labadi beach and came with matching drawstrings.</p>\n<p>I can’t say that everything my tailor created <em>worked</em>, but I always appreciated his self-confidence. He knew his vision and he presented his clothing without fear or apology. That he made every single outfit in his shop with his own sewing machine and hands lent a certain gravitas to him.</p>\n<p>He often talked about becoming a fashion designer, but he had no sense of scale. He didn’t have a single employee, and he often went to the market himself to buy fabrics. At my request, he’d usually accompany me on such trips, and I might treat him to lunch as compensation. But the notion of manufacturing clothes was beuond him. He made clothes from his mind’s eye – and for humans he knew, touched, heard.</p>\n<p>Fashion in West Africa is a poor man’s glamour in which I eagerly participated because, even by the standards of local elites, I was poor. The cost of looking good, while not trivial, could well be afforded by anyone with the some sort of regular employment.</p>\n<p>That’s still true, but with machine-made clothes flooding Africa now – mainly new garments from China and India but also used clothes from charities in America and Europe – the fidelity to local tailors is declining. Mine soldiers on, living off the legacy of a long reputation for quality and service. But many tailors have surrendered to market forces they neither understand nor approve of. Most of them, bereft of great design ideas, face a race with anonymous and distant machines – a race they’re losing.</p>\n<p>There are exceptions, designers who because of education or priviledge or sheer determination, have risen to achieve international recognition – and this despite the existence of an African factory system that could produce small batches of high-quality clothing. In her <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/fashion/africas-new-fashion-influence.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fashion%20africa&st=cse\">original and much-needed new book, Helen Jennings, a fashion journalist, has documented and profiled leaders in “New African Fashion,”</a> as she titles her book. The results are captivating — and amply demonstrate that African design, while not spawning yet a fashion industry of any scale or scope, is at least gaining a global audience of sophisticates.</p>\n<p>African clothing designers remain vulnerable to the predations of European, American and even Asian designers who seize on exotic motifs in African fashion and present them, drained of meaning and often in fragmented ways, to their own distant tribes. But increasingly, the fruits of uniquely-talented African designers cannot be stolen wholesale. At least not without the risk of global approbation.</p>\n<p>And that’s an improvement, a sign that in fashion, as in some much else, the normal and functional in African life is taking center stage.</p>"
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"title" : "HOWARD TATE, RIP",
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"title" : ""Forgetting as a feature, not a bug"",
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"content" : "<div><blockquote>[New] technologies are currently being viewed as either substitutes for, or possible augmentations of, human faculties. I argue that the proffered scenarios of computerized ‘help’ for human activities evident in the ubiquitous computing world tends to focus on augmentation of human remembering, with sensors and computer networks archiving vast amounts of data, but neglects to consider what augmentation might mean when it comes to that other human activity, namely, forgetting. (5)</blockquote>\r\n<p><small>via <a href=\"http://www.contemplativecomputing.org/2011/12/forgetting-as-a-feature-not-a-bug.html\">www.contemplativecomputing.org</a></small></p>\r\n<p>Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is reading an article by <a href=\"http://www.idc.ul.ie/people/liam-bannon\">Liam Bannon</a>, director of the Interaction Design Centre at the University of Limerick, on forgetting as a feature, not a bug.</p>\r\n<p>I started down the path of thinking about how computers currently handle the process of forgetting, and as part of that better understand what kind of metaphors are missing for the task of augmenting forgetting.</p>\r\n<p>There's the notion of \"garbage collection\", when unwanted memory is reclaimed. That process relies on a way of marking unwanted (computer) memory as forgettable.</p>\r\n<p>Computers also have the notion and defect of a \"memory leak\", where unwanted memory accumulates in a state where it's taking up space but not really doing anything.</p>\r\n<p>When memory does go bad in a computer world, it's \"bitrot\" - think about old tapes that have glitch errors, or more importantly old computer programs that have a hard time digesting new formats of data.</p>\r\n<p>The worrisome aspect of computer memory is its binary nature, where a single transient glitch can render mass storage unreadable, and so rather than the healthy forgetting of the human brain you get sudden unrecoverable failure. Your carefully pickled up thoughts or rolodex full of context vanishes, and suddenly you have to rely on your mental rolodex rather than the paper or electronic one to recall details.</p>\r\n<p>(Filed under Discardia.)</p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=NqzhiIWpumA:b3C-DlcsSnU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=NqzhiIWpumA:b3C-DlcsSnU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?i=NqzhiIWpumA:b3C-DlcsSnU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=NqzhiIWpumA:b3C-DlcsSnU:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?i=NqzhiIWpumA:b3C-DlcsSnU:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Vacuum/~4/NqzhiIWpumA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Best Practices for HTTP API evolvability",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer\">REST</a>\nis the architectural style of the Web, and closely related to REST is the\nconcept of a\n<a href=\"http://www.mnot.net/blog/2011/10/25/web_api_versioning_smackdown\">HTTP API</a>.\nA HTTP API is a programmer-oriented interface to a specific service, and is\nknown by other names such as a\n<a href=\"http://soundadvice.id.au/blog/2010/10/03#rest-service-discovery\">RESTful service contract</a>,\n<a rel=\"tag\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource-oriented_architecture\">resource-oriented architecture</a>,\nor a\n<a href=\"http://bitworking.org/news/132/REST-Tips-URI-space-is-infinite\">URI Space</a>.\n</p>\n<p>I say closely related because most HTTP APIs do not comply with the uniform\ninterface constraint in it's strictest sense, which would demand that the\ninterface be \"standard\" - or in practice: Consistent enough between different\nservices that clients and services can obtain significant network effects.\nI won't dwell on this!\n</p>\n<p>One thing we know is that these APIs will change, so what can we do at a\ntechnical level to deal with these changes as they occur?\n</p>\n<h3>The Moving Parts</h3>\n<p>The main moving parts of a HTTP API are</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The generic semantics of methods used in the API, including exceptional conditions and other metadata</li>\n<li>The generic semantics of media types used in the API, including any and all schema information</li>\n<li>The set of URIs that make up the API, including specific semantics each generic method and generic media types used in the API</li>\n</ol>\n<p>These parts move at different rates. The set of methods in use tend to\nchange the least. The standard HTTP GET, PUT, DELETE, and POST are sufficient\nto perform most patterns of interactions that may be required between clients\nand servers. The set of media types and associated schema change at a faster\nrate. These are less likely to be completely standard, so will often include\nlocal jargon that changes at a relatively high rate. The fastest changing\ncomponent of the API is detailed definition of what each method and media\ntype combination will do when invoked on the various URLs that make up the\nservice contract itself.\n</p>\n<h3>Types of mismatches</h3>\n<p>For any particular interaction between client and server, the following\ncombinations are possible:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The server and client are both built against a matching version of the API</li>\n<li>The server is built against a newer version of the API than the client is</li>\n<li>The client is built against a newer version of the API than the server is</li>\n</ol>\n<p>In the first case of a match between the client and server versions, then\nthere is no compatibility issue to deal with. The second case is a backwards-\ncompatibility issue, where the new server must continue to work with old\nclients, at least until all of the old clients that matter are upgraded or\nretired.\n</p>\n<p>Although the first two cases are the most common, the standard nature of\nmethods and media types across multiple services means that the third\ncombination is also possible. The client may be built against the latest\nversion of the API, while an old service or an old server may end up processing\nthe request. This is a forwards-compatibility issue, where the old server has\nto deal with a message that complies with a future version of the API.\n</p>\n<h3>Method Evolution</h3>\n<h4>Adding Methods and Status</h4>\n<p>The addition of a new method may be needed under the uniform interface\nconstraint to support new types of client/server interactions within the\narchitecture. For HTTP these will likely be any type of interaction that\ninherently breaks one or more other REST constraints, such as the stateless\nconstraint. However, new methods may be introduced for other reasons such\nas to improve the efficiency of an interaction.\n</p>\n<p>Adding new methods does not impact backwards-compatibility, because old\nclients will not invoke the new method. It does impact forwards-compatibility\nbecause new clients will wish to invoke the new method on old servers.\nAdditionally, changes to existing methods such as adding a new HTTP status\ncode for a new exceptional condition <em>can</em> break backwards-compatibility\nby returning a message an old client does not understand.\n</p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 1: Services should return 501 Not Implemented if they\ndo not recognise the method name in a request</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 2: Clients that use a method that may not be understood\nby all services yet should handle 501 Not Implemented by choosing an\nalternative way of invoking the operation, or raising an exception towards\ntheir user in the case that no means of invoking the required operation\nnow exists</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 3: A new method name should be chosen for a method\nthat <strong>is not</strong> forwards-compatible with any existing method - i.e. a new method name should be chosen if the new\nfeatures of the method must be understood for the method to be processed\ncorrectly (must understand semantics)</em></p>\n<p>These best practice items deal with a new client that makes a request on and\nold server. If the server doesn't understand the new request method, it\nresponds with a standard exception code that the client can use to switch to\nfallback logic or raise a specific error to their user. For example:\n</p>\n<pre>\nClient: SUBSCRIBE /foo\nServer: 501 Not Implemented\nClient: (falling back to a period poll) GET /foo\nServer: 200 OK\n</pre>\n<p>or</p>\n<pre>\nClient: LOCK /foo\nServer: 501 Not Implemented\nClient: (unable to safely perform its operation, raises an exception)\n</pre>\n<p><em>Best Practice 4: Services should ignore headers they do not understand\nor the components of which they do not understand. Proxies should pass these\nheaders on without modification or the components they do not understand\nwithout modification.</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 5: The existing method name should be retained and new\nheaders or components of headers added when a new method <strong>is</strong>\nforwards-compatible with an existing method</em></p>\n<p>These best practice items deal with a new client that makes a request on\nan old server, but the new features of the method are a refinement of the\nexisting method such as a new efficiency improvement. If the server doesn't\nunderstand the new nuances of the request it will treat it as if it were the\nexisting legacy request, and although it may perform suboptimally will still\nproduce a correct result.\n</p>\n\n<p><em>Best Practice 6: Clients should handle unknown exception codes based\non the numeric range they fall within</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 7: A new status should be assigned a status code within\na numeric range that identifies a coarse-grained understanding of the\ncondition that already exists</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 8: Clients should ignore headers they do not understand\nor the components of which they do not understand. Proxies should pass these\nheaders on without modification or the components they do not understand\nwithout modification</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 9: If a new status is a subset of an existing status\nother than 400 Bad Request or 500 Internal Server Error then refine the meaning\nof the existing status by adding information to response headers rather than\nassigning a new status code.</em></p>\n\n<p>These best practice items deal with a new server sending a new status to\nthe client, such as a new exception.</p>\n\n<h4>Removing Methods and Status</h4>\n<p>Removing an existing method introduces a backwards compatibility problem\nwhere clients will continue to request the old method. This has essentially\nthe same behaviour as adding a new method to a client implementation that is\nnot understood by an old service, with the special property that the client is\nless likely to have correct facilities for dealing with the 501 Not Implemented\nexception. Thus, methods should be removed with care and only after surveying\nthe population of clients to ensure no ill effects will result.\n</p>\n<p>Removing an existing status within a new client implementation before all\nserver implementations have stopped using the code or variant has similar\nproperties to adding a new status. The same best practice items apply.\n</p>\n\n<h3>Media Type Evolution</h3>\n<h4>Adding Information</h4>\n<p>Adding information conveyed in media types and their related schemas has\nan impact on the relationship between the sender of the document and the\nrecipient of the document. Unlike methods and status which are asymmetrical\nbetween client and server, media types are generally suitable to travel in\neither direction as the payload of a request or response. For this reason\nin this section we won't talk about client and server, but of sender and\nrecipient.\n</p>\n<p>Adding information to the universe of discourse between sender and\nrecipient of documents means either modifying the schema of an existing\nmedia type, or introducing a new media type to carry the new information.\n</p>\n\n\n<p><em>Best Practice 10: Document recipients should ignore document content\nthat they do not understand. Proxies and databases should pass this content\non without modification.</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 11: Validation of documents that might fail to meet\nBest Practice item 10 should only occur if the validation logic is written\nto the same version of the API as the sender of the document, or a later\nversion of the API\n</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 12: If the new information can be added to the schema of\nan existing media type in alignment with the design objectives of that media\ntype then it should so added</em></p>\n<p>For XML media types this means that recipients processing a given document\nshould treat unexpected elements and attributes in the document as if they were not present.\nThis includes the validation stage, so an old recipient shouldn't discard a\ndocument just because it has new elements in it that were not present at the\ntime its validation logic was designed. The validation logic needs to be:\n</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Performed on the sender side, rather than the recipient side</li>\n<li>Performed on the recipient side only if the document indicates a version number that the recipient knows is equal to or older than its validation logic, or</li>\n<li>Performed on the recipient side only after it has checked to ensure its\nvalidation logic is up to date based on the latest version of the media type\nspecification</li>\n</ol>\n<p>With these best practice items in place, new information can be added to\nmedia type schemas and to corresponding documents. Old recipients will ignore\nthe new information and new recipients are able to make use of it as\nappropriate. Note that information can still only be added to schemas in ways\nconsistent with the \"ignore\" rules of existing recipients. If the ignore rule\nis to treat unknown attributes and elements as if they do not exist, then new\nextensions must be in the form of new attributes and elements. If they cannot\nbe made in compliance with the existing ignore rules then the change becomes\nincompatible as per the next few Best Practice items.\n</p>\n\n<p><em>Best Practice 13: Clients should support a range of current and\nrecently-superseded media types in response messages, and should always state\nthe media types they can accept as part of the \"Accept\" header in requests</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 14: Services should support returning a range of\ncurrent and recently-superseded media types based on the Accept header\nsupplied by its clients, and should state the actual returned media type\nin the Content-Type header</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 15: Clients should always state the media type they have\nincluded within any request message in the Content-Type header</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 16: Services that do not understand the media type\nsupplied in a client request message should return 415 Unsupported Media Type\nand should include an Accept header stating the types they do support.</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 17: Clients that see a 415 Unsupported Media Type response\nshould retry their request with a range of current and recently-superseded\nmedia types with due heed to the server-supplied Accept header if one is\nprovided, before giving up and raising an exception towards their user.\n</em></p>\n<p>Content negotiation is the mechanism that HTTP APIs use to make\nbackwards-incompatible media type schema changes. The new media type with the\nbackwards-incompatible changes in its schema is requested by or supplied by\nnew clients. The old media type continues to be requested by and supplied by\nold clients. It is necessary for recent media types to be supported on the\nclient and server sides until all important corresponding implementations have\nupgraded to the current set of media types.\n</p>\n\n<h4>Removing Information</h4>\n<p>Removing information from media types is generally a backwards-incompatible\nchange. It can be done with care by deprecating the information over time\nuntil no important implementations continue to depend upon the information.\nOften the reason for a removal is that it has been superseded by a newer form\nof the information elsewhere, which will have resulted in information being\nadded in the form of a new media type that supersedes one or more existing\ntypes.\n</p>\n\n<h3>URI Space Evolution</h3>\n<h4>Adding Resources or Capabilities</h4>\n<p>Adding a resource is a service-specific thing to do. No longer are we\ndealing with a generic method or media type, but a specific URL with specific\nsemantics when used with the various generic methods. Some people think of\nthe URI space being something that is defined in a tree that is separate\nto the semantics of operations upon those resources. I tend to take a very\nserver-centric view in thinking of it a service contract that looks something\nlike:\n</p>\n<ul>\n<li>GET /invoice/{invoice-id}, returns application/invoice+xml, Return the invoice denoted by invoice-id</li>\n<li>GET /invoice/{invoice-id}/paid, returns text/plain (<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#boolean\">xsd:bool</a> syntax), Return the invoice paid status for the invoice denoted by invoice-id</li>\n<li>PUT /invoice/{invoice-id}/paid, accepts text/plain (<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#boolean\">xsd:bool</a> syntax), Set the invoice paid status for the invoice denoted by invoice-id</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Adding new URIs (or more generally, <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-gregorio-uritemplate-07\">URI Templates</a>) to a service, or adding new\nmethods to be supported for an existing URI do not introduce any compatibility\nissues. This is because each service is free to structure it resource\nidentifiers in any way it sees fit, so long as clients don't start embedding\n(too many) URI templates into their logic. Instead, they should use hyperlinks\nto feel their way around a particular service's URI space wherever possible.\n</p>\n<p>However, this can still become a compatibility issue between instances of\na service. If it takes 30 minutes to deploy the update to all servers\nworldwide then there may well be client out there that are\nflip flopping between an upgraded server and an old server from one request\nto the next. This could lead to the client directed to use the new resources,\nbut having their request end up at a server that does not support the new\nrequest yet. The best way to deal with this is likely to be to split the\nclient population between new users and old users, and migrate them\nincrementally from one pool to the next as more servers are upgraded and can\ncope with new increased new client pool membership. This can be done with\nspecialised proxies or load balancers in front of the main application servers\nand can be signalled in a number of ways, such as by returning a cookie that\nindicates which pool the client is currently a member of. Each new request will\ncontinue to state which pool the client is a member of, allowing it to be\npinned to the upgraded set of servers. Alternatively, the transition could be\nmade based on other identifying data such as ranges of client IP addresses.\n</p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 18: Clients should support cookies, or a similar mechanism</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 19: Services should keep track of whether a client should\nbe pinned to old servers or new servers during an upgrade using cookies, or a similar mechanism</em></p>\n<h4>Replacing Resources or Capabilities</h4>\n<p>Often as a URI space grows to meet changing demands, it will need to be\nsubstantially redesigned. When this occurs we will want to tear up the old\nURLs and cleanly lay down the new ones. However, we're still stuck with those\nold clients bugging us to deal with their requests. We still have to support\nthem or automatically migrate them. The most straightforward way to do this is\nwith redirection.\n</p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 20: Clients should follow redirection status responses\nfrom the server, even when they are not in response HEAD or GET requests</em></p>\n<p><em>Best Practice 21: When redesigning a URL space, ensure that new URLs\nexist that have the same semantics as old URLs, and redirect from old to new.</em></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616\">RFC2616</a> has some unfortunate\nwording that says clients MUST NOT follow redirection responses unless the\nrequest was HEAD or GET. This is harmful and wrong. If the server redirects to\na URL that doesn't have the same semantics as the old URL then you have the\nright to bash their door in an demand an apology, but this redirection feature\nis the only feature that exists for automated clients to continue working\nacross reorganisations of the URI space. It it madness for the standard to try\nand step in and stop such a useful feature from working.\n</p>\n<p>By supporting all of the 2616 redirection codes, clients ensure that they\noffer the server full support in migrating from old to new URI spaces.\n</p>\n<h3>Conclusion</h3>\n<p>I have outlined some of the key best practice items for dealing with API\nchanges in a forwards-compatible and backwards-compatible way for methods,\nmedia types, and specific service contracts. I have not covered the actual\ncontent of these protocol elements, which depend on other abstraction\nprinciples to minimise coupling and avoid the need for interface change. If\nthere is anything you feel I have missed at this technical level, please leave\na comment. At some stage I'll probably get around to including any glaring\nomissions into the main article text.\n</p>\n<p>Thanks guys!</p>\n<p>Benjamin</p>"
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"content" : "<div><p>From <em>House of Figs</em>:</p>\r\n<ol>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n<li>\r\n<div style=\"padding-left:60px\">She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.</div>\r\n</li>\r\n</ol>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://bethanyamandamiller.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/the-56-bestworst-analogies-written-by-high-school-students/\">here</a>.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F12%2F56-worst-similes-from-high-school-students.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=TWd7nmYTLbc:6AdSmemWh1A:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "VP trees: A data structure for finding stuff fast",
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"content" : "<p>\nLet's say you have millions of pictures of faces tagged with names. Given a new photo, how do you find the name of person that the photo most resembles?\n<p>\n<img align=\"right\" src=\"http://stevehanov.ca/wavelet/cup.png\" width=\"150px\"> Suppose you have scanned short sections of millions of songs, and for each five second period you have a rough list of the frequencies and beat patterns contained in them. Given a new audio snippet, can you find the song to which it belongs? \n<p>\nWhat if you have data from thousands of web site users, including usage frequency, when they signed up, what actions they took, etc. Given a new user's actions, can you find other users like them and predict whether they will upgrade or stop using your product?\n<p>\nIn the cases I mentioned, each record has hundreds or thousands of elements: the pixels in a photo, or patterns in a sound snippet, or web usage data. These records can be regarded as points in high dimensional space. When you look at a points in space, they tend to form clusters, and you can infer a lot by looking at ones nearby. \n<p>\nIn this blog entry, I will half-heartedly describe some data structures for spatial search. Then I will launch into a detailed explanation of VP-Trees (Vantage Point Trees), which are simple, fast, and can easily handle low or high dimensional data.\n\n<h2>Data structures for spatial search</h2>\n<p>\nWhen a programmer wants to search for points in space, perhaps the the first data structure that springs to mind is the K-D tree. In this structure, we repeatedly subdivide all of the points along a particular dimension to form a tree structure.\n\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Kdtree_2d.svg/300px-Kdtree_2d.svg.png\"></p>\n\n<p>\nWith high dimensional data, the benefits of the K-D tree are soon lost. As the number of dimensions increase, the points tend to scatter and it becomes difficult to pick a good splitting dimension. Hundreds of students have gotten their masters degree by coding up K-D trees and comparing them with an alphabet soup of other trees. (In particular, I like <a href=\"http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=ashraf%20masood%20kibriya%20fast%20algorithms%20for%20nearest%20neighbor%20search&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.148.4652%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&ei=rdXYTonIFanh0QH_9eHfDQ&usg=AFQjCNG93LpA1wldfrSx9RoK2RLEAc3DRA&sig2=Q3-zbUzdiZZgei10A-jRHA&cad=rja\">this one.</a>)\n\n<p>\nThe authors of <a href=\"http://books.google.ca/books?id=5FIEAwyn9aoC&lpg=PA136&dq=ball%20tree&pg=PA136#v=onepage&q=ball%20tree&f=false\">Data Mining: Practical machine Learning Tools and Techniques</a> suggests using <a href=\"http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/ftp/pub/techreports/1989/tr-89-063.pdf\">Ball Trees</a>. Each node of a Ball tree describes a bounding sphere, using a centre and a radius. To make the search efficient, the nodes should use the minimal sphere that completely contains all of its children, and overlaps the least with other sibling spheres in the tree.\n\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/balltree.png\"></p>\n\n<p>Ball trees work, but they are difficult to construct. It is hard to figure out the optimal placement of spheres to minimize the overlap. For high dimensional data, the structure can be huge. The nodes must store their centre, and if a point has thousands of coordinates, it occupies a lot of storage. Moreover, you need to be able to calculate these fake sphere centres from the other points. What, exactly, does it mean to calculate a point between two sets of users' web usage history?\n\n<p>\nFortunately, there are methods of building tree structures which do not require manipulation of the individual coordinates. The things that you put in them do not need to resemble points. You only need a way to figure out how far apart they are.\n\n<h2>Entering metric space</h2>\n<p>\nImage you are blindfolded and placed in a gymnasium filled with other blindfolded people. Even worse: you also lost all sense of direction. When others talk, you can sense how far away they are, but not where they are in the room. Eventually, some basic laws become clear. \n\n<ol><li>If there is no distance between you and the other person, you are standing in the same spot.\n<li>When you talk to another person, they perceive you has being the same distance away as you perceive them.\n<li>When you talk to person A and person B, the distance to A is always less than the distance to B plus the distance from A to B. In other words, the shortest distance between two people is a straight line. Distance is never negative.\n</li></li></li></ol>\n\n<p>\nThis is a metric space. The great thing about metric spaces is that the things that you put in them do not need to do a lot. All you need is a way of calculating the distances between them. You do not need to be able to add them together or find bounding shapes or find points midway between them. The data structure that I want to talk about is the <a href=\"http://pnylab.com/pny/papers/vptree/vptree/\">Vantage Point Tree</a> (a generalization of the BK-tree that is eloquently reviewed in <a href=\"http://blog.notdot.net/2007/4/Damn-Cool-Algorithms-Part-1-BK-Trees\">Damn cool algorithms</a>. \n<p>\nEach node of the tree contains one of the input points, and a radius. Under the left child are all points which are closer to the node's point than the radius. The other child contains all of the points which are farther away. The tree requires no other knowledge about the items in it. All you need is a distance function that satisfies the properties of a metric space. \n\n<h2>How searching a VP-Tree works</h2>\n<p>\nLet us examine one of these nodes in detail, and what happens during a recursive search for the nearest neighbours to a target.\n\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://zwibbler.com/shared/1795.png\">\n<p>\nSuppose we want to find the two nearest neighbours to the target, marked with the red X. Since we have no points yet, the node's center <i>p</i> is the closest candidate, and we add it to the list of results. (It might be bumped out later). At the same time, we update our variable <i>tau</i> which tracks the distance of the <i>farthest</i> point that we have in our results.\n\n<p>\nThen, we have to decide whether to search the left or right child first. We may end up having to search them both, but we would like to avoid that most of the time.\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://zwibbler.com/shared/1796.png\"></p>\n<p>\nSince the target is closer to the node's center than its outer shell, we search the left child first, which contains all of the points closer than the radius. We find the blue point. Since it is farther away than <i>tau</i> we update the tau value.\n\n<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://zwibbler.com/shared/1797.png\"></p>\n\n<p>Do we need to continue the search? We know that we have considered all the points that are within the distance <i>radius</i> of <i>p</i>. However, it is closer to get to the outer shell than the farthest point that we have found. Therefore there <i>could be</i> closer points just outside of the shell. We do need to descend into the right child to find the green point.\n\n<p>\nIf, however, we had reached our goal of collecting the <i>n</i> nearest points, and the target point is farther from the the outer shell than the farthest point that we have collected, then we could have stopped looking. This results in significant savings.\n\n<h2>Implementation</h2>\nHere is an implementation of the VP Tree in C++. The recursive <code>search()</code> function decides whether to follow the left, right, or both children. To efficiently maintain the list of results, we use a priority queue. (See my article, <a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=122\">Finding the top k items in a list efficiently</a> for why).\n\n<p>\nI tried it out on <a href=\"http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/worldcities/cities.txt.gz\">a database of all the cities</a> in the world, and the VP tree search was 3978 times faster than a linear search through all the points. You can download the C++ program that uses the VP tree for this purpose <a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/cities.cpp\">here.</a>\n\n<p>\nIt is worth repeating that <b>you must use a distance metric that satisfies the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_inequality\">triangle inequality</a></b>. I spent a lot of time wondering why my VP tree was not working. It turns out that I had not bothered to find the square root in the distance calculation. This step is important to satisfy the requirements of a metric space, because if the straight line distance to <i>a <= b+c</i>, it does not necessarily follow that <i>a<sup>2</sup> <= b<sup>2</sup> + c<sup>2</sup></i>.\n\n<p>\nHere is the output of the program when you search for cities by latitude and longitude.\n<pre>\nCreate took 15484122\nSearch took 36\nca,waterloo,Waterloo,08,43.4666667,-80.5333333\n 0.0141501\nca,kitchener,Kitchener,08,43.45,-80.5\n 0.025264\nca,bridgeport,Bridgeport,08,43.4833333,-80.4833333\n 0.0396333\nca,elmira,Elmira,08,43.6,-80.55\n 0.137071\nca,baden,Baden,08,43.4,-80.6666667\n 0.161756\nca,floradale,Floradale,08,43.6166667,-80.5833333\n 0.163351\nca,preston,Preston,08,43.4,-80.35\n 0.181762\nca,ayr,Ayr,08,43.2833333,-80.45\n 0.195739\n---\nLinear search took 143212\nca,waterloo,Waterloo,08,43.4666667,-80.5333333\n 0.0141501\nca,kitchener,Kitchener,08,43.45,-80.5\n 0.025264\nca,bridgeport,Bridgeport,08,43.4833333,-80.4833333\n 0.0396333\nca,elmira,Elmira,08,43.6,-80.55\n 0.137071\nca,baden,Baden,08,43.4,-80.6666667\n 0.161756\nca,floradale,Floradale,08,43.6166667,-80.5833333\n 0.163351\nca,preston,Preston,08,43.4,-80.35\n 0.181762\nca,ayr,Ayr,08,43.2833333,-80.45\n 0.195739\n\n</pre>\n\n<h3>Construction</h3>\nI'm too lazy to implement a delete or insert function. It is most efficient to simply build the tree by repeatedly partitioning the data. We build the tree from the top down from an array of items. For each node, we first choose a point at random, and then partition the list into two sets: The left children contain the points farther away than the median, and the right contains the points that are closer than the median. Then we recursively repeat this until we have run out of points.\n\n<pre>\n// A VP-Tree implementation, by Steve Hanov. (steve.hanov@gmail.com)\n// Released to the Public Domain\n// Based on "Data Structures and Algorithms for Nearest Neighbor Search" by Peter N. Yianilos\n#include <stdlib.h>\n#include <algorithm>\n#include <vector>\n#include <stdio.h>\n#include <queue>\n#include <limits>\n\ntemplate<typename T, double (*distance)( const T&, const T& )>\nclass VpTree\n{\npublic:\n VpTree() : _root(0) {}\n\n ~VpTree() {\n delete _root;\n }\n\n void create( const std::vector& items ) {\n delete _root;\n _items = items;\n _root = buildFromPoints(0, items.size());\n }\n\n void search( const T& target, int k, std::vector* results, \n std::vector<double>* distances) \n {\n std::priority_queue<HeapItem> heap;\n\n _tau = std::numeric_limits::max();\n search( _root, target, k, heap );\n\n results->clear(); distances->clear();\n\n while( !heap.empty() ) {\n results->push_back( _items[heap.top().index] );\n distances->push_back( heap.top().dist );\n heap.pop();\n }\n\n std::reverse( results->begin(), results->end() );\n std::reverse( distances->begin(), distances->end() );\n }\n\nprivate:\n std::vector<T> _items;\n double _tau;\n\n struct Node \n {\n int index;\n double threshold;\n Node* left;\n Node* right;\n\n Node() :\n index(0), threshold(0.), left(0), right(0) {}\n\n ~Node() {\n delete left;\n delete right;\n }\n }* _root;\n\n struct HeapItem {\n HeapItem( int index, double dist) :\n index(index), dist(dist) {}\n int index;\n double dist;\n bool operator<( const HeapItem& o ) const {\n return dist < o.dist; \n }\n };\n\n struct DistanceComparator\n {\n const T& item;\n DistanceComparator( const T& item ) : item(item) {}\n bool operator()(const T& a, const T& b) {\n return distance( item, a ) < distance( item, b );\n }\n };\n\n Node* buildFromPoints( int lower, int upper )\n {\n if ( upper == lower ) {\n return NULL;\n }\n\n Node* node = new Node();\n node->index = lower;\n\n if ( upper - lower > 1 ) {\n\n // choose an arbitrary point and move it to the start\n int i = (int)((double)rand() / RAND_MAX * (upper - lower - 1) ) + lower;\n std::swap( _items[lower], _items[i] );\n\n int median = ( upper + lower ) / 2;\n\n // partitian around the median distance\n std::nth_element( \n _items.begin() + lower + 1, \n _items.begin() + median,\n _items.begin() + upper,\n DistanceComparator( _items[lower] ));\n\n // what was the median?\n node->threshold = distance( _items[lower], _items[median] );\n\n node->index = lower;\n node->left = buildFromPoints( lower + 1, median );\n node->right = buildFromPoints( median, upper );\n }\n\n return node;\n }\n\n void search( Node* node, const T& target, int k,\n std::priority_queue& heap )\n {\n if ( node == NULL ) return;\n\n double dist = distance( _items[node->index], target );\n //printf("dist=%g tau=%gn", dist, _tau );\n\n if ( dist < _tau ) {\n if ( heap.size() == k ) heap.pop();\n heap.push( HeapItem(node->index, dist) );\n if ( heap.size() == k ) _tau = heap.top().dist;\n }\n\n if ( node->left == NULL && node->right == NULL ) {\n return;\n }\n\n if ( dist < node->threshold ) {\n if ( dist - _tau <= node->threshold ) {\n search( node->left, target, k, heap );\n }\n\n if ( dist + _tau >= node->threshold ) {\n search( node->right, target, k, heap );\n }\n\n } else {\n if ( dist + _tau >= node->threshold ) {\n search( node->right, target, k, heap );\n }\n\n if ( dist - _tau <= node->threshold ) {\n search( node->left, target, k, heap );\n }\n }\n }\n};\n\n</pre>\n\n<ul><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=44\">Make Windows XP look like Ubuntu, with Spinning Cube Effect</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=101\">\"This is stupid. Your program doesn't work,\" my wife told me</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=66\">Test Driven Development without Tears</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=21\">Dissecting Adsense</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=80\">Comment spam defeated at last</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=86\">Boring Date (comic)</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=74\">Blame the extensions (comic)</a></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "Goodbye Serenity",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/charles-simic/#tab-blog\">Charles Simic</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://assets.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Magnumbench_jpg_470x419_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos</p>\n <p>A stuffed animal and an old man sitting on a bench in Central Park, 1983</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day.\n</p>\n<p>My own inordinate interest in what the lunatics are up to in every corner of our planet has to do with my childhood. When I was three years old in Belgrade, German bombs started falling on my head. By the time I was seven, I was accustomed to seeing dead people lying in the street, or hung from telephone poles, or thrown into ditches with their throats cut. Like any child growing up in an occupied city during wartime, I didn’t think much about it. I was as serene then as I will ever be, sitting among the ruins smoking my first cigarette, riding on a Russian tank with a friend, or watching our school janitor hang the portraits of Marx, Stalin and Marshal Tito in our classroom after the liberation. \n</p>\n<p>Becoming a displaced person after that, one among millions, ending up in country after country, learning one foreign language after another, mispronouncing its words in school or when asking direction in the street, struggling to read and make sense of the history of the place, worrying about some war being declared and even bigger bombs falling on my head, and later, when I was older, fretting about being inducted into the army and sent half-way across the world to die for a cause that made no sense to me or to a great many other humans being capable of thinking—all this contributed to my need to know what plans are being hatched behind our backs. \n</p>\n<p>I mustn’t forget, either, that I was surrounded by political exiles in my youth, many of whom, after having lived either under Stalin or Hitler, or in some cases both, never lost their vigilance. Even after twenty or thirty years in the United States, they gave the impression of keeping a suitcase packed under their beds, ready to flee at a moment’s notice should hippies or some variety of American fascists come power.<br>\n</p>\n<p>Lucky for them, they are all long dead, so they can’t read some opinion piece or hear a congressman or a senator today clamor for the very same police state measures they barely escaped from. Watching the government of the country they grew to love curtailing liberties, spying on its citizens, militarizing its police forces, imprisoning both foreigners and Americans indefinitely without having to prove their guilt, and coming to admire the mindset of authoritarian regimes it used to despise, would have been both terrifying and depressing. They could not help but note that some of their fellow Americans who cheer for the death penalty and for torture, and call the people demonstrating against Wall Street lice-infested misfits and degenerates, are no better than the ones they knew back home and are as eager to persecute, imprison, and even commit murder should they be called upon (I think people who clap for death, love war without end, and adore guns are perfectly capable of it). My mother, who never recalled anything but trouble, and was sure the worst was yet to come, would be saying, I told you so, all day long.\n</p>\n<p>Her generation at least didn’t have the Internet to torment themselves with. This morning, for example, reading around on the web, I discovered that our top political commentators are in complete agreement that the so-called “Grand Bargain” that the two parties failed to agree on last summer and again in November, must be enacted sooner or later. Either geezers like me tighten their belts, stop heating their homes in winter, forget about the cost of living and future social security increases, don’t run to the doctor every time something hurts them and allow their teeth to rot and fall out, or the United States won’t have enough money to fight wars and bail out the big banks. \n</p>\n<p>To anyone who has been paying attention and knew that our political system has long been incapable of solving any of our country’s real problems, none of this comes as a surprise. I remember overhearing an inebriated elderly businessman in a restaurant back in the 1970s telling a lady companion, “The American worker is too expensive and has no future. I can make more money in Asia than in Pittsburgh.” However, I never realized that our ruling classes would be in such a hurry to give up on the rest of us, and not just the workers and the old, but the young people as well, and without a twinge of conscience. My only hope nowadays is that in my dotage I’ve got all of this wrong, and that in President Obama’s second term, or with Mitt Romney’s or Newt Gingrich’s first, we’ll see everything in this country change for the better. \n</p>\n<p>Till then, Happy Holidays!\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=lcigRqYeY6k:Cif-c7Ig_oc:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/lcigRqYeY6k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "Courtesy of former guest blogger <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/when-i-worked-for-the-cia/72861/\">Glenna Hall</a>, referencing a find by Matt Loschen earlier today:<br><br><img src=\"http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/jamesfallows/assets_c/2011/12/CarWreck%20copy-thumb-600x315-71138.png\" alt=\"CarWreck copy.png\" height=\"315\" width=\"600\"><br> <div>I don't know which explanation I prefer: that this was a pure accident of algorithmic news placement, or that human judgment was involved.<br></div><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:d3d3363af482cb0b0d3f2d68e3c64a07:Ejh3V%2FMBEwd7SbR3IEWIy48lesPkZd2ZTH%2FcbxvyXk98WnesKcK5sVccudgSguaZoZLKtlBpR4Fw7Q%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Email this Article\" alt=\"Email this Article\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthis.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:5b8d533e3ed5321a63417f55e39bcae8:jgkRMqzRI6ssjSrROdnPGP%2FLME6IAb2%2Bi3nzfVpzbQGSC4INtl%2BYFTIDaW%2B%2Ff0v25FLfWU%2FboHtSQQ%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to digg\" alt=\"Add to digg\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:439dcec09adff0ffd7ea444cbd986a8c:qX%2F5OjWKdxPQPZISkKVB4BgMPjVZKjUoiPiuU2g8a9qtChX4folz3FFNPP1bny44kuUJ%2FEhD5ZvysA%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Reddit\" alt=\"Add to Reddit\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:9032a81d372b69e62f9fae6bb1702927:lav1zt0bx0W6E%2BrtIYa0oqsf74yPQoTIunGfNCsHM%2BVgHuFCYA0IYu7tjOTubUlJvrsstdG%2F3ngRa00%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Twitter\" alt=\"Add to Twitter\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/twitter.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:70fdd9d1a12d5c9783785f023e39389e:371vQZUS0yOYktHa6MaAT0RPl6SRuvKgtJ0OiiXiS8aovUc8VYAee2si%2Fl3aAb%2BWD0F31ygkZ89LtA%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to del.icio.us\" alt=\"Add to del.icio.us\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/delicious.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:f64d5ef6a0d7b3f05627f8a47c6c7d2b:qEU1JsvcfdEmOFJTaNBzTnoWczq8ZWAt1wRtO%2B%2BdST1g%2BGbaWwaxOylMYo9v22EtmI%2Bsj5tg7JNhdLc%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" alt=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:9fcff973a767b6433c3bc4e748f2b665:eybJc9fvWefqTQzBXTCjCwJVp2c1yLTCW49bLtQADcbfd9wpJd2UCejRcfQ4YzFlxrpIqkc0Fkgpp2Q%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Facebook\" alt=\"Add to Facebook\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif\"></a>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9b52a3aa155cf1a782e0dddc9c3f5219&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9b52a3aa155cf1a782e0dddc9c3f5219&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=Business&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:ef7jeah&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?a=NeWFfAoTbs0:jXF71Mzis2U:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesFallows?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/JamesFallows/~4/NeWFfAoTbs0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><em>Preface: I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get this post published. I won’t bore you with my ruminations and remorse … instead, on with the show.</em></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/JNMugshotmemex.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"187\" height=\"134\">I still do analog. Case in point: <em>A Brief History of the Future: From Radio Days to Internet Years in a Lifetime</em>, a monograph by <a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/\">John Naughton</a>, distributed on inked wood-pulp, and purchased by me in person at a used bookstore in Philadelphia off South Street about a month ago.</p>\n<p>It’s a fine book. Naughton has a tremendous storytelling flair, but his greatest genius is for identifying and communicating the human depths and excellences that might be overlooked by a less gold-hearted storyteller. There are many, many nuggets here that invite careful rereading and contemplation, far too many for one blog post. I suspect I’ll eventually write about several.</p>\n<p>For now, though, I want to share the story Naughton tells of Steve Crocker, one of the original members of ARPANET’s “Network Working Group.” This is the group Vint Cerf worked with as he helped to bring TCP/IP into being. I knew something of Cerf’s story. I recognized the names of Jeff Rulifson and Bill Duvall from SRI (part of Doug Engelbart’s group). I dimly recalled reading something about Steve Crocker. But what I didn’t know was the pivotal role Crocker played in building the platform for collective intelligence within the early ARPANET itself. He did this with a very special kind of protocol, the kind more closely linked with diplomacy than with networked computers “shaking hands.”</p>\n<p>He did it by inventing a new genre of professional writing: the <strong>Request for Comments</strong> (RFC).</p>\n<p>As Naughton tells the story, the young graduate students who were at the center of the Network Working Group found themselves with the future of the Internet in their hands. The big corporate brains knew about the machines that made up the network, but they didn’t know much about the network itself–it was too new, and it was an emergent phenomenon, not a thing they had built. The grad students in the NWG felt they were at great risk of offending the honchos, of overstepping their bounds as “vulnerable, insecure apprentices,” to use Naughton’s words. Crocker was especially worried they “would offend whomever the official protocol designers were….” But the work had to go forward. So Crocker invented the “Request for Comments,” what he called “humble words for our notes” that would document the discussions that would build the network.</p>\n<p>Here’s how Crocker himself put it in this excerpt from <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3\">RFC-3, “Documentation Conventions”</a>:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Documentation of the NWG’s effort is through notes such as this. Notes may be produced at any site by anybody and included in this series…. [Content] may be any thought, suggestion, etc. related to the HOST software or other aspect of the network. Notes are encouraged to be timely rather than polished. Philosophical positions without examples or other specifics, specific suggestions or implementation techniques without introductory or background explication, and explicit questions without any attempted answers are all acceptable. The minimum length for a NWG note is one sentence.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">These standards (or lack of them) are stated explicitly for two reasons. First, there is a tendency to view a written statement as ipso facto authoritative, and we hope to promote the exchange and discussion of considerably less than authoritative ideas. Second, there is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition.</p>\n<p>You can see the similarity to blogging right away. At least two primary Network Working Groups are involved: that of all the other people in the world (let’s call that civilization), and that of the network that constitutes one’s own cognition and the resulting “strange loop,” to use Douglas Hofstadter’s language. We are all of us in this macrocosm and this microcosm. Most of us will have multiple networks within these mirroring extremes, but the same principles will of course apply there as well. What is the ethos of the Network Working Group we call civilization? And for those of us engaged in the specific cognitive interventions we call education, what is the ethos of the Network Working Group we help out students to build and grow within themselves as learners? We discussed Ivan Illich in the Virginia Tech New Media Faculty-Staff Development Seminar today, and I was forcibly reminded that the NWG within sets the boundaries (and hopes) we have with which to craft our NWG without. School conditions what we expect in and from civilization.</p>\n<p>I hope it’s also clear that these RFC-3 documentation conventions specify a <em>praxis</em> of intellectual discourse–indeed, I’d even say scholarly communication–that is sadly absent from most academic work today.</p>\n<p>Would such communciation be rigorous? Academic? Worthy of tenure and promotion? What did these RFCs accomplish, and how do they figure in the human record? Naughton observes that this “Request for Comments” idea–and the title itself, now with many numerals following–has persisted as “the way the Internet discusses technical issues.” Naughton goes on to write that “it wasn’t just the title that endured … but the intelligent, friendly, co-operative, consensual attitude implied by it. With his modest, placatory style, Steve Crocker set the tone for the way the Net developed.” Naughton then quotes Katie Hafner’s and Matthew Lyon’s judgment that “the language of the RFC … was warm and welcoming. The idea was to promote cooperation, not ego.”</p>\n<p>Naughton concludes,</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">The RFC archives contain an extraordinary record of thought in action, a riveting chronicle of the application of high intelligence to hard problems….</p>\n<p>Why would we not want to produce such a record within the academy and share it with the public? Or are we content with the ordinary, forgotten, and non-riveting so long as the business model holds up?</p>\n<p>Or have we been schooled so thoroughly that the very ambition makes no sense?</p>\n<p>More Naughton:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">The fundamental ethos of the Net was laid down in the deliberations of the Network Working Group. It was an ethos which assumed that nothing was secret, that problems existed to be solved collaboratively, that solutions emerged iteratively, and that everything which was produced should be in the public domain.</p>\n<p>I think of the many faculty and department meetings I have been to. Some of them I have myself convened. The ethos of those Network Working Groups has varied considerably. I am disappointed to say that none of them has lived up to the fundamental ethos Naughton identifies above. I yearn for documentation conventions that will produce an extraordinary record of thought in action, with the production shared by all who work within a community of learning. And I wonder if I’m capable of Crocker’s humility or wisdom, and answerable to his invitation. I want to be.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gardnercampbell.net%2Fblog1%2F%3Fp%3D1644&title=Request%20for%20Comments\"><img src=\"http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "Tackling Africa’s Image Problem",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/screen-shot-2011-12-01-at-12-01-28-pm.png\"><img title=\"Screen Shot 2011-12-01 at 12.01.28 PM\" src=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/screen-shot-2011-12-01-at-12-01-28-pm.png?w=420\" alt=\"\"></a>Back in 2000….</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>And now… <a href=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/screen-shot-2011-12-01-at-12-01-49-pm.png\"><img title=\"Screen Shot 2011-12-01 at 12.01.49 PM\" src=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/screen-shot-2011-12-01-at-12-01-49-pm.png?w=420&h=332\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"332\"></a></p>\n<p>The latest issue of the Economist has “Africa” on the cover, with the pronouncement that the continent has, in the last ten years, moved from <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/printedition/2000-05-13\">hopeless</a> to <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21541015\">hopeful</a>.</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Africa’s enthusiasm for technology is boosting growth. It has more than 600m mobile-phone users—more than America or Europe. Since roads are generally dreadful, advances in communications, with mobile banking and telephonic agro-info, have been a huge boon. Around a tenth of Africa’s land mass is covered by mobile-internet services—a higher proportion than in India. The health of many millions of Africans has also improved, thanks in part to the wider distribution of mosquito nets and the gradual easing of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. Skills are improving: productivity is growing by nearly 3% a year, compared with 2.3% in America.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>All this is happening partly because Africa is at last getting a taste of peace and decent government. For three decades after African countries threw off their colonial shackles, not a single one (bar the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius) peacefully ousted a government or president at the ballot box. But since Benin set the mainland trend in 1991, it has happened more than 30 times—far more often than in the Arab world.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Population trends could enhance these promising developments. A bulge of better-educated young people of working age is entering the job market and birth rates are beginning to decline. As the proportion of working-age people to dependents rises, growth should get a boost. Asia enjoyed such a “demographic dividend”, which began three decades ago and is now tailing off. In Africa it is just starting.</strong></p></blockquote>\n<p>More on this <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21541015\">here</a>.</p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/category/africa/\">africa</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/african-developemnt/\">african developemnt</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/angola/\">angola</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/economic-growth-in-africa/\">economic growth in africa</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/economist-magazine/\">Economist Magazine</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/governance-in-africa/\">governance in africa</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/hopeful-continent/\">hopeful continent</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/hopeless-continent/\">hopeless continent</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/kenya/\">Kenya</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/nigeria/\">Nigeria</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/peace-and-stability/\">peace and stability</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/south-africa/\">south africa</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/kenopalo.wordpress.com/4214/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kenopalo.wordpress.com&blog=2271139&post=4214&subd=kenopalo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right\"><div><div></div></div><div><a name=\"fb_share\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php\">Share</a></div></div><div style=\"width:337px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-5202\" href=\"http://africanarguments.org/2011/11/29/revisiting-biafra-civil-war-leader-ojukwu-dies-by-richard-dowden/biafradeclaration/\"><img title=\"BiafraDeclaration\" src=\"http://africanarguments.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/BiafraDeclaration.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"327\" height=\"228\"></a><p>Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declares Biafran independence in May 1967</p></div>\n<p>There was one astounding moment at Chinua Achebe’s Colloquium at Brown University in the US last year when three of the most influential men in the Biafran War came together on the platform – Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Oxford educated Biafran rebel leader, Professor Achebe himself, the most articulate proponent of the Biafran cause, and Wole Soyinka who flew into Biafra to act as a peacemaker and as a result was thrown into jail by the Nigerian President, General Yakubu Gowan. Only Gowon was missing.</p>\n<p>Just to see the three old men together was extraordinary – the slow-spoken, reflective Achebe in his beret, Soyinka with his shock of snowy hair and white beard speaking bluntly then enigmatically, and Ojukwu, a giant of a man in a huge black coat but now blind, led around by an assistant. He said very little but I wanted to ask a simple question, so when the session ended I managed to stop him for a moment and ask if he had any regrets about the war. He paused but did not turn his head. “History does not repeat itself,” he growled. “But if it did, I would do exactly the same again. Excuse me.” He moved on.</p>\n<p>He died in London last Saturday and his death may trigger a re-assessment of that terrible war. In so many ways the Biafran conflict defined war in Africa for the rest of the century. It challenged the universal agreement among the newly independent African states to accept the colonial borders. The Ibos attempted to leave Nigeria and create their own state, (although they would have taken with them several other ethnic groups, like the Ibibios, the Annanga and the Ogojas, who were not consulted). This tribally based rebellion was to be replicated throughout the continent in following years. The war divided Africa, with Gabon, Cote d’Ivoire and Tanzania supporting the Biafran cause and other countries backing Nigeria. A divided African Union prevented it acting as a peacemaker, and from then on the AU played almost no role in ending wars in Africa.</p>\n<p>Biafra was also about resources – oil in this case, which supercharged the conflict and ensured that outsiders like Britain took sides and supplied weapons. While not causing Africa’s subsequent wars, oil, diamonds, coltan and other valuable resources have exacerbated and prolonged conflicts. It did not however divide the world along Cold War lines. The Soviet Union also supplied weapons while the US took a neutral stance imposing its own arms embargo on both sides.</p>\n<p>But perhaps Biafra’s greatest impact was its image. The last time the world had seen masses of starving people was at the end of the Second World War. The ‘Biafran baby’ – a starving child with huge sad eyes, stick-like limbs and bloated stomach – became a defining image of Africa for the next half century as wars broke out in almost half the continent’s states.</p>\n<p>Aid agencies, which had had few emergencies since the end of World War II, found a new role in Biafra and there confronted all the problems they were to face elsewhere in Africa in the coming decades. A whole generation of aid workers were forged in the Biafran fire. The biggest problem for the aid agencies was that they knew some of the food and medical supplies were being taken by the combatants, thereby prolonging the war. The aid air bridge was also used by arms suppliers and one aid plane was shot down by the Nigerians. The Nigerian government tried to starve out the rebels. Chief Awolowo, then a minister, said in 1968 “all is fair in war and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight us harder.”</p>\n<p>On January 12<sup>th</sup> 1970 the war ended with the collapse of Biafra and the flight of Ojukwu (although he said he would die rather than run away). General Yakubu Gowon declared that there would be no victors and no vanquished and there appears to have been no retribution once the fighting stopped. But there was no peace building or reconciliation either. Nigeria returned to peace, Ojukwu returned to Nigeria and was given an official pardon. But many Ibos feel they have been excluded from high office ever since and there has been little discussion of the war or its effects. The history of the war and its causes is not taught in schools and until Chimamanda Adichie’s novel <em>Half of a Yellow Sun</em> there was no written memory of what happened.</p>\n<p>Perhaps with the death of Ojukwu that will change.</p>\n<p><strong>Richard Dowden is Director of the Royal African Society and author of <a href=\"http://astore.amazon.co.uk/royaafrisoci-21/detail/184627155X\"><em>Africa: altered states, ordinary miracles</em></a></strong></p>\n<p><em> </em></p>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><em>I write this for Nigeria, beautiful but troubled land that houses my umbilical cord…</em></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">So, the other day I was watching a video clip of a Nigerian caught in the claws of the UK immigration. He had just alighted from a plane, clutching a fake passport and a detailed script for responding to pesky questions by UK immigration officials. The interview with the UK officials is at once funny and sad. <a href=\"http://www.tayotv.net/2011/11/video-nigerian-man-caught-with-fake.html\">If you have the time, you may watch the tragi-comedy here.</a> When he is told he would be sent back home to Nigeria he breaks down in copious tears, kneels down and begs for relief. This warrior truly doesn’t want to go home for reasons different from the tissue of lies he has offered. The terror in his eyes hurts to behold. He looks like he is in his early thirties but he has definitely been schooled in the immigration laws of the UK; he loudly claims to be fifteen – a vulnerable minor in need of protection. He is clearly not fifteen but skeptical authorities decide to take him to a home where he would stay until his age is determined. He absconds and disappears into the catacombs of London never to be seen again. You cheer for this warrior until you realize that lacking any discernible skills his life is not going to be much better in London (English subtitles mock his halting English, humiliating hints of an abusive Nigerian educational system). Who knows, maybe his offspring will live a better life. Our leaders should be shot. Yes, our leaders should be shot. I am not only referring to our political leaders. When the history of Africa’s troubled journey is accurately chronicled, the world will come to realize the horror of the self-serving perfidy of Africa’s intellectual leaders. We are the new self-serving colonialists perpetuating black-on-black crime on our own people. Ask the underclass of South Africa now attending to the narcissism of their black elite.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/emeagwali1.jpg\"><img title=\"emeagwali\" src=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/emeagwali1.jpg?w=500\" alt=\"\"></a>The degree of narcissism and self-absorption is mind-boggling. Many of our intellectual leaders are, like their political brethren, indifferent to personal responsibility. For them, flowery words are perfect substitutes for good character. Many will forever remember how the great fraud Philip Emeagwali wormed his way into credible history books as the “Father of the Internet.” Why, his face is permanently etched on a Nigerian postage stamp as a great son of Africa, this man who defrauds thousands daily by claiming that his graduate term paper makes him the founder of the Internet. <a href=\"http://saharareporters.com/report/how-philip-emeagwali-lied-his-way-fame\">His lies and exaggerations are copiously chronicled here by Sahara Reporters.</a> If you need only the abridged Cliff notes, click on <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcml1gxtCCM\">this</a>. Please do not google “Emeagwali fraud,” your computer will crash from the e-rage. There are extremely reliable rumors that this trickster was set to receive Nigeria’s highest honor in 2010 until news of his hoax went viral on the Internet. <a href=\"http://www.emeagwali.com/\">Using his sordidly self-serving website here</a>, Emeagwali continues to ply his sick trade in America as a Black History Month pimp where folks desperate for black heroes uncritically accept his daring lies and obfuscations. By the way, whatever happened to the Nigerian government’s vow to <a href=\"http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5639794-146/government_to_investigate_emeagwali__.csp\">investigate Philip Emeagwali?</a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">When it comes to matters of immigration, I must concede that it is complicated; I generally make no judgment about how and why folks move from place to place. Right now, young people are doing daring things to escape what are admittedly harsh conditions in Africa. Hundreds die annually crossing roiling seas just to escape the disastrous consequences of their leaders’ perfidy. What they are doing is no different from what the colonialists did in coming to America. The face of immigration is browning, that is the only difference. This earth belongs to all of us, and you live where you can afford to.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The eighties and the nineties were particularly brutal years for Nigerians. Waves of murderous dictators took turns making life miserable for the people – and enriching themselves and their families in the process. Writers and artists were vulnerable. Many fought ferociously and were just as ferociously attacked for their beliefs and words. Many lost their lives and many are forever broken by the savagery that was visited upon them. The books of these brave warriors document their harrowing experiences in the hands of dictators. It is the truth. Well, not all of it is the truth. As in every instance, there are those who would take advantage of situations for self-serving reasons. Every now and then, a celebrated writer gets caught in the web of lies and exaggerations. <a href=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/beah.jpg\"><img title=\"beah\" src=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/beah.jpg?w=500\" alt=\"\"></a>There is the sad case of Ishmael Beah, author of the memoir, <em>A Long Way Gone,</em> a bestseller about Beah’s days as a child-soldier. That book ran into difficulties when some dogged researchers did some homework and came up with the compelling conclusion that the book is mostly reams of lies and exaggerations <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2008/03/the_fog_of_memoir.single.html\">(see some links here)</a>. What is particularly tragic here is that Beah’s book is, in my humble opinion, a very good and important book; it could have been marketed as fiction, but no, I imagine that Beah and his agent concluded that the only way it would sell would be to claim fantastic adventures that have spurious basis in fact. The West’s hunger for child-soldier stories is insatiable and many alleged child-soldiers are wailing all the way to their suburban banks in Europe and America.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/abani2.jpg\"><img title=\"abani2\" src=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/abani2.jpg?w=300&h=198\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\"></a>So the other day, I was doing some research on the acclaimed Nigerian writer <a href=\"http://www.chrisabani.com/Bio/index.html\">Chris Abani</a> and I came across these comic howlers on his <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Abani\">Wikipedia page</a>:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“Christopher Abani (or Chris Abani) (born December 27, 1966) is a Nigerian author. Abani’s first novel, Masters of the Board, was about a Neo-Nazi takeover of Nigeria. The book earned one reviewer to praise Abani as “Africa’s answer to Frederick Forsyth.” The Nigerian government, however, believed the book to be a blueprint for an actual coup, and sent the 18-year-old Abani to prison in 1985. After serving six months in jail, he was released, but he went on to perform in a guerilla theatre group. This action led to his arrest and imprisonment at Kiri Kiri, a notorious prison. He was released again, but after writing his play Song of a Broken Flute he was arrested for a third time, sentenced to death, and sent to the Kalakuta Prison, where he was jailed with other political prisoners and inmates on death row. His father is Igbo, while his mother was English born.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“He spent some of his prison time in solitary confinement, but was freed in 1991. He lived in exile in London until a friend was murdered there in 1999; he then fled to the United States.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Kalakuta prison! Who knows of such a prison? Based on these tales, in 2003, Abani is offered and happily accepts to be a recipient of <a href=\"http://www.ifex.org/international/2003/07/30/hellman_hammett_grants_awarded/\">the Hellman/Hammett grants</a> awarded to 28 “brave” writers from all over the world. Here is Abani’s citation:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“Chris Abani (Nigeria), poet and novelist, was arrested in 1985 and again in 1987 when plots of his novels were said to be plans for attempts to overthrow the government. He spent six months in prison in 1985. In 1987, he was held in Kiri-Kiri Maximum Security Prison for a year and tortured. On his release, Mr. Abani entered Imo State University. Inspired by Wole Soyinka’s use of theater as protest, Mr. Abani formed a theater group that wrote and performed anti-government sketches. In 1990, he wrote a play, Song of the Broken Flute, for the University’s commencement exercises which the military head of state and military governor were scheduled to attend. The play, a series of monologues that decried government corruption and its effects on the people, landed him back in prison on treason charges. Released after 18 months, he graduated from Imo State University and joined the national service. Several attempts on his life while in boot camp prompted him to flee to England. He lived there quietly until publication of his prison memoir in 1997, when he began speaking out. As a result, the Nigerian government applied to have him extradited to stand trial for treason again. In December 1999, following the doorstep murder of his next-door neighbor, the only other Nigerian in the building, Mr. Abani left England for the United States. He now lives in California and is a doctoral student in literature at the University of Southern California.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The story gets hilarious and changes with each re-telling. No one bothers to check. To be fair to his fellow writers, this award caused quite an uproar on krazitivity an online listserv of writers. He was put to task and <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&note_id=10150952373575106\">he offered some defense of sorts</a> before promptly disappearing out of sight. In the defense he pointedly avoids mention of the alleged death sentence. There were many responses, restrained, polite but expressing robust incredulity. The artist and poet Olu Oguibe asked for independent verification pointing out accurately that as an activist and student union leader himself he did not remember these tales; he did remember the late <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/sep/26/guardianobituaries.mainsection1\">Chima Ubani </a>who suffered eerily similar travails in the hands of the Nigerian government. He has since expanded on his skepticism, with even more profound analysis on my Facebook page. The writer Nnorom Azuonye offered a compelling deconstruction of Abani’s 2003 defense <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150952380550106\">here</a>.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It is one thing for Abani to tell a lie and then move on with his life. It is another thing for him to continue to perpetuate the same lie at the expense of Africa. It is obnoxious and offensive, and if he was white, it would be considered racist. Since the confrontation/intervention in 2003, Abani has gone on to conduct moving interviews and given speeches expanding in graphic detail his alleged experiences. As I said earlier, the details get more fantastic in the re-telling and details and dates change each time. It is comic really. Watching Abani in 2008 <a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/02/29/ted2008-chris-abani-forgetting-their-names/\">here on TED</a>, you wonder if he has delusions of grandeur, the man really believes all this stuff. You have to read this piece and watch the video clip. There is this piece of brilliant fiction where Abani talks about ending up in solitary on Nigeria’s “death row” and witnessing the execution of “John James,”a 14-year old prisoner. “John James didn’t really understand death row and believed they’d get out. “They killed him. They handcuffed him to a chair, nailed his penis to a table, and let him bleed to death. That’s how I ended up in solitary, because I made my feelings known.” So many questions: How come no one has publicly called him on these lies? THAT is the real scandal. And the damage to Nigeria is needless. Such a brilliant writer, weaving unnecessary lies! Where is the outrage? <a href=\"http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178254\">Read this</a> and marvel at Abani’s abilities to weave utter fiction. And yes, I have made up my mind, Abani is lying through all his teeth; he definitely lives in pure fantasy-land. Google Abani and there are all these Westerners fawning over him, they did not even bother to check the facts – reverse racism feeds some of our African intellectuals’ wallets. <a href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/09/18/2368514.htm\">Read this interview and be royally teed</a>. <a href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/09/18/2368514.htm\">And here is another load of bullcrap</a>. Abani ought to offer apologies for doing this to Nigeria and Africa.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">These are questions I pose directly to Chris Abani: Were you really sentenced to death in Nigeria for your involvement in the Mamman Vatsa coup? Do you have copies of the extradition documents from the Nigerian government? Produce something, a newspaper clipping, anything and I will personally apologize to you for doubting you. It is amazing that up until now, no one has ever seen fit to call Abani on his lies and exaggerations. His appalling conduct threatens to distort permanently Nigeria’s already tortured history. There have been private complaints about his narcissistic behavior, yet no one has seen fit to come forth and complain about this outrage. The simplest explanation is that Abani is a hugely talented and influential writer; people, especially his peers are reluctant to confront him publicly because they do not want to be seen as raining on a talented writer’s parade. Words are powerful. In the hands of the gifted they can move armies to awesome destruction. It is not always a good thing. Words woven into lies can do major structural damage and trust becomes collateral damage. It is truly very simple; Abani should go to Nigeria, visit Kirikiri prisons like the writer and activist Ogaga Ifowodo recently did, show the world his cell and ask the authorities to give him copies of his incarceration documents. They are all there waiting for him. Failing that, he should shut up and keep writing. We will buy his books and love him regardless. Yes, will the real Christopher Abani stand up? In the name of Africa, I say stand up, speak the truth and sit down.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/xokigbo.wordpress.com/285/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=xokigbo.wordpress.com&blog=25734203&post=285&subd=xokigbo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Counting sheep",
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"content" : "<p>Sadly I can’t, I presume, reproduce in its entirety the delightful and serendipitous poem <a title=\"hat tip to Dave\" href=\"http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15306\"><em>Counting Sheep</em> by Linda Pastan</a> which is today’s poem at <a href=\"http://poems.com/\">Poetry Daily</a>. However I strongly recommend heading that way to read it. Here is an excerpt:</p>\n<p>At a thousand fifty<br>\nI notice a ram<br>\npushing up against<br>\na soft and curly female,<br>\nand for a moment<br>\nI’m distracted by errant<br>\nimages of sex.<br>\nIt is difficult<br>\nto keep so many sheep<br>\nin line for counting—<br>\nthey are not a parade<br>\nbut more like a roiling<br>\nsea of whitecaps…</p>\n<p>Counting and sheep go together like, er, probably like a shepherd and a sheepdog (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication#Approximate_dates_and_locations_of_original_domestication\">dogs were the first animal species to be domesticated by humans, sheep the second</a>). There are special words for counting sheep which derive from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brythonic_languages\">the language spoken in Britain in the Iron Age</a>. Which is cool. In base 20. Which is cool. And with a sub-base 5 element. Which is cool. And three cools make freaking awesome. And the fact that you can use the system to count up to 399 using only two hands makes it <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera\">mind-blowing</a>.</p>\n<blockquote><p>Like most Celtic numbering systems, they tend to be vigesimal (based on the number twenty), but they usually lack words to describe quantities larger than twenty; though this is not a limitation of either modernised decimal Celtic counting systems or the older ones. To count a large number of sheep, a shepherd would repeatedly count to twenty, placing a mark on the ground, or move his hand to another mark on his crook, or drop a pebble into his pocket to represent each score (e.g. 5 score sheep = 100 sheep).</p>\n<p>It is also worth noting the number theory behind the scheme. Although decimal up to 10, in most dialects the scheme then changes to counting in(sub-)base 5. It is possible to carry out limited arithmetic in base 5 on numbers up to 30 (decimal) using your fingers as a rudimentary abacus. It is pure speculation, but there may be a connection between the two facts, and the shepherds of England may have carried out limited accounting on their fingers.</p>\n<p>In particular, the names of the numbers fit a pattern in which the index finger and forefinger each represent 0 when retracted, 1 when bent, and 2 when straight, while the other three fingers each represent 5 when extended. The rhyming transitions occur with the straightening of a finger, and the pattern repeats at intervals of 5. Thus, with two hands, a person can count up to 399. In the similar but simpler system, discernible in Roman numerals, in which the thumb is 5 and the other fingers 1 each, a person can only count up to 99 on two hands. The Yan Tan Tethera system was thus advantageous until writing made the limitation of two hands less important.</p>\n<p>Another reason for the use of base five is suggested by the design of the shepherds crook which has grooves, nobbles, nicks or other impressions on it which enable the shepherd to note the number of fives counted on the other hand. Using base five counting in this way allows the shepherd to total as many sheep as the markings on the crook will allow, each mark representing five sheep.</p></blockquote>\n<p>But why waste an excellent counting system on just one use. It was employed by stitch-counting knitters too, as recently as 1863:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=40wAAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA204&ots=rLTg_PDDUQ&dq=alice+aston+%22john+anne%22&pg=PA205&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false\"><img title=\"Notes and queries September 12 1863\" src=\"http://www.twistedrib.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Notes-and-queries-Google-Books.jpg\" alt=\"Notes and queries September 12 1863\" width=\"478\" height=\"670\"></a></p>\n<p>So which of the small selection given on Wikipedia of the more than 100 variants of the system shall I reproduce here? Since there are strong family ties to Kirkby Lonsdale, it is the Kirkby Lonsdale variant, divided into fives for ease of reading:</p>\n<p>Yaan, tyaan, taed’ere, mead’ere, mimp;<br>\nHaites, saites, hoves, daoves, dik;<br>\nYaan’edik, tyaan’edik, tead’eredik, mead’eredik, boon;<br>\nYaan’eboon, tyaan’eboon, tead’ereboon, mead’ereboon, buom’fit.</p>\n<p>I remember going to see <a href=\"http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/composer_main.asp?composerid=2729&ttype=BIOGRAPHY&ttitle=Biography\">Harrison Birtwistle</a>‘s <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera_(opera)\">opera <em>Yan Tan Tethera</em></a> and being very excited by recognising <a href=\"http://www.michaelnyman.com/\">Michael Nyman</a> in the audience. Oh heady days. In fact the main reason I wanted to see/hear it was because the <a href=\"http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsH/harrison-tony.html#15727\">libretto</a> was by one of my heroes, <a href=\"http://literature.britishcouncil.org/tony-harrison\">Tony Harrion</a>. He, unfortunately, was not in the audience (that I saw).</p>\n<p>Needless to say <a href=\"http://www.languagehat.com/\">Language Hat</a> has a post on <a href=\"http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002031.php\">the counting systems</a>. Be sure to read the comments too. His is prompted by poet Basil Bunting. Unfortunately all I can find of poet James Crowden’s radio programme about counting sheep is <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00xbfr4\">this rather perfunctory summary</a>. If anyone ever comes across the now-unobtainable audio I’d love to hear it.</p>"
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"title" : "The Music Matrix – Exploring tags in the Million Song Dataset",
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"content" : "<p>Last month Last.fm contributed a <a href=\"http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/lastfm\">massive set of tag data</a> to the Million Song Data Set. The data set includes:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>505,216</strong> tracks with at least one tag</li>\n<li><strong>522,366</strong> unique tags</li>\n<li><strong>8,598,630</strong> (track – tag) pairs</li>\n</ul>\n<p>A popular track like Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven has dozens of unique tags applied hundreds of times.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tags-for-led-zeppelin-e28093-stairway-to-heaven-e28093-video-listening-stats-at-last-fm.png\"><img title=\"Tags for Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven – Video, listening & stats at Last.fm\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/tags-for-led-zeppelin-e28093-stairway-to-heaven-e28093-video-listening-stats-at-last-fm.png?w=620\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n<p>There is no end to the number of interesting things you can do with these tags: Track similarity for recommendation and playlisting, faceted browsing of the music space, ground truth for training autotagging systems etc.</p>\n<p>I think there’s quite a bit to be learned about music itself by looking at these tags. We live in a post-genre world where most music no longer fits into a nice tidy genre categories. There are hundreds of overlapping subgenres and styles. By looking at how the tags overlap we can get a sense for the structure of the new world of music. I took the set of tags and just looked at how the tags overlapped to get a measure of how often a pair of tags co-occur. Tags that have high co-occurrence represent overlapping genre space. For example, among the 500 thousand tracks the tags that co-occur the most are:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>rap</strong> co-occurs with<strong> hip hop</strong> 100% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>alternative rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>rock</strong> 76% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>classic rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>rock</strong> 76% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>hard rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>rock</strong> 72% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>indie rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>indie</strong> 71% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>electronica</strong> co-occurs with <strong>electronic</strong> 69% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>indie pop</strong> co-occurs with <strong>indie</strong> 69% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>alternative rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>alternative</strong> 68% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>heavy metal</strong> co-occurs with <strong>metal</strong> 68% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>alternative</strong> co-occurs with <strong>rock</strong> 67% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>thrash metal</strong> co-occurs with <strong>metal</strong> 67% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>synthpop</strong> co-occurs with <strong>electronic</strong> 66% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>power metal</strong> co-occurs with <strong>metal</strong> 65% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>punk rock</strong> co-occurs with <strong>punk</strong> 64% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>new wave</strong> co-occurs with <strong>80s</strong> 63% of the time</li>\n<li><strong>emo</strong> co-occurs with <strong>rock</strong> 63% of the time</li>\n</ul>\n<p>It is interesting to see how the subgenres like <strong>hard rock</strong> or <strong>synthpop </strong>overlaps with the main genre and how all <strong>rap </strong>overlaps with <strong>Hip Hop. </strong>Using simple overlap we can also see which tags are the least informative. These are tags that overlap the most with other tags, meaning that they are least descriptive of tags. Some of the least distinctive tags are: <strong>Rock, Pop, Alternative, Indie, Electronic and Favorites. </strong> So when you tell someone you like ‘rock’ or ‘alternative’ you are not really saying too much about your musical taste.</p>\n<p><strong>The Music Matrix</strong></p>\n<p>I thought it might be interesting to explore the world of music via overlapping tags, and so I built a little web app called<a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html\"> The Music Matrix</a>. The Music Matrix shows the overlapping tags for a tag neighborhood or an artist via a heat map. You can explore the matrix, looking at how tags overlap and listening to songs that fit the tags.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=heavy%20metal\"><img title=\"Matrix Diagram-1\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/matrix-diagram-1.png?w=620&h=495\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"495\"></a></p>\n<p>With this app you can enter a genre, style, mood or other type of tag. The app will then find the 24 tags with the highest overlap with the seed and show the confusion matrix. Hotter colors indicate high overlap. Mousing over a cell will show you the percentage overlap between the two corresponding tags and clicking on a cell will play a track that has high tag counts for the two tags. I find that I can learn a lot about a genre of music by looking at the 24 tag neighborhood for a genre and listening to examples. Some interesting neighborhoods to explore are:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=electronic\">Electronic</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=country\">Country</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=jazz\">Jazz</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=emo\">emo</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=experimental\">Experimental</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>You can also explore by moods:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=sad\">sad</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=angry\">angry</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=chill\">chill</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=romantic\">romantic</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=haunting\">haunting</a></li>\n</ul>\n<div>And other facets:</div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=fucking%20awesome\">fucking awesome</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=guilty%20pleasure\">guilty pleasure</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#tag=female%20vocalist\">female vocalists</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<p>If you are not sure what genre or style is for an artist, you can just start with the top tags for the artist like so:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#artist=deerhoof\">Deerhoof</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#artist=antony%20and%20the%20johnsons\">Antony and the Johnsons</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#artist=Taylor%20Swift\">Taylor Swift</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html#artist=weezer\">Weezer</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p>Use the Music Matrix to explore a new genre of music or to find music that matches a set of styles. Find out how genres overlap. Listen to prototypical examples of different styles. Click on things, have fun. Check it out:</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong><a href=\"http://static.echonest.com/MusicMatrix/matrix.html\">The Music Matrix</a></strong></p>\n<p><em>The code for the Music Matrix is on <a href=\"https://github.com/plamere/msd-matrix-explorer\">Github</a>. Thanks to Thierry for creating the <a href=\"http://www.columbia.edu/~tb2332/\">Million Song Data Set</a> (the best research data set ever created) and thanks to Last.fm for contributing a very nice set of tag data to the data set.</em></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3726/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=musicmachinery.com&blog=6500426&post=3726&subd=musicmachinery&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "DRC elections: what to watch",
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"content" : "Against all odds and amid pre-election violence that has <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/drcNews/idAFL5E7MQ03N20111127\">killed several Kinois</a> in the last two days and widespread reports that not all polling stations have ballots and other election materials, CENI (the Congolese electoral commission) has decided to go ahead with Monday's scheduled elections. Speaking in Kinshasa on Sunday evening, CENI head Daniel Ngoy Malunda (who also serves as President Joseph Kabila's personal pastor) <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15910554\">said that his agency is 99% ready</a> and that the elections will happen as scheduled. Never mind that the remaining 1% could mean that 600 or so polling stations lack the materials necessary to carry out an election. <div><br></div><div>No one knows what is going to happen in this election; there were no scientific polls conducted and the exceptionally loud voices of much of the Congolese Diaspora (most of which is very pro-Tshisekedi) are making public opinion seem more skewed to the UDPS than it probably actually is. Jason Stearns (who is observing the election in Bukavu) has <a href=\"http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/2011/11/who-will-win-presidential-elections.html\">a helpful province-by-province breakdown of likely voting pattern</a>s, but as he notes, results will depend heavily on turnout and are too close to call at this point. A few things to watch for as results come in:</div><div><ul><li><b>Violence </b>- As many as <a href=\"http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2011/11/27/le-bilan-des-tensions-kinshasa-salourdit-environ-10-morts-40-blesses/\">10 are dead in Kinshasa</a>, which is heavily opposed to Kabila and has a significant pro-Tshisekedi voting bloc. If violence happens Monday or in the days after the election, it will likely start in Kinshasa. </li><li><b>Tshisekedi's reaction</b> - <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/drcNews/idAFL5E7MQ03N20111127\">Tshisekedi was blocked from entering Kinshasa for several hours Saturday </a>and was not allowed to hold a final campaign rally Sunday (the governor of Kinshasa banned all political rallies amid rising violence on Saturday). Tshisekedi has continued with strong rhetoric, and there's no telling what he might call for if there are significant irregularities or the perception thereof on Monday. Tshisekedi is almost openly daring the government to arrest him (he has, among other comments, <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/12/etienne-tshisekedi-congo-_n_1089924.html\">called on his supporters to \"terrorize\" the government</a> and declared himself president in recent weeks). Tshisekedi believes he has the victory and that the public is on his side; if he doesn't get a victory in this election, he and his supporters are unlikely to accept the results as legitimate.</li><li><b>The East</b> - Kiswahili-speaking easterners were Kabila's main base of support in 2006, where he made extensive promises about improving the security situation and rebuilding infrastructure. While there is no question that both of these areas have improved somewhat in the last five years, Kabila can no longer count on voters there to have his back. DRC voters, especially in urban areas, are savvier this time around, and few are willing to take promises at face value anymore. As <a href=\"http://iwpr.net/report-news/drc-braced-crucial-vote-0\">one Goma voter told Melanie Gouby</a>, “We had no idea how to decide who to vote for during the 2006 elections. ...This time we know better. I won’t vote for someone because I was given a t-shirt, I want someone who will build the road, not just talk about it.” Such comments do not bode well for Kabila, whose campaign depends largely on promises of patronage.</li><li><b>Irregularities </b>- Already, there are reports that <a href=\"http://congosiasa.blogspot.com/2011/11/last-minute-update-on-elections.html\">several hundred thousand registered voters names do not appear on the rolls in Ituri and Idjw</a>i. There are almost certainly also polling stations that have not yet received ballots. How CENI reacts when these reports arise - and whether voters feel their voices were heard - will be key determinants of whether protests happen and whether such protests turn violent.</li></ul></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/15935618-6168866792524387923?l=texasinafrica.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "To be, etc...",
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"content" : "<div style=\"margin:0 0 10px 0;padding:0;font-size:0.8em;line-height:1.6em\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/6392985419/\" title=\"SHIRT\"><img src=\"http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7157/6392985419_0edccfb4dd.jpg\" alt=\"SHIRT by Ape Lad\"></a><br><span style=\"margin:0\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/6392985419/\">SHIRT</a>, a photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/apelad/\">Ape Lad</a> on Flickr.</span></div><p>Here's how the <a href=\"http://shirt.woot.com/friends.aspx?k=22375\">previously blogged</a> shirt turned out. It looks great in person, if you can call a shirt a person. I can't wait to wear it to England if I ever go there.<br><a href=\"http://shirt.woot.com/Derby/Entry.aspx?id=58325\">This shirt</a> continues to do well in the derby, but not, in all likelihood, well enough to win. But that's okay, I really appreciate the votes. That goes for all 512 of you and counting. Thanks for taking the time to show you liked something I did. <br>I've been saying thanks quite a bit around here lately because it seems like I don't say it enough. Either way, tis the season.<br>A couple of things to look out for:<br>Last night I helped make a music video for <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006B3AEME?ie=UTF8&tag=h080f-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=B006B3AEME&ref_=sr_1_5&qid=1322113333&sr=8-5\">a band</a> I think you'll enjoy. They're called Zip Zip Through the Night. The video will be released next year, and I'll be sure to tell you all about it once it drops. (That's a music industry verb. Drops.)<br>Also, if you haven't picked up John Hodgman's final book of complete world knowledge, entitled <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525952446?ie=UTF8&tag=h080f-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=0525952446&ref_=sr_1_1&qid=1322113511&sr=8-1\">THAT IS ALL</a>, you should. I have some drawings in it, one of which I drew after it was discovered that the people of twitter were of no help whatsoever in providing the desired image. If you have the book, check page 658. You could also delve into the tweet history of either Hodgman or mine to discover when the hive mind failed. It was a few months ago, and everyone involved is still surprised the internet does not contain everything just yet.<br>There are several more things I'm excited to tell you about, but they remain secrets at this point. Not <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&tag=h080f-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393193&x=0&y=0&field-keywords=deadly%20secrets&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks\">deadly secrets</a>, just regular secrets.</p><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30451540-1530722960689653656?l=apelad.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/ppqqglv5dbc70fb9k763me45f0/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fapelad.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F11%2Fto-be-etc.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Babies’ Surnames: To Hyphenate or Not?",
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"content" : "People with hyphenated surnames face quandaries when giving their own children a last name: some follow tradition, and some get creative."
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"title" : "Steganographic knitting",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography\">Steganography</a> is the art of hiding messages in plain sight. Perhaps the most famous example of coded knitting occurs in Dickens’ <em>A Tale of Two Cities</em> in the creation of Madame Defarge. Turns out she was a steganographic tricoteuse because she didn’t just sit and knit any old pot-holder next to the guillotine, she used her <a href=\"http://knitty.com/ISSUEsummer05/FEATtopten.html\">knitting as a form of code</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>A creation of Dickens’ fertile mind, Madame Therese Defarge appears in his classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. As a leader of the Jacques during the French revolution, she used pattern stitches as a code and knit a list of the upper class doomed to die at the guillotine. According to Rutt in his comprehensive A History of Hand Knitting, Dickens was inspired by the “tricoteuses”, women who attended the National Convention in which the fate of the unfortunate rich was debated during the French revolution, knitting while they listened. Such a macabre pastime earned them a reputation as sadists, and an archetypal evil character was born in Madame Defarge.</p>\n<p>This was a true testament to Dickens’ talent. He was able to turn knitting, the frequent symbol of loving grandmothers and charming domesticity, into an ominous, cruel, inhuman act.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Needless to say several people have <a href=\"http://home.montgomerybell.edu/~battenw/Madamedefargecode.pdf\">proposed how this might have been done</a> since Dickens doesn’t give us the patterns, of which this is one:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Presented here is one possible way to encrypt names by using a unique set of three stitches for each letter of the alphabet, omitting the letter K and diacritical marks. A skilled, rapid knitter would be able to encrypt a name of eighteen letters and marks, such as Charles St. Evremonde, in only fifty-four stitches. Madame Defarge probably found a simple scarf, not a shroud, the best garment to knit in what would appear to be a somewhat abstract design. The cipher would be knitted only on the front side of the garment. Borders of garter stitch would be necessary to keep the coded section clear and the edges neat. Alternate rows would most likely be purled (purled back) to keep the encrypted letters relatively distinct.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Here’s <a href=\"http://stringgeekery.wordpress.com/2011/10/17/simple-secret-code-rib-knitting/\">another</a>, rather more time-consuming, interpretation, part of <a href=\"http://stringgeekery.wordpress.com/category/stitch-patterns/secret-code/\">a series of posts on using knitting to hide meaning</a>.</p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lrsnk\">this BBC programme about MI6</a> patriots in occupied Belgium employed the technique (at 10’20″ in):</p>\n<blockquote><p>They would get little old ladies who sat in their houses that happened to have windows that overlooked railway marshalling yards and they would do their knitting and they’d drop one for a troop train, purl one for an artillery train and so on and so on, so it was that basic stuff.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The wikipedia article on steganography linked to above gives an example of wool having a morse code message painted onto it (presumably dots and dashes applied in a contrasting colour to a base yarn) which was knitted into a garment worn by the courier. The recipient would then unravel the garment to read the message. I can’t find any confirmation of this widely-reproduced claim, unfortunately, but there’s lots about knitting morse code by texture or colour-work – just google it. I was surprised to find myself among the results, but I suppose it’s been a long-standing obsession. And I am not alone!</p>\n<p><iframe width=\"480\" height=\"360\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/hoiuYw5pVQ4\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>And if you watch that, then you’ll realise that it’s not just the tactile fabric itself that is potentially useful, it’s the patterns too. So much so that, during World War II, knitting patterns were treated with great suspicion as potential sources of illicit information and <a href=\"http://thomas.gloeckler-ulm.de/fhu-old/www/stego.html\">censorship offices banned the international mailing of patterns</a>.</p>\n<p>Just remember that, whatever your message, it’ll look and feel better and last longer if it’s 100% wool!</p>"
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"title" : "53. Tickling the Ghanaian - Encounters with Contemporary Culture by Kofi Akpabli",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtj8SUOcF3Y/TsI6Ax3q8GI/AAAAAAAAA08/IP6htvEjNNE/s1600/tickling+the+ghanaian2.png\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;text-align:justify\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtj8SUOcF3Y/TsI6Ax3q8GI/AAAAAAAAA08/IP6htvEjNNE/s1600/tickling+the+ghanaian2.png\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Title: Tickling the Ghanaian - Encounters with Contemporary Culture</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Author: Kofi Akpabli</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Genre: Non-Fiction/Contemporary Culture</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Publishers: TREC</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Pages: 142</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Year of First Publication: 2011</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Country: Ghana</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>For <a href=\"http://kinnareads.wordpress.com/2011/10/11/the-2nd-annual-ghanaian-literature-week/\">Kinna's Ghana Literature Week</a></i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Kofi Akpabli is a creative writer I have come to admire. His is a journalism completely circumscribed by the field of Creative Writing. His style, of combining keen observation, difficult questions and mirthful writing, makes him unique in this expansive field of words, sentences and descriptions; a field where most practitioners resort to sensationalism, outright lies, and trivialisation, stretching an already suspicious occupation to its negative extremum, to grab people's attention and glean some fame for themselves. Such is the shitload on discerning ears that some, having exceeded their elastic limit, have tuned out from radio, permanently. To such individuals, Akpabli's writing has come as a relief. For having gone through the proverbial mill, Kofi Akpabli's method is refined. His dedication to his craft has been appreciated by winning, on two consecutive occasions, the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist for Arts and Culture - the first person to do so. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Whereas Akpabli's first book <i><a href=\"http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2011/06/23-sense-of-savannah-tales-of-friendly.html\">A Sense of Savannah</a> </i>grew from his travels - mostly through northern Ghana - <i>Tickling the Ghanaian</i> is a compilation of thirteen published articles including <i>The Serious Business of Soup in Ghana</i> and <i>What is Right with Akpeteshie, </i>which won him the 2010 and 2011 awards respectively.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">From <i>How Cloths tickle the Ghanaian</i> to <i>This is the Way we say Goodbye</i>, Kofi presents in this book articles which take an infinite look at the multi-dimensionalities of contemporary Ghanaian culture; contemporary, in that some of what is discussed are leftovers from colonisation - those that we imbibed, localised and refused to grant independence to or decolonise both at the peak of our furor and euphoria for independence. With themes on Christmas reminiscences, the vanishing taste of food, food shunned and loved, fashion, drinks, funerals and bargaining, Kofi takes us on a tour of Ghana's cultural idiosyncrasies. He looks at every topic exhaustively.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The book opens with <i>How Cloths tickle the Ghanaian. </i>Here the history, types, functions and sources of cloths and how certain kinds of cloths, especially those coming from Holland (like Vlisco/Dumas) have come to signify class and status in the society are detailedly discussed. Whether discussing the childhood uses of cloths, its social (among the citizenry) and traditional (between the citizenry and the chieftain) status, its use in traditional dances, like <i>agbadza</i>, or any of its numerous uses, Kofi weaves wit, knowledge, and love into each line providing the reader with a sense of satisfaction that only comes from reading a well-researched piece. In one of such various functions of the cloth among the Ewes (these are group of people to be found mainly in the Volta Region of Ghana and spreads through Togo and parts of Benin) Kofi writes</div><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Among the Ewe people, the sleeping cloth is so important that it has a personality of its own. It even has a name, Zavor. Zavor simply means "night cloth" and it is the closest companion one could ever have in life. </div></blockquote><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Over time, Zavor adopts one's personality. Indeed, few items hoard specimen of an individual's DNA like the night cloth) come on, what with all those body fluids). Among the boarding school boys and bachelors, Zavor has a special reputation for smelling bad. [18] </div></blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">In <i>Ghanaman and the Rastaman</i> the writer writes from experience when he had locks. He talks of how he was consistently thought to be a user of hemp and how people preferred to address him as belonging to the Rastafarian faith. <i>The Serious Business of Soup in Ghana</i> compares what Ghanaians refer to as soup and what is described as Soup in Europe and America. How soup could be drunk in a cup; how it could contain sugar and alcohol; how soup could be pepper-less, still bothers me. In this humorous description of Soup, Kofi writes<br><blockquote>What is soup? Philosophically, soup is what makes the Ghanaian say \"I haven't eaten all day\" simply because all he or she has had did not contain a soup item. Soup is what makes people look forward to going home after a long day's work. Again, soup is what gingers up nostalgia for homely, far away places. Finally, soup (especially, when taken hot) is what helps critical minds to form opinion on serious issues. [32]</blockquote>What more could one ask for? Yet, Kofi provided a detailed write-up on all the types and functions of soup interspersing it with titillating soup stories.<br><br>In<span style=\"text-align:-webkit-auto\"> </span><i>The Rise of the Schnapps</i>, Kofi investigates how this Dutch drink has risen to occupy a position that used to be the preserve of the local gin, <i>akpeteshie</i>; today at no traditional ceremony, be it naming ceremony, festivals, or engagement, can one not find Schnapps. <i>Between Tinapa and Boflot - where did the old Taste go</i> questions whether foods are losing their cherished tastes especially comparing old brands with the current bland brands.<br><br>Other issues investigated include the art of bargaining, which is a psychological warfare that could be studied under Game Theory. Here each player anticipates the other's move before he plays or makes his move. Nash equilibrium is reached when both parties are satisfied with the outcome of their final moves, else there is no trade: the buyer getting value for his money and the seller too. Unlike in shopping malls,boutiques and other places where prices are fixed, the majority of trade in Ghana is governed by this art. Those who are well versed in this art always come out satisfied. This is discussed under the chapter heading <i>Dongomi and Albarika - The Ghanaian Art of Bargaining</i>. Here it is only right that I quote from Kofi's repertoire of humorous, yet truthful lines:</div><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The Ghanaian's bargaining habit is also expressed at fetish consultations. Usually when a priest mentions the items needed to perform a ritual it is considered spiritually critical. Therefore, folks do not subject it to common market-place negotiation.</div></blockquote><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">However, there are times when the items demanded are simply impossible. For instance, a gourd, half-filled with the very first collection of late season rain, the egg shells of a maiden vulture and the midnight droppings of a pregnant elephant.</div></blockquote><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Because of the difficulty in obtaining these items, clients would manage a bargain of sort: \"Errm, Mighty One, we have heard but; can you plead with your Honourable Deities to quantify everything in monetary terms?\" [66]</div></blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The remaining topics include <i>Things we do for Rings</i>; <i>The Truth about Fufu</i>; <i>Ghana vrs Naija - rubbing shoulders with a Giant</i>; <i>Batakari has spoken</i>;<i> Why Kokonte is facing the Wall</i>; <i>What is Right with Akpeteshie</i>; and <i>This is the way we say Goodbye. </i><br><br>In <i>What is Right with Akpeteshie</i>, Kofi discusses the functions and origins of this local gin that has devastated so many homes and yet is one of the hottest commodities on the market. Though its effects - when taken in excess - are known, demand is high even if it has fallen from grace. People would love to hide or pretend to be not taking it. But it is the drink that has the heaviest repertoire of aliases. Whenever you hear <i>blue kiosk</i> you know there is a reference to this drink. Our reaction to this drink is similar to that of a local food <i>kokonte</i> which the author also discussed. But in <i>Why Kokonte is facing the Wall</i>, the author pointed out our hypocrisy with this food; a food that virtually saved Ghanaians from the massive famine the raged the country in the early 1980s, a food one would eat and sweat in a corner of his home but would swear he has never seen it before.<br><br>In the last title the author discusses how Ghanaians cherish funerals and how people go to all lengths to give their departed ones (loved or not) a befitting burial. It has become an industry on its own with different shapes and styles of coffin.<br><br>Throughout the book, Kofi treats the reader to insightful information and even when he seems not to be saying that 'let's be careful' he says it in a subtle way without sounding preachy and presenting the facts from both sides does the trick for him. With this style and delivery Kofi is set to go farther with his works.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">This book is highly recommended. The reader is bound to learn a lot about Ghanaians, an aspect which would not be found in any text book about Ghana nor taught in any place of learning: higher or lower. What is in this book are the things that make Ghana, Ghana; the things that people associate with. In brief, this provides a sort of informal history of events and things of Ghana.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">ASIDE: This book is similar in some thin respect to the one I am currently reading - <i>Imported Ghanaian</i>. What differs most is the approach, so that whereas Kofi looks at the more positive side, bringing out the fun and showing us we aren't that bad, the author of the current book takes a vitriolic take on Ghanaians and their behaviours.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">____________________</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>About the author:</b> <a href=\"http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2011/06/23-sense-of-savannah-tales-of-friendly.html\">Read about Kofi Akpabli here</a>. </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/29803016-3205285892610047468?l=freduagyeman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Les 10 commandements de la drague made in Conakry",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://lims.mondoblog.org/files/2011/09/couple3.jpg\"><img src=\"http://lims.mondoblog.org/files/2011/09/couple3-300x233.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\"></a><span style=\"color:#ff33cc\">La pratique de la drague à Conakry, comme partout ailleurs, obéit à des codes qui évoluent avec le temps. Voici 10 de ces codes tirés d’une petite enquête étoffée par mon expérience perso. A votre galanterie, prêt? Draguez!<br>\n</span></p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>De la poésie, tu t’en \tpasseras!</strong> C’est assez curieux de virer la poésie dans les \trelations amoureuses, mais y a bien longtemps que les meufs de notre \tcapitale sont devenues imperméables aux : <em><strong>« je me noie \tdans le bleu des tes yeux »</strong></em> et autres <em><strong>« mon \tange »</strong></em>, style Roméo et Juliette. Tu peux mémoriser \tcomme un disque dur toute l’œuvre de <strong>Shakespeare</strong>, tu \trisques de passer pour un minable rigolo en débitant <strong>vers</strong> et \t<strong>proses</strong> devant des minettes qui ont un cœur d’artichaut ! \tElles préférent les entendre dans les chansons, les séries télé \tou les lire dans un Harlequin.</li>\n<li><strong>Des fleurs, tu te méfieras.</strong> Ce commandement fait suite au précédent pour coller à la \tlogique : les fleurs flirtent avec la poésie. En homme galant \ttu trimballes une belle rose qui tu veux offrir à une nouvelle \tcible, tu es vite catalogué « débutant ». « C’est \tpas fleur on mange », on te dira. Les fleuristes le savent \ttous : en dehors de la nuit du <strong>14 février</strong> (Saint-Valentin), de celle du <strong>31 décembre</strong> (Saint-Sylvestre) \tou lors la Foire Internationale de Conakry (FIC), personne ne leur \tdemande combien coûte une fleur ; à part les nouvelles \tmariées qui veulent transformer le salon en verger pour mieux \tappâter leur « diaspo » de mari de retour au bercail !</li>\n<li><strong>Du m’as-tu-vu, tu useras.</strong> Tu veux passer pour « Monsieur Réglo » qui boit du \tFanta et hait le tabac ? Et bien tu en prendras pour ton grade. \tC’est pas exclu que tu dégotes une copine à la fin, mais tu \tauras sué sang et eau. Si tu veux aller droit au but, passe plutôt \tpour une star débordée : des gars t’embêtent pour une \thistoire de sous ou de véhicule, t’as une rencontre avec des \tpersonnalités, ton grand frère veux t’amener au Canada, etc., \talors que « ta » montre-bracelet Rolex (contrefaçon), \tla voiture que t’as et même les baskets et le costard que tu \tportes sont du <strong>« Yeffoussé »</strong> (empruntés). Tu \tdeviens ainsi un <strong>« Kambéremba »</strong> (fanfaron), mais \tc’est pour la bonne cause et ça paye…si la biche ne le découvre \tpas tout de suite !</li>\n<li><strong>Des cartes de recharge, tu \tachèteras</strong>. Pour toi d’abord bien sûr, mais aussi et surtout \tpour elle. Si vous êtes abonnés chez le même Opérateur, tu es \tsauvé. Tu souscris à un plan tarifaire. Les SMS et transferts de \tcrédit s’en trouvent facilités. Sinon, bonjour la galère. \tChacun de ses bips signifie une carte de recharge ou un transfert de \tcrédit vers son téléphone. Les montants inférieurs à <strong>5000</strong> <strong>GNF</strong> s’abstenir. Pour un début, faudra mettre le paquet \tpour espérer toucher le…<strong>Graal</strong> !</li>\n<li><strong>Au resto, tu l’amèneras. </strong>C’est classique le resto, donc quasiment incontournable. La \tbouffe à Conakry est sacrée et même… sucrée pour les filles ! \tSi tu n’invites pas au resto, c’est que t’es un pommé, un \tvulgaire étudiant. Repérer le restaurant en question et se \trenseigner sur les prix du menu avant le jour J est une bonne \tprécaution, même si elle est insuffisante. Il faut avoir la poche \tremplie plus qu’il n’en faut car la cible est capable de \tdébarquer avec sa « meilleure copine », histoire de \ttester ta solidité financière ! Sans parler du prix du \ttransport que les taximen sans pitié majorent en cas de déplacement \tsi tu n’es pas « véhiculé ».</li>\n<li><strong>Bien sapé et parfumé, tu \tseras. </strong>Il ne s’agit pas d’avoir forcément <strong>Gucci</strong> ou \t<strong>Puma</strong> de la tête aux pattes (même si ce serait un avantage). \tMais les gos d’ici détestent les gars mal fringués. <strong>« Etre \tprésentable »</strong>, c’est leur crédo. Jean, chemise et \tbaskets « Old School » feront l’affaire, le tout \taccompagné par un bon déo (un Nivea Homme acheté à Madina). Y en \ta qui parachèvent la <strong>collection</strong> par un morceau de sparadrap \tcollé à lobe de l’oreille, à défaut d’une vis. C’est \tdésavantageux des fois ! Tout comme le smoking qui fait trop \t<strong>Bill Clinton</strong>. Certaines ne kiffent pas cet excès de \t« sérieux » ! Le style <strong>Jay Z</strong> et compagnie \tfait encore du tabac par ici.</li>\n<li><strong>Trop sérieux, tu n’en seras \tpoint. </strong>S’emballer en inondant sa messagerie de SMS ou \ttransformer son téléphone en standard de Call Center dès le \tpremier jour est contreproductif. Si tu persistes, tu es vite \tétiqueté « <strong>emmerdeur »</strong> avec comme réponses à \ttes jérémiades : « je te rappelle, je suis avec ma \tmère », « mon téléphone était sur silencieux », \t« je dormais », et pititi et patata ! Le mieux \tc’est de pratiquer ce que des « experts » qualifient \tici de <strong>désintéressement intéressé</strong>. C’est-à-dire, sans \tl’ignorer trop longtemps, réduire le contact au strict \tnécessaire, passant ainsi pour un homme occupé. Se faire \timportant, grosso modo (<em>Confer Commandement 3)</em>.</li>\n<li><strong>Sur Facebook, tu t’inscriras. </strong>C’est la tendance. Sinon de quoi veux-tu que vous causiez \tautour du plat au resto ? Comment veux-tu qu’elle te montre \tses dernières <strong>tofs</strong> (le jargon compte hein), puisque sortir \tson album photo classique se ringardise petit à petit ? \tComment pourras-tu répondre quand elle te demandera si t’as du \t<strong>taf</strong> ? Il convient donc d’être un <strong>Facebookeur</strong>. \tPar contre parler de <strong>Twitter</strong>, de « <strong>Hashtag »</strong>, \tde <strong>« RT »</strong>, etc. peut apparaitre élitiste et la \tfaire passer pour une « Bala » (Niaise), ce qui serait \tune erreur fatale pour un premier rencart.</li>\n<li><strong>Ses copines, tu convaincras. </strong>Beaucoup de nanas vivent en solo, évitant le groupe de filles \tcomme de la peste. Mais en milieux scolaire et estudiantin, c’est \trarement le cas. Elles évoluent en petits groupes et les mecs sont \tsystématiquement notés par les copines intimes. Le <strong>« être \tprésentable »</strong> apparait ici plus que jamais important. Il \test donc vital de faire bonne impression aux copines de la cible : \tparoles, gestes, fringues, petits présents (les recharges !).<strong> </strong>C’est auprès d’elles qu’il faut sortir l’arsenal \tBling-Bling. Si la note est favorable, la copine-cible, même \tréticente, sera convaincue. Mais le jour où ses colistières se \ttransformeront en <em><strong>Standard and Poor’s</strong></em>, t’es \tdégradé, dépôt de bilan assuré !</li>\n<li><strong>Du courage, tu t’armeras. </strong>C’est vrai qu’en dépit de l’application correcte des 9 \tprécédents commandements, il arrive que la proie ne morde pas à \tl’hameçon. Ou pas tout de suite, comme tu l’espérais. Alors \tque reste-t-il à faire ? Redoubler de courage et prendre ton \tmal en patience. Parfois ça dure, se complique mais finit par se \tconcrétiser. <strong>Il est important de savoir que la fille la plus \tconsentante affiche toujours une attitude de refus pour se faire \tdésirer et importante. </strong>C’est humain. Savoir déceler cela à \ttemps est capital pour ne pas tomber dans le panneau. Et si ça ne \tmarche pas du tout, malgré tout, le prendre avec philosophie. Elle \tjoue probablement le même jeu avec 5 autres protagonistes ! \tTout comme toi…</li>\n</ol>\n<p> </p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?a=ZsHeEfKXkgc:eh_lM2zFo4I:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?a=ZsHeEfKXkgc:eh_lM2zFo4I:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?a=ZsHeEfKXkgc:eh_lM2zFo4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/MaGuinePlurielle?i=ZsHeEfKXkgc:eh_lM2zFo4I:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "SoulBounce's Class Of 1991: Alexander O'Neal 'All True Man'",
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"content" : "In 1991, where live music was dead outside of jazz, and R&B was looking a lot more like pap music, the leading man was as rare a find as two-parent households in a post-Reaganomic Black America. <strong>Alexander O'Neal</strong>, with only <strong>Luther</strong> to consistently help him out, was one of the only big brown men on radio or video who wasn't rapping. Alex's rich tenor, commanding 6'2\" presence, and the street cred of being too black and too hard for <strong>Prince</strong>, gave him his own \"thing.\" While <strong>Billy Ocean</strong>, <strong>Jeffrey Osborne</strong>, and<strong> Lionel Richie </strong>were also anti-Prince/<strong>DeBarge</strong>/<strong>Michael Jackson</strong> saviors of black masculinity, but \"Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car,\" \"She's on the Left,\" and \"Dancing on the Ceiling\" might have been a tad over the top, if not unforgivable sins. He was one of the first singers of my generation I wanted to sound like when I was a grown man. \n\n\n Following up the immensely popular <em>Hearsay</em> was the grown answer to <strong>Ralph Tresvant</strong>'s \"Sensitivity,\" \"All True Man,\" ironically composed and produced by the same duo, <strong>Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis</strong>. As if to say Tresvant's smash was for the younger audience (or battered women), O'Neal's third album of the same name was very much needed and well received in an age where the strong black males on display were either fighting the power or the police.<br><br>\n\nR&B's overly programmed and processed fad as of '91 impales the first six tracks (or side A) of the album. Sometimes trying too hard to fit in my dorm room shuffle with <strong>BBD</strong>, most of the tunes hit a temporary mark, but the songs don't stick for long. Save for Alex's confessional, \"The Yoke\" and \"Every Time I Get Up,\" there's nothing remotely close to \"Fake\" and we're mostly looking forward to the ballads. An attempt to recreate \"Criticize\" from <em>Hearsay</em> wraps the way too busy beats and that's where the album becomes something else. The title cut begins a succession of the magic that is Jam, Lewis, and O'Neal. \"Sentimental\" is an emotional and sincere hearkening to family values, blessed by a lush arrangement and <strong>Karyn White</strong>. \"What is This thing Called Love\" is a dance jam that conveys what the first side was missing. \n\n<br><br>\n\nThe ending's string section hints at what affluence Jam & Lewis' success have now afforded, whereas the previous album could only deliver in keyboards. "The Morning After," follows in <em>Hearsay</em> fashion and kept Alex alive on Quiet Storm formats. \"Hang On\" is the most stellar of the ballads, produced by <strong>Lance Alexander</strong> and <strong>Tony Tolbert</strong>, soon to be known as the sole architects and members of <strong>Lo-Key?</strong>, the sentiment, arrangement, and instrumentation (featuring <strong>The Time</strong> member, <strong>Jesse Johnson</strong>) are the polish of <em>Hearsay</em>, but a contemporary-appropriate sound that rounds out this new decade version of Alex. With this album being Jam & Lewis' last production of their former band mate, "Hang On" would be the validation of why Alexander and Tolbert should be the lead producers on O'Neal's next album. That decision was also made based on Jam & Lewis newly acquiring their own label and being too busy to deal with anything "extra," which often came with recording O'Neal. This "extra-ness" (see TV One's <em>Unsung</em>) and slower sales on his following album ultimately retired the man once big enough in the UK to sell out Wembley, to rare small-room venues over time. <br><br>\n\n<em>All True Man</em> wasn't the perfect album package of Alex's previous work, but it was just as, if not more important in black male artist contributions to music in a time when brothers were really searching for who to emulate.\n<br><br>\n\n\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://d.yimg.com/m/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop.swf&width=480&height=390&flashVars=id%3Dv2161261%26eID%3D1301797%26lang%3Dus%26ympsc%3D4195329%26enableFullScreen%3D1%26shareEnable%3D1\" width=\"480\" height=\"390\"></iframe>\n\n<br><br>\n\n\n<strong>Alexander O'Neal <em>All True Man</em> [<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/B004F9UIPE/soulb-20\">Amazon</a>][<a href=\"http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/all-true-man/id408098725\">iTunes</a>][<a href=\"http://open.spotify.com/album/2qbz92cQLFaqxmWO2My5R7\">Spotify</a>]</strong>"
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"title" : "Guest Post: Tom Banks on Probability and Quantum Mechanics",
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"content" : "<p>The lure of blogging is strong. Having guest-posted about <a href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/10/24/guest-post-tom-banks-contra-eternal-inflation-2/\">problems with eternal inflation</a>, Tom Banks couldn’t resist coming back for more punishment. Here he tackles a venerable problem: the interpretation of quantum mechanics. Tom argues that the measurement problem in QM becomes a lot easier to understand once we appreciate that even classical mechanics allows for non-commuting observables. In that sense, quantum mechanics is “inevitable”; it’s actually classical physics that is somewhat unusual. If we just take QM seriously as a theory that predicts the probability of different measurement outcomes, all is well.</p>\n<p>Tom’s last post was “technical” in the sense that it dug deeply into speculative ideas at the cutting edge of research. This one is technical in a different sense: the concepts are presented at a level that second-year undergraduate physics majors should have no trouble following, but there are explicit equations that might make it rough going for anyone without at least that much background. The translation from LaTeX to WordPress is a bit kludgy; here is a more elegant-looking <a href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/files/2011/11/banks-qmblog.pdf\">pdf version</a> if you’d prefer to read that.</p>\n<p>—————————————-</p>\n<p>Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov of Nahariya said in the 6th century, “He who has not said three things to his students, has not conveyed the true essence of quantum mechanics. And these are Probability, Intrinsic Probability, and Peculiar Probability”. </p>\n<p>Probability first entered the teachings of men through the work of that dissolute gambler Pascal, who was willing to make a bet on his salvation. It was a way of quantifying our risk of uncertainty. Implicit in Pascal’s thinking, and all who came after him was the idea that there was a certainty, even a predictability, but that we fallible humans may not always have enough data to make the correct predictions. This implicit assumption is completely unnecessary and the mathematical theory of probability makes use of it only through one crucial assumption, which turns out to be wrong in principle but right in practice for many actual events in the real world.</p>\n<p>For simplicity, assume that there are only a finite number of things that one can measure, in order to avoid too much math. List the possible measurements as a sequence</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=A%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%20a_1%20%26%20%5Cldots%20%26%20a_N%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29.%20&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"A = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} a_1 & \\ldots & a_N\\end{array} \\right). \" title=\"A = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} a_1 & \\ldots & a_N\\end{array} \\right). \"><br>\n The a<sub>N</sub> are the quantities being measured and each could have a finite number of values. Then a <i>probability distribution</i> assigns a number P(A) between zero and one to each possible outcome. The sum of the numbers has to add up to one. The so called <i>frequentist</i> interpretation of these numbers is that if we did the same measurement a large number of times, then the fraction of times or frequency with which we’d find a particular result would approach the probability of that result in the limit of an infinite number of trials. It is mathematically rigorous, but only a fantasy in the real world, where we have no idea whether we have an infinite amount of time to do the experiments. The other interpretation, often called Bayesian, is that probability gives a best guess at what the answer will be in any given trial. It tells you how to bet. This is how the concept is used by most working scientists. You do a few experiments and see how the finite distribution of results compares to the probabilities, and then assign a confidence level to the conclusion that a particular theory of the data is correct. Even in flipping a completely fair coin, it’s possible to get a million heads in a row. If that happens, you’re pretty sure the coin is weighted but you can’t know for sure.</p>\n<p>Physical theories are often couched in the form of equations for the time evolution of the probability distribution, even in classical physics. One introduces “random forces” into Newton’s equations to “approximate the effect of the deterministic motion of parts of the system we don’t observe”. The classic example is the Brownian motion of particles we see under the microscopic, where we think of the random forces in the equations as coming from collisions with the atoms in the fluid in which the particles are suspended. However, there’s no <i>a priori</i> reason why these equations couldn’t be the fundamental laws of nature. Determinism is a philosophical stance, an hypothesis about the way the world works, which has to be subjected to experiment just like anything else. Anyone who’s listened to a geiger counter will recognize that the microscopic process of decay of radioactive nuclei doesn’t seem very deterministic. <span></span></p>\n<p>The place where the deterministic hypothesis and the laws of classical logic are put into the theory of probability is through the rule for combining probabilities of independent alternatives. A classic example is shooting particles through a pair of slits. One says, “the particle had to go through slit A or slit B and the probabilities are independent of each other, so,</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=P%28A%5C%20%7B%5Crm%20or%7D%20B%20%29%20%3D%20%20P%28A%29%20%2B%20P%28B%29%27%27.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"P(A\\ {\\rm or} B ) = P(A) + P(B)''.\" title=\"P(A\\ {\\rm or} B ) = P(A) + P(B)''.\"><br>\n It seems so obvious, but it’s wrong, as we’ll see below. The <i>probability sum rule</i>, as the previous equation is called, allows us to define <i>conditional probabilities</i>. This is best understood through the example of hurricane Katrina. The equations used by weather forecasters are probabilistic in nature. Long before Katrina made landfall, they predicted a probability that it would hit either New Orleans or Galveston. These are, more or less, mutually exclusive alternatives. Because these weather probabilities, at least approximately, obey the sum rule, we can conclude that the prediction for what happens after we make the observation of people suffering in the Superdome, doesn’t depend on the fact that Katrina <i>could have</i> hit Galveston. That is, that observation allows us to set the probability that it could have hit Galveston to zero, and re-scale all other probabilities by a common factor so that the probability of hitting New Orleans was one.</p>\n<p>Note that if we think of the probability function P(x,t) for the hurricane to hit a point x and time t to be a physical field, then this procedure seems non-local or a-causal. The field changes instantaneously to zero at Galveston as soon as we make a measurement in New Orleans. Furthermore, our procedure “violates the weather equations”. Weather evolution seems to have two kinds of dynamics. The deterministic, local, evolution of P(x,t) given by the equation, and the causality violating projection of the probability of Galveston to zero and rescaling of the probability of New Orleans to one, which is mysteriously caused by the measurement process. Recognizing P to be a probability, rather than a physical field, shows that these objections are silly.</p>\n<p>Nothing in this discussion depends on whether we assume the weather equations are the fundamental laws of physics of an intrinsically uncertain world, or come from neglecting certain unmeasured degrees of freedom in a completely deterministic system.</p>\n<p>The essence of QM is that it forces us to take an intrinsically probabilistic view of the world, and that it does so by discovering an unavoidable probability theory underlying the mathematics of classical logic. In order to describe this in the simplest possible way, I want to follow Feynman and ask you to think about a single ammonia molecule, NH<sub>3</sub>. A classical picture of this molecule is a pyramid with the nitrogen at the apex and the three hydrogens forming an equilateral triangle at the base. Let’s imagine a situation in which the only relevant measurement we could make was whether the pyramid was pointing up or down along the z axis. We can ask one question Q, “Is the pyramid pointing up?” and the molecule has two states in which the answer is either yes or no. Following Boole, we can assign these two states the numerical values 1 and 0 for Q, and then the “contrary question” 1 − Q has the opposite truth values. Boole showed that all of the rules of classical logic could be encoded in an algebra of independent questions, satisfying </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=Q_i%20Q_j%20%3D%20%5Cdelta_%7Bij%7D%20Q_j%20%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"Q_i Q_j = \\delta_{ij} Q_j ,\" title=\"Q_i Q_j = \\delta_{ij} Q_j ,\"><br>\nwhere the Kronecker symbol δ<sub>ij</sub> = 1 if i = j and 0 otherwise. i,j run from 1 to N, the number of independent questions. We also have ∑Q<sub>i</sub> = 1, meaning that one and only one of the questions has the answer yes in any state of the system. Our ammonia molecule has only two independent questions, Q and 1 − Q. Let me also define s<sub>z</sub> = 2Q − 1 = ±1, in the two different states. Computer aficionadas will recognize our two question system as a <i>bit</i>.</p>\n<p>We can relate this discussion of logic to our discussion of probability of measurements by introducing observables A = ∑a<sub>i</sub> Q<sub>i</sub> , where the a<sub>i</sub> are real numbers, specifying the value of some measurable quantity in the state where only Q<sub>i</sub> has the answer yes. A probability distribution is then just a special case ρ = ∑p<sub>i</sub> Q<sub>i</sub>, where p<sub>i</sub> is non-negative for each i and ∑p<sub>i</sub> = 1. </p>\n<p>Restricting attention to our ammonia molecule, we denote the two states as | ±<sub>z</sub> 〉 and summarize the algebra of questions by the equation</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=s_z%20%7C%20%5Cpm_z%20%5Crangle%20%3D%20%5Cpm%20%7C%20%5Cpm_z%20%5Crangle%20.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"s_z | \\pm_z \\rangle = \\pm | \\pm_z \\rangle .\" title=\"s_z | \\pm_z \\rangle = \\pm | \\pm_z \\rangle .\"><br>\n We say that ” the operator s<sub>z</sub> acting on the states | ±<sub>z</sub> 〉 just multiplies them by (the appropriate ) number”. Similarly, if A = a<sub>+</sub> Q + a<sub>−</sub> (1 − Q) then</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=A%20%7C%20%5Cpm_z%20%5Crangle%20%3D%20a_%7B%5Cpm%7D%20%7C%20%5Cpm_z%20%5Crangle%20.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"A | \\pm_z \\rangle = a_{\\pm} | \\pm_z \\rangle .\" title=\"A | \\pm_z \\rangle = a_{\\pm} | \\pm_z \\rangle .\"><br>\n The expected value of the observable A<sup>n</sup> in the probability distribution ρ is</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%5Crho_%2B%20a_%2B%5En%20%2B%20%5Crho_-%20a_-%5En%20%20%3D%20%7B%5Crm%20Tr%7D%5C%20%5Crho%20A%5En%20.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"\\rho_+ a_+^n + \\rho_- a_-^n = {\\rm Tr}\\ \\rho A^n .\" title=\"\\rho_+ a_+^n + \\rho_- a_-^n = {\\rm Tr}\\ \\rho A^n .\"><br>\n In the last equation we have used the fact that all of our “operators” can be thought of as two by two matrices acting on a two dimensional space of vectors whose basis elements are |±<sub>z</sub> 〉. The matrices can be multiplied by the usual rules and the trace of a matrix is just the sum of its diagonal elements. Our matrices are </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=s_z%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%201%20%26%200%20%5Ccr%200%20%26%20-1%20%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"s_z = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 1 & 0 \\cr 0 & -1 \\end{array} \\right),\" title=\"s_z = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 1 & 0 \\cr 0 & -1 \\end{array} \\right),\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=A%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%20a_%2B%20%26%200%20%5Ccr%200%20%26%20a_-%20%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"A = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} a_+ & 0 \\cr 0 & a_- \\end{array} \\right),\" title=\"A = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} a_+ & 0 \\cr 0 & a_- \\end{array} \\right),\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%5Crho%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%20%5Crho_%2B%20%26%200%20%5Ccr%200%20%26%20%5Crho_-%20%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"\\rho = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} \\rho_+ & 0 \\cr 0 & \\rho_- \\end{array} \\right),\" title=\"\\rho = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} \\rho_+ & 0 \\cr 0 & \\rho_- \\end{array} \\right),\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=Q%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%201%20%26%200%20%5Ccr%200%20%26%200%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"Q = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 1 & 0 \\cr 0 & 0\\end{array} \\right).\" title=\"Q = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 1 & 0 \\cr 0 & 0\\end{array} \\right).\"><br>\n They’re all diagonal, so it’s easy to multiply them.</p>\n<p>So far all we’ve done is rewrite the simple logic of a single bit as a complicated set of matrix equations, but consider the operation of flipping the orientation of the molecule, which for nefarious purposes we’ll call s<sub>x</sub>,</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=s_x%20%7C%20%5Cpm%20%5Crangle%20%3D%20%7C%20%5Cmp%20%5Crangle%20.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"s_x | \\pm \\rangle = | \\mp \\rangle .\" title=\"s_x | \\pm \\rangle = | \\mp \\rangle .\"><br>\nThis has matrix</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=s_x%20%3D%20%5Cleft%28%20%5Cbegin%7Barray%7D%7Bccc%7D%20%200%20%26%201%20%5Ccr%201%20%26%200%5Cend%7Barray%7D%20%5Cright%29.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"s_x = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 0 & 1 \\cr 1 & 0\\end{array} \\right).\" title=\"s_x = \\left( \\begin{array}{ccc} 0 & 1 \\cr 1 & 0\\end{array} \\right).\"><br>\nNote that s<sub>z</sub><sup>2</sup> = s<sub>x</sub><sup>2</sup> = 1, and s<sub>x</sub> s<sub>z</sub> = − s<sub>z</sub> s<sub>x</sub> = − i s<sub>y</sub> , where the last equality is just a definition. This definition implies that s<sub>y</sub> s<sub>a</sub> = − s<sub>a</sub> s<sub>y</sub>, for a = x or a = z, and it follows that s<sub>y</sub><sup>2</sup> = 1. You can verify these equations by using matrix multiplication, or by thinking about how the various operations operate on the states (which I think is easier). Now consider for example the quantity B ≡ b<sub>x</sub> s<sub>x</sub> + b<sub>z</sub> s<sub>z</sub> . Then B<sup>2</sup> = b<sub>x</sub><sup>2</sup> + b<sub>z</sub><sup>2</sup> , which suggests that B is a quantity which takes on the possible values ±√{b<sub>+</sub><sup>2</sup> + b<sub>−</sub><sup>2</sup>}. We can calculate</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%7B%5Crm%20Tr%7D%5C%20%20%5Crho%20B%5En%20%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"{\\rm Tr}\\ \\rho B^n ,\" title=\"{\\rm Tr}\\ \\rho B^n ,\"><br>\n for any choice of probability distribution. If n = 2k it’s just </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%28b_x%5E2%20%2B%20b_z%5E2%29%5Ek%20%2C&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"(b_x^2 + b_z^2)^k ,\" title=\"(b_x^2 + b_z^2)^k ,\"><br>\n whereas if n = 2k + 1 it’s </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=%28b_x%5E2%20%2B%20b_z%5E2%29%5Ek%20%28p_%2B%20b_z%20-%20p_-%20b_z%29%20%20.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"(b_x^2 + b_z^2)^k (p_+ b_z - p_- b_z) .\" title=\"(b_x^2 + b_z^2)^k (p_+ b_z - p_- b_z) .\"><br>\n This is exactly the same result we would get if we said that there was a probability P<sub>+</sub> (B) for B to take on the value √{b<sub>z</sub><sup>2</sup> + b<sub>x</sub><sup>2</sup>} and probability P<sub>−</sub> (B) = 1 − P<sub>+</sub> (B), to take on the opposite value, if we choose</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://s.wordpress.com/latex.php?latex=P_%2B%28B%29%5Cequiv%20%5Cdisplaystyle%7B%5Cfrac%7B1%7D%7B2%7D%20%5Cleft%281%20%2B%20%5Cfrac%7B%28p_%2B%20-%20p_-%29b_z%7D%7B%5Csqrt%7Bb_z%5E2%20%2B%20b_x%5E2%7D%7D%5Cright%29%7D.&bg=ffffff&fg=000000&s=0\" alt=\"P_+(B)\\equiv \\displaystyle{\\frac{1}{2} \\left(1 + \\frac{(p_+ - p_-)b_z}{\\sqrt{b_z^2 + b_x^2}}\\right)}.\" title=\"P_+(B)\\equiv \\displaystyle{\\frac{1}{2} \\left(1 + \\frac{(p_+ - p_-)b_z}{\\sqrt{b_z^2 + b_x^2}}\\right)}.\"><br>\nThe most remarkable thing about this formula is that even when we know the answer to Q with certainty (p<sub>+</sub> = 1 or 0), B is still uncertain.</p>\n<p>We can repeat this exercise with <i>any</i> linear combination b<sub>x</sub> s<sub>x</sub> + b<sub>y</sub> s<sub>y</sub> + b<sub>z</sub> s<sub>z</sub>. We find that in general, if we force one linear combination to be known with certainty, that all linear combinations where the vector (c<sub>x</sub>, c<sub>y</sub>, c<sub>z</sub>) is not parallel to (b<sub>x</sub> , b<sub>y</sub>, b<sub>z</sub>) are uncertain. This is the same as the condition guaranteeing that the two linear combinations commute as matrices.</p>\n<p>Pursuing the mathematics of this further would lead us into the realm of <i>eigenvalues of Hermitian matrices</i>, <i>complete ortho-normal bases</i> and other esoterica. But the main point to remember is that <i>any</i> system we can think about in terms of classical logic <i>inevitably</i> contains in it an infinite set of variables in addition to the ones we initially thought about as the maximum set of things we thought could be measured. When our original variables are known with certainty, these other variables are uncertain <i>but the mathematics gives us completely determined formulas for their probability distributions</i>. </p>\n<p>Another disturbing fact about the mathematical probability theory for non-compatible observables that we’ve discovered, is that it does NOT satisfy the probability sum rule. This is because, once we start thinking about incompatible observables, the notion of <i>either this or that</i> is not well defined. In fact we’ve seen that when we know “definitely for sure” that s<sub>z</sub> is 1, the probability for B to take on its positive value could be any number between zero and one, depending on the ratio of b<sub>z</sub> and b<sub>x</sub>. </p>\n<p>Thus QM contains questions that are neither independent nor dependent and the probability sum rule P(s<sub>z</sub> <span>or</span> B ) = P(s<sub>z</sub>) + P(B) does not make sense because the word <i>or</i> is undefined for non-commuting operators. As a consequence we cannot apply the conditional probability rule to general QM probability predictions. This appears to cause a problem when we make a measurement that seems to give a definite answer. We’ll explain below that the issue here is the meaning of the word measurement. It means the interaction of the system with macroscopic objects containing many atoms. One can show that conditional probability <i>is</i> a sensible notion, with incredible accuracy, for such objects, and this means that we can interpret QM for such objects as if it were a classical probability theory. The famous “collapse of the wave function” is nothing more than an application of the rules of conditional probability, to macroscopic objects, for which they apply.</p>\n<p>The double slit experiment famously discussed in the first chapter of Feynman’s lectures on quantum mechanics, is another example of the failure of the probability sum rule. The question of which slit the particle goes through is one of two alternative histories. In Newton’s equations, a history is determined by an initial position and velocity, but Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty relation is simply the statement that position and velocity are incompatible observables, which don’t commute as matrices, just like s<sub>z</sub> and s<sub>x</sub>. So the statement that either one history or another happened does not make sense, because the two histories interfere.</p>\n<p>Before leaving our little ammonia molecule, I want to tell you about one more remarkable fact, which has no bearing on the rest of the discussion, but shows the remarkable power of quantum mechanics. Way back at the top of this post, you could have asked me, “what if I wanted to orient the ammonia along the x axis or some other direction”. The answer is that the operator n<sub>x</sub> s<sub>x</sub> + n<sub>y</sub> s<sub>y</sub> + n<sub>z</sub> s<sub>z</sub>, where (n<sub>x</sub> , n<sub>y</sub>, n<sub>z</sub>) is a unit vector, has definite values in precisely those states where the molecule is oriented along this unit vector. The whole quantum formalism of a single bit, is invariant under 3 dimensional rotations. And who would have ever thought of that? (Pauli, that’s who).</p>\n<p>The fact that QM was implicit in classical physics was realized a few years after the invention of QM, in the 1930s, by Koopman. Koopman formulated ordinary classical mechanics as a special case of quantum mechanics, and in doing so introduced a whole set of new observables, which do not commute with the (commuting) position and momentum of a particle and are uncertain when the particle’s position and momentum are definitely known. The laws of classical mechanics give rise to equations for the probability distributions for all these other observables. So quantum mechanics is <i>inescapable</i>. The only question is whether nature is described by an evolution equation which leaves a certain complete set of observables certain for all time, and what those observables are in terms of things we actually measure. The answer is that ordinary positions and momenta are NOT simultaneously determined with certainty. </p>\n<p>Which raises the question of why it took us so long to notice this, and why it’s so hard for us to think about and accept. The answers to these questions also resolve “the problem of quantum measurement theory”. The answer lies essentially in the definition of a macroscopic object. First of all it means something containing a large number N of microscopic constituents. Let me call them atoms, because that’s what’s relevant for most everyday objects. For even a very tiny piece of matter weighing about a thousandth of a gram, the number N ∼ 10<sup>20</sup>. There are a few quantum states of the system per atom, let’s say 10 to keep the numbers round. So the system has 10<sup>10<sup>20</sup></sup> states. Now consider the motion of the center of mass of the system. The mass of the system is proportional to N, so Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation tells us that the mutual uncertainty of the position and velocity of the system is of order [1/N]. Most textbooks stop at this point and say this is small and so the center of mass behaves in a classical manner to a good approximation.</p>\n<p>In fact, this misses the central point, which is that under most conditions, the system has of order 10<sup>N</sup> different states, all of which have the same center of mass position and velocity (within the prescribed uncertainty). Furthermore the internal state of the system is changing rapidly on the time scale of the center of mass motion. When we compute the quantum interference terms between two approximately classical states of the center of mass coordinate, we have to take into account that the internal time evolution for those two states is likely to be completely different. The chance that it’s the same is roughly 10<sup>−N</sup>, the chance that two states picked at random from the huge collection, will be the same. It’s fairly simple to show that the quantum interference terms, which violate the classical probability sum rule for the probabilities of different classical trajectories, are of order 10<sup>−N</sup>. This means that even if we could see the [1/N] effects of uncertainty in the classical trajectory, we could model them by ordinary classical statistical mechanics, up to corrections of order 10<sup>−N</sup>. </p>\n<p>It’s pretty hard to comprehend how small a number this is. As a decimal, it’s a decimal point followed by 100 billion billion zeros and then a one. The current age of the universe is less than a billion billion seconds. So if you wrote one zero every hundredth of a second you couldn’t write this number in the entire age of the universe. More relevant is the fact that in order to observe the quantum interference effects on the center of mass motion, we would have to do an experiment over a time period of order 10<sup>N</sup>. I haven’t written the units of time. The smallest unit of time is defined by Newton’s constant, Planck’s constant and the speed of light. It’s 10<sup>− 44</sup> seconds. The age of the universe is about 10<sup>61</sup> of these Planck units. The difference between measuring the time in Planck times or ages of the universe is a shift from N = 10<sup>20</sup> to N = 10<sup>20</sup> − 60, and is completely in the noise of these estimates. Moreover, the quantum interference experiment we’re proposing would have to keep the system completely isolated from the rest of the universe for these incredible lengths of time. Any coupling to the outside effectively increases the size of N by huge amounts. </p>\n<p>Thus, for all purposes, even those of principle, we can treat quantum probabilities for even mildly macroscopic variables, as if they were classical, and apply the rules of conditional probability. This is <i>all</i> we are doing when we “collapse the wave function” in a way that seems (to the untutored) to violate causality and the Schrodinger equation. The general line of reasoning outlined above is called the theory of decoherence. All physicists find it acceptable as an explanation of the reason for the practical success of classical mechanics for macroscopic objects. Some physicists find it inadequate as an explanation of the philosophical “paradoxes” of QM. I believe this is mostly due to their desire to avoid the notion of intrinsic probability, and attribute physical reality to the Schrodinger wave function. Curiously many of these people think that they are following in the footsteps of Einstein’s objections to QM. I am not a historian of science but my cursory reading of the evidence suggests that Einstein understood completely that there were no paradoxes in QM if the wave function was thought of merely as a device for computing probability. He objected to the contention of some in the Copehagen crowd that the wave function was real and satisfied a deterministic equation and tried to show that that interpretation violated the principles of causality. It does, but the statistical treatment is the right one. Einstein was wrong only in insisting that God doesn’t play dice.</p>\n<p>Once we have understood these general arguments, both quantum measurement theory and our intuitive unease with QM are clarified. A measurement in QM is, as first proposed by von Neumann, simply the correlation of some microscopic observable, like the orientation of an ammonia molecule, with a macro-observable like a pointer on a dial. This can easily be achieved by normal unitary evolution. Once this correlation is made, quantum interference effects in further observation of the dial are exponentially suppressed, we can use the conditional probability rule, and all the mystery is removed.</p>\n<p>It’s even easier to understand why humans don’t “get” QM. Our brains evolved according to selection pressures that involved only macroscopic objects like fruit, tigers and trees. We didn’t have to develop neural circuitry that had an intuitive feel for quantum interference phenomena, because there was no evolutionary advantage to doing so. Freeman Dyson once said that the book of the world might be written in Jabberwocky, a language that human beings were incapable of understanding. QM is not as bad as that. We CAN understand the language if we’re willing to do the math, and if we’re willing to put aside our intuitions about how the world <i>must</i> be, in the same way that we understand that our intuitions about how velocities add are only an approximation to the correct rules given by the Lorentz group. QM is worse, I think, because it says that logic, which our minds grasp as the basic, correct formulation of rules of thought, is wrong. This is why I’ve emphasized that once you formulate logic mathematically, QM is an <i>obvious and inevitable</i> consequence. Systems that obey the rules of ordinary logic are special QM systems where a particular choice among the infinite number of complementary QM observables remains sharp for all times, <i>and</i> we insist that those are the only variables we can measure. Viewed in this way, classical physics looks like a sleazy way of dodging the general rules. It achieves a more profound status only because it also emerges as an exponentially good approximation to the behavior of systems with a large number of constituents. </p>\n<p>To summarize: All of the so-called non-locality and philosophical mystery of QM is really shared with <i>any probabilistic system of equations</i> and collapse of the wave function is nothing more than application of the conventional rule of conditional probabilities. It is a mistake to think of the wave function as a physical field, like the electromagnetic field. The peculiarity of QM lies in the fact that QM probabilities are <i>intrinsic</i> and not attributable to insufficiently precise measurement, and the fact that they do not obey the law of conditional probabilities. That law is based on the classical logical postulate of the law of the excluded middle. If something is definitely true, then all other independent questions are definitely false. We’ve seen that the mathematical framework for classical logic shows this principle to be erroneous. Even when we’ve specified the state of a system completely, by answering yes or no to every possible question in a compatible set, there are an infinite number of other questions one can ask of the same system, whose answer is only known probabilistically. The formalism predicts a very definite probability distribution for all of these other questions.</p>\n<p>Many colleagues who understand everything I’ve said at least as well as I do, are still uncomfortable with the use of probability in fundamental equations. As far as I can tell, this unease comes from two different sources. The first is that the notion of “expectation” seems to imply an expecter, and most physicists are reluctant to put intelligent life forms into the definition of the basic laws of physics. We think of life as an emergent phenomenon, which can’t exist at the level of the microscopic equations. Certainly, our current picture of the very early universe precludes the existence of <i>any </i> form of organized life at that time, simply from considerations of thermodynamic equilibrium. </p>\n<p>The frequentist approach to probability is an attempt to get around this. However, its insistence on infinite limits makes it vulnerable to the question about what one concludes about a coin that’s come up heads a million times. We know that’s a <i>possible</i> outcome even if the coin and the flipper are completely honest. Modern experimental physics deals with this problem every day both for intrinsically QM probabilities and those that arise from ordinary random and systematic fluctuations in the detector. The solution is not to claim that any result of measurement is definitely conclusive, but merely to assign a confidence level to each result. Human beings decide when the confidence level is high enough that we “believe” the result, and we keep an open mind about the possibility of coming to a different conclusion with more work. It may not be completely satisfactory from a philosophical point of view, but it seems to work pretty well.</p>\n<p>The other kind of professional dissatisfaction with probability is, I think, rooted in Einstein’s prejudice that God doesn’t play dice. With all due respect, I think this is just a prejudice. In the 18th century, certain theoretical physicists conceived the idea that one could, in principle, measure everything there was to know about the universe at some fixed time, and then predict the future. This was wild hubris. Why should it be true? It’s remarkable that this idea worked as well as it did. When certain phenomena appeared to be random, we attributed that to the failure to make measurements that were complete and precise enough at the initial time. This led to the development of statistical mechanics, which was also wildly successful. Nonetheless, there was no real verification of the Laplacian principle of complete predictability. Indeed, when one enquires into the basic physics behind much of classical statistical mechanics one finds that some of the randomness invoked in that theory has a quantum mechanical origin. It arises after all from the motion of individual atoms. It’s no surprise that the first hints that classical mechanics was wrong came from failures of classical statistical mechanics like the Gibbs paradox of the entropy of mixing, and the black body radiation laws.</p>\n<p>It seems to me that the introduction of basic randomness into the equations of physics is philosophically unobjectionable, especially once one has understood the inevitability of QM. And to those who find it objectionable all I can say is “It is what it is”. There isn’t anymore. All one must do is account for the successes of the apparently deterministic formalism of classical mechanics when applied to macroscopic bodies, and the theory of decoherence supplies that account.</p>\n<p>Perhaps the most important lesson for physicists in all of this is not to mistake our equations for the world. Our equations are an algorithm for making predictions about the world and it turns out that those predictions can only be statistical. That this is so is demonstrated by the simple observation of a<br>\nGeiger counter and by the demonstration by Bell and others that the statistical predictions of QM cannot be reproduced by a more classical statistical theory with hidden variables, unless we allow for grossly non-local interactions. Some investigators into the foundations of QM have concluded that we should expect to find evidence for this non-locality, or that QM has to be modified in some fundamental way. I think the evidence all goes in the other direction: QM is exactly correct and inevitable and “there are more things in heaven and earth than are conceived of in our naive classical philosophy”. Of course, Hamlet was talking about ghosts…</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/m39s1abgm7ishqihf6til397u0/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.discovermagazine.com%2Fcosmicvariance%2F2011%2F11%2F16%2Fguest-post-tom-banks-on-probability-and-quantum-mechanics%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CosmicVarianceBlog/~4/QGTXA0NNPWg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "You knew this was going to happen--eventually. Quentin Rowan, aka Q.R. Markham, whose debut spy novel, <i>Assassin of Secrets</i>, <a href=\"http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/q-r-markham-book-removed-after-plagiarism-allegations_b41794\">was yanked from store shelves</a> after it became clear that <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/11/copy-that.html\">parts of it were plagiarized</a>, has begun to apologize for his actions. Not in a big way, but in a strangely satisfying, small manner. UK thriller writer <a href=\"http://jeremyduns.blogspot.com/p/about.html\">Jeremy Duns</a>, who had taken an early interest in <i>Assassin in Secrets</i>, has recently carried on a correspondence with Rowan/Markham, in which the latter doesn’t justify his actions, but seeks to explain them. Here’s part of what he wrote:<br>\n<blockquote><i>When I was 19 a poem I wrote in high school was chosen for </i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/068481451X?ie=UTF8&tag=thrash01-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=068481451X\">The Best American Poetry 1996</a><i>. Up until that time I was an indifferent writer, a dabbler really, at the best of times. I was in college and like everyone trying to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. (Mostly I just wanted to play Rock music.) I took this anthology business as a sign that I was meant to be a famous writer. However, unlike any normal person who works at something a long time and eventually gets good, I decided I had to be good then and there. Because I was already supposed to be the Best. I didn’t really plagiarize poetry, it was when I switched to fiction (God knows why) at the age of twenty that I began to distrust my own voice and began swiping other people’s words or phrases because I thought they sounded better or more clever than my own. Perhaps if there had been no pressure to keep publishing it might have been different, but in my mind my course was set.<br>\n<br>\nMany times through my twenties I stopped trying to write altogether, because once I got started on something that felt good enough for publication, I would inevitably start wanting to make it “better” and start stealing things. Therefore, some things I did in the past ten years are perfectly clean and others, obviously, aren’t. There was a need to conceal my own voice with the armor of someone else's words.<br>\n<br>\nThis is what happened with </i>Assassin of Secrets<i>, or </i>Spy Safari<i>. It started out as something fun and just for me. A much sillier, more parodic kind of thing. ( I should state that it was initially inspired by my long-time love and study of the genre, not any kind of contempt for it.) Then I decided maybe I could do something with it. But the minute I got an agent and started showing it to people who suggested changes, I began to distrust the quality of whatever real work I’d done on it. So I started ripping off passages from spy novels in my collection that fit. Somehow public scrutiny has always been the pressure point for me. Once I feel I’m doing the work for someone else’s eyes, I begin stealing, because I want to impress.</i></blockquote>You can read the entirety of Rowan/Markham’s explanation <a href=\"http://jeremyduns.blogspot.com/2011/11/highway-robbery-mask-of-knowing-in.html?showComment=1321259953379#c563057237791226662\">here</a>, as well as his responses to some of Duns’ excellent follow-up questions about the plagiarized novel.<br>\n<br>\n(Hat tip to <a href=\"http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/quentin-rowan-explains-why-he-plagiarized_b42147\">GalleyCat</a>.)<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16749171-7624115126540899911?l=therapsheet.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Walks with Julius: Teju Cole’s ‘Open City’",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\">NOTE: Initially published June 4, 2011 on <a href=\"http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Books/5708974-147/story.csp\">Next.</a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Teju Cole’s enigmatic new book ‘Open City’ is truly unusual. Imagine a book that, when doused with the rich waters of the writer’s curiosity and intellect, grows exponentially until it overwhelms the reader’s senses. In this experiment, Cole takes a different approach to writing a novel. There is virtually no plot to the novel, to use the term novel loosely, and the author dispenses with the use of quotes in dialogue. Thankfully, ‘Open City’ is a monologue a lot of times; Julius is in love with the sound of his own voice. Furthermore, it seems that every plot is hatched and allowed to promptly disappear into the catacombs of New York City and Europe, the settings for the book. The novel is rich and messy. Just like life.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Inspecting the catacombs</strong> ‘Open City’ is about myriad issues, most of them unrelated. The main character, Julius, an uber-brainy restless German-Nigerian, seems devoid of humour, appears to be clinically depressed and walks around New York City’s (and Europe’s) streets relentlessly, as if afflicted with the Sokugo. He picks up issues and conversations everywhere from the people and places he encounters along the way. Like a lonely prisoner exercising in a prison yard he ekes out snippets of conversations from fellow prisoners: “At first, I encountered the streets as an incessant loudness, a shock after the day’s focus and relative tranquillity, as though someone had shattered the calm of a silent private chapel with the blare of a TV set.” These are fascinating walks. Julius has a philosopher’s eye for detail and nuance; he is a restless spirit chasing his soul’s shadow. He walks around with an attitude, bearing a rarefied, perhaps contrived air of a know-it-all scholar. In the process, a historian’s gaze falls heavy on New York, and we can say the city will never be the same again.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Cole wrote ‘Open City’ his way and let the book find its audience. This is an interesting, perhaps brilliant approach to writing a novel and sharing one’s ideas. It is a tough book to follow if you are a mere mortal like me with garden-variety brains; it is an acquired taste because it is too rich in erudition but I highly recommend it. It grows on you. Do keep your smartphone tuned to Google; you will need an explanation of virtually every other word. Even the title, ‘Open City’ is of historical significance, google it. There are all these influences that are alien to the reader, the mind keeps asking, who is so and so? Julius muses darkly, “In that sonic fugue, I recalled St Augustine, and his astonishment at St. Ambrose, who was reputed to have found a way to read without sounding out the words.” And the reader wonders: Who are these people and why are they reading to themselves?</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cole.jpg\"><img title=\"cole\" src=\"http://xokigbo.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cole.jpg?w=197&h=300\" alt=\"\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\"></a>In an important sense, ‘Open City’ amply demonstrates the failure of the book as a traditional vessel of expression to contain all the vibrant ideas of a brain on steroids. Each nanosecond in Julius’s over-stimulated life is a digital picture recorded with too much detail. Slices of history are disjointed in an eclectic way. The book as a medium of expression does Cole’s robust ideas an immense injustice. It fails magnificently to carry the weight of Cole’s ideas and brilliance. Endless are the possibilities; endless is the genius that radiates out of Cole’s brooding demons. I imagine the book’s next reincarnation as a digital experiment on the Internet with every word that I did not understand configured as a hot link to even more ideas, with the streets of Manhattan plotted and mapped out, in 3-D, as a restless Julius, afflicted with the Sokugo, treks from dawn to dusk. And no, I will not tell you what the Sokugo is. Google it.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Immigration and colourful civilisations</strong> ‘Open City’ is definitely a refreshing and eclectic departure from the usual immigrant-suffering-in-Babylon offering. Weaving in and out of different civilisations, pondering multiple intelligences, Julius fills the reader’s head with the philosophies of the West and the Orient. But then Africa rears its dark head in this book, and it is never good. One of the few philosophers of colour Julius can muster is a blind beggar in Nigeria turning sage-tricks for alms. Naipaul is smirking: I told you so. There are only a precious few characters in the book that can truly engage the narrator’s intelligence. There is Professor Saito, the Japanese American. There is Dr Annette Mailotte the Belgian; and there is Farouq the Middle Easterner obsessing about Palestine and Israel. ‘Open City’ should be required reading in the catacombs of the world’s foreign offices where intellectuals and civil servants plot the next arcane law to throw at the truly dispossessed caught in that river of crocodiles called immigration. Through Julius, Cole captures the futility of the movement of people, races, civilisations, trees, bees, bed bugs, any and everything, even the air.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Through all this, Julius is a walking enigma. He obsesses and reflects with compassion on the history of savagery and injustice. However, when he is confronted with injustice in the present tense, especially concerning people of colour, he recoils with cutting indifference. Julius describes the journey of a black immigrant asylum seeker facing deportation with rich whiffs of incredulity, as if he is reading a third rate child-soldier story written by a third rate African writer turning story tricks for quick bucks. You wonder if he believes this warrior. He recoils from meaningful contact and discourse with the world’s downtrodden, less fortunate fellow immigrants: asylum seekers, taxi drivers, dishwashers, and security men manning museums built for smug overbearing intellectuals. Each time an African immigrant reaches out to him, he rejects the hand with cloying condescension. Who are these people? Surely they also have their own stories.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Interestingly, to me, the most moving and profound words in the book were uttered by an African American poet toiling inside a US post office as a clerk. He tries to engage an unimpressed Julius intellectually by sharing a poem: “We are the ones who received the boot. We, who are used for loot, trampled underfoot. Unconquered. We, who carry the crosses. Yes, see? Our kith and our kin used like packhorses, We of the countless horrific losses. Assailed by the forces, robbed of choices, silenced voices. And still unconquered. You feel me? For four hundred and fifty years. Five centuries of tears, aeons of fears. Yet, still we remain, we remain, we remain the unconquered.” Deep words, still, Julius’s words drip with condescension as he describes the poet as one “moved by his own words.” He makes “a mental note to avoid that particular post office in the future.” Naipaul would be proud of this.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Julius seems to have issues with his own identity and Africans. In talking about Nigeria, he alludes to another world, almost unspoken, as if with embarrassment (“my mind went to a hunting party flushing rabbits out of their holes”). As an aside, Cole’s book does not come with robust notes, appendices, and keys for explaining all those great Western writers and philosophers and classical musicians that Julius knows and delights in showing off on every page of his restless walk. Cole expects the reader to know these people or do the research. Contrast that with how Nigerian writers painstakingly provide helpful annotations, detailed footnotes and apologetic explanations for egusi, ofensala, ogbono, Rex Lawson, ogogoro, Gabriel Okara, Buchi Emecheta, etc. I do love Cole’s approach; let the reader do the research. African writers please take note; let your Western customers do the research.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Mimicry, narcissism and the Other</strong> ‘Open City’ wittingly or unwittingly dissects the duplicity and dishonesty of the intellectual of colour. Cole meticulously charts the lives of immigrants as they plod through the journey that is their life, this relentless movement that is coldly called immigration. However, Julius does not invest time in the dispossessed. He has strong opinions on what happened to them, not on what is happening to them. He finds natural kinship in those who have strong voices and opinions and who deploy them to whining about their lot as the Other. Their identification as the Other is for them an inconvenience to be branded as racism, bigotry, etc. It loosens liberal wallets and sells books. We come in full contact with the narcissism and arrogance that blind and bind the views of many intellectuals of colour, and present their vision as the bible.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Julius is a narcissistic bundle of contradictions. He is indifferent to a cripple at a stop light; and when he reflects on his breakup with his girlfriend, it is clinical – and it is a function of his narcissism that his girlfriend’s character is half-formed, inchoate. There is only room for one person in this relationship. His observation of the physically disabled leads him to an interesting musing about Obatala, the closest that Julius comes to reflecting on the deep, rich philosophy and mythologies of the land of his ancestry According to Julius, Obatala is “the demiurge charged by Olodumare with the formation of humans from clay. Obatala did well at the task until he started drinking. As he drank more and more, he became inebriated, and began to fashion damaged human beings. The Yoruba believe that in this drunken state he made dwarfs, cripples, people missing limbs, and those burdened with debilitating illness. Olodumare had to reclaim the role he had delegated and finish the creation of humankind himself and, as a result, people who suffer from physical infirmities identify themselves as worshippers of Obatala. This is an interesting relationship with a god, one not of affection or praise but of antagonism. They worship Obatala in accusation: it is he who has made them as they are. They wear white, which is his colour, and the colour of the palm wine he got drunk on.” We are all Obatala’s children.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Deconstructing the book and us</strong> The book exposes the savagery of civilised societies, built for and populated by savages. As one of the characters says about the fate of Native Americans, “it’s a difficult thing to live in a country that has erased your past.” Let me warn the reader again; this is one dense book, busy with issues on every page, absolutely nothing bothering mankind escapes Julius’s eyes: racism, global warming, Idi Amin, Ugandan Indians, Japanese American internment camps, bedbugs, birds, immigration, sexuality, date rape, the Palestinian question, Zionism, 9-11, the pace is dizzying and manic.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Chapter Eight is prophetic in how it almost foretells the Mideast uprising. It is deeply profound, with some strong but refreshingly bold opinions. The novel is relentlessly dismal, apocalyptic even in the past tense. Moving was Cole’s depiction of savagery and brutality in Nigeria’s boarding schools as he depicted Julius’s life as a boy at the Nigerian Military School. Although the narration is almost clinical, the author somehow pulls it off.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In Open City, the reader is turned into a psychiatrist and the mind becomes the couch. Julius talks nonstop, sometimes, it is numbing. However, once you get past the narcissistic self-absorption of the main character and his sidekicks, ‘Open City’ reveals itself as an important book, offering profound insights into a changing world. It is not nearly enough though: He browses past Harlem, not much going on there, as Naipaul would say, not much civilisation here, no thinkers to engage. Julius sees karma in the demise of companies like Blockbuster (a video rental chain) but there is little analysis where it matters as to how and why, and the effect of globalisation. Here, opinions are informed, one suspects, by a left-leaning liberal ideology: “They had made their profits and their names by destroying smaller, earlier local businesses.” There is a valuable lesson here. Julius walks nonstop meeting people and issues and expressing disdain for positions taken. His attitude is a quiet, perhaps overly enthusiastic evangelical rebuke of anti-curiosity and anti-intellectuality.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Loving and hating Julius</strong> I loved Julius, I hated Julius. He is a Walter Mitty character, a creep even. Julius is eclectic, some would say too eager to appear so, precise, almost anally-retentive. He knows his Chopin, Bach partitas, Beethoven sonatas and Shostakovich symphonies by heart. The peasant reader asks: Who are these people that Julius knows on a last-name basis? Who is Veláquez? Gilles Deleuze? Gaston Bachelard? Paul Claude? Julius comes across as a caricature of the African intellectual schooled in Western ways and loudly wearing his intellect like a pimp overwhelmed by his loud clothes. I estimate that Julius would need to have lived three productive lifetimes to acquire all the education and erudition he displays. Or lived one sad lifetime immersed in the study of Western books, classical music, art and architecture. I could not follow the streets of New York as Julius mapped them. I could not imagine them, the grid, the life, the noise, Julius seems entombed in the cloying clammy coldness of his thoughts. Sometimes, the novel reads like the thinly veiled autobiography of someone with several unresolved personal issues. It is hard not to imagine Julius as Cole.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Western reviewers have been generous in their praise of Cole’s book although some, desperate to share the same rarefied intellectual space that Cole apparently lives in, have gone overboard in the manufacture of inane babble-speak. Their disconnectedness from the lived experience in Nigeria is amusing and sad. There is a piece about a crime in the book that deeply disturbs and rattles the perspectives of a number of Western reviewers. Moralities are assumed to be universal across the seas; there is no discussion as to the context in the society that Julius came from.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Julius, bedbugs and the identity question</strong> This book is really about identity, starting with the question, who really is Julius? As he is being beaten by two thugs in a New York neighbourhood, Julius is musing philosophical thoughts. Who does that? Julius is many things. He has an exaggerated sense of his own importance in the world. And New York flicks him off like a bedbug. New York is not Lagos. Sometimes, for Julius, the world is a cold museum housing mummified remains of the past. I can almost smell the formaldehyde. The introspection is contrived, overwrought in most places. It is as if Cole was determined to empty his history, philosophy and art textbooks in the bowels of the novel. Some would argue that Julius is pretentious. Sometimes, details seem contrived. Julius can tell the species of birds dotting the skies high up above. His knowledge of classical music is encyclopedic; he knows dogs apart by breed.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">He is dismissive of jazz: “Too often, it merely sounded sweet to me, cloying even, and I especially disliked it as background music.” Julius on classical music: “I returned to my browsing, moving from bin to bin, from reissues of Shostakovich symphonies played by long-forgotten Soviet regional orchestras to Chopin recitals by fresh-faced Van Clyburn Competition runners-up…” He is eclectic, some would say too eager to appear so: “I recognised the recording as the famous one conducted by Otto Klemperer in 1964. With that awareness came another: that all I had to do was bide my time, and wait for the emotional core of the work, which Mahler had put in the final movement of the symphony, I sat… and sank into reverie, and followed Mahler through drunkenness, longing, bombast, youth (with its fading) and beauty (with its fading). Then came the final movement, “Der Abschied,” the Farewell and Mahler, where he would ordinarily indicate the tempo, had marked it schwer, difficult.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Open City is a mostly complex work of art that invites varied interpretations, a compressed book of books. No knowledge escapes Julius’s hyper-restless mind. He reminds the readers of the minutest detail. For instance he notes that in 1903, when Dr. Charles A. Campbell performed experiments on the bedbug cimex lectularius, he found that “bedbugs survived four months of isolation on a table in a sea of kerosene without food, they came through a deep freeze lasting 244 hours without being harmed, and were able to remain alive underwater for an indefinite period of time. The cunning of these insects… is remarkable and it appears that they have, to a certain extent, the power of reasoning. He described an experiment by Mr. N. P. Wright of San Antonio… in which, as Wright moved his bed farther and farther from the sides of the room, the bedbugs climbed up the wall to the precise height from which they could jump and land on him.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Vladimir Nabokov and Teju Cole</strong> Random House has urged readers and reviewers to compare Open City with the works of Joseph O’Neill, Zadie Smith, W. G. Sebald and J. M. Coetzee. Cole certainly has had lots of literary influences. An intriguing, perhaps more appropriate influence would be Vladimir Nabokov. Literary scholars of literature would do well to study, compare and contrast Nabokov’s ‘Pnin’ with Cole’s ‘Open City’. There are great parallels between Pnin and Julius. Charles Poore, writing in the New York Times in 1957, noted that Pnin “is a comedy of academic manners in a romantically disenchanted world. The central character… becomes a sardonic commentary on the civilisation that produced him… an émigré of the old Russian school. He is tremendously proud of his American citizenship, enchanted with the glittering gadgetry of our culture, lonely, loquacious and heroic. He teaches classic Russian literature at Waindell… one of those small colleges whose existence is doing so much these days to add to America’s bulging store of scholarly satires.” Poore could have been talking about Cole’s Julius, the similarities are eerie. When talking about an African character Kenneth who wants to identify with him (“I am African just like you”), Julius gets irritated: “I felt a little sorry for him and the desperation in his prattle.” Sounds like what Pnin would have said.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Naipaul, Soyinka, Achebe, Said, these writers described the rage of the condition of people of colour. And each in his own way rejected the condition he found himself in. Cole has written a memorable book in the first person. It has been classified as a work of fiction even though there are parallels to his lived life. Avoiding the categorisation of ‘memoir’ allows Cole to ditch responsibility for the protagonist’s views and judgments. I wonder what he really thinks about these things. 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"title" : "The world's most expensive mobile network",
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"content" : "By the mid-2000s the minimal cost-to-serve a mobile phone user had got down to the point where it was worth Roshan's while to put base stations in places where <a href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article5992947.ece\">British soldiers broke down 105mm light guns to carry them piece by piece up a cliff</a>, in order to fire from the hilltop next to the base station and get additional range.<br><br>It's fairly well known that the Taliban weren't entirely pleased about this, especially when ISAF started publicising their tip-off hotline and people did just that with their new second-hand Nokias. And they started destroying base stations until the operators agreed to shut down for part of the day. An uneasy settlement was arrived at - after all, Talibs use the phone too, and so do their families and friends. Like the old pattern of the insurgent owning the roads during the night and the government during the day, the insurgent owned the 900MHz band during the night and left it to the government during the day. <br><br>(However, their control of radio spectrum is purely <em>negative</em>, as if they were to use it themselves, the government could spy on them doing so, direction-find the transmitters, traffic-analyse the network to find out who is important, and sic drones, attack helicopters, or commandos on them. They can intimidate other people out of using it, but they can't use it themselves without very careful security precautions.)<br><br>So I'd like to recommend this <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/11/taliban-targets-mobile-phone-masts\">really excellent article</a>.<br><br>It seems that this shaky <em>modus vivendi</em> has broken down. Not only are the Taliban destroying more sites, they are doing so more <em>thoroughly</em>. <br><br>A typical problem for an emerging-market GSM operations engineer is the security of diesel fuel. Some operators in Africa are their countries' biggest electricity generators. This is fiendishly expensive - not only do you have to buy the diesel, you have to pay people to fill up the tanks on thousands of remote cell sites. And other people will steal it, or even steal the whole generator, which is why some of them are half-way up the tower although that means the structure must be much heavier and stronger and more expensive. Highway robbery is a better payoff than burglary as you get the whole truckload and the truck to move it, so you also have to pay for protection. That might mean protection as in guards, or protection as in racket, and quite often the distinction is far from clear. <br><br>This also becomes a typical first world GSM operations engineer's problem as soon as a big storm knocks over a few hundred towers and outs the electricity, as some bright spark inevitably notices the backup generator running.<br><br>Although you can buy solar and wind-powered base stations, there are still a lot of diesel ones out there. Now, if your objection is not merely financial, this means it's easy to destroy the infrastructure - you force open the valves and set it on fire. Interestingly, though, the Taliban have moved on from just starting a fire to breaking into the equipment cabinet and soaking it with the fuel, then setting that on fire. Thus multiplying the cost of repair and the downtime by an order of magnitude at least. <br><br>Alternatively, they sometimes dig a hole and blow the whole thing up with high explosive, wrecking the civil works (budget for quite a bit more including the labour) and demonstrating their aggression to everyone in earshot.<br><br>It also looks like they've realised that the backhaul links from the base stations to the switching centre are point-to-point microwave ones, and that the network has a hierarchical structure, with multiple base stations linked by microwave radio to a base station controller (or radio network controller in 3G) site which has a microwave link to the switch, and where there may be a variety of other equipment depending on exactly how the network is designed. As all that suggests, this is a crucial node and therefore a target. It is suspected that they have expert advice.<br><br>So the operators shut down service, and then the Afghan government and NATO yell at them to turn it back on.<br><br>And this is where it gets interesting. NATO has been installing macro-cells - big high power base stations - on its outposts as well as the private, ruggedised femtocells I wrote about with regard to Mr. Werritty. The idea was that if the commercial network was down, the phones would roam onto the backup network. Take that, forces of Islamofascism! But there's a problem. The commercial operators won't let the new network be in the list of permitted roaming networks on their SIMs, because they fear that if they shut down and service is still available, the Taliban will blow up even more of their stuff and perhaps start murdering engineers. <br><br>The government network <em>could</em> run like an IMSI catcher, masquerading as all four networks to capture their subscribers but forwarding everything - but I get the impression the operators don't want to interconnect with it, so calls would have to be routed out of the country and back in via the international gateway and it probably won't work very well.<br><br>And as a result, NATO has created the exact opposite of a successful emerging market GSM operator. Rather than cut-down low-power small cells cunningly distributed in the landscape, it's got big expensive pigeon fryers placed whereever seems safe or rather less unsafe. You'd think the same sort of place would do for a radio station as would do for a fort, but radioplanning is far more complicated than just picking hilltops and often deeply counter-intuitive. Rather than rock-bottom cost-to-serve, it's thought to be the most expensive phone network in the world per-user.<br><br>It's possible, thinking back to Rory Stewart, that a network designed along the lines of the kind of wireless-mesh broadband system his mates are building for the Penrith area might be more robust against such an attack. The <a href=\"http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2011/09/marines-dismantle-los-zeta.html\">Mexican Zetas</a> seem to think so. Even staying in GSM, the BSC functions can be forward-deployed to the cell sites, and more of the backhaul could be point-to-multipoint rather than point-to-point, and more of the sites could be interlinked, thus getting more redundancy at the expense of worse efficiency. But that would only reduce the number of critical nodes. GSM remains a fundamentally hierarchical network architecture, and some would inevitably be much more important at the system level than others. <br><br>And finally, they could still just destroy towers, only with rather less efficiency. Putting more equipment at the cell site might just make it more vulnerable. Also, a problem with mesh networks is that they are more effective the more nodes there are - but the places where we usually want them because other networks are impossible tend to be sparsely populated. It would also make the whole issue personal. Owning the device would make you a target.<br><br>In the final analysis, fire remains an effective technology of rebellion.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-6260991220292550641?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/plagiarizednovel.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Books Novel Pulled\" width=\"200\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 12px 25px\">Debutante plagiarist Q.R. Markham's temporarily-lauded spy thriller, <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031617646X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=beschizza-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=031617646X\">Assassin of Secrets</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=beschizza-20&l=as2&o=1&a=031617646X&camp=217145&creative=399373\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\"></em>, is in fact <a href=\"http://www.edrants.com/q-r-markham-plagiarist/\">a string of passages lifted from other books</a> in the genre. No-one noticed until it was released, at which time <a href=\"http://debrief.commanderbond.net/topic/60689-assassin-of-secrets/page__pid__1171360#entry1171360\">readers noticed at once</a>. \n<p>\nThe book's been recalled by publisher Little, Brown, whose president, Michael Pietsch, apologized in a prepared statement: \"We take great pride in the writers and books we publish and tremendous care in every aspect of our publishing process, so it is with deep regret that we have published a book that we can no longer stand behind. Our goal is to never have this happen, but when it does, it is important to us to communicate with and compensate readers and retailers as quickly as possible.\"\n<p>\nThe author represented others' work as his own, deceived and embarrassed those he worked with, and created a nightmare for his publisher, and deserves no sympathy or respect.\n<p>\nThat said, the intensity and promiscuity of his literary swipeage is really something else; it's relentless, often at length, from a wide variety of sources. If he'd just thrown it out there as a mashup, instead of roping the industry into selling it as a fully-original work, this would have been an <em>excellent</em> project. You don't have to see it as some sort of snooty statement or deconstruction of the genre, just as a fantastic remix of classic Bond-dom that got lost on the way to the internet. \n<p>\nAccordingly, I have instructed our agents to acquire the rights to this <em>books</em> so that we may re-release it under the name QR Markov.\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=c0e840e4d7b7e256a13c9d6c614122ca&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=c0e840e4d7b7e256a13c9d6c614122ca&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechCons&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://insight.adsrvr.org/track/evnt/?ct=0:dupdmqp&adv=wouzn4v&fmt=3\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/y85bYZmJkj0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "The Social Graph is Neither",
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"content" : "\n\n\n<p>I first came across the phrase social graph in 2007, in <a href=\"http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/\">an essay by Brad Fitzpatrick</a>, though I'd be curious to know if it goes back further. \n\n<p>The idea of representing relationships between people as networks is old, but this was the first time I had thought about treating the connections between all living people as one big object that you could manipulate with a computer.\n\n<p>At the time he wrote, Fitzpatrick had two points to make. The first was that it made no sense for every social website to try and recreate the same web of relationships, over and over, by making people send each other follow requests. The second was that this relationship data should not be proprietary, but a common resource that rival services could build on as a foundation.\n\n<p>Fitzpatrick subsequently went to work for Google, and his Utopian vision of open standards and open data became subsumed in a rivalry between Google and Facebook. Both companies now offer their version of a social graph API, and Google (which is trying to catch up) has taken up the banner of open standards and data portability.\n\n<p>This rivalry has brought the phrase 'social graph' into wider use. Last week Forbes even went to the extent of calling the social graph an <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2011/10/21/the-social-graph-as-crude-oil-go-ahead-build-that-yasn/\">exploitable resource comprarable to crude oil</a>, with riches to those who figure out how to mine it and refine it.\n\n<p>I think this is a fascinating metaphor. If the social graph is crude oil, doesn't that make our friends and colleagues the little animals that get crushed and buried underground? \n\n<p>But right now I would like to take issue with the underlying concept, which I think has two flaws:\n\n<h2>I. It's not a graph</h2>\n\n<p> The idea of the social graph is that each person is a dot in a kind of grand connect-the-dots game, the various relationships between us forming the lines. Some of these lines may point in one direction (Ted works for Sylvia), while others are reciprocal (Bob is my neighbor). All of them taken together form a mathematical structure called the social graph. Facebook even has a pretty picture!.\n\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/fb_graph.png\" width=\"500\">\n\n<p>We nerds love graphs because they are easy to represent in a computer and there is a vast literature on how to do useful things with them. When you ask Google for directions from Detroit to Redwood City, for example, you're interacting with a graph that represents the US road network. The same principle applies any time a site tells you people who bought object X might also be interested in book Y.\n\n<p>In order to model something as a graph, you have to have a clear definition of what its nodes and edges represent. In most social sites, this does not pose a problem. The nodes are users, while edges means something like 'accepted a connection request from', or 'followed', or 'exchanged email with', depending on where you are. \n\n<p>The way you interpret this is another matter - does clicking 'follow' imply you're friends with someone in real life? But at least what the data model represents is unambiguous.\n\n<p>But when you start talking about building a social graph that transcends any specific implementation, you quickly find yourself in the weeds. Is accepting someone's invitation on LinkedIn the same kind of connection as mutually following them on Twitter? Can we define some generic connections like 'fan of' or 'follower' and re-use them for multiple sites? Does it matter that you can see who your followers are on site X but not on site Y?\n\n\n<p>One way to solve this comparison problem is with standards. Before pooling your data in the social graph, you first map it to a common vocabulary. Google, for example, uses XFN as part of their <a href=\"http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/\">Social Graph API</a>. This defines a set of about <a href=\"http://gmpg.org/xfn/background\">twenty allowed relationships</a>. (Facebook has a much more austere set: <tt>close_friends</tt>, <tt>acquaintances</tt>, <tt>restricted</tt>, and the weaselly <tt>user_created</tt>).\n\n<p>But these common relationships turn out to be kind of slippery. To use XFN as my example, how do I decide if my cubicle mate is a <tt>friend</tt>, <tt>acquaintance</tt> or just a <tt>contact</tt>? And if I call him my <tt>friend</tt>, should I interpret that in the northern California sense, or in in some kind of universal sense of friendship? \n\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/brudershaft.png\">\n\n<p> In the old country, for example, we have two kinds of 'friendship' (distinguished by whether you address one another with the informal pronoun) and going from one status to the other is a pretty big deal; you have to drink a toast with your arms all in a pretzel and it's considered a huge faux pas to suggest it before both people feel ready. But at least it's not ambiguous!\n\n<p>And of course sex complicates things even more. Will it get me in hot water to have a <tt>crush</tt> on someone but have a different person as my <tt>muse</tt>? Does <tt>spouse</tt> imply <tt>sweetheart</tt>, or do I have to explicilty declare that (perhaps on our 20th anniversary)? And should <tt>restrainingOrder</tt> be an edge or a node in this data model?\n\n<p>There's also the matter of things that XFN doesn't allow you to describe. There's no <tt>nemesis</tt> or <tt>rival</tt>, since the standards writers wanted to exclude negativity. The gender-dependent second e on <tt>fiancé(e)</tt> panicked the spec writers, so they left that relationship out. Neither will they allow you to declare an <tt>ex-spouse</tt> or an <tt>ex-colleague</tt>.\n\n\n<p>And then there's the question of how to describe the more complicated relationships that human beings have. Maybe my friend Bill is a little abrasive if he starts drinking, but wonderful with kids - how do I mark that? Dawn and I go out sometimes to kvetch over coffee, but I can't really tell if she and I would stay friends if we didn't work together. I'd like to be better friends with Pat. Alex is my AA sponsor. Just how many kinds of edges are in this thing?\n\n<p>And speaking of booze, how come there's a field for declaring I'm an alcoholic (<tt>opensocial.Enum.Drinker.HEAVILY</tt>) but no way to tell people I smoke pot? Why are the only genders <tt>male</tt> and <tt>female</tt>? Have the people who designed this protocol really never made the twenty mile drive to San Francisco? \n\n\n<p>What happens to dead people in the social graph? Facebook keeps profiles around for a while in memoriam, so we probably shouldn't just purge dead contacts from the social graph immediately. But we certainly don't want them haunting us on LinkedIn - maybe there should be a second, Elysian social graph where we can put those nodes to await us? \n\n<p>You can call this nitpicking, but this stuff matters! This is supposed to be a canonical representation of human relationships. But it only takes five minutes of reading the existing standards to see that they're completely inadequate. \n\n<p>Here the Ghost of Abstractions Past materializes in a flurry of angle brackets, and says in a sepulchral whisper:\n\n<p>“How about we let people define arbitrary relationships between nodes…”\n\n<pre>\n(subject,verb,object)\n</pre>\n\n<p>“Maybe even in XML…”\n\n\n<pre>\n<<span>Person</span> "john">\n <<span>likesToShareRecipesWith</span> "susan" />\n</<span>Person</span>>\n</pre>\n\n<p>“Of course, we'll need namespaces…”\n<pre>\n\t\n <<span>ns:Person</span> <span>rdf:about</span>="http://www.example.org/#john">\n <<span>ns:likesToShareRecipesWith</span> \n <span>rdf:resource</span>="http://www.example.org/#susan" />\n </<span>ns:Person</span>>\n\n</pre>\n\n<p>And RDF rises lurching out of the grave to infect the brains of another generation of young developers. </p>\n\n\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/rdf_hell.png\">\n\n<p>But even if we go ahead and build the Semantic Web, 2004 edition, and populate it with information about all our connections to other people, it still won't be expressive enough.\n\n<p>One big sticking point is privacy. Do I really want to find out that my pastor and I share the same dominatrix? If not, then who is going to be in charge of maintaining all the access control lists for every node and edge so that some information is not shared? You can either have a decentralized, communally owned social graph (like Fitzpatrick envisioned) or good privacy controls, but not the two together. \n\n<p>There's another fundamental problem in that a graph is a static thing, with no concept of time. Real life relationships are a shared history, but in the social graph they're just a single connection. My <tt>friend</tt> from ten years ago has the same relationship to me as the friend I dined with yesterday. You're left with forcing people (or their software) to maintain lists like 'Recent Contacts' because there is no place in the model to fit this information.\n\n<p>\"No problem,\" says Poindexter. \"We'll add a time series of state transitions and exponentially decaying edge weights, model group dynamics as directional flows, and pass a context object in with each query...\" and around we go. \n\n<p>This obsession with modeling has led us into a social version of the Uncanny Valley, that weird phenomenon from computer graphics where the more faithfully you try to represent something human, the creepier it becomes. As the model becomes more expressive, we really start to notice the places where it fails.\n\n<p> Personally, I think finding an adequate data model for the totality of interpersonal connections is an AI-hard problem. But even if you disagree, it's clear that a plain old graph is not going to cut it. \n\n\n<h2>II. It's Not Social</h2>\n\n<p>The social graph project has roots in something called Friend of a Friend, or FOAF (disclaimer: I worked on a <a href=\"http://loaf.cantbedone.org/about.htm\">rival project called LOAF</a>, and you may feel free to ascribe everything I say here to purest bitterness). \n\n<p>The idea of FOAF was that everyone would create little XML snippets that represented their interests. For example, if you liked burgers and had a huge crush on your neighbor Matt, you could generate an RDF file that said so and stick it in to your Geocities page. \n\n<p>The problem FOAF ran headlong into was that <b>declaring relationships explicitly is a social act</b>. Documenting my huge crush on Matt in an XML snippet might faithfully reflect the state of the world, but it also broadcasts a strong signal about me to others, and above all to Matt. The essence of a crush is that it's furtive, so by declaring it in this open (but weirdly passive) way I've turned it into something different and now, dammit, I have to go back and edit my FOAF file again.\n\n<p>This is a ridiculous example (though it comes up <a href=\"http://gmpg.org/xfn/intro\">with strange regularity</a> in the docs), but we run into its milder manifestations all the time. Your best friend from high school surfaces and sends a friend request. Do you just click accept, or do you send a little message? Or do you ignore him because you don't want to deal with the awkward situation? Declaring connections is about as much fun as trying to whittle people from a guest list, with the added stress that social networking is too new for us to have shared social conventions around it.\n\n<p>OkCupid was one of the first social sites to understand that every visible action sent a signal. While other dating sites nagged you to upgrade to an expensive 'Gold' status, which branded you as a foreveralone pariah, OKCupid took pains to make sure people had stuff to do on the site that was unrelated to dating. A popular activity was building and taking personality quizzes. The quiz feature removed some of the stigma from hanging out on the site (I'm just a cool guy having some fun with these quizzes!) while creating a whole new avenue for meeting people.\n\n<p>Social graph proponents seem uninterested in the signaling problem. Leaving aside the technical issues of how to implemented, how does cutting ties actually work socially? Is there any way to be discreet, for example, or have connections naturally degrade over time? In real life, all relationships fade naturally if you don't maintain them, but right now social networks preserve ties in amber until we explicitly break them. Is my sister going to resent me if I finally defriend her annoying husband? Can I unfollow my ex now, or is that going to make her think I'm still hung up on her? \n\n<p>There's no way to take a time-out from our social life and describe it to a computer without social consequences. At the very least, the fact that I have an exquisitely maintained and categorized contact list telegraphs the fact that I'm the kind of schlub who would spend hours gardening a contact list, instead of going out and being an awesome guy. The social graph wants to turn us back into third graders, laboriously spelling out just who is our fifth-best-friend. But there's a reason we stopped doing that kind of thing in third grade!\n\n<p>You might almost think that the whole scheme had been cooked up by a bunch of hyperintelligent but hopelessly socially naive people, and you would not be wrong. Asking computer nerds to design social software is a little bit like hiring a Mormon bartender. Our industry abounds in people for whom social interaction has always been more of a puzzle to be reverse-engineered than a good time to be had, and the result is these vaguely Martian protocols. \n\n<p>But let's say an inspired mathlete proves me wrong. There's a brilliant hack that fixes all the issues I've raised and we go ahead and build the Platonic social graph. What can you actually do with it?\n\n<p>Well, one thing we've seen is that machine-readable lists of friends make it much easier to launch social sites. Letting a thousand startups bloom is one of the big justifications in Fitzpatrick's essay. But is removing this friction a good thing? It is admittedly annoying to have to re-follow people every time you sign up for something, but it also forces the authors to make the site appealing enough to get us over that hurdle. We're already starting to see apps whose first act is to suction down our contact list and spam our various accounts with invites without bothering to woo us at all. I can't imagine having open API access to the social graph is going to improve that.\n\n<p>In other domains, a big graph would be good for recommendations, but friendship is not transitive. There's just no way to tell if you'll get along with someone in my social circle, no matter how many friends we have in common.\n\n<p>But one thing you <i>can</i> do is mine a huge amount of information about my friends and infer things about their interests, income, social status and tastes. And then maybe you can use that information to bring them valuable news and offers, or help them <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/111883881632877146615/posts\">digitally engage</a> with their favorite brands.\n\n<p><img src=\"http://idlewords.com/images/pepsi_pull.png\">\n\n\n<p>Imagine the U.S. Census as conducted by direct marketers - that's the social graph.\n\n<p>Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook. \n\n<p>Because their collection methods are kind of primitive, these sites have to coax you into doing as much of your social interaction as possible while logged in, so they can see it. It's as if an ad agency built a nationwide chain of pubs and night clubs in the hopes that people would spend all their time there, rigging the place with microphones and cameras to keep abreast of the latest trends (and staffing it, of course, with that Mormon bartender).\n\n<p>We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it's worth pointing out how weirdly <i>unsocial</i> it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?\n\n<p>We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage - we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action. Even if you have faith in their good intentions, you feel misgivings about stepping into the elaborate shrine they've built to document your entire online life.\n\n<p>Open data advocates tell us the answer is to reclaim this obsessive dossier for ourselves, so we can decide where to store it. But this misses the point of how stifling it is to have such a permanent record in the first place. Who does that kind of thing and calls it social? \n\n\n<h2>III What, then, is to be done?</h2>\n\n<p>The funny thing is, no one's really hiding the secret of how to make awesome online communities. Give people something cool to do and a way to talk to each other, moderate a little bit, and your job is done. Games like Eve Online or WoW have developed entire economies on top of what's basically a message board. MetaFilter, Reddit, LiveJournal and SA all started with a couple of buttons and a textfield and have produced some fascinating subcultures. And maybe the purest (!) example is 4chan, a Lord of the Flies community that invents all the stuff you end up sharing elsewhere: image macros, copypasta, rage comics, the lolrus. The data model for 4chan is three fields long - image, timestamp, text.\n\n<p>Now tell me one bit of original culture that's ever come out of Facebook.\n\n<p>Right now the social networking sites occupy a similar position to CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL in the mid 90's. At that time each company was trying to figure out how to become a mass-market gateway to the Internet. Looking back now, their early attempts look ridiculous and doomed to failure, for we have seen the Web, and we have tasted of the blogroll and the lolcat and found that they were good. \n\n<p>But at the time no one knew what it would feel like to have a big global network. We were all waiting for the Information Superhighway to arrive in our TV set, and meanwhile these big sites were trying to design an online experience from the ground up. Thank God we left ourselves the freedom to blunder into the series of fortuitous decisions that gave us the Web.\n\n<p>My hope is that whatever replaces Facebook and Google+ will look equally inevitable, and that our kids will think we were complete rubes for ever having thrown a sheep or clicked a +1 button. It's just a matter of waiting things out, and leaving ourselves enough freedom to find some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online.</p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "SMOKIN' JOE FRAZIER: IN MEMORIAM",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wWPjKUAzotY/Trrut7IDDvI/AAAAAAAAC0o/yv7dLI1SFn4/s1600/joe%2Bfrazier%2B1.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:161px;height:200px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wWPjKUAzotY/Trrut7IDDvI/AAAAAAAAC0o/yv7dLI1SFn4/s200/joe%2Bfrazier%2B1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>It was Joe Frazier's blessing and curse that he shared center stage in the squared circle with Muhammad Ali, and their rivalry may be the greatest of the sporting 20th century, better than Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, Palmer and Nicklaus, Borg and McEnroe, because it took place in the one setting most revealing of a man's character, courage, and self-awareness.<br><br>It helps that Frazier and Ali were perfect complements to each other. Out of the ring Ali was pretty, loud, egotistical—a presentation he'd learned studying pro wrestlers. He often had another agenda, and he played it out perfectly. Joe was rugged but not beautiful, softly spoken, and straight forward in what he said and what he did.<br><br>The same applied inside the ring. It's not enough, nor is it true, to say they epitomised the 'boxer versus the puncher' matchup—you want a classic for that watch Kenny Buchanan against Roberto Duran. Rather, it was that their behaviour in the ring echoed perfectly their characters outside it.<br><br>Ali's boxing style kept his face from being hurt. He was the quickest heavyweight any of us had ever seen, both with his dancing feet and his ability to pull his head back out of range in a flash. His punches, with their twist on the end, weren't knockout blows, but damaging in their own way.<br><br>Smokin' Joe, by contrast, was willing to sacrifice himself to get into punching range, taking a beating in order to give one, and once he got close enough he inflicted hammering drill-press pain, with a left-hook that destroyed right-handed punchers. He was Rocky Marciano, in a lot of ways, and once Eddie Futch taught him to bob and weave coming forward, he was as close as boxing gets to an irresistible force.<br><br>The shame of their three meetings is that <a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zEt5Y4vgZfw/TrkOGtWwfTI/AAAAAAAACzs/23RcioC0240/s1600/frazier%2Bali.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0;width:200px;height:145px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zEt5Y4vgZfw/TrkOGtWwfTI/AAAAAAAACzs/23RcioC0240/s200/frazier%2Bali.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>Ali, having been stripped of the title, didn't get to work his way through the other contenders, and face Frazier with his hand and foot quickness intact. When they met at the Garden for the first time, a few days before my 20th birthday, I listened to the fight on the radio. I was a war-protesting pseudo hippie jock trapped into a love of competitive sports, and Ali of course symbolised the meeting of those two worlds so I was cheering for him. But even in the radio commentary I could tell that Joe was dominating, coming forward, taking the fight to Ali. The beauty of their fights is that Ali proved he had the courage to match Frazier at his own game, enduring inhuman punishment, until in the monumental rubber match, it was Futch who threw in the towel after the fourteenth round.<br><br>People remember that Ali won the gold medal at the Rome Olympics in 1960 (but often forget it was at light-heavy) but not that Joe won the heavyweight gold in Tokyo four years later. His path to the medal wasn't easy, because he lost at the Olympic trials to Buster Mathis, who drove Joe crazy in the amateur ranks. When Joe lost to Mathis at the Olympic trials he complained that the Baby Huey-shaped Mathis pulled his trunks so high ('up to his titties') that he was penalised two points for a low blow that went right into Buster's ample midsection. But Mathis pulled out of the '64 Olympics, and Joe, despite breaking his left thumb in the semifinal, won the heavyweight gold. He would later destroy Mathis when they met as pros.<br><br>Frazier's pro career is odd, in that, having come up later than Ali, he never fought Liston or Patterson, he missed Ernie Terrell and Cleveland Williams, and after Ali he somehow never got in the ring with Ken Norton. His best fights, apart from Ali, were probably his first against Oscar Bonavena, who knocked him down twice, the stoppage of George Chuvalo<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ghhqk9VjWBg/TrrugwwY-rI/AAAAAAAAC0c/V8x53KeoTWM/s1600/joe%2Bfraz%2Bquarry.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:155px;height:200px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ghhqk9VjWBg/TrrugwwY-rI/AAAAAAAAC0c/V8x53KeoTWM/s200/joe%2Bfraz%2Bquarry.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a> (both those guys made Joe look like Ali), the first win over Jerry Quarry, which was probably Quarry's best fight, and the first over Jimmy Ellis, the Ali sparring partner who won the 'tournament' to replace him as champ, a tournament Joe refused to fight in. Joe Bugner gave him a tough fight losing a 12 round decision, and the one I remember well is Frazier's quick win over Bob Foster, the exceptional light-heavyweight, who was tall and skinny and nearly knocked horizontal in mid-air by a Frazier punch. But here's the rub: Ali had half a dozen fights besides the ones with Frazier that were legendary, or close to it. Frazier really had only the ones with Ali.<br><br>He lost twice to Ali, and twice to George Foreman, who was an immovable object if ever boxing produced one. Ali watched Frazier's irresistible force rendered useless and figured out what he'd have to do to beat Foreman, and he knew, having survived three fights with Joe, he could take the punishment. He paid the price down the line, as we all know. He saw Ali extending his career for big paydays, but his comeback lasted only one fight, an awkward draw with Jumbo Cummings, and he retired for good.<br><br>Joe's legacy will always be entwined with Ali's, and it's important to remember how badly Ali treated him. Joe refused to participate in the WBA's tournament when Ali was stripped, and he wrote to President Nixon asking that he reinstate Ali. He actually loaned Ali money to keep him going when he wasn't boxing, and making a living speaking on college campuses. He thought they were friends, and he'd stood by his friend.<br><br>Then, when the time came for them to be matched, Ali launched into his full pre-fight hype mode, calling Joe an Uncle Tom, a gorilla, dumb, and all the rest, which not only infuriated Frazier, but hurt him. You could see his anger in the first fight, which otherwise he might have approached with some reluctance, in a business-like way. But Ali had made it personal, and both guys took a lot of punishment as a result.<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R5czuq7uqTE/TrkOMynFVVI/AAAAAAAAC0A/jB5R8sH2YFc/s1600/joe%2Bfrazier%2Bold.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:200px;height:153px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R5czuq7uqTE/TrkOMynFVVI/AAAAAAAAC0A/jB5R8sH2YFc/s200/joe%2Bfrazier%2Bold.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>Smokin' Joe was pretty fine as a singer too, with that Philadelphia sound—something that is often overlooked. He wasn't dumb by any means; but there was still a lot of rural Beaufort, South Carolina rather than urban Philly (or Louisville, for that matter) in him. He was funny and quick-witted in interviews, but that side of his personality would always be overshadowed by Ali. As would Joe's entire legacy. There is no shame in that—Ali is undoubtedly the biggest worldwide sports personality ever-- but there is shame if we don't remember just how good, how straight-forward, and how important Joe Frazier was. He was everything heavyweight boxing was supposed to be, and, since the days of Ali and Frazier, has not really been for a long time.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/413013422636027916-3183621385541441480?l=irresistibletargets.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<h1>Activity Graph Concepts</h1> \n <h1> </h1> \n <p> An Activity Craph can be considered a set of actions taken on\n items within a <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10149/toc.htm\">WebCenter Space</a>. The result is a graph, where the nodes\n are the items (users or documents) and the edges are the actions taken \non those items (view, edit, like, tag, etc). </p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/jpsdg_rec_agoverview.gif\"><br></p> \n <p>Much more detail is provided in the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm\">WebCenter documentation</a>, which introduces the concept with: "The Activity Graph service provides suggestions of people that a user \nmay be interested in connecting with, based on existing connections and \nshared interaction with objects within the application. It also directs \nusers to Spaces or content that may be of interest, based on similar \ninteractions with those Spaces or items that the user is currently \nviewing."</p> \n <p>The purpose of this blog entry is to show how Activity Graph can be integrated with WebCenter Personalization (WCP) to provide recommendations or suggestions to users at runtime, creating a dynamic, personalized user experience. <br></p> \n <h1>The Activity Graph Provider<br></h1> \n <p>Activity Graph is exposed as a WebCenter REST service, enabling the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/introduction_to_webcenter_personalization_the_conductor\">Conductor</a> to plug it in as a <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/data_providers_integration_of_personalization_components\">data provider</a>. WebCenter Personalization uses Activity Graph to yield \nrecommendations of documents or similar users at runtime, easily able to\n integrate these recommendations within a scenario. Details of providers are in the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_personalize.htm#CACFJFJD\">WebCenter Personalization documentation</a>; this article is more focused on actually using the Activity Graph Provider, shipped ou-of-the-box as part of WebCenter Personalization, in the context of an application.<br></p> \n <p>Several examples of using the Activity Graph Provider are given in the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WebCenter Personaliztion demo application</a>. The concept is similar to that of the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/using_the_cmis_provider_to\">CMIS Provider</a>, although the APIs are not as straightforward. This blog entry will attempt to give you an overview of those APIs, as well as introduce you to WebCenter ID concepts, which are critical to using the more advanced APIs of the Activity Graph Provider. </p> \n <h2> Prerequisites</h2> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4>Activities must take place within a <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10149/toc.htm\">WebCenter Space</a></h4> \n <p>Create a public WebCenter Space, add some users, then generate some data. For example, create several documents and have the different users interact with them (view, edit, tag, like, etc). <br></p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4> The Activity Graph Engines must be run to collect and analyze the data</h4> \n <p>Best explained in the Activity Graph documentation section on <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e12405/wcadm_recommend.htm#BEBBADEG\">running the engine</a>. </p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <h4>Visibility of items</h4> Either documents must be in a public space, or the domain must be configured for <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/configuring_cross_domain_trust_service\">Cross-domain Trust Services</a>.\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n </li> \n </ul> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4>Make sure recommendations show up in WebCenter</h4> \n <p>Here's an example of recommended documents in WebCenter; in this case, recommendations for the 'Glaciers in Driveway' document. Note the little triangle icon at the top of the diagram; click on that for recommendations:</p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/WebCenterRec.png\"></p> \n <p> </p> \n <p> </p> \n <h2>Activity Graph Nomenclature </h2> \n <h4> ClassURN</h4> \n <p> These are classes of Activity Graph nodes, explained in the Node Classes section of the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIIGDCJ\">Activity Graph documentation</a>. Examples are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <p>Users (<code>WC.user</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Spaces (<code>WC.group-space</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Documents (<code>WC.document</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Wiki Pages (<code>WC.wiki-page</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Blogs (<code>WC.blog</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Discussion Topics (<code>WC.topic</code>)</p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <h4>ObjectURN</h4> \n <p>These are the WebCenter IDs for the ClassURN. Examples are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> WC.user => username, such as 'carl'</li> \n <li>WC.document => the document ID, such as stellent-repository#dDocName:MOUNTAINS</li> \n </ul> \n <p>IDs for items in the WebCenter Space may be found by drilling down into the item itself. For documents, click on the 'information' icon to see the "identifier" field:</p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/DocumentIDs.png\"></p> \n <h4>Actions and Recipes<br></h4> \n <p> Actions are taken upon items in WebCenter. A recipe is some combination of weighted actions. Both are described more in detail in the 'Actions' section of the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIIGDCJ\">Activity Graph documentation</a>. Actions will be used to formulate recipes used in the recommendation AG REST calls. </p> \n <p>The AGProvider APIs generally take the default recipes for recommendations, greatly simplifying the API. However, if you are more familiar with Activity Graph, APIs that let you parameterize the recipe are also available on the AGProvider.<br></p> \n <p> </p> \n <p> </p> \n <h1>A Tour of the Activity Graph Provider APIs</h1> \n <p>The Activity Graph Provider APIs are readily available from the JDeveloper UI in the scenario editor when the integrated domain server is running. </p> \n <p> If you're new to JDeveloper, you might want to check out the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_personalize.htm#CACFFDHG\">JDeveloper tutorial for creating a personalization application</a>. If you want a jump-start on using the Activity Graph Provider in a working demo, check out the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCPS demo app blog entry</a>.</p> \n <h2>Return Objects</h2> \n <p>Because WCP interacts with the Activity Graph REST service, its return types have been marshaled into JAXB objects. Here is a class diagram for reference (pardon the layout), best read from bottom to top. The two objects of interest are Recommendations and Results. <br></p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGReturnTypes.png\"><br></p> \n <h2>Recommendations</h2> \n <p>Here's an example scenario in JDeveloper invoking the AGProvider 'recommendations' API:</p> \n <p> <img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGRecs.png\"></p> \n <p>Recommendations require a 'context': in this case, it requires an input document as context so that it can recommend other documents. Activity Graph relies on 'recipes' for its calculations, which are explained more in detail <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIBEBGC\">here</a>. In this example, the default recommendation recipe is used. </p> \n <h3>Resource: QueryRecommendations</h3> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <p>Examples for most of these APIs are included in the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/activity-provider.zip\">sample scenarios</a>. Most often, you could simply use the first few methods. More experienced Activity Graph users may opt for the full-featured APIs for more control over the results.<br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedUsers(String user)</h4> \n <p>Return recommendations of other users for the input user, using the default recipe of "recipe=user-connect:100;user-edit:50;user-like:50;user-comment:10;user-tag:10;user-all:1". The user parameter is in the form of the username, such as 'carl'. <br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedDocuments(String docId)</h4> \n <p> Return items that are recommended based on the input document, using the default recipe of "recipe=item-edit:100;item-like:50;item-comment:20;item-tag:10;item-all:1".<br>The docId is in the form of stanl18-ucm11g#dDocName:STANL18USORACL013209</p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedGroupSpaces(String groupSpaceId)</h4> \n <p>Return groupspaces that are recommended, based on the input GroupSpace, using the default recipe of "recipe=gs-edit:10;gs-all:1". <br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendations(String classURN, String objectURN)</h4> \n <p>Get contextual recommendations using default recipes. The recipe is chosen based on the classURN, which has to be one of the OOTB classURNs. The OOTB classURNs are: WC.user, WC.document, WC.group-space, WC.wiki-page, WC.blog, WC.topic.<br></p> \n <p>See above section for definitions of ClassURN and ObjectURN. See the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/public%20Recommendations%20getRecommendations%28String%20classURN,%20String%20objectURN%29\">Activity Graph documentation</a> for more information.<br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendations(String classURN, String objectURN, String recipe)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, except this API permits you to specify the recipe instead of using the default. See the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/public%20Recommendations%20getRecommendations%28String%20classURN,%20String%20objectURN%29\">Activity Graph documentation</a> for more information.</p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendationsUsingFilter(String userCredentialClassURN, String classURN, String objectURN, String recipe, String classURNRestrictions,<br> String excludeObjectActions, Integer startIndex, Integer pageSize) </h4> \n <p>Access to the full-blown <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIBGJBE\">Activity Graph REST service</a> parameters. <br></p> \n <h2>Common Users</h2> \n <h3>Resource: QueryCommonUsers</h3> \n <h3> Methods</h3> \n <h4>public Results commonUserConnections(String userId1, String userId2)</h4> \n <p>Return other users with which these two users share WebCenter user connections.<br></p> \n <h4>public Results commonUsersForGroupSpaces(String gsId2, String gsId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>Return users that have both interacted with these two groupspaces. The IDs of the GroupSpaces are in the form of: 'OOW_s8bee14d8_a5fd_405e_af3e_bc2f51af1735'<br>Valid actions are: </p> \n <ul> \n <li>gs-edit</li> \n <li>gs-all</li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public Results commonUsersForDocuments(String docId1, String docId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>Return users that have both interacted with these two documents. Example document Id: stanl18-ucm11g#dDocName:USORACL1234567. Valid actions are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li>item-edit</li> \n <li>item-like</li> \n <li>item-comment</li> \n <li>item-all</li> \n <li>item-tag</li> \n </ul> \n <h4> public Results commonUsersForItems(String sourceClassURN, String sourceObjectURN, String targetClassURN, String targetObjectURN, String action)</h4> \n <p>This is a full-featured API for users who understand the Activity Graph nomenclature and action restrictions. Returns users that have interacted with both these items via the specified action. See section on ClassURN nomenclature in this blog entry for valid classURN parameters.<br></p> \n <h2>Common Items</h2> \n <h3>Resource: QueryCommonItems</h3> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <h4>public Results commonItemsForUsers(String userId1, String userId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>The common items collection represents items with which these two users have both interacted with, sorted by most-recent action occurrence date. Valid actions are: </p> \n <ul> \n <li>item-edit</li> \n <li>item-like</li> \n <li>item-comment</li> \n <li>item-all</li> \n <li>item-tag</li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public Results commonGroupSpacesForUsers(String userId2, String userId2)</h4> \n <p>Return groupspaces with which the two users have both interacted.</p> \n <h2>The Activity Graph Function Provider</h2> \n <p>Function providers are essentially classes that provide static utility methods, most often to transform data within a scenario. The Activity Graph function provider is one such example. Here is an example of using it in a scenario expression:</p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGFunctionProvider.png\"> </p> \n <p>Note the syntax of invoking a function provider within a scenario. In this case, it is 'agfunction:' along with the method call. Input is the 'recommendations' variable returned from invoking the Activity Graph Provider (see example JDeveloper UI screenshot above). </p> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <h4>public static List<String> getContentIDs(Object agResults)</h4> \n <p>Returns the short-version content identifier from the Recommendations results. The parameter 'agResults' can be one of:</p> \n <ul> \n <li>Recommendations</li> \n <li>RecommendedItems</li> \n <li>List<Recommendation></li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public static List<String> getContentIDsFiltered(Object agResults, String filterClassURN)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but returns only those IDs corresponding to the classURN. See the nomenclature section in this blog for more details on ClassURN.</p> \n <h4> public static List<String> getContentIDsExclude(Object agResults, String excludeClassURN)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but excludes the 'excludeClassURN' from the results.</p> \n <h4>public static Recommendations filterRecsByScore(Recommendations recs, float cutoffScore)</h4> \n <p>Return only those Recommendations that are equal to or above the cutoffScore.</p> \n <h4>public static List<String> getCMISLinksFromRecommendations(Recommendations recommendations)</h4> \n <p>Return the clickable URLs to the actual content item in the recommendations.</p> \n <h4>public static List<String> getCMISLinksFromCommonItems(Results results)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but for common items.</p> \n <h2> Using the Activity Graph Provider in Scenarios </h2> \n <h3>Configuration</h3> \n <p>If you're using the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCP demo application</a>, \n please note the section on how to configure wcps-connections.xml. This\n will provide user-specific access to the Activity Provider REST \nservice. If you want to enable the secure trust service for \ncross-domain authentication, please see <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/configuring_cross_domain_trust_service\">this post</a>. \n Enabling cross-domain security will permit users to see only the data \nthey are entitled to see, including content in private WebCenter Spaces. <br></p> \n <h3>Jump-start</h3> \n <p>Download and use the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCP demo application</a>\n for a quick jump-start using the Activity Graph Provider. Example scenarios are \ngiven for this provider, along with a UI to execute them. Also, I've attached a\n zip file of many <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/activity-provider.zip\">example scenarios</a> to demonstrate uses of the ActivityGraphProvider, ActivityGraphFunction Provider, EL \nsyntax, scenario collections and looping, and so on. You'll probably \nwant to change the name of the <connection> entry in each to be \n'ActivityGraphConfigConnection' if you're using the WCP demo application. </p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGRecsUI.png\"><br></p> \n <h3>Dot notation of return objects</h3> \n <p>The Conductor scenario syntax uses EL (Expression Language). Therefore, you can reference nested objects. Let's say you have a Results object returned from the ActivityGraphProvider, 'results'. Then:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> results.items.item is the first Item in the (Common Items) result</li> \n <li>results.items[2] is the third Item in the result</li> \n </ul> \n <h1>Summary</h1> \n <p>The Activity Graph Provider in WebCenter Personalization introduces a powerful means to personalize a user's experience via real-time recommendations based on the context of the user's experience. The <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/introduction_to_webcenter_personalization_the_conductor\">Conductor</a> architecture facilitates integration of <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/data_providers_integration_of_personalization_components\">data providers</a> (the Activity Graph Provider is shipped OOTB) into scenarios. This article has delved more into the details of this component, and given links to demo applications and scenarios using the provider.</p> \n <p>Make your applications smarter: use the Activity Graph Provider to leverage personalized recommendations and take advantage of common user experiences.<br></p> \n <h4></h4>"
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"title" : "Dreams, discernment, and Google Reader",
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"content" : "<p>There’s been some interesting critical discussions of some design and product changes within Google Reader recently and I’ve kind of stayed out of it since I’m heads down on making big changes elsewhere. But I grabbed a few minutes, and I’d like to share a few notes I’ve written about it…<br> </p>\n<ul>\n<li>If Reader continues being understaffed, absorbed, or is eliminated then the internal culture at Google will adjust to <strong>a newly perceived lack of opportunity for building things that are treasured</strong>. No one knows what effect this will <em>actually</em> have, though. The response could be tiny.<br> </li>\n<li>Technology will route around the diminishment or disappearance of Reader. Even if this means something other than feeds are being used.<br> </li>\n<li><strong>It’s a tough call.</strong> Google’s leaders may be right to weaken or abandon Reader. I feel more people should acknowledge this.<br> </li>\n<li>However, <strong>saying “no” to projects doesn’t make you Steve Jobs if you say no to inspiring things.</strong> It’s the discernment that’s meaningful, not the refusal. Anyone can point their thumb to the ground.<br> </li>\n<li>The shareable social object of subscribe-able items makes Reader’s network unique and the answer to why change is painful for many of its users is because no obvious alternative network exists with <em>exactly</em> that object. The social object of Google+ is…nearly anything and its diffuse model is harder to evaluate or appreciate. The value of a social network seems to map proportionally to the perceived value of its main object. (Examples: sharing best-of-web links on Metafilter or sharing hi-res photos on Flickr or sharing video art on Vimeo or sharing statuses on Twitter/Facebook or sharing questions on Quora.) If you want a community with stronger ties, provide more definition to your social object.<br> </li>\n<li><strong>Reader exhibits the best unpaid representation I’ve yet seen of a consumer’s relationship to a content producer.</strong> You pay for HBO? That’s a strong signal. Consuming free stuff? Reader’s model was a dream. Even better than Netflix. You get affinity (which has clear monetary value) for free, and a tracked pattern of behavior for the act of iterating over differently sourced items – and a mechanism for distributing that quickly to an ostensible audience which didn’t include social guilt or gameification – along with an extensible, scalable platform available via commonly used web technologies – all of which would be an amazing opportunity for the right product visionary.<br> </li>\n<li>Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market <em>totally exists</em> and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent).<br> </li>\n<li>The language for decisions based on deferred value is all about sight, which I find beautiful (and apt for these discussions). People are asking if Google is seeing the forest for the trees. I’d offer that Google is viewing this particular act-of-seeing as a distraction.<br> </li>\n<li>Reader will be an interesting footnote in tech history. That’s neat and that’s enough for me; wasn’t it fun that we were able to test if it worked?<br> </li>\n<li>Google is choosing to define itself by making excellent products in obvious markets that serve hundreds of millions of people. This is good. A great company with evident self-consciousness that even attempts to consider ethical consequences at that scale is awesome. But <strong>this is a perfect way to avoid the risk of creating entirely new markets</strong> which often go through a painful <em>not-yet-serving-hundreds-of-millions</em> period and which require a dream, some dreamers, and not-at-all-measurable luck. Seemingly Google+ could be viewed as starting a new market, but I’d argue that it mainly stands a chance of improving on the value unlocked by <em>other</em> social networks, which is healthy and a good thing, but which doesn’t require an investigation into <em>why</em> it’s valuable. That’s self-evident in a Facebook world. Things like Reader still need a business wizard to help make sense of the value there.<br> </li>\n<li>If Google is planning on deprecating Reader then <strong>its leaders are deliberately choosing to not defend decisions that fans or users will find indefensible</strong>. This would say a lot about how they would communicate to the marketplace for social apps and about how they’d be leading their workforce. If this is actually occurring and you’re internal to Google – it’s ok, I can imagine you’d be feeling that these decisions are being made obtusely “<em>just because</em>” or since “<em>we need to limit our scope to whatever we can cognitively or technically handle</em>” or such but I’d offer that maybe it’s needed for driving focus for a large team? I suppose sacrificing pet projects, public responsibility, and transparency could be worth it if the end is a remarkable dream fulfilled. <em>But what if the thing you’re driving everyone toward isn’t the iPod but is instead the Zune?</em> So just make sure it’s not <em>that</em>.<br> </li>\n<li>The following sentence is unfair but it’s a kind of myth and fog that has been drifting into view about ‘em: Google seems to be choosing efforts like SketchUp over Reader. I doubt there’s a common calculus, but it’s now harder for Google’s users to really know how important it is that many millions of people are using a product every day when Google is deciding its evolution and fate.<br> </li>\n</ul>"
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"title" : "On Homesickness",
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"content" : "<div><p>From <em>The Paris Review:</em></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0162fc28973b970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Homesickness\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0162fc28973b970d-350wi\" style=\"width:350px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Homesickness\"></a><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef015436a6c8e5970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"></a>The word <em>homesickness</em> didn’t come into use until the 1750s. Before that, the feeling was known as “nostalgia,” a medical condition. It was first identified in 1688 by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss scholar, who warned that the condition had not been sufficiently observed or described and could have dire consequences. By Hofer’s description, the nostalgic individual so exhausted himself thinking of home that he couldn’t attend to other ideas or bodily needs. While nostalgia was embraced as a Victorian virtue, a testament to civility and the domestic order, extreme onsets could kill a person. And so they did during the Civil War. By two years in, two thousand soldiers had been diagnosed with nostalgia, and in the year 1865, twenty-four white Union soldiers and sixteen black ones died from it. Meantime one hundred thousand Confederates deserted, presumably motivated by memories of mom’s hushpuppies. The war just about ended what little romanticization of homesickness had survived in the wilds of early America. A sentiment that caused desertion and death could no longer pass as a force for social good. Instead it had far greater utility as a patronizing justification of racism. Some in favor of slavery began to claim that slaves loved their home more than anyone; that being the case, how cruel to then tear them from the plantation.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">An immigrant seeking a fortune couldn’t afford any semblance of <em>I can’t cut it.</em> Nor could a pioneer moving westward, or a Yankee trudging to California with a pan in his hand.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/11/02/on-homesickness/\">here.</a></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F11%2Fon-homesickness.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=nGTq8wp9_20:FpNrj1ri5JI:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Friday Poem",
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"content" : "<div><p><span style=\"font-size:13pt\">(Un)occupy Oakland: An Open Source Love Poem</span></p>\r\n<p>I.</p>\r\n<p>They have come for the city I love<br><br>city of taco trucks, wetlands reclaimed<br>water fowl with attitude, gutted<br>neighborhoods, city of toxic<br>waste dumps and the oldest wildlife refuge<br>in North America.<br>City owned by spirits <br>of Ohlone, home<br>to the international treaty<br>council, inter-tribal friendship house</p>\r\n<p>City<br>in which I love and work, make art,<br>dance, share food, cycle dark streets at 2am<br>wind in my face, ecstasy<br>pumping my pedals.</p>\r\n<p>City where women make family<br>with women<br>men with men<br>picnic in parks with their children<br>walk strollers through streets.</p>\r\n<p>City that birthed the Black Panthers<br>who took on the state<br>with the deadliest of arsenals:<br>free breakfast for children, free clinics,<br>grocery giveaways, shoemaking<br>senior transport, bussing to prisons<br>legal aid.</p>\r\n<p>City where homicide rate for black men<br>rivals that of US soldiers in combat.</p>\r\n<p>City where I have walked precincts<br>rung doorbells, learned that real<br>democracy<br>is street by street, house by house<br><em>get the money out and<br></em><em>get the people in.</em></p>\r\n<p>City of struggling libraries<br>50-year old indie bookshops<br>temples to Oshun, Kali-Ma, Kwan Yin.</p>\r\n<p>City where Marx, Boal,<br>Bhaktin, Freire are taught<br>next to tattoo shops<br>bike collectives rub shoulders<br>with sex shops, marijuana<br>dispensaries snuggle banks</p>\r\n<p>City of pho, kimchee, platanos, nopales<br>of injera, tom kha gai, braised goat,<br>nabeyaki udon, houmous and chaat,<br>of dim sum and wheatgrass and chicken-n-waffles.</p>\r\n<p>City of capoiera and belly-dance,<br>martial arts, punk rock, hip-hop,<br>salsa, bachata, tango<br>city of funk and blues and jazz.</p>\r\n<p>City that shut down for 52 hours<br>in 1946, dragged jukeboxes<br>into the streets, jammed<br>to “Pistol-Packin’ Mama” for the rights<br>of 400 female store clerks<br>to fair wages and unions.</p>\r\n<p>City of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union,<br>who refused for a record 10 days<br>in 1984 to unload a ship from South Africa<br>in the world’s 4th largest port<br>faced down million dollar fines.</p>\r\n<p>City of nail parlours, hair brokers, tarot dens<br>nano-tech, biotech, startups<br>women-owned auto shops<br>gondolas on a lake fruity<br>with sewage, magical<br>with lights.</p>\r\n<p>City of one-hundred-twenty-five<br>freaking languages<br>the most ethnically diverse<br>in the USA.</p>\r\n<p>Here on the shores of a lake<br>where all the waters, fresh and salt<br>of history and revolution mingle<br>they have come for the city I love.</p>\r\n\r\nII.\r\n<p>They have come for the people I love<br>butch dykes and tranny boys<br>trans men and drag queens<br>the two-spirit, gender-queer<br>dreadlocked and pierced<br>dancers and drummers<br>unionists stevedores<br>copwatchers carpenters<br>labor historians bodyworkers<br>scholars shamans jugglers<br>welders mechanics plumbers<br>painters truckdrivers fruitpickers<br>immigrant activists hemp weavers<br>raw-fooders rollerbladers<br>bikers builders engineers<br>wheelchair warriors war resisters<br>musicians journalists co-op creators<br>bakers of bread, growers of food<br>reclaimers of contaminated soil<br>cleaners of polluted waterways<br>teachers nurses healers<br>layers of pipe and cable, strippers of asbestos<br>urban farmers scientists union organizers<br>radical lawyers artists<br>internationalists<br><br>the ones who know that making a movement<br>is a life’s work; know<br>how to go limp when arrested; how<br>to eat from the land, make<br>cities beautiful, livable; heal<br>without surgery, drugs; raise<br>a child without violence.</p>\r\n<p>They have come for my people<br>with military helicopters, armored<br>vehicles, with rubber bullets, teargas<br>with flash-bang grenades and gratuitous<br>destruction, police bussed in<br>from 17 departments outside Oakland<br>with pepper spray and sticks<br>with 40mm canisters aimed<br>to fracture skulls, they have come<br>for the people I love.</p>\r\n<p>III.</p>\r\n<p>They have come for the dream that we dreamed<br>a city of parks and libraries<br>Jingletown Art Murmur<br>First Fridays Sistahs<br>Steppin’ In Pride<br>Bay Area Solidarity Summer<br>Women’s Cancer Resource Center<br>Pueblo Community Health<br>Destiny Arts, Food Justice<br>a city of Refuge, a city<br>of safe streets, where migrants<br>walk unafraid, vibrant schools<br>food co-ops in every ‘hood</p>\r\n<p>acupuncture<br>for the people, yoga<br>for the people, power<br>to the people, books<br>not bars, living wage green<br>jobs not jails<br>clean air and water<br>public healthcare, public transport<br>urban farms on every block<br>children making art and science and music<br>adults making home, community.<br><br>Tonight, last night, the night before<br>the helicopters roared<br>at 4am, a pack<br>of jackals in the sky, snarled<br>contempt at all that lives and grows<br>desecrated sunrise.</p>\r\n<p> IV.</p>\r\n<p>Look.<br>A thousand candles. Look<br>she who was thrown out<br>of her wheelchair by the police,<br>illuminated. See<br>the ones with the wrist casts, dressings<br>on wounds, eyes rinsed of teargas<br>with camomile tea, watch<br>the street medics check their supplies<br>mediators earth the rage, watch<br>how we labor<br>at strategy, technique, dialogue<br>at race, class, gender, disability<br>at coalition-building, at complexity<br>conversation by careful<br>conversation. Watch us<br>do<br>this<br>thing.<br><br>See us<br>fifty, sixty-thousand strong<br>wave on wave<br>rolled two miles back<br>from Port of Oakland, carnival<br>of joyous justice ¿De<br>quién son las calles? ¡Son nuestras<br>las calles!</p>\r\n<p>Look<br>there under the jeer<br>of the low-circling ‘copter, three<br>generations of hijabi women<br>do yoga asanas<br>on the straw floor<br>of Frank Ogawa - Oscar Grant plaza.</p>\r\n<p>They have come<br>for the city I love<br>for the people I love<br>and the people I love<br>and the city I love<br>keep<br>coming<br>back.</p>\r\n<p><em>by <a href=\"http://blinkutopia.wordpress.com/shailja-patel/\">Shailja Patel</a><br><a href=\"http://shailja.com/\">Migritude</a></em><br><br></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F11%2Funoccupy-oakland-an-open-source-love-poem-i-they-have-come-for-the-city-i-lovecity-of-taco-trucks-wetlands-reclaimedwa.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=eP_wGoihF3k:ksqfriPmtJM:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p><strong>By Orlando Reade,<br>\nGuest Blogger</strong></p>\n<p>A painting sits glowering on the wall of the Jack Bell Gallery in London. Figures daubed in bright colours stare out from the canvases against a dark background broken up by bits of newspaper cuttings. This is <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Les Fantomes</span>, the work of Aboudia, a 26-year-old Ivorian painter whose stark images have recently been receiving some much-deserved attention.</p>\n<p>In January, Aboudia was working in a studio in Abidjan without electricity. He remained in the city throughout the conflict which broke out in response to the contested 2010 election. His studio was right next to the Golf Hotel, which Ouattara’s party used as their headquarters, and the artist came dangerously close to the conflict, forced to remain inside for days, and often retreating to his cellar when the fighting was nearby. Jack Bell recalls him talking about the burning of bodies in the lot next to his studio, how he observed the three stages of decomposition, grew to know the stench, the different colours of the smoke.</p>\n<p>Since then, things have been changing fast. A German artist, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefanmeisel/\">Stefan Meisel</a>, saw his work on Facebook, immediately bought two paintings, and offered to represent him. Aboudia has received plenty of press for the intimacy of his art with the conflict. An <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-ivorycoast-artist-idUSTRE73S5Z220110429\">article</a> by Reuters carried the headline: “Ivorian artist paints as bullets whizz overhead”. Aboudia had his first show earlier this year, also at the Jack Bell Gallery, taking his first aeroplane flight to see it. After three days in London he was impatient to return to his studio. His work is due to feature at the forthcoming <a href=\"http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/paint/\"><strong>Painters’ Painters</strong></a> exhibition at the commercial Saatchi Gallery. He is currently on his way to New York to collect his green card.</p>\n<p>Two of Aboudia’s paintings feature in <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Les Fantomes</span>, a group exhibition of Central and West African artists.</p>\n<p><span></span>These are the first work of his post-conflict work to be exhibited, and the explicitly political content of the earlier work has been replaced by mythology. The signifiers of war are absent, and the figures evoke the vodou talismans of the northern militia. If the conflict has abated, its phantoms are filling this work. Aboudia’s second painting in this exhibition, <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">The White King</span> (pictured below), uses similar motifs. But the crown has a registered trademark symbol; the language of these paintings exceeds and resists that of global capitalism.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/11/01/the-ghosts-of-cote-divoire/jb06/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35265\"><img title=\"jb06\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/jb06.jpg?w=600&h=363\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"363\"></a></p>\n<p>There appears to be a content to these works that resists being easily imported to the galleries of Europe. In Aboudia’s work, tribal art is often worked over, erased, and reappears in the reworkings of magazine images. The visual debts to Jean-Michel Basquiat is already one of the <a href=\"http://www.designweek.co.uk/home/blog/the-battle-for-abidjan/3027672.article\">stock responses</a> associated with this work, but the real influences are closer to home. The scrawled writing on these canvases are reminders that graffiti, and the culture of the street is of primary importance. The words are often from nouchi, the Ivorian argot originating in Abidjan, the slang of child soldiers.</p>\n<p>The complex of local and global in Aboudia’s work are presented as part of a dialogue with the other African artists appearing in <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Les Fantomes</span>. The extraordinary <a href=\"http://ghettobassquake.com/paa-joes-coffins\"><strong>coffins</strong></a><strong> </strong>sculpted by Paa Joe, a prostitute-shaped tomb for a prostitute, or a little Mercedes for a car mechanic, statements about their inhabitant’s life work, are at once joyful and colourfully macabre. <a href=\"http://www.jackbellgallery.com/leonce.html\">Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou</a>’s photographs apply the highly-stylised approach of his <a href=\"http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=Leonce+Raphael+Agbodjelou&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1280&bih=679&tbm=isch&tbnid=LEMad9ZSlpp3_M:&imgrefurl=http://artwednesday.com/2010/09/02/leonce-raphael-agbodjelou/&docid=LOGygVXW_jo0jM&imgurl=http://artwednesday.com/wp/wp-co\"><strong>studio portraits</strong></a><strong> </strong>to the ceremonial figures of local ritual in Benin. The other photographer in the exhibition, <a href=\"http://www.jackbellgallery.com/maiga.html\">Hamidou Maiga</a>, documents Mali’s transition into independence and modernity. The Congolese artist, <a href=\"http://www.jackbellgallery.com/bandoma.html\">Steve Bandoma</a> takes body parts from magazine clippings reassembling them with watercolour and ink into strange and delicate chimeras. <a href=\"http://www.jackbellgallery.com/hughes.html\">Afedzi Hughes</a>, a Ghanian artist now based in New York, makes paintings which negotiate their own hybridities, measuring an Adidas football boot against a gun, the imported image with associated forms of violence.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/11/01/the-ghosts-of-cote-divoire/jb05/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35270\"><img title=\"jb05\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/jb05.jpg?w=600&h=303\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"303\"></a></p>\n<p>The proximity of Aboudia’s personal narrative to violence and suffering is the main reason this work has attracted attention, but the intensity and thoughtfulness of his mark-making is justification enough. In May he claimed to have hung up his “war brushes” and started a series on “the children of Abobo train station”. In this <a href=\"http://observers.france24.com/content/20110512-ivory-coast-artist-aboudia-civil-war-paintings\">work</a>, the explicitly political referents which gives the war paintings their resonance with the European satire of Goya and Picasso are no longer to be found, replaced by a playful and brutal infancy. It will be interesting to see whether the interest in his work maintains if the phantoms with the conflict which has given it its aura of authenticity recede. But it is clear that, whatever happens with <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE79P0P620111026\">next month’s elections</a> in Abidjan, Aboudia’s powers of description will not be wasted.</p>\n<p>The next exhibition at the Jack Bell Gallery is the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Egungun Project</span>, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, 17 November – 17 December 2011.</p>\n<p>* Orlando Reade is a teacher and writer based in London.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/35163/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=35163&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Gyros to Heroes: A Column About Sandwiches: Late-Night Love by Lindsay Eanet",
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"content" : "<p>Marty got dumped before I met him. She broke it off after he took her to a concert he only went to because she needed someone to go with.</p>\n<p>He’s a man of simpler pleasures now. He likes cider and fixing gadgets and falling asleep to the <span>BBC</span> World Service. He’s probably better informed than any of us through osmosis alone, yet you’d never know. But Marty has one great pleasure, one great love above all others: Doner kebab.</p>\n<p>For the uninitiated, Doner kebab is a gyro-esque Turkish-born take on the classic meat-shaved-off-a-spit-and-stuffed-in-flatbread theme that permeates Mediterranean cooking. It’s cheap, greasy and for most omnivorous palates, the perfect balance between chili sauce-soaked exotica and the deliciously, almost primal, globally familiar realm of indeterminate meat roasted over flame and separated by a sword-like device.</p>\n<p>Most human relationships I’ve seen lack the love and devotion Marty has for the Doner kebab. He had never had one before moving to England for university, with a bunch of friends all from the same small town in the north of Ireland. When he returned home after his first year, they’d reached County Tyrone, only they were six pounds, he told us, and certainly not the same as the ones he tried and fell madly in love with in Liverpool. It’s a manifestation, I think, of that transformation that happens to you your first year of college or otherwise living on your own, that avalanche of new experiences and exposures, that first taste of something that is novel or exotic at least to someone. Love—or at least lust, anyway—germinates quickly under this condition, spurred by novelty.</p>\n<p>The ritual Marty-and-kebab dance would go something like this: we’d all be at his flat, seated around the living room, watching the <span>BBC</span> World Service (of course) and warm and malleable after one lager too many. Around midnight, Marty would informally poll the group to see if anyone else wanted to order a kebab later. Never mind that there was a perfectly satisfactory kebab shop not even half a block from his flat, no—only the kebabs from one purveyor would do. The Nile, a hole-in-the-wall takeaway in the heart of Liverpool’s student enclave, a veritable spirit-house for zealous kebab-seeking pilgrims, produced the kebabs—massive and blanketed in warm, sweet, fluffy naan—that were the objects of Marty’s affection. He enjoyed the effort, I think. The pursuit. A man of high standards in low places.</p>\n<p>On the rare occasions he chose an alternate purveyor of kebabs for the sake of convenience, one could detect the defeat in his voice as he ordered, the deflation of being forced to settle. The idea of cheating on his beloved with another kebab shop just did not sit well with him.</p>\n<p>He did occasionally cheat, however, searching for a cheaper date than The Nile kebab by attempting to make them at home. Working in frozen food had made him a connoisseur of pre-cooked meat products, although the first couple of attempts—involving steaming in tinfoil over an open flame, the way you would with fish on a grill—ended badly. The meat looked as though it had given up halfway through the cooking process, a thoroughly depressing brown-beige mass with bits of foil stuck to it. He ate it anyway, assuring his disgusted barbecue guests that it ’wasn’t that bad,’ feigning his pleasure, faking the foodgasm.</p>\n<p>Occasionally, they got kinky, Marty and these frozen-meat kebabs, most notably in an unfortunate incident involving the freezer-bag product, some very hungry friends, mind-altering intoxicants, mayonnaise and Nutella. Rather unsurprisingly, this got rave reviews.</p>\n<p>Back in the living room again, at around 1 a.m., he would ask again, and again, every five minutes or so until some hungry, reckless or inebriated soul would give in. His behavior in his campaign to recruit for the kebab brigade was akin to that friend in every group who really, really wants to try online dating but is too scared to do it alone. ‘You should sign up with me! It’ll be fun!’ Either he was self-conscious about his love, or just highly enthusiastic. Marty was like a newly-smitten love interest, a textbook dating-website success story eager to show his beef and lamb beau off to everyone in the vicinity.</p>\n<p>At around 2, the kebabs would finally arrive, warm and dripping, with garlic mayo and chili sauce seeping like ‘50s horror film nuclear waste around the edges of the Styrofoam container. They were enjoyed all around, to the point where the kebab experience became an almost automatic routine—a familiar, sating lullaby for the taste buds, a warm duvet for the stomach and a harsh, remorseful wake-up call for the digestive tract. But Marty wouldn’t eat with the rest of the group. He’d retreat into his room, where a squeeze bottle of off-brand peri-peri sauce would be waiting on his desk for him to pour onto his meaty prize, sit over the desk and devour, with the <span>BBC</span> World Service or maybe some contemporary folk tunes—Damien Rice, Mumford & Sons, that sort of vein—to keep him company. He didn’t like eating in front of people, he said. Not like this.</p>\n<p>The eating of the kebab, for a ritual that he entered into with such joy, such urgency, such reckless abandon, was something that was somber, intimate, almost holy. In public, he would be so persuasive, such a strong and enthusiastic advocate for us all to meet and share in the joy of the kebab with him, but when it came down to the act itself, the moment of consumption, he wanted it to be just the two of them, a private affair. I suppose most new relationships are like that.</p>\n<p>It took a while for Marty to get over his ex. This may make it sound like he used Doner kebabs as a crutch, as a substitute for a real, human relationship, but I can assure you, that is not the case. The parallels between his garlic mayo-soaked fling and the way most people conduct themselves in the early stages of a relationship are evident, but he’s got plenty of other things going on. He takes to most passions—his self-designed karaoke nights, his computer repair business, his well-maintained friendships—the same way he does to the kebabs: with persistence, a bit of innovation and most of all, a blind, ridiculous love for the thing itself. And with those attributes in mind, he’ll be more than alright. He will find that kind of love one day, or be just as happy and validated single and with a passel of good friends to keep him company, but in the meantime, The Nile is open late seven days a week.</p>"
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"title" : "Anam City",
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"title" : "Viva Kinshasa",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/10/31/viva-kinshasa/viva-riva-2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-35004\"><img title=\"viva-riva\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/viva-riva1.jpeg?w=600&h=217\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"217\"></a></p>\n<p>One of the most exciting films to come out of the continent recently is the Congolese gangster noir, ‘Viva Riva!’ Sean already blogged about it <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/09/the-best-african-movie/\">here</a> when it just started to attract a lot of hype. I saw the film at the Durban International Film Festival earlier this year, where it seemed to polarize the audience. Some felt it was entertaining and authentic, while others felt it was “socially irresponsible”. I found myself thinking the former. True to its genre, the film is a stylish rough-and-tumble tour of Kinshasa. There is violence and sex, but not to the point where it feels excessive or contrived. It’s a gangster film after all.</p>\n<p>We follow Riva (Patsha Bay Mukana), a charming hustler who steals a truckload of fuel from some Angolan gangsters and returns to Kinshasa to make money off it. There is a shortage<strong> </strong>of fuel in town and word quickly spreads of Riva’s acquisition. He becomes hot property and everyone wants a piece of him. Throw a corrupt army official and a femme fatale into the mix and you’ve<strong> </strong>got yourself a thrilling ride through Kinshasa’s bustling streets.</p>\n<p>Writer/director Djo Tunda Wa Munga, who has been called <a href=\"http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/an-african-tarintino/\">“an African Tarantino”</a> has his filmmaking roots in the documentary genre. He was born and bred in Kinshasa and it shows. Kinshasa is not just a backdrop to Riva’s story, but a living, breathing character in the film. ‘Viva Riva!’ has been doing the rounds internationally and has thus far won an MTV award for Best African Film and six awards at the 7<sup>th</sup> African Movie Academy Awards.</p>\n<p>I recently caught up with Djo Tunda Wa Munga in Amsterdam at the <a href=\"http://africainthepicture.nl/nl/flash_taalkeuze\">Africa in the Picture Film Festival</a>, where he scooped the Best Feature Film Award. I sat in/hijacked <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/03/23/brand-africa/\">Serginho Roosblad</a>’s interview with him for <a href=\"http://www.rnw.nl/africa/radioprogramme/bridges-africa-0\">Radio Netherlands Worldwide</a> and asked a couple of questions of my own. Serginho graciously offered this interview to AIAC.</p>\n<p><strong>Is ‘Viva Riva!’ in a way a story about Africans who have emigrated and the experience of alienation when returning to their hometown? </strong></p>\n<p><span></span>I didn’t want to talk about the Diaspora in this film, that’s not the most important thing. I wanted to talk about the city Kinshasa itself. It’s kind of difficult to talk about the city if one just lives inside. So I wanted to use the tool of someone coming back after many years. Because when you come back, you kind of fall in love with the places that you know, with the city you grew up in. And so in that love relationship with the city it was also an opportunity to talk about Kinshasa. Viva Riva is really a film that describes the Kinshasa that I know and that I like. Someone asked me the other day if it’s a love letter to the city. I think I would call it that.</p>\n<p><strong>Is it also a personal love letter to the city, as you moved to Belgium for a while, and perhaps fell in love with Kinshasa when you returned?</strong></p>\n<p>I wouldn’t say it is because of the fact that I’ve lived abroad, in Belgium, and came back after my studies, that I have a parallel with Riva. I don’t think so because I used it more as a dramatic tool in the story; the fact that he comes back. It’s easier. When you come back you can look at things enthusiastically and describe them. For me, I don’t see it that way. I’ve come back and I’ve seen the country evolve in many different ways. And so it’s very different, the story you have in the film.</p>\n<p><strong>In what way is the film representative of the whole nation?</strong></p>\n<p>We have to be very serious about the fact that one film can’t represent a nation. It’s impossible. What I tried to do was to represent the point of view that I had of the city. And to create a relation as a filmmaker with an environment that I find beautiful or intense, and then to transpose it to film. If I manage to do that, to have a point of view of the environment, which is intense enough and accurate enough, I’ll be very happy.</p>\n<p><strong>There’s a lot of sex and there’s a lot of violence in this movie. How did the Congolese public and people from Kinshasa in particular react to this?</strong></p>\n<p>In the screenings in Congo, I think that people weren’t shocked. They weren’t shocked because the reality, the environment we live in is much stronger; the prostitution, the violence, they have experienced that already. And so the fact that they can see it on the screen brings them some kind of relief in the sense that these are our realities, this is what we know. So the screenings in Kinshasa went well in the sense that people weren’t surprised, there was no tension at that moment. Because reality is stronger and people just see that, OK this is a film. They can relate to it in a more positive way.</p>\n<p><strong>In the movie we see a lot of universal themes, like love and crime. But are there also typical Congolese themes hidden in the movie that you would only know if you were from Congo?</strong></p>\n<p>If there is one, I would say it’s the self-destructive attitude of Riva, towards money. He’s not a guy who’s going to save money, he’s not a guy who thinks, ‘OK, I’m gonna calculate,’ and so on. Riva is really someone from Kinshasa so he thinks bigger than life. It must be really, really large and he goes for that. He goes for that directly. And in that sense I can really recognize and relate to this extreme pleasure of life we aspire to in Kinshasa.</p>\n<p><strong>This is one of the few feature films to come out of Congo in the last two decades. Why do you think it took that long for something like ‘Viva Riva!’ to come along?</strong></p>\n<p>We had a long dictatorship under Mobutu, which ended in 1997. Mobutu didn’t really allow artists to work, or to be independent, or to make films. After that we had five years of war, and after that we had a transition. All of this made it very difficult, kind of impossible, to film. After all that, we are in somehow at the beginning. We are reconstructing all of that.</p>\n<p><strong>As an African filmmaker, are you concerned with portraying your country as positively as possible to an international audience?</strong></p>\n<p>I think this may surprise you, but I’m not that focused on the external world, and what they will think of the representation of Africa. Because I think that’s a mistake. I would rather try to focus on finding the inner voice, the truth inside myself and of the story. What will come out of that will be real and authentic. And after that, that thing will define itself towards westerners and international films.</p>\n<p><strong>Your movie has won a lot of prizes already. What is it about ‘Viva Riva!’ that captures the international imagination?</strong></p>\n<p>Maybe the fact that for once, these are the eyes from someone inside Africa who looks at reality, and probably looks at it differently. And yes I think that westerners recognize that and they say “why not, it’s kind of interesting.”</p>\n<p><strong>Do you think this film will open up doors for other filmmakers in Congo?</strong></p>\n<p>I really hope that this film will help some other filmmakers to get out there with their own projects. This is the best you can hope for, but I don’t know. We’ll have to wait a little bit, and hopefully people will get there.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/34980/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=34980&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>With the upcoming <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2011/10/upcoming-changes-to-reader-new-look-new.html\">transition</a> of social features in Google Reader to Google+, I thought this would be a good time to look back at the notable social-related events in Reader's history. For those of you who are new here, I was Reader's <a href=\"http://blog.persistent.info/persistent.info/about/resume.html\">tech lead</a> from 2006 to 2010.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Late 2004 to early 2005</strong>: <a href=\"http://massless.org/\">Chris Wetherell</a> <a href=\"http://massless.org/?archive=2007/05/about-google-readers-birth-part-1\">starts</a> <a href=\"http://massless.org/?archive=2007/05/about-google-readers-birth-part-2\">work</a> on \"Fusion\", one of the 20% projects that serve as <a href=\"http://blog.persistent.info/2010/10/bloglines-express-or-how-i-joined.html\">prototypes</a> for Google Reader. Among other neat features, it has a \"People\" tab that shows you what other people on the system are subscribed to and reading. There's no concept of a managed friends list, after all when the users are just a few dozen co-workers, we're all friends, right?</p>\n\n<p><strong>September 2005:</strong> <a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/bdarnell\">Ben Darnell</a> and <a href=\"http://www.xenomachina.com/\">Laurence Gonsalves</a> add the concept of \"public tags\" to the nascent Reader backend and frontend. There are no complex <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_control_list\">ACL</a>s, just a single boolean that controls whether a tag is world-readable.</p>\n\n<p><strong>October 2005:</strong> A remnant of the \"People\" tab is present in the HTML of the <a href=\"http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/feed-world.html\">launched</a> version of Google Reader, and an eagle-eyed Google Blogoscoped forum member <a href=\"http://blogoscoped.com/forum/11152.html#id11167\">notices it</a> and speculates as to its intended use.</p>\n\n<p><strong>March 2006:</strong> Tag sharing <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2006/03/reader-learns-to-share.html\">launches</a>, along with the ability to embed a shared tag as a widget in the sidebar of your blog or other sites. On one hand, tag sharing is quite <a href=\"http://blog.persistent.info/2006/03/google-reader-tidbits.html\">flexible</a>: you can share both individual items by applying a tag to them, and whole feeds (creating spliced streams) if you share folders. On the other hand, having to create a tag, share it and manually apply it each time is rather tedious. A lot of users end up sharing their starred items instead, since that enables one-click sharing.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Summer of 2006:</strong> As part of <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/110683134945147464336\">Brad Hawkes</a>'s summer internship, he looks into what can be done to make shared tags more discoverable (right now users have to email each other URLs with 20-digit long URLs). He whips up a prototype that iterates over a user's Gmail contacts and lists shared tags that each contact might have. This is neat, but is shelved for both performance (there's a lot of contacts to scan) and privacy (who exactly is in a user's address book?) concerns.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://persistent.info/images/reader-broadcast-action.png\" style=\"float:right;border:solid 1px #ccc;padding:7px;background:#fff;margin-left:5px\" width=\"196\" height=\"54\" alt=\"Reader &auot;share" action\"><strong>September 2006:</strong> Along with a revamped user interface, Reader <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2006/09/something-looks-different.html\">re-launches</a> with one-click sharing, allowing users to stop overloading starred items.</p>\n\n<p><strong>May 2007:</strong> Brad graduates and comes back work on Reader full-time. His starter project is to beef up Reader's support for that old school social network, <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/05/there-are-people-who-dont-use-feed.html\">email</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Fall of 2007:</strong> There is growing momentum within Google to have a global (cross-product) friend list, and it looks like the Google Talk buddy list will serve as the seed. Chris and I start to experiment with showing shared items from Talk contacts. We want to use this feature with our personal accounts (i.e. real friends), but at the same time we don't want to leak its existence. I decide to (temporarily) call the combined stream of friends' shared items \"amigos\". Thankfully, we remember to undo this before launch.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://persistent.info/images/reader-friends-tree.png\" style=\"float:right;border:solid 1px #ccc;padding:7px;background:#fff;margin-left:5px\" width=\"180\" height=\"79\" alt=\"Friends' shared items tree\"><strong>December 2007:</strong> After user testing, revamps, and endless discussions about opt-in/out, shared items from Google Talk buddies <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/reader-and-talk-are-friends.html\">launches</a>. Sharing is up by 25% overnight, validating that sharing to an audience is better than doing it into the void. On the other hand, the limitations of Google Talk buddies (symmetric relationships only, contact management has to happen within Gmail or Talk, not Reader) and <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/managing-your-shared-items.html\">communication issues</a> around who could see your shared items lead to some <a href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-howdoi/msg/6ce68f18663318f9\">user</a> <a href=\"http://www.techmeme.com/071225/p10#a071225p10\">stress</a> too.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Spring of 2008:</strong> With sharing in Reader picking up steam, a <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20081201163751/http://socialreader.net/\">few</a> <a href=\"http://www.rssmeme.com/\">aggregators</a> <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080109171933/http://www.readburner.com/\">and</a> <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080118174715/http://sharedreader.dennesabing.com/\">leaderboards</a> of shared items start to spring up. <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/100925866698547748666\">Louis Gray</a> comes to the attention of the Reader team (and its users) by <a href=\"http://blog.louisgray.com/2008/01/readburner-in-stealth-mode-looking-to.html\">discovering</a> the existence of <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080109171933/http://www.readburner.com/\">ReadBurner</a> before its creator is ready to announce it.</p>\n\n<p><strong>May 2008:</strong> Up until this point sharing has been without commentary; it was up to the reader of the shared item to decide if it had been shared earnestly, ironically, or to disagree with it. <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/05/share-anything-anytime-anywhere.html\">\"Share with note\"</a> gives users an opportunity to attach a (hopefully pithy) commentary to their share. Also in this launch is the \"Note in Reader\" bookmarklet (internally called \"Tag Anything\") that allows users to share arbitrary pages through Reader.</p>\n\n<p><strong>August 2008:</strong> Incorporating the lessons learned from Reader's initial friends feature, the preferred Google social model is <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/08/pick-your-friends.html\">revamped</a>. Instead of a symmetric friend list based on Google Talk buddies, there is a separate, asymmetric list that can be managed directly within Reader. The asymmetry is \"push\"-style: users decide to share items with some of their contacts, but it's up those contacts to actually subscribe if they wish (think <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/stream/incoming\">\"Incoming\"</a> stream on Google+, where people are added to a \"See my Reader shared items\" circle). This feature is brought to life by <a href=\"http://minivishnu.net/\">Dolapo Falola</a>, who injects some much-needed humor into the Reader code: the unit tests use the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menudo_(band)\">Menudo band members</a> to model relationships and friends acquire a (hidden) \"ex-girlfriend\" bit.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://persistent.info/images/reader-comments-indicator.png\" style=\"float:right;border:solid 1px #ccc;padding:7px;background:#fff;margin-left:5px\" width=\"262\" height=\"23\" alt=\"New comments indicator\"><strong>March 2009:</strong> After repeated user requests, (and enabled by more powerful ACL supported added by <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/115843642983912275977\">Susan Shepard</a>) comments on shared items are <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-reader-is-your-new-watercooler.html\">launched</a>. Once again Dolapo is on point for the frontend side, while <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/104457944992101681183\">Derek Snyder</a> does all the backend work and makes sure that Reader won't melt down when checking whether to display that \"you have new comments\" icon. The ability of the backend and user interface to handle multiple conversations about an item is stress-tested with a particularly popular <a href=\"http://persistent.info/images/reader-bsg-share.png\">Battlestar Galactica item</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>May 2009:</strong> <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/05/life-is-great-bundle-of-little-things.html\">Bundles</a> are launched, extended sharing from just individual tags to collections of feeds.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://persistent.info/images/reader-konami-likes.png\" style=\"float:right;border:solid 1px #ccc;padding:7px;background:#fff;margin-left:5px\" width=\"199\" height=\"241\" alt=\"Hearts when like-ing an item\"><strong>July 2009:</strong> Continuing the social learning process, the team (and Google) <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/07/following-liking-and-people-searching.html\">revamps</a> the friends model once again, switching to a asymmetric \"pull\"-style (i.e. following) model. This is meant to be \"pre-consistent\" with the upcoming Google Buzz launch. Also included in this launch are better ties to Google Profiles and the ability to \"like\" items. In general there are so many moving parts that it's amazing that <a href=\"http://www.thepinkestblack.com/\">Jenna</a>'s head doesn't explode trying to design them all.</p>\n\n<p>Also as part of this launch, intern <a href=\"http://devinrkennedy.com/\">Devin Kennedy</a>'s trigonometry skills are put to good use in creating an <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6-_2h4St6k\">easter egg animation</a> triggered when liking or un-liking an item after activating the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code\">Konami code</a>.</p>\n\n<p><strong>August 2009:</strong> Up until this point, one-click sharing had mainly been for intra-Reader use only (though there were a few third-party uses, some <a href=\"http://memerocket.com/2006/11/05/gordita-delicious-tagging-for-google-reader/\">hackier</a> than <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/08/pubsubhubbub-support-for-reader-shared.html\">others</a>). With the launch of <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/08/flurry-of-features-for-feed-readers.html\">Send to</a> (also Devin's work), Reader can now \"feed\" almost any other service.</p>\n\n<p><strong>February 2010:</strong> The <a href=\"http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/google-buzz-in-gmail.html\">launch</a> of Google Buzz posed some interesting questions for the Reader team. Should items shared in Reader show up in Buzz? (yes!) Should we allow separate conversations on an item in Buzz versus Reader? (no!) With a lot of behind the scenes work, sharing and comments in Reader are <a href=\"http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2010/02/readers-get-your-buzz-on.html\">re-worked</a> to have close ties to Buzz, such that even non-Reader-using friends can finally get in on the commenting action.</p>\n\n<p><strong>March 2010:</strong> Partly as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to <a href=\"http://www.google.com/search?q=ursquake\">social developments</a> within Google, and partly to help out some Buzz power users who were <a href=\"http://scobleizer.posterous.com/why-i-dont-use-google-reader-anymore\">complaining</a> that all the social features in Reader were slowing it down, I add a secret (though <a href=\"http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/04/disable-google-readers-social-features.html\">not for long</a>) anti-social mode.</p>\n\n<p><strong>May 2010:</strong> Up until this point, it was possible to have publicly-shared items but only allow certain friends to comment on them. Though powerful, this amount of flexibility was leading to complexity and <a href=\"http://blog.louisgray.com/2010/02/how-to-enable-comments-on-google-reader.html\">user confusion and workarounds</a>. To simplify, we switch to offering just two choices for shared items, and in either case if you can see the shared item, you can comment on it.</p>\n\n<p>As you can see, it's been a long trip, and with the switch to Google+ sharing features, Reader is on its fourth social model. This much experimentation in public led to some <a href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/google-reader-howdoi/browse_thread/thread/318c4559e2ac5bbe\">friction</a>, but I think this incremental approach is still the <a href=\"http://blog.persistent.info/2011/06/in-praise-of-incrementalism.html\">best way</a> to operate. Whether you're a <a href=\"http://purityanddanger.blogspot.com/2010/10/google-reader.html\">sharebro</a>, a <a href=\"http://googlereaderlexicon.wikispaces.com/Reader+Party+--+An+Alternate+Universe\">Reader partier</a>, a <a href=\"https://www.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/Gooder\">Gooder fan</a>, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QVnn0a71gk\">the number 1 sharer</a> or <a href=\"http://www.google.com/reader/item/tag:google.com,2005:reader/item/5dc3553431a6fd04\">someone who \"like\"-d someone else</a>, I am are very grateful that you were part of this experiment (and I'm guessing the <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/114228948437847649793/posts/GMXL2AgHyp9\">rest</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/cw/status/129694312266072064\">of</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/shellen/status/129691611528560641\">the</a> <a href=\"http://fury.com/2011/10/changing-google-reader-for-the-better/\">past</a> and <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107528504794032335668\">present</a> <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/113760695441101959932\">team</a> is grateful too). And if you're looking to toast Reader for all its social <strike>stumbles</strike> accomplishments, the preferred team drink is <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/pink_and_black/3346991263/\">scotch</a>.</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PersistentInfo/~4/VGC5jA6WOD8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Winter is beginning in North America, and the real test of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests and sympathetic demonstrations is about to begin. Thus far all of the major mistakes have been made by opponents of the protests (e.g.: certain police, media, and politicians), and the movement has gained attention each time. For once the American Left has seized on some actually effective marketing and sloganeering, and even more remarkably have not so far followed their usual pattern of transforming victory into defeat by any means necessary. The problem for the protesters themselves is that they have to now do what they have said they will do if things don't change, they must occupy and be seen to occupy, as continuously as possible for the next full year. That is because unless the protests can continue to move the poll numbers in the electorate and generate a political movement of the terms of debate over the next election cycle culminating in November of 2012, both Republicans and Democrats will continue to provide the economic elite with the privilege of impunity from the consequences of their self-enrichment.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"></div><a name=\"more\"></a><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Privilege literally just means \"private law,\" and with the number of Wall Street bankers and brokers serving time amongst the national prison population of millions, for theft, or fraud, or malfeasance, or indeed any charge related to the loss of trillions of dollars in wealth and savings, currently standing at precisely zero, I think that it is safe to say that these are privileged persons indeed! They have not even been \"named and shamed\" by the free press, which may be fortunate given the vast quantities of firearms floating around this country and all of these millions of people who have been evicted from their homes with no access to mental health facilities. Hollywood has already started cashing in with \"comedic\" fantasies that revolve around protagonist employees who are seeking revenge against their bosses. But one of the traditional privileges of the rich is not having to associate with poor people, and police at beckon call to enforce this. Another is to smugly assume that one's wealth is entirely of one's own making without a requisite social contract. That last one is at the heart of what OWS is all about, and the rich would be wise to disabuse themselves of this delusional paradigm post haste. Throw the Ayn Rand books away and read some actual economics.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">One of the richest men in America is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and when OWS began over a month ago he clearly figured that if he just treated it like any other protest, it would go away like every other protest before always has. When it didn't go away his administration had no additional options prepared, just lots and lots of cops in riot gear standing around earning overtime, and his peers amongst the rich people complaining about the noise from the crowds. Over decades cities like New York have enacted long lists of laws designed to make persons considered undesirable by rich property owners leave otherwise public spaces. Tops of the list are homeless people and protestors, so the rich are understandably agitated over what appears to be a large concentration of homeless protesters announcing their intention to occupy public spaces adjacent to very high rent property. The irony that proximity to public spaces in one of the world's mega-cities is one of the key factors which make these properties valuable in the first place seems to have escaped them for the moment. It was only a matter of time before pressure from the rich caused a man like Bloomberg to tell his Police Commissioner to make OWS go away. It was only standard operating procedure that prompted the Commissioner to tell his Precinct Captains to make life hard on the protesters. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Meanwhile the media that had come around sniffing for a story when it all began, scoffed at the relatively small numbers of protestors with their signs claiming to represent 99% of society, and after the first week the story was relegated to junior reporters with orders to find the \"lighter side\" of the news. The late night comedians vied with one another to exploit every tired stereotype about the sad truth that over the last few decades protests in America have been largely ineffective, self-indulgent parades with no practical impact on governance or policy-making. True, many hippies still haven't learned that drum circles make protests smaller, not larger, because unless you have a drum it gets oppressive fast and the only solution is to be somewhere else. Clearly nobody had planned for long term sanitation issues, nor apparently realised that they would by necessity require the cooperation of local small businesses to avoid drowning in their own feces, and thousands of flushes a day costs real money. The whole thing could have been one long running joke to most of the country, that is if they even noticed OWS at all, but privilege had been affronted, and that was apparently not a laughing matter.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Americans are probably the most propagandized people on the planet because they do it to themselves. In the Cold War, where the USSR placed their faith in Pravda, a single government sanctioned version of the truth from which no other media could deviate, the USA went in the opposite direction, flooding their population with media choices, encouraging competition for every conceivable niche market and audience. The result today is that any American of average means who wants to watch or read about nothing but sports, or cooking, or finance, or animals, or cartoons, or whatever they like can easily do so. Even for news junkies it is all too easy to self-select for media which tells them exactly what they want to hear, spinning every event or fact in the national dialogue into one continuous partisan monologue. Americans have been choosing to pay more attention to debt, and conservative politicians should look in the mirror for the blame. All the best economists said that the paradox of thrift would cause consumers to spend less just when the recovering economy needed them to spend more even if they must borrow to do so. Efforts to shift discourse away from overly thrifty policies towards a debate on productive investment versus waste were swept aside by the right wing Tea Party, which insists that national debt is equivalent to personal debt, and in rather puritanical fashion somehow morally indefensible. They have insisted on slashing public payrolls, and deepened the crisis in the process. Sometimes it can be hard to see the trees with that forest in the way.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Even as the US government flounders in a vacuum of tax revenues, now at their lowest share of GDP in decades, and unemployment rates have risen and remained at highs not seen since before World War II, the richest of the rich continue to see their share of national income grow and to accumulate more and more of the available wealth for themselves. The surviving middle class has been reducing debt at a record pace, primarily by renegotiating home mortgages and paying down high interest credit card balances. The sad realization that the value of their modest homes will not escalate exponentially and magically pay for them to live a lavish retirement has set in, and serious attention is now being paid to job security, pension prospects, and potential for advancement. The promise that higher education would lead to success has proven false for too many, and with tuition rates increasing at 4 times the rate of inflation since 1982, total student loan debts just last week surpassed total consumer credit card debts in the USA. Taxes on the richest Americans are lower than they have been in more than half a century, but they are so blinded by privilege and self-selected media that they are still trying to shift the burden even further on to the poor and middle class. The candidates for the Republican Party nomination to face Barack Obama for the Presidency in 2012 have spent the last few weeks trotting out tax plans which would lower taxes for the top 10% of earners and raise them on everybody else. Part of the problem is that most of the people in charge of the media outlets are themselves a part of the privileged 1%, and so they don't understand why their attempts to shape the narrative about the protests is not resonating with audiences.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Pushing Americans is a bad idea (so much easier to put on another baseball game or cooking show), and a deeply seated objection to state sponsored violence against their fellow citizens is one of the only things that will unify large sections of society. The political powder keg had been placed in lower Manhattan, just waiting for a spark. For OWS to have any effect at all in getting Americans to self-select media about them, Bloomberg and his police force had to ignite the fuse, and true to form on Sept. 24th they got careless playing with fire, as reported here by Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC: </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/mZCysXJqNYg\" width=\"495\"></iframe></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Contrary to the usual script, this approach obviously did not make the OWS protest go away. Quite the opposite in fact, and now there are sympathy protests happening across the globe in dozens of countries and more than fifty major US cities. Smart local authorities have made room and tried to show solidarity with the protesters, assigning a few token officers to guard the protesters against potential crimes against each other (otherwise known as policing), and in those places everything is calm and business continues as usual. Panicky mayors in places like Boston and Oakland have not been so intelligent, attempting to evict protesters in the middle of the night by force, which only draws the hungry lenses of competitive media desperate for exclusive original content, especially if it involves violence (because they can't show sex on the news, yet). Both cities are now getting all the wrong kinds of attention, provoking anger from citizens and making tourists and convention planners reconsider plans to visit or locate conferences there. Needless to say, the odds of such mayors winning election to another term in office are dropping with each incident that they provoke. The costs to city budgets to constantly surround protesters with police are mounting, and with the arrested threatening to demand jury trials for all charges, the potential expense of the Bloomberg strategy is looking increasingly astronomical. The protests in New York, Boston and Oakland continue to grow, and show no more signs of stopping than do the more stable occupying populations in calm cities.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Even as I write this the Oakland Police are trying to stop protesters from retaking by day the city plaza that they lost to tear gas assault last night. More teargas, more clubs and arrests, more media coverage. Tomorrow Occupy Oakland will grow, the protesters will adapt and innovate, the police will be more fatigued (it is not easy beating on your neighbors day after day), their budget more depleted, and their reputation more tarnished. Soon they will begin to see a decline in citizen cooperation in policing other crimes, and other police departments will see their own efforts at community outreach undermined by the steady stream of brutality emanating from their misguided neighbors in Oakland. We can only hope that they too make their displeasure known to the skittish and scared Mayor Jean Quan. Apparently she never had any intention of running for re-election or any other elected office ever again. Too bad, just a couple of weeks ago she was marching arm in arm with these same protesters. Someone must have reminded her that she was privileged, and she didn't need to associate with poor people, just call for the police to remove them.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Over the winter, the protests in the calm cities will shrink to token occupations, largely symbolic and staffed in shifts, seeds for spring and summer protests in the lead up to November elections. Attempts to evict the tokens in panicky cities will result in full scale occupations that will draw the most committed activists from the calm cities sooner or later. Continued failure by the Republican Party to embrace the OWS message (or mimicry of Ron Paul's futile attempts to shift their focus onto the Federal Reserve instead of the private sector bankers), will result in very high voter registration and turnout from population demographics which were very favourable towards President Obama and fellow Democratic candidates in previous election cycles. Efforts at the State level to reduce registration rates and to exclude otherwise eligible voters through technicalities will only deepen the resolve of such persons to not only vote, but to vote against the Party that tried to deny them, and also to persuade others to do likewise. Smart politicians like Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren are already positioned firmly alongside the people and the grievances being voiced at OWS:</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/htX2usfqMEs\" width=\"495\"></iframe></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Only FoxNews and the financial networks (one of which is owned by Mayor Bloomberg after all) are still trying to mock the protesters, even going so far as to read copy claiming the police did not use flash grenades while showing pictures of riot police apparently firing flash grenades. Result: more protesters. Hundreds of videos of alleged police brutality continue to circulate, yet in spite of repeated claims by the police that protesters assaulted them first, threw bottles or stones, or otherwise provoked a violent response, I have yet to come across a single piece of video evidence to indicate even a single instance of such behaviour by the protesters. It would be truly remarkable if no such incidents occurred at any of the protest sites, but the fact that the sea of cameras seem to unerringly omit every instance of protester violence towards police boggles the mind. Journalists always dutifully report that the police claim to have been attacked, but none that I have heard can claim to have witnessed any of it themselves even if they didn't get it on camera. I have just received reports that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed has now entered the panicky column, and has begun forcible evictions from parks in that city. This after announcing on Oct. 17th that protesters could stay for at least three more weeks. We can therefore expect lots more protesters and a new mayor in Atlanta's future. If the nation's police departments don't make it clear to the politicians soon that they will not be used as weapons against the very citizens that they are sworn to protect, then we can expect a lot of new Police Commissioners and Chiefs in the wake of the next election as well.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Occupation has become the dominant tactic for peaceful protesters worldwide, especially those who are young, healthy and unemployed. They literally don't have anywhere else to be, nothing \"better\" to do, or anything to \"go back to.\" The only way to get them to stop will be to put them to work doing something productive at wages that will allow them to live a middle class lifestyle and retire in relative comfort and security in their old age. That can't happen for as long as the privileged 1% are permitted to claim half of all income with impunity. That can't happen for as long as the fiction persists that anyone could possibly amass, let alone hold on to their wealth without the consent of the 99%. The 1% cannot win by attrition, new potential protesters are being born faster than the police can arrest the current ones. The 99% can theoretically keep this up for generations if necessary. The 1% cannot win by escalation, because the more resources put towards stopping the protests simply further reveals and reinforces the argument that the 1% is hoarding resources for their own benefit and co-opting public officials to do their bidding, thus convincing even more of the 99% to oppose them directly. The 1% cannot win by co-opting the protesters, because the 1% is exclusive by definition and cannot be expanded. They have become conspicuous through shameless self advancement at the expense of everyone else, and they cannot pretend to have wanted to bring the rest of us along with them, because they have already accepted rewards obviously out of proportion to any conceivable individual contribution of value to the whole. The 1% cannot win by controlling the message in the broadcast or print media, because there are too many camera phones and no way to effectively censor social media. The 1% should surrender now and cut their losses, drop the privileges, pay their fair share of progressive taxes towards the common good, and stop running for election to political office using their personal fortunes and a few billionaire donors. It is the only way to avoid spending the rest of their lives in their crowd-proof \"panic rooms.\" </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/1PyernhYxuA\" width=\"495\"></iframe></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Authorship</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The above post was written by our resident special contributor - L Yakima.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Zambian Economist encourages special contributions from leading thinkers on matters relevant to Zambia's national social, economic and political development. The purpose of these notes is to stimulate discussion and ensure logic and impartial critique plays a leading role in shaping public debate.</i></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2705183461541363969-2186011027313914955?l=www.zambian-economist.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/kj43469jkq3jkc823r6o7l2dbs/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zambian-economist.com%2F2011%2F10%2Fwinter-of-discontent-guest-blog.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?i=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?a=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NewZambia?i=UEPoem-U4V0:xr30Vhmzcz0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NewZambia/~4/UEPoem-U4V0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>A lot of bits have been used over on the OpenStack list recently about versioning the <a href=\"http://docs.openstack.org/api/\">HTTP APIs they provide</a>. </p>\n\n<p>This over-long and rambling post summarises my current thoughts on the topic, both as background for that discussion, as well as for review in the wider community.</p>\n\n<h3>The Warm-up: Software vs. Web Versioning</h3>\n\n<p>Developers are used to software versioning; e.g., for every release, you bump an identifier. There are usually major versions, minor versions, and sometimes things like package identifiers.</p>\n\n<p>This fine level of granularity is useful to both developers and users; each of these things has precise semantics that helps in figuring out compatibility and debugging.</p>\n\n<p>For example, on my Fedora box, I can do:</p>\n\n<pre><code>cloud:~> yum -q list installed httpd\nInstalled Packages\nhttpd.x86_64 2.2.17-1.fc14 @updates\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>… and I’ll know that Apache httpd version 2.2.17 is installed, and it’s the first package of that version for Fedora 14. </p>\n\n<p>This lets me know that any modules I want to use with the server will need to work with Apache 2.2; and, that if there are security bugs found in httpd 2.2.15, I’m safe. Furthermore, when I install software that depends upon Apache, it can specify a specific version — and even packaging — to require, so that if it wants to avoid specific bugs, or require specific features, it can.</p>\n\n<p>These are good and useful things to use software versioning for; it’s evolved into best practice that’s pretty well-understood. See, for example, <a href=\"http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:NamingGuidelines#Package_Versioning\">Fedora’s package versioning guidelines</a>.</p>\n\n<p>However, they don’t directly apply to versioning on the Web. While there are\nsimilar use cases — e.g., maintaining compatibility, enabling debugging,\ndependency control — the mechanisms are completely different. </p>\n\n<p>For example, if you throw such a version identifier into your URI, like this:</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/v2.2.17-1.fc14/things/foo\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>then every time you make a minor change to your software, you’ll be minting\nan entire new set of resources on the Web;</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/v2.2.17-2.fc14/things/foo\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Moreover, you’ll need to still support the old ones for old clients, so you’ll have a massive footprint of URIs to support. Now consider what this does to \ncaches in the middle; they have to maintain duplicates of the same thing — because it’s unlikely that foo has changed, but it can’t be sure — and your cache hit rate goes down.</p>\n\n<p>Likewise, anybody holding onto a link from the previous version of the API has to decide what to do with it going forward; while they can guess that there’ll be compatibility between the two versions, they can’t really be sure, and they’ll still need to be rewriting a bunch of APIs.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, just sticking software versions into Web URL removes a lot of the value we get from using HTTP, and if you do this, you might as well be using a ‘dumb’ RPC protocol.</p>\n\n<h3>So what does work, on the Web?</h3>\n\n<p>The answer is that there is no one answer; there are lots of different mechanisms in HTTP to meet the goals that people have for versioning. </p>\n\n<p>However, there is an underlying principle to almost any kind of of versioning on the Web; <strong>not breaking existing clients</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>The reasoning is simple; once you publish a Web API, people are going to start writing software that relies upon it, and every time you introduce a change, you introduce the potential to break them. That means that changes have to happen in predictable and well-understood ways.</p>\n\n<p>For example, if you start using the Foo HTTP header, you can’t change its semantics or syntax afterwards. Even fixing bugs in how it works can be tricky, because clients will start to work around the bugs, and when you change things, you break the workarounds.</p>\n\n<p>In other words, good mechanisms are extensible, so that you can introduce change without wiping the slate clean, and it means that any change that doesn’t fit into an extension needs to use a new identifier, so it doesn’t confuse clients expecting the old behaviour. </p>\n\n<p>So, if you want to change the semantics of that Foo header, you can either take advantage of extensibility (if it allows it; see the <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p6-cache-16#section-3.2.3\">Cache-Control headers extensibility policy for a great example</a>), or you have to introduce another header, e.g., Foo2. </p>\n\n<p>This approach extends to lots of other things, whether they be media types, URI parameters, and potentially URIs themselves (see below).</p>\n\n<p>Because of this, <strong>versioning is something that should not take place often</strong>, because every time you change a version identifier, you’re potentially orphaning clients who “speak” that language.</p>\n\n<p>The fundamental principle is that you can’t break existing clients, because you don’t know what they implement, and you don’t control them. In doing so, you need to <strong>turn a backwards-incompatible change into a compatible one</strong>.</p>\n\n<p>This implies that <strong>API versioning absolutely cannot be tied to software versioning in any way</strong>; doing so will needlessly limit (and often break) your clients, and generally upset people.</p>\n\n<p>There’s an interesting effect to observe here, by the way; this approach to versioning is <em>inherently non-linear</em>. In other words, every time you mint a new identifier, you’re minting a fundamentally new thing, whether it be a HTTP header, a format identified by a media type, or a URI. you might as well use “foo” and “bar” as “v1” and “v2”. In some ways, that’s preferred, because people read so much into numbers (especially when there are decimal points involved).</p>\n\n<p>The tricky part, as we’ll see in a bit, is what identifiers you nominate to pivot interoperability around.</p>\n\n<h4>An Aside: Debugging with Product Tokens</h4>\n\n<p>So, if you don’t put minor version information into URIs, media types and other identifiers, how do you debug when you have an implementation-specific problem? How do you track these minor changes?</p>\n\n<p>HTTP’s answer to this is <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-16#section-6.3\">product tokens</a>. The appear in things like the User-Agent, Server and Via headers, and allow software to identify itself, without surfacing minor versioning and packaging information into the protocols “core” identifiers (whether it’s a URI, a media type, a HTTP header, or whatever).</p>\n\n<p>These sorts of versions are free — or even encouraged, delta the security considerations — to contain fine-grained identifiers for what version, package, etc. of software is running. It’s what they’re for.</p>\n\n<h3>The Main Event: Resource Versioning</h3>\n\n<p>All of that said, the question remains of how to manage change in your Web application’s interface. These changes can be divided into two rough categories; <em>representation format changes</em> and <em>resource changes</em>.</p>\n\n<p>Representation format changes have been covered fairly well by others (e.g., <a href=\"http://www.pacificspirit.com/blog/2004/06/14/protocol_extensibility_and_versioning\">Dave</a>), and they’re both simple and maddeningly complex. In a nutshell, don’t make backwards-incompatible changes, and if you do, change the media type. </p>\n\n<p>JSON makes this easier than XML, because it has both a simpler metamodel, as well as a default mustIgnore rule.</p>\n\n<p>Resource changes are what I’m more interested in here. This is doing things like adding new methods, changing the URIs that clients use (including query parameters and their semantics), and so forth. </p>\n\n<p>Again, many (if not most) changes to resources can be accommodated by turning them into backwards-compatible changes. For example, rather than bumping a version when you want to modify how a resource handles query parameters, you mint a new, sibling resource with a different name that takes the alternate query parameters.</p>\n\n<p>However, there comes a time when you need to “wipe the slate clean.” Perhaps it’s because your API has become overburdened with such add-on resources, or you’ve got some new insights into your problem that benefit from a fresh sheet. Then, it’s time to introduce a new API version (which again, shouldn’t happen often). The question is, “how?”</p>\n\n<h4>In this Corner: URI Versioning</h4>\n\n<p>The most widely accepted way to do version resources of Web APIs currently is in the URI. A typical example might be:</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/v1/things/foo\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Here, first path segment is a major version identifier, and when it changes, everything under it does as well. Therefore, the client needs to decide what version of the API it wants to interact with; there isn’t any correlation between URIs between v1 and v2, for example.</p>\n\n<p>So, even if you have:</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/v2/things/foo\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>There isn’t necessarily any correlation between the two URIs. This is important, because it gives you that clean slate; if there were correlation between v1 and v2 URIs, you’d be tying your hands in terms of what you could do in v2 (and beyond).</p>\n\n<p>You can see evidence of this in lots of popular Web APIs out there; e.g., <a href=\"https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1/get/statuses/home_timeline\">Twitter</a> and <a href=\"http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/V1/questionSearch.html\">Yahoo</a>.</p>\n\n<p>However, it’s not necessary to have that version number in there. Consider Facebook; their so-called <a href=\"https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/rest/\">old REST API</a> has been deprecated in favour of their <a href=\"https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/\">new Graph API</a>. Neither has “v1” or “v2” in them; rather, they just use the hostname to name space the different interfaces (“api.facebook.com” vs. “graph.facebook.com”). Old clients are still supported, and new clients can get new functionality; they just called their new version something less boring than “v2”.</p>\n\n<p>Fundamentally, this is how the Web works, and there’s nothing wrong with this approach, whether you use “v1” and “v2” or “foo” and “bar” — although I think there’s less confusion inherent in the latter approach.</p>\n\n<h4>The Contender: HATEOS</h4>\n\n<p>However, there is one lingering concern that gets tied up into this; people assume — very reasonably — that when you document a set of URIs and ship them as a version of an interface, clients can count on those URIs being useful.</p>\n\n<p>This violates a core REST principle called “Hypertext As The Engine of Application State”, or HATEOS for short.</p>\n\n<p>RESTafarians have long searched for signs of HATEOS in Web APIs, and <a href=\"http://roy.gbiv.com/untangled/2008/rest-apis-must-be-hypertext-driven\">Roy has lamented its absence in the majority of them</a>. </p>\n\n<p>Tying your clients into a pre-set understanding of URIs tightly couples the client implementation to the server; in practice, this makes your interface fragile, because any change can inadvertently break things, and people tend to like to change URIs over time.</p>\n\n<p>In a HATEOS approach to an API, you’d define everything in terms of media types (what formats your accept and produce) and link relations (how the resources producing those representations are related).</p>\n\n<p>This means that your first interaction with an interface might look like this:</p>\n\n<pre><code>GET / HTTP/1.1\nHost: api.example.com\nAccept: application/vnd.example.link_templates+json\n\nHTTP/1.1 200 OK\nContent-Type: application/vnd.example.link_templates+json\nCache-Control: max-age=3600\nConnection: close\n\n{\n \"account\": \"http://accounts.example.com/{account_id}\",\n \"server\": \"/servers/{server_id}\",\n \"image\": \"https://images.example.com/{image_id}\"\n}\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Please don’t read too much into this representation; it’s just a sketch. The important thing is that the client uses information from the server to dynamically generate URIs at runtime, rather than baking them into the implementations. </p>\n\n<p>All of the semantics are baked into those <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5988\">link relations</a> — they should probably be URIs if they’re not registered, by the way — and in the formats produced. URIs are effectively semantic-free.</p>\n\n<p>This gives a LOT of flexibility in the implementation; the client can choose which resources to use based upon the link relations it understands, and changes are introduced by adding new link relations, rather than new URIs (although that’s likely to be a side effect). The URIs in use are completely under control of the server, and can be arranged at will.</p>\n\n<p>In this manner, you don’t need a different URI for your interface, ever, because the entry point is effectively used for <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p3-payload-16#section-5.2\">agent-driven content negotiation</a>. </p>\n\n<p>The downsides? This approach requires clients to make requests to discover URIs, and not to take shortcuts. It’s therefore chatty — a fairly damning condemnation.</p>\n\n<p>However, notice the all-important Cache-Control header in that response; it may be chatty without caching, but if the client caches, it’s not that bad at all. </p>\n\n<p>The main issues with going HATEOS for your API, then, are the requirements it places upon clients. If client-side HTTP tools were more widely capable, this wouldn’t be a big deal, but currently you can only assume a very low-level, bare HTTP API without caching, so it does place a lot of responsibility on your client developer’s shoulders — not a good thing, since there are usually many more of them than there are server-side.</p>\n\n<p>So, there are arguments for and against HATEOS, and one could say the trade-offs are somewhat balanced; both are at least reasoned positions. However, there’s one more thing…</p>\n\n<h4>Enter Extensibility</h4>\n\n<p>Extensibility and Versioning are the peanut butter and jelly of protocol engineering. Sure, my kids’ cohort in Australian primary schools are horrified by this combination, but stay with me.</p>\n\n<p>OpenStack has an especially nasty extensibility problem; they allow vendors to add pretty much arbitrary things to the protocol, from new resources to new representations, as well as extensions inside their existing formats. </p>\n\n<p>Allowing such freedom with “baked-in” URIs is hard. You have to carve out extension prefixes to avoid collisions, and then hope that that’s good enough. For example, what if an API uses URIs like this:</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/users/{userid}\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>and HP wants to add a new subresource to the users collection? Does it become</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/users/hp\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>? No, that’s bad, because then no userid can be “hp”, and special cases are evil, especially when they’re under the control of others.</p>\n\n<p>You could do:</p>\n\n<pre><code>http://api.example.com/users/ext/hp\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>and special-case only one thing, “ext”, but that’s pretty nasty too, especially when you can still potentially add “hp” to any point in the URI tree. </p>\n\n<p>Instead, if you take a HATEOS approach, you push extensibility into link relations, so that you have something like:</p>\n\n<pre><code>GET / HTTP/1.1\nHost: api.example.com\nAccept: application/vnd.example.link_templates+json\n\nHTTP/1.1 200 OK\nContent-Type: application/vnd.example.link_templates+json\nCache-Control: max-age=3600\nConnection: close\n\n{\n \"users\": \"http://api.example.com/users/{userid}\",\n \"hp-user-stuff\": \"http://api.example.com/users/{userid}/stuff\"\n}\n</code></pre>\n\n<p>Now, the implementation has full control over the URIs used for extensions, and it’s responsible for avoiding collisions. All that HP (or anyone else wanting an extension) has to do is mint a new link relation type, and describe what it points to (using existing or new media types).</p>\n\n<p>This isn’t the whole extensibility story, of course; format extensions are independent of URIs, for example. However, the freedom of extensibility that taking a HATEOS approach gives you is too good to pass up, in my estimation.</p>\n\n<p>The key insight here, I think, is that URIs are used for <strong>so many things</strong> — persistent identifiers, cache keys, bases for relative resolution, bookmarks — that overloading them with versioning and extensibility information as well makes them worse for all of their various purposes. By pushing these concerns into link relations and media types using HATEOS, you end up with a <strong>flexible, future-proof system</strong> that can evolve in a controllable way, without giving up the benefits of using HTTP (never mind REST).</p>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"margin:0 0 10px 0;padding:0;font-size:0.8em;line-height:1.6em\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/6268050359/\" title=\"... isolator isolates!\"><img src=\"http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6050/6268050359_ed399bcc86.jpg\" alt=\"... isolator isolates! by x-ray delta one\"></a><br><span style=\"margin:0\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/6268050359/\">… isolator isolates!</a>, a photo by <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/\">x-ray delta one</a> on Flickr.</span></div>\n\n<p><span>T</span>his is an image of The Isolator, purportedly invented by Hugo Gernsback the science fiction pioneer, and clearly, loon.</p>\n<p>I haven’t dug into this, so it’s possible this is a hoax, but at the source website, this madness is taken at face value: </p>\n<blockquote><p>The “Isolator” is designed to help focus the mind when reading or writing, not only by by eliminating all outside noise, but also by allowing just one line of text to be seen at a time through a horizontal slit. <a href=\"http://greatdisorder.blogspot.com/2010/03/focus-focus.html\">via A Great Disorder</a></p></blockquote>\n<p>As the author at A Great Disorder points out, this “solution” for the problem of distractions perhaps takes the solution a little too far. Only allowing the author to see through one tiny slit seems especially mental. Particularly for those of us who, in the 21st century, have atrophied memories, and are incapable of keeping the previous line in our head. How can we maintain paragraph continuity, let alone the continuity of an entire novel? </p>\n<p>I imagine The Isolator is the perfect piece of equipment if you want to write some kind of dadaist masterpiece. </p>\n<p>Or, if you suffer from even minor claustrophobia, a complete breakdown. </p>\n<p>On the other hand, the air supply arrangement does offer certain possibilities…</p>\n<h6><a href=\"http://humor.alltop.com\">Alltop </a>has one of these in its bedroom.</h6>\n<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/markarayner/axIl/~4/KoHPjhUZshw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Ghana's population explosion",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/7827?ns=guardian&pageName=Ghana%27s+population+explosion%3AArticle%3A1649960&ch=Global+development&c3=Guardian&c4=Global+development%2CGhana+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CPopulation+%28News%29%2CEnvironment&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Living&c6=John+Vidal&c7=11-Oct-21&c8=1649960&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Global+development&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FGlobal+development%2FGhana\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div><p>As the world population hits 7 billion, John Vidal returns to the country of his birth to find the midwife who delivered him and to see how Ghana is dealing with a leap from 4 million to more than 25 million people</p><p>Sometime in 1947 or 1948, King Jorbie Akodam Karbo I summoned one of his young unmarried daughters to the palace at <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawra\" title=\"\">Lawra</a>. The all-powerful ruler of the small kingdom in the far north of what is today Ghana, but was then the Gold Coast, told the girl she must go to Accra, the capital of the colony. She was to learn to be a midwife and return to teach others, so helping to prevent the many childbirth deaths that were taking place in the community.</p><p>You can imagine her trepidation at leaving. The journey of around 600 miles south would have taken many days in the weekly post bus. The girl knew no one, none of her family had ever been to a city or seen the sea, and she would have barely seen a car, let alone a white person. She stayed in a boarding house and learned to nurse at the colony's principal hospital, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korle_Bu_Teaching_Hospital\" title=\"\">Korle Bu</a>.</p><p>At around the same time, another young woman, my mother, set off on what was to be an equally adventurous journey, from Liverpool to Accra by boat. My father was to be the last in a long line of West African colonial administrators, and, like the princess, Mum knew no one in Accra. She had barely met a black person, and knew only that the Gold Coast was a dangerous place because of malaria and other tropical illnesses.</p><p>The two women struck up a friendship in January 1949 after my mother, remarkably for the time, chose to give birth not in Accra's private European hospital but at Korle Bu, the public African hospital. Mum never told me the name of her midwife, but used to say I had been born with the help of the "beautiful daughter of the King of Lawra", who "had her teeth filed to sharp points that made me think she was a cannibal". Having me at Korle Bu, she said, was not just an act of faith in the new Africa then emerging with powerful independence movements after the second world war, but also a pragmatic decision. "You got a better standard of care there!" she would say.</p><p>The women never met again. Within a few years, we had moved to Nigeria and the King of Lawra's daughter had left Accra.</p><p>With the <a href=\"http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm\" title=\"\">world's population officially hitting 7 billion</a> this week, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion, I went back to Accra to try to understand the massive explosion in human numbers that has been largely responsible for Ghana's development since I was born, and that will, for good or else, determine its future. In those 60 years, the world's population has grown by two new Chinas and an India combined; Ghana has doubled and doubled again from around 4 million people to <a href=\"http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=202483\" title=\"\">more than 25 million</a>. It is projected to keep growing to around 50 or even 60 million people by 2050.</p><p>How will this small country, which is seen as one of the economic and social success stories of Africa but which is in most parts still desperately poor, cope with twice as many people in just over a generation? Clutching a birth certificate, some old black and white photos of the houses we lived in, a description of the princess with filed teeth who delivered me, and a tourist map, my plan was to find my midwife's family and to trace the roots of Ghana's population explosion through the places that we knew.</p><p>Clearly, the city to which the two women travelled in the late 1940s is unrecognisable today. Accra was then about the size of Stoke or Shrewsbury. Now it sprawls 30 or more miles from the old town centre, throwing up new slums and suburbs every year. A 1948 census estimated 4,113,345 people and 3,035,125 goats in the whole country. There were fewer than 2,500 Europeans and only 84 doctors, of whom just 17 were Gold Coast Africans.</p><p>What hits you hardest, though, is not Accra's size today but the fact that everyone is young. It is rare to meet anyone over 40. Officially, 3% of Ghana's population is over 60, but these are mostly invisible people. In fact, more than one in three people are under 14, and the country is adding nearly 500,000 children a year.</p><p>My questions started at Korle Bu hospital, in 1949 a collection of quite grand, collonaded buildings, these days Ghana's premier teaching hopsital. My old maternity ward is still there, now sponsored by Latex Foam, but most births take place in a purpose-built six-storey baby factory built in the 1960s. A young Accravian mother-to-be now has a choice of giving birth in nearly 20 private and public hospitals and clinics in the city. If the family has $5,000, she can stay in what is effectively a five-star hotel. If poor, as the vast majority are, she may have to share a bed or sleep on the floor at Korle Bu. Every day 35 babies are born there.</p><p>\"That's 12,000 babies a year from this one hospital,\" says Professor Samuel Obed, head of obstetrics and gynaecology, who says that Ghana's population explosion has been a triumph of modern midwifery, prenatal and maternal care. He puts the success down partly to people such as the young princess of Lawra who learned so well how to deliver babies and teach others. \"The vast increase in the number of people in Ghana today is entirely due to the efforts made to stop birth mortalities. I put it down to better education. As more people get a formal education, so they see the need to have proper prenatal care. Many women in the past never went for prenatal care. Now 95% in Ghana do. Back in 1949, it was only available to a very few people.</p><p>"In your mothers's time here, everything was still left to nature. People used to offer a libation or they would pray when they gave birth. You lived or you died in childbirth. It was very risky. A lot of people died. That is why in Ghana new mothers wear white. Birth is seen as a victory.</p><p>\"Your nurse probably came here at a very young age. She would have been one of the first generation of northerners to have a formal education.\"</p><p>The population explosion puts immense strains on the health service, he says, with nearly half the hospital's resources being spent on childbirth and the rest on illnesses related to malaria. "Everything comes down to money. We need to re-equip one operating theatre to take care of caesarean births. We need more nurses... The explosion in numbers is not going to go away. Women are having fewer children, but they are surviving and there are more and more families. It's cultural. If a couple have no children, you will have the in-laws round their necks. Pressure to have children is not going to abate."</p><p>\"Everyone used to have big families in your mother's day,\" says Felicia Darkwah, a retired teacher born in 1926 and typical of the wealthy, land-owning, educated Ghanaians who took over from the British at independence in 1957.</p><p>I met her in the sitting room of 47 Seventh Avenue, the first house we lived in in Accra. Most of the other houses in the street have since been pulled down and rebuilt as embassies, banks or private executive residences. They hide behind high walls and razor wire, are guarded night and day, and can cost as much as anything in Chelsea, London. But number 47 is almost unique. Still owned by the government, its grounds have been divided up for three other houses, but it has barely changed. The rosewood parquet floors are the same but now lifting, the ceiling fans have rusted a bit and been augmented by air conditioning, but the pre-independence bungalow with its tin roof is intact, lived in for the past 24 years by Felicia, her Cambridge-educated <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agronomy\" title=\"\">agronomist</a> husband and two of their children and their families. (One is now a very high-ranking government official who is fearful of being identified.)</p><p>"I am one of 13 children," Felicia says. "That was a small family for the time. My uncle's daughter, Animeh, died the other day and she had 100 children and grandchildren. I've known people with far more."</p><p>There seems to be a rule of thumb among educated Ghanaians that each generation has about half the number of children as their parents. Felicia had five children, and her children have two or three each. \"I don't think anyone needs to bother about the numbers in Ghana as long as we work hard,\" she says. \"We can produce enough food but the speed of growth is difficult.\"</p><p>I show her the pictures of my father's office, a young white man surrounded by more than 50 Africans. "This face looks familiar… and that one," she says.</p><p>Next week the UN will warn that the world population could spiral not to 8 billion or 9 billion people as demographers expected in the 1980s, but to 10 billion, or even 16 billion after 2100 if countries do not control their populations soon. And while it will be the rich whose consumption of goods is likely to destabilise the climate and global food supplies, it will be the very poorest countries of Asia and Africa that will be left to cope with inevitable large-scale environmental degradation, the explosion of slums, pressure on health and education services, and the reality of living in a world without enough food and water for all.</p><p>Of all the continents, Africa will see the greatest changes in the next 40 years – 11 countries in the world have fertility rates above six babies per woman and nine of them are there. Sub-Saharan Africa's population was around 100 million in 1900, 750 million in 2005 and the latest UN projections suggest it will level off at over 2 billion after 2050.</p><p>West Africa will be at the centre of this tidal wave of births. Nearby Nigeria, now with 150 million people, is expected to have 600-725 million before numbers start to tail off in 40 years. And far from reducing fertility rates, some countries', such as Mali's, are still rising.</p><p>Space is not the problem for Ghana or most other African countries. The continent is physically big enough to fit China, India and the US in its boundaries, and it can grow enough food for itself and for others. But a rapid, huge population increase linked to deep poverty in ecologically fragile, nearly landlocked countries such as Chad, Niger, Ethiopia and Mali terrifies planners and <a href=\"http://populationmatters.org/\" title=\"\">demographers</a> the world over.</p><p>In Niger, a few hundred miles east of Ghana, two in three people are under 20, women have an average of more than seven children and only 5% of adults use any form of contraception. If its current growth rate of 3.3% per year remains unchanged, by 2050 it will have 56 million inhabitants, from under 15 million today. It is already one of the poorest countries in the world, it is intensely vulnerable to climate change and is experiencing regular food crises.</p><p>Other west African countries, such as Burkina Faso, traditionally saw their youths migrating to other countries to relieve pressure on environments, but Ghana, growing at less than 2% a year, is much better off, says Marilyn Aniwa, head of the <a href=\"http://www.uaps-uepa.org/home/\" title=\"\">Union for African Population Studies</a>: "Hunger will not be the problem here. Contraception is still not widely used, but the country has land, water and space enough to double in numbers.</p><p>"But population is not about the numbers of children. It's about environment, rapid urbanisation, wellbeing and human rights. These are the areas that have not been addressed in the same way as midwifery and prenatal care. Development has not kept up with the numbers. What has been left behind is the social aspects."</p><p>You can't just pin all the problems on African governments, say demographers. Back in the 1970s, family planning was high on their and western political agendas, but in the 1980s countries such as Ghana were treated by the IMF and Britain as laboratories for enforced economic reforms and debt programmes. Contraception and family-planning programmes, just beginning to have an effect, were sidelined. The free market economy pushed on Africa may have worked for the cocoa farm and gold field owners of Ghana, but there was far less money for health and education. The result was a rapidly growing, ill-educated, fast-breeding generation living in a technically richer but more unequal country where people knew how to save children dying at childbirth but were not able to look after their long-term interests.</p><p>"The danger is that we now revert to how we were 30 or 40 years ago," says Emmanuel Ekaub, a Cameroonian demographer. "Maternal mortality is worsening across Africa again. Poverty is worsening again, and the cities and planners cannot cope."</p><p>Five minutes down the road from 47 Seventh Avenue is 9 Second Circular Road, a brutish two-storey house built by the colonial government in 1950 for my father and his young family. In those days it was exclusively for elites. Nothing changes. Now the road is reserved, it seems, for diplomats, judges, bankers, government ministers and people with £300,000 to spend on an apartment.</p><p>But number 9 stands empty behind a concrete wall. A large tree has grown right outside the front door, the gardens, laid out in the English cottage style of the 1950s, are overgrown, and a high court judge and his daughter live in what were the servants' quarters to the side.</p><p>Number 9 is still owned by the government but it hides a dark secret. No one wants to live there when they hear that, in 1982, it was the scene of Ghana's most notorious political murder. A military junta, led by <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rawlings\" title=\"\">Sergeant Jerry Rawlings</a>, had seized power months earlier and there was a curfew in place, but on the evening of 30 June a death squad called on Cecilia Koranteng-Addo, a high court judge who was living here and, at the time, breastfeeding her baby. She was abducted, along with three others, and their bodies were later found riddled with bullets. The \"enemies of the revolution\", as Rawlings called them, were never caught.</p><p>In fact, number 9 is squatted. Two lads, who call themselves D.Jen and D.Beal from "X-tribe", have stuck their pictures to the wall of the old living room. "Fuck U Mother Fucker" someone has scrawled. There are cigarette butts, bottles of cheap South African wine, and a bedroll and TV in the old cloakroom.</p><p>\"What Ghana's population explosion has done is suck young people into the city,\" says Aniwa. \"They live in kiosks, old shipping containers, anywhere they can find. Some live in incomplete houses. New suburbs and townships like Gbawe, Sowutum amd Ashiaman are sprouting.\"</p><p>\"Urbanisation will inevitably go to another level in the next 20 or 30 years,\" says Delali Badasi, a researcher at the Regional Institute for Population Studies at Accra University. \"The average young person does not want to live in rural areas. They are all leaving to come to the cities. The slums will increase. We can't even house people today. The problem is the speed of change.\"</p><p>Opinions are sharply divided among economists about the advantage of having a younger population and youthful workforce. According to the government, 250,000 young women and men enter the job market every year, but the formal sector is able to employ fewer than 5,000 of them. "A rising population will support local firms and inspire foreign investment, but unless the youth have jobs and social betterment is achieved, the risk of social uprising is profound," says Simon Freemantle, Standard Bank Africa's senior analyst. "There is a real risk of social instability if the disgruntled youth feel left out."</p><p>We had sent a message north to tell King Puowele Karbo III in Lawra that we were trying to track down the family of the young princess who had delivered a white baby back in 1949. But that had been several weeks ago and we had received no reply. So, with a long journey ahead, warnings of bandits and no idea of what would greet us at the other end, we, too, set off in some trepidation.</p><p>It takes at least two days to reach Lawra from Accra. We flew 400 miles to Tamale, found an old banger and a driver, and travelled the last 200 miles along some of the worst roads in Africa, passing the great Bole national park with its elephants and baboons, villages with names such as Tuna and Ya, and shops called The Forgive And Forget Chemical Drug Store. The land is mostly flat and, this being the end of the rainy season, quite green.</p><p>Late in the evening we presented ourselves at the palace, a rambling collection of low buildings, some built underground, a courtyard dominated by two enormous marble graves and several flagpoles. We were greeted by the king's brother, who said he knew we were coming because our car made an unusual sound. We arranged to meet the family the next day.</p><p>When you have an audience with King Karbo, you must bring libations, in this case two bottles of gin. He greeted us from his throne, animal skins strewn at his feet and pictures of his ancestors on the walls. "We believe that we have identified the woman your mother knew," he said. "She was one of the first ladies from the north of Ghana to be sent to Accra for training. My father believed we needed a trained midwife because so many children were dying under the traditional childbirth system. It was a very important mission. The whole community depended on her."</p><p>The concept of children in a place such as Lawra 60 years ago was pretty relaxed. They defined men's social standing, they were needed to increase wealth, they were assets to work the fields and fetch water, but numbers did not matter. A man did not look after them, and no one actually knew how big families were.</p><p>In retrospect, it would seem that King Karbo I, Puowele's father, was on a mission to populate Ghana singlehandedly. When he died in 1967, the family tried to count his offspring. "I did a population census of him in 1970," says the king. "We counted about 70 daughters and 35 sons. He left 39 widows. I could not count them all. Our children are many, and traditionally we don't count them. We don't actually know how many he had – he never counted them. He tried keeping records, but it didn't work."</p><p>Today, says Puowele, children are no longer seen as an asset. He has eight, his brother, an international athlete and recently retired university lecturer, five. \"The trend is downwards. Nowadays the demands [on families] are great. You are in deep shit if you have too many. So you go for quality rather than numbers.\"</p><p>If his father had been responsible for so many births, and his relative had devoted her life to saving children as a midwife, Puowele could be said to have played a major role in Accra's rise from a small town to a megalopolis. He was national director of planning in the city, and devoted a lifetime to trying to control the tide of young people heading to the cities from places such as Lawra.</p><p>"Yes, Accra is a mess," he concedes. "We just could not control the population. We created a green belt, we planned reservoirs to stop flooding, we planned for oil, but the [politicians] refused to implement these things." He and his colleagues even considered building a new capital city to take pressure off Accra. "We looked at Abuja, the purpose-built capital of Nigeria. You can build a city from scratch, but if you do not change behaviour, it will be the same as the old one."</p><p>Lawra survived by traditionally exporting its youths to Accra and the south, to the gold mines and coffee plantations. "Women here still have eight to 10 children, but these days they are living. We are the stubborn ones, who refused to die."</p><p>Even so, Lawra is testament to what happens if people overuse resources and approach their ecological limits as is happening across large parts of west Africa. "Our environment has suffered badly from the pressure of numbers," the king says. "Our natural resources are diminishing. Our forests are being cut down. We can no longer find the herbs we used to use. The river bed is now silting up because we are farming close to the banks of the river. There used to be a gap between the villages, but now they are joining up. We cannot capture rainfall in the increasingly long, dry spells. Climate change is taking place."</p><p>But Lawra's future, he says, is not bleak at all. Like most Ghanaians, he loves children and believes that, if planned better and given a fair wind, the country's burgeoning population will be the key to its future prosperity. "We will have to diversify, yes. We will learn new things. But we are still confident in the future. Lawra will become a city, with all its social problems."</p><p>He turns the conversation back to the princess. "I can tell you she is our auntie. Your mother was very observant to see she had chiselled teeth. Her name is Stella Yeru, or Mrs Kuortibo. She had four children, two of whom are living now. The boy is a tax inspector at Tamale. She filled a void. She paid her dues. She worked in Lawra and all the other big hospitals in the region. She would have trained very many people. It was very rare in those days for a woman to work in public service like her. We can think of no other women like her. She was a pioneer. If you worked under her, you had no place if you were lazy."</p><p>Out of the blue, the king then asked if I would like to meet her. I was flabbergasted. Stella must now be in her mid-80s and I had not expected her still to be alive, let alone there. "But she is very old. She is bedridden and has forgotten everything," he warned.</p><p>We find a very frail old lady lying in her bed on the veranda of the house she had had built just outside the palace walls. She was beautifully, even ceremonially dressed, but was very weak and clearly near the end of her life. Her son, Anthony, had come to be with her.</p><p>I held her hand as her helper told her that I had come from London because she had delivered me at Korle Bu hospital in Accra all those years ago.</p><p>"Yes, I remember the white woman," she said in a thin voice that spoke loudly across the generations.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ghana\">Ghana</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population\">Population</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnvidal\">John Vidal</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/%7Eah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fglobal-development%2F2011%2Foct%2F21%2Fghana-population-explosion\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"280\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"100%\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/7827?ns=guardian&pageName=Ghana%27s+population+explosion%3AArticle%3A1649960&ch=Global+development&c3=Guardian&c4=Global+development%2CGhana+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CPopulation+%28News%29%2CEnvironment&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Living&c6=John+Vidal&c7=11-Oct-21&c8=1649960&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Global+development&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FGlobal+development%2FGhana\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>As the world population hits 7 billion, John Vidal returns to the country of his birth to find the midwife who delivered him and to see how Ghana is dealing with a leap from 4 million to more than 25 million people</p><p>Sometime in 1947 or 1948, King Jorbie Akodam Karbo I summoned one of his young unmarried daughters to the palace at <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawra\" title=\"\">Lawra</a>. The all-powerful ruler of the small kingdom in the far north of what is today Ghana, but was then the Gold Coast, told the girl she must go to Accra, the capital of the colony. She was to learn to be a midwife and return to teach others, so helping to prevent the many childbirth deaths that were taking place in the community.</p><p>You can imagine her trepidation at leaving. The journey of around 600 miles south would have taken many days in the weekly post bus. The girl knew no one, none of her family had ever been to a city or seen the sea, and she would have barely seen a car, let alone a white person. She stayed in a boarding house and learned to nurse at the colony's principal hospital, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korle_Bu_Teaching_Hospital\" title=\"\">Korle Bu</a>.</p><p>At around the same time, another young woman, my mother, set off on what was to be an equally adventurous journey, from Liverpool to Accra by boat. My father was to be the last in a long line of West African colonial administrators, and, like the princess, Mum knew no one in Accra. She had barely met a black person, and knew only that the Gold Coast was a dangerous place because of malaria and other tropical illnesses.</p><p>The two women struck up a friendship in January 1949 after my mother, remarkably for the time, chose to give birth not in Accra's private European hospital but at Korle Bu, the public African hospital. Mum never told me the name of her midwife, but used to say I had been born with the help of the "beautiful daughter of the King of Lawra", who "had her teeth filed to sharp points that made me think she was a cannibal". Having me at Korle Bu, she said, was not just an act of faith in the new Africa then emerging with powerful independence movements after the second world war, but also a pragmatic decision. "You got a better standard of care there!" she would say.</p><p>The women never met again. Within a few years, we had moved to Nigeria and the King of Lawra's daughter had left Accra.</p><p>With the <a href=\"http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm\" title=\"\">world's population officially hitting 7 billion</a> this week, just 12 years after reaching 6 billion, I went back to Accra to try to understand the massive explosion in human numbers that has been largely responsible for Ghana's development since I was born, and that will, for good or else, determine its future. In those 60 years, the world's population has grown by two new Chinas and an India combined; Ghana has doubled and doubled again from around 4 million people to <a href=\"http://ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=202483\" title=\"\">more than 25 million</a>. It is projected to keep growing to around 50 or even 60 million people by 2050.</p><p>How will this small country, which is seen as one of the economic and social success stories of Africa but which is in most parts still desperately poor, cope with twice as many people in just over a generation? Clutching a birth certificate, some old black and white photos of the houses we lived in, a description of the princess with filed teeth who delivered me, and a tourist map, my plan was to find my midwife's family and to trace the roots of Ghana's population explosion through the places that we knew.</p><p>Clearly, the city to which the two women travelled in the late 1940s is unrecognisable today. Accra was then about the size of Stoke or Shrewsbury. Now it sprawls 30 or more miles from the old town centre, throwing up new slums and suburbs every year. A 1948 census estimated 4,113,345 people and 3,035,125 goats in the whole country. There were fewer than 2,500 Europeans and only 84 doctors, of whom just 17 were Gold Coast Africans.</p><p>What hits you hardest, though, is not Accra's size today but the fact that everyone is young. It is rare to meet anyone over 40. Officially, 3% of Ghana's population is over 60, but these are mostly invisible people. In fact, more than one in three people are under 14, and the country is adding nearly 500,000 children a year.</p><p>My questions started at Korle Bu hospital, in 1949 a collection of quite grand, collonaded buildings, these days Ghana's premier teaching hopsital. My old maternity ward is still there, now sponsored by Latex Foam, but most births take place in a purpose-built six-storey baby factory built in the 1960s. A young Accravian mother-to-be now has a choice of giving birth in nearly 20 private and public hospitals and clinics in the city. If the family has $5,000, she can stay in what is effectively a five-star hotel. If poor, as the vast majority are, she may have to share a bed or sleep on the floor at Korle Bu. Every day 35 babies are born there.</p><p>\"That's 12,000 babies a year from this one hospital,\" says Professor Samuel Obed, head of obstetrics and gynaecology, who says that Ghana's population explosion has been a triumph of modern midwifery, prenatal and maternal care. He puts the success down partly to people such as the young princess of Lawra who learned so well how to deliver babies and teach others. \"The vast increase in the number of people in Ghana today is entirely due to the efforts made to stop birth mortalities. I put it down to better education. As more people get a formal education, so they see the need to have proper prenatal care. Many women in the past never went for prenatal care. Now 95% in Ghana do. Back in 1949, it was only available to a very few people.</p><p>"In your mothers's time here, everything was still left to nature. People used to offer a libation or they would pray when they gave birth. You lived or you died in childbirth. It was very risky. A lot of people died. That is why in Ghana new mothers wear white. Birth is seen as a victory.</p><p>\"Your nurse probably came here at a very young age. She would have been one of the first generation of northerners to have a formal education.\"</p><p>The population explosion puts immense strains on the health service, he says, with nearly half the hospital's resources being spent on childbirth and the rest on illnesses related to malaria. "Everything comes down to money. We need to re-equip one operating theatre to take care of caesarean births. We need more nurses... The explosion in numbers is not going to go away. Women are having fewer children, but they are surviving and there are more and more families. It's cultural. If a couple have no children, you will have the in-laws round their necks. Pressure to have children is not going to abate."</p><p>\"Everyone used to have big families in your mother's day,\" says Felicia Darkwah, a retired teacher born in 1926 and typical of the wealthy, land-owning, educated Ghanaians who took over from the British at independence in 1957.</p><p>I met her in the sitting room of 47 Seventh Avenue, the first house we lived in in Accra. Most of the other houses in the street have since been pulled down and rebuilt as embassies, banks or private executive residences. They hide behind high walls and razor wire, are guarded night and day, and can cost as much as anything in Chelsea, London. But number 47 is almost unique. Still owned by the government, its grounds have been divided up for three other houses, but it has barely changed. The rosewood parquet floors are the same but now lifting, the ceiling fans have rusted a bit and been augmented by air conditioning, but the pre-independence bungalow with its tin roof is intact, lived in for the past 24 years by Felicia, her Cambridge-educated <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agronomy\" title=\"\">agronomist</a> husband and two of their children and their families. (One is now a very high-ranking government official who is fearful of being identified.)</p><p>"I am one of 13 children," Felicia says. "That was a small family for the time. My uncle's daughter, Animeh, died the other day and she had 100 children and grandchildren. I've known people with far more."</p><p>There seems to be a rule of thumb among educated Ghanaians that each generation has about half the number of children as their parents. Felicia had five children, and her children have two or three each. \"I don't think anyone needs to bother about the numbers in Ghana as long as we work hard,\" she says. \"We can produce enough food but the speed of growth is difficult.\"</p><p>I show her the pictures of my father's office, a young white man surrounded by more than 50 Africans. "This face looks familiar… and that one," she says.</p><p>Next week the UN will warn that the world population could spiral not to 8 billion or 9 billion people as demographers expected in the 1980s, but to 10 billion, or even 16 billion after 2100 if countries do not control their populations soon. And while it will be the rich whose consumption of goods is likely to destabilise the climate and global food supplies, it will be the very poorest countries of Asia and Africa that will be left to cope with inevitable large-scale environmental degradation, the explosion of slums, pressure on health and education services, and the reality of living in a world without enough food and water for all.</p><p>Of all the continents, Africa will see the greatest changes in the next 40 years – 11 countries in the world have fertility rates above six babies per woman and nine of them are there. Sub-Saharan Africa's population was around 100 million in 1900, 750 million in 2005 and the latest UN projections suggest it will level off at over 2 billion after 2050.</p><p>West Africa will be at the centre of this tidal wave of births. Nearby Nigeria, now with 150 million people, is expected to have 600-725 million before numbers start to tail off in 40 years. And far from reducing fertility rates, some countries', such as Mali's, are still rising.</p><p>Space is not the problem for Ghana or most other African countries. The continent is physically big enough to fit China, India and the US in its boundaries, and it can grow enough food for itself and for others. But a rapid, huge population increase linked to deep poverty in ecologically fragile, nearly landlocked countries such as Chad, Niger, Ethiopia and Mali terrifies planners and <a href=\"http://populationmatters.org/\" title=\"\">demographers</a> the world over.</p><p>In Niger, a few hundred miles east of Ghana, two in three people are under 20, women have an average of more than seven children and only 5% of adults use any form of contraception. If its current growth rate of 3.3% per year remains unchanged, by 2050 it will have 56 million inhabitants, from under 15 million today. It is already one of the poorest countries in the world, it is intensely vulnerable to climate change and is experiencing regular food crises.</p><p>Other west African countries, such as Burkina Faso, traditionally saw their youths migrating to other countries to relieve pressure on environments, but Ghana, growing at less than 2% a year, is much better off, says Marilyn Aniwa, head of the <a href=\"http://www.uaps-uepa.org/home/\" title=\"\">Union for African Population Studies</a>: "Hunger will not be the problem here. Contraception is still not widely used, but the country has land, water and space enough to double in numbers.</p><p>"But population is not about the numbers of children. It's about environment, rapid urbanisation, wellbeing and human rights. These are the areas that have not been addressed in the same way as midwifery and prenatal care. Development has not kept up with the numbers. What has been left behind is the social aspects."</p><p>You can't just pin all the problems on African governments, say demographers. Back in the 1970s, family planning was high on their and western political agendas, but in the 1980s countries such as Ghana were treated by the IMF and Britain as laboratories for enforced economic reforms and debt programmes. Contraception and family-planning programmes, just beginning to have an effect, were sidelined. The free market economy pushed on Africa may have worked for the cocoa farm and gold field owners of Ghana, but there was far less money for health and education. The result was a rapidly growing, ill-educated, fast-breeding generation living in a technically richer but more unequal country where people knew how to save children dying at childbirth but were not able to look after their long-term interests.</p><p>"The danger is that we now revert to how we were 30 or 40 years ago," says Emmanuel Ekaub, a Cameroonian demographer. "Maternal mortality is worsening across Africa again. Poverty is worsening again, and the cities and planners cannot cope."</p><p>Five minutes down the road from 47 Seventh Avenue is 9 Second Circular Road, a brutish two-storey house built by the colonial government in 1950 for my father and his young family. In those days it was exclusively for elites. Nothing changes. Now the road is reserved, it seems, for diplomats, judges, bankers, government ministers and people with £300,000 to spend on an apartment.</p><p>But number 9 stands empty behind a concrete wall. A large tree has grown right outside the front door, the gardens, laid out in the English cottage style of the 1950s, are overgrown, and a high court judge and his daughter live in what were the servants' quarters to the side.</p><p>Number 9 is still owned by the government but it hides a dark secret. No one wants to live there when they hear that, in 1982, it was the scene of Ghana's most notorious political murder. A military junta, led by <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Rawlings\" title=\"\">Sergeant Jerry Rawlings</a>, had seized power months earlier and there was a curfew in place, but on the evening of 30 June a death squad called on Cecilia Koranteng-Addo, a high court judge who was living here and, at the time, breastfeeding her baby. She was abducted, along with three others, and their bodies were later found riddled with bullets. The \"enemies of the revolution\", as Rawlings called them, were never caught.</p><p>In fact, number 9 is squatted. Two lads, who call themselves D.Jen and D.Beal from "X-tribe", have stuck their pictures to the wall of the old living room. "Fuck U Mother Fucker" someone has scrawled. There are cigarette butts, bottles of cheap South African wine, and a bedroll and TV in the old cloakroom.</p><p>\"What Ghana's population explosion has done is suck young people into the city,\" says Aniwa. \"They live in kiosks, old shipping containers, anywhere they can find. Some live in incomplete houses. New suburbs and townships like Gbawe, Sowutum amd Ashiaman are sprouting.\"</p><p>\"Urbanisation will inevitably go to another level in the next 20 or 30 years,\" says Delali Badasi, a researcher at the Regional Institute for Population Studies at Accra University. \"The average young person does not want to live in rural areas. They are all leaving to come to the cities. The slums will increase. We can't even house people today. The problem is the speed of change.\"</p><p>Opinions are sharply divided among economists about the advantage of having a younger population and youthful workforce. According to the government, 250,000 young women and men enter the job market every year, but the formal sector is able to employ fewer than 5,000 of them. "A rising population will support local firms and inspire foreign investment, but unless the youth have jobs and social betterment is achieved, the risk of social uprising is profound," says Simon Freemantle, Standard Bank Africa's senior analyst. "There is a real risk of social instability if the disgruntled youth feel left out."</p><p>We had sent a message north to tell King Puowele Karbo III in Lawra that we were trying to track down the family of the young princess who had delivered a white baby back in 1949. But that had been several weeks ago and we had received no reply. So, with a long journey ahead, warnings of bandits and no idea of what would greet us at the other end, we, too, set off in some trepidation.</p><p>It takes at least two days to reach Lawra from Accra. We flew 400 miles to Tamale, found an old banger and a driver, and travelled the last 200 miles along some of the worst roads in Africa, passing the great Bole national park with its elephants and baboons, villages with names such as Tuna and Ya, and shops called The Forgive And Forget Chemical Drug Store. The land is mostly flat and, this being the end of the rainy season, quite green.</p><p>Late in the evening we presented ourselves at the palace, a rambling collection of low buildings, some built underground, a courtyard dominated by two enormous marble graves and several flagpoles. We were greeted by the king's brother, who said he knew we were coming because our car made an unusual sound. We arranged to meet the family the next day.</p><p>When you have an audience with King Karbo, you must bring libations, in this case two bottles of gin. He greeted us from his throne, animal skins strewn at his feet and pictures of his ancestors on the walls. "We believe that we have identified the woman your mother knew," he said. "She was one of the first ladies from the north of Ghana to be sent to Accra for training. My father believed we needed a trained midwife because so many children were dying under the traditional childbirth system. It was a very important mission. The whole community depended on her."</p><p>The concept of children in a place such as Lawra 60 years ago was pretty relaxed. They defined men's social standing, they were needed to increase wealth, they were assets to work the fields and fetch water, but numbers did not matter. A man did not look after them, and no one actually knew how big families were.</p><p>In retrospect, it would seem that King Karbo I, Puowele's father, was on a mission to populate Ghana singlehandedly. When he died in 1967, the family tried to count his offspring. "I did a population census of him in 1970," says the king. "We counted about 70 daughters and 35 sons. He left 39 widows. I could not count them all. Our children are many, and traditionally we don't count them. We don't actually know how many he had – he never counted them. He tried keeping records, but it didn't work."</p><p>Today, says Puowele, children are no longer seen as an asset. He has eight, his brother, an international athlete and recently retired university lecturer, five. \"The trend is downwards. Nowadays the demands [on families] are great. You are in deep shit if you have too many. So you go for quality rather than numbers.\"</p><p>If his father had been responsible for so many births, and his relative had devoted her life to saving children as a midwife, Puowele could be said to have played a major role in Accra's rise from a small town to a megalopolis. He was national director of planning in the city, and devoted a lifetime to trying to control the tide of young people heading to the cities from places such as Lawra.</p><p>"Yes, Accra is a mess," he concedes. "We just could not control the population. We created a green belt, we planned reservoirs to stop flooding, we planned for oil, but the [politicians] refused to implement these things." He and his colleagues even considered building a new capital city to take pressure off Accra. "We looked at Abuja, the purpose-built capital of Nigeria. You can build a city from scratch, but if you do not change behaviour, it will be the same as the old one."</p><p>Lawra survived by traditionally exporting its youths to Accra and the south, to the gold mines and coffee plantations. "Women here still have eight to 10 children, but these days they are living. We are the stubborn ones, who refused to die."</p><p>Even so, Lawra is testament to what happens if people overuse resources and approach their ecological limits as is happening across large parts of west Africa. "Our environment has suffered badly from the pressure of numbers," the king says. "Our natural resources are diminishing. Our forests are being cut down. We can no longer find the herbs we used to use. The river bed is now silting up because we are farming close to the banks of the river. There used to be a gap between the villages, but now they are joining up. We cannot capture rainfall in the increasingly long, dry spells. Climate change is taking place."</p><p>But Lawra's future, he says, is not bleak at all. Like most Ghanaians, he loves children and believes that, if planned better and given a fair wind, the country's burgeoning population will be the key to its future prosperity. "We will have to diversify, yes. We will learn new things. But we are still confident in the future. Lawra will become a city, with all its social problems."</p><p>He turns the conversation back to the princess. "I can tell you she is our auntie. Your mother was very observant to see she had chiselled teeth. Her name is Stella Yeru, or Mrs Kuortibo. She had four children, two of whom are living now. The boy is a tax inspector at Tamale. She filled a void. She paid her dues. She worked in Lawra and all the other big hospitals in the region. She would have trained very many people. It was very rare in those days for a woman to work in public service like her. We can think of no other women like her. She was a pioneer. If you worked under her, you had no place if you were lazy."</p><p>Out of the blue, the king then asked if I would like to meet her. I was flabbergasted. Stella must now be in her mid-80s and I had not expected her still to be alive, let alone there. "But she is very old. She is bedridden and has forgotten everything," he warned.</p><p>We find a very frail old lady lying in her bed on the veranda of the house she had had built just outside the palace walls. She was beautifully, even ceremonially dressed, but was very weak and clearly near the end of her life. Her son, Anthony, had come to be with her.</p><p>I held her hand as her helper told her that I had come from London because she had delivered me at Korle Bu hospital in Accra all those years ago.</p><p>"Yes, I remember the white woman," she said in a thin voice that spoke loudly across the generations.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ghana\">Ghana</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population\">Population</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnvidal\">John Vidal</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fglobal-development%2F2011%2Foct%2F21%2Fghana-population-explosion\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "The strange and evil world of Equatorial Guinea",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/16104?ns=guardian&pageName=The+strange+and+evil+world+of+Equatorial+Guinea%3AArticle%3A1649450&ch=World+news&c3=Obs&c4=Equatorial+Guinea+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2COil+%28business%29%2CPolitics&c5=Unclassified%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Ian+Birrell&c7=11-Oct-23&c8=1649450&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FEquatorial+Guinea\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>When Nadine Dorries decided to lead Britain's first parliamentary delegation to one of Africa's richest states, Ian Birrell tagged along to see how our MPs coped with President Obiang's kleptocracy</p><p>It is hard not to be impressed when you arrive in the newly rich nation of Equatorial Guinea, especially when you are invited as a guest of the president. There is just a brief wait in the VIP lounge, with its white leatherette sofas and <em>The Naked Gun</em> playing on a flat-screen television, before you are whisked into your limousine, the usual hassles of passport control handled by friendly officials. Leaving Malabo airport you see what looks almost like a modernist sculpture of discarded aeroplanes, one of which has its nose pointing into the air. You wonder if this is some kind of weird memorial to the infamous Wonga coup attempt, when British-led mercenaries failed to overthrow your host in an attempt to get their hands on his oil wealth.</p><p>Then there is a drive for several miles along a new three-lane highway. Strangely, it is devoid of traffic – we passed no more than five cars coming in the opposite direction. On either side are new buildings planted among the impossibly lush foliage. There are offices for oil and construction companies, together with scores of new blocks of flats – again all empty.</p><p>Eventually you pass the conference centre, a concrete edifice built to host a recent African Union summit. Beside it is a complex of 52 identical mansions, one for every African leader attending the week-long event. It has its own heliport, of course. The houses are all empty.</p><p>\"Fantastic infrastructure here, isn't it, compared with the rest of Africa,\" enthuses one of my companions as we speed past. This is Adrian Yalland, an ebullient former spokesman for the Countryside Alliance who now speaks up for this West African dictatorship. He has not visited the country before.</p><p>Next, you pass an artificial beach and an ultramodern hospital before turning into an impressive Sofitel hotel with 200 rooms, the country's first spa and a bespoke island nature walk. An 18-hole golf course is being hacked from the verdant jungle. Even the obligatory picture of President Teodoro Obiang has been given a black-and-gold makeover, giving him the look of JFK. There are, however, hardly any guests.</p><p>Welcome to Sipopo. This Orwellian complex, grafted on to the capital, Malabo, is the face Equatorial Guinea wishes to present to the world. Obiang, now the longest-serving ruler in Africa and a man accused of presiding over one of the world's most corrupt, kleptocratic and repressive governments, spent more than half a billion pounds creating it as part of his drive to rebrand his regime. It is small change for a man alleged to pocket £40m a day in energy revenues; his tiny country is sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest oil producer.</p><p>It is like something out of <em>The Truman Show</em>, one of many illusions in a land of artifice. Sipopo cost four times the annual education budget in what is perhaps the planet's most unequal society, a country where per-capita wealth exceeds Britain but three-quarters of its 675,000 citizens live on less than a dollar a day. Infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world, but that spanking-new hospital, said one doctor, has no patients most of the time. Ordinary people, it turns out, are barred from the area.</p><p>This makes it difficult for hotel guests to get taxis in and out of town. But I was travelling with Britain's first parliamentary delegation to Equatorial Guinea, so we were cocooned from reality, taken around in motorcades led by police cars with blaring horns. It was great fun – although judging by the angry glares rather less so for local drivers forced out of the way. They are unlikely to complain, however; a pharmacist recently stopped by police over a minor traffic mishap said they beat him \"like an animal\".</p><p>The invitation to join the trip came from Greg Wales, a British businessman with a long-standing interest in the murkier corners of Africa – not least when he was associated with fellow Brit Simon Mann's plot to overthrow Obiang. In a surreal twist, he now promotes the regime he sought to oust seven years ago. He asked me as a cultural representative, given my interest in African music; I saw a rare opportunity to get a glimpse into a notoriously despotic regime.</p><p>Former foreign secretary Michael Ancram had been scheduled to lead the delegation, Wales told me, but was unable to make it. So there were just three backbench Tory MPs – none of whom appeared to have done too much research on Equatorial Guinea before sinking into their business-class seats on the flight out – together with two cultural representatives. The aim was clear: to persuade us this was a good place for business, arts and possibly even tourism.</p><p>The rain hammered down as we headed off for our first meeting. It was chaired by Ángel Serafín Seriche Dougan, a dapper fellow who is president of the parliament. Before this he was prime minister until he was forced out amid allegations of corruption – no mean feat in Equatorial Guinea. We sat in a row on his right while senior politicians from his country sat three abreast on sofas to his left. The watches on display were impressive.</p><p>\"We are here to find out about Equatorial Guinea and take back our impressions,\" said Nadine Dorries, the former nurse best known for her anti-abortion campaigning, heading the group in Lord Ancram's absence. \"We are incredibly honoured to be the first parliamentary delegation in your country.\"</p><p>There followed a polite discussion about the \"dynamic democracy\" of Equatorial Guinea. Mr Dougan said they held free elections with \"all the transparency possible\", discussed the freedoms given to opposition parties and explained how they were reforming their constitution along British lines. \"We will have two houses, so better to attend to the people. We are learning from you – you may say we do not go fast enough, but we are good pupils.\" He added that the two sets of parliamentarians shared common interests. \"From 1996 we have had oil and have been trying to develop the country. We try to use the resources with all possible transparency to develop the country for the welfare of the country.\"</p><p>Laudable aims. If only they were true. Freedom House, the respected US think tank, places Equatorial Guinea alongside Burma, North Korea and Somalia on its list of the world's worst regimes, a ruthless one-party state where elections are stolen, opponents jailed and state coffers looted, control of daily life is all-pervasive and the government is accused of grotesque human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial killings.</p><p>Britain's representatives responded with the following three questions as the illusory discourse continued: could the opposition raise issues to be debated in parliament? Could they apply for debates? And best of all, whether democratic reform was driven by politicians or the people. This came from Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North and former chief executive of the National Pony Society.</p><p>Then the cream-suited Yalland chipped in: \"One of the misconceptions of Equatorial Guinea is that you don't have a functioning democracy, but you obviously do with state funding and functioning political parties. One of the other major misconceptions is over civil liberties and human rights.\"</p><p>Dougan said he knew it was a big job for his guests to change the views of people in Europe and show them that not everything in Equatorial Guinea was negative. "You will leave as our first ambassadors," he concluded with a smile. Little wonder – cameras had been rolling and clicking constantly, ensuring excellent footage for state-controlled broadcasters. Official reports were hailing the arrival of an all-party group of 10 British MPs.</p><p>Despite the naivety of their questions, the MPs begun to twig that all was not as it appeared. Dorries confided she had noticed one of the female politicians had a Hermès handbag costing about £15,000. \"What sort of parliamentarian has a bag like that? It's the little things you notice that cause the alarm.\"</p><p>The answer was obvious, given the precedent set by the president. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo seized power in 1979 from his uncle, a man who claimed to be a sorcerer, collected human skulls and was such a tyrant that one-third of the population fled his murderous rule. Since then Obiang has created a brutal one-party state that revolves around his family. He is lauded on state radio as a god in "permanent contact with the Almighty" who can "decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell"; this has not, however, stopped him claiming to be a Catholic and being invited to the Vatican by successive popes.</p><p>Few outsiders cared much about events in this Spanish-speaking backwater until the discovery of oil. Then western energy giants moved in and the first family joined the global rich list. Obiang, blaming foreigners for bringing corruption to his country, told people he needed to run the national treasury to prevent others falling into temptation. The fantastic scale of his subsequent larceny became apparent when American inquiries into a collapsed bank discovered that Obiang controlled $700m in deposits there alone.</p><p>The most notorious member of the clan is Teodorín, the favourite son and presumed heir. His official salary as minister of agriculture and forestry is about £5,000 a month, but in just three years he spent twice as much as the state's annual education budget on luxury goods. He was caught trying to buy a £234m super yacht earlier this year – and last month was reported to have lost a briefcase in Swaziland with £250,000 inside. \"He's an unstable, reckless idiot,\" commented one US intelligence official.</p><p>Little wonder Estanislao Don Malavo, the minister of work and social security, told us: \"We used to be very poor. Then God answered our prayers – we discovered oil.\"</p><p>Like others we met, he repeated a mantra fed by their advisers that the world had the wrong impression of Equatorial Guinea. Certainly it is easy to be seduced by the capitals's crumbling colonial buildings, the tropical-gothic cathedral and the fancy new restaurants filled with expats – although the streets seem noticeably more subdued, the people more wary, than in other parts of Africa. \"People think that when you come here you will be shot at the airport,\" said Malavo. \"Our mistake was that we did not do anything to portray a more positive image.\"</p><p>The regime is spending huge sums on public relations, although this has not stopped criminal investigations in America and France. Obiang's first attempt to whitewash his image on the global stage came three years ago with the £2m sponsorship of a United Nations science prize, which caused such a furore with human rights groups it was never awarded. Now he is president of the African Union and adopting what one aide called more subtle approaches.</p><p>Hence our trip – and its highlight of a promised meeting with Obiang. So with the sun finally shining, we were whisked on the presidential jet over to Bata, the second city. An even bigger motorcade collected us at the airport, security men in reflector shades jumping out and opening doors as our cars slowed down. Waiting at the hotel, we watched a minister guzzling champagne at the bar before being told we must meet the prime minister, Ignacio Milam Tang, first.</p><p>Tang sat strangely rigid throughout our meeting, with his back ramrod straight and hands clasped tightly together. The only movement came from his legs, which shook uncontrollably. He was clearly extraordinarily nervous as he explained their goal to develop the country \"not just internally but morally in building a better society\".</p><p>Dorries opened with her now-familiar recitation about how honoured the delegation was to be there. \"We are here to dispel some of the myths about Equatorial Guinea and also with humility to offer you help to avoid the mistakes we have made.\"</p><p>Then came a bizarre question-and-answer session. Dorries, for instance, asked if Sipopo hospital would be open for everyone, to which the PM replied that it was new so people were unaware of it – this in a country where one in seven children dies before the age of five. Steve Baker, the earnest third member of the delegation with a fixation on free markets, asked about tax rates, to which the PM replied he did not know the exact figures \"since I'm not in charge of finance\".</p><p>After Tang said he did not know how to reply to my question on why he thought the country's reputation was so bad, Dorries conferred with Baker and finally raised the issue of repression. \"We keep hearing that you don't recognise your image. But that answer does not help us to help you,\" she said. \"It is particularly the question of human rights.\"</p><p>Tang replied that some governments tried to impose views that were not suitable because of cultural differences, before adding they were victims of stories emanating from the previous regime. As the meeting ended, he dropped his bombshell: the president was not in town, so he could no longer meet us.</p><p>Dorries, clearly irked, demanded another question \"if we are not going to meet your president\", and asked which of their cultural values were at odds with those of their critics. Tang looked uneasy, said he didn't know, then added that their \"African values\" could never meet \"your values in Europe\".</p><p>The mood became glacial. Baker and the ambassador to Britain joined in, the latter saying tribalism made democracy difficult, before concluding: \"We can't have people coming from Europe and telling us what to do without understanding Africa and the African way of doing things.\"</p><p>Dorries, who spent a year working in Zambia when she was younger, replied that the problem was "unacceptable diktats" from governments. "All African countries have tribes, but not all African countries have a reputation like Equatorial Guinea."</p><p>Tang responded that they were not the only African country with a bad reputation. \"People have tried to learn the truth of cultures before making accusations. Concerning what you say about diktats of government, let me say again: Equatorial Guinea is trying its best to be a country ruled by law. We are trying to do our best.\" He closed the meeting by thanking his visitors for their sincerity.</p><p>Outside in the corridor, the mood was tense. \"I need a cup of tea, I need a cup of tea,\" said Nokes. \"No one has offered me a drink. How can this country be developed?\"</p><p>By the time I returned to the hotel after another meeting, the party was polishing off pizzas and wine. Dorries ended the meal by telling Wales they were not being shown a proper picture of the country and would not write a "whitewash" report; he replied that they had been rude to their hosts and did not understand Africa. A furious row broke out.</p><p>Just at that moment, the mayor of Bata and governor of the state turned up for another official dinner. Needless to say, it turned out to be excruciating.</p><p>We never met Obiang. Nor did we get our promised trip to Black Beach, briefly home to Simon Mann and the most notorious prison in Africa, with its reputation for systematic savagery and torture. This was less surprising, despite all the claims that its infamy belonged in the past.</p><p>But I did meet Gerardo Angüe Mangue, who knows the prison all too well. A leading member of the Progress Party, he received a phone call in March 2008 urging him to get home quickly. When he got there, four policemen handcuffed him and beat him up outside the house, then threw him into a tiny cell at Black Beach. He was accused with fellow party leaders of scheming to overthrow Obiang.</p><p>For two months, he was kept in shackles. Police would regularly fetch him, bind his hands and feet and then suspend him from a pole threaded through his arms. In his tidy house, he demonstrated the crouching position he was forced into, his body screaming in agony as candles were lit under his face so the smoke choked him. Sometimes cold water was poured over him. \"Many people died under this torture,\" he said. \"I thought often I would die also.\"</p><p>The only sustenance was bread and water, while a bucket in the corner served as a toilet. Beatings were commonplace. After a few weeks he was moved to a cell with five other people, and the food improved with chicken necks and wings. For a year he was held incommunicado, then his wife, family and friends were allowed to visit if they paid the guards. Sometimes, they too were beaten.</p><p>Mangue, 50, told me women and children were among the inmates. A Lebanese man owing money to members of the country's elite died after police refused his girlfriend's pleadings to give him insulin for his diabetes, while a Nigerian died under torture. The prison was cleaned up before Red Cross visits, but most inmates were too scared to talk openly, he said.</p><p>He was freed in June after a presidential amnesty, although he was warned he would go straight back to Black Beach if he resumed political activity. So why was he talking openly to me? \"It is simple,\" he said. \"After you have been in Black Beach you have nothing to lose.\"</p><p>Another dissident offered to show me an alternative view of Equatorial Guinea. He smiled when he saw me emerge from a car with presidential licence plates, then asked if I was sure I wanted to join him since the last foreign journalists in Malabo had been detained by secret police then deported.</p><p>We wandered around Campo Yaoundé, a community of 25,000 people in the midst of the capital. The bustling streets were so muddy it was hard to walk without slipping. Soukous and hip-hop pounded out of bars as young children walked around hawking clothes. A man offered to show me his shack, made from planks of wood with a corrugated iron roof. Inside were two rooms for the four people living there, with buckets of water stored by the door and intermittent power. Many houses had far more people crammed in.</p><p>"Welcome to my home," he said with a rueful smile. "Maybe half the people in Malabo live like this. Not just the unemployed but teachers, engineers, even economists. It's a long way from Sipopo, isn't it?" There were a handful of books on his shelves bought in Spain. "We must be the only country in the world where there are no bookshops," he said when I mentioned them. Despite tough circumstances, he offered to share his dinner of rice and stew with me.</p><p>After leaving, the dissident gave me an example of how the regime offered illusions of change while retaining control. \"The opposition socialist party used to be unable to sell its papers. Now they can sell them openly in the street,\" he said. \"But anyone buying a paper is followed by plainclothes police and then questioned, harassed and intimidated.\"</p><p>He pointed to a striking yellow building in the distance, saying it was a new private school owned by the first lady. Then he showed me another yellow building; this one was more like a ramshackle shed, with wooden props that looked like they were stopping it collapsing into the mud. It was the local school, but there were no books, so the 100 pupils learned by rote.</p><p>A teacher told me schools used to make a little money by selling uniforms to parents. Last year, however, Obiang's family opened a textile factory and insisted all schools bought uniforms from there, increasing their wealth a tiny bit more and further undermining a poorly resourced education system.</p><p>This is the real face of the family ruling the wealthiest country in sub-Saharan Africa: ruthless, heartless and obscenely greedy. While the president stuffs his bank accounts and his spendthrift son fritters away a fortune on flash cars, more than half his people lack access to safe water, child survival rates are reportedly falling and numbers of children receiving primary education dropping. Obiang, meanwhile, concentrates on polishing his tarnished image; one of the visiting MPs was offered £20,000 to lure out colleagues.</p><p>The MP rejected the offer. Regardless, I could not help but wonder about such ventures after my unusual glimpse into the world of the parliamentary freebie. The British politicians returned home after a strange trip for which they made few preparations, asked few penetrating questions, sometimes patronised their hosts and never left their purpose-built bubble. Yet to give them credit, they had ventured into the unknown and ultimately refused to buckle down and whitewash the regime as expected.</p><p>In our meeting with the president of parliament, I asked the whereabouts of Plácido Micó, the lone voice of genuine opposition in parliament. \"We asked him to be here,\" Dougan replied. \"He is not around. Maybe he is out of the country.\"</p><p>He wasn't, of course. Micó snorted with derision when I mentioned this before telling me of how he was barred from the media, his meetings were broken up by thugs, his members sacked from their jobs. He has been arrested a dozen times and endured spells in Black Beach.</p><p>I asked Micó what he would have told Britain's MPs. \"My message is that the people of Equatorial Guinea are suffering one of the worst dictatorships. People here need help. Look at the interests of the people suffering, not of the oil companies and multinationals.</p><p>\"In the past 10 years most of the foreign people who come here are more interested in oil and to get commercial advantages than the lack of human rights and democracy,\" he said. \"People here could have a very good life with the oil and gas. Instead it all goes to Mr Obiang and his family.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/equatorial-guinea\">Equatorial Guinea</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/oil\">Oil</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ian-birrell\">Ian Birrell</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2011%2Foct%2F23%2Fequatorial-guinea-africa-corruption-kleptocracy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "The view from Doctor Doom",
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"content" : "<p>JUST back from chairing a panel session at an asset allocation conference in London. The lead speaker (and panel member) was Nouriel Roubini (who has inherited the title of Doctor Doom from Henry Kaufman). He outlined the case why he thinks there is a 60% chance of a developed world recession.</p><p>With the US economy at what he calls \"stall speed\" of 1% annualised growth in the first half of the year, it cannot continue in such a state. Either it must reaccelerate or fall into recession. He cited a whole range of factors as to why the second outcome was more likely.</p><p>History teaches us that financial crises are followed by anaemic growth and the developed economy is duly following the script. Rapid growth is implausible.</p><p>Tail risks are not transitory. Eurozone contagion has been spreading; the US government has almost been shut down by fiscal disputes and the super committee won't reach agreement; middle East conflict is also hitting more countries.</p><p>For the above reasons, the outlook is very uncertain and that increases the \"option value\" of waiting. Companies defer investment. Economic weakness can become self-fulfilling.</p><p>There is a vicious cycle in which bad macroeconomic news drives down asset markets which have an adverse economic impact; notably credit spreads have risen, increasing corporate borrowing costs.</p><p>Some recent US data have been encouraging. But that was true of the first quarter, only for growth to be revised lower. Big companies may be fine but surveys of small business sentiment are at depression-style levels.</p><p>US consumption has been artificially boosted by tax cuts and transfer payments that may not be repeated in 2012. Without them, the outlook is bleak given the weak labour market, slow wage growth and poor consumer confidence.</p><p>The massive increase in wealth inequality has redistributed income from labour to capital and from the poor to rich. This has reduced the marginal propensity to consume.</p><p>Policymakers are running out of bullets (an argument also made <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/21524886\">here</a>). Fiscal stimulus is being replaced by austerity; there is political resistance to bank bailouts; depreciating currencies to gain export share is a zero-sum game; and monetary policy is becoming impotent because QE merely leads to the build-up of excess bank reserves.</p><p>He also pretty much dismissed all the eurozone rescue plans as financial engineering. Doctor Doom indeed.</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ButtonwoodsNotebook/~4/Cxd3UZ8J758\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Mosquitoes Must Die.",
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"content" : "Dennis Ashbaugh <a href=\"http://www.metafilter.com/77393/The-Agrippa-Files\">(previously)</a> makes art exploring<em><a href=\"http://www.wingatestudio.com/Ashbaugh.html\"> our human relationship to science, biotechnology and genetic research.</a></em> He also doesn't like mosquitoes very much.\n<blockquote><a href=\"http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/48-305A/sketch.html\">Serra</a>, <a href=\"http://theartinquirer.blogspot.com/2011/07/phaidon-press-presents-carl-andre.html\">Andre</a>, <a href=\"http://www.askart.com/askart/d/mark_di_suvero/mark_di_suvero.aspx\">diSuvero</a>, <a href=\"http://art-documents.tumblr.com/post/359364419/donald-judd-untitled-six-boxes-art-and-bob\">Judd</a>, Heiser, and <a href=\"http://fromthefloor.blogspot.com/2004/07/pilgrimage-to-lightning-field-part-1.html\">deMaria</a> all have made great work in 3D. Also I had considered the 7 billion people on the planet, each of whom, has probably had the personal experience of being \"bitten\" by at least one mosquito and they could be a rather large audience for my work. I continued working on and refining the traps for two more years.</blockquote>The mosquito traps are \"ready,\" and can be viewed <a href=\"http://mosquitoesmustdie.com/#/the-traps/Traps-5\">here.</a><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=sYz45hGChQI:Qu5Fh8gu6Ko:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=sYz45hGChQI:Qu5Fh8gu6Ko:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "My experience in a Ghanaian driving school",
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"content" : "Inspired by Samuel Obour’s post The ‘Devil’ on our roads I’ve finally decided to spill the beans on my experience at a Ghanaian driving school. I had never driven a car before but I did go to motorbike training school in the UK and took a test. Much of the advice I was given by [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=grahamghana.wordpress.com&blog=11949077&post=1467&subd=grahamghana&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "“Just Trying to Get Better Cellphone Reception”",
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"content" : "<p>Dear ineffectually disguised intruder, dear<br> close call way out of turn, could you not have<br> thought of a better excuse when the police<br> doing Segway rounds caught you— having just<br> cleared the jutting-out branch of the maple,<br> having just jimmied the second floor front<br> windows of the neighbor, the ones that open<br> into atrium space clear from the balcony above<br> to the floor below? You didn’t know about<br> the thirteen foot drop, the jumble of plants<br> in pots by the door, the sharp cacophony<br> of broken terra cotta. Obviously you<br> had other things in mind— art work<br> in expensive frames on the wall;<br> a bedroom safe, shiny jewelry, small<br> appliances, cash found in a drawer:<br> anything, anything else but <em>that</em>.</p><p>—<a href=\"http://www.luisaigloria.com\">Luisa A. Igloria</a><br> 10 10 2011</p>"
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"title" : "Nuts and bits",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20111008_WBP503.jpg\" alt=\"\"><span>ABRAHAM TAKURA leans over a jute sack and holds his Motorola smartphone in front of a white label, on which are printed a bit of text and a few black lines. It is not that Mr Takura has a penchant for dull photographs: the lines are a barcode, which he is scanning. His phone duly records important data and sends them to a server in the German town of Walldorf: this sack of shea nuts, belonging to Fati Karimu, from Chamera Fong, has been delivered to the warehouse in Janga.</span></p><p><span>Janga, in northern Ghana, home to about 3,000 people, is reached by a spine-jarring 40-minute ride along an unmade, red-earth road. Water has to be obtained from the pump, but telecommunications are on tap. A red-and-white steel tower, the ubiquitous sign of Africa’s leap into the mobile-phone age, rises above the homes of mud and thatch, breeze-block and corrugated metal.</span></p><p><span>Janga’s tower has been here for a few years at most. Its women have been gathering shea nuts from the bush for generations. It is hard, dangerous work: there are snakes in the grass and the nuts are collected after they fall. But they are an essential source of income. The nuts are dried and made into shea butter, of which most is used in confectionery and some in cosmetics. It is said to do wonders for dry skin.<div></div><p><a href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/10/smartphones-africa\">read more</a></p></span></p>"
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"title" : "New Films",
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"content" : "<p>Here’s my semi-regular round-up of trailers for new African or African-themed films which I wish to get my hands on. It’s a big continent, so I am not surprised at the output. Some of these are sure to make the rounds at film festivals or short runs in art cinemas or pop up on obscure cable channels. (I’m still waiting for that entrepreneur who’ll start an African film Netflix. I’ll be a customer.) So here they are:</p>\n<p>Migration is a big topic in these films.</p>\n<p>First up there’s Swiss director Fernand Melgar’s “Special Flight”</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/9vL1PgyL0lk?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p><span></span>Film critic Leo Goldstein writes about “Special Flight” <a href=\"http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/09/film/activists-aliensfilms-of-unrest-at-the-2011-festival-del-film-locarno\">in Brooklyn Rail</a>:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">[Melgar] investigated a detention center for asylum-seekers in Switzerland; his new film concerns a group of foreign nationals at a rather darker place in the process. Many of the film’s subjects—a couple of dozen men, mainly originating from Africa and Kosovo—have lived in Switzerland for decades, working, paying taxes, and raising families. Now, at a detention center in Frambois, near Geneva, they sit in clean, gray institutional buildings, waiting to hear about the status of their appeals for citizenship, or else to be forcibly shipped out to their countries of origin, the “special flights” of the film’s title … [The] degree of access occasionally gives the film a professional polish that makes it seem almost staged. Stills from the film, which resemble a slightly sunnier Pedro Costa film, made more than one non-Swiss festivalgoer I spoke to think the film was a work of fiction.) Stranger still is the interaction between the detention center’s staff and the inmates (whom the former prefer to call “residents”), which is cordial, warm, and often even apologetic. Members of the staff welcome the detainees, express remorse for their situations, and hear out their grievances sympathetically, forming relationships that border on friendship. And when the orders come down for deportation, staff-members carry them out with an odd mix of duty, helplessness, and regret.</p>\n<p>There’s also Belgian filmmaker <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeIG4fXezuE\">Nicolas Provost</a>‘s “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjEvjB5SG2k\">The Invader</a>” which focuses on the travails of an African migrant in Brussels. The film has a brilliant opening scene. See Tom’s post later today.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/coloroftheocean\">Another feature film</a> with African migrants washing up on the shores of a European island at the heart of it; this time the Canary Islands:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/MzXRKLZ4LXU?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The very talented Akin Omotoso (somebody give him buckets of money to keep making films) directed “Man on Ground,” a film about xenophobic violence against African migrants by black South Africans in Johannesburg. <a href=\"http://www.artandculturemaven.com/2011/09/tiff-review-akin-omotosos-man-on-ground.html?spref=fb\">Here</a>‘s an early review and <a href=\"http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/2011/08/26/behind-the-camera-omotoso-reflects-on-funding-healing-xenophobia\">here</a>‘s an interview with Omotoso. Here’s the trailer:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/E7syzEXy2ZM?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>“<a href=\"http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/cardboardvillage\">The Cardboard Village</a>” about an Italian priest and illegal immigrants who take shelter in his church. Bonus: it stars “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner\">Blader Runner</a>” star Rutger Hauer. (I don’t know what to expect from that casting choice.) The trailer doesn’t make much sense, but here it is anyway:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/10/07/new-films/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/gEjp5R__aHw/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>And here–in its entirety–is a new short, “<a href=\"http://www.plowsharefilms.com/pages/film_counterfeit.php\">Counterfeit</a>,” about West African migrants selling counterfeit watches and fake handbags in Chinatown in New York City:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/17602593\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>And also a 12 minute short about racism and the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti (no surprises from which side the racism emanates):</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/61ky5aICIXE?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>“<a href=\"http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/alwaysbrando\">Always Brando</a>” part fake documentary, part drama about a Tunisian filmmaker’s obsession with the famed American actor:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/oKqWR68MXwo?version%3D3&width=600&height=450\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Another North African film. This time Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaidi’s “Death for Sale” about 3 young petty thieves:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/MG3dzT26XFk?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Then there is, “Les Hommes libres,” a period piece about an Algerian black marketer in Nazi-occupied France (also by a Moroccan director). The lead is played by Tahar Rahim who played the lead in the prison film, “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKxFbtLBuLg\">A Prophete</a>.” (I’m assuming this is in the same vein as the excellent “Indigènes,” which aimed to set the record straight about the roles of blacks and Arabs’ in the liberation of France during World War II):</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/OHsjuXuWuy4?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>“The Rhythm of My Life,” a documentary film about the Miami rapper Ismael Sankara who travels to Gabon to visit family and sort of figures out his life and career:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/-LfTZbWORG8?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>A number of German films have recently explored their country’s relationship to the African continent. (Remember “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN3xdM2hAFs\">Nowhere in Africa</a>,” ”<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQwdRgd4aJk\">Sleeping Sickness</a>“ and “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxttqsovtuM\">At Ellen’s Age</a>.” Now there’s “The River Used To Be A Man” about a German actor finding himself in some open African space. Here’s a clip (what’s with trailers that don’t mean or say much?):</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/VpMWiaY_kwA?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The trailer for director Aki Kaurismäki’s “Le Havre” (France) about the relationship of an elderly working-class couple in the French port city of the title with a a young, lovable African illegal immigrant they’re harboring and the police inspector searching for the stowaway. This film is loved by every mainstream critic who has reviewed it. The trailer suggests it has obvious tropes which appeals to American and European audiences:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/BpAFPgNyxmc?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Talk about films with cute children. “Lucky” is film about a young South African child and the AIDS epidemic there (remember “Life Above All” directed by Oliver Schmitz and which had a limited release here in New York City in the Spring). The director of “Lucky” is <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avie_Luthra\">Avie Luthra</a>, an Indian national. In “Lucky” there is a nice twist though; unlike most AIDS films he is not saved by a saintly white person: the lead character ends up in Durban with unscrupulous relatives, but is helped by a South African woman of Indian origin. As far as I know, apart from Leon Schuster’s racist caricatures (Disney just gave him guarantees to make more of that nonsense), “Lucky” might be the first time you have an Indian South African in a major role in a film coming from that country.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/q_FBdPcV6PM?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Back to documentaries: “Last Call At The Oasis” about the global crisis about water which affects us all:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/8lq5yy0pYoQ?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Films about the unfinished Egyptian Revolution our coming out fast. Take “Tahrir 2011: The Good, The Bad And The Politician.” The film is divided into three chapters; the first focuses on activists, the second on the police and the third the dictator Hosni Mubarak:</p>\n<p>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjA2XbUCcz0</p>\n<p>Then, Italian director Stefano Savona’s “Tahrir: Liberation Square”:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/26904025\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>There’s also the music-focused “<a href=\"http://www.microphone-film.com/\">Microphone</a>” by Egyptian director Ahmed Abdallah:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/TlkqSAGkToE?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The trailer for Columbia University art historian Susan Vogel’s film, “<a href=\"http://susan-vogel.com/Anatsui/Fold_Crumple_Crush.html\">Food, Crumple Crush</a>,” about the famed Ghanaian artist El Anatsui who lives in Nigeria:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/Gr0sSCV2UDg?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>There’s a few others for which I can’t find trailers:</p>\n<p>* The film version of Albert Camus’ final, unfinished novel based on his childhood in French-occupied Algeria, “<a href=\"http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/firstman\">The First Man</a>.”</p>\n<p>* “<a href=\"http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2011/educationofaumaobama\">The Education of Auma Obama</a>“ about Barack Obama’s sister, Auma, which includes home video of the young Barack Obama on his first ever visit to Kenya in the late 1980s. (<a href=\"http://a39.video2.blip.tv/7900009349789/Vibeandvegas-VIBEANDVEGASSHOWQASESSIONAFTERTHESCREEINGOFTHEEDUCA791.mp3?brs=150&bri=2.3\">Here</a>‘s a link to a post-screening Q&A with director Branwen Okpako and Auma Obama at the 2011 Toronto Film Fetsival.)</p>\n<p>Then a film, I have at the top of my wish list. “Indochina, tras la pista de una madre” (Indochina, Traces of a Mother) is the story of an Afro-Asian man (the son of a Vietnamese woman an and African soldier) who goes back to Vietnam. His parents met when his father, from Benin, was conscripted by France to go and resist Vietnamese independence:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/qZrXCh9mf1I?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>* A new film about the struggle around AIDS in South Africa (by veteran director Jack Lewis):</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/UnhJ4po_5Ho?version%3D3&width=600&height=450\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></iframe></p>\n<p>This film will definitely not make a commercial cinema screen here. The Senegalese director Mamadou Sellou Diallo films the pregnancy of his wife and the birth of his daughter. It’s also a film about womanhood in Senegal:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/QqFFJ4lsz4M?version%3D3&width=600&height=450\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></iframe></p>\n<p>* There are also some films about the descendants of Africans in America:</p>\n<p>Director <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/dianeparagas\">Diana Paragas</a> and writer Nelson George’s “Brooklyn Boheme,” about black life in late 1980s and 1990s Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is finally here. (That’s my neighborhood for the last 10 years). Here’s the first 5 minutes:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/n-f5gww1laY?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>There’s a documentary about black punk rockers Fishbone:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/ChXk4R0mGNw?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>A profile of foul-mouthed, ageing rapper Blowfly; in daily life the mainstream musician Clarence Reid:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/UCOBGotTMmM?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>“White Wash,” a documentary about black surfers (which reminds me of the film, “<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESogM8x59AA\">Taking Back the Waves</a>,” about Apartheid racism and surfing in South Africa):</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/9iNE4Qeye70?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>“Angel,” a documentary film directed by Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva, about a former Ecuadorian boxer, lately a transvestite prostitute in France, traveling back to his homeland:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/n36e9cA9WbE?version%3D3&width=600&height=450\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Helene Lee, who wrote a book–”The First Rasta”– about Leonard Howell, who is considered the founder of Rastafari in Jamaica, has now made a documentary about him:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/_BK4D8WpgaA?version%3D3&width=600&height=338\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\"></iframe></p>\n<p>* Finally, a couple of short films you can watch in full:</p>\n<p>Johannesburg filmmaker Palesa Shongwe–whose work reminds me of fellow South African <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/XIVUMBEKO\">Steve Mokwena</a>–has a short film (in full below) “Atrophy (and the fear of fading)” about nostalgia and youth:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/Y-dJNYHARbQ?version%3D3&width=600&height=450\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\"></iframe></p>\n<p>And, American Allysa Eisenstein’s film on homophobia in Uganda based around interviews with gay rights activists and the bigotry and hate they encounter:</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/14204295\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/31582/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=31582&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>\n\n\tThe following tale could well have been told on the one-thousand-and-second night:\n\n\tIn the first decade of the nineteenth century there lived in Reykjavík a merchant who sold new and secondhand furniture in a shop he ran on the first floor of a house his wife owned right next to the city lake. He bought some of his furniture in Copenhagen and had it shipped to him in Iceland. His wife’s house stood a stone’s throw away from the City Theater, where plays of both a sad ...</p>\t\n<p>\n \n\nTranslated from\n\t\n\t\tIcelandic\n\t\n\n\nby\n\tÓlafur Gunnarsson \n\t\n\n\n<span style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/bilingual/the-slayer-of-souls\"><i>bilingual version</i></a></span>\n \n</p>"
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"title" : "Counting one’s blessings",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/paperless_office1.jpg\"><img src=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/paperless_office1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"paperless_office1\" width=\"500\" height=\"139\"></a></p>\n<p>Today marks a pivot in my life. Yesterday I retired from the <a href=\"http://www.open.ac.uk/\">Open University</a>, after a long and productive career there. Today I become Vice-President of <a href=\"http://www.wolfson.cam.ac.uk\">Wolfson College</a>, where I’ve been a Fellow for many years and now become part of The Management (as it were).</p>\n<p>The worst thing about leaving an institution, I discovered, is having to clear out one’s office. I’ve spent the last week shredding a mountain of stuff — the accumulated paperwork of a 40-year academic career. (So much for the paperless office. Abi Sellen and Richard Harper <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001AQ91J4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=meme11-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B001AQ91J4\">were right</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=meme11-21&l=as2&o=2&a=B001AQ91J4\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">.) It’s said that if you fall from a high cliff, your life flashes before your eyes before you hit the ground. Well, much the same thing happens when you shred the documentary evidence of a long time in an organisation — all those committee papers, project reports, task-force agendas, visits and visitors, background for research papers, letters and memoranda from The Management, and so on. </p>\n<p>One thing that struck me as I shredded was how much energy I had expended on so many different things; many of them fizzled out, as you’d expect, but a few of them yielded real benefits. With my colleague Nigel Cross, for example, I changed the way the university approached the teaching of technology, for example, from an approach that focussed mainly on machinery and the environment, to one that was centred on issues and values as well on technical subjects. With Jake Chapman and others I persuaded the university to embrace the PC revolution and to require our students to have access to a PC for many courses; with <a href=\"http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/\">Martin Weller</a> I launched the institution into teaching online: our first course attracted 12,000 students in its first year, and the OU now has upwards of a quarter of a million students online; and with <a href=\"http://blog.ouseful.info/\">Tony Hirst</a>, <a href=\"http://b2fxxx.blogspot.com/\">Ray Corrigan</a>, <a href=\"http://www.sharedsolutions.ac.uk/people/andy-lane\">Andy Lane</a>, <a href=\"http://design.open.ac.uk/johnson/\">Jeff Johnson</a> and others launched the OU’s <em>Relevant Knowledge</em> Programme of short, online courses on fast-moving technological subjects.</p>\n<p>What also struck me as I looked back was how lucky I have been. I’m a baby-boomer, born in 1946, and what looking back over the record of references and job applications and further particulars and promotions brought home to me is the extent to which I belong to a truly blessed generation. When I graduated (with a First) in 1968 I had about thirty job offers (as an experiment, I had gone to all the ‘milk-round’ interviews then run by large corporations). All of my engineering classmates in 1968 got ‘professional’ jobs, and some went on to have very successful careers in large companies. One of my sons is now the same age as I was when I got that lectureship and he tells me that of his cohort of friends and contemporaries, only he and one of his friends have what one might describe as meaningful work. When I got my university lectureship the first thing I did was to go out and buy a house in Cambridge. None of my son’s contemporaries has been able to buy a house, and for some it looks like being an unattainable dream. And nobody on a junior lecturer’s salary could nowadays afford to buy even a simple terraced house in Cambridge. I’ve had a secure, tenured job doing interesting work for four decades, something that already seems implausible in the modern economy. And, to cap it all, I get to retire on a decent pension, linked to my final salary. If that isn’t luck, then I don’t know what is. </p>\n<p>All of which makes it ever more frustrating to see how my generation and the ones immediately succeeding it have comprehensively screwed up the prospects for my children and grandchildren.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sue_noticeboard.jpg\"><img src=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/sue_noticeboard-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"sue_noticeboard\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\"></a>As I shredded, most of the time memories whizzed by in an interesting but untroubling blur. But then I came on a document that brought me to a shuddering halt. It was the minutes of the first committee meeting at which I came face to face with Sue, the woman who transformed my life. She was then a rising star in the University Administration, a talented, sassy, ambitious girl who was clearly destined for greater things. And as I read this anodyne record of discussions held and decisions reached I was transported back to the moment in 1986 when I sat in that Committee Room stunned by her beauty and easy grace and wondered if such creatures ever talked to mere academics. As it turned out, she did. I fell for her — hook, line and sinker — and to my astonishment she fell for me. We had twelve blissful years together, and two lovely children, before fate (as PG Wodehouse would say) slipped the lead into the boxing glove. She died from cancer nine years ago. Meeting her was the most wonderful unexpected benefit of working at the OU, and if I had got nothing else out of my career, that would have been enough to justify it.</p>\n<p>I’m the last cohort of employees to whom compulsory retirement age applies. From today, employers will have to make a case for making people stop at the statutory retirement age. I could have made a case to stay on, but decided against it: I had too many other things that I wanted to do. As a father of two children of university age, the idea of having a useful lump sum was attractive. And to have stayed on might also have blighted the prospects of younger colleagues, or — in a time of budget cuts — necessitated staffing reductions elsewhere.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pinker_book.jpg\"><img src=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/pinker_book-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"pinker_book\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\"></a>Besides, there’s something absurd about the idea of ‘retirement’ for academics. Most of them continue to do what they do, regardless of whether they have an institutional perch or not. In my case, I’m simply moving to another corner of academia, but even if I weren’t, an observer would be hard put to notice any difference in my daily routine. I’ll still be blogging, for example. My <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/series/networker\"><em>Observer</em> column</a> goes on. I have a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0857384252/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=meme11-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0857384252\">new book</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=meme11-21&l=as2&o=2&a=0857384252\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\"> coming out in January, and am already incubating its successor. And a courier has just delivered Steven Pinker’s <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1846140935/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=meme11-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1846140935\">whopping new book</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.co.uk/e/ir?t=meme11-21&l=as2&o=2&a=1846140935\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">, which I’ll have to read because the <em>Observer</em> wants me to do an email debate with him.</p>\n<p>In other words: business as usual.</p>"
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"title" : "Transaction Taxes and Transparency",
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"content" : "The City of London is in a stir over the EU proposal of a financial transactions tax. The<a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/47d4d53c-e9c4-11e0-bb3e-00144feab49a.html\"> great</a> and the <a href=\"http://blogs.ft.com/the-a-list/2011/09/29/a-tobin-tax-is-a-leap-in-the-wrong-direction/\">good</a> are uniformly arrayed against such a tax. I am not so sure that it wouldn't be a good thing.<br><br>Here in Britain we now pay 20 per cent Value Added Tax on virtually everything we buy, except food, medicines and children's clothing. Yet the financial sector is exempt of any similar tax on transactions. This is patently unfair since approximately 5 pence of the 20 is required to finance the state bailouts of the financial sector. As a regressive and unfair tax, that is hard to beat.<br><br>In addition to raising revenues from an investment banking sector which has decimated public finances for a generation to come, a transaction tax might be a very good thing from an accountability and transparency perspective. <br><br>Those opposing say it would be anti-markets and drive trading offshore. Markets clearly do not work properly anymore at price discovery, liquidity aggregation or trade transparency. I rather think markets would work better if those participating had an economic stake in the transaction longer than a nanosecond, and a trading objective more durable than front-running real investors with HFT gaming. <br><br>More than that, a transaction tax would recognise that the state adds value to the market and deserves to be recompensed for that value. A huge part of the operational value of developed markets is derived from the rule of law. Taxing transactions would be recognising that each transaction benefits from the legal system which makes such a transaction valid and enforceable.<br><br>In my view, the way to make the transaction tax workable and cost-effective is to incentivise the reporting of transactions and the payment of tax. The way to do this is to legislate that transactions themselves will only be legally enforceable if there is a record that the tax has been paid. Anyone might choose not to pay the tax, but if they want to enforce a trade or debt obligation they are on their own. If they want recourse to the courts, rights to exercise on margin/collateral or a valid claim in insolvency, then they pay the tax as their ticket to rely on the legal system.<br><br>In the United States we see that the <a href=\"http://foreclosuredefensenationwide.com/?p=175\">MERS scandal</a> boils down to the wholesale attempt by US banks to avoid paying the transaction taxes on land mortgage registrations with local counties and states. As a result, the very enforceability of millions of mortgages is being thrown into doubt as a matter of law.<br><br>Had originators, banks, investment banks and investors been forced to register interests in mortgages in compliance with the law, some of the great abuses of securitisation would have become much more difficult to sustain for so long. In that sense, transparency would have promoted greater accountability and helped curb abuse.<br><br>The public has an interest in the integrity of markets. That integrity has been undermined horribly over the past 25 years by demutualisation of exchanges and clearing houses, fragmentation of markets to off-exchange systems and derivatives, leveraged shadow banking, and information assymetries between highly concentrated market insiders and everyone else. We now don't know who owns what and who owes what, and that means that economies are operating with dangerous blind spots. Relaxed accounting rules and forbearance on capital mean that mis-pricing and mis-allocation of capital are endemic and worsening, making any recovery even more doubtful. <br><br>A transaction tax on trades, as a pre-condition to legal enforceability, might restore some integrity to markets. That would help restore more efficient functioning to economies with much greater promise than further bailouts to banks."
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/09/28/multimediality/africasacountry-21/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-32088\"><img title=\"africasacountry\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/africasacountry1.jpeg?w=598&h=391\" alt=\"\" width=\"598\" height=\"391\"></a></p>\n<p><span></span>Algerian-born French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, author of <a href=\"http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/davis/davis8-17-06.asp\">The Politics of Aesthetics</a> has some strong words about Yinka Shonibare’s art:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">“Multimediality” only means that you combine several media. The combination may be implemented in various ways, with various intentions and effects. The combination may be an addition or it may be a fusion. The addition may produce a surplus of sensory power or it can create a lack, a gap or a distance. Multi-mediality has often been used by conceptual artists to explore the relations between words, meanings and visible forms. When <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Hill\">Gary Hill </a>used a number of monitors as sculptural elements to explore the relations between a mouth and the words that go through it, this could hardly be considered as “hyper-spectacle”. Yet, in contrast, when <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rhoades\">Jason Rhoades</a> built his gigantesque installation that was supposed to represent the bellows of the capitalist machine swallowing everything and turning it to shit, he may have had the intention of denouncing the capitalist machine, but what remains on the ground is a kind of theme-park entertainment. The same occurs when <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=Yinka+Shonibare\">Yinka Shonibare</a> creates his <a href=\"http://www.quaibranly.fr/en/programmation/exhibitions/last-exhibitions/garden-of-love-created-by-yinka-shonibare-mbe.html\">Garden of Love</a> (2007) where he turns some well-known French 18th century paintings into “tableaux vivants” and dresses the characters with batik cloth.* He may have had the intention to both denounce the reality of slavery behind the happy amorous scenes of noble life and the false authenticity of African batik, which actually was made in Indonesia, but what remains is a wax-museum scene. More generally I would say that there is no straight connection between multimediality and subversion (or subjugation). A technical dispositif is always at the same time an aesthetic dispositif, and it is at this level that art may take on such and such political meaning, according to such and such a context.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://thesip.org/2011/09/interview-with-jacques-ranciere/\">Source</a></p>\n<p>* Shonibare’s Garden of Love was held at, and created for, the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, April 2–July 8, 2007.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/32005/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=32005&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2011/09/22/but-whos-the-real-criminal-its-me-isnt-it/\">Daniel Davies’s effort to become the most popular man in Britain</a> has, apparently, not developed to his advantage, to quote the Emperor Hirohito. It struck me that there are two opposed explanations for the unusual toxicity of the comments thread that ensued, and they tell us quite a lot about the Great Bubble and the Great Recession that followed.</p>\n<p>The first would be Daniel’s explanation. Look at them! It took only six comments for someone to analogise him to a soldier whose commander pays him in whiskey and cigarettes to cut the ears off prisoners, and sixty-five for someone to compare him to one of the anonymous organisers of the Holocaust. We got to Josef Stalin by comment 115 and to Megan McArdle by 108. Surely, this is evidence that there is an unreasoning and unproductive rage around at anything that smacks of banks, bankers, or banking.</p>\n<p>The second would be mine. Fans of Daniel Davies’s work since the distant era of Adequacy.org will appreciate that he is a practised and expert troll, and distinguished among the guild of ancient Norwegian bridge-guardians by the fact he can turn it on and off as desired. Knowing that bankers are unpopular (were they ever popular?), and that Crooked Timber is a website full of left-wing people, he crafted a post that would cause them all to freak out amusingly.</p>\n<p>You will of course notice that the basic distinction here is that one explanation is demand-driven and one supply-driven. The first assigns agency to the buyer, the second to the seller. The distinction is important in economics – one of the most standard assumptions is that consumer sovereignty holds and that firms are generally price-takers. Another key assumption is that industry fundamentally responds to demand. Electrical engineers would say that it is load-following, like a power plant whose output can be throttled up or down to respond to the needs of the grid. </p>\n<p>In itself, this isn’t controversial. Industries produce what they can sell. There are lags in the supply-chain, and it’s possible to have temporary shortages or surpluses, but basically, the rate of production is both constrained and driven by demand. But the stronger form of this argument, and the one that is baked into essentially all economic models, is that not just the quantity of goods, but also their quality and kind, is demand driven. The distinction between drivers and constraints is important here. It is obvious, and trivial, to say that things nobody will buy won’t be produced for very long. But that is only half the argument.</p>\n<p>How did we decide to try making fireguards out of chocolate, or self-certifying mortgages with negative-amortising interest rates, in the first place? Obviously, there are cases where new products do respond to an identifiable demand. At the level of the whole economy, though, this implies that every conceivable product or service already exists in latent form in the minds of customers, as if there was a statue in every block of stone waiting to get out. This is…somehow implausible and unsatisfying. Among other things, it has the curious consequence that being really true to the core assumptions of economics implies eliminating the role of the entrepreneur, at least as an inventor or product designer rather than as an operational manager.</p>\n<p>If entrepreneurs are a thing, on the other hand, we have to accept the possibility that firms have agency in structuring the markets they sell into, that even if aggregate supply doesn’t create its own aggregate demand, it is possible for <em>specific</em> supply to create its own <em>specific</em> demand. It’s Milan fashion week, after all – an institution exquisitely dedicated to the proposition that producers can at least try to define what consumers will want.</p>\n<p>Now, back to the mortgage market. Mortgage brokers are a fine example of a business that really is demand-driven. People come to them and say how much house they are trying to buy, and the broker tries to find someone who will lend them the money. As they were both in competition as firms, and usually rewarded on commission as individual workers, their structural incentives were to follow the housing market wherever it went. In that sense, property buyers had real agency and hence culpability. The broker/originator sector was also meant to evaluate their creditworthiness, but as it didn’t take the risk on the loans itself, it didn’t have any incentive to turn people down. It had agency, and therefore also blame.</p>\n<p>But what about the banks? Just treating them as a normal business is illuminating. Businesses invent new products all the time – sometimes following demand, sometimes reaching ahead of it. Sometimes, what they invent is dangerous to the public and they have to be restrained. Nobody would argue, for example, that in inventing the RBMK nuclear reactor, the Soviet nuclear industry wasn’t berserkly irresponsible and directly to blame when one blew up.</p>\n<p>And one product the banks surely did invent was outsourced mortgage-servicing. This practice may yet prove to be one of the most pernicious of the Great Bubble, not because it led to illegality as such (although there’s plenty of that), but because it is a major obstacle to recovery, and it is the more profitable the longer it stays that way. When lenders were responsible for collecting payments and dealing with borrowers themselves, they were much more likely to be reasonable with borrowers who struggled to keep up the payments. They had good economic reasons for this; typically, they would recover much more of their money in a negotiated settlement than in a foreclosure, an expensive process in itself that usually ends with the property going for auction at a fire-sale price.</p>\n<p>But once the servicing function is outsourced, the incentives are actually <em>reversed</em>. Not only does the servicer, the party who has direct contact with the borrower, have no incentive to agree a modification of the original loan, they have every reason to insist on foreclosure. They get paid based on the tasks they carry out, and foreclosure generates a lot of lawyering and letters, all of them chargeable to the lender.</p>\n<p>Now, there are three ways out of a balance-sheet recession. One is economic growth itself. As, I recall, Daniel Davies once said, if you are in debt as an individual, the best solution of all is to increase your income if it is at all possible. And the Kulmhof-Ranciere study argues that increasing real wages is the best way out of the crisis at the macro-level. Another is inflation. And the point has been made, by one Daniel Davies among others, that inflation is a rather simple mechanism to adjust all sorts of contracts that were set at nominal prices that have become unpayable, one which avoids all the complex machinery of courts and loan officers.</p>\n<p>And a third is bankruptcy, in which we recognise by law the fact that both the lender and the borrower agreed on a contract that has become impossible to honour, and both of them share in the cost of cramming it down to a realistic level. Here is a case in which a major new product invented by the financial sector, in advance of demand, is directly blocking one of the three roads to economic recovery. To what extent the banks are responsible for the lack of progress on the other two is left as a topic for discussion.</p>\n<p>In my next post, I’m going to look at some more people who are to blame. They are not Greek schoolteachers.</p>\n\n\n<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/circular-logic-watch/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: Circular Logic Watch\">Circular Logic Watch</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/what-goes-up/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: What Goes Up……….\">What Goes Up……….</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/ireland-a-recession-of-the-banks-by-the-banks-and-for-the-banks/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: Ireland: A recession of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks\">Ireland: A recession of the banks, by the banks, and for the banks</a></li>\n</ol></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=62IBKpS1Db0:r5Yw4XM2N60:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=62IBKpS1Db0:r5Yw4XM2N60:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=62IBKpS1Db0:r5Yw4XM2N60:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=62IBKpS1Db0:r5Yw4XM2N60:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=62IBKpS1Db0:r5Yw4XM2N60:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "here's a tragedy: women cursed with holding doors open for everyone meets man cursed with the inability to go through a door if a women is holding it open.",
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"content" : "<p>Indeed Madam, this is how I have come to be with my dearest darling; though we have since passed that first threshold. <br><br>I had it favorably in mind to attend a comic opera but found myself late for the first act, having stopped off to obtain some Garibaldi biscuits.<br><br>She stormed out of the unsatisfying performance, hammer and tongs, toward the front doors of the playhouse where we found ourselves at curious odds in our opposing positions. Withal, our initial vexation gave way to verdant affection and here we find ourselves as two doves atop the proscenium of this ‘stage’ we call life…</p>"
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"title" : "Gadhafi's Legacy to Africa",
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"content" : "<p></p><div style=\"float:right;margin-left:10px\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blacklooks.org%2F2011%2F09%2F419-reasons%2F\"><br>\n\t\t\t\t<img src=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.blacklooks.org%2F2011%2F09%2F419-reasons%2F&source=blacklooks&style=normal&service=bit.ly&b=2\" height=\"61\" width=\"50\"><br>\n\t\t\t</a>\n\t\t</div>\n<p>In two weeks Nigeria will attempt yet another deception by claiming to “celebrate’ 51 years of independence. There will be the usual speeches, parades and flag waving by undignified dignitaries. Bloggers and Tweeps will simultaneously rubbish the country, ask for God’s salvation, pray and claim its not really that bad and continue the search for 419 Reasons to Like Nigeria. Growth is at 7% but there is no national grid and everyone relies on generators; billions have been made from oil yet the region where it is produced is impoverished.</p>\n<p>Today the country is faced with daily attacks by <a href=\"http://yusufislamicbrothers.blogspot.com/\">Boko Haram</a>; religious and ethnic violence in Plateau State; rumblings from ex militants in the Niger Delta; political assassinations and increasing number of kidnappings; the labeling and abuse of children as witches. Encircling all of these is the ongoing corruption and here I am not only referring to politicians and civil servants but religious institutions and just about every aspect of life; the persistent decades long crisis in education, health, infrastructure, environmental destruction and the violence of poverty. Of course none of these are peculiar to Nigeria and there are countries where corruption, poverty levels and violence are far far worse. But I dont want to get into the trap of comparisons. The point is how do we as citizens respond to our realities? How do we respond to the gang rape of a young woman which is subsequently broadcast on YouTube or the extrajudicial murder of a young man also broadcast on YouTube?</p>\n<p>By launching a campaign on <a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/2011/09/05/introducing-419-reasons-to-like-nigeria/\">419 Reasons to Like Nigeria and Nigerians</a>? The campaign takes its name “419” from the financial scams originally associated with Nigeria but copied by fraudsters throughout the world. The first initiative to “like Nigeria” was the ‘<a href=\"http://www.419positive.org/\">The 419Positive Project’</a> which invited Nigerians and their friends to come up with “419 positive attributes of Nigerians”. The “419 Reasons to Like ……..” follows on from this by asking bloggers and tweepers to write positive things about Nigeria which seems to me to be not only a thankless task but given the serious failings and present crises, wholly misdirected. The energy spent in trying to come up with positive reasons to like a country would be better spent in organising and campaigning around the many problems which are being neglected. <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/419Positive\">The “419 positives”so far listed</a> such as a Nigerian winning political office in Poland or winning a sporting event, though wonderful personal accomplishments, have no bearing on the shaping of political and economic forces in the country. There is a political immaturity about the 419 Reasons……. which is little more than a tabloid gimmick with minimal substance in a country which is addicted to corruption, to militarism, to individualism, to religion and hypocrisy. Though I fully respect her decision to stop writing, how I miss the insight and critical thinking of one of the very few serious Nigerian political blogs, <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com\">Nigerian Curiosity</a>.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p>Nigerian leaders have always viewed criticism as unpatriotic or even treason and many a journalist has paid the price for daring to speak out. We as citizens should not fall into the same stupor of denial. To be critical is not a betrayal rather it is our duty as citizens to raise the national consciousness and seriously engage with political processes.</p>\n<p>Take the gang rape of the young woman and incidentally four weeks on and people continue to watch the video. Abia State University deny the rapists are students. Neither the police nor the State government officials have come out to even make a statement let alone investigate and hopefully arrest the rapists. Many of the comments on the <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/nigeriansagainstrape/\">Facebook page “Nigerians Against Rape</a>” are voyeuristic as people go into detailed discussion on the video – who said what and did what and when and so the rape goes on and on.</p>\n<p>Of course there are positives for instance resistance to violence and militarism or searching for ways to ensure that when women are raped they can expect to receive justice. Here we can turn to the numerous examples of women who historically have been at the forefront of struggles for social and economic justice such as the market women of Aba and Egbaland, Ogoni and Ijaw women. But these are not individual achievements they are actions by communities. What would they have achieved by trying to come up with 419 positives instead of facing the colonial state or an occupying army?</p>\n<p>There is something disturbing whereby people feel the need to be liked because of their nationality or person which assumes one can be disliked for the same reason – neither is rational. 419 Reasons….. is an obsession with the self – please please like me because I am a really nice person and I can prove it. It’s the encounters with people and communities and how we experience each other that influences the way we feel about particular people or groups of people.</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "Heart of Dickness",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uqW4AFWhEKo/Tmvl97dvLdI/AAAAAAAAB7o/hNIctHe_VCg/s1600/dick_cheney-smiling-2-18-10.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:158px;height:200px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uqW4AFWhEKo/Tmvl97dvLdI/AAAAAAAAB7o/hNIctHe_VCg/s200/dick_cheney-smiling-2-18-10.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a> If Charles Manson were to publish his autobiography, a lot of media people would find it hard to turn down an invitation to interview him. So it's not surprising that Dick Cheney, <a href=\"http://www.blogger.com/v\">who, you may have heard, has a book out</a>, has been all over the TV these past few weeks. It should go without saying that the one question any interviewer should want to lead with is, \"Mr. Vice-President, you, alone of all the architects of the invasion of Iraq, have always maintained that there are solid grounds for believing that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and that the invasion was therefore directly connected to avenging the murders of thousands of Americans on September 11, 2001. You made this claim when you were a sitting vice-president, and continued to make it even as the CIA and the President you swore to serve always insisted that it wasn't so. Since you lied about this, despite the fact that you must have known that no sane person could possibly have believed you, why should anyone believe anything you say in your book?\" I haven't seen every second of all the interviews Cheney has given as part of his book tour, but I'm guessing that no one has asked him this, because I'm pretty sure that if someone had, it would have made it onto my Yahoo front page. I'm not even going to ask Google about the only follow-up question I'd like to hear, which would involve reminding Cheney of the vote he cast in Congress against a measure that would have called for Nelson Mandela to be released from prison, and then asking him to make his best case for why Mandela having spent so much of his life in a cell and Cheney not spending a minute in one has, overall, been a good thing for the world.<br><br>The chief difference between Manson and Cheney is that the media long ago settled on a consensus opinion about who Manson is. In 2000, after Cheney was put in charge of helping George's kid settle on a running mate and somehow found all the possible candidates save himself irreparably flawed, the official line on Cheney was that he was a flaming moderate wise man and consensus builder who would be a fine steadying influence on rash young Prince Hal. Given Cheney's voting record in Congress and his oft-stated conclusion, particularly in reference to Richard Nixon during Watergate and Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra, that the office of the presidency was insufficiently powerful and the president himself too accountable to trivial things like the law of the land, there is no good explanation for why anyone would have claimed to think this, except that he looked the part, just as the media has long insisted that George Will must be a serious political philosopher because he has poofy hair, a stern gaze, and dresses like a member of the Nation of Islam. (When somebody mentioned the Mandela vote during the coverage of the 2000 Republican convention, I swear I heard more than one analyst explain that it was just a symbolic measure that wouldn't have actually gotten Mandela out of stir, and when a choice is symbolic, why <span style=\"font-style:italic\">wouldn't</span> you take the morally indefensible position?) By now, the settled opinion on Cheney is divided between the \"crazies\" who think he's evil incarnate and the idiots who would rather not think about it, but, if they had to, would probably say that he is a serious statesman with a long, distinguished career who, at a moment of crisis that might have brought out something other than the best in any of us, may have taken certain ideas about executive privilege that, in retrospect, one can see were always present in... his... hoo boy! The one thing everyone seemed to agree on a couple of years back was that Cheney would never write a book about his experience as vice-president, because to do so would make it appear that he cared about the verdict of his history, and it was obvious that he was too majestically, serenely self-assured to give a fig what anyone now or later thought of him. Whoops!<br><br>The tenth anniversary of 9/11 provides the country with the opportunity to look back and remember those who lost their lives that day, but it also commemorates a terrible, freakish atrocity that led to a very strange and self-destructive time in America. Many people have started to take into account the scale of the self-destruction, both to the country's moral stature and to its economic health. (When the tax cuts Bush rammed through early in his first year in office--a tax cut package that, before 9/11, seemed to be the only thing he really cared about using his four years in office to accomplish--and the first recession of his administration hit and the budget surplus the previous president had left him to safeguard instantly turned into a massive deficit, Bush conceded that he hadn't foreseen any of the horrors he was having to deal with when he'd insisted, on the campaign trail, that his tax plan wouldn't create any deficits at all. But he never considered raising taxes, or even just not further cutting them, to pay for his wars and his enormous expansion of the federal government to pay for his new security bureaucracy.) But I think it's a sign of just how far we have to go in coming to terms with the response to 9/11 that many people still don't quite accept how strange and illogical it was, at every step.<br><br>As Nicholas Lemann <a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/82220/decision-points-book-review-bush?page=0,2\">wrote earlier this year in a review of Bush's memoir</a>, \"Politicians usually pluck their ideas out of the atmosphere, but invading and occupying Iraq was not in the air, even after September 11. The idea that if Saddam Hussein had 'WMD,' the United States should of course unseat him militarily—the only question at hand, therefore, was whether the widespread suspicion that he had the weapons was true—was a Bush creation.\" Matthew Yglesias <a href=\"http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/29/307341/tales-of-the-gore-administration/\">recently addressed a study</a> that found that most people don't think the state of the nation would be that different if the Supreme Court had allowed Al Gore to collect his prize back in 2000, and while Yglesias rightly pointed out how insane this is, and how likely rooted it is in the reluctance of people of all political stripes to just want to reject the possibility that a terrible, avoidable mistake was made and then just accepted by the public at large, even Yglesias takes it as a given that 9/11 would have happened if Gore had been president. Of course, we'll never know for sure, but when you take into consideration how focused the Clinton administration's security apparatus was on al-Qaeda, how quickly the Bush administration--citing its official philosophy that anything Clinton believed must have been wrong--abandoned that approach in favor of a mysterious fixation on the successfully isolated and neutralized Iraq, the ignored warnings, and everything else, it seems strange that a culture that loves to kick the big \"What If?\" questions around considers this one off limits. In the last ten years, you heard more idle speculation about whether FDR had definite foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor than about whether a Gore presidency would have prevented 9/11, just as the people in place before 9/11 foiled the millennium attack plots. Likely the thought that an intellectually corrupt decision made by partisan Supreme Court justices and applauded by the media as the end to a long national nightmare might have led to a lowering of our defenses when we needed them the most is just something nobody wants to even speculate about.<br><br>This isn't idle speculation designed to piss off half the country and make the other half whisper, \"Don't go there!\" (If I wanted to just piss off half the country, I'd ask if anybody really believes that there are any Republicans who wouldn't regard it as an act of treason to out a CIA agent just to get at someone who'd published embarrassing and accurate information in a newspaper op-ed piece, if a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Democrat</span> had done it.) It's about what out to be an ongoing debate about how to deal with these things, a debate that ought to take into consideration what experience has shown us, not just what the latest partisan meme states. Rahm Emanuel got in a lot of trouble for saying, with regards to the economic meltdown, that you don't want to let a good crisis go to waste, but he was right. Crises are wake-up calls, and you don't want to just apply a band-aid to them; you want to take the opportunity they provide to use bold strokes and try new ideas. That's what the Bush administration did with the crisis of 9/11, and there's nothing wrong with that in theory. It's just that all their biggest ideas were bad, and based on soft and self-serving ideas about how the world should work that had rough consequences for a lot of people. 9/11 was a crisis that should have been greeted with clear, level-headed thinking about how sustainable our way of life had become and how best the civilized people of the world could come together to deal with the barbarians.<br><br>Instead, it fell into the hands of men who wanted to cloak the presidency in unanswerable powers and total secrecy, who saw any call for an inquiry about how things had gone wrong as a vicious insult, who mistook the willingness to torture and engage in wars of choice as shows of strength, and the ability to hire yes-men who would insist that <span style=\"font-style:italic\">their</span> tortures and wars of choice were legal as a claim to the moral high ground. They were people who saw that events had made foreign people sympathetic to America and eager to extend a hand and told the foreign peoples to go screw, because that made them feel tough. They were people who saw that, after years of rising income inequality and consumerist inanity. the American people were ready to make sacrifices for each other, and told the American people to go shopping and leave everything to daddy. They were people who sneered at the idea of treating punk criminals as punk criminals, fit to be dealt with as such, and instead built them up as super-villains who could not be extended the usual rights of law, because to see them that way made them feel like supermen. They were people who declared themselves to be at war with terrorism itself, setting the terms of the battle in such a way that the battle could never end, so that they would never have to relinquish the extraordinary powers they would need to fight this fearsome foe. They were people who <span style=\"font-style:italic\">liked</span> the idea of being \"a war president\" and his cabinet. Somewhere, in a better place than this, Lincoln puked.<br><br>In his 9/11 anniversary piece, <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2303013/\">Christopher Hitchens</a> writes that \"The proper task of the 'public intellectual' might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Never, ever ignore the obvious either</span>.\" He's referring to the obvious fact that al-Qaeda were bad people who'd done an awful thing that needed to be answered in blood. But for the preceding decades, Hitchens had shown a tremendous ability to at least skirt the obvious, or find more unpredictable things to say about world events than to hammer at it: he wouldn't have become the star he is otherwise. Certainly he never accepted the idea, during the Cold War, that any illegal or horrific act could be defended if it were done in the name of anti-Communism. Now, he wants to make clear, he doesn't excuse illegal or horrific acts committed in the name of anti-terrorism--except for the Iraq war itself, which he will never disown, and which a lot of people will always regard as illegal, horrific, and unnecessary.<br><br>\"One reason for opposing excesses and stupidities on 'our' side (actually, why do I defensively lob in those quotation marks? Please consider them as optional) was my conviction that the defeat of Bin-Ladenism was ultimately certain. Al-Qaida demands the impossible—worldwide application of the most fanatical interpretation of sharia—and to forward the demand employs the most hysterically irrational means. (This combination, by the way, would make a reasonable definition of \"terrorism.\") It follows that the resort to panicky or degrading tactics in order to combat terrorism is, as well as immoral, self-defeating.\" But what <a href=\"http://www.nplusonemag.com/farewell-hitch\">turned so many people off</a> about Hitchens's support for the war when it was approaching was his contempt for anyone who had a problem with it, or even those who just voiced concern that George W. Bush might not be the best man to have in charge of a delicate mission to change the world through military adventure. Having lambasted everyone who didn't support the war as dupes of bin Laden, he's now careful in his language just where he shouldn't be. There is, indeed, that one reason he cites for \"opposing excesses and stupidities\" in the name of anti-terrorism, and that might be the reason you'd lean on if you were afraid of offending your friends who think anything done in anti-terrorism's name is inexcusable.<br><br>The rest of us don't need that reason, because the fact that excesses and stupidities are excessive and stupid are the only reason anyone should need to reject them, good and hard. <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2302751/\">As Dahliah Lithwick recently pointed out</a>, Cheney keeps inviting people to argue with him over whether we should have tortured people because it may have kind of worked in a case or two, which is like arguing that, although we officially don't endorse slavery, and he himself has never owned slaves, during that period a few years ago when his lawyer was able to provide him with language that made it legally acceptable to own human beings, they sure did get the crops in on time. \"Only fools,\" writes Lithwick, \"debate whether patently illegal programs 'work'—only fools or those who have been legally implicated in designing the programs in the first place... Most of agree that we should not be a nation of torturers, and that torture has tarnished the reputation of the United States as a beacon of justice. Most of us do not want warrantless surveillance, secret prisons, or war against every dictator who looks at us funny. We may be bloodthirsty, but we aren't morons.\"<br><br>When 9/11 first hit, and for some years afterward, the idea that there was anything you could do to fight terrorism that might not be worth doing got about as much traction with people like Hitchens as the idea that maybe the fact that the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil had occurred on George W. Bush's and Dick Cheney's watch might not really be conclusive proof that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were the best people we could count on to keep us safe. I don't think this can all be accounted for by remembering how thoroughly 9/11 scared the crap out of everyone. As Bill Wyman mentioned in that <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2303145/\">article I linked to the other day</a>, the nineties were not a time for heroic swaggering on the world stage. They were relatively quiet for an era where staggering, world-transforming leaps of technological innovation co-existed alongside the aforementioned income gap that has since accelerated to the point that we may have bypassed the question of how much our decline will resemble Great Britain's and started wondering how long it'll be before parts of this country are dead ringers for New Delhi. This actually nagged at a lot of people. Bill Clinton, for one, was known to mourn a little over the lack of a geopolitical crisis big enough for him to prove his mettle as a historically significant \"great\" president. Then that goddamn <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Saving Private Ryan</span> movie and Tom Brokaw's book about \"the greatest generation\" came out, and every Baby Boomer in the country, especially the millions with access to a microphone or an op-ed page, were begging the fates to send them their very own Hitler to sock on the jaw like Captain America. I'm pretty much convinced that the response to 9/11, or rather the response to Bush and Cheney's response to 9/11, would have been very different if it hadn't been timed to coincide with so many Boomers' midlife crises.<br><br>Well, it was a long time ago, if not as long as it sometimes feels, and now the Boomers, having failed to outdo their parents when it comes to healing a threatened continent to a boogie-woogie beat, have <a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/94550/baby-boomers-selfish-social-security-welfare-capitalism\">turned once again to more personal concerns.</a> The spirit of those who were so sure that they had the answer to stopping terrorism in particular and evil in general has dissipated, as witnessed by <a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/94145/september-11-do-ideas-matter\">Paul Berman's latest reminiscence</a> about all the exciting thinking he did in the wake of the fall of the Twin Towers. The underlying spirit is something like this: once it was 1941 again, and I knew what had to be done, and it was very exciting. Now, I'm not sure I really did know, but I know that everyone else had less of a clue that I did. (He doesn't mention the most thrilling part of his book <i>Terror and Liberalism</i>, which insisted that the war to liberate Iraq was the first war ever declared in defense of feminist principles, and called on liberals to support the effort to democratize the Middle East through military invasion on behalf of women everywhere. I hope the Arab Spring turns out to be a good thing for women in the Middle East; the invasion of Iraq has been a case of maybe not so much.) Berman's essay appears in <i>The New Republic</i>, which, on the occasion of the death of Ronald Reagan, published the notion that, while it turned out to be true that the Soviet Union wasn't much of a threat by the time Reagan was elected, to have not been deluded into thinking they were an incredible threat at the time would have been very irresponsible. No doubt there are times when being wary of threats that don't exist is the responsible thing. But at the risk of sounding obvious myself, not being wrong may not be the most odious thing in the world, even if it seems that way to people who were wrong at the time and would like to remain proud of how right they felt at the time.<br><br>And now, in recognition of Bill Wyman's theory about how works of art may comment on events that haven't happened yet but that the artist senses may be coming, a song for Dick Cheney, from everyone in America, perhaps especially those who once thought that he was just what America needed in its time of crisis, but came to think otherwise:<br><br><iframe width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/Abpr0Tt5l0E\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/20694821-6211576636487378615?l=philnugentexperience.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Guest Post: “Revolutionary Road – On the Nafusa Highway”",
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"content" : "Below is a report from western Libya by Eileen Byrne (ebyrne202@yahoo.com), a friend of the blog and journalist based in Tunis, special to TMND. The two thuwar (revolutionaries) on the highway that runs east from the Tunisian border had time to chat on that bright Wednesday morning, four days after Tripoli rose up against Qadhafi. [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=themoornextdoor.wordpress.com&blog=3064297&post=7067&subd=themoornextdoor&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/4702?ns=guardian&pageName=In+Africa%27s+universities%2C+quantity+threatens+quality+%7C+Richard+M+Kavuma%3AArticle%3A1630039&ch=Global+development&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Global+development%2CUganda+%28News%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CInternational+education+news%2CEducation&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CEducation+Weekly+Education%2CStudents+Education&c6=Richard+M+Kavuma&c7=11-Sep-09&c8=1630039&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Global+development&c13=&c25=Poverty+matters+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FGlobal+development%2Fblog%2FPoverty+matters+blog\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Uganda's Makerere reflects the crisis facing many African universities – how to fund higher education amid rising demand for places and concerns about falling academic standards</p><p>All is not well at Makerere University in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Once called the Harvard of Africa, Makerere was closed last week after academic and administrative staff downed their tools, the climax of a row over pensions and pay.</p><p>It is the second time in four years that the university has closed over matters relating to staff welfare. The pension dispute between the staff and the National Insurance Corporation should be sorted out by the legal and political regimes. Indeed, President Yoweri Museveni has committed his government to dealing with the issue.</p><p>But staff are also demanding salary increases, a reflection of a wider crisis confronting many of Africa's public universities – how to fund higher education amid rising demand for places and concerns about falling academic standards. According to Dr Tanga Odoi, chairman of the Makerere University Academic Staff Association, some teachers earn as \"little\" as $390 a month. Muasa wants the starting salary to be almost eight time that. With inflation at 21%, the government says all civil servants will get a pay raise but that can only happen in next year's budget, which does not come into effect until July 2012.</p><p>Makerere's staff problems began some time ago, and its crisis mirrors that of many other African public universities.</p><p>Until the late 1980s, the only Uganda students who joined university were those who secured a government scholarship. Since the early 1990s, however, Makerere – and now other public universities – have been admitting fee-paying students to study alongside state-sponsored students. The change grew out of a coincidence of increased demand for university education and public universities surviving on shoestring budgets.</p><p>The result for Makerere has been a public university mostly funded by private money but controlled by the state, which still has the last word on such issues as staff pay and tuition fees. In other words, the government vigorously defends its statutory right to shape public universities but frets about responsibility to fund the institutions. Last year barely 37% of Makerere's budget came from the government, compared with 55% from private students' tuition.</p><p>For years the university, starved of public funds, tried to increase revenue by raising fees to reflect the actual cost of education, only to be blocked by the government. Technocratic vision lost out to political calculations, until 2009 when the government allowed a 40% increase, which is still not enough. In April, when university authorities announced another fees hike, students went on strike. The increment has been shelved, with the state minister for higher education, John Chrysostom Muyingo, saying there was \"not enough justification\".</p><p>Problems such as these are not limited to Makerere. In the past two months, for instance, Madagascar, South Africa, Togo and Sierra Leone have witnessed protests related to university fees and welfare, while in Ghana a funding squeeze has forced the education minister to announce an increased role for the private sector in higher education.</p><p></p><h2>Rising student numbers</h2><p>According to a <a href=\"http://publications.worldbank.org/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=23821\" title=\"\">2010 World Bank report</a>, Africa is grappling with a huge mismatch between student population and investment in higher education. Between 1991 and 2006, the number of students in higher education rose from 2.7 million to 9.3 million. This was an annual rise of about 16%, but public resources for expenditure grew by 6%. Over the same period, \"public investment\" in higher education has remained about 20% of education sector budgets.</p><p>The report concluded: \"In most sub-Saharan African countries, enrolment in higher education has grown faster than financing capabilities, reaching a critical stage where the lack of resources has led to a severe decline in the quality of instruction and in the capacity to reorient focus and to innovate.\"</p><p>The result has been \"a trade-off that often occurs at the expense of quality and particularly at the expense of expenditure on wages. Universities are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain a teaching staff, lecture halls are overcrowded, and buildings are falling into disrepair, teaching equipment is not replenished, investment in research and in training for new teachers is insufficient, and many teachers must supplement their incomes by providing services to the private sector\".</p><p>With governments unlikely to dramatically increase funding, one of the reforms envisaged is to increase (or in some countries introduce) student fees, with the money ploughed back into the higher education institution. But the report acknowledges this is a sensitive political matter: it can lead to protests and riots by students and staff – as happened in England (2011), France (2008), and Mexico and Germany (1999).</p><p>To get around this problem, the report proposes that before introducing financial reforms, governments should conduct extensive public consultations to build consensus, start the reforms with new institutions and in phases, and build in initiatives such as student loans to ensure that those from poorer backgrounds are not excluded. However, student loans won't be easy to recover, given that many graduates do not find work in the formal sector.</p><p>At the same time, African governments need to rethink their attitudes towards higher education. Scholars such as Columbia's <a href=\"http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/mm1124-fac.html\" title=\"\">Professor Mahmood Mamdani</a>, an alumnus of Makerere and now director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research, have blamed the World Bank for misadvising governments like Uganda's to shift attention to basic education at the expense of tertiary education. The mistaken thinking was that if governments provided basic education, the children would be all right. They may be, but their countries, which need transformative research and human capital, will not.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/uganda\">Uganda</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/internationaleducationnews\">International education news</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/richardmkavuma\">Richard M Kavuma</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fglobal-development%2Fpoverty-matters%2F2011%2Fsep%2F09%2Fafrica-university-funding-crisis\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Jose James Spreads 'Trouble' 'All Over' With These New Tracks",
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"content" : "<strong>Jose James</strong> is no stranger to SoulBounce, but any new music from him thrown our way is worthy of mentioning. The last thing we heard from Mr. James was <a href=\"http://soulbounce.com/soul/2011/01/jose_james_flying_lotus_give_us_a_dose_of_vicadin.php\">\"Vicadin,\"</a> his collaboration with <strong>Flying Lotus</strong>. Now we get some goodies from him in the form of a mini-concert he performed for the folks over at <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/user/AllSaintsShop\">AllSaints Spitalfields</a>. Jose blessed them with two new songs, \"Trouble\" and \"It's All Over (Your Body),\" for their Basement Sessions series. Both songs stand up to the jazzy, soulful sounds that we've come to expect from any output that Jose produces, and they'll hopefully be included on his upcoming project, scheduled to be released in spring 2012. Catch Jose performing \"Trouble\" below, and check after the bounce for \"It's All Over (Your Body)\" and an in-depth interview with Mr. James himself about the man and his craft.\n<br><br>\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/5Gz2kqOupCI\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"390\" width=\"480\"></iframe>\n\n\n\n <iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/VGtHvy_3W4Q\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"390\" width=\"480\"></iframe>\n<br><br>\n\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZjQWOA0rNcE\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"390\" width=\"480\"></iframe>"
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"content" : "Mr. Tantlinger is credited with creating, in the 1950s, the first commercially viable modern shipping container, which changed the way nations do business.<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=299fe67d425be08b62427dbf3a1ab2ed&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=299fe67d425be08b62427dbf3a1ab2ed&p=1\"></a>"
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"content" : "<p></p><blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><em>When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled “made in Germany”; </em><em>it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism;</em><em>it will be called, of course, “Americanism.” </em>Halford E. Luccock, <em>Keeping Life Out of Confusion</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/hooking-up-tom-wolfe-hardcover-cover-art.jpg\"><img style=\"margin:5px\" title=\"hooking-up-tom-wolfe-hardcover-cover-art\" src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/hooking-up-tom-wolfe-hardcover-cover-art.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"234\"></a>Before</strong></p>\n<p>Times were good for many Americans—or, at least, times were good if appearances were to be believed. Even some of our sharper minds were deluded. After stapling the 1960’s and 1980’s in place with <em>The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test</em> and <em>The Bonfire of the Vanities</em>, journalist-by-novel Tom Wolfe addressed the impending <em>aughts</em> with the historically inapt essay, <em><a title=\"An American's World\" href=\"http://shos.it/pz6IdM\">What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Second Millennium: An American’s World</a>, </em>from <em>Hooking Up</em>.</p>\n<p>Wolfe employs a Proletarian air-conditioning “mechanic” as everyAmerican—the sort of character David Brooks would later clothe in madras shorts and pop-neurology for the purpose of contriving <a title=\"Brooks, New Yorker\" href=\"http://shos.it/oLYr6O\">New Yorker columns</a> explaining his we to us. Wolfe’s pen is nimbler than Brooks’ iPad, but <em>An American’s World</em> still suffers from Ozymandian conceits, exemplified by messes like:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…[H]is own country, the United States, was now the mightiest power on earth, as omnipotent as Macedon under Alexander the Great, Rome under Julius Caesar, Mongolia under Genghis Khan, Turkey under Mohammed II, or Britain under Queen Victoria. His country was so powerful, it had begun to invade or rain missiles upon small nations in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean for no other reason than that their leaders were lording it over their subjects at home…</p></blockquote>\n<p>Which was true, far as it went. Everyone was getting mad-rich and feeling <em>tres</em> sexy, thank you very much—we told ourselves, and we believed us when we heard: these <em>are</em> the good old days. Yet, as Wolfe’s mechanic cavorts in St. Kitts among the ruins of Marxism, one detects a whiff of regret among the words, as though the writer is struggling to find a narrative peg on which he might hang a complaint:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…[I]t was standard practice for the successful chief executive officer of a corporation to shuck his wife of two to three decades’ standing for the simple reason that her subcutaneous packing was deteriorating, her shoulders and upper back were thickening like a shot-putter’s—in short, she was no longer sexy… the [new wife] and her big CEO catch were invited to all the parties, as though nothing had happened.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Many of us had similar misgivings at the time, I think. I remember scholar, blogger and writer <a title=\"Kerschen\" href=\"http://shos.it/dphBWh\">Paul Kerschen</a> giving a first-listen report on Radiohead’s 2000 release, <em>Kid A</em> that folded the nameless nagging into useful context: “It’s like two hours,” he said, “—an excellent two hours, understand, but two hours—of rain drizzling on the rusted shroud of a semi-functional HVAC unit. Things are <em>not</em> OK.”<br>\n<span></span><br>\nThere was plenty of evidence to help us shuffle through a decades-long sleep-walk. The federal budget was in surplus. Peace, erupting everywhere: Bono partied in Sarajevo, Arafat chilled at Camp David, East Timor lurched at independence, Sinn Fein had lain down its guns, and many Rwandans committed to turning from a decade of barbarism and evil.</p>\n<p>We focused attention on what seemed to work, ignoring what did not: Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount and the ensuing second intifada, for one non-starter. We glossed over others: Russian war crimes in Chechnya, Chechen war crimes in Chechnya, the sudden absence of diversion for central Europe’s dedicated Mujahids, queer diseases of the mind infecting humans who’d eaten meat from cows fed—for efficiency’s sake—with the brains and bones of other cows.</p>\n<p>Americans failed to consider they were buying pets.com stock with money borrowed from retirement funds, paying for vacations with home-equity loans, or that they stood a greater chance of seeing an American manufacturing plant while partying in Tijuana than at home, in Toledo, Ohio.</p>\n<p>But even those palliative facts were hard to come by in summer 2001. The transition from news to infotainment was complete by then, and Fox, having by its creation exposed a previous bias in favor of its non-existence, combined with Matt Drudge’s <em>Report</em> to frame the national conversation in inane leading questions seeming to consist of whether sharks were angry at swimmers, whether celebrity sex videos were good or bad, whether the erotic proclivities of U.S. Congressmen were interesting or not, and whether Liberals were evil, stupid or just plain un-American.</p>\n<p>Dull, sated and conditioned by the Clinton carnival to watch politics rather than engage in them, Americans allowed a Presidential contest to be determined first by a group of screaming frat-boys in Florida, then by a group of scribbling nudges in Washington, D.C., in the chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the margin of error in the Florida recount, it’s likely we can <em>never</em> know for certain who won the 2000 U.S. Presidential election; what matters is we were <em>told</em> who won, and these years on, it is clear who lost.</p>\n<p>“Winner,” George W. Bush plucked the residents of the Project for A New American Century—a neoconservative, Straussian think-tank that had for a decade clamored to <a title=\"PNAC\" href=\"http://shos.it/n0rYZe\">remake the Middle East</a> in its own image through regime change brought, in one proffered scenario, by catastrophic “pearl-harbor-type events”. Bush placed the tank’s alleged thinkers at the heart of America’s foreign policy apparatus. The list includes Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Francis Fukuyama, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and William Kristol.</p>\n<p>Lacking any adult supervision, they went about three tasks: cozying up to energy cartels, including the disgusting Saudi royals, preparing for war with Saddam Hussein, and <a title=\"Wright, Looming Tower\" href=\"http://shos.it/p3LsJN\">ignoring with extreme diligence</a> any intelligence on threats to U.S. “interests” that did not comport with a worldview they already held.</p>\n<p>Despite warnings—in person, from Richard Clarke, and in a written <a title=\"Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US\" href=\"http://shos.it/r7sbzR\">brief</a> titled <em>Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US</em>, President George W. Bush and cohort continued their Freudian obsession with “the guy who tried to kill my dad,” and brought America’s national delusion to its penultimate phase.</p>\n<p>Remember the American Colossus? Shopping, screwing, drinking, drugging, investing on margin, engaging in voyeurisms of all sorts and to the last stroke before blindness <em>lying</em>, mostly to itself, but also to the world, lying and denying until there was almost no truth left; all this, all of it, while the unquiet, dissatisfied planet wobbled between its knees.</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><strong>“…”</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"><strong>After</strong></p>\n<p><em><a title=\"9/11 Commission Report\" href=\"http://shos.it/pua8YB\">The 9/11 Commission Report</a></em> is a bloated, condescending, piece-of shit doorstop. God willing, future historians will regard this fetid bilge-tank of doublespeak as symptomatic of the decline of one society, presaging the need, and rise, of another. For now, it is accepted “history,” a narrative that must be addressed on its own terms. Those terms are best defined in negative space, looking to what’s denied, rather than admitted. The <em>Report</em> is the civic equivalent of a mall-kiosk hidden-image poster.</p>\n<p>Thomas Kean, who chaired the Commission that released this steaming turd, warned ahead of its release that neither Clinton nor W. were “well-served” by the FBI and CIA. As a result, the report made extensive recommendations for changes to prevent another attack, including the creation of an extra layer of bureaucracy atop the country’s dozens of publicly-acknowledged intelligence agencies, and a massive new Homeland Security apparatus. Implemented, all.</p>\n<p>But remember, now: Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was a son of the Saudi Royal Family’s chief architect and civil engineer, beloved by many for modernizing Mecca’s infrastructure and connecting the Kingdom’s cities with paved roads. Osama bin Laden lived in Arabia for much of his life, as well as Yemen and Sudan, but only Yemen and Sudan when he—and his evolving beliefs—had worn out his welcome in the Kingdom.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/220px-911report_cover_HIGHRES.png\"><img style=\"margin:5px\" title=\"220px-911report_cover_HIGHRES\" src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/220px-911report_cover_HIGHRES-212x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\"></a>Bin Laden’s organization, al-Qaeda, was, and probably is, a shaky quasi-theological crime-syndicate built on a grab-bag of adulterated Salafist martyr-cult stupidity and the exported-on-cassette paranoiac rantings of the Egyptian Sayyid al-Qutb, further interpolated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who lusted bin Laden’s purse—fatter or thinner, depending on how Saudi benefactors regarded bin Laden’s most recent antics—to realize the goal of a post-Nasserite Egyptian theocracy.</p>\n<p>After the Taliban secured victory over Northern Alliance foes in post-Soviet Afghanistan, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, having been drawn to the Jihad, found themselves without a worthy foe in the wild-east of the Afghan/Pakistani no-man’s land. Motivated by the objectively sickening U.S./Saudi alliance, which had given the Pentagon a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula, and secondarily by U.S. support for Israeli interests, they sought to take al-Qaeda, an Eastern-Hemisphere annoyance, global.</p>\n<p>Al-Qaeda had dozens of documented contacts with Saudi Royals, Saudi government functionaries and Saudi citizens, at levels from the Court, to the Intelligence bureaus, to the parlors of fellow travelers.</p>\n<p>Al-Qaeda and its aims were known to anyone paying attention. I remember discussing them in great detail in a law school International Relations seminar, in 1998. We spoke of Bin Laden’s interest in the subcontinent—because of the Pakistani “Islamic Bomb,”—and how the Kashmir/Jammu conflict could be manipulated by demagogues, as well as the dangers inherent in partnering with the ISI, which we regarded as a poisoned honeycomb, dripping with corruption, taking aid money with one hand, shaking the hands of jihadis with the other.</p>\n<p><em>In 1998</em>.</p>\n<p>The University of Toledo College of Law is a fine school—but it is not the Kennedy School, Georgetown, nor The War College; if <em>we</em> knew those things, our betters should also have known them. It is disheartening to read, in the <em>Report</em>, and in Wright’s <em>Looming Tower</em>, how willfully blind America’s leaders were four years on; they should have known better. They <em>did</em> know better.</p>\n<p>Acknowledging the obvious dovetails between bin Laden and his Saudi patrons, The Commission admitted fifteen of the hijackers were Saudi, but “found no evidence the Saudi government <em>as an institution</em> or <em>senior</em> officials <em>within the Saudi government</em> funded al-Qaeda.” Without delving into the obvious fallacy we’re offered, <em>i.e.</em>, <em>that</em> <em>no evidence of is </em><em>evidence of no</em>, it’s easy to see enough room left between the words of the <em>Report</em>’s phrasing to rebuild the Kobar Towers with cash from <a title=\"Bandar & BAE\" href=\"http://shos.it/qSXSPP\">Bandar’s BAE slush & bribe fund</a> and drive a full tanker-truck right up next to them.</p>\n<p>Formal or informal Saudi complicity, whether from sympathy or to buy internal peace, are real Acts of War. In any sane period of history, Bandar and his corrupt platoon of brothers would be rotting in the stocks of Leavenworth, or better yet, hung in Saudi for domestic crimes or omissions, from gallows fashioned by the hands of Saudis themselves—or, rather, gallows paid for with Saudi money and fashioned by the hands of Indian and Philipino craftsmen.</p>\n<p>In our remembering Americans must not <em>forget, </em>no matter how deeply buried in the <em>Report</em>, or made a non-subject by the American media, that bin Laden’s story, 9/11’s story, <em>our</em> story, is peopled by a cast of characters dominated more or less by Egyptians and ideas popularized by Egyptians, and more, much more, by Saudis and Saudi culture, specifically metastasizing, exported Wahhabism, and other distinctly Saudi problems, like bin Laden himself. We must remember to remember:</p>\n<p>This why George W. Bush sent American teenagers to Iraq.</p>\n<p>No, it doesn’t make sense. And Americans must <em>remember</em> it doesn’t make sense, because the world as it is mapped today is nonsensical. Only by keeping to mind that America went down the rabbit-hole in the middle of the last decade can it begin to find its bearings.</p>\n<p>Egyptian ideas, Saudi money. Say it over and over until it stops making sense; say it and repeat yourself sane:</p>\n<p>This why George W. Bush sent American teenagers to Iraq.</p>\n<p>According to the <em>Report</em>, while meetings between al-Qaeda representatives and Iraqi government officials occurred, the panel <em>had no credible evidence</em> Saddam Hussein assisted al-Qaeda in preparing or executing the 9/11 attacks.</p>\n<p>That is cold, late comfort to thousands of dead Iraqis and the confused, homesick soldiers Bush and the Boys sent to “defend our freedom.” Because from the President of the United States to various party flunkies at the local level, American leaders conflated Iraq, Islamism, Jihadis, al-Qaeda, bin Laden, terrorism, Israeli national security, the <em>emotion</em> terror, Islam itself, Afghanistan, the Taliban, Iraqis fighting Americans post-invasion, a group of terrorists the U.S. Media learned to call al-Qaeda in Iraq (as though bin Laden dealt in franchise licenses from Tora Bora), U.S. national security, Palestinian causes, Egyptian radicals and various other Middle Eastern regimes. Fox News anchors, in tone, gesture and connotation, abetted this slander 24/7/365, reducing complex foreign policy concerns to either/or polls and making a mockery of legitimate analysis.</p>\n<p>Relatedly, and of pressing, current interest, the report also offered evidence of increased contact between Iran and al-Qaeda.</p>\n<p>So, you know, stay tuned.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"><strong>Instead</strong></p>\n<p>A pause, now, while we address the “conspiracy thing”: the <em>Report</em> ignores many incongruent threads of fact that, if only treated plausibly by people who <em>could</em> treat them, might dispense with inevitable counter-narrative spinning; so much so, that other Committees were compelled to address some of them in supplemental <a title=\"Supplemental Memoranda\" href=\"http://shos.it/o1c2un\">memoranda</a>. Yet this is the nature of tales, even of many eye-witnessed events.</p>\n<p>We might consider here the words of Hunter S. Thompson, whom, it should be noted, numbered among “truthers.” He wrote these lines long before 9/11, though, in bittersweet nostalgia for the Summer of 1967:</p>\n<blockquote><p>History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Our problem is we are without any sweet to measure against the bitter. It is at least flattering to think someone with <em>real</em> power cared enough to throw, help throw, or allow the planet to be thrown into chaos, rather than think for a minute that a sickly Bond-villain hiding under a rock in Pakistan could play Jenga with Manhattan landmarks all by his lonesome.</p>\n<p>Either way, it doesn’t matter. The truth, as received, is horrible enough.</p>\n<p><strong>Between</strong></p>\n<p>During the remaining Bush years, Americans became convinced by talk-radio idiots like Sean Hannity and the entire Fox roster, as well as anyone running for public office from either major party, anywhere in the country, that American shores, schools and courts faced imminent invasion from Sharia-spouting Jihadis and that individual Americans were at great risk of personal attacks from Muslims.</p>\n<p>Americans tossed away freedoms—a subject to which we shall return presently—as well as the keys to the public treasury. No price seemed too high, no DARPA project too outlandish, no Pentagon request too expensive. Trillions spent, that’s with a <em>T</em>, and counting, with interest, if you care to amortize.</p>\n<p>Little time-bombs of a more lethal, but less obvious character, began to blow in the middle-part of the decade. Bill Clinton had brokered a devil’s deal with Wall Street to break down the firewalls between investment banking (<em>i.e.</em>, endlessly debt-ridden derivative speculation) and regular banking, where depositors loan a bank money for free, which the bank then loans to other people, at a profit. Clinton and Congress made this bargain with the likes Robert Rubin, the appalling Sen. Phil Gramm and Alan Greenspan, then the insipid, spittle-flicking, polysyllabic, idiot-savant Federal Reserve Chairman.</p>\n<p>For their part, they had been inspired by a misanthropic, chain-smoking, Russian dwarf named Ayn Rand. When not wrecking the homes of ardent disciples, Rand spent her time subjecting the world of popular philosophy to the agonizing resolution of an Elektra Complex that had seized her after rampaging Bolsheviks collectivized her father’s business. Rand had discovered—and you can too!—that, despite hundreds of years of human economic experience, capital markets, if left to tend themselves, would put fuzz on bunnies and photosynthetically generate Vitamin C in babies’ bodies. All that stood in the way of a Capitalist Utopia were the sorry collective impulses that had robbed her childhood of privilege.</p>\n<p>Amid the wars emptying the American treasury, PNAC’s ongoing project of American global dominance financed with the Federal Reserve’s Platinum Credit Card, and unrestrained by sensible New Deal legislation, <a title=\"Tiny Bubbles, Not So Much\" href=\"http://shos.it/noVx6L\">the chain of bubbles</a> supporting Western capitalism since 1980 began to collapse. Seems allowing banks to gamble on margin borrowed at a thousand-times deposits wasn’t a smart thing to do. One evening, thanks to Clinton, Cronies, Congress and Dwarf, Christian civilization learned it was bankrupt.</p>\n<p><img style=\"margin:5px\" title=\"bt1n\" src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/bt1n-198x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\"></p>\n<p>George W. Bush attempted to step aside for his—and our—true masters, and have Congress acclaim Henry Paulson, of Goldman Sachs, Emperor of the United States. This is not hyperbole, not cited to <em>The Onion</em>—<a title=\"King Henry I\" href=\"http://shos.it/pEgU5Q\">look it up</a>. To its credit, Congress balked at coroneting Paulson; still, as though to make amends, the Federal establishment fell all over itself borrowing money from the Chinese government on behalf of unborn Americans to satisfy debts owed by its friends, individual and corporate, to parties unknown, incurred at the trillion-dollar global banking mega-casino. In 2008, America was bruised, broke, angry and paranoid. Americans elected—without the help of the Supreme Court—a black man with an Arabicized name to <em>fix this bullshit.</em></p>\n<p>I overheard an old woman in Troy, Ohio, exclaim, after voting, “I think America hates Bush more than it loves racism.”</p>\n<p>[<em>we are aware Bush wasn’t officially running—ed.</em>]</p>\n<p>In 2009, Barack Obama took office. He made a nice speech to Muslims in Cairo. Angry people, organized under the name of a thrilling sexual pastime, yelled at him, though they seemed unsure why. Obama appointed the same bankers who ruined the economy to fix it. He threw twice as much free money into the bottomless pit at Wall Street, rigged the health-care system to guarantee in perpetuity, by law, paying customers for insurers. Then, without breaking a sweat, he picked up the PNAC project <em>exactly</em> where his predecessors left it. He even found some places it might be improved.</p>\n<p>He also authorized a Navy Seal team to kill Osama Bin Laden. They obliged.</p>\n<p>President Obama usually avoided getting his shoes dirty <em>en route</em> to signing catastrophic-when-not-ineffectual laws, as the paths through the White House grounds have been repaved with the clean, pure aspirations of those who trusted him, and sealed with the distilled, water-tight essence of what we once knew as the American Dream.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:-webkit-auto\" align=\"center\"><strong>Within</strong></p>\n<p>How many wars? Iraq; Afghanistan; Yemen; Libya. Four? Probably more underway, under various definitions, forms and dispensations, if we had the information an informed citizenry should.</p>\n<p>And we don’t.</p>\n<p>At first, this lack of information was a function of our incompetent and negligent press; following 9/11, the flow was <a title=\"Moyers Selling The War\" href=\"http://shos.it/oRCn6p\">stymied</a> by gate-keepers whose access to the cocktail party circuit would’ve been curtailed if they had done their jobs. When the resolve of those tasked with keeping State Secrets, and disseminating State Propaganda, splintered, the press itself came under attack. There is now no real refuge for useful public knowledge. The very concept is an Enemy of the State.</p>\n<p>But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—I mention the count of wars because, focused as we are now <em>on</em>, if not <em>in</em>, Afghanistan, and with the—<em>gasp</em>—newly discovered, Pakistani loyalty problem, we generally forget the aspect of The Global War on Terror that affects Americans most. 2,752 people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. Hundreds of thousands have died in the ensuing conflicts. Still, the least mourned victim is the American Republic itself. What over a million died protecting in the years between Independence and V-J Day was traded away on the memory of several thousand and a promise it wouldn’t be permitted to happen again.</p>\n<p>The truest memorial America could offer those who died on 9/11 is to refuse to fall into the moral orbit of the death-cults we claim to abhor. No reflecting pools, no spires at 1776 feet, none of it. We shouldn’t have become the photo-negative of jihadis seeking martyrdom, cowering in the skirts of craven politicians promising to shield us from harm and make our streets safe for commerce.</p>\n<p>We <em>should</em> have rebuilt the towers exactly as they were, within a year. We should have marked the ground with a small, tasteful plaque, and held annual parades celebrating the season we brushed off the worst Osama bin Laden and his pals could dish, then turned on the demagogues screeching from the most shameful perspectives present in our national dialogue when they asked us to pay for the victims’ deaths with civil liberties. We <em>should</em> be whooping and hollering and singing songs about how al-Qaeda <em>bored</em> us, how bin Laden died from <em>neglect</em>, his corpse reeking in the <em>stank</em> of his own sick creed, how not one American teenager died thinking he or she was fighting Saddam over 9/11, and no Afghani or Iraqi teenager died thinking American teenagers were invaders, or occupiers.We should be celebrating how <em>we</em> were <em>centered</em> enough to tar and feather our own vilest blowhards and ride them to Harlem on a rail.</p>\n<p>Alas, little more than six weeks after the attacks, Congress had a spryly captioned bill in the hopper—The USA PATRIOT Act.</p>\n<p>The timing is a bit suspicious; anyone experienced with the Federal bureaucracy would be forgiven for asking, <em>really? </em>It can take longer than six weeks to get an acknowledgment that you, a constituent, have contacted your Representative in writing; it’s worse if you need action on an important matter. Washington does not move quickly. Is it beyond the pale to suggest that this law, or some version of it, had been pre-written, and was collecting dust in a drawer somewhere, awaiting the right calamity?</p>\n<p>The Patriot Act is a travesty. It can be read to enshrine the noxious <em>Korematsu</em> doctrine that interned the Japanese Americans in World War II. It does not explicitly allow detention of U.S. Citizens, but without recourse to due process, a detainee has no forum to which he may claim <em>habeas corpus,</em> and assert his citizenship. It permits clandestine, secret searches of homes and businesses, allows the FBI to search phone, email and financial records without warrants, and lays open library borrowing records to law enforcement agencies.</p>\n<p>The erotica <em>you</em> borrow from your public library is, by standing U.S. law, the intelligence community’s business. These are the same folks who claimed surprise at learning bin Laden<em> himself</em> enjoyed a blue movie now and then—if that was the case, and not some disinformative psy-op.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/patriot_act-1.jpg\"><img style=\"margin:5px\" title=\"patriot_act (1)\" src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/patriot_act-1-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"162\" height=\"240\"></a></p>\n<p>Worse—and it gets much worse—The Patriot Act represents what Americans were <em>willing</em> to give up, not what has been <em>lost</em>. Much more has been lost, as much more has been <em>taken</em>.</p>\n<p>The Patriot Act is the public face of a ghost that has possessed the machine of the American Body Politic. Possession came welcomed, one assumes, upon the adoption of the <a title=\"Unitary Executive\" href=\"http://shos.it/ovSxSM\">Unitary Executive</a> theory that Dick Cheney and Department of Justice ringers cooked up to allow Cheney himself, and the President, to operate outside six-hundred years of established Anglo-Saxon law. Under that specious theory, an American wartime executive enjoys immunity from impeachment for crimes committed pursuant to national security initiatives, domestic prosecution for acts taken pursuant to authority as Commander in Chief, and perhaps some defense to international war crimes proceedings.</p>\n<p>What Cheney hath wrought, Obama embraces—under the 44<sup>th</sup> President, whom I remind you, was hired to <em>fix this bullshit</em>, an Orwellian cancer has spread to the national lymph nodes. Obama has not even tried to stem it; his administration is part of it, thrives on it, is one with it. This totalitarian demon, which infuses almost every aspect of American life, is of a width and breadth unimaginably vast, and its aims seem nothing less than total awareness, total power and total obedience to its shifting whims.</p>\n<p>Legal scholar, writer and Salon columnist <a title=\"Greenwald, Out\" href=\"http://shos.it/nocV5G\">Glenn Greenwald</a> has done yeoman’s work providing an outline of its forms and habits; he has taken to calling this <em>unclean thing</em> the <em>National Security State</em>.</p>\n<p>It needs perpetual war. Without it, claim to the powers it craves are laughable, on their face, to a free people. What luck then, that the <em>external</em> war in which we are now engaged has no fixed enemy, no fixed field, no fixed milestones for victory. After 9/11, America didn’t declare war on anything, except an abstraction—the emotion of fear, of <em>terror</em>. As such, the only end to the external war in which we are now engaged comes when our species evolves beyond fear of its own demise, or beyond the crippling empathy inspired by learning that harm may come to a loved one.</p>\n<p>The National Security State is fragile. Only by knowing more about its citizens than its citizens know of it can the Beast coerce obedience to directives against the citizenry’s interests. George W. Bush and Barack Obama hid, and hide, their least defensible orders under the aegis of National Security, which usually terminates further discussion or <a title=\"National Security\" href=\"http://shos.it/n8I7FL\">challenge</a> in public fora.</p>\n<p>The National Security State’s expansive, wholly illegal wiretapping of the entire American telecommunications infrastructure under George W. Bush (or further back—Bush extended National Security protections retroactively, to protect former Presidents’ documents, if they want them classified) was shielded first under this notion, then retroactively ratified by a Congress that included then-Senator Obama. That Congress went as far as immunizing telecom companies from liability for violating the privacy of Americans, a reward for cooperating with illegal demands.</p>\n<p>A successor NSA program currently rakes the telecom grid for bad-guys, and is overwhelmingly effective, because it does not differentiate between friend and foe; the NSA holds a record of your digital life, and mine, as well as those who might be planning to commit crimes. This initiative violates the long-standing ideal that citizens judge citizens in citizen tribunals—our military and intelligence apparatus operates outside our borders, not within them. <em>Everyone </em>knows this program is illegal, immoral and unconstitutional, but the National Security State <em>must</em> be fed with data, so highfalutin legal concerns be damned. Knowing the program is evil is not a sin; the sin lies in <em>saying</em> it is. Well meaning, good hearted <em>real</em> patriots, in good faith, have tried to warn us; the National Security State has <a title=\"New Yorker, Drake\" href=\"http://shos.it/raElM3\">destroyed</a> their lives in return.</p>\n<p>The Bush administration fostered the program; while the Obama administration acknowledges it, the Administration regards criteria set for its use as a State Secret, and has revealed its claims to the program’s legitimacy and legality only to select Members of Congress, who, when not rubber-stamping such things, are prevented by from making their knowledge public. If they have concerns that might incline them to disclose criminal activity by the President or his subordinates, they are put in a double-bind—treason by silence, or treason by disclosure? Silence is the safer choice.</p>\n<p>The National Security State is sadistic. America, as well as any other entity seized of corporate authority, ever, has and will torture. The idea that Dick Cheney invented water-boarding is ludicrous; however, Cheney, as an acolyte and High Priest of the National Security State, introduced the positively barbaric notion that torture should be euphemized into normality, and when it could not that permissions for it be written into the <em>standing, published law</em> of this once Constitutional Republic—probably in anticipation of possible criminal proceedings resulting from orders he, or they, have given. Nevermind “torture” is a poorly cloaked rape-fantasy inspired by Jack Bauer fandom and snuff-films; never mind it is methodologically unsound and disavowed by those, like the CIA, who <em>should</em> be inclined to use it; never mind that in a scenario where it would work, it would be likely done anyway<em>. </em></p>\n<p><em></em>There is something in the hoary nature of familiar evil that desires recognition, even as it obscures its own identity. Our current interrogation regime is a testament to this violent, literally tortuous facet of the National Security State’s multiple personality disorder.</p>\n<p>The TSA is another tip-of-the-iceberg public aspect of the hidden <em>thing</em>, this National Security State, that has subsumed what was once America. For our safety, the National Security State has employed what seem to be the least observant, least capable, least fit examples of the population—many with personal, vocational or situational axes to grind with the world at large—and placed them in positions of authority, armed them the imprimatur of Homeland Security, and tasked them with enforcement of no-exceptions, no-common-sense- required, black-letter policies. America’s airports, in 2011, are kakistocracies. The only people inconvenienced by the TSA are those with someplace to go; idiots with C4 in their skivvies seem to get along, and get past, just fine. But that’s the <em>point</em>: the National Security State requires legalized brutality, humiliation, degradation and inhumanity because the National Security State <em>gets off on it</em>.</p>\n<p>The National Security State fears Due Process and enumerated rights. At its core, the National Security State cannot justify itself without innuendo, hyperbole and fear; open and just civilian tribunals—for criminals, terrorists, “leakers,” for any accused person—expose the Beast’s dearest parts, its regions most sensitive to comment, criticism and ridicule. From that need comes FISA, secret detentions, black-site prisons, military tribunals, and the shameful Guantanamo Bay facility. The National Security State skulks in the curtilege because its reasons for being exist not for long, and only in shadow.</p>\n<p>Finally, the National Security State requires control of the Word. Information is its antidote—the more accurate, the more timely, the more comprehensive, the more potent. While indefensible, pursuing “leakers,” in Washington is at least <em>understandable</em>, but the National Security State can brook neither dissent, nor the exposure of sunlight to its deeds if that exposure will inspire dissent, no matter from what direction the light comes.</p>\n<p>Remember Bradley Manning, who has done allegedly to GWOT what Daniel Ellsberg did, to great acclaim, to Vietnam? Manning, very likely, now lies naked, fetal, in the throes of a long-term, dehumanizing breakdown and brainwash, for no purpose other than to be made an example of—his crime, allegedly, is having given information embarrassing to the powerful to someone who would make it public.</p>\n<div style=\"width:240px\">\n\t<a href=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/5316195322_35ae8f45c6_m.jpg\"><img title=\"Achtung\" src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/5316195322_35ae8f45c6_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\"></a>\n\t<p>Achtung</p>\n</div>\n<p>Julian Assange, while in turns complicated and unsympathetic, is a <em>hero</em>. Full stop. <em>Hero</em>. In Assange’s case, students of the history and practices of espionage will read “alleged rapist” on his vita as “dumbass poon-hound caught in a honey-pot.” He has much more bad to do before the good he has done is offset.</p>\n<p>The Assange case is reminiscent of an earlier, deft move by the nascent National Security State on U.S. intelligence operative Scott Ritter, during the months preceding the Iraq war. Ritter, who worked as a contract employee with Central Intelligence and whose ongoing interests in <a title=\"Ritter Flack\" href=\"http://shos.it/njdttW\">sex with young girls</a> would have been—or should have been—a matter of polygraph record, was nevertheless considered fit to serve on the U.N. Weapons Inspection Team in Iraq.</p>\n<p>He was deemed unfit to comment in public, by the mainstream media, on the subject of whether those weapons existed, when he decided they did not. The reason? Not his qualifications, but an earlier sex sting arrest. Suddenly, his criminal past was highly relevant, available and a point of commentary from every interviewer who addressed him.</p>\n<p>Flacking someone like Ritter, or in a better example, Assange, personally, is not enough to satisfy the National Security State when the information flow will not cease with personal destruction. As an independent source, Wikileaks itself is under constant DOS battery; the National Security State apparently thinks the exposure of policy and facts relating to the causes of death of innocents in the conduct of American foreign policy is a greater harm than the <em>actual</em> loss of human life. The concept of unmediated disclosure of “classified” material is what’s at issue, not the material itself. The Beast requires both the head, and the carcass, it seems.</p>\n<p>If the National Security State cannot tell us its story, there can be no story at all.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\" align=\"center\"><strong>Now</strong></p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><em>And so it goes. </em>Kurt Vonnegut, <em>Slaughterhouse Five</em></p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>God knows what bin Laden envisioned ten years on.</p>\n<p>One assumes he would be pleased that if we did not collapse explicitly, we have come to take for granted that the democratic elements of the Republic have ossified to the point of uselessness and we have yielded wholly to autocratic elements imbued with a spirit of Fascism, which have expanded to fill the roles required for the operation of a functioning nation-state. Since 9/11, our systems—financial, moral, legal, constitutional and philosophical have gone bankrupt. To the extent they continue to work at all, they serve those who can <em>afford</em> them. Our politics are nauseating: America’s “left” is right-wing and its right wing is fucking batshit crazy. Neither have anything relevant to say or constructive to propose.</p>\n<p>Two successive presidents have spoken differently while acting uniformly; trillions of dollars have gone wasted on “security,” yielding arrests in conspiracies that law enforcement agencies appear to have concocted themselves, mostly for the purpose of making arrests. The law enforcement and intelligence community trumpet the apprehension of a few sorry wannabes like Jose Padilla, while <em>real</em> plots usually seem to be foiled by Muslim beef-frank vendors, airplane passengers or sharp-eyed locals.</p>\n<p>With war upon war upon economic calamity upon natural disaster besetting America, the beleaguered Yank—perhaps an everyAmerican air-conditioning mechanic—who once might have been set to howling at the slightest encroachment upon his prerogatives, now learns the Central Intelligence Agency has set up shop within the New York City Police Department in order to spy on <em>them</em>, even though <em>they</em> are fucking <em>American citizens</em> who just happen to call God’s name in Arabic—he learns the CIA has done this, without compunction, with impunity, in bald violation of its charter.</p>\n<p>And the “mechanic,” shrugs. It’s just one more thing.</p>\n<p>Other one-more-things are coming—one-more-things akin to the general strikes, riots and conflagrations of the Maghreb, of Tel Aviv, or London and Paris, or Athens and Rome and Madrid and Reykjavík, which illustrate the real war unfolding between a financier elite and those of us they intend to have serve them, or at least service debts they claim are owed.</p>\n<p>You can hear echoes, see the stirrings, on the San Francisco BART, can’t you? It’s almost an odor, rife with potential, terrifying and exhilarating at once—</p>\n<p>On arrival of these somethings-else, these other, new <em>things</em>, our poor everyYank may find himself ill-suited to mark the time. In the course of human events he may find he surrendered more than convenience in his deal with the National Security State. He may find he surrendered the best parts of his humanity as well—the cruelest irony being the surrender will have been in bin Laden’s name, to exorcise the fear that the unexpected strike inspired and nurtured, but in bin Laden’s name all the same.</p>\n<p>When he requires the tools he entrusted to the National Security State for safekeeping—his civil liberties, the rule of law, human rights—the mechanic may find they are not where the National Security State promised him they’d be. He may find, in buying his purported enemy’s defeat with what should have been the last things he would spend, he will have ensured the realization of his enemies’ ultimate aims.</p>\n<p>Of all the things to reflect upon this sordid anniversary, and if only to keep a pinch of truth alive in dark times, we should note the facts of the post-9/11 American experiment, as they coalesce around us: unless we remember ourselves, unless we remember what we promised the world we could be, 9/11 will not only mark the day we began giving up our dearest ideals, it will mark the day America gave up altogether.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=BsOOaRPVvb8:8YDfjJPMc4M:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/BsOOaRPVvb8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/70605?ns=guardian&pageName=Introducing+9%2F11+stories%3AArticle%3A1628739&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=September+11+2001+911+9%2F11+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CBooks%2CCulture%2CShort+stories+%28books%29%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29%2COriginal+writing&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Richard+Lea&c7=11-Sep-08&c8=1628739&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=9%2F11+stories+%28Books+series%29&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FSeptember+11+2001\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Ten years after the attacks on New York and Washington, we asked six writers to look back at a decade of change and conflict. What can fiction tell us about 9/11?</p><p>How do you mark an anniversary like 9/11? How do you examine what has changed and what has not in the 10 years since destruction was visited on New York and Washington out of a clear, blue sky? How do you reflect on the lives lost and the lies told in the course of what Pankaj Mishra calls our <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/02/after-september-11-pankaj-mishra\" title=\"\">\"low, dishonest decade\"</a>? </p><p>Over the last 10 years, this newspaper has charted the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/12/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety\" title=\"\">shock</a>, the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/10/iraq.jamesmeek\" title=\"\">reverberations</a> and the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/02/world-trade-centre-rescuers-health-risk\" title=\"\">legacy</a> of those events, but the effect on our imagination – on how we perceive the world – is perhaps as important to determine. Here on the books desk, we felt <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/9-11-stories\" title=\"\">an attempt should be made through fiction</a>.</p><p>When we started commissioning these stories we didn't ask for stories about the day itself – in the years since, we've <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jun/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview22\" title=\"\">already heard</a> <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/26/fiction.dondelillo\" title=\"\">quite a bit</a> <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/mar/22/jonathan-lethem-chronic-city-fiction\" title=\"\">from New York</a>. This time, 10 years on, we wanted to trace the ripples as they headed further outwards.</p><p>To that end, we've assembled a set of six stories which we'll be publishing on the site this week, criss-crossing the world from San Francisco to Port Harcourt, from London to a farm in Oregon. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/05/9-11-stories-geoff-dyer\" title=\"\">Geoff Dyer opens the series</a> with a story that opens on the morning of the attacks, but on the other side of the continent. <a href=\"http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=authc2d9c28a1129f16e9djny24920e4\" title=\"\">Kamila Shamsie</a> tackles the question of whether there is \"something singular – something exceptional – about suffering when it happened to Americans\" with a story set during a power cut in Karachi. <a href=\"http://www.helonhabila.com/\" title=\"\">Helon Habila</a> measures the distances between Lagos and Washington DC, while <a href=\"http://lailalalami.com/\" title=\"\">Laila Lalami</a> finds tremors in Baghdad reaching all the way to Bay City. <a href=\"http://www.aitkenalexander.co.uk/index.php?option=com_k2&view=itemlist&task=user&id=867%3Arobmagnusonsmith&Itemid=151\" title=\"\">Rob Magnuson Smith</a> traces the effects of war and financial crisis back to the American west, and finally <a href=\"http://will-self.com/\" title=\"\">Will Self</a> looks to the future with a story examining how technology has complicated our relationship with reality.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/september11\">September 11 2001</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/short-stories\">Short stories</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/original-writing\">Original writing</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/richardlea\">Richard Lea</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ow8iwz_FEZvthNbFrRBn1mz_-xA/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ow8iwz_FEZvthNbFrRBn1mz_-xA/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ow8iwz_FEZvthNbFrRBn1mz_-xA/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/Ow8iwz_FEZvthNbFrRBn1mz_-xA/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "Israel's Image Won't Improve Without Policy Changes",
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"content" : "<div><p>Gary Wexler in <em>Forward</em>:</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e8b27b35c970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"ScreenHunter_05 Sep. 01 13.11\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e8b27b35c970d-800wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"ScreenHunter_05 Sep. 01 13.11\"></a> Even with all the efforts of Camera, the Israel Project, the Jewish Federations and all the other organizations that blast my email inbox daily with defensive statements, Israel is increasingly emerging as the world’s pariah nation.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Yet, as strange as it may sound coming from a marketer with an advertising background, who has represented hundreds of Jewish organizations worldwide, I have arrived at the conclusion that the solution will not be found in branding, marketing, public relations or the writings of political pundits. The problem is that all their concepts, strategies, words and legitimate defenses – no matter how powerful and clever – are not going to elevate Israel’s plummeting image. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors and the Israeli government have been poured into this effort, yet the situation only worsens every month. I am as much to blame as anyone for being a supporter of these actions.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">It has become clear that the world doesn’t care about Israel’s wines, its Bauhaus architecture, its fashion, its alluring women, its sexy gay men, its beaches, its ballet or its hummus. The world, its media and its university campuses are riveted upon Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians as well as the state of its democracy.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">No, the answer to Israel’s image problems does not depend upon the marketing. It depends first upon the policies.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://forward.com/articles/141862/\">here</a>.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F08%2Fisraels-image-wont-improve-without-policy-changes.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=iIxlfWnwKDY:R7Jdkdk3gkw:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Fiction: Gadhafi's final days",
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"content" : "<p>Moammar Gadhafi had absolute power, controlled great oil wealth and influenced international events for more than four decades. Now, in all likelihood, he is holed up with a handful of loyalists or desperately on the run. No longer will he negotiate with the crush-worthy Condoleezza Rice. No longer will his children join the jet set at St. Bart's and spend millions for private concerts by the likes of Beyoncé and Mariah Carey.</p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tf9gkupst02d5kid4n6h00kcqc/300/250#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.salon.com%2Fbooks%2F2011%2F08%2F29%2Fgadhafi_fiction%2Findex.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/salon/index/~4/2UcGCOJq7F8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The End of Refrigeration",
"published" : 1314328778,
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"content" : "\n\n<p>The last refrigerator we had lasted about 20 years. Sometime around year 15 it finally blew out a condenser or a coil or whatever it is that makes refrigerators produce coldness and we paid $400 to have it fixed. <img align=\"right\" style=\"border:1px solid black;margin:20px 20px 15px 30px\" alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/blog_ge_board_0.jpg\">A few years later it broke again and we bought a new one.</p>\n<p>This one broke after eight years. But not because of a condenser or a coil or something comprehensibly structural. The repair guy took about five seconds to diagnose the problem: it stopped working because the \"main board\" blew out. That's it on the right. Now, maybe I'm off base on this because it's been so long, but this looks like a butt simple design to me. One small custom chip, some relays, a transformer, a couple of heat sinks, and a bunch of passive parts. Maybe a build cost of $20-30 or so? But GE's price to me was $250, plus $150 for the 20 minutes it took to pull out the old one and swap in the new one.</p>\n<p>Paying $400 for a big piece of physical gear plus a couple hours of labor didn't bother me. Paying $400 for a primitive circuit board and a few minutes to plug it in does. The repair guy laughed good-naturedly when I mentioned this. \"All the computer guys say the same thing,\" he told me. He even knew what I was going to say about the board before I said it. Our neighborhood is lousy with electrical engineers and other high tech weenies.</p>\n<p>Bottom line: $400 because a $2.02 <a href=\"http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/technologies/electromechanical/relays/power-relays/Pages/3734225-832A-1C-S-12VDC-VDE.aspx\">Song Chuan 832 Series 30 A SPDT 12 VDC Through Hole General Purpose Heavy Duty Power Relay</a> burned out. So here's your economics question for the day: Did I stimulate the economy today? Or this an example of the broken refrigerator fallacy? Or did most of my consumption spending leak out to China? Please phrase your answers in the form of a koan.</p>\n\n<div><a href=\"http://motherjones.com/node/132807#disqus_thread\" title=\"Jump to the comments of this posting.\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/end-refrigeration#dsq-new-post\">Post Comment</a></div><div><span><a href=\"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmotherjones.com%2Fkevin-drum%2F2011%2F08%2Fend-refrigeration&title=The+End+of+Refrigeration\" title=\"Digg this post on digg.com\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.motherjones.com/sites/all/modules/patched/service_links/images/digg.png\" alt=\"Digg\" title=\"\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\"></a> </span><span><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmotherjones.com%2Fkevin-drum%2F2011%2F08%2Fend-refrigeration&t=The+End+of+Refrigeration\" title=\"Share on Facebook.\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.motherjones.com/sites/all/modules/patched/service_links/images/facebook.png\" alt=\"Facebook\" title=\"\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\"></a> </span><span><a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmotherjones.com%2Fkevin-drum%2F2011%2F08%2Fend-refrigeration&title=The+End+of+Refrigeration\" title=\"Submit this post on reddit.com.\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.motherjones.com/sites/all/modules/patched/service_links/images/reddit.png\" alt=\"Reddit\" title=\"\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\"></a> </span><span><a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmotherjones.com%2Fkevin-drum%2F2011%2F08%2Fend-refrigeration&title=The+End+of+Refrigeration\" title=\"Thumb this up at StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.motherjones.com/sites/all/modules/patched/service_links/images/stumbleit.png\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\" title=\"\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\"></a> </span></div>"
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"title" : "How one app introduced AutoDesk to consumers (Inside Apps)",
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"title" : "Questlove's celebrity stories",
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"content" : "<p>I missed this last summer when it went around originally, but all of Questlove's celebrity stories are <a href=\"http://www.hypnagogics.com/questo/\">collected here</a>. I had to post it at the end of the day because if this is relevant to your interests, and I think it may be, it's going to run roughshod over your productivity. </p>\n\n<p>David Letterman<br>\n<blockquote><p>thing is...i know they brought me in for the freakish factor. but only dave bothered to ask me what do i do in real life....so when i told him he was shocked like \"wait you are an established artist?\" even funnier was the reference \"so if this like us picking up george clintons bass player thinking we got a random freaky guy and we messed around and got an icon?\"---i was flattered and said \"lets hope you still feel that way when its time for my album to come out\"</p></blockquote></p>\n\n<p>I'm pretty sure the <a href=\"http://www.hypnagogics.com/questo/#!/eddie-murphy\">Eddie Murphy story</a> features Prince, but it's too long to even excerpt.</p>\n\n<p>Phil Collins<br>\n<blockquote><p>i \"organixed\" the shit outta phil in 97 at the grammies when i told him some geek shit like you and stevie wonder are the best ride cymbal crashers in modern rock after bonham. i told him \"do you know do you care\" shows that example in his cymbal work. man i made his day with that one.</p></blockquote></p>\n\n<p>Here's Quest talking about <a href=\"http://www.hypnagogics.com/questo/#!/will-smith\">Will Smith's house</a>. So you know Questlove isn't easily impressed, this is the same Will Smith whose house was recently featured on the cover of <a href=\"http://www.architecturaldigest.com/homes/homes/2011/09/will-and-jada-pinkett-smith-home-slideshow#slide=2\">Architectural Digest</a>.</p>\n\n<p>I'm telling you, the whole site is gold. Read everything.</p>\n\n<p>For more Questlove awesome, see his recent <a href=\"http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/8031-uestlove-15-years/\">interview on Pitchfork</a>. Read everything there, too. It's great.</p>\n\n<p>(Thanks, Keith)</p> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/David%20Letterman\">David Letterman</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Eddie%20Murphy\">Eddie Murphy</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Phil%20Collins\">Phil Collins</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Prince\">Prince</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Questlove\">Questlove</a>"
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"title" : "The Ballad Of Black Bosco",
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"content" : "The novel Ernest wrote when he was coming down off the lithium/cocaine hangover one weekend.<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=bazanye.wordpress.com&blog=997108&post=1389&subd=bazanye&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "A footnote on novel H1N1",
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"content" : "<p>A couple years ago, I wrote a post about the <a href=\"http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=353\">H1N1 “swine flu”</a> outbreak, talking a bit about the mechanics of the virus and how it could be hacked. Today I read an <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110728/full/news.2011.447.html\">interesting tidbit in Nature</a> referencing <a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6044/850\">this article in Science</a> that is a silver lining on the H1N1 cloud. </p>\n<p>You know how every flu season there’s a new flu vaccine, yet somehow for other diseases you only need to be vaccinated once? It’s because there’s no vaccine that can target all types of flu. Apparently, a patient who contracted “swine flu” during the pandemic created a novel antibody with the remarkable ability to confer immunity to all 16 subtypes of influenza A. A group of researchers sifted through the white blood cells of the patient and managed to isolate four <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_cell\">B cells</a> that contain the code to produce this antibody. These cells have been cloned and are producing antibodies facilitating further research into a potential broad-spectrum vaccine that could confer broad protection against the flu.</p>\n<p>For some reason I find this really interesting. I think it’s because at a gut level it gives me hope that if a killer virus did arise that wipes out most of humanity, there’s some evidence that maybe a small group of people will survive it. Also, never getting the flu again? Yes, please! On the other hand, this vaccine will be a fun one to observe as it evolves, particularly around the IP and production rights that results from this. Who owns it, and who deserves credit for it? Does the patient that evolved the antibody deserve any credit? What will be the interplay between the researchers, the funding institutions, the health industry and the consumer market? Should/can the final result or process be patented so that ultimately, a corporation is granted a monopoly on the vaccine (maybe there’s already a ruling on this)? Should we administer the resulting vaccine to everyone, risking the forced evolution of a new “superstrain” of flu that could be even deadlier, or should we restrict it only to the old, weak, and young? While these questions have been asked and sometimes answered in other contexts, everyone can relate to suffering through the flu, so perhaps the public debate around such issues will be livelier. </p>"
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"title" : "Debt is the original building block of economic civilization",
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"content" : "In the most remote recorded times, [anthropologist David Graeber] argues, it was debt, rather than money, that made society hum. The majority of cuneiform documents we have from ancient Mesopotamia relate to financial matters, and they show that by about 3500 BC the Sumerians had a uniform system of accountancy, the silver shekel. However, Graeber asserts, this denomination was less money in our modern sense (it hardly circulated) than a way for accountants to keep track of who owed what to whom. Debt, in other words, was the basic currency that got business done. Money of the portable kind emerged later, primarily in times and areas of conflict, when grab-and-go was a priority. ...<br><br><b>IDEAS: </b>A lot of people think of barter, rather than debt, as the earliest kind of economy. But you write that pure barter economies never existed?<br><br><b>GRAEBER: </b>As an anthropologist, it’s kind of a professional pet peeve. We’ve been looking for this mythical land of barter for the last 200 years, so we would have found it by now ... The spot trade, where it’s in the moment and you never see each other again, this is the opposite of any kind of exchange in primitive economies. In order to create the idea that life is just a series of exchanges we can all walk away from - a very antisocial notion of what people are about - you have to eradicate all obligations that people have to each other. ...<br><br><b></b>Credit money is the original form, and then you have this 1,000-year period where coins come mainly out of the building of empires and to pay soldiers, and then when the empires go, the coins do too. In the Middle Ages you go back to credit systems, very sophisticated in some times and places. Then we have another time of bullion money, since the 16th or 17th century, and that’s what’s going away now.<br><i>--J. Gabriel Boylan, Boston Globe, on <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/21/which_came_first_money_or_debt/?page=full\">debt trumping barter and money</a></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-5887112693498144458?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RpXn1rMF6LQ/TksaWDIXxSI/AAAAAAAAAY4/zXHiZvlv-No/s1600/exodus%2B2.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:320px;height:229px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RpXn1rMF6LQ/TksaWDIXxSI/AAAAAAAAAY4/zXHiZvlv-No/s320/exodus%2B2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a>\n<br><div style=\"text-align:left\">The exodus has begun. One by one, friends have begun to trickle back to the motherland, foreign degree in one hand, green passport in the other, in their back pocket a British or American accent to be pulled out wherever and whenever needed. Some hold dual <span>citizenships</span>. Should things not work out as they planned, should their salaries not be in the millions by their third year at home, they will pack their bags and return to their second motherland. For many though, going back home is burning a bridge. They may have lived in England for four, five, maybe seven years but once they move back to Nigeria, it will be like they never set foot here. The embassies give no special treatment to those who have spent a sizable chunk of their lives abroad. You are either one of them or you're not.</div><div>\n<br></div><div>I think one of the bigger shocks for people who have made the move is returning to their old haunts on 'holiday.' For years, Nigeria has been the Christmas, spring break or summer spot. Suddenly it is England that becomes the vacation destination. When the returnees come back to visit, everything is familiar to them. They know exactly what bus will get them from <span>Woodgreen</span> to <span>Clapham</span> Junction. Yet, they look at things that were once familiar with puzzlement. One recent returnee told me during her 'holiday', \"Nobody has a life in England. They just go to work and come home. In Lagos, nobody goes home after work. I don't understand how you guys do it.\"</div><div>\n<br></div><div>Like most people, I am sceptical of sweeping statements that begin with 'nobody.' However, you do find that many of the returnees come back with vast judegments like: In Nigeria, people are so impatient. In Lagos, everybody forms. All Nigerian men are cheats. They are too English or American or Austrian not to be shocked by their new lives in Nigeria. Yet, by the time they return on 'holiday', they are too Nigerian not to be shocked by the old lives they once led abroad. It seems the plight of the cosmopolitan is forever to be shocked.</div><div>\n<br></div><div>There is a myth that goes round the Nigerian undergraduate circles over here. Legend has it that once you return to the motherland clutching at least a 2.2 degree, a top job in the financial sector, the oil and gas sector or the telecommunications sector will be waiting for you. If you are a girl, added to this is the fact that at least 5 men will want to marry you no matter your age or level of beauty. At least two of these men will propose when you step off the plane at <span>Murtala</span> <span>Mohammed</span> airport. </div><div>\n<br></div><div>I was speaking to a friend of mine about the first part of this myth. He did his National Youth Service Corps (<span>NYSC</span>) in Lagos and there were a lot of returnees from America, London, Johannesburg, Accra. According to him, they came expecting the best jobs but many were disappointed, for two reasons. First of all, the market is saturated. There are only so many jobs to go around, no matter how many overseas graduates descend on V.I looking for a start up annual salary of at least 2 million. Secondly, in his opinion, the foreign trained graduates were not such great employees anyway. They were arrogant, they spoke funny and many of them had not gone to first rate universities abroad.Thus, in employer's eyes, their 2.1 from a low ranking university in England, was no more valuable than a 2.1 from the University of Ibadan. My friend saw many of those who had come from abroad in search of <span>Eldorado</span>, returning to where they came from, their dreams dissolved to dust.</div><div>\n<br></div><div>However, I hear stories which make me wonder how much of a lie the myth is. I have another friend in England, who has just finished a Masters here. She is currently looking for work but only halfheartedly because she has two job offers waiting for her in Nigeria. The first is from a large bank, one of the so-called 'new-generation' banks. The second is from an oil company. These are the kind of jobs that people fast and pray just to get an interview for. To give you an idea of how prized such jobs are, about a year ago, when a multinational oil company advertised a job opening in a national newspaper, over 90, 000 people applied. 90,000. I can't even get my head round such a number. Even if only a tenth of those that applied were eligible, that still means that whoever got it, would have beaten 9,000 others to get that job. I don't even think my friend had an interview. I know for a fact that she has no background in finance yet she has a banking job waiting for her in Nigeria. Is she an exception? I don't think so. I've heard too many stories like hers. Is she the norm? I don't know. </div><div>\n<br></div><div>No-one is quite certain what Nigeria will hold for us returnees when we get back. I've heard amazing success stories. I've seen people who could barely afford to load their Oyster cards, come back to England on 'holiday' with more money than they had in all their years here put together (and no they are not doing 419). I've seen others who go back and make it by Nigerian standards. They have a job that pays well enough for them to afford a car with air conditioning (my humble reckoning of success) but still they are not content. They see their fellow returnees buying houses in <span>Lekki</span> and flying first class and they crave that lifestyle, they feel entitled to it by reason of their foreign education. And of course, there are a few who go back and don't make anything of it at all. Again, they are by no means starving but they always feel that things would have been better if they have stayed in England. No matter if they moved back last year of twenty years ago, they will always mention in conversation, \"When I lived in England...\" Some will spend their lives, looking for ways both legal and illegal to make a second exodus. </div><div>\n<br></div><div>As my friends return, I wish them well. I pray they come back on holiday with more than they have left with. I pray they will be safe. I pray they will be strong. May they go with optimism. May they never stop believing that things can change. May they never say like our parents did, \"We are managing.\" The exodus has begun in my generation. The children are coming home.</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7525024318966536302-7797837449822303582?l=authorsoundsbetterthanwriter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Physics of a Sad Balloon",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://scienceblogs.com/principles/upload/2011/08/the_physics_of_a_sad_balloon/sm_balloon_long_ribbon.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"582\" alt=\"sm_balloon_long_ribbon.jpg\">My birthday was two months ago, and SteelyKid's was the weekend before last, so we've had balloons running around the house for a good while now. Meaning that when I came into the library yesterday, I saw the sad little image on the right: a half-deflated Mylar balloon floating at about chest height.</p>\n\n<p>Now, the first thought of a normal person on seeing this would be \"Why didn't we throw this away a while ago?\" My thought, since I've been on a bit of an everyday physics kick for a little while now, was \"Hey, physics!\"</p>\n\n<p>\"What do you mean?,\" you ask. \"What physics is there in the sad balloon? It floats because it's still got some helium in it, making it lighter than air. It's elementary buoyancy-- even SteelyKid probably understands that.\"</p>\n\n<p>\"Ah, I reply, but why is it floating <em>at that height</em>?\" I reply. \"After all, if it was really lighter than air, it should keep going up until it's not lighter than air any more-- until the density of the air outside matches the density of the air inside. But I can assure you that our ceilings are not nearly high enough for the air density to vary appreciably over the height of a first-floor room.\"</p>\n\n<p>\"Hmmm....\" you reply. \"Hey, physics!\"</p>\n\n <a href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/08/the_physics_of_a_sad_balloon.php\">Read the rest of this post...</a> | <a href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/08/the_physics_of_a_sad_balloon.php#commentsArea\">Read the comments on this post...</a><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/scienceblogs/uncertainprinciples/~4/sRHEcZGINfM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Historical Question for Governor Perry",
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"content" : "<p>Dear Rick Perry:</p>\n<p>I am a historian and if you will indulge me, I’d just like to ask you a question about historical parallels.</p>\n<p>So if we were living in Germany’s Weimar Republiic and it was 1930, and a <a href=\"http://www.freep.com/article/20110817/NEWS07/108170345/Perry-s-quips-not-loved-by-all\">politician warned a central banker that his policies were treasonous</a> to the nation, and threatened to have him roughed up, and said that the current president did not love his country, can you tell me to what political party that politician most likely belonged?</p>"
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"title" : "Nigeria: Customs Arrests Two Tankers Loaded With Textile in Kano",
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"title" : "The 3rd Annual 10 Softest Niggas In The Game",
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"direction" : "ltr",
"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><br>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZwY7F_Fz1A/ThKa4LGOUZI/AAAAAAAAAQE/fzbRUCAqBPk/s1600/DoughBoy4.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ZwY7F_Fz1A/ThKa4LGOUZI/AAAAAAAAAQE/fzbRUCAqBPk/s400/DoughBoy4.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ayo whattup yall its ya boy Tony Starks aka The Black Bolo Yeung aka Volcano Hands Deini nahmean. Its that time a year again when we discuss all the softest niggas in the game namsayin. Word is bond. Yall already kno how it go. We gon push the reset button on this one tho nahmean. So that means that even if a nigga was featured in the 1st n 2nd lists he still eligible to be mentioned on this list namsayin. Cos theres jus some muthafuckas that need to be recognized for all they efforts n they talents more than others son. So on that note...</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><br>\n<br>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><br>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h3mvlbx9Id4/ThN47B67GUI/AAAAAAAAAQU/MvJdAz4TI8M/s1600/drake+face+12.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h3mvlbx9Id4/ThN47B67GUI/AAAAAAAAAQU/MvJdAz4TI8M/s1600/drake+face+12.jpg\"></a></div><br>\n<br>\n10. Drizzy Drake<br>\n<br>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T45qlP3m_hM/ThUz-KMcZoI/AAAAAAAAARM/wDPVzqMghTM/s1600/prodigy+mj.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T45qlP3m_hM/ThUz-KMcZoI/AAAAAAAAARM/wDPVzqMghTM/s1600/prodigy+mj.jpg\"></a>Surprise niggas! Ya boy Young Angel is bizzack like he forgot his lip balms. Ayo yall remember the reactions niggas had when they seen those pictures that the nigga Jay-Z threw up on the Summer Jam screen of Prodigy dressed up like Mike Jackson? Niggas looked at that shit like it was pictures of son doin cartwheels in a bikini yo. Niggas thought that niggas career got dealt a deathblow wit that shit nahmean. N maybe it did kinda shake my nigga up namsayin....I dont know. But in the meantime this merry little muthafucka right here got pictures of hisself sittin on broads laps n more pictures of hisself embracin other dudes than any nigga known to man...n he STILL goin on wit life like that shit all good. Cos aint nobody SHOCKED when they see the sus nigga wit liquid vagina flowin thru his veins doin that shit namsayin. Niggas practically EXPECT that shit from son namsayin. But when you compare the MJ costume to this Farnsworth Bentley of Middle Earth look....you really cant see nothin that wrong wit the Prodigy pictures no more son. Either way...when it comes to Aubs you are lookin at the most softboiled creature on Gods green earth yo. This niggas music is so light in the ass that if you look real close at ya speakers when you playin his joints you can see tiny little heart bubbles comin outta em son. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><br>\n<br>\n<br>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jygm4UV3r3w/ThTVuJHvkdI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/qz9ZiYhNiVs/s1600/big+sean+posner.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Jygm4UV3r3w/ThTVuJHvkdI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/qz9ZiYhNiVs/s1600/big+sean+posner.jpg\"></a></div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\">9. Big Sean </div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">I buy a lot a music son so it aint unusual for Tone to end up coppin shit n then givin it away or throwin it out the window while Im drivin n shit namsayin. I try to give niggas a chance. I even held this niggas cd in my hand n looked at it like I dont kno.... should I drop 8 bucks on this shit n give son a clean slate? I ended up puttin it down n coppin the Curren$y joint after I came back to my senses n shit tho. But I ended up hearin it anyway namsayin. To be honest wit yalls...I was kinda feelin most those beats. But I cant get past this niggas rhymin yo. What really had me shakin my head n questionin the niggas sanity was son had the nerve to call those bars he spit on the BET awards wit them other g.o.o.d. music niggas the "verse of the year". Like forreal forreal....this nigga is outta his fuckin mind son. Nigga said in plain english "tell me that wasnt verse of the year" on his So Much More joint. That shit wasnt even the verse of that cipher son....nevermind year! Its possible that the only nigga that didnt spit nicer bars was Kanye. But I think that nigga Ye actually went off the head wit summa that shit. To make shit even worse tho the nigga Kanye recently said <span style=\"line-height:19px\">"What Beyonce is to R&B...Big Sean can be to rap."</span><span style=\"line-height:19px\"> That is a quote son. In reality this nigga aint got a original bone in his body so he aint gon ever be the Beyonce of rap....but how his own boss comparin him to broads yo? Yeah yeah I kno niggas heard sons supa dupa shit n ran wit it...................... baton. But other niggas was doin that shit when Medium Sean was still a fetus anyways yo. Go ask Sean Price. Either way tho....it aint like I hate this nigga. But he need to stop the diva shit n all the talk bout wantin to be famous n jus make some decent music or some shit nahmean.</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;line-height:19px\"><br>\n</span></span></div><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4uUYzp6UQS8/ThOBEuHY-eI/AAAAAAAAAQk/wqlcUQi1zn0/s1600/Kanye_Blouse.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4uUYzp6UQS8/ThOBEuHY-eI/AAAAAAAAAQk/wqlcUQi1zn0/s400/Kanye_Blouse.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">8. Kanye West</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Now I got nothin but love for the nigga Yeezy nahmean. I jus wanna make that shit very clear yo. Son is a genius n he a muthafuckin animal when he get in the studio namsayin. That nigga will bite the head off a dove when he in the booth son. Son aint really the most lyrical nigga on earth like that...but he got a lot of heart n charisma namsayin. Nevermind what that nigga do when he behind the boards son....I aint even gotta tell you he gets busy g. I love this niggas music son. BUT this muthafucka done put on womens garments one too many times to not get called out for it son. This niggas drivin his gender mobile in the middle of the freeway wit no regards for which way the traffic is goin AT ALL b. This nigga aint jus gon be rockin the entire Chanel spring collection n not catch no flack for that shit nahmean. The nigga dont only throw on a couple questionable accessories here n there tho...he actually dresses straight up in shit that was designed for broads like he jus dont give a fuck namsayin. I cant condone that shit son. I been known to rock some elegant shit from time to time too son but this nigga done put the flame back in flamboyant yo. That shit aint even unisex my nigga. Cmon son. Crossdressin aint fly son. Fuck is you doin Ye?</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCQfWDKAVq0/ThOLl9EUDiI/AAAAAAAAAQo/uaLJtqdnWw0/s1600/j+cole.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vCQfWDKAVq0/ThOLl9EUDiI/AAAAAAAAAQo/uaLJtqdnWw0/s1600/j+cole.jpg\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">7. J. Cole</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Now before all yall Cole stans who been lookin past this nigga's boring ass songs for years start cryin over this shit like you in a Trey Songz video....hear me out yo. I kno the nigga can spit. I kno he got a couple dope production wins under his belt too. But despite all that....its like this niggas been readin from Memphis Bleek's book on '100 Ways To Fail Even When Ya Mentor Is The Biggest Nigga In Hip Hop' all this time son. Also why this nigga always gotta have a facial expression lookin like somebody jus stole his bike n shit? Is this nigga capable of a genuine moment of happiness yo? I dont think so son. This niggas own shadow gets depressed from hangin round his bitter ass. But when he do try n make some party type shit for the broads that shit jus ends up soundin unnatural as fuck anyway. For example the niggas got absolutely no clue what he spose to be doin on shit like Work Out. Son was like...."Uhhh...bitches love old Paula Abdul shit...Imma jus sing some old Paula Abdul shit rite here..." n lost his composure all over that shit yo. Lets jus accept the fact that the nigga is too emotionally delicate to pull this shit off. Son aint the second comin of Nas like niggas was hypin him up to be. Nas was on like 4 joints before he dropped. his first album. 2 of those shits ended up on Illmatic. Illmatic had 10 tracks. 1 a those tracks was a intro. You see where Im goin wit this? This nigga got like 40 to 50 joints out n his label still aint NOWHERE ready to drop a album based off what he givin em. I wanna see this nigga win but its lookin like he need to call his next mixtape False Alarm. Tone feels ya pain Jigga. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OLsKVcq2wz0/ThN45N5fKiI/AAAAAAAAAQM/3rGBFS4RKMI/s1600/drake+happy.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OLsKVcq2wz0/ThN45N5fKiI/AAAAAAAAAQM/3rGBFS4RKMI/s400/drake+happy.jpg\" width=\"360\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">6. Lil Wayne </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">I aint never really had no problems wit Weezy namsayin. But son is forcin niggas hands yo. We see pictures of son french kissin Baby....niggas pardon that. He allows Nicki Minaj to release music n hop on remixes 5 times a day for the last 2 years...niggas pardon that. He allows wack ass Gudda Gudda to continue to eat....niggas pardon that. Drake............we pardoned that. He even puts out a bullshit ass "rock" album.....n niggas pardoned that too. But when that nigga set foot in the booth to croon a ballad called "How To Love"....n expected niggas to really not take offense to the shit he was doin....ayo Wayne we got problems now son. Somebody needs to go stomp the braids off this niggas head yesterday son. This shit is NOT okay yo. How you gon jus out-soft that nigga Drizzy anyway? I thought yalls was family nahmean. You kno damm well thats ya boys lane. But you even took it further than him. I mean that nigga Aubrey got his own set of feminine tendencies to cope wit but he aint never sat down n sang a whole fruity ass love ballad over some Wyclef bathin in the waters of his idols type guitar chords n shit son. You really went too far nigga. Son you was a animal back in like '04 to '07. Bring back that nigga or some shit son. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WcYvXdxyJJA/ThU5kAtcylI/AAAAAAAAARQ/pG9rq0CsgXw/s1600/soulja+boy.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WcYvXdxyJJA/ThU5kAtcylI/AAAAAAAAARQ/pG9rq0CsgXw/s320/soulja+boy.jpg\" width=\"265\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><br>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\">5. Soulja Boy </div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-top:0px;text-align:justify\">Aka the 2011 Mr Bojangles. This nigga also deserves recognition as the coon of the decade namsayin. I dont even kno how muthafuckas listen to this niggas music....nevermind callin that shit hip hop. If it was 1930 this nigga would be rockin a necklace made of chicken legs n pigs feet n be tap dancin on watermelons for a livin. Anyways...sons music is only technically hip hop....like drinkin a beer wit a straw n a umbrella in the bottle is technically drinkin a beer namsayin. Hidin behind 50 Cent wont protect you from ya own bitchassness tho son. This nigga been germinatin in the garden of wackness for a hot minute now. This nigga done splashed hisself wit enough water from the fountain of coonery to last 12 lifetimes. Stop givin this nigga a pass jus cos he young. Muthafuckin Run DMC was around this niggas age when they made King Of Rock yo. LL Cool J was on his first comeback when he was this niggas age yo. NWA made Fuck The Police when they was this niggas age son. You cant hide behind youth forever you clown ass muthafucka. If I see you Imma smack the slaves outta you nigga. Its open season on you son. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dKogLaeUnE8/ThP_i1_YBTI/AAAAAAAAAQs/VGXdfpPQ7J0/s1600/bow+wow+2.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dKogLaeUnE8/ThP_i1_YBTI/AAAAAAAAAQs/VGXdfpPQ7J0/s1600/bow+wow+2.jpg\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">4. Bow wow</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">This nigga rite here is a human bellybutton son. The only form of touch this nigga is capable of is a caress namsayin. Fuck outta here wit the fake Nino Brown shit too you shrimp cocktail ass nigga. This little muthafucka jus refuses to let his career die wit some honor or dignity nahmean. Word is bond this nigga is his own worst enemy too yo. The last time anybody took this nigga serious Lil Kim was still mostly made of human body parts son. Callin this nigga a clown would be givin him too much credit nahmean. If I see the nigga Imma slap his head n torso off his legs. Word is bond. Ayo Bow Wow you better stay ya bitch ass out the gods way son. If I see you Imma throw all 80 pounds of you as far as I can off the top of a buildin n then run down the stairs n hop in my whip n chase you as you flyin across the sky n hit you wit my car jus as you bout to land n then smash the whip into a brick wall son. You been warned son.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oPhqv5isBKw/ThU7XCXzKjI/AAAAAAAAARU/QX3Urzfcpv8/s1600/tyga+tyga.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"265\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oPhqv5isBKw/ThU7XCXzKjI/AAAAAAAAARU/QX3Urzfcpv8/s400/tyga+tyga.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">3. Tyga </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">This nigga looks like a transgender Vietnamese prostitute that got abducted by aliens n was cloned but never really finished the process of turnin hisself into a actual human n shit so he came out lookin like he do...but he still part alien n only kinda human lookin now namsayin. Or some shit like that. Son looks like Wiz Khalifa n Dennis Rodman's love child or some shit son. But that aint even the problem wit this nigga g. This niggas music sounds like shit you hear when you see a geisha twirlin ribbons in the air n shit namsayin. To top it all off the nigga be lookin more suspect than two niggas sharin a hot dog from opposite sides n meetin in the middle nahmean. Am I the only one thats seein this shit? Son looks like a fuckin lesbian yo. The nigga probably marinates hisself in lotion for hours when he gets home son. Why is this nigga even here yo?</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HG1AaYXu_uE/ThTi5yWEIrI/AAAAAAAAARA/uiddcDpk8XQ/s1600/yung+berg+4.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HG1AaYXu_uE/ThTi5yWEIrI/AAAAAAAAARA/uiddcDpk8XQ/s320/yung+berg+4.jpg\" width=\"279\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">2. Yung Berg </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Callin this nigga a failure is not givin him enough credit namsayin. Straight up. Technically this nigga has already mastered failure n moved on to the level that comes after failin tho. Son has evolved past bein a regular failin ass nigga. This nigga has developed his own science when it comes to that shit....its "quantum failure" nahmean. This nigga can fail without even bein awake yo. Son can fail in a dream n bring that shit back wit him to his conscious state namsayin. The nigga can inception fail his way thru life. The nigga can find the fail buried 4 levels deeper under the failure that you actually see. The nigga can fail about 78 times per heartbeat g. In fact by the time you finish readin this sentence the nigga will have failed approximately 468 times namsayin. This nigga is usin methods of failure that niggas aint even seen since the ancient Mayans n Egyptians was on earth still yo. This nigga is usin approaches to failin that brought upon the destructions of entire ancient civilizations son. Think its a game yo? This nigga takes his failure very fuckin seriously son. He dont want no failures happenin unless he involved. No chains snatched...no faces smacked...no nothin. A nigga falls off his bike in the park....he wants IN. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;line-height:19px\"><br>\n</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;line-height:19px\"><br>\n</span></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;line-height:19px\"><br>\n</span></span></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yrN7P3_AqW4/ThN486iC1NI/AAAAAAAAAQg/3gIk2TZtOeA/s1600/drake+outsiders.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yrN7P3_AqW4/ThN486iC1NI/AAAAAAAAAQg/3gIk2TZtOeA/s1600/drake+outsiders.jpg\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">1. The many sides of Drake </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">This is a conflicted nigga rite here. If this aint a nigga wit a identity crisis I dont kno what is namsayin. First you got the Drake thats like the Taio Cruz of hip hop. The nigga got the most bitchmade voice on earth so its not like it takes son much effort to go FAM (Feminine As a Muthafucka) on a track. But then you look again n the niggas hollerin soo woo n twistin his fingers in all sortsa stupid ways while he takin a picture wit Jeezy. Then you hear the nigga promisin to wife any broad that glances in his general direction in a song. Then theres Drake who dont give a fuck bout a bitch or a hoe. Then theres Drake who will snuggle up in a broads lap n fall asleep. We all kno who the real Drake is but son wants to have his cupcake n eat it too namsayin. First off this nigga had approximately zero male role models in his household to look up to while he was growin up. So it aint came as no surprise to his moms when son had a Jack Sparrow walk n stuck his pinky out when he held his teacups. Son <span style=\"border-collapse:collapse;line-height:18px\"> probably weighs about 190 or 200...n at least 50 of those pounds gotta be due to female hormones alone yo. But a</span>int nobody mad at the nigga for all that effeminate shit. That cornball shit aint the facade. Its the fake ass shit that niggas cant look past namsayin. Ayo son...will.i.am. is a corny nigga too. That nigga Travie McCoy a corny nigga. Even Will Smith is a corny nigga. But those dudes stay in they own lane. They jus some pop niggas. So nobody got problems wit em. Even Nelly accepted that he was better off livin his life as a pop nigga n stopped talkin bout street sweepers n blowin weed in his hooks namsayin. But them dudes dont represent US as a culture like that. If this nigga wanna step up n be the face of hip hop n talk bout how he gon follow in the footsteps of niggas like Jay-Z then he better rep the culture correctly. Otherwise he need to take his Febreze-garglin, B-throwin, hoe-savin, bubblegum R&B ass home son. That bein said....</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><b>THE FIRST INDUCTEE INTO THE SOFT NIGGA HALL OF FAME IS..........</b></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><b><br>\n</b></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><b><br>\n</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JPs7sv3wCiY/ThN48Qo23WI/AAAAAAAAAQc/mYDldXliy74/s1600/drake+face+11.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"212\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JPs7sv3wCiY/ThN48Qo23WI/AAAAAAAAAQc/mYDldXliy74/s320/drake+face+11.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:center\"> AUBREY DRAKE GRAHAM</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Congrats to that nigga. He earned it namsayin. Before I wrap this shit up tho I jus wanna say that these little niggas need to stop talkin nonstop bout makin it someday n becomin successful n bein famous n all that nahmean. Niggas thats true to they hearts bout what they do jus make they art however they wanna make it son. The fame n all that is jus the benefits that come along wit stayin true to yaself. Eybody that raps wanna be famous n get money yo. Its been that way since Sugar Hill son. But niggas like Big Sean n that nigga J. Cole followed in the footsteps of that diva nigga Drake n made that shit the subject of half they songs yo. Cmon son. Niggas dont need to hear bout all that bitterness n that \"Im bout to get on\" shit on half the joints you makin n shit nahmean. Smarten up little niggas.</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1247522493868782777-2412663805108790924?l=bigghostnahmean.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/bANbi/~4/-Z-yXQQHq-s\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Splinters",
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Since moving to Berlin, I have been flying even more than my usual a lot. </p>\n<p>Yesterday, in planning for my airport flight tomorrow, I went to my usual barber (a gentle man from Istanbul who speaks with kind eyes) and asked him to go ahead and make me pretty for the immigration control officer. As I sat there looking at the mirror, I realized that 1) I rather liked my face covered in short, grey, splinters. And 2) I was afraid of what these short, grey splinters would tell someone else about me. </p>\n<p>I realized that this particular habit began ten years ago. I flew back into Chicago from London on Sep 16th, 2001. I was originally scheduled to come back on Sep 12th. I remember shaving. I remember shaving every single time since then. Now, this was not a rather well-thought out thing. There was no reason, I don’t think <a href=\"http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/9-11-investigation/american-airlines-11\">in retrospect</a>, to conclude that NOT having a beard was a good idea. </p>\n<p>Except that the images we were watching were of Usama and Omar and I was reading about Sikh elders getting attacked and the world had decided that a beard was really the marker of hate – but only on brown skin, naturally. </p>\n<p>My younger brother grew a beard around 2006-7. He had a manicured kind long before, but then he began a proper Sunnah beard – emulating the Prophet. Long, uncut, with little hair on the mustache. My father as well. I love their beards – they represent faith, devotion, a sense of commitment to their ethical and moral lives. </p>\n<p>My own adventures in hirsuteness came from laziness. I was not a fan of the daily shave, preferring the shadow. Either way, there was not much stock in my facial hair pot – it represented nothing, I believed. </p>\n<p>But my clean shave on the eve of flying did make a representative gesture and maybe even an identitarian one, as well. I did because I wanted no “trouble” at the border. I wanted to see my loved ones and reach my destinations. It was a small thing to do. </p>\n<p>Ten years later, the small thing was a grooved-in habit.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Photo-on-8-16-11-at-2.15-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"unshaves\" width=\"566\" height=\"302\"></p>\n<p>There is, of course, much to say about the last ten years and I feel that we all should. There is every reason to think back, willfully and in full light of history, about what we lived through, enabled and participated in. The wars, the killings are but one aspect of our global re-ordering. When I say “we”, I ought to qualify it by saying Americans or Iraqis or Afghans or Pakistanis or Muslims or whatever else. I will not do that. I read some of the fiction that came out after 9/11 when I was writing <a href=\"http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/the-cultural-damage-of-the-war-on-terror\">this piece</a> and I remember a discussion (phone, was it?) with my editor Jonathan Shainin (who wrote this <a href=\"http://www.thenation.com/article/plot-against-america\">must-read</a> tracing Updike’s post 9/11 novel) about pointillism or minutiae in the American gaze on 9/11. I remember, if I can recreate my own thoughts, being very adamant that this microscopic examination was another form of refusal by the American imagination to look up and out, to refuse to be historical and global.</p>\n<p>I will probably still make that argument. Perhaps with more qualifiers, though. </p>\n<p>In the meantime, I want to look at my own minutiae. </p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=p6xHOsYNOZk:wa4t4bZEq3g:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/p6xHOsYNOZk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"370\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/FYE1QrJmYOU?rel=0\" width=\"500\"></iframe><br><br><a href=\"http://osibisaba.blogspot.com/2010/09/palmwine-videos-to-jazz-koo-nimo.html\">This</a> great 2008 performance by Koo Nimo at <a href=\"http://www.openluchttheaterhertme.nl/afrikafestival.asp?Taal=EN&PaginaID=47\">Afrikafestival Hertme</a> in the Netherlands has been around Youtube for a while, and now we have another recently posted Youtube video which presents a more complete version of this performance. The always incredible Koo Nimo is joined here by members of his Adadam Agofomma group as well as the seprewa virtuoso Osei Korankye (whose collaboration album with Koo Nimo is <a href=\"http://osibisaba.blogspot.com/2010/09/koo-nimo-osei-korankye-tete-wobi-ka.html\">available</a> on this blog). The set begins with a seprewa/guitar piece \"Abube ne atebe\" that features Osei, followed by a beautiful song entitled \"Death is everybody's business.\" The performance concludes with a version of the Ghanaian standard \"Yaa Amponsah\" that quickly turns into Koo Nimo's own tune \"Aburokyire Abrabo\" (Overseas Life). In case you're interested, I've posted a full recording of this tune below, along with a translation by Joe Latham from the booklet <a href=\"http://homepage.ntlworld.com/latham/koonimo/ashball.htm\"><i>Ashanti Ballads of Koo Nimo</i></a>.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CAUYOR1HmOs/TknUYIDRYtI/AAAAAAAAAlM/PBUtqp_OXa8/s1600/6a00e54f95d5fc883301539085e6d4970b-pi.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"218\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CAUYOR1HmOs/TknUYIDRYtI/AAAAAAAAAlM/PBUtqp_OXa8/s320/6a00e54f95d5fc883301539085e6d4970b-pi.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div>On the subject of Koo Nimo, you might like to check out this beautiful, handmade book honoring Agya Koo that was recently acquired by the Smithsonian. The book is called <i>Listen, listen : Adadam Agofomma : honoring the legacy of Koo Nimo</i>, a collaboration between artists Mary Hark, Atta Kwami, and Koo Nimo himself. An article about the book is on the Smithsonian site <a href=\"http://smithsonianlibraries.si.edu/smithsonianlibraries/2011/08/listen-listen-adadam-agofomma-a-fine-press-artists-book-in-the-warren-m-robbins-national-museum-of-a.html\">here</a>. <br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--rwUV5xVzH8/Tkmn0mc83wI/AAAAAAAAAlE/jtCRV8W1DT4/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-08-15+at+5.47.45+PM.png\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--rwUV5xVzH8/Tkmn0mc83wI/AAAAAAAAAlE/jtCRV8W1DT4/s1600/Screen+shot+2011-08-15+at+5.47.45+PM.png\"></a></div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br> <span style=\"color:#0b5394\">Koo Nimo - Aburokyire Abrabo</span><br><br><br><h2 style=\"color:black;font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-family:trebuchet ms,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Aburokyire Abrabo</span> <span style=\"font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;font-size:small\">(</span><span style=\"font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;font-size:small\">Overseas Life</span><span style=\"font-size:small\">)</span></span></h2><span style=\"font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif\"> <span style=\"color:#0b5394\">Mother, Oh Mother, your son has made a terrible journey. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Now I am stranded overseas. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Darkness has encircled me. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> There can be no witness to what I endure alone. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> An unsuccesful mission is a disgrace, </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> So how can we come hone? </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> If you fail, no child is named after you. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Death is preferable to shame. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Everyone has reasons for leaving his native land. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Some travel to study, or to marry. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Some go as tourists, some look for jobs. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Some seek medical treatment. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Some return, but others die overseas. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> What a tragedy that is. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Why should this be? </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> It is our individual destiny. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Life has its bad times we have to pass through. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> The cold weather gets so bitter men lose their senses. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Poverty, family problems, illness and accidents </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> All aggravate the stranger's sad state. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Married or single, life is not pleasant in a foreign land. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Bad company, gossip, rumours, misunderstandings, </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> So many troubles could be settled by speaking to the family. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> There is but one consolation: </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Namely that travel brings wisdom to men. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Spirits of our Ancestors, </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Gods of our Ancestors, </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Watch over our brothers abroad. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> Let them return home safely. </span><br style=\"color:#0b5394\"><span style=\"color:#0b5394\"> To live in Europe is to understand this lament. </span></span><br><div style=\"color:#0b5394\"><br></div><i><a href=\"http://homepage.ntlworld.com/latham/koonimo/ashball.htm\"><span style=\"font-family:"Trebuchet MS",sans-serif\">http://homepage.ntlworld.com/latham/koonimo/ashball.htm</span></a></i>"
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"title" : "Hipster ipsum: filler text for your next design project",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/7.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"7\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/5.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"5\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DrPaul_Cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"DrPaul_Cover\" width=\"300\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p>\nI'm really digging the look of Dr. Paul Koudounaris' new book, <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0500251789/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mitogo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0500251789\">The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses</a><img src=\"http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=mitogo05-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0500251789&camp=217145&creative=399373\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none!important;margin:0px!important\">. </p>\n<p>\nDon't yet have a copy in my hands (it's not out 'til October), but I've pre-Amazonned one for myself. The book is packed with hundreds of gorgeous color photographs of these sites throughout the world, many of which are usually inaccessible to outsiders. </p>\n<p>\n <a href=\"http://www.empiredelamort.com\">Here's the project website</a>, and <a href=\"http://www.tandhhighlights.co.uk/9780500251782.html\">here's the publisher's feature page</a>. The first show and signing <a href=\"http://www.laluzdejesus.com/shows/2011/Events/Empire-of-Death/Ossuaries.htm\">takes place at La Luz de Jesus gallery</a> in Los Angeles on Sept. 24.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://leejosephpublicity.com/show/paulkstatement\">Here is the author/artist's statement</a>, and here is a <a href=\"http://leejosephpublicity.com/show/paulklinks\">collection of related essays by Dr. Koudounaris</a>.</p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0500251789/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=mitogo05-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0500251789\">Advance order here for $31.50</a>. View more photos and a sneak peek inside the book, below...</p>\n<p>\n<span></span></p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http://www.laluzdejesus.com/shows/2011/Events/Empire-of-Death/Ossuaries.htm\">La Luz de Jesus</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2006, Dr. Paul Koudounaris who two years earlier completed a PhD in Art History at UCLA, found a research topic which would preoccupy the next four years of his existence. Koudounaris’ interest in the bizarre and suspicious led him to an extraordinary charnel house in the crypt under the Church of Sts Peter and Paul in the Czeck Republic town of Melnik. Unlike the “Bone Church” in nearby Sedlec, it was gritty and dirty, not for tourists and even unknown by most locals, but contained an arrangement of bones that reflected both a beauty in artistic principles and an understanding of philosophy and theology. Upon discovering that the local hostel receptionist had no idea of its existence, Dr. Koudounaris set his sights on discovering how many more of these charnel houses might still be standing. </p>\n<p>Dr. Koudounaris eventually visited researched and photographed charnel houses on four continents - plus countless others he found in historic documents, grande dames which had fallen by the wayside of the passing centuries. They are presented in the book “The Empire of Death” which, with detailed photos and text not only recovers their history, but the history of the religious movement which gave birth to them. This is not a book about the macabre or death. It is a book about beauty and salvation.</p>\n<p>In this tour de force of original cultural history, Dr. Koudounaris takes the reader on an unprecedented international tour of macabre and devotional architectural masterpieces in nearly 20 countries. The sites in this brilliantly original study range from the Monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Palermo, where the living would visit mummified or skeletal remains and lovingly dress them, to the Paris catacombs, to elaborate bone-encrusted creations in Austria, Cambodia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Koudounaris photographed and analyzed the role of these remarkable memorials within the cultures that created them, as well as the mythology and folklore that developed around them, and skillfully traces a remarkable human endeavor with 250 full-color and 50 black-and-white photographs in a beautifully bound leather covered book.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"1\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"2\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/3.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"3\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/6.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"6\" width=\"600\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/8.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"8\" width=\"590\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/9.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"9\" width=\"617\" align=\"left\"></p>\n<p>\n<em>(Thanks, Julien Nitzberg!)</em><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=e026073fc7f596cbad52ae6a768b50dc&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=e026073fc7f596cbad52ae6a768b50dc&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechCons&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://amch.questionmarket.com/adsc/d887846/17/909940/adscout.php\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/A0ez-iwikWo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p></p>"
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"title" : "Teju Cole and Nostalgia",
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"content" : "I heart this guy. His next work is non fiction, set in Eko, describing my city. He reads from it in this clip. It is such a powerful and evocative extract I want to get on a plane and return to my country. He has made me so homesick.<div>\n<br></div><div><i>Me I like my country,</i></div><div><i>My country very good o,\n<br></i></div><div><div><i>Everything dey for my country,</i></div><div><i>So let us join hands and make Nigeria greater.</i></div><div><i>\n<br></i></div><div>It was a song we used to sing when I was younger. Do you remember this one?</div><div>\n<br></div><div><i>O eba, O eba,</i></div><div><i>When shall I see dodo </i></div><div><i>Ireti give us food o,</i></div><div><i>When I think of Egusi and Iyan, </i></div><div><i>I will never forget pomo.</i></div><div><i>\n<br></i></div><div>And this one</div><div>\n<br></div><div><i>There are seven rivers in Africa,</i></div><div><i>Nile, Niger, Senegal, Congo, Orange, Limpopo, Zambezi,</i></div><div><i>Azikiwe, Mohammed, Tafawa Balewa</i></div><div><i>White man don take the crown from us. </i></div><div>\n<br></div><div>Anyways, here is the reading that sparked off all this nostalgia.</div>\n<br><iframe width=\"480\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/b6FtpAhpkZA\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7525024318966536302-8151619793755346119?l=authorsoundsbetterthanwriter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Freedom in numbers",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20110813_STP501.jpg\" alt=\"\">VIETNAM'S media is state-owned, its blogs and bloggers monitored and its occasional protests attended by uniformed officers while being filmed by plain-clothes ones. However, if you want a SIM card, and thus a new number, for your mobile phone it is no harder than handing over a few dollars. Unlike much of the rest of the world, including neighbouring Cambodia, no photo ID is required. One international telecommunications expert was amazed at how free Vietnam is compared to other nations, in this one respect at least.</p><p>Given how many young people buy multiple SIM cards to take advantage of free credit offers this is just as well; the wheezing photocopiers at most mom-and-pop phone shops might not handle the strain of such unending work well. In the past this has also meant that gauging the size of the market was difficult and the apparent 80% penetration rate given for mobile-phone use is probably too high. Mind you, even some farmers hailing from ethnic minorities in Vietnam's remote northern mountains sport high-quality phones picked up cheaply at the Chinese border, though their network access remains patchy.</p><p>The Vietnamese people appear to stay connected pretty much all the time. Answering phones while driving or in meetings is par for the course. A series of ads shown before cinema screenings portrays people who speak in the theatre as bumpkins and buffoons—so far to little avail. Texting while driving a motorbike is commonplace.</p><p>3G has come to Vietnam and even iPhones are becoming increasingly popular. This in a country whose laws still require stiff background checks on proprietors of internet cafés and the Green Dam filtering software is supposed to be installed in all public computers. The lack of documentation for SIM cards may be an fortuitous oversight—but it is one that many theoretically freer nations corrected years ago.</p>"
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"title" : "Album Review: R. Kelly’s Love Letter",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://i52.tinypic.com/rri6ad.jpg\" height=\"300\" width=\"300\"><br>\nThe Pißmeister Has Done It Again… No, Not <em>That</em>.</p>\n<p>When R. Kelly began to ascend from the ranks of Aaron Hall impersonator to R&B staple, I admittedly wasn’t paying attention. I was mostly listening to hip-hop, as few acts in R&B of the time cold hold my ear long enough to keep it playing past the time a prospective girlfriend was riding with me. Even then, I felt more compelled to cling to the sounds of yesteryear, which I was just beginning to discover; it’s no secret that I still hold a high preference to the R&B music of the 1970s and 1980s, the music my parents and elder cousins were listening to, over that of my own generation. Much of what was forced upon our ears through the traditional channels in that era had decomposed into nearly indistinguishable crap, a viewpoint that would squarely put me in what some might call the “relic” category, despite my age.</p>\n<p>Honestly, when I think of R. Kelly, songs like “Honey Love”, and “I Believe I Can Fly” don’t come to mind as much as Dave Chappelle’s hilarious send up of the R&B crooner and Kelly’s more embarrasing contributions to the genre like “Thoia Thong” and the unforgettable “Trapped In The Closet” series do. He’ll always be the <em>Pißmeister</em> to me, and that’s being kind. When the cloak was pulled over the dark aspects of his life, and he was in the hot seat, R. Kelly didn’t distract us listeners by making something grand and regal (well, for the most part, he did not), he gave us “Milton”. I half expected him to make his own version of “Piss On You”. Even more tolerable outings like Happy People/You Saved Me couldn’t erase the urinous stain from R. Kelly’s record.</p>\n<p>So when word broke that R. Kelly was making a new album, I had the anticipation of one awaiting news that an unnanounced enema may be forthcoming. I paid about as much attention to it as I do the chattering of preteen and teenaged girls over Justin Bieber, their Crisco-and-blowdryer coiffed savior. Then came the public appearances on the Soul Train Awards, and on the graveyard shift during which they air Jimmy Fallon’s late night program. Here was an R. Kelly, free of the cornrows that adorned his head in the decade prior, appropriating the look and sound of a 1960s soul singer. However, it didn’t matter how he looked; what stood out most about Kells this time around was his voice.</p>\n<p>There was R. Kelly’s voice, bright and brilliant as it was back in the mid 1990s, there to remind us that it existed, behind a backdrop more befitting his age, and for a brief moment, I had almost forgotten that this was the guy who mocked us with percussion that sounded like the drops of a golden shower during “Trapped In The Closet”. But wait — was this going to be what the whole album was about? A return to the 1960s? “Just like R. Kelly”, I thought. “A follower, not a leader”. We’d been there, done that. Ask Raphael Saadiq and one of the sadder examples idiots in glass houses will use to justify the war on drugs, Amy Crac — I mean, Winehouse.</p>\n<p>However, I’m pleased to find that upon listening to this album there is but a small sampling of such. The soon-to-be-ubiquitous “When A Woman Loves”, and “Love Is”, two songs which someone was wise enough to pair together in sequence on the album, and the album’s true closer, “How Do I Tell Her”. The rest are songs of which R. Kelly has allowed the music and his voice, not the sideshow, to speak, and it’s all brilliant! Surely, Kells has let more a more honest musical message prevail. There is no outright aping of other artists here, unlike the time he “borrowed” Frankie Beverly’s baseball cap on the Happy People album, or when he straight lifted Prince’s “The Beautiful Ones” for … whatever that song was. Even though “You Are Not Alone”, a song he most famously wrote for Michael Jackson, whom he needlessly shouts out in the beginning, pales somewhat in comparison to the version recorded by his fallen hero, Kells pays the Gloved One a more fitting tribute in the paranoid, multi-tiered vocal confession of “Taxi Cab”, and “Not Feelin’ The Love”, two songs that might have worked if Jackson had been alive to cover them. There’s even a tiny bit of Stevie Wonder in “Just Can’t Get Enough” that sounds more an inflection than an outright bite.</p>\n<p>There is very little, if none, of the lyrical nonsense that has made his music an instant change of the channel, none of the “keeping up with the rappers” shtick that has made him more of a laughingstock from those who won’t be fooled by a step anthem or two. <em>Love Letter</em> is an honest-to-God R. Kelly album; it’s aptly titled, as this is both a “Love Letter” to his most loyal fans, and a redemption plea to his detractors. Everything you may have liked and nothing of what you don’t about R. Kelly is contained in this album. This surely is what he should have been making 7 years ago, when everyone was making “POO POO” and “PEE PEE” mashups of “Ignition”. R. Kelly finally has foregone his claim to be the old man in the club, and is making a claim to be the old man who runs the club. You can bet that Trey Songz is studying this album. It is only a matter of time before you hear one of the songs in this collection humming through the closed doors and windows of every young lady’s Ford Focus, Chrysler Sebring, second-hand Mercedes-Benz C-Class, or as they do in my white-flight scorched corner of Cleveland suburbia, Pontiac Grand Ams from the previous decade.</p>\n<p>However, I won’t be joining them, for as you all know… I drive a Volvo. And while R. Kelly’s <em>Love Letter</em> is just what the mass market ordered, Volvo drivers are known to be on the fringe. It is, however a step in the right direction, albeit several years off schedule.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com/40/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=thepeoplesvault.wordpress.com&blog=14842838&post=40&subd=thepeoplesvault&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Jollof rice: the African dish that everyone loves but no one can agree on",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/17771?ns=guardian&pageName=Jollof+rice%3A+the+African+dish+that+everyone+loves+but+no+one+can+agree+o%3AArticle%3A1618464&ch=Life+and+style&c3=Guardian&c4=Food+and+drink++%28Life+and+style%29%2CLife+and+style%2CMeat+%28recipes%29%2CVegetarian+%28recipes%29%2CAfrica+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CFood+and+Drink&c6=Reina+Yaidoo&c7=11-Aug-10&c8=1618464&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Life+and+style&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FLife+and+style%2FFood+%26+drink\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Whether you add okra, plantain or fish comes down to fiercely held regional preferences, but all varieties have one thing in common – they're delicious</p><p>Every community has \"the dish\". A recipe that is sacrosanct and passed down to each new generation. For Jewish mothers, it's chicken soup. In Spain, paella. And in West Africa, where I am from, it is jollof rice. Made with rice, tomatoes, tomato paste and any number of variable meats, spices (such as nutmeg, cumin and ginger) and vegetables, it is said to have originated from the Wolof tribe in Senegal, which was once a great empire stretching into parts of the Gambia. In some places it is known as Benachin, which means \"one pot\", and it is usually eaten on festive or ceremonial occasions.</p><p>There is a photograph of my father as a young man on the front porch, sitting with his friends, my mother and a bowl of jollof rice. And one of my fondest memories is of the time when, aged six, I sat in with my mother to learn how to prepare the dish.</p><p>But jollof rice is a subject of great debate in West Africa. Every country has its own version, and abhors \"inauthentic\" variations. In Ghana, it is eaten on its own or with fried, ripe plantains. The addition of green, leafy plants is much frowned upon there. Nigerians purport to have the most authentic recipe and sigh wearily at preposterous notions such as adding garlic, bell pepper, carrots, green beans or cabbage. Likewise, a stunned silence would greet anyone adding seafood to jollof rice in my home country, Liberia – which is, ironically, on the coast. Meanwhile, our French-speaking cousins in Cote D'Ivoire, Senegal and Mali would see the use of okra or nuts as heresy.</p><p>I like to imagine the first Wolof tribesperson who concocted it, laughing at us all aruging over their creation.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/food-and-drink\">Food & drink</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/meat-recipes\">Meat recipes</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/vegetarian\">Vegetarian recipes</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/africa\">Africa</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Flifeandstyle%2F2011%2Faug%2F10%2Fjollof-rice\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Trapping The Night Raids",
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"content" : "<div><p>(updated below)</p>\n<p>In Afghanistan the U.S. military launches <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/afghan-air-war-doubles\">about a dozen</a> kill or capture raids each night.</p>\n<p>These are supposed to <em>take out</em> leading Taliban person but, as they are based on dubious intelligence, often go wrong and hit <a href=\"http://news.antiwar.com/2011/04/05/afghan-governor-nato-kills-six-civilians-in-night-raid/\">peaceful people</a> or even people <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031000708.html\">associated</a> with the Afghan government. Additional people <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/05/us-afghanistan-violence-idUSTRE7742XY20110805\">get killed</a> in the protests against such raids.</p>\n<p>There is an obvious strategy to counter such raids or at least to make them more difficult. Traps could be laid that would provoke night raids and allow to hit the raiding force as hard as possible. I have wondered for a while if/when such were happening.</p>\n<p>Laying a trap should be easy to do. A <em>tip-off</em> to the Afghan secret service NDS about an imminent Taliban leader meeting, some <em>suspect</em> geo-locatable mobile phone calls from and to Pakistan from a secluded compound and a few cars or motorcycle <em>aggregating</em> at that place at night should be enough to get the military's interest. Then hide, wait for the choppers and take them out.</p>\n<p>I suspect that <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/asia/07afghanistan.html\">this</a> might well have been such a trap:</p>\n<blockquote>Insurgents shot down a NATO Chinook helicopter during an overnight operation in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 37 people on board, a coalition military official said on Saturday.\n<p>Afghan military officials put the death toll at 38, including 31 Americans and seven Afghan commandos. <br>...<br> The helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Tangi valley of the Wardak Province just west of Kabul, the coalition official said. The Taliban claimed credit for the attack. <br>...<br> A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said insurgents shot down the helicopter around 11 p.m. Friday as it was launching an operation on a house where the militants were gathering in the Tangi Joyee region of the district of Saidabad in the eastern part of the province. Eight militants were killed in the fight that continued after the helicopter fell, he said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>A few of such incidents, initiated all over the country, might make the U.S. military much more reluctant to launch more raids.</p>\n<p><strong>Update</strong> (1:00pm) :</p>\n<p>As it turns out my hunch was right and this incident was very likely <a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-afghan-chopper-20110807,0,7157351.story\">a trap</a>:</p>\n<blockquote>The Taliban claimed its fighters had ambushed Western troops after <strong>being tipped off</strong> to an imminent night raid in the district. The crash site is located in Wardak's Tangi valley, where the insurgents are extremely active.\n<p>The Wardak police chief, Gen. Abdul Qayuum Baqizoi, said the American strike was aimed at <strong>a meeting of insurgent figures</strong> in the district, which is considered a perilous one. <br>...<br> The Taliban statement, from spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, was <strong>unusually specific</strong> in some of its details, ...</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>The "meeting of insurgent figures" was likely a trap as described above. The unusual detailed statement from the Taliban, and the fact that they were the first to come out with the news today, shows that the attack was actually planned in advance and the propaganda pre-prepared. The Taliban claim of having been "tipped off" is dubious. It will make U.S. military more suspicious of their Afghan co-fighters and may have been inserted just to create that effect.</p>\n<p>But from a propaganda standpoint <a href=\"http://news.yahoo.com/ap-sources-crash-kills-members-seal-team-6-155743903.html\">this</a> will have the biggest effect:</p>\n<blockquote>The operators from SEAL Team Six were flown by a crew of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. <br>...<br> One source says the team was thought to include 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew.\n<p>The sources thought this was the largest single loss of life ever for SEAL Team Six, known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It were operators from SEAL Team Six, aka DevGru, that killed Osama Bin Laden.</p>\n<p>To now have killed a big number of them is a huge victory for the Taliban and their associated groups.</p></div>"
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"title" : "Alice Russell Gives It To Us 'Hard & Strong' 'Over & Over'",
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"content" : "<strong>Adele</strong> may be ruling the charts with <em>21</em> and people may still be mourning the loss of<strong> Amy Winehouse</strong> while rediscovering the gems in her catalog, but when it comes to UK singers, for me it's all about <strong>Alice Russell</strong>. I need a new album from her like yesterday, but there hasn't been anything to report on that front of late. However, that lack of news doesn't mean that Alice hasn't been creating new material and even testing it out on European audiences lucky enough to see her perform. In two separate performances in France, Russell blessed those in attendance with two songs, "Hard & Strong" and "Over & Over," which may or may not find their way onto her next record but are enough to satisfy those of us with ravenous appetites for something from her. She effortlessly belts out these tunes, making it look as simple as talking about the weather. If these songs are any indication, then the forecast for Alice's next album is sunny with a chance of damn good music. See Russell and her band in action on "Hard & Strong" below and with the addition of a string section on "Over & Over" after the bounce.<br><br>\n<iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/kJCOcxNStDc\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"390\" width=\"480\"></iframe>\n <iframe width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/f7MhDiD0sj0\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>"
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"title" : "The Choices of 2008, the Consequences for Today (Caution: Very Dark)",
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"content" : "It’s always a good idea to try to see the present as a moment in history, in relation to the main forces at work. By now it can no longer be denied that the US and European, and therefore world, economies are in serious trouble. We are awash in analyses that examine at close distance the various aspects of our predicament: beleaguered US consumers, sovereign European borrowers who can’t keep treading water as their interest rates rise, and misguided politicians and policy chieftains on both continents who provide half measures at best on top of perversely procyclical fiscal and monetary blunders. All this is true.<br>\n<br>\nBut let’s go back to the critical moment in the fall of 2008 when global markets froze and, in the midst of crisis, decisions had to be made about fundamental economic strategy.<br>\n<br>\n<a name=\"more\"></a><br>\nThe runup to the crisis was, in broad terms, marked by several developments:<br>\n<br>\nUS households had substituted debt for income, borrowing through every available channel and particularly against their increasingly fictitious housing equity.<br>\n<br>\n<ul><li>Global imbalances reached stratospheric proportions, with housing bubbles, directly or indirectly inflated by capital inflows, becoming the vehicles of choice for financing surplus expenditures in deficit countries, including peripheral Europe.<br>\n</li>\n<li>The exposure of financial institutions to real estate price volatility was both amplified and concealed by a hyper-complex pyramid of derivative instruments, facilitated by reckless deregulation.<br>\n</li>\n<li>There was massive malfeasance on the part of financial market participants and rating agencies in this process—although such malfeasance may be the norm in this arena, invisible in good times and coming to light only when prices collapse.</li>\n</ul><br>\nAll of this came to a head in 2007 and culminated in the post-Lehman meltdown. At this point, policymakers had to act quickly. They faced several choices:<br>\n<br>\n1. They could organize a massive debt writeoff to bring the financial system to health as quickly and thoroughly as possible. This would involve letting insolvent lenders fail, replacing them on either an interim or long-term basis with public banks—the so-called “good new bank” idea. Borrowers would have their principle reduced to a manageable level, freeing them from excessive servicing burdens. Vigorous countercyclical measures would safeguard household incomes and restore demand. Over the medium term, the sources of income-expenditure imbalances could be systematically addressed. This was by far the preferred option, although it was also the most radical and posed high short-run risks.<br>\n<br>\n2. They could put private financial institutions under temporary public control. Investigators would go through their assets, sequestering those that had little value in a “bad new bank” and recapitalizing to the extent needed to restore an equity cushion to support those that remained. This would have wiped out the private owners but restored the banks to viability. Public funds could be used to ease the terms on overstretched households, particularly in real estate markets. As with #1, temporary fiscal and monetary stimulus would be provided to the extent required to maintain effective demand, and (although most proponents of this approach did not say this) similar medium-term measures could be taken to undo the sources of financial imbalance. This was the second-best approach, more costly and less equitable than the first, but one that would follow a well-charted course. Its potential risks were longer-term, having to do with the public cost of subsidizing borrowers and lenders in order to preserve as much of the existing private debt obligations as possible.<br>\n<br>\n3. They could patch and hope. Flood the markets with enough liquidity that even thoroughly insolvent financial institutions would remain in business. Provide enough countercyclical stimulus that household bankruptcies could be kept at a level that would not threaten lenders. Regulation and structural reform would be kept to a minimum, since the more profitable the financial sector, the more equity positions could be shored up. This third approach hardly deserved to be called a solution, except for holders of financial wealth, and even then only in the short to medium run.<br>\n<br>\nSo guess which way the elites turned. A few economists (including yours truly) advocated #1, mainstream economic opinion supported #2, but in Washington, Brussels and Frankfurt it was #3 all the way. This was not because one side or another won a war of ideas, but because all major governments are so closely tied to the financial wealth-holding class that any other approach was out of the question.<br>\n<br>\nHowever: #3 was not a solution.<br>\n<br>\n1. It did little about the true state of banks’ balance sheets. The financial sector may be sucking in record profits, but trillions of dollars of asset values have been effectively wiped out, and it would take too many years to erase insolvency through profits alone. The fact is, no one really knows the state of the world’s banks except for those who run them, and they aren’t talking. So-called stress tests are conducted with the lightest of touches, using risk profiles drawn up by the banks themselves so as not to have to actually open the books. There is still no transparency about CDS’s and other derivatives. The agonizing over whether a Greek debt swap that lenders could accept or reject constituted a “default” and would therefore trigger doomsday claims on the derivatives market was half-farce, half-nightmare.<br>\n<br>\n2. It did little about the state of household balance sheets. Particularly in the US, where the lethal combination of extreme inequality and massive current account deficits (and a corresponding shortfall of aggregate earned income) put a substantial proportion of the population in near debt-peonage, consumer expenditures have collapsed.<br>\n<br>\n3. It was an enormous drain on the public fisc. The fact that the majority of the financial sector bailouts have been back-door (e.g. AIG, Greek bonds) does not mean that they have been small potatoes. The deficit countries whose institutions were most at risk and needed the most cash to prop themselves up are also the ones that have run up the largest sovereign debt loads. Hyperventilating Republicans to the contrary, the US is in the fortunate position of supplying the world’s reserve currency, so it still has considerable fiscal space to play in. (It is true that this space is not without limits, of course, and the cost of a second, deeper dip will give us a chance to see how close we are to them.) Not so the peripheral Europeans, who must cope with the monetary union and fiscal fragmentation of the Eurozone. They have already bailed beyond their means, and the Eurocrats must now figure out how to convince their publics to accept cross-border transfers in order to keep the bailouts of core banks flowing.<br>\n<br>\nSo here we are. We are on the brink of second, perilous dip into the wild eddies of the Great Recession. Financial institutions in the US and Europe remain exposed, but we don’t know how much. Our leaders have been so dishonest about the choices they have made, the reasons for those choices, and the costs they have passed on to us, that they have been reduced to pure gibberish. (“The recovery is on course.” “The banks are closely regulated and no longer at risk.” “Austerity will restore growth.”)<br>\n<br>\nI wish Marx were right, that our governments could have the competence and vision to serve as executive committees of the ruling class. Maybe they did that once. But today the class that occupies the driver’s seat is diffuse and has little in common other than a desire to earn the highest rate of risk-adjusted return on its portfolio. They speak dozens of languages, pray to many gods or none at all, hold all sorts of political views and know only a handful of their peers. There is no guiding hand or collective wisdom, just the demand to keep the cash flow flowing.<br>\n<br>\nI predict it will flow until it stops, when the last short-term palliative has been exhausted. Even more, I am worried about the political reaction if economic conditions continue to deteriorate.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4900303239154048192-1800119105885825166?l=econospeak.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Against cool stethoscope placement",
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"content" : "<div><div style=\"font-weight:bold\">Objective</div><div>To determine whether the “cool” or circumcervical placement of the stethoscope when not in use is as efficacious as the traditional placement in terms of transfer time to the functional position.<br><br></div></div><div><div style=\"font-weight:bold\">Methods</div><div>Measurement of time taken by 100 health care professionals in each group to transfer stethoscope to functional position.<br><br></div></div><div><div style=\"font-weight:bold\">Results and interpretation</div><div>The cool group was much slower than the traditional group, despite their younger years. This wasted time could translate into a substantial financial burden on Canada's health care system. ...<br><br>Assuming that 80% of these health care practitioners use the cool position and each of them uses his or her stethoscope 20 times on average per day, or 4800 times per year, then the time wasted per year could be as much as 273 869 hours (71.32 х 0.8 х 5200). At an average hourly earning of $75, the annual cost would be approximately $20.5 million. With the current shortage of health care resources, it might be advisable for the respective provincial ministries of health to consider appointing “stethoscope police” to enforce a return to the traditional placement. We do have some concerns, however, that the costs generated by the resultant bureaucracy would negate any positive financial benefit to the health care system.<br></div></div><br>Traditional<br><img src=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80581/bin/10FF1A.jpg\"><br><br>Cool<br><img src=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80581/bin/10FF1B.jpg\"><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">--William Hanley and Anthony Hanley, <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80581/?tool=pubmed\">\"The efficacy of stethoscope placement when not in use: traditional versus 'cool',\"</a> Canadian Medical Association Journal. HT: AL</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-5159719969410854142?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Future of the Post Office?",
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"content" : "<p align=\"justify\">I’ve had many recent <a href=\"http://bankelele.blogspot.com/2011/03/going-postal.html\">trips to the post office</a>, tracing lost dusty packages, new keys, dividend cheques and other mail which 85% of which are bills & statements, and 10% are marketing materials & junk. Very rarely do you get a personal letter in the mail, and that's usually around Christmas. <br><br>The post offices are run by teams of (mostly) older workers, who are well trained, dedicated, and honest in their work. However they work in a rigid bureaucratic environment and that means that almost every process has to be cross-checked & triple check, with signatures to be obtained by several people seated a few feet apart.<br><br>When Equity Bank released their half year results last week, their CEO James Mwangi spoke about the bank having reached the maximum productivity that could be attained from physical bank branches. They were now shifting to a whole-hearted embrace of agency banking model, which they had initiated in Kenya and sold to the Central Bank. <br><br>With agency banking, Equity has been converting small kiosks, cyber cafes (which are dying), pharmacies, garages into mini banks (open you own bank). Equity envisions having 5,000 agents (2,300 are now operational) and also have them sell insurance, airline tickets, and other services. <br><br>For Equity they only pay commissions per transactions that agents complete as opposed to the fixed cost of operating their branches with. And for agents, the current <a href=\"http://bankelele.blogspot.com/2011/04/your-bank-your-neighbour.html\">agency rules</a> means that they can't be mutually exclusive (like phone dealers and m-pesa agents tied to Safaricom). This means a pharmacy can offer agent banking services for KCB, Equity, even smaller physical reach banks like DBK and Giro.</p><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Nik-8QDPZ8/Tjvhc2FjE3I/AAAAAAAABXA/2yjoSb3ng0M/s1600/Mailboxes%2Bat%2BNairobi%2BPost%2BOffice.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"240\" width=\"320\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Nik-8QDPZ8/Tjvhc2FjE3I/AAAAAAAABXA/2yjoSb3ng0M/s320/Mailboxes%2Bat%2BNairobi%2BPost%2BOffice.jpg\">Mailboxes at Nairobi Post Office</a></div><p align=\"justify\">While these new agents have to overcome weaknesses of customer service, training, security (physical & cyber), the post office already has many of these attributes taken care of, plus they have steady foot traffic for letters, and parcels in their well known & guarded premises, and with ample space to expand. <br><br>The local post office currently acts as (non banking) agents for the among others; the Kenya Revenue Authority (parcel are opened and tax is assessed has to be paid before release), Old Mutual (mutual fund), Safaricom (airtime), Airtel Money (mobile money transfer, pensions (posta), salaries (for school teachers), and several utilities - DSTV (satellite TV), Nairobi Water, Kenya Power, Kenya Charity sweepstakes (Lotto) etc. <br><br>A new addition is acting as bank agents for KCB customers who are depositing or withdrawing cash. And that could be the future of the post office - as a financial supermarket for several banks, financial and utility firms.</p><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9317825-3417431970027266791?l=bankelele.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<img alt=\"http://helium.lunarpages.com/~funky4/pictures/crusaders_lp.jpg\" src=\"http://helium.lunarpages.com/%7Efunky4/pictures/crusaders_lp.jpg\"><br>After moving to Baltimore in the late-seventies, my mom dated a middle-aged be-bop fiend named Mr. Lee. Riding in his junky tan Cadillac that always reeked of second-hand smoke, I got my first lessons on the art of jazz. Steadily flicking ashes from a filterless cigarette, there was always a steady flow of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday or other old school jazzbos streaming from the speakers. “Now this is music,” Mr. Lee arrogantly assured me.<br><br>Flaunting his disdain against the David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and George Clinton albums that crowded my limited musical canon, Mr. Lee helped me to appreciate what I had secretly thought of as “strange noddling.” Later, hoping to impress him, I pulled out the closest thing to jazz in my collection, the stellar 1979 single “Street Life” by The Crusaders featuring vocalist Randy Crawford.<br><img alt=\"http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/images/local/250/A520554BF9B747CC8249FAA1A7A86B26.jpg\" src=\"http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/images/local/250/A520554BF9B747CC8249FAA1A7A86B26.jpg\"><br>Spinning the 11:18 album version that I’d borrowed from my new best buddy Walter (dude had a basement full of dusty grooves), I was lost in the velvety textures of bandleader Joe Sample’s piano riffs and guest-vocalist Randy Crawford; years later, rappers Tupac and Masta Ace would sample this groove for their respective hip-hop hits.<br><br>As Mr. Lee listened to the entire track (in my young mind the jazzy soul conjured images of a cool neon wilderness populated with hop-heads, pool-hall hustlers and midnight cornerboys straight out of Nelson Algren), his face was blank. “That’s not jazz!” he bellowed. Storming out of the room, I overheard my mom wondering what had happened. “Nothing much, it’s just that boy of yours can’t tell pop music from real jazz.”<br><br>Though the Houston, Texas natives had originally called themselves the Jazz Crusaders, there were many purists who thought that these pioneering jazz/soul stylists represented the death of their beloved art. Yet, much like other fusionists in the post-Bitches Brew era of rhythmic rebellion, artists like Weather Report, Return to Forever and Herbie Hancock, the Crusaders were merely trying to forge their own musical identities in the often narrow minded jazz world. First formed in 1954 when pianist Joe Sample, tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder (who later doubled on electric bass) and drummer Stix Hooper were students at Phyllis Wheatley High School and played gigs under the names the Nite Hawks, Modern Jazz Sextet and Black Board Jungle Kids.<br><br>In an interview with writer Carina Prange, Sample recalled, “My father was a music lover. My older brother, he was 15 years older, played piano in an all black navy band in the Second World War. So he had records, records, records—every time he came home, he played the piano and I would just watch him. By six years, I told my mother I wanted to begin to play the piano and take piano lessons.”<br><br>According to jazz scholar Bob Blumenthal, “The music they played was typical of their hometown - bluesy, soulful, and spirited. They'd get together in the Fifth Ward, where Felder lived, to rehearse; before long, they fell sway to a new sound, by guys like Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach, whose records they'd listen to for hours.<br><br><img alt=\"http://i.fanpix.net/images/orig/l/n/ln4fxrzh9ar5nlfa.jpg\" src=\"http://i.fanpix.net/images/orig/l/n/ln4fxrzh9ar5nlfa.jpg\"><br><br>“Adding trombonist Wayne Henderson, flutist/alto saxophonist Hubert Laws, and bass player Henry Wilson, they changed their name to the Modern Jazz Sextet and sought to master their instruments as the beboppers had done. But they never lost that Southern feel or their gulf basin roots. That group continued playing locally as the members worked their way through college.”<br><br>Moving to California in the early 1960s, after it was decided by the group that the New York City jazz scene had becoming too wily and weird as free jazz avant-gardists dominated the scene, they changed their name to the Jazz Crusaders. “The New York players made me realize that we were not jazz musicians,” Sample said years later. “We were territory musicians in love with all forms of African-American music.”<br><br>Recording throughout the sixties the Jazz Crusaders made eight albums for Pacific Jazz, where they were label-mates with Chet Baker and Chico Hamilton. Under the guidance of label owner/producer Richard Bock, the Jazz Crusaders released classic sides that included their 1961 debut Freedom Sounds (the title track, which opens this collection, was re-recorded in 1973) and Talk That Talk in 1966.<br><br>Yet, in an effort to expand their horizons like their musical brothers over at the progressive CTI Records, the Texas crew dropped the “Jazz” and jumped ship for MCA in 1971. On their first MCA disc simply titled 1, the Crusaders included a cover of Carole King’s pop ballad “So Far Away.”<br><br>In a review of 1, critic John Ballon wrote, “With their masterful improvising skills still in full force, the Crusaders plugged in, adding electric piano, electric bass, and most importantly, the electric guitar of Larry Carlton. Keeping their signature trombone & saxophone frontline of Wayne Henderson and Wilton Felder, the band really let loose.”<br><br>While some folks riff contentiously about the contributions of Sample and Carlton (whose hypnotic playing on “Scratch,” “Free As the Wind” and “Lilies of the Nile” is legendary), we should not allow there skills to overshadow the contributions of the groups co-creators Stix Hooper, Wayne Henderson and Wilton Felder. “Stix Hooper is perhaps one of the most underrated drummers in music,” says fusion aficionado Antonio Rodriguez. “He had a soulful musicality that other drummers couldn’t match. Stix was able to bridge blues and jazz, but he never sounded generic.”<br><br><img alt=\"http://www.musicnotes.com/images/productimages/mtd/MN0081719.gif\" src=\"http://www.musicnotes.com/images/productimages/mtd/MN0081719.gif\"><br><br>Before “Street Life” became the Crusaders biggest crossover hit (the song has been used in neo-noir flicks<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> Sharkey’s Machine </span>and <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Jackie Brown</span>), Wayne Henderson’s soulful “Keep That Same Old Feeling” from Those Southern Nights (1975) was the song most likely to be played simultaneously at Studio 54, a red-light basement party or a Harlem bar. With the group singing the lyrics themselves (later they would work with vocalists Bill Withers on “Soul Shadows” and Nancy Wilson on “The Way It Goes”), “Keep That Same Old Feeling” has the distinction of being the first Crusaders track with vocals.<br><br>Simply called “Trombone” by friends and collaborators (Henderson has worked with Bobby Womack, Joni Mitchell and Marvin Gaye) his contribution to the Crusaders includes their classic “Young Rabbits,” which was later used as the theme to the Academy Award-winning documentary When We Were Kings. Henderson also played drums on Hugh Masekela’s “Grazing in the Grass” and co-produced Rebbie Jackson’s “Centipede” (1984) along with her brother Michael.<br><br>The soulful saxophone and electric bass playing of Wilton Felder, a musician who has influenced a generation of players including Greg Osby and Nathan East, is undisputed. From the cool country grooves of “Way Back Home” (where Felder plays both instruments) to the wonderful “Nite Crawler” (which was written by Larry Carlton especially for Felder) to his session work (he played bass on the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”), Felder was a master.<br><br>“I remember the way each of us played and made our sound unique,” Felder told the Virginian-Pilot in 2006 while promoting his last solo disc <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Let’s Spend Some Time</span>. “There was individual playing within the context of a band. The Crusaders were a unit with each piece of the puzzle standing out.” Playing with one another, the puzzle was complete.<br><img alt=\"http://www.lyricsmusica.it/img/artisti/big/the+jazz+crusaders-62198.jpg\" src=\"http://www.lyricsmusica.it/img/artisti/big/the+jazz+crusaders-62198.jpg\"><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/21374673-4313331795258882991?l=blackadelicpop.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://isen.com/blog/uploaded_images//TPT-Wurker.jpg\"><img src=\"http://isen.com/blog/uploaded_images//TPT-Wurker-tm.jpg\" height=\"500\" width=\"575\" border=\"1\" hspace=\"4\" vspace=\"4\" alt=\"Tpt-Wurker\"></a><br>\nI can’t get this <a href=\"http://www.cartoonistgroup.com/properties/Wuerker/search_2.php\">cartoon by Matt Wuerker</a> out of my head. Brilliant. More than brilliant . . . prophetic.<br>\nYou can see Matt Wuerker’s most recent work at <a href=\"http://www.politico.com/wuerker/\">Politico</a>. Reprinted with permission of the artist — thanks Matt!</p>\n<p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right;font-size:10px\">Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http://www.technorati.com/tag/BarackObama\" rel=\"tag\">BarackObama</a>, <a href=\"http://www.technorati.com/tag/Obama\" rel=\"tag\">Obama</a>, <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\" rel=\"tag\">Politics</a>, <a href=\"http://www.technorati.com/tag/Stupidity\" rel=\"tag\">Stupidity</a>, <a href=\"http://www.technorati.com/tag/wingnuts\" rel=\"tag\">wingnuts</a></p>\n<p></p></p>"
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"content" : "<p><em>I’ve been under the weather for the last couple of weeks, which has prevented me from doing most things, including blogging. Luckily, I had a blog post sitting in my drafts folder almost ready to go. I spent a bit of time today finishing it up, and so here it is. A look at the fascinating world of spelling correction for artist names.</em></p>\n<p> <br>\n<a href=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/britney-spears-google-search-1.png\"><img style=\"margin-right:10px\" title=\"britney spears - Google Search-1\" src=\"http://musicmachinery.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/britney-spears-google-search-1.png?w=300&h=166\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"166\"></a>In today’s digital music world, you will often look for music by typing an artist name into a search box of your favorite music app. However this becomes a problem if you don’t know how to spell the name of the artist you are looking for. This is probably not much of a problem if you are looking for U2, but it most definitely is a problem if you are looking for Röyksopp, Jamiroquai or <a title=\"Britney Spears misspellings at google\" href=\"http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html\">Britney Spears</a>. To help solve this problem, we can try to identify common misspellings for artists and use these misspellings to help steer you to the artists that you are looking for.</p>\n<p><strong>A spelling corrector in 21 lines of code<br>\n</strong>A good place for us to start is a post by Peter Norvig (Director of Research at Google) called ’<a href=\"http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html\">How to write a spelling corrector</a>‘ which presents a fully operational spelling corrector in 21 lines of Python. (It is a phenomenal bit of code, worth the time studying it). At the core of Peter’s algorithm is the concept of the <a title=\"wikipedia edit distance\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_distance\">edit distance </a> which is a way to represent the similarity of two strings by calculating the number of operations (inserts, deletes, replacements and transpositions) needed to transform one string into the other. Peter cites literature that suggests that 80 to 95% of spelling errors are within an edit distance of 1 (meaning that most misspellings are just one insert, delete, replacement or transposition away from the correct word). Not being satisfied with that accuracy, Peter’s algorithm considers all words that are within an edit distance of 2 as candidates for his spelling corrector. For Peter’s small test case (he wrote his system on a plane so he didn’t have lots of data nearby), his corrector covered 98.9% of his test cases.</p>\n<p><strong>Spell checking Britney<br>\n</strong>A few years ago, the smart folks at Google posted a list of<a title=\"britney spears spelling corrections\" href=\"http://www.google.com/jobs/britney.html\"> Britney Spears spelling corrections</a> that shows nearly 600 variants on Ms. Spears name collected in three months of Google searches. Perusing the list, you’ll find all sorts of interesting variations such as ‘birtheny spears’ , ‘brinsley spears’ and ‘britain spears’. I suspect that some these queries (like ‘Brandi Spears’) may actually not be for the pop artist. One curiosity in the list is that although there are 600 variations on the spelling of ‘Britney’ there is exactly one way that ‘spears’ is spelled. There’s no ‘speers’ or ‘spheres’, or ‘britany’s beers’ on this list.</p>\n<p>One thing I did notice about Google’s list of Britneys is that there are many variations that seem to be further away from the correct spelling than an edit distance of two at the core of Peter’s algorithm. This means that if you give these variants to Peter’s spelling corrector, it won’t find the proper spelling. Being an empiricist I tried it and found that of the 593 variants of ‘Britney Spears’, 200 were not within an edit distance of two of the proper spelling and would not be correctable. This is not too surprising. Names are traditionally hard to spell, there are many alternative spellings for the name ‘Britney’ that are real names, and many people searching for music artists for the first time may have only heard the name pronounced and have never seen it in its written form.</p>\n<p><strong>Making it better with an artist-oriented spell checker<br>\n</strong>A 33% miss rate for a popular artist’s name seems a bit high, so I thought I’d see if I could improve on this. I have one big advantage that Peter didn’t. I work for a music data company so I can be pretty confident that all the search queries that I see are going to be related to music. Restricting the possible vocabulary to just artist names makes things a whole lot easier. The algorithm couldn’t be simpler. <em>Collect the names of the top 100K most popular artists. For each artist name query, find the artist name with the smallest edit distance to the query and return that name as the best candidate match</em>. This algorithm will let us find the closest matching artist even if it is has an edit distance of more than 2 as we see in Peter’s algorithm. When I run this against the 593 Britney Spears misspellings, I only get one mismatch – ‘brandi spears’ is closer to the artist ‘burning spear’ than it is to ‘Britney Spears’. Considering the naive implementation, the algorithm is fairly fast (40 ms per query on my 2.5 year old laptop, in python).</p>\n<p><strong>Looking at spelling variations<br>\n</strong>With this artist-oriented spelling checker in hand, I decided to take a look at some real artist queries to see what interesting things I could find buried within. I gathered some artist name search queries from the Echo Nest API logs and looked for some interesting patterns (since I’m doing this at home over the weekend, I only looked at the most recent logs which consists of only about 2 million artist name queries).</p>\n<p><strong>Artists with most spelling variations </strong><br>\nNot surprisingly, very popular artists are the most frequently misspelled. It seems that just about every permutation has been made in an attempt to spell these artists.</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Michael Jackson</strong> - <em>Variations</em>: michael jackson, micheal jackson, michel jackson, mickael jackson, mickal jackson, michael jacson, mihceal jackson, mickeljackson, michel jakson, micheal jaskcon, michal jackson, michael jackson by pbtone, mical jachson, micahle jackson, machael jackson, muickael jackson, mikael jackson, miechle jackson, mickel jackson, mickeal jackson, michkeal jackson, michele jakson, micheal jaskson, micheal jasckson, micheal jakson, micheal jackston, micheal jackson just beat, micheal jackson, michal jakson, michaeljackson, michael joseph jackson, michael jayston, michael jakson, michael jackson mania!, michael jackson and friends, michael jackaon, micael jackson, machel jackson, jichael mackson</li>\n<li><strong>Justin Bieber</strong> – <em>Variations</em>: justin bieber, justin beiber, i just got bieber’ed by, justin biber, justin bieber baby, justin beber, justin bebbier, justin beaber, justien beiber, sjustin beiber, justinbieber, justin_bieber, justin. bieber, justin bierber, justin bieber<3 4 ever<3, justin bieber x mstrkrft, justin bieber x, justin bieber and selens gomaz, justin bieber and rascal flats, justin bibar, justin bever, justin beiber baby, justin beeber, justin bebber, justin bebar, justien berbier, justen bever, justebibar, jsustin bieber, jastin bieber, jastin beiber, jasten biber, jasten beber songs, gestin bieber, eiine mainie justin bieber, baby justin bieber,</li>\n<li><strong>Red Hot Chili Peppers</strong> – <em>Variations:</em> red hot chilli peppers, the red hot chili peppers, red hot chilli pipers, red hot chilli pepers, red hot chili, red hot chilly peppers, red hot chili pepers, hot red chili pepers, red hot chilli peppears, redhotchillipeppers, redhotchilipeppers, redhotchilipepers, redhot chili peppers, redhot chili pepers, red not chili peppers, red hot chily papers, red hot chilli peppers greatest hits, red hot chilli pepper, red hot chilli peepers, red hot chilli pappers, red hot chili pepper, red hot chile peppers</li>\n<li><strong>Mumford and Sons</strong> – <em>Variations: </em>mumford and sons, mumford and sons cave, mumford and son, munford and sons, mummford and sons, mumford son, momford and sons, modfod and sons, munfordandsons, munford and son, mumfrund and sons, mumfors and sons, mumford sons, mumford ans sons, mumford and sonns, mumford and songs, mumford and sona, mumford and, mumford &sons, mumfird and sons, mumfadeleord and sons</li>\n<li><strong>Katy Perry - </strong><em>Even an artist with a seemingly very simple name like Katy Perry has numerous variations</em>: katy perry, katie perry, kate perry, kathy perry, katy perry ft.kanye west, katty perry, katy perry i kissed a girl, peacock katy perry, katyperry, katey parey, kety perry, kety peliy, katy pwrry, katy perry-firework, katy perry x, katy perry, katy perris, katy parry, kati perry, kathy pery, katey perry, katey perey, katey peliy, kata perry, kaity perry</li>\n</ul>\n<p>Some other most frequently misspelled artists:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Britney Spears</li>\n<li>Linkin Park</li>\n<li>Arctic Monkeys</li>\n<li>Katy Perry</li>\n<li>Guns N’ Roses</li>\n<li>Nicki Minaj</li>\n</ul>\n<div><strong>Which artists are the easiest to spell?</strong></div>\n<div>Using the same techniques we can look through our search logs and find the popular artists that have the fewest misspelled queries. These are the easiest to spell artists. They include:</div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Muse</li>\n<li>Weezer</li>\n<li>U2</li>\n<li>Oasis</li>\n<li>Moby</li>\n<li>Flyleaf</li>\n<li>Seether</li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<div><strong>Most confused artists:</strong></div>\n<div><strong></strong>Artists are most easily confused with another include:</div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>byran adams - ryan adams</li>\n<li>Underworld – Uverworld</li>\n</ul>\n<div><strong>Wrapping up</strong></div>\n<div>Spelling correction for artist names is perhaps the least sexiest job in the music industry, nevertheless it is an important part of helping people connect with the music they are looking for. There is a large body of research around <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=1,30&q=context+sensitive+spelling+correction\">context-sensitive spelling correction</a> that can be used to help solve this problem, but even very simple techniques like those described here can go along way to helping you figure out what someone really wants when they search for ‘Jastan Beebar’.</div>\n</div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/musicmachinery.wordpress.com/3419/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=musicmachinery.com&blog=6500426&post=3419&subd=musicmachinery&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p><em>by Doctor Science</em></p>\n\n<p>... or this week, anyway. <a href=\"http://faultline.org/\">Chris Clarke</a> and <a href=\"http://sunpig.com/abi/\">Abi Sutherland</a> are having an <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/100562415844382241634/posts/6khPiou6BXL#100562415844382241634/posts/6khPiou6BXL\">old-fashioned jammin' and stampin' poetry SMACKdown</a>.</p>\n\n<p>It began thus:<blockquote><b>Abi Sutherland</b> - May I serve you a peach, sir? I do like the way you're wearing those white flannel trousers; rolling them definitely suits you.</blockquote></p>\n\n<p>The beach? Why, it's this way.</p>\n\n<p><b>Chris Clarke</b> - this is just to say<br>\nI have fenced<br>\nthe lawn<br>\nthat was in my yard<br>\nand which you were probably hoping to be on.<br>\n <br>\n<b>Abi Sutherland</b> - \"You are old, Mr Clarke,\" the woman said, stunned,<br>\n\"And your music has gone out of style;<br>\nYet your circles are full and your comments +1'd<br>\nHave you been on the net a long while?\"</p>\n\n<p>\"In my youth,\" Mr. Clarke replied to the lass,<br>\n\"Our flamewars used genuine fires.<br>\nI still carve my zeroes; my ones are hand-cast.<br>\nThey barely fit through the wires.\"<br>\n...and proceeded to riff on --</p>\n\n<p><a style=\"display:inline\" href=\"http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/.a/6a00d834515c2369e2014e8a3a5dc1970d-popup\"><img alt=\"Four-women-composing-poetry\" title=\"Four-women-composing-poetry\" src=\"http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/.a/6a00d834515c2369e2014e8a3a5dc1970d-320wi\"></a><br>\n<small><a href=\"http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/jpd/item/2008660791/\">Four women composing poetry, possibly as a competition</a>, by Eishi Hosoda. The Library of Congress notes say it's from a series of Tale of Genji prints.</small></p><p></p>\n\n<p>-- <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Ways_of_Looking_at_a_Blackbird\">Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird</a>:<blockquote>I.<br>\nAmong twenty spammy newsgroups,<br>\nThe only moving thing <br>\nWas the yap of the newbie.<br>\n...</blockquote>-- <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_%28poem%29\">The Second Coming</a>:<blockquote>Raging and raging in the lengthening thread<br>\nThe mood will not heed the moderator;<br>\nRules sprout loopholes; the FAQ cannot answer;<br>\nMere trollery is loosed upon the site,</blockquote>-- <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shall_I_compare_thee_to_a_summer%27s_day%3F\">Sonnet 18</a>:<blockquote>Shall I compare thee to a Summer's Eve?<br>\nThou art more trollish and intemperate:<br>\nRough words don't slake your need to vent your peeve,<br>\nAnd someone here is past their sell-by date:<br>\n...</blockquote>-- <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est\">Dulce et Decorum est</a>:<blockquote>Bent double, web designers without slack,<br>\nAche-wristed, hacking with tags, we cursed each kludge,<br>\nTill on the table cells we turned our back<br>\nAnd toward semantic code began to trudge. <br>\n...</blockquote>-- <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyke-Wake_Dirge\">The Lyke-Wake Dirge</a>:<blockquote>This ae site, this ae site,<br>\n<i>So long as screen-light glowes,</i><br>\nJoke and jest and fire-fight,<br>\n<i>The web preserve thy prose.</i><br>\n...</blockquote>My quotes are partial; remarkably, each riffed poem is the length of the original. <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/u/0/100562415844382241634/posts/6khPiou6BXL#100562415844382241634/posts/6khPiou6BXL\">Look on their works</a>, ye witty, and admire.</p>\n\n<p>More playing is going on at <a href=\"http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013146.html#013146\">Making Light</a>.</p></div>"
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"title" : "Balanced Diets",
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef015434185196970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Mason490x300NEW-thumb-490x300-2273\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef015434185196970c-320wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Mason490x300NEW-thumb-490x300-2273\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/essays/balanced-diets.php\">Daniel Mason</a> in Lapham's Quarterly:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>On June 6, 1800, nearly a year into his scientific journey through South America, Alexander von Humboldt arrived at a mission on the Orinoco River called La Concepción de Uruana. It was a stunning site. The village sat at the foot of granite mountains, amidst huge pillars of stone that rose above the forest. Weeks before, Humboldt had seen mysterious etchings on the summits of such rocks—painted, the natives told him, by ancestors carried up there by the waters of a great flood.</p>\r\n<p>Although weakened by bouts of fever and hunger, Humboldt was in fine spirits. In the preceding months he had watched the Leonid meteor shower fill the sky, experienced his first earthquake, and confirmed the communication of the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers through the Casiquiare Canal. He had collected electric eels and watched the dissection of a manatee. If at times the mosquitoes were so thick as to obscure the horizon and prevent his reckoning of latitude, or if other times ant hordes filled his canoe, he pushed on, spurred, he wrote, by an uncertain longing “for what is distant and unknown.”</p>\r\n<p>Humboldt and his botanist companion Aimé Bonpland (and Indian servants, and pressed plants, and jars of preserving spirits, and a chattering menagerie of birds and monkeys in cages on his boats) stayed at Uruana for only one day, conversing with the missionary Fray Ramon Bueno and visiting the Otomac villagers. For all of nature’s splendors, it was the people of Uruana that most caught Humboldt’s attention: “a tribe in the rudest state,” “considered dirty even by their neighbors,” “ugly, savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors,” and yet presenting “one of the most extraordinary physiological phenomena” Humboldt had ever seen. The Otomacs ate earth, “a prodigious quantity” of it. During the two to three months of the rainy season, when the high and turbulent waters of the river made fishing difficult, they claimed to eat nothing but.</p>\r\n</blockquote></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F07%2Fbalanced-diets.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lVy-rlfyqX0:iq64UUJf9EY:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Dic Lit",
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"content" : "<p></p><p><strong>I. A Terribly Attractive Man</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979853714\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/qaddafi_small_web-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Muammar Qaddafi\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></a>I probably first heard the name Qaddafi on the radio, from NPR, an always present background noise in my childhood. But the name only acquired meaning when I heard it uttered by my Great Aunt in a stage whisper to my mother: “That Mr. Qaddafi is terribly attractive!” She hissed, more than once. The A’s in Mr. Qaddafi’s name were flattened as with Sir John Gielgud intoning, “Mr. Gandhi.” My Great Aunt was well over six feet tall, a raven-haired beauty in her day, and a force to be reckoned with at all times. I imagine her commenting on the physical loveliness of Mr. Qaddafi while running her hand along her pearls, her dark eyes flashing naughtily, her lower jaw jutting out to make an emphatic point in her native lockjaw. I must have been around ten years old, and she in her lower seventies. The fact that such whispered pronouncements were not meant for my ears, though fully audible, was brought home to me by the many unsuitable stories she liked to tell my mother at that same volume. Most memorable of these was a lengthy narrative from her youth about being greeted by a surly abortionist clad in a bloodstained apron after climbing a narrow tenement staircase in New York when she sought to terminate an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Sitting a few feet away with a book opened in my lap, I always pretended to read as she stage-whispered one startling story after the next on winter’s evenings when we went to dine at her house.</p>\n<p>Over the years I paid little attention to Qaddafi though his name gained additional accretions of meaning in my mental inventory. He was not just terribly attractive, but was also the insane dictator who harbors terrorists, sleeps in a tent, and wraps himself in flamboyant robes. It was not until the current uprising began that I began to pay closer attention– already an Egyptian revolution addict, I was sprawled on my voyeur’s divan hoping for another drama to unfold that would be just as thrilling and edifying as Egypt. As things began to go poorly, and as the situation became more confusing and our Peacemaker-in-Chief began to play drone video games with the Qaddafis, I started to look for more information about Libya. The tweets and articles of Libyan author Hisham Matar were compelling, and I ordered his 2006 novel <em>In the Country of Men</em>. </p>\n<p>Thence began one of the most difficult reading experiences I have undertaken in a long time. <em>In the Country of Men</em> is beautifully written, spare and precise, and it does the novel a great disservice to speak of it as merely a source text for insight into the Qaddafi regime and the history undergirding the current situation in Libya. But the portrait painted of the pervasive and chilling influence of a powerful dictator is disturbing beyond belief and does much to dispel the <em>opera buffa</em> caricatures of Qaddafi in the Western media. This is, indirectly, and through the eyes of a narrator looking back on his childhood, a portrait of how a shrewd and powerful man managed to effectively infiltrate the homes, families and consciousnesses of his people so effectively that he was capable of shattering family units, neighborhoods, communities. </p>\n<p>Two scenes stand out. One, in which the narrator, a child, watches the interrogation of a family friend and neighbor that <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979869644\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/hisham-matar_web-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Hisham Matar\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></a>is being televised. As with most transmissions on Libyan state TV, this program is bracketed by static images of pink flowers. Brutality nests in a soothing field of blossoms. It is said, the narrator observes, that the Guide has his own controls of the broadcasting system, and can switch on and off the images that his people see in their living rooms. The other scene features a phone call. There are more often than not, it seems, people listening in on phone conversations. But they are not merely mutely recording calls. They sometimes interfere, speak up, persuade. During one conversation between the narrator and a comrade of his father’s, a third voice insinuates itself into the conversation making remarks about the beauty of the narrator’s mother and asking questions about her alcoholism. These are just two of many examples of how the regime tampers with the lives and mental health of its citizens. This psychological control seems almost more devastating than the aggressive brutality of the state. Almost, but not quite. State TV also broadcasts executions of ‘traitors’ of the regime. Haplessly sitting in one’s living room, one can suddenly be subjected to the sight of a physically tortured human hanging to death while a stadium-full of people cheers its support. </p>\n<p>It took me months to read this short novel because I could not bear the narrative tension. The way in which the story unfurled, the family unit disintegrated, and the state became more powerful than ever felt inevitable but worth avoiding as a reader. The palpable psychological control of Qaddafi’s regime makes one experience the suffocation and dismantling of the characters in a most uncomfortable fashion. This is the man that NATO is ineffectually attempting to take out, that rebels have shown great bravery in attacking. He is not a clown in a tent, he is a military mastermind in a bunker. There’s no doubt that he planned for, even expected the current turn of events. After reading <em>In the Country of Men</em>, it’s hard not to wish for his annihilation. And yet.</p>\n<p><strong>II. A Missed Opportunity</strong></p>\n<p>As a child, I was often seated at dinner parties next to an elderly gentleman with whom most other guests did not wish to converse. It was clear that he, a bit dull, and I, a child, were being pushed off into corner dead spaces so as not to ruin the flow of conversation. This gentleman was married to a younger woman whose sparkling wit and snappy repartee were a must at any smart dinner table. And thus her husband had to be tolerated. In anticipation of this recurring arrangement, my mother began to coach me in the car rides to dinner: “He enjoys history. Ask him what his favorite historical event was.” “He likes to play golf, ask him how is day on the course went.” I don’t remember his responses, or even if I got up the courage to ask him any of these questions. Last month, on the death of his wife (he had died years before), I learned from her obituary that he had been a prosecutor at the Nuremburg Trials. This fact would have meant nothing to me at the time, but now I felt confronted with an enormous missed opportunity. I have so many questions for him now.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979214527\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/zia_herring_web-296x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Pas de Deux\" width=\"296\" height=\"300\"></a>When recently reading Mohammed Hanif’s <em>A Case of Exploding Mangoes</em>, I could not help but wonder if guests at the American Embassy’s terrible barbecue that the author imagines so vividly now sigh over the opportunities they missed by avoiding chatting with that crashing bore Osama bin Laden. In Hanif’s telling, bin Laden is a maladroit guest who lists about unsuccessfully trying to strike up conversations with important people. He is a teetotaling version of Peter Sellers in <em><a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063415/\">The Party</a></em>, with the dénouement of his role in this particular party occurring many years later and extra-textually. </p>\n<p>History is rife with Frankensteinian examples of the United States going to spectacular lengths to destroy the monsters it has gone to spectacular lengths to create. While bin Laden was one such monster, General Zia, the central focus of <em>Mangoes</em>, appears not to have been, to the discredit of our government. Zia, the planter of many ghastly seeds that continue to bear fruit to this day (among these fruits, the system which was able so handily to harbor Mr. bin Laden in his twilight years), Hanif weaves a <em>Murder on the Orient Express</em>-like web of motivations for the assassination of Zia, wherein the actual crashing of the aircraft that carried him was merely one of many knife-thrusts to his by then barely beating heart. None of his would-be assassins is American, however, and Very Important Americans go down with him when his plane crashes.<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979213931\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/hanif_hatchet-298x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Mohammed Hanif as a lad\" width=\"298\" height=\"300\"></a> Indeed, Zia is even infested by an internal army of tapeworms that could conceivably have taken him down. The godly stature of dictators lends them a very real air of immortality it seems, and their Rasputinish ability to escape death adds to the mythos that surrounds their persons. General Pervez Musharraf, for example, happily trots out story after story of his own nine lives in his memoir.</p>\n<p>In Maria Vargas Llosa’s <em>The Feast of the Goat</em>, it takes a carload of assassins, each of whom harbors a hair-raising revenge motive, to gun down General Trujillo as he drives to an evening’s assignation. The assassins are backed not only by the United States and the Catholic church but also by members of Trujillo’s own inner circle. The car, the driver, and the General are riddled with bullets, but Vargas Llosa has also imagined Trujillo as afflicted with prostate problems and impotence, conditions which are destroying his ability to satisfy his legendary libido. The truly awful dénouement, which is not his assassination, is a rape and deflowering by the impotent dictator of a young girl, offered up to him by an out-of-favor vassal. Vargas Llosa seems to imagine this moment as both a tribute to Trujillo’s numerous sexual victims and a metaphor for the way in which the old man was able to continue to screw over his people long after his real power was gone. </p>\n<p><strong>III. A Brand New Kind of Poetry\t</strong></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979772368\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/pinochet-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Augusto Pinochet\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"></a>It is the peculiar challenge faced by the artist that he must continually come up with ideas that are wholly new and original. Yet once he is successful, he must also conform to expectations of his distinctive imprimatur. One of the dangers of fame, my father always likes to say, is that you can end up ‘doing yourself,’ by which he means that artists cursed with fame and renown run the risk of feeding public expectations by producing art that is imitative of their own most successful works. With fame, the works of Joe Smith become Joe Smithesque, pastiches of that Joe Smith style we’ve all come to know and love. </p>\n<p>A similar challenge is faced by torturers. How to be creative enough to extract new information from detainees? To truly break a person’s spirit? What if the victim is jaded? Has seen and heard it all? What if he is even desensitized to torture? And furthermore, to combine these two propositions, how does a novelist write about torture in a manner that is uniquely horrifying but not the stuff of horror films? How does a creative writer create a creative torturer that shakes his complacent reader to the core but does not cause that reader to drop the book in revulsion? There will be humiliation, physical pain, rows of instruments, dark fetid chambers covered with disturbing stains. Some regimes will have particular trademark features to their torture regimens: ‘the chair,’ ‘the clamps,’ etc. As with the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, one’s initial horrified reaction can become dulled and desensitized. It’s natural to push our reaction to a psychologically acceptable position where we will not be in a position to feel tormented by disturbing information. </p>\n<p>In succession I read <em>A Case of Exploding Mangoes, In the Country of Men, The Feast of the Goat</em>. Each one featured at least a modicum of torture. <em>The Feast of the Goat</em> featured a whole lot of torture. Just about enough torture to make it tortuous to read about the torture. I recall reading somewhere (Wikipedia, perhaps?) that Vargas Llosa included a great deal of realistic torture in his novel about Trujillo as an antidote to the tendency among Latin American fabulists to use magical realism to discuss the excesses of dictatorial regimes. Vargas Llosa chose instead to use regular realism to discuss these things. The result is both disturbing and strangely dull; there’s just a touch of Human Rights Watch report about the pacing of the narrative. Virtually every assassin and conspirator implicated in the murder of Trujillo is hunted down, incarcerated and tortured. Each torture is documented, as is each death. The narrative is part fiction and part accounting. It eventually wears thin, though the novel clearly serves a particular purpose that has nothing to do with creative work.</p>\n<p>I later, on the advice of a friend who learned I was reading lots of novels about torture, read a slim novel by Naguib Mahfouz called <em>Karnak Café</em>. The novel concerns the habitués of a cafe in Cairo under the regime of Nasser. The narrator observes the slow crumbling of a social circle of young students as they are imprisoned, tortured and released in several rounds of purges of ‘enemies’ of the revolution. Eventually the social circle, reduced in its numbers, is reconstituted, the bonds between its members badly damaged. One day the man who has tortured them all, their direct torturer, appears in the cafe himself. In the interim, he too has been arrested and tortured. He is no longer part of the regime; through experience, he has become one of them. They are jaded, all of them, and they accept him with a strange equanimity. An encounter that one might imagine to be fraught and horrifying feels almost flat.</p>\n<p>The strange flatness of affect in parts of <em>The Feast of the Goat</em> and <em>Karnak Café</em> make the not magical realism but certainly<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/lapata/5979771862\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/bolano-300x297.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Roberto Bolaño\" width=\"300\" height=\"297\"></a> not conventional realism of Roberto Bolaño an excellent antidote. In Bolaño’s short novel <em>Distant Star</em> set during the beginning of the Pinochet regime in Chile, a character appears in a group of young poets who promises that he will totally change the nature of Chilean poetry. [Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD] The character turns out to be a bright young regime apparatchik and torturer whose wholly original poetic interventions include arresting most of the poets, murdering the most attractive women poets, sky-writing portions of <em>Genesis</em> in Latin for admiring crowds of fascist regime supporters, and creating an installation of photographs and poems documenting his torture and murder of women poets. Bolaño’s off-the-wall imagining of a revolutionary poet who uses torture and death as his art perfectly captures the torturer’s conundrum by marrying it to the conundrum of the writer or artist. How to create a signature style that is utterly new yet clearly one’s own? It’s classic Bolaño.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=GaQ-J_xU-6Y:3O3rpMhOeQw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/GaQ-J_xU-6Y\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p> <a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef015434032d6a970c-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"The_vatican_18\" src=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef015434032d6a970c-120wi\" title=\"The_vatican_18\"></a> <br>(After Richard Holbrooke’s death in December, Sidney Smith, a man whose intelligence I very much admire, protested about my comparing Tolstoy with Flannery O’Conner. Somehow, the post was mislaid, so I am forwarding it now).<em> </em></p>\n<p> Sidney Smith’s comments about my posts are always courteous thoughtful and extremely well-expressed, and I would not offend him for anything. Yet in his conviction that I had tendered a slight to Flannery O’Connor by comparing her to Tolstoy, I believe he was not only “off topic” as he concedes, he was, in my view, off the point as well. </p>\n<p> I think it was Bagehot who once classified readers as voracious, subtle, stupid or otherwise.</p>\n\n\n<p> If I remember him correctly, Bagehot thought the voracious reader was like Samuel Johnson, who, with impatient greed, extracted the broad, basic features of a work, gouging out its essence while rejecting the rest as superfluous. He was deaf to style. This kind of reader doesn’t want to bother to savor the style or linger over the felicities of expression or the means a writer uses to accomplish certain happy effects. He guts the book of its meaning the way a sportsman guts dead fish. </p>\n<p> Mr. Smith is never stupid nor is he voracious or undiscriminating when he reads. He is a subtle reader who pursues with” relentless attention the most imperceptible and delicate gradations of the narrative. He takes note of tiny traits and peculiarities, always keeping a keen eye fastened on the author’s personality and talents. He is entirely alive to, the motes in the sunbeam, and is minutely attentive to every prejudice and alert to every passion.” I think this is a correct quote from Bagehot.) </p>\n<p> In mentioning Tolstoy, I was talking of <em>War and Peace</em>, and one cannot consider that book without thinking of things like size ,dimensions, its sheer volume or the astonishing sweep of the novel including the incredible multiplicity of characters and scenes, the dazzling variety of settings and topics, the breadth of effective spectacle that it offers. What other book has such an impressive roll call of characters so convincingly presented within such a splendid series of episodes? ( think of Pat Lang’s books. ) Tolstoy is a gigantic, copious abundance. </p>\n<p> <a href=\"http://turcopolier.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c72e153ef0153902fd320970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"></a> <br> In other words, Tolstoy is epic, truly “awesome” in that word’s original powerful and uncontaminated sense. Further, he exhibits a profound creative fecundity that is in its way resembles Rabelais, for instance. Tolstoy once said of his <em>Childhood, Boyhood, Youth</em>, that “without vanity” it had “something of the <em>Iliad</em> about it.” And that is right. Tolstoy exhibits an unparalleled narrative power. His effects have an instinctive rightness in relation to their place and their setting. Wagner, (who possesses many of Tolstoy’s qualities) once observed that next to Shakespeare, one could place but one figure: Beethoven. </p>\n<p> Can anyone possibly think of epic when they thank or read of O’Connor? She is a genius and a wonderful one, but, like Hemingway, she is an artist of the small space. </p>\n<p> I have read <em>War and Peace </em>seven or eight times, but I still feel like a fisherman who lowers his modest bucket into a deep, boundless ea and takes up what he can. My desk is full of jottings about it, and I hope one day to make a coherent argument to laud its greatness. </p>\n<p> My chief point is that in <em>no way </em>did I intend to slight the limited but acute and deep-feeling genius of Ms. O’Connor I was only trying to use contrast to deepen my meaning.</p>\n<p>By Richard Sale, author of <em>Clinton’s Secret Wars</em></p>\n<p><em> </em></p>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zoSKbQZSrCc/TiuJeaJlcLI/AAAAAAAAC8s/x1_noFz9KYs/s1600/1215161116811_f-1.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zoSKbQZSrCc/TiuJeaJlcLI/AAAAAAAAC8s/x1_noFz9KYs/s400/1215161116811_f-1.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div> <br><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i>Amy Winehouse and Her Critics:</i></b></span><br><span style=\"font-size:small\"><b><i>Lines Lived Among the Lyrical Landmines</i></b></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><a href=\"http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=13096878&postID=5209148888656730496\" name=\"_GoBack\"></a>by Ed Pavlić | special to <b>NewBlackMan</b></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i>I stay up clean the house at least I’m not drinking.</i></span></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i>Run around just so I don’t have to think about thinking.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> —Amy Winehouse, “Wake up Alone”</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">I wrote the following essay after reading Daphne Brook’s review of Amy Winehouse in <a href=\"http://www.thenation.com/article/amy-winehouse-and-black-art-appropriation\">The Nation Online</a> in September of 2008 when Amy Winehouse’s album <i>Back to Black</i> was still a sensation lost by degrees to the shadow of her real-life foibles projected by the pop culture industry’s (from tabloids to academic critiques) media machine. I came to Winehouse’s work late, I considered her then and I consider her now one of the very finest writers and deliverers of “lyric” I’d come across in recent years. The following is the final third of a triptych essay I’d drafted titled “Evil Gal’s Blues” that considered the lyric brilliance of Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Amy Winehouse. Yes, I was looking for a fight. Right off, I’d heard something in the way Winehouse can (now, could) “live a line” that joined her to the work of these master-forebearers of her trade. Lyric. Now that she’s gone on and formally joined Holiday and Washington and other too-briefly lit lyric torches, I thought it would be a good time to reconsider how Amy Winehouse sounded, at her best. Rather than gawking at her at her worst, I thought some people might be willing to consider her in her place, where I think she belongs, among other great lyric writers. Here’s my piece: </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">*</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">“I keep thinking about the lessons of the human ear / which stands for music, which stands for balance—” writes Adrienne Rich in “Meditations for a Savage Child,” from <i>Diving Into the Wreck</i>. She’s meditating on the role of the ear, of hearing, and of language in trafficking between and charting terrains of who we are. She considers the physical structure of the ear : “the whorls and ridges exposed / It seems a hint dropped about the inside of the skull / which I cannot see.” As one pushes one’s listening back into the interior, as we all know, the identifications and distinctions between self/other (between whole grammars of this and that) begin to bend, flex, warp. Rich concludes the section observing : “go back so far there is another language / go back far enough the language / is no longer personal / these scars bear witness / but whether to repair / or destruction / I no longer know.” </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> For you I was a flame</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">I want to suggest that, at bottom, the lyric is a device for pulling back these kinds of layers (in language, memory, experience) or suddenly piercing through them, a way of charting and summoning buried structures and putting them into the air. Obviously, various borders (which can be concrete in one level of experience or voice and which can become porous, and even <i>vanish</i>, in others) are blurred and crossed in this ‘lyric’ process. Others appear sharply focused often by the crossing as if transcendence pulled a hamstring and left one, then, across the border in denied territory. This kind of traffic can be disorienting and, as Rich notes, can bear ambiguous results (repair or destruction) to the traveler. But, what happens if the lyric traveler (as well as the audience) operates in proximity to sacrosanct, historically volatile borders? Seems the results could be confusing, even dangerous. This final section of “Evil Gals’ Blues” charts just such lyric confusions and dangers (and, possibly, some that offer a sense of growth and repair) emanating from and swirling about the career of contemporary musician, singer and lyricist Amy Winehouse. Possibly, considering her work in close relation to its lyric pulse (and in relation to multiple lyric traditions with which she’s aligned) might enable a new glimpse at what she’s done, what she’s undone, and what’s she’s provoked in response to her various “lessons [for] the human ear.”</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> love is a losing game.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">In her recent essay, “<a href=\"http://www.thenation.com/article/amy-winehouse-and-black-art-appropriation\">Tainted Love</a>,” about the ambiguous racial and gendered scurryings-about inflecting (infecting?) Amy Winehouse’s voice, stage persona and personal life, Daphne Brooks displays many many things. One, she obviously knows more about the pop cultural cipher than I do these days. Brooks is seemingly mad at Amy Winehouse (isn’t everyone?) about many things : unacknowledged and / or dishonored sources of her style; her style; her bad behavior off stage; the stage; her borrowed behavior on stage and her self-obliterative behavior off of it? But, is any of this a surprise? Maybe *that's* what—the repetition trauma—Brooks is—and seemingly so many others who care about popular culture are—upset about? I appreciate what Brooks writes. And she writes about many things: minstrelsy, vaudeville, the blues, Motown, Winehouse’s racial affronts, her stage show, her cracker jack handlers. All with accuracy and aplomb and a healthy dose of rage. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>Five story fire, yet, you came / love is a losing game.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">What I’d like to do if I could is re-orient attention according to the rare things I hear in Winehouse’s lyrics. Most centrally, the power of her writing and the way her lyrics—in the tradition of<i> lyricists</i> like John Keats, Billie Holiday, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman, Dinah Washington, Marvin Gaye, Yusef Komunyakaa and others—involve frayed edges of her life and psyche. Even more, I’d like to point to Winehouse’s gift for “living the line” in performances that (dangerously) blur the line between life and art in a way that communicates a turbulent, simultaneous sense of living and artistic flux at the border (among others) between becoming and unbecoming. So, this is an essay about art and the rough (largely interior but not necessarily personal) waters it swims on its way to us. Before that, some ground to clear.</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>One I wished I’d never played / oh, what a mess we made.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">As with much I’ve been reading about Winehouse (admittedly, not an exhaustive survey), all of what Brooks writes is true and most of it a.b.c. gum stuck to the shoe of the popular culture that's steady stomping on Amy Winehouse. It’s a formidable distraction. It has been a while since a performer of such talent has worn the shoe that stomps her with quite the intensity of Ms. Winehouse. Still, amid it all, I think Amy Winehouse is a real lyricist. One of the best I’ve heard. And, as happens in all true lyrics, registers of experience collide and the results in life can be as ugly as the results in song can be beautiful. Whatever—beautiful, that is—that means? Certainly, there are things to pick at about Amy Winehouse (easy target) and even easier to dart the barn-sized board of popular culture. Even easier than that to deconstruct historical popular culture where we don’t share the blind place in the contemporary chaos that the performers occupy.</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><a name=\"more\"></a><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span><br><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>And, now the final frame / love is a losing game.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">But, pinning sources of brilliant, surprising lyrical writing (and performance) is harder. In fact, it <i>might</i> be impossible. After all manner of hypotheses, Brooks ends up wondering whether all of the shenanigans isn’t really about Winehouse’s wanting “to be a black man.” I guess that’ll put her through changes. But, it seems like a distracting gesture. Has anyone wondered if much of Amy Winehouse’s turmoil isn’t also about her attempts to coexist with her powerful (verbal and vocal) lyrical gifts? As the lives of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington show plainly, coexistence with intense lyrical talent has a well-earned reputation as risky (even more than risqué) business and a m.o. that matches Winehouse’s life along the ever-blurrier line between on and off stage. Let’s cover a little territory and then get back, briefly, to what’s so overlooked about Winehouse’s music. Namely, the music. And then let’s give a moment’s attention to the pulse-under-razor in some of her lyricism. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>Played out by the band / love is a losing hand.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Obviously, Winehouse's style is begged, borrowed and stole(n). Doesn't everyone know that? She names Ray (Charles) and Mr. Hathaway in the rehab song. I haven't followed her around, but I'd guess it's no secret. Seems to me as I look around the University of Georgia campus where I work, young "white"--they and some of the world may think they're white, but they're not--men wouldn't even be able to say hello and shake hands without the guidance of black culture telling them to chin up and find a way to touch hands while staring thru (Shem style) not into each other's eyes. Cross-racial lyric gestures? Am I supposed to be mad at that? Ironically enough, I used to be mad at that! Maybe I still am. But, if they’d come up with surprising poems and songs about it, I’d be less mad at it. Maybe. But, it doesn’t matter, the fact is that if you live on earth and have electricity (or someone you know does), you’ve been touched by the rhythms of black life in America. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>It was more than I could stand.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">And Winehouse's racist ditties (apparently, there’s footage of her singing some offensive song to the tune of “Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes”)? I hadn't heard them, doesn't surprise, don’t want to hear them, really. By now, don't we all know that we ALL carry around brains full of racial slurs about —“our own,” whatever <i>that</i> means, and—other races in our heads? When a (literally) slurring addict like Winehouse, or a repeat offender like Jesse--cut his nuts off--Jackson, or a Spanish--chinky-eyed--basketball team lets out in public, it's an offensive wave. Sure. But, I've heard and seen it all before and so has everyone else. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>Love is a losing hand. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">And the hoopla and politics and dope and money swirl in and around Amy Winehouse in ways we've seen before too, right? Don't they? One of Daphne Brooks’s criticisms of Amy Winehouse is that she’s desecrating dignified images and the behavior of performers who crafted images of black people compatible with Dr. King’s vision of a racially inclusive America and upon whose musical legacy Amy Winehouse borrows heavily. But, I’m not sure we can honestly look at sources of lyrical brilliance for models of good behavior. Can we? Maybe the Motown girl groups. Maybe. But, don’t let's look to Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday or Mahalia Jackson for our models of personal behavior, ok? Is *this* why Whitney Houston, Chaka Khan, Natalie Cole, Phyllis Hyman, Alicia Meyers and on and on and on get left off the well-behaved list? Did they desecrate the Dream, too? In “Baby Get Lost,” Dinah Washington nods to the moral sense, but she’s too busy to follow through. She sings : “I’d try to stop you cheating but I just don’t have the time. Cause I’ve got so many men that they’re standing in line.” Don’t keep listening, one of the men is a seven-foot tall dentist named “Long John.” </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Self-professed profound / til the chips were down.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Chaka Khan sang “I’m Every Woman,” I guess, if one's going to be every woman, a few might not be the ones to invite to the in-laws for the howdy dinner? Amy Winehouse is clear about that as she is, in her brilliant blues, “Stronger Than Me,” about the ambiguities of a woman’s desire freed of family obligations : “I’m not going to meet your mother, anytime.” Maybe she's felt a dose of her own \"look who is [not] coming to dinner\" blues? In South London, it’s more than possible. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Though you’re a gambling man / love is a losing hand.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Is it (again!) the role of music to affirm black dignity through respectability? Is it the only role? First, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted, and as Billie Holiday noted from <i>her</i> childhood in Baltimore, and in a way that echoes many scenes in my own life, many ‘respectable’ black folks might not have been eager to rub elbows with someone like Amy Winehouse. No home training. Who knows? Second, come to that, let's don’t (via time machine) upload 20 hours worth of day-in-the-life, realtime footage of Billie Holiday in action, ok? F and N bombs for all, she'll make your toenails curl up. Is this news? And before we go washing Barry Gordy's feet in hot oils, now, if the Motown men and women *were* prodded into respectability (the ambiguities about which poets like Melvin Dixon, Cheryl Clarke and others have long had </span><span style=\"font-size:small;font-variant:small-caps\">lots</span><span style=\"font-size:small\"> to say) for the Dream, and they were, no doubt, they were also prodded—flipped hair, pearls, diction lessons and all—that way for the cross-over cash. Why else move the operation to a city named for los angels and dedicated to covering the globe with celluloid delusions. Or was that just so Aretha could profile with the pink drop-top in January? </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Though I battle blind / Love is a fate resigned </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Anyway, cross-racial heresy and the poisoned-privacy meets media-frenzy dilemma are all old friends of pop talent, aren't they? Billie Holiday did a year and a day for it. No, scratch that, she did life. <i>And</i>, death. At least the spectacle is a friend of the agents and labels with Their Eyes on the News Cycle. Some artists handle it better than others. And, some make a bi-zillion $ (for someone) whilst it happens. And, I'd guess (though I haven't actually done the research) it's probably obvious that (the miss-taken for) \"white\" train wrecks do make a lot more dough (for someone) than the black ones do. Legions and generations of black blues and jazzmen and women who were geniuses and train wrecks (and some who lived dignified anonymous lives and some veering from one to the other and back) did it for free! Call Sharpton. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>And the memories they mare my mind. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">But, even after the march and the Tom Joyner spot, none of this seems new to me at all. At bottom, it’s an unavoidable ebb and flow, like sunrise and set, in a fundamentally delusional culture. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Love is a fair design. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">But, still, why Amy Winehouse as a lens for all this interesting, but re-treaded, critique? Most of Brooks’s essay (and many others about Winehouse) is as interesting without Amy Winehouse as it is with her in it. Post Modern? I once had a friend who informed me that she felt no hesitation blasting the film <i>Hustle and Flow</i> even though she hadn't seen it. My position was that it did something for black, southern, un-respectible male life similar to what a Cézanne still life did for peaches. Then again, rightly and / or wrongly, the way one feels about that would fluctuate depending upon one’s relationship to peaches in the world. Nonetheless, unlike ‘cultural moments,’ art insists (and we on its behalf as it does on ours) that its existence be seriously reckoned with. Anyway, I guess the fact that Amy Winehouse’s <i>voice</i> makes almost no appearance at all in much of this critique would be perfectly fine if Winehouse was, say, a painter. But, a singer?</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Oh, over futile hours / and laughed at by the gods</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">So, if the voice is basically absent, is it just the buckets of money, media play, and her private (made pornographically public) demise? Again, apart from youtube access, is this new? It's not like the minstrel tradition and black musical influences are an esoteric discourse hidden high on a mount. And one can, as we know, hide in plain view. As poet George Oppen lamented (strangely), you couldn't escape the voice of black music if you wanted to. So, why Amy Winehouse? Well, what about <i>talent</i>? Brooks’s writes : “Winehouse has been lauded for essentially throwing [Billie] Holiday along with Foster Brooks, Louis Armstrong, Wesley Willis, Megan Mullally's Karen on Will and Grace, Moms Mabley and Courtney Love into a blender and pressing pulse.” Ok, cool, but that’s not how music gets made, it’s not how lyrics get written. When the chips are down, a person does that and during the key moments when it happens, they’re as good as deaf and blind. If there was a button to push, there’d be a million Amy Winehouses. There aren’t.</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> And now the final frame / love is a losing game. Thank you.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">And, too, maybe it's like Ezra Pound said of the folk-ballad scholarship that basically proved that "Homer" wasn't an unprecedented individual. In fact, there were hundreds of Homers. It was a whole culture of Homers. True. And, Pound : "but that doesn't explain why this ‘Homer’ is so much better than everyone else.”When we say culture, sometimes, we are also talking about art, right? Music. So, why is "aesthetics" (sound) and “lyrics” (writing) and lyricism (apt performance) missing from the discussion of Amy Winehouse? Maybe it’s not. But, if you think it is, keep reading. I’m getting there. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>What are you going to do? This is a tune “Stronger Than Me”</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Aesthetics. The thing missing from all this Amy Winehouse stuff, for me, is the brilliance of her writing and the crushing way she can (and sometimes does) deliver a line. All due import to period, race, nation, racism, in fact and even so, shockingly, frighteningly (for her), like Billie Holiday, Amy Winehouse seems to be able to write it out and then \"live a line\" in a song. It's about how to sing with one foot in the song and one foot in the world and be both places and neither at the same time. In other words, you have to be who you are </span><span style=\"font-size:small;font-variant:small-caps\">and</span><span style=\"font-size:small\"> who you’re </span><span style=\"font-size:small;font-variant:small-caps\">not</span><span style=\"font-size:small\">. It’s tough to do that. It’s tough to know that the bottom of who you are has little predictable to do with who you think (let alone who other people think) you are. That’s the lyric. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">In <i>Stephen Hero</i>, James Joyce called the lyric “a simple liberation of a rhythm.” What a novelist. Truth is that it’s a complex simplicity and, from the evidence, a liberation—like so many—with deeply ambiguous (destruction or repair and, in relation to what, which is which?) consequences. In other words, it’s a real risk. Like James Baldwin wrote of his days in the pulpit, for all the preparation and deceit involved, \"there were times when it seemed I was really carrying the Word,\" when, as he explained, the speaker / singer all of a sudden, by whatever accident, testifies to his / her own experience and to the audience’s experience at the same time. We reach a language somewhere hidden in us that, as Adrienne Rich writes, is “no longer personal.” But, by this point we can clearly see that that’s not quite it, either. The lyric voice is, indeed, beyond the personal, but at the same time, it’s not not personal, either. Is there a word for that? In my experience, when the beyond but not <i>not </i>personal blurs inter or intra (or the blurs the distinction between intra- and inter-racial) radical dynamics, there’s a word for <i>that</i>. Trouble. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>You should be stronger than me / You been here seven years longer than me</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">That's the crux of the \"lyric\" tradition, a map of the immediate simultaneity of otherwise divergent interior and public lives. Tangents. Lyrics. Ever looked at a Francis Bacon tryptic and seen your portrait? Millions have. It’s the opposite approach to an epic condition. The route to the “universal” leads through things that aren’t things about the most intensely <i>private</i> reaches of our beings. The (counter) logic goes like this : if you can touch that private thing that’s so private it’s a secret from yourself, that’s yours and yours alone, and if you can voice that thing, other people will see themselves there. That is to say, if you can really get alone, you realize you’re not. Go figure. And, then get ready. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>Don’t you know you’re supposed to be the man. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">And, yes, and with whatever other stuff about Amy Winehouse, with all of it, the child can do that. She does do that. Not every performer can do that. No one really knows how they do that. Smokey Robinson went into Marvin Gaye’s house while he was writing <i>What’s Going On</i>, Marvin said, “Smoke, I ain’t writing this, man, God’s writing this.” Maybe, maybe not. But it wasn't really "Marvin," either. And, Marvin knew that and it was tough for Marvin to know that. With studio time left over, they asked Billie Holiday if she knew any “sayings” that would make a good extemporaneous blues. Resisting the “down home” implications, the sophisticated Lady said, no. Then after a few moments, she said, well, there’s that saying “God Bless the Child. . .”. But the saying <i>isn’t</i> the lyric. Billie Holiday made the lyric from the saying, there on the spot. She pinned it to a melody and injected it with . . . well, with what? Well, with something unknown (to her) in herself, but that doesn’t really narrow it down. And, then there’s how? </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> I pale in comparison to who you think I am.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">There's no map to the origins (though it seems to be close to some pain center in the brain of the gifted/afflicted) of this talent and there damned sure isn't an etiquette guide for how to handle that gift. A list of \"lyricists\" from John Keats to to Marvin Gaye, to Ms. Winehouse’s Mr. Hathaway to. . . won't necessarily produce a viable group of people to run for Senate or to affirm anyone’s respectability. Then again, either will any other 100 people randomly selected (including, obviously, the present Senators). That’s the delusion. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Cause you always want to talk it through, and I don’t care.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">The lyricists affirm, though, they affirm plenty : we're here; this is who we really are. They leap into the dark and say, “if it’s there in me, it’s there in us all.” Is there any real dignity—leave respectability to the side—without that affirmation? James Baldwin told Studs Terkel, “there’s a division of labor in the world. . . my job is to imagine the private life. Not mine, yours.” Billie Holiday sings in her lover’s ear in “Long Gone Blues” : “Aw, you trying to quit me baby but you don’t know how.” How do <i>we</i> know she’s right?</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> I always have to comfort you, when I’m there. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Lyric. Repair and Ruin. In 1983, at the NBA All-Star Game, Marvin Gaye sang the United States as close as it’s ever been (in my ear) to a truly \"lyric Anthem\" of itself. It was as if he'd been possessed by the ghost of Lester Young—who was always possessed by the presence of Billie Holiday and vice versa. Listen to Marvin's Anthem against, say, Lester Young's \"I'm Confessin'.\" Anyway, Marvin was <i>very</i> respectable. Well dressed, clean, with dark shades on to hide how hopelessly fucked up he was. In his voice, the place—this is Reagan’s America—actually sounded like a place to live, not a prison, not a Nepalm strike, not a suburb, not a cliché or an abstraction to be defended through extermination of “terror” and other murderous, delusional objectives to achieve. I listened then and I listen—via youtube—now and I think, I could live there. And I watch Marvin’s chin bump the mic and see his knees buckle to near-collapse and his face crack open into a vague plea when he belts “La-and of the free. . .”. I think, shit, I <i>do</i> live there. And, I wonder what color flashed behind those shades when he whispers “Oh lord” (just off the mic) at the close of the song. And he did it in Philly, where Billie was pinned to the narcotics charge that got her sent away for a year and a day. She came back a year later, with Decca, singing “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I do. . .” and never played in a New York City jazz club again. Life. It’s nobody's business. As for Marvin, he was dead inside a year. Anyway, enough lyric history. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> But, just what I want you to do, stroke my hair. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">So, yes. That Racial Apartheid American Style and sheer terror of life on the denied territory athwart Jefferson's disease-and-genocide depopulated, slave- state dream of a "tabula rasa with inalienable rights" has forced (some) black folks to show out, dress well and behave better than that no matter the hell inside marks an important line in the sand. Whew. It’s a valuable principle of coherence for black culture with its own dissident tradition (why people like Robert Williams, Malcolm and Baldwin weren’t at the March on Washington). So, is the point that Amy Winehouse should mime *that* part of the culture as well as whatever she already has in the blender? Sure, why not? If she gets to grow up, she might. She’s 25 at light speed. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Oh, I forgot all of young love’s joys.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Cursed blessings abound, changing costumes, all the while sharpening their teeth. My ipod could hold enough itunes songs to empty my retirement account. At this rate, the bank can give my mortgage, my student loans and applications for Chinese passports to my kids. But, art lasts. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> I feel like a lady and you’re my ladyboy.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Lyrics. Aesthetics. I've listened to plenty minstrel acts (not all of them white) and few of them “live a line” in a song like Ms. Winehouse can. Strictly speaking, maybe it's not *her* (moat diggers abound) life she's living in these songs; that's true of every autobiography we have. Imagined. Lives come apart and come back together in the turbulence of an imagination. Alberto Giacometti would spend hours sculpting or painting his model's face (his brother, his wife, friends) and then go to dinner (usually around 3 am) with them and claim that he didn't recognize them at all. Shit gets loosed in a lyric. Have we met? Beckett found the plays in the abyss, wrote them in French, and then translated them back into English. Identities loosed, borders be damned. Stevie Wonder is (and isn't) Steveland Morris. Yusef Komunyakaa isn't (and is) whomever he was by whatever “misfitted”name growing up in Louisiana. Ruth Jones in Alabama, Dinah Washington in Chicago. Someone little black, Irish-Catholic girl in Baltimore by the name of Fagan, someone <i>else</i> (and not) sings \"Moanin Low\" with Lester Young whispering in her ear. Who are they when they sing what they sing? Who are we when we hear them? Cause if they’re not exactly who they are, then are we. . ? You see, this lyric business is disturbing stuff. Maybe that’s why it’s left out of the culture wars. It won’t choose sides. It won’t <i>represent</i>. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> You should be stronger than me / but to stay longer than frozen turkey.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Racial, ethnic borders in a riven, violent world imperil people's lives. No matter, the imagination won't abide these borders and identities fracture in creative work (the Yoruba word for tradition translates as \"fork in the road\"). Even de-Frosted, there really isn't any being one traveler. As DuBois knew way back yonder-when and as Michelle Cliff’s brilliant new book, <i>If I Could Write This In Fire</i>, shows again and again, being (what George Oppen called) ‘numerous’ in America is ever an inter-racial, fraught, reality. All artists aren't well studied in matching one dimension of experience (of a life) to the others. But, their skill and foibles can illuminate otherwise invisible lies and perils and, hopefully, otherwise invisible boons and pleasures and truths. As an artist, while one's busy tripping the invisible beams of the alarms (which is never the point of a piece, much less a life, really), it's hard to tell which is which. Enter, critics. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> Now, why you always put me in control / when all I need is for my man to live up to his role.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">In the end, who knows just whose life (or lives and how many) sounds (sound) in Amy Winehouse's mouth? But, in the lines she lives, she's made it hers better than crowds and crowds of others. Here and there on the records it happens. The critics and audiences know this. And, by obsessing (on Jezebel and other net rags and elsewhere) on the distractions, it seems the audience and critics seem to have as much trouble dealing with her gift as she does. T.S Eliot wrote that the perfect critic must first “submit to the work,” get eye to eye and toe to toe with the art. Is anyone doing that? When I try it with Ms. Winehouse’s work, it’s moving and scary. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> You always want to talk it through, and I’m ok / I always have to comfort you everyday. </i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">It happens on the records, but it happens better on those youtube performances (with live acoustic guitar--yes, black men in both cases--accompaniment) of \"Love is a Losing Game\" and \"Stronger Than Me.” \"Stronger than Me\" is so \"wrong\" it works in the (black) signifying tradition over gender roles. The woman’s voice complains that the man should be stronger than she is while she distills her needs and voice into crystal clear beams of being. Works for me anyway. Gender reversals and behind the scenes brought into the light : “You always wanna talk it through, and I don’t care. I always have to comfort you when I’m there / but just what I need you to do, stroke my hair.” She taunts “I feel like the lady and you my ladyboy / you should be stronger than me. . ./ why you always put me in control.” Curse of the superwoman myth belied and even a little cross-racial im-posturing revealed : “I pale in comparison to who you think I am.” Standards quoted and coda attached : “You don’t know what love is / get a grip.” Is that song <i>that</i> far from "Don't Explain" or "Long Gone Blues" or Dinah Washington’s “I’m a girl who blew a fuse”? Amy : “Don't you know you're supposed to be, the man?” Billie : "Ah, you’re trying to quit me baby but you don’t know how.” Maybe I'm too far gone, but I'd love to hear Hot Lips Paige in there with a plunger mute filling in windows with Ms. Winehouse. Keep the Dap-Kings. I don’t need the retro hoopla. Give me the lyrics. At heart, she’s a solo songstress, lyrics like razors, symmetrical as Sushi, in relation to which so much of the culture looks and sounds like Botox’d butcher meat. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> This what I need you to do / are you gay?</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Going under. At the Mercury Awards in 2007, that version of \"Love is a Losing Game\" is classic concert songstress lyricism. The tune swims the whirlpool like a bird with a broken wing. Afloat, for now. And, Ms. Winehouse behaved herself even if her tattoos didn't. Maybe it's borrowed straight from Billie Holiday at La Scala? Or stolen. Either way, it's the best Sade song I've seen performed in years. And maybe that <i>is</i> a crime but it’s true. Because he was there at those pianos with Billie Holiday at the end, I’d love to ask Mal Waldron what he hears in this performance. That “no longer [but not not] personal” thing I hear living those lines in Amy Winehouse's voice probably didn't announce itself when it appeared. Likely, it knew her before she knew it. Could she handle it better? Yes. Who knows? I don't. Would I have? Am I stronger than Amy Winehouse? Was I when I was 25? The questions are meaningless. Or maybe they’re not. But, they shouldn't overshadow the brilliant lines the woman’s living in her work. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> He said the respect I made you earn / I thought you had so many lessons to learn / I said you don’t know what love is / get a grip.</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Take a few reads through the line above. How’s that for a younger (supposed to be white?) woman turning around the head-trip rap of a seven-years older (presumably black) man? Where’d she run into <i>that</i> line do you suppose? Where’d she get <i>that</i> lyrical ground to stand on? And, what did that cost? In any case, if she stole it upfront, seems like she's paying for it (or paying for something) now. She sings, in “Love is a Losing Game,” about the \"memories that mare my mind,\" and she rips the word m-i-n-d apart and into the sound (if it makes sound) of tearing flesh. If tearing flesh doesn’t make a sound, it does now. As Adrienne Rich put it in “Meditations for a Savage Child,” another “lesson of the human ear.” And, new. Lyric brilliance. Always dialogic, always, ours. That <i>is</i> new. Like Pound said about real poetry, “it’s news that stays news.”</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i> I’m not going to meet your mother, any time / I just wanna grip your body, over mine / now, please tell me why you think that’s a crime?</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">And, watch with your ears or (via youtube) listen with your eyes as she nails “think” to the ear in the lens of the camera. In “Uses of the Blues,” James Baldwin recounts a story of Miles Davis giving an addicted and broke Billie Holiday $100. And someone said to Miles, “man, you know she’s going to go buy dope with it.” And Miles : “Man, haven’t you ever been sick?” Which, in whatever imperfect way, was Miles saying two things : don’t fool yourself, it could be you; and, go easy on her, ok? Let’s us in her audience (critics and especially professors!) go a little easy on the poet, Amy Winehouse. She’s in a tumult and she doesn’t know the way in or the way out and, if others like her are any guide and when push comes to shove, she’s going to have to find the way on her own. And, by that, by the logic of the “no longer [but not not] personal” lyric, she’ll do some of that traveling for (if not with) us. I’m pulling for her. </span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"> <i>You should be stronger than me</i></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">***</span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\"><br></span></div><div><span style=\"font-size:small\">Ed Pavlić’s most recent books are <i>But Here Are Small Clear Refractions</i> (Achebe Center, Bard College, 2009), <i>Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway</i> (UGA P, 2008) and <i>Labors Lost Left Unfinished</i> (UPNE, 2006). His other books are <i>Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue</i> (Copper Canyon P, 2001) and <i>Crossroads Modernism</i> (U Minn P, 2002). His prizes include the Darwin Turner Award from <i>African American Review</i>, <i>The</i> <i>American Poetry Review</i> / Honickman First Book Prize, and the Author of the Year Award from The Georgia Writers Association. He teaches Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Georgia at Athens.</span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-5209148888656730496?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/christophera/3055563798/\" title=\"Trust Circle by ChristopherA, on Flickr\"><img alt=\"Trust Circle\" height=\"160\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3230/3055563798_5355b9b99c_m.jpg\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px;float:right\" width=\"240\"></a>With Google+ almost two weeks into its test phase, conversation about this new social network service seems to be going in circles.</p>\n<p>Literally.</p>\n<p>That’s because Circles is the Google+ feature that users are generating the most buzz about. It’s Google’s answer to the problem of organizing your social graph online.</p>\n<p>If you’re not familiar with a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_graph\">social graph</a> it’s a map of everyone you know and how they are related to you. Social graphs are tricky; as you try to define them you’ll inevitably run into some complications.</p>\n<p>Pete Pachal, news director of <a href=\"http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2387808,00.asp\">@PCMag</a> comments:</p>\n<blockquote><em>“People want things easy, and Google Circles isn’t easy. It puts the burden on users to take the time to think about each and every contact and put them in a specific bucket. To use the feature effectively, users will certainly have to create new Circles, and that requires even more thought. After using Google+ for a few minutes last night, I was often unsure which Circles to put certain people in and, more to the point, which to leave them out of. And what if you create a new Circle that should include some of the people in other Circles you already have?”</em></blockquote>\n<p>Circles are lists that you’ve created by grouping people together and giving them a name. They’re important in Google+ because when you post you must explicitly say which “Circles” you wish to share with. Posting to a limited list of people is a big change from existing social networks such as Facebook, where posts are sent to all mutual friends by default, or Twitter, where posts are public. This change forces you to think more deeply about your social graph and who should see each item you post.</p>\n<p><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"349\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/BwvygI2xKGM\" width=\"560\"></iframe></p>\n<h2>Your Initial Set of Circles</h2>\n<p>Google+ will present you with 4 suggested set of Circles: Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://lifewithalacrity.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341d8bc053ef014e89d8ca03970d-pi\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Default-google+-circles\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://lifewithalacrity.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341d8bc053ef014e89d8ca03970d-800wi\" title=\"Default-google+-circles\"></a> <br>Google+ also defines five special Circles: Two are only for reading: "Stream" which is everyone in any of your Circles; and "Incoming" which is are posts that are shared to you by people not in your Circles. Then are three special Circles managed by Google only for posting: "Your Circles" which is everyone in any of your Circles; “Extended” which is everyone in your Circles plus the people in <em>their</em> Circles; and “Public” which is <em>anyone</em>.</p>\n<p>Few find this default set to be sufficient. As a result, most Google+ users are soon creating new Circles, moving people around, renaming Circles, etc.</p>\n<p>There are sound reasons for people finding the default Circles limiting. Sociological research shows that everyone has a number of concentric personal circles (see my blog post <a href=\"http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2008/11/personal-circle.html\">Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles</a> for more details). These circles are sometimes called “ego-centric” social graphs as the individual is located in the center. This sort of graph is the model I used when I began reorganizing my own Google+ Circles.</p>\n<p>I started out using Support (for my Support Circle), Close (for my Sympathy Circle), Trusted (for my Trust Circle), and Colleagues (for my Emotional Circle), but that didn’t work for very long. I’ve since been experimenting with a number of different ways to organize my Circles. I wanted an initial set that would offer useful early advice for using Google+ but would still be applicable for when expanded to hundreds of people. (I now have over 600 people in my Circles.)</p>\n<p>One insight I’ve had is to avoid the word ‘friends’, which has been corrupted to almost meaninglessness in recent years. So instead I use terminology like Peers for my trust circle and Kith for the combination of my support and sympathy circles. (Kith may be familiar to you from the phrase “kith and kin”. The root of kith means “to know”, thus it’s those people that you know very well and that know you very well.)</p>\n<p>I also learned that sub-Circles exist within Circles. Using a ‘general ledger’ system of naming Circles with numbers—which I’ll demonstrate in a moment—helps me keep these Circles and sub-Circles in order and allows me to easily add new Circles when I need to. Hopefully Google+ will in the future introduce features that allow us to order Circles as we please, but until then this numbering system works.</p>\n<p>Working with Google+ has also shown me that some Circles are for reading and other Circles are for posting. I’ll talk a little more about this below.</p>\n<p>It has only been a week, but by combining these insights to organize my Circles I’ve improved my ease of use and become better able to manage my time while using Google+.</p>\n<p>Here is my recommended initial list of Circles:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong>0.0 ME</strong> - a simple Circle with just yourself in it, for saving posts, for drafts, etc.<br><strong>1.0 KIN</strong> - your family & extended family<br> <strong> 2.0 KITH</strong> - your best friends, your confidants (i.e. those with whom one shares a secret or private matter, trusting them not to repeat it to others)<br><strong> 3.0 PEERS</strong> - your trusted colleagues, those who you work closely with, your collaborators<br><strong> 4.0 LOCAL</strong> - your neighbors, parents of your children's friends, people you'd invite to a party<br><strong> 5.0</strong> {various groups & interests}<br><strong> 6.0 ACQUAINTANCES</strong> - people you know, but that you don't know well or that don’t know you well<br><strong> 7.0 FOLLOWS ME</strong> - people who follow you on Google+, who you may or may not know<br><strong> 8.0 WATCHING</strong> - people whose posts you read, but who don't necessarily read your posts<br><strong> 9.0 SPECIAL</strong> - useful for special lists & exceptions</p>\n<h2>Expanding Circles</h2>\n<p>Many people will find my default set of ~10 Circles to be very useful, and need only add a few more. However, the design of this set is to allow for much greater expansion should you need it.</p>\n<p>Like those “personal circles” that I wrote about previously, most of the Circles above are ego-centric: they’re fundamentally centered on your own personal social graph. This isn’t the only potential type of Circle, however. Socio-centric Circles aren’t centered on you, though they still have some sort of membership boundaries, while info-centric Circles are based on topics instead of being based on relationships. These socio-centric and info-centric Circles will support many relationships better than ego-centric Circles do.</p>\n<p>If someone seems to write a lot about a particular topic, I put him or her into an appropriate info-centric Circle. My own info-centric Circles thus include people who post about topics like iOS Development, the Social Web, Sustainability/Green, and Entrepreneuring. If a number of people are all part of a group or all come from a certain geographical area then I put them together in a socio-centric circle. After creating the Circles, I put the ones that were geographic into 4.0 of my ledger, then placed the others in 5.0. (I tried separating out groups and interests, and found that didn’t work, so now I keep them together.)</p>\n<p>I now have over 600 people in my Google Plus+ social graph. All together my Circles now look something like this:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong>0.0 Read Later<br> 0.1 Drafts<br> 0.2 Book Project<br> 0.3 iPad Project<br><br> 1.0 ALL KIN<br> 1.1 Immediate Family<br> 1.2 Extended Family<br><br> 2.0 ALL KITH<br> 2.1 Close Friends<br> 2.2 Old But Distant Friends<br> 2.3 Distant Family<br><br> 3.0 ALL PEERS<br> 3.2 Collaborators<br> 3.3 Current Professional Colleagues<br> 3.4 Former Professional Colleagues<br><br> 4.0 ALL LOCAL<br> 4.1 Local Kith, Kin & Peers<br> 4.2 Local Berkeley<br> 4.3 Non-Local Seattle<br> 4.3 Non-Local Portland<br><br> 5.0 ALL GROUPS & INTERESTS<br> 5.1 Entrepreneurs<br> 5.2 Apple & iOS<br> 5.3 - iOSDevCamp<br> 5.4 Green & Sustainability<br> 5.5 - BGIedu<br> 5.6 Social Web<br> 5.7 - Jerry’s Kids<br><br> 6.0 ACQUAINTANCES<br> 6.1 Familiar Strangers<br> 6.2 Friendly Strangers<br><br> 7.0 FOLLOWS ME<br> 7.1 Core Audience<br> 7.2 Commented or Shared My Posts<br><br> 8.0 WATCHING<br> 8.2 Pundits<br> 8.3 Celebrities<br> 8.4 Noisy<br><br> 9.0 ALL<br> 9.1 Everyone But Pundits, Celebrities & Noisy<br> 9.2 Read Daily<br> 9.3 Read Weekly</strong></p>\n<p>In a future blog post I’ll share my ongoing experience with using this approach to Circles, but this example shows how easy it is to separate and add Circles as your interests change and grow.</p>\n<h1>Managing Your Circles</h1>\n<p>We, as humans, enjoy social networks in large part because we get to interact with people. Managing your Circles is thus about more than just understanding your social graph. It also allows you to manage your time effectively when you read and share with other people on Google+. Here is my approach for how to manage the time you spend reading, sharing, and managing your social graph.</p>\n<h3><strong>Circles for Reading</strong></h3>\n<p>I find it useful to think about Circles that are explicitly for reading as different from Circles intended for sharing. I have a few of these read-only Circles. Thus, my “Pundits” Circle contains people that share a lot and for whom I don’t always want to read everything. My “Read Daily” Circle is conversely for people for whom I want to read everything they post.</p>\n<p>I’ve also found Circles helpful for close collaborators. It’s easy in Google+ to have a conversation with someone directly by simply typing their name as +<name> into the share field of posts. However, I find these direct posts get lost over time. To resolve this problem, create a Circle dedicated to just the two of you: a dyad. I have a number of people that I’m collaborating with closely and I use these small Circles to both keep track of our mutual posts and to see what they are thinking about at the moment. Examples of this kind of two-person Circle include my “Book Project” and “iPad Project”</p>\n<h3><strong>Time Management of Reading Circles</strong></h3>\n<p>Each day I look first at my “ALL KIN”, “ALL KITH” and and “ALL PEER” Circles to see what is going on with my support, sympathy and trust cliques. Then I’ll read my “Read Daily” Circles.</p>\n<p>After reading these daily basics (which I try to keep to a limited number), I’ll typically pick an interest, a geography, or a group, depending on what I’m doing that day. (My personal time-management style is to only follow one interest per day, e.g. if I am working on my iPad app then I’m not reading Social Web posts.) If I’m preparing a blog post and want to see what my audience is thinking I might review “Core Audience”, or “FOLLOWS ME”. If I’m traveling I might read one of my non-local Circles such as “Seattle”. If I’m doing ‘weak-signal research’ I might start with “ALL INTERESTS”, but if I’m particularly tolerant of noise I might read “Familiar Strangers”, “FOLLOWS ME”, “Everyone but Pundits & Strangers”, “Pundits”, or even “ALL”.</p>\n<h2>Posting to Circles</h2>\n<p>One of the important reasons for creating Circles in the first place is so that you can share with groups of people. I’ve developed some strategies for this as well.</p>\n<h3><strong>Circles for Posting</strong></h3>\n<p>I’ve found it useful to create a Circle that only contains yourself. I have two of these — “Read Later”, and “Drafts”. If I’m reading and I see something interesting but don’t have time for it immediately, I’ll share it with my “Read Later” Circle so that I can quickly go back to it. Similarly, if I need to do some more research before writing and sharing, I’ll share my immediate thoughts in “Drafts”. As new features are added to Google+ these Circles will hopefully become obsolete, but they are useful for now.</p>\n<h3><strong>Managing Sharing Privacy of Private Posts</strong></h3>\n<p>When sharing, you want to ask yourself if this is ‘private’ post, a ‘quasi-public’ post or a ‘public’ post.</p>\n<p>My private posts tend to go “KIN”, “KITH”, a dyad project, or one of the sub-Circles of PEER depending on their context. Some posts that are of only geographic interest (say a party, or local event) will be shared privately to the appropriate local Circle. If you are using my ledger system of using numbers in Circle names, these are the lower numbers—5.0 and below are Circles where I’m more sensitive about privacy.</p>\n<p>Once shared, these more personal posts will be labeled as “Limited” instead of using the “Public” label that allows anyone to see them. If a recipient tries to share a “Limited” post, a box will pop up reminding the person: “This post was originally shared with a limited audience – remember to be thoughtful about who you share it with”. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, one purpose of Circles on Google+ is to determine who gets what information.</p>\n<p>Though it may be easy to create Circles to segregate those with whom you wish to share private information, the recipients of your posts have no such limitations and could share outward beyond your intent (though they will be warned if they try to, as noted above). To enable further privacy you can disable resharing of these personal posts made to your Circles. To do so, share your post to a non-public Circle, then you select the arrow in the upper-right-hand corner where you can edit, delete or disable the post, and click on the final option, “Disable Reshare”.</p>\n<p>There’s another privacy issue: by clicking the grey “Limited” label, a message’s recipient can see all others you shared the post with. This could potentially result in privacy problems, as the reader could discover who is in one of your Circles. There are ways of eliminating this by going into your Privacy account settings, which I will cover in a future post.</p>\n<h3><strong>Managing Sharing Privacy of Quasi-Public Posts</strong></h3>\n<p>I call posts “quasi-public” when they’re of narrow interest to a specific group or a topic that isn’t really relevant to other members of my audience. I find these quasi-public posts happen the most for my more esoteric interests—for instance, when I’m sharing a complex iPhone development article that is really only interesting to a narrow group of my contacts.</p>\n<p>In Google Reader, I typically wouldn’t share these articles at all because there were so many of my contacts that wouldn’t be interested in them and it would only be noise to them. Ditto with Twitter. I found that sometimes people would stop following me after a conference I attended because I posted regularly and the conference was not of interest to them. This could be quite frustrating at times. Though these posts were not private by any means, I only wanted to share them with a specific group, such as an iPhone group. Now with Circles, I can share this information easily with my “Apple & iOS” Circle. I find that this feature is what makes Google+’s Circles so potentially powerful.</p>\n<p>Though I might offer much of this more esoteric information as “quasi-public” posts to a specific group or interest, I’ll probably offer the best of them to the “Public”. Sometimes that is what it means to be a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maven\">Maven</a>—you share across social network boundaries.</p>\n<h3><strong>Managing Sharing Privacy of Public Posts</strong></h3>\n<p>Sharing a post to your “Your Circles” is effectively public, as is sharing to “Extended Circles”. Ask yourself if there is really some reason why you don’t want to make a post totally “Public” so that it is searchable by those who are not members of Google+. If there is some reason, consider sharing to your “ALL” Circle or some other more limited circle instead, as you’ll have more control and can turn off resharing or commenting.</p>\n<h2>Managing Your Social Graph</h2>\n<p>Maintaining your Circles can take away from the time you can spend on reading and sharing. I’ve come up with the following strategy to limit the time I spend.</p>\n<p>To start with, I have some basic rules for which Circles to place people in:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>When I’m notified that someone is following me, I add them to “FOLLOWS ME” and an appropriate other Circle. If I vaguely recognize a follower’s name or face, I put them in “Familiar Strangers”. If I don’t recognize them at all but they look interesting, I add them to “Friendly Strangers”.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>When I’m notified that someone has +1’ed, commented, or mentioned me in a post, I add them to “Core Audience” and the appropriate sub-Circle. I will also make sure that the other Circles they are in are correct.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>If I discover while I’m reading that someone is too noisy for the Circle I selected, I’ll move them to a more appropriate Circle—or place them in the “Noisy” Circle or even block them.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<h3><strong>Time Management of Your Social Graph</strong></h3>\n<p>In addition I review a few of my Circles every day. I do so by going to “Manage Circles”, then selecting “People in your Circles” and sorting by last name. I choose that letter of the alphabet that corresponds to the day of the month and hover my mouse over each name. (For example, I look at names starting with “L” on July 12th, as “L” is the 12th letter.) Google+ highlights the Circles that each person is in. If they’re in the wrong Circle, I move them. I might even click on some people and review their profile so that I can see who they are—or (if I already know them) see what they are up to lately, update my address book, and maybe send them a brief email. At the end of the month (on the 27th through the 31st) I review my overall Circles lists. This way, over the course of each month I briefly review my entire social network, without spending too much time on it. (I try to spend 10 minutes or so a day.)</p>\n<p>Periodically (right now weekly, but hopefully eventually monthly) I do some larger scale management of my Circles. Learning how to do this the first time is a pain, but once you know how it only takes a few minutes.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>I go to “Manage Circles” and select “People Who Have Added You”. I sort that list by “Not Yet in Circles”, “Select All” and add the people revealed to “FOLLOWS ME”.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>I then do the same with all of my Circles to update my “ALL” Circle.</p>\n</li>\n<li>\n<p>Finally, I copy my “ALL” circle to “Everyone But Pundits, Celebrities & Noisy” and remove any Pundits, Celebrities or Noisy people from that Circle.</p>\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>When managing your Circles, remember the motto “Perfection is the Enemy of the Good”. You are the only one that sees who is in which Circle, and you can place people in multiple Circles. So your Circles don’t have to be perfect, just good enough. If you share a lot of private posts, concentrate on making sure that those more personal Circles are more accurate.</p>\n<p>Using these approaches, you should find Circle management quick, and you won’t get mired down in Circle management for hours at a time.</p>\n<h1>Summary</h1>\n<p>Looking back, I wish I had this organization when I started on Google+ two weeks ago. By using some of these techniques from the beginning I would have made my life a lot easier. Over the next month I now have to go back and re-organize people and re-Circle them. I hope sharing these tips will make your use of Google+ simpler from the start!</p>\n<p>Also, I expect that Google will be adding new features to make Google+ easier. For instance I’m hoping for #hashtags (the ability to tag posts into topic categories), favorites (the ability to tag posts into a persistent archive, hopefully with an option tag), ordering Circles, concentric Circles, and better integration with Google Reader. (I share my favorite blog posts on <a href=\"http://www.google.com/reader/shared/ChristopherA\">Google Reader</a> at and my best of best articles and posts in <a href=\"http://twitter.com/ChristopherA/favorites\">Twitter Favorites</a> or <a href=\"http://delicious.com/christophera\">Delicious</a>.)</p>\n<p>As with any new online feature, people are finding out new things and coming up with new ideas every day. So what are <em>your</em> methods for organizing your Circles and social graph?</p>\n<hr>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>If you want to follow me on Google+, I’m at </strong><strong><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/113059510043663667610/about\">+Christopher Allen</a>.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>If you'd like to comment using Google+, there is a <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/113059510043663667610/posts/2eYjBB2CpNm\">public comment thread</a> about this post.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>If you would like to subscribe to my Google+ posts in Google Reader, use my </strong><a href=\"feed://plusfeed.appspot.com/113059510043663667610\"><strong>PlusFeed</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>\n<p><em><strong>Some other posts from my blog related to this post:</strong></em></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2008/11/personal-circle.html\">2005-03: Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/02/dunbar_triage_t.html\">2005-02: Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/08/intimacy_gradie.html\">2004-08: Intimacy Gradient and Other Lessons from Architecture</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/08/progressive_tru.html\">2004-08: Progressive Trust</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>Some recent high signal-to-noise blog posts on Google+ and/or managing your Circles:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107631581023945167601/about\">+Matt Stratton</a>: <a href=\"http://www.mattstratton.com/tech-tips/how-i-set-up-my-circles-in-google-plus\">How I Set Up My Circles in Google+</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/113551191017950459231/about\">+Anson Alex</a>: <a href=\"http://ansonalex.com/tutorials/managing-circles-in-google-plus/\">Guide to Working with Circles in Google Plus</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/101746196094367799224/about\">+Adina Levin</a>: <a href=\"http://www.alevin.com/?p=2616\">The promise of Google+ for organizing</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/104681313125038107957/about\">+Sterling Ledet</a> <a href=\"http://www.weteachthecoolstuff.com/2011/07/09/a-thought-on-circles-privacy-vs-relevance/\">A Thought on Google+ Circles – Privacy vs. Relevance</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/118432652629200965858/about\">+Dave Pollard</a>: <a href=\"http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2011/07/11/google-plus-on-communities-circles-friendship-and-love/\">Google+: On Communities, Circles, Friendship and Love</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107965826228461029730/about\">+Beth Kanter</a>: <a href=\"http://www.bethkanter.org/np-google/\">Are You Going To Adopt Google+ for Professional Learning/Networking? Why or Why Not?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/104181568670836761473/about\">+Damon Morda</a>: <a href=\"http://www.brandedclever.com/five-steps-to-configuring-privacy-on-google-plus/\">Five Steps to Configuring Privacy on Google Plus (+)</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong>Some quality recent public Google+ posts regarding Google+ or managing your Circles (be sure to look over the comments):</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/about/\">+Robert Scoble</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/ghn6Bu6tsmM\">My tips for newer users of Google+</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/about/\">+Dave Gray</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/posts/1SdhSBqwAmA\">Where circles can go</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/about/\">+Dave Gray</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/posts/D9bRJCmjJRV\">Sharing Universe</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/about/\">+Dave Gray</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/117373186752666867801/posts/XHvCRURHidx\">Is Google plus public or private?It’s neither, and both!</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107965826228461029730/about\">+Beth Kanter</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/107965826228461029730/posts/DV8QxNzTxaF\">Insightful Threads</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/103399926392582289066/about\">+Craig Kanalley</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/103399926392582289066/posts/52dmpNDbWtp\">Tips & Thoughts on Google+</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"https://plus.google.com/105611903933875658496/about/\">+Paul Goode</a>: <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/105611903933875658496/posts/W9CaNrwku3x\">Sketch on Google+</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><em><strong>My bookmarks to various papers and websites on related to this topic are available at <a href=\"http://delicious.com/ChristopherA\">delicious.com/ChristopherA</a> under some of the following tags:</strong></em></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://delicious.com/ChristopherA/personal+circles\">personal circles</a> - everything I have on the of personal limits.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://delicious.com/ChristopherA/personal+circles\">familiar strangers</a> - those people you recognize by face.</li>\n</ul>\n<p><strong><em>Illustration by <a href=\"http://www.nancymargulies.com\">Nancy Margulies</a>, Many thanks to <a href=\"https://plus.google.com/102320045646237908121/about\">+Elyn Andersson</a> and <a href=\"http://www.skotos.net/about/staff/shannon_appelcline.php\">Shannon Appecline</a> for their assistance with this post.</em><br> </strong></p>\n</blockquote><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?a=QOm2QTsLg60:c2gtgIRZ48g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?a=QOm2QTsLg60:c2gtgIRZ48g:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?a=QOm2QTsLg60:c2gtgIRZ48g:aKCwKftKxY0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?i=QOm2QTsLg60:c2gtgIRZ48g:aKCwKftKxY0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?a=QOm2QTsLg60:c2gtgIRZ48g:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeWithAlacrity?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Recipe #85: Ghana's famous "red-red"",
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"content" : "Any visitor to Ghana will likely be introduced to one of the recipes most popular with foreigners: "red-red," the name of an (appropriately) red stew, served with ripe plantains, aka "red plantains." The "red" also refers to the (red) palm oil used to prepare the stew. Because I'm quite fond of tomatoes, I use tomato paste in mine, which further enhances its color. "Red-red" (don't you love the"
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"content" : "<dl>\n<dt>Shute, Nevil [Nevil Shute Norway].\n<cite><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/1842322915/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour\">Slide Rule</a></cite>.\nKelly Bray, UK: House of Stratus, [1954] 2000.\nISBN 978-1-84232-291-8.</dt>\n<dd>\nThe author is best known for his novels, several of which were\nmade into Hollywood movies, including\n<cite><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WUYONY/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour\">No Highway</a></cite> and\n<cite><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307473996/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour\">On the Beach</a></cite>.\nIn this book, he chronicles his “day job” as\nan aeronautical engineer and aviation entrepreneur in what\nhe describes as the golden age of aviation: an epoch where a\nsmall team of people could design and manufacture innovative\naircraft without the huge budgets, enormous bureaucratic\norganisations, or intrusive regulation which overcame the\nspirit of individual invention and enterprise as aviation\nmatured. (The author, fearing that being known as a\nfictioneer might make him seem disreputable as an engineer,\npublished his books under the name “Nevil Shute”,\nwhile using his full name, “Nevil Shute Norway”\nin his technical and business career. He explains that\ndecision in this book, published after he had become a\nfull-time writer.)\n<p></p>\nThis is a slim volume, but there is as much wisdom here as in\na dozen ordinary books this size, and the writing is\nsimultaneously straightforward and breathtakingly beautiful.\nA substantial part of the book recounts the history of the\nU.K. airship project, which pitted a private industry team in\nwhich Shute played a major rôle building the\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R100\">R.100</a> in competition\nwith a government-designed and -built ship, the\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R101\">R.101</a>, designed\nto the same specifications. Seldom in the modern history of\ntechnology has there been such a clear-cut illustration of the\ndifference between private enterprise designing toward a\nspecification under a deadline and fixed budget and a government\nproject with unlimited funds, no oversight, and with\nspecifications and schedules at the whim of politicians with no\ntechnical knowledge whatsoever. The messy triumph of the R.100 and the\ntragedy of the R.101, recounted here by an insider, explains\nthe entire sordid history of NASA, the Concorde, and innumerable\nother politically-driven technological boondoggles.\n<p></p>\nHad Shute brought the book to a close at the end of the airship\nsaga, it would be regarded as a masterpiece of reportage of\na now-forgotten episode in aviation history. But then he goes\non to describe his experience in founding, funding, and\noperating a start-up aircraft manufacturer,\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airspeed_Ltd\">Airspeed Ltd.</a>,\nin the middle of the Great Depression. This is simply the best\nfirst-person account of entrepreneurship and the difficult\ndecisions one must make in bringing a business into being\nand keeping it going “whatever it takes”, and of\nthe true motivation of the entrepreneur (hint: money is\n<em>way</em> down the list) that I have ever read, and I\nspeak as somebody who has\n<a href=\"http://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/\">written one of my own</a>.\nThen, if that weren't enough, Shute sprinkles the narrative\nwith gems of insight aspiring writers may struggle years\ntrying to painfully figure out on their own, which are handed\nto those seeking to master the craft almost in passing.\n<p></p>\nI could quote <em>dozens</em> of lengthy passages from this book\nwhich almost made me shiver when I read them from the sheer life-tested\ninsight distilled into so few words. But I'm not going to, because\nwhat you need to do is go and get this book, <em>right now</em> (see\nbelow for an electronic edition), and drop whatever you're doing\nand read it cover to cover. I have had several wise people counsel me\nto do the same over the years and, for whatever reason, never seemed\nto find the time. How I wish I had read this book before I embarked\nupon my career in business, and how much comfort and confidence it\nwould have given me upon reaching the difficult point where a\nbusiness has outgrown the capabilities and interests of its\nfounders.\n<p></p>\nAn excellent <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003WUYP3I/?tag=fourmilabwwwfour\">Kindle edition</a> is available.\n</dd>\n</dl>"
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"content" : "A timely paper out of Google at the recent ICML 2011 conference, \"Suggesting (More) Friends Using the Implicit Social Graph\" (<a href=\"http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/37120.pdf\">PDF</a>), not only describes the technology behind GMail's fun \"Don't forget Bob!\" and \"Got the right Bob?\" features, but also may be part of the friend suggestions in Google+ Circles.<br><br>An excerpt from the paper:<blockquote><i>We use the implicit social graph to identify clusters of contacts who form groups that are meaningful and useful to each user.<br><br>The Google Mail implicit social graph is composed of billions of distinct nodes, where each node is an email address. Edges are formed by the sending and receiving of email messages ... A message sent from a user to a group of several contacts ... [is] a single edge ... [of] a directed hypergraph. We call the hypergraph composed of all the edges leading into or out of a single user node that user's egocentric network.<br><br>The weight of an edge is determined by the recency and frequency of email interactions .... Interactions that the user initiates are [considered] more significant .... We are actively working on incorporating other signals of importance, such as the percentage of emails from a contact that the user chooses to read.<br><br>\"Don't forget Bob\" ... [suggests] recipients that the user may wish to add to the email .... The results ... are very good - the ratio between the number of accepted suggestions and the number of times a suggestion was shown is above 0.8. Moreover, this precision comes at a good coverage ... more than half of email messages.<br><br>\"Got the wrong Bob\" ... [detects] inclusion of contacts in a message who are unlikely to be related to the other recipients .... Almost 70% of the time [it is shown] ... users accept both suggestions, deleting the wrong Bob and adding the correct one.</i></blockquote>I like the idea of using e-mail, mobile, and messaging contacts as an implicit social network. One problem has always been that the implicit social network can be noisy in embarrassing ways. As this paper discusses, using it only for suggesting friends is forgiving and low-risk while still being quite helpful. Another possible application might be to make it easier to share content with people who might be interested.<br><br>For more on what Google does with how you use e-mail to make useful features, you might also be interested in another Google paper, \"The Learning Behind Gmail Priority Inbox\" (<a href=\"http://research.google.com/pubs/archive/36955.pdf\">PDF</a>).<br><br>For more on implicit social networks using e-mail contacts, please see my 2008 post, \"<a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/12/e-mail-as-social-network.html\">E-mail as the social network</a>\".<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/T4jzx-KzT3w\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://www.maxtannone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ghostfunk_cover_web1.jpg\" alt=\"\"><br>\nArtwork by <a href=\"http://joedichiara.com/\">Joe Dichiara</a></p>\n<p>Over the years there have been some interesting blends of artist acapella and back beat concept records. Dangermouse's <em>The Grey Album</em>, which combined the vocals of Jay Z’s <em>Black Album</em> with beats made entirely of The Beatles <em>White Album</em> has set the bar for this type of mix. Downloaded for free millions of times, pulled from the internet (but still managed to be downloaded), and consequently showcasing a great producer even further, Dangermouse’s ingenuity and skill have made him a household name since that mix. I’m sure most people were not familiar with his early Dangermouse and Gemini stuff, but with <em>The Grey Album</em>, they are now. Since then, we’ve seen everything from the <em>Double Black Album</em> (Jay Z vs. Metallica) to Lt. Dan’s Jay Z, Guru, G-Unit and MJ blends to Shaolin Jazz (Wu-Tang Clan vs. Jazz) to DJ bC Beastles (Beastie Boys vs. the Beatles), more Wu Tang and Jay Z Reggae/Dub mixes, and now this mix. This time NYC producer Max Tannone comes hot off his last three projects: the well praised and publicized Jaydiohead (Jay Z x Radiohead), <em>Doublecheck Your Head</em> (pairing up the Beastie Boys with themselves), and Mos Dub (Mos Def versus King Tubby classics, a sequel to Dub Kweli) to put out Ghostfunk, a combination of Ghostface Killer and Afro Beat, Afro Funk and Psychedelic Rock beats. I don’t know about you, but to me this is a great pairing. Ghostface could take a shit in a box and rhyme over it and it still could be good. The vocals of course are always dope, and with Max Tannone comes correct with these beats. A great remix project indeed, my fave track is “Danger 500″ which takes Nigeria’s answer to the Pointer Sisters, The Lijadu Sisters, and flips the script on “Lord Have Mercy” to bring you an all together different feel. The organ on this track KILLS. This is one of the many great tracks throughout, and solidifies a great effort. Well done Max, way to keep it movin’ in the ’11. </p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.maxtannone.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/ghostfunk_back_cover_web.jpg\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p><strong>Ghostfunk Track List:</strong></p>\n<p>Track list:<br>\n1 Make It N.Y.<br>\n2 Dem Back<br>\n3 Mighty Agho<br>\n4 The Same Girl<br>\n5 Three Lords<br>\n6 Danger 500<br>\n7 Astro Easy Love<br>\n8 Dear Psychedelic Woman<br>\n9 Breakthrough Kids<br>\n10 Funky Criminology</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://maxtannone.com/files/Ghostfunk%20-%20produced%20by%20Max%20Tannone.zip\"><strong>Download Ghostfunk</strong></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?ws5ttw5fjf2efey\"><strong>Alternate Download Site</strong></a></p>\n<p>**Here’s a bonus Max threw in too, the entire lot of samples he used:</p>\n<p># Ghostfunk “Track Title”<br>\nOriginal artist – original track [original album]<br>\n1. “Make It N.Y.”<br>\nRob Kanda – “Make It Fast, Make It Slow” [Ghana Soundz - Afro-Beat, Funk, And Fusion in 70s Ghana]<br>\nAZ feat. Ghostface Killah & Raekwon – “New York” [A.W.O.L.]<br>\n2. “Dem Back”<br>\nGyedu Blay-Ambolley – “Fa No Dem Ara” [Simigwa]<br>\nGhostface Killah – “Tooken Back” [The Pretty Toney Album]<br>\n3. “Mighty Agho”<br>\nSir Victor Uwaifo – “Agho” [Guitar Boy Superstar]<br>\nGhostface Killah – “Mighty Healthy” [Supreme Clientele]<br>\n4. “The Same Girl”<br>\nSoul Throbs – “Little Girl” [Next Stop...Soweto Vol. 2: Soul, Funk & Organ Grooves from the Townships 1969-1976]<br>\nGhostface Killah feat. Carl Thomas & Raekwon – “Never Be The Same Again” [Bulletproof Wallets]<br>\n5. “Three Lords”<br>\nLijadu Sisters – “Lord Have Mercy” [Danger]<br>\nGhostface Killah feat. Notorious B.I.G. & Raekwon – “Three Bricks” [Fischscale]<br>\n6. “Danger 500″<br>\nLijadu Sisters – “Danger” [Danger]<br>\nGhostface Killah feat. Raekwon & Cappadonna – “Daytona 500″ [Ironman]<br>\n7. “Astro Easy Love”<br>\nAmanaz – “Easy Street” [Africa]<br>\nGhostface Killah – “Astro” [Astro 12"] & Ghostface Killah – “Love Session” [Bulletproof Wallets]<br>\n8. “Dear Psychdelic Woman”<br>\nHoney & The Bees Band – “Psychedelic Woman” [Ghana Soundz - Afro-Beat, Funk, And Fusion in 70s Ghana]<br>\nGhostface Killah – “Save Me Dear” [The Pretty Toney Album]<br>\n9. “Breakthrough Kids”<br>\nThe Funkees – “Breakthrough” [Slipping Into Darkness single]<br>\nGhosftace Killah feat. Raekwon – “Apollo Kids” [Supreme Clientele]<br>\n10. “Funky Criminology”<br>\nEbo Taylor Jr. – “Mondo Soul Funky” [Ghana Soundz - Afro-Beat, Funk, And Fusion in 70s Ghana - Volume 2]<br>\nRaekwon feat. Ghostface Killah – “Criminology” [Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...]</p>\n<p>For more information on Max go to his <a href=\"http://www.maxtannone.com/\">website</a>. </p>\n<p>Keep Diggin’! </p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/afro-beat/\">Afro Beat</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/afro-funk/\">Afro Funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/beats/\">Beats</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/crate-digging/\">Crate Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/dj/\">DJ</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/flea-market-funk/\">Flea Market Funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/funk/\">funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/producing/\">Producing</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/psychedelic-rock/\">Psychedelic Rock</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/records/\">records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/remixes/\">Remixes</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/vinyl/\">vinyl</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/afro-beat/\">Afro Beat</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/afro-soul/\">Afro Soul</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/dj/\">DJ</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/flea-market-funk/\">Flea Market Funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/ghostface/\">Ghostface</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/ghostfunk/\">Ghostfunk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/hip-hop/\">Hip Hop</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/max-tannone/\">Max Tannone</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/psychedelic-rock/\">Psychedelic Rock</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/remix-project/\">Remix Project</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/vinyl/\">vinyl</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/4361/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=fleamarketfunk.com&blog=907294&post=4361&subd=fleamarketfunk&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Heart of Darkness: Narration and Temporal Displacement",
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"content" : "<p>Well, I’ve read <i>Heart of Darkness</i>. And, yes, <i>Apocalypse Now</i> is quite different. But, no, I’m not going to subtract any points from Coppola for not being faithful to the text. Why? Because, even if he did carry around a copy of Conrad’s story and marked it up six ways from Sunday and copped the general river voyage situation and some lines from it, even then it wasn’t <i>his</i> text and fidelity isn’t relevant.\n</p>\n<p>\nI suppose, as a stunt, I could subtract points from <i>Heart of Darkness</i> for not being faithful to <i>AN</i>, but what would that get me? Not even another day older and deeper in debt. That happens, but it’s automatic and has nothing to do with this. So I won’t attempt that.\n</p>\n<p>\nHerewith some notes.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Closure</b>\n</p>\n<p>\nAt first blush the most interesting comparison between the two is in closure. <i>AN</i> closes upon the double sacrifice, one aspect of which has Willard, the Marlow character, killing Kurtz. That doesn’t happen in <i>HD</i>, where Marlow wasn’t sent to kill Kurtz, but simply to get to his station so Management could recover the ivory he’d gathered for the Company. There IS a moment where Marlow considers that he might have to kill Kurtz, but Kurtz backs off.\n</p>\n<p>\nInstead, as Management has taken Kurtz’s ivory on board, so Kurtz brings the man himself, very ill, on board. He dies in transit: “Mistah Kurtz – he dead.”\n</p>\n<p>\nKurtz entrusted Marlow with his papers, as Kurtz had asked Willard to convey the truth to his son. He gives the last packet of papers to Kurtz’s Intended. Note that difference: Coppola’s Kurtz is married with children; Conrad’s Kurtz is only betrothed. Here’s the conclusion of Marlow’s conversation with the Intended:\n<br>\n<blockquote><p>\n“‘Forgive me. I—I—have mourned so long in silence—in silence. ... You were with him-—to the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near to understand him as I would have understood. Perhaps no one to hear. ...’ \n</p>\n<p>\n“‘To the very end,’ I said, shakily. ‘I heard his very last words. ...’ I stopped in a fright. \n</p>\n<p>\n“‘Repeat them,’ she said in a heart-broken tone. ‘I want—I want—something—something—to—to live with.’ \n</p>\n<p>\n“I was on the point of crying at her, ‘Don’t you hear them?’ The dusk was repeating them in a persistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a rising wind. ‘The horror! The horror!’ \n</p>\n<p>\n“‘His last word—to live with,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t you understand I loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’ \n</p>\n<p>\n“I pulled myself together and spoke slowly. \n</p>\n<p>\n“‘The last word he pronounced was-—your name.’\n<br>\n</p></blockquote> \n<br>\nWhatever comfort that lie may have given the Intended – didja notice, BTW, that this creature has no proper name, just a functional specification; I don’t know Conrad’s work at all – through I read The Secret Agent in college – so I don’t know whether this is a feature of his style or merely a feature of this text – it bothered Marlow enough for him to wonder whether it caused a disturbance in the cosmos:\n<br>\n<blockquote><p>\nIt seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he wanted only justice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her.\n<br>\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>\nSo, Conrad’s tale achieves its closure with a lie told to a woman about the man she loved, no, it would seem, worshipped. Coppola’s tale achieves its closure with the completion of a military mission, albeit one that was off the books.\n</p>\n<p>\nI’m not quite sure what to make of that difference. Not sure at all. It seems to me that The State is very much in play in <i>AN</i>, but not <i>HD</i>. European civilization, yes, The State, no. To be sure, The State is not front and center in AN, but it’s the matrix in which the whole tale is set. Is love between a man and a woman the matrix in which HD is set?\n</p>\n<p>\nAn interesting puzzle.\n</p>(Continued below the fold.)</p>"
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"title" : "Organized Crime in Ireland Evolves As Security Increases",
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"content" : "<p>The <a href=\"http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/0704/1224300030694.html\">whole article</a> is interesting, but here's just one bit:</p>\n\n<blockquote>The favoured quick-fix money-making exercise of the average Irish organised crime gang had, for decades, been bank robberies. But a massive investment by banks in branch security has made the traditional armed hold-up raids increasingly difficult.\n\n<p>The presence of CCTV cameras in most banks means any raider would need to be masked to avoid being identified. But security measures at the entrances to many branches, where customers are admitted by staff operating a buzzer, say, means masked men can now not even get through the door.</p>\n\n<p>By the middle of the last decade, cash-in-transit vans delivering money to ATMs were identified by gangs as the weak link in the banks’ operations. This gave rise to a huge number of armed hold-ups on the vans.</p>\n\n<p>However, in recent years the cash-in-transit companies have followed the example of the banks and invested heavily in security technology. Most vans carrying money are now heavily protected by timing devices on safes in the back of the vans, with staff having access to only limited amounts of cash at specific times to facilitate their deliveries.</p>\n\n<p>These security measures have led to a steady decline in robberies on such vans in the past five years.</p>\n\n<p>But having turned from bank robberies to armed hold-ups on cash vans, organised crime gangs have once again changed tack and are now engaging in robberies with hostage-taking.</p>\n\n<p>Known as “tiger raids”, the robberies involve an organised crime gang kidnapping a family member or loved one of a person who has access to cash because of their work in a bank or post office.</p>\n\n<p>Family members are normally taken away at gunpoint, threatened with being shot and or held until the bank or post-office worker goes to their work place, takes a ransom sum and leaves it for the gang at a prearranged drop-off point.</p>\n\n<p>The Garda has worked closely with the main banks in agreeing protocols for such incidents. The main element of that agreement is that banks will not let money leave a branch, no matter how serious the hostage situation, until gardaí have been notified. A reaction operation can then be put in place to try and catch the gang as they collect the ransom.</p>\n\n<p>These protocols have been relatively successful and seem to be deterring tiger raids targeting bank workers.</p>\n\n<p>However, gangs are now increasingly targeting post offices in the belief that security protocols and equipment such as safes are not as robust as in the banking sector.</p>\n\n<p>Most of the tiger raids now occurring are targeting post-office staff, usually in rural areas.</p>\n\n<p>The latest raid occurred just last week, when more than €100,000 was taken from a post office in Newcastle West, Co Limerick, when the post mistress’s adult son was kidnapped at gunpoint and released unharmed when the ransom was paid.</p></blockquote>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:right;margin-left:10px\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"http://twitter.com/share?counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.redmonk.com%2Fjgovernor%2F2011%2F07%2F04%2Fa-tale-of-two-dads%2F\">Tweet</a><br>\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t</div>\n<p>I meant to write this little story up a couple of weeks ago.\n</p>\n<p>Its Father’s Day and I walk into the kitchen, bleary-eyed and wishing someone had put a pot of coffee on already. My dad stands there, smiling at me.\n</p>\n<p>Dad I say: its a funny thing being a son. You grow up wanting to be your dad, not just wanting to be like him, but to be him. You want to walk, talk and think like him. For years this feeling fills you up. Then one day, probably in your early teens, something happens, a switch flips and you no longer do; you want to be different from your dad now. You want to put some distance between what he is, and what you’re going to become. You don’t want to be like your dad. He’s not so great. But then of course the final stage happens years later, when you turn around and look, not at your dad, but at yourself – oh you realise, with a shrug – I’m just like my dad, after all. I sound like him, talk like him, think like him. I guess that’s being a son.\n</p>\n<p>So my dad stands there looking at me for a few seconds, quizzical-like, then slowly raises a Governor eyebrow (that gesture, based on physiognomy I certainly inherited), and says… yeah that’s right. It’s a funny thing being a dad. You have a kid, and you want him to be different from you, to be smarter than you, faster than you, better than you. You spend your time trying to teach him to be a better person. You put everything into parenthood. You want your son to be different – smarter, better-mannered, richer and so on. Then one day you turn around and you realise something… that is, your son is <em>just like you</em>. All that effort and he turned out just like you. That’s being a dad.\n</p>\n<p>It was a lovely exchange, sardonic enough but not too much. I hugged my dad for a long time after that.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?a=7cu7Wn7HrcU:A4-uj6pNEOA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?a=7cu7Wn7HrcU:A4-uj6pNEOA:aKCwKftKxY0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?i=7cu7Wn7HrcU:A4-uj6pNEOA:aKCwKftKxY0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?a=7cu7Wn7HrcU:A4-uj6pNEOA:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/JamesGovernorsMonkchips?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Small and cramped. Nestled in the plains that have become farcical industry and stagnant development. Houses and factories, shops and public latrines all intertwined in a regrettable mix sprawling for miles and miles... or kilometers if you will. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span><br></span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span>Organised and disorderly. Haphazardly </span>scattered on even and slanted surfaces; on hills and in valleys, securely nestled on vast plains and annually sinking in secluded swamps. No space too small, no area to cramped. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Home is where it can be put up before the Assembly is aware in the township that is my city.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div><br></div>"
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"content" : "<blockquote></blockquote>While the inclusion of Mister Cee on anything seems like a misstep in retrospect, you gotta give TVOne props for thoroughly documenting The Greatest Rapper Of All Time. <br><br><iframe frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xjkocb\"></iframe><br><br>Yeah, I said it. The Greatest Rapper <em>Of All Time</em>. Anyone care to dispute me?!? Didn't think so.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2696165851183554268-7818103585594611606?l=www.averagebro.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "I have been reading Curzio Malaparte's <em>Technique of the Coup d'état</em> this weekend. It's a fascinating document - the basic argument is that the October Revolution represented an exportable, universally applicable technology for taking control of the state, quite independent of ideological motivation or broader strategic situation. It was already fairly well-known at the time that Russia in 1917 really wasn't the environment Marxists imagined would lead to a revolution and that Lenin had essentially retconned the whole thing to provide for giving history a little push. Malaparte's unique contribution was to argue that it was more fundamental than that - the Bolshevik seizure of power could in reality have been carried out almost anywhere, for whatever reason. It wasn't a strategic or ideological question, but one of operational art and tactics.<br><br>So, what's this open-source putsch kit consist of? Basically you need a small force of determined rebels. Small is important - you want quality not quantity as secrecy, unanimity, and common understanding good enough to permit independent action are required. You want as much chaos as possible in advance of the coup, although not so much that everything's shut. And then you occupy key infrastructures and command-and-control targets. Don't, whatever you do, go after ministries or similar grand institutional buildings - get the stuff that would really cause trouble if it blew up.<br><br>Ideally, you do this by just floaking in through the front door as if you were in the railway station to catch a train rather than to seize the signalling centre. You'll probably need, once you've got control of the real instruments of power, to stage some sort of symbolic overthrow of the government, but this is really only in order to get the message across to everybody else. Then, induce whatever authority is meant to be in charge after the head of government has been incapacitated to legitimise your action after the fact. It doesn't matter much what state it's in - a pro tip is to keep the parliament but get rid of enough opposition members to rig the vote.<br><br>Bada bing, bada boom, you are now the dictator.<br><br>From the other side, Malaparte argues that the worst thing that can go wrong is a general strike. There's no point occupying key points if you can't make the machine work yourself, as you'll just be master of a lot of dark, cold buildings. The second worst thing that can go wrong is that you start to fall behind schedule. The whole trick relies on missing out as many people as possible, and the longer it takes, the more people have time to recover their orientation and get angry.<br><br>Interestingly, he comes up with something very like the 70s \"historic compromise\" concept in relation to this.<br><br>So you need either to get the support or at least the neutrality of the unions, or else render them unable to act in advance, which will mean fighting a civil war before you get to bring off the coup. And once you start, you've got to move quickly and keep moving.<br><br>Interestingly, he doesn't say much about how you're going to keep power once you've got it, if you can't rely on calling everyone out on strike. After all, two can play at this game. This is a weakness in the whole concept, and quite an illuminating one.<br><br>Malaparte was a deeply odd character, a border-nationalist of German origins, an Italian first world war hero, later a diplomat and journalist and a fascist of the first hour who went on to fall out with fascism and get locked up. This is probably why he is read at all now. Having been released, he reported the Eastern Front of 1941 for the Italian papers until he fell out with the Germans, covered the Finnish sector until something similar happened, ended up back in Italy in time to take part in his second Italian coup (he had already managed to invade Russia twice, once as an attaché with the Poles in 1920 and again with the Germans as a journo in 1941, and live to tell the tale), served in the pro-Allied Italian army, and claimed to have become a communist.<br><br>He was also an almost joyously unreliable source, a self-mythologising war junkie who made Hemingway look sensible, and to be frank, if he fell out with the fascists it wasn't because he was going soft or anything. I've read his dispatches from the Eastern Front (<em>The Volga Rises in Europe</em>) and found it hard to make out what the Germans objected to - obviously my standards aren't those of a Wehrmacht press officer, but there's a lot of hardboiled combat reporting, quite a bit of gratuitous fine writing, and nothing much critical of the war or Germany. <br><br>He also had an Ernst Röhm gay-fascist streak you could have landed a fleet of Savoia-Marchetti flying boats on, across it. Or at least his style did. <em>The Volga...</em> is just full of dashing blond Finnish officers and casually hunky, rough-trade Nazi recovery mechanics track-bashing in the Ukrainian sun, although there are a fair few fair country girls whose hearts and minds don't seem to need much winning in there as well. (By the time it all got stuck in a ditch outside Rostov-on-Don he'd long since been ghosted by the German spin doctors.)<br><br>Anyway, a fascinating, utterly mad, and often deeply creepy writer. Back to the steps of the telephone exchange.<br><br>I think his coup technique is quite telling. Fascism always had an odd central contradiction in that it insisted it believed in hardcore political realism but also in romantic activism. Power, and specifically either firepower or horsepower, was all that mattered, but with enough will it would always be possible to change the power realities. Marxists offered inevitability; fascists opportunity. Rapid shock action directed at the key installations will give us the state, and that will give us everything else. Speed, style, ruthlessness, and cheek are everything. It's the hope of audacity - get the right people together and a list of oil refineries, and everything is possible.<br><br>This may not sound very convincing, but it's certainly true that many, many coups have been carried out following this rough plan.<br><br>Malaparte makes a complex distinction between the seizure of power in a parliamentary state and just using the parliamentary institutions to go legit later. He's agin the first. I'm not so sure - two of the most successful coups of the 20th century were carried out in France, Petain's parliamentary coup and de Gaulle's rather less parliamentary one in 1958. <br><br>I think what's happening here is that his residual fascist is showing.<br><br>Another thing that runs through the book is the idea, very common in extreme politics since 1918, that the military tactics of the late first world war - infiltration, independent action, surprise attack - can just be ported straight into politics. Malaparte actually goes so far as to make this explicit. It's a great historical irony that the world experts of decentralised command were the Prussians, of course. <br><br>As always, though, it all makes for great tactics but lousy strategy.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-8753682533100627373?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Poem of the week: The Rolling English Road by GK Chesterton",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/72365?ns=guardian&pageName=Poem+of+the+week%3A+The+Rolling+English+Road+by+GK+Chesterton%3AArticle%3A1589517&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=GK+Chesterton+%28author%29%2CPoetry+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Carol+Rumens&c7=11-Jun-14&c8=1589517&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=Poem+of+the+week+%28blog+series%29&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FGK+Chesterton\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>This genial defence of a drink or two rattles along with inimitable panache</p><p>This week's choice may be the best-loved of <a href=\"http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/g__k__chesterton/poems\" title=\"G K Chestertons poems\">GK Chesterton's poems</a>, but perhaps not many readers know that \"The Rolling English Road\", first published in a political weekly in 1913, was originally titled <a href=\"http://distributistreview.com/mag/2010/06/chestertons-scrapbook-a-look-at-g-k-s-weekly/\" title=\"A Song of Temperance Reform.\">\"A Song of Temperance Reform\"</a>.</p><p>I think it was TS Eliot who described Chesterton's verse as \"first-rate journalistic balladry\" and there's no doubt that much of it, like much of his writing in general, has a mission to persuade. Not for Chesterton the then-fashionable dictum of \"art for art's sake\". Behind \"The Rolling English Road\" lies its author's powerfully-felt opposition to the threatened introduction of Prohibition into Britain: the law had already been passed in the US, and Chesterton saw it as an abuse of the ordinary man's right to ordinary pleasures. But, if moral indignation was the impulse, the resulting poem is miles away from one-sided polemic.</p><p>Form and content blend as harmoniously as – well – hops and fresh water. Heptameters, informally known as \"fourteeners\" because the line usually has 14 syllables, are potentially cumbersome in English, but Chesterton's lines flow effortlessly, without a stumble. They roll like the roads themselves, whose meanderings, the poet ingeniously imagines, were shaped by drunken natives aeons before the Romans introduced more logical and direct (and therefore deeply un-English) routes from A to B.</p><p>A clever narrative twist occurs in line five: \"A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread ... \" The shift into anecdotal mode and first-person immediately engages the reader's sympathy. This is not a hymn to drink, it signals, but middle-age looking back with a forgiving, companionable eye on the escapades of youth.</p><p>Chesterton, it almost goes without saying, takes advantage of every opportunity for alliteration. It lubricates the heptameters: it licks its lips and heightens the mood of sensuousness and oral indulgence. Perhaps a respectful nod to the Anglo-Saxon poets is also intended. Alliteration is a particularly useful device in the last line of each stanza, playfully yoking the far-flung places together (Birmingham/Beachy Head, etc) and reminding us that, like a pub comic, our narrator is, supposedly, improvising his tall story. When he drops the alliterative yoke in the last stanza (\"Paradise ... Kensal Green\") you know he's being serious.</p><p>The joke about setting off to a place by way of another place that's situated at the opposite end of the country (beginning from some hostelry in a town unspecified, but probably London) could have been overplayed. Chesterton could surely have gone on for several more stanzas, and it's to his temperate credit that he resists. The itinerary seems more bizarre with each stanza: my favourite, though, is the surreal idea in the second, of heading to Glastonbury, Somerset, via the Goodwin Sands, the hazardous sandbank off the coast of Deal, in Kent. I don't think the term, \"getting wrecked,\" was one the Edwardians used, but it adds a dimension for the contemporary reader.</p><p>Of course, there's sentimentality as well as humour, piety as well as broad-mindedness. No doubt the speaker is seeing \"the rolling English drunkard\" through a generous lens. It's the same lens he turns on England itself, when the wild rose, England's symbol, somehow watches over the \"wild thing\", sleeping it off, we hope, rather than dead, in the ditch.</p><p>Finally, the poet seems at pains to emphasise that, anti-Prohibition he may be, but, in maturity, he favours rectitude over wrecktitude. Still, he keeps a trace of the fun and fantasy going with his reference to \"the decent inn of death\", an image that satisfyingly suggests moderate pleasures and eternal rest may not be incompatible.</p><p>Chesterton's was an extraordinary talent. He wrote copiously, and often brilliantly, at home in almost every literary genre of his period, from detective fiction to fantasy, literary criticism to hagiography. As a political thinker, he formulated, with Hilaire Belloc, a radical economic philosophy, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism\" title=\"Distributism\">Distributism</a>, which might be worth a closer look today, if any politician seriously wanted to re-shape and humanise economic policy. As for Chesterton's poems, they are simply unlike anyone else's. And the best of them are completely unlike each other.</p><p><strong>The Rolling English Road </strong></p><p>Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, <br>The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. <br>A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, <br>And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; <br>A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread<br>The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head. </p><p>I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire, <br>And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire; <br>But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed <br>To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,<br>Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands, <br>The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands. </p><p>His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run <br>Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun? <br>The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,<br>But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch. <br>God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear <br>The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier. </p><p>My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage, <br>Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,<br>But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth, <br>And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death; <br>For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen, <br>Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gk-chesterton\">GK Chesterton</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/poetry\">Poetry</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/carolrumens\">Carol Rumens</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/8kf8j41glg0kjidva4o58ic684/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fbooks%2Fbooksblog%2F2011%2Fjun%2F13%2Fpoem-week-g-k-chesterton\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "I decided to take a break from some very intense drafting to check Facebook, and what do I see? Apparently <a href=\"http://www.kfc.com/\">KFC</a> has opened its first branch in Ghana, on Oxford Street!<br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcBZnsDvL1I/Tg3oVcmwizI/AAAAAAAAArk/rcmWBJjQzpw/s1600/kfc.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"228\" width=\"205\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FcBZnsDvL1I/Tg3oVcmwizI/AAAAAAAAArk/rcmWBJjQzpw/s400/kfc.jpg\"></a></div><br><br>The news comes as such a surprise and I can't help but be excited. Not by the thought of eating their breaded, fried chicken in the heart of Accra, but as always, by the idea of something new happening. Of course I am also a bit anxious about what this means for us; will there be an influx of other unhealthy fastfood joints? How soon before we start seeing an increased number of US-style obese people on the streets of Accra?<br><br>Before my thoughts wonder any further, can somebody kindly confirm whether this news is true? According to <a href=\"http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/kfc-looking-to-boost-african-footprint/6281/\">this article</a>, 4 outlets are to be opened in Ghana this year. Send me picture evidence, pleeeeease!<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4913928809714336337-8714843142130836722?l=mayasearth.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "My Father",
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"content" : "<p>I don’t remember exactly when I learned what type of work my father did. As a child, I thought <em>Democracy</em> is what he did for a living, because whether he was speaking Kikuyu, Luo, Kiswahili or Luhya, my father always said the word <em>Democracy</em> in English. <em>Democracy </em>filled our house nightly with red eyed men who gesticulated wildly as they lectured on the finer points of politics. Like my father, these men were misunderstood geniuses. <em>Democracy</em> made my father set his wristwatch ten minutes ahead of time even though he was always running ten minutes late for everything. It made him part his curly shock of black hair just like Nelson Mandela, carry his black leather briefcase everywhere and hire a Kalenjin man called Ruto to chauffeur him around town in his white Peugeot 404 sedan. He rode back-left.</p>\n<p>These were the years of the<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_arap_Moi\"> Moi regime</a> and <em>Democracy</em> was in short supply. For instance, in 1992 when president Moi was on a tour of Western province, a rumor came through the grapevine that the old man had keeled over and become past tense. Our town broke into an impromptu party: businesses closed for the day, hens’ lives were cut short, bars filled to capacity. My father hoisted me onto his shoulders and we walked to the Africana Bar where a waitress with a hair weave and a bleached face welcomed him with an all too familiar hand on his shoulder. He ordered a beer and let me sip the foam off the top of the glass, then told me to go home. On my way out, I turned and looked at him. The Africana Bar had this effect on him: his shoulders sank, he gesticulated less when he spoke and his cheeks grew chubby as he smiled. There were few women at the Africana. They wore miniskirts and too much make up, sat on men’s laps and threw their heads back when they laughed.</p>\n<p>In the evening news bulletin, president Moi reasserted his continued existence in the present tense. Turns out he’d just fainted or maybe it was heat exhaustion. Whatever it was, he was still going to occupy three quarters of TV airtime planting and watering trees; stashing cash into baskets at village fundraisers; laying down stones to build gabion dams; and waving his ivory scepter right before setting fire to ivory tusks seized from poachers.</p>\n<p>As with all misunderstood geniuses, my father ended up in prison. I was in the second grade back then. I thought they put him there because of <em>Democracy</em>, but they said it was because of <em>Sedition</em>. Most of his friends — all of them misunderstood geniuses — also ended up in prison. The sedition charges didn’t stick, so they reduced it to tax evasion. That didn’t stick either: no one was paying taxes in Kenya back then. In the end he was acquitted. He literally ran out of the court so the guards wouldn’t detain him and allow the prosecutor to bring new charges against him — citing “fresh” evidence. That’s how it was back then: if you saw someone burst out of the courts running, you knew he’d been acquitted.</p>\n<p>We never talked about what it was like for him in prison. Misunderstood geniuses didn’t stop by anymore — some of them were disappeared, the rest became even more misunderstood. One of them sat on the pavements downtown and used colored chalk to write equations on the concrete. He also claimed he’d found a cure for malaria. My father grew quiet, he gesticulated less, and started keeping chickens. During the post-election violence of 2007/8, some marauding youths were planning on attacking Kikuyus in my parents’ district. Together with others, my father armed himself with a machete and formed a protective force. They stood guard at the homes of Kikuyus to make sure no harm came their way. I was scared for my father — I even tried to talk him out of it — but I was also proud of him. Kikuyus were killed elsewhere in town, but not in my parents’ area.</p>\n<p>Now I clearly know what my father does for a living.</p>"
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"title" : "The madness of crowds: Kate Middleton’s dress",
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"content" : "<p>What psychologists term the “availability error” is prominent in so many different forms throughout our mental life that it’s debatable whether this constitutes a form of delusion at all. Still, some examples are so egregious that unpicking them may help us in the general direction of better mental hygiene.</p>\n<p>A few weeks ago a serviceably pretty young woman went to a big ugly house to meet a handsome man who happens to be the president of America, and his mildly steatopygic wife. For the occasion, the young woman slipped on a fairly nondescript dress. In due course, when photographs of this prettyish woman wearing said dress appeared in the papers, there was a frenzy as thousands upon thousands of crazed punters attempted to log on to the website of the British high-street label Reiss to buy it.</p>\n<p>Put simply, the availability error consists in judging by the first thing that comes to mind; in this case, we can summarise the thought processes of the wannabe Reiss-buyers thus: Kate Middleton is wearing that dress and looks good, therefore if I put on that dress I will look good as well. We could elaborate, because undoubtedly there is a further murkier tier to such unreasoning: Kate is wearing that dress, therefore, if I wear that dress, one day I will be queen of England (as well as Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Bongo-Bongo Land, etc), hobnob with the Obamas, wear diamonds the size of pigeons’ eggs – and so on.</p>\n<p>A variation of the availability error that I’ve discussed in this column before, in connection with my propensity – or otherwise – for urinating into the Dyson Airblade hand dryer, is the halo effect. The halo effect implies that if one person has a single, very obvious, characteristic, the rest of his or her attributes are invariably perceived in the light of it. This is why – despite all evidence to the contrary – good-looking people are often viewed as sagacious, amusing, possessed of phenomenal ball control, and so forth.</p>\n<p>Ms Middleton is no film-star beauty, nor has she ever done anything in her short life worthy of note save part her thighs for the heir to the throne, then marry him. Be that as it may; paradoxically, her approachable, girl-next-door vibe becomes incorporated into her halo, so that potential dress-buyers formulate syllogisms of this sort: “All girl-next-door types wear mid-range fashion labels, Kate Middleton is wearing a mid-range fashion label, therefore Kate Middleton is a girl next door.” This conclusion won’t necessarily sell that many £175 Shola dresses (the Reiss design that Middleton wore to meet the Obamas), but it will, of course, sell the object – the Windsors – to their subjects, at a time when the populace might well resent the spectacle of hereditary multibillionaires lording it over them without even minimal concessions to such coalition virtues as choice and fairness.</p>\n<p>The use of the availability error and the halo effect by advertisers is nothing new – when I was a kid, there was a scare to the effect that big corporations were pushing their product by inserting subliminal imagery into feature films. The rumour was that, for a split second during some parched scene of Lawrence of Arabia or another, an ice-cold can of Coca-Cola was flashed up on screen, ensuring that, come the intermission (remember them?) everyone would rush to the foyer and begin guzzling down the sinister sarsaparilla.</p>\n<p>In fact, most advertisers have no need for such subterfuge – they can openly supply the imagery and we will subliminally influence ourselves. Thus shampoos provoke orgasms, mobile phones collapse cities like packs of cards and cars . . . Well, cars morph into just about everything imaginable and then chomp up the road. Do I believe that there is something intrinsically wrong with this? Yes, I think there may be.</p>\n<p>Take Chinese Elvis. He runs a not terribly successful restaurant on the Old Kent Road, and once or twice during the evening’s sittings he emerges from the kitchen dressed as the King to sing “Suspicious Minds” or “Heartbreak Hotel”. He doesn’t look a bit like Elvis, and he certainly doesn’t sound like him, but such is the potency of the late rock monarch’s halo effect that, even years after his death, it can still garrotte the unsuspecting. In fairness to Chinese Elvis, he’s only helping to sell his food – which isn’t too bad – but it remains a bizarre aspect of contemporary commerce that stuff can now be sold not only by the famous, but also by their impersonators – and how mad is that?</p>"
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"title" : "“The epidemic was characterized by episodes of laughing and crying”",
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"content" : "<p>Paging Dr García Márquez. <a href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=13973013\">Central African Journal of Medicine</a>, May 1963:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The disease commenced on 30th January, 1962 at a mission-run girls’ middle school at Kashasha village, 25 miles from Bukoba (see map). From that date until the 18th March, 1962, when the school was forced to close down, 95 of the 159 pupils had been affected. Fifty-seven pupils were involved from the 21st May, when the school was re-opened, until it was again shut at the end of June. The spread of the disease to other areas is described below…Most of the victims have been adolescent school girls and school boys, though adult males and females have also been involved. No literate and relatively sophisticated members of society have been attacked.</p>\n<p>The patient has had some very recent contact with someone suffering from the disease. The incubation period is from a few hours to a few days. The onset is sudden, with attacks of laughing and crying lasting for a few minutes to a few hours, followed by a respite and then a recurrence. The attack is accompanied by restlessness and on occasions violence when restraint is attempted. The patient may say that things are moving around in the head and that she fears that someone is running after her.</p>\n<p>The examination is notable for the absence of abnormal physical signs. No fever was detected, although some reported that they had had fever after a few days. The only abnormalities found were in the central nervous system. The pupils were frequently more dilated than controls, but always reacted to light. The tendon reflexes in the lower limbs were frequently exaggerated. There were no tremors or fits or losses of consciousness. The neck was not stiff.</p>\n<p>Symptoms have lasted from several hours in a few cases up to a maximum of 16 days. During this time the patient is unable to perform her normal duties and is difficult to control.</p></blockquote>\n<p>From Olumide Abimbola in comments, listen to <a href=\"http://www.radiolab.org/2008/feb/25/contagious-laughter/\">Radiolab</a> on the outbreak.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/4110/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=4110&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Hypermedia API Presentation",
"published" : 1309298853,
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"content" : "<p>This presentation talks about the important — and largely overlooked — hypermedia constraint in REST.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://oredev.org/2010/sessions/hypermedia-apis\" title=\"http://oredev.org/2010/sessions/hypermedia-apis\">http://oredev.org/2010/sessions/hypermedia-apis</a></p>\n<p>I think this is a must-see for any team serious about implementing a RESTful API, which I’m starting to think of as hypermedia APIs.</p>\n<p>IMHO almost all the confusion and trickiness about REST disappears if you start from the point-of-view of how to deliver and use hypermedia. More and more I ask the question, “What would HTML do?” when posed with a tricky design question. This presentation does a great job of explaining that.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/looselyconnected.wordpress.com/486/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=looselyconnected.wordpress.com&blog=12380808&post=486&subd=looselyconnected&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/lvmasai4.jpeg\"><img src=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/lvmasai4.jpeg?w=370&h=555\" alt=\"\" title=\"Louis Vuitton Maasai Shuka\" width=\"370\" height=\"555\"></a></p>\n<p>What does this picture have in common with a picture of Wangari Maathai in Oslo City Hall on December 10th 2004? Easy, both of them give us another example of how peculiar Kenyans are. We take for granted all the wealth and potential we have until outsiders put it up on a pedestal, then that’s when Kenyans quickly rush to claim that which is being praised or paraded as originally from Kenya.</p>\n<p>Kenyans are not only guilty of not appreciating what they have, but of also being too generous with their precious resources. How many times have you heard of researchers from the Developed World masquerading as tourists visiting Kenya, going straight to our rural destinations, collecting samples of plant, animal or even human genes, then heading back to their laboratories in the West and developing patented products which we end up buying?<br>\nIn this regard, another recurring theme is Kenyans failing to come up with new and innovative ways of utilising all those aspects of our traditional knowledge and cultural expressions that are already known to be Kenyan and thus considered to be in the public domain for purposes of intellectual property protection, including art, designs and handicrafts.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kiondo1.jpg\"><img src=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kiondo1.jpg?w=225&h=225\" alt=\"\" title=\"kiondo basket kenya \" width=\"225\" height=\"225\"></a><br>\n<strong>The Kiondo case:</strong><br>\nThe Kiondo was not ‘stolen’ as is widely believed. Kenyans have simply failed to commercialise the Kiondo both as a product patent or even as a design. However, even if Kenya had filed a patent in respect of the Kiondo, the life of a patent under the law is only 20 years non-renewable. After this period, the patent falls into the public domain and can be freely used, adapted and copied by others.<br>\nWith both the product patent and design windows firmly shut, the only other avenue for commercializing the kiondo is through a process patent. This is what Japan is currently doing and Kenya is not. The Japanese Patent Office database currently contains patented inventions able to produce en masse industrial woven baskets, some made of fabric or paper materials. Therefore for Kenyans to utilize the kiondo, there must be more aggressive brand campaigns so that we retain that positive link of association between the baskets and Kenya.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kikoy.jpg\"><img src=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/kikoy.jpg?w=205&h=246\" alt=\"\" title=\"kenya kikoy\" width=\"205\" height=\"246\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>The Kikoy case:</strong><br>\nA few years back a UK Company had attempted to register a trademark in respect of the Kikoy. This application for trademark registration was rejected because the word ‘kikoy’ has become a generic term (in the same way as ‘Xerox” in respect of photocopying) therefore it could not be registered in respect of textile goods. However for those innovative Kenyans that have been able to use the kikoy to come up with other products, these can be protected under our law as utility models or as distinctive trademarks.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/lvmasai7.jpeg\"><img src=\"http://diasporadical.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/lvmasai7.jpeg?w=370&h=555\" alt=\"\" title=\"Louis Vuitton Masai \" width=\"370\" height=\"555\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>The Maasai shuka case:</strong><br>\nThe question we must ask ourselves is for how many decades has the Maasai shuka been with us without us fully commercializing and exploiting it? So, if you’re a Kenyan designer and have registered a trademark in respect of shorts, shirts and ensembles similar to those unveiled by Louis Vuitton, by all means SUE AND CASH IN ON A SETTLEMENT! If not, then you really only have yourselves to blame. In reality, Louis Vuitton now basically owns a piece of Kenya’s cultural history through its branding of our maasai shuka as part of its fashion collection. It remains up to Kenyans to turn this free publicity by Louis Vuitton into a marketing tool to showcase to the world more varieties and uses of the maasai shuka. It’s a rare opportunity that many countries dont get.<br>\nLet’s exploit it!</p>\n<p><strong>Way Forward:</strong><br>\nThe truth of the matter is that there are many aspects of our traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions that are already in the public domain and thus cannot be patented or copyrighted because they belong to some or all Kenyans. However there still exists widespread unfair exploitation of our cultural heritage by outsiders for commercial and business interests and this cannot be allowed to continue. The solution is still up for debate and so far we have two options. Our government argues that the intellectual property (IP) system (patents, trademarks, copyright, industrial design) only serves to protect private and corporate property but not the collective heritage of the past, present and future generations of local communities. Therefore they want us to develop a brand new legal system of protecting our traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. </p>\n<p>However I am of a differing opinion. Coming up with a new protection mechanism will take a long time to establish and may not in any case be politically feasible. Furthermore, why re-invent the wheel? Laws relating to Trademarks and certification marks have provided both positive and defensive protection for traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions in countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Plus, with a law on geographical indications in the pipeline, we will have enough legal tools for protection requiring very few adaptations.</p>\n<p>In the meantime, Kenyans must remain vigilant and stop being so generous with your intellectual riches. If you discover something, stumble across something, know of someone or something that is indigenous to Kenya and has useful commercial application and is of great societal value, harness its potential, don’t go disclosing it. We have already proved ourselves as innovators on the world stage with MPesa. It is time for Kenyans to look within and see what other ways we can develop the nation by turning those traditional medicines, genetic materials, cultural expressions into commercial assets and strong income-earners.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/diasporadical.wordpress.com/5543/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=diasporadical.com&blog=11351856&post=5543&subd=diasporadical&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Unpolished writing in the open notebook",
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"content" : "<div><p><em>Steve Crocker, <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3\">Internet Request for Comments 3</a>, from 1969: \"There is a natural hesitancy to publish something unpolished, and we hope to ease this inhibition.\"</em></p>\r\n<p>From time to time, someone reads Vacuum and comments that the writing looks unpolished and incomplete. Why would you publish this kind of work, which obviously isn't up to the standards that would let you sell it to someone for use in print? Why wouldn't you hide it in your notebooks?</p>\r\n<p>I'm using this weblog as a notebook, and publishing my notes for myself instead of always as a tightly edited, polished, finished work. By exposing this part of a process I hope to be prepared to find some way to make myself understood, even if I don't completely understand myself immediately as I write through an issue or question. Thoughts go in, get refined as far as they need to be to make them coherent, and then go onto the net and into the world so that there's room for the next piece to emerge.</p>\r\n<p>The open notebook is going to be messy, but it also means that I have some hope of finding my own half-finished work and revisiting it years later; when I don't do that, there's always something lost. Writing this way lets me tune into ideas, spin them around for a bit until I have a clearer focus, and move on. In most cases, I'm not ready to make things shiny and neat, and I'm content to explore facets of an unpolished gem over a series of years.</p>\r\n<p><em>Previously, because I put it out there in first draft format so that I could find it again: <a href=\"http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2011/03/first-version-coherent.html\">make the first version coherent</a> (from 2011); <a href=\"http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2008/09/creativity-vs-p.html\">creativity vs productivity</a> (from 2008); on <a href=\"http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2007/04/shitty_first_dr.html\">shitty first drafts</a> (from 2007); <a href=\"http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2004/05/my_quadrille_no.html\">wishing that my weblog looked more like my quadrille notebooks</a> (from 2004).</em></p>\r\n<p><em><br></em></p>\r\n<p><em><br></em></p></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=tCYD-njq230:WcgjLuJKWBE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=tCYD-njq230:WcgjLuJKWBE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?i=tCYD-njq230:WcgjLuJKWBE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?a=tCYD-njq230:WcgjLuJKWBE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Vacuum?i=tCYD-njq230:WcgjLuJKWBE:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Vacuum/~4/tCYD-njq230\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Soviet war statue graffiti of the day",
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"content" : "<p>I am not one for defacing war memorials, but I will give points for social critique.</p><p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/wp/../files/2011/06/article-2004814-0C9CF95700000578-566_634x337.jpg\"><img title=\"article-2004814-0C9CF95700000578-566_634x337\" src=\"http://chrisblattman.com/wp/../files/2011/06/article-2004814-0C9CF95700000578-566_634x337.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"463\" height=\"246\"></a></p><p style=\"text-align:left\">The monument is in Sofia, Bulgaria.</p><blockquote><p><span>Taking centre stage is Superman with his distinctive red cape and blue suit. To the left is Santa Claus and to the right Ronald McDonald, the mascot of the fast-food giant McDonalds, and the Joker also makes an appearance.<br> </span></p><p><span>Below the graffiti artist has sprayed “Moving with the times” in Bulgarian black paint.</span></p></blockquote><p><span><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2004814/Is-bird-Is-plane-No-Superman-friends-painted-Soviet-statue-Banksy-Bulgaria.html#ixzz1QYa2vSYt\">Source</a>.</span></p><p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://chrisblattman.com/wp/../files/2011/06/article-2004814-0C9D043F00000578-952_634x418.jpg\"><img title=\"article-2004814-0C9D043F00000578-952_634x418\" src=\"http://chrisblattman.com/wp/../files/2011/06/article-2004814-0C9D043F00000578-952_634x418.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"463\" height=\"304\"></a></p> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Hd-Jom6l_bQ:oBt8Z7HuAj8:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Hd-Jom6l_bQ:oBt8Z7HuAj8:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Hd-Jom6l_bQ:oBt8Z7HuAj8:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=Hd-Jom6l_bQ:oBt8Z7HuAj8:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Hd-Jom6l_bQ:oBt8Z7HuAj8:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/Hd-Jom6l_bQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>I’ve only recently joined <a href=\"https://www.spotify.com/int/\">Spotify</a> (via a Dutch proxy server) – the in-the-cloud music service that has almost all tracks. I like Spotify – a lot – and wouldn’t want to stop using it, even though it isn’t that easy to register an account with them from Germany or even pay for an unlimited or premium Spotify access.</p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img hspace=\"5\" alt=\"opened guitar amp\" vspace=\"3\" src=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/openedguitaramp.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"306\"><br>\n<em>a somehow unrelated photo I’ve posted here to focus your attention on the text. (yes, I’ve recently repaired this Marshall guitar amp for a friend of mine)</em></p>\n<p>There are alternatives to Spotify, alternatives that are accessible from Germany, namely <a href=\"http://grooveshark.com\">Grooveshark</a> and <a href=\"http://www.simfy.de\">Simfy</a>. Grooveshark is somehow questionable because – as far as I know – they do not have agreements with record labels or the German Society for Musical Performing and Mechanical Reproduction Rights (GEMA) which has for long been an obstacle for internet surfers in Germany to access music videos from a German IP. But nevertheless, from a user perspective – and that’s all that matters right now – it doesn’t really matter which service you are using <strong>as long as your stuff is available*</strong>. <em>What’s your stuff</em>, you ask? <strong>Your metadata.</strong></p>\n<p>I am using the term “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata\">metadata</a>” to describe all the soft and invisible stuff that provides the extra, the bonus data that brings the icing on the cake. With music services, it clearly is playlists. Your own and those of other users you’ve subscribed to.</p>\n<p><strong>Playlists</strong></p>\n<p>Now, with all these different music services, music in form of downloadable mp3s and streaming audio to your desktop computer or even mobile phone, it seems to be obvious that the availability of multimedia files as such isn’t the latest fashion, but instead your private or shared playlists. <strong>Playlists</strong>, I think, are the same reason why I prefer carefully written music blogs to mass music blogs that keep on publishing music-related posts just because it’s their business. No, playlists are the modern mixtape, <u>the human selection</u> that you can share with others. <strong>To me, these are very valuable</strong>.</p>\n<p>When I switched from Spotify to Grooveshark the other day, I was wondering about my playlists and starred tracks on Spotify and how to get them onto Grooveshark. There’s a service that does exactly that: <a href=\"http://groovylists.com/\">Groovylists.com</a> – which will help you importing up to 200 tracks in one go.</p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img hspace=\"5\" alt=\"spotify\" vspace=\"3\" src=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/spotify.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"94\"></p>\n<p><strong>In-Sync</strong></p>\n<p>However, I found myself preferring Spotify to Grooveshark for different reasons (there’s Fadhili Williams on Spotify!) so I went back to using Spotify and have been wondering how to keep these lists in sync. Would I want to manually keep all these services in sync? Will this question be solved one day with the introduction of Apples’s music cloud service and the standards (if any) it will set for their competitors? Mimi, me I don’t know. But what I do know is that <strong>we’ll urgently need a service that syncs all our metadata to the cloud</strong> and makes it available via a secured API to all these fancy new Web 2.0 sites. Just like the already existing password, bookmark and setting synchronisation via Firefox, Chrome, Xmarks and <a href=\"https://lastpass.com/\">LastPass</a>. Or that I can already backup all the apps from my Android phone to my <a href=\"http://db.tt/qYHYeIs\">Dropbox</a> folder via Titanium Backup in one go.</p>\n<p>What we’ll need is <strong>ONE service</strong> that does just that. Something that we can trust and that syncs all the selected metadata, be it private or openly shared, <strong>from</strong> all devices and all services <strong>to</strong> all devices and services. I’d even pay for (the privacy of) it.</p>\n<p>Does something like that already exist?</p>\n<p>(* = “your music”, as in <em>“your mp3 won’t be uploaded to our music service because it already exists on our Amazon-S3-based service where we’re paying for the Gigabyte”, or in other words: it’s not the music files that matter, but the associated data, hence the metadata</em>)</p>\n<p><em>AOB, but also somehow related:</em><br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/S-dehFb13P4?version%3D3%26hl%3Dde_DE%26rel%3D0&width=500&height=375\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Probably the best reason to spend 8 minutes of your lifetime on my blog.</p>\n<p></p> <p><a href=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/?flattrss_redirect&id=3404&md5=81fe396842514ee2baf3c591b3aab89f\" title=\"Flattr\"><img src=\"http://kikuyumoja.com/wp-content/plugins/flattr/img/flattr-badge-large.png\" alt=\"flattr this!\"></a></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/fi015eqeiq9r8soand6ao66cuo/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fkikuyumoja.com%2F2011%2F06%2F22%2Fwell-need-a-universal-service-to-sync-all-our-metadata%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=E4mlftXDzqg:BMssGhMXlho:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=E4mlftXDzqg:BMssGhMXlho:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?i=E4mlftXDzqg:BMssGhMXlho:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?a=E4mlftXDzqg:BMssGhMXlho:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/kikuyumoja?i=E4mlftXDzqg:BMssGhMXlho:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/kikuyumoja/~4/E4mlftXDzqg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Thesis finished and approved",
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"content" : "<span title=\"ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Adc&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Focoins.info%3Agenerator&rft.title=Thesis+finished+and+approved&rft.aulast=Dingemanse&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.subject=Ideophones&rft.subject=Siwu&rft.source=The+Ideophone&rft.date=2011-06-22&rft.type=blogPost&rft.format=text&rft.identifier=http://ideophone.org/thesis-finished-and-approved/&rft.language=English\"></span>\n<abbr title=\"http://ideophone.org/?p=2636\"></abbr>\n<p>The work is done. My PhD thesis is now not just finished, but also officially approved. The defense is scheduled for the 24th of October at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. For the record, that is a little over a year after I first handed in the bulk of the manuscript (early October 2010). Large things move slowly.</p>\n<p>If you want to learn more about the thesis, feel free to contact me by email (firstname.lastname@mpi.nl). Thanks for your interest!</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Dingemanse, Mark. 2011. <em>The Meaning and Use of Ideophones in Siwu.</em> PhD dissertation, Nijmegen: Radboud University/MPI for Psycholinguistics.</li>\n</ol>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?a=ifEdtFoifII:nJdbiWG2DhM:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?a=ifEdtFoifII:nJdbiWG2DhM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/ideophone?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ideophone/~4/ifEdtFoifII\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Fran Osseo-Asare on African Cuisine",
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"content" : "Today is my son-in-law's first official Father's Day (his Kumiwah is 3+ months old), and this post is dedicated to him. <br>I have frequently mentioned my own love of kelewele, a wonderful Ghanaian snack. Koranteng, however, is a a real kelewele connoisseur. The international wedding quilt we assembled for him and Abena in 2005 included a square from Ghana featuring his beloved plantain favorite."
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>It kept photobloggers busy for a few days; Iconic Photos weighs in with its two cents. </strong></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.logrithmic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/kiss.jpg\" alt=\"null\"></p>\n<p>If there is one small part of photojournalism that this blog revels in, it is on how photos lie. Seeing is believing, but we also only see what we want to see, and the above photo taken amidst the chaos of hockey riots in Vancouver is almost a textbook case. The image seemingly showed a young couple determined to make love, not war – to use a much clichéd phrase.</p>\n<p>But was it a passionate embrace, a staged photo-op or a piece of performance art? Like many a good kiss captured on film, this photo was dogged by endless questions. Like <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/v-j-day-kiss/\">Eisenstaedt</a>, Richard Lam who took the photo didn’t have time to verify the identifies of his subjects; he even didn’t realized what he had captured until he got back to his office, initially assuming that he was taking pictures of some injured youths.</p>\n<p>But this is no 1945, there are Twitter and Facebook to propose many theories, and also surveillance cameras and camera phones to <a href=\"http://www.merredinmercury.com.au/news/national/national/general/riot-kiss-conspiracy-lights-up-the-web-after-more-pictures-emerge/2200690.aspx\">substantiate and repudiate </a>them. A <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/kissingcouple\">fake twitter account </a>popped up; Esquire gushed it may be <a href=\"http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/vancouver-riots-2011-photo-5929916\">the greatest photo ever</a>. (<a href=\"http://www.jeremynicholl.com/blog/2011/06/20/10-reasons-this-isn%E2%80%99t-the-greatest-photo-ever/\">Still another tongue-in-cheek retort</a>). In the end, it took a little more than 24 hours for details to emerge. [See the <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/17/vancouver-kiss-couple-riot-police#zoomed-picture\">Guardian</a>]</p>\n<p>The man in the photo was identified as the 29-year old barman Scott Jones by his family which lived 10,000 miles away in Perth, Australia. “I knew it was him because he doesn’t have a lot of clothes with him and he always puts on the same thing,” his mother mused. Mr. Jones was lying on the road with his Canadian girlfriend who had hurt her leg. The kiss, alas, was one of reassurance and comfort, rather than one of passion.</p>\n<p>(N.B. I showed Emily the photo, hoping to solicit an “awww”; instead she noted cynically that had the girl been wearing pants, there would have been no fuss. She may be onto something here – it’s the legs that made this photo, in my opinion).</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><img src=\"http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/6/17/1308319806189/A-second-photograph-taken-007.jpg\" alt=\"null\"></p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/culture/\">Culture</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/politics/\">Politics</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/kiss/\">kiss</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/riots/\">Riots</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/vancouver/\">Vancouver</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4536/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=4536&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "NOT MY BUSINESS – NIYI OSUNDARE",
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"content" : "POET’S PROFILE Today, I review my favourite Nigerian poet, Niyi Osundare, whose works strike the same cords with me as Kwesi Brew of Ghana. He was born in 1947 in Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. He is a prolific poet, dramatist and literary critic with degrees from the University of Ibadan (BA), the University of Leeds [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=afrilingual.wordpress.com&blog=18903321&post=189&subd=afrilingual&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Complaints are often misunderstandings.",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/card2910.jpg\"><img title=\"card2910\" src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/card2910-380x236.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"380\" height=\"236\"></a></p>\nShare and Enjoy:<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F&title=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20&bodytext=\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/digg.png\" title=\"Digg\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F&title=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/stumbleupon.png\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://delicious.com/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F&title=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20&notes=\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/delicious.png\" title=\"del.icio.us\" alt=\"del.icio.us\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F&t=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/facebook.png\" title=\"Facebook\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/home?status=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20%20-%20http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/twitter.png\" title=\"Twitter\" alt=\"Twitter\"></a><a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=http%3A%2F%2Fthisisindexed.com%2F2011%2F06%2Fcomplaints-are-often-misunderstandings%2F&title=Complaints%20are%20often%20misunderstandings.%20&annotation=\"><img src=\"http://thisisindexed.com/wp-content/plugins/sociable-30/images/default/16/googlebookmark.png\" title=\"Google Bookmarks\" alt=\"Google Bookmarks\"></a><br><br>"
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"title" : "talking with leo...",
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"content" : "<div><p><em>by russell</em></p>\n<p>Back in February, my wife and I went to NOLA to visit some friends, eat some good food, and listen to music. We stayed with our friend Leo and his family. Leo's not his real name, his real name is not important. We'll just call him Leo.</p>\n<p>Leo is a former colleague of my wife's. He's a marketing consultant, works a lot with entrepreneurs who are trying to bootstrap their mom and pop operations into something they can sell. He's a very very bright and personable guy, funny, great ideas, knows how to run a meeting, knows how to talk to a roomful of people. He has, professionally, a very good track record. He's helped make some folks very wealthy.</p>\n<p>We've known Leo and his family for a long long time. When they come this way, they stay with us, when we go their way, we stay with them. He's kind of part of the extended russell family, and vice versa.</p>\n<p>One night after the wives and kids went to bed, Leo and I hung out, had a couple of beers, and discussed life. Eventually, we got on the topic of the sorry state of the national economic life, and Leo told me a story.</p>\n\nIt started with me making my typical statement, familiar to many here, that C level managers and owners -- the top single percent of earners -- are making too much freaking money. The other folks should also get more of the value they create. Managers and owners get too big a slice of the pie, sez I. There needs to be some kind of credible relationship between value created and compensation earned.\n<p>Leo thought about this for a moment. I'll give you an example of that, he said.</p>\n<p>Years ago, Leo worked for a bank as a kind of junior financial analyst. At some point, he had an insight about the bank's credit offerings. He explained it to me in some detail, but I'm not a numbers guy, so what little of the substance I grasped at the time has escaped me since. It had to do with aligning the rates the bank was offering to business borrowers with the annual economic cycle in a particular way. It was, apparently, a really good idea, and it ended up making the bank a lot of money.</p>\n<p>Leo went to his boss, a VP at the bank, and explained his idea. Wonderful, says the VP. Let me ponder this.</p>\n<p>VP ponders, comes back to Leo a bit later. Leo, he says, here is how this is going to play out. Your idea is great, we're going to roll with it. We're going to make a lot of money from it. I'm going to take credit for it, because that's how life is. Thanks for your good work.</p>\n<p>VP cut Leo a $10K personal check to put some weight behind the "thank you". $10K was a lot of money to get in one chunk for Leo at that time. Leo cashed the check and shut up.</p>\n<p>Some time later, the bank was sold. Leo did well in the new organization, because he's a bright, hard-working guy with a positive attitude. Soon he was tasked with going over some of his former employer's records.</p>\n<p>He discovered that his old boss had received a $2M bonus for the year in which Leo's bright idea was rolled out. The bonus was largely based on the results of the roll-out of Leo's idea.</p>\n<p>On that $2M, Leo got $10K. That's a half-cent on every dollar that the VP got. And that was a personal check from the VP, off of the bank's books. A pure side deal, just between the two of them. The other folks involved - the legal and financial analysis who vetted the concept for legal and financial goodness, the administrators who designed and implemented whatever processes and policies were needed to make it happen - didn't even get the $10K. They got their salaries.</p>\n<p>I'm not sure how much the bank made off of the idea, but even if it was tens or hundreds of millions, $2M is a nice bit of cream to skim off the top.</p>\n<p>So, big deal. Another big shot capitalizes on somebody else's good idea. SSDD. It's good to be the king.</p>\n<p>What I can't get my head around, to this day, is Leo presenting this as an example of the guy at the top getting the fat paycheck because he created the value. I love Leo, he's a really great guy. I just have no way of making sense of his understanding of the world.</p></div>"
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"title" : "The Origins of Money: 1. Cows and Shells",
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"content" : "<p>BBC Radio 3 talk by me (15 minutes) 13 June 2011, 22: 45</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011vh2c\">Listen here</a></p>\n<p>The written text may be found below, but look at this description by the producer:</p>\n<p>“Money. You don’t know where it’s been,<br>\nBut you put it where your mouth is.<br>\nAnd it talks.” (Money, by Dana Gioia)</p>\n<p>The history of money stretches back some 11,000 years. There have been certain key moments in its development and each essay tells their story and the resonance that these revolutionary blips have had ever since.</p>\n<p>1. Cows – round about 9,000BC cattle were first domesticated. Soon after they became units of exchange and thus the idea of money was born: cows became cash on legs. And they still are – in certain parts of Africa commodities (especially brides) are priced in cows. Professor Keith Hart explores the early examples of money as part of an economy of living persons and things.</p>\n<p>In the rest of the series, Essayists explore: the emergence of the very first banks; the setting of inter-regional and international standards; how the very first coins helped also foster abstract thought; and the appearance of the first forms of paper money in ancient China.</p>\n<p>Series Producer: Paul Kobrak.</p>\n<p>This was written before I was commissioned to write the essay, but I could not shake Paul from his belief that contemporary practices in Africa and the Pacific are evidence of the early history of money nor that money is a commodity whose origins lie in barter. It means that a century of academic ethnography has not dislodged the ideology of unilinear evolution. I tried to insert more about the contemporary crisis of the money system, but this was excised. The line in every sense had to be maintained. I still managed to keep some of the message in what I read and the notion of “an economy of living persons and things” was added to the notice. But if ever evidence were needed of anthropologists’ collective failure to dispel the idea of “primitive” money from the public imagination, this is it. And why would they listen to us if we refuse to engage with questions of world history?<span></span></p>\n<p><strong>Cows and shells</strong></p>\n<p>As soon as I was old enough, I was given three pence a week pocket money. I was a regular customer at Mrs. Hewitt’s sweet shop. She reserved my favourites for me and sometimes gave me extra measure. When she sold the shop, she introduced her regulars to the new owner. “This is Keith and he likes wine gums, pear drops and liquorice allsorts.” It was a time of rationing, following the Second World War. So, in addition to my three pence, which bought two ounces of sweets, I handed over a coupon entitling the bearer to that quantity. One day when I was five, my mother announced that sugar rationing was over. From now on, people could buy as many sweets as they liked. I rushed to Mrs. Hewitt’s and ordered sweets up to the limit of my imagination, three bags of two ounces each. “That will be nine pence, please.” “But I only have three pence. They said you could now have as much as you like.” “Well, you need the money too.” And that is how I learned the bitter lesson that money, at least the stuff I grew up with, is also a rationing device. Markets are democratically open to anybody. All you need is the money.</p>\n<p>Since then, I’ve been obsessed with getting to know what money really is and how to get round its restrictions. I became an anthropologist in part to explore alternatives to the money system. But why would we be interested in the origins of money today? Because it is changing dramatically before our eyes. If money is the ground on which we stand, the financial shocks of the last three years have vividly brought home how shaky that foundation is. The physical substance of money is giving way to bits whizzing around cyberspace; personal credit is now available on terms that were unimaginable a few years ago; and we read about vast sums of money being created and disappearing overnight. So what is happening to money? Where did it come from and where is it going? Here I will look at some things that have been described as “primitive money” and are still in use: cows in Africa and shells in Melanesia. They don’t tell us where our money comes from, but they do help us gain a broader understanding of what money is and what it does.</p>\n<p>*****</p>\n<p>But of course we all know where money came from. Our remote ancestors started swapping things they had too much of and others wanted. But it wasn’t always easy to find someone who wanted what you had and had what you wanted. For many natural products, the timing of supply and demand does not coincide. So some objects became valued as tokens to hold for use in future exchanges. It might be salt or ox-hides, but especially precious metals. Gold, silver and copper were scarce, attractive, useful, durable, portable and divisible. Barter’s limitations were lifted as soon as sellers would accept these money tokens, knowing that they could use them later. The money stuff succeeded because it was the supreme barter item, valued not only as a commodity, but also as a means of exchange.</p>\n<p>All this is a myth of course, but what does it tell us? It tells us that money is a real thing and a scarce commodity. That it is more efficient and originated in barter. When Adam Smith first told this story, he claimed that the “Wealth of Nations” resulted from the slow working out of a deep-seated propensity in human nature, “to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another”. He went on,</p>\n<p>“It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that.”</p>\n<p>At least Smith acknowledged a degree of social complexity in these transactions: the idea of contract, private property (mine and yours) and equivalence (fairness), none of which could plausibly be traced to the non-human world. His latter-day successors have not shown similar modesty, routinely claiming that behaviour in Wall Street is driven by impulses that are not just eternally human, but shared with the animals too, or at least the primates. Listen to Nicholas Dunbar in his book, <em>Inventing Money</em>:</p>\n<p>“In chimpanzee communities, individuals exchange gifts (such as fruit or sexual favours) within a group to cement alliances, and punish those who attempt to cheat on such mutually beneficial relationships. Anthropologists believe that early humans started trading in much the same way. The word they use to describe this behaviour is ‘reciprocity’ and our personal relationships work on this basis.”</p>\n<p>That’s quite a lot of metaphysics piled onto the observation that chimps sometimes pleasure each other and pass on the odd bit of fruit. Two claims are being made here: that private property is natural, therefore inevitable; and that it underpins most other important things in our lives. Adam Smith seems almost cautious in comparison.</p>\n<p>*****</p>\n<p>The first time I arrived in the market square of a West African village, I saw four beefy men dragging a young woman by the hair, kicking and screaming. “It’s alright”, said my companion, “they’re just her brothers”. She was married to an old man with many wives, a major political figure; she had run away several times with her lover; the old man demanded his bride-wealth back – the standard payment of four cows to his wife’s lineage; but her brothers had already spent the cows on a marriage and they didn’t want to break their alliance with him; so this was a public affirmation of their commitment to the marriage.</p>\n<p>Modern capitalist economies base the accumulation of wealth on production of inanimate things for sale. Traditional African economies had as their object the production of human life. So cattle were used to secure the reproduction of kin groups through marriage. When Europeans first saw women being exchanged for cows, they thought they were being bought. In fact, bride-wealth consists of animal tokens whose payment secures the marriage and allows the recipients to find another woman to replace the one they had lost. They are rationing coupons more than money. The power of this custom is still strong, even in South Africa, where it is known as <em>lobola</em>. The growing African middle class there, when choosing between an expensive marriage payment and the purchase of a new house or car, often opt for the former, even though it places them in substantial debt. Of course, throughout Africa today, cash payments are often substituted for transfers of livestock.</p>\n<p>In these societies, animals were traditionally the main means of saving and accumulation. The word for interest is sometimes “water” on the analogy of a loan of cattle. If a cow has offspring while on loan, the borrower, when returning its mother, kept the calf as a reward for having watered them. Note that the interest was paid to the borrower who did the work! Cattle are thus a source of increase, a store of wealth and a means of payment in marriage and for other large debts. They are not a standard of value or a medium of exchange, since very little can be measured by them or exchanged for them. Most people are reluctant to sell them just for cash, much as we would prefer to replace a car with another one rather than sell it to pay our debts.</p>\n<p>In recent decades, the fastest-growing sector of world trade has been in services such as entertainment, education, media, software and information. This trend makes the economy more about what people do for each other (services) than the physical objects that make up their material livelihood. After early industrialization, the predominant focus of the world economy is reverting to the development of human beings. We have a lot to learn from the human economies of Africa, where people always had priority over things and cows still have some, if not all of the properties of modern money.</p>\n<p>*****</p>\n<p>As an anthropologist, I have been inspired by a famous exchange after the First World War between the founders of modern anthropology in Britain and France concerning whether shell valuables circulating in Melanesia were money or not. The basic positions on “primitive money” have never been expressed more clearly. Bronislaw Malinowski published <em>Argonauts of the Western Pacific</em> in 1922, when the year’s hit movie was <em>Nanook of the North</em>, a tale of Eskimo resilience in the face of a harsh environment. After the slaughter of the trenches, the old imperialist story about “our” mission to civilize “them” lay in tatters. So, when Malinowski produced his account of native adventurers, heirs to the tradition of noble heroes, his story found a receptive audience.</p>\n<p>The <em>kula</em> ring of the Trobriand Islanders and their neighbours provided an allegory of the world economy. Here was a civilization spread across many small islands, each incapable of providing a decent livelihood by itself, that relied on international trade mediated by the exchange of precious ornaments. There were no states, money or capitalists and, instead of buying cheap and selling dear, the trade was sustained by an ethic of generosity. <em>Homo economicus </em>was not only absent, but upstaged by comparison, revealed as a shabby and narrow-minded successor to a world the West had lost.</p>\n<p>Malinowski was adamant that <em>kula</em> valuables – arm-shells and necklaces circulating in opposite directions — were <em>not</em> money in that they did not function as a medium of exchange and standard of value. But his French contemporary Marcel Mauss, in his celebrated essay, <em>The Gift</em>, held out for a broader approach:</p>\n<p>“On this reasoning…there has only been money when precious things…have been really made into currency – namely have been inscribed and impersonalized, and detached from any relationship with any legal entity, whether collective or individual, other than the state that mints them… One only defines in this way a second type of money — our own”.</p>\n<p>Mauss believed that the limits of society must be extended to become ever more inclusive. Society has to be made and remade, sometimes from scratch. On a diplomatic mission or a first date, we give prsents. The<em> kula</em> valuables enable inter-island exchange by forming partnerships between the persons who guarantee the peace. For Mauss this made them a kind of money, if not of the impersonal kind we are familiar with. Heroic gift-exchange is designed to push the limits of society outwards. No society is ever economically self-sufficient. In addition to setting social limits at the local level, a community must also extend its reach abroad. This is why money in some form and the markets it makes possible are universal.</p>\n<p>Now money is often portrayed as a lifeless object separated from persons, whereas in fact it is a creation of human beings, imbued with the collective spirit of the living and the dead. As a token of society, it must be impersonal in order to connect individuals to the universe of relations to which they belong. But people make everything personal, including their relations with society. This two-sided relationship is universal, but highly variable. The <em>kula</em> canoe expeditions were dangerous and magical because their crews were temporarily outside the realm of normal society. Neoliberal globalization and the digital revolution in communications have led to a rapid expansion of money and markets in recent decades. Society has been extended beyond its national limits, becoming more unequal and more unstable in the process. Reliance on the pound sterling and the barter myth of money’s origins will not help us find solutions. We need to rethink what money is for and what we might do with it. Other traditions, such as those of Africa and the Pacific, may show us how to make any future economy more human.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+Origins+of+Money%3A+1.+Cows+and+Shells+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F3c2v6dr\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+Origins+of+Money%3A+1.+Cows+and+Shells+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F3c2v6dr\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/14/the-minister-of-finance/7084inventory13086-1020/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-27135\"><img title=\"7084Inventory13086-1020\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/7084inventory13086-1020.jpeg?w=500&h=753\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"753\"></a></p>\n<p>“The Minister of Finance,” one of a series of over the top, mock portraits by Zimbabwean-born, Johannesburg-based artist Kudzanai Chiurai. The work was first exhibited as “<a href=\"http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/kudzanaichiurai\">Dying to be Men</a>” and is currently on show in London (at the Victoria & Alibert Museum as part of a big show <a href=\"http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/figures-fictions/\">on contemporary South African photography</a>) as “The Parliament.” Below is the PR <a href=\"http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/70985-popup.html\">from the Victoria & Albert</a>. You can also see the full series on the website of <a href=\"http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/kudzanaichiurai\">his South African gallery’s website</a>:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">His satirical series The Parliament depicts the fictitious characters of an imaginary government cabinet in a parody of media representations of masculinity and political power. The series draws upon the conventions of African studio portraiture, dramatised magazine features, hip-hop, film and fashion as well as the story lines, stereotyped characters and plots of soap operas. </p>\n<p>Here’s the Minister of Education:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/14/the-minister-of-finance/7091inventory14106-1020/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-27794\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/7091inventory14106-1020.jpeg?w=500&h=753\" alt=\"\" title=\"7091Inventory14106-1020\" width=\"500\" height=\"753\"></a></p>\n<p>And, the Minister of Defense:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/14/the-minister-of-finance/7090inventory14105-1020/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-27795\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/7090inventory14105-1020.jpeg?w=500&h=753\" alt=\"\" title=\"7090Inventory14105-1020\" width=\"500\" height=\"753\"></a></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/27133/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=27133&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "DRC/ Mozambique: Breaking Down Beyonce's Dance Moves",
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"content" : "Sekamoke.org lays Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)" video over a Werrason track, identifies the dance moves and points to their African inspirations - everyone from DRC dancing girls to Mozambique's Tofo Tofo Boys. As for the Pieter Hugo photography adapted for the video, Scarlett Lion points to a quote from Hugo over at the New Yorker blog: <br>“It isn’t the first time someone has used my images"
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"title" : "Happy Birthday Alice",
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"content" : "<p><em>- It’s my sister’s birthday today. Just doing my bit…</em></p>\n<p>Happy Birthday Alice! Yes the 9th of June is here,<br>\nThe last year of your thirties has arrived but never fear,<br>\nMy master plan to cheer you up is typed upon this page,<br>\nI’ve made a list of things and then compared them to your age.</p>\n<p>For instance if you do the math I do believe you’ll find,<br>\nYou’re older than both Jayden Smith and Taylor Swift combined,<br>\nYou’re older than molecular biology as well,<br>\nPlus Thandie Newton, Lauren Hill and Geri Haliwell,</p>\n<p>You’re twice as old as Pixie Lott and Miley Cyrus too,<br>\nYou’re only two years younger than the cartoon Scooby Doo,<br>\nYou’ve stood 11 years more time than did the Berlin wall,<br>\nYou’re older too than Usain Bolt (though not as fast or tall).</p>\n<p>So Happy Birthday Alice! Though you’re 39 today,<br>\nYou know I’d not remind you of that fact in any way,<br>\nBecause I’m sure you’re using every bit of birthday cheer,<br>\nTo help you to forget that it’s the big FOUR-OH next year…</p>"
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"title" : "Tarantino, Nazis, and Movies That Can Kill You – Part 1",
"published" : 1307622436,
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Basterds-Poster.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Basterds-Poster-e1307622178768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"356\"></a></p>\n<p>I think I can show that <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>is not really a revenge movie, which, if you’ve seen the movie — well, you’re not going to believe me. It’s an implausible point, hard to make stick — and I’d rather start easy. So maybe I’ll just ask a few questions about the film, and then try to answer them, though maybe the questions are really the hard part, after all. It will be harder, I think, to get the questions right than to get the answers right; <em>Basterds</em> is so diabolically entertaining that a person could easily overlook how complicated a thing it really is. So I’m thinking that if we can just name the movie’s complications—if we can lift out its puzzles—the answers might start taking care of themselves.</p>\n<p>My questions are three.</p>\n<p>First question: Is <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>a historical movie? Is it a period piece? …or not? In some sense, yes, plainly, of course it is. It takes place at a specified moment in history—1944; the story unfolds against the backdrop of a major world event—World War II; it transforms real historical personages into minor fictional characters—Hitler, Goebbels, and the like—and it freely intermixes these “real people” with characters of its own invention. Those are the hallmarks of historical fiction in the mode of Walter Scott or Tolstoy. Scott’s <em>Waverley</em> features the <em>real</em> Scottish prince who, in the middle of the C18, tried to seize the throne of England and Scotland. <em>War and Peace</em>, in turn,<em> </em>actually has Napoleon as a character—a fairly central character, even, at least for part of the novel.</p>\n<p>But there’s an obvious problem with this comparison, which is that Tarantino’s movie completely rewrites the history it has chosen to recount. And I can already hear the English professors amidst whom I work murmuring: But wait, historical fiction always, in myriad subtle ways, rewrites the history that it recounts. And they’re right. But <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>is not subtle about this; it does not even <em>pretend</em> to historical insight. It gleefully concocts an alternate history, in a manner that is impossible to overlook. In case anyone has forgotten: American Jews did not storm the Nazi high command and gun Hitler down in an act of heroic retribution. This is not a historical fiction in the usual sense, but rather a kind of <em>fantasia </em>or historical reverie—and the movie makes no effort to hide this. Not even in Tolstoy does Napoleon complete the march to Moscow.</p>\n<p>But then this is where things really get strange. So the movie is a flight of fancy on a historical subject. OK; I think I can take that on board, because I’ve seen it before. In science-fiction circles, alternate histories have become a genre in their own right: What would England look like in the C20 if it had stayed Catholic—if, that is, there had never been a Protestant Church of England? What would the world look like today if Europeans had been wiped out in the fourteenth century by the Black Death?—a world without white people; I’ve always rather liked that one. Or closest to the day’s concerns: What would the US look like now if Hitler had never been defeated? Those books all exist and lots more like them: Historical novels about histories that never happened. But then we need to think about <em>which</em> event the movie has chosen to rescript: It doctors the end of World War II, and if we’re going to think about <em>that</em>, then let us call to mind another obvious thing: America actually defeated the Germans in World War II; or rather the Allies did. And Americans defeat the Nazis in the movie, too, with some help from French resisters. It’s worth pausing to register how odd that is. I mean, it’s not like the movie has taken a tale of American failure or hesitation and turned it into an American triumph. If you try to imagine <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>as a Vietnam movie, you’ll begin to see what I mean. There was a period in the mid-‘80s when Hollywood started churning out movies—like <em>Delta Force </em>or the second Rambo joint—in which the US Army was granted some kind of magic do-over in South-East Asia. In <em>Rambo</em>, Sylvester Stallone<em> </em>actually speaks the question: “Do we get to win this time?” And his commanding officer responds: “Yes, Rambo. You get to win this time.” What’s going on there isn’t especially hard to grasp. The historical record—or, if you prefer, popular historical pseudo-memory—contains, in reference to Vietnam, all sorts of ambivalence: feelings of failure, complicity, shame, and so on—and those feelings are a breeding ground for compensatory fantasies. But Tarantino has scripted an alternative to D-Day, of all things, which means he has replaced the most heroic moment in twentieth-century US history—a history that is already fully triumphalist, entirely devoid of ambivalence—with something <em>even more triumphalist</em>, but weirdly, ferociously so. He has scripted a fictional way of winning a war that the US <em>won anyway</em>. So what’s going on? That’s the first question.</p>\n<p>I have a second question that also involves the ways this is not a straightforward historical movie. I want to be careful here: Historical fictions are always complicated, because they always require you to think at the same time about <em>two different historical moments</em>; if you’re reading a historical novel, you need to think about when the book was set, but you also need to think about when the book was written. So take Toni Morrison’s <em>Beloved</em>, which is the one recent historical novel you can count on someone having read. That book is set in the 1870s, but it was written in the 1980s. And a person might ask: What’s the difference between a book <em>written </em>in the 1870s, like Thomas Hardy’s <em>Far From the Madding Crowd</em>, and one <em>set </em>in the 1870s? That second book, <em>Beloved</em>, has a historical shadow dimension that the first book doesn’t. Historical novels belong, as it were, to two historical moments at once. They are always implicitly putting two historical moments in front of you and asking you what connects them or what they share. So <em>Beloved</em> is a novel about America in the nineteenth century—it’s about the aftermath of slavery—but it is also a novel <em>of </em>the 1980s. The 1870s and the 1980s get held up next to each other. If you want to understand <em>Beloved</em>, you have to understand both what Toni Morrison is saying <em>about</em> the past and what she is saying <em>to </em>her contemporaries. It’s Reconstruction; and it’s the Reagan-era; and they’re side by side. Same deal with <em>Inglourious Basterds</em>. Tarantino was talking about this movie as early as 2001; he wrote different versions of the screenplay across the last decade; two or three times, he announced he was going into production only to change his mind; and then he finally began filming in October 2008—a month before the Obama-McCain election, if you want to think of it that way. So this movie is about 1944, but we can also think of it as pretty much the last movie of the Bush administration. And it’s a war movie—and we mustn’t lose sight of this—which recasts WWII as a settling of scores. And few viewers will have overlooked that it’s also a Western. The opening scene has a French farmer living in what you could mistake for the timber shack of a Montana frontiersman; there’s a shootout in a saloon where desperadoes are drinking whiskey; and so on. So who thinks about war as a Western? Six days after 9/11, George Bush stood up in front of the press corps and said: “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that said: ‘Wanted, Dead or Alive.’”</p>\n<p>We seem to be making headway. But the point I’m after is that <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>is actually more complicated than this. Historical fictions are always complicated, and this movie is more complicated still, not least because it is so obviously stitched together out of parts from other movies. Now we know that this is what Tarantino likes to do; he’s got a mash-up aesthetic. So that opening scene?—it’s borrowed from John Ford; and the scene where the French Jewish beauty and the young Nazi hero kill each other?—that’s ripped from a John Woo movie. Now again, movies and novels are always borrowing from other movies and novels, so maybe you’re thinking <em>Big deal</em>. But most movies and novels take some pains to cover their tracks; they don’t want you to spot their borrowings; they invite you to sink into the story, so that you can trick yourself into thinking that you are watching the past unfold organically before you. And Tarantino simply will not let you sink into the story. He does not hide his sources. The most obvious example is the moment when the movie introduces Hugo Stiglitz for the first time; suddenly the movie has a narrator, and the narrator is Sam Jackson, in voiceover, and with an underlay of boom chicka wawa, and every time you hear those pimped-out cadences, you get airlifted briefly out of 1944 and deposited in the mid-‘70s instead—so Sam Jackson, but Sam Jackson in his incarnation as latter-day soul brother.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Stiglitz-still.png\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Stiglitz-still-e1307621929894.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"199\"></a></p>\n<p>That’s the single most intrusive moment in the movie; the visible incursion of another film genre into the World War II movie; but it’s hardly the only one. There’s the spaghetti Western soundtrack, which provides an ongoing temporal counterpoint to the action. Or there’s the title. I dutifully went and watched the 1978 Italian movie from which the title <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> has been filched only to discover that it bears absolutely no resemblance to the movie Tarantino made. The later film is in no way a remake of the earlier one. But then knowing that should help us see how programmatic Tarantino’s retro aesthetic is: He wants you to think his movie is a remake even when it isn’t a remake. In the event, the title is something like an all-purpose footnote; it doesn’t do much more than point you, broadly, to the entire body of late ‘60s and ‘70s-era trash movies that we all know Tarantino loves; and the music does the same thing; and so does Sam Jackson. Someone out there was disappointed to discover that Richard Roundtree wasn’t playing Hitler. So the movie doesn’t just whisk us back to 1944; and it doesn’t even really whisk us back to its alternate-reality 1944. Rather, it forces us to contemplate 1944 through a scrim of other movies, and I want us to think of this as an almost geological act of historical layering. This is how <em>Inglourious Basterds </em>is different from an ordinary historical fiction: There aren’t just two historical moments in play, there are at least <em>three</em>. Hence my second question: Why, in 2009, make a ‘70s-style movie about 1944?</p>\n<p>One quick point to make, in passing, because it will be important to some people’s experience of the movie: This might be a trash movie; and it might rewrite history in preposterous ways; but its use of historical detail is nonetheless meticulous. The movie’s evident precision begins with its attention to language. It’s a tri-lingual movie, and the German in the movie is impeccable—entirely unlike the <em>Halt!-und-Schnell! </em>that you get in <em>Schindler’s List </em>and other graduates from<em> </em>the Hogan’s Heroes School of War Cinema. And beyond that, the movie is full of historical references that aren’t in the least offhand—references, I mean, that are knowing and apt. Tarantino works in references to early twentieth-century German children’s literature; he briefly introduces, as a character, a cat named Emil Jannings, who was 1) a real German actor of the period; 2) the first person ever to win an Oscar; 3) and a prominent Nazi. And on and on. Now if you’re in a position to appreciate these details—which basically means <em>if you’re German</em>—the experience of the movie has got to be all the more bewildering. The puzzles I’ve been describing intensify, because in lots of ways the movie seems unusually committed to 1944—the movie’s erudition, I mean, can’t help but convey a certain respect for the movie’s historical materials—and yet at the same time 1944 is constantly slipping from sight.</p>\n<p>So … a second question. My third question is easier to explain, though it’s probably also the most important one. It all comes down to this image and to the scene that contains it:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Flaming-screen.png\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2011/06/Flaming-screen-e1307622052997.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"197\"></a></p>\n<p>We have to be clear about what’s going on here. I can imagine a person being keyed up enough at the sweet sight of all those Nazis getting killed to overlook the second thing that’s going on in the movies climactic scenes—not a second event—but a second, equally plausible way of describing that one event: The movie is showing a Jewish woman wreaking vengeance upon Germans, but it is also showing a filmmaker killing her own audience. That’s amazing; and serious thinking about the movie has got to start there. We need to think hard about the conditions under which some of us saw this movie. If you were lucky enough to see <em>Inglourious Basterds</em> during its original run—and so not on DVD—then you sat <em>in a movie theater</em> and watched people <em>in a movie theater</em> get wiped out. You might have been rooting for Shoshanna or the Basterds—I know I was—but the people getting offed were, at the moment of their death, unmistakably like you. The aspect of the movie that most leaps out, I think, is its extraordinary hostility towards the audience. So my third question is: Why does Quentin Tarantino hate us so much?</p>\n<p>So those are my three questions: 1) Why take the triumphalist American history of WWII and make it even more triumphalist? 2) Why channel our perceptions of the 1940s via the 1970s? 3) And why commit mass murder upon the audience? I will next attempt some answers.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>…MORE TO COME…</p>"
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"title" : "Reverse Engineering Superbugs",
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"content" : "<p>The outbreak of the EHEC <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O104:H4\">O104:H4 <em>E. coli</em></a> “superbug” in Europe has got me <a href=\"http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=353\">thinking about biology</a> again.</p>\n<p>The rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs are a product of our love of antibiotics. In the absence of antibiotics, a bug that has few resistances will grow faster and more efficiently than one that has to put on bullet-proof armor every morning and lug around heavy artillery. In other words, the biological machinery required to produce antibiotic resistance comes at a fitness cost for the bug. In antibiotic-free conditions, non-resistant strains grow faster than the resistant strains; and with as little as 20 minutes per generation, just a couple days can yield hundreds of generations. This is why, thankfully, not every bug out there has a full suite of drug resistance — a chief enemy of the superbug is the common bug. </p>\n<p>According to this evolutionary theory for the acquisition and loss of drug resistance genes, a hospital is an ideal breeding environment for superbugs: they are asceptic (less competition from common bugs), and full of antibiotics (plenty of selective pressure to acquire resistance genes). </p>\n<p>Thus it is curious to find superbugs in food. Farms are teeming with common bugs, creating a selective pressure to lose antibiotic resistance genes. While antibiotics are routinely put into farm animal feed, it’s probably not cost-effective to use broad-spectrum antibiotics on such a scale. Perhaps O104:H4 is just a spontaneous coincidence, a fluke — a bug had acquired a set of genes, got lucky and grew, and just as quickly got edged out by more competitive neighbors. This could explain why it’s been tough to find its origin. </p>\n<p>Fortunately, the entire sequence of the O104:H4 bug is available for download on the internet. Our friends in China — BGI, located in Shenzhen — acquired a sample and in an unusual act released the sequence for <a href=\"http://www.genomics.cn/en/news_show.php?type=show&id=644\">public download</a>. This is unusual because research organizations typically hold this kind of data close to the chest, partially for peer review to vet it before public release, and partially for competitive advantage in academic publications — proprietary access to data is a common method to reduce competition for high-profile publications, and thus ensure your academic reputation. Whatever their reasons are for sharing the data, I think it’s worth noting the contribution, because now everybody in the world can perform an analysis on the bug.</p>\n<p>And that’s where the fun begins! Analyzing the sequence data requires a little know-how, but fortunately, my “perlfriend” is a noted bioinformaticist. The raw sequence data provided by BGI is a set oversampled sub-sequences, which have to be assembled based on matching up overlapping regions. Once you assemble the sequence, you get a set of contiguous reads, but there are still gaps. It’s a bit like trying to compose a large picture out of a number of small photos taken at random. With enough sampling you will eventually create a complete picture, but for various technical reasons there are still ambiguities and gaps. </p>\n<p>After assembly, the genome of O104:H4 is stitched from over a half million short DNA samples into 513 contiguous fragments of DNA (“contigs” in bio-speak), with a total length of 5.3 million base pairs (notably, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli\">wikipedia cites</a> <em>E. coli</em> as having only 4.6 million base pairs, so O104:H4 is probably at least 15% longer — and likewise takes more time to replicate than a non-drug resistant strain). Here’s contig 34 of the assembly:</p>\n<p><code><br>\nAAATGGTATTCCTGTTCACGATACTATTGCCAGAGTTGTATCCTGTATCAGTCCTGC<br>\nAAAATTTCATGAGTGCTTTATTAACTGGATGCGTGACTGCCATTCTTCAGATGATAA<br>\nAGACGTCATTGCAATTGATGGAAAAACGCTCCGGCACTCTTATGACAAGAGTCGCCG<br>\nCAGGGGAGCGATTCATGTCATTAGTGCGTTCTCAACAATGCACAGTCTGGTCATCGG<br>\nACAGATCAAGACGGATGAGAAATCTAATGA<strong>GATTACA</strong>GCTATCCCAGAACTTCTTAA<br>\nCATGCTGGATATTAAAGGAAAAATCATCACAACTGATGCGATGGGTTGCCAGAAAGA<br>\nTATTGCAGAGAAGATACAAAAACAGGGAGGTGATTATTTATTCGCGGTAAAAGGAAA<br>\nCCAGGGGCGGCTAAATAAAGCCTTTGAGGAAAAATTTCCGCTGAAAGAATTAAATAA<br>\nTCCAGAGCATGACAGTTACGCAATTAGTGAAAAGAGTCACGGCAGAGAAGAAA<br>\n</code><br>\n(Fun fact: the word “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca\">Gattaca</a>” occurs 252 times in the genome of O104:H4)</p>\n<p>Aside from making gratuitous pop culture references, the raw DNA isn’t very useful to us — it’s as if we were staring at binary machine code. In order to analyze the data, you need to “decompile” the methods contained within the DNA. Fortunately, protein sequences are highly conserved. Thus, a function that has been determined through biological experiment (for example, snipping out the DNA and observing what happens to the cell, or transfecting/transforming the DNA into a new cell and seeing what new abilities are acquired) can be correlated with a sequence of DNA, which can then be pattern-matched over the entire record to determine what functions (genes) are inside the overall genome. </p>\n<p>The pieces needed to do this reverse-engineering are a protein database, and a tool called “blastx”. All of these tools are available free for download. </p>\n<p>The list of known proteins can be downloaded from <a href=\"http://www.uniprot.org\">uniprot.org</a>. Searching for “drug resistance” restricted to <em>E. coli</em> organisms yields a nice list of proteins that have been identified by scientists over the years to confer upon <em>E. coli</em> parts of drug-resistance machinery. Overall, our query to the uniprot database returned 1,378 proteins that are described to confer drug resistance to <em>E. coli</em>.</p>\n<p>Have a look at <a href=\"http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P23895\">Multidrug transporter emrE</a> [uniprot.org]. Inside the link, you’ll find a description of the biological mechanism for its function (it pumps antibiotics out of the cell), its secondary structure (a notion of the shape of the protein) and its 110-residue amino acid sequence. </p>\n<p>Here’s another example of a snippet from the database for a drug you may recognize:<br>\n<code><br>\n>sp|P0AD65|<strong>PBP2_ECOLI Penicillin-binding protein 2</strong> OS=Escherichia coli (strain K12) GN=mrdA PE=3 SV=1<br>\nMKLQNSFRDYTAESALFVRRALVAFLGILLLTGVLIANLYNLQIVRFTDYQTRSNENRIK<br>\nLVPIAPSRGIIYDRNGIPLALNRTIYQIEMMPEKVDNVQQTLDALRSVVDLTDDDIAAFR<br>\nKERARSHRFTSIPVKTNLTEVQVARFAVNQYRFPGVEVKGYKRRYYPYGSALTHVIGYVS<br>\nKINDKDVERLNNDGKLANYAATHDIGKLGIERYYEDVLHGQTGYEEVEVNNRGRVIRQLK<br>\nEVPPQAGHDIYLTLDLKLQQYIETLLAGSRAAVVVTDPRTGGVLALVSTPSYDPNLFVDG<br>\nISSKDYSALLNDPNTPLVNRATQGVYPPASTVKPYVAVSALSAGVITRNTTLFDPGWWQL<br>\nPGSEKRYRDWKKWGHGRLNVTRSLEESADTFFYQVAYDMGIDRLSEWMGKFGYGHYTGID<br>\nLAEERSGNMPTREWKQKRFKKPWYQGDTIPVGIGQGYWTATPIQMSKALMILINDGIVKV<br>\nPHLLMSTAEDGKQVPWVQPHEPPVGDIHSGYWELAKDGMYGVANRPNGTAHKYFASAPYK<br>\nIAAKSGTAQVFGLKANETYNAHKIAERLRDHKLMTAFAPYNNPQVAVAMILENGGAGPAV<br>\nGTLMRQILDHIMLGDNNTDLPAENPAVAAAEDH<br>\n</code></p>\n<p>(Incidentally, I find it amusing that the sequence for PBP2 is shorter than, for example, my PGP public key block)</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P0AD65\">PBP2_ECOLI</a> is linked to penicillin resistance, and functions as a mutant of a gene that determines the shape of the bacteria. Reading through the bio-speak, it seems that this resistant variant is adapted to operate despite the presence of penicillin; bacteria with non-resistant forms of this gene are unable to form properly shaped cell walls and thus die. So, by browsing this database, we are getting a feel for the variety of countermeasures that bacteria has: sometimes they are active (pumping the antibiotic out of the cell) and sometimes they are passive (mutations that enable operation despite the presence of antibiotics). </p>\n<p>Now, you need the actual decompiler itself. The program we used is called <a href=\"http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Web&PAGE_TYPE=BlastDocs&DOC_TYPE=Download\">blast</a>; specifically, a variant known as blastx. Blast stands for “basic local alignment search tool”. This analysis program computes all of the possible translations of the <em>E. coli</em> DNA to protein sequences (there are 6 overall: 5′->3′, 3′->5′, each multiplied by three possible framing positions of the codons), and then does a pattern-matching of the resulting amino acid sequences with the provided database of known drug-resistance sequences. The result is a sorted list of each known drug resistance protein along with the region of the <em>E. coli</em> genome that best matches the protein. </p>\n<p>Here’s the output for the penicillin example:</p>\n<p><code><br>\n# BLASTX 2.2.24 [Aug-08-2010]<br>\n# Query: 43 87880<br>\n# Database: uniprot-drug-resistance-AND-organism-coli.fasta<br>\n# Fields: Query id, Subject id, % identity, alignment length, mismatches, gap openings, q. start, q. end, s. start, s. end, e-value\\<br>\n, bit score<br>\n43 sp|P0AD65|<strong>PBP2_ECOLI 100.00</strong> 632 0 0 29076 30971 1 632 0.0 1281<br>\n43 sp|P0AD68|FTSI_ECOLI 25.08 650 458 21 29064 30926 6 574 2e-33 142<br>\n43 sp|P60752|MSBA_ECOLI 32.80 186 120 6 12144 12686 378 558 6e-17 87.0<br>\n43 sp|P60752|MSBA_ECOLI 27.78 216 148 5 77054 77677 361 566 8e-14 76.6<br>\n43 sp|P77265|MDLA_ECOLI 27.98 193 133 6 12141 12701 370 555 2e-10 65.5</code></p>\n<p>etc...<br>\n</p>\n<p>Here, you can see that the gene for PBP2_ECOLI has a 100% match inside the genome of O104:H4.</p>\n<p>Now that we have this list, we can answer some interesting questions, such as “How many of the known drug resistance genes are inside O104:H4?” I find it fascinating that this question is answered with a shell script:</p>\n<p><code><br>\ncat uniprot_search_m9 | awk '{if ($3 > 99) { print;}}' | cut -f2 |grep -v ^# | cut -f1 -d"_" | cut -f3 -d"|" | sort | uniq | wc -l<br>\n</code></p>\n<p>My perlfriend writes these so quickly and effortlessly it’s as if she’s tying IMs to friends — I half expect to see an “lol” at the end of the script. Anyways, the above script tells us that 1,138 genes are a 100% match against the database of 1,378 genes. If you loosen the criteria up to a 99% match, allowing for one or two mutations per gene — possibly a result of sequencing errors or just evolution — the list expands to 1,224 out of 1,378. </p>\n<p>The inverse question is which drug-resistance genes are most definitely <strong>not</strong> in O104:H4. Maybe by looking at the resistance genes missing from O104:H4, we can gather clues as to which treatments could be effective against the bug. </p>\n<p>In order to rule out a drug-resistance gene, we (arbitrarily) set a criteria of any gene with less than 70% best-case matching as “most likely not” a resistance that the bug has. The result of this query reveals that there are 116 genes that are known to confer drug resistance that are less than 70% matching in O104:H4. Here is the list:</p>\n<p><code><br>\nA0SKI3 A2I604 A3RLX9 A3RLY0 A3RLY1 A5H8A5 B0FMU1 B1A3K9 B1LGD9 B3HN85 B3HN86 B3HP88 B5AG18 B6ECG5 B7MM15 B7MUI1 B7NQ58 B7NQ59 B7TR24 <a href=\"http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P56976\">BLR</a> CML D2I9F6 D5D1U9 D5D1Z3 D5KLY6 D6JAN9 D7XST0 D7Z7R4 D7Z7W9 D7ZDQ3 D7ZDQ4 D8BAY2 D8BEX8 D8BEX9 DYR21 DYR22 DYR23 E0QC79 E0QC80 E0QE33 E0QF09 E0QF10 E0QYN4 E1J2I1 E1S2P1 E1S2P2 E1S382 E3PYR0 E3UI84 E3XPK9 E3XPQ2 E4P490 E5ZP70 E6A4R5 E6A4R6 E6ASX0 E6AT17 E6B2K3 E6BS59 E7JQV0 E7JQZ4 E7U5T3 E9U1P2 E9UGM7 E9VGQ2 E9VX03 E9Y7L7 O85667 Q05172 Q08JA7 Q0PH37 Q0T948 Q0T949 Q0TI28 Q1R2Q2 Q1R2Q3 Q3HNE8 Q4HG53 Q4HG54 Q4HGV8 Q4HGV9 Q4HH67 Q4U1X2 Q4U1X5 Q50JE7 Q51348 Q56QZ5 Q56QZ8 Q5DUC3 Q5UNL3 Q6PMN4 Q6RGG1 Q6RGG2 Q75WM3 Q79CI3 Q79D79 Q79DQ2 Q79DX9 Q79IE6 Q79JG0 Q7BNC7 Q83TT7 Q83ZP7 Q8G9W6 Q8G9W7 Q8GJ08 Q8VNN1 Q93MZ2 Q99399 Q9F0D9 Q9F0S4 Q9F7C0 Q9F8W2 Q9L798<br>\n</code></p>\n<p>Again, you can plug any of these protein codes into the uniprot database and find out more about them. For example, <a href=\"http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P56976\">BLR</a> is the “Beta-lactam resistance protein”:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\nHas an effect on the susceptibiltiy to a number of antibiotics involved in peptidoglycan biosynthesis. Acts with beta lactams, D-cycloserine and bacitracin. Has no effect on the susceptibility to tetracycline, chloramphenicol, gentamicin, fosfomycin, vacomycin or quinolones. Might enhance drug exit by being part of multisubunit efflux pump. Might also be involved in cell wall biosynthesis.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately, a cursory inspection reveals that most of the functions that O104:H4 lacks are just small, poorly understood fragments of machines involved in drug resistance. Which is actually an interesting lesson in itself: there is a popular notion that knowing a DNA sequence is the same as knowing what diseases or traits an organism may have. Even though we know the sequence and general properties of many proteins, it’s much, much harder to link them to a specific disease or trait. At some point, someone has to get their hands dirty and do the “wet biology” that assigns a biological significance to a given protein family. Pop culture references to DNA analysis are glibly unaware of this missing link, which leads to over-inflated expectations for genetic analysis, particularly in its utility for diagnosing and curing human disease and applications in eugenics.</p>\n<p>While the result of this just-for-the-fun-of-it exercise isn’t a cure for the superbug, the neat thing about living here in The Future is that just a few days after an outbreak of a deadly disease halfway across the world, the sequence of the pathogen is available for download — and with free, open tools anyone can perform a simple analysis. This is a nascent, but promising, technology ecosystem. </p>"
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"content" : "<span style=\"color:rgb(64,64,64);font-family:Verdana;font-size:small\"><i>College education has joined the ranks of cartels feeding at the trough of the Finance Capital-Central State. The \"end of work\" will force a revolution within the education cartel.</i><p><b><br></b></p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>I have addressed the \"end of work\" and the related transformation of education and industry for years:</b></p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec08/cascading-jobs12-08.html\">End of Work, End of Affluence I: Cascading Job Losses</a> (December 8, 2008)</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan09/endgame-work01-09.html\">The End of (Paying) Work </a>(January 21, 2009)</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/blogs/education1.html\">Is Our Education System Based on a Factory Metaphor?</a> (November 15, 2005)</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/blogs/education2.html\">Education: Replacing the Factory With The Workshop </a>(December 7, 2005)</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb10/manufacturing02-10.html\">The Future of Manufacturing in the U.S.</a> (February 5, 2010)</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>The key take-aways:</b></p><p><b><br></b></p><p></p><li>The \"end of work\" is driven by global trends including web-enabled business and work, automation and robotics.</li><p></p><li>Work, education, finance, governance and cultural norms and values are inextricably bound together: there is no way to transform one without transforming all.</li><p></p><li>\"Centralized factory\" models for education, government, finance, energy and production have run their course and are now counter-productive.</li><p></p><li>Education in the U.S. has been financialized along with everything else, burdening \"customers\" with huge debt loads in exchange for dubious future promises of value (just as housing never goes down, a college degree is a must, etc.).</li><p></p><li>The education \"industry\" is now just another cartel in bed with finance that has captured the regulatory and governance processes via massive lobbying and campaign donations.<p></p></li><li>Future opportunities are all on the other end of the spectrum from centralized concentrations of capital and political power, in localized, decentralized, self-organizing networks of industry, education and production.</li><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>As noted yesterday, what we really have in the U.S. is a corporate-colonial economy ruled by financial oligarchies and their minions in the Central State.</b> Look no further than student loans which cannot be discharged in bankruptcy to dispel any doubts you may entertain about this.</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>The domestic populace is indentured colonial labor to the Central State, Finance, Corporate America and the Education \"industry.\"</b> Want a \"good job\" in the government or Corporate America? Then you need that four-year university degree credential, and that of course is gonna cost you.</p><p><br></p><p>Outside of Corporate America and the State, employers are interested in what you know how to do and your collaborative and learning skills, not your credentials, which are so easily gamed nowadays (from correspondent Bernie B.):</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/\">The Shadow Scholar</a>--student cheating on the graduate level is rampant:</p><p></p><blockquote>While the deficient student will generally not know how to ask for what he wants until he doesn't get it, <b>the lazy rich student will know exactly what he wants. He is poised for a life of paying others and telling them what to do. Indeed, he is acquiring all the skills he needs to stay on top.</b><p><br></p><p>As for the first two types of students—the ESL and the hopelessly deficient—colleges are utterly failing them. Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who haven't mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences.</p></blockquote><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>As government implodes under its own corrupt, bloated excesses and Corporate America hires new workers overseas near their new markets, research and development and production facilities, then the value of costly college credentials will decline.</b> If what you can actually do in the real world is more important than credentials, then the \"career value\" of credentials will revert to professions that have erected high barriers to entry and State-controlled professional guilds (license to practice, etc): doctors, nurses, attorneys, architects, etc.</p><p><br></p><p>The closer you get to entrepreneural Nirvana, i.e. Silicon Valley, the less valuable credentials become, with the exception of patent attorneys and other specialists.</p><p><br></p><p>Here is an excellent, skeptical look at the supposed value of credentials and the bureaucracy of issuing them: <a href=\"http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html\">On Credentials</a> (Paul Graham)</p><p></p><blockquote>Let's think about what credentials are for. What they are, functionally, is a way of predicting performance. If you could measure actual performance, you wouldn't need them.<p><br></p><p>So why did they even evolve? Why haven't we just been measuring actual performance? Think about where credentialism first appeared: in selecting candidates for large organizations. Individual performance is hard to measure in large organizations, and the harder performance is to measure, the more important it is to predict it. If an organization could immediately and cheaply measure the performance of recruits, they wouldn't need to examine their credentials. They could take everyone and keep just the good ones.</p><p><br></p><p>Large organizations can't do this. But a bunch of small organizations in a market can come close. A market takes every organization and keeps just the good ones. As organizations get smaller, this approaches taking every person and keeping just the good ones. So all other things being equal, a society consisting of more, smaller organizations will care less about credentials.</p></blockquote><p></p><p><br></p><p>So is forming an independent citizenry the purpose of college, or is it just glorified job training for the Central State and Corporate America? We can't seem to make up our minds: <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/06/06/110606crat_atlarge_menand?currentPage=all\">Live and Learn: Why we have college</a> (from correspondent D.S.):</p><p></p><blockquote>“Academically Adrift” (Chicago; $25) was written by two sociologists, Richard Arum (N.Y.U.) and Josipa Roksa (University of Virginia). It is not a diatribe based on anecdote and personal history and supported by some convenient data, which is what books critical of American higher education often are. It’s a social-scientific attempt to determine whether students are learning what colleges claim to be teaching them—specifically, “to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems, and communicate clearly.”</blockquote><p><br></p><p>According to this article, the book concludes many students are not learning these skills in college.</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>As many readers have pointed out over the years, the real value in an Ivy League education is the opportunities to network with wealthy, well-connected students and their parents,</b> a point made in this excellent article: <a href=\"http://jonbischke.com/2011/05/26/what-really-keeps-poor-people-poor/\">What Really Keeps Poor People Poor</a>.</p><p><br></p><p>Are there innovative ways to replace increasingly useless and costly credentialing and enable the growth of \"value\" in tapping networks? There are a number of ideas bubbling away which are worth pondering, for example:</p><p><a href=\"http://jonbischke.com/2011/02/11/learning-graph-reputation-graph-massive-disruption-in-higher-ed/\">Learning Graph + Reputation Graph = Massive Disruption in Higher Ed?</a></p><p></p><blockquote>Education, especially at the post-secondary level provides a strong filtering and sorting mechanism for society. There’s a reason why some companies will only hire Ivy League graduates. And it’s a big part of why the top schools have incredible pricing power. But what if you could develop an alternative signaling mechanism that rivaled or even eclipsed what schools currently do? I think that’s precisely what the reputation graph could become. It’s still way early but I could see the reputation graph ultimately playing a very important role in decision-making about people.<p><br></p><p>Big universities might not like it but they might not have a choice. I feel that a lot of education companies are similar to where the record labels where a decade ago. They're trying to pretend that the world isn't changing fast or that the dynamics of change won't affect them. They'll likely continue to do this until it's too late to make meaningful shifts in strategy. And just as companies like Apple have usurped most of the power in the music biz, my guess is that the powerful companies in education in the coming decades will look very little like the ones in power today.</p></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Rick Davis of the excellent <a href=\"http://www.consumerindexes.com/\">Consumer Metrics Institute</a> recently published an extended commentary on the costs (and valuations) of education, which I excerpt below:</p><p></p><blockquote>It is an article of cultural faith that a good college education is the surest and most universal path to the \"American Dream\" -- and by virtue of that cultural dogma any debt incurred while acquiring higher education is irrefutably good debt.<p><br></p><p>We're not so sure. We could argue that in the early 21st century -- regardless of the U.S. cultural memory dating from the implementation of the first G.I. Bill through the 1980s -- the growth of student loans may be a major drag on the potential growth of the economy for at least two reasons:</p><p><br></p><p>-- The crippling effect that the enormous personal debts are having on the spending potential of a whole generation of consumers;</p><p><br></p><p>-- The cost effectiveness of the education being so dearly bought.</p><p><br></p><p>Or, in a politically incorrect nutshell, are we creating a whole generation of hopeless debtors by foisting on them an exorbitantly priced education that will be of marginal value when they graduate?</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Granddad -vs- Junior</b></p><p><br></p><p>Granddad may have benefited greatly from an education acquired under the G.I. Bill. Dad and Mom may have benefited from taxpayer subsidized in-state tuitions during the 1970s and 1980s. But is Junior's $150,000 Bachelor of Arts from a private college going to benefit him similarly? And more importantly to our concerns here, is it going to add growth to the economy?</p><p><br></p><p>There are two critical economic differences between the educations received by Granddad and Junior:</p><p><br></p><p>-- Subsidies -vs- Loans: For the most part, the educational components of the various generations of \"G.I.\" bills have been stipends or matching grants, not loans. For the class of 2009 the Project on Student Debt estimated that the average student graduated with $24,000 in student loan debt -- and at one private school the average student loan debt was over $61,000.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Relative Cost: According to the Trends in College Pricing 2010 report published by The College Board, a four year in-state education at a public institution is now priced at an average of $64,560 -- while the same four years at a private institution averages $147,972. In that same publication The College Board reported that the real price of tuition and fees at public four year institutions (i.e., net of CPI inflation rates) had grown to be over three and a half times as expensive as in 1980. Over that same time span median real personal income grew by less than 30% -- meaning that since 1980 the real price of tuition and fees at a public university has grown over eight times more than median personal income.</p><p><br></p><p>The parallels to the housing bubble are unmistakable to Malcolm Harris, who also quotes Marc Bousquet on the current sad state of classroom instruction:</p><p><br></p><p>\"If you're enrolled in four college classes right now, you have a pretty good chance that one of the four will be taught by someone who has earned a doctorate and whose teaching, scholarship, and service to the profession has undergone the intensive peer scrutiny associated with the tenure system. In your other three classes, however, you are likely to be taught by someone who has started a degree but not finished it; was hired by a manager, not professional peers; may never publish in the field she is teaching; got into the pool of persons being considered for the job because she was willing to work for wages around the official poverty line (often under the delusion that she could 'work her way into' a tenurable position); and does not plan to be working at your institution three years from now.\"</p><p><br></p><p>So, why have the costs in tuition and fees grown eight-fold relative to median incomes since 1980 -- when tenured professors likely taught three of every four classes? Easy credit (and the cultural prestige of a college education) turned higher education into yet another \"asset\" bubble -- but secured in this case only by the garnishing powers of the lenders.</p><p><br></p><p>And it could also be argued that recently those increased costs have begun to yield diminished returns: salaries for 2010 graduates with majors in the liberal arts majors fell 8.9% nominally year-over-year, to $33,540 -- roughly 9% less than the average U.S. per capita disposable income (which, incidentally, had actually grown 2.2% nominally on the same year-over-year basis).</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Instructional Parallels</b></p><p><br></p><p>The two economic issues are causally related: absent the exorbitant rise in tuitions and fees the debt levels would be more sustainable. Conversely, the availability of subsidized and securitized (and Federally guaranteed) loans -- coupled with politically expedient reductions in underwriting standards (to spread the benefits of higher education to the economically disadvantaged) -- empowered the rapid rise in tuitions and fees.</p><p><br></p><p>The parallels to the housing bubble can also be instructional. The solutions may have to be similar, and the higher education \"industry\" may experience the same kinds of pain as the housing industry has faced for the past several years. Among the plausible options might be:</p><p><br></p><p>-- Rescind the student loan provisions in the 2005 Bankruptcy Law. Hopelessly bad debts have to be cleared, and the court system is the best way to apportion debt forgiveness and lending haircuts to all parties -- according to their complicity in creating the mess in the first place.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Stop the lending madness. It simply isn't working if 65% of the 2005 cohort of students can't carry the debt. Among the \"unthinkable\" options are:</p><p><br></p><p>- Stop the securitization of student loans;</p><p><br></p><p>- Put the institutions at risk for non-performing loans by requiring that a substantial and progressive portion of loan values (perhaps 5% for the smallest loans and 50% for the largest loans) be secured by institutional assets. This would presumably encourage real underwriting;</p><p><br></p><p>- Cap the tuition cost per credit hour that can be supported by student loans;</p><p><br></p><p>-- Provide consumer protection to students and their families by requiring clear disclosure of the quality of the ingredients in the educational package. For example, there could be differential pricing of classes based on the credentials of the instructors and the class size, thereby avoiding the defacto \"bait and switch\" instruction quoted above. This could also allow students (including those who just don't fit a four-year degree program) a chance to engineer a \"budget\" educational experience.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Consumers are also harmed by institutional indifference to the number of years typically required to get a degree. Perhaps indifference is too kind a word; in fact the institutions have strong incentives to extend the educational \"experience\" as long as possible. A report from the U.S. Department of Education has found that only 34% of entering freshmen manage to get a degree from that same school in four years, with another 21% completing the task by the sixth year and yet another 7% still working on that degree beyond year six. Taking all transfers and sabbaticals into account, the chairman of the Spellings Commission observed that \"the median time to a bachelor's degree is closer to six years than four years.\" The remedy could be as simple as putting the educational experience on a contractual basis, with a fixed maximum cost (tuition and fees) clearly stated for a prudently pursued degree program -- and with the institution contractually obligated to provide a reasonable opportunity and environment for students to accomplish the task in four years or less.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Make only the monies spent in direct classroom instruction exempt from institutional taxation. The annual tuition and fees for two-year public institutions in the western U.S. are only about 22% of the annual tuition and fees for four-year public institutions in the same region, and a mere 5% of the annual tuition and fees of four-year private institutions in New England. Although some of this can be attributed to differences in the quality of the faculties, a larger portion is administrative bloat. Encourage greater efficiency by taxing that bloat -- and other non-classroom funding revenues. If it walks like a sports franchise and quacks like a sports franchise, maybe it should be taxed like a sports franchise.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Create a national clearing-house for credit-hour transfers between all accredited institutions, with \"real-time\" balances of hours earned at each contributing institution. In time the hours-earned metric might largely replace the make-or-break \"degree\" hurdle for students not headed to graduate school -- enabling some sort of continuous measurement for higher education accomplishments. Plus, there is no better way to keep costs down than to provide consumers with plentiful and easily executed options for their spending.</p><p><br></p><p>-- Make the cost efficiency of an institution's degree programs a major criteria while awarding Federal research grants.</p></blockquote><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Are we really turning out independent, skeptical, curious and adaptable citizens?</b>Critics have had their doubts for decades, for example:</p><p><br></p><p><a href=\"http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt\">From 7 Lessons Public School Teaches</a> by John Taylor Gatto, New Society Publishers:</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>Students learn to accept:</b></p><p><b><br></b></p><p>1. Confusion as your destiny.<br>2. Hierarchy: You must stay in class where you belong.<br>3. Indifference: Not to care about anything too much.<br>4. Emotional dependency: Surrender your will/rights to the predestined chain of command who can withdraw your rights.<br>5. Intellectual dependency: Curiosity has no important place, only conformity.<br>6. Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do.<br>7. Provisional self-esteem: Your self-respect should depend on expert opinion-- children should not trust themselves or their parents, but need to rely on the evaluation of certified officials.<br>8. Controlled society: Constant surveillance and denial of privacy--no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate.</p><p><b><br></b></p><p><b>I will be extending this discussion of education later this week.</b> As a worthy end note, consider this:</p><p><br></p><p>\"The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things--the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.\" (Samuel Johnson)<br><br><br><i>Readers forum: <a href=\"http://www.dailyjava.net/\"><b>DailyJava.net</b></a>.</i><br><br><br><i>Order <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449563449?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1449563449\">Survival+: Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation</a> <a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/survivalplus.html\">(free bits)</a> <a href=\"http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/BookDetails.asp?BookID=233568&Origine=5090\">(Mobi ebook)</a> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Structuring-Prosperity-Yourself-Nation/dp/B002UNN7F0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1257177272&sr=1-3\">(Kindle)</a> or <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1450529305?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1450529305\">Survival+ The Primer</a> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00359FHTM?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00359FHTM\">(Kindle)</a> or <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439201102?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439201102\">Weblogs & New Media: Marketing in Crisis</a> <a href=\"http://www.oftwominds.com/consulting/PYTC1.html\">(free bits)</a> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OI237K?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001OI237K\">(Kindle)</a> or from your local bookseller.</i></p><p><i><b><i>Of Two Minds Kindle edition:</i></b><i> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACP2BI?ie=UTF8&tag=charleshughsm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002ACP2BI\">Of Two Minds blog-Kindle</a></i></i></p><p><i><br></i></p><p><i><br></i></p><p><i><span style=\"font-style:normal\"><i></i></span></i></p><table width=\"540\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"5\"><tbody><tr><td width=\"230\" bgcolor=\"#C8D7E1\" align=\"left\" valign=\"top\"><b><i>Thank you, David S. ($75), for your stunningly generous contribution to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.</i></b></td><td width=\"50\" bgcolor=\"white\" align=\"left\" valign=\"top\"> </td><td width=\"230\" bgcolor=\"#C8D7E1\" align=\"left\" valign=\"top\"><b><i>Thank you, John S. ($5), for your much-appreciated generous contribution to this site-- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.</i></b></td></tr></tbody></table></span><p></p><div>Go to my main site at www.oftwominds.com/blog.html \nfor the full posts and archives.<img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/33848955-5676729328925477098?l=charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/google/RzFQ/~4/4os8ExQv_UY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>I assume they have all read the same book, because they use the same outline, start-up CEOs I mean. It has two parts. The opening, and the gonna have a revolution bit.</p>\n<p>First the prolog:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open with how grateful you are for the ideas and help the host (and/or the most powerful people in room) provided in starting your firm. But, don’t explain why. Leave that a mystery to hook your audience. Set the hook “i’ll get back to that.” Note how this reframes the usual thanks to the host for inviting you. Note you don’t need to know these people, but you should have done your homework and be familiar with their ideas, papers, books, failures and achievements – certainly there is something in there you can use.</li>\n<li>Introduce your founding myth. The characters in the founding myth should be drawn from a sacred category, e.g. mom, family, your tribe, citizens, the profession of your audience. Populism can work. Customers is kind of a weak form populism. Nine times out of ten these stories seem to involve a mention of family. The pain the product resolves is introduced here, as felt by this representative of sacred/worthy group. This works for a few reasons. First off banishment from home is the usual kick off of any fairy tale: so this make your audience comfortable. Secondly it draws our their empathy, everybody cares about mom. It also makes you out to be a caring person so the audience begins to identify with you.</li>\n<li>Introduce the broad themes of value generation. It’s good if at this point you can begin to introduce yourself as the agent of resolving the problem previously introduced. Your frustration at being unable to aid those in need. This is becomes the quest in the classic story template.</li>\n<li>Start to tempt the audience. Letting them glimpse the solution. Letting them glimpse an artifact or a prototype at this point can be good, but don’t show it to them! This creates an appetite; which if can heighten by delay. This might be a mistake if overplayed, I’ve noticed audiences that stop listening as they attempt to catch a glimpse of the hidden product.</li>\n<li>Finally notch up the frustration at lack of resolution both for you as hero, and for your homie.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>That end’s the prolog. Now this is a VC funded start-up; so we need a industry game changing story. That prolog doesn’t provide that. In a story telling frame you now want to introduce the evil king (current industry structure) and how your firms innovative addition is going be the revolution. At this point we are shifting out of the fairy tale frame and into revolutionary group forming. You want to create in the audience a desire to join the revolution.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tell story of current industry structure. This structure must frustrate, bewilder, and/or anger you – our hero. Done right you will not need to say it, but your audience will see how the glimpses of a solution you gave before foreshadow the resolution of these issues. At this point you must have quantitative data; at least charts. Trend lines, preferably exponential, illustrating how it is only going to get worse. A bit of casual social science about why it’s in the culture of the evil kings is good at this point.</li>\n<li>This, or just after the next step, is a good point to resolve the quesiton of what you learned from your those powerful people in the room, it shouldn’t be the whole answer – it should be an addition to the core.</li>\n<li>Now you can finally reveal the solution, but though not the demo or the prototype. You can and probably should be rational, and quantitative.</li>\n<li>Now double the bet. Make it clear that the pain your addressing is felt so widely that there is broad demand for a new paradigm. Clarify why your solution enables it.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>That fits most of the stories I’ve heard. Occasionally there is another element. Notice how that story is buyer facing; but it is good if you have additional bit that talks about how you have unique supply side advantages. The lamest form of this is a single patent or research result. In the story telling metaphor this is part where our hero picks up his band of uniquely talented buddies – the brother who can swallow the sea, the cat that talks, the cloak of invisibility. Weaving these into the story is tricky. Too much too early and the audience figures out what your doing too soon – which leads to their minds wandering and then they make up objections. But it’s cool if you can get them into the story early and the mystery of how your going to use that cofounder, or that unusual technology can suddenly become clear as you reveal your answer. The other reason to get your supply side advantages into the narrative is so you can have charts that show how this revolution is inevitable and timely.</p>\n<p>Timely is good because it answers the objection – why hasn’t anybody done this before? Inevitable is good because it creates urgency to move now; before the revolution/wave – and it’s wealth generating power – breaks.</p>\n<p>That framing is another standard framework. You want to get a population (this industry) to move you build them a golden bridge (your solution) and set fire to their village. You need to make clear that the problem your solving scales up to being so serious and widespread that the industry is soon going to be on fire.</p>\n<p>I was surprised at first that nobody every goes back and explains how their Mom has now been made happy. But that’s actually obvious, this is a start-up and the story’s not over yet.</p>"
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"title" : "Finding the top K items in a list efficiently",
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"content" : "<p>\nAlgorithms will always matter. Sure, processor speeds are still increasing. But the problems that we want to solve using those processors are increasing in size faster. People who are dealing with social network graphs, or analyzing twitter posts, or searching images, or solving any of the hundreds of problems in vogue would be wasting time without the fastest possible hardware. But they would sitting around forever if they weren't using the right tools.\n<p>\nThat's why I get sad when I see code like this:\n\n<pre>\n# find the top 10 results\nresults = sorted(results, reverse=True)[:10]\n</pre>\n\n<p>\nAnything involving a sort will usually take O(nlogn) time, which, when dealing with lots of items, will keep you waiting around for several seconds or even minutes. An O(nlogn) algorithm, for large N, simply cannot be run in realtime when users are waiting.\n\n<h2>The Heap</h2>\nFinding the top K items can be done in O(nlogk) time, which is much, much faster than O(nlogn), using a heap (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_(data_structure)\">wikipedia</a>). Or, since <a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95\">I usually end up rewriting everything in C++ eventually</a>, a <a href=\"http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/stl/priority_queue/\">priority queue</a>.\n<p>\nThe strategy is to go through the list once, and as you go, keep a list of the top k elements that you found so far. To do this efficiently, you have to always know the smallest element in this top-k, so you can possibly replace it with one that is larger. The heap structure makes it easy to maintain this list without wasting any effort. It is like a lazy family member who always does the absolute minimum amount of work. It only does enough of the sort to find the smallest element, and that is why it is fast.\n<p>\nHere's some code to demonstrate the difference between a linear search, and a heap search to find the top K elements in a large array. The heap search is 4 times faster, despite the test being biased in favour of the linear search. The linear search ends up executing in compiled C inside python itself, while the heap search is completely in interpreted python. If they were both in C, the difference in performance would be more pronounced.\n\n<pre>\n#!/usr/bin/python\nimport heapq\nimport random\nimport time\n\ndef createArray():\n array = range( 10 * 1000 * 1000 )\n random.shuffle( array )\n return array\n\ndef linearSearch( bigArray, k ):\n return sorted(bigArray, reverse=True)[:k]\n\ndef heapSearch( bigArray, k ):\n heap = []\n # Note: below is for illustration. It can be replaced by \n # heapq.nlargest( bigArray, k )\n for item in bigArray:\n # If we have not yet found k items, or the current item is larger than\n # the smallest item on the heap,\n if len(heap) < k or item > heap[0]:\n # If the heap is full, remove the smallest element on the heap.\n if len(heap) == k: heapq.heappop( heap )\n # add the current element as the new smallest.\n heapq.heappush( heap, item )\n return heap\n\nstart = time.time()\nbigArray = createArray()\nprint "Creating array took %g s" % (time.time() - start)\n\nstart = time.time()\nprint linearSearch( bigArray, 10 ) \nprint "Linear search took %g s" % (time.time() - start)\n\nstart = time.time()\nprint heapSearch( bigArray, 10 ) \nprint "Heap search took %g s" % (time.time() - start)\n</pre>\n\n<pre>\nCreating array took 7.15145 s\n[9999999, 9999998, 9999997, 9999996, 9999995, 9999994, 9999993, 9999992, 9999991, 9999990]\nLinear search took 10.9981 s\n[9999990, 9999992, 9999991, 9999994, 9999993, 9999998, 9999997, 9999996, 9999999, 9999995]\nHeap search took 2.66371 s\n</pre>\n\n<p>\nAlso, if you see stuff like this, you should go directly to the wikipedia page on the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_algorithm\">Selection Algorithm</a>\n\n<pre>\n# find the median\nmedian = sorted(results)[len(results)/2]\n</pre>\n<ul><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=7\">Rules for Effective C++</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=8\">A Rhyming Engine</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=100\">Google Buzz gets less awful every day</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=134\">0, 1, Many, a Zillion</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=39\">Stock Picking using Python</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=53\">cairo blur image surface</a><li><a href=\"http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=37\">Spoke.com scam</a></li></li></li></li></li></li></li></ul></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "Continuous profiling at Google",
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"content" : "\"Google-Wide Profiling: A Continuous Profiling Infrastructure for Data Centers\" (<a href=\"http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/pubs/archive/36575.pdf\">PDF</a>) has some fascinating details on how Google does profiling and looks for performance problems.<br><br>From the paper:<blockquote><i>GWP collects daily profiles from several thousand applications running on thousands of servers .... At any moment, profiling occurs only on a small subset of all machines in the fleet, and event-based sampling is used at the machine level .... The system has been actively profiling nearly all machines at Google for several years.<br><br>Application owners won't tolerate latency degradations of more than a few percent .... We measure the event-based profiling overhead ... to ensure the overhead is always less than a few percent. The aggregated profiling overhead is negligible -- less than 0.01 percent.<br><br>GWP profiles revealed that the zlib library accounted for nearly 5 percent of all CPU cycles consumed ... [which] motivated an effort to ... evaluate compression alternatives ... Given the Google fleet's scale, a single percent improvement on a core routine could potentially save significant money per year. Unsurprisingly, the new informal metric, \"dollar amount per performance change,\" has become popular among Google engineers.<br><br>GWP profiles provide performance insights for cloud applications. Users can see how cloud applications are actually consuming machine resources and how the picture evolves over time ... Infrastructure teams can see the big picture of how their software stacks are being used ... Always-on profiling ... collects a representative sample of ... [performance] over time. Application developers often are surprised ... when browsing GWP results ... [and find problems] they couldn't have easily located without the aggregated GWP results.<br><br>Although application developers already mapped major applications to their best [hardware] through manual assignment, we've measured 10 to 15 percent potential improvements in most cases. Similarly ... GWP data ... [can] identify how to colocate multiple applications on a single machine [optimally].</i></blockquote>One thing I love about this work is how measurement provided visibility and motivated people. Just by making it easy for everyone to see how much money could be saved by making code changes, engineers started aggressively going after high value optimizations and measuring themselves on \"dollar amount per performance change\".<br><br>For more color on some of the impressive performance work done at Google, please see my earlier post, \"<a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeff-dean-keynote-at-wsdm-2009.html\">Jeff Dean keynote at WSDM 2009</a>\".<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-4900227635273597490?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/qHDCKn9Ep9o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Letter to Nostalgia",
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"content" : "<p>City I once wore like a shawl<br>\non my shoulders, the soft brown outlines<br>\nof your hills and valleys the first thing I saw<br>\ncoming in at dawn on the lowland bus—<br>\nWhere will I see again except in memory<br>\nsuch astonishing green, or the deep sapphire<br>\nof a sky outlining trees that push through sheer<br>\noutcroppings of rock? And it’s true, nothing<br>\nI’ve seen abroad holds a candle to this view:<br>\nearly morning light glinting off rooftops,<br>\nthe cry of bean curd vendors in the streets;<br>\nmy children once, in their own youth, holding out<br>\nbowls by the gate for a taste of this sweet.</p>\n—<a title=\"The Lizard Meanders\" href=\"http://www.blipfoto.com/lizardmeanders\">Luisa A. Igloria</a> <br>\n05 17 2011 <br>\n<br>\n<em>In response to <a href=\"http://morningporch.com/2011/05/17/159121748\">an entry from The Morning Porch</a>.</em><br>\n<br>"
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"title" : "Blogging the Caine: “Hitting Budapest,” by NoViolet Bulawayo",
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"content" : "<p><em>This is my inaugural post on the <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/\">Caine Prize for African Writing</a> (my introductory post <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/blogging-the-caine-prize/\">here</a>). I’ll be blogging each of the five short stories that were short-listed on the five Fridays between now and the announcement of the winner on July 11, along with a slate of other bloggers (so far: </em><a href=\"http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-review-budapest.html\">The Oncoming Hope</a>, <a href=\"http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/hitting-budapest/\">Backslash Scott</a>, <a href=\"http://konwomyn.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-hitting-budapest.html\">Sky, Soil, and Everything in Between</a>, <a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-hitting-budapest.html\">The Mumpsimus</a>, <a href=\"http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature.html?spref=tw\">Method to the Madness</a>, <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/06/the-caine-prize-2/\">Africa is a Country</a>, <a href=\"http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-2011-short-list-story-one.html\">The Reading Life</a>). <em>And feel free to join us!</em></p>\n<p>Read the story here: <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Bulawayo.pdf\">NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’ Vol 35, no. 6 – Nov/Dec 2010</a></span></p>\n<p>A line like “because her grandfather made her pregnant” is meant to hit us like a ton of bricks, and I’m pretty sure it does. Buried in the middle of the third paragraph, it comes <em>after </em>the point where we’ve started to find our narrative bearings — we’ve learned that the story is about a group of children, one of which is the impregnated Chipo — but <em>before </em>the scene has fully taken shape, which is to say, before anything has really happened in it. It’s not so much an event, in other words, but just part of the back-story and background, part of the fabric of the story’s <em>normal </em>out of which or against which, presumably, the story’s events will eventually take place.</p>\n<p>For this reason, it is this very <em>normality </em>that is meant to strike us, the very casual way it gets mentioned only to explain why Chipo is no longer a fast runner. The fact that she was impregnated by her grandfather is not shown to us as even a particularly notable thing, in and of itself, and this is the real horror, its casual normality: that a ten year old child being impregnated by her grandfather is presented as <em>normal </em>is the thing that is meant to stand out, the deeply abnormal horror of its normality.</p>\n<p>That can be its only function, really, because nothing will actually come of that moment. It is mentioned repeatedly, and the story will return to the image of her “soccer ball” belly, again and again, but no subsequent event in the story will particularly depend on it, or develop out of it. It is the main detail that stood out in my mind in reading the story, but it also could have been omitted without fundamentally changing <em>what happens </em>in the story, which is simply this: a group of children leave the very poor part of town where they leave, go to a rich section of town, steal guavas, briefly interact with a well-off London born lady who takes their picture, and return (and when they return, they take the shoes off the body of a woman who hanged herself because they can sell the shoes for money to buy food).</p>\n<p>“Hitting Budapest” not a sunny story, to be sure, but my point would be that it’s almost not even a <em>story </em>at all. So little happens in it — events which are colorful, but not <em>eventful</em> — that the most memorable thing about the story is actually a “non-story” detail (in that it does not stem from or produce any particular action or events in the narrative). This is just a day in the life; not the day when Chipo was raped, or the day she gives birth, but just one of the days in the middle, where a ten-year old’s pregnancy is just a part of everyday normality. Which is to say, this is not a story in which we are encouraged to watch <em>events</em>, but in which we are shown a spectacle of <em>non-events, </em>the spectacle of nothing really happening. Nothing is really at stake in the story, because it is precisely the point that — in the “normal” life of these children — there is nothing much to be gained, nothing much to be lost. What happens is that nothing happens. And when they go to “Budapest,” what we are really seeing is the impossibility of their ever going to the place it represents, a place where they can be real people, as the narrator puts it (“if I lived in Budapest I would wash my whole body every day and comb my hair nicely to show I was a real person living in a real place”).</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/65542/65542,1245910883,1/stock-photo-skinny-african-child-with-a-jacket-warming-in-the-sun-32722108.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"470\">I should admit that I didn’t really love this story. I feel like I’ve read it before. If you were so inclined, in fact, the thing you could say about it would be that it traffics in the familiar genre of Africa-poverty-pornography, by which I would mean that its “story” is only an obligatory excuse for the parade of affect-inducing spectacles which are the story’s <em>real </em>reason for existing. Rather than building a character through back-story, you could say, the purpose of “Chipo” and her fellows is only to dramatize a particular sociological narrative about poverty, to put into view a picture of what you might call a collapsed mode of social reproduction. You could say it’s the same parable of unsocialized children and failing family networks that populated the Moynihan Report (“Getting out of Paradise is not so hard since the mothers are busy with hair and talk. They just glance at us when we file past and then look away. We don’t have to worry about the men under the jacaranda either since their eyes never lift from the draughts”). And then, having shown us all this social pathology, nothing will come of it; having shown herself to be pregnant, Chipo’s function in the story has pretty much been exhausted. We are to watch what happens, empathize/recoil, and perhaps moralize/despair, and then we move on.</p>\n<p>Such a criticism wouldn’t exactly be <em>wrong</em>, I think — and this is why I didn’t love the story — but all it does is give us permission to dismiss the story (and the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/zunguzungu/status/76389081688457216\">genre of African writing</a></span> it represents), rather than understand it better. Where does such writing come from? Why do people write it?</p>\n<p>I think it’s worth calling it a genre, in fact, to emphasize that it has a range of versions of varying quality. At the risk of over-generalizing, I would even posit a general shift in how African writers have tended to use children-stories since around the 1980′s: fewer bildungsromans and more of what I would call the “drama of unsocialization,” stories like this one, where political dysfunction produces the social dysfunction of isolated children running wild. It’s not a uniform shift, of course, but it really is noticeable: in the 1960’s and 70’s, a whole lot of African writers wrote novels and memoirs about children growing up, in part because the bildungsroman form — I would hazard to assert — spoke to a particular narrative about modernization that you can also find in a lot of public discourse of the era. African nations, too, were said to be “growing up,” and the ambiguous adventures of children being socialized into the broader society spoke to the ambiguous adventure of decolonization. Different writers still had different ambitions/agendas for what they used their bildungsromans to say, of course, but I think it would be fair to say that so many of them adopted the form because it allowed them to give their particular answer to a question they all took to have in common. Nowadays (and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s <em>Sozaboy </em>might be a good place to mark the shift, if we had to) the more common generic form is the story of children left behind by their society, either running wild in perverse and monstrous ways (as in the child soldier narrative, in particular) or festering in horrible ignorance and social pathology. The worst of that genre, in my humble opinion, would be Uzodinma Iweala’s <em>Beasts of No Nation</em>, but most of the sins I would ascribe to that book are things like its minstrely faux-naif language and its shallow luridness for the sake of luridness, not so much the genre itself. So then, the question becomes: is this story of that ilk?</p>\n<p>For the prosecution, I would give you Ikhide Ikheloa, who not only condemns the “lazy, predictable stories that made the [Caine] 2011 shortlist” (what he calls “a riot of exhausted clichés…huts, moons, rapes, wars, and poverty,” in which “[t]he monotony of misery simply overwhelms the reader”) <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Art/5701351-147/email_from_americathe_2011_caine_prize.csp\">diagnoses the problem as selling out to the West</a></span>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“The problem now is that many writers are skewing their written perspectives to fit what they imagine will sell to the West and the judges of the Caine Prize. They are viewing Africa through a very narrow prism, all in a bid to win the Caine Prize.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>He is accusing them, in short, of the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1\">How to Write About Africa syndrome.</a></span> I’m not sure I want to say that he’s wrong, yet, but I’m first of all not that interested in banning all stories that contain “huts, moons, rapes, wars, and poverty” from the canon of Real African Writing, as the logic of his piece sort of pushes us towards. And while I, personally, am much more interested in stories from Africa that <em>don’t</em> dwell on lurid poverty spectacles — which is why, subjectively, this story didn’t really catch me — it’s not like slums and poverty and social dysfunction are a “non-African” subject. As deeply undesirable elements of reality, they cannot be wished away, however obscene it may be to<a href=\"http://www.journaids.org/index.php/blog/blog-entry/the_politics_of_shack_chic/\"> commodify it</a>.</p>\n<p>Anyway, to return to where I started, this would be my case for what is interesting about this story. If we compare “Hitting Budapest” to the story that won the 2009 Caine Prize — EC Osondu’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/5kh88l\">“Waiting”</a></span> — we notice a distinctly different narrative emphasis: it is set in <em>space </em>rather than <em>time</em>. And there is a point to this. While “Waiting” is similarly full of unsocialized children trying to escape from a similarly every-day reality of brutal normality, that story (in which, also, nothing really happens) takes place in a <em>refugee camp</em>, a place which is (at least nominally) meant to be only a temporary place of refuge during a time of emergency. But because “Waiting” is all about <em>time</em> (as in the title, and in the temporal setting of ”wartime emergency”) it not only has an <em>extremely </em>vague sense of geographical setting, but the horizon of future possibility which is visible to its narrator is exclusively one of deliverance by adoption. The only possible future will be when an American comes to the refugee camp and adopts him.</p>\n<p>“Hitting Budapest,” by contrast, not only emphasizes the cruel normality of an inegalitarian <em>geography</em> — in detail — but it thereby shows us how a state of emergency can be built into the permanent spaces of urban separation. There is something particularly cruel, in fact, about the way the children can so easily leave “Paradise” (the ironically named slum they live in) and go to “Budapest” (whose name also signals a kind of exotic worldiness ironic for a place so <em>close</em>), and that they can so easily interact with “the other half,” and that <em>still</em>, none of it matters. As when they chat with the lady with the camera — who expects their attention to be on her Marvelous Piece Of Technology, missing that they are really focused on the unnamed piece of food she is eating (and throws away, to their anger) — again, the fact that nothing really comes of this exchange is the interesting and cutting thing. They shout at her, she is puzzled, and then they all return to their normal places: she goes back in her house, they go back to the “shanties.” The brutality of normality is not interrupted or troubled by their visit; it is made of sterner stuff than that. So she learns nothing. They learn nothing. We learn nothing, in fact. <em>Time </em>changes nothing, when the problem is space.</p>\n<p>Blog-versation on “Hitting Budapest” (look for updates):</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-review-budapest.html\">The Oncoming Hope</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/hitting-budapest/\">Backslash Scott</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://konwomyn.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-hitting-budapest.html\">Sky, Soil, and Everything in Between</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-hitting-budapest.html\">The Mumpsimus</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature.html?spref=tw\">Method to the Madness</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/06/06/the-caine-prize-2/\">Africa is a Country</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-2011-short-list-story-one.html\">The Reading Life</a></li>\n</ul>"
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"title" : "All politics is local, and more",
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"content" : "<p>Many have seen the BBC map below of the outcome of the just-concluded Nigerian presidential elections. The south voted for incumbent Jonathan while the north went for Buhari.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/screen-shot-2011-06-02-at-10-08-43-pm.png\"><img title=\"Nigeria Presidential Election Results \" src=\"http://kenopalo.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/screen-shot-2011-06-02-at-10-08-43-pm.png?w=420&h=387\" alt=\"\" width=\"420\" height=\"387\"></a></p>\n<p>The state elections were a different kettle of fish. In these elections the president’s party – the PDP – held its own in the north. <a href=\"http://www.inecnigeria.org/results/gubernatorial/\">Available results</a> show that PDP candidates won in Bauchi, Kaduna, Niger, Gombe, Kebbi, Jigawa, Kano and Buhari’s home state Katsina – in total eight out of the 12 states shaded blue in the picture above.</p>\n<p>How is this possible, given the clear north-south divide in the presidential vote?</p>\n<p>The answer to this question is threefold (<a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/2011/06/03/nigerias-gubernatorial-elections-and-the-northern-voter/\">and is here</a>).</p>\n<p>First, all politics is local. Given that both the PDP and CPC rode on personality politics with little ideological differentiation, once the presidential race was settled the game reverted back to local personality politics. PDP bigwigs could therefore hold their own in most of these states based on their own local connections.</p>\n<p>Second, it could be due to the sequencing of Nigerian elections. In Nigeria, the gubernatorial elections take place weeks after the presidential election. Because patronage politics is the only real game in town, the rational thing for voters to do is pick the president’s man for governorship. This way one can increase the probability that pork will flow to one’s state when President Jonathan sets out to reward those who voted for him and the PDP.</p>\n<p>Third, Jonathan might have panicked about having lost the north in the presidential election and therefore put extra effort into winning as many gubernatorial races as he could in the north in order to guarantee his administration a sense of national legitimacy.</p>\n<p>In a sense the gubernatorial results are encouraging. It is calming to know that there are powerful local elites in northern Nigeria who are willing and able to work with Jonathan to help Nigeria realize its potential.</p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/category/africa/\">africa</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/abuja/\">Abuja</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/buhari/\">buhari</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/goodluck-jonathan/\">Goodluck Jonathan</a>, <a href=\"http://kenopalo.wordpress.com/tag/nigerian-elections/\">nigerian elections</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/kenopalo.wordpress.com/3230/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=kenopalo.wordpress.com&blog=2271139&post=3230&subd=kenopalo&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Adam Mansbach on Gil Scott-Heron",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JhuaJoLvKbE/TeDbaCxujuI/AAAAAAAAC0M/hApwqJpnH70/s1600/gil-scott-heron3.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"218\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JhuaJoLvKbE/TeDbaCxujuI/AAAAAAAAC0M/hApwqJpnH70/s400/gil-scott-heron3.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><b>\"He was Breaking Shit Down\": Remembering Gil Scott Heron</b></i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">by Adam Mansbach | Special to NewBlackMan</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">I’ve known for fifteen minutes now that Gil Scott-Heron is gone. Time enough to play “Winter in America” and “Pieces of a Man,” and to cry, and for the belief that his death is among the greatest tragedies I’ve ever known to harden inside me. That probably sounds ridiculous, and perhaps it is. Certainly, Gil died in slow motion: there is nothing to be surprised at here, no sudden violence ripping apart the fabric of a life. But the fact remains: the most incisive and salient political musician this country has ever produced – ever – is gone. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The fact that drugs took him under – and I don’t mean today, I mean over and over again ¬– makes it worse; makes me angry in a diffuse, perhaps unreasonable way: leads me into thought-rants like if he’d been acknowledged as the national treasure he was, if they (“they”) had given him a fucking MacArthur, then at least he would’ve been one of those enough-money-to-function drug addicts, and he’d be with us still, shadow-version of himself or not. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">But all that is beside the point. First things first, the depth and scope of Gil Scott-Heron’s musical-political content is beyond compare. Nothing and nobody comes close: not Bob Dylan, not KRS-One, nobody. During the prime of his career (1970-1984), he was out in front on practically every major political issue – not just nationally, but globally. His commentary was incisive, nuanced, hilarious, and routinely prescient. He carved up the entire Nixon administration with a stainless steel scalpel, psychoanalyzed Reagan and Reagan-happy America better than anybody else I can think of. Challenged the South African government, clarioned the dangers of nuclear power, called out racist cops. Did environmentalism is the early seventies. Gun control in 1980. The Iranian Revolution, the No-Knock Law. Abortion.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">And that’s just his topical shit; it’s harder to say what “Ain’t No Such Thing As Superman” or “Winter in America” is about… unless you just cut to the chase and start throwing around words like “zeitgeist,” or phrases like “the troubled soul of America.” And if Gil didn’t invent the pointedly-absurdist extended-free-associative-pop-culture riff, he certainly perfected it in his most famous song. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">But none of that even get at his greatness, or at least not fully. The flipside of Gil’s panoramic political worldview was the depth of his self-analysis, the delicacy of his portraiture: for every world-shaking anthem, every “Johannesburg,” there is another song buried deeper in his catalogue, one that charts the quietest, most intimate of blues moments with sublime beauty, raw honesty, unfettered emotion. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">I met Gil in 1994, when I was seventeen and he was touring behind the release of his first new album in a decade. Went to check him at Regattabar in Cambridge, and rushed him afterward, a sheaf of my own poems in hand. He didn’t break his stride – clearly, the man had somewhere to be – but he did take them. Several hours later, well past midnight, my phone rang (that is, the phone in my parents’ house rang). It was Gil. He’d read my shit. For the next two hours, I listened to him talk, and jotted notes. I still have the piece of paper. It says things like “Black Elk Speaks” and “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” The word “Skippy” is underlined a bunch of times; midway into the conversation, I figured out that Skippy was Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, and the vast, intricate web of Gil’s monologue started to make more sense – a frightening amount of sense, in fact. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Was he high as hell? Probably. It didn’t matter. He was breaking shit down, and I never wanted that phone call to end. I moved to New York City later that year, and ran into him soon after, on 112th and Broadway, in front of the used-CD stand. He didn’t remember our phone call, but I never forgot it. </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">There’s much more I’d like to say, but it’s one a.m. and I suspect I’ve got more tears to shed. Writing this late is probably a mistake, and so is writing this early, this soon after the fact. I don’t want to end this with a flourish, or a benediction or a cliché; I guess I don’t really want to end it at all. </div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">***</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"> <br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i style=\"font-family:Times,"Times New Roman",serif\"><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Adam Mansbach's last novel, <em>The End of the Jews </em>(Spiegel & Grau) won the California Book Award. Named a Best Book of 2008 by the <em>San Francisco Chronicle</em>, it has been called \"extraordinary\" by the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, \"beautifully portrayed\" by the <em>New York Times Book Review</em> and \"intense, painful and poignant\" by the <em>Boston Globe</em>, and translated into five languages. His new book Go the F**k to Sleep, a satire abour parenting will be published next month.</span></i> </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-7044181885806186769?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>\n\n\tWalter had no luck with women. He had tried to write monologues and essays on this subject, and had even pulled off a noteworthy sentence here and there, but on the whole he came up with only commonplaces, of which he later felt ashamed. It occurred to him that he basically did not understand women, that they fascinated and irritated him, and even though he had now and then been lucky enough to be with one, he could not shake the feeling of expecting too much of them. At first things had ...</p>\t\n<p>\n \n\nTranslated from\n\t\n\t\tGerman\n\t\n\n\nby\n\tRoss Benjamin \n\t\n\n\n<span style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/bilingual/the-world-of-men-and-the-world-of-women\"><i>bilingual version</i></a></span>\n \n</p>\n\n <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=J8G99kPC2U8:MSATA9CupIc:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwborders/~4/J8G99kPC2U8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Health food and religious cults",
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"content" : "By the time I dined with Chinmoy, I'd spent months eating at restaurants run by fringe religious movements, often referred to as \"cults,\" and trying to figure out why so many sects have opened shrines to a single deity: health food. ...<br><br>In addition to restaurants, many fringe groups own natural-foods stores or manufacture products like Yogi Tea, invented by Happy, Healthy, Holy Organization founder Yogi Bhajan. Here's a challenge: Name an infamous sect or \"cult\" that has never operated some sort of restaurant or natural-foods store. Most of them—the Church of Scientology, Aum Shinrikyo, the Branch Davidians, the Mormon Fundamentalists, even Jim Jones' People's Temple—have. The question is: Why? ...<br><br>One reason small religious groups tend to serve health food is that they helped invent it. In fact, they arguably launched the whole movement. ...<br><br>In 1930s San Francisco, a Seventh-day Adventist named Ella Brodersen ran what might have been the city's first vegetarian restaurant, the Health Way Cafeteria. Near Santa Barbara, Alan Hooker, who had moved to the town of Ojai to be near his guru, Yogi Krishnamurti, opened the Ranch House restaurant in 1956—which would lead some people to call him \"the grandfather of California cuisine,\" a precursor to famous chefs such as Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck. Los Angeles became home to yoga pioneer Paramahansa Yogananda. As Hollywood chef Akasha Richmond put it, \"by the 1950s, it was the Mushroom Burger, served at Yogananda's SFR India Café, that made the veggie burger popular in Hollywood.\" ...<br><br>The 1974 edition of the <em>Spiritual Community Guide</em>, \"The Yellow Pages of the New Age Movement,\" listed 2,470 addresses throughout the country. ... 31.2 percent of the total, were health-food stores or restaurants. ...<br><br>[U]nlike large religions, which can sustain themselves with tithes and donations, smaller groups usually have to generate revenue through actual businesses—and the restaurant industry has low barriers to entry.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">--Daniel Fromson, Slate, on <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2295857/\">health food's cult origins</a>. See also my previous post on <a href=\"http://jamesjchoi.blogspot.com/2009/12/food-and-sex-reversals.html\">food and morality</a>.</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-7975186472244009996?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Further cunning linguistics",
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"content" : "<p>And while dabbling with the British and their meaningful utterances, a version of the “translation for foreigners” meme making the rounds at the moment, this from the Economist*:</p>\n<p>What the British say: “I hear what you say”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I disagree and do not want to discuss it any further”<br>\nWhat is understood:”He accepts my point of view”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “This is in no sense a rebuke”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I am furious with you and letting you know it”<br>\nWhat is understood: “I am not cross with you”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “With the greatest respect”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I think you are wrong (or a fool)”<br>\nWhat is understood: “He is listening to me”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Correct me if I’m wrong”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I know I’m right–please don’t contradict me”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Tell me what you think”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “That’s not bad”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “That’s good or very good”<br>\nWhat is understood: “That’s poor or mediocre”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “QUITE good” (with the stress on the “quite”)<br>\nWhat the British mean: “A bit disappointing”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Quite good”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “quite GOOD” (with the stress on the “good “)<br>\nWhat the British mean: “excellent”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Quite good”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Perhaps you would like to think about….”/”I would suggest…” /”It would be nice if…”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “This is an order. Do it or be prepared to justify yourself…”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Think about the idea, but do what you like”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Do as much as you think is justifed”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “Do it all”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Do what you can”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Oh, by the way/Incidentally …”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “The primary purpose of our discussion is…”<br>\nWhat is understood: “This is not very important …”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “I was a bit disappointed that/It is a pity you…”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I am most upset and cross”<br>\nWhat is understood: “It doesn’t really matter”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Very interesting”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I don’t agree/I don’t believe you”<br>\nWhat is understood: “They are impressed”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Could we consider some other options”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I don’t like your idea”<br>\nWhat is understood: “They have not yet decided”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “I’ll bear it in mind ”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I will do nothing about it”<br>\nWhat is understood: “They will probably do it”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “Please think about that some more”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “It’s a bad idea: don’t do it”<br>\nWhat is understood: “It’s a good idea, keep developing it”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “I’m sure it’s my fault”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “I know it is your fault, please apologise”<br>\nWhat is understood: “It was somebody else’s fault”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “That is an original point of view”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “You must be mad, or very silly”<br>\nWhat is understood: “They like my ideas!”</p>\n<p>What the British say: “I’m sure you’ll get there eventually”<br>\nWhat the British mean: “You don’t stand a chance in hell”<br>\nWhat is understood: “Keep on trying; they agree I’m on the right track”</p>\n<p>* http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/05/euphemistically_speaking</p>\n<p>The comment section contains further examples.</p>"
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"title" : "Blogging the Caine Prize: An Introduction",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XCQl5G1sVPs/TeV3IMR69pI/AAAAAAAADrc/qZL5eQpaKmM/s1600/caine_prize_2011_cover.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XCQl5G1sVPs/TeV3IMR69pI/AAAAAAAADrc/qZL5eQpaKmM/s400/caine_prize_2011_cover.jpg\" width=\"267\"></a></div><br><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/blogging-the-caine-prize/\">Aaron Bady has come up with a great idea</a>: since the <a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/\">Caine Prize for African Writing</a> will be awarded in five weeks, and there are five short stories nominated, why not write about one story a week until the award?<br><br>I'm going to throw myself into this, because I think the Caine Prize is important, and the exercise could be fun. I hope lots of other folks will join in.<br><br>Here are the nominated stories, all available online as PDFs:<br><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Bulawayo.pdf\">NoViolet Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) ‘Hitting Budapest’ from ‘The Boston Review’ Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010</a> [or <a href=\"http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/bulawayo.php\">direct link to the story at <i>Boston Review</i></a>]</li></ul><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Lamwaka.pdf\">Beatrice Lamwaka (Uganda) ‘Butterfly dreams’ from ‘Butterfly Dreams and Other New Short Stories from Uganda’ published by Critical, Cultural and Communications Press, Nottingham, 2010</a><br><br></li><li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Keegan.pdf\">Tim Keegan (South Africa) ‘What Molly Knew’ from ‘Bad Company’ published by Pan Macmillan SA, 2008</a><br><br></li><li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Kubuitsile.pdf\">Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana) ‘In the spirit of McPhineas Lata’ from ‘The Bed Book of Short Stories’ published by Modjaji Books, SA, 2010</a><br><br></li><li><a href=\"http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2011_Medalie.pdf\">David Medalie (South Africa) ‘The Mistress’s Dog’ from ‘The Mistress’s Dog: Short stories 1996-2010’ published by Picador Africa, 2010</a></li></ul><b><br></b><br><b>[Update:</b> My contributions so far: <a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-hitting-budapest.html\">On \"Hitting Budapest\"</a>, <a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-butterfly-dreams.html\">On \"Butterfly Dreams\"</a>, <a href=\"http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-caine-prize-what-molly-knew.html\">On \"What Molly Knew\"</a>]<br><br>To begin, though, and as an introduction, here's a review I wrote of <i><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=G6Sd04-wJX4C&lpg=PA5&dq=caine%20prize&pg=PA5#v=onepage&q&f=false\">Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing</a></i>, for the <a href=\"http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2010winter/print.shtml\">winter 2010/11 print issue of <i>Rain Taxi</i></a>.<br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br><br><div><b>TEN YEARS OF THE CAINE PRIZE FOR AFRICAN WRITING</b></div><div><b><i>edited by Chris Brazier</i></b><span style=\"font-style:normal\"><b></b></span></div><div><b>New Internationalist ($18.95)</b></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><i>by Matthew Cheney</i></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>The Caine Prize for African Writing was first awarded at the 2000 Zimbabwe International Book Fair. Named for Sir Michael Caine, who for many years chaired the management committee of the Booker Prize, the prize is awarded annually to a work of English-language short fiction by an African writer (the winners have all so far been from sub-Saharan countries). Before his death, Caine had been working on ways to bring African writing in English to a wider audience, and his family, friends, and colleagues created the prize after his death to honor him and his efforts.</div><div> </div><div>Because of Michael Caine's connection to the Booker Prize, the Caine Prize has sometimes been called \"the African Booker\", and <i>Ten Years of the Caine Prize for African Writing</i><span style=\"font-style:normal\"> encourages this idea by leading with works by Booker winners Ben Okri, Nadine Gordimer, and J.M. Coetzee. Coetzee's story, "Nietverloren", is the only one original to the anthology, and his prominence as not only a Booker winner, but, like Gordimer, a Nobel Prize laureate, in some ways overshadows the Caine Prize winners, especially since Coetzee has rarely published short fiction. Okri contributes a sententious introduction and a story, "Incidents at the Shrine", that tells an allegorical tale of an urbanized man being purified through contact with spirits in his rural village.</span></div><div> </div><div>Beginning the book with stories by the Booker winners who have African connections is understandable from a marketing point of view, but it unfortunately makes the Caine Prize seem not so much like "the African Booker" as "the lesser Booker" -- after all, the Booker is given not to short fiction, but to novels, and it has the power to make its winners into overnight international bestsellers. On one hand, placing the Caine Prize winners alongside the work of Okri, Coetzee, and Gordimer encourages us to see them all as equals; on the other hand, it is very obvious that the differences between the prizes and their winners is substantial.</div><div> </div><div>This is not to suggest that the Caine Prize winners are bad stories; none of them are, and many of them are more vivid and gripping than, at least, the two plodding and obvious stories by Gordimer that are included ("The Ultimate Safari" and "An Emissary"; Gordimer has written some brilliant short fiction, but you would not know that if you only read these two pieces). Coetzee's story is minor in comparison to the accomplishments of his novels, but a minor story by one of the greatest living writers in the English language is still an impressive piece of work, and the tale has a complexity and richness lacking from all but one or two of the other pieces in the book. In telling a story about one man's perception of the changes in pastoral South Africa during the course of his life, Coetzee offers a delicate and complicated perspective on nostalgia, change, commercialism, and authenticity. There are ironies in the story, and the portrait of a sad, alienated man is affecting while also incisive: we do not, as readers, need to accept his admittedly bitter interpretation of life in South Africa as objective and accurate, but his view of the world as a place ineradicably commercialized is seductive. (It makes for a particularly interesting comparison with Okri's "Incidents at the Shrine", which tells a very different story of a man returning to a changed home.)</div><div> </div><div>The sort of complexities "Nietverloren" offers are absent from the other stories in the book, which tend to be more straightforward. Most of the prize winners are slice-of-life dramas featuring many of the problems that get sold to the non-African world as endemic to the continent: abject poverty, diseased slums, wanton political corruption, refugees, children of war. If there are ironies in these stories, they tend toward the obvious, as in Mary Watson's "Jungfrau", the 2006 winner, wherein a character nicknamed "the Virgin Jessica" is proved to be anything but virginal. The narrator announces from the first sentence that "It was the Virgin Jessica who taught me about wickedness," and the story goes on to show how. There's nothing particularly wrong with such a tale, but there's also nothing exciting or innovative about it, either. It is skilled, and that's about all.</div><div> </div><div>Binyavanga Wainaina's "Discovering Home" is much more than skilled. Seeming to hover in a genre divide between being a personal essay and a short story, it is an absolute masterpiece, full of both humor and pathos. It builds on a simple concept: a man returning to his Kenyan home after time in Cape Town. Wainaina's keen eye for meaningful details enriches this simple structure, and the abundant specificity of the narrator's observations and experiences becomes universally affecting for anyone who has ever returned home with new eyes. There is an energy and humor to the writing that is absent from the rest of the book.</div><div> </div><div>Henriette Rose-Innes's "Poison" may lack "Discovering Home's" wryness and brio, but it's probably the wrong sort of tale for such things anyway, being an apocalyptic science fiction story of a massive chemical cloud causing havoc in South Africa. What distinguishes "Poison" from the other Caine Prize winners (aside from being the only story clearly set outside a recognizable present reality) is the clarity and grace of its writing. The situation and plot are not especially original, but the imagery is polished and affecting, the sentences impressively efficient and balanced. It's a haunting story, bleak but not nihilistic.</div><div><br></div><div>The individual Caine Prize volumes include the shortlisted stories and stories from an annual African writers' workshop, and the effect is quite different from this collection only of winners. While the quality of writing in the annual volumes is more varied, the subject matter and story types are as well. The Caine Prize judges seem to have narrow tastes, at least when it comes to picking a winner, and this is a real limitation not only of the prize, but of its loftier goals for spreading awareness of African fiction. African writers are no less diverse in the types of literature they write than non-African writers, but without much publishing infrastructure for fiction outside of a few countries on the continent, African writers who seek something more than local publication are at the mercy of non-African ideas of what constitutes "African literature". </div><div> </div><div>Bringing attention to African fiction is a worthy endeavor, and though the winners have, overall, been narrow in scope and technique in the first decade of the Caine Prize, the second decade may offer more variety of writing as the prize brings encouragement and resources to Africa's writers.</div><div><br></div><div style=\"text-align:right\"><a href=\"http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2010winter/print.shtml\">originally published in <i>Rain Taxi,</i> Winter 2010/11</a></div><div style=\"text-align:right\">reprinted with permission of <i>Rain Taxi</i></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5698059-4948160691171818756?l=mumpsimus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/koranteng/\">amaah</a> posted a photo:</p>\n\t\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5772948418/\" title=\"gil scott-heron ronald reagan and john wayne - b movie deadwood culture\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2025/5772948418_a93c6d825e_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"178\" alt=\"gil scott-heron ronald reagan and john wayne - b movie deadwood culture\"></a></p>\n\n<p>My favourite urban griot, Gil Scott-Heron, is sorely missed. Here we find him in peak satire mode in the Deadwood saloon in the company of the embodiment of nostalgic myth-making, John Wayne, and the pale imitation of B-movie lore that America settled for, Ronald Reagan (or the Hollyweird Ronald the Ray-Gun as Gil would so quotably put it). <br>\n<br>\nDig <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ipWM3DWe4\" rel=\"nofollow\">The B movie theory</a>:<br>\n<br>\n"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia.<br>\n<br>\nThey want to go back as far as they can – even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of <a href=\"http://www.iraqtimeline.com/graphics/bushcarrier.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">the man in the white hat</a> or <a href=\"http://www.president-bush.com/missionaccomplished.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">the man on the white horse</a> - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment – someone always came to save America at the last moment – especially in "B" movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan – and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at – like a "B" movie..."<br>\n<br>\nI put it this way four years ago at the height of the George W. Bush years:<br>\n<br>\nWe are living in a moment where nostalgia is key, we're anesthetizing ourselves with cowboy politics, selective amnesia and worse, when we'd rather have John Wayne. And Baghdad and New Orleans are not the only ones who can testify to that insight. <br>\n<br>\nGil Scott-Heron is one the great satirists, punctuating his critique with a melodious line and a soulful groove. It's uncanny how he does it, that you can't help but nod your head, tap your feet and laugh out loud even as you want to cry at what he is saying. His body of work is heroic, his prescience altogether scary.<br>\n<br>\nBut it is hard living as a canary in a mineshaft, if no one is listening and home is where the hatred is, can it be a surprise if there only remain fractured pieces of a man? Dig: I too might drown myself in fugitive spirits.<br>\n<br>\nAnyway let's kick some urban griot poetry around this joint. Or should we call it soul food?</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/koranteng/\">amaah</a> posted a photo:</p>\n\t\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5772408577/\" title=\"gil scott-heron ronald reagan and john wayne - b movie\"><img src=\"http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2189/5772408577_475f925dd8_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"178\" alt=\"gil scott-heron ronald reagan and john wayne - b movie\"></a></p>\n\n<p>My favourite urban griot, Gil Scott-Heron, is sorely missed. Here we find him in peak satire mode in the Deadwood saloon in the company of the embodiment of nostalgic myth-making, John Wayne, and the pale imitation of B-movie lore that America settled for, Ronald Reagan (or the Hollyweird Ronald the Ray-Gun as Gil would so quotably put it). <br>\n<br>\nDig <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56ipWM3DWe4\" rel=\"nofollow\">The B movie theory</a>:<br>\n<br>\n"The idea concerns the fact that this country wants nostalgia.<br>\n<br>\nThey want to go back as far as they can – even if it’s only as far as last week. Not to face now or tomorrow, but to face backwards. And yesterday was the day of our cinema heroes riding to the rescue at the last possible moment. The day of <a href=\"http://www.iraqtimeline.com/graphics/bushcarrier.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">the man in the white hat</a> or <a href=\"http://www.president-bush.com/missionaccomplished.jpg\" rel=\"nofollow\">the man on the white horse</a> - or the man who always came to save America at the last moment – someone always came to save America at the last moment – especially in "B" movies. And when America found itself having a hard time facing the future, they looked for people like John Wayne. But since John Wayne was no longer available, they settled for Ronald Reagan – and it has placed us in a situation that we can only look at – like a "B" movie..."<br>\n<br>\nI put it this way four years ago at the height of the George W. Bush years:<br>\n<br>\nWe are living in a moment where nostalgia is key, we're anesthetizing ourselves with cowboy politics, selective amnesia and worse, when we'd rather have John Wayne. And Baghdad and New Orleans are not the only ones who can testify to that insight. <br>\n<br>\nGil Scott-Heron is one the great satirists, punctuating his critique with a melodious line and a soulful groove. It's uncanny how he does it, that you can't help but nod your head, tap your feet and laugh out loud even as you want to cry at what he is saying. His body of work is heroic, his prescience altogether scary.<br>\n<br>\nBut it is hard living as a canary in a mineshaft, if no one is listening and home is where the hatred is, can it be a surprise if there only remain fractured pieces of a man? Dig: I too might drown myself in fugitive spirits.<br>\n<br>\nAnyway let's kick some urban griot poetry around this joint. Or should we call it soul food?</p>"
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"title" : "GIL SCOTT-HERON / Gil Scott-Heron Classic Mixtape",
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"content" : "<img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20rip%2001.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron rip 01.jpg\" title=\"gil scott-heron rip 01.jpg\"> <br>By now, I presume most music lovers are aware that Gil Scott-Heron died (around 4pm, Friday, May 27, 2011 in New York City). Tons of memorials and tributes are pouring in from all over the globe. Gil truly touched people worldwide.<br><br>We at BoL have featured Gil numerous times over our nearly six years of our website’s existence (we started June 18, 2005). We not only were full of praise for Gil, we also asked hard questions, painful questions. Gil was not only a man of contradictions, he was also deeply honest about contradictions including his own shortcomings.<br><br>Here is a list of some of our Gil Scott-Heron write-ups on BoL: <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2010/02/01/gil-scott-heron-sade-%E2%80%9Cwhat%E2%80%99s-new-mixtape%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">GSH-1</font></a>, <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2007/10/21/gil-scott-heron-%E2%80%9Cblue-collar%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">GSH-2</font></a>, <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/05/07/gil-scott-heron/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">GSH-3</font></a>, <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/05/07/gil-scott-heron-%E2%80%9Cpieces-of-a-man%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">GSH-4</font></a>, and <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/01/01/gil-scott-heron-%E2%80%9Cbeginnings%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">GSH-5</font></a>.<br><br>I don’t expect people to read all the previous postings, and furthermore, we don’t intend to repeat ourselves here just to add more words to the pile of testimonials. But there is one point I would like to make: Gil Scott-Heron was a major composer in addition to being a masterful performer.<br><img width=\"343\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"515\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron rip 02.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron rip 02.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20rip%2002.jpg\"> <br>I call this Mixtape Gil Scott-Heron Classic Mixtape not because it features the most famous or even most impressive Gil Scott-Heron songs. For example “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is not included, nor is there even one of the numerous versions of “The Bottle.” And I’m sure people are going to wonder how in the world I could not include “Is that Jazz” or “Inner City Blues.” And for those who like to party-hardy, or maybe just to dance until they drop, I’m sure you think I’m positively lame for not including “Angel Dust” or especially for skipping over “Johannesburg.” But there is a reason for my madness of excluding popular songs.<br><br>Some of the songs included here are rarities in Gil’s copious catalogue. Plus, some of these versions are not the studio recordings but live performances of diverse provenance. I had three little guidelines in mind. I assumed that over the next week or so you would be able to hear the major hits from a plethora of online and radio sources. Therefore I didn’t feel any pressure to assemble a greatest-hits Mixtape.<br><img width=\"343\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"227\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron rip 05.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron rip 05.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20rip%2005.jpg\"> <br>In addition, I wanted to highlight Gil as both a poet and a composer by including a wide range of his work. I’m sure that the majority of people will be hearing the poem <b>“Jose Campos Torres”</b> for the first time. I’ve included <b>“The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dot Dit Dot Dot Dash)”</b> especially for those who have never heard Gil live, especially Gil in his prime at the top of his game both fully in control of his faculties and in full synchrony with his audience. <br><br>Many people may not be aware that Gil wrote as many ballads as he did, after all Gil was often characterized as fiercely political but he also wrote some of the most tender love songs you ever want to hear. In a couple of cases, most notably<b> “Morning Thoughts”</b> Gil was the master of merging the personal and the political in ways that seamlessly transitioned from romance to revolution within three minutes or less.<br><br>Finally, I had a not so obvious goal in mind. In this time of mourning and grief about Gil’s transition from the land of the living, I wanted to put together a Mixtape that encourages us to be optimistic about our ability to create a better world, our ability to live better and more beautiful lives.<br><img width=\"344\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"231\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron rip 03.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron rip 03.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20rip%2003.jpg\"> <br>Gil had the ability to be serious without being grim, to come hard and at the same time be funny as hell. I wanted to put listeners in a reflective mood that hopefully would encourage and inspire action.<br><br>I believe we should celebrate and commemorate Gil Scott-Heron not only by listening to his music but also by making this world a better place—a place of peace, sincerity, and of humane resolution of inevitable social contradictions.<br><br>The last time I saw Gil Scott-Heron in New Orleans was at the Essence Festival, I believe it was July 2008. I went mainly because I thought that might be my last chance to see him perform. Reviews and photographs from that period were not encouraging about both his health and the quality of his performances (or, for that matter, even showing up for a scheduled gig). While that performance was not the best of Gil Scott-Heron and the set-up in what was called the Super-lounge (there was no seating, so you had to stand, and as you might imagine, it’s hard to "lounge" standing up) was not conducive to a relaxed set, still Gil was in good spirits and the performance was much, much better than I expected.<br><br>The last time I saw Gil perform was March 2010 at the National Black Writers Conference in Brooklyn, New York. Talib Kweli opened the show, and Gary Bartz was a back up musician for Gil. Although the set was short, Gil was great. And now a year later he’s gone. <br><br>Gil gifted us with a cornucopia of beautiful music, vibrant, meaningful, inspirational sounds and vibrations.<br><img width=\"342\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"192\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron rip 04.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron rip 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20rip%2004.jpg\"> <br>Through his recorded music, yesterday, today and tomorrow, Gil lives. Gil Scott-Heron lives.<br><br><b>—Kalamu ya Salaam</b><br><br><br><br><u><i><b>Gil Scott-Heron Classic Mixtape Playlist</b></i></u><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2001.jpg\"> <br>01 <b>“Message To The Messengers”</b> – <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSpirits-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000000GRC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781025%26sr%3D8-7&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Spirits</font></a></i><br><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 02.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 02.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2002.jpg\"> <br>02 <b>“Jose Campos Torres”</b> – <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMind-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000056VIS%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781071%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron</font></a><br></i><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 03.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 03.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2003.jpg\"> <br>03 <b>“Pieces Of A Man”</b> –<i> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPieces-Man-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000005MLZ%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781186%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Pieces Of A Man</font></a></i><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2004.jpg\"> <br>04 <b>“Peace Go With You, Brother”</b> – <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWinter-In-America%2Fdp%2FB002U9NKYM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781239%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Winter In America</font></a></i><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 05.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 05.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2005.jpg\"> <br>05<b> “Cane”</b> – <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSecrets-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB0027ST8WE%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781348%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Secrets</font></a></i><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 06.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 06.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2006.jpg\"> <br>06<b> “Alien (Hold On To Your Dream)”</b> - <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAnthology-Gil-Scott-Heron-Brian-Jackson%2Fdp%2FB0009UBXUC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781411%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Anthology: Messages </font></a></i><br><br><img width=\"305\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"221\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 07.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 07.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2007.jpg\"> <br><i>Live at The Bottom Line </i><br>07 <b>“Almost Lost Detroit” </b><br>08<b> “Winter In America” </b><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 02.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 02.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2002.jpg\"> <br>09 <b>“The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dot Dit Dot Dot Dash)”</b> – <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMind-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000056VIS%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781071%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron</font></a><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2001.jpg\"> <br><i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSpirits-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000000GRC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781025%26sr%3D8-7&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Spirits</font></a></i><br>10 <b>“Give Her A Call”</b><br>11 <b>“The Other Side, Part I” </b><br>12 <b>“The Other Side, Part II” </b><br>13 <b>“The Other Side, Part III” </b><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2004.jpg\"> <br>14 <b>“Peace Go With You, Brother”</b> – <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWinter-In-America%2Fdp%2FB002U9NKYM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781239%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Winter In America</font></a></i><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 01.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2001.jpg\"> <br><i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSpirits-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000000GRC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781025%26sr%3D8-7&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Spirits</font></a></i><br>15 <b>“Work For Peace”</b><br>16 <b>“Don`t Give Up” </b><br><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 17.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 17.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2017.jpg\"> <br>17 <b>“Must Be Something”</b> - <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FFirst-Minute-New-Day-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000005ZD1%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781556%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Midnight Band The First Minute </font></a></i><br><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2004.jpg\"> <br>18 <b>“A Very Precious Time”</b> - <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWinter-In-America%2Fdp%2FB002U9NKYM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781239%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Winter In America</font></a></i><br><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 19.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 19.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2019.jpg\"> <br>19 <b>“Save The Children”</b> – <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FMinister-Information-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB0000040LJ%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781640%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Minister of Information </i></font></a><br><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2004.jpg\"> <br><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWinter-In-America%2Fdp%2FB002U9NKYM%3Fie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1306781239%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Winter In America</font></a><br>20 <b>"Your Daddy Loves You” </b><br>21 <b>“Song For Bobby Smith” </b><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 22.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 22.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2022.jpg\"> <br>22 <b><font color=\"#000000\">“Beginnings (The First Minute Of A New Day)"</font></b> – <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSouth-Africa-Carolina%2Fdp%2FB004720JTE%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781693%26sr%3D8-3&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><i><font color=\"#cc0000\">From South Africa To South Carolina</font></i></a><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 23.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 23.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2023.jpg\"> <br>23 <b>“Better Days Ahead”</b> – Live In London<br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 24.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 24.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2024.jpg\"> <br>24 <b>“Morning Thoughts”</b> - <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FReflections-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB000024QBI%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781769%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><i><font color=\"#cc0000\">Reflections </font></i></a><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 22.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 22.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2022.jpg\"> <br>25 <b>“A Lovely Day”</b> – <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSouth-Africa-Carolina%2Fdp%2FB004720JTE%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781693%26sr%3D8-3&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><i><font color=\"#cc0000\">From South Africa To South Carolina</font></i></a><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 05.jpg\" alt=\"gil scott-heron classic mixtape cover 05.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/gil%20scott-heron%20classic%20mixtape%20cover%2005.jpg\"> <br>26 <b>“A Prayer For Everybody/To Be Free”</b> - <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FSecrets-Gil-Scott-Heron%2Fdp%2FB0027ST8WE%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1306781348%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Secrets</font></a></i><br><br><br>"
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"content" : "<div><p>Amid rising costs, increasing competition, and Wall Street's myopic focus on short-term profitability, many firms are fine-tuning business models. But instead of figuring out ways of giving more for less, a growing number of them are taking the easy way out. A key component of today's remarkably short-sighted \"'value' proposition\": deceiving and cheating customers. Here are four articles that highlight the \"strategies\" corporate America is increasingly relying on:</p>\r\n<h3><strong>1. Lower quality</strong></h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong><a href=\"http://www.cnbc.com//id/43185693\">\"Shopping 'Til the Quality Drops\"</a> (<em>CNBC</em>)</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Lauren Parra prefers to spend more money buying quality items that will last more than two or three seasons.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">These days it's getting harder and harder.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">\"I have noticed a shift in the quality of items. For instance, I noticed that Loft and Gap items look/feel like they'll fall apart—clothes aren't soft anymore,\" said Parra.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Parra, who likes to shop at Ann Taylor, Urban Outfitters and Rue La La, is not imagining anything.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Quality at many retailers seems to be hanging on by a thread.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">According to Global Hunter Securities Macro and Consumer Strategist Richard Hastings, retailers have been collaborating with their production contractors for about two years. They are trying to push back on the total volume, cost and weight of every unit.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">\"Along the way, the consumer barely noticed. By now, everybody knows something is wrong,\" said Hastings. \"If we had to put a number on it, it's probably a 7.5% decline in total quality and durability of products compared to a bigger increase in the cost of production per unit made outside of the U.S.\"</p>\r\n<h3><strong>2. Deceptive packaging</strong></h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong><a href=\"http://www.marketwatch.com/story/inflation-diet-same-price-less-product-2011-05-12\">\"Inflation Diet: Same Price, Less Product\"</a> (<em>MarketWatch</em>)</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\"><em>Commentary: For cash-strapped consumers, it’s ‘caveat emptor’ on aisle 3</em></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Economists are worried not only about inflation, but also deflation, and now it appears U.S. consumers need to worry too.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">While prices for many goods are rising, in cases where prices are steady, the packaging frequently is smaller. It’s an unmistakable trend for grocery shoppers these days: every other package seemingly has a “great new look” for the “same great price.”</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">The problem is that the new look is a few ounces smaller than the old packaging. Or there has been some other creative way to have shoppers pay the same money as always without recognizing that they are bringing less home.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Barring a change in the way packaging is regulated, consumers need to change habits — or at least be more attentive — in order to make their dollars go farther and minimize the effects of this cost-inflation/product-deflation cycle.<br>Pinching inches</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">It’s been particularly noticeable to me of late because my family recently switched from our preferred grocery store to a nearby competitor. With the change, we noticed that it felt like our dollars were buying less and less.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Retail prices in the two stores are roughly the same, but we were buying less. For instance, a “half-gallon” container of orange juice from Tropicana is actually 59 ounces; a roll of toilet paper is shorter, the “new-look” salad dressing is four ounces smaller, and so on.</p>\r\n<h3><strong>3. Unavoidable surcharges</strong></h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong><a href=\"http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/22/pf/airline_fees_rise/index.htm\">\"Airline Fees: The $500 Surprise\"</a> (<em>CNNMoney</em>)</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Thinking of spending a weekend in Paris this spring? Think again.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">The cost of travel to Europe has increased exponentially, mostly due to surcharges and fees which can add $500 or more to the price of round-trip airfare.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">With the price of oil surging, travelers to Paris and other European cities will pay an extra $420 as a fuel surcharge, according to BestFares.com. Taxes and other fees can add another $100 or more.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">For domestic travel, the cost of fuel is often lumped in to the base ticket price, although fuel surcharges are occasionally added on as well. Still, they are much higher on international travel partly because of the long haul.</p>\r\n<h3><strong>4. Excessive and unwarranted fees</strong></h3>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong><span style=\"color:#000000\"><a href=\"http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/2011-05-15-bank-fees_n.htm\">\"Big Banks Hit Customers with Higher Fees, and More of Them\"</a></span> (<em>USA Today</em>)</strong></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">The nation's biggest banks are increasing many of their fees, adding new ones, eliminating debit card rewards programs and making it harder for customers to avoid paying monthly charges for checking accounts.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">At Chase Bank, fees have increased for overdraft transfers, outgoing wire transfers and stopped payments. New customers that sign up for a basic checking account face a $12 monthly charge, up from $6.</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Experts warn consumers to expect more of these and other moves by large banks to boost revenue. \"Services that used to be free will not be free,\" said Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com, a financial information publisher. \"There is very definitely a pocketbook impact on consumers.\"</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:60px\">Banks say they don't want to raise fees but they are losing revenue from new regulations.\"You are going to see a lot of creativity and innovation to recoup revenue losses,\" said Carol Kaplan, an American Bankers Association spokeswoman.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/smj96ouef0dpao9ibgh4l14prk/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.financialarmageddon.com%2F2011%2F05%2Frip-off-central.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?i=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?a=8LyV_1tLtms:HWDcrJf5v7Y:cGdyc7Q-1BI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/financialarmageddon?d=cGdyc7Q-1BI\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/financialarmageddon/~4/8LyV_1tLtms\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Brad De Long writes something condescending",
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"content" : "<p>I was starting to feel somewhat neglected. Usually, when I write something of any substance on Crooked Timber, Brad De Long pops up and has a sneer. Recent efforts have been so stretched in relation to what I actually wrote that I have to conclude it’s personal and that Brad is just itching to have a go. Well that’s his problem. Usually, I’d post a short and polite correction in his comments box, explaining where I thought he’d got himself mixed up, but recently Brad has taken to “moderating” my comments, as if I were some kind of troll. Well ho hum. Anyway, <a href=\"http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/05/chris-bertrams-decisive-self-critique.html\" title=\"\">he clearly approves of my latest, or purports to</a> , since he (unsurprisingly) approves of my judgement that Leninism doesn’t offer a way forward for the Western left. Well no shit. But he also appears delighted to catch me out in a “contradiction”, because, well, didn’t I write something laudatory about Cuba on the occasion of Castro’s retirement over two years ago? (It seems Brad is keeping track, which does feel a bit creepy.) Well yes I did, though he clearly didn’t understand the point I was making, which was principally that US hate-obsession about Cuba has everything to do with capitalism and not much to do with enthusiasm for human rights. Plus (in the case of Brad and people like him) it signals that you really really disapprove of those to your left. Am I pro-Cuban in the sense that I support the ideology and strategy of the Cuban CP? Well no, of course not. I’m not a Barca fan either, for that matter, but I will be cheering them on in the Champions League final.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>UPDATE</span>: I see that DeLong has extended his original post slightly. I respond below the fold:<br>\n<span></span><br>\nHe gives a characterization of <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2011/05/22/the-fragmenting-coalition-of-the-left-some-musings/\" title=\"\">my most recent post</a> , thus: that I call for</p>\n\n\t<blockquote>“the left” to abandon social democracy—… and rely on a combination of “populist nationalism[:] culturally conservative, worried by immigration (and willing to indulge popular anxieties), anxious about the effects of markets on working-class community…” and zero-growth greenism.”</blockquote>\n\n\t<p>Nope. I speculated (hopefully it’s true) that the left would break with the likes of New Labour and Larry Summers (i.e. elite neoliberals masquerading as “progressives”). They aren’t equivalent to social democracy except in DeLong’s brain. My speculations did involve a rapprochement between the social group that (in the UK) forms the basis of “old Labour” and is currently worried by immigration and the corrosive effects of global markets in their communities and another group I characterized as the “eco-left”, for want of a better term. In case anyone is in any doubt, I’m not hostile to immigration, though I do endorse the view that the relentless pursuit of more stuff (not technically equivalent to growth in the economists’ sense) will not improve human happiness and will wreck the environment, and that we ought to be thinking about schemes involving less working-time, more leisure and lower unemployment.</p>"
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"title" : "Tina Fey: “A Prayer for My Daughter”",
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"content" : "<blockquote><p>First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.</p><p>May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.</p><p>When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half and stick with Beer.</p><p>Guide her, protect her when crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.</p><p>Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes and not have to wear high heels.</p><p>What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.</p><p>May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.</p><p>Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.</p><p>O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers and the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.</p><p>And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.</p><p>And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.</p><p>“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.</p><p>Amen.</p></blockquote><p>From her<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316056863/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=httpchrisblat-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0316056863\"> new book</a>.</p><p>Hat tip to sister Shelly.</p> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Gt_LfbvvTkM:t04o9Zk4irs:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Gt_LfbvvTkM:t04o9Zk4irs:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Gt_LfbvvTkM:t04o9Zk4irs:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=Gt_LfbvvTkM:t04o9Zk4irs:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=Gt_LfbvvTkM:t04o9Zk4irs:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/Gt_LfbvvTkM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Are IPTV packets more equal than Internet packets?",
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"content" : "<p><em>[ updated May 26]</em></p>\n<p>The headlines of the Sandvine <a href=\"http://www.sandvine.com/news/pr_detail.asp?ID=312\">Global Internet Phenomena Report </a>Spring 2011 have been repeated in many blogs. The focus on the size of Netflix in the USA as a percentage of (peak or average) traffic , and consequently on the question if Netflix will “swamp the Net” obscures unfortunately some interesting information in the report.</p>\n<p>Such as the difference in average (mean) data consumption per month between North America and the EU for fixed Internet access.</p>\n<table border=\"1\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"91\"></td>\n<td width=\"171\">Europa</td>\n<td width=\"161\">North America</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"91\">Downstream</td>\n<td width=\"171\">31.3 GByte</td>\n<td width=\"161\">18.6 GByte</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"91\">Upstream</td>\n<td width=\"171\">8.2 GByte</td>\n<td width=\"161\">4.5 GByte</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n<p>This difference supports the claim that broadband in the EU generally is faster.</p>\n<p>The second observation is that IPTV, delivered over the same infrastructure as Internet access, generates a LOT more data traffic than all Internet access combined.</p>\n<p>In the Netherlands the average TV viewing time per month per person is 65 hrs, whereas in the USA it is 110 hrs according to Nielsen. If we assume a minimum per TV channel of 5 Mbps for SD quality and 12 Mbps for HD quality this translates to 146 Gbyte/351 Gbyte of data per month (Netherlands). The total will be more, because there are more TV sets and more persons per household.</p>\n<p>So it makes you wonder: why do people worry if “Real-Time Entertainment” (as Sandvine lumps all video over the Internet together) can be sustained, while at the same time IP TV which demands way more data is delivered over the same access infrastructure, without any problem? Even stronger, one could leave the TV set on 24/7, consuming Terabytes, without incurring a penalty for exceeding data caps. (!) Yet for Internet access frugality is discussed as being virtuous and economically necessary……</p>\n<p>IPTV proves that the delivery of large amounts of data to your home is no problem at all, that the infrastructure to deliver this amount of data across the country is available.</p>\n<p>No, this does not apply to all video from all servers to all Internet users in the world, but that is not the point. The point is that IPTV shows that a <del>large</del> significant part of the existing infrastructure is already capable of delivering way more data than is discussed in the Sandvine report.</p>\n<p><em>[ update: details on how IP-TV is delivered versus OTT TV]</em></p>\n<p>The broadband access line to a home is shared between IP-TV, Internet access, Voice and other types of communication (broadcast TV/radio in cable or FttH for instance). The broadband access line has a fixed cost given its peak capacity and is <strong>the</strong> major cost factor (other than license costs for TV). Its cost does not depend on the amount of data that is transmitted, only on the peak capacity.</p>\n<p>Linear IP-TV (non-Internet) usually is delivered by the telco de-duplicated to a local concentration point/exchange location, where every subscribers gets the 2 or 3 streams selected. (On-demand TV is usually delivered from a higher aggreggation point.)</p>\n<p>Youtube or Netflix go via the Internet (OTT), they deliver their streams at a higher aggregation level to the ISP, be it an IX or a peering point. They own or hire a widely distributed Content Delivery Network (CDN) to minimize the gap between their servers and the local concentration point for the access line of the end-user. The variable cost for the ISP is in the peak transmission capacity between the CDN and the local aggregation point where the access line starts. The main issue there is that (on-demand) video traffic does not fit in the statistical multiplexing ratio’s of the past, that allowed high oversubscription ratio’s without complaints of the subscribers. This cost must either be born by the broadband access line subscriber or someone else. The costs of this middle mile transmission capacity expansion are (per subscriber) not insignificant, but not major when compared to the absolute subscription level, at least in relatively densely populated area’s. (see previous posts)</p>\n<p>The rational thing to do from a technological and operational point of view is the have the OTT content providers to expand their CDN’s (at their cost) to deeper into the network, while increasing middle mile capacity paid for by broadband access subscribers. There is no reason why this could not be accomodated at very acceptable costs.</p>\n<p>The business side has a different observation: the revenue source of linear (and on-demand ) TV is potentially endangered by the likes of Netflix, especially if the price level of a TV package is high.</p>\n<p>The tension between these 2 perspectives is noticeable.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fare-iptv-packets-more-equal-than-internet-packets%2F&linkname=Are%20IPTV%20packets%20more%20equal%20than%20Internet%20packets%3F\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fare-iptv-packets-more-equal-than-internet-packets%2F&linkname=Are%20IPTV%20packets%20more%20equal%20than%20Internet%20packets%3F\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fare-iptv-packets-more-equal-than-internet-packets%2F&linkname=Are%20IPTV%20packets%20more%20equal%20than%20Internet%20packets%3F\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2011%2F05%2Fare-iptv-packets-more-equal-than-internet-packets%2F&title=Are%20IPTV%20packets%20more%20equal%20than%20Internet%20packets%3F\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a></p>"
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"title" : "What The Game's Been Missing: Spoken Monologues",
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"content" : "Music is like sex. You have to ease into it.<br><br>\n\nAnd like sex, the best music is made when you and the musician have a little time to get to\nknow each other. Too often, artists are forced to have the musical equivalent of a hook up,\nmade to shave their songs into three-minute (three-and-a-half-minutes, if they are lucky) quickies of radio-ready\nmusic to satisfy the insatiable hunger of labels, stations, and fans. What this really means is\nthat artists don't have time properly lure their listeners, instead giving them a momentary flash in\nthe pan rather than a smoldering slow burn.\n\n\n \nAn age-old trick for extending soul songs (for your pleasure) was the spoken monologue. Before guest rappers or spoken word poetry breaks filled the world of R&B, the monologue was a\nform of aural foreplay, drawing the listeners into the singer's world. The build-up caused by this\nextraneous exposition made you feel as if you knew the person who was talking to you through\nyour radio. Crazy, yes, but think about it. You could have been that friend listening to a homeboy complain about his\nwoman, as is the case in <b>Bobby Womack</b>'s <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbbZ_k1Z8gU\">\"If You Think You're Lonely Now.\"</a> Or you could have been the\nhomegirl silently eavesdropping in on <b>Shirley Brown</b>'s <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZssL3nr6JZg\">\"Woman to Woman\"</a> conversation.\n<br><br>\nThe spoken monologue could even have been a deliciously vengeful dig at a lover caught cheating. Take, for\nexample, the quintessential (and utterly comical) monologue from \"The Rain\" by <b>Oran \"Juice\" Jones</b> who gave us a front row seat to this hood soap opera.<br><br>\nFirst, he set up his lover with a honeytrap:<br><br><i>\n\nHey, hey, baby, how ya doin'? Come on in here.<br>\nGot some hot chocolate on the stove waiting for you.<br>\nListen, first things first, let me hang up the coat.<br>\nYeah, how was your day today?<br>\nDid you miss me?<br>\nYou did? Yeah? I missed you, too</i>.<br><br>\n\nThen he went in for the kill:<br><br><i>\n\nI missed you so much I followed you today.<br>\nThat's right! Now close your mouth, 'cause you cold busted!</i><br><br>\n\nFrom there, he went on to elaborate how he COULD have showed his ass:<br><br><i>\n\nMy first impulse was to run up on you and do a Rambo.<br>\nWhip out the jammy and flat blast both of you.<br>I didn't wanna mess up this 3700 dollar lynx coat.<br>\nSo instead, I chilled. That's right. Chilled</i>.<br><br>\n\nAnd <i>then </i>he exacted his revenge:<br><br><i>Then I went to the bank. Took out every dime.<br>\nAnd then I went and cancelled all those credit cards. Yeah. </i><br><i>All your charge accounts. Yeah.<br>I stuck you up for every piece of jewelry I ever bought you! </i><br><i>Yeah, that's right, everythang! Everythang.<br>Nah, don't go, don't go, don't go lookin' in that closet.</i><br><i>'Cause you aint got nothing in there.</i><div><i>Everything you came here with is packed up and waiting for you in the guest room. </i><br><i>That's right. What was you thinking about? Huh?</i><br><i>What was you trying to prove? Huh?<br>You was with the Juice!<br>\nI gave you silk suits, Gucci handbags, blue diamonds.<br>\nI gave you things you couldn't even pronounce!<br>Now I can't give you nothin' but advice.<br>\nCause you still young. That's right, you still young.</i><br>\n<i>I hope you learned a valuable lesson from all this.<br>You know. Gon find somebody like me one of these days.<br>\nUntil then, you know what you gotta do?</i><br><br>\n\nFinally, he let his old girl know what time it is:<br><br><i>\n\nYou gotta get on outta here with that alley-cat-coat-wearing,\nhush-puppy-shoe-wearing crumbcake I saw you with. <br>\nCause you\ndismissed!<br>\nThat's right, silly rabbit, tricks are made for kids, don't you know\nthat?<br>\nYou without me like corn flake without the milk! <br>\nThis my world!<br>\nYou' just a squirrel trying to get a nut! <br>\nNow get on outta here. <br>\nScat! Don't touch that coat!</i><br><br>\n\n\n<iframe width=\"480\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/9dZW1C3neao\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\n<br><br>\n\nIndeed, you should not touch the coat, nor should you cross the all-powerful Oran \"Juice\" Jones. If\nyou couldn't tell by the sheen on his suit in the video, he is a powerful man and will not tolerate\nalleycats disrespecting his sexy. And how do you know this? Because he told you. He didn't sing it. He didn't rap it. He didn't try to sugarcoat it with a poem. He descended from his pedestal of musical glory to give the audience the nitty gritty, and\nthat's real.\n<br><br>\nPerhaps the best known instance of a singer breaking it down so that it will forever be broke was in <b>Lenny Williams</b>' classic, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbzkwLWK-Ps\">\"Cause I Love You.\"</a> Torn beyond belief at losing his woman, he went into explicit detail about the lovesick trance he found himself in (\"I knocked on your door, and\nmy knocks went unanswered.\" \"I watched TV until the TV went off.\") upon finding that she was\nnowhere to be found. Listening to Williams cuts straight to the heart-meat, and you literally feel\nhis cries of \"oh-Oh-oh-Oh-oh-Oh-OH\" wrack through your body. That kind of passion doesn't\nhappen in less than two minutes. It is a papable tension, built up by the honeyed words and\nyearnings of a lovelorn singer making his case for redemption by using a dose of real talk to titillate the\naudience's emotional core.\n\n<br><br>\n\n\n</div>"
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"content" : "For six months in my life, I pursued a Fashion Design Dream. That was a long time ago. I don't remember the last time I tried designing anything for myself but deep down, that passion still flickers.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5758044678/\" title=\"_MG_9478 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5222/5758044678_af4053e582_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"_MG_9478\"></a><br>This Vlisco Fashion Show was just to showcase their new collection of designs and I was privileged enough to get a front seat from where I could steal a few shots. I wasn't the official photographer. I was there as a guest.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5757501217/\" title=\"_MG_9468 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2387/5757501217_7b9ec57939_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"_MG_9468\"></a><br>Enjoy the pictures and do have a great A.U Day :)<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5757504651/\" title=\"_MG_9523 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2287/5757504651_afc7bdbc50_b.jpg\" width=\"533\" height=\"800\" alt=\"_MG_9523\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5757502943/\" title=\"_MG_9489 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3501/5757502943_2e090b9460_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"_MG_9489\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5758046338/\" title=\"_MG_9493 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5149/5758046338_417a5f6a74_b.jpg\" width=\"533\" height=\"800\" alt=\"_MG_9493\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5757504223/\" title=\"_MG_9509 by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5068/5757504223_d3c2f2350a_b.jpg\" width=\"533\" height=\"800\" alt=\"_MG_9509\"></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-2563739172912707395?l=nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Male lactation: Can a 33-year-old guy learn to breast-feed?",
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"content" : "You don't see many men in the lactation section of Buy Buy Baby, but that's where I was when I bought my first breast pump. I wasn't there on a mission for a pregnant wife or girlfriend. I was preparing to test an obscure secret of biology: Men can lactate. While not widely known, the image of the breast-feeding male dates back thousands of years. The Bible provides one in Numbers 11:12, where Moses complains to God about the difficulties of watching over the freed slaves in the Sinai wilderness: \"Have I begotten them, that you should say to me, Carry them in your bosom, as a nursing father bears the sucking child … ?\" (There's a more literal reference in the Talmud.) In more recent times, Charles Darwin himself observed that \"it is well known that in the males of all mammals, including man, rudimentary mammæ exist. These in several instances have become well developed, and have yielded a copious supply of milk.\"<br><br>[<a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2295405/?from=rss\">more ...</a>] <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:5afa8d572b1019746711378d2244205f:DDBDT9yGqaYZfYonXj5MLAV3CbJaS4Faf4QwjydTP7a2xCwcKsKkG4qo4jduRAw1LturjFjimy1n7sU%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Facebook\" alt=\"Add to Facebook\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:2fc0bc1122fa7f5707c983742b016315:jqdlNKq1zqc8E66QiYCjBtHuJwY4itV7%2B4SjJfohuv041UBcQOqzASY9NT7A5e%2FrAYSlxwCi9mKw2xQ%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Twitter\" alt=\"Add to Twitter\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/twitter.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:6a5ff78be158132f45259e765e7c15df:4FSweylZkw838Iwj9pQt2tnzQkRf6JBp1RBlDSNtBB2VRYLq1GBzXkJjHpH3zYsBW%2FywiNbaPiTBEg%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to digg\" alt=\"Add to digg\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1b04ce93f9fd700d2ebb20031c50f9ec:kKWmTAL1Gg0dldAqfT%2BX%2FzX7YlKFgk%2Fg3BZi%2BYknYLs81I1cTaNzP9fwigLwJsZhDINItM3wKhin2g%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Reddit\" alt=\"Add to Reddit\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b60ea4b1b0b02d2c7bc5a8b010c82013:pTMyRjdzXpZw3Cs%2B9wLDKvMpyOX18TX1rtQUnFwVD%2F4WhthE9lak6Xy4kwz42pI%2Ff4mSxZWeCPmGlk8%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" alt=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:72ab6b410751f21c39da8ada79bdd682:FgsmafimxXyx%2FAIrjDKSSoIm6xAdge4KjJOgAPl7TKwc9UJ9MptiG0cszUMRj1dd5EzV4MT4bzlUeMM%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Email this Article\" alt=\"Email this Article\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthisHF.gif\"></a>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f984f2710c930db97a38707cac6df84d&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f984f2710c930db97a38707cac6df84d&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=Business&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29918.rss.Business.34533,cat.Business.rss\">"
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"title" : "Taking small steps toward personalized search",
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"content" : "Some very useful lessons in this work in a recent WSDM 2011 conference, \"Personalizing Web Search using Long Term Browsing History\" (<a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/139933/MatthijsRadlinski_WSDM2011.pdf\">PDF</a>).<br><br>First, they focused on a simple and low risk approach to personalization, reordering results below the first few. There are a lot of what are essentially ties in the ranking of results after the first 1-2 results; the ranker cannot tell the difference between the results and is ordering them arbitrarily. Targeting the results the ranker cannot differentiate is not only low risk, but more likely to yield easy improvements.<br><br>Second, they did a large scale online evaluation of their personalization approach using click data as judgement of quality. That's pretty rare but important, especially for personalized search where some random offline human judge is unlikely to know the original searcher's intent.<br><br>Third, their goal was not to be perfect, but just help more often than hurt. And, in fact, that is what they did, with the best performing algorithm \"improving 2.7 times more queries than it harms\".<br><br>I think those are good lessons for others working on personalized search or even personalization in general. You can take baby steps toward personalization. You can start with minor reordering of pages. You can make low risk changes lower down to the page or only when the results are otherwise tied for quality. As you get more aggressive, with each step, you can verify that each step does more good than harm.<br><br>One thing I don't like about the paper is that they only investigated using long-term history. There is a lot of evidence (e.g. <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2007/08/effectiveness-of-personalized-search.html\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/09/potential-of-web-search.html\">[2]</a>) that very recent history, your last couple searches and clicks, can be important, since they may show frustration in an attempt to satisfy some task. But otherwise great lessons in this work out of Microsoft Research.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-1270519294466080406?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/FD4v50GNZ4Y\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "\"You Might Also Like:\" Privacy Risks of Collaborative Filtering",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~akilzer/\">Ann Kilzer</a>, <a href=\"http://randomwalker.info/\">Arvind Narayanan</a>, <a href=\"http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten/\">Ed Felten</a>, <a href=\"http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/\">Vitaly Shmatikov</a>, and I have released a new <a href=\"http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~jcalandr/papers/ymal-oakland11.pdf\">research paper</a> detailing the privacy risks posed by collaborative filtering recommender systems. To examine the risk, we use public data available from Hunch, LibraryThing, Last.fm, and Amazon in addition to evaluating a synthetic system using data from the Netflix Prize dataset. The results demonstrate that temporal changes in recommendations can reveal purchases or other transactions of individual users.</p>\n<p>To help users find items of interest, sites routinely recommend items similar to a given item. For example, product pages on Amazon contain a \"Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought\" list. These recommendations are typically public, and they are the product of patterns learned from all users of the system. If customers often purchase both item A and item B, a collaborative filtering system will judge them to be highly similar. Most sites generate ordered lists of similar items for any given item, but some also provide numeric similarity scores.</p>\n<p>Although item similarity is only indirectly related to individual transactions, we determined that temporal changes in item similarity lists or scores can reveal details of those transactions. If you're a Mozart fan and you listen to a Justin Bieber song, this choice increases the perceived similarity between Justin Bieber and Mozart. Because similarity lists and scores are based on perceived similarity, your action may result in changes to these scores or lists.</p>\n<p>Suppose that an attacker knows some of your past purchases on a site: for example, past item reviews, social networking profiles, or real-world interactions are a rich source of information. New purchases will affect the perceived similarity between the new items and your past purchases, possibility causing visible changes to the recommendations provided for your previously purchased items. We demonstrate that an attacker can leverage these observable changes to infer your purchases. Among other things, these attacks are complicated by the fact that multiple users simultaneously interact with a system and updates are not immediate following a transaction.</p>\n<p>To evaluate our attacks, we use data from Hunch, LibraryThing, Last.fm, and Amazon. Our goal is not to claim privacy flaws in these specific sites (in fact, we often use data voluntarily disclosed by their users to verify our inferences), but to demonstrate the general feasibility of inferring individual transactions from the outputs of collaborative filtering systems. Among their many differences, these sites vary dramatically in the information that they reveal. For example, Hunch reveals raw item-to-item correlation scores, but Amazon reveals only lists of similar items. In addition, we examine a simulated system created using the Netflix Prize dataset. Our paper outlines the experimental results.</p>\n<p>While inference of a Justin Bieber interest may be innocuous, inferences could expose anything from dissatisfaction with a job to health issues. Our attacks assume that a victim reveals certain past transactions, but users may publicly reveal certain transactions while preferring to keep others private. Ultimately, users are best equipped to determine which transactions would be embarrassing or otherwise problematic. We demonstrate that the public outputs of recommender systems can reveal transactions without user knowledge or consent.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, existing privacy technologies appear inadequate here, failing to simultaneously guarantee acceptable recommendation quality and user privacy. Mitigation strategies are a rich area for future work, and we hope to work towards solutions with others in the community.</p>\n<p>Worth noting is that this work suggests a risk posed by any feature that adapts in response to potentially sensitive user actions. Unless sites explicitly consider the data exposed, such features may inadvertently leak details of these underlying actions.</p>\n<p>Our paper contains additional details. This work was presented earlier today at the <a href=\"http://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2011/\">2011 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy</a>. Arvind has also <a href=\"http://33bits.org/2011/05/24/you-might-also-like-privacy-risks-of-collaborative-filtering\">blogged about this work</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>As nobody who hasn’t been living in a Faraday cage on Ellesmere Island for the past four days no longer knows, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/15/imf-chief-debt-talks-crisis\">Dominique Strauss-Kahn</a>, IMF managing director and probable next president of the French Republic, has been charged with attempted rape and has been remanded in custody of the New York police. I’m sure the AFOE Whole Control Inter-Macro Economic Soul Patrol will have some thoughts about the future leadership of the IMF in due course. For mine, I’m tempted to think that rudderless confusion is probably the least harmful condition for this organisation, but I know not every reader will agree. </p>\n<p>Anyway. What about French politics? That’s bound to be more fun. </p>\n<p>The most important fact here is that DSK was predicted by national polls to beat all the other candidates in the next presidential election. The Socialist leadership has been something between a soap opera and a French movie about self-torturing neurotic dread of action for years, but basically everybody expected that once he decided he was going to run, not only would he win the primary, but he’d also take out the general election. The facts are pretty simple – President Sarkozy has the worst poll rating of any French president <em>ever</em>. The extreme-right leader, Marine Le Pen, is doing better than ever. But DSK was both the top pick out of the Socialists, and also the polls’ pick for the big gig. </p>\n<p>In fact, there was widespread speculation that the horrible experience of May, 2002 might be reversed. Rather than the extreme Left splitting the vote and leaving a run-off between the extreme Right and the Gaullist Right, the extreme Right would split the vote and leave a run-off between the extreme Right and the Socialists. This scenario was a little like a nuclear attack on Manchester destroying Old Trafford and Maine Road. A lot of people would think it a terrible disaster. But quite a lot of the people most concerned would have to mourn through gritted teeth to keep from laughing with pure <em>schadenfreude</em>. </p>\n<p>Who was DSK? An academic economist and long-time Socialist, from a well-off family, one of those men who always seem to come up lucky. He was an effective minister of Finance, Economics, and Industry in the Jospin government, and he presided over possibly the first time the IMF ever thought wages should go up. I remember him wanting to know why the British let General Electric buy the division of Amersham International plc that at the time made practically all the world’s DNA sequencers. I still haven’t heard anyone answer that. </p>\n<p>In French politics, he was very much parallel to his contemporary Peter Mandelson in Britain. Both ran economic ministries with some success, and did likewise as international civil servants. Both were considered dangerously foreign to their own parties for a mixture of reasons to do with ideology and with style – both liked the company of the rich and enjoyed good tailoring and better travel. They were certainly both well to the right of their parties, but it was DSK who was responsible for the 35 hours law in France, and the British Labour Party is now rediscovering how little it likes Conservative government in general. They were also both disliked for appearing clever, visibly enjoying cleverness, and repeatedly winning in micro-political squabbles with the journalists who hated them. As is the way with people who are genuinely clever and effective and look like they enjoy it, they were both hated and indispensable to the leaders of their respective movements.</p>\n<p>It is probably worth pointing out that they are both Jewish and – much as everyone involved would deny it – this does look like a role grounded in stereotype.</p>\n<p>Mandelson collected a lot of fairly horrible abuse from the cheaper end of the British press because (and again, everyone involved will now whine about this) he’s gay. DSK was regularly written up as a stereotypical French ladies’ man, a Latin lover for whom it was all both indivisible from his personality and from the sheer style of politics. </p>\n<p>It seems, in the absence of a <em>coup de theatre</em> to blow the theatre roof off, that only one of these statements was true. Women are already turning up who claim that he raped them years ago – most shamefully, one of them was apparently told by her mother to shut up. Her mother is a relatively important official in the PS’s regional organisation for Paris, DSK’s power base throughout his career, and someone who could perhaps have expected favour if and when he was back in power. This week’s <em>Canard Enchainé</em> is likely to be an explosively sordid document. </p>\n<p>It would seem that the whole story is the classic one of an abuser protected by his friends, family, and colleagues. The network would say nothing, and indeed would influence others to say nothing, until the day when he pushed his luck outside its zone of influence. At this point, it is usual for a whole lot of people to have sudden and wholly unexpected fits of principle. I would not be surprised if skeletons tumbled from many other French politicians’ cupboards in the next few weeks. If I sound pissed off, well, how many other people were convinced that he was a decent man? </p>\n<p>So far, the party and specifically the Ile de France regional federation seems to be…well, <a href=\"http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/01012337636-dsk-la-these-du-complot-se-repand-sur-le-net\">check out the list</a>. It is to be expected that a lot of the people named will rapidly forget that the whole thing is a plot against them because Sofitel is a French company. (Surely, had he stayed at the Hilton, that would have been even more suspicious?) I hear that this tone of denial is quite widespread among people who certainly ought to know better.</p>\n<p>Upshot? It seems unlikely anyone will be more satisfied with Sarkozy as a result. In fact, only a revolution of opinion would be enough to help much. And Sarkozy’s personal style – all yachts and executive jets and watches and models – is rather like DSK’s. It will probably give Marine Le Pen a little more. </p>\n<p>Inside the PS, expect yet more neurosis. DSK’s supporters skew to the right of the party, and he has a particular beef with Laurent Fabius (who in any case isn’t going to win). In the absence of other factors, they’d probably be spread roughly equally between Ségoléne Royal, François Hollande, and Martine Aubry. But there are other factors. Royal and Aubry have defined geographical power bases, Royal from being president of Poitou-Charentes, Aubry from being mayor of Lille. If you had to pick, you’d probably take the second for an intra-party fight. DSK’s support is localised in Paris – it was the only PS federation not to vote for Royal as candidate last time out. Hollande’s base is in the party organisation, from his years as first secretary and therefore chief organiser. It’s fair to say that a lot of his people are also based in the capital, so he might claim more of a bonus than anyone else. He has recently been enjoying an upward trend in the polls.</p>\n<p>It is possible that this is an end of an era, or at least a significant moment in moral history. As I said above, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there were more disgraces in short order, and that the general tolerance-level will have been reduced to a more defensible value.</p>\n<p>Also, the style of French politics is changing. Mitterand is dead, Jacques Chirac is gone. Sarkozy is the least popular president on record. DSK, Laurent Fabius, Charles Pasqua, Simone Veil, Edith Cresson, Rachida Dati, a whole series of enormous and often enormously flawed personalities have left the scene in one way or another. Dominique de Villepin and Alain Juppé hang around, but will either make any impact? </p>\n<p>The new style is understated and in fact quite dull. On the Right, there are people like François Fillon and Christine Lagarde – a gang of grey managers. On the Left, people like Hollande and Aubry – solid town hall politicians. Marine Le Pen’s unique selling point is that she makes fascism boring. Her party’s thuggish stewards have been ordered by party headquarters to dispense with their shiny boots and paramilitary trappings, and are said to be exploring British football-casual style for the future. So much the better for the Italian textile sector, so much the worse for Leicester. But perhaps dull is good. It’s worth remembering that dull is great news in the long term of European history. They said Clement Attlee was dull.</p>\n<p>And now, for the IMF…</p>\n\n\n<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/deference-check/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: Deference check\">Deference check</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/french-political-update-surveillance-sex-and-surveys/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: French political update: surveillance, sex, and surveys\">French political update: surveillance, sex, and surveys</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/123and-theyre-off-the-left/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: 1..2..3..And They’re Off – The Left\">1..2..3..And They’re Off – The Left</a></li>\n</ol></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=mFveq0FD_Rc:j5OwDctyl1A:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=mFveq0FD_Rc:j5OwDctyl1A:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=mFveq0FD_Rc:j5OwDctyl1A:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?i=mFveq0FD_Rc:j5OwDctyl1A:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?a=mFveq0FD_Rc:j5OwDctyl1A:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/fistfulofeuros/bBvg?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "King David's Nkrumah Salute",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\"> The first leader of a newly independent Ghana<br>Faced many a challenge to visions of utopia;<br>The vision is based on science and agriculture;<br>Here come the vultures shitting like pigeons on a sculpture.<br>Nobody's perfect, yo! he's got faults you can list them...<p></p> Dr. Nkrumah's intentions were the best<br>Why it's all a mess cause we still needed lots of help from the West...<p></p>Kennedy and his foreign aid<br>During the cold war turning Ghana into economic slaves...<p></p> Military coup after coup it's appaling<br>Seventh time a charm: enter Jerry Rawlings...<p></p>There once lived a great man with a geat vision, great plan,<br>A great dreamer determined to realize what he'd seen for Africa<br> Things fell apart at the seams in Ghana...<p></p>We salute ya, we salute ya,<br>Dr. Kwame Nkrumah</blockquote><div>—from <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewt-YTLCrek\">"Nkrumah Salute"</a> by King David</div> <p></p><div>My cousin and <a href=\"http://www.dmsounddesign.com/DMSoundDesignLtd/Intro.html\">sound producer extraordinaire</a> released this clear-eyed tribute to the great man who spearheaded the African independence movements of the 50s, including that of Nigeria, whose independence came a few years after Ghana's. Nkrumah was the father among pan-African visionary leaders from Nyerere to Azikiwe who did succeed in the most visible successes of independence, but whose energy and charisma were not quite enough to counter the complex manipulations engineered by colonial powers within the field of influence of the globally influential cold war poles in Washington and Moscow.</div> <p></p><div><iframe src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ewt-YTLCrek?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"417\" width=\"500\"></iframe></div><p></p><div>What I like about this Nkrumah salute is that it doesn't shy away from calling out the disaster of Nkrumah's Volta river project, which also pioneered errors repeated across Africa where ambition for foreign exchange and rapid industrialization led governments into economic patterns that extended the hegemony of Western powers while decimating indigenous industries. These errors led to corruption, which led to erosion of the most important human resources and caused perilous internal strains. In Ghana the false gold was bauxite, which inspired the Volta river project. In Nigeria it was and still is petroleum. Such projects required strong central control, which bred autocracy, in which Nkrumah was also an unfortunate pioneer, and eventually this led to a wave of military coups across Africa, and made it easier for the CIA and KGB to conduct their proxy wears across the continent.</div> <p></p><div>Despite all that we rightly salute Nkrumah. if these have been harsh lessons for Africans to learn, it has been essential that we learn them ourselves, and Nkrumah led the way to such self-determination. It is also for us to address the problems over time. We should be wary of quick fixes. Everyone salutes Mandela for his greatness, but I'm sure he paid careful attention to his African history, and learned the right lessons. Even Mandela had his elders, among whom Nkrumah was a leading light.</div> <p></p><div>I've always personally enjoyed the fact that Nkrumah took his pan-Africanism even as far as matters of the heart, marrying an elagent Coptic Egyptian lady Fathia, whom he impressed as a fiery African nationalist in the spirit of Nasser. The marriage fell apart with the strains of Nkrumah's later years in power and Fathia returned to Cairo even before Nkrumah went into exile in Guinea, but after Fathia's death a few years ago she was flown according to her wishes to be buried beside her husband in Ghana.</div> <p></p><div><div>\n<img alt=\"Tumblr_lgr9zfh6ph1qzcr7ao1_400\" height=\"516\" src=\"http://getfile9.posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/copia/2bj5YuuXeWGblVQDwQE613kguE72EW937OP8em398OjRSWR8fKU68kC3rwQn/tumblr_lgr9zfH6PH1qzcr7ao1_400.png\" width=\"357\">\n</div>\n<br></div><p></p><p></p>ObPoeticReference: <p></p><div><blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\"> <span style=\"font-family:Arial,tahoma Trebuchet MS,lucida,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px\">We are the punch bag of fate<br>on whom the hands of destiny wearies<br> and the show of blows gradually lose<br>their viciousness on our patience<br>until they become caresses of admiration<br>and time that heals all wounds<br>comes with a balm and without tears,<br>soothes the bruises on our spirits.</span></blockquote> <div>—from "Ghana's Philosophy of Survival" by Kwesi Brew, richly discussed in <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2009/03/poetry-as-cultural-memory.html\">"Poetry as Cultural Memory"</a>, by Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah. It's also well worth reading <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2006/03/africa-1966.html\">"Africa, 1966"</a> on the same Weblog.</div> <p></p><p></p></div>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/king-davids-nkrumah-salute\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/king-davids-nkrumah-salute#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "Personalized Recommendations using the Activity Graph Provider",
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"content" : "<h1>Activity Graph Concepts</h1> \n <h1> </h1> \n <p> An Activity Craph can be considered a set of actions taken on\n items within a <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10149/toc.htm\">WebCenter Space</a>. The result is a graph, where the nodes\n are the items (users or documents) and the edges are the actions taken \non those items (view, edit, like, tag, etc). </p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/jpsdg_rec_agoverview.gif\"><br></p> \n <p>Much more detail is provided in the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm\">WebCenter documentation</a>, which introduces the concept with: "The Activity Graph service provides suggestions of people that a user \nmay be interested in connecting with, based on existing connections and \nshared interaction with objects within the application. It also directs \nusers to Spaces or content that may be of interest, based on similar \ninteractions with those Spaces or items that the user is currently \nviewing."</p> \n <p>The purpose of this blog entry is to show how Activity Graph can be integrated with WebCenter Personalization (WCP) to provide recommendations or suggestions to users at runtime, creating a dynamic, personalized user experience. <br></p> \n <h1>The Activity Graph Provider<br></h1> \n <p>Activity Graph is exposed as a WebCenter REST service, enabling the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/introduction_to_webcenter_personalization_the_conductor\">Conductor</a> to plug it in as a <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/data_providers_integration_of_personalization_components\">data provider</a>. WebCenter Personalization uses Activity Graph to yield \nrecommendations of documents or similar users at runtime, easily able to\n integrate these recommendations within a scenario. Details of providers are in the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_personalize.htm#CACFJFJD\">WebCenter Personalization documentation</a>; this article is more focused on actually using the Activity Graph Provider, shipped ou-of-the-box as part of WebCenter Personalization, in the context of an application.<br></p> \n <p>Several examples of using the Activity Graph Provider are given in the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WebCenter Personaliztion demo application</a>. The concept is similar to that of the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/using_the_cmis_provider_to\">CMIS Provider</a>, although the APIs are not as straightforward. This blog entry will attempt to give you an overview of those APIs, as well as introduce you to WebCenter ID concepts, which are critical to using the more advanced APIs of the Activity Graph Provider. </p> \n <h2> Prerequisites</h2> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4>Activities must take place within a <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10149/toc.htm\">WebCenter Space</a></h4> \n <p>Create a public WebCenter Space, add some users, then generate some data. For example, create several documents and have the different users interact with them (view, edit, tag, like, etc). <br></p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4> The Activity Graph Engines must be run to collect and analyze the data</h4> \n <p>Best explained in the Activity Graph documentation section on <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e12405/wcadm_recommend.htm#BEBBADEG\">running the engine</a>. </p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <h4>Visibility of items</h4> Either documents must be in a public space, or the domain must be configured for <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/configuring_cross_domain_trust_service\">Cross-domain Trust Services</a>.\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n </li> \n </ul> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <h4>Make sure recommendations show up in WebCenter</h4> \n <p>Here's an example of recommended documents in WebCenter; in this case, recommendations for the 'Glaciers in Driveway' document. Note the little triangle icon at the top of the diagram; click on that for recommendations:</p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/WebCenterRec.png\"></p> \n <p> </p> \n <p> </p> \n <h2>Activity Graph Nomenclature </h2> \n <h4> ClassURN</h4> \n <p> These are classes of Activity Graph nodes, explained in the Node Classes section of the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIIGDCJ\">Activity Graph documentation</a>. Examples are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> \n <p>Users (<code>WC.user</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Spaces (<code>WC.group-space</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Documents (<code>WC.document</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Wiki Pages (<code>WC.wiki-page</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Blogs (<code>WC.blog</code>)</p> \n </li> \n <li> \n <p>Discussion Topics (<code>WC.topic</code>)</p> \n </li> \n </ul> \n <h4>ObjectURN</h4> \n <p>These are the WebCenter IDs for the ClassURN. Examples are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> WC.user => username, such as 'carl'</li> \n <li>WC.document => the document ID, such as stellent-repository#dDocName:MOUNTAINS</li> \n </ul> \n <p>IDs for items in the WebCenter Space may be found by drilling down into the item itself. For documents, click on the 'information' icon to see the "identifier" field:</p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/DocumentIDs.png\"></p> \n <h4>Actions and Recipes<br></h4> \n <p> Actions are taken upon items in WebCenter. A recipe is some combination of weighted actions. Both are described more in detail in the 'Actions' section of the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIIGDCJ\">Activity Graph documentation</a>. Actions will be used to formulate recipes used in the recommendation AG REST calls. </p> \n <p>The AGProvider APIs generally take the default recipes for recommendations, greatly simplifying the API. However, if you are more familiar with Activity Graph, APIs that let you parameterize the recipe are also available on the AGProvider.<br></p> \n <p> </p> \n <p> </p> \n <h1>A Tour of the Activity Graph Provider APIs</h1> \n <p>The Activity Graph Provider APIs are readily available from the JDeveloper UI in the scenario editor when the integrated domain server is running. </p> \n <p> If you're new to JDeveloper, you might want to check out the <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_personalize.htm#CACFFDHG\">JDeveloper tutorial for creating a personalization application</a>. If you want a jump-start on using the Activity Graph Provider in a working demo, check out the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCPS demo app blog entry</a>.</p> \n <h2>Return Objects</h2> \n <p>Because WCP interacts with the Activity Graph REST service, its return types have been marshaled into JAXB objects. Here is a class diagram for reference (pardon the layout), best read from bottom to top. The two objects of interest are Recommendations and Results. <br></p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGReturnTypes.png\"><br></p> \n <h2>Recommendations</h2> \n <p>Here's an example scenario in JDeveloper invoking the AGProvider 'recommendations' API:</p> \n <p> <img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGRecs.png\"></p> \n <p>Recommendations require a 'context': in this case, it requires an input document as context so that it can recommend other documents. Activity Graph relies on 'recipes' for its calculations, which are explained more in detail <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIBEBGC\">here</a>. In this example, the default recommendation recipe is used. </p> \n <h3>Resource: QueryRecommendations</h3> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <p>Examples for most of these APIs are included in the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/activity-provider.zip\">sample scenarios</a>. Most often, you could simply use the first few methods. More experienced Activity Graph users may opt for the full-featured APIs for more control over the results.<br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedUsers(String user)</h4> \n <p>Return recommendations of other users for the input user, using the default recipe of "recipe=user-connect:100;user-edit:50;user-like:50;user-comment:10;user-tag:10;user-all:1". The user parameter is in the form of the username, such as 'carl'. <br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedDocuments(String docId)</h4> \n <p> Return items that are recommended based on the input document, using the default recipe of "recipe=item-edit:100;item-like:50;item-comment:20;item-tag:10;item-all:1".<br>The docId is in the form of stanl18-ucm11g#dDocName:STANL18USORACL013209</p> \n <h4>public Recommendations recommendedGroupSpaces(String groupSpaceId)</h4> \n <p>Return groupspaces that are recommended, based on the input GroupSpace, using the default recipe of "recipe=gs-edit:10;gs-all:1". <br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendations(String classURN, String objectURN)</h4> \n <p>Get contextual recommendations using default recipes. The recipe is chosen based on the classURN, which has to be one of the OOTB classURNs. The OOTB classURNs are: WC.user, WC.document, WC.group-space, WC.wiki-page, WC.blog, WC.topic.<br></p> \n <p>See above section for definitions of ClassURN and ObjectURN. See the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/public%20Recommendations%20getRecommendations%28String%20classURN,%20String%20objectURN%29\">Activity Graph documentation</a> for more information.<br></p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendations(String classURN, String objectURN, String recipe)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, except this API permits you to specify the recipe instead of using the default. See the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/public%20Recommendations%20getRecommendations%28String%20classURN,%20String%20objectURN%29\">Activity Graph documentation</a> for more information.</p> \n <h4>public Recommendations getRecommendationsUsingFilter(String userCredentialClassURN, String classURN, String objectURN, String recipe, String classURNRestrictions,<br> String excludeObjectActions, Integer startIndex, Integer pageSize) </h4> \n <p>Access to the full-blown <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17904_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_recommend.htm#BEIBGJBE\">Activity Graph REST service</a> parameters. <br></p> \n <h2>Common Users</h2> \n <h3>Resource: QueryCommonUsers</h3> \n <h3> Methods</h3> \n <h4>public Results commonUserConnections(String userId1, String userId2)</h4> \n <p>Return other users with which these two users share WebCenter user connections.<br></p> \n <h4>public Results commonUsersForGroupSpaces(String gsId2, String gsId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>Return users that have both interacted with these two groupspaces. The IDs of the GroupSpaces are in the form of: 'OOW_s8bee14d8_a5fd_405e_af3e_bc2f51af1735'<br>Valid actions are: </p> \n <ul> \n <li>gs-edit</li> \n <li>gs-all</li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public Results commonUsersForDocuments(String docId1, String docId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>Return users that have both interacted with these two documents. Example document Id: stanl18-ucm11g#dDocName:USORACL1234567. Valid actions are:</p> \n <ul> \n <li>item-edit</li> \n <li>item-like</li> \n <li>item-comment</li> \n <li>item-all</li> \n <li>item-tag</li> \n </ul> \n <h4> public Results commonUsersForItems(String sourceClassURN, String sourceObjectURN, String targetClassURN, String targetObjectURN, String action)</h4> \n <p>This is a full-featured API for users who understand the Activity Graph nomenclature and action restrictions. Returns users that have interacted with both these items via the specified action. See section on ClassURN nomenclature in this blog entry for valid classURN parameters.<br></p> \n <h2>Common Items</h2> \n <h3>Resource: QueryCommonItems</h3> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <h4>public Results commonItemsForUsers(String userId1, String userId2, String action)</h4> \n <p>The common items collection represents items with which these two users have both interacted with, sorted by most-recent action occurrence date. Valid actions are: </p> \n <ul> \n <li>item-edit</li> \n <li>item-like</li> \n <li>item-comment</li> \n <li>item-all</li> \n <li>item-tag</li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public Results commonGroupSpacesForUsers(String userId2, String userId2)</h4> \n <p>Return groupspaces with which the two users have both interacted.</p> \n <h2>The Activity Graph Function Provider</h2> \n <p>Function providers are essentially classes that provide static utility methods, most often to transform data within a scenario. The Activity Graph function provider is one such example. Here is an example of using it in a scenario expression:</p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGFunctionProvider.png\"> </p> \n <p>Note the syntax of invoking a function provider within a scenario. In this case, it is 'agfunction:' along with the method call. Input is the 'recommendations' variable returned from invoking the Activity Graph Provider (see example JDeveloper UI screenshot above). </p> \n <h3>Methods</h3> \n <h4>public static List<String> getContentIDs(Object agResults)</h4> \n <p>Returns the short-version content identifier from the Recommendations results. The parameter 'agResults' can be one of:</p> \n <ul> \n <li>Recommendations</li> \n <li>RecommendedItems</li> \n <li>List<Recommendation></li> \n </ul> \n <h4>public static List<String> getContentIDsFiltered(Object agResults, String filterClassURN)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but returns only those IDs corresponding to the classURN. See the nomenclature section in this blog for more details on ClassURN.</p> \n <h4> public static List<String> getContentIDsExclude(Object agResults, String excludeClassURN)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but excludes the 'excludeClassURN' from the results.</p> \n <h4>public static Recommendations filterRecsByScore(Recommendations recs, float cutoffScore)</h4> \n <p>Return only those Recommendations that are equal to or above the cutoffScore.</p> \n <h4>public static List<String> getCMISLinksFromRecommendations(Recommendations recommendations)</h4> \n <p>Return the clickable URLs to the actual content item in the recommendations.</p> \n <h4>public static List<String> getCMISLinksFromCommonItems(Results results)</h4> \n <p>Same as above, but for common items.</p> \n <h2> Using the Activity Graph Provider in Scenarios </h2> \n <h3>Configuration</h3> \n <p>If you're using the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCP demo application</a>, \n please note the section on how to configure wcps-connections.xml. This\n will provide user-specific access to the Activity Provider REST \nservice. If you want to enable the secure trust service for \ncross-domain authentication, please see <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/configuring_cross_domain_trust_service\">this post</a>. \n Enabling cross-domain security will permit users to see only the data \nthey are entitled to see, including content in private WebCenter Spaces. <br></p> \n <h3>Jump-start</h3> \n <p>Download and use the <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/sample_jdev_app_to_jump\">WCP demo application</a>\n for a quick jump-start using the Activity Graph Provider. Example scenarios are \ngiven for this provider, along with a UI to execute them. Also, I've attached a\n zip file of many <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/activity-provider.zip\">example scenarios</a> to demonstrate uses of the ActivityGraphProvider, ActivityGraphFunction Provider, EL \nsyntax, scenario collections and looping, and so on. You'll probably \nwant to change the name of the <connection> entry in each to be \n'ActivityGraphConfigConnection' if you're using the WCP demo application. </p> \n <p><img src=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/resource/AGRecsUI.png\"><br></p> \n <h3>Dot notation of return objects</h3> \n <p>The Conductor scenario syntax uses EL (Expression Language). Therefore, you can reference nested objects. Let's say you have a Results object returned from the ActivityGraphProvider, 'results'. Then:</p> \n <ul> \n <li> results.items.item is the first Item in the (Common Items) result</li> \n <li>results.items[2] is the third Item in the result</li> \n </ul> \n <h1>Summary</h1> \n <p>The Activity Graph Provider in WebCenter Personalization introduces a powerful means to personalize a user's experience via real-time recommendations based on the context of the user's experience. The <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/introduction_to_webcenter_personalization_the_conductor\">Conductor</a> architecture facilitates integration of <a href=\"https://blogs.oracle.com/webcenter_personalization/entry/data_providers_integration_of_personalization_components\">data providers</a> (the Activity Graph Provider is shipped OOTB) into scenarios. This article has delved more into the details of this component, and given links to demo applications and scenarios using the provider.</p> \n <p>Make your applications smarter: use the Activity Graph Provider to leverage personalized recommendations and take advantage of common user experiences.<br></p> \n <h4></h4>"
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"content" : "<p>If your interested in Network Effects <a href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/05/19/businessinsider-network-effects-2011-5.DTL&ao=all\">this article</a> from the San Francisco chronicle is worth reading. It outline a few ways you might be able to tackle an incumbent firm that owns the natural monopoly of a strong network effect.</p>\n<p>First they might screw up – which we call “bad execution.” This is the usual story for how Facebook managed to take the territory that other earlier social networks had already colonized. Friendster and Orkut are both fine examples of failure of execution. This has other names: lack of vision, lack of follow, etc. etc. I believe that one subspecies of failed execution is the lack of necessary complements – it is damn hard to build a huge internet business without access to the resources that Silicon Valley has and nobody else does.</p>\n<p>Secondly it is possible that the current entrant hasn’t managed to cover the ground; in which case you can grab up real estate and later displace them. I suspect that for this theory to work out you need to seize higher ground. Thus Facebook’s happen stance initial market – ivy league schools – turned out to be higher ground that MySpace’s Los Angeles party scene (plus bands & fans).</p>\n<p>The third is an old one – vertical specialization. Right from day one people have presumed eBay would face serious competitive threats from more narrowly focused auction sites: antiques say, or fashion, cars, etc. While on balance this tactic does not make sense for eBay it might make sense for other networks biz. And, it goes both ways. For example is there a social gaming business that can exist outside of Facebook – taking traffic away from them – or on the other hand – are all the massive multiplayer games going to collapse into Facebook?</p>\n<p>The fourth segment of the article is mostly about Group-on and it’s based on a bogus strawman. Nuff said. And again they don’t seem to understand how Gilt Groupe is a network effect business of a slightly different color.</p>\n<p>At one point in the article tries to split hairs about scale effects. They argue that Google’s search get’s better because they can learn by observing the behaviors of their crowd of users. I don’t see that. It is a common delusion – in my experience – that the folks who run these network businesses believe that their fine execution with it’s deep craft knowledge is the primary cause of their success rather than just a necessary part of avoiding the failure of bad execution.</p>\n<p>Many wags like to argue the CraigsList is, sooner or later, going to fail due to an or all of these reasons. Possibly, but lordy that prediction is a perennial. Anyhow, the article contains this delightful slide enumerating various attempts to seize some of that territory using vertical specialization (click to enlarge). Of course, the same chart could be made for eBay’s categories.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/craigslist-competition.png\"><img title=\"craigslist-competition\" src=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/craigslist-competition-490x367.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"367\"></a></p>\n<p>Gosh that looks like a roll up waiting to happen. I’m happy that the LinkIn IPO is going to make that a lot harder.</p>"
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"content" : "<h4><a href=\"http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Watson_Institute/Open_Source/RadioOpenSource-Teju_Cole.mp3\">Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Teju Cole (42 minutes, 20 mb mp3)</a></h4>\n<div><img src=\"http://www.radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/tejucole.jpg\" alt=\"\"></div>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.tejucole.com/\">Teju Cole</a> and <i><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/02/28/110228crbo_books_wood\">Open City</a></i>, his marvel of a first novel, pull you into a peculiarly contemporary stream of consciousness — of a global mind in motion, coming home to see himself and us, as if for the first time. Born in Michigan of Nigerian parents, Cole was raised in Lagos to the age of 17, then got his college and graduate education (briefly in medicine, then in art history) in the States. It’s not just the quick resumé that reminds you of <a href=\"http://www.radioopensource.org/rana-dasgupta-this-era-of-catastrophe-and-euphoria/\">Rana Dasgupta</a> — who was born and educated in England, then returned to his father’s country, India, to write stories and the novel <i>Solo</i>, set in the everywhere/nowhere of Bulgaria. Both writers — friends and mutual admirers, both in their mid-thirties — seem to have undertaken a project without borders. Cole tells me he likes to see himself evaluating a scene, he says, like an detective in a cop show: “What have we got here?” First, he looks; then he starts digging. History is the new geography, even at Ground Zero in Manhattan:</p>\n<div><img src=\"http://www.radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/opencity1.jpg\"></div>\n<blockquote><p>This was not the first erasure on the site… The site was a palimpsest, as was all the city, written, erased and rewritten. There had been communities here before Columbus ever set sail, before Verrazano anchored his ships in the narrows, or the black Portugese slave trader Esteban Gomez sailed up the Hudson; human beings had lived here, built homes, and quarreled with their neighbors long before the Dutch ever saw a business opportunity in the rich furst and timber of the island and its calm bay. Generations rushed through the eye of the needle, and I, one of the still legible crowd, entered the subway. I wanted to find the line that connected me to my own part in these stories…<br>\n<h6>The narrator “Julius” at the World Trade Center site, in <i><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Open-City-Novel-Teju-Cole/dp/1400068096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305680194&sr=1-1\">Open City</a></i> by Teju Cole. Random House, 2011. p. 59</h6>\n</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/04/video-teju-cole-on-coming-to-america.html\">Teju Cole</a> in conversation is sprightly, almost ecstatically musical, well-read and warm. He spins, riffs, notices and links — much as he does on the page. On an effulgent May afternoon in New York we are sitting on the grass, as it happens, before the brick row houses around Henry James’s Washington Square Park. Talk about palimpsests! And Teju Cole, feeling “more alive than on other days,” is peering through the layers and disguises of the scene, picking out evidences of his “open city” transformed.</p>\n<blockquote><p>What we see is an apparently uncomplicated scene of urban leisure on a Thursday afternoon, but all of this is happening in a historical context, and in the shadow of economic uncertainty… Some of the people are here because they’re out of work. You could say to yourself: New York City is an astonishingly diverse place, but we see around us all kinds of evidence of segregation: white students from NYU, and black women of a certain age working as nannies for white babies. We are looking at the American reality under an overlay of innocence…</p>\n<p>This city, like many others, is a space that has been pre-inhabited, that contains the stories of people who are gone, who are vanished. We look at their inscriptions and we engage with their monuments, and we walk along their paths: every time you walk down Broadway, you’re walking along an ancient cattle path that was put down by Native Americans who then had an appalling encounter with European invaders and were more or less wiped out. But we still walk down their roads. And those roads themselves, and many of those buildings, were built by slave labor in this city, by people not only whose lives have been erased from the record, but whose deaths, in a way, have been erased from the record. Only recently was the burial grounds of the slaves rediscovered. And even then, most of that burial ground is covered with office buildings now. There’s this essential mystery of life in the city: it contains others who are not us in the present time — I’m not you and you’re not me, maybe we don’t live in the same neighborhood — but it also contains others who are not us, in the sense that so much of it was made by those others.<br>\n<h6>Teju Cole with Chris Lydon in Washington Square Park, New York City, May 12, 2011.</h6>\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Teju Cole is opening up, too, about the music that’s written into <i><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/books/review/Syjuco-t.html\">Open City</a></i> — for example, the pattern of “doublings” (as in instrumental voices) of characters and cities, themes and phrases (like the air of a man “who had undertaken long journeys”) that recur in different rhythms and harmonies, so to speak. In particular, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler\">Gustav Mahler</a> is another of those “vanished” who inhabit Teju Cole’s present and obsess his character Julius, a psychiatry resident about to start his clinical practice. Mahler (death centennial next year) was himself drawn to the “open city” of New York in a tormented late act of a great composing-conducting career. He was, Cole writes, “the genius of prolonged farewells,” in a long series of “final statements,” up to his unfinished Tenth Symphony. </p>\n<p>Mahler’s music flows somewhere under Cole’s elegiac novel — “a story,” he calls it, “of mourning, for the feeling this city carried with itself after 9.11.” But what is it, I wonder, we are still bidding farewell? “It’s as if,” Cole says, “after 9.11 we entered a new phase in the life of this civilization. But I think it was also clear that it was the end of something… There’s a strong goodbye element in this novel, too.” The last chapter of the book, we’re noting, has three endings: one at Carnegie Hall, in a Simon Rattle performance of <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j2mSULqbYg\">Mahler’s Ninth</a>; another in a view of the stars over Manhattan; the last in a harbor-cruise view of the Statue of Liberty.</p>\n<p>There are two “open cities,” it turns out, in Teju Cole’s novel. Julius travels in search of his German mother to Belgium. Brussels is the city which gave Hitler’s troops free passage in World War II and preserved its medieval design but which, by 2006, is half-paralyzed by dread of Muslim immigrants. Brussels is where Julius meets his own double, a Moroccan Islamist of “seething intelligence,” a phone-store clerk who wants to be Edward Said when he grows up. And then there is Brussels’ “double,” New York, open to the deadbeat and the driven, thriving on perpetual renewal, and “saturated with the ominous energies” of its inherited past. </p>\n<p>But then a student delighted Teju Cole on a school visit with the thought that his invention Julius — a solitary walker and cool, catalytic conversationalist with a stunning variety of New Yorkers — is himself the Open City. </p>\n<p>Teju Cole’s last word with us — very much in that Open City spirit — was about the work ahead: first, a non-fiction account of Lagos (another “doubling,” it seems, of Rana Dasgupta’s work in progress on New Delhi) and then another novel: </p>\n<p>“It’s simmering very softly below the surface. I don’t know what it’ll be. I don’t know where it’ll go. But I am going to have to confront <i>Ulysses</i>. We can’t keep pretending it didn’t happen. We can’t keep writing 19th Century novels, you know. We can’t pretend that that amazing unexploded ordnance of a book did not happen.” On the other side of Washington Square Park we hear sounds of kids cheering. “And in the far distance,” Teju Cole closed, as if on cue, “people applaud that idea. So I take it as a sign from the gods.”</p>"
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"content" : "A lot of folks are shaking their heads after learning that FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker is leaving her post to <a href=\"http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FCCs-Baker-Heads-for-Job-at-Comcast-114174\">take a lobbying job at Comcast</a> just a few months after she voted to approve Comcast's massive purchase of NBC Universal. Now, let's be clear: there's nothing illegal in her taking this job. While she <a href=\"http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/baker-stuns-with-abrupt-move-from-fcc-to-comcast-20110511\">can't lobby the FCC</a> for two years, she can lobby Congress or other parts of the government. And, it doesn't mean that she's corrupt at all. But it's this <i>kind</i> of move that makes people trust our government less and highlights why so many people believe that our government is corrupt.\n<br><br>\nWhen you have a massive revolving door, in which the people voting on important deals for companies are likely to get massive salary increases in jobs from those same companies a few months later, it's certainly going to make plenty of people <i>assume</i> corruption, even if there isn't any. So even if it's not corruption in the classical sense, it's hard not to see this as a form of regulatory capture. Baker's term is up in June, but it had been expected she would be re-nominated and would stay. But, making this decision so soon after voting on such a huge deal for the FCC certainly raises some questions about when she started talking to Comcast about a job and when she even decided she was looking for a different job.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110511/22132414243/what-corruption-looks-like-fcc-commissioner-takes-job-comcast-months-after-she-voted-to-approve-its-deal-with-nbc-universal.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110511/22132414243/what-corruption-looks-like-fcc-commissioner-takes-job-comcast-months-after-she-voted-to-approve-its-deal-with-nbc-universal.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110511/22132414243/what-corruption-looks-like-fcc-commissioner-takes-job-comcast-months-after-she-voted-to-approve-its-deal-with-nbc-universal.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=2a20fed56ea40ef3c0e33148bafddbe9&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=2a20fed56ea40ef3c0e33148bafddbe9&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechBiz&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29198.rss.TechBiz.8626,cat.TechBiz.rss\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=V_s2E1wSqTk:G1YUUkOz9ak:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=V_s2E1wSqTk:G1YUUkOz9ak:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=V_s2E1wSqTk:G1YUUkOz9ak:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/V_s2E1wSqTk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : ""We Have to Sink or Swim Ourselves"-Henri Chinery Hesse",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">In <a href=\"http://www.povertycure.org/\">Poverty Cure</a><br><a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=herman\">Henri Chinery-Hesse</a> \"I don't know of any country in the world where a bunch of foreigners came and developed the country...\"<br><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"349\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/bs9cJEE-G9c\" width=\"440\"></iframe></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13876624-804901382229858668?l=africaunchained.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Liar, Our Witch and my Wardrobe",
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"content" : "Sometimes I am just completely blind sided by Ghana. There are moments when I am busy minding my own business, living my little expat life within the confines of this African republic, and culturally I trip over something that just has me reeling.<br><br>And then I remember that despite my hard drives full of pirated American TV series that fill us with the ultimate superficial each weekday evening, and the goat cheese in my salad, made with imported iceberg lettuce; this is NOT North America, and this little capsule called our home is situated squarely within an entirely different world.<br><br>There are undercurrents that pulsate just below the surface in Ghana, in my office, in my yard, in the strangers who pass me on the street. And there are moments when they peek out, when that reality faces me. At those times I am never prepared.<br><br>Last night I was bopping around my humid kitchen, wearing my Hello Kitty pyjama set, with my freshly washed hair tied up; I was dishing up our supper plates, anxious to head back into the relative cool of the living room to watch some mind numbing TV series.<br><br>“Madam” came the low voice from the pool of darkness beyond my kitchen window.<br>“Eric?” (assuming it was our gardener, (term used very loosely) who lives at the back of the house).<br><br>“Madam, I believe you are busy but I need to speak to you. Very important, very urgent. I beg.”<br><br>I begrudgingly put down my ladle and agreed to meet Eric around the side of the house.<br><br>So we met, I in cartoon pants with brightly coloured kittens scattered about my legs, opening the sliding doors, the bright and cool mixing with the dark heat. Eric stood glumly almost out of sight on the veranda.<br><br>“Yes Eric, what is wrong?” – I of course, assuming there would be a long winded story of medical or other woe, and a plea for money. But this was a different problem altogether.<br><br>Eric shifted and stuttered and said Madam a few times.<br><br>“It’s about Gilbert” (our cook and cleaner who has worked for the company over 12 years).<br><br>“Yes Eric?! What about Gilbert?” <a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lttlQsEyEm0/TckkGmyjeyI/AAAAAAAACDw/cGWZq722lu8/s1600/Nkonde-lower_zaire-nail-fetish-doll.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:212px;height:320px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lttlQsEyEm0/TckkGmyjeyI/AAAAAAAACDw/cGWZq722lu8/s320/Nkonde-lower_zaire-nail-fetish-doll.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br><br><br>“Well Madam, he is disturbing me in ways you won’t understand. In fact, it is very serious.”<br><br>“Ok, well you tell me and I’ll see what I can do” (me, clueless)<br><br>“Madam, in fact, he has been trying to… trying to… well he has been determined to kill me spiritually”.<br><br>Silence.<br><br>My first instinct is to laugh, which probably won’t go over well. I can see the shiny sweat on Eric’s forehead, reflecting the light from behind me. He is very serious.<br><br>“Madam, maybe these things you cannot understand. But even physically, he has been doing things. I am having so many challenges in life. Josephine has gone (this was Eric’s girlfriend, who was always way out of his league in my opinion), and Gilbert even today, he…. Well I must confess there was a problem in this house today”<br><br>Eric went on to explain that Gilbert had called a certain driver and started to talk to him loudly about how Eric had not been pulling his weight around the house, implying he was useless, and ‘damaging’ his name. Eric then came out of his room and they argued. Gilbert is a liar and possibly a witch?!<br><br>I was really not sure why the two of them would be arguing, nor what I was expected to do. But mostly I was pinching myself, wondering if really, I had been called out to hear that one of my staff was trying to kill the other spiritually. Juju. Again. This theme keeps reappearing.<br><br>And it’s not just among the relatively uneducated. Making that assumption would be to miss the undercurrent and remain completely oblivious to how this society functions.<br><br>I got up this morning with last night’s event freshly in my mind. I greeted Gilbert who was busy making eggs and saw Eric through the window. He was wielding a machete, and hacking away at the overgrown weeds. He gave me a look. His eyes narrowed, his brow furrowed. And he nodded. As if we had shared something… as if I should now understand… Yet I just smiled and carried on as the shallow obruni I am.<br><br>I arrived at work, thinking I’d left behind the sinister world of magic cooks and revengeful gardeners… and then I saw <a href=\"http://vibeghana.com/2011/05/10/npp-mp-mills-used-magic-ring-to-win-presidency/\">this</a>. <br><br>A respected Member of Parliament in Ghana’s opposition party, on Ghana’s most popular morning television talk show this week, has claimed he has ‘conclusive evidence’ that the current president, John Atta-Mills, used a magic ring to win the election. He apparently wore the ring only during the election campaign – never before and never after. That is the only proof needed apparently. So there it is. Juju. Things I’ll never understand.<br><br>Eric left me with one final comment/warning as we parted ways at my sliding door last night.<br><br>“Madam- there are other things. When you go away Gilbert brings his own things to wash at your house. He delays in doing your things. And madam, I just want to say, THAT IS THE MAN WHO MAKES YOUR FOOD.”<br><br>And he wandered off pensively into the night.<br><br>And there I stood. I looked down. Hello Kitty smiled innocently back up at me. And I acknowledged that I who knows nothing, will have to resign myself to that fact.<br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-we62uEDQ8BY/TckjZukeG6I/AAAAAAAACDo/bBo0EMKfw0k/s1600/fetish.JPG\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:638px;height:436px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-we62uEDQ8BY/TckjZukeG6I/AAAAAAAACDo/bBo0EMKfw0k/s400/fetish.JPG\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>Above - a table at a fetish market - selling ingredients for magic brews and curses...."
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"content" : "<b>In which I continue the time-honoured internet tradition of providing unsolicited consultancy to political parties which I do not support...</b><br><br>I do not have a \"tribal hatred\" of the Liberal Democrats - I voted for them in <a href=\"http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-election-diary-note-everything.html\">2006</a> when I was angry at the Labour Party (this was back when I was <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/may/04/iamtheswingvoter\">the most important person in British politics</a>). And I think a number of the points I'm about to make are shared by a few friends who have been much more LibDem-friendly in the past than myself, including a couple of former party members. So while I would be absolutely lying if I didn't say that I was enjoying the spectacle of their support melting down, lying if I claimed not to be intent on the destruction of their leader's career and probably even lying if I claimed to want them to survive as a political party, I am not lying when I say that the following advice is sincere and not motivated by simple hate.<br><br>The point that Liberal Democrats don't seem to understand is that they have entered into a coalition government with the Conservative Party and that there are consequences which flow from that. This is odd, as one of the things Nick Clegg is fondest of telling us all, is that he is in a coalition with the Conservative Party and that there are consequences of that. But \"<a href=\"http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2010/11/pissing-down-your-back-and-telling-you.html\">political realities</a>\" is a term with general application; it doesn't just mean \"I am about to break some promises and there is fuck-all you lot can do about it\". Here's the political realities as I see them.<br><br>1. The LibDems entered into a coalition with the Conservative Party<br>2. <i>Therefore</i>, the LibDems lost the presumptive trust of the Labour Party<br>3. <i>Therefore</i>, arguments based on adding LibDem votes and/or seats to Labour votes and/or seats and calling it \"the centre-left\" have lost credibility<br>4. <i>Therefore</i>, one cannot assume as of right that Labour voters will support electoral reforms that chiefly benefit the LibDems.<br><br>That's why they lost the AV referendum. (NB: the leadership of the Labour Party supported AV, but this is of marginal relevance since party membership is a small fraction of the Labour vote). Moving on:<br><br>5. <i>Furthermore</i>, LibDems cannot presume that they will benefit from tactical voting support from Labour voters.<br>6. <i>Furthermore</i>, LibDems cannot gain support from voters to their left by changing their policies, because nobody cares about their policies; while they are in a coalition government, they \"own\" the policies of that government.<br><br>This is, to a large extent, why the vote share has collapsed. The median LibDem voter between about 2002 and 2010 was quite likely someone who believed (sensibly, a respectable case could certainly be made for this) that they were to the Left of Labour. Their signature policy was a hypothecated income tax increase for education, along with did-they-or-didn't-they opposition to the Iraq War. Now, their electoral support consists of electoral reform trainspotters, about a dozen people who read the Orange Book and daydream about being Gerhard Schroeder, plus that part of the West Country that doesn't get regular newspapers and believes that it is still voting for Gladstone. They have lost precisely that set of voters who they have spent the last year more or less intentionally losing.<br><br>So, if the LibDems are interested in being a political party, rather than a political-party re-enactment society, what do they do? I am taking it for granted that the current strategy of fanning out across the internet looking for \"progressive\" voters to berate and insult for being too babyish to understand coalition politics isn't a goer - the Democrats can get away with this in the USA but that doesn't mean everyone can. In general, the LibDem political hack base really lacks strength in depth - they have very few ideologues and lots and lots of people (including their leader) who only ever joined them in the first place out of the biggish fish's instinct for a smallish pond, and I genuinely believe that they don't understand how badly they're hated. In my analysis, their only real political asset was the presumptive trust and second-preference of Labour voters, and they need to build that back in baby steps.<br><br>Since we've already established that I'm the median voter, how would the LDs go about rebuilding trust in me? Difficult. Currently, they are cemented in my view as a bunch of opportunists. I don't think they're ever going to convince me that the Liberal Democrats are anything else, and I now regard myself as having been very, very naive in the past to think otherwise (in the face of literally everyone I know who has had active involvement in electoral politics telling me).<br><br>So, I think the LibDems need to convince me that their opportunism has some good purpose. Specifically, I would need to see evidence of coalition policies that they have ameliorated or mitigated. And, at this stage, I think it would be better if this was presented in as neutral and factual a form as possible, preferably with reference to specific amendments to legislation or to public statements. Things like \"we are responsible for Lansley's pause on health reform\" aren't really good enough, because that's the sort of thing I would only take from a party that had my presumptive trust. <br><br>So, that's my analysis. Any ideas, liberals?<br><br><b>Update</b>: <a href=\"http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2011/04/liberal-democrats-conservative\">This is the sort of thing I'm talking about</a> (not coincidentally, I think, from someone with no background in LibDem politics). Although I have to say, I regard the actual list of \"concessions\" it links to as very small beer indeed.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3699020-3086399319962643761?l=d-squareddigest.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Who gets the most remittances?",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/pqqlvok8p0eclc8uyodu3q.jpg\"></div><p>\nA new <a href=\"http://www.gallup.com/poll/147446/Three-Percent-Worldwide-International-Remittances.aspx\">Gallup poll</a> looks at which countries have the most citizens who depend on remittances from migrant workers living abroad. The Philippines may be famous for its<a href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2010/02/philippines_and_its_remittance_economy\"> remittance-based economy</a>, but it's actually the semiautonomous region of Somaliland that leads the world, with 40 percent of its households receiving remittances from abroad. Overall, the list of countries with over 20 percent receiving remittances is a pretty eclectic group:\n</p>\n<p>\n<img src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110509_remit.JPG\">\n</p>\n<p>\nIt's also worth noting that these numbers don't seem to track that closely with the countries that have <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPROSPECTS/Resources/334934-1199807908806/Top10.pdf\">the <i>most </i>emigrants</a>. The top 5 by total population (Mexico, India, Russia, China, Ukraine) and by percentage (the Palestinian territories, Samoa, Grenada, St. Kitts, and Guyana) are nowhere on this list. Only Albania and the Philippines seem to have very high numbers of their population living abroad <i>and </i>very high percentages of those back home receiving remittances. People seem to be a somewhat specialized export.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Hat tip:</b> <a href=\"http://bit.ly/lvlp5F\">Erica Marat</a> \n</p>"
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"content" : "<p>Three months ago, I <a href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/02/societal_securi.html\">announced</a> that I was writing a book on why security exists in human societies. This is basically the book's thesis statement:</p>\n\n<blockquote>All complex systems contain parasites. In any system of cooperative behavior, an uncooperative strategy will be effective -- and the system will tolerate the uncooperatives -- as long as they're not too numerous or too effective. Thus, as a species evolves cooperative behavior, it also evolves a dishonest minority that takes advantage of the honest majority. If individuals within a species have the ability to switch strategies, the dishonest minority will never be reduced to zero. As a result, the species simultaneously evolves two things: 1) security systems to protect itself from this dishonest minority, and 2) deception systems to successfully be parasitic.\n\n<p>Humans evolved along this path. The basic mechanism can be modeled simply. It is in our collective group interest for everyone to cooperate. It is in any given individual's short-term self interest not to cooperate: to defect, in game theory terms. But if everyone defects, society falls apart. To ensure widespread cooperation and minimal defection, we collectively implement a variety of societal security systems.</p>\n\n<p>Two of these systems evolved in prehistory: morals and reputation. Two others evolved as our social groups became larger and more formal: laws and technical security systems. What these security systems do, effectively, is give individuals incentives to act in the group interest. But none of these systems, with the possible exception of some fanciful science-fiction technologies, can ever bring that dishonest minority down to zero.</p>\n\n<p>In complex modern societies, many complications intrude on this simple model of societal security. Decisions to cooperate or defect are often made by groups of people -- governments, corporations, and so on -- and there are important differences because of dynamics inside and outside the groups. Much of our societal security is delegated -- to the police, for example -- and becomes institutionalized; the dynamics of this are also important. Power struggles over who controls the mechanisms of societal security are inherent: \"group interest\" rapidly devolves to \"the king's interest.\" Societal security can become a tool for those in power to remain in power, with the definition of \"honest majority\" being simply the people who follow the rules.</p>\n\n<p>The term \"dishonest minority\" is not a moral judgment; it simply describes the minority who does not follow societal norm. Since many societal norms are in fact immoral, sometimes the dishonest minority serves as a catalyst for social change. Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>At this point, I have most of a first draft: 75,000 words. The tentative title is still \"The Dishonest Minority: Security and its Role in Modern Society.\" I have signed a contract with Wiley to deliver a final manuscript in November for February 2012 publication. Writing a book is a process of exploration for me, and the final book will certainly be a little different -- and maybe even very different -- from what I wrote above. But that's where I am today.</p>\n\n<p>And it's why my other writings continue to be sparse.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Rzzh9RI0grc:_ww1-zVnMwE:2mJPEYqXBVI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=2mJPEYqXBVI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Rzzh9RI0grc:_ww1-zVnMwE:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Rzzh9RI0grc:_ww1-zVnMwE:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/53944?ns=guardian&pageName=Translators+must+read+with+their+ears%3AArticle%3A1548724&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Original+writing%2CBooks%2CCulture%2CFiction+%28Books+genre%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Helen+Stevenson&c7=11-Apr-22&c8=1548724&c9=Article&c10=Extract%2CBlogpost&c11=Books&c13=Oil+stories&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FOriginal+writing\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Trying to convey <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/21/chez-janette-alain-mabanckou-story\" title=\"\">Alain Mabanckou's work to English readers</a> depends on recreating a 'voice', not exact linguistic equivalence</p><p><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/apr/18/chez-janette-alain-mabanckou-story\" title=\"\">Alain Mabanckou</a> speaks many African languages, among them lingula, munukuluba, laari and bembé, but he writes in French – it's the language in which he learned to write. Despite the obvious differences in our upbringings, growing up in Congo-Brazzaville and England respectively, we share a literary taste which has been shaped by almost exactly the same French writers. French was a first language for neither of us, but it was, for both of us, the language in which we were most accustomed to read great works of literature. I think that helps.</p><p>When I was translating his novel <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/data/book/fiction/9781846686757/broken-glass\" title=\"\">Broken Glass</a> – a novel with no full stops, no sentences, in which a variety of characters relate their stories to a scribe in a downtown bar – I kept thinking of the African voices I heard around me in London. It was only after I had finished that I heard Alain speak for the first time. He was speaking French, but with an accent – actually, not even an accent so much as a rhythm – that made sense of the beat of the prose I'd been translating.</p><p>The difficulty of translating fiction isn't finding the correct equivalent for each word. That would be like a pianist reading music and fumbling about for the right note on the keyboard each time: no music would ever be made. It is, as people often say, about finding the voice. Alain's literary voice is so strong, so rhythmic, the words he uses carry it entirely; I find that simply translating them honestly, without strain, with facility, is enough. It's an attempt to let the writer speak, just in my language.</p><p>I think that being a musician helps. I can feel the rhythm, but it's still him who does the singing. He is a master of the interplay of African rhythm and French elegance and lucidity, but <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2009/mar/31/alain-mabanckou-broken-glass\" title=\"\">he is primarily a poet and a comic writer</a>. I have to be sure to translate with due respect for his comic rhythms, to let his humour breathe. In Alain's work, the mixture of graceful, sometimes slightly quaint French, Congolese rhythm and Parisian street slang is very complex, but it is a complexity achieved by him as a writer. He does all the work. As a translator you just have to get used to reading with your ears.</p><p>As with any French novel, one of the jobs of the translator is to make it read easily in English. It has to sound as though it were written in English – though with enough of the accent of the original to remind you constantly, in reading, of the text's beginnings. So much of the history of the former French colonies of west Africa is conveyed through the coupling of Congolese rhythm and French expression. The translator's art is a transparent, inconspicuous one. Alain's allusions to unfamiliar subjects, whether literary or not, are another problem he shares with many French writers – though these aren't really a problem for the translator. The richness of his cultural references may make the books difficult to sell, but not to translate.</p><p>Political linguistics – or more exactly anxieties to do with tact – are another matter. At first I worried about how to translate \"nègre\", a word Alain's characters use all the time, often disparagingly. I got so worked up about this word, whose English equivalent was to me so un-useable, that eventually I sent Alain my first email, introducing myself as his English translator and asking him what to do. He must have been surprised to discover his translator had such rudimentary French. \"Dear Helen, he wrote, 'nègre' means 'negro'.\" That seemed pretty clear, so I stopped worrying about tact.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/original-writing\">Original writing</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fiction\">Fiction</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sttuLpGtWO6X_517zf-3DlnHY4M/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sttuLpGtWO6X_517zf-3DlnHY4M/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sttuLpGtWO6X_517zf-3DlnHY4M/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/sttuLpGtWO6X_517zf-3DlnHY4M/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "The value of Google Maps directions logs",
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"content" : "Ooo, this one is important. A clever and very fun paper, \"Hyper-Local, Direction-Based Ranking of Places\" (<a href=\"http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol4/p290-venetis.pdf\">PDF</a>), will be presented at VLDB 2011 later this year by a few Googlers. <br><br>The core idea is that, when people ask for directions from A to B, it shows that people are interested in B, especially if they happen to be at or near A.<br><br>Now, certain very large search engines have massive logs of people asking for directions from A to B, hundreds of millions of people and billions of A to B queries. And, it appears this data may be as or more useful than user reviews of businesses and maybe GPS trails for local search ranking, recommending nearby places, and perhaps local and personalized deals and advertising.<br><br>From the paper:<blockquote><i>A query that asks for directions from a location A to location B is taken to suggest that a user is interested in traveling to B and thus is a vote that location B is interesting. Such user-generated direction queries are particularly interesting because they are numerous and contain precise locations.<br><br>Direction queries [can] be exploited for ranking of places ... At least 20% of web queries have local intent ... [and mobile] may be twice as high.<br><br>[Our] study shows that driving direction logs can serve as a strong signal, on par with reviews, for place ranking ... These findings are important because driving direction logs are orders of magnitude more frequent than user reviews, which are expensive to obtain. Further, the logs provide near real-time evidence of changing sentiment ... and are available for broader types of locations.</i></blockquote>What is really cool is that, not only is this data easier and cheaper to obtain than customer reviews, but also there is so much more of it that the ranking is more timely (if, for example, ownership changes or a place closes) and coverage much more complete.<br><br>I find it a little surprising that Google hasn't already heavily been using this data. In fact, the paper suggests that Google is only beginning to start using it. At the end of the paper, the authors write that they hope to investigate what types of queries benefit the most from this data and then look at personalizing the ranking based on each person's specific search and location history.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-389389602913829499?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/ro8I793Fm3I\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p></p><p><strong>I.</strong> </p>\n<p>Rudolph says to the sheriff,<br>\n“For five long years you’ve tried.<br>\nAnd you can search as long as you like,<br>\nyou can try with all your might,<br>\nbut I’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye.<br>\nI’ll see you in the sweet bye and bye.” </p>\n<p>Sheriff says to Eric Rudolph,<br>\n“Through caves and abandoned mines,<br>\nWe’ll search through scraps and the old feed sacks.<br>\nIn every old place you could hide.” <br>\n – Ballad of Eric Rudolph, Michael Holland (2008)</p>\n<p><em>For a time, Mr. Rudolph’s success as a fugitive reframed the conflict, from criminal vs. the law to local boy vs. federal intruders. It made him a celebrated underdog, with T-shirts being sold bearing the phrases “Run Rudolph Run” and “Hide and Seek Champion.”</em><br>\n – New York Times, April 9, 2005</p>\n<p>Eric Rudolph <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/national/09rudolph.html?sq=eric%20rudolph&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print&position=\">disappeared</a> for five years in the United States. He planted bombs and killed civilians at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, family planning clinics, and a gay club in 1998 and then, went on the run. It was hard to believe, sitting in the States, that someone can disappear like that. We were all in the known universe. I don’t believe at his capture, much was made of him. John Ashcroft called him “the most notorious American fugitive”. This was in 2003. The coverage, which I followed, didn’t make any connection between Rudolph and terrorism or between the plausibility of local help and Rudolph’s long evasion. Rudolph belonged to some other America – not the one where on May 1st, 2003 George W. Bush had declared “Mission Accomplished” and where John Ashcroft was busy <a href=\"http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/pressrel/pr022403.html\">busting potheads</a>. Rudolph was some lingering story – one about battles long over. His acts, his flight, his evasion or his capture had little to offer us.</p>\n<p><strong>II.</strong></p>\n<p><em>Long before, he had become a hero in much of the Islamic world</em>…<br>\n – New York Times, May 2, 2011. </p>\n<p>It is wrong to claim that Osama b. Laden was irrelevant long before he was killed. He wasn’t. He represented, and represents, hundreds of thousands of lives lost since December 2001 when US forces reportedly failed to capture or kill him. He disappeared for the next decade but that absence was filled with wars in Iraq and Pakistan – wars waged on the heads of civilians, among urban centers, and at the cost of trillions. Just the technological developments of killing from the skies accomplished in this decade are mind or moral numbing. No, Osama b. Laden was never irrelevant and he was never off the script. Sure, George W. Bush or Pervez Musharraf told us that the battle was now bigger, the stakes higher and the cost greater, but they were empty words. The deaths of September 11th, 2001 and the destructions that followed hold us accountable – to remember that the cost of those lives began in a bid for this one life. So, we must deal with that life and the narratives it spawned. NYT claims that he was a “hero in much of the Islamic world”. The obituary moves on, and we are left with that “fact”. What are we to make of it? Heroes, after all, were gods and immortals. </p>\n<p><strong>III.</strong></p>\n<p><em>The code name for Bin Laden was “Geronimo.” </em><br>\n- New York Times, May 2, 2010. </p>\n<p>I recently spoke at a conference in Chicago about teaching South Asia critically and I concluded with: </p>\n<blockquote><p>To tell the story of America’s entangled history with South Asia is the first and most basic step in teaching South Asia critically. Elihu Yale, who lived and worked in India for nearly three decades with the British East India Company from 1670 to 1699 donated to the Collegiate School of Connecticut three bales of goods- Madras cotton, silk and other textiles from India – laying the foundation of their first building. The first seated chair of Sanskrit emerged at Yale. In 1800 when Alexander Dow negotiated yet another treaty with the Sindhi Mirs to establish ports and harbors on the Arabian Sea, he specifically noted that Americans were to kept out of Sindh. The1856 Guano Islands Act passed by Congress claimed for the United States any “unclaimed” island with sufficient supplies of bird waste (to be used as fertiliser by American farmers) by any American entrepreneur, and this annexation to be defended by the US Navy. The list of island territories annexed, claimed or contested – Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines, and so on – is long and scattered around the globe. But that act of Congress is also part of the legal framework that created Guantanamo Bay and that enables drone assassinations in “remote frontier” regions of Pakistan where there “is no rule of law”. The opium trade network which sustained the East India Company coffers in the mid-19th century by supplying Bengal-raised opium to China was remitted through American cotton and that money seeped right into the Southern slave economy.</p>\n<p>These entanglements disrupt the teleologies of postcolonial study in the United States, and they complicate the relationship of the academic to the funding bodies, to the region, and to the student. The politics of provincializing Europe are all too evident but the necessity to provincialize America bears laying out. We must look at the American state-war on the Native American populations – decreed explicitly by the post-Civil War Congress. We need to look at the barbary Muslim pirates in whose encounters American power first went ashore. We need to look at the American imperial gaze that stretched out towards the West and called it the open Frontier and sought to settle it, sought to categorize its people, its histories, build ethnographic portraits of the good Indians and the bad Indians. It is of utmost importance to our understanding of the American engagement with the Tribe post 2005 that we recall the work of John Wesley Powell and the Bureau of American Ethnology. We need to pay as much attention to Locke, Jefferson, Whitman, Turner, Wilson as we do to Hegel or Heidegger or Bentnick or Curzon.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The “Indians” or the “hostiles” as they were once named remain an indelible part of our national myth. The myopia we extend out to the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan exists in North Carolina, Alabama and Oklahoma. We have programmed forgetfulness in our civic and political lives. We have enabled our academic lives to non-entities in the public sphere. </p>\n<p><strong>IV.</strong></p>\n<p><em>I go myself, as agent of the British Government, to a Court of the language and manners of which I am utterly ignorant, and to accomplish that of which the most sanguine have no hope. It is simply a matter of duty</em> .<br>\n- James Abbott, <em><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=toIEAAAAQAAJ\">Narrative of a Journey from Heraut to Khiva, Moscow and St Petersburgh</a></em> (1843)</p>\n<p>Abbottabad was named to memorialize the service of Sir James Abbott, commissioner of the Hezara region. One can say that he became immortal.</p>\n<p><strong>V.</strong></p>\n<p><em>So I would have no objection if we picked out a country that is a likely suspect and bombed some oil fields, refineries, bridges, highways, industrial complexes, airports, military bases, and anything else that is of great value but doesn’t shelter innocent civilians. If it happens to be the wrong country, well, too bad, but it’s likely it did something to deserve it anyway. Or would in the future. And its leaders, as well as other troublemakers, would get the message: Terrorism is too costly a game.</em></p>\n<p>President Clinton says we should be cautious about placing blame or taking action. OK. But when the time comes for punishment, it wouldn’t be an eye for eye. That’s just a swap. We should take both eyes, ears, nose, the entire anatomy. That’s how to make a lasting impression.<br>\n – Mike Royko, April 21, 1995, Chicago Tribune</p>\n<p>Salman Rushdie wants <a href=\"http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-02/salman-rushdie-pakistans-deadly-game/\">Pakistan to be declared a terrorist nation</a> and expelled from the “comity of nations”. To Rushdie a 6 ft 4in man wandering around a country of 5 ft 8in plebeians without getting noticed is inconceivable and, hence, the entire 180 million must pay the price. They were all in the know. Keeping mum even as drones kept killing their lots; even as the Taliban kept blowing up hotels, police compounds, intelligence agency offices, shrines and hospitals; even as the US kept endorsing and supporting dictatorial power over them; even as the US kept funding their military to the tune of tens of billions while “non-humanitarian aid” was pegged to a billion or so; even as an earthquake and a flood shook their geography loose. The millions of Pakistan kept their quiet, maybe giggling in anticipation of whenever Uncle Sam would catch them in the act. Now they have been caught! The ISI knew! This validates all the drones missiles! It means MORE DRONE MISSILES! Yeah. That is what it means. They were all in it, Rushdie. Every stinking lying one of them. </p>\n<p>Royko wrote what I quote above after the Oklahoma City Bombing. I remember that morning. I was ironing my clothes for my night shift at the restaurant. I remember Connie Chung breathlessly telling me that men of Middle Eastern hue had been seen fleeing the scene. She was literally out of breath: The war in the Middle East has finally come to the United States. Royko was similarly shocked and convinced. It wasn’t important that almost immediately the call had went out to look for white caucasian suspects. <a href=\"http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=11412\">Later</a>, in October 2001, we kept hearing that Timothy McVeigh got his training or his weapon or something from Iraq. Royko’s wish came true – we got both ears, nose, the entire anatomy. Maybe Rushdie’s wish would come true as well. Who remembers Geronimo anyways?</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=dN5A7N3Z_LU:RRiioet-qDM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/dN5A7N3Z_LU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Welcome to Oil City!",
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"content" : "<div>\n <div>\n <div>\n <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/article/ghana-sekondi-takoradi-welcome-oil-city\"><img src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/node_image/Sedi04-11-001_10531.JPG\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"300\"></a> </div>\n <div>\n <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/article/ghana-sekondi-takoradi-welcome-oil-city\"><img src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/node_image/TadiPort04-03-11-005_10532.JPG\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"300\"></a> </div>\n <div>\n <a href=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/article/ghana-sekondi-takoradi-welcome-oil-city\"><img src=\"http://pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/node_image/TadiPort04-03-11-004_10533.JPG\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"300\"></a> </div>\n </div>\n</div>\n<p>As Sekondi-Takoradi looks like it's set to become Ghana’s new oil hub, the question is posed: will the oil industry revive this large poor city, and relieve its masses of unemployed youth?</p>"
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"title" : "Bobby Valentino & The Problem With R&B Dudes",
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"content" : "You think you know struggle? Try being a male R&B singer. Forging a \nunique path in a field saturated with dozens upon dozens of becornrowed \nhopefuls, in an industry that gives .75 of a damn about the little man \ncan't be easy. Social networks, video countdowns, and inboxes are \nendlessly cluttered with singles, mixtapes, and videos from crooning, \nemoting, almost admirably persistent R&B Dudes (several notches \nbehind the "Rapper Dude" on the People Who Are Annoying list) and there \nis no end in sight. Bless them and their texturized hair, seductively \nopened shirts, voicemail interludes, and spoken intros starting with "Hey\n girl..." Since they live in the studio "writing hits," they largely \nhaven't received the memo that spastic, passionate <b>Jodeci</b>-esque fits of \nemotion in videos are no longer mandatory, mind you. So bear with them.<br>\n The R&B Dude's entire life is an uphill battle. He's relegated to a \nlife of outrunning mediocrity and walking the tightrope between \nunquestionable masculinity and endearing, romantic sensitivity. The \nR&B Dude is, according to universal law, required to take himself \nembarrassingly seriously. You see those veins straining in that neck? \nThat means he's a big deal, goddamn you. So don't you forget it. R&B\n Dude typically has some enormous and insurmountable \nshortcoming, which they'll compensate for -- or distract you from -- with \nsome other often annoying tactic. It could be <b>Tank</b>'s unjustified \ncockiness (tactic: aggressively attacking naysayers). Or <b>Drake</b>'s Treacher Collins. Or, even <b>Musiq \nSoulchild</b>'s...um...well...the point is: It's not easy. Ask <b>Trey Songz</b>. He must at once be the \nideal husband and an ever-shirtless womanizer. He must tend to/plow his \nloose-legged fans and still make his mama proud. He even had\n to make a new genre out of rhythmic yodeling. Give that man an award.<br>\n<br>\nAnd unless you're lucky enough to have a decent face, R&B Dude is \nforbidden from removing his shades, regardless of location, occasion, or\n time of day. It's exhausting, I tell you.<br>\n<br>\nWhat's prompted all of this? The video for <b>Bobby Valentino</b>'s \"Sweetness.\" The clip from the upcoming <i>Fly On The Wall</i> (no <b>Miley Cyrus</b>) finds Bobby getting X-rated with a well-paid video model. No disrespect to the "actress," as booty \nenhancements surely won't pay for themselves, of course. It's no secret \nthat the R&B Dude's biggest battle is not producing trash. "How can I\n separate myself from the pack and not suck?," he asks himself. That \nstruggle, and every other R&B Dude struggle can be witnessed here. <br><br>From the nearly two minute failed comedic opening -- Jerome from <i>Martin</i>,\n anyone? -- to the decidedly 106 & Plantation-friendly production \nvalues, there are many larger issues represented within this video. By \nlaw, R&B Dude is required to have at least one pointless, soft porn \nvideo. Song quality is irrelevant. <b>Chris Brown</b> had <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFAmOuQ69Qs\">\"No Bullsh*t\"</a> and Trey Songz <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zI3OeNsnvI\">invented sex</a>.\n Bobby would like you to know he can be sexy, too. In actuality, it's \nabout as enticing as a <b>Tyler Perry</b> sex scene. With a woman. Fast forward\n to the 3:59 mark. Most. Unsexy. Thing. Ever. Filmed. If you've ever \nbeen an awkward, virginal teenager fondling an insanely hot, experienced \nbut uninterested girl, then this video will speak to you directly. \nOtherwise: no. It does, however, signify a staple of the R&B Dude's \nexistence: the flop.<br><br>At least he didn't attempt a <b><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVNOnPyvIU\">D'Angelo</a></b>.<br><br>I haven't followed Bobby V much since he surrendered his budget over at <b>Ludacris</b>' Disturbing Tha Peace imprint. Apparently I'm not missing much. This being his fourth album, he has yet to, in <a href=\"http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/bobby-v-talks-party-songs-words-and-feeling-new-on-fly-on-the-wall/8442036\">his words</a>, break through. Don't get your hopes up, dude. Word to <b>Kelly Rowland</b>,\n High Priestess of the Non-Breakthrough. To his credit, he can carry a \ntune; his voice is not as terrible as the video. He's just living the \nR&B Dude life, fighting the good fight: being unable to locate a \nperson who gives a sh*t. See what the fuss is (not) about below."
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/sakawa/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25831\"><img title=\"sakawa\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakawa.jpg?w=500&h=262\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"262\"></a></p>\n<p>In early April <a href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/05/motherboard.ghana.sakawa/index.html?iref=allsearch\">CNN</a>‘s website posted a video report on internet fraud in Ghana by its media partners, hipster producers <a href=\"http://www.motherboard.tv/video/the-sakawa-boys-inside-the-bizarre-criminal-world-of-ghana%E2%80%99s-cyber-juju-email-scam-gangs\">Vice</a>. The program focused on “Sakawa,” a form of internet scamming popular in Ghana, similar to the 419 scam originating in Nigeria. The Vice piece suggested that Sakawa, popular among young men, was out of control–that it had taken on the significance of a national crisis. The piece, predictably contained the usual stereotypes of Ghana and Africans. Since then the Ghanaian blogosphere have been in uproar. Reactions veer between denunciations of CNN and Vice–Global Voices Online summarized it <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/04/15/bloggers-react-to-demeaning-article-about-ghana/\">here</a>–to acceptance that Sakawa is a problem, i.e. “the big elephant in the room” (see, for example, the views of the blogger Sinaisix–blogging <a href=\"http://sluqman.blogspot.com/2011/04/youth-of-ghana-living-in-self-denial.html\">here</a>.) <a href=\"http://www.pipelinedreams.org/2011/04/ghana-gets-the-vice-treatment/\">American bloggers</a> have also weighed in. Others have now drawn up <a href=\"http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/noracistreportingonafrica/\">a petition</a> denouncing CNN. To make sense of all this, we spoke to <a href=\"http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~jenna/\">Jenna Burrell</a>, an assistant professor at Berkeley’s School of Information, who does research on internet use among young people in Ghana, her opinion–Sean Jacobs</p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/vice/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25832\"><img title=\"vice\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/vice.jpg?w=500&h=284\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"284\"></a></strong></p>\n<p><strong>What are your general impressions of the Vice video piece on Sakawa in Ghana? What did they get wrong? What did they get right?</strong></p>\n<p>What the Vice video got right was the emergence of Ghanaian internet scamming as a subculture–the ‘sakawa boys’ with their particular styles of clothing and cars. They also got some things right about how sakawa is emerging as a pop cultural phenomenon, as a theme in popular Ghanaian movies and music. It also picked up a bit on this resentment of Western affluence and the history of Western exploitation of Africa that scammers sometimes speak about.</p>\n<p>What the video got wrong I think was in the way it equated Internet scamming with ‘juju.’ Are young Internet scammers regularly using such practices, enrolling spiritual forces, to enhance their online activities? It is really unclear at this point. The circulating stories, even what scammers themselves say about what other scammers are doing can’t just be taken at face value as the documentary seemed to do. The young scammers I spoke with in Accra just this past summer (June and July 2010) categorically denied using any such techniques–stating that their success was through telling persuasive stories (what they referred to as the ‘format’ of the scam) and through their persistence in pursuing scam targets. I think the rumors and pop culture references to ‘sakawa’ are better understood as part of a longstanding debate about wealth accumulation and morality in Ghanaian society (more on this below). The stories (whether in rumors or in movies) are their own thing, not simply a mirror of scammer strategies.</p>\n<p>If I might say it this way, I thought the tenor of the video got things very wrong. It was self-interested, a nod-and-wink to the Western audience assumed to be looking on at this “bizarre” and exotic foreign <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Other</span>. The video tried to temper this a bit with some comments on how such practices (as they say “if you think about it”) are no more bizarre than Western practices like communion or circumcision, yet still ultimately it was the circus sideshow freak approach (cue the video of the “juju priest” in grass skirt and talcum powder throwing eggs). Why, for example, did the video start from an electronic waste dump site rather than somewhere like BusyInternet, Accra’s biggest Internet café where lots of different people are using the Internet to do things that don’t involve scamming? Overall the video privileged visual appeal and spectacle over a balanced story.</p>\n<p>I also think many Western media outlets, especially Internet-based ones, don’t have a firm grasp on the fact that their audience is going to be composed of people from around the world as the Internet becomes more widely adopted. This audience will include Ghanaians and other Africans connecting from the continent as well as Ghanaians in the diaspora. So news services are going to be held accountable by the people or societies they are depicting.</p>\n<p><span></span><br>\n<a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/sakawa2/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25833\"><img title=\"sakawa2\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakawa2.jpg?w=500&h=262\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"262\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>What do you make of the reaction of the Ghanaian media, diaspora and blogosphere?</strong></p>\n<p>Aside from the video which had a few of its own exaggerations, the CNN article (the text of it) I agree with blogger Kobby Graham and responses to the CNN post, that it simply wasn’t good journalism – full of factually incorrect statements. I was pleased (and not surprised) to see the Ghanaian presence online, commenting on this write up and giving voice to their resentment about Western media representations of Africa. The CNN article was even worse than the video as far as promoting the old, tired caricatures of Africa and Africans. The write -up on CNN’s website did a disservice to the video by distracting all attention from generating a conversation about Internet scamming, sakawa, and youth culture in Ghana, a conversation worth having. There was much to critique in the video itself but it raised some legitimate issues whereas the article could be easily dismissed.</p>\n<p>And of course, Ghana has a middle and upper class composed of people who work in banks, make money on import/export and selling in local markets, work in mining, in agriculture, for NGOs, and in various departments of the government. There are lawyers, doctors, professors. There are Ghanaians working for Google in Ghana, for the various mobile phone networks, and for advertising and marketing firms. Certainly many of these people can afford cars and other luxuries through their legitimately earned incomes. It’s pretty outrageous that such a thing has to be said, that the insinuation that such a society is composed of 1% criminals and corrupt politicians and 99% bagged water sellers can pass the editorial review at CNN. Though this is precisely the sorts of demeaning and exaggerated representations that scammers play upon in carrying out their scamming strategies. Ironic? Yes absolutely.</p>\n<p>Are Ghanianas in denial as the blogger Sinaisix suggests? There may be some ‘denial,’ among Ghanaians (and others) who convince themselves that the people who fall for these scams simply deserve what they get. There’s denial where Ghanaians suggest that its only Nigerians in the country who are doing this. I’ve heard this before and I can tell you that its not. Scamming practices are carried out that play not just on the greed of foreigners, but under altruistic pretenses (i.e. a fake pastor posing to raise money for a church). Romance scams seem to be especially devastating because they involve more than money, some documented cases have lead to victims committing <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247774/Divorcees-train-suicide-82-000-internet-date.html\">suicide</a>. Scams also definitely do damage to Ghana’s reputation and potential as a place for business investment as the Vice video noted.</p>\n<p>The Internet scamming business in Ghana is something the government of Ghana urgently needs to find a way to address but without compromising the openness and accessibility of the Internet for the broader population. I’ve seen myself how over the past six years, with the rise of successful Internet scamming that the Internet cafes in certain areas of town are becoming a less and less welcoming and accessible space for Ghanaians who are interested in doing other things with the Internet. Furthermore Internet security measures are now blocking people in Ghana from a number of features and services on the Internet – they can’t use Paypal or create profiles on many of the popular dating websites. Accra has been <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2010/02/black-sheep.html\">removed as a destination</a> from many of the travel booking websites. There’s a need for better consumer protection and fraud awareness services to protect Ghanaians (who also are victimized through Internet-based and other forms of fraud). This isn’t just a story of the Western world getting their just desserts, there are repercussions that harm Ghana as well.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/sakawa3/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25834\"><img title=\"sakawa3\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakawa3.jpg?w=500&h=279\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"279\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>The Vice report suggests that Sakawa is now “used for everything involving money.” Any sign of material well-being is sakawa. But the video also suggests sakawa is associated with popular critiques of colonialism or the government and the market’s failure to deliver to Ghanaians? </strong></p>\n<p>Sakawa is now used as a vernacular term for practices that involve fraud or suspicious monetary practices–not “everything involving money.” There was a recent debate in the government when the ruling National Democratic Congress introduced their financial budget statement which the opposition dismissed as a, “<a href=\"http://www.modernghana.com/news/205352/1/sakawa-budget.html\">sakawa budget</a>.” So the term itself has become a flexible way to comment on what is perceived as suspicious or deceptive.</p>\n<p>Some youth refer to their activities as a response especially to discriminatory foreign policies (in the difficulty young men in particular have getting travel visas to go to desirable migration destination countries like the U.S.). I was once told that the thinking was this, ‘If we can’t go to America, we will take money from the Americans.’ I don’t think one could say that Internet scamming is principally a political act, a critique of the history of Western exploitation. Furthermore, among young men who engage in Internet scamming, not all are driven to do so by poverty or unemployment. It’s a combination of a certain resentment about their exclusion from the global economy, but also peer influence (having friends already involved in it), and also the Internet itself as a particular type of mediating technology facilitates these activities. Just as many Westerners have narrow perceptions of Africa, many of the young Ghanaians involved in scamming likewise have a pretty simplistic conception of Americans and others – as wealthy and/or greedy. A practice described to me by one of these young scammers was to cancel all e-mail accounts and phone numbers after receiving money from a scam and to never speak to that scam victim again (escaping the aftermath of the victims anger, fear or devastation). Compared to face-to-face crimes its perhaps easier to do fraud at arms-length with a victim who’s a sort of abstract entity. So material properties and the mediating role of the Internet plays a role.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/sakawa5/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25835\"><img title=\"sakawa5\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakawa5.jpg?w=500&h=281\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>Can you tell us more about your own findings about Ghanaians’ internet use, especially about “rumors about Internet scamming told by Internet cafe users”?</strong></p>\n<p>Internet scamming came to be understood more publicly as ‘sakawa’ only recently. Before that, back when I started my research in Accra on Internet café use it was more underground. I talked to Internet café users back then, both scammers and non-scammers, and frequently heard their stories about the ‘big gains’ realized by other local Internet users. I was told stories about young men getting the credit card of Oprah Winfrey, or using Bill Gates credit card to buy ten laptops. One young man commented on how such people, “don’t even notice the money is reduced.” These stories (rumors in the way they narrated an event the teller had not directly observed or experienced) had a certain pattern, describing the scam victims often as these superhuman celebrity figures. These rumors not only presented the promise of gaining money from the Internet, but also restored the morality of these practices in this way of characterizing scam victims as beyond harm.</p>\n<p>The new popular discourse about sakawa in churches, in mass media, in movies, in the government I find reflects a new round of struggle over wealth accumulation and morality. It goes along with a long-standing discourse in Ghana on the legitimate and illegitimate avenues to wealth and ways of managing that wealth. This is a historical thread you can trace back to the colonial era, first with the shift to a cash economy, the opening up to new forms of global trade that has made certain unexpected figures (such as young men) suddenly wealthy in ways society couldn’t quite understand. So in the end, the rumors in various forms reflect something of the moral sensibility of Ghanaian society. In the way sakawa narratives in local movies play out, scammers eventually succumb to their own greed. In ‘occult’ practices it is believed that scammers sacrifice a close family members – a wife, child, mother, or brother – through “blood money” as a necessary exchange for gaining wealth. The justice of the cosmic order is reasserted in these stories. These stories take the victimization of a distant foreigner and make it a more immediate and personal threat. The fact that scamming may be carried out flagrantly doesn’t at all mean that it is an accepted practice in Ghana. Rather it reflects the way the institutional infrastructure (police force and court system) has not yet been able to put these activities in check. Among the young men I talked to this past summer who were engaged in scamming, many had had their activities discovered by family members and were facing ostracism and conflict as a result.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/05/02/the-sakawa-boys/sakawa6/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-25836\"><img title=\"sakawa6\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/sakawa6.jpg?w=500&h=279\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"279\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>Why do you think people living in industrial countries fall for schemes like Sakawa and 411?</strong></p>\n<p>There’s more than one reason. Some are greedy and naïve and do, in fact, buy into these stereotypical depictions of Africa as believable stories that resonate with how they know things to be in that part of the world. They buy into the stories of corrupt politicians or of spoils of war stashed in a ‘third world’ and therefore unregulated country, of abandoned bank accounts, or smuggled gold. There are others who are operating from more human and sympathetic impulses, lonely people looking for love (perhaps less sympathetically rather old men looking for very young attractive women). Also altruistic individuals who think they are contributing money to orphans or to a church. What is also interesting is, in many <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/15/060515fa_fact\">documented cases</a>, how scam victims often get in so deep and are so committed to the scenario they’ve been presented, they seem not to be able to believe that it was entirely made up, refuse to accept that the person they thought they were dealing with doesn’t exist at all.</p>\n<p><strong>The piece suggests that Ghana’s discovery of oil will “make things more interesting.”</strong></p>\n<p>My hope is that Ghana’s political stability over the years will help smooth the transition into oil-producing country. Unfortunately it seems that these sorts of highly technical resource extraction processes that involve significant foreign investment tends to generate what they call ‘enclave economies’ and the gains flow right out of the country to benefit mostly the big oil companies. I have one friend in Ghana who’s already been admitted into a Masters degree program in the UK on International Oil and Gas Management – so you can see youth on the ground (who are able) trying to align their futures with this change in the economic outlook of Ghana. Luckily Ghanaians are never hesitant to speak out to their representatives in the government and public political debate is lively and impressive. So I hope the citizenry is able to hold the government accountable and the government is able to get ensure a fair share from this investment benefits the country as a whole.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/25823/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=25823&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<b>Boris Vian translation project</b><br><br>After 2007's <a href=\"http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2007/05/weekend-pacifist-poetry-time-swans.html\">Le Déserteur</a>, I am moving on to one of the lighter pieces; <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eryzp0Pklc8\">La java des bombes atomiques</a>. Lyrics <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpOEkL7U3IM\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://lyricstranslate.com/en/la-java-des-bombes-atomiques-atomic-bomb-java.html\">here</a>; my translation, loosely in the style of a music-hall monologue, below:<br><br><i>My Uncle Tom built atom bombs; he never went to college<br>But he was Wigan's nuclear sage, as everyone acknowledged<br>He'd spend each Sunday afternoon, inventing in his shed <br>Then tramp back in the living room, and this is what he said;<br><br>\"A nuclear bomb, me bonny lad, is not a piece of cake<br>The A-bomb, granted, right enough, that any fool could make<br>But getting yer plutonium's a much more tricky task<br>An H-Bomb? No, impossible, don't even try to ask<br><br>But ask we did; he stamped away and worked all afternoon<br>We went to bed. But midnight came, and howling at the moon,<br>We saw him running in his nightgown, halfway down the street<br>Sobbing \"t' bloody blast radius doesn't stretch twelve feet!\"<br><br>All winter long he banged and hammered, missing meals and sleep<br>The shed began to glow a bit; old Tom was seen to weep<br>\"I never thought\", he sobbed \"that it could be this bloody hard\"<br>\"To make the bloody crater even six or seven yards!\"<br><br>I tried to comfort him; I said \"Now never mind, old Tom\"<br>\"It isn't just the size of fallout makes a nuclear bomb\"<br>\"By Jove! You've got it!\", Uncle said, as from his chair he sprang<br>\"It's <i>where</i> you blow the bugger up that makes the bloody bang!\"<br><br>Well that was it; we gathered round our friends and our relations<br>And sent official telegrams to the United Nations<br>Inviting all and sundry round to visit Uncle Tom<br>And telling them to \"Watch out world: Wigan's got the Bomb!\"<br><br>Well that put cat among the pigeons; as you might remember<br>The Heads of State all came to visit us in late November<br>They saw the Pier; we gave them pies and when they all were fed<br>Progressed down to the testing site, in Uncle Tom's old shed.<br><br>They put their fingers in their ears and counted \"6, 5, 4\"<br>While Uncle Tom sneaked out the shed and bolted up the door<br>He stepped eight yards away and finished \"3, 2, 1\"<br>A small - but big enough - cloud rose; the shed was bloody gone!<br><br>There was a trial of course, so we all took a trip to t' Hague<br>I spoke in Uncle Tom's defence; I wasn'tt shy or vague<br>I pointed out his duty to defend our mental health<br>They pardoned him with honour, and showered him with wealth.</i><br><br><hr><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3699020-622598013975233010?l=d-squareddigest.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "The news that Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace were among the million people (including 22 ‘world leaders’) who thronged St Peter’s Square for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II lends a piquant note to what was already a gothic occasion. Their presence was not, in itself, surprising: Mugabe tends to remember [...]"
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But the central character of the scene looks imperturbable amidst the beaches’ sights, sounds and smells. The lounging man, his lunch lying next to him, is still wearing his formal socks as he rests yards away from the sea. He has ostensibly come to the beach to enjoy the elements, but his attire and demeanor suggest that he is as cocooned from the nature as sandwiches he has carefully wrapped away in aluminum foil. Beneath all his stoicism, his sense of discomfort is palpable. It was Steele-Perkins’ commentary on “Britishness” that invokes the best works of the satirist William Hogarth.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Chris Steele-Perkins is best known for his very first work “The Teds”, an immersive documentary on London’s Teddy Boy gangs, that captured not only the gangland culture but also fashion and life in the 70s London. His subsequent career recorded rural life in Durham, the Cumbria World Gurning Championships, life at St Thomas’ hospital and inner city racial conflicts. His current work in progress documents the often challenging lives of carers and the cared for. Chris presents a sweeping, unique mosaic of what he thinks makes England truly English. In his work throughout the 1980s and the 90s, Steele-Perkins offered a deeply pessimistic view of the British pursuit of pleasure. To him, this hedonism is not confined along class lines, noting his pictures “have nothing to do with celebrity or fame but of everyday-ness and how that can be special”. This view is reflected in a series of photos such as ‘Fightin a Night Club, London’, ‘Hospital Visit by Postman Pat and His Cat’ or ‘Juliana’s Summer Party, London’ collected in his aesthetically pleasing and cultural intriguing “The Pleasure Principle”. But ‘Blackpool Beach’ which was also included in the book is different; an ahedonistic <em>tour de force, </em>it is still, for millions of Britons, really is ‘the English at home’.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/culture/\">Culture</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/society/\">Society</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/blackpool-beach/\">Blackpool Beach</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/chris-steele-perkins/\">Chris Steele-Perkins</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/england-my-england/\">England My England</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4310/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=4310&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p>"
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"content" : "Suspicions of the president have moved from the theoretical to the theological.<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=518d04d6c5b9f5b07d55379c14e0eb7b&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=518d04d6c5b9f5b07d55379c14e0eb7b&p=1\"></a>"
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"title" : "Powering Africa",
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"content" : "<p>Le Monde Diplomatique maps out the <a href=\"http://mondediplo.com/maps/utopianafrica\">distribution of energy in Africa</a>, which is inherently cool because of its use of subway graphics and because highlights many of the geo-political regional power struggles throughout the continent:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://moproblems.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/arton58711.gif\"><img title=\"arton5871\" src=\"http://moproblems.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/arton58711.gif?w=500&h=687\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"687\"></a></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/moproblems.wordpress.com/1618/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/moproblems.wordpress.com/1618/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=moproblems.wordpress.com&blog=6064371&post=1618&subd=moproblems&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Go the Fuck to Sleep: a storybook for exhausted parents",
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"title" : "Nigeria: Parole Denied",
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"content" : "<div dir=\"ltr\" style=\"text-align:left\">The records show that retired judge, Vincent Ogbulafor, sentenced you to 60 years in jail for crimes against humanity. In passing judgement, you were found liable for the mismanagement of hundreds of billions of dollars since independence while your people languished in poverty. You fought a brutal civil war but learnt few lessons from that tragedy. You had several coups and counter coups that upstaged elected governments. You put in place some of the most corrupt regimes ever in the world and saw to the theft of public resources in ways never before imagined. In all that period, you never managed to hold any free or fair elections, except for the one of June 12, 1993, which you promptly annulled.<br><br><br>Recall that the judgment was also predicated on the fact that within two decades of adulthood, all the roads, railways and even the national airline you inherited were grounded. From one of the most efficient railway systems in Africa, you now have almost nothing despite billions sunk to develop that mode of transport. It is true that you inherited narrow roads, but in some places, those pre-colonial roads are still the only ones people use. The huge expressways you embarked on building are now death tracks that kill and maim people every day. Those that diverted the monies meant for road rehabilitation are now part of your inner caucus. How do you want to convince me that you have changed?<br><br>Against wise counsel, you embarked on massive borrowing from foreign agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank and wasted those monies on dubious, ill-conceived and ill-executed programmes, some of which never saw the light of day. Your actions left your people with massive foreign debts which were crippling foreign reserves and threatening development. At huge cost, you deprived your people of basic things like good schools, hospitals, roads and water to pay off those debts in one fell swoop. It is sad to note that within a few years of escaping the debt trap, you have fully returned to borrowing monies on unfavourable terms, for mostly indeterminate and largely unseen projects. As we speak today, your domestic and foreign debts have shot up sharply once more, yet you keep requesting permission to borrow more.<br><br>In delivering its judgement, the court also took cognisance of the fact that when you reached the legal adult age in 1960, you had one of the most productive agricultural sectors in the world. Your groundnut pyramids were known the world over. Your cocoa used to be one of the best varieties in the entire world and was much sought after. You had some of the largest rubber plantations in the world. Not only could you feed yourself, you exported food to other parts of the world. Today, you waste over $2 billion to import rice that is inferior to what you grow locally and $1 billion to import processed orange juice when you have orange plantations rotting away.<br><br>When you started in 1960, you represented the most important hope and inspiration of the black race. Every black person, not just in Africa but the entire world, looked up to your leadership and certain destiny. How did you pay back those hopes and expectations? With deep, heart wrenching disappointment. You never learnt to walk, not to talk of flying the hope we had in you. Today, you do not even inspire your own citizens, much less the black race. Your small and much less endowed cousin, Ghana, has taken up that charge with flying colours.<br><br>All of that aside, the most important reason for my ruling today is that four years ago, you stood on that same spot and made the same arguments. You promised to disabuse the electoral process to ensure that the will of the people, no matter how disagreeable, was respected. The fact is that you have neither changed in your character, nor exhibited remorse for your crimes. Rather, each passing day, your activities continue to embarrass every rule of common civility. You conducted the most expensive elections in history, but ended up with controversy.<br><br>In view of the foregoing, I cannot at this stage favourably consider your application for parole. You are to be returned to the custody of poverty, insecurity, corruption and profligacy for four years. If in that time conditions convince you to radically change your ways, this court shall listen with a sympathetic ear. Until then, you leave me with no options but to reject your application.<br><br>Parole denied.<br><br><br><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8645399025059309116-6554635775291436816?l=suleimansblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>The other evening (middle-aged speak for “months ago”), sitting having one of my favourite repasts – slow, bland, achingly solitary – at the OK Chinese restaurant on Wandsworth Road, I found myself shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation of the couple at the next table. They were a father and son in their late 40s and late teens respectively. They had a large-boned assurance and an ease with one another I found instantly attractive – how else to explain my moment of madness?</p>\n<p>After all, a native Londoner, I revile above all things the folly of talking to strangers. Anyway, there was this attraction, and there was what they were saying: the son jollily expounding to his dad that, “In the 1500s, or maybe the 1700s – I’m not sure which – there was a huge flood in London, the whole city was under water, something like 25,000 people were drowned.”</p>\n<p>The older man demurred: “No, I can’t believe that! I’m sure I’d've heard about it . . .” But the son persisted in his contention that the city had been completely deluged at some indeterminate point in the past, with a concomitant huge loss of life. It was at this point that I could no longer forbear, and leapt in with a potted version of the account of the 1524 flood-that-never-was, as told by Charles Mackay in his Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.</p>\n<p>According to Mackay, a mania for prophecy conjoined with several soothsayers predicting a catastrophic high tide on the Thames for 1 February 1524 – the result was a mounting and wholesale panic.</p>\n<p>As the appointed day neared, thousands fled their homes and set up encampments on the heights of Hampstead and the North Downs. The prior of St Bartholomew was so alarmed that he had a well-provisioned stockade erected at Harrow-on-the-Hill to which he retired with a few close friends – shades here of Poe’s tale “The Masque of the Red Death”.</p>\n<p>As we know, no flood occurred, and the populace trailed home feeling shamefaced in the way we all do after succumbing to asinine groupthink.</p>\n<p>I was momentarily bowled over by the notion that this young chap, circa 2011, might be retelling not a piece of bona fide history learned from some sub-Schama at school, but a folktale that was still embedded in the popular unconscious of Londoners and that had, over the centuries, acquired the verdigris of veracity.</p>\n<p>We’re all familiar with the phenomenon of the urban myth, which, despite spawning sodden stacks of toilet books in the past few decades, still continues to culture itself using the minds of the credulous as a substrate.</p>\n<p>A recent one (middle-aged speak for “some years ago”) took the form of a round-robin email sent on by a friend who’s a senior editor at a national newspaper – and really should have known better. The gist of this scare story was that night-time drivers in sarf London shouldn’t flash their headlights if flashed by another car, because they would then be chased by the flasher and gunned down in cold blood.</p>\n<p>I pointed out to my daffy pal that the spread of this delusion exactly coincided with a local upsurge in gun crime; moreover, didn’t she think it strange that the myth was being transmitted between white middle-class professionals via email, when all the shootings were black-on-black and confined to the lumpenproletariat?</p>\n<p>But to return to the brackish matter in hand. My fellow diners heard me out, and then the dad mused: “Well, come to think of it, I suppose London must’ve flooded at some point – or else they wouldn’t've built the Thames Barrier.” I was about to explain to him that while London had been subjected to quite devastating floods – notably in 1953 – the loss of life had been in the low hundreds, and that furthermore the Thames Barrier had been built as an antediluvian measure, rather than après le déluge. But then I thought better of it and put my face back in my duck with ginger and spring onions.</p>\n<p>Why? Well, you can’t win ‘em all – and besides, I was reminded of how I had shared such moments of baseless conviction with my own late father. Our joint delusion had seemed altogether believable at the time, and we had chatted long into the night outlining the specifics of what, in later years, I came to realise was never, ever going to happen.</p>\n<p>Socialism, I believe it was called.</p>"
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"content" : "I’ve heard quite a few unforgettable expressions on the streets of Accra. Almost all of these were in Ghanaian languages. <br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5648384656/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5146/5648384656_a7a0b05ea1_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br>Let’s see if I can translate them into English with the flavuor intact.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5647824409/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5108/5647824409_95636df29c_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br>I remember once at Abossey Okai (where 99% of Ghanaians by spare parts for their cars), it started drizzling unannounced. A young man who was briskly passing by raised his eyes, looked up into the clouds and says “God, take it easy. Your children, we are busy hustling”. <br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5647825325/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5106/5647825325_db022a4f93_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"537\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br>Another time, I saw two hustlers fighting over money. The broke one was accusing his friend of being greedy. He’s friend retorted: “Even the sea, with all its water, doesn’t reject fresh rain”.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5647825975/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5028/5647825975_ac896eaaed_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br>A guy buying coconut from a young kumasi man asked for a discount. Coconut seller looks poor man squarely in the eyes and says “Master, do you think I came to Accra to watch the sea?” <br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5648387524/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5225/5648387524_ae0dc76016_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br>One time in Kantamanto, a guy almost knocked a woman’s wares over and didn’t even bother to stop. The angry woman yells at him” You! You are just a little more handsome than a monkey”.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5647823877/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5149/5647823877_9cf344e306_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5648386066/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5264/5648386066_3b9a948b9a_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5648385254/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5310/5648385254_8238383dea_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><br><br>Now, do have a great week :) And remember, better is always possible.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5647821379/\" title=\"Accra Hustling by Nana Kofi Acquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5188/5647821379_eb6062a04a_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra Hustling\"></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-8899646476793299287?l=nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The economics of British glamour models",
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"content" : "A friend who spends his life negotiating with the agents of glamour models explained to me the principles of “boobonomics”. Let's assume a pretty girl, who has been snapped in her bikini for a local newspaper, seeks a big-time career. Her agent phones a men's magazine and proposes for a given sum, say £3,000, that she pose in lingerie.<br><br>If she's a hit with the readers, her agent will then suggest that for a greater sum, say £5,000, she will pose topless, but with her nipples concealed by her cupped fingers (“hand bra”). Subsequently her fee will rise for each coy permutation: “hair bra” or “girl-on-girl bra” (two models face to face shielding each other's breasts). Eventually, once this dance of the seven thongs has been exhausted and readers are believed to be slavering with anticipation, the agent will propose that for a huge sum — say £50,000 — the girl will finally reveal all.<br><br>But the harshest principle of boobonomics is that after this shoot, the value of the girl's assets — which is what they are in a technical, business sense — collapses. From this point she will only receive £20K for full topless, a sum she only recently received for showing far less. Her product life cycle is reaching an end. Now, however, agents have a new strategy for reviving the brand, rather as when Kit Kat launched peanut or orange-flavoured variants. He proposes that his client have a breast enlargement: would the magazine be interested in the first pictures, you know, when the scars have healed? The going rate for new knockers will never match her initial “reveal”, but raises her value momentarily to, say, £35,000. Jordan, the Milton Friedman of boobonomics, has amassed a great fortune increasing her breast size by increments in three operations.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">--Janice Turner, Times of London, on <a href=\"http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article3085180.ece\">assets that are passing away</a></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-7101686291504537777?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Amazon — The Purpose of Pain",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://teddziuba.com/images/juggalos-welcome-but-kings-of-leon-fans-need-not-apply.jpg\">Pain is nature's way of telling you that you have just fucked up. It's a hint to your future self that maybe you should never do that again. Yet, you dumbasses continue to host things full-bore in Amazon. Since its inception, EC2 has gone down, S3 has dropped off the face of the earth, and Amazon's Elastic Block Store bludgeons Reddit to death every few weeks, but yet every time, the <a href=\"http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2011/04/the-aws-outage-the-clouds-shining-moment.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">apologists</a> line up. (Since it's foolish to waste a perfectly good crisis, some jackass is even selling an <a href=\"http://www.ablebots.com/ec2enabled/\">eBook</a> about how to design your service around EC2 failures).</p>\n\n<p>There's a point where \"I told you so\" doesn't quite fit, so in light of Amazon's most recent aristocrats joke, let's explore some common myths about Cloud Computing that developers actually believe.</p>\n\n\n<h3>Myth 1: SLAs Are Meaningful</h3>\n<p>Amazon EC2 has a stated service level agreement of 99.95% uptime, yearly. As of right now, EC2's uptime is 99.23%, well below the SLA. Since computer programmers like to take a pathologically literal interpretation of the law and contracts, they usually don't understand the reality of such matters.</p>\n\n<p><em>\"But, but, EC2 is violating their SLA! That can't happen!\"<br>\n\"It just did.\"<br>\n\"But, but...Segmentation Fault (core dumped)\"</em></p>\n\n<p>The trouble with SLAs is that <strong><em>shit happens</em></strong> is not yet in the vernacular of modern jurisprudence. You should never try to compare hosts based on SLA, compare them based on how they respond to downtime, because it will happen everywhere you go, without fail. For example, the machine that is serving you this web page is a physical box hosted by SoftLayer at a data center in Seattle. Last week, I had about an hour worth of downtime because of some networking problems in their data center. Whatever, like I said, <em>shit happens</em>. What I'm really looking for is communication. I logged a ticket with support, and in six minutes they updated me about the situation, how widespread it was, and an ETA on the fix. The tech also asked if there was anything else he could do for me. They restored connectivity quickly, but did not keep me in the dark about what was going on.</p>\n\n<p>Try that with Amazon. There's a <a href=\"https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=65649&tstart=0\">thread</a> on the AWS forum where some genius decided to host safety critical software on EC2, and can't get his data up. The thread was posted on Friday, it's now Saturday, and with Sunday coming afterward, I'm pretty sure that nobody whose safety depends on EC2 is lookin' forward to the weekend. Now, maybe it's a troll, but not even a \"we're working on it\" reply?</p>\n\n<h3>Myth 2: Architecture Will Save You from Cloud Failures</h3>\n\n<p>Fault-tolerant architecture a centerpiece of the NoSQL dog and pony show, but by and large, the programmers using it don't understand that the software depends on hardware. Note, I said <em>hardware</em> not <em>virtual machines</em>. The trouble with using virtual machines is that your visibility into the actual metal of the device ends at the hypervisor. There are certain things that software packages must hold sacrosanct, for example, the <code>fsync()</code> system call, that instructs the kernel to make sure that data is written to physical disk. In virtual machine land, whether or not <code>fsync()</code> does what it should is a bit of a mystery. This gets even more entertaining with Amazon Elastic Block Store, which, as the Reddit administrators have found, will happily accept calls to <code>fsync()</code>, and lie to your face, saying that the data has been written to disk, when it may not have been.</p>\n\n<p>No amount of architecture is going to save you from lying virtual hardware. Applications, especially databases, are built on the assumption that there is an atomic way to commit data to disk. Sure, there are problems with disk writeback caches sometimes, but anybody who knows what they are doing can check to see if it's actually going to be an issue. If you're running on Amazon's virtual machines, take a guess; it's turtles all the way down.</p>\n\n\n<h3>Myth 3: A Virtual Machine is an Appropriate Gift for All Occasions</h3>\n\n<p>This, perhaps, is the cause of such widespread service downtime — developers who are hosting entire services full-bore on virtual machines. VMs have their place, sure, but they are by no means the solution to every hardware problem. In my experience, you should use VMs for:\n\n<ul>\n <li>Web application servers</li>\n <li>Offline data processing</li>\n <li>Squid/Memcache servers</li>\n <li>One-off utility computing</li>\n</ul>\n\nThe general rule is that if the machine eats shit, nothing of value will be lost. Remember what I said about pain in the beginning? If you're hosting a database on a VM, well, at some point it will become abundantly obvious.</p>\n\n<p>The trouble with \"commodity\" computing is that servers are not really something that should be commoditized. There is so much variability in these devices that a \"six sizes fit all\" offering is insulting. The things you can do with disk controllers alone are more than worth the effort to colocate hardware in a data center. Personally, I prefer to solve problems with hardware than software, for example, throwing SSD drives in a database machine that is dogging it on disk I/O. It's much more business-efficient to throw money at performance problems than it is to throw code at them, but I guess some of you guys just really like to type.</p>\n\n<p>Personal preference, I suppose.</p>"
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"content" : "POET’S PROFILE The Kenyan poet Jared Angira was born in 1947 and studied commerce at the University of Nairobi where he was also the editor of the journal Busara. He has spent much of his working life in the Kenyan civil service, and published seven volumes of poetry, which include Juices (1970), Silent Voices (1972), [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=afrilingual.wordpress.com&blog=18903321&post=164&subd=afrilingual&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"><b>For the Last Time, Fire</b></div><div align=\"center\" style=\"text-align:center\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">That August the birds kept away from the village, afraid:</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"> people were hungry.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">The phoenix hid at the sun’s center and stared down</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"> at the Banker’s house,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">which was plump and factual, like zero.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">Every good Banker knows</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">there’s no such bird.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">She came to the house like an old cat, wanting</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">a different kind of labor.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">But the Banker was busy, feeding his dogs, who were nervous,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">Perhaps she looked dangerous.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">The child threshed in her belly</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">when she fell. The womb cracked, slack lipped,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">leaving a slight trace of blood on the lawn. Delicately,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">the phoenix placed the last straw on its nest.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">Mrs. So-and-So the Banker’s wife beat time</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">in her withdrawing room. Walked her moods</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">among the fluted teacups, toying with crusted foods.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">The house hummed Bach, arithmetic at rest.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">The phoenix sang along with the record,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">and sat.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">But the villagers counted heads, and got up.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">So, logical as that spiral worming the disc to a hole in</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"> the center,</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">one night there were visitors, carrying fire. The dogs</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"> died first</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">then they gutted everything.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">Something shook itself out of the ash.</div><div style=\"margin-left:1.0in\">Wings, Perhaps.</div><div><br>\n</div><div>“For the Last Time, Fire” by Dennis Scott. <i>Uncle Time</i>. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973.</div><div><br>\n</div><div>“The house hummed Bach, arithmetic at rest.” There was always something magical about this poem that I’ve never been able to shake. The combination of social engagement, myth, allusions to contemporary literature, and the ironies--all in a few lines. This poem was a standout in Dennis Scott’s <i>Uncle Time</i> and has been a major influence on my own work. After reading this poem, I wanted to be a poet. I wanted to create something as beautiful, as musical as this poem…</div><div><br>\n</div><div><br>\n</div><div><br>\n</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yYO7bzvPDpk/TazH7LXA7NI/AAAAAAAADRo/YW8jkX1o4cI/s1600/Dennis.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yYO7bzvPDpk/TazH7LXA7NI/AAAAAAAADRo/YW8jkX1o4cI/s1600/Dennis.jpg\"></a></div><div><br>\n</div><div><br>\n</div><div style=\"line-height:12.1pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0in\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://www.peepaltreepress.com/author_display.asp?au_id=144\"><span style=\"color:#007cbb\">Dennis Scott</span></a> was born in Jamaica in 1939. He had a distinguished career as a poet, playwright, actor (he was Lester Tibideaux in <i>The Cosby Show</i>), dancer in the Jamaican National Dance Theatre, an editor of <i>Caribbean Quarterly</i> and teacher. His first collection,<i> Uncle Time </i>(1973) was one of the first to establish the absolutely serious use of nation language in lyric poetry. His other poetry collections include <i>Dreadwalk </i>(1982) and <i>Strategies</i> (1989). His plays include <i>Terminus, Dog, Echo in the Bone</i>, and Scott’s work is acknowledged as one of the major influences on the direction of Caribbean theatre. He died at the early age of fifty-one in 1991.</span></div><div style=\"line-height:12.1pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0in\"><br>\n</div><div style=\"line-height:12.1pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0in\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/9994/Dennis-Scott.html\"><span style=\"color:#007cbb;text-decoration:none\">Dennis Scott</span></a>: Dennis Scott Biography - (1939 –91), <i>Caribbean Quarterly.</i></span></div><div><br>\n</div><div style=\"text-align:center\">***</div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><br>\n</div><div><br>\n</div><div><br>\n</div><div><h6 style=\"font-size:1em;margin:1em 0 0 0\">Related articles</h6><ul><li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/02/biography-by-dennis-scott.html\">\"A Biography\" by Dennis Scott</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/02/diary-by-dennis-scott.html\">\"Diary\" by Dennis Scott</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/02/family-man-by-dennis-scott.html\">\"A family man\" by Dennis Scott</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/02/marrysong-by-dennis-scott.html\">\"Marrysong\" by Dennis Scott</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/04/21-days-21-poems-poem-whose-meanings.html\">21 Days/ 21 Poems: A Poem Whose Meanings Have Grown with Rereading</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://repeatingislands.com/2011/03/29/that%25e2%2580%2599s-just-how-she-does-it-%25e2%2580%2594-lorna-goodison-by-love-possessed/\">That's just how she does it - Lorna Goodison, By Love Possessed</a> (repeatingislands.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/04/21-days-21-poems-erotic-poem.html\">21 Days/ 21 Poems: An Erotic Poem</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2011/03/new-book-immortelle-and-bhandaaraa.html\">New Book: Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems by Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming</a> (geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com)</li>\n</ul></div><div style=\"height:15px;margin-top:10px\"><a href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"><img alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=73b98f23-62de-4597-98c2-672f40d0a3e0\" style=\"border:none;float:right\"></a></div><div><p>\"Set the captives free...</p>\n<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/entity/Geoffrey-Philp/B001K819L0?ie=UTF8&ref_=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1\">My Author Page @ Amazon</a>\n<p> © Geoffrey Philp 2005-2011</p><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19836501-3922864869193498495?l=geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/7qd945k78kv65au9hq0n7007m4/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fgeoffreyphilp.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F04%2F21-days-21-poems-poem-that-made-me.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?i=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:m_dHZg_EWUA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=m_dHZg_EWUA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:KBC2T5LBHXo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=KBC2T5LBHXo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?a=NxJp_GhzsXQ:-HV0Co00bGg:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/EVfd?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/EVfd/~4/NxJp_GhzsXQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Prince Makes It Purple Rain On 'Lopez Tonight'",
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"content" : "For <strong>Prince </strong>fans, last night was like Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, our birthdays, and winning the lottery all rolled into one when the man, the myth, the legend took over <em>Lopez Tonight </em>to kick off his string of performances in Los Angeles. Prince's 21-night stand in LA for his Welcome 2 America Tour officially starts tonight at The Forum, but he gave television audiences an unprecedented look at his artistry in motion on the <strong>George Lopez </strong>exclusive. Performing three songs and even sitting down with George for a surprisingly lengthy interview, Prince shut it down last night, but he wasn't alone. His Purple Flyness brought <b>Sheila E.</b>; <b>New Power Generation</b>; singers <b>Shelby J.</b>, <b>Liv Warfield</b>, and <b>Elisa Dease</b>; ballet dancer <b>Misty Copeland</b>; and <b>DJ Rashida </b>with him to turn that mother out. At 52 and looking damn near 25, Prince wore more glitter and sequins last night than you can find in any craft store while singing \"Laydown\" from last year's <i>20Ten </i>to open the show, an incredible version of \"The Beautiful Ones\" featuring Copeland, and closing the show with a rousing rendition of <b>D-Train</b>'s \"You're The One For Me\" showcasing the talents of Sheila and Shelby with Prince even breaking us off with a one-man drumline. This was the most epic hour of programming that's been on television in a minute. To see what you missed or to relive the magic in case you did see this when it first aired, watch Prince's performances below (before they get snatched offline, that is) and check him out looking like a sexy red velvet cupcake during his interview with Lopez after the bounce.\n\n<br><br>\n\n<iframe frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xi7skl?theme=none&wmode=transparent\"></iframe>\n <iframe frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" src=\"http://www.dailymotion.com/embed/video/xi7sf9?theme=none&wmode=transparent\"></iframe>"
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"title" : "Wisconsin County That 'Found' Lost Votes Apparently Has Major Voting Irregularities For Years...",
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"content" : "You may recall a little over a week ago we wrote about the Wisconsin county that magically <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110408/01441913818/14000-unsaved-votes-suddenly-found-wisconsin.shtml\">found 14,000 votes</a> in a recent (highly contested) election, after the very partisan County Clerk -- who had just been questioned for questionable methods of collecting election data -- said that she had \"failed to save the results\" in her original report. While this followup story is now about a week old, someone just sent it over to us. Apparently that particular county, Waukesha County, has a <a href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/965994/-%28updated%29-Waukesha-voting-irregularities-go-back-to-2004\">rather stunning history of voting irregularities</a>, including having an <i>astounding</i> and totally unprecedented 97.63% voter turnout rate in 2004:\n<blockquote><i>\nApparently in 2004 the polls in Waukesha were teeming with voters as the Waukesha County Clerk's office showed a 97.63% turn out. No, that's not a typo. 97.63%\n<br><br>\n<a href=\"http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/uploadedFiles/Media/List_Documents/County_Clerk/2004_Official_Election_Results/Summary_Report_Nov2_2004.lst\">http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/...</a>\n<br><br>\nOf the 236,642 registered voters in Waukesha on Nov 2, 2004 apparently 231,031 of them came out in a hint of rain and drizzle and did their civic duty.\n<br><br>\nJust to put this in perspective, Australia has compulsory (mandatory) voting and their turnout is 95%.\n</i></blockquote>\nAnd it's not just voter turnout that's suspiciously high. Voter registrations are unprecedented as well:\n<blockquote><i>\nIn the 8 months leading into the 2004 Presidential Election there was a marginal 1.3% increase in the rolls netting about 3000 additional new voters. However in the 3 months after the election, which showed an anomalous 97.63% turn out, suddenly the rolls surged to the tune of almost 50,000 new voters and upped the rolls 20%. I suppose that's one way to even out a suspiciously high turn out.\n<br><br>\nFurthermore, remember that first number I told you to hang on to? The 283,820 eligible voters in the county of Waukesha in July of 2004? This new surge in the voter rolls has now pushed total voter registration in Waukesha County <b>to 99.5% of elegible voters</b> being registered to vote by February of 2005.\n</i></blockquote>\n99.5% of eligible voters registered? Wow.\n<br><br>\nBut, let's not stop there. The blogger who did this research also dug up the official <a href=\"http://www.waukeshacounty.gov/uploadedFiles/Media/List_Documents/County_Clerk/2006_Official_Election_Results/Official_Election_Combined_Summary_Nov20_2006.LST\">election results data</a> from the 2006 election in Waukesha County, and noticed that some of the elections appeared to have <i><b>more votes than ballots were cast</b></i> by a fairly large number:\n<blockquote><i>\nIn the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor there were a total of 176,112 votes cast. For Attorney General there were a total of 174,047 votes cast. And for Secretary of State there were a total 170,440 votes cast.\n<br><br>\nSo, look at the 3rd line of the top of that report...Total Ballots Cast: 156,804. So based on those numbers 20,000 extra votes were cast in the election that weren't actually accounted for in the ballots cast.\n</i></blockquote>\nTo say the least, these numbers are pretty troubling if you believe in the integrity of democratic elections.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110415/23002413918/wisconsin-county-that-found-lost-votes-apparently-has-major-voting-irregularities-years.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110415/23002413918/wisconsin-county-that-found-lost-votes-apparently-has-major-voting-irregularities-years.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110415/23002413918/wisconsin-county-that-found-lost-votes-apparently-has-major-voting-irregularities-years.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=98bb1d9b4f1192bb8acf3e68ef6b0402&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=98bb1d9b4f1192bb8acf3e68ef6b0402&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechBiz&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29198.rss.TechBiz.8626,cat.TechBiz.rss\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=UXkSHjuiZH8:FvIlqNKTt0E:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=UXkSHjuiZH8:FvIlqNKTt0E:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=UXkSHjuiZH8:FvIlqNKTt0E:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/UXkSHjuiZH8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "“More Like This…” Building a network of similarity",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div>Ever wondered what makes “Inception” similar to “12 Monkeys”?<br><div></div><div><br></div><div>Looking at similarity between movies and TV shows is a useful way to find great titles to watch. At Netflix, we calculate levels of similarity between each movie and TV show and use these “similars”, as we call them, for a variety of customer-facing and internal systems.</div><div><br></div><div>Hi, there. Hans Granqvist, senior algorithm engineer, here to tell you more about how we build similars. I want to share some insights into how we lifted and improved this build as we moved it from our datacenter to the cloud. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>The similars build process</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>First a little background. </div><div><br></div><div>To create a network of similars, we look at more than thousands facets associated with each title. A future post will go into more detail of the similarity build, but it follows this somewhat simplified process: </div><div><br></div><div>First we discover sets of titles that may be similar to the source title, based on the algorithm used and facets associated with each title. We then refine these sets of titles and filter them to remove unwanted matches, depending on algorithm deployment types and audiences.</div><div><br></div><div>After this, we dynamically weigh each facet and score it. The sum is the measure of similarity: the higher the sum, the more similar the titles.</div><div><br></div><div>Until last year, we built similars in our data center. As internal dependencies transferred to the cloud, its scaling capabilities became real. We wanted to use the cloud’s more flexible deployment structure, and its inherent parallelism would let us change the build to scale linearly with number of machines. We could increase the numbers of algorithms by an order of a magnitude. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Shortcomings of old Datacenter build. Opportunities and challenges of the cloud.</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>While the old build worked well, its shortcomings were several:</div><div></div><ul><li>Algorithms were defined in the code making them hard to change.</li><li>The datacenter was limited to small set of machines leading to long recalculation times (several days).</li><li>Longer push cycles due to code linkage and runtime dependencies.</li><li>Building directly on production DB structure with varying resource availability.</li></ul><div>Moving to the cloud presented new opportunities:</div><div></div><ul><li>A new architecture lets us define algorithms outside of code, using distributed stores to properly isolate and share newer versions of algorithms.</li><li>The cloud’s unlimited capacity (within reason) could be exercised to build massively in parallel.</li><li>Netflix components are now all re-architected as services. We can push new code much faster, almost instantaneous. Internal dependencies are just an API call away. </li></ul><div>Of course, with this come challenges:</div><div></div><ul><li>Remote service calls have latency. Going from nanoseconds to milliseconds makes a huge difference when you repeat it millions of times.</li><li>The cloud persistence layers (SimpleDB and S3) have wildly varying performance characteristics. For some searches via SimpleDB, for example, there are surprisingly no SLAs.</li><li>With hundreds of machines building simultaneously, the need to partition and properly synchronize work becomes paramount.</li><li>The distributed nature by the cloud environment increases the risk of failures around data store, message bus systems, and caching layers.</li></ul><div><b><i>Solutions</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>We based our new cloud architecture on series of <i>tasks</i> distributed by a <i>controller</i> to a set of <i>builder nodes</i> that communicate through a set of message queues. </div><div><br></div><div>Each task contains information including source title and algorithm, with optional versioning. As a build node picks up these tasks off the queue, it collects the definition of the algorithm from persistent storage, converts it into a sequence of executional steps, and starts executing. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Technologies used</i></b></div><div></div><ul><li>AWS Simple Queue System for communication between controller and nodes.</li><li>AWS SimpleDB, Amazon’s row database, to store the definitions of algorithms.</li><li>AWS S3, Amazon’s key/value store.</li><li>EV Cache, a Netflix-developed version of memcache to increase throughput.</li><li>A Netflix-developed persistent store mechanism that transparently chains various types of caching (local near-cache LRU cache and service-shared EV cache, for example) to S3.</li></ul><div><b><i>Build process</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>The following figure shows the various components in the build process. The <i>Controller</i> sends tasks on an SQS<b><i> </i></b><i>instruction queue</i>. These tasks are read by a set of <i>Build Nodes</i>, which read the algorithms from SimpleDB and S3, and use various data sources to calculate the set of similars. When done, the node writes the result to persistent store and signals build status back to the controller via an SQS <i>feedback queue</i>.<br><br></div><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6eLqs_c4ewI/Taxjc-gBktI/AAAAAAAAG68/rveMETdYQMY/s1600/simsarch.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"239\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6eLqs_c4ewI/Taxjc-gBktI/AAAAAAAAG68/rveMETdYQMY/s320/simsarch.png\" width=\"320\"></a><br><table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"font-size:small\">Architecture of the Similars Build process (click to enlarge). A ‘wrapped component’ indicates the component needs to be instrumented to handle network hiccups, failures and AWS API rate limitations.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div>Based on their availability to process new tasks, build nodes periodically read from the instruction queue. When a message has been seen and read, SQS guarantees other nodes will not read the same message until the message visibility window expires. </div><div><br></div><div>The build process spins off independent task threads for each task parsed. The first time an algorithm is seen, a builder node reads the algorithm definition and decides whether it can process the task. Newer versions of build nodes with knowledge of newer sets of data sources can co-exist with older ones using versioned messages. </div><div><br></div><div>If a node cannot process the task, it drops the message on the floor and relies on the SQS time out window to expire so the message becomes visible for other nodes. The time-out window has been tuned to give a node reasonable time to process the message.</div><div><br></div><div>SQS guarantees only that messages arrive, not that they arrive in the order they were put on the queue. Care has to be given to define each message as independent and idempotent.</div><div><br></div><div>The final step is to persist the now calculated list of score-ordered similar to S3.</div><div><br></div><div>Once the task has been performed, the node puts a feedback message on a feedback queue. The controller uses this feedback to measure build task progress and also to collect statistics on each node’s performance. Based on this statistic, the controller may change the number of builder threads for a node, how often it should read from the queue, or various other timeout and retry values for SQS, S3, and SimpleDB. </div><div><br></div><div><b><i>Error situations and solutions</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>Building the system made us realize that we’re in a different reality in the cloud. </div><div><br></div><div>Some of the added complexity comes from writing a distributed system, where anything can fail at any given time. But some of the complexity was unexpected and we had to learn how to handle the following on a much larger scale than we initially envisioned.<br><ul><li>Timeouts and slowness reading algorithms and weights from persistent store systems, each of which can rate-limit a client if it believes the client abuses the service. Once in such a restricted state, your code needs to quickly ease off. The only way to try to prevent AWS API rate limitation is to start out slow and gradually increase your activity. Restriction normally applies to the entire domain, so all clients on that domain will be restricted, not just the one client currently misusing it. We handled these issues via multiple levels of caching (using both a near cache on the builder node + application level cache to store partial results) with exponential fallback retries.</li><li>Timeouts and AWS API rate limitation writing to SQS. Putting messages on the queue can fail. We handle this via exponential fallback retries.</li><li>Inability of a node to read from SQS. Also handled via exponential fallback retries.</li><li>Inability of nodes to process all tasks in a message. We batch messages on SQS for both cost and performance reasons. When a node cannot process all tasks in a message, we drop message on floor and rely on SQS to resend it.</li><li>Inability of a node to process a task inside a batch message. A node may have occasional glitches or find it impossible to finish its tasks (e.g., data sources may have gone offline). We collate all failed tasks and retry on each node until set is empty or fail the batch message after a number of tries.</li><li>Timeouts and AWS API rate limitation writing to persistency layers. We handle with exponential retry.</li></ul></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>All exponential retries typically wait in the order of 500ms, 2000ms, 8000ms, and so on, with some randomness added to avoid nodes retrying at fixed intervals. Sometimes operations have to be retried up to dozens of times.<br><br></div><div><b><i>Conclusion</i></b></div><div><br></div><div>By moving our build to the cloud, we managed to cut the time it takes to calculate a network of similars from up to two weeks down to mere hours. This means we can now experiment and A/B test new algorithms much more easily. </div><div><br></div><div>We also now have combinatorial algorithms (algorithms defined in terms of other algorithms) and the build nodes use this fact to execute builds in dependency order. Subsequent builds pick up cached results and we have seen exponential speed increases.</div><div><br></div><div>While network builds such as these many times can be embarrassingly parallel, it is worth noticing that the error situations come courtesy by a distributed environment where there in many cases are ill-defined (or none at all) SLAs.</div><div><br></div><div>One key insight is that the speed with which we can build new networks is now gated by how fast we can pump the result data to the receiving permanent store. CPU and RAM is a cheap and predictable cloud commodity. I/O is not.</div><div><br></div><div>The lessons of building this system will be invaluable as we progress into more complex processes where we take in more factors, many of which are highly temporal and real-time driven or limited to specific countries, regions, languages, and cultures.</div><div><br></div><div>Let us know what you think… and thanks for reading!</div><div><br></div><div>PS. Want to work in our group? <a href=\"http://www.netflix.com/Jobs\">Send us your resume</a> and let us know why you think, or don’t think, “Inception” is similar to “12 Monkeys.”</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/725338818844296080-8439069603499333805?l=techblog.netflix.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-24691\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/04/11/in-the-end-just-a-guy-in-a-bad-hawaiian-shirt-without-a-clue/12ivory4_cnd-articlelarge/\"><img title=\"12Ivory4_cnd-articleLarge\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/12ivory4_cnd-articlelarge.jpeg?w=500&h=275\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"275\"></a></p>\n<p>That’s how <a href=\"https://twitter.com/#!/alexis_ok\">Alexis Okeowo</a> (on Twitter) sums up the end of the four-month stand-off against democracy by Cote d’Ivoire’s former Life President, <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/?s=Laurent+Gbagbo\">Laurent Gbagbo</a>.</p>\n<p>The New York Times has <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/world/africa/12ivory.html?src=tptw\"> the details</a> and the photograph above on the arrest of Gbagbo. He was found “… sweating [and] plaintive … he appeared in a white tank-top undershirt, wiping dry his face and underarms with a towel as men dressed in military camouflage looked on, smiling.”</p>\n<p>Here’s also <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FdOvJ3WIXE&feature=player_embedded\">some video</a> from Ivorian TV.</p>\n<p>There’s also this <a href=\"http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/11/6452900-ivory-coast-former-first-lady-captured-by-enemy-forces\">disturbing image</a> of Gbagbo’s wife Simone with some of their captors:</p>\n<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-24740\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/04/11/in-the-end-just-a-guy-in-a-bad-hawaiian-shirt-without-a-clue/pb-110411-simone-gbagbo-2p-photoblog900/\"><img title=\"pb-110411-simone-gbagbo-2p.photoblog900\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/pb-110411-simone-gbagbo-2p-photoblog900.jpeg?w=500&h=347\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"347\"></a></p>\n<p>Which brings up the well-documented abuses by Alassane Ouattara’s forces. They have been guilty of <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704641604576254740647524716.html?mod=rss_africa&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter\">all kinds of atrocities</a> against civilians in their efforts to free Cote d’Ivoire of Gbagbo’s regime.</p>\n<p><span></span> * Separately The New York Times also has <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/us/12evangelical.html?_r=3#\">the lowdown</a> on the affection Gbagbo enjoyed among some Republican Congressmen, the demagogue Glen Beck and American evangelicals.</p>\n<p>To the American Right Gbagbo is a Christian; not Muslim like Obama or Ouattara. The Times quotes TV evangelist Pat Robertson last week: “…[I]t’s one more Muslim nation that’s going to be building up that ring of Sharia law around the Middle East.”</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/24690/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=24690&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><em>Update: <a href=\"http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/\">Brenda Clews</a> recorded a <a href=\"http://shadowcabinet.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/daves-how-to-read-a-poem-read-by-brenda.mp3\">reading of this post</a>, mixed with some <a href=\"http://ccmixter.org/files/morgantj/16181\">found sound</a>. Thanks, Brenda!</em><br>\n<a href=\"http://shadowcabinet.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/daves-how-to-read-a-poem-read-by-brenda.mp3\">Download audio file (daves-how-to-read-a-poem-read-by-brenda.mp3)</a></p>\n<p>As if it were any other kind of communication that means what it says, not some kind of code to be deciphered.</p>\n<p>As if it were code, where a single mistyped letter can change everything, and turn a webpage into the white screen of death. </p>\n<p>As if you had nothing else to do: no news to skim, no email to hurry through, no other work, no purer entertainment. </p>\n<p>As slowly as a lover performing oral sex: forget about me, what does the <em>poem</em> want? </p>\n<p>As fast as a sunrise on the equator, so the mind won’t have any time to wander. </p>\n<p>As if each line were an elaborate curse in some nearly extinct language with only four elderly speakers left, all of them converts to evangelical Christianity. </p>\n<p>As if the stanzas were truly rooms, and not houses lined up on some quiet street. </p>\n<p>As if the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life. </p>\n<p>As if it were perfectly useless and irrelevant to the cycle of discipline and indulgence we think of as real life. </p>\n<p>As if each poem were an oracle just for you: a diagnosis from a physician, an interview with Human Resources, the suggestions of a therapist, the absolution given by a priest. </p>\n<p>As if the real poem were buried like a deer tick ass-up in the flesh of your ear.</p>\n<p><em>For notes on reading poetry for an audience, see my similarly titled post, “<a href=\"http://www.vianegativa.us/2010/12/how-to-read-a-poem/\">How to read a poem</a>” and the <a href=\"http://voicealpha.wordpress.com/\">Voice Alpha</a> blog it links to. (Must work harder on titles!)</em></p>"
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"content" : "<p>When we first moved into our current house, newly married, I had some caulking to do around the place. I found some silicon caulking that boasted on the tube that it was warranted for 20 years. Cool, I thought. I'll never have to do this again.</p>\n\n<p>Twenty years later, what's this? The caulking is staring to fray, disenigrate, fail. I realize now that 20 years is not forever, though it seemed that way before. Now that I am almost 60, I can see very permanent things decay in my own lifetime. Surprising, asphalt doesn't last forever, nor do iron and even stone. Some of the most permanent things we can think of -- the earth beneath us -- visibly moves over 60 years. The hill our house rests on is slowly sliding around us. Over a hundred years tree roots can crumble foundations. Try to make something last for 1,000 years and you'll quickly realize that this is an almost impossible achievement. It requires the constant application of order and energy to combat the everyday entropy unraveling what has been made. </p>\n\n<p>It's taken me 60 years, but I had an ephipany recently: Everything, without exception, requires additional energy and order to maintain itself. Not just living things, but the most inanimate things we know of: stone gravemarkers, iron columns, copper pipes, gravel roads, a piece of paper. None will last very long without attention and fixing, and the loan of additional order. Life is maintenance.</p>\n\n<p><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" src=\"http://www.kk.org/thetechnium//doorfix.jpg\" alt=\"Doorfix\" title=\"doorfix.jpg\" border=\"0\" width=\"490\" height=\"368\"></p>\n\n<p>Most surprising to me has been the amount of sheer maintenance that software requires. Keeping a website or a software program afloat is like keep a yacht afloat. It is a black hole for attention. I can kind of understand why a mechanical device would break down after a while -- moisture rusts metal, or the air oxidizes membranes, or lubricants evaporate -- all of which require repair. But I wasn't thinking that the intangible world of bits would also degrade. What's to break? Apparently everything. </p>\n\n<p>Here is news to the young: Crap accumulates in code. Chips weaken. Programs break. On their own, nothing you did.</p>\n\n<p>And then there is the assault of the changing digital landscape. When everything around you is upgrading, trying new actions, or seeking new loopholes, this puts pressure on the website and necessitates maintenance. You may not want to upgrade, but you have to because everyone else is.</p>\n\n<p>This upgrade arms race spills over into our private lives. It's completely altered my attitude about upgrading. I used to upgrade begrudgingly (why upgrade if it still works?), and at the last possible moment. The trouble is familiar. Upgrade this and suddenly you need to upgrade that, which triggers upgrades everywhere. A \"tiny\" upgrade of even a minor part can be hugely disruptive. But as our personal technology became more complex, more co-dependent, more like a personal ecosystem, delaying upgrading is even more disruptive. So I now see upgrading as a type of maintenance: you do it to survive. Technological life in the future will be a series of endless upgrades.</p>\n\n<p>Expecting to spend your life upgrading should be a life skill taught in school. Indeed, I'd like to learn how to manage maintaining my digital ecosystem better myself. There must be a zen and art to upgrading.</p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/hhtodjhmb4g922okahkj5r5k0c/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kk.org%2Fthetechnium%2Farchives%2F2011%2F04%2Fthe_art_of_endl.php\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/thetechnium?a=3lX6d084d4k:XoiLBg9r6s4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/thetechnium?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/thetechnium/~4/3lX6d084d4k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "New Poetry Anthologies from Ghana and Zimbabwe",
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Look Where You Have Gone to Sit (Edited by Martin Egblewogbe and Laban Carrick Hill)</b></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ENFwcOH2d1I/TabBW_gapJI/AAAAAAAAAmk/NfDIumxjndo/s1600/poetryanthologycover-224x300.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;text-align:justify\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ENFwcOH2d1I/TabBW_gapJI/AAAAAAAAAmk/NfDIumxjndo/s200/poetryanthologycover-224x300.jpg\" width=\"149\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The <a href=\"http://writersprojectghana.com/look-where-you-have-gone-to-sit/\">Writers Project of Ghana</a> has released the first of a series of anthologies titled <i>Look Where You have Gone to Sit.</i> Edited by Martin Egblewogbe and Laban Carrick Hill and published by Woeli Publishing Services in Accra, <i>Look Where You have Gone to Sit</i> features the work of nineteen new writers, presenting exciting writings across different themes. Writers Project of Ghana intends to continue its efforts to put out more anthologies of Ghanaian writing; consequently, there will be a launch for the next anthologies for 2011 later this year, one for poetry and another for short stories. Copies of this anthology would be available in all bookstores soon, so keep looking.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">I have a poem, <i>Finding My Voice</i>, in this anthology. For more information contact martin@writersproject.com.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Together by Julius Chingono and John Eppels</b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DCGWI-t2pXc/TabBwxl0n8I/AAAAAAAAAms/bx4q1qcHCvo/s1600/Together.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"147\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DCGWI-t2pXc/TabBwxl0n8I/AAAAAAAAAms/bx4q1qcHCvo/s200/Together.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a>Co-published by 'amaBooks (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe), University of KwaZulu-Nala Press (South Africa) and University of New Orleans (USA), <i>Together </i> is a collaborative writing between Chingono and Eppels. This book would honour the memory of <a href=\"http://vasigauke.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-university-press-to-release-book-by.html\">Chingono</a> who passed away in January this year. <i>Together</i> is being launched on April 18.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b><br></b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Date:</b> April 18, 2011</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Time:</b> 5:30 pm</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>Venue:</b> Lobby Books, Idasa's Cape Town Democracy Centre, 6 Spin Street, Cape Town</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b>RSVP:</b> aspath@idasa.or.za</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/29803016-7306641066238491544?l=freduagyeman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "I escaped from Auschwitz",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/91047?ns=guardian&pageName=I+escaped+from+Auschwitz%3AArticle%3A1544276&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Holocaust+%28News%29%2CSecond+world+war+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CPoland+%28News%29%2CEurope&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Homa+Khaleeli&c7=11-Apr-11&c8=1544276&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FHolocaust\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Kazimierz Piechowski is one of just 144 prisoners to have broken out of the notorious Nazi camp and survive. Today aged 91, he tells his extraordinary story</p><p>On 20 June 1942, the SS guard stationed at the exit to Auschwitz was frightened. In front of him was the car of Rudolph Höss, the commandant of the infamous concentration camp. Inside were four armed SS men, one of whom – an Untersturmführer, or second lieutenant, was shouting and swearing at him.</p><p>\"Wake up, you buggers!\" the officer screamed in German. \"Open up or I'll open you up!\" Terrified, the guard scrambled to raise the barrier, allowing the powerful motor to pass through and drive away.</p><p>Yet had he looked closer, the guard would have noticed something strange: the men were sweating and ashen-faced with fear. For far from being Nazis, the men were Polish prisoners in stolen uniforms and a misappropriated car, who had just made one of the most audacious escapes in the history of Auschwitz. And the architect of the plot, the second lieutenant, was a boy scout, to whom the association's motto \"Be prepared\" had become a lifeline.</p><p>Almost 70 years later, prisoner 918 is holding forth in the home of the scouting association, Baden Powell House in London. At 91, he is impeccably dressed, with a face as wrinkle-free as his well-ironed shirt. As he accepts the ceremonial neckerchief from a shy girl scout from Lancashire, he is as straight-backed as any of the teenagers on parade. In the UK as the guest of a British singer, <a href=\"http://katycarr.com/\" title=\"Katy Carr, who has written a song about his experiences\">Katy Carr, who has written a song about his experiences</a>, he is thrilled when the scouts and guides join her to sing for him. Yet in between the traditional trappings of a jamboree, Kazimierz Piechowski, or Kazik as he likes to be called, will tell them a story few in the UK have heard – how, during Nazi occupation, scouts their age were murdered in the streets, while others like him were sent to concentration camps to witness the horror of Hitler's Final Solution.</p><p>Piechowski had a happy childhood in the town of Tczew, swimming with friends in the nearby river Vistula or playing with bows and arrows in the park with his two brothers. His family were middle class and his father worked on the railways. When he was 10, Piechowski decided to join the scouts – an act that would alter his life for ever. The youth association was flourishing in Poland, a newly independent state set up after the first world war, with a strong focus on patriotism, \"toughness\" and brotherhood. \"I joined because I was patriotic,\" he remembers. \"And when I arrived home, my mother was crying a little bit and said to me: 'I am so happy you are on the right way.'\"</p><p>When the Nazis invaded the country nine years later, in 1939, the scouting movement was seen by the invaders as a symbol of nationalism – and a potential source of resistance. \"I was 19 when the war broke out,\" Piechowski says. \"Four days after Germany declared war, they arrived in Tczew. They started shooting the scouts.\" Among those rounded up and killed were Piechowski's childhood friends, and the teenager was terrified. \"I knew that, sooner or later, I would also be killed,\" he says, \"so I decided to run away.\"</p><p>He tried to flee across the Hungarian border, a route used by other scouts making their way to France to fight in the Free Polish forces there, only to be caught at the crossing. After eight months in various prisons he was sent to Auschwitz.</p><p>\"We were only the second transportation to the camp,\" Piechowski says, \"and we had to help build it.\" The old collection of buildings that made up the original concentration camp was not big enough to house all those caught in mass arrests, so inmates were forced to work 12- to 15-hour days to construct a new camp next door that would become notorious as <a href=\"http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=1\" title=\"the Nazis biggest death camp\">the Nazis' biggest death camp</a>.</p><p>\"For the first three months, we were all in complete shock,\" says Piechowski. And it just got worse. From June 1940 and all through the first six months of 1941, the SS were keen to kill inmates – beating them to death with batons – as the simplest way to cope with the camp's overcrowding. Today, the starvation, unimaginable brutality and physical labour that made the concentration camp a living hell are well documented. But the details of Piechowski's memories still have the power to shock. Inmates were each given a spoon and a tin bowl – not just to eat and drink from, but also to urinate in at night. \"If you lost your spoon, you ate from the bowl like a dog,\" he says quietly. \"If you lost your bowl, that was it; you did not get any soup.\"</p><p>Sometimes the guards would murder just to get a holiday, he says. \"When an SS man was bored, they would take off a prisoner's cap and throw it away. They would then order the prisoner to fetch it. As the prisoner was running, the officer would shoot them. Then they would claim the prisoner was trying to escape and get three days off for foiling it.\"</p><p>How did people cope? \"Some prayed, but some who had prayed before they arrived would say: 'There cannot be a God if Auschwitz exists.'\"</p><p>For six weeks, Piechowski was set to work carrying corpses after executions. \"The death wall was between blocks 10 and 11. They would line prisoners up and shoot them in the back of the head.\" At the end there would be a pile of naked corpses and Piechowski would take the ankles, while another man held the arms, and throw them on to carts, to transport them to the crematorium. \"Sometimes it was 20 a day, sometimes it was a hundred, sometimes it was more. Men, women and children.\" He looks at me fiercely. \"And children,\" he repeats.</p><p>Yet he did not think of trying to escape until a friend's name appeared on a death list. Like many of the boy scouts in Auschwitz, Piechowski joined the resistance movement in the camp. As many of the scouts spoke German, they found useful positions – some were even among the prison police and were able to access the prisoners' files. One day, a Ukrainian friend, Eugeniusz Bendera, a gifted mechanic who worked in the camp's garage, came to him. \"He had been told by those who had access to his documents that he was going to be murdered. I was devastated,\" Piechowski says. The germ of an escape plan formed.<br><br>\"He said he could organise a car, but that was not enough.\" The men were being held in the main camp, <a href=\"http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=6\" title=\"Auschwitz I\">Auschwitz I</a>, where the fences were covered in electrified barbed wire and there were guards every few metres. The escapees would have to make it through the infamous <em>Arbeit macht frei</em> gate (the legend meant \"Work sets you free\"), and also break out of the outer perimeter of the complex.</p><p>Yet Piechowski could not dismiss his friend's plea. \"When I thought that they would put Gienek [Bendera] against the wall of death and shoot him, I had to start thinking.\" It helped that Piechowski was now working in the store block, where the guards' uniforms and ammunition were kept. Slowly an idea took shape. But holding him back were the consequences for other prisoners. \"In the speech the deputy commandant gave when a new transport came in, he would say: 'If anyone thinks of doing something stupid like escaping, let them know this: we will kill 10 people for each person who escapes from a work group or [housing] block.' It was like a cup of cold water hurled over my head.\"</p><p>So that the Nazis would not hold their real working group responsible, Piechowski and Bendera formed a fake group of four, recruiting another boy scout, Stanislaw Gustaw Jaster, and priest Józef Lempart for their \"spectacular escape\".</p><p>On 20 June 1942 – two years to the day after Bendera entered Auschwitz – the conspirators met in the attic of a half-built block to run through the escape plan for the last time. It was a Saturday, when work stopped at midday and the store rooms and motor pool would be unmanned. Before they left they said a prayer for their families, and agreed that if the attempt failed they would shoot themselves. \"What was really encouraging us and pushing us on was that if we did not do this Gienek would be killed. \"Until the last moment we weren't sure. But we said: 'We have to do this, we have to believe.'\"</p><p>Picking up a rubbish cart containing kitchen waste, the four started walking towards the <em>Arbeit macht frei</em> gate. Here Piechowski told the guard he was part of a squad taking the rubbish away, praying the guard would not check to see if they were registered. Their luck held and they were able to walk freely out of the main camp and towards the store block. How did it feel? \"I did not think about anything,\" Piechowski says. \"I was just trying to pass this final examination. From that moment we did not only need courage, but intelligence.\"</p><p>At the stores, three of them made their way to trap doors covering chutes to the coal cellars. That morning while at work, Piechowski had unscrewed a bolt keeping the doors locked so they could climb in. They made their way to the second-floor store room, broke down the door and dressed themselves in officers' uniforms. Meanwhile, Bendera got into the garage with a copied key and brought round the car.</p><p>The mechanic had picked the Steyr 220 – the fastest car in Auschwitz, there for the sole use of the commandant. \"It had to be fast, because he had to be able to get to Berlin in a few hours. We took it because if we were chased we had to be able to get away.\"</p><p>They drove to the main gate – passing SS men who saluted them and shouted Heil Hitler. But for Piechowski, the biggest test was still to come. \"There was still one problem: we did not know whether, when we came to the final barrier, we would need a pass. We just planned that I would play the role of an SS officer so well that the guards would believe me.\"</p><p>Yet as they approached the barrier, the guard did not move. As he describes what happens next, Piechowski looks away as though he can see the last obstacle before him. \"We are driving towards the final barrier, but it is closed . . . We have 80m to go, it is still closed . . . We have 60m to go and it is still closed. I look at my friend Gienek – he has sweat on his brow and his face is white and nervous. We have 20m to go and it is still closed . . .\" Bendera stopped the car and as Piechowski stared blankly ahead, not knowing what to do, he felt a blow on his shoulder. It was Lempart. \"He whispered: 'Kazik, do something.'</p><p>\"This was the most dramatic moment. I started shouting.\" The SS guards obeyed and the car drove to freedom – allowing the men to become four of only 144 prisoners to successfully escape Auschwitz.</p><p>The Nazis were incensed, says Piechowski. \"When the commandant heard in Berlin that four prisoners had escaped he asked: 'How the bloody hell could they escape in my own car, in our own uniforms, and with our ammunition?' They could not believe that people they did not think had any intelligence took them [for a ride].\"</p><p>Keeping away from the main roads to evade capture, they drove on forest roads for two hours, heading for the town of Wadowice. There they abandoned the Steyr and continued on foot, sleeping in the forest and taking turns to keep watch. Lempart became ill and was left with a parish priest, while Jaster returned to Warsaw. Piechowski and Bendera spent time in Ukraine before Piechowski returned to Poland, joining the partisan Polish Home Army and spending the rest of the war fighting the Nazis.</p><p>In revenge, Jaster's parents were arrested and died in Auschwitz, and there were serious consequences for the remaining prisoners. \"A month after we escaped, an order went out that every person must be tattooed [with their prison number]. The Nazis knew that an escapee's hair would grow back, and that the partisans would make new documents for them. But when people saw the number, they would know that they were from Auschwitz. No other camp used numbering – it was our escape that led to it.\"</p><p>Although they were never recaptured, Piechowski relived his time in the camp in flashbacks and nightmares. And his problems were not over. When Poland became a communist state in 1947, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for joining the Home Army, serving seven. \"When I finally came out of prison I was 33 years old. I thought, 'They have taken away my whole youth – all my young years.'\"</p><p>Later, he became an engineer and when the communist regime fell in 1989, he took to travelling the world with his wife, Iga. He has written two books about his experiences, and tries to ensure no one will forget what happened in Auschwitz. Does he mind reliving his terrifying past? \"I am a scout so I have to do my duty – and be cheerful and merry. And I will be a scout to the end of my life,\" he says simply.</p><p><em>Additional reporting Christina Zaba</em></p><p><em>For details of Katy Carr's 'Escapologist Tour', which will include screenings of the short documentary Kazik and the Kommander's Car, visit </em><a href=\"http://katycarr.com/\" title=\"katycarr.com\"><em>katycarr.com</em></a></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/holocaust\">Holocaust</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/secondworldwar\">Second world war</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/poland\">Poland</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news\">Europe</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/homa-khaleeli\">Homa Khaleeli</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2011%2Fapr%2F11%2Fi-escaped-from-auschwitz\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Things I have learned in Ghana: #1 The strength of women",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ukmw-e9LQbM/TZ7wP1MVLlI/AAAAAAAAAL8/Fvzdi5sQSF4/s1600/women+carrying+wood.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"212\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ukmw-e9LQbM/TZ7wP1MVLlI/AAAAAAAAAL8/Fvzdi5sQSF4/s320/women+carrying+wood.JPG\" width=\"320\"></a></div><br>\n<br>\nI have learned that a woman may carry an incredible load and yet still question her own strength.<br>\n<br>\n<br>\n<i>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1803\">freedigitalphotos.net Africa</a></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6847712185319140876-3886769684774693250?l=www.fionaleonard.net\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/YearInAmerica/~4/ZQuIPmVWilA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Data Beats Math",
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"content" : "<div><p> </p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>Over the years, folks have often asked me what kind of math am I using to create large scale, real-time, <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/08/accumulating_co.html\">context accumulating</a> systems (<em>e.g.,</em> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/11/ieee_paper_thre.html\">NORA</a>). Some fond of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian\">Bayesian</a> speculate I am using Bayesian techniques. Some ask if I am using <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network\">neural networks</a> or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic\">heuristics</a>. A math professor said I was doing advanced work in the field of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory\">Set Theory</a>.</p>\n<p>My answer is always, “I don’t know any math. I didn’t finish high school. But I can explain how it works, step-by-step, and it is really quite simple.”</p>\n<p>That reminds me of a related funny story. After IBM acquired my SRD company in 2005 I began touring IBM’s impressive research facilities around the world. During a visit to <a href=\"http://www.almaden.ibm.com/http:/www.almaden.ibm.com/\">IBM’s Almaden Research Center</a> I explained my techniques to a room full of researchers. A few months later, to my surprise, they sent me a technical paper to express my work … using math. Fascinating I thought. The idea that my algorithms are now expressed in math terms was really exciting. Could it be? I was so curious. So I asked them to humor me and take me through the paper very slowly via a conference call. It was actually a bit embarrassing. I started out by asking the question what does an equal sign mean when a colon is in front of it? Symbol by symbol I asked for an explanation. Then I asked about this thing shaped like the letter “U” … what does that mean? (Union as it turns out). Anyway, I was able to follow the math and it all made sense until about halfway through the paper when I spotted an obvious error. So I said, “um, the math here is inconsistent with my technique.” I suggested a fix. The phone went quiet for a minute and then about 45 days later they came back with a new and improved paper. Continuing where we left off, I found a similar discrepancy further down the page and then provided some more specifics about my technique. Unfortunately, I never received another draft. Clearly, they could have. But honestly, I suspect they simply lost interest in having to teach me math.</p>\n<p>I wish we would have finished that paper, as then folks trained in formal methods would better understand what I am doing and seeing.</p>\n<p>One of the things demonstrated by this mathy paper might have been the notion that “data beats math” – at least when it comes to <em>Assertion Algorithms</em>. Based on the available observation space, can an assertion be made? Yes or no. In short, there comes a point where sufficient evidence exists such that an assertion can be made as a “no-brainer” without feeling compelled to split hairs with probability math.</p>\n<p>Here is practical example. Imagine being presented with two identity records?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Record #1 </span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Name: Mark Smith</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Date of Birth: 05/12/1987</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">SSN: 555-00-1122</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Record #2 </span></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Name: Mark Smith</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Date of Birth: May 1987</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">D/L: 0099912334</p>\n<p>Are they the same person? It is certainly possible. Using population statistics and some math someone could compute a reasonably accurate probability. I say heck with using math to guess. I’d say where can I find some <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/07/how-to-use-a-gl.html\">glue</a> around here? For example, a record like this:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Record #3</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Name: Mark K Smith</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Date of Birth: May 12, 1987</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">D/L: 0099912334</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">SSN: 555-00-1122</p>\n<p>So the point is: I’d rather look for corroborating and/or dissenting evidence than look to math for estimated probabilities. And if a really important outcome might come from such an assertion, I would continue to seek observations until it was so obvious you could show the board of directors and they would say “duh.” If you run out of available observations and you are still not sure … then you have a few choices: 1) locate and collect the kinds of observations you need, 2) wait until you luck into a future observation related to the assertion in question (letting the existing ambiguity fester), or 3) pound on it with math. But I say only pound on it with math if it is going to be worth the additional effort/compute (<em>e.g.,</em> you are playing high-stakes poker in Vegas).</p>\n<p>My gripe, if any, is that way too many people are chipping away at hard problems and making no material gains in decades (<em>e.g.,</em> entity extraction and classification) … when what they actually need is more data. Not more of same data, by the way. No, they more likely need orthogonal data – data from a different sensor sharing some of the same domain, entities and features (<em>e.g.,</em> name and driver’s license number).</p>\n<p>When the quality of mathematical predictions start to flatten out, I recommend increasing your observation space. Hence the above reference to this awesome quote:</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>RELATED POSTS:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/08/accumulating_co.html\">Accumulating Context: Now or Never </a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2008/06/smart-systems-f.html\">Smart Systems Flip-Flop</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2008/02/algorithms-at-d.html\">Algorithms At Dead-End: Cannot Squeeze Knowledge Out Of A Pixel</a></p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/07/how-to-use-a-gl.html\">How to Use a Glue Gun to Catch a Liar</a></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/12/it_turns_out_bo.html\">It Turns Out Both Bad Data and a Teaspoon of Dirt May Be Good For You</a></span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/05/smart-sensemaking-systems-first-and-foremost-must-be-expert-counting-systems.html\">Smart Sensemaking Systems, First and Foremost, Must be Expert Counting Systems</a></p></div>"
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"title" : "Endgame in Abidjan",
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"content" : "When French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe announced that outgoing Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo was in negotiations to surrender, he hailed the resolution of the crisis as a success by the international community. Today, France can be proud to have participated in the defense and expression of democracy in the Ivory Coast, he said, proclaiming the last four months of international engagement a wild success.But at the end of a very long day, following massacres in the West of the country and a days-long siege on Abidjan, it's hard to see how anyone can be proud of how this has unfolded. A contested election degenerated into a four-month electoral stand-off that has left at least 1,500 people dead, has caused about 200,000 refugees over the borders, and displaced another several hundred thousand within the Ivory Coast. This is not a shining example of how to negotiate a solution to conflict. It's a case in which everything went very, very wrong. And it's a visceral example of how one, very stubborn man, can ruin a nation. From day one, this crisis looked messy. After an election that was postponed countless times for half a decade, the voting finally took place in November -- and it was clean. But the Gbagbo government resisted releasing the results. When it became clear that the opposition leader Alassane Ouattara had won the vote, Gbagbo tried to fudge, disqualifying votes until his total polling was higher. When that didn't work -- after all, the United Nations, African Union, and every Western country had already recognized Ouattara -- he just did what any power-grabbing president would: He took the oath of office and stayed put. At first, the African Union, and particularly the West African economic bloc ECOWAS, made loud noises about unseating Gbagbo, arguing that they were even ready to use military intervention if necessary. But when it became clear that this was just talk -- Nigeria, the heavyweight that would have had to back such action, is about to have (potentially flawed) elections of its own -- Gbagbo's confidence only grew. The world tried economic sanctions; Gbagbo got around them. It tried sending envoys; Gbagbo refused them. It even tried offering Gbagbo a dignified exit, probably in a country of his choosing at that point. That the crisis dragged on so long was precisely the reason it became so bad. The Ivory Coast's economy shut down; the country defaulted on its debt in January. Investors grew anxious, and time seemed to stop. But most devastatingly, throughout those weeks, both Gbagbo- and Ouattara-loyal troops were preparing for a military solution. For Gbagbo forces, much of that meant actively thwarting the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country. For Ouattara, that meant weeks of planning an offensive march toward the commercial capital to unseat Gbagbo personally. On the streets of Abidjan, we now have a visceral picture of what both sides were preparing for. After a weekend of fighting, Ouattara-loyal troops had taken most of the city, save for the presidential palace area, where Gbagbo is holed up. His resistance was strong enough that the United Nations' peacekeeping mission, with the help of France, went on the offensive. After a day during which the United Nations warned citizens of the city not to go outside, Gbagbo finally looks interested in thinking about stepping down. But let's name the things that have gone wrong: Negotiations failed; economic sanctions failed; the U.N. peacekeeping mission was thwarted, though it later regained initaitive. A military siege has not yet succeeded and regardless comes at a high cost. The French have gotten involved militarily, which was surely the last thing they wanted to do in a former colony where resentment toward their influence runs incredibly high.The humanitarian situation is as precarious as it has been in the last decade. Now is no time to celebrate. If and when this political stand-off ends, the Ivory Coast is going to be broken. It's incredible to reflect on what that means: that one man, Laurent Gbagbo, could push a country to the brink of self destruction, costing thousands of lives, billions of lost economic dollars, and an uncountable toll of human suffering. The world didn't fail to end this crisis for want of trying; it failed because there were no good answers. It's particularly striking given how many things were working in favor of this being resolved. The country already had a 11,000-strong peacekeeping mission. There was from the beginning been international consensus about the outcome of the elections. If we can be proud of how the Ivory Coast turns out, it will only be in one way: As a cautionary tale for the strongman who decides to stick around. This -- Ivory Coast today -- is what you will do to your country."
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/my-fischer-price-portable.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>I remember back in the day, pre-portable digging. I’d buy stuff by title, oh it has Funk in it, it must be good. After getting burned time after time (Peter Brown is not funky!), I finally pulled the trigger and bought a portable off of E Bay about 14 years ago. I got the children’s record player from Fisher Price, model 820. Unlike the 825, it can be battery operated, which is crucial going out into the field. Unfortunately, like an idiot, when I got it, I used the wrong plug and shorted it out while testing it. After all, it is made of plastic and a child’s toy. Totally bummed about it, I eventually took it to a guy who not only fixed it, but put a headphone jack into it so I could dig without having to share. Ready to go, the only thing I needed were some extra needles. These things are tough to get, and when I met up with DJ Andy Smith to go digging for the first time in NJ (he was touring North America and Canada), he informed me he bought up the last needles in the US for this turntable! Now I know where to go when I need one. The 820 has been a work horse for me. It’s light, rather small, and takes C batteries. It has definitely been a life and money saver out in the field.<br>\n<em>Fisher Price 825 Record Player</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/fisher-price-825.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>A few years ago I needed a back up portable, so I went with the Numark PT-01. I got it fairly cheap (I think $79) and I think the seller dropped it because my volume button is a bit crooked. I used this in the field once, and after determining it was really too bulky as well as being too heavy, it is retired to recording my records to convert to MP3′s to post up or to just listen to some records when I’m not in my studio. The sound is great, it plays 45s, 33s, and 78s, but if given my choice again, I would definitely not buy this record player. Too bulky like I said before, and way, way too heavy. Great for home use, and extra input for your receiver to play your vinyl, but leave this mammoth behind when going digging.<br>\n<em>Numark PT-01</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/numark-pt01.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>The portable I <em>should</em> have considered was the Vestax Handy Trax. Light, solid, and backed by one of the best names in the business, the Handy Trax now come with a USB port to go right into the computer for recording. Vestax even advertises to the DJ/ Collector: “Whether a collector from fine Jazz to classics, a digger in search at garage sales or in the attic the handy trax USB will take you wherever possible. from Japan to the Americas, through Europe and back, Vestax assures infinite portability.” That’s a company that is confident and knows what they are talking about with their product. Their mixers were always “mad tight”, so why wouldn’t their portables be the same top notch quality? Ok, I had one shitter of a Vestax Mixer, but my 05 is a damn champ, still in my studio today. It also comes in black, which looks really stealth.<br>\n<em>Vestax Handy Trax</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/handy-trax.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"><br>\nAnother player that has always been seen at record conventions and the like is the Columbia GP-3. Very retro looking, square, and a bit smaller than the Handy Trax, this has been a staple in Japan for years. This thing is so popular that it even has it’s own <a href=\"http://www.myspace.com/breakbeatraer\"><strong>MySpace page</strong></a> (that breakbeat raer tag smells just like Soul Strut…). It does have a hefty $250 price tag, but I’ve seen this thing in action, it’s well worth it. My man <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/mfasiscrckbeats\"><strong>Mfasis</strong></a> has been using this thing for more than 10 years plus in the field and I believe Larry from Funky 16 rocks one as well. No complaints from them. This is a piece I definitely have to have.<br>\n<em>Columbia GP-3</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/columbia-gp3.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>Here’s a great story about the Holy Grail of portables: The Sound Burger. About 10 or so years ago, I could have purchased two Sound Burgers for $150. What a complete fool I am for not doing so. Since then, the best of the best has jumped to sometimes over $400 for one. DJ Bluewater rocks one. DJ Andy Smith brought his while digging here in the States. It’s compact, and a true hi-fi component. Made by Audio Technica, the AT-727 Sound Burger was a direct response to the Sony Walkman. I mean who wouldn’t want to walk around playing the latest Run DMC Lp while walking down the street? This is hands down, the best IMHO. There was also a Sound Crocodile that played records, Good luck even finding one of those for sale. Ok, fast forward now to 2011. I get a tip from Bluewater, who knows I have been looking for a Sound Burger, that someone put a link on Soul Strut they had a grip of SB for sale. I check it out, it’s on Etsy, and they have positive feedback. Actually, 100% and they have sold one SB already. I immediately buy the thing, it was just shy of $100, plus $15 shipping. Done and done. They have a 3 day pay/ 3 day ship policy, so Bob’s Yer Uncle, and I’ll have my Sound Burger by Friday. I do a little research, it was being sold by a Midwest all 45 DJ, who seemed really excited to help out fellow DJ’s by selling these portables. Long story short, I never got my Sound Burger, eventually got my money back because I payed with a credit card, but the seller, <strong>Rekkerds</strong> from Knoxville, TN (who deleted their Etsy account after 4 straight negative feed backs for taking people’s money and never shipping the product) has long since disappeared. Or have they? E mail me and I will give you this person’s full name/ location/ DJ name and crew because <em>she</em> is a complete scammer. DO NOT BUY FROM THIS PERSON. Karma man, karma. But I digress, Crosley has put out the Crosley Radio CR6002A-BK , a Sound Burger look alike. The jury is still out on this product. Some good reviews, some bad, “wobbly sound” and bad belts, but I mean I’ve seen them for $50 bucks, and if you can get one at that price (at whatever color), I say do it. I will as well. While researching, I came across this little piece of gold: <a href=\"http://cgi.ebay.ie/SKY-STUDIO-MODEL-830-PORTABLE-SOUND-BURGER-PLAYER-/140498712789\"><strong>Sky Studio 830 portable</strong></a>, which has a cassette player in it as well, for all you retro vinyl sellers offering free cassette mix tapes with purchase in your garage or tent. The price is over $400 bucks, so I don’t know if it’s worth it. If you have one, e mail me and give me a review.<br>\n<em>Audio Technica AT-727 Sound Burger</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/sound-burger.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>So there you have it. A portable turntable breakdown. There are a ton of other portables out there, the Fisher Price Big Bird turntable, the Panasonic that looks like a Lady Bug, and a plethora of 70′s portables that you will encounter if you look. Remember, it would probably be a good idea to have a back up turntable if you buy one that’s that old. These newer turntables have parts that are widely available, and if you need a needle, etc. you’ll be able to get it. That’s my $.02 in the portable turntable game. Keep Diggin’!<br>\n<em>Fisher Price Big Bird (820) Model</em><br>\n<img src=\"http://fleamarketfunk.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/big-bird-turntable.gif?w=490\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/45-records/\">45 records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/45s/\">45s</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/crate-digging/\">Crate Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/dj/\">DJ</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/funk/\">funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/portable-turntable/\">Portable Turntable</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/record-collecting/\">record collecting</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/record-digging/\">Record Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/records/\">records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/soul/\">soul</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/category/vinyl/\">vinyl</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/columbia-gp-2/\">Columbia GP-2</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/crate-digging/\">Crate Digging</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/fischer-price/\">Fischer Price</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/flea-market-funk/\">Flea Market Funk</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/handy-trax/\">Handy Trax</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/numark-pt-01/\">Numark PT-01</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/portable-turntables/\">Portable Turntables</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/records/\">records</a>, <a href=\"http://fleamarketfunk.com/tag/sound-burger/\">Sound Burger</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/fleamarketfunk.wordpress.com/3142/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=fleamarketfunk.com&blog=907294&post=3142&subd=fleamarketfunk&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>I have been talking about the notion that "<a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\">the data must find the data and the relevance must find the user</a>" for some time now.</p>\n<p>Another way to think about this is "the data is the question."</p>\n<p>As each new piece of data arrives in the enterprise, the enterprise just learned something. And with each new observation one should ask, “How does this relate to what I already know? Does this matter and, if so, to whom?"</p>\n<p>This is the world of sense and respond, situational awareness, sensemaking or whatever you want to call it.</p>\n<p>Example: An employee in the bank’s credit department changes his home address in the payroll system. What if the employee's new address is the same address currently under investigation by the bank's own fraud department? How would the bank know?</p>\n<p>They wouldn't.</p>\n<p>When the data is the query, a change to a home address in the payroll system is determined, at that split second, to be the same address under investigation by the fraud department. And, at that split second this is determined to be relevant, so the fraud department is notified.</p>\n<p>Real-time, sub-second.</p>\n<p>When organizations can process arriving observations for relevance … organizations will be more competitive, or might even, for the first time, seem to be “awake.”</p>\n<p>Note: The systems/technologies that are going to do this are very different than what organizations have in place today. Existing operational systems cannot do this. Neither can master data management systems, data warehouses, operational data stores, data mining engines … not even <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce\">Hadoop Map/Reduce</a>.</p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>RELATED POSTS:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\">Data Finds Data</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/general-purpose-sensemaking-systems-and-information-colocation.html\">General Purpose Sensemaking Systems and Information Colocation</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/03/on-a-smarter-planet-some-organizations-will-be-smarterer-than-others.html\">On A Smarter Planet … Some Organizations Will Be Smarter-er Than Others</a></p>\n<p> </p></div>"
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"title" : "On the superiority of American domestic appliances.",
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"content" : "As a U.S. citizen who has just returned from a decade in Europe, I can't report much good news about the relative standing of the American dream. My experience is that—despite their own economic crises—Europeans have far less reason to worry about job security, health care, or unpronounceable ingredients in their food. Their public transportation is better, their roads smoother. Their working hours, vacation, and parental leave are staggeringly more family-friendly. We're falling behind. Debts and wars, income inequality, a curdling political culture, and Charlie Sheen have knocked us off our national stride.<br><br>[<a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2290317/?from=rss\">more ...</a>] <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:575569f76a8379d9c08401c7210cf9f5:Hjs5y77827ukHOfw4qDU6of9ID2NDsi%2BVzfkXGgjP5lc3ptTjfUbOBivbh51chHaZb6aqZFp%2FVf53nw%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Facebook\" alt=\"Add to Facebook\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:e4b0002f2af5bfc2c65ba079445ea315:8qBpqqlNc9%2BgnqG2BU%2BQnSQrzIYxuBec5rpzYuZ6vPyKMF1Rz2VllfhgkUdqLrit%2FP%2Bl0mmk3N1t%2FF4%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Twitter\" alt=\"Add to Twitter\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/twitter.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:9d1330b3234fd34f644cbab2521c66a8:TFxChm4HNrS80JGnYKocBJq13witZlucwAP1AGb6XrDIY6Kh%2BeUlgH2WNwCDZEzqxEJHKl%2BiD9kSdw%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to digg\" alt=\"Add to digg\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:97e096f3d34f3ffd80cde363563ab47f:Xzx7bhlCTz3sPBS9RDKZmHpRdY1zIosdI8Sr6G6FjSMCH8960OjcUDojL%2BHx%2BrSupn2PhOlTnK5MAQ%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Reddit\" alt=\"Add to Reddit\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:1b5903d772e8baf1ccdcfda9459e5c5f:ciEvPlN9JAgYPnts89F6x5W04GYHhmDww52XXyqe4CuO3nZYfBiUroX%2B%2FS8RGFMhSfPYe2ae%2BxIVd3E%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" alt=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3b217618b628756b953dbe938fcccdcd:OrqpeIUHVFobQBM1UwBb99ayRaPQYVGXHAgxnREFpjZgfggiam3huvNT5ESn%2FWVPHWRw9g8i8aKBFrY%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Email this Article\" alt=\"Email this Article\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthisHF.gif\"></a>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d6f913530dc5f1b9ebecce505da387de&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d6f913530dc5f1b9ebecce505da387de&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=Business&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29918.rss.Business.34533,cat.Business.rss\">"
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"title" : "It Was the Best of Crimes: Critics’ Choice",
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"content" : "In the summer of 2000, British critics <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._F._Keating\">H.R.F. “Harry” Keating</a> and <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/03/rip-and-read.html\">Mike Ripley</a> were commissioned by the London<i> Times</i> newspaper to conduct a survey of the best crime novels (mysteries/spy stories/thrillers) of the 20th century, choosing one per year, 1900-1999. This, said the two critics, couldn’t be done so neatly, but what they <a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mksSGZFJ0Ek/TZTaONYCARI/AAAAAAAAIEY/9KwJpEgFxsA/s1600/Riddle+of+the+Sands.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;margin-top:1.5em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mksSGZFJ0Ek/TZTaONYCARI/AAAAAAAAIEY/9KwJpEgFxsA/s200/Riddle+of+the+Sands.jpg\" width=\"117\"></a>would do was select 100 books to represent a century which began with the recall of Sherlock Holmes and ended with the death of Inspector Morse.<br>\n<br>\nIn the end, Ripley cheated a bit by nominating <i>101</i> titles to include Keating’s own <i>The Perfect Murder</i> from 1964, which modesty had forbidden its author from suggesting.<br>\n<br>\nThe survey, with a brief justification for each title, was published in a 16-page supplement to <i>The Times</i> on Saturday, September 30, 2000. The basic list of titles selected is republished here for the first time as a tribute to author and scholar Harry Keating, who <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2011/03/grateful-association.html\">died earlier this week at age 84</a>. (Titles and years are as when published in the UK.)<br>\n<br>\n<b>1902:</b> <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<br>\n<b>1903:</b> <i>The Riddle of the Sands</i> – Erskine Childers<br>\n<b>1905:</b> <i>The Four Just Men</i> – Edgar Wallace<br>\n<b>1907:</b> <i>The Thinking Machine</i> – Jacques Futrelle<br>\n<b>1908:</b> <i>The Circular Staircase</i> – Mary Roberts Rinehart<br>\n<b>1911:</b> <i>The Innocence of Father Brown</i> – G.K. Chesterton<br>\n<b>1912:</b> <i>Trent’s Last Case</i> – E.C. Bentley<br>\n<b>1915:</b> <a href=\"http://killercoversoftheweek.blogspot.com/2010/02/39-steps-by-john-buchan.html\"><i>The Thirty-Nine Steps</i></a> – John Buchan<br>\n<b>1918:</b> <i>Uncle Abner</i> – Melville Davisson Post<br>\n<b>1926:</b> <i>The Murder of Roger Ackroyd</i> – Agatha Christie<br>\n<b>1928:</b> <i>Ashenden</i> (<i>The British Agent</i>) – W. Somerset Maugham<br>\n<b>1929:</b> <i>Little Caesar</i> – W.R. Burnett<br>\n<b>1929:</b> <i>Red Harvest</i> – Dashiell Hammett<br>\n<b>1930:</b> <a href=\"http://www.januarymagazine.com/features/hammettintro.html\"><i>The Maltese Falcon</i></a> – Dashiell Hammett<br>\n<b>1930:</b> <i>The Documents in the Case</i> – Dorothy L. Sayers, Robert Eustace<br>\n<b>1931:</b> <i>Malice Aforethought</i> – Francis Iles<br>\n<b>1932:</b> <i>Before the Fact</i> – Francis Iles<br>\n<b>1933:</b> <i>The Nine Tailors</i> – Dorothy L. Sayers<br>\n<b>1934:</b> <i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> – Agatha Christie<br>\n<b>1934:</b> <i>The Postman Always Rings Twice</i> – James M. Cain<br>\n<b>1934:</b> <i>Death of a Ghost</i> – Margery Allingham<br>\n<b>1935:</b> <i>They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?</i> – Horace McCoy<br>\n<b>1935: </b><i>The Hollow Man</i> – John Dickson Carr<br>\n<b>1935:</b> <i>The League of Frightened Men</i> – Rex Stout<br>\n<b>1936:</b> <i>The Wheel Spins</i> – Ethel Lina White<br>\n<b>1938:</b> <i>Lament for a Maker</i> – Michael Innes<br>\n<b>1938:</b> <i>The Beast Must Die</i> – Nicholas Blake<br>\n<b>1939:</b> <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/12/book-you-have-to-read-coffin-for.html\"><i>The Mask of Dimitrios</i></a> – Eric Ambler<br>\n<b>1939:</b> <i>Ten Little Niggers</i> (<i>And Then There Were None</i>) – Agatha Christie<br>\n<b>1939:</b> <i>Rogue Male</i> – Geoffrey Household<br>\n<b>1940:</b> <i>A Surfeit of Lampreys</i> (<a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/04/book-you-have-to-read-death-of-peer-by.html\"><i>Death of a Peer</i></a>) – Ngaio Marsh<br>\n<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KkADJzwe9zI/TZTl-M17g-I/AAAAAAAAIEs/Z0blwpSJNcQ/s1600/The+Bride+Wore+Black-1.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;margin-top:1.5em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KkADJzwe9zI/TZTl-M17g-I/AAAAAAAAIEs/Z0blwpSJNcQ/s200/The+Bride+Wore+Black-1.jpg\" width=\"117\"></a><b>1940:</b> <i>The Bride Wore Black</i> – Cornell Woolrich<br>\n<b>1942:</b> <i>Calamity Town</i> – Ellery Queen<br>\n<b>1943:</b> <i>The High Window</i> – Raymond Chandler<br>\n<b>1944:</b> <i>Green for Danger</i> – Christianna Brand<br>\n<b>1946:</b> <i>The Big Clock</i> – Kenneth Fearing<br>\n<b>1947:</b> <i>The Moving Toyshop</i> – Edmund Crispin<br>\n<b>1948:</b> <i>Devil Take the Blue-Tail Fly</i> – <br>\nJohn Franklin Bardin<br>\n<b>1949:</b> <i>My Friend Maigret</i> – Georges Simenon<br>\n<b>1949:</b> <i>The Asphalt Jungle</i> – W.R. Burnett<br>\n<b>1950:</b> <i>Strangers on a Train</i> – Patricia Highsmith<br>\n<b>1950:</b> <i>Smallbone Deceased </i>– Michael Gilbert<br>\n<b>1950:</b> <i>The Stain on the Snow</i> – Georges Simenon<br>\n<b>1951:</b> <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/09/book-you-have-to-read-daughter-of-time.html\"><i>The Daughter of Time</i></a> – Josephine Tey<br>\n<b>1952:</b> <i>The Tiger in the Smoke</i> – Margery Allingham<br>\n<b>1952:</b> <i>Last Seen Wearing</i> – Hilary Waugh<br>\n<b>1953:</b> <i>Five Roundabouts to Heaven</i> – John Bingham<br>\n<b>1953:</b> <i>The Long Goodbye</i> – Raymond Chandler<br>\n<b>1953:</b> <i>The Burglar</i> – David Goodis<br>\n<b>1956:</b> <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i> – Patricia Highsmith<br>\n<b>1956:</b> <i>Mystery Stories</i> – Stanley Ellin<br>\n<b>1957:</b> <i>From Russia with Love</i> – Ian Fleming<br>\n<b>1959:</b> <i>The Manchurian Candidate</i> – Richard Condon<br>\n<b>1962:</b> <i>The Ipcress File</i> – Len Deighton<br>\n<b>1963:</b> <i>Gun Before Butter</i> – Nicolas Freeling<br>\n<b>1963:</b> <i>The Spy Who Came in from the Cold</i> – John Le Carré<br>\n<b>1964:</b> <i>The Deep Blue Good-bye</i> – John D. MacDonald<br>\n<b>1964:</b> <i>Pop. 1280</i> – Jim Thompson<br>\n<b>1964:</b> <i>The Expendable Man</i> – Dorothy B. Hughes<br>\n<b>1965:</b> <i>Black Money</i> – Ross Macdonald<br>\n<b>1967:</b> <i>Roseanna</i> – Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo<br>\n<b>1968:</b> <i>Making Good Again</i> – Lionel Davidson<br>\n<b>1968:</b> <i>The Glass-Sided Ants Nest</i> – Peter Dickinson<br>\n<b>1969:</b> <i>Blind Man with a Pistol</i> – Chester Himes<br>\n<b>1970:</b> <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/06/get-carter-re-examination.html\"><i>Jack’s Return Home</i></a> – Ted Lewis<br>\n<b>1971:</b> <i>The Day of the Jackal</i> – Frederick Forsyth<br>\n<b>1972:</b> <a href=\"http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2009/07/book-you-have-to-read-friends-of-eddie.html\"><i>The Friends of Eddie Coyle</i></a> – George V. Higgins<br>\n<b>1972:</b> <i>Sadie When She Died</i> – Ed McBain<br>\n<b>1972:</b> <i>The Players and the Game</i> – Julian Symons<br>\n<b>1974:</b> <i>Other Paths to Glory</i> – Anthony Price<br>\n<b>1976:</b> <i>The Wrong Case</i> – James Crumley<br>\n<b>1976:</b> <i>A Demon in My View</i> – Ruth Rendell<br>\n<b>1976:</b> <i>A Morbid Taste for Bones</i> – Ellis Peters<br>\n<b>1977:</b> <i>A Judgement in Stone</i> – Ruth Rendell<br>\n<b>1977:</b> <i>Laidlaw</i> – William McIlvanney<br>\n<b>1978:</b> <i>SS-GB</i> – Len Deighton<br>\n<b>1979:</b> <i>Whip Hand</i> – Dick Francis<br>\n<b>1979:</b> <i>Skinflick</i> – Joseph Hansen<br>\n<b>1979:</b> <i>Kill Claudio</i> – P.M. Hubbard<br>\n<b>1981:</b> <i>Red Dragon</i> – Thomas Harris<br>\n<b>1981:</b> <i>Thus Was Adonis Murdered</i> – Sarah Caudwell<br>\n<b>1982:</b> <i>The False Inspector Dew</i> – Peter Lovesey<br>\n<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5YlyUrMcoqI/TZTkOy1gxcI/AAAAAAAAIEo/HQny8rmTvfI/s1600/The+False+Inspector+Drew-1.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;margin-top:1.5em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5YlyUrMcoqI/TZTkOy1gxcI/AAAAAAAAIEo/HQny8rmTvfI/s200/The+False+Inspector+Drew-1.jpg\" width=\"136\"></a><b>1982:</b> <i>Indemnity Only</i> – Sara Paretsky<br>\n<b>1982:</b> <i>The Artful Egg</i> – James McClure<br>\n<b>1984:</b> <i>Stick</i> – Elmore Leonard<br>\n<b>1984:</b> <i>Miami Blues</i> – Charles Willeford<br>\n<b>1986:</b> <i>A Perfect Spy</i> – John Le Carré<br>\n<b>1986:</b> <i>A Taste for Death</i> – P.D. James<br>\n<b>1987:</b> <i>The Black Dahlia</i> – James Ellroy<br>\n<b>1988:</b> <i>Double Whammy</i> – Carl Hiaasen<br>\n<b>1989:</b> <i>Lonely Hearts</i> – John Harvey<br>\n<b>1990:</b> <i>Postmortem</i> – Patricia Cornwell<br>\n<b>1991:</b> <i>Devil in a Blue Dress</i> – Walter Mosley<br>\n<b>1991:</b> <i>Dirty Tricks</i> – Michael Dibdin<br>\n<b>1993:</b> <i>The Sculptress</i> – Minette Walters<br>\n<b>1993:</b> <i>In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead</i> – James Lee Burke<br>\n<b>1995:</b> <i>The Mermaids Singing</i> – Val McDermid<br>\n<b>1998:</b> <i>On Beulah Height</i> – Reginald Hill<br>\n<b>1998:</b> <i>The Hanging Garden</i> – Ian Rankin<br>\n<b>1999:</b> <i>The Remorseful Day</i> – Colin Dexter<br>\n<br>\nNow, what do you think? Are there other books from the 20th century that you believe belong on this rundown, or some mentioned here that you think ought not be included? And how many of these works have you actually read? Sound off by clicking on “Comments” below.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16749171-7179527818696233177?l=therapsheet.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Photos of war atrocities are corrupting | Andrew Brown",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/30659?ns=guardian&pageName=Photos+of+war+atrocities+are+corrupting+%7C+Andrew+Brown%3AArticle%3A1538581&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Afghanistan+%28News%29%2CUS+military+%28News%29%2CEthics+%28News%29%2CPhotography+%28Art+and+design%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CEthical+Living%2CPhotography&c6=Andrew+Brown&c7=11-Mar-29&c8=1538581&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Andrew+Brown%27s+blog%2CCif+belief&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FAndrew+Brown%27s+blog\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>No moral good comes of clicking on the images in Rolling Stone of US soldiers with slaughtered Afghan civilians</p><p>On Monday there was a flurry of shocked twittering among my friends because <a href=\"http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-kill-team-20110327?page=1\" title=\"Rolling Stone: The Kill Team\">Rolling Stone magazine</a> had published a fresh set of photographs of horrors from Afghanistan: American soldiers posing with slaughtered civilians as if they were hunting trophies; American soldiers playing cards for body parts – you get the picture. The question is whether to click on it, too. What do we learn from a picture that we can't learn from its description, and should we really want to learn it?</p><p></p><p>Lots of people ask whether it is right to publish pictures of atrocities; my question is whether it is right to look at them. In part this is because the decision to publish them is made by fewer people, even in a net-connected world where every link is also a kind of republication. It's very easy to be confronted with a link you feel you should not click on. So is there any justification for this feeling?</p><p></p><p>The obvious one is that you will be repulsed and horrified. From <a href=\"http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tubgirl\" title=\"Urban Dictionary: Tubgirl\">tubgirl</a> to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx\" title=\"Wikipedia: Goatse\">goatse</a>, there are a number of thoroughly nasty pictures, designed to upset people, which every 15-year-old boy in the developed world must have seen by now and spent several hours working out how to make unsuspecting girls click on them. But I don't think these are corrupting: they are just the digital equivalent of <a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/oe52cf\" title=\"Go Comics: Calvin and Hobbes\">Calvin's grossings out of Susie Derkins</a>.</p><p></p><p>Repulsion and horror are not in themselves harmful, though easy enough to burn out on. But there are further steps. The first, I think, is desensitisation. If you are looking at something for the sake of the thrill it gives, you need to watch more and more and preferably more extreme, to get the same thrill. Watching tubgirl once never did anyone lasting harm. Looking at it 500 times is a symptom of something wrong, and probably a cause of further wrongness, too.</p><p></p><p>The next wrongness is not desensitisation exactly, but a kind of learned failure to forget and a consequent loss of proportion. I am thinking here of disaster porn: the first I remember was images of the Challenger disaster. Watched once, it told something: after seeing it 10 times, it was simply treating the deaths as entertainment. Much worse was the footage of the planes hitting the twin towers, which was unavoidable in the autumn of 2001 on US TV. I think the constant repetition of an image best forgotten did serve as a commercial for war, while making it harder and harder to understand why anyone might want to fight the US. So I didn't watch. But it took some small effort.</p><p></p><p>Of course, the other side in those wars had their own and deeply damaging images: some were pictures of innocent victims, designed to promote a thirst for revenge; others, much more sinister, were beheading videos designed to promote the thirst to kill. I don't think it is a morally good thing to click on these just to know what they are like. There are some things we ought not to see because they stir up difficult and painful emotions, which have no constructive outlet.</p><p></p><p>Of course, sometimes there is a constructive outlet. The pictures and videos from <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/pictures/image/0,8543,-104016200805,00.html\" title=\"Guardian: Abu Ghraib\">Abu Ghraib</a> did bring home what was happening there in a way that nothing else could have done, and promoted a great wave of revulsion that helped to get the place closed down.</p><p></p><p>The Rolling Stone pictures, though, are recognisably part of the same tradition as beheading videos. They were made to depict as enjoyable some rather horrible things, and published to show that they are in fact shocking, or they ought to be. But we can't, in fact, know which effect they are going to have. Most readers will be horrified; some will no doubt be turned on in a rather horrible way. What I think is really unlikely is that they will change the mind of anyone who sees them. The majority who think that war is terrible because it kills civilians will be strengthened in their conviction. The minority who think that war is fun because it gives an opportunity to kill civilians will also find evidence to gratify them.</p><p></p><p>So I won't click, and I don't think you should either.</p><p></p><p>This isn't an argument about censorship, although it is obviously related. But there is one not-so-obvious link, too, to the standard liberal arguments against censorship, which says we should not stop adults from making their own decisions. But the corollary of this is obviously that not everyone will click on pictures like that, and quite probably that no one ought to, even if banning things would be the greater evil.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/afghanistan\">Afghanistan</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-military\">US military</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ethics\">Ethics</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography\">Photography</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/andrewbrown\">Andrew Brown</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p7fhLV2qnex7q6zDzDVkWCfpGnw/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p7fhLV2qnex7q6zDzDVkWCfpGnw/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p7fhLV2qnex7q6zDzDVkWCfpGnw/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/p7fhLV2qnex7q6zDzDVkWCfpGnw/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "Des Maliens rentrent de Libye armés, menaçant la paix au Sahel",
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"title" : "A Recent Exercise in Nation-Building by Some Harvard Boys",
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"content" : "<p>It was worth a smile at breakfast that morning in February 2006, a scrap of social currency to take out into the world. Michael Porter, the Harvard Business School management guru, had grown famous offering competitive strategies to firms, regions, whole nations. Earlier he had taken on the problems of inner cities, health care and climate change. Now he was about to tackle perhaps the hardest problem of all (that is, after the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).</p>\n<p>He had become adviser to Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya.</p>\n<p>There at the bottom of the front page of the <em>Financial Times</em> was a <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/35f5a62a-98d0-11da-aa99-0000779e2340.html#ixzz1HcbG7tI2\">story</a> that no one else had that day, or any other – a scoop. It turned out that Porter and his friend Daniel Yergin and the consulting firms which they had respectively co-founded and founded, Monitor Group and Cambridge Energy Research Associates, had been working for a year on a plan to diversify the Libyan economy away from its heavy dependence on oil. Their teams had conducted more than 2,000 interviews with “small- and medium-scale entrepreneurs as well as Libyan and foreign business leaders.” (Both men are better-known as celebrated authors: Porter for <em>Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors</em><em> and The Competitive Advantage of Nations</em>, Yergin for <em>The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power</em> and <em>The Commanding Heights: the Battle for the World Economy</em>.)</p>\n<p>The next day Porter would <a href=\"http://www.isc.hbs.edu/pdf/2006-0209_Libya.pdf\">present</a> the 200-page document they had prepared in a ceremony in Tripoli. Gadhafi himself might attend. The <em>FT</em> had seen a copy of the report, which envisaged a glorious future under the consultants’ plan. If all went well, it said, then by 2019 – the 50th anniversary of the military coup that brought Col. Gadhafi to power – Libya would have “one of the fastest rates of business formation in the world,” making it a regional leader contributing to the “wealth and stability of surrounding nations.”</p>\n<p>From Cairo, the <em>FT</em>’s William Wallis reported:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The Harvard project is part of the efforts of Saif al-Islam, the colonel’s son, to restore Libya’s international legitimacy after his father’s renunciation of weapons of mass destruction and Tripoli’s agreement to pay compensation to the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie aircraft bombing.</p></blockquote>\n<p>A year later, in February 2007, <em>BusinessWeek</em> trumpeted the relationship, <a href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2007/gb20070220_956124.htm\">first </a>on the eve of another Porter lecture on the “New Dawn” in Tripoli, then <a href=\"http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_11/b4025061.htm\">again</a> a month later. The Cambridge, Mass., firm that Porter had started fifteen years before with seven other HBS professors had become. <em>BW</em> reported, “deeply engaged in overhauling the Mediterranean petro-state.” It wasn’t clear, the magazine noted, that partial bank privatization and “mini-MBAs” for some 250 emerging leaders would prevail over statism and red tape.</p>\n<p>We now know that Gadhafi’s son bribed his way into his PhD from the London School of Economics (LSE); that Monitor Group had been paid to help him write his dissertation there (much of which apparently turns out to have been <a href=\"http://saifalislamgaddafithesis.wikia.com/wiki/Plagiarism\">plagiarized</a>, anyway); that the Libyan government was paying Monitor $250,000 a month for its services; that, according to <em>The New York Times</em>, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund today owns a portion of Pearson PLC, the conglomerate that publishes the <em>Financial Times</em> and <em>The Economist;</em> that the whole deal quietly fell apart two years later.</p>\n<p>Sir Howard Davies resigned earlier this month as director of the LSE after it was disclosed he had accepted a ₤1.5 million donation in 2009 from a charity controlled by Saif Gadhafi.</p>\n<p>It turns out that Monitor also proposed to write a book boosting Gadhafi as “one of the most recognizable individuals on the planet,” promised to generate positive press, and to bring still more prominent academics, policymakers and journalists to Libya, according to Farah Stockman of <em>The Boston Globe</em>. She did a banner job of pursuing the details she found in <a href=\"http://www.libya-nclo.com/Portals/0/pdf%20files/A%20Proposal%20for%20Expanding%20the%20Dialogue%20around%20the%20Ideas%20of%20Muammar%20Qadhafi.pdf\">A Proposal For Expanding the Dialogue Surrounding the Ideas of Moammar Khadafy</a>, a proposal from Mark Fuller in 2007 that a Libyan opposition group posted on the Web.</p>\n<p>Among those enlisted were Sir Anthony Giddens, former director of the LSE; Francis Fukuyama, then of Johns Hopkins University; Benjamin Barber, of Rutgers University (emeritus); Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab; Robert Putnam and Joseph Nye, both former deans of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Nye received a fee and wrote a <a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/article/tripoli-diarist?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true\">broadly sympathetic account</a> of his three-hour visit with Gadhafi for <em>The New Republic</em>. He also told the <em>Globe</em>’s Stockman he had commented on a chapter of Saif’s doctoral dissertation. (When <em>The New Republic</em> scolded Nye earlier this month, after <em>Mother Jones</em> magazine <a href=\"http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/libya-qaddafi-monitor-group\">disclosed</a> the fee, Nye replied that his original manuscript implied that he had been employed as a consultant by Monitor, but that the phrase had been edited out).</p>\n<p>Connoisseurs of the consultant’s art will relish Monitor’s 2007 proposal, with its elaborate plan to write and sell a book about Gadhafi as a world-historical figure to a major publisher, and its hints of prospective visits from Cass Sunstein, future constitutional adviser to President Barack Obama (“positive preliminary conversation”) and Nelson Mandela. No memo dated before Porter’s February 2006 appearance in Tripoli has surfaced yet. An earlier <a href=\"http://libya-nclo.com/Portals/0/pdf%20files/Monitor2.pdf\">letter of understanding</a>, dated May 2006, stated that “Monitor is not a lobbying organization.”</p>\n<p>But the lobbying law may be involved, as <a href=\"http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/03/01/us-consulting-group-working-for-libya-did-not-register-as-foreign-agent\">noted</a> earlier this month by Paul Blumenthal, of the Sunlight Foundation.. Last week Monitor <a href=\"http://www.monitor.com/AboutUs/News/tabid/56/ctl/NewsDetail/mid/653/CID/20112403105223135/CTID/2/L/en-US/Default.aspx\">acknowledged</a> it may have a problem with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and hired an outside counsel to advise its internal investigation. Chances are we’ll hear more about this.</p>\n<p>Curiously enough, Porter’s name didn’t appear in the <em>Boston Globe</em> account until the twelfth paragraph under the headline “Local Consultants Aided Gadhafi/Cambridge firm tried to polish his image”, well below the continuation of the article on an inside page. Stockman’s account of Porter’s explanation is worth quoting in full.</p>\n<blockquote><p>Monitor’s work in Libya began when Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor who is among the country’s top theorists on management strategies, received a call from Saif Gadhafi around 2001, according to Porter. Saif, a western-leaning doctoral student who US officials hoped would become the next leader of Libya, asked for his expertise to help change Libya’s battered, Soviet-style economy.</p>\n<p>Porter met Saif and several Libyan ministers in London but said he could not help until Libya resolved the issues that had earned it international condemnation, including the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The terrorist attack killed all 259 passengers and crew and 11 villagers.</p>\n<p>“I remember telling Saif, ‘We can’t do anything until you settle your dispute with the rest of the world,’” Porter recalled in a recent interview.</p>\n<p>In the next few years Libya offered compensation to the Lockerbie victims and gave up its nuclear weapons program, putting it on a path of normalize relations with the United States.</p>\n<p>So in 2005, Porter agreed to be a senior adviser on a program, to lay out a blueprint for reforms.</p></blockquote>\n<p>He told the <em>Globe</em>’s Stockman he ended his personal involvement in later 2007, after he realized “that the reforms were going nowhere when a person who opposed them was appointed head of the group charged with implementing them.”</p>\n<p>Why did a couple of guys as smart at Porter and Yergin become involved in such a mug’s game? It is always possible that Porter thought really thought Saif Gadhafi was full of promise as a democratic reformer when they met. (Today Saif is back in Tripoli, vowing to fight “to the last bullet.”) It is possible that Porter thought the Bush administration would welcome the access to Libyan business that he and Yergin gained through their project. Nicholas Negroponte’s brother John was, after all, Director of National Intelligence from 2005-07.</p>\n<p>It’s true, too, that Harvard University was in no way institutionally involved. After its mission to advise the Russian government on behalf of the US State department collapsed in 1997 amid a welter of conflict of interest charges, Harvard closed its Institute for International Development. After losing a long court battle, and partly as a consequence of it, the university relieved Lawrence Summers of his presidency (but made him a university professor) and revoked economics professor Andrei Shleifer’s endowed chair.</p>\n<p>But Porter is also a <a href=\"http://www.harvard.edu/about/university_professors.php\">university professor</a>, one of just twenty who hold Harvard’s highest honor. Monitor consultants and journalists writing about the Libyan program have indiscriminately brandished the Harvard name. How can he have been so personally reckless?</p>\n<p>I’ve followed Porter’s <a href=\"http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/12.07/01-michaelporter.html\">career</a> with interest for twenty-five years. Some part of the explanation for his interest in Libya surely has to do with a nearly boundless sense of personal efficacy. A fine student-athlete – an All-American golfer for Princeton in 1968 – Porter graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering and then moved easily into technical economics at Harvard, managing a rock band in his spare time.</p>\n<p>The 1970s were a time of great ferment in theories of industrial organization. As Harvard undergraduates, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer honed their wits in A. Michael Spence’s advanced micro course, before Gates went out into the world to found Microsoft. By the end of the decade, Porter decided his competitive advantage lay in codifying the latest understandings for corporate executives. Three spectacular business best-sellers followed.</p>\n<p>Porter became a rising star in the Reagan administration; a frequent consultant to governments around the world in the 1990s; proprietor (with Jeffrey Sachs, of Columbia University), of a Global Competitiveness Report; a peripatetic adviser to corporations large and small; and, by 2000, the single most famous professor at the Harvard Business School. He advised presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2007. <a href=\"http://www.isc.hbs.edu/stateprofiles.htm\">Here</a> he is addressing the National Governor’s Association last month about budget balancing.</p>\n<p>But there is also all that Libyan oil and money. The sovereign wealth fund at its peak was worth $70 billion or so, all of it operating under the indirect control of Saif Gadhafi. Income from Libya’s oil production is as much as $40 billion a year. The US eased its sanctions on Libya in April 2004, permitting US companies to bid on Libyan oil and gas for the first time in twenty years, <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20080614195109/http:/www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Libya/Oil.html\">sparking considerable interest</a> in a country whose plentiful reserves can cost as little as $1/bbl to lift. Libya’s “new dawn” would be well lubricated, in any event. Porter and Yergin signed on to coach the country less than a year later.</p>\n<p>In a statement last week, Monitor wrote that “just a few years ago many saw a period of promise in Libya.” That was certainly true in Cambridge. What dissenting Libyans in Tripoli witnessed was a parade of well-paid visitors flattering their half-mad dictator, and a <a href=\"http://feb17.info/news/monitor-group-planned-training-for-khadafy%E2%80%99s-security-apparatus-in-libya\">squad of Harvard-connected consultants</a> bent on creating a National Security Organization for the government, designed to augment the existing security apparatus with a new corps of MBA-trained personnel officers.</p>\n<p>I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for Porter to give some evidence of contrition about his mission to Tripoli. Sir Howard Davies may have resigned as director of the LSE (“The short point is that I am responsible for the school’s reputation and that has suffered”), but being a Harvard professor apparently means never having to say you’re sorry. Perhaps instead the university will find some way to rein in on its professors’ more self-serving ambitions.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save\">Share/Bookmark</a> </p>"
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"content" : "by: Daniel Becker<br>\nThis is<a href=\"http://roundtree7.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/updated-secrets-of-us-history/\"> very important</a>. It is a list of all we have done in the world. Go take a look. It won't take long. I'll wait for you to return.<br>\n<br>\nThat we do not teach about this in our schools is why we are who we are. This list should be a banner which is run along the bottom of every news cast for as long as we are involved in such activity or when a new such action is proposed. It should be a page in every Sunday newspaper edition for as long as we are involved or when a new such action is proposed.<br>\n<br>\nMost of all, this list and the banner should start with the following words: \"<strong>You have done all of the following..." </strong>I say "you" because such actions need to remain personal. It is always personal. Yes, you and me personally have done all of this. Don't start thinking that the use of robotics removes you from the equation. Don't fall for that psych-ops. You, me, we still are the one's pulling the trigger. We did this. All of this. <br>\n<br>\n<a name=\"more\"></a><br>\nWe're broke? We have to sacrifice? What do we have to sacrifice, our dignity? Our integraty? Do you like someone doing all this in your name? Your name is on it. Don't make that mistake thinking it's not. <br>\n<br>\nOh, it's only about the money at this blog? Well, you're the private sector, you, me and we. Is this how you would choose to spend your Nth dollar? Is this how you would choose to spend your vaction money, your retirement money, your holiday gift money? I mean, it's all extra spending anyway. Gee, you have no extra? Well then, is this how you would choose to spend your grocery money, your heating money (just filled my tank, $3.59/gal), your insurance money, your TAX money? <br>\n<br>\nIs the private sector spending it better than the government sector? How can you tell? See, private or government, it's still US. You pulled the trigger. I pulled the trigger by inclusion. We pulled the trigger.<br>\n<br>\nAnd the rest of the world knows it.<br>\n<br>\nIn case you did not go to the link, here is the first list:<br>\nUS interventions taken for sole purpose of regime change since 1945:<br>\n<br>\n<br>\n1946 – Thailand (Pridi; conservative): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1946 – Argentina (Peron; military/centrist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1947 – France (communist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1947 – Philippines (center-left): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1947 – Romania (Gheorghiu-Dej; stalinist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1948 – Italy (communist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1948 – Colombia (Gaitan; populist/leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1948 – Peru (Bustamante; left/centrist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1949 – Syria (Kuwatli; neutralist/Pan-Arabist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1949 – China (Mao; communist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1950 – Albania (Hoxha; communist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1951 – Bolivia (Paz; center/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1951 – DPRK (Kim; stalinist): failure (Overt force)<br>\n1951 – Poland (Cyrankiewicz; stalinist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1951 – Thailand (Phibun; conservative): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1952 – Egypt (Farouk; monarchist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1952 – Cuba (Prio; reform/populist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1952 – Lebanon (left/populist): success: (Subverted election)<br>\n1953 – British Guyana (left/populist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1953 – Iran (Mossadegh; liberal nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1953 – Costa Rica (Figueres; reform liberal): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1953 – Philippines (center-left): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1954 – Guatemala (Arbenz; liberal nationalist): success (Overt force)<br>\n1955 – Costa Rica (Figueres; reform liberal): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1955 – India (Nehru; neutralist/socialist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1955 – Argentina (Peron; military/centrist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1955 – China (Zhou; communist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1955 – Vietnam (Ho; communist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1956 – Hungary (Hegedus; communist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1957 – Egypt (Nasser; military/nationalist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1957 – Haiti (Sylvain; left/populist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1957 – Syria (Kuwatli; neutralist/Pan-Arabist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1958 – Japan (left-center): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1958 – Chile (leftists): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1958 – Iraq (Feisal; monarchist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1958 – Laos (Phouma; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1958 – Sudan (Sovereignty Council; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1958 – Lebanon (leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1958 – Syria (Kuwatli; neutralist/Pan-Arabist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1958 – Indonesia (Sukarno; militarist/neutralist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1959 – Laos (Phouma; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1959 – Nepal (left-centrist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1959 – Cambodia (Sihanouk; moderate/neutralist): failure (CO)<br>\n1960 – Ecuador (Ponce; left/populist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1960 – Laos (Phouma; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1960 – Iraq (Qassem; rightist /militarist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1960 – S. Korea (Syngman; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1960 – Turkey (Menderes; liberal): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1961 – Haiti (Duvalier; rightist/militarist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1961 – Cuba (Castro; communist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1961 – Congo (Lumumba; leftist/pan-Africanist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1961 – Dominican Republic (Trujillo; rightwing/military): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1962 – Brazil (Goulart; liberal/neutralist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1962 – Dominican Republic ( left/populist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1962 – Indonesia (Sukarno; militarist/neutralist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Dominican Republic (Bosch; social democrat): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Honduras (Montes; left/populist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Iraq (Qassem; militarist/rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – S. Vietnam (Diem; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Cambodia (Sihanouk; moderate/neutralist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Guatemala (Ygidoras; rightist/reform): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1963 – Ecuador (Velasco; reform militarist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1964 – Guyana (Jagan; populist/reformist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1964 – Bolivia (Paz; centrist/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1964 – Brazil (Goulart; liberal/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1964 – Chile (Allende; social democrat/marxist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1965 – Indonesia (Sukarno; militarist/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1966 – Ghana (Nkrumah; leftist/pan-Africanist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1966 – Bolivia (leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1966 – France (de Gaulle; centrist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1967 – Greece (Papandreou; social democrat): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1968 – Iraq (Arif; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1969 – Panama (Torrijos; military/reform populist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1969 – Libya (Idris; monarchist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1970 – Bolivia (Ovando; reform nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1970 – Cambodia (Sihanouk; moderate/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1970 – Chile (Allende; social democrat/Marxist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1971 – Bolivia (Torres; nationalist/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1971 – Costa Rica (Figueres; reform liberal): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1971 – Liberia (Tubman; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1971 – Turkey (Demirel; center-right): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1971 – Uruguay (Frente Amplio; leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1972 – El Salvador (leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1972 – Australia (Whitlam; liberal/labor): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1973 – Chile (Allende; social democrat/Marxist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1975 – Australia (Whitlam; liberal/labor): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1975 – Congo (Mobutu; military/rightist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1975 – Bangladesh (Mujib; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1976 – Jamaica (Manley; social democrat): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1976 – Portugal (JNS; military/leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1976 – Nigeria (Mohammed; military/nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1976 – Thailand (rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1976 – Uruguay (Bordaberry; center-right): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1977 – Pakistan (Bhutto: center/nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1978 – Dominican Republic (Balaguer; center): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1979 – S. Korea (Park; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1979 – Nicaragua (Sandinistas; leftist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1980 – Bolivia (Siles; centrist/reform): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1980 – Iran (Khomeini; Islamic nationalist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1980 – Italy (leftist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1980 – Liberia (Tolbert; rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1980 – Jamaica (Manley; social democrat): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1980 – Dominica (Seraphin; leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1980 – Turkey (Demirel; center-right): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1981 – Seychelles (René; socialist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1981 – Spain (Suarez; rightist/neutralist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1981 – Panama (Torrijos; military/reform populist); success (Covert operation)<br>\n1981 – Zambia (Kaunda; reform nationalist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1982 – Mauritius (center-left): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1982 – Spain (Suarez; rightist/neutralist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1982 – Iran (Khomeini; Islamic nationalist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1982 – Chad (Oueddei; Islamic nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1983 – Mozambique (Machel; socialist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n1983 – Grenada (Bishop; socialist): success (Overt force)<br>\n1984 – Panama (reform/centrist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1984 – Nicaragua (Sandinistas; leftist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1984 – Surinam (Bouterse; left/reformist/neutralist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1984 – India (Gandhi; nationalist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1986 – Libya (Qaddafi; Islamic nationalist): failure (Overt force)<br>\n1987 – Fiji (Bavrada; liberal): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1989 – Panama (Noriega; military/reform populist): success (Overt force)<br>\n1990 – Haiti (Aristide; liberal reform): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1990 – Nicaragua (Ortega; Christian socialist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1991 – Albania (Alia; communist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1991 – Haiti (Aristide; liberal reform): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1991 – Iraq (Hussein; military/rightist): failure (Overt force)<br>\n1991 – Bulgaria (BSP; communist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1992 – Afghanistan (Najibullah; communist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1993 – Somalia (Aidid; right/militarist): failure (Overt force)<br>\n1993 – Cambodia (Han Sen/CPP; leftist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n1993 – Burundi (Ndadaye; conservative): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1994 – El Salvador (leftist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1994 – Rwanda (Habyarimana; conservative): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1994 – Ukraine (Kravchuk; center-left): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1996 – Bosnia (Karadzic; centrist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1996 – Congo (Mobutu; military/rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1996 – Mongolia (center-left): success (Subverted election)<br>\n1998 – Congo (Kabila; rightist/military): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1998 – Indonesia (Suharto; military/rightist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n1999 – Yugoslavia (Milosevic; left/nationalist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n2000 – Ecuador (NSC; leftist): success: (Covert operation)<br>\n2001 – Afghanistan (Omar; rightist/Islamist): success (Overt force)<br>\n2001 – Belarus (Lukashenko; leftist): failure (Subverted election)<br>\n2001 – Nicaragua (Ortega; Christian socialist): success (Subverted election)<br>\n2001 – Nepal (Birendra; nationalist/monarchist): success (Covert operation)<br>\n2002 – Venezuela (Chavez; reform-populist): failure (Covert operation)<br>\n2002 – Bolivia (Morales; leftist/MAS): success (Subverted election)<br>\n2002 – Brazil (Lula; center-left): failure (Subverted election)<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5048766-8028029659172625776?l=www.angrybearblog.com\" alt=\"\"></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?a=bBe2BRJ2wK0:lWqGnXORsow:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/Hzoh/~4/bBe2BRJ2wK0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Is Cote d'Ivoire headed to genocide?",
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"content" : "No. At least, I don't think so.<br><br>Senam Beheton has a very interesting post on possible parallels between Côte d'Ivoire today and Rwanda in 1994. He draws the parallels, then reaches the following conclusions:<br><span><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><strong></strong></span></span></span><blockquote><span><span style=\"font-size:small\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><strong>All of the above, will occur if everything stays the same.</strong></span> While I am happy to see the FRCI’s successes, I would like the world to understand that we have been here before. Gbagbo is boxed in militarily and politically. He has no way out. He is literally a prisoner in Abidjan with nowhere to retreat in Ivory Coast and dwindling options outside of the country. He is an historian and knows what happened to Charles Taylor, Samuel Doe, Dadis Camara and the like. It is only a matter of time till forces loyal to Mr. Ouattara take control of the whole country. What happens between now and then is up to all of us. I don’t know what the trigger will be for UN and French Licorne forces currently in Ivory Coast. The UN and France were in Rwanda. Both were sorry for their reluctance to protect civilians. They will have a do-over. I hope they make the right decisions this time for humanity sake</span>.</span></blockquote>Now, I know a lot about Rwanda, but I am by no means a Cote d'Ivoire expert, so take my opinions here with that grain of salt in mind. I think Beheton makes some very interesting points here, but am not sure that this will lead down the path to genocide, even if things continue to go horribly wrong. Which they will. The international community's refusal to take this crisis seriously or do anything about it <a href=\"http://lindaraftree.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/cote-divoire-anyone/\">beyond inadequately funding the response to the humanitarian crisis</a> is appalling. Like Rwanda in 1994, this crisis is the result of a previous series of crises and longstanding tensions that were allowed to fester for decades with little attention from the outside world.<br><br>But I digress. In order to think more about this, I'd like to consider a few points of difference between the Rwanda situation and what's going on in Côte d'Ivoire today. This is not in any way to diminish the human suffering or seriousness of the Côte d'Ivoire crisis, but rather to help us think clearly about where this mess is headed:<br><ul><li><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Exiles aren't invading Côte d'Ivoire & northerners control territory.</span> Both Rwanda and Côte d'Ivoire have significant ethnic cleavages (whether constructed by colonizers or based on religion), but Côte d'Ivoire is different from Rwanda in that the base of power for the northerners (almost all of whom back Ouattara) is in the country rather than outside in a neighboring country. Furthermore, the two sides in this conflict are much more segregated by location than were Tutsis and Hutus Rwanda. Northerners control their territory and have done so for about a decade. I think this makes a real difference in how the fighting will play out. In Rwanda, massacring Tutsis was relatively easy for the Hutu extremists because Tutsis lived next door. In Côte d'Ivoire, while there's certainly a high concentration of northerners in Abidjan and other urban centers, most northerners are in the north. Those who are not can at least try to flee to the north, whereas Tutsis in Rwanda had few options for escape.<br></li><li><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Côte d'Ivoire is richer than Rwanda</span>. The cocoa industry and Côte d'Ivoire's importance as a regional economic power means that a lot more people have an interest in seeing stability and a political solution to the problems there. France has pointedly taken a back seat to ECOWAS and the African Union through much of this crisis to avoid being seen as a neo-colonial power pulling the strings (which is exactly what Gbagbo wants France to do). But if things get really nasty, I think we'll see France become increasingly involved.<br></li><li><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Ivoirité is not Hutu Power</span>. Ivoirité is a nasty ideology that developed in Côte d'Ivoire in the mid-1990's as a means of excluding northern Muslims from the country's political space by labeling them as \"foreigners.\" While it's true that Côte d'Ivoire does have a large foreign population (workers come from all over West Africa to provide labor for the cocoa plantations), Ivoirité was not really aimed at them; it was aimed at Ivoirian Muslims and involved an explicit political goal, namely, excluding Ouattara from running for president in 2000. While there are lots of nasty manifestations of the ideology, as far as I know, we have not yet seen the use of Ivoirité to justify mass slaughter of Ivoirian Muslims in the same way that Hutu Power ideology was used to justify the killing of Tutsis. There's a qualitative difference; Hutu Power was always about eliminating Tutsis from the face of the planet, whereas Ivoirité has been about more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion. That may be changing as we speak, but I imagine it will take some time.<br></li></ul>Cote d'Ivoire experts and interested observers, what do you think? Do I have this completely wrong? Is Côte d'Ivoire headed for genocide if action is not taken quickly?<br><br><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">UPDATE: </span> Beheton has posted <a href=\"http://senambeheton.posterous.com/in-ivory-coast-vs-rwanda-comparison-similarit\">a very thoughtful reply here</a>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/15935618-1763131571594710159?l=texasinafrica.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Tom Toles on Gentrification",
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"content" : "<p>Much respect to Richard Layman for remembering and preserving <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/95438294/\">this 1998 Tom Toles cartoon</a>:</p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rllayman/95438294/sizes/m/in/photostream/\"><img src=\"http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/95438294_2fd841b9f7.jpeg\" alt=\"\" title=\"95438294_2fd841b9f7\" width=\"500\" height=\"426\"></a></center></p>\n<p>Funny.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=EuwVNgFd2zw:FtQBWcjiLuw:H0mrP-F8Qgo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/EuwVNgFd2zw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Hersh: It's the cameras",
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-weight:bold\">It's The Cameras</span><br><br>by digby<br><br><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/03/the-kill-team-photographs.html\">Seymour Hersh on the Afghan atrocities</a>:<br><br><blockquote>It’s the smile. In photographs released by the German weekly Der Spiegel, an American soldier is looking directly at the camera with a wide grin. His hand is on the body of an Afghan whom he and his fellow soldiers appear to have just killed, allegedly for sport. In a sense, we’ve seen that smile before: on the faces of the American men and women who piled naked Iraqi prisoners on top of each other, eight years ago, and posed for photographs and videos at the Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad.<br><br>It’s also the cameras. Der Spiegel reported this week that it had obtained four thousand photographs and videos taken by American soldiers who referred to themselves as a “kill team.” (Der Spiegel chose to publish only three of the photographs.) The images are in the hands of military prosecutors. Five soldiers, including Jeremy Morlock, the smiling man in the picture, who is twenty-two years old, are awaiting courts martial for the murder of three Afghan civilians; seven other soldiers had lesser, related charges filed against them, including drug use. On Tuesday, Morlock’s lawyer said that he would plead guilty.<br><br>We saw photographs, too, at My Lai 4, where a few dozen American soldiers slaughtered at least five hundred South Vietnamese mothers, children, and old men and women in a long morning of unforgettable carnage more than four decades ago. Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer, was there that day with two cameras. He directed the lens of his official one, with black-and-white film in it, away from the worst sights; there is a shot of soldiers with faint smiles on their faces, leaning back in relaxed poses, and no sign of the massacre that has taken place. But the color photos that Haeberle took on his personal camera, for his own use, were far more explicit—they show the shot-up bodies of toddlers, and became some of the most unforgettable images of that wasteful war. In most of these cases, when we later meet these soldiers, in interviews or during court proceedings, they come across as American kids—articulate, personable, and likable.<br><br>Why photograph atrocities? And why pass them around to buddies back home or fellow soldiers in other units? How could the soldiers’ sense of what is unacceptable be so lost? No outsider can have a complete answer to such a question. As someone who has been writing about war crimes since My Lai, though, I have come to have a personal belief: these soldiers had come to accept the killing of civilians—recklessly, as payback, or just at random—as a facet of modern unconventional warfare. In other words, killing itself, whether in a firefight with the Taliban or in sport with innocent bystanders in a strange land with a strange language and strange customs, has become ordinary. In long, unsuccessful wars, in which the enemy—the people trying to kill you—do not wear uniforms and are seldom seen, soldiers can lose their bearings, moral and otherwise. The consequences of that lost bearing can be hideous. This is part of the toll wars take on the young people we send to fight them for us. The G.I.s in Afghanistan were responsible for their actions, of course. But it must be said that, in some cases, surely, as in Vietnam, the soldiers can also be victims.</blockquote><br><br>Read on. That is so true. <a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/genie-in-bottle-by-digby-nobody-is.html\">It reminds me of this post from a few years ago</a>:<br><blockquote>\"If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it,\" he said. \"One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, 'Why didn't you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?' They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn't even bother to ask questions.\" Ultimately, he said -- echoing Gerber's comments -- \"torture becomes an end unto itself.\"<br><br>[...]<br><br>According to a 30-year CIA veteran currently working for the agency on contract, there is, in fact, some precedent showing that the \"gloves-off\" approach works -- but it was hotly debated at the time by those who knew about it, and shouldn't be emulated today. \"I have been privy to some of what's going on now, but when I saw the Post story, I said to myself, 'The agency deserves every bad thing that's going to happen to it if it is doing this again,'\" he said. \"In the early 1980s, we did something like this in Lebanon -- technically, the facilities were run by our Christian Maronite allies, but they were really ours, and we had personnel doing the interrogations,\" he said. \"I don't know how much violence was used -- it was really more putting people in underground rooms with a bare bulb for a long time, and for a certain kind of privileged person not used to that, that and some slapping around can be effective.<br><br>\"But here's the important thing: <span style=\"font-style:italic\">When orders were given for that operation to stand down, some of the people involved wouldn't</span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"> [emphasis mine --ed]</span>. Disciplinary action was taken, but it brought us back to an argument in the agency that's never been settled, one that crops up and goes away -- do you fight the enemy in the gutter, the same way, or maintain some kind of moral high ground?</blockquote><a href=\"http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/genie-in-bottle-by-digby-nobody-is.html\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Read on ...</span></a><br><br><br>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4013705-164960815886968002?l=digbysblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p></p><h2>Time-Based Profiling</h2>\n<p>Before any of this will make sense, I ask you to imagine doing a survey of your local shopping mall or other busy commercial shopping district. You want to know where people congregate, where they spend most of their time. Is it in a particular shop, in the food court, or in some dark corner of the parking garage?</p>\n<p>There are a few ways of solving this problem:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>You could have a video capture of the entire complex, digitize that data and map where everyone is. Aggregate over a representative time interval (days? weeks?) and you will have a good idea where people hang out. The downside of this approach is that it requires an expensive and complex camera system, and generates a massive amount of data.</li>\n<li>Another approach would be to do this with a series of still cameras that cover the entire mall. Take a snapshot at period intervals. A bit less expensive, but still requires “getting everyone in the frame”.</li>\n<li>Yet another approach is to sample both by time and by location. So don’t install cameras all over the mall. Have one hand-held camera, and take a picture in the book store one minute, another picture in the food court another minute, etc. Aim for coverage over time and locations. And repeat, repeat, repeat. Take thousands of samples. This is low tech on the data capture side, but can still generate massive amounts of data.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So three approaches. Obviously some approaches are easier to implement for the owner of the mall. But only the last one is doable by the average citizen.</p>\n<p>This is essentially the situation we find ourselves in with Twitter. They do have APIs that can be used to query their user data. But it is all “rate-limited”, meaning only a certain number of requests can be made per IP address per day. So it is impossible to get a running stream of all activity (a “video”) or even a snapshot of all activity at a single time (a “still camera”). But what we can do is access the “<a href=\"http://twitter.com/public_timeline\">Twitter Public Timeline</a>“, which will give you the most recent 20 tweets. This can be queried every 60 seconds, up to your daily limit.</p>\n<p>I’ve been capturing the Twitter Public Timeline since late 2009. I have now nearly 6 million records, each one containing the message, of course, but also the name of the user and their “Followers” and “Following” count at that point in time. I started doing scatter plots of this data and was amazed at the detailed structure evident in the data, that illustrate some interesting ways in which Twitter is being used. No single graph can show it all, so I’m giving you a series of charts, each one showing an area of the Following/Followers phase space 10ox larger.</p>\n<p>All charts here were done using the open source <a href=\"http://www.r-project.org/\">R environment</a>.</p>\n<h2>One Thousand Followers</h2>\n<p>In this chart each pixel represents one Twitter user, plotted at a position reflecting how many people they are Following, and how many Followers they in turn have. This chart is zoomed in to show only those whose Following/Follower counts are 1000 or fewer.</p>\n<p>We see a few trends here. First, there is a predominance of users with counts less than 300 or so. But we also see a strong trend toward parity in counts. That is the line going up to the right at 45 degrees. This would be expected for socially-interacting groups of mutual followers.</p>\n<p>What I did not expect were the “spikes” for users who follow 100, 200 and 300 accounts. This is not an aliasing artifact of the graphing. This is real. Is there something out there that would lead large numbers of users to follow exactly 100, 200 or 300 users?</p>\n<p>(For those of you interested in how the chart was created, I used alpha blending to deal with the “overplotting” problem. So each point is plotted in a partially transparent way, so an area gets darker the greater the density of points. If I didn’t do that, the entire chart would be one giant blot of black, with no discernible patterns. I also introduced random “jitter” between -0.5 and 0.5 to avoid false patterns caused by integer quantization interacting with screen resolution.)</p>\n<p><img title=\"1000\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/twitter_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"671\"></p>\n<h2>Ten Thousand Followers</h2>\n<p>Moving out a factor of ten, we now look at those users who have 10,000 or fewer followers. Again, each pixel represents one sampled user. The entire previous chart would fit in to the lower left corner.</p>\n<p>The salient feature here is the hard cut-off at 2000. This is due to Twitter’s “<a href=\"http://support.twitter.com/entries/68916-following-rules-and-best-practices\">aggressive following</a>” limitation: “Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user and is based on your ratio of followers to following.” They are a bit coy about what exactly the rule is, but a look at the chart certainly suggests that having a Following/Followers ratio > 1 is going to be a problem.</p>\n<p>We also see an unexplained density of people Following exactly 1000 users.</p>\n<p><img title=\"10000\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/twitter_4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"671\"></p>\n<h2>One Hundred Thousand Followers</h2>\n<p>Another factor of 10 and we switch to a different presentation, representing users with small circles rather than pixels. We’re now starting to see recognizable users and information sources. I’m illustrating some account names at random. Maybe not exactly celebrities, but there are some broadly followed users here. Since the only way to follow 100,000 users is to have close to that number already following you, the lower right half of the chart is empty, and will remain so as we continue to zoom out.</p>\n<p>The structure here seems to be:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Information pushers who follow nearly no one, up the y-axis on the left.</li>\n<li>Users who follow almost everyone who follows them, running diagonally</li>\n<li>Nothing much in the middle</li>\n</ul>\n<p><img title=\"100000\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/twitter_5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"671\"></p>\n<h2>One Million Followers</h2>\n<p>Zooming out another factor of 10, and we see that the Following count trails off. Does Twitter have another limit here? Or do people realize that it is pointless to follow 500,000 people? But why wouldn’t they also see that it is senseless to follow 50,000 people?</p>\n<p><img title=\"1000000\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/twitter_6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"671\"></p>\n<h2>Ten Million Followers</h2>\n<p>And in the last chart we take it out one more order of magnitude, and the Twitterverse recedes to be Ellen DeGeneres, Britney Speaks, Barak Obama, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher. If you are an average Twitter user, like me, everyone you know and actually interact with on Twitter is represented by 1/20th of a pixel in the lower left corner of the chart.</p>\n<p>Note that this chart (and the previous) one do not reflect the current Follower/Following count for these particular users. This is not a concurrent snapshot. This was all sampled over an 18 month period of time. Different users are necessarily shown according to their status at different dates. The point is to show the structure of the data, not make a claim that, e.g., Ellen DeGeneres has more followers than Justin Bieber.</p>\n<p><img title=\"10000000\" src=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/images/twitter_7.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"671\"></p>\n<p>Related posts:<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.robweir.com/blog/2011/01/twitter-2010-by-the-numbers.html\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Twitter 2010 by the Numbers\">Twitter 2010 by the Numbers</a></li>\n</ol></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?i=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?a=s_Z-BxWqvCU:TUi6dKx3-Q4:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/robweir/antic-atom?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~4/s_Z-BxWqvCU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Notes on A Confession of A (so-called) Black Gentrifier",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BPswIhIdVvY/RihGhBpUgkI/AAAAAAAAAAU/JmUE-S1Ao0k/s320/blk+harlem+melting+copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"144\">When I was preparing to write the piece <a href=\"http://kenyonfarrow.com/2011/03/21/blacks-being-ethnically-cleansed-from-nyc/\">“Blacks Being Ethnically Cleansed from NYC?”</a> I knew I was going to get 2 questions (which, quite predictably, I got):</p>\n<p>1. What are white people supposed to do? (A question, I think best answered as <a href=\"http://bandung1955.wordpress.com/\">Tamara K. Nopper</a> responded to a thread on Facebook noting, “What if leftist and non-Black folks put as much thought into the question, where can Black people go where they are not subject to displacement/state and public violence as they do in the questions where should white people go and what should they do in the world? Why is so much intellectual, political, and emotional energy spent trying to figure out white people’s place in a progressive world?”)</p>\n<p>2. What about Black gentrifiers?</p>\n<p>Well as luck would have it, The Washington City Paper in DC published an article, <a href=\"http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/40564/confessions-of-a-black-dc-gentrifier/full/\">Confessions of a Black Gentrifier</a>, also on Friday March 18th–the same day as Charles M. Blow’s op-ed in the NYT my Ethnic Cleansing piece was inspired by. The story is mostly a narrative on the conundrum of being Black and middle-class, moving to a poor Black or working class neighborhood you’re not originally from, and all the angst and hand-wringing worthy of a 1930′s tragic mulatto pulp fiction novel (It’s a wonder this even got published so few facts exist in this article to support its bony reasoning—but perhaps I expect too much from journalism. But I digress.). Shani O. Hilton writes:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“The story of the black gentrifier, at least from this black gentrifier’s perspective, is often a story about being simultaneously invisible and self-conscious. The conversation about the phenomenon remains a strict narrative of young whites displacing blacks who have lived here for generations. But a young black gentrifier gets lumped in with both groups, often depending on what she’s wearing and where she’s drinking. She is always aware of that fact.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>This is not to say that Black people with higher incomes should not be critically engaged with the ways in which they play a role often in perpetuating classism that may exacerbate the isolation of poor and working class Blacks in neighborhoods under the onslaught of gentrification. So yes, middle and upper-class Black folks can open and/or patronize bourgie stores that don’t cater to tastes of the neighborhood, or are out of price range for most poor black residents. They can sometimes plead to police departments for increased policing of poor black people they feel uncomfortable around, whether or not any real “crime” or violence is taking place.</p>\n<p>But I disagree with the definition of gentrification put forward by this article, and the premise that Blacks can be gentrifiers, per se. Hilton, on the other hand concludes that a</p>\n<blockquote><p>“’Gentrifier’ can’t be equated with ‘white person.’ After all, most poor people in this country are white (though it’s definitely a numbers game; whites are still less likely to be poor than blacks and Latinos—there are just more of them). The gentrifier is a person of privilege, and even if she doesn’t have much money, she’s got an education and a network of friends who are striving like she is, and she has the resources to at least try to get what she wants.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>According to Hilton, gentrification begins and ends with a discussion of privilege—a political definition that has destroyed any real critique of racial wealth and capital and their connection to anti-black state violence. I blame this definition’s ubiquitous use on the white anti-racist movement as well as “people of color” defined projects, that try to evade notions of racial and economic justice in favor of equating class or skin color privilege with the way in which white and non-Black bodies can not only exercise “privilege” but often also draw capital, wealth and resources to kick-start the seemingly never-ending process of Black people being physically displaced and dispossessed of wealth—which is an not a phenomenon of the least 20 years.</p>\n<p>So for me, gentrification is not just, or even mostly about, class to the exclusion of race. The problem with this article and most progressive analysis of gentrification is that they discuss it in very limited and ahistorical terms. I would argue (and forgive me if someone else has already said this) continual physical displacement is a condition of anti-Black racism since the beginning of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, and includes massive Black imprisonment, the adoption/foster care system, lynchings done to usurp land owned by Blacks, the destruction of “Black Wall Street” in 1921, the Great Migration, urban “renewal” projects of the 1940′s-1970′s and the recent foreclosure crisis, which disproportionately affected black women homeowners. I do believe that this question of “Black gentrification” is at best a shallow understanding of what’s happening when Black middle and upper income people move to communities that have been poor and working class Black. At worst, it’s a strategic attempt to draw attention (and culpability) away from the larger forces of white gentrification and capital that much more severely impacts the ability of poor and working class blacks to remain in their communities.</p>\n<p>So if the “gentrifier” can’t be racialized as white but boils down to economics, how come the Black middle-class, despite their income drive property values DOWN when they move into white neighborhoods, even if they make similar or equal amounts of money as the whites in that community? Why is the Black middle-class not as able to live among people of similar economic status who are not Black (in large numbers) even if they so desire to? And if many Black middle-class people choose to live in mixed-income Black communities, what does that say about their experiences with racism even if they have the income and credit to live elsewhere? This has everything to do with race and less to do with income or education.</p>\n<p>If we understand dispossession and displacement as a particular condition of Black experience, history and current events would show us that the Black middle class is barely holding on to its position. A 2010 study by the<strong> <a href=\"http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100517070105.htm\">Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University</a></strong> showed:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>From 1984-2007, the racial wealth gap among Whites and \tBlacks increased by $75,000 — from $20,000 to $95,000. Financial \tassets, excluding home equity, among white families grew from a \tmedian value of $22,000 to $100,000 during that period while African \tAmericans saw very little increase in assets in real dollars and had \ta median wealth of $5,000 in 2007.</li>\n<li>By 2007, the average \tmiddle-income white household had accumulated $74,000 in wealth, an \tincrease of $55,000 over the 23-year period, while the average \thigh-income African-American family owned $18,000, a drop of $7,000. \tThat resulted in a wealth gap of $56,000 for an African-American \tfamily that earned more than $50,000 in 1984 compared to a white \tfamily earning about $30,000 that same year.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So how did this mythical Black middle class come to dominate the discourse on gentrification over the last couple years? Clearly, the Black middle has lost wealth, and therefore in no real position to cause the massive upheaval in Black lower-income neighborhoods over the same period. So many of those people who may have moved to buy homes or businesses were much more likely to face foreclosure (loss of wealth), and may not have been able to keep their homes of businesses due to rising property taxes when white gentrifiers moved in.</p>\n<p>Why are Black middle-class people never talked about in terms of neighborhood “revitalization?” I am not advocating it, as it would still have very elitist connotations, but the point is, we hear the terms <em>revitalization, renewal, progress, and development</em> when white people (hipsters, activists, artists, yuppies, white gays and queers, etc), immigrants, and “students” move into Black neighborhoods. Why are Black neighborhoods by default spoken of as “dead?”</p>\n<p>The article takes place in DC, which is somewhat of an outlier because state & federal public service jobs are one of the few sectors in the economy that African-Americans have any kind of foothold, and those jobs do tend to be more stable (See 2011 <em><strong><a href=\"http://www.faireconomy.org/dream/2011\">State of the Dream Report</a></strong></em> by United for a Fair Economy). But with a Republican takeover of Congress and calls for fiscal prudence (which means cutting jobs where many Blacks are likely to work, in the social service federal agencies and the US Postal Service), DC middle-class may not be as immune as they have been (and they haven’t been immune as the article states. The Congress controls the budget for the city, and its own infrastructure has been horribly underfunded for decades, which is why many Black residents refer to the city as a colony). Even if Black middle-class people have returned to some urban and poorer Black communities, will they be able to retain their wealth over time? History would suggest not.</p>\n<p>The article hints at but does not analyze what one of the Black middle class residents names—his “protection and participation” as a part of the middle class depends on how he’s dressed. If he is dressed in sweats or in things that don’t socially mark him as middle class, he is subjected to similar kinds of hostility from white residents as well as from law enforcement. So white residents are made safe from law enforcement by virtue of race—for Blacks, wearing the wrong clothes quickly changes one’s position. But I know from personal experience having lived in gentrifying neighborhoods that white people still act in terror no matter how I’m dressed, and have also been assaulted by police officers, clothing style no matter.</p>\n<p>Despite the anxiety many upper-class or educated Blacks may feel about their position in helping to displace poorer Blacks, we have to really look critically at whether “Black gentrification” is really even possible, or whether it is a tool to use the anxiety of the Black middle class to distract attention from white and/or non-Black culpability in Black displacement and dispossession.</p>\n<p>Suggested reading:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/B/bo4149945.html\">Black on The Block: The Politics of Race and Class in The City.</a> Mary Pattillo.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226649288/qid=1043083114/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6741411-1084920?v=glance&s=books\">Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class</a>. Mary Pattillo.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Root-Shock-Tearing-Neighborhoods-America/dp/0345454235/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300765572&sr=1-1\">Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It</a> . Mindy Thompson Fullilove.</p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Underdeveloped-Black-America-Updat/dp/0896085805/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300765618&sr=1-1\">How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society (South End Press Classics Series)</a>. Manning Marable </span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Lose-Your-Mother-Journey-Atlantic/dp/0374531153/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300765679&sr=1-1\">Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route</a>. Saidiya V. Hartman</p>"
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"title" : "Flea powder may be saving lives in Japan",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/uploads/reactor.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.cringely.com/wp-content/uploads/reactor-300x210.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Fukushima nuclear plant\" width=\"200\" height=\"140\"></a>There’s a 40 year-old nuclear reactor cooling-down right now in Japan following the big earthquake in that country. Actually there are 11 such reactors cooling-down, automatically brought offline by the 8.9 temblor, but one of those reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi generating plant is not going gracefully and 3000 people have been moved from their homes as a precaution.</p><p>Good idea.</p><p>I worked as an investigator for the Presidential Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, 32 years ago, and a few months studying the plumbing TMI’s Unit 2, which is actually younger than the errant Japanese reactor, gives me a very healthy respect for the danger in Japan.</p><p>That Japanese reactor shut down automatically within seconds of the earthquake, the idea being that dropping the thermal load (stopping the nuclear reaction and cooling-down the reactor) would minimize risk overall from a huge plumbing system that was likely compromised and vulnerable. Radiation and the passage of time conspire to make pipes brittle and aftershocks make brittle pipes break. Not good.</p><p>The 10 other reactors behaved as expected, but this unit didn’t. Once the reactor was no longer making steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity the plant was supposed to fire-up diesel generators to make the power needed to keep coolant pumps running. Only the diesels wouldn’t start. It can take up to seven days, you see, to get such a reactor down to where it can survive without circulating coolant. With the diesels out (under water perhaps?) the plant relied on batteries to run the pumps — batteries good for only eight hours.</p><p>Tokyo Electric Power Company isn’t saying much. Utilities tend not to and Japanese utilities are notoriously secretive. But we got a clue to what’s happening from U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of all people, who remarked that the U. S. military was delivering “coolant” to the stricken reactor.</p><p>“Coolant?” wondered aloud all the CNN and Fox News nuclear experts looking for a lede for their stories. “What is she talking about, coolant?” This is a boiling water reactor and the coolant is water. The U. S. Air Force isn’t needed to export water to Japan.</p><p>This shows the limits of cable news experts and maybe experts in general, because Hillary isn’t the kind of person to choose the wrong words. She said “coolant” and she meant “coolant.” Though she may not have known she was saying so, she also meant the reactor was dead and will never be restarted.</p><p>A boiling water reactor does just what it sounds like — it boils water to make steam that drives a turbine generator. This is as opposed to a pressurized water reactor that uses the nuclear reaction to heat a coolant that never really boils because it is under high pressure, then sends that coolant through a heat exchanger which heats water to make steam to drive the generator. Boiling water reactors are simpler, cheaper, but generally aren’t made anymore because they are perceived as being less safe. That’s because the exotic coolant in the pressurized water reactor can contain boric acid which absorbs neutrons and can help (or totally) control the nuclear reaction. You can’t use boric acid or any other soluble boron-laced neutron absorbers in a boiling water reactor because doing so would contaminate both the cooling system and the environment.</p><p>That’s why the experts didn’t expect it because they are still thinking of how the plant can be saved, but it can’t be.</p><p>Though the boiling water reactor has already been turned off by inserting neutron-absorbing control rods all the way into the core, adding boric acid or, more likely, sodium polyborate would turn the reactor off-er — more off than off — which could come in really handy in the event of a subsequent coolant loss, which reportedly has already happened. But that’s a $1 billion kill switch that most experts wouldn’t think to pull.</p><p>I’m guessing the US Navy delivered a load of sodium polyborate from some nuclear aircraft carrier reactor supply room in the Pacific Fleet. Its use indicates that the nuclear threat is even worse than presently being portrayed in the news. Tokyo Electric Power Company has probably given-up any hope of keeping those cooling pumps on after the batteries fail. Eventually they’ll vent the now boron-laced coolant to the atmosphere to keep containment pressures under control.</p><p>Sodium polyborate, by the way, is something you might use around the house, since it is the active ingredient in most flea and tick treatments.</p><p>An earthquake with such loss of life is bad enough, but Japan has also just lost 20 percent of its electric generating capacity. And I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that none of those 11 reactors will re-enter service again, they’ve been so compromised.</p> <img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ICringely/~4/fvSJooJ9O-o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Insurance and Banking: Risk, Resiliency and Harmonisation",
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"content" : "I attended an interesting discussion of risk management in the City this week, bringing together insurers with bankers. The two sectors manage risk quite differently, which is why there are rarely insurance crises and frequently banking crises. Insurance crises tend to occur when insurers act like banks (AIG Financial Products, MBIA and other monolines). Bank crises tend to occur when banks act like investment banks.<br><br>Insurers must not underwrite risks that they will not be able to cover in the event, and must therefore have reserves sufficient to perform at all times. This makes the insurers much more cautious about taking on risk, about pricing risk accurately at the time of contracting, and about managing reserves to be liquid when claims require payment. Regulation is fundamentally about solvency and selling.<br><br>Banks undertake risks on their books that they can only cover so long as they continue to have access to liquidity (funding, deposits, repos or central bank support). Bank capital is never enough to ensure performance without market liquidity for reserve assets. Banks are generally much less cautious about taking on risk, rely overmuch on incomplete models to price risk, and manage capital to optimise returns rather than ensure survival. Regulation focuses on capital (never enough on its own) rather than conduct, common sense and functional suitability.<br><br>One risk manager observed that in insurance the risks are exogenous, generally independent in occurrence, and finite. In banking the risks are too often endogenous, correlated in unpredictable ways, and of unknowable magnitude. As a result, a single bank failing has systemic consequences for the banking system, where a single insurance company failure has no systemic consequences for the insurance sector.<br><br>An interesting observation both insurers and bankers agreed on was that international harmonisation of regulation had driven formerly diverse business models and management preferences toward uniformity by enforcing preferred models for capital and solvency. As a result, the risks of total systemic failure are much, much higher than before <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_II\">Basel II</a> and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvency_II\">Solvency II</a>, because when the models are wrong, the whole financial system is compromised. <br><br>Models are <i>always</i> wrong because they are partial, approximate, and use historic data and correlations. In internationally harmonised regulation, the failure of models is even more assured as many domestic factors which have great implications for financial risk are ignored or discounted. Quite simply, models are illuminating, not correct.<br><br>What this means is that the 25 year drive to harmonise regulation using financial models is almost certainly counterproductive if the aim was to ensure wider financial integrity and stability. Instead of a global financial system constructed as a spider's web, such that the breaking of one strand does not compromise the whole web, we have a system that has bound all the threads into a single cable. And if that cable frays under stress . . .<br><br>There was controversy around the idea of functionally segregating the pedestrian but systemically important functions like payments and mortgage intermediation from the riskier eccentricities of modern of investment banking. About half the room thought it perfectly sensible, and half thought it couldn't be done. I'm of the view that \"narrow banking\" for some functions might be a very reasonable way to secure the taxpayer from future losses by reducing the scope for contagion in the banking system. And if we could do that, we could allow bad banks to fail, restoring some morals and some hazard to the management of banking."
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"title" : "concessions: new flag & anthem",
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"content" : "<p>Squirrel this away. It’s a big time saver. Next time your minions rise up you can rework this template:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“The younger Mr. Qaddafi … blamed … offered … potentially … a new flag, national anthem … threaten …” — <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/world/africa/21libya.html\">nytimes</a></p></blockquote>\n<p>Your welcome.</p>"
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"title" : "The Race to Build a PageRank for the Social Web Continues",
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As we’ve <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2011/02/18/should-we-be-keeping-score-on-twitter-klout-thinks-so/\">discussed before at GigaOM</a>, companies like PeerIndex and Klout are trying to become the default measure of online influence, something that advertisers and marketers in particular are extremely interested in as they try to identify “influencers” who can spread their messages.</p>\n<p>Both PeerIndex and Klout rank users based on data that comes from their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, although the two sites describe their rankings somewhat differently. Klout <a href=\"http://klout.com/kscore\">talks about overall “reach” and “amplification,”</a> both of which are determined by looking at a user’s activity and how much impact it has on their social graph — whether their tweets are re-tweeted by others with influence, for example. PeerIndex says that it looks at a user’s activity in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and then comes up with <a href=\"http://www.peerindex.net/help/scores\">an authority rank for their expertise</a> in eight topic areas, which it uses to create an influence “footprint” for each user.</p>\n<p>Unlike Klout, PeerIndex also ranks what it calls “realness,” which is a measure of the likelihood that a user is an actual person rather than an automated feed or “spambot” (luckily, PeerIndex seems pretty convinced that I am a real person). And if a user has a huge number of followers but many of those are bots, the company says that actually decreases their overall ranking.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/peerindex-snapshot.png\"><img title=\"PeerIndex-snapshot\" src=\"http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/peerindex-snapshot.png?w=604&h=453\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\"></a></p>\n<p>The focus on authority within specific topic areas makes Quora a particularly good fit for PeerIndex, since the Q&A site is building a crowdsourced ranking system of its own that measures the authority of different users, something <a href=\"http://www.quora.com/Charlie-Cheever/Scaling-Up\">Quora co-founder Charlie Cheever talked about recently</a>. Although he didn’t give any details, that authority ranking presumably looks at the quality of a user’s answers and any votes or comments that they have gotten from other users. That kind of influence makes Quora results a perfect addition to a service like PeerIndex — in the same way that StackOverflow is now using content from its Q&A site as a way of ranking users <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2011/02/16/stack-overflow-rides-experts-and-order-to-qa-success/\">as part of its new careers service</a>.</p>\n<p>We’re also starting to see some interesting applications of the data that comes from Klout and PeerIndex. For one thing, companies are <a href=\"http://klout.com/perks\">starting to offer perks to Klout users</a> who have high scores — including discounts at retail outlets and advance screenings of movies, presumably because marketers are hoping these “influencers” will spread the news to their followers and social graphs. And <a href=\"http://peersquare.com\">Peersquare</a> is a recently-launched blend of PeerIndex and the Foursquare location-based service that shows the rankings of people who are in the same location as you, something that could be useful during a conference or other event. Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com has even <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2010/12/10/what-if-you-were-paid-based-on-your-klout-score/\">talked about compensating employees</a> based on their influence within social networks.</p>\n<p>As Klout and PeerIndex add more sources of reputation or influence data such as Quora to their rankings, the web moves closer to having <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2010/11/18/why-we-need-pagerank-for-the-social-web/\">a kind of Google PageRank for social activity</a>, with all that implies. The big problem, as with Google search, is how to exclude the social equivalent of black-hat SEO and link spam, and how to determine what it is real influence and what is <a href=\"http://gigaom.com/2011/02/18/should-we-be-keeping-score-on-twitter-klout-thinks-so/\">simply Justin Bieber-style popularity</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>Related GigaOM Pro content (sub req’d):</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://pro.gigaom.com/2011/02/are-comments-facebook%E2%80%99s-next-big-service/?utm_source=gigaom&utm_medium=editorial&utm_content=mathewingram&utm_campaign=related3\">Are Comments Facebook’s Next Big Service?</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://pro.gigaom.com/2010/03/social-advertising-models-go-back-to-the-future/?utm_source=gigaom&utm_medium=editorial&utm_content=mathewingram&utm_campaign=related3\">Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future</a></li>\n<li><a>What Facebook Messages Is Really After</a></li>\n</ul>\n<p><em>Post and thumbnail <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en\">courtesy</a> of Flickr user <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/serenityphotographyltd/5255901742/\">Danny Cain</a></em></p>\n<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&blog=14960843&post=304070&subd=gigaom2&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><hr><p>\n\t<a href=\"http://www.juniper.net/us/en/dm/datacenter/?utm_source=GO&utm_medium=BN&utm_campaign=QUANTUM\">\n\t\t<img src=\"http://s3.amazonaws.com/ad-creative.gigaom/juniper-2011-02-24.png\" alt=\"The exponential data center is here: Juniper Networks\" border=\"0\">\n\t</a>\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?i=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?i=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?a=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/OmMalik?i=4C2yWEbymOk:Ukp6nWYliGw:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OmMalik/~4/4C2yWEbymOk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><em><a href=\"http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/climate_change_vulnerability_in_africa_002.jpg\"><img title=\"climate_change_vulnerability_in_africa_002\" src=\"http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/climate_change_vulnerability_in_africa_002-274x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"274\" height=\"300\"></a>Press Release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK):</em></p>\n<p>03/01/2011</p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">Large climate risks for African farmers: IPCC was on the right track</span></h3>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Climate change poses severe risks to food production in many African countries. This statement of the last assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was attacked fiercely one year ago. Critics suggested this assessment lacked scientific foundation, trying to challenge the credibility of the IPCC as a whole. But the IPCC finding has been confirmed by recent research, reported by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the renowned US-journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “None of the agricultural regions in Africa is on the safe side,” lead-author Christoph Müller says. “This is a robust conclusion, even though we still don’t know many things as precisely as we would like to.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The authors draw this conclusion from a review of twenty studies covering a wide range of impact projections. Under future climate and, yields may be reduced to zero or increase by 168 percent, depending on the region. The projections vary by region, crop, and time horizon of the studies. Indirect climate change effects on agriculture, like cropland inundation and erosion, are often disregarded, Müller says. “The quantitative results presented in some studies therefore seem to be rather optimistic.” Uncertainties are connected to the chosen methodologies, e.g. the extrapolation of statistical relationships into the future without considering the dynamics of the world agricultural market.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“From a risk-management perspective, the focus has to be on the most critical regions in Africa and the people affected there,” Wolfgang Cramer says, chair of PIK research domain Earth System Analysis. For parts of African agriculture, climate change could also be beneficial, because of possible increases in precipitation in arid regions and because the so-called CO2-fertilization effect could enhance plants’ productivity. In other parts, climate change will be detrimental. Overall, the damaging potential is very high.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">In many cases, climate change impacts are projected for African agricultural systems that already today do not meet the local demand for food. At the same time, the potential for increasing yields is very large as agricultural productivity often suffers from inefficient management. In some countries like Angola, yields could be theoretically multiplied–according to one study. Recent research sees the restoration of soils, efficient and soil-conserving cultivation methods and integrated pest management as promising for adaptation to climate risks. Equally important is the reduction of trade barriers, including the development of roads and infrastructure.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">“African Agriculture has potential for improvement,” Cramer says. “Rather than closing the eyes to imminent risks from climate change, research should now study resource-efficient ways to secure food production for the coming generations.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Article: Müller, C., Cramer, W., Hare, W.L., Lotze-Campen, H.: Climate change risks for African agriculture. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2011) [doi: 10.1073/pnas.1015078108]</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/23/1015078108.abstract\">Weblink to the Article</a></p>\n</blockquote>"
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"title" : "Quotīdiē ❧ Whose Country? Is it Each One's?",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\">walking by the waters,<br> down where an honest river</blockquote>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\">shakes hands with the sea,<br> a woman passed round me<br>in a slow, watchful circle,<br>as if I were a superstition;</blockquote>\n<p>—from <a href=\"http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=5685\">\"In My Country\" by Jackie Kay</a><p></p></p>\n<div>Poetry is as much a mirror that reflects the reader as a window to the writer. It's very interesting to read a poem that captures so well some facet of my own existence, but then reflects a reaction thereto that's a complete opposite of mine. I've always reveled in my otherness, whether I was in the US, the UK or in Nigeria at the time. I'm hardly above little venal flourishes, an over-emphasized accent here and there; and my favorite technique for getting to know others is to focus on serious questions of their own heritage and identities. But <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Kay\">Jackie Kay</a> does take me to the riverside in her poem, and opens into my own sense the cold tap of her own feelings as she finds herself probed by a stranger.</div>\n<div><a href=\"http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780330513371/Fiere\"><img title=\"9780330513371.jpg\" src=\"http://images.bookdepository.com/assets/images/book/medium/9780/3305/9780330513371.jpg\" alt=\"9780330513371.jpg\"></a></div>\n<div>I have no idea why (it's certainly not toward from immediate logic) Kay's poem should bring me so to mind of a bit of <a href=\"http://www.bartleby.com/122/40.html\">Hopkins's \"Carrion Comfort</a>\".</div>\n<p></p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\"><span> </span>...whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród<span> </span><br>Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one?...</blockquote>\n<p></p>\n<div>What great force of hap flings us, dashed like broken china, to half-borrow a trope from John Pepper Clark's "Ibadan," among the continents, those seven great hills rearing out of the oceans? And what gathers assorted locals around, fascinated by the shattered pieces of our identities? By the way, as heavily anthologized as it is, Clark's iconic poem is always worth another look.</div>\n<p></p>\n<div>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\">Ibadan,<br>Running splash of rust<br>and gold-flung and scattered<br>among seven hills like broken<br>china in the sun. </blockquote>\n<div>—"Ibadan" by John Pepper Clark</div>\n<p></p>\n<div>I'm a sucker for a volume of poetry that features a glossary of Scots and another of Igbo, especially when there might be <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/fiere-by-jackie-kay-2227375.html\">but one in the species, Kay's Fiere</a>, a lyric counterpart to her memoir, "Red Dust Road." She wrote these books throwing a light upon her quest to understand her Scottish birth mother and <a href=\"http://igbopeople.blogspot.com/2011/02/jackie-kay.html\">Igbo birth father</a>.</div>\n<p></p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\">Many poems in Fiere (Scots for friend, mate, companion) grow out of the experience Jackie Kay had tracing her birth-parents, as chronicled in her memoir Red Dust Road. But this collection of 44 poems has a stronger focus, one which draws on Kay's unusual personal story but grows into a celebration of what it means to be close to someone.</blockquote>\n<p></p>\n<div>I've just ordered the book, so I can't comment in-depth, and Kay is new to me just today, but already she gives me an impression of a poet I'm likely to appreciate through shared understanding, like an Okigbo or even <a href=\"http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ctufariello/\">Catherine Tufariello</a>, rather than for its distant brilliance, like say the work of Eliot.</div>\n<p></p>\n<blockquote style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:#cccccc;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex\">In Nigeria, she sees a road \"stretching/ perhaps into infinity/ to a foreseeable future/ and back to/ lost time\".</blockquote>\n<p></p>\n<div>Which reminds me of a work of my own, "Nchefu Road," which has loomed large in my notebook for 2 decades, but which has struggled to work its way to a finish. Igbo, journeyings and the inchoate. With such common threads clear upon the fringe, I look forward to pulling at the warp of Kay's work.</div>\n</div>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/quotidie-whose-country-is-it-each-ones\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/quotidie-whose-country-is-it-each-ones#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "How can I make money from writing sonnets?",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://quoderatech.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/shakespeare.jpg?w=233&h=300\" alt=\"William Shakespeare\" title=\"William Shakespeare\" width=\"233\" height=\"300\">I’ve written a sonnet, and I think it’s very good. Now I’d like to get paid for it so that I can quit my job and live off the revenue. Any suggestions?</p>\n<p>Perhaps you’ve asked this question yourself: just substitute “iPhone app”, “blog”, “web site”, “Twitter mashup”, etc. for “sonnet”. You have a right to be proud that your app/blog/site is wonderful, but why won’t anyone pay you for it?</p>\n<h2>A pat on the head for young Billy</h2>\n<p>In school, when you did good work, you got rewarded, because school is a system designed to encourage you to do your best (at least, a good school is). In a job, when you do good work, you may get noticed and rewarded, depending on how much value your manager puts on continuing to treat you like a school student.</p>\n<p>Outside of these artificially-constructed systems, however, nobody beyond friends and family gives a shit that you did something good — as Don Draper said on <cite>Mad Men</cite> “There is no system. The universe is indifferent.” </p>\n<h2>Don’t go past the fence!</h2>\n<p>Still, many brave or foolish people venture outside the school/employment sandbox every year, and the moment they go out the gate, they are hit with two shocks at once:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Nobody wants to give them money.</li>\n<li>Nobody wants to give them praise.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>If you’re going to have a chance of success, you recover from this shock, forget about chasing after praise (it’s mostly worthless), grit your teeth, and learn through trial and error how to provide enough value to other people that they’re willing to give you money in exchange. </p>\n<p>That’s hard work — <em>very</em> hard work — and the heart of it is not simply promoting a product or service, but spending months and years developing real business relationships with people, and even more importantly, learning (and caring about) what those people — <em>not</em> you — want and need.</p>\n<h2>Shortcuts</h2>\n<p>Many people aren’t ready to face that kind of a shock, though, and at that point, they’re an easy mark for anything that promises an alternative to the hard (but necessary) work of actually dealing with people and caring about what they want. Every year, there seems to be at least one fad that promises a shortcut:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>You can run Google ads (or others) on your blog or web site, and Google will take care of finding and billing the customers, then will send you a monthly cheque.</li>\n<li>You can write a Twitter mashup or Facebook app, where Twitter or Facebook members will take care of the hard work of marketing for you, and you can then get enough visitors to cash in on those adds (or sell subscriptions through PayPal, etc.).</li>\n<li>You can post a video to YouTube, and get a share of ad revenue if it goes viral (insert buzzwords like “social media” where appropriate).</li>\n<li>You can write an iPhone or Android mobile app, and Apple or Google will find and bill your customers for you.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>All of these promise money (however little they actually deliver), but more importantly, they promise that you can stay in a safe, non-Don-Draper-esque world like the one you remember from school or work: the world where you can get an A+ for doing a <em>very good job</em> on your essay, or a bonus for working <em>extra hard</em> on the ACME account. Effectively, Google, Apple, or some other organization becomes your teacher/parent/boss, dishing out rewards in the form of money and/or pageviews. </p>\n<p>That’s a world most people understand; it’s a system where most people feel safe; but it’s no way to sell a sonnet.</p>\n<h2>Shakespeare</h2>\n<p>To be honest, we don’t know if Shakespeare ever made money from his sonnets, but he did make a living from his plays … well, not so much from his plays, as from putting them on. It turns out that around the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, Londoners sometimes wanted to get out of the house and <em>do</em> something, but you can go to only so many bear-baitings and Morris dances before a certain <em>ennui</em> sets in.</p>\n<p>Shakespeare didn’t just sit in a lonely garret writing plays to for someone else to put on (the 1600 equivalent of writing mobile apps for the iTunes store): as an actor, as part-owner of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later King’s Men), and as an investor in the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare threw himself directly into the hard work of forming relationships and dealing with his customers. He made enough money to go back to his home town and buy the second-largest house — a mansion, really — and lord it over everyone he grew up with.</p>\n<p>After all that work, perhaps he wrote his sonnets just for fun.</p>\n<p><em>(This post was inspired partly by my life partner, Bonnie Robinson, and the long hours she’s putting into <a href=\"http://sweettartstakeaway.com/\">Sweet Tarts Takeaway</a>.)</em></p>\n<br> Tagged: <a href=\"http://quoderat.megginson.com/tag/business/\">business</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/quoderatech.wordpress.com/450/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/quoderatech.wordpress.com/450/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=quoderat.megginson.com&blog=14988159&post=450&subd=quoderatech&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/koranteng/\">amaah</a> posted a photo:</p>\n\t\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5467489737/\" title=\"Rawlings and Gaddafi on cover of Talking Drums magazine, 1986-01-13 - Ghana stands by Libya in US dispute - Doe pledges reconciliation\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5260/5467489737_806ffded22_m.jpg\" width=\"182\" height=\"240\" alt=\"Rawlings and Gaddafi on cover of Talking Drums magazine, 1986-01-13 - Ghana stands by Libya in US dispute - Doe pledges reconciliation\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Rawlings and Gaddafi on the cover<br>\nThe Flight Lieutenant and the Colonel<br>\nGhana and Libya<br>\nBlood and Sin<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2011/02/he-of-little-green-book.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">He of The Little Green Book</a>, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, came to Ghana in December 1985 to meet his younger brother in arms and blood, Jerry Rawlings. We asked ourselves: why are these men laughing?<br>\n<br>\nTop stories in this issue:<br>\n- Ghana stands by Libya in US dispute <br>\n- President Doe of Liberia pledges reconciliation</p>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.npr.org/2010/12/28/132369744/scandal-threatens-indias-economic-growth\">Is India an oligarchy?</a> Late last year, when India's income tax office tapped the phone of <a href=\"http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/who-is-niira-radia-72723\">well-connected lobbyist, Niira Radia</a>, they were looking for evidence of tax evasion and money laundering. But what they found instead was what many consider evidence of an even bigger problem: \"[T]he tapes reveal that the country that prides itself on being the world's largest democracy is really ruled by a small coterie of powerful people.\" Some of <a href=\"http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268618\">the leaked tapes that sparked the scandal are available online</a>, on the website of the weekly magazine that first broke the story, as well as <a href=\"http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268064\">a few transcripts</a>.<br><br> \"Journalist and historian Prem Shankar Jha says the convergence of money and political power in India stems from a problem that's also fiercely debated in the United States: 'The lack of any system for financing elections.'\" More context <a href=\"http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/22829/\">here</a>. Perhaps not too surprisingly, considering the allegations of media collusion, there have been persistent complaints of a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_tapes_controversy#Alleged_media_blackout_and_reactions_in_social_media\">\"media blackout\" surrounding coverage of the story in India</a>.<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=7LbkeVb_4Os:ees4UWnm2bs:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=7LbkeVb_4Os:ees4UWnm2bs:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Attending a Lighthouse chapel in America (Oakland) #Ghana",
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"content" : "This Sunday, I attended yet another <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Ghanaian church</span> in the <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Bay Area</span>. Yeap, you guessed right, it's in Oakland too. I had already been to the <a href=\"http://mightyafrican.blogspot.com/2010/05/experiencing-ghanaian-church-in-america.html\">Church of Pentecost here</a>, twice. A <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">friend </span>invited me to the new <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Lighthouse Chapel International</span> branch that they had started in September. Her persistence paid off as I attended this weekend. Like I learnt in Ghana last Christmas, <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">there is a Lighthouse chapel in every corner</span>. Seriously. I hope this blog entry helps us all figure out why.<br><br>There are <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">1200</span> Lighthouse Chapel International (LCI) branches worldwide in <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">52</span> nations. Talk about spreading far and wide. It started in Ghana 21 yrs through a medical student called Dag Heward Mills who is now the presiding bishop. <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Sorry, but I can't help but think of churches as businesses/enterprises/start-ups these days</span>. Dag Heward Mills is every bit an entrepreneur churning out new entrepreneurs every year. There has been the question of should churches pay taxes? I think so, if they don't, they should be made to contribute appropriately in nation building; in education, health, etc. Looking at the senior secondary school system in Ghana, I think religious bodies investing in education is the most appropriate. Just look at Presec, Opoku Ware, St.Louis, Central University, etc.<br><br>The new Oakland branch is one of the <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">59 Lighthouse chapel branches in the USA</span>. There are 6 LCIs in the New York City area alone. There are 9 in Maryland (of course). Others are in Worcester, Virginia, Atlanta, Houston, Sacramento, etc. <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Pastor Joel Obuobisa</span> didn't mention one in \"Columbus Ohio\" but I'll be surprised if there weren't any there. Pastor Joel has been in the US for a long while and has helped build the LCI branches in New York, Worcester, Maryland and Chicago. If you called him an entrepreneur just now, I heard it. He moved to California with his family recently and is heading the new Oakland branch with a Kenyan pastor. Yea, the Ghanaian church has some Kenyan pastors. <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Africa Unite</span>!<br><br>Unlike the Church of Pentecost, <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">we didn't sing any Twi or Ghanaian language gospel songs</span>. I wasn't complaining because I was really loving it. I knew most of the songs though which is interesting to me. It's good to know certain songs cut across denominations. <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Yup, unity in the house of God</span>. Like all new churches (erm, except a few), it was small but it was not a disadvantage at all. Like I discussed with someone in the congregation later, it allowed for a communal feeling, a classroom setting, attention to detail teaching and personal development in a church. It was lovely. Even the kids in the church were actively involved.<br><br>I met a friend from Boston I hadn't seen since she moved to the Bay Area. She was shockprised to see me. I also saw another friend I know from Oakland who I didn't know attended the church. He was like the only guy in the church. \"<span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Hmmm, mmarima, ɛyɛ a, monko asɔre wae. Daabi, menkaasɛ monko pɛ mmaa o, mese, monko asɔre wae!</span>\" I'm speaking to my Ghanaian peoples, ask a Ghanaian who speaks Twi to translate for you. When I went to the Church of Pentecost, I had thought the ladies who went to parties were not the same who went to church. Well, that theory has been debunked since but the <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">best women are really those who are going to church</span>. Best believe. :-)<br><br>I loved the sermon too. Pastor Joel shared from <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Matthew 4:1-4</span> before the sermon, talking about fighting temptations. \"It is written, '<em>Man shall not live on bread alone</em>, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God'.\" The sermon was about Daniel's Principles of Prayer. The pastor started us off with <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Daniel 6:10</span>. During the sermon, I could not help but think about well-versed and awesome of a public speaker Pastor Joel was. There was no 'ermming' or 'like liking' in his delivery. It helps to be doing this for years, but I really admired how he delivered with his well-thought out message. I will leave you with these principles of prayer.<br><br><blockquote>Prayer is very important. No one is ever too busy, too blessed, or too successful to pray. Prayer is the power of our source and protection. Prayer is important in acquiring and sustaining the blessings of God. For prayer to be effective, it must be habitual. Prayer must continue both in troubled times and in times of peace. Every nation needs lots of prayer and prayerful leaders. It is important to pray for long periods of time. It is important to enter your closet for effective prayer. Everyone must develop the ability and the formulae for praying four times a day.</blockquote><br><br>I definitely hope to attend again. But it's close to an hour's drive for me from home and I attend other church services nearer to me. <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">But if you are near Oakland and you are looking for a good church, I highly recommend the </span><a style=\"font-weight:bold\" href=\"http://www.lcius.org/home/index.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=sobi2Details&catid=5&sobi2Id=59&Itemid=86\">Lighthouse Chapel International</a><span style=\"font-weight:bold\"> branch</span>.<br><br><br><div><img src=\"http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/1236325261/ghana_fire_normal.jpg\" alt=\"Ato Ulzen-Appiah\" width=\"48\" height=\"48\"> </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4957153574047966177-922420475447018987?l=mightyafrican.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><p>Walter Kirn in his new blog <em>Walter Kirn's Permanent Morning</em>:</p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">1. <em>As Cautionary Tale.</em> <br><br><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e5f8f43b3970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Charlie-sheen-rehab\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e5f8f43b3970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Charlie-sheen-rehab\"></a> Acutely problematic. Since Sheen's biography bears little relationship to the experiences of most civilians, it's hard to know where exactly he went wrong or how, under the circumstances (father a hyper-observant Roman Catholic political activist thinking-person's movie star; brother a frozen-in-pop-culture-time non-thinking person's teen-dream idol; face a peculiar demonic composite of both of them that's somehow been robbed of its individuality; ex-wife a robotic sex kitten projection deemed real only for legal and gossip purposes; TV show a fiendishly exploitative mechanism which invites the viewer to superimpose what he knows to be Sheen's degraded consciousness on a generic asshole background of a character) he might have avoided going wrong.<br><br>Yes, in theory, cocaine abuse is something human beings should avoid and probably ought to condemn when it's observed, but Charlie Sheen does not exist in theory. Indeed, no theory can account for Charlie Sheen. Indeed, the possibility of his existence proves that theory has no useful part in any account of lived human reality.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://walterkirn.blogspot.com/2011/03/three-uses-for-charlie-sheen.html?spref=fb\">here</a>.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F03%2Fthree-uses-for-charlie-sheen-a-wittgensteinian-appreciation.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=KetEhnWDie8:80-WIApvqqI:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "THE OBSCENELY LUXURIOUS LIFESTYLE OF A DICTATOR’S SON",
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"content" : "<div>\n<div><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/teodorins_world</a></div>\n<div><a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/\"><img src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/fp_logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"140\" height=\"141\"></a><img title=\"teodorin\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_teosolo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"721\"></div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h1><a title=\"Teodorin's World\" href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/teodorins_world\">Teodorin’s World</a></h1>\n<h2>Playboy bunnies. $2 million Bugattis. Bags full of cash. Meet the world’s richest minister of agriculture and forestry.</h2>\n</div>\n<h3>BY KEN SILVERSTEIN | <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issues/185/contents/\">MARCH/APRIL 2011</a></h3>\n<p><strong><a title=\"Teodorin's World\" href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/teodorins_world\"><br>\nTeodorin’s World</a></strong></p>\n<p>Playboy bunnies. $2 million Bugattis. Bags full of cash. Meet the world’s richest minister of agriculture and forestry.</p>\n<p><strong>BY KEN SILVERSTEIN</strong> | <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issues/185/contents/\">MARCH/APRIL 2011</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/from_malabo_to_malibu\"><strong> </strong></a></p>\n<p><em>View a <a href=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/from_malabo_to_malibu\"><strong>slide show</strong></a> of the surreal playboy life of Teodorin Obiang.</em></p>\n<p>The owner of the estate at 3620 Sweetwater Mesa Road, which sits high above Malibu, California, calls himself a prince, and he certainly lives like one. A long, tree-lined driveway runs from the estate’s main gate past a motor court with fountains and down to a 15,000-square-foot mansion with eight bathrooms and an equal number of fireplaces. The grounds overlook the Pacific Ocean, complete with swimming pool, tennis court, four-hole golf course, and Hollywood stars Mel Gibson, Britney Spears, and Kelsey Grammer for neighbors.</p>\n<p>With his short, stocky build, slicked-back hair, and Coke-bottle glasses, the prince hardly presents an image of royal elegance. But his wardrobe was picked from the racks of Versace, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana, and he spared no expense on himself, from the $30 million in cash he paid for the estate to what Senate investigators later reported were vast sums for household furnishings: $59,850 for rugs, $58,000 for a home theater, even $1,734.17 for a pair of wine glasses. When he arrived back home — usually in the back seat of a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce or one of his other several dozen cars — his employees were instructed to stand in a receiving line to greet the prince. And then they lined up to do the same when he left.</p>\n<p>The prince, though, was a phony, a descendant of rulers but not of royals. His full name is Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue — Teodorin to friends — and he is the son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, a country about the size of Maryland on the western coast of Africa. A postage stamp of a country with a population of a mere 650,000 souls, Equatorial Guinea would be of little international consequence if it didn’t have one thing: oil, and plenty of it. The country is sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest producer of oil after Nigeria and Angola, pumping around 346,000 barrels per day, and is both a major supplier to and reliable supporter of the United States. Over the past 15 years, ExxonMobil, Hess Corp., and other American firms have collectively invested several billion dollars in Equatorial Guinea, which exports more of its crude to the U.S. market than any other country.</p>\n<p>Energy revenues have flowed into the pockets of the country’s elite, but virtually none has trickled down to the poor majority; since the oil boom began, the country has rocketed to one of the world’s highest per capita incomes — and one of its lowest standards of living. Nearly four-fifths of its people live in abject poverty; child mortality has increased to the point that today some 15 percent of Equatorial Guinea’s children die before reaching age 5, making it one of the deadliest places on the planet to be young.</p>\n<p>Teodorin’s 68-year-old father, Brig. Gen. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, seized power in a 1979 coup and has made apparent his intent to hand over power to a chosen successor. Obiang has sired an unknown number of children with multiple women, but 41-year-old Teodorin is his clear favorite and is being groomed to take over. That’s a scary prospect both for the long-suffering citizens of his country and for U.S. foreign policy. As a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with Teodorin put it to me, “He’s an unstable, reckless idiot.”</p>\n<p><img title=\"the dreamland of teodorin\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_3_MalibuEstate.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"130\"></p>\n<p>He’s also, according to thousands of pages of documents I’ve reviewed from multiple federal and congressional investigations of the Obiangs over the last decade, fantastically corrupt. As the minister of agriculture and forestry in his father’s government, Teodorin holds sway over the country’s second-largest industry. Investigators have documented how he has run his ministry like a business, operating several logging companies alongside the agency meant to regulate them. Documents from a secret joint investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency quote sources alleging that Teodorin supplemented his modest ministerial salary of $5,000 per month with a “large ‘revolutionary tax’ on timber” that he ordered international logging firms to pay “in cash or through checks” to a forestry company he owned. Investigators suspect a large chunk of his assets was derived from “extortion, theft of public funds, or other corrupt conduct,” stated a 2007 Justice report detailing the probe, which I first reported on for the<a title=\"U.S. Government Documents Crime Spree by Dictator’s Son: Why no action by the feds? | Harper's Magazine, Nov. 16, 2009\" href=\"http://harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006022\"><strong><em>Harper’s</em></strong><strong> </strong><strong>website in 2009</strong></a>. Teodorin has not only assembled a vast fortune, he’s routed much of it into the United States; a detailed report last year by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that he used shell companies to evade money-laundering laws and funnel more than $100 million into the United States.</p>\n<p><img title=\"bugatti veyron\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_bugatti.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"669\"></p>\n<p>All those millions purchased Teodorin a lavish and debauched lifestyle, according to allegations in a series of previously unreported civil lawsuits filed against him by a dozen former employees at the Malibu estate. They claim they were cheated out of salaries, overtime wages, and work-related expenses for items ranging from gasoline to toilet paper, while being forced to support a tawdry setup straight out of the movie <em>The Hangover</em>: There were drug “binges,” as one ICE document claimed, escort service girls, Playboy bunnies, and even a tiger. “I never witnessed him perform anything that looked like work,” reads a legal filing on behalf of Dragan Deletic, one of Teodorin’s former drivers. “His days consisted entirely of sleeping, shopping and partying.” (Without responding to specifics, a Los Angeles lawyer for Teodorin, Kevin Fisher, dismissed the charges as “salacious” and “extreme,” adding, “The allegations have not been verified and the people making them are not subject to perjury, so I don’t give a great deal of credence to them.”)</p>\n<p>After years of wrangling, most of the cases have now been settled, and the employees signed agreements that prevent them from speaking about Teodorin. But prior to that I interviewed several plaintiffs and their attorney, Jim McDermott, and read the case filings. I also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. and foreign investigations that involve Teodorin. They are incredibly damning.</p>\n<p><img title=\"yacht\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_13_yacht.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"546\"></p>\n<p>The larger issue raised by all this is why the U.S. government — after going to the effort to produce this mound of information pointing to Teodorin’s flagrant corruption and apparent misuse of the U.S. banking system — has been unwilling to do anything about it. “I’m surprised that he’s still allowed in the country based on all of the information contained in the Senate report and uncovered by other investigators and reporters,” said Linda Candler, a former Justice Department prosecutor who specialized in international criminal investigations. Indeed, legal experts say that Teodorin shouldn’t have been allowed to enter the United States since 2004, when President George W. Bush issued Proclamation 7750, which bars corrupt foreign officials from receiving U.S. visas. “No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves,” <a title=\"REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO THE GHANAIAN PARLIAMENT | White House, July 11, 2009\" href=\"http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-ghanaian-parliament\"><strong>said Bush’s successor Barack Obama</strong></a>, whose administration pledged to “vigorously” enforce 7750. “We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don’t.”</p>\n<p>And yet no formal action against Teodorin has been taken, despite an investigation whose stated goal, according to one of the Justice Department documents, was to shut down the flow of money into the United States “obtained through kleptocracy” by the Obiangs. Why? U.S. officials declined to discuss the ongoing cases on the record or speak harshly about Equatorial Guinea; it certainly appears to be the familiar story of a U.S. government unwilling to offend an important oil partner — the same coddling that has produced such stellar results in the past with Saudi Arabia and other energy-rich, democracy-poor Middle East allies. The Obama administration last year did help block UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency, from accepting $3 million from Obiang to endow a <a title=\"Thanks, but no thanks | Turtle Bay, ForeignPolicy.com, June 15, 2010 \" href=\"http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/15/thanks_but_no_thanks\"><strong>science prize in his name</strong></a> — but only after a public outcry raised by media reports calling attention to a prize the United States had previously been willing to overlook. Otherwise the administration has said little publicly about Equatorial Guinea’s awful record of corruption and human rights violations, and it has failed to impose sanctions against Teodorin or the state he is set to inherit. As of late 2010, years after the Justice Department probe began, investigators were still seeking to identify expert witnesses who could tell them about the early days of the Obiang regime.</p>\n<p><img title=\"in the poverty zone\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_2_malabo2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"590\"></p>\n<p>To date, the only substantial actions taken against the Obiang clan in the United States have been prompted by the efforts of McDermott, the plaintiffs’ attorney, and Superior Court judges in California. “In our system of international politics, there’s a lot of ass-kissing, especially if there’s oil involved,” McDermott told me. “But in the cases that have gone to judgment thus far, the buck has stopped with our state court, which doesn’t give special treatment to anyone, including Teodorin. That’s the beauty of the rule of law.”</p>\n<p><strong>BUT IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA, THE OBIANGS ARE THE LAW.</strong> The only former Spanish colony in sub-Saharan Africa, Equatorial Guinea gained independence in 1968. The country’s first ruler was Francisco Macias Nguema, a crackpot dictator who named himself the “Implacable Apostle of Freedom” and “The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea.” In 1979, by which time his regime had murdered as many as 50,000 of his opponents — real and imagined — the Sole Miracle was overthrown and executed by his nephew, Obiang <em>père</em>. Teodoro was then only 37 years old, but he was already skilled in the art of dictatorship after running Macias’s National Guard and Black Beach prison, a notorious torture chamber for political prisoners. Over the past three decades, Obiang has been thrice “elected” in sham ballots, most recently in 2009 when he won 95.4 percent of the vote (a record low; he peaked with 97.85 percent in 1996).</p>\n<p><strong>THE DICTATOR … AND HIS SLAUGHTERED UNCLE</strong></p>\n<p><strong><img title=\"DICTATOR OBIANG\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_10_obiang_uncle_combo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"743\"></strong></p>\n<p>The United States historically had little interest in Equatorial Guinea and closed its embassy there in 1995 after the Obiang regime issued threats against Ambassador John Bennett, who had lodged protests over human rights conditions. But in an unfortunate twist, American companies soon discovered vast reserves of oil and gas in the waters off Equatorial Guinea, and successive U.S. governments have been slowly but steadily backtracking ever since. The key step came in 2003, when after an intense lobbying campaign by the oil industry, Bush approved the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital. (The embassy formally reopened three years later.) “With the increased U.S. investment presence, relations between the U.S. and the Government of Equatorial Guinea have been characterized as positive and constructive,” notes the <a title=\"Background Note: Equatorial Guinea | U.S. State Dpet., Dec. 6, 2010\" href=\"http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/7221.htm\"><strong>State Department’s country profile</strong></a>. Relations may be good, but the official U.S. assessment of the country is much less rosy. The State Department’s most recent global <a title=\"2009 Human Rights Report: Equatorial Guinea | U.S. State Dept., March 11, 2010\" href=\"http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/af/135951.htm\"><strong>human rights report</strong></a> cited abuses in Equatorial Guinea including “torture of detainees and prisoners by security forces; life-threatening conditions in prisons [and] arbitrary arrest.” Freedom House’s 2011 “Freedom in the World” survey put the country in its “<a title=\"Freedom in the World 2011 | Freedom House\" href=\"http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/File/fiw/FIW_2011_Booklet.pdf\"><strong>worst of the worst</strong></a>” category for governments that violate political rights and civil liberties, along with North Korea, Sudan, and Turkmenistan.</p>\n<p>Equatorial Guinea’s economy depends almost entirely on oil, which generated revenues last year of well over $4 billion, giving it a per capita annual income of <a title=\"Country Comparison: GDP - Per Capita (PPP) | World Factbook, CIA\" href=\"https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryName=Equatorial%20Guinea&countryCode=ek&regionCode=af&rank=29#ek\"><strong>$37,900, on par with Belgium</strong></a>. “The oil has been for us like the <a title=\"Kuwait Of Africa? | 60 Minutes, CBS, July 18, 2004\" href=\"http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/14/60minutes/main583700.shtml\"><strong>manna that the Jews ate</strong></a> in the desert,” Obiang has said. It certainly has been for him. Obiang placed eighth on a 2006 list by <em>Forbes</em> of the <a title=\"Fortunes Of Kings, Queens And Dictators | Forbes, May 5, 2010\" href=\"http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/04/rich-kings-dictators_cz_lk_0504royals.html\"><strong>world’s richest leaders</strong></a>, with a personal fortune estimated at $600 million. His population hasn’t fared so well. Human Rights Watch reports that one in three of Obiang’s impoverished subjects dies before age 40.</p>\n<p>Obiang’s corruption is hardly unique among oil-rich dictators. French authorities have uncovered 39 properties in France and 70 French bank accounts held by the family of President Omar Bongo, who ruled Gabon for 41 years until his death in 2009. (Soon thereafter, his son, Ali Bongo, took power.) Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the leader of Congo-Brazzaville, has bought a variety of French properties with tens of millions of dollars in oil revenues funneled out of his country. “All the leaders of the world have castles and palaces in France, whether they are from the Gulf, Europe, or Africa,” Sassou-Nguesso recently <a title=\"Congo Republic's heavy use of D.C. lobbyists prompts questions | Washington Post, Aug. 25, 2010\" href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/25/AR2010082505238_2.html\"><strong>said by way of explanation</strong></a>. In Central Asia, fantastically rich new ruling families have exploited energy wealth with great panache too, from throwing birthday parties featuring Elton John to doling out luxury villas to friends and family.</p>\n<p>TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA RECEIVED IN THE WHITE HOUSE BY THE OBAMAS</p>\n<p><img title=\"OBIANG IN WHITE HOUSE\" src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_12_Teodoro_Obiang_Nguema_Mbasogo_with_Obamas.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"969\" height=\"646\"></p>\n<p>But Obiang watchers say the scale of his regime’s looting appears to be approaching the sort of baroque levels reached before by historic crooks like Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, America’s closest friend in Africa during the Cold War, and Nigerian Gen. Sani Abacha, who funneled several billion dollars into Swiss accounts before dying in 1998 of undetermined causes, reportedly in the company of two teenage prostitutes. Many African regimes have degenerated into kleptocracy, but Equatorial Guinea’s corruption is so entrenched, scholar Geoffrey Wood has written, that it “is one of the few African countries that ‘can be correctly classified as a <a title=\"Business and politics in a criminal state: the case of Equatorial Guinea | African Affairs, 2004, 103(413): 547-567\" href=\"http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/103/413/547.full.pdf\"><strong>criminal state</strong></a>.’”</p>\n<p>A few members of Congress have criticized Obiang — Michigan Sen. Carl Levin once compared him to Saddam Hussein — and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has twice investigated the regime, in its report on Teodorin last year and in 2004, when it found that Obiang personally controlled as much as $700 million in state funds deposited at Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., overwhelmingly by U.S. oil companies. The Senate panel said Riggs opened multiple accounts for Obiang and helped the president stash his wealth in offshore shell corporations; it was eventually hit with a huge fine for this and similar dealings with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.</p>\n<p>But in general, the U.S. government has preferred to look the other way since the oil boom hit, aside from the criticism contained in the pro forma annual State Department human rights reports and milquetoast appeals for better behavior. “We’ve raised our strong concerns about the country’s poor human rights record consistently in meetings with officials from EG up to the highest level,” a State Department official told me by email.</p>\n<p>To ensure that Equatorial Guinea stays within the reasonable limits of Washington’s good graces, Obiang has hired a team of American lobbyists and PR specialists, among them Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton and now a Washington lobbyist who has also represented the 2009 Honduran coup plotters and, briefly, Laurent Gbagbo, the human-rights-abusing leader of the Ivory Coast who refused to step down after losing elections late last year. “I’ve kidded him he’d do <a title=\"African Leader Hires Adviser and Seeks an Image Change | New York Times, June 29, 2010\" href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/africa/29obiang.html\"><strong>better to win by 51 percent than 98 percent</strong></a>,” Davis told the <em>New York Times</em> about Obiang — the type of sage advice for which Equatorial Guinea pays him a cool $1 million a year. The government also retains Qorvis Communications, which for $15,000 per month emails out a steady stream of news releases highlighting all manner of heartwarming news about Equatorial Guinea, from the Obiang government’s alleged support for animal conservation to native daughter Matinga Ragatz being named Michigan’s “<a title=\"Equatorial Guinea Congratulates Matinga Ragatz on Being Named Michigan 'Teacher of the Year' | PR Newswire, June 10, 2010\" href=\"http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/equatorial-guinea-congratulates-matinga-ragatz-on-being-named-michigan-teacher-of-the-year-96068474.html\"><strong>Teacher of the Year</strong></a>.” Teodorin separately pays the firm $55,000 per month to help polish his image, lobbying disclosure reports say.</p>\n<p>Early one evening this past summer, I met two of Teodorin’s PR handlers from Qorvis, Matt J. Lauer and Seth Pietras, at a bar in Washington. The two men unknotted their ties in unison after slipping onto a couch and ordering drinks. Allegations of human rights abuses in Equatorial Guinea are highly exaggerated, they said, citing as evidence their experience during a trip to the country. “We could walk around at night and talk with people and no one interfered with us,” said Lauer. “No one is saying there are no problems, but it’s not North Korea.” They were similarly miffed about Teodorin’s reputation as a high-rolling kleptocrat, saying that officials from a number of energy-rich countries also live lavishly, while their client was unfairly singled out. Pietras noted that Bush had reportedly been a drinker and partier as a younger man before becoming more serious. Teodorin, he offered, “is at the point where he’s thinking about his legacy.”</p>\n<p><strong>IF SO, THEN SOME SERIOUS SOUL-SEARCHING IS IN ORDER.</strong> In the fall of 1991, Teodorin, then 22, arrived on the posh Malibu campus of Pepperdine University to enroll in an English-as-a-second-language course. Walter International, a Houston-based energy firm that then had a stake in Equatorial Guinea’s as-yet-untapped offshore fields, financed Teodorin’s studies. Walter also agreed to pick up Teodorin’s living expenses, which proved to be a costly mistake. Tuition was a mere $3,400 and included boarding at Pepperdine, but Teodorin deemed the dormitory unsuitable and shuttled between two off-campus residences: a rental home in Malibu and a suite at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. He rarely attended class, instead spending much of his time shopping in Beverly Hills. Teodorin dropped out of the program after five months; Walter International’s tab came to about $50,000. The aggrieved firm complained to Ambassador Bennett, and the story later came out in public.</p>\n<p>Teodorin traveled the world in subsequent years but returned frequently to the Los Angeles area. In 2001, he bought a $6.5 million home on Antelo Road in Bel Air, across from actress Farrah Fawcett. He never moved in, however, lamenting to a real estate agent that in retrospect the house was too contemporary for his taste.</p>\n<p>Teodorin dreamed of being a hip-hop mogul and for a time owned and operated a label whose name was derived from his initials: TNO Entertainment. TNO’s most significant project appears to have been a flop titled <em>No Better Than This</em> by Won-G — a fitting collaboration given that the rapper, whose real name is Wondge Bruny, has described his father as a former military official under “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the Haitian dictator deposed in 1986.</p>\n<p>Teodorin continued to burn through cash during these years. He lived for a time at a Paris hotel off the Champs-Élysées; a French TV crew captured him on a shopping spree during which, it reported, he bought more than 30 suits in a single day. In 2004, he bought two estates worth a combined $7 million in Cape Town. But he and his family generally stayed off the radar screen in the United States — until the Riggs scandal broke.</p>\n<p>Lesser kleptocrats might have turned tail and fled, but not Teodorin. He employed two lawyers to set up shell companies and associated bank accounts that he controlled but on which his name never appeared, according to the 2010 Senate report. It found that the companies were merely vehicles for him to receive and spend funds wired from abroad.</p>\n<p>In 2006, Teodorin used one of the firms, Sweetwater Malibu LLC, to purchase the Malibu estate, which is among the largest homes in the private gated community of Serra Retreat. When it came to spending habits, Teodorin wasn’t to be outdone by his Hollywood-star neighbors. He owned at least three dozen luxury cars, including seven Ferraris, five Bentleys, four Rolls-Royces, two Lamborghinis, two Mercedes-Benzes, two Porsches, two Maybachs, and an Aston Martin, with a collective insured value of around $10 million, according to the Senate investigation. There were far too many cars to keep at the estate, so Teodorin rented storage space in the garage of the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard and had his drivers fetch the one he wanted for an outing, a choice that sometimes depended on his attire. “I’m wearing blue shoes, so get me the blue Rolls today,” he once told Benito Giacalone, a former driver.</p>\n<p>His favorite was a blue Bugatti Veyron, a car that can reach speeds of more than 250 miles per hour and sells new for about $2 million. One night, Teodorin parked his toy near the entrance of L’Ermitage, a favorite hangout where he’d gone for drinks. When he saw gawkers stop to admire it, he sent Giacalone back to Malibu by cab so Giacalone could drive back his second Bugatti to park next to it.</p>\n<p>Teodorin’s household staff included drivers, housekeepers, caretakers, estate managers, executive assistants, chefs, landscaping crews, and two security teams with off-duty and retired cops, and guards from Equatorial Guinea. One security unit was based at the estate while a second, called the “chase team,” tailed Teodorin on his late-night excursions into Malibu and beyond. Legal filings depict the “prince” as a nocturnal creature who generally slumbered until afternoon and sometimes as late as 9 p.m.</p>\n<p>He dated a series of women, among them the rapper Eve, whom he designated as president, treasurer, and chief financial officer of his Sweet Pink shell company, according to the 2010 Senate report. An Equatorial Guinean logging company owned by Teodorin transferred $60,000 into Sweet Pink’s corporate account, but the Union Bank of California, where it was housed, shut it down a month later, in October 2005, because it deemed any funds sent from Equatorial Guinea to be potentially of criminal origins. In 2005, Teodorin reportedly threw a party for Eve aboard the Tatoosh, a 303-foot yacht that he rented for $700,000 from its owner, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. An account in the New York <em>Daily News</em> said she later cooled on him, perhaps after hearing that his father was an <a title=\"RAPPER GIVES HER AFRICAN HOTSHOT THE EVE-HO, SEZ PAL | Daily News, Aug. 16, 2006\" href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/2006/08/16/2006-08-16_rapper_gives_her_african_hot.html\"><strong>accused cannibal</strong></a> who had eaten his political rivals. Other companions included Tamala Jones, who appeared in such movies as <em>Booty Call</em> and<em>Confessions of a Call Girl</em>, and Lindsey Evans, named Miss Louisiana Teen USA in 2008 and Playboy Playmate of the Month in October 2009.</p>\n<p>The guest list at Teodorin’s mansion invariably included an assortment of high-heeled, miniskirt-clad women procured from escort agencies, according to my interviews with former employees. Giacalone noted in his legal filings that his unofficial duties included accompanying his boss’s girlfriends on elaborate shopping sprees. He also said the Dolce & Gabbana store on Rodeo Drive periodically dispatched a sales associate and tailor to Teodorin’s estate in a van packed with racks of merchandise for his viewing and would close off its second-floor showroom when his girlfriends came in to shop. Giacalone said he escorted one who racked up about $80,000 in purchases, including bronze and red dresses that cost nearly $7,000 apiece. Giacalone claims Teodorin gave him the embarrassing task of paying the tab from a Nike shoebox filled with shrink-wrapped bills.</p>\n<p>Thanks to his diplomatic passport, Teodorin routinely carried as much as $1 million in cash into the country, the ICE documents allege. Several ex-employees said he had a bag the size of a small suitcase that was forever stuffed with stacks of fresh $100 bills. Teodorin traveled on a Gulfstream V, which he bought in 2006 through a British Virgin Islands-registered shell called Ebony Shine International, Ltd. “He used it like a taxi,” Giacalone said. “He’d fly alone or use it to pick up one passenger. Once he sent it from Rio to Los Angeles to bring back his barber.” And Teodorin didn’t travel light. He bought a 15-seat cargo van and had the seats taken out to fit his collection of Louis Vuitton luggage.</p>\n<p>Records compiled by FlightAware, a firm that tracks private and commercial air traffic, show that Teodorin’s ministerial duties took him to such vital destinations as Las Vegas, where a July 2009 bill for the presidential suite at the Four Seasons — made out to “Prince Teodoro Nguema Obiang” — showed a rate of $5,000 per night; to Miami, where he docked one of his two Nor-Tech 5000 speedboats; and to Palm Beach. International destinations included Bermuda, Nice, and Paris.</p>\n<p>His fall 2009 monthlong jaunt to Maui stands out for debauched luxury, according to an account by Giacolone. Teodorin flew on the Gulfstream V and chartered a second jet for a group of household employees. He also brought along a few escort girls and shipped several sports cars and one of the Nor-Tech speedboats, painted in gaudy orange, purple, and yellow. The leaded fuel it ran on wasn’t sold on the island, so it was flown in, at a cost of $600 per barrel, the former driver claimed. But the holiday was marred when the Nor-Tech capsized into the Pacific following a brief excursion. “I still have not be[en] able to confirm where the guy is from, but money is not a problem,” one bemused local wrote on an online boating forum, <a title=\"Nor-Tech 50 ooooopppps! | The Hull Truth Boating Forum, Oct. 16, 2009\" href=\"http://www.thehulltruth.com/boating-forum/249475-nor-tech-50-ooooopppps.html\"><strong>thehulltruth.com</strong></a>. “Yesterday, when it was time to drive the boat, the prince showed up at the ramp in his Bugatti.… Between the car, the boat, the royal aides (including four absolutely stunning foxes) with him, they were quite an image at the tiny ramp.”</p>\n<p><strong>AMERICA HAS BEEN ONE LONG PARTY FOR TEODORIN,</strong> but his days of wine and roses might finally be coming to an end. He still owns the Malibu estate; Lauer at Qorvis insists there is no information suggesting he is barred from the United States and that he came on a visit last spring. (Qorvis declined to reply to questions about the claims of corruption and money-laundering by U.S. investigators or the allegations from the former employees suing Teodorin.) But the 2010 Senate report disclosed reams of the family’s sensitive banking information, which has surely reduced his ability to move money into the country. Meanwhile, new lawsuits keep sprouting up — there are four still outstanding — and the charges grow ever more lurid, with one former employee alleging full frontal nudity by Teodorin. “He is a guest in our country who clearly does not think that the rules apply to him,” McDermott argues.</p>\n<p>Perhaps all this helps explain why Teodorin is seldom in Los Angeles these days, spending far more time in Equatorial Guinea. It may not be Malibu, but he owns a huge beachfront estate there with a swimming pool set on a patio dotted with marble statues imported from Italy. Better yet, there are no investigators or financial regulators to worry about. Through a holding company called Abayak and other assorted business vehicles, Teodorin’s father reportedly has a stake in all key economic sectors. Gabriel, Teodorin’s younger brother, controls the oil sector from a post at the Ministry of Mines and Energy. His cousin runs the treasury department and oversees the budget, and another relative heads the military cabinet.</p>\n<p>Nor does Teodorin need to fret about nosy reporters, because there is no independent radio or television in Equatorial Guinea. In 2009, the Information Ministry dismissed four journalists at a state broadcaster for “<a title=\"Despotic regime’s absurd methods decried after four journalists fired for “lack of enthusiasm” | Reporters Without Borders, Jan. 23, 2009\" href=\"http://en.rsf.org/equatorial-guinea-despotic-regime-s-absurd-methods-23-01-2009,30091.html\"><strong>lack of enthusiasm</strong></a>” about the government’s “merits.” A few years earlier, an announcer on Radio Asonga — owned by Teodorin — declared that President Obiang was “in <a title=\"Equatorial Guinea's "God" | BBC News, July 26, 2003\" href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3098007.stm\"><strong>permanent contact with the Almighty</strong></a>” and has the authority to “kill without anyone calling him to account.”</p>\n<p>Washington’s accommodation of Obiang stands in marked contrast to its harsher treatment of global thugs who aren’t lucky enough to be sitting atop vast energy reserves. And the relationship between the United States and Equatorial Guinea is as oily as they come. In June 2000, with American oil company executives starting to call Equatorial Guinea the “Kuwait of Africa,” the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a U.S. government agency, approved $173 million in loan guarantees to build an American-owned methanol plant in Equatorial Guinea, at the time its largest program ever in sub-Saharan Africa. Five months later, Rep. William Jefferson led the first-ever congressional delegation to Equatorial Guinea and was presented with a key to Malabo. (Jefferson was sentenced to prison in 2009 after being convicted on multiple counts, including conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Prosecutors charged that he took bribes in exchange for promoting deals in Africa, including oil concessions in Equatorial Guinea.)</p>\n<p>In September 2005, the Obiang regime tortured dozens of detainees it had accused of having links to an alleged coup attempt the year before, according to credible human rights groups. Yet the following April, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with Obiang in Washington and called him a “<a title=\"With Friends Like These . . . | Washington Post, April 18, 2006\" href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041701368.html\"><strong>good friend</strong></a>” of the United States. In September 2009, two months before Equatorial Guinea held its sham presidential election, a smiling <a title=\"U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama With World Leaders at the Metropolitan Museum in New York | U.S. State Dept., Flickr, Sept. 23, 2009\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/statephotos/3949359659/\"><strong>Obama posed for a photo</strong></a> with Obiang during a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, marking a minor PR coup for the regime.</p>\n<p>American business ties have meanwhile deepened and expanded. In February 2010, Equatorial Guinea quietly awarded a $250 million contract to Virginia-based private security firm Military Professional Resources Initiative (MPRI) to provide coastal monitoring, a deal that required State Department approval. “Granting a license to MPRI is consistent with our foreign policy goal of ensuring maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea,” a State Department official told me in an email, adding that the license came with training that “includes an important human rights component and anti-trafficking provision and we believe this training is a strong tool for tangible improvement in human rights and transparency.”</p>\n<p>Several other countries, however, appear to be going after Equatorial Guinea’s leaders with more vigor. A Spanish court is investigating a complaint charging that 11 of Obiang’s relatives and associates used $26.5 million in laundered money to buy houses and chalets in Madrid and the Canary Islands. A 2007 French police inquiry uncovered tens of millions of dollars’ worth of assets belonging to the Obiang gang, including luxury cars owned by Teodorin worth a combined $6.3 million. Late last year, a French court ruled that a related corruption case brought by human rights groups against the Obiangs and several other African ruling families could proceed.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><img src=\"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_images/110218_12_Teodoro_Obiang_Nguema_Mbasogo_with_Obamas.jpg\" alt=\"\"></p>\n<p>After years of allowing him to run amok in the United States and otherwise enabling him, the U.S. government may soon find that it needs to deal far more directly with Teodorin in the future. In a clear sign of his political ascendancy, his doting father named him vice president of the ruling party last July. Furthermore, a well-placed source told me that government officials in Equatorial Guinea have already informed American oil company executives that Teodorin will be the country’s next leader. Given the size of his country’s oil reserves, he’s going to have leverage — and cash — for a long time to come.</p>\n<p>Note to the Obama administration: If you think he was hard to manage as the Prince of Malibu, just wait until Teodorin becomes the King of Equatorial Guinea.</p>\n<p>PAINTING BY ANDREA VENTURA FOR FP</p>\n<p><em>Ken Silverstein is an Open Society Institute fellow and contributing editor to</em>Harper’s<em> magazine. The Nation Institute provided research funding for this story.</em></p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save\"><img src=\"http://cameronduodu.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p>"
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"title" : "Luanda is Expensive",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-21628\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2011/02/24/luanda-is-expensive/20110212_map001/\"><img title=\"20110212_map001\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/20110212_map001.jpeg?w=500&h=281\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\"></a></p>\n<p><strong>By Marissa Moorman,<br>\nGuest Blogger</strong></p>\n<p>This is “The Economist” recently on the Angolan capital:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">The Angolan capital calls itself the “New Dubai” and there certainly are similarities with the emirate. Luanda has vast oil wealth. If they could only get visas, which are rarely granted, tourists would flock to its beaches and nearby game parks. Following the opening of a modern airport, flights arrive non-stop from Europe and America. But if prices in Dubai seem inflated, they have nothing on Luanda. Last year Angola’s capital was the most expensive city in the world, according to Mercer, a New York-based consultancy. A bog-standard hotel room costs $400, a non-alcoholic drink in the lobby $10 (though a mere $2 in a supermarket). An underwhelming hotel buffet is $75 and a pizza on the street $25.</p>\n<p>Etcetera, etcetera.</p>\n<p><span></span>As a professor of African history, I spend ample classroom time analyzing Western produced images, past and present, of the African continent, African peoples, African economies and African cultures. I suggest that these images tell us more about the producers than they do about the places and people they show us. Reading <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/18119197?story_id=18119197&fsrc=rss\">this blog entry</a> (excerpted above) on the The Economist site about Luanda, Angola (the city where I currently live and work), reminded me again of this ‘kickback’ of representation.</p>\n<p>Surprise and wonder at the high prices and cost of living in Luanda and at the extremes of wealth and poverty in the city are journalistic boilerplate for foreign correspondents visiting Angola. And I’ve come to find it just as tiresome and problematic as 19th century European depictions of African savagery because it erases the complicity of outsiders (who, in the end, consumes the great bulk of oil pumped from Angola’s ocean floor?), and paints Westerners as victims of official corruption or as heroes – in the blog above a Frenchman tried to sue a local business for profiteering (no mention was made, of course, about the ongoing case against French officials on trial in France for having illegally sold arms to Angola during its long civil war and bolstered state power).</p>\n<p>Those who pay the highest price, both literally and figuratively, are Angolans. They experience more crime, more hassles from government bureaucrats, and spend huge amounts of time, energy and money on poor goods and services, while a small number of their fellow countrymen and ex-pats make money hand over fist. And yet, I know very few Luandans who ever see themselves as victims.</p>\n<p>Representations of Luanda’s high cost of living are 21st century are a lazy riff on 19th century ideas and images. Exotic economies and corrupt officials replace quaint folklore and savage rulers reminding us that Westerners continue need the continent to do symbolic work for them.</p>\n<p>* Marissa Moorman teaches history <a href=\"http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/faculty/Display.php?Faculty_ID=24\">at Indian University</a> in Bloomington. She has written about music and politics in Angola, where she currently lives.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/21272/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=21272&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><img title=\"libya-gaddafi-limo\" src=\"http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/libya-gaddafi-limo.png?w=700&h=463\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"463\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">It is often said that people get the government they deserve, but by no stretch of the imagination can the Libyans have deserved Muammar Gaddafi, who at the time of his downfall was the longest-serving ruler in Africa. Son of an illiterate Bedouin herder, Gaddafi had already hatched plans to topple the Libyan monarchy while at college and, after military training in Greece and Britain, led a successful revolution at the age of 27. Like Mao, Gaddafi outlined his political views in a pithy tome: the Green Book. His Islamic socialism was a curious mixture of Arab nationalism, socialist welfare state and religious moral codes, but succeeded only in reducing LIbya from a republic into a <em>jamahiriya</em> — a neologism that means “government by the masses” — a querulous tribalistic quasi-state.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Meanwhile, Gaddafi was left free to practice his interventionist and not inconsequential policies. Libya has donated money for humanitarian causes across Africa and also allowed Africans to travel to the country to find work. It supported African rebels in South Africa and Zimbabwe during apartheid. On the other hand, Gaddafi had supported scores of other baleful rebel movements in Chad, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Liberia. After he had became embroiled in Chad’s Civil War, Gaddafi sent high school pupils to the frontline, telling them that they were going on a field trip. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), Palestinian militants and the forces of former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin had training camps in Libya, although the Irish soon left after facing tight alcohol regulations.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">These unseemly connections led to Gaddafi being identified as the world’s premier state-sponsor of terrorism. Implicated in several terrorist attacks including the Munich Massacre of 1972, shooting of protestors from inside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1983, and the Berlin discotheque bombing of 1986, Gaddafi was the “mad dog of the Middle East” to President Reagan, who authorized the bombing of Tripoli, which killed, among many others, Gaddafi’s own adopted daughter. His retaliation was the Lockerbie Bombings of 1988, which consigned Libya into international pariah-hood.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Although his military rank remained uncharged, the colonel subsequently festooned himself with rows after rows of decorations. His delusions of grandeur were also palpable when he tried to create a Federation of Arab Republics (with Egypt and Syria), an Arab-African Federation (with Morocco), and an Arab Islamic Republic (with Tunisia). They lasted five years, two years and two days respectively. As his fellow Arabs failed to support him in the face of international isolation in the 1980s and 1990s, he abandoned pan-Arabism for pan-Africanism. In the recent years, his vision was for a second USA — the United States of Africa, modeled after the EU — with Gaddafi himself as its “King of Kings”.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">As his influence dwindled, Gaddafi became more idiosyncratic: he came to dress more and more eccentrically; two years ago, he gave an incoherent speech at the UN; he paid Italian women to study Islam. Bedouin tents, Amazonian bodyguards and an Ukrainian nurse closely accompanied him. Yet, he found limited success in his bridge-building to the West. After he partially atoned for Lockerbie, the new generation of world leaders sought Gaddafi’s help in the War on Terror and energy security. He emerged as the key mediator in negotiations over Western hostages kidnapped in Mali and Niger. He ‘magnanimously’ pardoned Bulgarian nurses accused to spreading AIDS in Libya. In 2009 — the year he chaired the African Union — Gaddafi was also at the G-8 summit, a worthy achievement for the man who was, for the better part of four decades, a bogeyman for the West.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">After forty years of repression, Gaddafi’s end came astonishingly fast. As dictatorships to east and west of him crumbled, his position became increasingly untenable. Yesterday, he appeared in a 22-second TV interview, holding an umbrella, sitting in the front seat of a van and denying the rumors that he had fled to Venezuela (above). Preparing a symbolic last stand, he made a speech from his deserted residence, which was aerial bombed in 1986 by the U.S., brandishing his Green Book. Like his own dictatorship, the speech was rumbling and went on far too long; Gaddafi himself looked distant and shabbier than ever before, at last unable to steer the destiny of a nation that had ceased to listen to him, ceased to trust him. To the end, he remained defiant, saying “Colonel Gaddafi is history”. In this judgment at least, he was correct.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"> </p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"> </p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/obituary/\">Obituary</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/politics/\">Politics</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/libya/\">Libya</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/muammar-gaddafi/\">Muammar Gaddafi</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4072/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=4072&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Mobile money in 2006 and 2016",
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"content" : "<p><em>Editor’s Note: Michael Klein is the former Vice President of Financial and Private Sector Development of the World Bank Group and is currently Visiting Professor at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University.</em><em></em></p>\n<p><em>Nairobi 2006</em>. Making Finance Work for Africa is the topic. Bankers, officials of monetary authorities, regulators, representatives of the IMF and multilateral development banks crowded in the conference room of the Serena hotel to launch the new <a href=\"http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTAFRSUMAFTPS/Resources/MFWfAFinalNov2.pdf\">Making Finance Work for Africa</a> report. When I arrived at the airport, it was hard not to notice the omnipresent Safaricom ads: “Roam with the largest herd”. Luckily, I had chosen to present at the conference on the potential for mobile money, branchless banking and the like. Just a few months later in March 2007 Safaricom launched its M-PESA service. Today—less than 4 years later—M-PESA helps some 60 per cent of all adult Kenyans with payment services and is all the rage in the world of microfinance, in Kenya and beyond.</p>\n<p>M-PESA reaches all over Kenya. 23,000 shops, often within just a few meters from each other, proliferate in slums and villages. Changing money at these cash merchants is pretty much like buying any other product in a shop; consumers face no or few lines, take advantage of opening hours from early till late, and can find cash merchants close to places of business or residence. The benefits are numerous: life is easier and safer; money is harder to steal or lose; waiting at the bank is over. Mobile phones make it possible. The herd of roamers comprises most adults in Kenya. And they have voted with their feet and money: payment services are what they want from financial inclusion.</p>\n\n\n<p>Clever business people with prodding from the UK’s Department for International Development made it happen. The Central Bank of Kenya allowed it to happen. Some banks were and are furious. Competition in the small payment business by M-PESA hurts banks like Equity, which is a local champion of micro-finance and has a significant retail payment business of its own. Yet, Kenya’s Central Bank waved the new approach through, and with good reason. It helped chart a new course for regulation of mobile retail payments. In the process, M-PESA challenges the way we think about banking regulation. The Central Bank of Kenya may well have helped chart the basic course for many other mobile money schemes in the world.</p>\n<p>M-PESA’s business model makes it clear: one needs to “unbundle” the various functions a bank typically performs and look at each in turn. Suitable regulatory approaches will differ by function, with each function potentially performed by a different entity. What basic functions are involved in banking? Exchange of types of money, storing money, transferring money and investing money.</p>\n<p>The cash merchants function as money changers. Suppose a worker in Nairobi wants to send money to his wife in a village. The worker goes to a cash merchant and gives the merchant paper money The merchant, in return, gives the worker book-entry money (BEM) by instructing M-PESA via mobile phone to transfer BEM from the merchant’s account to that of the worker. Exchanging one form of money for another is like exchanging bills for coins. There’s no need for prudential regulation—otherwise all machines that spit out coins for bills should be regulated too. The cash merchants are colloquially called “agents”, but they are not agents in the sense of a banking agent that needs regulation. They are money changers. In principle, anybody with an M-PESA account can perform the exchange function. This is a contestable business with options for free entry.</p>\n<p>M-PESA provides two functions. It stores money in the form of BEM and it transfers it. People storing money with M-PESA are rewarded in the same way as if they had stored the money in a safe-deposit box. They get no interest and the nominal value of the money is preserved. When the worker has BEM in his M-PESA account, he can instruct M-PESA via mobile phone to put the money into the account of his wife. The system requires reliability, integrity. That means standard protections from commercial law and maybe some special consumer protection to help insure the system is safe. No prudential regulation with capital requirements is required. We can call the money in M-PESA accounts “deposits”. As such they are deposits in the sense that money in a safe-deposit box is a deposit—but not in the sense of banking regulation. And by the way, the phone is not an “e-wallet” or “e-purse”. That may be exciting terminology, but the money is stored in the electronic “books” of M-PESA. The phone serves to relay instructions and messages. When the phone is lost, the money is still there—not like a wallet is lost with the bills inside.</p>\n<p>So far, this whole process happens entirely outside the banking system. However, M-PESA and the Central Bank recently came to an understanding that the net cash deposited with M-PESA at any time should be deposited in a bank (in fact, in two banks to diversify risk). In turn, the banks can invest the deposits, but this introduces risk because of the maturity mismatches between deposits and loans. The net cash held with M-PESA is as safe as any deposit in a bank that is supervised by the Central Bank. Consequently, there’s no need to subject M-PESA to additional supervision beyond specifying what kind of deposits in which banks are acceptable to the regulator. In this model, M-PESA acts as an aggregator or conduit for bank deposits. What strictly needs regulation is not “deposit-taking” institutions, but “deposit-investing” ones, i.e. the banks, not M-PESA. The fundamental consequence for regulation is to think in terms of “regulation by type of service”, not “regulation by institutional label” (e.g. a bank).</p>\n<p>New technologies allow old business models to be reconfigured. These technologies change both the marketplace and the appropriate regulations for this reconfigured marketplace. And continual change has proven to be a fact of life in information and communication technologies. Already, a small cluster of software developers have sprung up in Kenya who are testing new ways of creating platforms for storing and moving money. Competing telecom companies are testing their own business models.</p>\n<p>M-PESA did not exist when I attended the Nairobi conference less than five years ago. Equity Bank was all the rage in microfinance circles, with its unprecedented outreach to the common people. At the time, the whisper in the corridor was: Isn’t Equity Bank growing too fast? Just wait to see if the portfolio is really sound. Shouldn’t the regulators be more cautious in the face of such growth and with the money of so many depending on it? Today, Equity Bank has matured into Kenya’s largest bank. And the whisper now is: Isn’t M-PESA too big? Is the money of all those poor people really safe? Do payment services really add up to financial inclusion?</p>\n<p>I look forward to returning to Kenya in 2016 for the 10th anniversary of Making Finance Work for Africa. Let’s see what company they’re whispering about in the corridors then.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=K4ZLYvL5P88:QDCpQoOKZxc:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=K4ZLYvL5P88:QDCpQoOKZxc:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?i=K4ZLYvL5P88:QDCpQoOKZxc:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=K4ZLYvL5P88:QDCpQoOKZxc:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=K4ZLYvL5P88:QDCpQoOKZxc:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSDBlog/~4/K4ZLYvL5P88\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Reflections on the Revolutions in North Africa",
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"content" : "<p>Reading\nthis <a href=\"http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/02/why_do_protests_bring_down_reg.html\">interesting\npost on why protests can bring down authoritarian regimes</a>, and\na <a href=\"http://www.themonkeycage.org/2011/02/some_thoughts_on_authoritarian.html\">response\ndistinguishing how long a regime happens to survive from how able it is to\nwithstand crises</a>, I can't help thinking of what\n<a href=\"http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL4.html#Part%20I,%20Essay%20IV,%20OF%20THE%20FIRST%20PRINCIPLES%20OF%20GOVERNMENT\">Mr. Hume</a>\nwould say; or rather, had said:\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>NOTHING appears more surprizing to those, who consider human affairs\nwith a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by\nthe few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own\nsentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means\nthis wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as FORCE is always on the side of\nthe governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is\ntherefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends\nto the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free\nand most popular. The soldan of EGYPT, or the emperor of ROME, might drive his\nharmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclination:\nBut he must, at least, have led his <i>mamalukes</i>, or <i>prætorian\nbands</i>, like men, by their opinion.</p> \n\n<p>Opinion is of two kinds, to wit, opinion of INTEREST, and opinion of\nRIGHT. By opinion of interest, I chiefly understand the sense of the general\nadvantage which is reaped from government; together with the persuasion, that\nthe particular government, which is established, is equally advantageous with\nany other that could easily be settled. When this opinion prevails among the\ngenerality of a state, or among those who have the force in their hands, it\ngives great security to any government.</p> \n\n<p>Right is of two kinds, right to POWER and right to PROPERTY. What\nprevalence opinion of the first kind has over mankind, may easily be\nunderstood, by observing the attachment which all nations have to their ancient\ngovernment, and even to those names, which have had the sanction of antiquity.\nAntiquity always begets the opinion of right; and whatever disadvantageous\nsentiments we may entertain of mankind, they are always found to be prodigal\nboth of blood and treasure in the maintenance of public justice. There is,\nindeed, no particular, in which, at first sight, there may appear a greater\ncontradiction in the frame of the human mind than the present. When men act in\na faction, they are apt, without shame or remorse, to neglect all the ties of\nhonour and morality, in order to serve their party; and yet, when a faction is\nformed upon a point of right or principle, there is no occasion, where men\ndiscover a greater obstinacy, and a more determined sense of justice and\nequity. The same social disposition of mankind is the cause of these\ncontradictory appearances. </p> \n\n<p>It is sufficiently understood, that the opinion of right to property is\nof moment in all matters of government. A noted author has made property the\nfoundation of all government; and most\nof our political writers seem inclined to follow him in that particular. This\nis carrying the matter too far; but still it must be owned, that the opinion of\nright to property has a great influence in this subject.</p> \n\n<p>Upon these three opinions, therefore, of public <i>interest</i>, of\n<i>right to power</i>, and of <i>right to property</i>, are all governments\nfounded, and all authority of the few over the many. There are indeed other\nprinciples, which add force to these, and determine, limit, or alter their\noperation; such as <i>self-interest, fear</i>, and <i>affection</i>: But still\nwe may assert, that these other principles can have no influence alone, but\nsuppose the antecedent influence of those opinions above-mentioned. They are,\ntherefore, to be esteemed the secondary, not the original principles of\ngovernment.</p> \n\n<p>For, <i>first</i>, as to <i>self-interest</i>, by which I mean the\nexpectation of particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which\nwe receive from government, it is evident that the magistrate's authority must\nbe antecedently established, at least be hoped for, in order to produce this\nexpectation. The prospect of reward may augment his authority with regard to\nsome particular persons; but can never give birth to it, with regard to the\npublic. Men naturally look for the greatest favours from their friends and\nacquaintance; and therefore, the hopes of any considerable number of the state\nwould never center in any particular set of men, if these men had no other\ntitle to magistracy, and had no separate influence over the opinions of\nmankind. The same observation may be extended to the other two principles of\n<i>fear</i> and <i>affection</i>. No man would have any reason to <i>fear</i>\nthe fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as\na single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther\npower he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the\npresumed opinion of others. And though <i>affection</i> to wisdom and virtue in\na <i>sovereign</i> extends very far, and has great influence; yet he must\nantecedently be supposed invested with a public character, otherwise the public\nesteem will serve him in no stead, nor will his virtue have any influence\nbeyond a narrow sphere.</p> \n\n<p>A Government may endure for several ages, though the balance of power,\nand the balance of property do not coincide. This chiefly happens, where any\nrank or order of the state has acquired a large share in the property; but from\nthe original constitution of the government, has no share in the power. Under\nwhat pretence would any individual of that order assume authority in public\naffairs? As men are commonly much attached to their ancient government, it is\nnot to be expected, that the public would ever favour such usurpations. But\nwhere the original constitution allows any share of power, though small, to an\norder of men, who possess a large share of the property, it is easy for them\ngradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to\ncoincide with that of property.\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>This leaves open, of course, how anyone, subject or mamaluke, learns the\nopinions of their fellows regarding rights and interests;\nbut <a href=\"http://www.jstor.org/pss/2950679\">this is one thing public\npolitical action is for</a>.\n\n<p>Applications to other contemporary events, in which subjects cease to let\nthemselves be led like brute beasts, will occur to my learned and sagacious\nreaders, and so I will not belabor the obvious.\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_the_continuing_crisis.html\">The Continuing Crises</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "He of The Little Green Book",
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"content" : "Events are fast outpacing the best laid plans of both dictators and mere toli mongers, thus, although the theme fits the bill, I have had to bring forward the piece I promised almost four years ago as a follow up to <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2007/04/excellent-discussions.html#excellent\">the theater of that secret video of Gaddafi that was leaked to me</a>. The current atrocities and low rent circumstances however necessitate light verse, or even doggerel, rather than the intended prose poem. Thus I give you another entry in the <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2006/03/things-fall-apart.html\">Things Fall Apart Series</a>, file this under the banner of Fallen Angels.<br><br><h3>I. He of The Little Green Book</h3><br>He of The Little Green Book was <a href=\"http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,36-990243@51-987190,0.html\">in Paris</a> the other day<br>A grand tour, part of <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-colonel-who-came-in-from-the-cold-libya-opens-its-doors-to-the-west-438936.html\">an awakening</a> some might say<br><br>Hospitality and social graces were extended his way<br>Amnesty International had to make do with dismay<br><br>Inconvenient topics, blood and sin, never to be discussed.<br>He went hunting, or, as his hosts put it, <a href=\"http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,496711,00.html\">faire la chasse</a>.<br><br>The tumult of the entourage and the ceremonial band<br>The <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/7037403/\">customary bodyguards</a>, as always, were close at hand.<br><br>He pitched his travel tent on the lawn of the Grand Palais<br>And lectured his hosts on human rights throughout the day<br><br>An oasis of oil and gas under his land<br>He'd built up a legacy of blood-soaked sand.<br><br>Self-importance, one can always understand<br>The revolutionary principles, however, damned the man.<br><br>Epigrams, ludicrous even without translation<br>And with translation, worthy of the blandest corporation.<br><br>Claimed to be a Guide with revolutionary notions<br>To life, the Brother Leader presented solutions<br><br>You've heard no doubt about the \"Third Universal Theory\"<br>And of course \"The Solution of the Problem of Democracy\"<br><br>\"The Authority of the People\" was his starting point<br>His modus operandi however was blood, from joint to joint<br><br>The social and economic basis of this here distributed theory<br>Was, in practice, a political axis of corruption, not the first in history<br><br>Newspapers throughout Libya were <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/world/africa/12libya.html?ex=1331352000&en=945e955c7dd23381&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss\">organs of adulation</a><br>He of The Little Green Book, officially venerated as a philosopher-king<br><br>...<br><br>Back home in Ghana <acronym title=\"1983-1986 were terrible years of blood and man-made famine courtesy of Rawlings and the PNDC\">at the depth of our despair</acronym><br>When books were scarce, and food shelves were laid bare<br><br>He of The Little Green Book made a donation<br>A token of the good Colonel's appreciation<br><br>A thousand copies of The Little Green Book<br>Brotherly solidarity, extended to the Ghanaian pocketbook<br><br>The generosity of his wisdom, to be shared far and wide.<br>Our universities, the recipients of his vacuous bromides<br><br>We'd learned heavy lessons about what he called revolution<br>\"Crush the dissent\", \"Don't brook any opposition\".<br><br>Thus, ever since the <abbr title=\"Jerry Rawlings\">Flight Lieutenant</abbr>'s arrival<br>We'd had to develop a new <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2009/03/poetry-as-cultural-memory.html\">philosophy of survival</a><br><br>At markets, we would fight over corned beef and sardine tins<br>Throughout I kept asking myself: why are these men laughing?<br><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5467489737/\" title=\"Rawlings and Gaddafi on cover of Talking Drums magazine 1986-01-13 - Ghana stands by Libya in US dispute - Doe pledges reconciliation\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5260/5467489737_806ffded22.jpg\" width=\"379\" height=\"500\" alt=\"Rawlings and Gaddafi on cover of Talking Drums magazine 1986-01-13 - Ghana stands by Libya in US dispute - Doe pledges reconciliation\" style=\"display:inline\" border=\"0\"></a></div><br><br>...<br><br>He of The Little Green Book was <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1192117/Colonel-Gaddafis-Mr-Berlusconi--Silvio-taken-Libyan-leaders-honour-guard.html\">in Italy the other day</a><br>Introducing good old Silvio to a rarefied kind of play<br><br><a href=\"http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201006/silvio-berlusconi-profile?printable=true\">Bunga bunga parties</a> were on the menu<br>Gas and oil deals discussed, and matters of revenue <br><br>On Putin's bed, it was eroticism incarnate<br>Sexual gymnastics, the orgies very articulate<br><br>They were men who thumbed their noses at everyone else<br>Impunity their lifeblood, they were enamoured of self<br><br>A cushy life, lived surrounded by buxom Ukrainians<br>They were gremlins and parasites, or rather, rogue authoritarians<br><br>Mercurial, the journalists would call him, and I think it was a cop out<br>For he was severe in the application of power, of that there can be no doubt<br><br>Adept at the <a href=\"http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/08/20/libya_a_foreign_policy_test_ca/#comment-290768\">shell game</a> of diplomacy in latter times<br>Don't forget the expedient dumping of allies at the drop of a dime<br><br>There's even an <a href=\"http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1862017,00.html\">opera about him, Gaddafi</a>, do take a look<br>Although it points out inconsistencies in <a href=\"http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb.htm\">The Little Green Book</a><br><br>Fear not, in the pantheon where Chairman Mao had his Red Book<br>You can share the luminous thoughts of He of The Little Green Book<br><br>A slight never forgotten, that's what brought him here<br>The clannish sensibility of a cold-blooded dictator<br><br>He of The Little Green Book thus always made it clear<br>He'd kill you and your family no matter when or <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2286553\">where</a><br><br>Stories of <a href=\"http://allafrica.com/stories/200805260016.html?viewall=1\">plots to bomb dissidents in Kenya</a>, Egypt or <a href=\"http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D1FFF3F540C738DDDAF0894DC404482&pagewanted=print\">Saudi Arabia</a><br>Only made it clear to everyone that the world was his oyster<br><br>In newspapers, the subject was always elided:<br>The khat, and other drugs that made him funeral minded<br><br>Conspiratorial notions were his living condition<br>He ascribed drunkenness and drug-taking to any opposition<br><br>...<br><br>He of The Little Green Book <a href=\"http://www.zimbio.com/photos/Muammar+al-Gaddafi/Vladimir+Putin\">met Vladimir Putin the other day</a><br>It was the usual circus, the large retinue come what may. <br><br>Luxurious modesty was how he liked to call it,<br>He lived for the bustle around him, confident he could take Putin's judo hit<br><br>Like a palm tree rising in an oasis surrounded by blight.<br>The other leaders would be shown in their proper pedestrian light. <br><br>The desert savvy, the endurance of those who were truly able<br>By sheer will to conquer the shifting sands, of that he was quite capable <br><br>For months at a time he would go out there on a bend<br>Then emerge seemingly untroubled if not exuberant. <br><br>Men of will who forced their views on clans and the whole world. <br>The caliber of revolutionary, visionary men on the road to hell.<br><br>Take The Little Green Book - a blueprint for life itself,<br>To be studied and internalized, it even dealt with public health!<br><br>An <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8107876.stm\">unbroken chain of leadership</a>, he outlasted Chairman Mao. <br>Who else had such a claim? He even beat <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/world/africa/15libreville.html\">Omar Bongo</a>.<br><br>And <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/05/1\"><em>that</em> kleptocrat</a>, only <abbr title=\"and only Sarkozy at that\">the French</abbr> cared about him<br>The real prize, as you know, was to indulge in blood and sin.<br><br>No, it was only right, he belonged in the history books. <br>In any gathering he would stand out, opinions as sharp as his looks. <br><br>And he had put them down - the opinions that is, <br>Distilled them for present and future generations. <br><br>The <a href=\"http://blogs.aljazeera.net/sites/default/files/imagecache/FeaturedImagePost/images/gaddafigreenbook_crop.jpg\">Little Green Book</a>, the wisdom for the ages. <br>A guide for <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,964515,00.html\">the world</a>, a guide for revolutions.<br><br>Battle-tested in countless countries, comprehensive and worldly <br>Luminous as only the folk wisdom of desert guides could be. <br><br>...<br><br>He of The Little Green Book <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1553044/Blair-Gaddafi-and-the-BP-oil-deal.html\">met Tony Blair the other day</a><br>That sad sack, for whatever reason, again thought he'd have some sway<br><br>He of The Little Green Book couldn't believe the ease of the bamboozle<br>Of course, we could have told him he was dealing with Bush's poodle <br><br>Then later, remember, there was an audience with <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/world/africa/08diplo.html?ex=1378612800&en=d47f72d9a79b1ce0&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink\">Condoleeza</a><br>And a call subsequently for a <a href=\"http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/2849.cfm\">United States of Africa</a><br><br>US policy to the dictator was clear: coddle and let's make nice<br>His gifts, in return, were choice to the talented Miss Rice:<br><br>Diamond trinkets, a locket, and a copy of The Little Green Book<br>A sidelong glance, oil and gas contracts were the inevitable hook<br><br>Those Swiss bank accounts, how prosaic wouldn't you think?<br>Well, even an uncommon criminal needs money to drink<br><br>A bloodthirsty murderer that we indulged like no other<br>Willing to shoot children before their own grandmothers<br><br>He'd even bomb bystanders, he didn't believe in innocence<br>The legacy of a pariah devoid of all human sense<br><br>Months later it was declared, and this was no small thing,<br>Colonel <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7588033.stm\">Gaddafi would be the king of kings</a><br><br>Thus, among traditional leaders on the continent, he was elected<br>Well, according to his bank statements, he was rather <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8485477.stm\">self-selected</a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7588033.stm\"><img src=\"http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44970000/jpg/_44970009_libya466afp.jpg\" width=\"466\" height=\"300\" style=\"display:inline\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Gaddafi king of kings\"></a></div><br><br>...<br><br>But back to that time period I alluded to earlier<br>In a Ghana fraught with dubious revolution and political theater<br><br>Perhaps I should not venture into matters eschatological<br>As indeed my doggerel rather tends towards the scatological<br><br>Let me not lose the rhyming meter, indulge my light verse<br>I'm congenitally incapable of engaging in anything terse<br><br>My father, the law school dean, was very precise<br>And, truth be told, what he recalled back then wasn't very nice<br><br>Thankfully it flew under the radar of Rawlings' dispensation:<br>It was about the application of the good Colonel's donation<br><br>In Ghana's scarcity, nothing went to waste:<br>'Twas a grim outlook<br><br>He'd photocopy his lecture notes for students;<br>They'd have to do as a textbook<br><br>As he thumbed through thousands of the Colonel's pristine pages<br>He was minded that, in our country, there were even paper shortages<br><br>We really had no time for this Third Universal Theory<br>It was a undoubtedly a low moment in all of Ghana's history<br><br>The memory, then, should come as no surprise to you, Dear Reader:<br>The pages of The Little Green Book were used as toilet paper.<br><br>...<br><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5468261014/\" title=\"The Little Green Book is dismantled\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5136/5468261014_f5dd2dedc7.jpg\" width=\"460\" height=\"287\" alt=\"The Little Green Book is dismantled\" style=\"display:inline\" border=\"0\"></a></div><br><br><h3><a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2007/04/excellent-discussions.html#excellent\">II. Excellent Discussions</a></h3><br>The issue was blood and sin.<br><br><h3>III. Lest We Forget</h3><br>Field notes on a legacy of blood...<blockquote>Prosecutor: Was there ideology taught in the camp?<br><br>Witness: Yes, what we learned in the <a href=\"http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb.htm\">Mataba</a> was about how to share the wealth of your government - about <strong>the distribution of wealth</strong>.<br><br>Prosecutor: This Mataba, did you receive any books or lesson papers in that ideology?<br><br>Witness: The ideology was taught in Mataba itself. They had a school to learn the ideology. <strong>You learned about the Green Book. How governments are cheating other governments</strong>.<br><br>— <a href=\"http://www.charlestaylortrial.org/2008/05/14/200-taylors-former-vice-president-governments-of-libya-burkina-faso-and-ivory-coast-supported-taylors-1989-invasion-of-liberia/\">Taylor's former vice president: governments of Libya, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast supported Taylor's 1989 invasion of Liberia</a></blockquote><hr width=\"10%\" align=\"center\"><blockquote>Prosecutor: At what age do you say you were abducted by the RUF?<br>Witness: 11 years.<br>Prosecutor: Had you been to school up to that time?<br>Witness: Yes.<br>Prosecutor: In what languages were you taught at school?<br>Witness: English.<br>Prosecutor: From what age did you attend school up to the time you were abducted at age 11?<br>Witness: I don't know the age at which I went to school. I don't know the age.<br>Prosecutor: How many years had you been in school by the time you were abducted at age 11?<br>Witness: Six years.<br>Prosecutor: After you were abducted, at some point you have told us in evidence you had some lessons from the RUF. That's right, isn't it?<br>Witness: Yes.<br>Prosecutor: Were you at some time <strong>made to read passages of Colonel Gaddafi's Little Green Book by the RUF</strong>?<br>Witness: <strong>The Green Book. They called it the Revolutionary Green Book. They said it was from Libya, from Mohamed Gaddafi. Yes, I read that one.</strong><br>Prosecutor: In what language?<br>Witness: In English. Everything was in English.<br>Prosecutor: So you speak good English, do you?<br>Witness: The English that I can speak is what I am speaking here. I don't have any other English. As you hear me speaking I don't have it above that and I don't have it below that. That is what I am speaking here.<br>Prosecutor: So, what was taught in English apart from the Green Book?<br>Witness: The Green Book when they read it they would read it in English and they would interpret it, because there were people who did not understand English and so they would interpret it into Krio to them, but some of us who were able to read a little bit when they spoke the English we would understand. That was why I said everything was in English.<br><br>— <a href=\"http://www.sc-sl.org/Transcripts/Taylor/22August2008.pdf\">Transcript of child soldier's testimony. The special court on Sierra Leone</a>, 22 August 2008</blockquote><hr width=\"10%\" align=\"center\"><blockquote>[Moses] Blah testified about the first time he met <strong>[Charles] Taylor</strong> during his military training in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and <strong>Tripoli, Libya. In Libya, he trained with a group of Gambians, as well as a group of Sierra Leoneans led by Foday Sankoh</strong>. Blah testified that Sankoh referred to Taylor as \"chief.\" Blah recounted that the first time he saw Taylor, Taylor introduced himself as \"chief\" and named the soldiers the National Patriotic Front of Liberia. Taylor also appointed Blah as Adjutant General of the NPFL.<br><br>— <a href=\"http://charlestaylortrial.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/may-2008-trial-report2.pdf\">Charles Taylor trial report (pdf),</a> May 2008</blockquote><hr width=\"10%\" align=\"center\"><blockquote>After listening to 91 prosecution witnesses over the past 18 months, Taylor said people had referred to his forces as if they \"were brutes and savages: We are not. I am not.\"<br><br>Still, the former president acknowledged that <strong>skulls of Liberian soldiers were displayed at strategic roadblocks in 1990</strong>.<br><br><strong>\"They were enemy skulls and we didn’t think that symbol was anything wrong,\" he said. \"I did not consider it bad judgment. I did not order them removed.\"</strong><br><br>Taylor, who earned an economics degree at Bentley College (now University) in Waltham, said <strong>he had seen images of skulls used in many \"<abbr title=\"Skull and Bones\">fraternal organizations</abbr>\" and Western universities</strong>.<br><br>He also acknowledged that atrocities were committed in Liberia by \"bad apples\" and renegade soldiers, but said <strong>he had taught his small band of rebels - from their initial training in Libya - to abide by the laws of war</strong>.<br><br>\"We found out that they were taking place, and we acted to bring those responsible to justice,\" he said. Rebel soldiers who committed excesses were court-martialed and sometimes executed, but civilian judicial institutions were left in place in areas under rebel control, he said.<br><br>— <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2009/07/17/taylor_defends_displaying_of_human_skulls_at_roadblocks/\">Taylor defends displaying of human skulls at roadblocks</a>, Associated Press / July 17, 2009</blockquote>He of The Little Green Book and his brothers in blood will not be missed.<br><br><h4>Soundtrack for this note</h4><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000YAL/\">Miles Davis Quintet - If I Could Write A Book</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000001ADD/\">Stevie Wonder - You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000477S/\">Betty Carter - I Could Write A Book</a></li></ul><br><br><span>File under: <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/rogues\" rel=\"tag\">rogues</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Gaddafi\" rel=\"tag\">Gaddafi</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/poetry\" rel=\"tag\">poetry</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/verse\" rel=\"tag\">verse</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/humour\" rel=\"tag\">humour</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/politics\" rel=\"tag\">politics</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/culture\" rel=\"tag\">culture</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/observation\" rel=\"tag\">observation</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/blood\" rel=\"tag\">blood</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/satire\" rel=\"tag\">satire</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/hatchet%20job\" rel=\"tag\">hatchet job</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Libya\" rel=\"tag\">Libya</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/cruelty=\">cruelty</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/violence\" rel=\"tag\">violence</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Liberia\" rel=\"tag\">Liberia</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Sierra%20Leone\" rel=\"tag\">Sierra Leone</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Ghana\" rel=\"tag\">Ghana</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/history\" rel=\"tag\">history</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Things%20Fall%20Apart\" rel=\"tag\">Things Fall Apart</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/Fallen%20Angels\" rel=\"tag\">Fallen Angels</a>, <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/search/label/toli\" rel=\"tag\">toli</a></span>"
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"content" : "<p>Pinker is a bit of a jerk. He is very dominate by virtue of being a fire hose and he never tempers his pronouncements with even the slightest bit of doubt. Thus you often feel a strong “now just wait a minute there!” emotion when reading or listening to him. All that said it can be fun to go for along for the ride.</p>\n<p>I once worked in a team that had gifted it’s self a subscription to an wonderfully foolish supermarket tabloid. We kept in the conference room. Slowly but surely we would, all of us, read every article. And, we came to notice that the fictions reported, entirely with a straight face, in these articles began to enter our brains as if they were true. You’d find your self saying “I read that in Brazil they found … no wait, maybe that wasn’t true … oh nevermind.”</p>\n<p>I have exactly that same problem with Pinker, but it’s worse. All I can recall is that at the time I read or heard him explain X I had strong doubts about the argument’s coherence; but now – later – it’s too late.</p>\n<p>With that warning out of the way … I enjoyed this talk he gave (<a href=\"http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/archive/steven-pinker\">video</a>, <a href=\"http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2008/the-stuff-of-thought-language-as-a-window-into-human-nature\">audio</a>, partial as <a href=\"http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2011/02/14/rsa-animate-language-window-human-nature/\">cartoons</a>). For example it has a very fun offensive section on swearing and the functional purpose taboo words.</p>\n<p>One thing I liked was that his had a number for frameworks I should take the time to add to <a href=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/category/frameworks\">my collection</a>. For example Alan Fiske three kinds of relationships:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Dominance — don’t mess with me</li>\n<li>Commonality — share & share alike</li>\n<li>Reciprocity — business like or tit for tat</li>\n</ul>\n<p>It is no end of fun to map those three into some of <a href=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/category/threes\">my other triples</a> (rock, paper, scissors?).</p>\n<p>If I actually go look into Alan Fiske’s work I bit it appears there are four kinds; let me <a href=\"http://paei.wikidot.com/fiske-alan-the-four-elementary-forms-of-human-relations\">quote from here</a>.</p>\n<blockquote><p>P – Market Pricing (MP): Haggling over a commercial transaction between strangers who do not plan to meet repeatedly. Involves bidding, bluffing and countering while keeping one’s true buying limits a secret. Non-personal instrumental exchanges with no self-disclosure.</p>\n<p>A – Equality Matching (EM): Equality of exchange over time, a balance of exchanged favours, accruing social debt and obligation when receiving favours, the discharge of debt or gain of credit when giving favours. Tit-for-Tat. Ground rules for peer relationships.</p>\n<p>E – Authority Ranking (AR): Negotiated inequality, deciding over time who has more importance, status or dominance over others. Unequal exchange where the dominant obtains resource advantages but accrues an obligation to support or sustain subordinates in some way.</p>\n<p>I – Communal Sharing (CS): People contribute what they can and take what they need. Almost always constrained to the inclusive fitness group, nuclear family and sometimes various degrees of extended family, rarely beyond.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In the four reciprocity has been split into two groups; reflecting how very different one shot transactions are from longer term transactional relationships.</p>"
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"content" : "Thanks to reader <a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/\">Koranteng</a> for <a href=\"http://yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com/2011/02/cash-rules-everything-around-me-but.html?showComment=1298213715022#c7323909611753033433\">this data point</a>. You may recall this <a href=\"http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/the-market-for-thugs-egyptian-edition/\">post</a> about the market for thugs in Egyptian politics. Specifically, when the government needed arseholes to attack the protestors, it had to pay four times per capita GDP to get them.<br><br>In Libya this week, it is said that the government is using mercenaries recruited from its various allies' wars in sub-Saharan Africa as arseholes, and that it's paying $500 a day for their services. Libyan per capita GDP is $14,884 at purchasing-power parity, so the price of privatised violence is running at a premium of over one hundred times typical earnings. Clearly, either the regime has so much less real legitimacy, or the degree of brutality required and risk involved is that much higher. In fact, those options are both consistent, as a regime with less legitimacy would need to use more force and it does seem to be doing just that.<br><br>I made the point last time out that it's typical for mercenaries to be very highly paid relative to the countries in which they operate. This is clearly an important point here. It's also true that Gadhafi's Libya has often got other people to fight its battles for it - they exported Palestinians into a variety of different wars in the 1970s and 80s, notably sending PLO volunteers to prop up Idi Amin (you bet they didn't sign on for that). Later, in the 1990s, they trained and equipped fighters in the various West African civil wars (notably Charles Taylor - there's an arsehole for you). Now they're doing the opposite.<br><br>Of course, being an oil state, they can probably afford to keep hiring the arseholes.<br><br>However, here's something interesting from the Egyptian elections last year, from <a href=\"http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/thuggery-familiar-blot-on-egyptian-elections/\">Reuters</a>. <blockquote><em>Rates for hiring a thug start at 800 Egyptian pounds ($140) and can reach 40,000 pounds depending on the assignment, according to a study printed by the independent Wafd newspaper.The study, by criminologist Refaat Abdel Hamid, said thugs hired to attack large groups or candidates cost 25,000 pounds a day. Those hired to resist the authorities cost 6,000.<br><br>\"The price of thugs includes compensation for custody and hospitalisation,\" the study said. \"Former and current ministers and the NDP party get special prices and discounts. Prices are hiked for businessmen and first-time candidates.\"</em></blockquote><br><br>That suggests that in October 2010, your entry-level goon came in at about twice the rate Mubarak was paying at the height of the revolution. Interestingly, if you were looking for goons who would be willing to assault a crowd of rivals - the same mission the camel riders had - you'd have had to pay much, much more. Thirty times more, or perhaps there's a zero missing somewhere, in which case it would imply an even bigger price drop. Part of the difference might be explained by the NDP claiming mates' rates as a large customer of long standing, and one who could offer valuable side payments in the event of success.<br><br>But it's hard to think of any explanation why the NDP would have been paying <em>less</em> for thugs at the height of the revolution, when they would presumably have been in demand, and the party itself would have been desperate. Also, assuming the selling party could read the writing on the wall, they would surely have been likely to insist on payment in cash on the nail, rather than promises of future side-deals that would likely never be fulfilled. Perhaps the supply of potential thugs increased, but how? Was violence just a more salient possibility?<br><br>Or perhaps there was a radical shift in the supply curve between October and January. If the usual sources of goons were for some reason unavailable, and the recruiters were fishing in other ponds, it might be quite possible that wages would be dramatically lower and that the thugs would be much less effective. Of course, another way of saying that there was a radical shift in the supply curve for state violence is to say that there was a revolution.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-4213188118336295329?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "James Wood: Teju Cole's prismatic début novel, “Open City.”",
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"title" : "A Surgical Assistant with Hands Blessed by God: Vivien Thomas",
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"text-align:center\">This article is posted in honor of Black History Month:</p>\r\n<p>From <em>ScienceHeroes:</em></p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e862d240f970d-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Thomas_vivien_prob_pd\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef014e862d240f970d-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Thomas_vivien_prob_pd\"></a> The bank crash of 1930 wiped out a young man's entire savings, destroying his dream of going to medical school. But, this didn't stop him from going on to revolutionize the medical profession. That man was Vivien Thomas, an aspiring physician. His lack of funds forced him to drop out of college and, with work hard to come by amidst the Great Depression, he took a job sweeping floors at Vanderbilt University. There, Dr. Alfred Blalock took notice of this African American janitor and realized he had great potential to be so much more. Blalock hired Thomas as his surgical assistant. This began a decades-long association, during which the pair became a creative and formidable force in the new \"golden age\" of heart surgery. </p>\r\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">Thomas was a quick study, with particularly skilful hands. He worked diligently and learned to perform surgical operations, chemical reaction procedures and data analysis with precision. His quiet dedication to Blalock and the experiments was invaluable. When Blalock moved to Johns Hopkins in 1941, he asked Thomas to accompany him. Thomas joined Blalock's surgical team and helped to develop the \"Blue Baby\" operation, also known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt. Blue Baby (Tetralogy of Fallot) is a congenital defect involving multiple abnormalities of the heart. The condition causes blood to be diverted past the lungs, resulting in a lack of vital oxygen being transported throughout the body. It's this oxygen deprivation that causes the infant's bluish color (cyanosis) and gives the syndrome its name. Before Thomas and Blalock developed the Blue Baby operation, 25 percent of babies born with this condition died before their first birthday-by the age of ten, 70 percent would die. The procedure to correct Blue Baby was painstakingly worked out by Thomas over a two-year period. Ultimately, he joined an artery leaving the heart to an artery leading back to the lungs. This gave the blood a second opportunity to absorb the critical oxygen and transport it throughout the body. Delicate instruments were needed to perform the corrective heart surgery on their tiny newborn patients. Since no such instruments then existed, Thomas designed and built them himself.</p>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=269&Itemid=240\">here.</a> (Note: Thanks to Ms. Vasiliki Korikis who sent me this beautiful story) </p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2011%2F02%2Fa-surgical-assistant-with-hands-blessed-by-god-vivien-thomas.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gje2ohiUeKQ:hy5SdueQD3M:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "The Trademarking Of Duff Beer: How Fictional Trademarks Become Copyright Issues In The Real World",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/thr-esq/hollywood-docket-marvel-v-jack-98286?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed\">THResq</a> points us to a fun, but thorough, law journal article by law student Benjamin Arrow, looking at <a href=\"http://www.entertainmentlawreporter.com/2011/02/fictional-trademarks-protectable.html\">whether or not Duff Beer, from the Simpsons, is protectable as a trademark in the real world</a> (or you can <a href=\"http://iplj.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/C04_Arrow_011111_Final.pdf\">go directly to the paper</a>) (pdf). The analysis is actually more complex than you would think, noting that as you shift from the fictional world of the Simpsons to the real world of beer production, the issue switches from being a trademark issue to a copyright issue, where the beer is a form of a derivative work on the copyrighted expression known as the cartoon of Duff Beer.\n<blockquote><i>\nFox and The Simpsons' creator, Matt Groening, developed the\nidea for the fictional brand, Duff. Therefore, when a real-world\nmanufacturer puts out a product by the same name, one might\nthink that it has stolen Fox's idea and that, as a matter of equity,\nintellectual property law ought to furnish a remedy. But\nintellectual property law does not protect ideas in the abstract.\nWhile a real-world Duff manufacturer may have taken more than\njust an idea, it is difficult to articulate how much more. Part of the\nreason it is so difficult to conceptualize the injury Fox suffers\nwhen another producer introduces a Duff Beer to the marketplace\nstems from the fact that Duff Beer is a fictional product sold in a\nfictional universe under a fictional brand name. Fox's injury looks\nvery different when we suspend our disbelief and plunge into the\nfictional world of Springfield, accepting the fictional reality as our\nown and when we pull back, remind ourselves that The Simpsons is\nnothing more than a cartoon and view Duff Beer as one element of\na vividly imagined work of animated fiction. As a consequence of\nthis puzzle of perspective, Fox suffers a different intellectual\nproperty injury depending on our vantage point.\n<br><br>\nAn analogy to Internet law helps explicate the puzzle. Writing\non the problem of perspective in this area of the law, Professor\nOrin Kerr posits that \"whenever we apply law to the Internet, we\nmust first decide whether to apply the law to the facts as seen from\nthe viewpoint of physical reality or virtual reality.\" Kerr terms\nthe perspective from inside virtual reality the \"'internal\nperspective' of the Internet\" and the point of view of an \"outsider\nconcerned with the functioning of the network in the physical\nworld rather than the perceptions of a user\" the \"external\nperspective.\" In attempting to apply law to the Internet, our\nperception of who is doing what to whom is not a mere cognitive\ntool for conceptualizing difficult problems, Kerr contends.\nInstead, our selection of perspective is itself outcome\ndeterminative, because \"[b]y choosing the perspective, we choose\nthe reality; by choosing the reality, we choose the facts; and by\nchoosing the facts, we choose the law.\" While Kerr suggests\nthat courts may dismiss this problem of perspective as \"a minor\nskirmish in the 'battle of analogies,'\" he notes that courts \"already\nchoose perspectives when they apply law to the Internet\" without\nrealizing it.\n</i></blockquote>\nWhile this may just seem like a fun, little intellectual query, the second paragraph above highlights why it's actually pretty important. For nearly a decade, we've been pointing out the <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20031113/1143235_F.shtml\">problems</a> that occur when you take laws from the real world and pretend you can just apply them naturally into a virtual world. The same thing applies here to some extent. In this case, it's resolved via copyright law, since the creation of Duff Beer may be protectable under copyright in the real world, and any such beer would be derivative. Trademark, on the other hand, which would apply <i>in</i> the fictional world, does not apply in the real world, since there's no real \"use in commerce\" of a product known as Duff Beer.\n<br><br>\nEither way, the paper is a fun read, and actually raises a series of issues that are important and worth thinking about when discussing how the real world law applies on the internet in general and in wider \"virtual\" worlds.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110211/13014213060/trademarking-duff-beer-how-fictional-trademarks-become-copyright-issues-real-world.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110211/13014213060/trademarking-duff-beer-how-fictional-trademarks-become-copyright-issues-real-world.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110211/13014213060/trademarking-duff-beer-how-fictional-trademarks-become-copyright-issues-real-world.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=346cc73c2d155276ed1c97daa57908ef&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=346cc73c2d155276ed1c97daa57908ef&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechBiz&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29198.rss.TechBiz.8626,cat.TechBiz.rss\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://event.adxpose.com/event.flow?uid=38vYBtngNRREa1yL_Pixel&eventcode=000_000_12&location=&wh=&xy=&cid=Win7_ISV&duration=0&iframed=0&p=1\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=yronRNjIhIo:N7Wk1iDzeDs:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=yronRNjIhIo:N7Wk1iDzeDs:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=yronRNjIhIo:N7Wk1iDzeDs:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/yronRNjIhIo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "They Were Best of Friends, Until the Feds Showed Up",
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"content" : "<p>Manager Took Down Best Friend in Insider-Trading Probe... Knowing one of the protagonists - the one who is now being branded as both Judas, Cain and worse, I can only hope that their considerable family resources will come into play and mitigate the stain to their livelihood and reputation. I can even imagine the Hollywood movie that will show the resilience of friendship in the face of betrayal of their insider-trading culture. The New England Brahmin types always land on their feet.</p>\n <span>\n <a href=\"http://www.delicious.com/save?url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052748704171004576148763203239164.html&title=They%20Were%20Best%20of%20Friends%2C%20Until%20the%20Feds%20Showed%20Up&copyuser=amaah&copytags=morality+values+friends+crime+economics+law+bubble+finance+fraud+USA+privilege+betrayal+culture+bromance&jump=yes&partner=delrss&src=feed_google\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"add this bookmark to your collection at http://www.delicious.com\"><img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/hr/img/delicious.small.gif\" alt=\"http://www.delicious.com\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" border=\"0\"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>\n - Saved by <a title=\"visit amaah's bookmarks at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah\">amaah</a>\n to\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged morality\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/morality\">morality</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged values\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/values\">values</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged friends\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/friends\">friends</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged crime\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/crime\">crime</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged economics\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/economics\">economics</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged law\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/law\">law</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged bubble\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/bubble\">bubble</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged finance\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/finance\">finance</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged fraud\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/fraud\">fraud</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged USA\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/USA\">USA</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged privilege\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/privilege\">privilege</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged betrayal\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/betrayal\">betrayal</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged culture\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/culture\">culture</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged bromance\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/bromance\">bromance</a>\n \t\t\t- <a rel=\"self\" title=\"view more details on this bookmark at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/url/da67b1da76710ab144330ac7704b7713\">More about this bookmark</a>\n </span>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr9umbKdmZg/TV6CYxuclXI/AAAAAAAABng/HCXzVvr_PaU/s1600/pure%2Bwater.JPG\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:300px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fr9umbKdmZg/TV6CYxuclXI/AAAAAAAABng/HCXzVvr_PaU/s400/pure%2Bwater.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a>A bag of purified sachet water, popularly known as 'pure water' is now to be sold in the Ashanti region at ten Ghana pesewas. <br>The hike from 5pesewas to 10pesewas represents a 100percent increment.<br>The Sachet Water Producers Association in Ashanti which made the announcement said the increment was to take effect from Monday February 21, 2011.<br>They blamed the hike on an increased cost of production which they said was draining them. Almost all producers in the region run transport services which distributes the product.<br>“Our cost of distribution has gone up drastically due to increases in fuel prices and vehicle spare parts”, Mr Eric Forson a member of the producers association told the Daily Graphic.<br> He argued that prices or sachet water have not been increased since 2007 even though prices of other commodities kept going up.<br>In 2007 it was increased from 2pesewas to 5pesewas.<br>“For the moment we are dying as cost of spares have gone up”, Mr Kofi Antwi-Adjei Secretary of the producers association said.<br>He said if prices were not increased many producers may be forced to lay off some of their workers in the coming months.<br>The producers currently offload the commodity to retailers at 70pesewas per a sack of 30pieces. The retailers in turn sell at 5pesewas and make a commission of 70pesewas.<br>They now intends to offload a sack of 30pieces at GH¢1.50p to retailers for them to sell at 10pesewas per sachet.<br>For the ordinary consumer on the street some think that the new price would be too expensive to afford.<br>Mr Akwasi Agyemang, a former player of Kumasi Cornerstones told the Daily Graphic it would be unbearable on his pocket.<br>He said the conventional method of selling iced water in cups which had to make way for the sachet ones for reasons bothering on hygiene may have to come back if prices were to be increased this way.<br>“What is happening is not good for us. How can common water be this expensive”, he questioned.<br>He argued that government may have to step in and said this explains why free markets were sometimes not good for consumers.<br>Yaw Afrifa, a Kumasi resident on his part also thinks that even though the new price would be expensive, he felt the producers have no alternative as a result of the increased production cost. <br>“When there was no sachet water, we were drinking our natural water, and non of us died and if pure water producers say they are not ready to reduce the price of pure water, we are ready to go back to our normal water. It is not compulsory for us to drink pure water and we will not die” Maame Akosua Pokua from Santasi said.<br>“Our natural water is what our fore-fathers gave to us, we never died and I believe that there will not be any health problem as the case may be. It is even this pure water that has caused lots of health hazards in us”, she added.<br>Before the advent of pure water in Ghana, there was a great patronage for ‘ice water’ by people who could not afford bottled water. It was sold in cups and when concerns of hygiene were raised, the sellers started putting them in plastic bags (wraps).<br>When further hygiene concerns were raised, the sealed sachet method was introduced and the former was referred to as “panyin de panyin”.<br>Those who patronised ice water in cups and in plastic wraps were not concerned about standard even as glaring as it was that drinking bad water had its consequences until the sachet method completely took over the market."
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"title" : "Kenya’s Mobile & Internet, by the Numbers (Q4 2010)",
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"content" : "<p>If you’ve been wondering what the numbers look like for Kenya’s mobile and ISP space, look no further than the <a href=\"http://www.cck.go.ke/resc/statcs.html\">latest CCK Report</a> (Communications Commission of Kenya). It’s one of the best documents that I’ve seen, compiling information that you just can’t seem to find anywhere else.</p>\n<h3>Highlights of Q4 2010:</h3>\n<ul>\n<li>There are 22 million mobile subscribers in Kenya</li>\n<li>9.5% mobile subscriptions growth, which is increasing over the previous quarters</li>\n<li>6.63 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks</li>\n<li>740 million text messages were sent</li>\n<li>Prepaid accounts for 99% of the total mobile subscriptions</li>\n<li>The number of internet <strong>users</strong> was estimated at 8.69 million</li>\n<li>The number of internet/data <strong>subscriptions</strong> is 3.2 million</li>\n<li>Broadband subscriptions increased from 18,626 subscribers in the previous quarter to 84,726</li>\n</ul>\n<h3>Price Wars</h3>\n<p>Everyone recognizes the impact on SMS and voice, due to the price wars brought on by Airtel last year. The average, people are paying 2.65 Ksh per minute for voice representing 33.4%<br>\nreduction on pre-paid tariffs. It comes as no surprise that there was a 68.4% increase in traffic during this period, nearly triple the norm.</p>\n<p>There’s nothing like a chart to bring this point home:<br>\n<a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-18-at-7.31.26-PM.png\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-18-at-7.31.26-PM-500x319.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Mobile phone wars in Kenya - price decreases 2010\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\"></a></p>\n<p>Interestingly, a decline in total number of text messages sent (4% less) was recorded. It’s an indicator that given the choice of lower cost voice, people would rather use that, and they do. </p>\n<p>Safaricom lost 4.8% market share, from 80.1% to 75.9% (still massive). Surprisingly, it wasn’t Airtel who benefitied, as Orange made up for most of that with a 4.4% increase of their own. Airtel did lead the market by recording 1,143,353 new subscriptions, about 3x their closest competitor.</p>\n<h3>Internet</h3>\n<p>A whopping <strong>99%</strong> of the internet traffic in Kenya is done via mobile operators, meaning 3G, Edge or GPRS. It’s to Safaricom’s credit that they moved on this early, not dithering around on data as their competition did, effectively taking the whole market. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-12.13.48-AM.png\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-19-at-12.13.48-AM-500x292.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Internet subscriptions in Kenya by internet provider - 2010\" width=\"500\" height=\"292\"></a> </p>\n<p>My theory is that there are only two major players in the ISP space in Kenya. The first is Safaricom, supported by this report, who will own most of the country due to having an island strategy (mobile towers). This allows them to own all the rural areas and anyone who needs decent speeds and has to be mobile.</p>\n<p>The other is the fiber bandwidth provider (ISP) who figures out and cracks the consumer market. The closest to doing this is <a href=\"http://www.zuku.co.ke/fibre/broadband/\">Zuku</a> (Wananchi) who started rolling out 8Mb/s high-speed fiber-to-the-home internet connections in Q4 2010 at only 3,499 Ksh ($45). These numbers aren’t reflected yet. My guess is that we’ll see Zuku tying up all the home internet connections in the major urban areas.</p>\n<p>Estimates for those with internet access in Kenya is closing in on 9 million users, and at over 22% of the population, we can say we’re getting a lot closer to the critical mass needed for real web businesses and services to thrive. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-18-at-7.33.24-PM.png\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-18-at-7.33.24-PM-500x270.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Number of Internet users in Kenya - 2010\" width=\"500\" height=\"270\"></a></p>\n<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>\n<p>Overall, the numbers on both mobile and internet are trending up, and at a very favorable rate. The indicators here prove that you should be paying a lot of attention to mobiles and data connectivity in Kenya. </p>\n<p>If you’re a business, what’s your mobile plan? How are you providing and extending your services over the internet (and no, a website is not enough)? </p>\n<p>If you’re an entrepreneur, how are you going to use this information to decide what to build? Are you paying attention to the wananchi, building apps for the upper class? </p>\n<p><em>PDF of Report: <a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/SECTOR_STATISTICS_REPORT_Q1_1011.pdf\">CCK Report download – Kenya Q4 2010</a></em></p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?a=3zZdsTn5O0E:M85C7m0aiRU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?a=3zZdsTn5O0E:M85C7m0aiRU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?i=3zZdsTn5O0E:M85C7m0aiRU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/white_african/~4/3zZdsTn5O0E\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Touring Ghana with a Dutchman",
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"content" : "Last Saturday and Sunday were 2 great days I got to spend with my Dutch friend Bertil.<br>Papee, my air-condition repair guy was graceful enough to offer to drive us all the way to the Wli falls.<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450742600/\" title=\"wli falls trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/5450742600_891d85470a_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"wli falls trip\"></a><br>We got caught up in crazy traffic at Atimpoku, where Bertil also tasted the smallest fish he’s ever eaten in his life: ONE MAN THOUSAND, as we famously call it in Ghana and of course, he had to have the aboloo too.<br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450741356/\" title=\"wli falls trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4080/5450741356_a0b4077b1c_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"wli falls trip\"></a><br>We decided to hop out of the car and see what the problem was. We found out there was maintenance work going on on the bridge.<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450090135/\" title=\"Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4146/5450090135_48f15a992b_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Wli Falls Trip\"></a> <br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450089939/\" title=\"Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4135/5450089939_aac47f2da7_b.jpg\" width=\"533\" height=\"800\" alt=\"Wli Falls Trip\"></a><br>These fishermen were oblivious to our plight. I hope they caught a lot of tilapia.<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450697712/\" title=\"Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5217/5450697712_75d3bdc513_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Wli Falls Trip\"></a><br><br>We turned what should have been frustrating time into an exciting adventure. It’s amazing how many girls hit on Bertil. <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450088919/\" title=\"Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5179/5450088919_7702ba7f98_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Wli Falls Trip\"></a><br>It was funny when this guy asked Bertil for his phone number and he being Dutch, looked the guy in the face and smilingly asked him what he wants it for since he’s not a girl. The brother was so shocked he just disappeared. Boy, did I laugh! That’s the tough dutchman drinking pure water. <br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450089307/\" title=\"Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5178/5450089307_c86074bf9e_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Wli Falls Trip\"></a><br>How many of you know the writing on this vehicle is actually a quotation from the Bible?<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450072883/\" title=\"The Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5259/5450072883_33297f611f_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"The Wli Falls Trip\"></a> Bertil was shocked when I told him. It’s amazing how Dutch people have just generally stopped going to church and turned almost all their churches into nightclubs, musuems, offices etc. They should come and see Ghana, we are turning all our cinemas into churches. That where the money is now, I’m told;)<br><br>I must leave some things for my next post so just go ahead and enjoy these photos and remember, Ghana is a beautiful country with many lovely people; and we would love to have you over, if you’ve never been.<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5450679230/\" title=\"The Wli Falls Trip by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5295/5450679230_3db7354da3_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"The Wli Falls Trip\"></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-8770626218197269734?l=nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "A Sneak-Peek Into “Tyler Perry’s Love Jones”",
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"content" : "<p></p><p>During <a href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-love-jones/\">my conversation with Ted Witcher</a> last week, he mentioned that a producer was interested in doing a remake of <a title=\"Love Jones\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/love-jones/\">Love Jones</a>, and he actually was in the process of negotiating the terms. He didn’t tell me exactly who, though, but a bit of investigative journalism on my part learned that it was actually <a title=\"Tyler Perry\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/tyler-perry/\">Tyler Perry</a>. Yup, you read that correctly: <em><strong>Tyler Perry is doing a remake of Love Jones.</strong></em></p>\n<p>A bit more investigating allowed me to get my hands on a draft of the screenplay. To Perry’s credit, he did attempt to stay true to the original version. The plot largely remains the same, and, although R-rated movies aren’t really Perry’s thing, the movie contains just as much adult dialogue and content as the original. But, as you probably imagined, the remake definitely has his fingerprints on it, and Perry struggles with the nuances present in the original movie’s sexual content.</p>\n<p>Due to copyright laws, I can only post one scene, but it should give you a pretty good indication of the entire product.</p>\n<p><strong>Opening Scene:</strong></p>\n<p><em>Setting:</em> “The Mortuary” — a popular hair salon/male <a title=\"strip club\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/strip-club/\">strip club</a> in Atlanta, Georgia.</p>\n<p>As Walter Hawkins’ version of “<em>Goin’ Up Yonder</em>” plays in the backdrop, the camera pans over the highly engaged and eclectic crowd. Peach Snapple, an blaxican male <a title=\"stripper\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/stripper/\">stripper</a> who vaguely resembles a much happier Scottie Pippen, dances on stage while the women sitting in the salon chairs — many of whom still have curlers in their hair — sway to the rhythmic claps of Peach Snapple’s muscular man booty.</p>\n<p>The camera then settles on a table of four men — superstar stripper/aspiring choreographer “Rank “The Wrangler” Whittaker” (<em>played by <a title=\"Chris Brown\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/chris-brown/\">Chris Brown</a> in a dreadlocks wig</em>), astronaut “J.R. Chapman” (<em>Micheal Jai White</em>), professional baseball player “Vaseline Williams” (<em>Baltimore Raven’s linebacker Ray Lewis, in his first major motion picture role</em>), and strip club DJ and MC “Plier Terry” (<em>Tyler Perry</em>) — and 0ne woman — Mortuary owner “Julie Watson” (<em>Raven Simone, in a role that’s sure to get Oscar buzz</em>).</p>\n<p>As the friends sip lattes, smoke weed, and have a conversation that no person on Earth has ever had, Rank gets up and walks to the bar, seemingly deep in thought. Megachurch choir director/aspiring orchestra conductor “Iesha Canty” (<em>Rihanna. Yes, that Rihanna</em>.) is already at the bar, and notices the pensive Rank.</p>\n<p><em>“What’s on your mind?”</em></p>\n<p><em>“Just…thinking about some ass.”</em></p>\n<p><em>“That must have been some very special ass.”</em></p>\n<p><em>“Yeah. It was.”</em></p>\n<p>While this is going on, the camera pans back to the table, and we watch them watching Rank and Iesha.</p>\n<p>“<em>I know she aint gonna fall for that sh*tty stripper game</em>” says Vaseline, who’s obviously the “player” in the crew.</p>\n<p>Piler, who we sense is the ultra-masculine voice of reason in this circle, replies <em>“Whatever, man. You need to forget about that stuff with your uncle and get back to church. It’s time that you forgave that man for what he did to you. 17 years of not seeing any women will do that to any brother. Anyway, excuse me while I help my boy do his thing”</em></p>\n<p>Piler gets up, and walks to the stage.</p>\n<p><em>“Ladies, gentleman, and ladies with gentleman parts, you’re in for a treat. Welcome to the stage, my boy, Atlanta’s own, The Wrangler!!!”</em></p>\n<p>As Rank swaggers on stage — dressed exactly how you’d imagine a male stripper named “Wrangler” to be dressed — the camera pans on Iesha, whose surprised expression lets the audience know that she definitely didn’t know that Rank was the featured stripper. Sitting next to Iesha is her homegirl, Vicky Ortiz (<em>Loretta Devine, in a very peculiar casting choice</em>).</p>\n<p>Before Rank starts dancing, he grabs the microphone and says<em> “This next song and dance is dedicated to a very, very special lady.”</em></p>\n<p>Rank puts the microphone down, goes to the middle of the stage, and puts his head down as the lights dim and the anticipation builds. The <a title=\"music\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/topics/music/\">music</a> starts, and Rank shifts into full “Wrangler” mode; popping and doing other things that male <a title=\"strippers\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/strippers/\">strippers</a> probably do in strip clubs and maximum <a title=\"security\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/security/\">security</a> prison cafeterias.</p>\n<p>The camera pans on Iesha, as she recognizes this song as familiar, but can’t quite place the name of it. Then, it hits her.</p>\n<p>It’s <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDPIK7Fz_g4\">“Iesha” by Another Bad Creation</a> — proof that Rank has dedicated this dance to her.</p>\n<p>This realization hits Iesha like a bag of bricks. Equal parts flattered, embarrassed, and aroused, Iesha watches mouth agape as Rank repeatedly thrusts his manhood in her direction, producing shrieks and screams from both the crowd and the hair-dressers.</p>\n<p>Later that evening, while Rank and his friends are hanging out outside of the club, Iesha and Vicky <a title=\"approach\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/approach/\">approach</a> them.</p>\n<p>“<em>That was some stunt you pulled.”</em> Iesha flirts to Rank.</p>\n<p>“<em>Seemed to get your attention</em>” Rank replies.</p>\n<p><em>“You seem to know a lot about sex and arousing me with your manparts. There’s more to life than that.”</em> Iesha says, as she draws closer to Rank.</p>\n<p><em>“What’s that?”</em> an obviously horny Rank retorts.</p>\n<p>Iesha pulls out a pen, and writes her response on Rank’s still sweaty chest.</p>\n<p>When finished, she tells the crew good night, and as her and Vicky walk away, the camera pans onto Rank’s chest so we can see what Iesha just wrote.</p>\n<p><em>“Jesus”</em></p>\n<p><strong>End scene.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>—The Champ</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Purchase our <strong>new</strong> book, <a href=\"http://amzn.to/yourdegrees\"><em><strong>Your </strong><strong>Degrees Wont Keep You Warm at Night:</strong> The Very Smart Brothas Guide to Dating, Mating, and <a title=\"Fighting\" href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/tag/fighting/\">Fighting</a> Crime</em> on Amazon.com </a></strong></li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http://eepurl.com/cpIeT\">Get on the VSB VIP List!</a></strong></li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>Related posts:<ol><li><a href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/a-final-word-on-this-tyler-perrylove-jones-mess/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: A Final Word On This Tyler Perry/Love Jones Mess\">A Final Word On This Tyler Perry/Love Jones Mess</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-love-jones/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Love Jones\">How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Love Jones</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.verysmartbrothas.com/yup-another-angst-ridden-discussion-about-tyler-perry/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permanent Link: Yup, Another Angst-Ridden Discussion About Tyler Perry\">Yup, Another Angst-Ridden Discussion About Tyler Perry</a></li>\n</ol></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/fd300053li7sd6r70fk8o6jpu0/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.verysmartbrothas.com%2Fa-sneak-peek-into-tyler-perrys-love-jones%2F%3Futm_source%3Drss%26utm_medium%3Drss%26utm_campaign%3Da-sneak-peek-into-tyler-perrys-love-jones\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?i=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?a=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/verysmartbrothas?i=WK2Yw6RXoRk:w-8F7JDxagA:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/verysmartbrothas/~4/WK2Yw6RXoRk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Letter to Affliction",
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"content" : "<p>Dear ruefulness, dear regret, I’ve rounded<br>\nthe bend and here you are again in the clearing,<br>\neach tree planted like a taper in a circle<br>\nof melted ground. How deep are your roots,<br>\nreally? The sky’s chipped at the rim like an old<br>\npiece of crockery— its white band milky,<br>\nits saucer mismatched. Where’s the calico<br>\nnapkin appliqued with cats? I’ve forgotten<br>\nif I’ve set the table for dinner or for tea.<br>\nPerhaps it’s not too late to take a long<br>\nvacation by the sea. A fleet of sandpipers<br>\nand gulls holds the rocks at siege. The water<br>\nasks over and over, What is the heart?<br>\nYou know it makes a sound louder<br>\nthan any internal combustion engine.<br>\nHere I am waiting for the skin of leaves<br>\nto split open; waiting for lightning<br>\nto marble in the marrow.</p>\n<p>—<a href=\"http://www.blipfoto.com/lizardmeanders\">Luisa A. Igloria</a><br>\n02 17 2011<br>\n<em><br>\nIn response to <a href=\"http://morningporch.com/2011/02/17/159121519/\">today’s Morning Porch entry</a> (and to <a href=\"http://morningporch.com/2011/02/17/159121519/comment-page-1#comment-3005\">another response-poem</a>, by Dale Favier)</em></p>"
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"title" : "Comparing Google Megastore",
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"content" : "A small pile of Googlers recently presented a paper, \"Megastore: Providing Scalable, Highly Available Storage for Interactive Services\" (<a href=\"http://www.cidrdb.org/cidr2011/Papers/CIDR11_Paper32.pdf\">PDF</a>) that details the architecture of a major distributed database used at Google.<br><br>Megastore \"has been widely deployed within Google for several years ... handles more than three billion write and 20 billion read transitions daily ... [and] stores nearly a petabyte ... across many datacenters.\"<br><br>Others have already summarized the paper (<a href=\"http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/01/09/GoogleMegastoreTheDataEngineBehindGAE.aspx\">[1]</a> <a href=\"http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/1/11/google-megastore-3-billion-writes-and-20-billion-read-transa.html\">[2]</a>), so I'll focus on my reaction to it. What I found surprising about Megastore, especially when comparing to other large scale databases, is that it favors consistency over performance.<br><br>For consistency, Megastore provides \"full ACID semantics within partitions\", \"supports two-phase commit across entity groups\", guarantees that reads always see the last write, uses Paxos for confirming consensus among replicas, and uses distributed locks between \"coordinator processes\" as part of detecting failures. This is all unusually strong compared to the more casual <a href=\"http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2008/12/eventually_consistent.html\">eventual consistency</a> offered by databases like Amazon's Dynamo, Yahoo's HBase, and Facebook's Cassandra.<br><br>The problem with providing Megastore's level of consistency is performance. The paper mostly describes Megastore's performance in sunny terms, but, when you look at the details, it does not compare favorably with other databases. Megastore has \"average read latencies of tens of milliseconds\" and \"average write latencies of 100-400 milliseconds\". In addition, Megastore has a limit of \"a few writes per second per entity group\" because higher write rates will cause conflicts, retries, and even worse performance.<br><br>By comparison, Facebook <a href=\"http://codingplayground.blogspot.com/2011/01/numbers-of-transactions-in-facebook-on.html\">expects</a> 4ms reads and 5ms writes on their database, so Megastore is an order of magnitude or two slower than what Facebook developers appear to be willing to tolerate.<br><br>Google application developers seem to find the latency to be a hassle as well. The paper says that Googlers find the latency \"tolerable\" but often have to \"hide write latency from users\" and \"choose entity groups carefully\".<br><br>This makes me wonder if Google has made the right tradeoff here. Is it really easier for application developers to deal with high latency all of the time than to almost always have low latency but have to worry more about consistency issues? Most large scale databases have made the choice the other way. Quite surprising.<br><br><b>Update</b>: Googler DeWitt Clinton <a href=\"http://www.google.com/buzz/glinden/CUbkuATqSm1/Comparing-Google-Megastore\">writes</a> with a good point: \"We build on top of Megastore when we require some of those characteristics (availability, consistency), and to Bigtable directly when we require low latency and high throughput instead. So it's up to the application to decide what tradeoffs to make, definitely not one-size-fits-all.\"<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-9097874443748462361?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Wikileaks in 10",
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"content" : "<div><p>I like <a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/wikileaks_mindmap-v2.jpg\">this mind-map by John Naughton</a> very much and used it recently in an English class when we got talking about some tools and techniques that help us think. It comes from his post, <a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2010/12/11/12477\">WikiLeaks: two challenges for journalism</a>:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">… how to make sense of all this. Most people cope with this problem by, effectively, reducing its variety.</span></p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>Early last Monday, I gave a 10 minute talk about Wikileaks to our top two years (12 & 13). I hope I managed to keep <em>some</em> of the variety. The way in, stepping stones and some points made:</p>\r\n<ul>\r\n<li>Our love of secrecy and stealth. I’d watched <a href=\"http://www.livestream.com/liftconference/video?clipId=pla_08a3016b-47e9-4e4f-8ef7-ce71c168a5a8\">Kevin Slavin’s fine Lift11 talk</a> at the weekend and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_Sea_Shadow_stealth_craft.jpg\">that photo of the Sea Shadow</a> makes for a good attention holder as 350+ students gather.</li>\r\n<li>Also, in a school where so many study Maths at advanced level, it was worth quickly smuggling in that compelling story Kevin tells — from black box counter-Stealth technology (cue slide of that downed <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117_Nighthawk\">Nighthawk</a>) to black box trading.</li>\r\n<li>Then to the emergence of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate\">Fourth Estate</a>. A quick flash of Zaret, <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-Democratic-Culture-Petitions-Early-Modern/dp/0691006946/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1297110533&sr=8-12\">Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England</a><span style=\"font-style:normal\">: </span></em>‘For David Zaret, the key to the rise of a democratic public sphere was the impact of this culture of printing on the secrecy and privilege that shrouded political decisions in seventeenth-century England.’ And some <a href=\"http://goo.gl/EDIN2\">Wilkes</a>.</li>\r\n<li>Wikileaks. First appeared on my radar <a href=\"http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2008/making-sense-wikileaks-fiasco-prior-restraints-internet-age\">3 years ago to the month</a>, with the Cayman Islands bank mini-saga and its very own <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect\">Streisand effect</a>. Fast forward to 2010: July, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_War_documents_leak\">the Afghan War logs</a> (+90K documents); October, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak\">the Iraq War logs</a> (+300K field reports); November, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables_leak\">the Diplomatic cables</a> (+250K documents).</li>\r\n<li>Back to now and <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-stores-secret-cables\">Siprnet</a> and the matter of how many of the huge number of security-cleared personnel have access rights to this …</li>\r\n<li>Wikileaks no snake, but <a href=\"http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XyvpcMiDlMcC&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=Manuel+Castells+networked+enterprise&source=bl&ots=3dR7RnQF5e&sig=PJZEQikpmImWzVFD3U4fGdG_bBI&hl=en&ei=4U__TPWTJcjNhAfHobTOCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false\">a networked enterprise</a> (<a href=\"http://memex.naughtons.org/archives/2010/12/08/12450\">more John Naughton</a>).</li>\r\n<li>Media coverage of Wikileaks (examples — the <em><a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/how-wikileaks-shone-light-on-worlds-darkest-secrets-1938729.html\" title=\"How Wikileaks shone light on world's darkest secrets, 8 April 2010\">Independent</a>;</em> the <em>Telegraph</em>: <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8083160/Wikileaks-is-a-wake-up-call-for-all-politicians.html\">Wikileaks is a wake-up call for all politicians</a>, 24 October, 2010, <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8304654/WikiLeaks-cables-US-agrees-to-tell-Russia-Britains-nuclear-secrets.html\">WikiLeaks cables: US agrees to tell Russia Britain’s nuclear secrets</a>, 4 Febraury, 2011) and the relationships developed with the <em>NYT</em>, <em>Guardian</em> and <em>Der Spiegel</em>.</li>\r\n<li>The tensions and the caving in. Amazon; Mastercard; Visa; PayPal/eBay. The threat of ‘extra legal’ actions against Wikileaks/Assange. Recall the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers\">Pentagon Papers</a>: the matter was settled, as it should be, by the courts.</li>\r\n<li>Lliberal democracies struggling to understand Wikileaks (John Naughton captured this well in a <em>Guardian</em> piece last December, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks\">Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It’s your choice</a>). And now, in Egypt, on the one hand Vodafone … on the other Twitter (already noted by, for example, the <em>FT</em>’s tech hub blog for its stance over Wikileaks, <a href=\"http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2010/12/twitter-fails-to-jump-to-dept-of-states-defence/\">Twitter fails to jump to Dept of State’s defence</a>): from Twitter’s own blog, <a href=\"http://blog.twitter.com/2011/01/tweets-must-flow.html\">The Tweets Must Flow</a>. And Google: <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/01/google-twitter-egypt\">Google and Twitter launch service enabling Egyptians to tweet by phone</a> (<em>Guardian</em>).</li>\r\n<li>Evgeny Morozov received considerable publicity recently with the publication of <em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Net-Delusion-How-Liberate-World/dp/1846143535/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297599442&sr=8-1\">The Net Delusion</a></em>, but his message is more complex than some represent it. <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3dd7c40-ff15-11df-956b-00144feab49a.html\">In the <em>FT</em> last December, he wrote</a>: ‘The lesson of the last week is that, in this new world, geeks have real power. … Mr Assange’s fans are often the very same geeks that Washington needs to court, in order to push forward its desires to end internet censorship in authoritarian states such as China and Iran. … Handled correctly, the state that will benefit most from a nerdy network of 21st-century Che Guevaras, is America itself.’</li>\r\n<li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/04/wikileaks-created-new-media-landscape\">Clay Shirky</a> on the significance of Wikileaks as a transnational whistle-blowing site and publisher. And: ‘Assange is not a magician – he is simply an early & brilliant executor of what is being revealed as a much more general pattern, now spreading. Al-Jazeera & the Guardian created a transnational network to release the Palestine papers, without using WikiLeaks as an intermediary, & Daniel Domscheit-Berg is in the process of launching OpenLeaks, which will bring WikiLeaks-like capability to any publisher that wants it.’</li>\r\n</ul>\r\n<p>To end on, to take us away from focusing just on Wikileaks, something about the big picture right now — Paul Mason’s piece which has resonated with so many (and with so many undergraduates and recent graduates I know), <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2011/02/twenty_reasons_why_its_kicking.html\">Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere</a>:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">… the graduate with no future … with access to social media … [which] kills vertical hierarchies spontaneously … They all seem to know each other: not only is the network more powerful than the hierarchy - but the ad-hoc network has become easier to form. … if lawyers, teachers and doctors are sitting in their garrets freezing and starving you get revolution. Now, in their garrets, they have a laptop and broadband connection. … People just know more than they used to. … People have a better understanding of power. … Technology has - in many ways, from the contraceptive pill to the iPod, the blog and the CCTV camera - expanded the space and power of the individual.</span></p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">***</p>\r\n<p>I gave the talk again mid-week to our Year 10, boiled down and in something more like 6 minutes.</p>\r\n<p>Here are a couple of other pieces which I’ve found good food for thought, neither of which I had time to work in to these talks:</p>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?_r=4&hp=&pagewanted=all\">Bill Keller in the <em>NYT</em></a><em> </em>(January, 2011):</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">I’m a little puzzled by the complaint that most of the embassy traffic we disclosed did not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. Ninety-nine percent of what we read or hear on the news does not profoundly change our understanding of how the world works. News mostly advances by inches and feet, not in great leaps. The value of these documents — and I believe they have immense value — is not that they expose some deep, unsuspected perfidy in high places or that they upend your whole view of the world. For those who pay close attention to foreign policy, these documents provide texture, nuance and drama. They deepen and correct your understanding of how things unfold; they raise or lower your estimation of world leaders. For those who do not follow these subjects as closely, the stories are an opportunity to learn more. If a project like this makes readers pay attention, think harder, understand more clearly what is being done in their name, then we have performed a public service. And that does not count the impact of these revelations on the people most touched by them. WikiLeaks cables in which American diplomats recount the extravagant corruption of Tunisia’s rulers helped fuel a popular uprising that has overthrown the government.</span></p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>Also from the same:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, including low-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.”</span></p>\r\n</blockquote>\r\n<p>And <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/06/twitter-speak-tweet-mubarak-networker\">this from John Naughton</a> (to whom we owe a lot for his pondering of these recent events) :</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">For hardcore geeks, the WikiLeaks saga should serve as a stimulant to a new wave of innovation which will lead to a new generation of distributed, secure technologies (like the TOR networking system used by WikiLeaks) which will enable people to support movements and campaigns that are deemed subversive by authoritarian powers. A really good example of this kind of technological innovation was provided last week by Google engineers, who in a few days built a system that enabled protesters in Egypt to send tweets even though the internet in their country had been shut down. “Like many people”, they blogged, “we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we can do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service – the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.”</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">They worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter and SayNow (a company Google recently acquired) to build the system. It provides three international phone numbers and anyone can tweet by leaving a voicemail. The tweets appear on <a href=\"http://twitter.com/speak2tweet\" style=\"color:#1c51a8\">twitter.com/speak2tweet</a>.</span></p>\r\n<p><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">What’s exciting about this kind of development is that it harnesses the same kind of irrepressible, irreverent, geeky originality that characterised the early years of the internet, before the web arrived and big corporations started to get a grip on it. Events in Egypt make one realise how badly this kind of innovation is needed.</span></p>\r\n</blockquote></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?a=WtBMaT0Ppqc:v5skPu-ADDc:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?a=WtBMaT0Ppqc:v5skPu-ADDc:bcOpcFrp8Mo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?d=bcOpcFrp8Mo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?a=WtBMaT0Ppqc:v5skPu-ADDc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?i=WtBMaT0Ppqc:v5skPu-ADDc:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?a=WtBMaT0Ppqc:v5skPu-ADDc:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Preoccupations?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Preoccupations/~4/WtBMaT0Ppqc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Sensemaking on Streams – My G2 Skunk Works Project: Privacy by Design (PbD)",
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"content" : "<div><p>Over the last twenty-eight months I have been quietly running a skunk works effort that I’ve code named “G2.” To my delight, on January 28th, 2011 this system became officially viable and will be entering something akin to a “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_trial\">sea trial</a>” phase through 2011.</p>\n<p>I believe this system will prove to be my most innovative work to date. I also believe it is the most responsible technology I have created to date.</p>\n<p>This new technology, something that might be characterized as a “<em><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">big data analytic sensemaking</span>” </em>engine, is designed to make sense of new observations as they happen, fast enough to do something about it, while the transaction is still happening. This engine brings to life many of the principles I have been openly sharing on my blog, ranging from <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/05/smart-sensemaking-systems-first-and-foremost-must-be-expert-counting-systems.html\">Sensemaking Systems Must be Expert Counting Systems,</a> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\">Data Finds Data</a>, <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/08/accumulating_co.html\">Context Accumulation</a>, <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/sequence_neutra.html\">Sequence Neutrality</a> and <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/general-purpose-sensemaking-systems-and-information-colocation.html\">Information Colocation</a> to new techniques to harness the <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/big-data-new-physics.html\">Big Data/New Physics</a> phenomenon. That said, as this is version 1.1, there remain many things to do to realize my full vision. It is a very ambitious effort, but more about that some other day. </p>\n<p>In terms of responsible innovation, I am even more proud to report that my team and I have baked in, from conception, more privacy and civil liberties enhancing technologies than any other product I am aware of to date. </p>\n<p>Friday, January 28<sup>th</sup>, 2011 – my official launch date – also happened to be the international <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Privacy_Day\">Data Privacy Day</a>. And on this day, internationally recognized privacy commissioner, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Cavoukian\">Ann Cavoukian</a> hosted a few hundred privacy executives and practitioners from around the world in Toronto Canada at her <em>Privacy by Design: Time to Take Control </em>conference. During my keynote entitled “<a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/PbD-ConfessionsOfAnArchitect.ppt\">Confessions of an Architect</a>” I highlighted seven (7) exciting features that have been baked into this new technology (<a href=\"http://www.privacybydesign.ca/\">Privacy by Design)</a>, specifically:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">1. Full Attribution</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">2. Data Tethering</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">3. Analytics in the Anonymized Data Space</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">4. Tamper-Resistant Audit Logs</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">5. False Negative Favoring Methods</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">6. Self-Correcting False Positives</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">7. Information Transfer Accounting</p>\n<p>The full presentation is <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/PbD-ConfessionsOfAnArchitect.ppt\">here</a>.</p>\n<p>Here is a summary of the above seven PbD features:</p>\n<p>1. FULL ATTRIBUTION: Every observation (record) needs to know from where it came and when. There cannot be merge/purge data survivorship processing whereby some observations or fields are discarded. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. If received data does not contain its data source and transaction pedigree, then system-to-system reconciliation and audit are virtually impossible, especially in large information sharing environments.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. If the system merges and purges observations, only later to discover the wrong observations were merged or purged, then without full attribution correcting these earlier mistakes can be difficult if not impossible. The typical alternative being periodic batch re-processing.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">C. The <a href=\"http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml\">Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> has four articles containing the word “arbitrary” <em>e.g.,</em> <a href=\"http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a9\">Article 9</a> reads “<em>No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” </em>If you don’t know where the data came from or when, how can any resulting action be anything but arbitrary?</p>\n<p>2. DATA TETHERING: Adds, changes and deletes occurring in systems of record must be accounted for, in real-time, in sub-seconds. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. Data currency in information sharing environments is important, especially if one is using data to make important, difficult to reverse decisions that affect people’s freedoms or privileges.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. When derogatory data is removed or corrected in a system of record, it is vital to reflect such corrections immediately. For example, if someone is removed from a watch list, how long should they have to wait before their name is cleared?</p>\n<p>3. ANALYTICS ON ANONYMIZED DATA: The ability to perform advanced analytics (including some fuzzy matching) over cryptographically altered data means organizations can anonymize more data before information sharing. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. With every copy of data, there is an increased risk of unintended disclosure.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. Data anonymized before transfer and anonymized at rest reduces the risk of unintended disclosure.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">C. If organizations can now share information in an anonymized form and still get a materially similar result, why would organizations want to share information any other way?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">[Technical Note: As every anonymized value maintains full attribution, re-identification is by design to support Data Tethering as well reconciliation and audit.]</p>\n<p>4. TAMPER-RESISTANT AUDIT LOGS: Each record of who searches for what should be logged in a tamper-resistant manner – even the database administrator should not be able to alter the evidence contained in this audit log. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. Every now and then people with access and privilege take a look at records without a legitimate business purpose, <em>e.g.,</em> should an employee at a financial services institution take a peek into their roommate’s file.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. Tamper-resistant logs make it possible to audit user behavior.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">C. And, when the word gets out to the work force that such accountability exists, this can cause a chilling effect on misuse.</p>\n<p>5. FALSE NEGATIVE FAVORING METHODS: The ability to more strongly favor false negatives is of critical importance in systems that could be used to affect someone’s civil liberties. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. In many business scenarios, it is better to miss a few things (false negatives) than inadvertently make claims that are not true (false positives). False positives can feed into decisions that adversely affect people’s lives – <em>e.g.,</em> the police find themselves knocking down the wrong door or an innocent passenger is denied the ability to board a plane.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">[Technical Note: Sometimes a new observation can lead to multiple conclusions. Systems that are not false negative favoring may select the strongest conclusion and ignore the remaining conclusions. But had the strongest candidate not existed, the second strongest conclusion would be asserted. One false negative favoring method involves remedy such a condition, for example by reversing an earlier conclusion should a future observation bring to light that fact that multiple possible conclusions now exist.]</p>\n<p>6. SELF-CORRECTING FALSE POSITIVES: With every new observation presented, prior assertions are re-evaluated to ensure they are still correct, and if no longer correct, these earlier assertions can often be repaired – in real-time, not end of month. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. False positives occur when an assertion (claim) is made, but is not true. If relied upon to make a decision, false positives can adversely affect people’s lives <em>e.g.,</em> consider someone who cannot board a plane because he or she shares a similar name and date of birth as someone else on a watch list.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. Without self-correcting false positives, databases start to drift from the truth and become provably wrong (even to the naked eye) – necessitating periodic (batch) reloading to true-up the database.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">C. Periodic monthly reloading to correct for false positives means wrong decisions are possible all month until the next reload, even though the system had everything it needed to know beforehand.</p>\n<p>[Technical Note: Reversing earlier assertions in real-time at scale, as new observations present themselves, is computationally non-trivial. Imagine making an assertion that two people are the same because they share exactly the same name, address and home phone number – only later to learn through another series of observations that these are really two different people (a junior and a senior). Our “self-correcting false positives” feature self-corrects for these rare cases, in real-time. We consider our ability to perform <em><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/sequence_neutra.html\">sequence neutrality</a></em> at scale one of several breakthrough aspects of our work.]</p>\n<p>7. INFORMATION TRANSFER ACCOUNTING: Every secondary transfer of data, whether to human eyeball or tertiary system, can be recorded to allow stakeholders (<em>e.g.,</em> data custodians or the consumers themselves) to determine how their data is flowing. Why is this so important?</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">A. It is often cumbersome to learn who has seen what records, or what records have been shared with tertiary systems.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">B. Much like a US credit report that contains an inquiries section exposing the list of recent inquiring parties, now so can your medical or financial file.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">C. Users can now be easily provided with such disclosures, increasing transparency and control <em>e.g.</em> enabling a consumer in some cases to request an information recall.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">D. When there is a series of leaks, information transfer accounting makes discovery of who accessed all records in the series quite trivial. This can narrow an investigation when looking for criminals within.</p>\n<p>What has me most excited is that where some features above would typically be an extra priced option in my new system so many are built in (<em>e.g.</em> this <a href=\"http://www.guardium.com/\">tamper-resistant audit logs</a>). And some of our privacy and civil liberties enhancing features cannot even be turned off!</p>\n<p>Yes, there is an official name for my new technology. And no, I’m not telling you, because this is not a sales pitch. Rather, I am simply trying to inspire other technologists to consider Privacy by Design as they innovate.</p>\n<p>I’ve had two most great days at IBM. The first great day was in January 2005 when IBM bought my company, SRD. And the second greatest day came six years later on January 28<sup>th</sup>, 2011.</p>\n<p>RELATED MATERIAL:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.privacybydesign.ca/\">Privacy by Design (PbD)</a></p>\n<p> </p>\n<p>RELATED POSTS:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/05/smart-sensemaking-systems-first-and-foremost-must-be-expert-counting-systems.html\">Smart Sensemaking Systems, First and Foremost, Must be Expert Counting Systems</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\">Data Finds Data</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/08/accumulating_co.html\">Accumulating Context: Now or Never </a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/sequence_neutra.html\">Sequence Neutrality</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/general-purpose-sensemaking-systems-and-information-colocation.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/general-purpose-sensemaking-systems-and-information-colocation.html\">General Purpose Sensemaking Systems and Information Colocation</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/big-data-new-physics.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/11/big-data-new-physics.html\">Big Data. New Physics.</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/10/source_attribut.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/10/source_attribut.html\">Source Attribution, Don’t Leave Home Without It</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/09/data_tethering_.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/09/data_tethering_.html\">Data Tethering: Managing the Echo</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/02/to_anonymize_or.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/02/to_anonymize_or.html\">To Anonymize or Not Anonymize, That is the Question</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_audit.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_audit.html\">Immutable Audit Logs (IAL’s)</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/12/out-bound-recor.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/12/out-bound-recor.html\">Out-bound Record-level Accountability in Information Sharing Systems</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/12/big-data-flows-vs-wicked-leaks-.html\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/12/big-data-flows-vs-wicked-leaks-.html\">Big Data Flows vs. Wicked Leaks</a><br> <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2008/01/data-decommissi.html_\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2008/01/data-decommissi.html_\">Decommissioning Data: Destruction of Accountability</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<p><strong><em>By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor for Rep. Alan Grayson. His Twitter feed is @matthewstoller</em></strong></p>\n<p>Via Wikileaks, we learned that the son of the former President of Egypt, Gamal Mubarak, had an interesting conversation in 2009 with Senator Joe Lieberman <a href=\"http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/02/09CAIRO326.html\">on the banking crisis.</a> Gamal is a key figure in the forces buffeting Egypt, global forces of labor arbitrage, torture, and financial corruption. Gamal believed that the bailouts of the banks weren’t big enough – “you need to inject even more money into the system than you have”. Gamal, a former investment banker trained at Bank of America, <a href=\"http://www.meforum.org/2063/gamal-mubarak-we-need-audacious-leaders\">helped craft Egypt’s industrial policy earlier in the decade.</a></p>\n<blockquote><p> Our purpose is to improve Egyptians’ living standards. We have a three-pronged plan to achieve this: favoring Egypt’s insertion into the global economy, reducing the state’s role in the economy, and giving the private sector greater freedom.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Deregulation, globalization, and privatization. This should be a familiar American recipe, commonly associated with former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief Bob Rubin. That Rubinite rhetoric has been adopted by the children of strongmen shows the influence of Davos, the global annual conference of power brokers. Gamal, far more polished than his father, understood that the profit and power for his family lay in cooperating with foreign investors to squeeze labor as hard as possible.</p>\n<p>This strategy was targeted at the global labor arbitrage going on since the 1970s, with Egypt’s role as one cheap labor in-sourcer. It’s no surprise that the Mubarak family has $40-70B stashed away in the global tax safe havens coddling the superrich. This wealth was extracted from the youth and women in Egypt’s new factories making low-cost goods for export. This is why the revolution was spearheaded by youth and women, and why the nationalist business elite, with its deep ties to the military, sided with the protesters. Mubarak’s inner circle aligned themselves with international investors and set themselves against domestic business and military interests.</p>\n<p>In other words, this is a revolt against Rubinite economic policy. Even the rhetoric Gamal used in pushing his policies echoes that of Rubinites. This Orwellian model of discourse frames corrupt decision-making to confiscate wealth from ordinary people as “tough-minded” because it’s “unpopular.” Here’s Gamal:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Bringing change is always a harsh task. You must sometimes accept unpopularity. But if you are really convinced that you are making the right decision, you must stick to it. Modernization is worth this price. If not, we will have to be honest both with ourselves and public opinion and acknowledge that we failed. I am perfectly aware of what the consequences of such a failure could be, and I am doing my best. I know that our action will later be examined scrupulously. This is what we call a “result-oriented culture.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>You can smell the McKinsey presentation. Here’s Obama’s budget director, <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/07/jacob-lew-the-easy-cuts-a_n_819476.html\">ex-Citigroup executive Jacob Lew</a> who made millions on the housing bubble, justifying his cuts to the social safety net (such as low income heating assistance, which means some poor people will freeze to death): </p>\n<blockquote><p>These three examples alone, of course, represent only a small fraction of the scores of cuts the president had to choose, but they reflect the tough calls he had to make.</p></blockquote>\n<p>And here’s George W. Bush, <a href=\"http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/George_W__Bush_Foreign_Policy.htm\">justifying his decision to invade Iraq:</a></p>\n<blockquote><p>And so what I’m telling you is that sometimes in this world you make unpopular decision because you think they’re right.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The political architecture of the Mubarak regime was directly pulled from the neoliberal shadow government model, right down to the political rhetoric of toughness as a mask for theft. <a href=\"http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/516/why-mubarak-is-out\">Paul Amar</a> has by far the most persuasive account of the Egyptian revolution. Amar goes beyond the absurdist <a href=\"http://www.thenation.com/article/158498/how-cyber-pragmatism-brought-down-mubarak\">Facebook revolution</a> narrative, and points out that what is going on is in effect a youth-driven <i>labor uprising</i>, combined with fights between Mubarak-centric Rubinite elites and the domestic nationalist business community tied to the military. Mubarak had made <a href=\"http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/586/why-egypts-progressives-win\">tight alliances</a> with the Islamic right, while slashing the social safety net and bringing in international investors to open low wage manufacturing (this is part of Mubarak’s son’s Bank of America training, more on that below).</p>\n<p>This uprising is just the culmination of strikes that began a few years ago in response.</p>\n<blockquote><p> This revolt began gradually at the convergence of two parallel forces: the movement for workers’ rights in the newly revived factory towns and micro-sweatshops of Egypt especially during the last two years, and the movement against police brutality and torture that mobilized every community in the country for the last three years. Both movements feature the leadership and mass participation of women (of all ages) and youth (of both genders). There are structural reasons for this.</p>\n<p>First, the passion of workers that began this uprising does not stem from their marginalization and poverty; rather, it stems from their centrality to new development processes and dynamics. In the very recent past, Egypt has reemerged as a manufacturing country, although under the most stressful and dynamic of conditions. Egypt’s workers are mobilized because new factories are being built, in the context of a flurry of contentious global investment. Several Russian free-trade zones and manufacturing settlements have opened up, and China has invested in all parts of the Egyptian economy. Brazil, Turkey, the Central Asian Republics and the Gulf Emirates are diversifying their investments. They are moving out of the oil sector and real estate and into manufacturing, piece-goods, informatics, infrastructure, etc. Factories all over Egypt have been dusted off and reopened, or newly built. And all those shopping malls, gated cities, highways and resorts have to be built and staffed by someone. In the Persian Gulf, developers use Bangladeshi, Philippine and other expatriate labor. But Egypt usually uses its own workers. And many of the workers in Egypt’s revived textile industries and piece-work shops are women. If you stroll up the staircases into the large working-class apartment buildings in the margins of Cairo or the cement-block constructions of the villages, you’ll see workshops full of women, making purses and shoes, and putting together toys and computer circuitboards for sale in Europe, the Middle East and the Gulf. These shop workers joined with factory workers to found the 6 April movement in 2008.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The torture and repression had a specific cause, as did the reaction against it.</p>\n<blockquote><p>In the place of food subsidies and jobs they have offered debt. Micro-credit loans were given, with the IMF and World Bank’s enthusiastic blessing, to stimulate entrepreneurship and self-reliance. These loans were often specifically targeted toward women and youth. Since economically disadvantaged applicants have no collateral to guarantee these loans, payback is enforced by criminal law rather than civil law. This means that your body is your collateral. The police extract pain and humiliation if you do not pay your bill. Thus the micro-enterprise system has become a massive set of police rackets and “loan shark” operations. Police sexualized brutalization of youth and women became central to the “regulation” of the massive small-business economy. In this context, the micro-business economy is a tough place to operate, but it does shape women and youth into tough survivors who see themselves as an organized force opposed to the police-state. No one waxes on about the blessings of the market’s invisible hand. Thus the economic interests of this mass class of micro-entrepreneurs are the basis for the huge and passionate anti-police brutality movement. It is no coincidence that the movement became a national force two years ago with the brutal police murder of a youth, Khalid Saeed, who was typing away in a small internet café that he partially owned. Police demanded ID and a bribe from him; he refused, and the police beat him to death, crushing his skull to pieces while the whole community watched in horror.</p></blockquote>\n<p>What is going in Egypt represents a remarkable new political coalition striking deep at the heart of the Washington consensus. Social media mattered, in that it was the language by which the youth expressed themselves and their hatred of the torture inflicted upon them to extract maximal profit. This alliances, of a domestic business-military community, women’s groups, and a youth-driven labor movement, has parallels in the 1930s New Deal coalition and the 1850s anti-slavery coalition. It is also interesting that the pre-Facebook blogosphere of 2004-2005 played <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">an important role</a> in unmasking torture and delegitimizing the authority of the state, including the justice system and the media.</p>\n<p>Seen in this context, Egypt is part of a global conflict of financial oligarchs fighting with leftist human rights activists, unions, and domestic industries. Egypt’s going to need the money stashed away and stolen by the Mubarak family; getting to that money requires an international crackdown on superrich tax havens. Furthermore, the links between Mubarak corruption and various Rubinites are probably as extensive as the torture trade between the CIA and Egypt. The extent of the cover-up of the Mubarak regime’s behavior will be the way to judge what happens going forward. Obama’s mild-mannered and largely irrelevant statecraft simply reflects the paralysis of the foreign policy establishment as the extent of its complicity in the overall economic and political strategy of this repressive regime is revealed.</p>\n<p>Of course, it’s quite possible that the Mubarak-style repressive franchise isn’t done. Already, the Egyptian military is trying to ban <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFNWEB867320110213\">the labor and professional organizing<a></a> at the heart of the uprising. Like Obama’s promises of hope and change in 2008, Egypt in 2011 is full of promise, with ambiguous tidings.</a></p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/fteafrro5kpjfa8gjatadmvu48/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2011%2F02%2Fmatt-stoller-the-egyptian-labor-uprising-against-rubinites.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:cGdyc7Q-1BI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=cGdyc7Q-1BI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?i=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?a=mBwud36-rIw:Jo5-4ZwHNGw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/NakedCapitalism?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/NakedCapitalism/~4/mBwud36-rIw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Not too long ago, I wrote a post entitled, Thoughts on script loaders<sup>[1]</sup>, in which I discussed my thoughts on the continuing introduction of script loaders such as LABjs and ControlJS. In that post I also mentioned what I thought was the main problem that led to existence of these libraries. That problem is the inability of the developer to control the download of JavaScript files as separate from its execution.</p>\n<p>After a conversation with Steve Souders about ControlJS, I put together a proposal for a delayed script execution model in browsers<sup>[2]</sup>. I reviewed this with Jonas Sicking and Boris Zbarsky from Mozilla as well as Tony Gentilcore from WebKit, where we had a nice go-around about actual use cases and possible solutions aside from mine. Ultimately, the consensus was that the issue should be brought up on the WHAT-WG mailing list to get a wider group of opinions, and so I initiated that thread<sup>[3]</sup>. But before diving into that discussion, it’s helpful to understand the problem.</p>\n<h2>Background</h2>\n<p>Traditionally, JavaScript execution immediately followed download of the external JavaScript file. This is exactly how the <code><script></code> element works in markup. There’s also the unfortunate side effect that <code><script></code> in markup causes the browser to block rendering (and other resource downloads in older browsers). Because most JavaScript isn’t necessary until at least the entire HTML page has been downloaded, the addition of the <code>defer</code> attribute was the first attempt to separate JavaScript download from execution.</p>\n<p>As a recap, adding <code>defer to a </code><code><script></code> causes JavaScript to download immediately but hold off on executing until the entire DOM has been loaded (before <code>DOMContentLoaded</code>). Multiple scripts marked with <code>defer</code> preserve the order of execution. The most important part of <code>defer</code> is that downloading of external JavaScript doesn’t block rendering or downloading of additional resources. Since <code>defer</code> was only supported in Internet Explorer, it was rarely used.</p>\n<p>Developers discovered that creating a script element dynamically using JavaScript caused a different behavior. Downloading of an external JavaScript using this pattern did not block rendering or other downloads, and then the script executed immediately upon download. Multiple scripts loaded in this manner may or may not retain their order of execution across browsers (most did not retain order, Firefox did).</p>\n<p>HTML5 introduced the <code>async</code> attribute on <code><script></code> to enable the same usage pattern as dynamic script elements. The behavior was the same: start to download immediately, don’t block rendering or other downloads, and then execute as soon as download is complete. The order of execution is explicitly <em>not</em> maintained.</p>\n<p>So there are already three different designations for how scripts should be loaded: regular, <code>defer</code>, and <code>async</code>. All three simply alter the timing and behavior of download and execution of the external JavaScript file. These cover the use case of initiating downloads very well but fail at allowing you to determine when the script should be executed.</p>\n<h2>The problem</h2>\n<p>Despite the various options for loading JavaScript, there is still no way to download a JavaScript file and set it to execute at an arbitrary time. You can say execute immediately, or you can defer until the DOM document is complete, but you can’t specify any other point in time to execute the code. This has resulted in developers coming up with hack after hack to try and create this ability:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kyle Simpson uses a <code>type</code> attribute of “script/cache” to force IE to download but not execute scripts in Internet Explorer. Once in the cache, a dynamic script element is created with the same URL. This offers the potential of a double download if cache headers are not set appropriately on the JavaScript file.</li>\n<li>Stoyan Stefanov investigated how to pre-cache both JavaScript and CSS using images<sup>[4]</sup>. ControlJS makes use of this technique. Once in the cache, a dynamic script element is created with the same URL. This has the same potential downside involving double downloading.</li>\n<li>The Gmail mobile team introduced a technique to provide JavaScript in script comments, and then only evaluate the code when necessary<sup>[5]</sup>. The only downside to this is that you must format the code as comments inline to the HTML and then eval later, which is a bit of work.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The reason why so many engineers are trying to come up with ways to separately download and execute JavaScript is because of the performance implications related to the blocking of rendering and other downloads. We need to get JavaScript onto the page, but we need to do it in such a way that it doesn’t affect the user experience.</p>\n<p>Bear in mind: this isn’t just a mobile issue, nor is it just a desktop issue, it’s an overall issue dealing with the level of control developers have over loading JavaScript into a web page. In my time at Yahoo!, my team has investigated many different ways of loading JavaScript, and the research continues.</p>\n<p>It’s with all this in mind that I decided to put forth a proposal to improve this situation. A lot of things get talked about hypothetically, but it’s only when a concrete proposal appears that things tend to move, and that was my intention from the start.</p>\n<h2>Requirements</h2>\n<p>One of the most helpful things that Steve and I did was to outline a few basic requirements for any solution that could solve this problem:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>The functionality must be exposed to feature detection techniques.</li>\n<li>No double download of JavaScript files as a guarantee.</li>\n<li>Don’t inhibit the parallel downloading of JavaScript files.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>With these requirements in mind, I set out on my first proposal.</p>\n<h2>The original proposal</h2>\n<p>My original proposal<sup>[2]</sup> was based on adding a <code>noexecute</code> attribute to a <code><script></code> element, which informed the browser not to execute the external file but to download it. You could later execute the code by calling a new <code>execute()</code> method. Simple example:</p>\n<pre><code>var script = document.createElement(\"script\");\nscript.noexecute = true;\nscript.src = \"foo.js\";\ndocument.body.appendChild(script);\n\n//later\nscript.execute();</code></pre>\n<p>The <code>noexecute</code> attribute could also be specified in HTML markup, allowing you to later get a reference to that element and called <code>execute()</code> on it as well. There were a large amount of additional details surrounding this proposal in terms of changes to events, formalization of <code>readyState</code>, and how to deal with the various states of the script itself.</p>\n<h2>Reactions and alternatives</h2>\n<p>The reactions I received from this proposal ranged from “interesting” to “too complicated.” No one outright hated it, which is always a good sign, but the number of people who loved it wasn’t high enough to continue on without rethinking. In the meantime, there were two other proposals being floated around:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make all of the browsers behave like Internet Explorer in the way they handle dynamic scripts. Download begins as soon as the <code>src</code> property is assigned but the code isn’t executed until the script node is added to the document. I pointed out the major issue with this is that there is no way to feature detect this functionality to differentiate browser behaviors. It was brought up that Internet Explorer is the only browser that supports <code>readyState </code>on script nodes and its value starts at “uninitialized”, so the functionality can be inferred. As many people I know, I hate feature inference.</li>\n<li>Use some version of <code><link rel="prefetch"></code> to download JavaScript files. I pointed out a couple of issues with this approach, the first being that prefetching happens during user idle time, and the developer doesn’t know when that will happen. The second issue is that you’d still need to create a new script node and assign its <code>src</code> property. This relies on correct caching behavior and could result in a double download.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>To be fair, there were significant criticisms on my proposal as well. The major list of dislikes in my proposal were:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Broken backwards compatibility when using <code>noexecute</code> in markup.</li>\n<li>Requires defining <code>readyState</code> and <code>onreadystatechange</code> on <code>HTMLScriptElement</code>.</li>\n<li>Changing how the load event works for <code>noexecute</code> scripts only.</li>\n<li>Adding the <code>execute()</code> method to <code>HTMLScriptElement</code>. This brought up many questions as to what should happen when this method was called in different situations.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The overall feeling on the WHAT-WG mailing list was that the proposal was too complicated even though the general direction seemed okay.</p>\n<h2>Proposal v2.1</h2>\n<p>After doing some soul searching, I decided to focus on what seemed like the simplest solution: making other browsers behave like Internet Explorer. As Kyle pointed out, this was already proven to work and the HTML5 specification allows this behavior. I set out to redefine my proposal as a way to codify this behavior in a way that allowed the developer to decide to turn this feature on as well as a way to feature detect. The results is a proposal I’ve called v2.1 (since I made some major edits after v2).</p>\n<p>This proposal simplifies the list of enhancements to:</p>\n<ol>\n<li>Create a <code>preload</code> property on <code>HTMLScriptElement</code>. This works only when used in JavaScript and has no effect when put in markup.</li>\n<li>When <code>preload</code> is set to true, download begins as soon as <code>src</code> is assigned to.</li>\n<li>An <code>onpreload</code> event handler is called when the file is successfully downloaded and is ready for execution.</li>\n<li>The script is executed when the script node is added to the document.</li>\n</ol>\n<p>A basic example of how this would be used:</p>\n<pre><code>var script = document.createElement(\"script\");\nscript.preload = true;\nscript.src = \"foo.js\"; //download begins here\nscript.onpreload = function(){\n //script is now ready, if I want to execute, the following should be used:\n document.body.appendChild(script);\n};</code></pre>\n<p>The reason why I like this solution is that the feature detection is obvious and corresponds directly to the behavior that will occur:</p>\n<pre><code>var isPreloadSupported = (typeof script.preload == \"boolean\");</code></pre>\n<p>I like this much better than the feature inference currently used in LABjs to detect Internet Explorer:</p>\n<pre><code>var isPreloadSupported = (script.readyState == \"uninitialized\");</code></pre>\n<p>To me, this doesn’t at all indicate that the preloading functionality is present. It only indicates that the <code>readyState </code>property is present and has a value of “uninitialized”. This is exactly the type of code that I seek to avoid with my proposal, so that script loaders can stop trying to infer what the browser will do and instead actually know what the browser will do.</p>\n<p>This proposal also keeps the changes to <code>HTMLScriptElement</code> small and self-contained, without affecting existing definitions.</p>\n<p>Note: There’s also the possibility that the default value of <code>preload </code>could be true instead of false, making Internet Explorer’s behavior the default amongst browsers that support this functionality. I could go either way on this issue, but the possibility should be mentioned.</p>\n<h2>And so on</h2>\n<p>The conversation is still ongoing on the WHAT-WG mailing list. As I’ve said on the list, I really don’t care what the final solution is, whether it be mine or not, so long as it fulfills the three requirements I laid out earlier. I think it’s pretty clear that this capability is important for finishing the work started with the introduction of the <code>async</code> attribute. Once we have better control over when JavaScript can download and execute, we’ll be able to create multiple variations of script loading techniques. It’s my hope that we’ll soon reach a conclusion on how best to move forward.</p>\n<h2>References</h2>\n<ol>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/12/21/thoughts-on-script-loaders/\">Thoughts on script loaders</a>, by Nicholas C. Zakas</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s8_iRr1TcwcDtShgfuGThapwZtVXItymw5zc16D0Pz8/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNbDlo8J\">Proposal for Delayed Script Execution</a>, by Nicholas C. Zakas</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2011-February/030161.html\">WHAT-WG: Proposal for separating script downloads and execution</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.phpied.com/preload-cssjavascript-without-execution/\">Preload JavaScript/CSS without execution</a>, by Stoyan Stefanov</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/09/gmail-for-mobile-html5-series-reducing.html\">Gmail for Mobile HTML5 Series: Reducing Startup Latency</a>, by Bikin Chiu</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EGM9xmQXbJ_rI0IFhbnACiDaaBPTSb7T3RynwD-naJg/edit?hl=en&authkey=CO7aqZAO\">Proposal for Delayed Script Execution v2.1</a>, by Nicholas C. Zakas</li>\n</ol>\n<h2>Related posts</h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2011/02/08/on-ua-sniffing-browser-detection-and-alexs-post/\" title=\"On UA sniffing, browser detection, and Alex’s post\">On UA sniffing, browser detection, and Alex’s post</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2011/08/09/introduction-to-the-page-visibility-api/\" title=\"Introduction to the Page Visibility API\">Introduction to the Page Visibility API</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/07/27/determining-if-an-object-property-exists/\" title=\"Determining if an object property exists\">Determining if an object property exists</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2010/02/09/announcing-high-performance-javascript/\" title=\"Announcing High Performance JavaScript\">Announcing High Performance JavaScript</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2009/12/29/feature-detection-is-not-browser-detection/\" title=\"Feature detection is not browser detection\">Feature detection is not browser detection</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.nczonline.net/blog/2009/08/11/timed-array-processing-in-javascript/\" title=\"Timed array processing in JavaScript\">Timed array processing in JavaScript</a></li>\n</ul>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?a=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nczonline?i=m8TC_GxUk0k:pz0zjrZuIBk:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nczonline/~4/m8TC_GxUk0k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Knowing and Unknowing the Egyptian Public",
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"content" : "<blockquote><p>“One of the greatest obstacles to any fruitful theory of genre has been the tendency to treat the genres as discrete. An ideological approach might suggest why they can’t be, however hard they might appear to try: at best, they represent different strategies for dealing with the same ideological tensions”</p>\n<p>–Robin Cook, 1977 essay, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,”</p></blockquote>\n<p>I’ve been thinking about Jay Rosen’s piece on <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://pressthink.org/2011/02/the-twitter-cant-topple-dictators-article/\">“The ‘Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators’ Article,”</a></span> in which he defines articles like <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/willheaven/100075775/mubarak-steps-down-but-lets-be-clear-twitter-had-nothing-to-do-with-it/\">this</a></span>, <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need-twitter.html%20/%20ixzz1CqneJJOu\">this</a></span>, <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/social-media-oppression/\">this</a></span>, and <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/11/tools-of-revolution/\">this</a></span>, as a <em>genre </em>by reference these formal markers:</p>\n<blockquote><p>1.) Nameless fools are staking maximalist claims.<br>\n2.) No links we can use to check the context of those claims.<br>\n3.) The masses of deluded people make an appearance so they can be ridiculed.<br>\n4.) Bizarre ideas get refuted with a straight face.<br>\n5.) Spurious historicity.<br>\n6.) The really hard questions are skirted.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Rosen has the beginnings of an answer as to why the genre has an appeal:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…here’s a guess: almost everyone who cares about such a discussion is excited about the Internet. Almost everyone is a little wary of being fooled by The Amazing and getting carried away. When we <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/malcolm-gladwell-tackles-egypt-twitter\">nod along</a></span> with Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators we’re assuring ourselves that our excitement is contained, that we’re being realistic, mature, grown-up about it.</p></blockquote>\n<p>I think this is right, as far as it goes. But I begin with a citation from Robin Cook’s fairly canonical argument about <em>cinematic </em>genre because he’s emphasizing the importance of placing generic formations in their broader discursive context, and I think this is precisely what we need to do with this brand of writing, now that we‘ve (Rosen) identified its formal characteristics. Its coherence is linked to the problem it seeks to solve and how, the work it takes as its project to do.</p>\n<p>Cook’s argument, for example, is that a Film Noir like <em>The Big Heat</em> and a Western like <em>Rancho Notorious </em>are not only part of the same conversation — which he argues <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=c72Dt4oFu9YC&lpg=PA261&ots=czdkSOpLPl&dq=One%20of%20the%20greatest%20obstacles%20to%20any%20fruitful%20theory%20of%20genre%20has%20been%20the%20tendency%20to%20treat%20the%20genres%20as%20discrete.%20An%20ideological%20approach%20might%20suggest%20why%20they%20can't%20be%2C%20however%20hard%20they%20might%20appear%20to%20try%3A%20at%20best%2C%20they%20represent&pg=PA261#v=onepage&q&f=false\">here</a></span>, for example — but that the position they take <em>in</em> that conversation (how they resolve the problems they raise) is at least a partial function of the narratives encoded in the generic structures they employ. To oversimplify: while the Western and the Film Noir are talking about the same kinds of social tensions, anxieties, or contradictions, the position they take on those questions (the answers/resolutions they give) are distinctly organic to their particular generic forms. Context, then, is key: we understand the relationship between Western and Noir (and the function of those generic markers) by placing them as different dialogic parts of a single conversation.</p>\n<p>The goal of doing so would be to liberate the concept of genre from its purely formal characteristics. By attacking “the foolishness of regarding [genres] as discrete and fully autonomous on the grounds of their defining iconography,” as Cook puts it, he wants us to see that the Western or the Noir are coherent <em>ideological </em>structures, not simply a set of clichéd forms. You know it’s a Western, in other words, not because of the simple presence of railroad, lawman, cowboy, Indian, etc, but because of the narratives that these motifs are being used to put forward, the particular kind of story the Western tells about history, progress, gender, and race.</p>\n<p>My version of Rosen’s argument, then, would be this: it is a fantasy of a particular kind of credulousness, which is then so soberly refuted (by sober debunkers) that the overriding impression left for the audience is only of the performance of seriousness itself, and of the credulous enthusiasm which has been dismissed.</p>\n<p>Take <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need-twitter.html#ixzz1DwTnipUG\">this bit</a></span> of rhetoric — much derided — from Malcolm Gladwell:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the nineteen-eighties had a <em>phone</em>—and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of people in central Leipzig and brought down a regime that we all thought would last another hundred years—and in the French Revolution the crowd in the streets spoke to one another with that strange, today largely unknown instrument known as the human voice. People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The assertion of eternal verities (people will always) alongside controlled contempt (Please.) and the repeated invocation of what is and isn’t “interesting” all adds up to an argument from an authority derived from the seriousness of his rhetoric: we know he’s a serious guy because he sounds serious, and because the people he’s criticizing are saying things that go against eternal verities, and because they cause a serious person to need to control his contempt (and we know they are contemptible because he is serious). It’s a recursive tautology; what you get is a blank stage in which there are two actors, the twitter-utopian and the debunker, and the staging and background (and object of debate) left insubstantial, immaterial. The rhetorical foreground fills up the camera while the historiographic background is left out of focus.</p>\n<p>Rosen suggests that this allows the “really hard questions” to be skirted, and that’s true, but I think it also accomplishes something else through the blankness of the absent backdrop: the Western generalist (Gladwell) gets to retain Serious Authority. The man who knows nothing about Egypt still gets to Seriously Know, precisely because it‘s only a dialogue between two Western speakers. And this, I think, is the real key. It isn’t just that really “hard” questions get skirted; it’s the fact that Egyptians are driving this narrative — and that if we want to understand it, we have to know something about Egypt <em>in its particularity </em>– that makes these people nervous.</p>\n<p>After all, the question of social media will, in the end, always turn into a question of the particular social reality it’s mediating. Which is why I would add to Rosen’s list another generic trait: the invocation of “people will always” as an explanation, something that always strikes me as a sign of a weak and unadventurous mind. People don’t “always” do anything. People are unpredictable. But they don’t do strange and unexpected things because they‘re irrational; people get called “irrational” when their rationality is not as apparent to us as we’d like to think it is. People always do what they do for a reason, but when we don’t know what that reason is, calling it irrational is a way of papering over the fact that we don’t actually understand.</p>\n<p>In this case, for example, the idea that “People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other” is flatly inadequate. Egypt had a grievance for three decades, yet they only started finding a way to communicate and coordinate with each other (on a massive scale) in the last few years. The Egyptian uprising happened when it did for good reasons, and eternal verities about what people will always do give us less than no purchase on that problem. But to even have the conversation about social media starts taking people like Gladwell way out of their comfort zone.</p>\n<p>In other words, to understand why the Egyptian revolt happened when it did, we’d have to learn something about Egyptian history, about the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefaya\">Kifaya movement</a></span>, and about how Egyptians were actually using blogs and facebook. Which would mean that a generalist intellectual about everything (and nothing in particular) like Malcolm Gladwell would suddenly find himself having to listen to a specialist like Charles Hirschkind, or even — ye Gods! — Egyptians themselves. But it’s less about <em>who</em> as <em>what</em>; the source of Hirschkind’s knowledge about how blogs were used to lay the foundation of the Egyptian revolution is, ultimately, not his own Deeply Serious intellect, but the fact that he’s been studying the formations of publics in Egypt for decades now. It’s the fact that Egypt is particular and similar only to itself (and that he’s been paying attention to it) that allows him to weave together <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/599/from-the-blogosphere-to-the-street_the-role-of-social-media-in-the-egyptian-uprising\">this narrative</a></span>, for example:</p>\n<blockquote><p>What was striking about the Egyptian blogosphere as it developed in the last 7 or so years is the extent to which it engendered a political language free from the problematic of secularization vs. fundamentalism that had governed so much of political discourse in the Middle East and elsewhere. The blogosphere that burst into existence in Egypt around 2004 and 2005 in many ways provided a new context for a process that had begun a somewhat earlier, in the late 1990s: namely, the development of practices of coordination and support between secular leftist organizations and associations, and Islamist ones (particularly the Muslim Brotherhood)—a phenomenon almost completely absent in the prior decades. Toward the end of the decade of the 90s, Islamist and leftist lawyers began to agree to work together on cases regarding state torture, whereas in previous years, lawyers of one affiliation would almost never publicly defend plaintiffs from the other.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Gladwell can’t take part in this conversation, except by dismissing it. Which is why he <em>must</em> dismiss it: to deal with it on its own terms — a topography of knowledge defined by a meridian set in Cairo — would lead him away from his ability to speak about all people all the time. It would prevent Western Authority from having a monopoly on the truth of all people.</p>\n<p>Let me push this even farther. Rosen writes that “everyone is a little wary of being fooled by The Amazing and getting carried away,” and this, again, seems right to me, but I think the fear runs deeper than simply a desire to not look foolish or of being wrong. Revolution is scary because it’s unpredictable. Hell, <em>democracy </em>is scarily unpredictable. And respect for democracy will require accepting that the Egyptians might do things we wouldn’t do if we were in their place, choices that may seem — to us — irrational, but only because the source of their rationality is unavailable to us. It will mean accepting the legitimacy of political rationalities we may not share, and which dismissing as “irrational” would only reveal us to be crypto-colonialists, willing to allow them to have democratic choice only between the options we’ve chosen for them.</p>\n<p>Note, for example, how many Western commentators have demanded <em>guarantees </em>that a democratic election in Egypt will produce a government we like. And the assertion that if democracy leads to Islamist rule (of any type), then <em>obviously </em>Egypt isn’t ready for democracy.<em> </em>The colonialist assumption of privilege that underpins that kind of thought process is staggering, as is its explicitly anti-democratic preference: before we can accept Arabs making choices for themselves, we have to know what those choices will be. Only choices that have already been vetted in Washington are to be allowed. And thus: only we get to have democracy.</p>\n<p>To return to the conversation about new media, one of the pitfalls of dubbing this a “facebook revolution” would be if we allowed the social topography in which facebook is <em>used </em>to disappear. The straw man that people like Gladwell invent are doing this, turning Egyptians into tools of their media tools. But this is also precisely what Hirschkind is <em>not </em>doing when he <em>places </em>blogs and facebook in their socio-political context: it is precisely because of pre-existing political problems — the fact that Islamists and secularists were not talking to each other — that blogs and other online organizing platforms, like facebook, could become so useful. Conversations that could not be had in person could be had online, which then <em>led</em> to face-to-face conversations, which then made collaborative action possible.</p>\n<p>To build on what seemed to be the consensus of Berkeley’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://cmes.berkeley.edu/Events/EGYPT%20EVENT.pdf\">Center for Middle Eastern Studies</a>, </span>the importance of social media is particularly to be found in the sense and performance of Egyptian public identity that it enabled, both the identity and political rationality which were suddenly seen to widespread. Routine state terror has been omnipresent for decades, but what we heard over and over again was that a facebook page like <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/we-are-all-khaled-saeed-redefining-political-demonstration-egypt\">“We Are All Khalid Saeed”</a></span> could became a means of rendering that experience — which so many people <em>silently </em>had in common — something which could be <em>publicly knowable</em> as a common experience. This move — taking something privately experienced, and making it publicly knowable — is a powerful thing.</p>\n<p>As Edward Said put it in <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v06/n03/edward-said/permission-to-narrate\">Permission to Narrate</a></span> (in a quote I was reminded of <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/arabs-seize-the-permission-to-narrate.html\">here</a></span>):</p>\n<blockquote><p>Facts do not at all speak for themselves, but require a socially acceptable narrative to absorb, sustain, and circulate them. . . . as Hayden White has noted in a seminal article, “narrative in general, from the folk tale to the novel, from annals to the fully realized ‘history,’ has to do with the topics of law, legality, legitimacy, or, more generally, authority.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Before the recent past — goes this interpretation — state terror in Egypt <em>was</em> ubiquitous, but it was not so easily and widely <em>known</em> to be ubiquitous. So however common it might have been, each fact and incident of torture and state violence was mostly knowable as isolated, particular. Which makes sense: in a country whose media was tightly controlled by a dictatorial apparatus, there were few available socially acceptable narratives which could absorb, sustain, and circulate them. Moreover, even if everyone <em>knew </em>that state terror was ubiquitous, they didn’t necessarily know that everyone else knew it too: they might have known that they — and anyone — could suffer the fate of Khalid Saeed, but they didn’t know, for sure, that <em>everyone else </em>knew this as well. In other words, Egyptians might have been united by the <em>fact </em>of being vulnerable to be tortured to death by their government, but the internet allowed them to see and understand that they all understood themselves to be this, that all were united in disgust and rage. This is the fertile seed-bed for revolt: knowing that if you stand in front of a tank, you will not be alone in doing so.</p>\n<p>And this is what I think the main function of the “Twitter Can’t Topple Dictators” article, and the ideological function that defines its genre: the disappearance of Egyptian social consciousness as the prime driver of events. Against the straw-man of techno-determinism, someone like Gladwell is enabled to argue that this has nothing to do with what Egyptians think of Egypt, nothing to do with a century of accumulated thought, emotion, identity, and narrated experience — most of which is unavailable to Gladwell, and which most Americans find strange and foreign. Instead, it is something safe and easy, something we, in the West, can safely opine and claim authority over: ourselves. The French revolution, the fall of communism, and <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=QqDa4tGENvYC&lpg=PR1&ots=Z5HVXa83jf&dq=provincializing%20Europe&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false\">Universal Western History</a></span>. In an implicit — but constitutive — dialogue with those who would tell us that this is about <em>Egypt</em>, it comes along to tell us that it’s not.</p>"
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"title" : "Happy Valentine's Day from Last.fm",
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"content" : "<p>We all know Last.fm listeners are achingly hip, resolutely individualistic, and far too cynical to be taken in by the annual cards-and-roses marketing-fest called Valentine’s Day, right?</p>\n\n\t<p>Well… perhaps not. We wondered, with years worth of data at our fingertips, if we could see whether February 14th brought out the sentimental side of our listeners.</p>\n\n<h3>This Is Not A Love Song</h3>\n\n\t<p>In order to listen to love songs, you have to find them first. So we started our investigation with the tags <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Romantic\">Romantic</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Love+Songs\">Love Songs</a>. Tags are supplied by listeners, so their presence alone is enough to give away the fact that at least some of you are softies at heart. </p>\n\n\t<p>Of course, ‘Romantic’ music can also refer to 19th-century pieces by the likes of <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Johannes+Brahms\">Brahms</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Franz+Schubert\">Schubert</a>, so we went to our database and extracted the top-scoring tracks associated with both Romantic <em>and</em> Love Songs. </p>\n\n\t<p>This gave us a stack of 30 songs by the likes of <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Lionel+Richie\">Lionel Richie</a>, <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Barry+Manilow\">Barry Manilow</a>, <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Bryan+Adams\">Bryan Adams</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Ronan+Keating\">Ronan Keating</a>.</p>\n\n<h3>What Time Is Love?</h3>\n\n\t<p>We wanted to find out whether there were specific times when our listeners were feeling particularly loved-up. So we scanned our <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/help/faq?category=99\">scrobbling</a> logs for 2010, and for each day counted the number of listeners who’d played at least one of the love songs in our test set. 30 songs is a tiny fraction of the millions of tracks scrobbled to Last.fm every day, but even so there’s a clear spike on February 14th:</p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://blog.last.fm/images/89.png\"><img src=\"http://blog.last.fm/images/88.png\"></a><br>\n<em>Click image for full-size version.</em></p>\n\n<h3>Put It In A Love Song</h3>\n\n\t<p>But tags are only one way of looking at the data. They tell us what people say about their music, but we wanted to turn the question around: what artists do people listen to especially on Valentine’s Day?</p>\n\n\t<p>To answer this question, you can’t just look at the top 10 or top 100 artists. After all, Last.fm listeners’ music taste is incredibly diverse, and for the most part the overlap is made up of the latest hits. For example, here’s the top 5 tracks played on Valentine’s Day 2010:</p>\n\n\t<p>1. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Lady+Gaga\">Lady Gaga</a> – Bad Romance<br>\n2. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Ke$ha\">Ke$ha</a> – TiK ToK<br>\n3. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Lady+Gaga\">Lady Gaga</a> – Poker Face<br>\n4. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Owl+City\">Owl City</a> – Fireflies<br>\n5. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Lady+Gaga\">Lady Gaga</a> – Paparazzi</p>\n\n\t<p>Could be any other day in February 2010 really. But by comparing people’s listening habits on Valentine’s Day to another day of the year you can see what music becomes temporarily more popular than usual when people are in the mood for love.</p>\n\n\t<p>So, we took the scrobbling logs for February 14th for the last six years and pulled out a shortlist of the artists who made it into the top 1000 that day but <em>not</em> seven days later (the 21st – a relatively unromantic day).</p>\n\n\t<p>We added up the number of times an artist appeared in the shortlist between 2005 and 2010 and ranked them by this score, breaking ties by average popularity on Valentine’s Day. </p>\n\n\t<p>So, after all the number-crunching, here’s the Top 10 Valentine’s Day artists for Last.fm listeners:</p>\n\n\t<p>1. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Barry+White\">Barry White</a>, the undisputed master of romance<br>\n2. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/BoA\">BoA</a><br>\n3. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Pete+Yorn\">Pete Yorn</a><br>\n4. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Sixpence+None+the+Richer\">Sixpence None the Richer</a><br>\n5. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Tiga\">Tiga</a><br>\n6. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Wire\">Wire</a><br>\n7. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Sam+Cooke\">Sam Cooke</a><br>\n8. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Shania+Twain\">Shania Twain</a><br>\n9. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Mandy+Moore\">Mandy Moore</a><br>\n10. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Daphne+Loves+Derby\">Daphne Loves Derby</a></p>\n\n\t<p>So there you have it. The late and lamented Barry White, leader of the <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Love+Unlimited+Orchestra\">Love Unlimited Orchestra</a>, melter of the hearts of housewives everywhere and crooner of the likes of <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Barry+White/_/Can't+Get+Enough+Of+Your+Love,+Babe\">Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe</a>, <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Barry+White/_/You're+The+First,+The+Last,+My+Everything\">You’re The First, The Last, My Everything</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Barry+White/_/It's+Ecstasy+When+You+Lay+Down+Next+To+Me\">It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me</a>, takes his rightful place on top of your Valentine’s Day chart.</p>\n\n\t<p>The runners-up span a vast range of tags — from <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Romantic\">Romantic</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Love\">Love</a> of course (Shania Twain, Mandy Moore and Sam Cooke), to <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Electroclash\">Electroclash</a> (Tiga) and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/Post-Punk\">Post-Punk</a> (Wire); what a diverse bunch you are.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n\t<p><em>For more technical details about this post, see <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/user/andrewclegg/journal/2011/02/14/47vhk2_technical_background_on_valentine's_day_data-mining_post\">Andrew’s journal</a></em>.<br>\n<em>Last.fm is hiring! If you like crunching big data, come and work for us as a <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/about/jobs#job_Data+Scientist\">Data Scientist</a>.</em></p>"
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"content" : "<p>I enjoyed this explanation of <a href=\"http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette\">how Google updates Chrome</a> faster than ever by cleverly only updating the elements that have changed. The problem is that software in executable form usually uses spots in memory that are hard-coded into it: Instead of saying “Take the number_of_miles_traveled and divide it by number_of_gallons_used…”, it says “Take the number stored at memory address #1876023…” (I’m obviously simplifying it.) If you insert or delete code from the program, the memory addresses will probably change, so that the program is now looking in the wrong spot for the numbers of miles traveled, and for instructions about what to do next. You can only hope that the crash will be fast and while in the presence of those who love you.</p>\n<p>So, I enjoyed the Chrome article for a few reasons. </p>\n<p>First, it was written clearly enough that even I could follow it, pretty much.</p>\n<p>Second, the technique they use is not only clever, it bounces between levels of abstraction. The compiled code that runs on your computer generally is at a low level of abstraction: What the programmer thinks of as a symbol (a variable) such as number_of_miles_traveled gets turned into a memory address. The Chrome update system reintroduces a useful level of abstraction.</p>\n<p>Third, I like what this says about the nature of information. I don’t think Courgette (the update system) counts as a compression algorithm, because it does not enable fewer bits to encode more information, but it does enable fewer bits to have more <em>effect</em>. Or maybe it does count as compression if we consider Chrome to be not a piece of software that runs on client computers but to be a system of clients connected to a central server that is spread out across both space and time. In either case, information is weird.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/02/Mobl\">InfoQ: Mobl — A New DSL for Creating HTML5 Mobile Applications</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Mobl is an external DSL targeted at creating cross-browser applications for mobile devices by compiling the code into HTML5, and it has been developed by Zef Hemel as part of his Ph.D. thesis in model-driven engineering and domain-specific languages, being inspired by the WebDSL project. InfoQ has discussed with Hemel in an attempt to find out more about this approach to writing mobile apps.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Cool. I also got an invitation to write a full article for InfoQ, so you can look forward to that, hopefully. Nice words in the comments as well:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>A beautiful example of what can be achieved when a small and coherent group of people (or just one mind) implement their vision starting with a clean slate – just capitalizing on existing experience and knowledge but not being encumbered by backwards compatibility.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It has been a good week for mobl.</p>\n\n<p><img src=\"http://zef.me/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/stats1.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"stats\" width=\"600\" height=\"242\"></p>\n<p></p> <p><a href=\"http://zef.me/?flattrss_redirect&id=3638&md5=55d6dd2148166495a5a3fff5c3079716\" title=\"Flattr\"><img src=\"http://zef.me/wp-content/plugins/flattr/img/flattr-badge-large.png\" alt=\"flattr this!\"></a></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zefme/~4/QugP9zgkckY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Congo, Then and Now",
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"content" : "<p><img title=\"Picture 2\" src=\"http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/picture-2.jpg?w=700&h=510\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"510\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><em>A father stares at the hands of his five year-old daughter, which were severed as a punishment for having harvested too little caoutchouc/rubber</em></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><em> </em>(This is an unnaturally long post for this blog, but even if you skim, please pay attention to last two paragraphs).</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The largest private estate ever ‘owned’ by man in history was perhaps a chunk of Africa as big as Europe acquired by the Belgian King in 1885. Between 1885 and 1908, Leopold II of the Belgians was the de facto owner — not merely an administrator, trustee, company director, colonial overlord or even king, but an owner in his own personal capacity — of over a million square miles of central Africa, in the form of Congo Free State, with its capital at Leopoldville.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Belgium never had interest in joining the so-called Scramble for Africa, but seeing a boom in demand for rubber (which Congo had plenty), Leopold decided to do the job himself. In 1876, he founded the <em>Association Internationale Africaine</em>, a strictly humanitarian organization with the highest ideals (at least in theory) to ‘carry to the interior of Africa new ideas of law, order, humanity and protection of the natives’, according the Daily Telegraph in 1884. In reality, however, its mission was, as Leopold himself confided privately, to carve out a slice of the “<em>magnifique gateau africain</em>“.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">From the very beginning, Congo had a certain mystique that appealed to outsiders. The popular magazines <em>Le Congo Illustre</em>, <em>Voyages et Traveaux des Belges dans l’Etat Independent du Congo</em> and <em>Etat Independent du Congo</em> provided the alluring pictures of sights and tribes. Absent from them, however, were shameful realities that Leopold’s greed had wrought: exploitation, mass-mutilations, state-sponsored slavery and murder, genocide.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">This reality was uncovered, almost by accident, by Edward Dene Morel, a shipping clerk who noticed that outgoing cargoes to Congo were predominantly arms and ammunition. Morel slowly gathered information from hundreds of eyewitnesses to discover the shocking truth. In his tenacious quest, Morel was aided by a group of missionaries who managed to photograph some atrocities. The most famous photo was perhaps the one depicted above, taken by the Rev. John Harris and his wife Alice, who returned from Congo in August 1905 to tour Britain with their shocking photographs, giving lectures condemning Leopold’s rule.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">The general public suddenly realized that this truly was <em>Heart of Darkness</em> evoked in the 1899 novel by Joseph Conrad. The Congo Issue was slowly becoming a media war; Leopold bribed newspapers to dismiss atrocities as ‘old wives’ tales’. When two distinguished travelers on a fact-finding mission went to Congo, they were shown so little that both came back with glowing tales. One of them, Viscount William Montmorres, published a gushing book about hardworking officials and cheerful natives. The other, the publisher Mary French Sheldon, fell in love with the captain of her steamboat, and later wrote in the <em>Times</em>, “I have witnessed more atrocities in London streets than…. in the Congo.” Frederick Starr, an anthropology professor at the University of Chicago, was hired to selectively use photos, and write an apologist text, “<em>The Truth about the Congo</em>” in 1907.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">However, Leopold finally lost the media war. In November, Congo was confiscated — or rather bought by millions of pounds — by the Belgium government from their king. The importance of news photographs in influencing public opinion was underlined in Mark Twain’s denunciation, “<em>King Leopold’s Soliloquy</em>“, where the aging king complains that the incorruptible Kodak camera was the only witness he had encountered in his long experience that he could not bribe. Fittingly, the book was illustrated with the Harrises’ photographs.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Even after Leopold and its independence the situation didn’t improve; we use coltan from (now Democratic Republic of) Congo in many things, including in the computer or phone you are currently using to read this article. For this lucrative reason, exploitation of Congo remains an undermentioned story in a world where Kodaks are incorruptible but journalists and photographers can be threatened or bribed away. A sobering note is that this is still happening more than a century after Morel founded the world’s first international human rights campaign and the world’s first NGO over Congo. In the last century, the only thing we have succeeded was in transferring Congo from a private property of Leopold into that of many corporations. Leopold would have been very pleased with the successes the latter are having in information blackout. </strong></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>This is not a shameless plug but rather a heartfelt proposal: I know some photographers and political pundits read this blog, and I request you to explore more about Congo. For the rest of you, I want you to repost/re-tweet this article. I believe the situation there deserves more attention. I have always wanted to go to Congo myself and report it myself, but at last, time and resources do not allow that. This post, however, is the best I can do.</strong></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"><em> — this post incorporates some text from </em><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Vertigo-Years-Europe-1900-1914/dp/0465011160\">The Vertigo Years</a><em>.</em></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right\"> </p>\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/politics/\">Politics</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/congo/\">Congo</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/genocide/\">genocide</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/4018/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=4018&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "my boundary issues w/ hypermedia",
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"content" : "<p>\n <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/zrimshots/1066270686/\" title=\"Irrigation\">\n <img src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1053/1066270686_37780ffef6_t.jpg\" align=\"right\">\n </a>\n i'll admit it: i have 'boundary issues.' lately i've been thinking about how hypermedia works between\n\tclients and servers and i'm seeing things in a different light. i see <i>boundaries</i>. now, sometimes seeing bright\n lines between things can be a problem; the lines can hinder understanding of the similiarities between things. but\n\tright now, i am working to clarify the boundaries in order to generate a <i>new</i> understanding (at least on my\n part) of how hypermedia works and how it can be leveraged in distributed network applications.\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n <b>NOTE:</b> as i have mentioned in \n <a href=\"http://amundsen.com/blog/archives/1087\" title=\"experimenting w/ RESTful clients\">recent</a> \n <a href=\"http://amundsen.com/blog/archives/1088\" title=\"on generic, specific, and custom media types\">posts</a>, \n i am spending time this year experimentating with hypermedia. what follows is a brain dump of my ideas on the value\n of boundaries in hypermedia messages. this may not be very coherent and there are still holes in the idea, \n but it <i>does</i> accurately represent the current state of my thinking on the matter.\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>first, a small digression...</p>\n\n<h4>Fielding's three architectural elements</h4>\n<p>\n one of the things i find interesting about Fielding's \n <a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm\" title=\"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures\">2001 dissertation</a> \n is his observation about the \n <a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/software_arch.htm#sec_1_2\" title=\"Elements\">elements of distributed network architecture</a>. in chapter one, he states that there\n are three elements that deserve attention:\n</p>\n<p><i>(start Fielding quote)</i></p>\n<dl>\n <dt>Components</dt>\n <dd>\n A component is an abstract unit of software instructions and internal state that provides a \n transformation of data via its interface.\n </dd>\n <dt>Connectors</dt>\n <dd>\n A connector is an abstract mechanism that mediates communication, coordination, or cooperation \n among components.\n </dd>\n <dt>Data</dt>\n <dd>\n A datum is an element of information that is transferred from a component, or received by a\n component, via a connector.\n </dd>\n</dl>\n<p><i>(end Fielding quote)</i></p>\n<p>\n The thing that strikes me here is that Fielding has expanded the traditional Component-Connector model by\n elevating Data to the architectural level. this was an important addition at the time. also, as i \n read it the first time, it showed me that - by rethinking a well-known conceptual model - new relationships, \n depdendencies, and interactions can be clearly observed.\n</p>\n<p>end digression.</p>\n\n<h4>my three hypermedia elements</h4>\n<p>\nwhile my own thinking is not to be treated on the same level as Fielding's PhD work, i, too, have been\nre-thinking my conceptual model of hypermedia in order to discover new elements and aspects. the current \nevidence of this attempt is my idea that hypermedia messages carry multiple levels of information.\nnot just the data, not just the \n<a href=\"http://amundsen.com/hypermedia/hfactor/\" title=\"Hypermedia Types\">application controls</a>, \nbut other information, too.\n</p>\n<p>\nas a result of my efforts to refresh my concept of hypermedia and it's role in distributed network applications,\ni've come to view the messages passed between client and server as containing several distinct sets\nof information. these are:\n</p>\n<dl>\n <dt>Protocol information</dt>\n <dd>\n <b>Protocol</b> information expresses the transfer protocol details understood by all participants\n in the network. these are usually application controls in the message that are mapped (via the\n media type documentation) to transfer protocol details\n (<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.2\" title=\"The A element\">HTML.A</a>\n tags map to \n <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec9.html#sec9.3\" title=\"GET\">HTTP.GET</a>, etc.).\n </dd>\n <dt>Domain information</dt>\n <dd>\n <b>Domain</b> information expresses the specific semantics understood by the target participants\n (usually the origin server and the client). these are usually expressed using the @rel attribute\n in HTML, Atom, etc. (e.g. rel=\"customer\", rel=\"edit\", rel=\"search\", etc.).\n </dd>\n <dt>State information</dt>\n <dd>\n <b>State</b> information expresses the transient state values for the particular request/response\n instance. these are usually expressed using pre-defined data elements within the media type (i.e.\n <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.4\" title=\"The INPUT element\">HTML.INPUT</a>) \n but may also be expressed in rendering elements (i.e. \n <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#h-10.2\" title=\"Unordered lists (UL), ordered lists (OL), and list items (LI)\">HTML.LI</a>, \n <a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/lists.html#h-10.3\" title=\"Definition lists: the DL, DT, and DD elements\">HTML.DT</a>, etc.). \n state information may even be expressed using \n <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2965\" title=\"HTTP State Management Mechanism\">Cookies</a> \n or other message meta-data.\n </dd>\n</dl>\n<p>\ni'll admit that last item (<b>State</b>) is particulary vague right now. today, i'm operating on the idea that it is\npossible to identify, understand, and manipulate <b>State</b> within a hypermedia message when\nthe media type is sufficiently defined to do so. i'm testing some ways to do this, but more at another time...\n</p>\n<h4>improving evolvability</h4>\n<p>\nwhy am i talking about this right now? because i think, by applying this boundary model to hypermedia messages,\nit is possible to improve the capabilities and flexibilty of Web clients|agents|applications.\n</p>\n<p>\nmy contention is, in order to improve evolvability on the Web, hypermedia types must first be sufficiently \ndesigned to allow for clearly-defined, variable protocol understanding. for example, the HTML.A\ntag does not <i>require</i> the href attribute use the \"http\" scheme. second, the hypermedia type must be \ndesigned in such a way as to keep domain-specific information clearly separated from the protocol details. \nagain HTML comes very close to this as it has a limited set of \n<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/types.html#type-links\" title=\"Link types\">@rel values defined</a> \nand most of them are very generic.\n</p>\n<p>in my mind, the key is to define and adopt a well-understood way to communicate domain-specific information. the\n<a href=\"http://gmpg.org/xmdp/\" title=\"Xhtml Meta Data Profiles\">XMDP</a> project is one such example. \n<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl\" title=\"Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1\">WSDL</a> and\n<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl/\" title=\"Web Application Description Language\">WADL</a> \nare similar attempts. i suspect a registered media type that pulls from these existing\nexamples will do the trick.\n</p>\n<p>\nfinally, the hypermedia type needs to be designed in such a way as to allow clients to easily locate and\nmanipulate state information within a message. this is handled well in the \n<a href=\"http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.13.4.1\" title=\"\">application/x-www-form-urlencoded</a> media type definition, but not taken into account in \nmost other media types. this lack of clear state semantics within messages is, i suspect,\none of the main reasons most automated agents on the web are limited to read-only activities. \n</p>\n<p>\njust how to go about describing this abstract \"state information\" is not yet clear to me.\nbut i have already begun to map out some of the details in a way that seems promising. essentially, \nby defining a set of elements that the clients and servers will be expected to share, a \"state profile\" \ncan emerge. this profile could be defined in a way that is understood by all parties. the details of how \nto manage and manipulate this stat can be left to each participant as a private implementation detail. \n</p>\n<h4>the missing link</h4>\n<p>\nso where is this leading? i contend that, with a clear set of <b>Protocol</b>, \n<b>Domain</b> and <b>State</b> boundaries, automated agents can be more powerful and flexible. \nin fact, with these three elements of hypermedia clarified and clearly deliniated in a message, \na fourth element - a missing link - can be brought into the picture: a hypermedia DSL.\n</p>\n<dl>\n <dt>Hypermedia DSL</dt>\n <dd>\n a <b>Hypermedia DSL</b> is domain-specific language designed to recognize the <b>State</b> elements \n within a message; understand the available <b>Domain</b> information, and be able to identify and \n execute the <b>Protocol</b> details provided.\n </dd>\n</dl>\n<p>\nIOW, when a hypermedia type has well-defined <b>Procotol</b>, <b>Domain</b>, and <b>State</b> information,\nit is possible to use a very simple turing-complete DSL to 'drive' an automated agent. the DSL might look\nsomething like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\n while(!done)\n {\n if(exsits(state.item='boots')\n {\n done=true;\n }\n if(exists(link.item='boots')\n {\n store(state.item)\n }\n if(exists(link.search))\n { \n actviate(link.search('boots'))\n }\n }\n</pre>\n<p>\neven though the above example is mere speculation, i will point out that the \n<a href=\"http://restfulie.caelum.com.br/\" title=\"Restfulie\">Restfulie</a> framework\nalready has a very compelling \"Web DSL.\" (much more capable then the weak example i offere here). i suspect it\nis only a matter of time before this kind of work spreads and becomes more ubiquitous.\n</p>\n<h4>am i correct?</h4>\n<p>\nin the past, i would make public assertions and <i>expect</i> them to be correct. not so much anymore\nnow, i am happy to expose my speculations and see where it leads. no matter the results, i'll have\nlearned something in the process. \n</p>\n<p>\nso i plod along. working through my 'boundary issues.' poking at the edges. attempting to make some\nheadway in my experiments.\n</p>\n<p>of course, once i have successfully delineated the boundaries, the most likely thing i'll do next is...</p>\n\n<h4>go beyond the boundaries</h4>"
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"title" : "In praise of … farting | Editorial",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/37646?ns=guardian&pageName=In+praise+of+*+farting+%7C+Editorial%3AArticle%3A1516987&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=Malawi+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Editorial&c7=11-Feb-09&c8=1516987&c9=Article&c10=Editorial&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Malawi's supposed ban on farting has attracted a huge amount of internet interest</p><p>Charles James Fox began his Essay Upon Wind with this disclaimer: \"I think I hear the Curious Reader exclaim, 'Heavens! That the brain of man should be set to work upon such cursed nonsense – such damned low stuff as farting; he ought to be ashamed of straining his dull faculties to such a nasty absurd subject.'\" Yet the brain of man remains as fascinated with the subject today as it was in Fox's time, to judge by the number of hits which internet items on Malawi's supposed ban on farting have attracted. One says \"supposed\" because that country's justice minister appears to have been speaking either in error or in jest when he said a provision to criminalise farting was included in a new law. He may even – who knows ? – have been trying to cover up an emission of his own by a sudden burst of chatter. That is one of the many techniques used to distract attention in such a situation. The most obvious is to look pointedly at another person, sometimes combining this with a batting motion of the hands. However, farting etiquette hardly ends there. If you are in audience with a royal person who breaks wind, for example, the subject apologises, not the prince. And the fart can be art, as was recounted by the Guardian's Paris correspondent Peter Lennon in a famous 1960s piece on the French music hall performer <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane\" title=\"\">Joseph Pujol</a>. Suppressing farts, Jonathan Swift believed, leads to congestion of the brain, adding: \"If in open Air it fires, In harmless Smoke its Force expires.\" Malawi ministers, take note.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/malawi\">Malawi</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fcommentisfree%2F2011%2Ffeb%2F09%2Fin-praise-of-farting\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "I arrived at the event at 5pm to find the organisers still arranging chairs and plugging in microphones. I was greeted warmly, but with curiosity. People wanted to know why I was so early, as the event didn’t start until 6.30. I pulled out my phone and scrolled through to the invitation I’d received to confirm the time. No, my invite definitely said 5pm. The organisers* laughed. I’d received the wrong invite. I'd received the <i>Ghanaian </i>invite not the <i>expat </i>invite. They used the two invite system because they'd come to believe that Ghanaians needed to be told the event started at 5 if there was any hope of it starting at the preferred time of 630.<br>\n<br>\nJokes abound about lateness – GMT stands for Ghana Man Time – and there is an assumption that nothing will ever start on time. And yet sometimes I wonder whether things don’t start on time because people are late, or because the attendees know that it won’t start on time.<br>\n<br>\nGiven that I was the only one there early, it is clear that everyone else knew that 5pm meant 630. So why not just say 630? Clearly time does matter. If you go to the trouble of asking people to come at 5 so they will be there at 630, then the start time is obviously important.<br>\n<br>\nWhy the need to be late? Is it that time really doesn’t matter? Is it a passive aggressive stance? A refusal to be held to account? Is it a way to show importance? Or is it just habit? Is it a reinforcement of a social norm - just because?<br>\n<br>\nLately I’ve been noticing a shift, of people refusing to maintain the pretence of timing. People are daring to suggest that if the meeting is to start at a particular time then that’s what should be on the invitation. But will it catch on? And what time should I plan on arriving in the meantime?<br>\n<br>\n<br>\n<i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">*For the record the organisers were black Ghanaians</span></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6847712185319140876-2265423508202257137?l=www.fionaleonard.net\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/YearInAmerica/~4/4uw7_J_Xw60\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://zimbabweinpictures.com/node/322\" title=\"The Fate of Vultures - Part Two [Vol.3 Edition 5]\" rel=\"nofollow\">ShareThis</a><p><strong><img style=\"float:left\" src=\"http://www.cosmoloan.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mobutu-sese-seko.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Mobutu\" title=\"Mobutu\" width=\"520\" height=\"339\">LAST WEEK</strong>, I looked at the Tunisian crisis and the lessons it held in how dictatorships operate. This week, I will attempt to examine how some fiction writers have tried to write narratives on tyrants. <span><a href=\"http://zimbabweinpictures.com/node/322\"><strong> Continue...</strong></a></span></p>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TVMc-Cm9BAI/AAAAAAAAClQ/TgME1OrWNUM/s1600/Marvin_Sease_the_real_deal_89.jpg\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:393px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TVMc-Cm9BAI/AAAAAAAAClQ/TgME1OrWNUM/s400/Marvin_Sease_the_real_deal_89.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://theloop21.com/society/nasty-he-wanted-be-remembering-marvin-sease\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">As Nasty as He Wanted to Be: Remembering Marvin Sease</span></a><br>by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21<br><br>Marvin Sease is not a name that will ever be included in a list of great Soul singers—and perhaps that is the way he might have wanted it. The singer, who died this week (Feb. 8) just shy of turning 65, will probably be most remembered as a cornerstone of the Southern Soul circuit for the past two decades.<br><br>Against all odds, his career didn’t take off until he was in his 40, and despite not getting any radio support for his music, he managed to become a star in a genre many thought had long been left for dead. Marvin Sease was a throwback to a time when Black performers could only be concerned with putting in a night’s work on stage and making sure that audiences had enough of a good time to come back again the next night.<br><br>Read the Full Essay @ <a href=\"http://theloop21.com/society/nasty-he-wanted-be-remembering-marvin-sease\"><span style=\"font-size:180%\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">theLoop21</span></span></a><br></div><br><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/BAITv1AFN0c\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"307\" width=\"370\"></iframe><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-3743679341768535949?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Gabon: The Invisible Revolt",
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"content" : "<p><span>Written by <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/julie-owono/\" title=\"View all posts by Julie Owono\">Julie Owono</a></span> \n</p><p>Protests in Gabon have failed to make a dent in the international news cycle as all eyes are still turned towards the Egyptian crisis. Mohamed Keita of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) was wondering if “<a href=\"http://cpj.org/blog/2011/02/in-gabon-fake-news-draws-real-censorship.php\">fake news wasn't drawing real censorship</a>” in Gabon, as he discussed the closing of the 1st private Gabonese TV channel, TV+. According to M Keita, the overreaction by the Ali Bongo's government is a sign of a deeper concern : what was considered ridiculous by Ali Bongo and his partisans before seems to have created subtantial political turmoil in this little Central African nation.<br>\nThe rhetorical strategy of Bongo's camp seems to consist of the total denyial of the opposition party.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000557953339\">Sekou Oumar Doumbia</a>, a Bongo partisan, writes on Ali Bongo's <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/alibongoondimba\">Facebook page</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Continuez de travailler et laissez les ridicules rêver.”</p></blockquote>\n<div>“Keep on working and let the ridiculous people dream on”</div>\n<p>Nevertheless, the situation appears more complicated: In the last five days, the country has witnessed excivil unrest. But <a href=\"http://www.iq4news.com/\">IQ4New</a>s, a columnist style magazine website dedicated to African related issues, <a href=\"http://www.iq4news.com/iq4news/gabon-forgotten-protesters\">noticed</a> that Protests in Gabon “have gone largely unnoticed by the media because of the focus on Egypt.”</p>\n<p><strong>Mass Protests in Libreville and the UNDP building attack</strong></p>\n<p>Thanks to locally based activists, there has a been a coverage of the events, and the latter was advertised through different social networks.</p>\n<p>Last saturday a demonstration was organised at Carrefour Rio in Libreville, the Capital city. More than 2000 Mba Obame's partisans went to protest against Ali Bongo's government and faced the public forces.<br>\n<iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"510\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/P7T-QEToEkY\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<div style=\"width:385px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-192476\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/02/04/gabon-the-invisible-revolt/manifrio/\"><img title=\"manifrio\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/manifrio-375x250.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"250\"></a><p>Demonsration, Carrefour Rio in LIbreville January 29th 2011</p></div>\n<p>This demonstration was followed by violent clashes between Mba Obame's partisans and Ali Bongo's Police forces, who were trapped by groups of demonstrators in slums near the place where the demonstration started.<br>\n<iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"640\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/CB2OMakqlps\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe></p>\n<p>The same day, Military forces were ordained to attack the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP) building in Libreville, where Mba Obame and his Government sought asylum. Camarade, a Gabonese activist, posted on his <a href=\"http://www.lepost.fr/article/2011/01/29/2387496_violences-inhumaines-des-forces-armees-pro-ali-bongo-sur-les-populations-civiles-au-gabon-images-des-victimes-de-l-attaque-du-pnud-et-texte.html\">blog</a> (fr) pictures showing some victims of the attack:</p>\n<div style=\"width:334px\"><img src=\"http://medias.lepost.fr/ill/2011/01/29/h-20-2387493-1296317466.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"324\" height=\"500\"><p>Mba Obame's Partisan after UNDP attack 29th January 2011-(c) Camarade on LePost</p></div>\n<p>Voice of the Gabonese people (La voix du Peuple Gabonais LVDPG) reports on its <a href=\"http://www.lvdpg.org/Politique_r6.html?start=14\">website</a> (fr) that 2000 other persons demonstrated in <a href=\"http://www.lvdpg.org/Les-Nouvelles-de-la-Revolution-Gabonaise-ca-bouge-a-BITAM-Woleu-Ntem-en-ce-moment-_a8032.html\">Bitam</a> (fr), in the North of the country, on Monday 31st January. On the same site, it is said that Riots occured in many <a href=\"http://www.lvdpg.org/Les-dernieres-Nouvelles-de-la-Revolution-Gabonaise-ca-pete-a-Nkembo-Gare-routiere-Libreville-en-ce-moment_a8081.html\">districts</a> (fr) of Libreville on 2nd February. In Atong Abè, one Policeman was wounded.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/franklinishere\">Franklin</a> explains on Twitter :</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Gabon:Crise politique:Soulèvements populaires en cours; quartiers pauvres de Nkembo, Cocotiers, Gare-routière, Atong Abè. Un blessé grave.”</p></blockquote>\n<div>“Gabon: Political crisis: Uprising of the people happening now; poor districts of Nkembo, Cocotiers, Gare-Routière, Atong Abè. One serious wounded.”</div>\n<div style=\"width:385px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-192512\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/02/04/gabon-the-invisible-revolt/meyo-kye-le-2-fev/\"><img title=\"Meyo-Kye le 2 fev\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Meyo-Kye-le-2-fev-375x281.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"281\"></a><p>Meyo-Kye, North Gabon, 2nd February 2011</p></div>\n<div>“In Tunisia, Ben ALi left. In Gabon, Ali Ben Out.”</div>\n<div style=\"width:385px\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-192499\" href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2011/02/04/gabon-the-invisible-revolt/atong-abe-mercredi-2-fev/\"><img title=\"Atong Abe Mercredi 2 fev\" src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Atong-Abe-Mercredi-2-fev-375x250.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"375\" height=\"250\"></a><p>Cars burnt in Atong Abè, Libreville, after riots on 2nd February</p></div>\n<p><strong>Wave of arrest of sympathisers and executives</strong></p>\n<p>A dozen of executives ans sympathisers of the National Union (NU), main opposition party, have been arrested during the last five days. <a href=\"http://koaci.com/\">Koaci.com</a> published a Press release by President of NU:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“A 5 heures du matin plusieurs compatriotes ont été arrêtés, brutalisés et transférés au camp Aïssa (caserne du Bataillon des parachutistes gabonais), puis au camp de gendarmerie de Gros-Bouquet, avant d’être finalement gardés à vue, à partir du 28 janvier, dans les sous-sols de la Direction générale des Recherches de la Gendarmerie Nationale et ce, au mépris de la loi qui interdit toute garde à vue au-delà de 72h.”</p></blockquote>\n<div>“5 am several comrades were arrested, brutalised, and transferred to the Aïssa camp ( Barrack of the Gabonese Paratroopers' battalion), then to the Gros-Bouquet Police Station's camp, before being placed in custody, from 28th January, in the cellar of the Research General Direction of the National Gendarmerie. Doing this they violated the law which forbidds above 72 hours custody.”</div>\n<p>The Putative Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Ben Moubamba, <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/BBMoubamba/status/33130904327036928\">tweeted</a> this morning about the kidnapping of the son of a Gabonese MP, Alexis Bengone:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Organized Repression & Brutality in Gabon. Former Prime minister' Son kidnapped by hooded men. <a title=\"#revogab\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23revogab\">#revogab</a><a title=\"#egypt\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23egypt\">#egypt</a> <a title=\"#tunisia\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23tunisia\">#tunisia</a> <a title=\"#civ2010\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23civ2010\">#civ2010</a>“</p></blockquote>\n<p>Some assume that his arrest is related to his online activism. He manages the “<a href=\"http://gabao2009.ning.com/\">Gabao Res Publica</a>” social network, and might have tried to raise youth with this <a href=\"http://gabao2009.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gabon-une-generation-en-quete\">article</a>: “Gabon: A generation in quest of Democratic sense”.</p>"
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"content" : "She meant to tell me yesterday that I would be losing some privileges.<br>I am now being told on the way out the door, so I can brood<br>on the ramifications as I walk the mile or so along the placid path<br>beside the pond home to geese and turtles leading to my workplace.<br>The ramifications, if extrapolated to the realm of kings or presidents,<br>might not appear great; but for proletariat riff-raff such as I, it is<br>something between ego-bludgeoning and ramrod down the throat.<br>Not that leaving beard hairs on the bathroom counter or losing <br>toothpaste caps or dropping shoes in the hall to trip on or neglecting <br>to listen to her while saying yes dear no dear I don’t think so dear <br>or putting milk in the cupboard and the cereal box in the refrigerator <br>or pulling all sheets to my side every night or forgetting to turn off<br>my side of the heating blanket in the morning or not cleaning <br>the bathtub out after use or cleaning the bathtub out poorly after use<br>or leaving papers strewn about the house or writing reminder notes<br>in indelible ink on small appliances or buying expensive wine<br>when she can’t drink wine or buying expensive wine and finishing<br>the bottle in one night or buying expensive jeans and wearing <br>them to work and spilling sulfuric acid on them or inviting guests<br>over and forgetting to tell her I’m inviting guests over until five<br>minutes before the first of six consecutive doorbell rings−<br>not that the sum total of all these individual infractions doesn’t add <br>up to some kind of palpable misdemeanor, I will openly admit.<br>But it has taken me three decades to polish this persona, give it<br>the flare and eccentricity it deserves, individuality, moxie,<br>pizazz, the brashness. It would be too tragic to give all that up <br>now, too much work. I can live without privileges. <br><br><br>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/671943706633921975-6373945604081932557?l=edwardnudelman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "How Ignorance dooms Autocracy",
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"content" : "<table border=\"1\"><tbody><tr><th>Tier</th><th>Type of knowledge</th><th>Recommended actions</th><th>System</th><th>Compatible with autocracy?</th></tr><tr><td width=\"65\" valign=\"top\">(1)</td><td width=\"135\" valign=\"top\">Certainty (known knowns)</td><td width=\"110\" valign=\"top\">Just do it</td><td width=\"109\" valign=\"top\">Administration</td><td width=\"96\" valign=\"top\">Yes</td></tr><tr><td width=\"65\" valign=\"top\">(2)</td><td width=\"135\" valign=\"top\">Probability (known unknowns)</td><td width=\"110\" valign=\"top\">Hypothesis testing</td><td width=\"109\" valign=\"top\">Academic freedom</td><td width=\"96\" valign=\"top\">Temporarily Yes, eventually No</td></tr><tr><td width=\"65\" valign=\"top\">(3)</td><td width=\"135\" valign=\"top\">Ignorance (unknown unknowns)</td><td width=\"110\" valign=\"top\">Decentralized feedback and accountability</td><td width=\"109\" valign=\"top\">Individual liberty</td><td width=\"96\" valign=\"top\">No</td></tr></tbody></table><p>As the Egypt crisis drags on, the issue of autocracy vs. democracy in development gets new life. One of the classic arguments against autocracy is that it can’t cope with uncertainty, not to mention ignorance.</p><p>Autocrats defend themselves by claiming they live in a word of certainty, where they can solve problems with known solutions (Tier 1 in the above table) through sheer administrative effort.</p><p>If the world is really more in Tier 2, where academic freedom is necessary to test and reject hypotheses, then autocrats sometimes try to carve out the space for it, while restricting other kinds of freedom. This can sometimes succeed for a while, but a House Divided against itself cannot stand forever — it will eventually revert to no freedoms or all freedoms.</p><p>Much of the development problem is really in Tier 3, where you don’t even know the probabilities of solutions to problems working. Then you need entrepreneurs for business, inventers for technology, and political reformers for institutions, all using a trial and error method where they are accountable to positive and negative feedback. In other words, you need unhindered democracy and markets to support continuing innovation for development to keep proceeding to the highest levels.</p><p>So, for example, the Soviet system <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">(not to mention the MVP)</span> tried to make a system work in Tiers 2 and 3, when it could only possibly work in Tier 1. For a while it sort of worked, as Tier 2 science facilitated imitation of technology invented in the Tier 3 West. But eventually Tier 2 scientists became dissidents, Lysenkoism corrupted Tier 2 anyway, and the system eventually collapsed altogether from the lack of innovation that was only possible in Tier 3. Would anyone like to predict a similar long-run fate for {insert NAME of temporarily successful autocracy here}?</p><p>As usual, we will give the economist who understood all this the best the last word:</p><blockquote><p>All institutions of freedom are adaptations to this fundamental fact of ignorance…certainty we cannot achieve in human affairs. (FA Hayek)</p></blockquote>"
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"title" : "500 kilos of gold, a war criminal and Gulfstream jet",
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"content" : "It is a plot made in Hollywood - last Thursday, a Gulfstream jet arrived at the airport in Goma with two Nigerians, a Frenchman and an American on board. According to local sources, the plane was immediately received by guards loyal to ICC-indictee Gen. Bosco Ntaganda. These soldiers offloaded some boxes and headed towards town. According to one version of the events, the Republican guard followed in pursuit but were told to step down when they saw the boxes were headed towards Bosco's residence. The crew was the arrested by Congolese intelligence officials, the engines of the aircraft still on.<br><br>So what was in the boxes? According to the governor of North Kivu Julien Paluku, $6,8 million. The Congolese authorities first suggested that Bosco might be behind it, but the head of intelligence for Amani Leo, Col. Wilson Nsengiyumva (also an ex-CNDP officer), said that Bosco had actually led the sting operation against unnamed Congolese businessmen who \"were trying to steal the country's riches.\" According to other sources, however, Bosco was trying to sell up to 500 kilos of gold - that would be worth around $20 million on the international market if it is decent quality.<br><br>Where would Bosco get the gold from? It is true that many of his soldiers control mining areas, but the gold trade usually goes through Bukavu or Butembo, not Goma. And 500 kilos would be a huge amount, an eighth of the estimated gold trade in the Kivus, although those estimates are very approximate given the underground nature of that trade.<br><br>And who are his presumed business partners? The press suggests that they are American Edouard Carlos St. Mary III, Nigerians Adeola Alexander Ehinmola and Mukaila Aderemi Lawal, and French citizen Franck Stephane M’Bemba.<br><br>Interesting fact: an Arizona court <a href=\"http://images.edocket.azcc.gov/docketpdf/0000119273.pdf\">ruled</a> last year that two local businessmen were guilty of defrauding investors for over $640,000 in a pyramid scheme they had set up with a certain Edward Carlos St. Mary who runs a company called <a href=\"http://www.axiomtradingcompany.com/images/about-us2_1.jpg\">Axiom</a>. (The court document suggests that the two convicted men had sued Mr. St. Mary, but do not mention the outcome of that case.) The investment? Buying diamonds. The company's motto was \"buy cheap, sell high.\" Apparently it didn't work out this time.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1209670742820403516-2031621720468996455?l=congosiasa.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5427526616/\" title=\"Accra by night by Bibinyiba, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5214/5427526616_5d6c38376f_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Accra by night\"></a><br>Squeaky, overworked beds take over<br>After the lights go to sleep <br>And a symphony of snores crescendoes<br>From the chambers of the uninspired.<br><br>Everybody and everything that goes<br>Back and forth and back and forth<br>finally sweats to a halt; even if<br>For just a few hours till they <br>regain enough energy to start<br>Going back and forth and back and forth<br>All over this beautiful city again.<br><br>The mask we wear in the morning <br>Is not the one we greet Night with.<br>If you still think her softest spot<br>Is her heart, you haven’t found good use <br>For your blessed fingers yet. <br>Proper probing yields great results.<br><br>Accra, you’re a beautiful place to know…<br>At night.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-5770132495123950835?l=nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Watch Will Self talking about Jonathan Swift (and Martin Amis on Henry Fielding) in BBC4′s Birth of the British Novel <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1p\">here</a>. Self’s contribution appears at about the 16-minute mark.</p>"
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"title" : "Will the West please stop preaching “Chinese colonialism” to Africans!",
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"content" : "The idea that former Western colonial powers should brazenly criticise and promote fear mongering about China’s supposed “colonisation” of Africa is surely ironic. Some of the reasons given by critics of the so called Chinese invasion are just as scurrilous. Some loath the Chinese policy of “non-interference” in countries they deal with which the West claims props [...]"
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"title" : "From the noisy phase to the quiet phase",
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"content" : "Is it meaningful to say that the Egyptian revolution is calming down, or petering out? I ask because a common flaw of the reporting on it has been to treat the basic dynamics of mobilisation as if they were signs of huge political shifts behind the curtain. It's obviously true that both revolutionaries and reactionaries need to sleep and eat. When the revolutionaries want to, they have no great difficulty in putting over a million people on the streets in Cairo and probably a bit more again elsewhere in Egypt. These are peak efforts. Idiot management-speakers like to talk about maintaining peak performance, but they are idiots: the word peak implies a supreme effort that cannot be maintained continuously. People have to eat and sleep, they have families, they have jobs, although many millions of Egyptians have been taking part in the revolution silently by essentially going on strike. Even revolutionaries have to maintain their barricades, update their blogs, and hold meetings to decide what to do next.<br><br>The result of this is that there's been a sort of media cycle - one day the papers are full of pictures from the latest day of rage, the next it's all about people grandly speculating on what happens next, and the regime's spokesmen explaining how they intend to preserve the substance of the regime. Perhaps they talk about that on the other days, but nobody is listening. Or perhaps they believe it, when they wake up and hear that there are only tens of thousands of rebels in Tahrir Square rather than hundreds of thousands. Then, the next callout of the demonstrators resets the clock again.<br><br>Today, we seem to be in one of the ebb-tide phases. So it's a good moment for a bit of speculating. What is important, in these terms, is that the government doesn't seem to be regaining much ground in between waves of protest. Instead, there seems to be a ratchet in operation - each wave extracts a new concession. Mubarak sacked his government. And appointed a vice president. Then he promised not to stand again. Then talks were opened with the opposition. Then the military accepted to talk directly with the opposition, independently. Then the NDP hierarchy was purged. Then Suleiman renounced becoming president himself. And the regime's own peak effort - Wednesday's thug raid - was dramatic and violent at the time, but with hindsight was nowhere near enough in terms of numbers to change anything. Arguably, it wrecked the government's remaining legitimacy and only demonstrated its lack of mass support.<br><br>The fear is that this is no ratchet, but a sort of retreat into the Russian hinterland, a trap. On the other hand, it's a common pattern in the end of dictatorship, a sort of political Cheyne-Stokes breathing. You may think you are saving the structural realities of power and giving away the forms, but how will those realities stand up without the Emergency Law and the special constitutional amendments and the practice of having political prisoners and the ban on opposition parties and the censorship of the press? After all, there must be a reason, rooted in the structural realities of power, why you wanted them in the first place. If owning hotels was enough to sustain a tyranny, there'd be no <em>need</em> for Central Security or private thugs on camels or sententious TV broadcasts or bulk SMS messages with faked originating numbers.<br><br>Revolutions come with years, like New Order remixes used to. Prague '89. Paris '68. Probably the most relevant ones now are the Polish ones - Solidarity feat. Jaruzelski '81 and '89. The first one was a lot like what everyone fears for Egypt and also quite a lot like the official preferences of our governments. There was violence, but not as much as there could have been, and a safe military dictator won. He, in turn, turned to a religious and conservative pseudo-opposition to give his rule some foundation. The second was more optimistic but less spectacular. In 1989, the end of communism in Poland involved far more negotiating than it did street-fighting, and it involved putting up with Jaruzelski sticking around for the rest of his term as a sop to the powers that be, or rather the powers that were.<br><br>Egypt is already some way beyond 1981 - there is something like a round table, and the officially designated military strongman is getting very close to the exit, having disclaimed supreme power for himself. Probably the communists of 1989 thought they were cunningly playing for time. Suleiman has a far more ruthless reputation, though; the big issue is whether he can be trusted or better, constrained from trying to either crush the opposition between here and whenever the election date is set or else to start a civil war like the Algerian generals of 1991.<br><br>One argument has been that there would be a fake revolution, leaving the security state in charge, <a href=\"http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2011/01/a-provisional-guess-at-a-temporary-endgame.html\">as Jamie Kenny put it</a>. I think this is now out of date. Similarly, although they are now talking to the Muslim Brotherhood, I think <a href=\"http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/da-brothers-gonna-work-it-out/\">my own prediction</a> is also out of date. We're past the point where a few Brothers in the government would convince anyone. In fact, Jamie and I saw our predictions first validated and then rendered irrelevant within a week.<br><br>Looking ahead, it's worth remembering that 1989 took <em>time</em> to deliver. After the original moment of success, there was a long and uncertain haul of getting rid of specific individual bastards, changing laws, moving editors around the State TV and inspectors around the police force. I think we're now into this phase. Some people seem to <a href=\"http://www.sandmonkey.org/2011/02/06/the-way-forward/\">agree</a>, from very different points on the <a href=\"http://www.arabawy.org/2011/02/07/workers-revolution/\">spectrum</a>. Changing the union confederation and the university professors' club is very much to the point, whether you're thinking 1989 and maintaining enough forward momentum to protect the revolution or 1917 and the second <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#!/3arabawy/status/34672284757135360\">wave</a>. <br><br><blockquote><em>Take it easy ya Ahmad. Every revolution in history always has this carnival-like side. The insurrection will come later. #Jan25</em></blockquote><br><br>I think I'd rather have that man on my side.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-5990340100620048623?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The 5 Best Toys of All Time",
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:670px\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/evelynishere/3803391866/sizes/l/in/photostream/\"><img title=\"Treasure box\" src=\"http://www.wired.com/geekdad/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/toys.jpg\" alt=\"pile of toys\" width=\"660\" height=\"400\"></a><p>"Treasure Box" photo by Flickr user Evelyn Giggles. Used under Creative Commons License.</p></div>\n<p>Here at GeekDad we review a lot of products—books, toys, gadgets, software—and I know it’s impossible for most parents to actually afford all of the cool stuff that gets written up. Heck, most of us can’t afford it either, and we’re envious of the person who scored a review copy of a cool board game or awesome gizmo. (Disclosure: that person is probably me.) So while we love telling you about all the cool stuff that’s out there, I understand that as parents we all have limited budgets and we sometimes need help narrowing down our wishlists.</p>\n<p>So to help you out, I’ve worked really hard to narrow down this list to five items that no kid should be without. All five should fit easily within any budget, and are appropriate for a wide age range so you get the most play out of each one. These are time-tested and kid-approved! And as a bonus, these five can be combined for extra-super-happy-fun-time.</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<div style=\"width:650px\"><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/chefranden/2736284243/sizes/l/in/photostream/\"><img title=\"A Gripping Scene\" src=\"http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3027/2736284243_36af03324c_z.jpg\" alt=\""A Gripping Scene" by Flickr user chefranden. Used with Creative Commons license.\" width=\"640\" height=\"401\"></a><p>"A Gripping Scene" from Flickr user chefranden. Used under Creative Commons License.</p></div>\n<p><strong>1. Stick</strong></p>\n<p>What’s brown and sticky? A Stick.</p>\n<p>This versatile toy is a real classic — chances are your great-great-grandparents played with one, and your kids have probably discovered it for themselves as well. It’s a required ingredient for Stickball, of course, but it’s so much more. Stick works really well as a poker, digger and reach-extender. It can also be combined with many other toys (both from this list and otherwise) to perform even more functions.</p>\n<p>Stick comes in an almost bewildering variety of sizes and shapes, but you can amass a whole collection without too much of an investment. You may want to avoid the smallest sizes—I’ve found that they break easily and are impossible to repair. Talk about planned obsolescence. But at least the classic wooden version is biodegradable so you don’t have to feel so bad about pitching them into your yard waste or just using them for kindling. Larger, multi-tipped Sticks are particularly useful as snowman arms. (Note: requires Snow, which is not included and may not be available in Florida.)</p>\n<p>As with most things these days, there are higher-end models of Sticks if you’re a big spender, from the smoothly-sanded wooden models (which are more uniformly straight than the classic model) to more durable materials such as plastic or even metal. But for most kids the classic model should do fine. My own kids have several Sticks (but are always eager to pick up a couple more when we find them).</p>\n<p>One warning: the Stick can also be used as a sword or club, so parents who avoid toy weapons might want to steer clear of the larger models. (On the other hand, many experts agree that creative children will just find something else to substitute for Stick, so this may be somewhat unavoidable.)</p>\n<p>Although she is not generally known as a toy expert, Antoinette Portis has written this <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061123250?ie=UTF8&tag=gee04a-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0061123250\">helpful user manual</a> for those needing some assistance in using their Stick.</p>\n<p><strong>Wired:</strong> Finally, something that <em>does</em> grow on trees.</p>\n<p><strong>Tired:</strong> You could put someone’s eye out.</p>\n<p><em>Disclosure: I have received several samples of Sticks from one manufacturer for review.</em></p>"
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"title" : "CLR James and the idea of an African revolution",
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"content" : "<p>Events in Tunisia and Egypt have brought back the issue of revolution to international debate. Already I can feel my book, which was once called <em>The African Revolution</em> and has since become <em>Africa’s Urban Revolution</em>, moving with the times. It is too early to say whether North Africa’s “revolutions” will change the world as profoundly as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of apartheid in 1989-90. A counter-revolution may yet succeed in either or both places. But the challenge posed by popular mobilizations to autocratic regimes is already an irreversible fact.</p>\n<p>I vividly recall watching the events in Tiananmen Square on TV with an old West Indian revolutionary in his cramped Brixton bedsit. His name was C.L.R. James, it was April 1989 and he died the next month aged 88. Who can forget the Chinese man who stopped a line of tanks by running in front of them? We both felt that this was a historical turning point, as did the whole world. James thought that the Chinese government would probably succeed in putting down the student rebellion; but their protest coincided with an international meeting to which the Soviet leader, Gorbachev, came and CLR told me that Eastern Europe could never be held by the Soviet Union after this. It took a bit more than half a year for the East Germans to bring down the Wall.<span></span></p>\n<p>James had long believed that there were only two world revolutions left — the second Russian revolution and the second American revolution. He embraced Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement as a harbinger of the first, but his keen sense of unfolding history saw Tiananmen Square as the tipping point. He didn’t live to see his prophecy realised. Perhaps radical regime change in the US would be the last world revolution, since world society as a whole is by now an American fiefdom.</p>\n<p>C.L.R. James left his native Trinidad for London in 1932 as a sports writer with some published short fiction and a novel manuscript in his luggage. He was 31 years old and, after loitering in Bloomsbury for a while, he joined the famous cricketer, Learie Constantine, in Nelson, Lancashire, then known locally as ‘Little Moscow’ for its working class activism. There he read his first example of Marxist literature, Trostsky’s <em>History of the Russian Revolution</em>, before returning to London. By the time he left for the United States in 1938, he had become one of the leading Trotskyite spokesmen in Britain, the first black Caribbean writer to publish a novel there (<em>Minty Alley</em>), he got out a couple of pieces on West Indian self-government, wrote the first history of the Communist International (<em>World Revolution</em>), was employed by the <em>Manchester Guardian</em> as a cricket reporter, founded the panafricanist International Africa Service Bureau with his childhood friend George Padmore, involving also Jomo Kenyatta and later Kwame Nkrumah, wrote a London play with Paul Robeson as Toussaint L’Ouverture and published the definitive history of the Haitan revolution (<em>The Black Jacobins</em>) as well as a short history of black struggles for emancipation on both sides of the Atlantic over the previous 150 years (<em>History of Negro Revolt</em>).</p>\n<p>According to James, the succesful Haitian slave revolt of 1791-1804 deserved to be seen as being equal in historical significance to the American and French revolutions; yet it had been almost buried from view. The slaves were in some ways the first moderns, uprooted from their origins and made to work in the most advanced form of industrial capitalism of the day, the sugar plantations of the French colony Saint-Domingue, under a system of violent racial domination. Having beaten the French, they fought off armies sent by the world’s great powers, just as Trotsky had to after the revolution of 1917. The British lost an army of 60,000 men in Haiti and the war against Napoleon was set back five years while they raised another one. This was also the heyday of the international movement to abolish slavery. The British prime minister, William Pitt, was persuaded by events in Haiti, coming so soon after American independence, to abolish the slave trade and turn the focus of the British empire from the New World to India.</p>\n<p>James’s writing was not simply or even mainly an exercise in black pride. <em>The Black Jacobins</em> ended with reflections on the relevance of the Haitian revolution for the contemporary struggle for African independence from colonial rule. An impressive coalition had grown up in the first half of the twentieth century calling itself Panafricanism and drawing on all parts of the African continent, as well as the European homelands of colonial empire and the New World African diaspora created by the Atlantic slave trade. As a nationalist movement aiming to restore control of African land to Africans and fueled by the dream of a return from the New World, Panafricanism brought together more people from different places and languages than any other at the time or since. James placed himself squarely within this movement. He liked to say “I had a fair wind at my back, the anti-colonial movement”.</p>\n<p>In the 1930s, very few people, whether European or African, believed that the colonial powers could be forced to leave soon. James’s political associates on the far left in Europe told him that African independence could only be granted by a successful workers’ revolution in the homelands of empire. He disagreed. What he took from the Haitian revolution was the view that racial domination, when combined with exposure to advanced forms of industrial capitalism, made for a potent revolutionary mixture. In the <em>History of Negro Revolt</em> he set out to describe and analyze the uprisings of Africans and people of African descent on both sides of the Atlantic since the Haitian revolution. He showed that the main theatre of action in the 19th century was the New World, but for the last half century Africa had become the principal focus of conflict. He saw that the most promising movements were in the principal concentrations of industry — the South African gold mines, the dock workers in the Gold Coast, the Abba women’s riots in Eastern Nigeria over oil palm exports. Capitalist exploitation + racial inequality = revolution…and sooner than you think! </p>\n<p>Well, the Second World War helped, but James was right and almost everyone else was wrong. The collapse of European empire in Africa lagged by only a decade behind its demise in Asia. It took a bit longer to displace the Portuguese and the Southern white settlers, but independence from British and French rule was an inescapable fact within two decades of James making his prediction. Like his Martinican counterpart in the Panafricanist movement, Frantz Fanon, James was quickly disillusioned with the path that African independence took, writing a highly critical account of his friend, Kwame Nkrumah’s turn towards nationalism (<em>Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution</em>, compare the long central chapter on “the pitfalls of national consciousness” In Fanon’s <em>The Wretched of the Earth</em>).</p>\n<p>Egypt plays a pivotal role in all this when seen in a longer-term perspective. Africa is both a continental territory and the home of a race, the place where black people come from. And Eqypt’s relationship to a combination of both is highly contested. North Africa was part of the urban revolution that launched agrarian civilization five millennia ago, whereas most of the rest of Africa was not. My argument here is that this difference has been narrowed by the rapid urbanization of Africa south of the Sahara in the 20th century, leading to the installation there of variants of the Old Regime of preindustrial civilization. But then the whole attempt to separate Black Africa from Egypt and the Mediterranean littoral is an extension of the imperialist cultural logic which divided Western Europe from its neighbours by severing ancient Greece from its historical, geographical and cultural links with the Eastern Mediterranean, including crucially Egypt (see Martin Bernal’s <em>Black Athena</em>). </p>\n<p>Many Westerners in the 18th and 19th centuries believed that Eqypt was the original source of world civilization and the Afrocentrics (see Cheikh Anta Diop <em>The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality</em>) argue that Eqypt itself should be seen as part of black African civilization. Certainly, if the Sahara seems an obstacle to movement between the Mediterranean and West Africa, the same cannot be said of the East, where the Nile, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean coast have always linked Egypt with the peoples of Sudan, Ethiopia and East Africa and the wide savannah links East and West Africa. Egypt has long been a significant member of organizations defined by the African continent, ranging from the African Union to World Cup football. If Nasser made Egypt the main centre of Panarabism and the Arab-Israeli wars, followed by latterday demonization of Islam in the West (“the clash of civilizations”), have reinforced that perceived alignment, the importance of the North African revolutions for developments in Africa more generally should not be underestimated.</p>\n<p>CLR James studied revolutions in history because he wanted to help make them. Right up to his death, he devoured biographies of the leading figures of the French revolution such as Danton. He used to say that in any country you will only find a handful of specialists in politics (including revolutionaries like him), maybe a few tens of thousands. These people dream about change and make plans for change all the time. Most people just want to keep what they have and that is a good thing, he said; life would be impossible without this inherent human conservatism. But “the revolution comes like a thief in the night” (Marx) when no-one is expecting it. Events move very quickly and many people soon discover that there is no going back, they may have already lost what they had or at least can no longer count on the status quo ante. Then something remarkable happens, he said: you may have seen a guy with an umbrella at the bus stop for years; he keeps his head down and says nothing; but now he turns up as a leading organizer of a street committee. Revolution revolutionizes people and everything becomes radically simplified at least for a time: freedom, dignity, democracy as universally shared goals, universal solidarity as a norm. At this time professional revolutionaries may have their uses.</p>\n<p>In my next post, I will explore the specific implications of the North African revolutions for Africa. This may help me to define a number of senses that I bring to using the term “African revolution”.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=CLR+James+and+the+idea+of+an+African+revolution+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F6y8zrez\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=CLR+James+and+the+idea+of+an+African+revolution+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F6y8zrez\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"title" : "Zanu PF activates its brutal campaign",
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"content" : "<div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sokwanele.com%2Fthisiszimbabwe%2Farchives%2F6313\"><br>\n\t\t\t\t<img src=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sokwanele.com%2Fthisiszimbabwe%2Farchives%2F6313&source=sokwanele&style=normal&service=bit.ly&b=2\" height=\"61\" width=\"50\"><br>\n\t\t\t</a>\n\t\t</div>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/crisiscoalition_logo_250.gif\" rel=\"lightbox[6313]\"><img title=\"Crisis Coalition in Zimbabwe\" src=\"http://www.sokwanele.com/thisiszimbabwe/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/crisiscoalition_logo_250.gif\" alt=\"Crisis Coalition in Zimbabwe - logo\" width=\"250\" height=\"148\"></a><em>Via Press Release:</em> In preparation for the ZANU PF’s election campaign, Madzibaba Godfrey Nzira, a self proclaimed prophet and Robert Mugabe adherent who in 2003 was jailed for 32 years on seven counts of rape walked out of prison a free man last week thanks to a controversial presidential pardon from President Mugabe. And just a week after being pardoned by Mugabe, the convicted serial rapist has been deployed to the Muzarabani District, marking the start of a national campaign to coerce members of the Apostolic Sect as well as other churches to support Mugabe and ZANU PF ahead of possible elections.</p>\n<p>In 2002 Madzibaba Nzira hit the campaign path in support of Mugabe’s presidential bid. That year Nzira claimed Mugabe was a “divinely appointed king of Zimbabwe and no man should dare challenge his office.” His release by Mugabe nearly seven years after being jailed has raised suspicion that the ZANU PF leader is bidding to hunt for support from Nzira’s followers ahead of possible elections. <span></span>As such, there is everything wrong with Mugabe setting out Nzira the rapist. His freedom appears to be based upon his paying the piper, in this respect Mugabe as his rowdy party begins to deploy its hooligans around the country in anticipation of elections. The question is how many people are in jail and have received no pardon simply because they happen to support parties different from ZANU PF.</p>\n<p>Mugabe last year attended a Johanne Marange Apostolic sect service while wearing their familiar white gowns. The move was seen by many as a campaign device. It seems Mugabe is trying to turn churches into campaign points for ZANU PF, especially in the rural areas. Mugabe’s party has bribed some church leaders to support his party, but then the same leaders relying on compelling their followers. The same explains the continuing harassment of Anglican Church parishioners by the police who are backing up the excommunicated Bishop Norbert Kunonga in campaigning for Mugabe and ZANU PF.</p>\n<p>ZANU PF is already testing the effectiveness of its bloody election machinery in Harare. Last week there were brutal attacks against MDC supporters in Harare suburbs of Budiriro and Mbare.</p>"
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"title" : "Teju Cole’s Open City",
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"content" : "<p></p><p><a href=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/teju_cole_smaller.jpg\"><img src=\"http://www.chapatimystery.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/teju_cole_smaller-297x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"teju_cole_smaller\" width=\"297\" height=\"300\"></a>I also have a review out today on Bookslut of long-time CM reader <a href=\"http://www.tejucole.com/\">Teju Cole</a>‘s superb new novel <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Open-City-Novel-Teju-Cole/dp/1400068096\">Open City</a>. The novel comes out tomorrow. Everyone must read it! An excerpt from my review:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The review materials I received with Open City ask me to compare Cole’s writing to that of W.G. Sebald or J.M. Coetzee. I was instead reminded of Wharton and James, of their pacing, of their detailed descriptions of place, history and person and of their slightly god-like distance from their characters and subjects. I read in Open City a kind of sequel to Wharton’s The Age of Innocence: the writing style, similarly precise and clear; the city, even less innocent than it was then. Cole, who is also a photographer and an art historian, has an enviable ability to take a subject, say, the city of New York, and turn it inside out and upside down, shake it out, and examine the contents, then pack it up again. In this, his writing resembles his photography, which, unlike most urban photography, manages to find grand vistas and great heights in the claustrophobic clutter of a city landscape. In a photograph such as this one, a bird’s eye view of what appears to be the interior of a multi-storied shopping mall becomes a delicate abstraction, the suspended star-shaped lights an orderly arrangement of origami, the tiny shoppers, so many ants dotting the background.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Read the rest <a href=\"http://bit.ly/fx1Jdl\">here</a>.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?i=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?a=uaTUFu3K4xk:GR3-yNWEdxU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chapatimystery?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chapatimystery/~4/uaTUFu3K4xk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Killings in Liberia: Nasty business",
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"content" : "<p>A spate of ritual killings unnerves Liberia</p><p>NOT rural superstition, but part of political life: body parts such as the heart, blood, tongue, lips, genitals and fingertips, all used in sorcery to bring wealth and power, are removed. Then the body is dumped. Such ritual killings are known in Liberia as gboyo. Since a case in the 1970s known as the Maryland murders, when seven people, including a parliamentarian and a senior policeman, were hanged for killing a fisherman, the practice has tainted politicians at the highest levels. As parliamentary and presidential polls this autumn draw near, politicians are again tempted to turn to the supernatural for help.</p><p>Welemonger Ciapha, a seasoned newspaper man, says the killings are “rampant” and increasing. Local media report tens of cases each year. But many deaths are described as murder, accident or suicide, according to an American government report on human rights. Others go undiscovered. ...</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=FTbftWb4VTM:Qz2tE9oAIno:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/economist/full_print_edition/~4/FTbftWb4VTM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "China's economic invasion of Africa",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/22851?ns=guardian&pageName=China%27s+economic+invasion+of+Africa%3AArticle%3A1515312&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=China+%28News%29%2CUganda+%28News%29%2CKenya+%28News%29%2CNigeria+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CBusiness&c5=Business+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Xan+Rice&c7=11-Feb-06&c8=1515312&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FChina\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>About a million Chinese, from engineers to chefs, have moved to work in Africa in the past decade. Xan Rice talks to some of them to find out why</p><p>In December 1999, a 24-year-old Chinese man called Zhang Hao left behind the freezing winter of his native Shenyang province to fly to Uganda. Zhang was nervous. He spoke no English. The journey was not even his idea, but that of his father, who had worked in Uganda a few years before on a fishing project involving the Chinese government.</p><p>\"If you want to start something – and be the boss – Africa is the place to do it,\" Zhang's father had told him when he asked for business advice.</p><p>Zhang had quit university to travel to east Africa, but he did not need a degree to spot easy money-making opportunities as soon as he set foot in Kampala: goods that were available cheaply in every city in China were either expensive here, or unavailable. He started by importing shoes. Then schoolbags. Then fishing nets, nails and bicycles.</p><p>"I imported everything. At that time they needed everything!" recalls Zhang, an affable man with rimless glasses.</p><p>His business grew quickly; he made money and local friends. But after a few years he grew weary of the long buying trips to China. So he and his wife bought a large plot of land in Kampala. On it they constructed a spectacular Chinese-Korean restaurant, with private dining areas, karaoke rooms and a giant 500-seat dining hall. To the side of the restaurant they built a bedroom, which became their home. The business prospered, and soon he started additional enterprises including a bakery, a firm selling flat-screen televisions and a security company.</p><p>\"Chinese don't think, they just try without studying the market too much. Otherwise, the chance is gone,\" he says.</p><p>At the site of each new enterprise, Zhang built a room for his family – he had a son in 2007 – to sleep in. They literally live at work.</p><p>It has paid off. Zhang says he is now the biggest Chinese employer in the country, with 1,200 local staff. He has even been offered a Ugandan passport, but has refused, just as he has declined to take an English first name.</p><p>\"I am Chinese, and we need to build a Chinese name here – to let people know that our country is not like before. We are richer, catching up the world.\"</p><p>Few Ugandans need reminding of that. When Zhang arrived in 1999 there were only a few hundred Chinese in the country, including embassy staff. Today, the most conservative estimate is 7,000, from the petty traders who have taken over whole blocks of the central business district to the construction engineers changing Kampala's skyline and the sharp-suited oil executives who frequent Zhang's restaurant. It is a similar story across the continent. Figures are hard to come by, but a decade ago there were probably no more than 100,000 Chinese people working in Africa. Today, there are around a million.</p><p>The first Chinese reached Africa nearly 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty, when the armada of admiral <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He\" title=\"Zheng He\">Zheng He</a> landed on the Kenyan coast. The next significant arrival was in the early 1900s, when 60,000 Chinese miners worked on the South African goldfields. Half a century on, Chairman Mao Zedong sent tens of thousands of agricultural and construction workers to Africa to enhance ties with countries emerging from colonialism.</p><p>But post-cold war migration concerns economics rather than politics. China-Africa trade grew from $6bn in 1999 to more than $90bn (£56bn) in 2009, roughly split equally between imports and exports: Africa's natural resources – oil, iron, platinum, copper, and timber – flowing east to feed China's factories, and finished goods, from flip-flops to trucks, travelling the other way. Last year, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/23/china-africa-trade-record-transform\" title=\"the trade is 00ADestimated to have topped $100bn. \">the trade is estimated to have topped $100bn. </a>Chinese state involvement in the trade is crucial. Each year Beijing provides billions of pounds in grants and loans to African governments as a sweetener to secure raw material deals or to finance infrastructure projects that could benefit its companies.</p><p>That is what brought Liu Hui to Kenya. A slight, 41-year-old civil engineer, he was working for China Wuyi, a state-owned construction firm, in Fujian province in 2006 when he was called into his \"leader's\" office, and told he was needed on a project to upgrade Nairobi's main airport. Liu had never set foot outside China. He was reluctant to leave his wife and seven-year-old son. He knew as little about Kenya as Zheng He's sailors. \"My image was: very poor, dry and hot,\" says Liu. \"But if my company wanted to send me somewhere, what could I have done? You have to show your capacity for work.\"</p><p>On arrival, Liu found that Nairobi was neither dry nor too hot. When the airport contract finished, he was assigned to oversee the construction of a highway between Nairobi and Thika, a pineapple-growing district to the north-east.</p><p>Liu lives at China Wuyi's main site office, a four-storey building alongside the highway. Though the commute to work consists of a flight of stairs, the day is long – from 7.15am to 6pm. The pace of work is often frustrating, and can be complicated by language difficulties; Liu speaks in halting English, and knows a few phrases of Swahili. "Chinese work very hard, very quickly," he says. "But here we are training local people to do the work, and if someone does not understand, he works slowly. You have to watch."</p><p>Most evenings Liu and his Chinese colleagues – there are about 100 on the road project – watch DVDs on their laptops or chat to family and friends over the internet. But they do get out occasionally, for coffee or dinner in nearby malls. Liu says he intends to return to China for good – his bosses permitting – when the road project finishes, in order to spend more time with his family.</p><p>But for Wang Lina, seated in her shop in downtown Nairobi, a few miles away, family is the reason she is here. The child of "normal worker" parents, Wang grew up with few thoughts of leaving Benxi, an industrial town nearly 600 miles north-east of Beijing. But in 2003, when she was 21 and newly married, her husband's uncle approached them with a proposition. A few years before he had travelled to Kenya to set up a home furnishings company. Now his business was expanding fast, and he was looking for family members to help run it. Wang and her husband agreed to join him.</p><p>But she missed her friends. In Kenya she could not find any clothes to fit her. She was too shy to talk to local people. So, after a year, she and her husband quit and returned to Benxi. But soon his uncle came calling again, begging them to give it another try.</p><p>This time Wang found herself appreciating the upside of living in Nairobi. In Benxi, she had lived in a flat, but was now sharing a large house and garden with two other couples from the extended family. Instead of simply being a cashier in the store, Wang moved into design and sales. She works hard, often seven days a week, but has also found time to enjoy some of east Africa's best tourist attractions – a safari near Mount Kenya, a beach holiday in Zanzibar. She and her husband have saved enough to buy an apartment back home, which is the goal of many young Chinese who take jobs abroad, even though she has no intention of returning soon.</p><p>"My friends who now work in Beijing and Shanghai are so tired," she says. "There's no time to relax, it's always faster, faster! Things are slower here, and I like that. No hurry in Africa, that's what they say."</p><p>China's move into Africa has not all been driven from the east. Countries such as Uganda have actively courted Chinese companies, to good effect: in 2010 China replaced the UK as the biggest source of foreign direct investment. One of the largest firms to have set up in Uganda is ZTE, China's second-biggest telecommunications equipment company. Zhu Zhenxing, 32, is its MD in Uganda. Growing up in Jiangsu, along China's east coast, Zhu was certain about two things: he wanted to learn English, and wanted to be an international businessman. He was recruited by ZTE at a job fair, with the promise of a job abroad.</p><p>\"I did not want to stay in my home area, or even in China,\" he says, puffing on a Dunhill cigarette. \"I wanted to experience things, to grow. The further away the better.\"</p><p>So when he was asked to go to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, Zhu did not hesitate. "Other people said: Africa is like this and like that. But I thought if other humans lived there, I could too."</p><p>He learned a lot. The corruption dismayed him. But Zhu liked Nigerians' optimism, \"always talking and smiling, not worrying about tomorrow\". He was so desperate to prove himself that he nearly burned out. He developed vitiligo, a disorder that causes loss of pigmentation. His face turned white \"like Michael Jackson\" and he was forced to return to China to recover.</p><p>He returned to Africa via Vietnam. In Uganda, he has grown ZTE's business exponentially – the company sold more than 500,000 handsets this year. Zhu looks the modern high-flyer – smart shoes, trousers with a Mont Blanc belt, a dress shirt and trendy black glasses. At weekends he plays golf with clients and Chinese embassy staff. But beyond that his lifestyle is far more modest than that of most expats. He and his staff all live in the same apartment block. A company vehicle takes them to and from work each day. His salary is good by Chinese standards but not comparable with those of his western competitors. Still, he has no complaints.</p><p>\"We are still working towards being a world-class company,\" he says. \"Our core competency is our low costs, so we must keep expenses down.\"</p><p>If there is one home comfort Chinese migrants in Africa can't do without it is their food. Most companies, including ZTE, bring over their own chefs. Xu Jianwen, 34, is one of them. Raised and trained in Sanhe, in northern China, he was working in a restaurant in Beijing when he heard that the China Road and Bridge Corporation, a state-owned construction giant, was hiring cooks. When he was offered a job in Uganda, his wife, with whom he has a young daughter, protested vehemently. But he won her over when he told her the salary – two and half times what he was earning in China. \"Salaries in China are not enough,\" he says. \"I had to come for the money.\"</p><p>His first job was to cook for 20 Chinese workers in Soroti, a small town in eastern Uganda. He had two local assistants but, lacking English, no way to communicate with them. At least the cooking was uncomplicated. Only five vegetables were available locally – aubergine, cabbage, potatoes, green peppers and tomatoes. "And there was no spicy sauce," he says. "I work every day, because people need to eat every day. I wake up at six in the morning and finish at seven. Every day is like that. I rest on Chinese public holidays."</p><p>Currently based at head office in Kampala, Xu plans to spend another two or three years overseas, saving all the while for \"housing, education and food\" for his family. He won't miss the mosquitoes, he says, but he will miss the people. \"They are very nice. Friendly to Chinese.\"</p><p>That is not always the case. In parts of southern Africa there has been strong resentment towards Chinese traders, many of whom arrive on tourist visas and stay on illegally. In Zambia, the Chinese managers of a coal mine recently shot two Zambian employees who were protesting over pay, causing anger across the country. And in Sudan and Ethiopia, rebel groups have killed Chinese workers because they view them as proxies of the local government.</p><p>In Kenya, home to up to 15,000 Chinese, the main problem for some of the early migrants was a mistrust of their goods. Xu Hui gave up an editing position at the state news agency Xinhua to start a toy-import business in the mid-90s. But when he moved into computers, people did not trust the quality. He resorted to showing potential clients the labels on the computers they already owned that said: "Made in China".</p><p></p><p>Today Xu runs a successful business importing Great Wall-brand televisions and giant rolls of toilet paper that are repackaged locally. He regards Kenya as his home – he enjoys the \"simple, healthy lifestyle\", playing badminton at a sports club every week – and only reluctantly sent his family back to China for educational reasons. But though the attitude to Xu's products may have changed, he is aware that western attitudes to China's push into Africa remain largely negative – something he struggles to understand.</p><p>"Western countries also buy oil, and have mines around the world. People don't talk about 'grabbing', or 'new colonialism' there. So why is it different for Chinese? We are not sending our armies to places and saying: 'Now sell us this!'" Xu says. "If you can't compete with us, you find an excuse. It's like two children fighting, and the losing one crying to his parent about funny tricks."</p><p>In fact, there is competition now on lots of levels. Every month thousands of African merchants travel to cities such as Guangzhou and Yiwu to buy wholesale goods. And other Chinese firms, including state-owned companies, battle for local tenders.</p><p>This can be stressful for company managers. Just ask Dong Junxia, an earnest, smartly dressed woman. Since 2008 she has been in charge of the small Ugandan office of the China Railway Seventh Group Corporation, a subsidiary of CREC, one of the world's largest construction companies. She worked on road-building projects in difficult environments in Tanzania and Liberia, with some success. But in Uganda her company had yet to win a large tender. Dong seemed ashamed, and insisted that her name and that of her company stay out of this story.</p><p>\"I have progressed professionally [in Africa], but suffered loss in being away from my family. In western culture it's different. Being with the family is the priority. Chinese sacrifice themselves for the family. It is hard to decide which is more important.\"</p><p>But a week later she called to say that her name could be used. She sounded exuberant: her company has been awarded a large contract to build a road. "After two years of hard work! You must understand how good that feels."</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china\">China</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/uganda\">Uganda</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/kenya\">Kenya</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/nigeria\">Nigeria</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/xanrice\">Xan Rice</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2011%2Ffeb%2F06%2Fchinas-economic-invasion-of-africa\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Fat Women with Big Baw-Taws in Ghana",
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"content" : "<div>“He’s very fat, and I’m also fat. I can never like him. We fat women, we don’t like fat men, we like slim men. I am not just fat, I am shapely – Coca Cola – with big <i>baw-taws</i>; and, in Africa, men always worry women like me.”</div><div><br></div><div>Say what? Fat women prefer slim men? And men always badger women with big <i>baw-taws</i>? Hmm. It’s a serious allegation of sexual harassment by a woman against her former boss. And she said something like what’s above on radio. I shouldn’t trifle with it.</div><div><br></div><div>But, seriously, are there any truths in her statement about fat-women-and-slim-men? And do men hound and harry women-with-big-<i>baw-taws</i> any more than slender women or women with small ‘tings’? I want full-bodied comments with big <i>baw-taws</i>, I beg.</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7564356874518161776-5309375551247683895?l=antirhythm.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Girlfriend Jacket Priciple",
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"content" : "<p><em>The Girlfriend Jacket</em> – guys, how many times has this happened to you on a cold night? You’re leaving the house, you ask your special lady friend if she’d like her jacket as you’re putting yours – she says “no.” A few hours later, you two are walking along, she’s warm and cozy, wearing your jacket, and you’re cold. Jason Cohen pointed this principal out to me a long time ago: just bring her jacket for her. The general idea applies applies to many things, like strollers (“we don’t need it, I’ll just hold him!” she says).</p>\n<p>(The gender here doesn’t matter: it could be the boyfriend jacket, or the scary uncle jacket – whatever you like.)</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/cote.wordpress.com/3483/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=drunkandretired.com&blog=111162&post=3483&subd=cote&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/71ck2mg4sa515ad5s35lfuun2s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fdrunkandretired.com%2F2011%2F01%2F16%2Fgirlfriendjacket%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/cote/~4/6Kx5cVUdTTs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Always walk around like you know where you’re going principle",
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"content" : "<p><em>Always walk around like you know where you’re going</em> – First you’ll get there faster because you’ll be moving faster. Second, people will stop you less because, obviously, you don’t need their help an should be going there. Third, if you don’t actually know where you’re going, just picking some direction and speeding off towards it will get you somewhere.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/cote.wordpress.com/3485/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=drunkandretired.com&blog=111162&post=3485&subd=cote&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/71ck2mg4sa515ad5s35lfuun2s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fdrunkandretired.com%2F2011%2F01%2F17%2Falways-walk-around-like-you-know-where-youre-going-principle%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/cote/~4/be9ods23_4o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>Why would authorities in a European county like Switzerland <a href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gKfH0j5XVuNcR8LfyY6yyXx6BE4Q?docId=CNG.57c4250144036276afd6dfad741f5c64.461\"> entertain the idea of trying George W. Bush for torture</a> if he came to give a talk in that country;</p>\n<p>But,<a href=\"http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F02%2F05%2FMN701HJCIV.DTL\"> European countries</a> are supporting <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/01/who-is-omar-suleiman.html\"> Omar Suleiman</a> for interim president of Egypt, even though he was the one who undertook the torture for Bush? Suleiman tossed some 30,000 suspected Muslim fundamentalists in prison, and accepted from the US CIA kidnapped suspected militants, whom he had tortured. Some were innocent. One, Sheikh Libi, was tortured into falsely confessing that Saddam Hussein was training al-Qaeda operatives, an allegation that straight into Colin Powell’s speech to the UN justifying the Iraq War.</p>\n<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>If Frank Wisner, President Obama’s informal envoy to Egypt, is a paid lobbyist for Egypt and says things like that <a href=\"http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/us-disassociates-itself-from-envoy-s-support-for-mubarak-1.1083617?localLinksEnabled=false\"> Mubarak must stay</a>, which Obama then has to deny …</p>\n<p>Why didn’t Obama send an envoy from Human Rights Watch instead?</p>\n<p>I ask myself why</p>\n<p>If Bush and the Neocons installed a pathbreaking democracy in iraq . . .</p>\n<p>– Why does its prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/05/AR2011020503870.html\">have to pledge not to run for office</a> again (taking a leaf from the books of the rulers of Yemen and Egypt? Why does al-Maliki <a href=\"http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/0201/Report-Secret-prison-in-Iraq-raises-fresh-concerns-over-torture\">have secret prisons</a> where people appear to have been tortured? Why is he <a href=\"http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/critics-attack-al-malikis-power-grab-over-iraq-state-institutions\">taking over independent commissions</a> such as the electoral commission? </p>\n<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>If President Hosni Mubarak, his generals, and the ruling National Democratic Party <a href=\"http://blackchristiannews.com/news/2010/12/hundreds-of-egyptian-protest-parliamentary-election-results.html\"> have engaged in voter fraud and corruption </a> during each of the elections for the past few decades; </p>\n<p>… Would would make them honest brokers in moving the county to presidential elections in September?</p>\n<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>If the Mubarak regime has had a change of heart and will now move toward democracy;</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354096/Egypt-protests-Police-use-Facebook-Twitter-track-protesters.html\"> why is its secret police snooping through</a> Facebook accounts with an eye to making arrests? And, where is <a href=\"http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=7941041\"> Wael Ghonim?</a>, the Google exec who began the Facebook page for the Jan. 25 demonstrations?</p>\n<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>If the <a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-egypt-protests-20110206,0,6035233.story\">resignations of high Egyptian officials</a>, and reputedly even Mubarak himself, from the National Democratic Party are sincere;</p>\n<p>Then why not just resign from the presidency, since the point of being in the ruling party was to attempt to use it to come to power?</p>\n<p>I ask myself why.</p>\n<p>If the Muslim Brotherhood is supposed to be such a radical party</p>\n<p>Then why is it a) the first <a href=\"http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/06/3131210.htm?section=world\">major opposition party</a> to begin negotiations with the government; and b) why is the MB <a href=\"http://www.eurasiareview.com/world-news/africa/muslim-brotherhood-rejects-khamenei-calls-for-iran-style-islamic-state-05022011/\">rebuking Iran’s ruling ayatollah Ali Khamenei </a> for saying the street revolution is Islamic, insisting instead that it is national?</p>"
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"content" : "This <em>WSJ</em> piece is a crucial <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703445904576118502819408990.html\">document</a> on Egypt: <blockquote><em>At 4 p.m., the battles appeared to tip decisively in the protesters' favor. An order came down from Mr. Mubarak to the Minister of Interior, Habib al-Adly, to use live ammunition to put down the protests, according to a person familiar with the situation.<br><br>Mr. al-Adly passed on the order to his top lieutenant, Gen. Ahmed Ramzy—but Mr. Ramzy refused, according to this person.<br><br>\"It was a poor assessment of what [orders] his generals would take from him,\" this person said.<br><br>When Mr. Mubarak saw that Mr. Adly wouldn't get the job done, he gave the order for the army to deploy, this person said. Mr. Adly was furious, according to the person. Mr. Adly then gave a sweeping order to pull all police from the streets, from lowly traffic monitors, to prison guards, to the vast armies of truncheon-wielding riot police that had been a ubiquitous presence around Egypt for decades.</em></blockquote><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-8511972870075782933?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The utter futility of scratch card games online with the UK National Lottery",
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"content" : "With an idle moment late last night I wondered how the <a href=\"https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/\">National Lottery</a>'s online scratch card games work. So I decided to poke around and intercept the network connections and have a look. Doing so revealed the utter futility of spending any time on these.<br><br>It's not even like the regular lottery where the result is random. In the \"Instant Win\" games the outcome is entirely known the moment you click Buy and your interaction with the game makes no difference at all. As you interact with the game you are literally wasting your time (and money).<br><br>Here, for example, is the game <a href=\"https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/player/gaming/wager/showGameDetail.do?type=wager&gameId=00000000000000003500\">Winning 7's</a> which involves being presented with a board with 25 squares on it from which you choose 16. The more 7's you uncover the higher your prize.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnL0Y_1IWI/AAAAAAAAAXw/Mop_0ZXDg2Q/s1600/Picture%2B2.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"258\" width=\"400\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnL0Y_1IWI/AAAAAAAAAXw/Mop_0ZXDg2Q/s400/Picture%2B2.png\"></a></div>The thing is, it doesn't matter what squares you uncover, the order in which you will uncover numbers is predetermined. You are not influencing the game at all. Here's why. In Firebug you can see the game downloading its state at the start:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnMrNqVTxI/AAAAAAAAAX4/Lird46x-5J0/s1600/Picture%2B3.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"70\" width=\"400\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnMrNqVTxI/AAAAAAAAAX4/Lird46x-5J0/s400/Picture%2B3.png\"></a></div>And if you pretty print that XML you can see the amount that will be won, and the order in which the numbers will be revealed:<br><pre><?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?><br><ticket><br> <outcome prizeTier="14" amount="0.00"/><br> <params wT="0" /><br> <turn n="8" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="7" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="5" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="1" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="3" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="5" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="2" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="7" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="5" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="7" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="9" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="4" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="5" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="6" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="7" wP="0" /><br> <turn n="3" wP="0" /><br></ticket><br></pre>On that go I was destined to receive £0.00 and have the numbers 8, 7, 5, 1, 3, 5, 2, 7, 5, 7, 9, 4, 5, 6, 7 revealed in that order no matter where I clicked. Imagine my surprise on my first click:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnNOFjEiEI/AAAAAAAAAYA/hhCUSvfVKHE/s1600/Picture%2B4.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"365\" width=\"400\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnNOFjEiEI/AAAAAAAAAYA/hhCUSvfVKHE/s400/Picture%2B4.png\"></a></div>And a few clicks later:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnNVsvqSCI/AAAAAAAAAYI/-5kNOGdgYDs/s1600/Picture%2B6.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"366\" width=\"400\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dt4ksD7hyDE/TUnNVsvqSCI/AAAAAAAAAYI/-5kNOGdgYDs/s400/Picture%2B6.png\"></a></div>The great advantage of this scheme is that it makes the game very secure. It doesn't matter what you do to hack the Flash applet or even modify that XML, the web site knows the correct outcome. When each game ends you end up going back to the same URL (there's no need for the Flash game to tell the web site what you won).<br><br>The same is true of every other game I looked at. And some take a long time to \"play\". Some even emulating shuffling or randomization.<br><br>In the end, it was soul destroying to think that people play these games. It's all a cruel trick. At least the lottery is clear: the chance of your numbers coming up is really, really, really small. Here there's the illusion that you are participating in some way.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19303585-2827262152380099447?l=blog.jgc.org\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Exclusive: The bloodbath in Tahrir Square",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/tahrir_0.jpg\"></div><p>\nI just spoke on the phone with journalist <a href=\"http://www.transterramedia.com/node/932\">Maryam Ishani</a>, who is currently just outside the melee inside Tahrir Square. She described the brutal scene she has witnessed today, including the targeting of foreign journalists, attacks on horseback, Molotov cocktails, and automatic-weapons fire: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tMI: Throughout the day, the mood changed significantly, starting from noon. In the morning, I went through Tahrir just to see what was going on and it was actually quite quiet.<i> [Sirens heard in the background.]</i> It was very peaceful. There were women and children gathered. There were a lot of people praying. It was quite calm. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tSo I walked around and ran into CNN's Ben Wedeman. There were a lot of press walking around. It was very easy for press to get around Tahrir at that time. We moved out, hearing that there was a situation with pro-Mubarak demonstrators on the outside, coming in. So we walked towards them. They have a very different attitude toward the press right now. They are looking for press, even asking people to tell them where Al Jazeera is, where's Reuters? \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tI lost Ben at that point. They let me through because I look Egyptian, but they won't let white press through. I was with three journalists -- French, German -- and I got into the square without them. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tNow, I'm basically stuck between what they've established as two cordons around Tahrir. One is established by pro-Mubarak demonstrators, whose job it is to keep people out of the square. That includes ambulances and anyone who's not on their side. They ask you if you're pro- or against. They're looking for Americans and foreigners. They're saying things like, "You brought Baradei. This is your fault. You're trying to break Egypt." They're quite hostile. They physically hit me with sticks. I went in to film them throwing stones and they knocked me back pretty hard, which is not the mood of the demonstrators inside the square.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe second cordon is also pro-Mubarak demonstrators, who are just beating up the demonstrators inside Tahrir. They have swords -- I'm not exaggerating -- they have things that look like machetes with a 12-inch blade or longer, sticks, pipes, automatic weapons. This is why people [are] saying they're actually police. They're in very large numbers, not just people who collected. They're generally all men between the ages of 20 or 30. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tAmong them are some pretty thuggish types. I walked down a street into a crowd of about 10 of them and I was so uncomfortable with the look on their face that I just turned right around. It literally looks like their job is to just beat people up. They're working their way into Tahrir an inch at a time with the cordon behind them keeping everyone out, specifically the press. They're confiscating cameras. They'll take things away and break them. They're throwing stones. They mean business in a way that hasn't been the case so far. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe army is not intervening at all on either side. There are a lot of injuries. I'm seeing ambulances treating four of five people with head injuries and cuts to the body from, I'm guessing, the knives.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThere's a lot of live fire. It's difficult to tell which direction it's coming from. But I'm hearing both shotguns and automatic weapons. I really can't see what's happening inside the square, but it's certainly nothing good. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t<b>JK: So the military is just watching?</b>\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMI: Absolutely. Right now, I'm walking past a tank with 11 soldiers sitting on top of it. They're not intervening at all. I'm actually seeing them move away from the protest. In one instance, I saw pro-Mubarak demonstrators throwing Molotov cocktails at anti-Mubarak demonstrators who were shielding themselves with wood or aluminum or whatever they can find. The tank between them literally rolled out of the way because it was taking hits from the Molotov cocktails. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t<b>JK: There were reports earlier of attacks on horseback. Have you seen any of that?</b>\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMI: Yes, I saw that. Men on horseback with swords. People would try to capture one and drag him off to the Army. That began right around the time that we realized something was going on. But the men on horseback have left. It turned out they were somewhat cumbersome. It was easy for people to pull them off so the horses were just wandering around alone and the riders were turning them over to the Army. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe Army is just kind of handing them off. It doesn't look like they're being detained. I would see one, and then a half an hour later, I would see the same one with the same wound somewhere else. They're not letting any ambulances inside the square. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t<b>JK: Can you speak to the reports that the Egyptian Museum has been firebombed?</b>\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMI: Yes. They were throwing Molotov cocktails at the lawn. But it wasn't enough. There's definitely smoke rising from the lawn, though. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t<b>JK: What do you believe is going to happen next?</b>\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tMI: A lot of what I'm hearing from people coming out from the inside is that it's just a bloodbath, a straight-up street fight. This is a turning point. More than one person has described it as a civil war. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tI would add, and I don't like to hype these things, that those on the pro-Mubarak side are chanting Islamic slogans. Throughout the day, we've been hearing that Friday is supposed to be what everyone is calling a "day of jihad" that both sides are gearing up for. Both sides are gearing up for a street fight on Friday. Definitely the mood has changed.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nMaryam also sent us <a href=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/28/dispatch_from_cairo_under_communications_blackout\">a dispatch </a>a few days ago as Cairo's Internet blackout went into effect. We hope to shortly post a series of interviews she has conducted with leaders of the anti-Mubarak movement. \n</p>"
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"content" : "<b>Arseholes, considered as a strategic resource</b><br><br>Why didn't the Egyptian army fire on the demonstrators. <a href=\"http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/02/the-shifting-civil-military-balance-in-egypt\">Because they had learned how to be nice from the American army?</a>. I think not. Looking at the TV pictures, the Egyptian Army didn't start anything because they didn't get on the streets early enough, and by the time they had, the crowd had got so big that I would imagine the phrase \"torn limb from limb\" might have been drifting through a few minds.<br><br>Numbers make a difference. An invading army can take over a city quite quickly; partly because an invading foreign army can usually be reasonably sure that all the guns are pointing in the same direction, partly because an invading army has physical momentum and has worked out ahead of time where it is marching to, but mainly because the population of an invaded city are usually not on the streets in anything like the numbers seen in Egyptian cities. Even a <a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-had-to-get-out--soldiers-tell-of-escape-as-warrior-caught-fire-507843.html\">tank</a>[1] is surprisingly little protection once it has stopped moving[2] and is surrounded by a mob. I saw pictures on the news yesterday of a tank crew sitting around at the edge of a square in Cairo - I have never in my life seen the crew of a tank looking so small and vulnerable. People are still talking about the army as if it was in control of the situation and for the moment at least, it just isn't.<br><br>And so that brings me to a useful piece of advice for any readers who are aspiring dictators, one that the Communists knew, Suharto knew, but that some modern day tyrants seem to have forgotten. There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaing potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you.<br><br>And that is, a <i>reactionary</i> citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijs are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, arseholes. Arseholes, considered as a strategic entity, have the one useful characteristic that is the only useful characteristic in the context of an Egyptian-style popular uprising - there are <i>fucking millions</i> of them.<br><br>This is my advice to any aspiring dictator; early on in your career, identify and inventory all the self-pitying, bullying shitheads your country has to offer. Anyone with a grievance, a beer belly and enough strength to swing a pickaxe handle will do. You don't need to bother with military training or discipline because they're hopefully never going to be used as a proper military force - just concentrate on nuturing their sense that they, despite appearances, are the backbone of the country, and allowing them to understand that although rules are rules, there are some people who just need a slap. The bigger and burlier the better, but when the time comes they'll be fighting in groups against people weaker than themselves, often under cover of darkness, so numbers are more important than anything else. The extractive industries are indeed often a good source, as are demobbed veterans (Zimbabwe) or the laity of an established religion.<br><br>I think this is my new rule for assessing the stability of any dictatorship around the world, and I am on the lookout for any Francis Fukuyama style book contracts. The key factor in determining the survival of repressive regimes isn't economics, religion or military success. It's arseholes.<br><br><hr><br><br>[1] Can I make it clear at this stage that if it turns out to be the case that the vehicle in question (a Warrior) is not technically a \"tank\" for some obscure reason of military terminology, any attempt to explain this to me will be resisted viciously with the comment delete button. It has tracks and a fucking gun.<br><br>[2] If you are sitting around on a street corner in Cairo in your tank, you have to open the hatches or you will get too hot; even the minority of tanks which have air conditioning systems will run out of fuel to run them eventually. If you open the hatches, you are no longer in a heavily armoured and invulnerable battle vehicle - you are a bloke sitting on top of a van.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3699020-1066091166462626680?l=d-squareddigest.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "YouTube uses Amazon's recommendation algorithm",
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"content" : "In a paper at the recent RecSys 2010 conference, \"The YouTube Video Recommendation System\" (<a href=\"http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1864770\">ACM</a>), eleven Googlers describe the system behind YouTube's recommendations and personalization in detail.<br><br>The most interesting disclosure in the paper is that YouTube has switched from their <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/07/video-recommendations-on-youtube.html\">old recommendation algorithm</a> based on random walks to a new one based on item-to-item collaborative filtering. Item-to-item collaborative filtering is the algorithm Amazon developed <a href=\"http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,266,649.PN.&OS=PN/6,266,649&RS=PN/6,266,649\">back in 1998</a>. Over a decade later, it appears YouTube found a variation of Amazon's algorithm to be the best for their video recommendations.<br><br>Other notable tidbits in the paper are what the Googlers have to do to deal with noisy information (noisy video metadata and user preference data), the importance of freshness on videos (much like news), that they primarily used online measures of user satisfaction (like CTR and session length) when competing different recommendation algorithms against each other and tuning each algorithms, and the overall improvement (about x3 better) that recommendations got over simple features that just showed popular content.<br><br>Some excerpts from the paper:<blockquote><i>Recommending interesting and personally relevant videos to [YouTube] users [is] a unique challenge: Videos as they are uploaded by users often have no or very poor metadata. The video corpus size is roughly on the same order of magnitude as the number of active users. Furthermore, videos on YouTube are mostly short form (under 10 minutes in length). User interactions are thus relatively short and noisy ... [unlike] Netflix or Amazon where renting a movie or purchasing an item are very clear declarations of intent. In addition, many of the interesting videos on YouTube have a short life cycle going from upload to viral in the order of days requiring constant freshness of recommendation.<br><br>To compute personalized recommendations we combine the related videos association rules with a user's personal activity on the site: This can include both videos that were watched (potentially beyond a certain threshold), as well as videos that were explicitly favorited, “liked”, rated, or added to playlists ... Recommendations ... [are the] related videos ... for each video ... [the user has watched or liked after they are] ranked by ... video quality ... user's unique taste and preferences ... [and filtered] to further increase diversity.<br><br>To evaluate recommendation quality we use a combination of different metrics. The primary metrics we consider include click through rate (CTR), long CTR (only counting clicks that led to watches of a substantial fraction of the video), session length, time until first long watch, and recommendation coverage (the fraction of logged in users with recommendations). We use these metrics to both track performance of the system at an ongoing basis as well as for evaluating system changes on live traffic.<br><br>Recommendations account for about 60% of all video clicks from the home page ... Co-visitation based recommendation performs at 207% of the baseline Most Viewed page ... [and more than 207% better than] Top Favorited and Top Rated [videos].</i></blockquote>For more on the general topic of recommendations and personalization on YouTube, please see my 2009 post, \"<a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/12/youtube-needs-to-entertain.html\">YouTube needs to entertain</a>\".<br><br>By the way, it <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/item-to-item-collaborative-filtering.html\">would have been nice</a> if the Googlers had cited the <a href=\"http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=item-to-item%20collaborative%20filtering&um=1\">Amazon paper</a> on item-to-item collaborative filtering. Seems like a rather silly mistake in an otherwise excellent paper.<br><br><b>Update</b>: To be clear, this was not intended as an attack on Google in any way. Googlers built on previous work, as they should. What is notable here is that, despite another decade of research on recommender systems, despite all the work in the Netflix Prize, YouTube found that a variant of the old item-to-item collaborative filtering algorithm beat out all others for recommending YouTube videos. That is a very interesting result and one that validates the strengths of that old algorithm.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-9131162781621877875?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/8cDiHXtV9tc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>I’ve heard rumors that Kenya’s mobile money system–cash by cell phone–has grown so big it holds more influence over the money supply than the central bank. Not sure if it’s true, but Billy Jack and Tavneet Suri tell us many interesting M-PESA facts in <a href=\"http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16721\">this new paper</a>.</p><blockquote><p>we report initial results of two rounds of a large survey of households in Kenya, the country that has seen perhaps the most rapid and widespread growth of a mobile money product – known locally as M‐PESA – in the developing world. We first summarize the mechanics of M-PESA, and review its potential economic impacts. We then document the sequencing of adoption across households according to income and wealth, location, gender, and other socio‐economic characteristics, as well as the purposes for which the technology is used, including saving, sending and receiving remittances, and direct purchases of goods and services. In addition, we report findings from a survey of M‐PESA agents, who provide cash‐in and cash‐out services, and highlight the inventory management problems they face.</p></blockquote> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=5K3E_dLV2OE:Vn7JQFsPPYU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=5K3E_dLV2OE:Vn7JQFsPPYU:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=5K3E_dLV2OE:Vn7JQFsPPYU:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?i=5K3E_dLV2OE:Vn7JQFsPPYU:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?a=5K3E_dLV2OE:Vn7JQFsPPYU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/chrisblattman?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/chrisblattman/~4/5K3E_dLV2OE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<h4><a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Click to listen to Chris’ conversation with Howard French. (52 minutes, 25 mb mp3)</a></h4>\n<div><img src=\"http://www.radioopensource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/hofrench.jpg\"></div>\n<p>Fifty years almost to the day after the catastrophic assassination of <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination\">Patrice Lumumba</a> in the Congo — a Cold War murder by Belgium with help from our CIA — the journalist <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Howard French</a> is sketching an alternative path ahead for African development today. China is the big investor in 21st Century Africa. China sees Africa as yet another “natural-resource play” but also as a partner in growth — not a basket-case but a billion customers who’ll be two billion by mid-century. With the West and Japan deep in a post-industrial funk, China is keeping its focus on manufacturing, exports and markets, “and we’ll have them largely to ourselves,” China calculates, “because the West doesn’t make the stuff middle-class Africans are buying — cars and houses and shopping malls and airports and all the things associated with a rise to affluence. Those are the things that China makes.”</p>\n<p>For the New York Times <a href=\"http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/f/howard_w_french_french/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=howard%20french&st=cse\">Howard French</a> covered Africa and then China, where he learned Mandarin. He returns to Africa now on a book project, observing and overhearing Chinese migrants to places like Ethiopia, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia and Liberia. </p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>HF:</strong> I was struck every time I got on a plane: the Westerners tend to be rich American tourists on their way to seeing lions and giraffes; or aid workers and NGO people — coming with a mission to minister to Africans about capacity-building or democracy and what my father used to do: public health. I say none of this with scorn, but the Chinese have a very different mission. The Chinese that I saw on the planes — and by the way, ten years ago I saw no Chinese; now they’re maybe a fifth of all the passengers — are all, almost to a person, business people. They’ve pulled up their stakes wherever they lived — in Szechuan province or Hunan province — and they have come to make it in Africa. And they’re not leaving until they do. Whatever it takes for them to make a breakthrough in farming or in small industry, they’re going to work 20 hours a day till they make it. They see Africa as a place of extraordinary growth opportunity, a place to make a fortune, to throw down some roots. These are not people who’re there for a couple of years. They’re thinking about building new lives for themselves in Africa. So you have this totally different perspective between the Westerners and the newcomers. One sees Africa as a patient essentially, to be lectured to, to be ministered to, to be cared for. The other sees Africa and Africans as a place of doing business and as partners. There’s no looking down one’s nose or pretending to superiority. It’s all how I can make something work here. </p>\n<p><strong>CL:</strong> I just wonder: among those development geniuses who argue about Trade vs. Aid as America’s next gift to Africa, in the face of all the Chinese activity buying forests, or building railroads, or planning the sale of billions of cellphones, what is the West’s better bet? Do we have one, or are we still asleep?</p>\n<p><strong>HF:</strong> I think we’re still asleep. </p></blockquote>\n<p>Yes, Howard French observes a Chinese style of racism in Africa, both familiar and different. “There’s a certain discourse about Africans being lazy or lacking in intelligence or unready, variations on a theme. One guy said to me just last week in Liberia essentially: ‘there’s a thousand-year gap between them and us,’ meaning… culturally, educationally, just sort of temperamentally; the ability to save, to sacrifice, to commit to a long-term project. But there’s an important distinction to be made. Western racism was instrumentalized to justify the sale of black people and their enslavement across the ocean to work as animals of labor on other continents. Chinese racism is, comparatively speaking up until this point, a largely rhetorical phenomenon…”</p>\n<p>And what are Africa’s chances of doing well in the new Chinese “deal”? Howard French sees “an incredible opportunity for Africa,” but no guarantees. States with a vigorous civil society, strong elites and an informed view of “how people’s daily and longer-term interests will be served” stand to get good results. “In states that are stuck in the kleptocratic authoritarian mode, the Chinese will pay cash on the barrel for whatever they want and all of the contracts will go through the state house and none of the money or very little of it will enter the public budget. Twenty years from now, China will say: it’s not our fault if the money is frittered away on Mercedes and villas in France and Swiss bank accounts. We paid you exactly the amount we said we were going to pay you. Don’t blame us if you have twice as many people and all of your iron ore is finished.” </p>"
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"content" : "<p>I was surprised at the normally astute <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5e01146a-28db-11e0-aa18-00144feab49a.html\">FT.com</a> for taking an old joke, and getting it wrong. Let’s see if we can help the FT find their sense of humor.</p>\n<p>First, the old joke:</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Bail-out blues</strong></p>\n<p>The rain beats down in a small Irish town. The streets are deserted. Times are tough. Everyone is in debt and living on credit. A rich German arrives at the local hotel, asks to view its rooms and puts on the desk a €100 note. The owner gives him a bunch of keys and he goes off for an inspection.</p>\n<p>As soon as he has gone upstairs, the hotelier grabs the note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher hurries down the street to pay what he owes to his feed merchant. The merchant heads for the pub and uses the note to pay his bar bill. The publican slips the note to the local hooker who’s been offering her services on credit. She rushes to the hotel to pay what she owes for room hire. As she puts the €100 bill on the counter, the German appears, says the rooms are unsuitable, picks up his €100 note and leaves town.</p>\n<p>No one did any work. No one earned anything. Everyone is out of debt. Everyone is feeling better. And that is how a bail-out works.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Well, not really.</p>\n<p>To begin with, the proper punchline to the joke is: “<strong><em>And that is how banking works.</em></strong>”</p>\n<p>Next, there was no bailout. If the rich German never came along, the town would not have defaulted, nor would it have have caused a global meltdown. Instead, we see an economy that thrives on credit. All of the local services were purchased on credit, by solvent, responsible, employed debtors who promptly paid off their debts as soon as they were liquid.</p>\n<p>Indeed, this is an economy town suffering from a liquidity issue, not a solvency problem.</p>\n<p>Here is how a bailout works: The financial sector ignores traditional capital requirements, imprudently leverages itself to the hilt, then blows up. The recklessness makes these banks insolvent, and the resultant collateral damage threatens the broader economy. A bailout is accomplished by transferring money from local taxpayer to the banks that caused the problem. Wait a decade or two, and repeat.</p>\n<p><em>None of that is present in the above situation.</em></p>\n<p>Last, the statement “No one did any work. No one earned anything” is actually false. Everyone did work and earned something: The hotelier was in debt to the butcher because he had guests whom he fed; the butcher raised and slaughtered his herd. He obviously worked with the feed merchant, who had sold his wares. The merchant purchased goods from the bartender in the pub. The pub owner had purchased services from the hooker, who in turn had purchased the services of the Hotelier. That seems to be a fairly robust economy, with a minor liquidity issue and credit squeeze.</p>\n<p>As I have said in the past, <a href=\"http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/06/economics-is-easy-comedy-is-hard/\">Economics is easy . . . comedy hard</a>.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/b0bjd6fho47voudd2of6s5dq9g/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ritholtz.com%2Fblog%2F2011%2F01%2Fhow-banking-works%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?i=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?a=40kVbOpuXoc:Bxf0OKbXFRU:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheBigPicture?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBigPicture/~4/40kVbOpuXoc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "I don’t always feel proud to have gone to Harvard as an undergraduate. The place didn’t always do a good job of recognizing genius. \n\n\nExample one: When I was on the staff of the Harvard Advocate, the undergraduate literary magazine, I heard a story about what happened when the young Robert Lowell tried out for a place there. He was allegedly put to cleaning the stairs or some other menial task. “I’m through,” he said when he had finished, and was told, “Yes, you are.” He then transferred to Kenyon College. (When I was a freshman, Robert Lowell was teaching there. If the story I’d heard was true, this must have taken an exceptional amount of forgiveness or masochism on his part. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover until after he was dead that Lowell was one of my favorite American poets. )\n\n\nExample two: Most universities would have been pleased to have Vladimir Nabokov teach literature for them, but not Harvard. Here’s what happened, according to the version of Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland: “When Nabokov was proposed for a chair in literature at Harvard in 1957, the language theorist Roman Jakobson is said to have objected, saying ‘Gentlemen, even if one allows that he is an important writer, are we next to invite an elephant to be Professor of Zoology?’”\n\n\nSo instead of teaching literature, Nabokov became the curator of lepidoptera at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Yet even here he apparently got no respect. \n\n\nBut despite the fact that he was the best-known butterfly expert of his day and a Harvard museum curator, other lepidopterists considered Nabokov a dutiful but undistinguished researcher. He could describe details well, they granted, but did not produce scientifically important ideas.\n\n\n\nNow it appears that Nabokov was no slouch as a lepidopterist. His bold theory about the evolution of the Polyommatus blues has been proven correct by modern gene sequencing. So congratulations, Volodya. And eat it, Harvard.<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ANaturalCuriosity/~4/mFo7QYEA-_U\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "Harvard, whatever its strong points, doesn’t always do a good job of recognizing genius. \n\n\nExample one: When I was on the staff of the Harvard Advocate, the undergraduate literary magazine, I heard a story about what happened when the young Robert Lowell tried out for a place there. He was allegedly put to cleaning the stairs or some other menial task. “I’m through,” he said when he had finished, and was told, “Yes, you are.” He then transferred to Kenyon College. (When I was a freshman, Robert Lowell was teaching at Harvard. If the story I’d heard was true, this must have taken an exceptional amount of forgiveness or masochism on his part. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover until after he was dead that Lowell was one of my favorite American poets. )\n\n\nExample two: Most universities would have been pleased to have Vladimir Nabokov teach literature for them, but not Harvard. Here’s what happened, according to the version of Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland: “When Nabokov was proposed for a chair in literature at Harvard in 1957, the language theorist Roman Jakobson is said to have objected, saying ‘Gentlemen, even if one allows that he is an important writer, are we next to invite an elephant to be Professor of Zoology?’”\n\n\nSo instead of teaching literature, Nabokov became the curator of lepidoptera at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Yet even here he apparently got no respect. \n\n\nBut despite the fact that he was the best-known butterfly expert of his day and a Harvard museum curator, other lepidopterists considered Nabokov a dutiful but undistinguished researcher. He could describe details well, they granted, but did not produce scientifically important ideas.\n\n\n\nNow it appears that Nabokov was no slouch as a lepidopterist. His bold theory about the evolution of the Polyommatus blues has been proven correct by modern gene sequencing. So congratulations, Volodya. And eat it, Harvard.<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ANaturalCuriosity/~4/oIEuE8aiEsQ\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><div style=\"float:right;width:250px;padding:0 0 0 25px;margin:0 0 10px 20px;border-left:1px solid #ccc9c3;border-bottom:0px solid #ccc9c3\">\n<h3>Sections</h3>\n<p style=\"margin-top:5px\"><a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/#introduction\">→ Introduction</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/#taxonomy\">→ A taxonomy for data</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/#architecture\">→ Data architecture</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/#rebirth\">→ Data warehouse rebirth</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/#conclusions\">→ Conclusions</a></p>\n</div></p>\nFor more than 25 years, data warehousing has been the accepted architecture for providing information to support decision makers. Despite numerous implementation approaches, it is founded on sound information management principles, most particularly that of integrating information according to a business-directed and predefined model before allowing use by decision makers. Big data, however one defines it, challenges some of the underlying principles behind data warehousing, causing some analysts to question if the data warehouse will survive.\n\n<p>In this article, I address this question directly and propose that data warehousing, and indeed information management as a whole, must evolve in a radically new direction if we are to manage big data properly and solve the key issue of finding implicit meaning in data.</p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Back in the 1980s I worked for IBM in Ireland, defining the first published data warehouse architecture (<a href=\"http://bit.ly/EBIS1988\">Devlin & Murphy, 1988</a>). At that time, the primary driver for data warehousing was to reconcile data from multiple operational systems and to provide a single, easily-understood source of consistent information to decision makers. The architecture defined the "Business Data Warehouse (BDW) ... [as] the single logical storehouse of all the information used to report on the business ... In relational terms, the end user is presented with a view / number of views that contain the accessed data ..." Note the phrase "single logical storehouse" — I'll return to it later.</p>\n\n<p>Big data (or what was big data then — a few hundred MB in many cases!) and the poor performance of early relational databases proved a challenge to the physical implementation of this model. Within a couple of years, the layered model emerged. Shown in Figure 1 (below), this has a central enterprise data warehouse (EDW) as a point of consolidation and reconciliation, and multiple user-access data marts fed from it. This implementation model has stood the test of time. But it does say that all data must (or should) flow through the EDW, the implications of which I'll discuss later.</p>\n\n<div align=\"center\">\n<p>\n<img alt=\"Operational systems\" src=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/21/0111-datawarehouse-figure1.png\" width=\"550\" style=\"margin-bottom:15px\"><br>\nFigure 1: The Traditional Data Warehouse Architecture.</p></div>\n\n<p>The current hype around \"big data\" has caused some analysts and vendors to declare the death of data warehousing, and in some cases, the demise even of the relational database.</p> \n\n<p>A prerequisite to discussing these claims is to understand and clearly define the term \"big data.\" However, it's a fairly nebulous concept. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data#Definition\">Wikipedia's definition</a>, as of December 2010, is vague and pliable: </p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Big Data is a term applied to data sets whose size is beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, manage and process the data within a tolerable elapsed time. Big data sizes are a constantly moving target currently ranging from a few dozen terabytes to many petabytes in a single data set.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>So, it's as big as you want and getting ever larger.</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>A taxonomy for data — mind over matter</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>To get a better understanding, we need to look at the different types of data involved and, rather than focus on the actual data volumes, look to the scale and variety of processing required to extract implicit meaning from the raw data.</p>\n\n<p>Figure 2 (below) introduces a novel and unique view of data, its categories and its relationship to meaning, which I call somewhat cheekily \"Mind over Matter.\"</p>\n \n<div align=\"center\">\n<p> \n<img alt=\"Operational systems\" src=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/21/0111-datawarehouse-figure2.png\" width=\"580\" style=\"margin-bottom:15px\"><br>\nFigure 2: Mind over Matter and the Heart of Meaning.</p></div>\n \n<p>Broadly speaking, the bottom pyramid represents data gleaned primarily from the physical world, the world of matter. At the lowest level, we have <em>measurement</em> data, sourced from a variety of sensors connected to computers and the Internet. Such physical event data includes location, velocity, flow rate, event count, G-force, chemical signal, and many more. Such measurements are widely used in science and engineering applications, and have grown to enormous volumes in areas such as particle physics, genomics and performance monitoring of complex equipment. This type of big data has been recognized by the scientific and engineering community for many years and is the basis for much modern research and development. When such basic data is combined in meaningful ways, it becomes interesting in the commercial world.</p>\n \n <p><em>Atomic</em> data is thus comprised of physical events, meaningfully combined in the context of some human interaction. For example, a combined set of location, velocity and G-force measurements in a specific pattern and time from an automobile monitoring box may indicate an accident. A magnetic card reading of account details, followed by a count of bills issued at an ATM, is clearly a cash withdrawal transaction. More sophisticated combinations include call detail records (CDRs) in telecom systems, web log records, e-commerce transactions and so on. There's nothing new in this type of big data. Telcos, financial institutions and web retailers have statistically analyzed it extensively since the early days of data warehousing for insight into customer behavior and as a basis for advertising campaigns or offers aimed at influencing it.</p>\n \n<p><em>Derived</em> data, created through mathematical manipulation of atomic data, is generally used to create a more meaningful view of business information to humans. For example, banking transactions can be accumulated and combined to create account status and balance information. Transaction data can be summarized into averages or sampled. Some of these processes result in a loss of detailed data. This data type and the two below it in the lower pyramid comprise <em>hard information</em>, that is largely numerical and keyword data, well structured for use by computers and amenable to standard statistical processing.</p>\n \n <p>As we move to the top pyramid, we enter the realm of the mind — information originating from the way we as humans perceive the world and interact socially within it. We also call this <em>soft information</em> — less well structured and requiring more specialized statistical and analytical processing. The top layer is <em>multiplex</em> data, image, video and audio information, often in smaller numbers of very large files and very much part of the big data scene. Very specialized processing is required to extract context and meaning from such data and extensive research is ongoing to create the necessary tools. The layer below — <em>textual</em> data — is more suited to statistical analysis and text analytics tools are widely used against big data of this type.</p>\n \n <p>The final layer in our double pyramid is <em>compound</em> data, a combination of hard and soft information, typically containing the structural, syntactic and model information that adds context and meaning to hard information and bridges the gap between the two categories. Metadata is a very significant subset of compound data. It is part of the data/information continuum; not something to push out to one side of the information architecture as a separate box — as often seen in data warehousing architectures.</p>\n \n<p>Compound data is the final category of data, and probably the category of most current interest in big data. It contains much social media information — a combination of hard web log data and soft textual and multimedia data from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and so on.</p>\n\n<p>The width of each layer in the pyramids corresponds loosely to data volumes and numbers of records in each category. The outer color bands in Figure 2 place data warehousing and big data in context. The two concepts overlap significantly in the world of matter. The major difference is that big data includes and even focuses on the world of mind at the detailed, high volume level.</p>\n\n<p>More importantly, the underlying reason we do data warehousing (more correctly, business intelligence, for which data warehousing is the architectural foundation) and analyze big data is essentially the same: we are searching for meaning in the data universe. And meaning resides at the conjoined apexes of the two pyramids.</p>\n\n<p>Both data warehousing and big data begin with highly detailed data, and approach its meaning by moving toward very specific insights that are represented by small data sets that the human mind can grasp. The old nugget, now demoted to urban legend, of \"men who buy diapers on Friday evenings are also likely to buy beer\" is a case in point. Business intelligence works more from prior hypotheses, whereas big data uses statistics to extract hypotheses.</p> \n\n<p>Now that we understand the different types of data and how big data and data warehousing relate, we can address the key question: does big data spell the end of data warehousing?</p>\n\n<p><br>\n<div style=\"border-top:thin gray solid;border-bottom:thin gray solid;padding:20px;margin:20px 2px\"><a href=\"https://en.oreilly.com/strata2011/public/register?cmp=il-radar-st11-data-warehouse\"><img style=\"float:left;border:none;padding-right:10px\" src=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/strata11-promo-radar.png\"></a><a href=\"http://strataconf.com/?cmp=il-radar-st11-data-warehouse\"><strong>Strata: Making Data Work</strong></a>, being held Feb. 1-3, 2011 in Santa Clara, Calif., will focus on the business and practice of data. The conference will provide three days of training, breakout sessions, and plenary discussions -- along with an Executive Summit, a Sponsor Pavilion, and other events showcasing the new data ecosystem.<br><br> <br>\n <br>\n<a href=\"https://en.oreilly.com/strata2011/public/register?cmp=il-radar-st11-data-warehouse\"><strong>Save 30% off registration with the code STR111RAD</strong></a><br></div></p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>Data warehousing, as we currently do it — and that's a key phrase — is usually rather difficult to implement and maintain. The ultimate reason is that data warehousing seeks to ensure that enterprise-wide decision making is consistent and trusted. This was and is a valid and worthy objective, but it's also challenging. Furthermore, it has driven two architectural aims:</p> \n\n<ol>\n<li> To define, create and maintain a reconciled, integrated set of enterprise data for decision making.</li>\n\n<p><li> That this set should be the single source for all decision-making needs, be they immediate or long-term, one-off or ongoing, throw-away or permanent.</li><br>\n</p></ol>\n\n<p>The first of these aims makes sense: there are many decisions which should be based on reconciled and integrated information for commercial, legal or regulatory reasons. The second aim was always questionable — as shown, for example, by the pervasive use of spreadsheets — and becomes much more so as data volumes and types grow. Big data offers new, easier and powerful ways to interactively explore even larger data sets, most of which have never seen the inside of a data warehouse and likely never will.</p>\n\n<p>Current data warehousing practices also encourage and, in many ways, drive the creation of multiple copies of data. Data is duplicated across the three layers of the architecture in Figure 1, and further duplicated in the functional silos of the data marts. What is more, the practice of building independent data marts fed directly from the operational environment and bypassing the EDW entirely is lamentably far too common. The advent of big data, with its large and growing data volumes, argues strongly against duplication of data. I've explored these issues and more in a series of articles on B-eye-Network (<a href=\"http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/12760\">Devlin, 2010</a>), concluding that a new inclusive architecture — Business Integrated Insight (BI2) — is required to extend existing data warehousing approaches.</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>Big data will give (re)birth to the data warehouse</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>As promised, it is time to return to the \"single logical storehouse\" of information required by the business. Back in the 1980s, that information was very limited in comparison to what business needs today, and its uses were similarly circumscribed. Today's business needs both a far broader information environment and a much more integrated processing approach. A single <em>logical</em> storehouse is required with both a well-defined, consistent and integrated physical core, and a loose federation of data whose diversity, timeliness and even inconsistency is valued. In order to discuss this sensibly, we need some new terminology that minimizes confusion and contention between the advocates of the various different technologies and approaches.</p>\n\n<p>The first term is \"Business Information Resource\" (BIR), introduced in a Teradata-sponsored white paper (<a href=\"http://bit.ly/BI2_White_Paper\">Devlin, 2009</a>), and defined as a single logical view of the <em>entire</em> information foundation of the business that aims to differentiate between different data uses and to reduce the tendency to duplicate data multiple times. Within a unified information space, the BIR has a conceptual structure allowing reasonable boundaries of business interest and implementation viability to be drawn (<a href=\"http://bit.ly/Beyond_BI\">Devlin, 2010a</a>). With such a broad scope, the BIR is clearly instantiated in a number of technologies, of which relational and XML databases, and distributed file and content stores such as Hadoop are key. Thus, the relational database technology of the data warehouse is focused on the creation and maintenance of a set of information that can support common and consistent decision making. Hadoop, MapReduce and similar technologies are directed to their areas of strength such as temporary, throw away data, fast turnaround reports where speed trumps accuracy, text analysis, graphs, large-scale quantitative analytical sand boxes, and web farm reporting. Furthermore, these stores are linked through virtual access technology that presents the separate physical stores to the business user as a single entity as and when required.</p> \n\n<p>The second term, \"Core Business Information\" (CBI), from an Attivio-sponsored white paper (<a href=\"http://bit.ly/uis_white_paper\">Devlin, 2010b</a>), is the set of information that ensures the long-term quality and consistency of the BIR. This information needs to be modeled and defined at an early stage of the design and its content and structure subject to rigorous change management. While other information may undergo changes in definition or relationships over time, the CBI must remain very stable. </p> \n\n<p>While space doesn't permit a more detailed description here of these two concepts, the above-mentioned papers make clear that the CBI contains the information at the heart of a traditional enterprise data warehouse (and, indeed, of modern Master Data Management). The Business Information Resource, on the other hand, is a return to the conceptual basis of the data warehouse — a logical single storehouse of <em>all</em> the information required by the business, which, by definition, encompasses big data in all its glory.</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>Conclusions</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>While announcing the death of data warehousing and relational databases makes for attention-grabbing headlines, reality is more complex. Big data is actually a superset of the information and processes that have characterized data warehousing since its inception, with big data focusing on large-scale and often short-term analysis. With the advent of big data, data warehousing itself can return to its roots — the creation of consistency and trust in enterprise information. In truth, there exists a substantial overlap between the two areas; the precepts and methods of both are highly complementary and the two will be mandatory for all forward-looking businesses.</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>References</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>Devlin, B. A. and Murphy, P. T., \"<em>An architecture for a business and information system</em>,\" IBM Systems Journal, Volume 27, Number 1, Page 60 (1988) <a href=\"http://bit.ly/EBIS1988\">http://bit.ly/EBIS1988</a></p>\n\n<p>Devlin, B., \"<em>Business Integrated Insight (BI2) — Reinventing enterprise information management</em>,\" White Paper, (2009) <a href=\"http://bit.ly/BI2_White_Paper\">http://bit.ly/BI2_White_Paper</a></p>\n\n<p>Devlin, B., \"<em>From Business Intelligence to Enterprise IT Architecture</em>,\" B-eye-Network, (2010) <a href=\"http://bit.ly/BI_to_ent_arch\">http://bit.ly/BI_to_ent_arch</a></p>\n\n<p>Devlin, B., \"<em>Beyond Business Intelligence</em>,\" Business Intelligence Journal, Volume 15, Number 2, Page 7, (2010a) <a href=\"http://bit.ly/Beyond_BI\">http://bit.ly/Beyond_BI</a></p>\n\n<p>Devlin, B., \"Beyond the Data Warehouse: A Unified Information Store for Data and Content,\" White Paper, (2010b) <a href=\"http://bit.ly/uis_white_paper\">http://bit.ly/uis_white_paper</a></p>\n\n<p><br></p>\n\n<p><strong>Related:</strong></p>\n<ul>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/what-is-data-science.html\">What is data science?</a></li>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/the-smaq-stack-for-big-data.html\">The SMAQ stack for big data</a>\n</li></ul>\n<br>\n\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:JEwB19i1-c4\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:JEwB19i1-c4\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=ryyffbbdbTU:itLOsaTiE2g:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~4/ryyffbbdbTU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "Verizon Communications (VZ) this afternoon said it would purchase Terremark Worldwide (TMRK) for $19 per share in cash, or $1.4 billion, a 35% premium to Terremark’s closing price of $14.05.\nTerremark, based in Miami, Florida, provides co-location of data center equipment for customers for a fee, running a network operations center, [...]<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.barrons.info/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?a=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.barrons.info/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?a=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?i=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.barrons.info/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?a=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?i=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.barrons.info/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?a=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?i=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.barrons.info/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?a=HvNYkyHGbKU:Bj8N8vTlqhQ:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/barrons/techtraderdaily/feed/~4/HvNYkyHGbKU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "What might sustain rapid development in Africa soon?",
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"content" : "<p>Expectation of rapid economic improvement soon in Africa seems counter-intuitive at this time, especially given Africa’s symbolic role as the negation of ‘white’ superiority. Black people have played this role for centuries as the stigmatized underclass of an unequal world society organized along racial lines; and never more than now, when American and European dominance is being undermined by a shift in the balance of economic power to countries like China, India, Brazi and, within its own region, South Africa. Rather than face up to a decline in their economic fortunes, the whites prefer to dwell on the misfortunes of black people and on Africa’s apparently terminal exclusion from modern prosperity. Failed politicians and aging rock stars, such as Blair and Bono, announce their mission to ‘save’ Africa from its presumed ills. The western media represent Africa as the benighted battleground of the four horsemen of the apocalypse: famine, war, plague and death. It all goes to reassure a decadent West that at least some people are a lot worse off than themselves. <span></span></p>\n<p>It is a curious fact that China occupied a similar slot in western consciousness not long ago. In the 1920s and 30s, Americans and Europeans often spoke of the Chinese the way they do of Africa today. China was then crippled by the violence of warlords, its peasants mired in the worst poverty imaginable. Today the country is spoken of as the only one capable of standing up to the United States, while its manufactures make inroads into western dominance on a scale far greater than Japan’s ever did. This profound shift in economic power from West to East does not guarantee Africa’s escape from the shackles of inequality, but it does mean that structures of Atlantic dominance which once seemed inevitable are perceptibly on the move; and that should make it easier to envisage change. We are entering a new phase of economic possibility, as well as altered patterns of constraint in world society.</p>\n<p>Africa’s advantage in current upheavals is its weak attachment to the status quo. The world economy could easily regress to a condition similar to that of the 1930s. In this case, Africans have less to lose; and the old Stalinist ‘law of unequal development’ reminds us that, under such circumstances, winners and losers can easily change places. I like to tell my European friends who express concern about African poverty, “Don’t worry about them – they have only one way to go, which is up. You should be worried about your own decline.” This applies particularly to my own country, Britain, for whom postponing recognition of the loss of empire has become a way of life in itself. A recent poll reported that Africa has a higher proportion of hopeful people than anywhere else in the world, 30% if I recall. The <em>New York Times</em> couldn’t understand how this could be so, since everyone knows that Africa is the most hopeless place on earth. The idea of Africa as a basket case goes very deep.</p>\n<p>To speak of a possible economic upturn begs the question of what Africa’s new urban populations could produce as a means of bringing about their own economic development. So far, African countries have relied on exporting raw materials, when they could. Minerals clearly have a promising future owing to scarce supplies and escalating demand; but the world market for food and other agricultural products is skewed by western farm subsidies and prices are further depressed by the large number of poor farmers seeking entry. Conventionally, African governments have aspired to manufacturing exports as an alternative, but here they face intense competition from Asia. It would be more fruitful for African countries to argue collectively in the councils of world trade for some protection from international dumping, so that their farmers and infant industries might at least get a chance to supply their own populations first. But the world market for services is booming and perhaps greater opportunities for supplying national, regional and global markets exist there.</p>\n<p>There was a time when most services were performed personally on the spot; but today, as a result of the digital revolution in communications, they increasingly link producers and consumers at distance. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is the production of culture: entertainment, education, media, software and a wide range of information services. The future of the human economy, once certain material requirements are satisfied, lies in the infinite scope for us to do things for each other — like singing songs or telling stories — that need not take a tangible form. The largest global television audiences are for sporting events like the World Cup or the Olympic Games. The United States’ three leading exports are now movies, music and software; and this is why they have sponsored an intellectual property treaty (TRIPs) that seeks to shore up the profits of corporations whose products can be reproduced digitally at almost no cost. The central conflict in contemporary capitalism is between this attempt to privatize the cultural commons and widespread popular resistance to it. Any move to enter this market will be confronted by transnational corporations and the governments who support them. Nevertheless, there is a lot more to play for here and the terrain is not as rigidly mapped out as in agriculture and manufactures. It is also one where Africans are exceptionally well-placed to compete because of the proven preference of global audiences for their music and plastic arts.</p>\n<p>Why do you think Hollywood is where it is? A century ago, film-makers on the East Coast struggled under Thomas Edison’s monopolies of electrical products; so some of them escaped to the Far West and kicked off the movie industry with as little regulation as possible. For his first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Walt Disney ripped off a Buster Keaton movie, ‘Steamboat Willie’. Now the Disney Corporation sues Chinese cartoonists for illegal appropriation of the Mickey Mouse logo. Did you know that the world’s second largest producer of movies, after Hollywood and before Bollywood, is Lagos in Nigeria (‘Nollywood’)? Most of their movies cost no more than $5,000, a pattern reminiscent of Hollywood when W.G. Griffith was king. American popular culture is still that country’s most successful export. There is no reason why it couldn’t be for Africans too.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=What+might+sustain+rapid+development+in+Africa+soon%3F+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F4kbyurv\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=What+might+sustain+rapid+development+in+Africa+soon%3F+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F4kbyurv\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"title" : "Alan Trustman on Bullitt",
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"content" : "<div><p>Yesterday afternoon, an email arrived in my in-box with a curious <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a75b9970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Screen shot 2011-01-26 at 6.05.17 PM\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a75b9970c-350wi\" style=\"width:333px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-26 at 6.05.17 PM\"></a> subject line: "That's MY car chase. MINE!!" The writer was, of course, referring to my article in Wednesday's <em>Wall Street Journal</em> <strong><a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704698004576104001598265530.html?KEYWORDS=marc+myers\">here</a></strong> on the famed car chase from <em>Bullitt</em>, the 1968 film starring Steve McQueen. Over the past weekend I was in San Francisco driving the movie's chase route in a new Mustang with Loren Janes, Steve McQueen's stunt double. [Photo of Steve McQueen in Palm Springs with albums by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Frank Sinatra and Count Basie at his feet]</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e205f9f8970b-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Screen shot 2011-01-26 at 5.58.19 PM\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e205f9f8970b-200wi\" style=\"width:200px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Screen shot 2011-01-26 at 5.58.19 PM\"></a> When I opened the email, the writer turned out to be Alan Trustman [pictured], who wrote the screenplay for <em>Bullitt</em> as well as <em>The Thomas Crown Affair</em> and other films. </p>\n<p>Here's what Alan's email said:</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">"That subject line is childish, but I am now 80 years old, so I’m entitled to be childish.<br> <br>"Did you ever wonder where the idea for the car chase <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e20154a9970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Images\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e20154a9970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Images\"></a> came from? Director Norman Jewison told me on <em>The Thomas Crown Affair</em> in '67 to include something athletic to absorb Steve’s energies. That's why I put the polo and dune-buggy sequences into the movie.<br> <br>"I originally wrote <em>Bullitt</em> for New York City. But when producers Philip D’Antoni and Robert Relyea and McQueen wanted to shift it to San Francisco, I was ecstatic. I told them that back in the summer of 1954, I had worked there at the law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro and was familiar with the city.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">"Back in '54, Ford had based its car prices on purchase locations—something it called the Basing Point system. As <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a84a3970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"54FORD5\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a84a3970c-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"54FORD5\"></a> a result, I was able to buy a Ford in Boston for a reasonable price and drive it to San Francisco. There, I worked at the law firm and drove around the city for three months before selling it for more than I paid. So I was very familiar with the streets.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">"I learned that when you drove a light car like a Ford <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e2016570970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Images-1\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e2016570970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Images-1\"></a> downhill in San Francisco, as we often did at 2 a.m., it would take off and fly through the air as you crossed some of the intersections. When we were discussing <em>Bullitt,</em> I suggested a Mustang, which was still quite a new car model in 1968. Steve was ecstatic. He couldn’t wait to try it.<br> <br>"I wrote the car chase in detail that night, including locations, the low camera on the bumper of the following cars, and the hub cap coming off as it bashed against the wall beside one locus. Since everybody loved the car chase idea, I insisted on a director who could do a car chase. </p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">"Peter Yates had directed a great car chase in <em>Robbery</em> with Stanley Baker, which producer Joe Levine hated and buried. <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a9487970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Images-3\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340148c80a9487970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Images-3\"></a> But I screened the movie at Warner Bros., loved it and put Peter at the top of my list for director. He had put the camera on the front bumper of the following car and got terrific shots. Peter was, however, the third name on the list favored by D’Antoni, Relyea and McQueen. <br> <br>But Nos. 1 and 2 on the list failed to answer the phone when they were called. D’Antoni, Relyea and McQueen refused to call again <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e2016b6b970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Alg_peter_yates\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e2016b6b970b-300wi\" style=\"width:300px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Alg_peter_yates\"></a> later or even leave a message. Instead, they immediately phoned No. 3 in England. Peter [pictured] answered because it was the middle of the night there, and that’s how he happened to direct <em>Bullitt</em>.<br> <br>"An incredible, very Hollywood, but true story.<br> <br>"Anyhow, many thanks for a great article in my favorite newspaper. What a great way to wake up in the morning!<br> <br> <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e20171bc970b-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Carey\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340147e20171bc970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Carey\"></a> "By the way, the crew gave Carey Loftin [pictured], whom they called a car jockey, most of the credit at the time, and Frank Keller won an Oscar for the editing and the film was nominated for best sound."</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax clip:</span></strong> <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K-GT-_gziw\">Here's </a>the car chase from <em>Robbery</em> that Alan Trustman refers to above. Peter Yates directed the film in 1967 and in some ways the chase is the prototype of <em>Bullitt's</em> famed sequence written by Alan and directed by Yates a year later. The chase and stunts in the clip below are indeed tension-filled and magnificent...</p>\n<p><iframe frameborder=\"0\" height=\"390\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/1K-GT-_gziw\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"450\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jazzwax/~4/niYUpBrKowE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "Cultural sources of a liberal revolution in Africa",
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"content" : "<p>The classical liberal revolutions were sustained by three ideas: that freedom and economic progress require increased movement of people, goods and money in the market; that the political framework most compatible with this is democracy, putting power in the hands of the people; and that social progress depends on science, the drive to know objectively how things work that leads to enlightenment. For over a century now an anti-liberal tendency has disparaged this great emancipatory movement as a form of oppression and exploitation in disguise; and, in common with many social revolutions, it this is partially true. Africa today must escape soon from varieties of Old Regime that owe a lot to the legacy of slavery, colonialism and apartheid; but conditions there can no longer be attributed solely to these ancient causes. It is possible that the example of the classical liberal revolutions, reinforced by endogenous developments in economy, technology, religion and the arts, could offer fresh solutions for African underdevelopment. These would have to be built on the conditions and energies generated by the urban revolution of the twentieth century.<span></span></p>\n<p>We all know of course that power is distributed very unequally in our world and any new liberal movement would soon run up against entrenched privilege. In fact, world society today resembles quite closely the Old Regime of agrarian civilization, as in eighteenth century England and France, with isolated elites enjoying a lifestyle wildly beyond the reach of masses who have almost nothing. It is not just in post-colonial Africa where the institutions of agrarian civilization rule today. Since the millennium, the United States, whose own liberal revolution once overcame the Old Regime of King George and the East India Company, seemed to have regressed to presidential despotism in the service of corporations like Haliburton.</p>\n<p>It has long been acknowledged that the rise of capitalism in Europe drew heavily on religion as one of its motors. Max Weber insisted that an economic revolution of this scope could only take root on the back of a much broader cultural revolution. If Africa’s informal economy has the potential to evolve into a more dynamic engine of urban commerce, what might be the cultural grounds for such a development? As I said, whatever happens next must build on what has already been put in place. The basis for Africa’s future economic growth must be the cultural production of its cities and not rural extraction or the reactionary hope of reproducing capitalism’s industrial phase. This in turn rests on:</p>\n<p>1. The energy of youth and women</p>\n<p>2. The religious revival</p>\n<p>3. The explosion of the modern arts</p>\n<p>4. The communications revolution</p>\n<p>5. The new African diaspora linked to sub-national identities</p>\n<p>I can only sketch an outline of what is a book-length argument.</p>\n<p>1. African societies, traditional and modern, have been dominated by older men. Women have benefited less from their opportunities and are less tied to their burdens. In many cases they have been quicker to exploit the commercial freedoms of the neo-liberal international economy. Even when men and boys have plunged whole countries into civil war, thereby removing state guarantees from economic life, an informal economy resting on women’s trade has often kept open basic supply lines. The social reality of Africa’s cities is a young population without enough to do and a growing generation gap. The energies of youth must be harnessed more effectively and the chances of doing so are greater if the focus of economic development is on something that interests them, like popular culture.</p>\n<p>2. The religious revival in Africa, both Christian and Muslim, is a matter of immense significance for the forms of economic development. This is in many cases founded on young people’s rejection of the social models and political options offered by their parents’ generation. Fundamentalist and less extreme varieties of religion make a different kind of connection to world society than that offered by the nation-state, based on the assumption of American dominance or its opposite. They help to fill the moral void of contemporary politics and often offer well-tried recipes for creative economic organization (e.g. the Mourides of Senegal, see below). Christian churches are usually organized and supported by women, even if their leadership is often male.</p>\n<p>3. In all the talk of poverty, war and AIDS, the western media rarely report the extraordinary vitality of the modern arts in post-colonial Africa: novels, films, music, theatre, painting, sculpture, dance and their applications in commercial design. There has been an artistic explosion in the last half-century, drawing on traditional sources, but also responding to the complexity of the contemporary world. One recent example is the ‘Africa Remix’ exhibition that toured Europe and Japan, a hundred installations from Johannesburg to Cairo, showing the modernity of contemporary African art. The African novel, along with comparable regions like India, leads the world. I have already referred to the creativity of the film industry.</p>\n<p>4. Africa largely missed the first two phases of the machine revolution, based on the steam engine and electricity; but the third phase, the digital revolution in communications whose most tangible product is the internet, the network of networks, offers Africans very different conditions of participation that they already show signs of taking up avidly. In origin a means of communication for scientists and the military, the internet is now primarily a global marketplace with very unusual characteristics. Like the informal economy, it goes largely unregulated; but this market freedom is harnessed to the most advanced technologies of our era. The internet has also generated new conditions for managing networks spanning home and abroad by radically shortening the time and space dimensions of communication and exchange at distance. The extraordinarily rapid adoption of mobile phones has made Africa a crucible for global innovations, such as the first multi-country network and use of phones for banking purposes in East Africa. Nor should we neglect the role of television as a transnational means of widening perceptions of community.</p>\n<p>5. In the last half-century a new African diaspora has emerged, based unlike that formed by Atlantic slavery on economic migration to America, Europe and nowadays Asia. These migrants are usually known away from home by their national identity, but many of them by-pass the national level when maintaining close relationships with their specific region of origin. They are often highly educated, with experience of the corporate business world, while retaining links to relatives living and working in the informal economy at home. One consequence of neo-liberal reforms has been that transnational exchange is now much easier than it was, drawing at once on indigenous knowledge of local conditions and the expertise acquired by migrants and their families in the West. Remittances from abroad are of immense importance everywhere, but they are bound to play a major role in Africa’s economic future.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=Cultural+sources+of+a+liberal+revolution+in+Africa+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F62kk822\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=Cultural+sources+of+a+liberal+revolution+in+Africa+http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2F62kk822\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "Back in 2009, I already a made <a href=\"http://biemond.blogspot.com/2009/03/some-handy-code-for-backing-beans-adf.html\">a blogpost about some handy code</a> which you can use in your ADF Web Application. You can say this blogspot is part 2 and here I will show you the code, I use most in my own managed Beans.<br>\n<br>\nI start with FacesContext class, with this class you can use to find a JSF Component, change the Locale, get the ELContext, Add a message to your view and get the ExternalContext <br>\n\nThe ExternalContext class, with this you can retrieve all the java init & context (web.xml) parameters, the Request & Session parameters and your web application url.\n<br>\n\nAdfFacesContext class, you can use this class for Partial Page Rendering ( PPR), get the PageFlowScope and ViewScope variables<br>\n\nADFContext class, with this you can get all the memory scopes variables even the application scope variables, ELContext and the SecurityContext. <br>\n\nSecurityContext class, retrieve the current user and its roles.<br>\n\nBindingContext, BindingContainer and DCBindingContainer class. These classes are well known when you want to retrieve the ADF pagedef objects.<br>\n\nThe last class is ControllerContext, which you can use to retrieve the exceptions <br>\n<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1839316484051079047-7991925490240623241?l=biemond.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Second thoughts on the overthrow of Ben Ali",
"published" : 1295806165,
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"content" : "The Tunisian uprising has been called the Jasmine Revolution, the Tunisian Revolution as well as a number of other things. The Tunisians did not accomplish a “true” revolution in an academic sense, at least not yet; what took place in the last month resembled a “color revolution” more than anything else, displacing a dictator while [...]"
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"title" : "19th century bond market manipulation",
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"content" : "A favorite story [of Paul Samuleson's], late in life, had to do with the huge profits [economist] David Ricardo reaped after the Battle of Waterloo, the details adduced by Ricardo’s biographer, Piero Sraffa. The bond trader had an observer stationed near the battle. Once the outcome was clear, he galloped quickly to where a packet ship was waiting. So Ricardo in London received the early news, and conveyed it to the British government.<br><br>Then he went down to his customary chair at the Exchange – and sold! Other traders, suspecting the worst, sold too, the prices of Treasuries tumbling, until at last, Ricardo reversed course and bought and bought and made a killing, his greatest coup ever, one that put even the Rothschild brothers in the shade.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">--David Warsh, Economic Principals, on <a href=\"http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2011.01.23/1225.html\">an economist who was both smart</a></span><a href=\"http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2011.01.23/1225.html\"> and<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> rich</span></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-4699961100897589150?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>documentary on Richland, the nuclear city in the west of the US.. its iconography is that of the mushroom cloud. interesting relationship between the population that depends on the jobs cleaning up the nuclear mess, the town and the nuclear material it draws it notoriety from. \nPour cette communaute, la nucleaire est une affaire de famille.</p>\n <span>\n <a href=\"http://www.delicious.com/save?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lemonde.fr%2Fa-la-une%2Fvisuel%2F2011%2F01%2F20%2Fatomic-city-la-ville-et-le-nucleaire_1464133_3208.html&title=Atomic%20City%2C%20la%20ville%20et%20le%20nucl%C3%A9aire&copyuser=amaah&copytags=nuclear+video+documentary+France+city+urban+sociology+anthropology+usa+culture+history+bomb+iconography+Nagasaki+plutonium+memory+observation+radiation+health+policy+danger+richland+hanford+safety&jump=yes&partner=delrss&src=feed_google\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"add this bookmark to your collection at http://www.delicious.com\"><img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/hr/img/delicious.small.gif\" alt=\"http://www.delicious.com\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" border=\"0\"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>\n - Saved by <a title=\"visit amaah's bookmarks at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah\">amaah</a>\n to\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged nuclear\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/nuclear\">nuclear</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged video\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/video\">video</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged documentary\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/documentary\">documentary</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged France\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/France\">France</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged city\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/city\">city</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged urban\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/urban\">urban</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged sociology\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/sociology\">sociology</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged anthropology\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/anthropology\">anthropology</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged usa\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/usa\">usa</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged culture\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/culture\">culture</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged history\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/history\">history</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged bomb\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/bomb\">bomb</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged iconography\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/iconography\">iconography</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged Nagasaki\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/Nagasaki\">Nagasaki</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged plutonium\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/plutonium\">plutonium</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged memory\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/memory\">memory</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged observation\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/observation\">observation</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged radiation\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/radiation\">radiation</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged health\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/health\">health</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged policy\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/policy\">policy</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged danger\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/danger\">danger</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged richland\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/richland\">richland</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged hanford\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/hanford\">hanford</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged safety\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/safety\">safety</a>\n \t\t\t- <a rel=\"self\" title=\"view more details on this bookmark at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/url/18696d12941b44fe4bc1e6848aad02ab\">More about this bookmark</a>\n </span>"
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"title" : "The Trouble with Dictators",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/william-pfaff/\">William Pfaff</a>\n\n\n<div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://184.73.187.38/media/img/blogimages/PAR165608_jpg_470x416_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Bruno Barbey/Magnum Photos</p>\n <p>Habib Bourguiba, the founder of the Tunisian Republic and predecessor of recently deposed Zein el-Abedine Ben Ali, viewing a military parade at an Arab Summit meeting, Rabat, Morocco, 1974</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n<p>Dictators do not usually die in bed. Successful retirement is always a problem for them, and not all solve it. It is a problem for everybody else when they leave. What’s to be done afterwards? The popular uprising that overturned the dictatorial Zein el-Abedine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia last week sent a thrill of hope through Arab populations, or at least to Arab democrats.\n</p>\n<p>But aside from the exceptional and complex case of Lebanon, Arab nations have since the demise of the Ottoman Empire mostly suffered from European quasi-empire, exploitative military and party dictatorships, and recently, hereditary family dictatorships, a reversion to absolute monarchy in secular guise. The dream of a united independent Arab nation to replace the Ottomans was destroyed by World War I peace settlements, which left the major Arab peoples in European mandates under the League of Nations. \n</p>\n<p>The deposed Tunisian president Ben Ali spent the first part of his career as a promising young army officer. This led him into intelligence and security, always a highway to success in the contemporary Arab world. He attended courses at Saint-Cyr in France and the American Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird in Maryland. His 1987 succession to the Tunisian presidency—in the “medical coup” that occurred when Habib Bourguiba, the republic’s founder (in 1957) become president-for-life, was too enfeebled to carry on—was reportedly arranged collaboratively by Italian and Algerian intelligence. The French former colonial power and the <span>CIA</span> reportedly were not involved, although they took a proprietary interest in the regime that followed.\n</p>\n<p>Ben Ali’s economic and educational reforms produced the best educated and most prosperous of the Maghreb states, but with the result that an underemployed and frustrated middle class contributed crucially to his downfall. His wife, a former hairdresser, and her immediate family were generally credited, during the Ben Ali presidency, with a rapacious personal enrichment that played a large part in the ruling family’s popular repudiation. It is a familiar story, with parallels in the business and banking elites of western countries, where enrichment is also prized, but political elites and their second wives are usually more discreet. \n</p>\n<p>At this writing, efforts to construct a transitional Tunisian government are going badly, since the public, having—to their astonishment—got rid of Ben Ali, now seem unwilling to see him replaced either by his former associates or unfamiliar figures from an opposition that mostly has existed in exile.\n</p>\n<p>This, traditionally, is where a would-be Napoleon steps in, although the army in Tunisia has fairly successfully kept its hands clean during the regime’s rise and fall. But next-door Algeria, during its years of military rule, Libya under the grotesque Colonel Qaddafi, and Egypt’s thus-far immovable Hosni Mubarak (with an ambitious son), provide deplorable precedents for Arab elites who want to believe that events in Tunisia are the dawn of a new future. There were seven self-immolations, one by a young woman, in Algeria alone between January 12 and January 19, and others in Egypt and Mauritania, burning themselves to (or near) death in the presumed hope that they might do for their countries what a despairing provincial fruit and vegetable vender, who was trying to support his widowed mother and seven siblings, accomplished in igniting the Tunisian uprising. \n</p>\n<p>And what about Laurent Gbagbo in the Ivory Coast? Former member of the Socialist International, helped into power by French Socialists during the Mitterrand presidency, he contends (or at least his Evangelical Protestant wife contends) that God sent him to rule the Ivory Coast, no matter what internationally-supervised presidential elections last month, the United Nations, the African Union, and various foreign countries have to say about the electoral victory of his longtime rival Alassane Ouattara. His French lawyers want a recount.\n</p>\n<p>He still controls the seat of government in Abidjan and his supporters roam the city. The internationally recognized president is besieged by Gbagbo’s army and volunteers in the luxury Hotel Du Golf, living on by provisions helicoptered in by the <span>UN</span> force in the country, which like the African Union troops to which it is officially allied, excuses itself and backs off when bands of Gbagbo-supporting youths block roads and tell it to go away. One of the French journalists there, who was also in the Balkans in the 1990s, calls the <span>UN</span> troops “expensively useless.” \n</p>\n<p>But if the <span>UN</span> were to go about installing leaders by force in various countries, no matter how just the cause, there would be hell to pay elsewhere, including the United States. Hasn’t the American right been explaining for years that the <span>UN</span>, instigated by liberal elites and the left-wing <em>New York Times</em>, is waiting to send its Black Helicopters to arrest American patriots and install aliens and androids in high Washington office? It could be practicing in Africa. Gbagbo has the support of a solid ethnic bloc of some 45 percent of the electorate, whereas Ouattara, a Muslim with a French wife, is supported by heterogeneous minorities and by foreigners. Gbagbo is playing the nationalist and anti-colonialist cards—he aspires to be president-for-life, while the “international community,” which has cut off the funds that pay his army and civil servants, tries to starve him (and them) out.\n</p>\n<p>He may find cause for reflection in the rash return to the international scene of a former president-for-life, Jean-Claude Duvalier, who journeyed to Haiti to general astonishment on January 16, accompanied by an entourage including a young woman described as his girlfriend. According to an elderly cousin, who visited him at his hotel, after 24 years and 11 months of absence “he was homesick.” The cousin said that “Baby Doc is happy to be here.” At noon the Haitian police called at the hotel and took Baby Doc away, holding the young woman’s hand. When they released him several hours later, there was a crowd to cheer him. Criminal charges reportedly have been filed.\n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=Mp9M_DAjZbc:3VvKpzVisgw:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/Mp9M_DAjZbc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : ""The Big Onion"",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackwize/5361189419/\" title=\"Kaneshie Sunday Market by NanaKofiAcquah, on Flickr\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5361189419_30dfee724f_b.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" alt=\"Kaneshie Sunday Market\"></a>I call this market \"The Big Onion\" for a couple of reasons:<br>1. It is layered beyond comprehension. The only way to fully discover it is by peeling one layer at a time.<br>2. It has this peculiar strong stench that never leaves.<br><br>Do have a great week.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1392769759109690709-2239002363041914031?l=nanakofiacquah.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "TOLBERTRebels pounded on the front door of his parent's shack, cursing and shouting, “We know you are in there!” and proceeded to smash the door down when no one answered. Once, then twice, the blade of a machete chopped through the plank door and retreated with a force that produced a dismal screech. Screws and nails flew off. The door leaped against the door frame and hinges. Light from the <img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/publishyourstory/~4/td9kWNgJolU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Ed Gordon with Dr. Regine Jean-Charles",
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"title" : "IAS 107: Reading: Jared Diamond's Provocation: The Invention of Agriculture as a Big Mistake",
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"content" : "<div><p>\"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race\": By Jared Diamond, UCLA Medical School, <em>Discover</em> Magazine, May 1987, Pages 64-66.</p>\n\n<p>To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.</p>\n\n<p>At first, the evidence against this revisionist interpretation will strike twentieth century Americans as irrefutable. We’re better off in almost every respect than people of the Middle Ages, who in turn had it easier than cavemen, who in turn were better off than apes. Just count our advantages. We enjoy the most abundant and varied foods, the best tools and material goods, some of the longest and healthiest lives, in history. Most of us are safe from starvation and predators. We get our energy from oil and machines, not from our sweat. What neo-Luddite among us would trade his life for that of a medieval peasant, a caveman, or an ape?</p>\n\n<p>For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It’s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it’s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.</p>\n\n<p>From the progressivist perspective on which I was brought up, to ask \"Why did almost all our hunter-gatherer ancestors adopt agriculture?\" is silly. Of course they adopted it because agriculture is an efficient way to get more food for less work. Planted crops yield far more tons per acre than roots and berries. Just imagine a band of savages, exhausted from searching for nuts or chasing wild animals, suddenly grazing for the first time at a fruit-laden orchard or a pasture full of sheep. How many milliseconds do you think it would take them to appreciate the advantages of agriculture?</p>\n\n<p>The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had. Thus it was agriculture that enabled us to build the Parthenon and compose the B-minor Mass.</p>\n\n<p>While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it’s hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here’s one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn’t emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"</p>\n\n<p>While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen’s average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It’s almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.</p>\n\n<p>So the lives of at least the surviving hunter-gatherers aren’t nasty and brutish, even though farmes have pushed them into some of the world’s worst real estate. But modern hunter-gatherer societies that have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of years don’t tell us about conditions before the agricultural revolution. The progressivist view is really making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they switched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that switch by distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from those of domesticated ones in prehistoric garbage dumps.</p>\n\n<p>How can one deduce the health of the prehistoric garbage makers, and thereby directly test the progressivist view? That question has become answerable only in recent years, in part through the newly emerging techniques of paleopathology, the study of signs of disease in the remains of ancient peoples.</p>\n\n<p>In some lucky situations, the paleopathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist today. For example, archaeologists in the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditions at time of death could be determined by autopsy (Discover, October). And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry caves in Nevada remain sufficiently well preserved to be examined for hookworm and other parasites.</p>\n\n<p>Usually the only human remains available for study are skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner’s sex, weight, and approximate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance companies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases.</p>\n\n<p>One straightforward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5’ 9" for men, 5’ 5" for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5’ 3" for men, 5’ for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.</p>\n\n<p>Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced bya bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. \"Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years,\" says Armelagos, \"but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive.\"</p>\n\n<p>The evidence suggests that the Indians at Dickson Mounds, like many other primitive peoples, took up farming not by choice but from necessity in order to feed their constantly growing numbers. "I don’t think most hunger-gatherers farmed until they had to, and when they switched to farming they traded quality for quantity," says Mark Cohen of the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, co-editor with Armelagos, of one of the seminal books in the field, Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture. "When I first started making that argument ten years ago, not many people agreed with me. Now it’s become a respectable, albeit controversial, side of the debate."</p>\n\n<p>There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor nutrition. (today just three high-carbohydrate plants–wheat, rice, and corn–provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species, yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential to life.) Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops, farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the mere fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some archaeologists think it was the crowding, rather than agriculture, that promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn’t take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearnce of large cities.</p>\n\n<p>Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions. Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, non-producing élite set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs at Mycenae c. 1500 B. C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and had better teeth (on the average, one instead of six cavities or missing teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A. D. 1000, the élite were distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.</p>\n\n<p>Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale today. To people in rich countries like the U. S., it sounds ridiculous to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an élite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be iimproted from countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a bushman gatherer in the Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?</p>\n\n<p>Farming may have encouraged inequality between the sexes, as well. Freed from the need to transport their babies during a nomadic existence, and under pressure to produce more hands to till the fields, farming women tended to have more frequent pregnancies than their hunter-gatherer counterparts–with consequent drains on their health. Among the Chilean mummies for example, more women than men had bone lesions from infectious disease.</p>\n\n<p>Women in agricultural societies were sometimes made beasts of burden. In New Guinea farming communities today I often see women staggering under loads of vegetables and firewood while the men walk empty-handed. Once while on a field trip there studying birds, I offered to pay some villagers to carry supplies from an airstrip to my mountain camp. The heaviest item was a 110-pound bag of rice, which I lashed to a pole and assigned to a team of four men to shoulder together. When I eventually caught up with the villagers, the men were carrying light loads, while one small woman weighing less than the bag of rice was bent under it, supporting its weight by a cord across her temples.</p>\n\n<p>As for the claim that agriculture encouraged the flowering of art by providing us with leisure time, modern hunter-gatherers have at least as much free time as do farmers. The whole emphasis on leisure time as a critical factor seems to me misguided. Gorillas have had ample free time to build their own Parthenon, had they wanted to. While post-agricultural technological advances did make new art forms possible and preservation of art easier, great paintings and sculptures were already being produced by hunter-gatherers 15,000 years ago, and were still being produced as recently as the last century by such hunter-gatherers as some Eskimos and the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.</p>\n\n<p>Thus with the advent of agriculture and élite became better off, but most people became worse off. Instead of swallowing the progressivist party line that we chose agriculture because it was good for us, we must ask how we got trapped by it despite its pitfalls.</p>\n\n<p>One answer boils down to the adage "Might makes right." Farming could support many more people than hunting, albeit with a poorer quality of life. (Population densities of hunter-gatherers are rarely over on eperson per ten square miles, while farmers average 100 times that.) Partly, this is because a field planted entirely in edible crops lets one feed far more mouths than a forest with scattered edible plants. Partly, too, it’s because nomadic hunter-gatherers have to keep their children spaced at four-year intervals by infanticide and other means, since a mother must carry her toddler until it’s old enough to keep up with the adults. Because farm women don’t have that burden, they can and often do bear a child every two years.</p>\n\n<p>As population densities of hunter-gatherers slowly rose at the end of the ice ages, bands had to choose between feeding more mouths by taking the first steps toward agriculture, or else finding ways to limit growth. Some bands chose the former solution, unable to anticipate the evils of farming, and seduced by the transient abundance they enjoyed until population growth caught up with increased food production. Such bands outbred and then drove off or killed the bands that chose to remain hunter-gatherers, because a hundred malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter. It’s not that hunter-gatherers abandonded their life style, but that those sensible enough not to abandon it were forced out of all areas except the ones farmers didn’t want.</p>\n\n<p>At this point it’s instructive to recall the common complaint that archaeology is a luxury, concerned with the remote past, and offering no lessons for the present. Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the worst mistake in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.</p>\n\n<p>Hunter-gatherers practiced the most successful and longest-lasting life style in human history. In contrast, we’re still struggling with the mess into which agriculture has tumbled us, and it’s unclear whether we can solve it. Suppose that an archaeologist who had visited from outer space were trying to explain human history to his fellow spacelings. He might illustrate the results of his digs by a 24-hour clock on which one hour represents 100,000 years of real past time. If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us?</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=4fVxFOpCG9k:_WyGBzhuxDQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=4fVxFOpCG9k:_WyGBzhuxDQ:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~4/4fVxFOpCG9k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>With the madness of CES over and the Chinese New Year holiday coming up, I finally found some time to catch up on some back issues of <a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org\">Science</a>. I came across a beautiful diagram of the metabolic pathways of one of the smallest bacteria, <em>Mycoplasma Pneumoniae</em>. It’s part of an article by Eva Yus <em>et al</em> (<a href=\"http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5957/1263.abstract\"><em>Science</em> <b>326</b>, 1263-1271 (2009)</a>). </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/m.pneumonia_sch_big.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/m.pneumoniae_sch.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>Looking at this metabolic pathway reminds me of when I was less than a decade old, staring at the schematic of an Apple II. Back then, I knew that this fascinatingly complex mass of lines was a map to this machine in front of me, but I didn’t know quite enough to do anything with the map. However, the key was that <b>a</b> map existed, so despite its imposing appearance it represented a hope for fully unraveling such complexities.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/appleii_schematic.png\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/appleii_schematic_sm.png\"></a></p>\n<p>The analogy isn’t quite precise, but at a 10,000 foot level the complexity and detail of the two diagrams feels similar. The metabolic schematic is detailed enough for me to trace a path from glucose to ethanol, and the Apple II schematic is detailed enough for me to trace a path from the CPU to the speaker. </p>\n<p>And just as a biologist wouldn’t make much of a box with 74LS74 attached to it, an electrical engineer wouldn’t make much of a box with ADH inside it (fwiw, a 74LS74 (<a href=\"http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/MC74HCT74A-D.PDF\">datasheet</a>) is a synchronous storage device with two storage elements, and ADH is alcohol deydrogenase, an enzyme coded by gene MPN564 (<a href=\"http://www.genome.jp/dbget-bin/www_bget?mpn:MPN564\">sequence data</a>) that can turn acetaldehyde into ethanol). </p>\n<p>In the supplemental material, the authors of the paper included what reads like a <a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/m.pneumoniae_bom.pdf\">BOM (bill of materials) for <em>M. pneumoniae</em></a>. Every enzyme (pentagonal boxes in the schematic) is listed in the BOM with its functional description, along with a reference that allows you to find its sequence source code. At the very end is a table of uncharacterized genes — those who do a bit of reverse engineering would be very familiar with such tables of “hmm I sort of know what it should do but I’m not sure yet” parts or function calls. </p>"
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"content" : "<p></p><p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/justinr/207889771\"><img title=\"FLICKR_wineglasses_JustinRoselt_400x266-1\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/FLICKR_wineglasses_JustinRoselt_400x266-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"266\"></a>You love cocktail parties, don’t you? If you’re an expat you probably adore the ones sponsored by embassies and big international companies where everybody has sold his or her soul to the god of networking. Well, the working spouses have. If you’re a trailing spouse accompanying your partner to such an event, you are lucky because you can consider this an educational opportunity. I’ve spent many an edifying hour standing around in my finery amid a gaggle of foreigners and listened to riveting honks about small ruminant value chains, the standard TSMA, gender-disaggregated data, and so on. This can be excruciatingly <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">fascinating</span> boring and usually we trailing expat spouses will find each other and discuss other matters such as fashion, breast implants, and potty training dramas. But one evening at a cocktail party in Ghana, West Africa, I met businessman Mr. X. And he did not talk about business or politics or international finance. Here’s what he did talk about:</p>\n<h2><span style=\"color:#3883a8\">BEAUTY AND THE BAD BOY</span></h2>\n<p>Mr. X is a charming, sophisticated African with graying hair, a mischievous glint in his eyes and a story to tell. He has a beautiful accent compliments of a PhD from Oxford and we are chatting at an outdoor cocktail party in Accra, Ghana. It is a dark and steamy night, the frogs are frogging, the drinks are flowing, and the malarial mosquitoes are zooming in ecstasy over the abundance of naked flesh. The naked flesh being faces, arms and legs, just to be clear here.</p>\n<p>His story involves a visit he made to my homeland of the Netherlands when he was a young man, a young man who had never left his native land of Ghana. As an unworldly 20-year-old on a two-week business course in The Hague, he was excited beyond description to be in the land of cheese and tulips. He had a wonderful time, at least until the last evening there when he attended the big goodbye affair with food, music and dancing. Dancing! Girls! Dutch girls!</p>\n<p>Now, Ghanaians know all about having fun eating food, making music and dancing (and they learn young), so Mr. X was looking forward to the evening.</p>\n<div style=\"width:600px\">\n\t<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/69321913@N00/270659890\"><img title=\"FLICKR_Ghana_dancing_Ofoliquaye_600x411\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/FLICKR_Ghana_dancing_Ofoliquaye_600x411.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"411\"></a>\n\t<p>Tiny Ghanaian Dancers</p>\n</div>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">\n<p>Some of his study-course mates had been abroad before and shared with him their acquired wisdom relating to the treatment of western women, such as how to behave at the dance and how to make a good impression.</p>\n<p>He was told that the women were expecting to be asked to dance and would not join in on their own. He could make his own choice by looking around to see who looked available and willing and then go over and ask her to dance.</p>\n<p>“Give compliments,” he was told. “Tell a girl she looks beautiful. That she has pretty eyes, a nice smile, that sort of thing.”</p>\n<p>Not so difficult. Young Mr. X was up to the task.</p>\n<p>Older Mr. X smiles at the memory as he relates this story. He takes a drink from his Scotch.</p>\n<p>“So,” he continues, “when dinner was over and the dancing began, “I looked around and saw a beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes and I went over to her and asked her to dance. She came to the dance floor with me and we commenced dancing and talking. Then I remembered what I’d been advised about giving compliments, so I told her she was beautiful and then something went awfully wrong.”</p>\n<p>“What do you mean?” I ask, spellbound by his story. What woman doesn’t want to hear she is beautiful? “What happened?”</p>\n<p>“She glared at me and took off. Left me standing there in the middle of the dance floor. I was perplexed! I was giving her compliments! What had I done wrong!”</p>\n<p>“She took off because you told her she was beautiful?” I am equally perplexed.</p>\n<p>Mr. X smiles, enjoying telling me his tale. “Yes, I told her she was beautiful. And so nice and fat.”</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong>*</strong></p>\n<div style=\"width:266px\">\n\t<a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/25hnjuv\"><img title=\"GHANA_extremebeauty\" src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/GHANA_extremebeauty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"266\" height=\"400\"></a>\n\t<p>A Beauty in Ghana</p>\n</div>\n<p>Dear reader, do I need to explain? In Ghana, as in some other African countries, the traditional view is that fat is beautiful. The original cultural reason behind this is the thinking that if a woman is fat she obviously has lots to eat, which means that first her father and then her husband is prosperous. Although many young Ghanaian women now have adopted the western idea of beauty and like to be thin, there are others who don’t. Just have a look at this picture. Read more about this shot at <a href=\"http://hollisramblings.blogspot.com/2010/08/extreme-beauties.html\">EXTREME BEAUTIES</a>, a post by my blogger friend Holli who domiciles in Ghana. But do come back and leave me a comment, please!</p>\n<h2><span style=\"color:#ff6600\"><strong>* * *</strong></span></h2>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">What cultural experiences, or experiences with foreign men, have you had about body image? About what you should look like? How much you should weigh or what the size of various body parts should be? Get some milk and cookies and think about it.<br>\n</span></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeintheexpatlane.com%2F2011%2F01%2Fexpat-confusion-what-men-want.html&title=EXPAT%20CONFUSION%3A%20WHAT%20MEN%20WANT\"><img src=\"http://www.lifeintheexpatlane.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_256_24.png\" width=\"256\" height=\"24\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:-BTjWOF_DHI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:-BTjWOF_DHI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:KwTdNBX3Jqk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:KwTdNBX3Jqk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?a=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/LifeInTheExpatLane?i=eKdjPwvKXfM:RHaM3hvoZn0:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LifeInTheExpatLane/~4/eKdjPwvKXfM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p>"
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"title" : "How poetry can be written after Auschwitz",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/67762?ns=guardian&pageName=How+poetry+can+be+written+after+Auschwitz%3AArticle%3A1503812&ch=Books&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Poetry+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CCulture&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Billy+Mills&c7=11-Jan-12&c8=1503812&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Books&c13=&c25=Books+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FPoetry\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>In his long poem about the Holocaust, Charles Reznikoff uses court records and a matter-of-fact tone to give due weight to their horror</p><p>Back in November, books blog readers were asked to name <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/26/books-of-the-year?showallcomments=true#comment-8571038\" title=\"\">their favourite book of 2010</a>. For me, the answer was, and is, an easy one; it has to be <a href=\"http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/reznikoff/holocaust.htm\" title=\"\">Holocaust</a> by <a href=\"http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/reznikoff/bio.htm\" title=\"\">Charles Reznikoff</a>. Now, I'm pretty sure most of you have never heard of either this book or its author, and that would hardly be surprising given that Holocaust has long been out of print and that Reznikoff has never been a fashionable writer. Now, <a href=\"http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/holocaust_charles_reznikoff_i019730.aspx\" title=\"\">thanks to Five Leaves Publications</a>, you can get your hands on a very nice paperback edition, complete with an introduction by George Szirtes, and judge for yourself whether or not I'm wrong.</p><p>Reznikoff was born in Brooklyn in 1894, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, and studied law at New York University, although he never actually worked as a lawyer. New York, Jewishness and the law were, one way or another, to dominate his poetry and fiction. In fact, his Complete Poems 1918-1975, sadly still out of print, consists mainly of observations of life in his native city and verse reworkings of episodes from the Old Testament and Talmud.</p><p>Reznikoff is on record as saying that his legal studies led him to the insight that poetry should be like the evidence given by a witness in a criminal trial; \"not a statement of what he felt, but of what he saw or heard\". It was this approach that made him a kind of patron and model for <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivist_poets\" title=\"\">the Objectivists</a> in the 1930s, and its full flowering was to come in his late 500-plus page long poem sequence <a href=\"http://jacketmagazine.com/30/hardy-reznik.html\" title=\"\">Testimony: The United States (1885-1915) Recitative</a>, the first volume of which was published in 1965.</p><p>Testimony draws on the records of hundreds of court cases to present a portrait of a society in ferment; the society, incidentally, into which the poet was born. It is, indeed, a picture of things seen and heard, with, ironically given the material, very little by way of judgemental interpretation. The original transcripts are arranged and lightly edited as, essentially, found poetry. For most of the cases used, we don't even get to read the verdict or sentence handed down.</p><p>Published just a year before his death in 1976, Holocaust was Reznikoff's last book. It, too, draws on court records, this time The Trials of the Major War Criminals at Nuremberg and the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. The literal, matter-of-fact style that Reznikoff uses in the poem is not accidental; it is a conscious technical choice. The horrors of the death camps are placed starkly before us in the words of the survivors, and the poet's selection process denies the reader the opportunity to look away. It also deprives us of any sense of catharsis; these things happened and no good came of them. There is no redemption, and no place for the reader to hide in the flat surface of the writing:</p><p> The women begged for their lives:<br> they were young, they were ready to work.<br> They were ordered to rise and run <br> and the SS men drew their revolvers and shot all five;<br> and then kept pushing the bodies with their feet<br> to see if they were still alive<br> and to make sure they were dead<br> shot them again.</p><p>And for me it is this matter of technique, the unblinking gaze of the invisible poet, that makes Holocaust such a vital book. It's as if Reznikoff took up the challenge implicit in Adorno's much misunderstood "Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch" ("<a href=\"http://www.marcuse.org/herbert/people/adorno/AdornoPoetryAuschwitzQuote.htm\" title=\"\">It is barbaric to write poetry after Auschwitz</a>\"). If Adorno's question is \"how can anyone write poetry that can comprehend the barbarity of the Holocaust\", Reznikoff's response is \"by doing what the artist has always done and finding the appropriate technical means\". The result is, in my opinion, one of the very great long poems in English to be written in the last century.</p><p>And so, there you have it. Not fashionable, not a big seller, not even a novel, but Holocaust is certainly the best book I read last year. And like any January drunk in a pub, my intention is to grab you by the collar and insist that you must read it, too. I'm not going to say you'll like it; that wouldn't be the point. But if you are interested in what poetry can do in the face of the world, then Holocaust is a must.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/poetry\">Poetry</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/billymills\">Billy Mills</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tcC4mrx9yvi39VtbxptI8lrEqfY/0/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tcC4mrx9yvi39VtbxptI8lrEqfY/0/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a><br>\n<a href=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tcC4mrx9yvi39VtbxptI8lrEqfY/1/da\"><img src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/tcC4mrx9yvi39VtbxptI8lrEqfY/1/di\" border=\"0\" ismap></a></p>"
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"title" : "Stealing SIM Cards from Traffic Lights",
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"content" : "<p>Johannesburg installed hundreds of networked traffic lights on its streets. The lights use a cellular modem and a SIM card to communicate.</p>\n\n<p>Those lights introduced a security risk I'll bet no one gave a moment's thought to: that criminals might steal the SIM cards from the traffic lights and use them to make free phone calls. But that's exactly <a href=\"http://www.joburg.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6068&catid=88&Itemid=266\">what happened</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Aside from the theft of phone service, repairing those traffic lights is far more expensive than those components are worth.</p>\n\n<p>I <a href=\"http://www.schneier.com/essay-266.html\">wrote about</a> this general issue before:</p>\n\n<blockquote>These crimes are particularly expensive to society because the replacement cost is much higher than the thief's profit. A manhole is worth $5–$10 as scrap, but it costs <a href=\"http://www.newsweek.com/id/137822\">$500 to replace</a>, including labor. A thief may take <a href=\"http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_4021500\">$20 worth of copper from a construction site, but do $10,000 in damage in the process</a>. And the increased threat means more money being spent on security to protect those commodities in the first place.\n\n<p>Security can be viewed as a tax on the honest, and these thefts demonstrate that our taxes are going up. And unlike many taxes, we don't benefit from their collection. The cost to society of retrofitting manhole covers with locks, or replacing them with less resalable alternatives, is high; but there is no benefit other than reducing theft.</p>\n\n<p>These crimes are a harbinger of the future: evolutionary pressure on our society, if you will. Criminals are often referred to as social parasites, but they are an early warning system of societal changes. Unfettered by laws or moral restrictions, they can be the first to respond to changes that the rest of society will be slower to pick up on. In fact, currently there's a reprieve. Scrap metal prices are all <a href=\"http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1438867.html\">down</a> from last year -- copper is currently $1.62 per pound, and lead is half what Berge got -- and <a href=\"http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/scrap_metal_prices_crash_as_ec.html\">thefts are down too</a>.</p>\n\n<p>We've designed much of our infrastructure around the assumptions that commodities are cheap and theft is rare. We don't protect transmission lines, manhole covers, iron fences, or lead flashing on roofs. But if commodity prices really are headed for new higher stable points, society will eventually react and find alternatives for these items -- or find ways to protect them. Criminals were the first to point this out, and will continue to exploit the system until it restabilizes.</p></blockquote><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Phq2kAHlEgk:tmeSw0Y6yfc:2mJPEYqXBVI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=2mJPEYqXBVI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Phq2kAHlEgk:tmeSw0Y6yfc:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?a=Phq2kAHlEgk:tmeSw0Y6yfc:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/schneier/fulltext?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Last December, I had the privilege of being featured in the Dust Magazine. My poem <i>Middle Sex</i> and a brief biography were published. You can read it <a href=\"http://www.scribd.com/doc/45118028/Dust-Magazine-December-2010\">here</a>. You would have to scroll down to read. This same poetry was also published at the <a href=\"http://writersprojectghana.com/middle-sex-nana-fredua-agyeman/\">Writers Project of Ghana</a>.<br><br>The following poems have also been published in <a href=\"http://www.africaknowledgeproject.org/index.php/jenda/index\">JENdA</a>! No. 17 (2010): African Women in Dimension: Part I:<br><ul><li>In the Line of Darkness</li><li>Eyes in the Window</li><li>The African Woman</li></ul></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/29803016-8571664447465007974?l=freduagyeman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The economy of Africa’s cities",
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"content" : "<p>When I started out in the 1960s, most of what anthropologists’ knew about African cities came from the Manchester school who worked in Central/Southern Africa, mainly in Northern Rhodesia (which became Zambia and was best known for the Copperbelt). Cities in this region had been largely built and were controlled by white settler regimes. The example of South Africa, where a white working class lobbied effectively to keep down African wages and working conditions, weighed heavily there. Urban areas were considered to belong to the whites, with blacks allowed only temporary sojourn there from their natural homelands in the countryside. </p>\n<p>The Manchester anthropologists (Max Gluckman, Bill Epstein, Clyde Mitchell and others) insisted strongly that this normative division was false. An African living in the town was a townsman with urban associations and relations, not a displaced villager. Class politics mattered more than race or traditional culture. This stereotype had been challenged, for example by Philip Mayer working in Port Elizabeth, South Africa; and some West African anthropologists like Michael Banton and Kenneth Little had pointed to very different conditions in that region. But still the Manchester paradigm of “African urbanization” was dominant.<span></span></p>\n<p>West African cities, by contrast, were built and supplied by Africans who moved freely between them and the countryside. White settlers were largely absent and mines were a relatively small part of the regional economy. A tiny colonial administration relied heavily on self-organized rural regimes for government. Commerce was controlled by European merchants, but their Lebanese counterparts were quite successful in inserting themselves into the import/export trade. The most significant export commodities — cocoa in the Gold Coast (later Ghana) and groundnuts in N. Nigeria and Senegal — were almost exclusively in indigenous hands. This meant that West Africans, even when there were few earlier precedents for urban settlement, largely built these cities, supplying them with housing, transport, food, infrastructure and a wide variety of commercial services including marketplaces where indigenous traders (often women) predominated. Understanding this is a valuable corrective to the implicit notion that anything modern must have been introduced by whites in Africa.</p>\n<p>I discovered quite soon that most West Africans could not plan to spend their lives in the city or to treat those lives as being exclusively urban. They tended to grow up in the countryside and, even if they found urban employment, needed rural kin for food supplies and help with marriage, to raise and educate some of their children and to provide support in the event of sickness or worse. It was unsurprising therefore that the migrant workers I knew expected to retire back home. One of my first published papers emphasized how ethnic identity was reinforced by these life cycle considerations, with marriages and funerals as the principal focus of social life in the city. I came to see rural and urban areas as a single field traversed by social networks in all directions. In retrospect, this was a vision of society as essentially translocal, an anticipation of globalisation as it later unfolded, but here mainly within the boundaries of the new nation-state.</p>\n<p>I have mentioned that I was never able to complete a monograph based on my urban ethnography. Bizarrely, the only book I produced based on my West African research was <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Political-Agriculture-Cambridge-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0521284236/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294991428&sr=1-1\"><em>The Political Economy of West African Agriculture</em></a> (1982), a historical survey of the literature originally commissioned by USAID. There are no living people in this account and I probably wouldn’t recognize a millet stalk if it hit me in the face, so my treatment of agriculture is rather abstract. I concluded that the concentration of economic resources by political means in a few primate cities would lead to disaster unless backward agriculture or some other sector generated modern machine capitalism. At much the same time, a friend of mine, Paul Richards was writing<em> <a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Indigenous-Agricultural-Revolution-Paul-Richards/dp/0091613213/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294992091&sr=1-1\">Indigenous Agricultural Revolution</a></em> (1985) based on his ethnography of small farmers in Sierra Leone. he was rightly contemptuous of my ignorance concerning farmers, but my historical analysis proved to be more prophetic than his celebration of their ingenuity. In the course of writing the book, I learned one thing that might help to explain my failure to write an urban ehngoraphy. It now seemed to me that West African cities were not distinctive from the surrounding countryside, but were rather extensions of long-established agrarian societies.</p>\n<p>When I graduated to the field of development studies, the picture of West Africa’s cities was just as distorted as one you might get from boorowing a Manchester school perspective. Here the emphasis of the economists was on the new states’ ability to pursue a neo-Keynesian development program. How could ‘we’ (the politicians, bureaucrats and their academic advisers) provide the jobs and other needs of the hordes flocking into the cities at the time? It was assumed that such provision had to come through the bureaucracy and conform to state-made laws. My paper on ‘informal income opportunities and urban employment’ pointed to the wide range of economic activities that were invisible to bureacracy. But even I saw them through a statist lens (“seeing like a state”), hence the term ‘informal’, not regulated by the bureaucracy. At that time I assumed that the bulk of economic progress must come though public and private sector enterprise of a corporate type.</p>\n<p>The informal economy was never adequately described or defined, but these days it is commonplace to read assertions that African economies are 70-90% ‘informal’. Certainly the deregulation undertaken over the last three decades of neoliberal economic policies have led to a radical informalization of the world economy, not least in Africa. But to label these activities ‘informal’ is to avoid identifying what they are positively for or how they are organized, by which social principles.</p>\n<p>I would say that the last half-century has seen a massive transfer of population to the cities, where most people have been left to generate their own forms of commerce. The informal economy in this sense has been a holding operation allowing many people to survive in the city and some to flourish. Whatever is coming up next will draw to some extent on this sprawling self-organized economic activity. Our task is to find out more about the promising sectors spawned by such a development.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+economy+of+Africa%E2%80%99s+cities+http%3A%2F%2Fthememorybank.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D1460\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=The+economy+of+Africa%E2%80%99s+cities+http%3A%2F%2Fthememorybank.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D1460\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<div><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/event/1787284+Rhian+Benson+in+Accra\">Thu 30 Dec – Rhian Benson in Accra</a><br><br>Ah Rhian Benson. Let's say that again. Ah Rhian Benson. I'll censor myself and only say "She's back".The gig was at Citizen Kofi's in Accra, the trendiest spot these days, I've been told. It was a year end celebration and short preview of the good things to come next year.<br><br>I can safely report that the wait was worth it. It's been 7 years since the last album. She explains "I had to do some living that I could then put in the album".<br><br>Such a tease... <span title=\"Unknown track\">Let's rewind</span> has a salsa flavour and kicks things off. Call it new soul.<br><br>The new album, <a title=\"Rhian Benson - Hands Clean\" href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Rhian+Benson/Hands+Clean\">Hands Clean</a>, is due to be released on Valentine's day next year.<br><br><a title=\"Rhian Benson – Better Without You\" href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Rhian+Benson/_/Better+Without+You\">Better Without You</a> dissolves into a reggae groove as a first single should. It should be a hit.<br><br><a title=\"Rhian Benson – This Feels Like Home\" href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Rhian+Benson/_/This+Feels+Like+Home\">This Feels Like Home</a>, also from the new album has a slower tempo, a deep bassy feel and is duly hypnotic. It was the first song she and her collaborators recorded in Copenhagen at the start of the new project. It too should be a hit.<br><br>She then covers Sade's Sweetest Taboo emphasizing the guitar and allowing her warm voice to tickle your ears and bring back memories.<br><br>She closed with her trademark and we all repeated the chorus: "This is my chance gonna say how I feel".<br><br>Short and sweet, it's good to have her back<br><br><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/tags/rhianbenson/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Photos of Rhian Benson from the show</a></div>"
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"title" : "Witness: Ghana coup",
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"content" : "<div style=\"font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:black\"><div>\n<table style=\"border:0;border-collapse:collapse\">\n<tr>\n<td style=\"line-height:0;border:0;padding:0;vertical-align:top\"><a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng\"><img src=\"http://friendfeed.com/static/images/nomugshot-medium.png?v=0fa9\" alt=\"Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah\" style=\"border:1px solid #ccc;width:50px;height:50px\"></a></td>\n<td style=\"border:0;padding:0;vertical-align:top;padding-left:8px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:11pt\">\n<div style=\"margin-bottom:1pt;color:black\">\n\n\n\n<a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng\" style=\"font-weight:bold;text-decoration:none;color:#00c\">Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah</a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n</div>\n<div style=\"margin-top:2px;color:black\">Witness: Ghana coup - <a style=\"text-decoration:none;color:#00c\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://www.divshare.com/download/13757482-50d\" title=\"http://www.divshare.com/download/13757482-50d\">http://www.divshare.com/downloa...</a></div>\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin-top:2px;color:#737373;font-size:10pt\">\n<a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng/7711c914/witness-ghana-coup\" style=\"color:#737373;text-decoration:none\">January 12</a>\n\nfrom <a style=\"color:#737373;text-decoration:none\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://delicious.com/amaah\">delicious</a>\n\n- <a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng/7711c914/witness-ghana-coup\" style=\"color:#77c;text-decoration:none\">Comment</a>\n- <a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng/7711c914/witness-ghana-coup\" style=\"color:#77c;text-decoration:none\">Like</a>\n</div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div style=\"margin-top:6pt\">\n<table style=\"border-spacing:0;border-collapse:collapse\">\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border:0;padding:0;padding-right:5px;padding-top:2px;vertical-align:top\"><img src=\"http://friendfeed.com/static/images/n-comment.png?v=1fa9\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\"></td>\n<td style=\"border:0;padding:0;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:10pt;color:#737373;vertical-align:middle\">How a New Year coup in Ghana in 1981 put one journalist in danger. Amongst other things, this is the story of how Mum and I fled Ghana in 1982. - <a href=\"http://friendfeed.com/koranteng\" style=\"color:#7777cc;text-decoration:none\">Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah</a></td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n</div>\n\n\n</td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n</div>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p>How a New Year coup in Ghana in 1981 put one journalist in danger. Amongst other things, this is the story of how Mum and I fled Ghana in 1982.</p>\n <span>\n <a href=\"http://www.delicious.com/save?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.divshare.com%2Fdownload%2F13757482-50d&title=Witness%3A%20Ghana%20coup&copyuser=amaah&copytags=ghana+coup+history+personal+politics+life+exile+Africa+journalism+media+violence+courage+toli+me+family+mum&jump=yes&partner=delrss&src=feed_google\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"add this bookmark to your collection at http://www.delicious.com\"><img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/hr/img/delicious.small.gif\" alt=\"http://www.delicious.com\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" border=\"0\"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>\n - Saved by <a title=\"visit amaah's bookmarks at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah\">amaah</a>\n to\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged ghana\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/ghana\">ghana</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged coup\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/coup\">coup</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged history\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/history\">history</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged personal\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/personal\">personal</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged politics\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/politics\">politics</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged life\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/life\">life</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged exile\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/exile\">exile</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged Africa\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/Africa\">Africa</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged journalism\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/journalism\">journalism</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged media\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/media\">media</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged violence\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/violence\">violence</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged courage\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/courage\">courage</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged toli\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/toli\">toli</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged me\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/me\">me</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged family\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/family\">family</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view amaah's bookmarks tagged mum\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/amaah/mum\">mum</a>\n \t\t\t- <a rel=\"self\" title=\"view more details on this bookmark at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/url/9c3dfa23dcd3f1cb135085594f8d6304\">More about this bookmark</a>\n </span>"
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"title" : "The Political Duopoly And Its Potential Competition",
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"content" : "<div><p>In an MIT lecture on <a href=\"http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/861\">The Financial Crisis, the Recession, and the American Political Economy</a>, Charles Ferguson, author of the documentary <a href=\"http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/site/\">Inside Job</a>, describes the U.S. political system as follows:</p>\n<ul>\n<li> The two parties have formed a duopoly in which both parties have agreed to agree on money issues and to disagree on social issues. </li>\n<li>Both parties serve the financial sector and the wealthy. Thus they agree on (de-regulation) / (non-)enforcement / (no )criminal prosecution for the financial sector, as well as on antitrust, campaign financing and tax policies. </li>\n<li>Both parties agree to retain their base through conflict over social policy: Religion, education, evolution/creationism, gay rights, abortion, environment, war, terrorism. </li>\n<li>The sustainability of the duopoly depends upon barriers to entry against newcomers via ballot qualification, redistricting/gerrymendering, campaign and advertisement costs, lack of parliamentary system and lack of ranked-order voting. </li>\n</ul>\n<p>While I agree on this 'duopoly' description, Ferguson has a few points wrong.</p>\n<p>War and terrorism are no longer social issues but are about money making as well as about keeping potential competitors away from the system. Therefore both parties agree on keeping the wars going and on keeping the terrorism bogeyman alive.</p>\n<p>That a parliamentary system instead of a presidential one is better in keeping the overwhelming influence of the financial sector and the wealthy away is disproved by the United Kingdom. In economic matters it works just the same way as the United States with the same catastrophic results. Even a parliamentary system like Germany's, which allows new parties to grow and to catch decent shares of votes (the Greens, the Left), is not that much different. After a few years the new parties simply get cooped by the system be that by bribes or other inducement.</p>\n<p>A solution could come from a constitution and the judiciary. But at least in the case of the U.S., the judiciary has been bought too.</p>\n<p>A widely known and successful alternative system in a different country or bloc of countries could create public demand to adjust the duopoly system and the reign of money. The existence of the example of the Soviet bloc was the reason for some decent social-democratic policies in Western Europe after WWII. The elimination of that example and competition moved the "western" systems to the right.</p>\n<p>There are currently three areas where a new better system could grow and set an example which would necessitate the "western" model to be adjusted to better care for its people. One is the bloc of social-democracies in South America. One is the Confucian system in China and potential third candidate could be a system based on Islam.</p>\n<p>How much the-powers-that-be of the current "western" systems fear the competition of these other social-system can probably be evaluated by measuring the amount of energy they put into fighting each of them.</p></div>"
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"title" : "Rolling up Flickr",
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"content" : "<p>Yahoo’s fate was pretty much sealed in the aftermath of Microsoft’s take over attempt. Shortly there after control of the firm shifted to a handful of wealthy <a href=\"http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/41020/Yahoo-Icahn-Settle-Carl-Gets-Three-Seats-Ends-Proxy-Fight\">individual</a>s who’s only aspiration was to maximize the short term return on their investment. Yahoo will die or be torn asunder trying to met their demands.</p>\n<p>So what about Flickr? Which without exaggeration I think can be described as one of the few great cultural achievements of the last twenty years. What can they do to it? What will squeeze the maximum return on investment out of it? Fast.</p>\n<p>Here’s a possibility: Yahoo is sells the Flicker community to Getty Images. Let me explain.</p>\n<p>While opinions vary about copyright’s fate, everybody agrees that copyright is looking a bit sickly right now. The internet upset the traditional distribution barriers, barriers that encouraged bottlenecks. Bottlenecks where copyright fees could easily be collected. The physical world analogy for this transformation is a toll bridge over a fast and dangerous river. If the river dries up it’s going to be hard to get people to pass thru your toll booth.</p>\n<p>One school of thought argues that technical and physical realities have changed; and that makes the copyright business models obsolete. Moral or legal arguments are irrelevant if they are physically impossible to implement. And much the same way that you can make compelling arguments against extreme disparities of wealth, you are severely limited in how much you can do about it. You can temper it, but you can not eliminate it. You can temper our inability to pay creators of information goods; but you can’t eliminate it. It’s not like they aren’t <a href=\"http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2011/01/everything-is-free.html\">going to do it anyway</a>.</p>\n<p>Another school of thought holds that shifting distribution channels are nothing new. Each time one emerges there is a period of, to use the analogy, untaxed river crossing. And each time bottlenecks emerge and it becomes possible to collect the tolls once again. And there is a lot of history to suggest that’s the case. Distribution networks, like all unregulated networks, tend to condense so their are hubs. A boatload of efficiency emerges out of that condensation. The standardization they enable goes hand and hand with the opportunity to collect a toll.</p>\n<p>One of the pleasures I get from thinking about his stuff is the stories. Here is an amazingly fun story about condensation in a distribution network involving <a href=\"http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-dope-smokers-with-munchies-at-2am.html\">dope smoking, junk food, and the cash flow of the a distributor</a>.</p>\n<p>A common 20th century pattern in shifting distribution channels was the roll-up. Early in the century every city had it’s own department store, and by the end of the century these had all merged. Early in the century every neighborhood had it’s own hardware store, privately owned by a single proprietor. By the end of the century national chains had displaced or rolled up displaced the neighborhood business. At this point there are very very few locally operated businesses. The pattern that a new industry starts with a diversity of vendors and condenses into a few is <a href=\"http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2003/07/reducing-diversity\">surprisingly inevitable</a>.</p>\n<p>Which brings us to Flickr.</p>\n<p>Flicker is a photo sharing community. It is a direct competitor to the more traditional stock photography industry; companies like <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbus\">Corbus</a> and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty_Images\">GettyImages</a>. These businesses provide a place were a publisher can shop for an image, pay his toll, and get back to work. They are classic two sided network buisnesses; bridge between the photographers and the publishers. Keeping most of the revenue for themselves. Their success depends entirely on the vitality of copyright. No doubt all those images at Flicker under liberal creative commons licenses have undermined the value of those businesses. Copyright is pretty sick these days. Thus, years ago, when Bill Gates bought Corbus by reaction was a combination of “wait!, copyright’s on it’s deathbed” and “oh, he think’s it will recover.” Markets climb a wall of worry, and all that.</p>\n<p>In talking about Corbus the Wikipedia page states: “By buying out the many family-owned businesses that created the field, Getty and Corbis are in the process of “rolling-up” the stock photo business.”</p>\n<p>So. How would you go about rolling up Flicker into your stock photo business if you wanted to?</p>\n<p>This morning a friend, who has a delightful popular presence on Flickr was invited by Flickr and GettyImages to sign an “Contributor Agreement for Photo Sharing Content.” The incentive was that she might receive a 20-30% share of any royalties they collect. It includes this clause:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<div>“Exclusivity: All Content accepted by Getty Images is on a Content exclusive basis. Such Content and any Similars may</div>\n<div>not be submitted to any third party for license, sale or distribution. However, on a non-exclusive basis, You</div>\n<div>may use Content and any Similars for Your personal or self promotional, non-commercial use, including</div>\n<div>Photo Sharing, provided that You do not compete with or limit the rights granted to Getty Images under the</div>\n<div>Agreement. On an exclusive basis you may use Content and any Similars for limited edition, signed and/or</div>\n<div>numbered fine art prints (though Getty Images retains the exclusive right to sell and license prints not</div>\n<div>signed or numbered).”</div>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So let us imagine how this plays out. Currently thousands of pages on thousands of sites around the Internet are decorated with images she created. After she signs this agreement the bots working on behalf of GettyImages quickly discover them all. Actually, I suspect thier bots already know this information and they invited her to sign up because they know her images are widely copied. The also know she didn’t already relinquish her rights with a liberal creative commons license.</p>\n<p>She currently manages the “enforcement of rights” problem her self. Trading off the chance of some royalities against the cost of chasing after those royalities. But since she makes her income from the work she photographs the wide distribution of the photos has many beneficial effects. It builds her fan base, it’s advertising, it contributes into the community she her work is situated in. So how to manage the enforcement problem is more subtle than it might appear at first glance.</p>\n<p>Not so for GettyImages, their business decision on enforcement is simple. For example if sending a note to every site with one of my friends images on it asking for a toll maximizes revenue, why not.</p>\n<p>So, I think, Yahoo is selling the Flicker community to Getty Images. I wonder if Google could do something analogous with their image search collection.</p>"
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"content" : "I got a kick out of reading the Slashdot posting\n<a href=\"http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=11/01/01/1614215\">\nReplacing Traditional Storage, Databases With In-Memory Analytics</a>.\nOne of my personal quirks is that the relational/sql model has never made\nmuch sense to me. It's both cumbersome and slow. Give me a big\nbucket of RAM and a log file any day. It's always hugely faster and\nmore flexible. If the database is too big for RAM,\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_(database_architecture)\">shard</a>.\nThere's a odd sort of political correctness about SQL. I've frequently\nrun into people with high performance transaction systems. When asked\nhow they achieved that performance, \"big HashMap\" comes up often,\nand often with a hint of embarrassment. Some people seem to think\nthat it's just a hack that they're forced into to achieve performance.\nBut there's a murky distinction in my mind between \"hack\" and\n\"elegant technique\". I tend to think of the log as the Truth, and RAM\nas a cache that just happens to be big enough to contain everything.\nThere's a huge bag of tricks to trade off reliability, scale, distribution\nand startup time. Pick a point in that multidimensional space, and there's\nalmost always a set of tricks to get you there."
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"content" : "<div><p><em>Editorial published in <a href=\"http://www.dawn.com/\">Dawn</a>, Jan. 11, 2011</em></p>\n<p>IT'S EASY to blame America's deepening crisis on its feckless civilian government. President Barack Hussein Obama and his Democratic Party have been ineffectual in managing the country's economy, slow in responding to disasters like last summer's oil spill and unable to attack extremist sanctuaries as the United States has been seeking for years. Having lost its majority in parliament, the Obama government looks as if it may be beyond rescue.</p>\n<p>Yet the assassination last week of one of Mr. Obama's allies, Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was a reminder that America is engaged in a fateful civil war between democratic moderates and extremists - and that the current government is the most reliably liberal force. Mrs. Giffords was an outspoken defender of secular values who had been campaigning to reform America's most odious laws against health care.</p>\n<p>There are many good reasons for frustration with Mr. Obama, both among Americans and among foreign allies. But this week's events make plain - if it were not clear enough already - that there is little choice other than to try to support and strengthen his government. Mr. Obama's government needs to implement economic reforms, sponsor development in areas where extremism breeds, and push the Army to go after them. But for now, the priority should be its survival.</p>\n<p>Adopted from: <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010605205.html\">Death of a liberal in Pakistan</a>, Editorial, WaPo, Jan. 6, 2011</p></div>"
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"content" : "<p>I cannot properly express how awesome this hour long interview is. Kind of wish it was in a podcast form but regardless, it’s worth your time.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/18175888\" width=\"400\" height=\"220\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>\n<p><a href=\"http://vimeo.com/18175888\">Sitdown With DJ Premier & Pete Rock</a> from <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/user2198269\">DJPremierBlog</a> on <a href=\"http://vimeo.com\">Vimeo</a>.</p></p>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TSEnTdGyX5I/AAAAAAAACdU/dYi58hX4mOQ/s1600/interview_monch.jpg\"><img style=\"width:150px;height:150px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TSEnTdGyX5I/AAAAAAAACdU/dYi58hX4mOQ/s400/interview_monch.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://www.believermag.com/issues/201101/?read=interview_monch\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-style:italic\">The Believer -- Interview with Pharoahe Monch</span></a><br>by Adam Mansbach<br><br>“zadu za! zuh za! zu baby!”<br>Good things for a song to include:<br>Goals<br>Morals<br>Quadruple metaphors<br><br>Even in the thick of the bountiful early ’90s scene, the Queens-bred duo known as Organized Konfusion stood out. On their self-titled debut and their revered follow-up, 1994’s Stress: The Extinction Agenda, Pharoahe Monch and his partner, Prince Poetry, defined the lyrical vanguard with ear-bending enjambment, melodic cadences, stutter-stepping flows, and furious, multisyllabic rhyme flurries. Perhaps more than any of their contemporaries’, OK’s records conveyed an exhilarating sense of possibility: like the avatars of free jazz, they had the chops and the courage to take a song anywhere, at any time.<br><br>Conceptually, the group was just as adventurous, rhyming from the perspectives of stray bullets and “hypnotical” gases. The way they cloaked battle rhymes and social commentary in clouds of energetic abstraction marked them as heirs to legendary Bronx super-weirdos the Ultramagnetic MC’s—as well as forefathers to scores of unlistenable rappers who never mastered the proper ratio of organization to confusion.<br><br>Critical acclaim and $4.25 will buy you an iced mocha latte, so after a third album, 1997’s The Equinox, Monch decided to go it alone. The year 1999 saw the much-anticipated release of Internal Affairs on the tastemaking Rawkus Records. Like the disc with which it shared advertising space, Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides, Internal Affairs showcased the versatility of a newly solo artist with ambitions and influences that both transcended and embodied hip-hop. Monch crooned, sparred with a who’s-who of guest MCs, and spewed high-concept rhymefests in the OK vein.<br><br>But it was “Simon Says,” Monch’s attempt to simplify his flow for maximum commercial impact, that gave the MC’s MC a bona fide crossover hit. Over an ominous sample jacked from a Godzilla movie, it commanded dancers to “get the fuck up,” and they obeyed in droves. Club DJs loved the song; radio embraced it. Charlie’s Angels and Boiler Room picked it up for their sound tracks. Then the Tokyo-smashing monster (or his human representatives) sued for the uncleared sample, and Rawkus was forced to pull the album from stores.<br><br>It would be nearly eight years before Monch released his next long-player, Desire, in June 2007—two or three eternities in the notoriously fast-moving world of hip-hop. Few artists could have marshaled a fan base after such lag-time, but hip-hoppers of a certain era are proving to be quite elephantine in the memory department (see: the resurrected career of MF Doom), and Desire found an audience.<br><br>It didn’t hurt that the album showcased Monch at the height of his powers: pushing boundaries with conspiracy theories, multipart narratives, and Tom Jones impressions; challenging listeners to digest his wordplay at the rate he served it up (“still get it poppin’ without Artist and Repertoire / ’cause Monch is a monarch, only minus the A & R”); structuring entire verses around the names of financial institutions and wireless devices. Desire manages to be simultaneously indignant and inspiring, defiant and joyful, hilarious and paranoid. Listening to it now, it is striking to realize how palpably the record feels like a document of the late Bush years.<br><br>Monch and I spoke several times by telephone shortly after his return to New York from a European tour. He was preparing for an Organized Konfusion reunion show, the first in ten years, and also laying verses for a new album, W.A.R. (We Are Renegades), scheduled for release in February. In each case, we talked until his cell phone ran out of juice.<br><br>—Adam Mansbach<br>I. THIS IS LADIES NIGHT!<br><br>THE BELIEVER: It seems to me that hip-hop today is like jazz was in the early ’70s. For the first time, the major innovators are not new artists, but fifteen- or twenty-year veterans—guys like you, MF Doom, Ghostface, Nas, Jay-Z. Even Lil Wayne has been in it for almost that long.<br><br>PHAROAHE MONCH: I think there’s a couple of reasons. Having the savvy to know what you want to say, how you want to say it, and what music you want to say it over comes with time spent and wisdom gained in a music career. Back in the days, a prodigy usually was cultivated by the veterans around him—take Nas, who was surrounded by Q-Tip, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Premier, and L.E.S., all listening to the tone of his voice and the way he rhymes melodically and saying, “He’s gonna sound better over this.” If Nas had tried to produce his first album himself and hand out demos to people… whatever, I don’t need to elaborate. I remember talking to Nas after [his debut verse on Main Source’s] “Live at the Barbeque,” and he was unsure what he wanted to do. It took time for him to cultivate his mental state and decide, This is what type of artist I want to be.<br><br>These days, you don’t get development. When new artists come out and they’re not being cosigned or some company doesn’t have a stake in it, or someone’s not getting paid under the table to produce the whole record or bring it to video, the artist really suffers. You’ve rarely got an artist that’s not being chauffeured into the business by some huge-ass names. Before, it could be like, “Who the fuck are these cats Ultramagnetic MC’s?” “Oh, they’re from the Bronx and they’re insane and this is what it sounds like and this is what they’re bringing to the table.” Now, unless somebody who’s already eleven thousand times platinum is like, “We’re ushering this project in,” it’s not really gonna pop commercially.<br><br>People gravitated to the first Organized Konfusion record because it sounded so experimental. We were trying to work on something more cultivated, nurtured by Paul C., a veteran producer who would have given us a more polished, tighter groove. Then Paul was murdered, so me and Prince Poetry was winging it—taking records to the studio and trying to do the shit ourselves.<br><br>BLVR: That reminds me of something Adam Bradley says in Book of Rhymes: that MCs who rhyme familiar, standard words tend to rhyme about familiar, standard subjects. So breaking out content-wise is dependent on breaking out poetically. It sounds like breaking out musically freed you to write differently, too.<br><br>PM: I would have to agree. I think it’s one of the major reasons that the art form is suffering and we’ve hit a wall artistically. A lot of the intricate parts of hip-hop culture became non-useful to the commercial mainstream, so they made it unusable. Like the beatbox: it goes from “All right, we don’t have money for equipment, but we’ve got this dude.…” to “We’ve got the budget to make a record now; we don’t need you in the group anymore.”<br><br>There’s a lot of pressure from the industry and the radio. Especially in New York, cats are like, “I guess this is what you have to do to be recognizable or even make this a profession at all. And I definitely could do what I’m hearing on the radio.” And they get caught in a rut. But the consumer is like, “I’m not gonna buy some Jay-Z-sounding shit from somebody other than him, because I can just wait for the best person to do it.”<br><br>BLVR: Have you seen the Byron Hurt documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, where he asks all these MCs standing on the street outside a record company why they all rhyme about the same shit, and they tell him it’s the only way to get signed?<br><br>PM: No, but I can imagine. A colleague of mine played me some stuff from a guy who gave him a CD and was like, “This is my group. And this is what we do.” And that shit was cool; it was cash and rims and coke. But then the same guy was like, “Here’s the CD of what I actually do outside of them, because I’m on my own shit.” And we were fucking blown the fuck away. You feel pressured to do what you think the public wants, when in actuality the sales aren’t reflecting what the radio is doing. Not in the least bit! At some point, there’s a disconnect. Five years ago, I was like, “I know this song is platinum: this is the four-hundredth time I’ve heard it this morning.” And then you check and not even the younger kids are buying into the shit. They’re like, “This is cool for my fucking cell phone alert, but I don’t believe this guy, he’s a clown.”<br><br>There are situations where I’m uncomfortable saying, “I’m a hip-hop artist.” In some circles, the response is like, “Oh, OK, so… you have whores and your ties are shiny?”<br><br>BLVR: Do you see a generation gap within hip-hop? Between the veteran artists and fans who connect hip-hop to social protest, and younger ones who just see hip-hop as a facet of pop culture? I’m thinking of the cover version of Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome” on Desire, which is a brilliant way of knitting two generations together: commenting on the continuing relevance of that song, but also reinventing it.<br><br>PM: That’s exactly why I did it. I’m a big PE fan, very inspired by Chuck and the group. I laid the first verse, and I was playing it for people younger than me and they were like, “This shit is incredible. This is dope, this is relevant.” And I was like, “If you think this is crazy, you need to hear the original version,” and they were like, “What… original…?” And I was like, “Oh my god, that’s even more reason for me to do it.”<br><br>BLVR: They’re certainly never going to hear PE on the radio.<br><br>PM: Radio goes after this demographic of eight-to-eighteen-year-olds, and plays music they think facilitates that demographic, and really dumbs it down. But at the same time, my manager has a nephew in high school, and he’s telling me about the resurgence of golden-era shit in his high school. The same monster that they invented—the Internet, which is a gift and a curse, because it gives you all this access—allows kids to find Public Enemy and breeze through the shit, if they’re willing to become privy to it, and listen to “They Reminisce Over You” and fucking Large Professor and Illmatic.<br><br>When you find that music, you really feel in your soul what’s on the level with what. A producer friend of mine went to a conference in Phoenix, and all the bigwigs is on the panel, and the audience is fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-old up-and-coming producers, and a guy raises his hand and is like, “What’s going on with the music? I’m not really feeling what’s going on.” And a guy on the panel is like, “Well, you know, the Pro Tools and the Reason and the digital transfer…” and the kid is like, “Yo, forget all of that! I’m saying that I’m not feeling what cats are doing right now, what’s being served to us!” And people started clapping. You can’t fool all the people all the time.<br><br>BLVR: It’s great that that happened at a producers’ conference, in a room full of people who aspire to shape what’s going to be on the radio next year.<br><br>PM: Even at my old-ass age, I think back to my father and my older brother telling me, “This is not good.” I remember one time I bought Kool & The Gang’s Ladies Night and my brother broke the record and was like, “This is bullshit Kool & The Gang! This is not real Kool & The Gang!” And I was like, “What the fuck, man? This is Ladies Night!” It’s the same thing. There needs to be someone who can lead you in the right direction. There’s a need for pop. There’s a need for radio. There’s also a need to understand the brilliance and the depth of jazz and soul—and what hip-hop can be at its most brilliant and what hip-hop can be at its most simplistic.<br><br>Kids don’t even realize what they’re up against. If you idolize Kanye, know who Kanye’s influences are, and study that stuff. You’ll never match Kanye by starting off with his last record. You gotta go back and see that he was a great student of Jay-Z and a great student of Mos and a great student of Common and a great student of [Talib] Kweli. You just can’t jump in it and expect to be at that level.<br><br>Even the guys who I like who are coming up now, like this kid Blu from L.A., you talk to these dudes and they’re like, “My father was this,” “I listened to that,” “I was in the basement with this.” Radio makes it appear like you can get some sounds in a laptop and be the next dude. Those careers don’t really last, that’s the sad thing about it.<br><br>BLVR: Well, they used to be built on a lot more. Hip-hop was passed down through mentor-apprentice relationships, and a lot of the skills had to be learned firsthand. You weren’t going to figure out how to DJ or write graffiti unless somebody showed you. So you were responsible to your elders.…<br><br>PM: It’s crazy. I was watching an interview about the black man who performed the first open-heart surgery. Forty years later, you have surgeries removing bullets from people’s lungs. You don’t have the doctors saying, “Oh, fuck that heart surgery he did back in the day, I’m pulling bullets out of people’s lungs now,” right?<br><br>It mattered. It mattered what someone did to allow you to have the forum to do what you’re doing. There’s no way that you can say, “Fuck KRS-One. What I’m doing now is what I’m doing now is what I’m doing now.” And somebody has to pull cats aside, not for them to pay homage, you don’t need to pay homage, but to just try to understand the vehicle that’s allotted to you, why it’s there. There once was no radio for hip-hop. There once was no video shows for hip-hop. It’s like a man going, “This shit is all me, it has nothing to do with the universe, nothing to do with God, my parents….” You have to understand the vehicle, the form that allows you to do what you do, and why that is.<br><br>Read the Full Interview @ <span style=\"font-size:180%\"><a href=\"http://www.believermag.com/issues/201101/?read=interview_monch\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">The Believer</span></a></span><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-2801952359457970305?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>May 10, 2011 introductory note: After reading and learning more I wrote <a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/cote-divoire-military-intervention-vs-constitutional-legitimacy/\">Côte d’Ivoire – Military Intervention Vs Constitutional Legitimacy</a>, which will tell you a great deal more about what actually happened and what next. It is summarized in the first part of this post: <a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/humanitarian-invasion-in-ivory-coast/\">Humanitarian Invasion In Ivory Coast</a>.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">________</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://koranteng.blogspot.com/2010/12/electoral-fictions.html\">Koranteng</a> writes:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The usual practice when handing over to oneself is to hold back declaring results in your strongholds and wait until you know how many votes you need. …<br>\n<strong>Gbagbo and company couldn’t manage to do this, indeed the electoral commission that this sitting government had put in place took its job seriously and was remarkably independent</strong> – as well it should since a tremendous amount of effort had been put in place by Ivorians and the international community to stage these elections. <strong>The resort, then, was to say that the electoral commission did not have the right to declare the results</strong>. Which brings me again to that <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11892438\">video clip I noted earlier</a> that I’ve been stewing over ever since (… I recommend to everyone their closing line: “<strong>the elections have been canceled six times in the past five years</strong>.”). I haven’t seen a more perfect piece of political theater in years. Every actor played their part brilliantly.</p></blockquote>\n<div style=\"width:310px\"><a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/gbagboouattara11-101.jpg\"><img title=\"Gbagbo and Ouattara\" src=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/gbagboouattara11-101.jpg?w=300&h=208\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"208\"></a><p>Laurent Gbagbo (L) and Alassane Ouattara (R) laugh during a meeting in Abidjan in this November 27, 2010</p></div>\n<blockquote><p>When the next day, the head of the electoral commission did manage to sneak out and declare the results, the Gbagbo camp would remark that the declaration was invalid since it hadn’t been made within the requisite timeframe. In other words, the declaration that could have been made the prior night had turned into Cinderella’s carriage once midnight had passed.</p>\n<p>What then followed would clearly demonstrate that Ivory Coast has had a fictitious election.</p>\n<p><strong>It would only be <em>after</em> the election results were declared that a ‘Constitutional Council’ would throw out the votes of 12 percent of the country so that the “results” would be in Gbagbo’s favour</strong>. Surely this must be the most innovative response to an electoral contest. …</p>\n<p>First for 15 years ago, you say that a large part of your countrymen are not Ivorians, then you say that they are but that they can’t register, then you delay for 5 years, then you allow only some to register as you then delay registration and again delay the vote. Then the whole country votes and even your folks vote against you so that the opposition win. <strong>And now you go and nullify their votes even though most of the irregularities were in your strongholds</strong>. Words fail me.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Koranteng also points out:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Incidentally, we were on notice as to how ugly things might turn out. Recall if you will, the September story about that Ivorian man arrested in California attempting to buy arms to smuggle in contravention of the UN embargo. The salient quote:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“$1.9 million wired to the US as a 50 percent downpayment on the weapons… the shipment of 4,000 handguns, 200,000 rounds of ammunition and 50,000 tear gas grenades to Ivory Coast.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>… The fact also that millions of dollars were so readily transferred surely indicates the importance the old government placed on the military option and indeed the kind of planning that was involved …</p></blockquote>\n<p>That should have been a tipoff, as should this diplomatic assessment from July 2009 via Wikileaks: <em>“The Reality: There will not be an election unless President Gbagbo is confident that he will win it — and he is not yet confident of the outcome.”</em></p>\n<p>There are reports of mercenaries coming in from Liberia and Angola, although the facts are difficult to determine. Ouattara is talking up the tales of mercenaries. He wants military intervention to help him assume office. But that does not mean that some accounts are not true. And some of Charles Taylor’s former cohorts are looking for work, grabbing their wigs and <a href=\"http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE70001Z20110101?pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true\">heading to Ivory Coast</a> in hope that either side might employ them.</p>\n<p>In an interview on Democracy Now, Horace Campbell provides his analysis of the aftermath of the election, along with some history:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2010/12/27/horace_campbell_on_ivory_coast_crisis\">As Thousands Flee Ivory Coast, Former Clinton Adviser Lanny Davis is Paid Lobbyist for President Who Refuses to Cede Power</a>:<br>\nWell, this is a test for the African Union. It’s a test for whether the concept of people’s rights and the idea of democracy will go beyond elections, because in the case of the Ivory Coast, that is called Côte d’Ivoire, we have a situation where the person who has lost the election, <strong>Laurent Gbagbo, is refusing to step down. And in the process of refusing to step down, he and those around him, they are invoking all forms of xenophobia and hostility to people from the north in order to divide the country</strong>. Thankfully, the days when Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea were places that could provide the mercenaries so that Gbagbo could develop war, thankfully, we are in the state of transition in Sierra Leone, in Liberia and Guinea so that the possibility for war will be dependent on the extent to which Gbagbo can get support from persons like Lanny Davis in the United States and the bankers and financial elements within the country that will finance his army.<br>\n…<br>\nWhat we have to do in this country, we have, in this country, to call on Hillary Clinton to distance herself from Lanny Davis, who has been employed by Gbagbo to lobby for him in Washington to present the government as a transparent and democratic government.<br>\n…<br>\n<strong>Gbagbo is trying to exploit differences between the State Department and the White House</strong>. The President of the United States called Laurent Gbagbo to urge him to step down, and he was so arrogant that he refused to take the telephone call of President Barack Obama. And he is arrogant enough to believe that he can whip up the kind of xenophobia to divide the people of the Ivory Coast to say that Alassane Ouattara is not an Ivorian … <strong>the point is, the people voted for him, and the election’s results should be observed</strong>.<br>\n…<br>\n<strong>And the positive result out of all of this is the clarity of the African Union, the fact that the African Union is taking a very clear position that Ouattara won the election</strong>. The African Union is taking a very clear position that they will use force. And the fact that the meeting of ECOWAS that took place two days ago would send a very clear signal so that there could be no manipulation within West Africa itself, I think this is part of the maturity of the African Union process. And we’re going to need that process also in the Sudan in nine to 11 days’ time, when we face a similar crisis in the Sudan. So, what we in this side of the world have to do, <strong>we have to keep up our education to the citizens so that people like Lanny Davis and the State Department and the U.S. Africa Command cannot use incidents such as what is happening in the Ivory Coast to represent Africa as backward and divisive and barbarian</strong>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In this interview Horace Campbell also provides some background to the current situation:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Ivory Coast was a jewel in the crown of French colonialism. The Ivory Coast, by its very name, was a place where colonial plunder took ivory and gold. And the Ivory Coast is located in West Africa, bordered by Liberia, bordered by Sierra Leone, and by Ghana. Now, the president of the Ivory Coast, <strong>when Ivory Coast became independent in 1960, the president of Ivory Coast was Houphouët-Boigny. Houphouët-Boigny used the Ivory Coast as a base for counterrevolution in Africa. All of the forces of French colonialism, all of the forces of French exploitation, all of the forces of French militarism converged on the Ivory Coast. And for 30 or more years, the Ivory Coast was the base for supporting apartheid in South Africa. It was a base for supporting Jonas Savimbi. Jonas Savimbi was very close to the leader, Houphouët-Boigny. And some of your listeners would know that they were also complicit in the plot to assassinate Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso</strong>.</p>\n<p>Now, the fact is, because of the intensification of the investment in the Ivory Coast in that period, in the 50-year period, millions of Africans went to work on banana and cocoa plantations, so that there were a number of people, persons from Burkina Faso, persons from Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana, who worked in that country. So the country has 20 million persons. There are 10 or a million more persons from north of the country whose ancestors came as migrant workers. Now, in the spirit of pan-Africanism, one should recognize that the borders in the Ivory Coast were artificially created at the Conference of Berlin.</p>\n<p>Well, in 1993, after Houphouët-Boigny passed away, Alassane Ouattara was the prime minister. They wrote a Supreme Court judgment to say that those who are from the north were not Ivorian citizens, and Alassane Ouattara, whose mother supposedly was born in the Burkina Faso, could not become a candidate for the presidency. Now, between 1999 and 2000, Gbagbo himself ran in an elections, and when he won the elections, the general who was the head of the army said that Gbagbo could not come to power. Gbagbo himself organized so that he could come to power, and there was a civil war in the country between 2000 and 2004, which, again, brought about the intervention of South Africa and the African Union. In that invention, the African Union worked to overturn that judgment of the Supreme Court that said that persons from the north could not be citizens.</p>\n<p><strong>And this idea is a sentiment that is whipped up in the country called Ivority. Ivority is a chauvinistic notion</strong>. It is an anti-pan-African notion. It’s a notion that says only those who are Christian from the southern area of the country can be citizens. <strong>Now, this is not something that is carried by the majority of the citizens of the Ivory Coast; this is an idea that is whipped up by the elements of the Ivorian capitalist class. These are Ivorians who have made millions of dollars out of cocoa plantation, out of exploiting the workers in the Ivory Coast</strong>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Abayomi Azikiwe writes <a href=\"http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-behind-calls-for-military.html\">What’s Behind the Calls for Military Intervention in Ivory Coast</a>, in which he provides more historical background on the situation in the Ivory Coast, including:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Guy De Lusignan in his book entitled “French-Speaking Africa Since Indpendence”, said … They staked their all on big business and foreign capital. The brilliant potentialities of the country are a challenge and their answer to that challenge is undoubtedly ‘neo-colonialist’ in spirit.</p></blockquote>\n<p>And Azikiwe writes about US and French policy in Ivory Coast. He does not support military intervention, at least not yet, because that intervention would inevitably be used as a tool of US imperialism, another exercise in <a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/obamas-african-rifles-partnerssurrogatesproxies/\">proxy war</a>. Azikiwe writes:</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>What is happening in Ivory Coast cannot be viewed in isolation from the overall U.S. and French policy of increasing military involvement in West Africa under the guise of the so-called “war on terrorism</strong>.”</p>\n<p>During the period of French colonialism and the first three decades of independence (1960-1990),Ivory Coast was promoted to the public as a model for imperialist rule that worked.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>What the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables revealed was that through successive U.S. administrations, including Barack Obama, the same imperialist aims and objectives determine the character of its foreign policy toward Africa.<br>\n…<br>\n… <strong>U.S. imperialism is strictly designed to further penetrate the economic, political and military affairs of the continent</strong>. The threatened intervention by ECOWAS would inevitably translate into large-scale deployments of both Nigerian and Ghanaians troops into Ivory Coast.</p>\n<p>Such an operation that would place thousands of ECOWAS troops in Ivory Coast would require the logistical support of the U.S. and France. <strong>This would place the imperialists in a position to monitor events in Nigeria</strong>, with its own political problems of regional and intra-religious conflict, as well as other states including Mali and Sudan.<br>\n…<br>\nConsequently, anti-war and peace movements inside the United States must oppose any effort by the U.S. to bolster its military presence in Africa by utilizing the Ivorian crisis as an excuse to indirectly invade the country through funding, coordinating and transporting ECOWAS troops in an invasion into the Ivory Coast. Such a course of action could spark even more bloodshed in the West Africa region.</p>\n<p>The mediation efforts of former South African President Thabo Mbeki provides some hope of resurrecting a political solution to the crisis. <strong>Why should their be an ultimatum given to Gbagbo while the other states in the region have been able to work out internal problems through political intervention and negotiations?</strong></p>\n<p>The United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) over the last year has conducted large-scale military maneuvers on the continent. In West Africa war games have been conducted under the guise of enhancing the security capacity of African states.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Although some fear the US State Department supports Gbagbo, citing particularly Lanny Davis and his close relationship with the Clintons, Ouattara appears to be the current <a href=\"http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/dec2010/ivor-d28.shtml\">darling of the US and France</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>He is a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist. He was deputy managing director of the IMF from 1994 to 1999 and governor of the Bank of Central African States. <strong>He [Ouattara] was prime minister of Ivory Coast from 1990 to 1993 and is closely identified with the free market policies introduced under an IMF structural adjustment plan that removed price subsidies and deregulated the labour market. State-owned enterprises were privatized and tariff barriers removed</strong>.</p>\n<p><strong>The economic and social tensions that were ultimately to break out into civil war can be traced in part to the process of economic liberalisation that began in the 1990s</strong>. President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled Ivory Coast from its independence in 1960 until his death in 1993, was able to maintain a degree of stability by sharing patronage among rival sections of the country’s elite. Under his successors tensions became increasingly acute. Falling commodity prices hit Ivory Coast’s chief export of cocoa, and structural adjustment reduced the amount of patronage available.</p>\n<p>Ivorian politicians whipped up communalist sentiments as they attempted to win a greater share of the country’s wealth for themselves and their supporters. This led to two years of civil war that was only brought to an end by a power-sharing agreement in 2004, which left the country divided.</p>\n<p><strong>France and the US are eager to see Ouattara in the presidential palace because they see him as the ideal candidate to push through economic measures that will make Ivory Coast the key to developing the entire region as a supplier of raw materials</strong>. Their outright backing for Ouattara represents a shift from their previous preference for a power-sharing agreement between the northern, mainly Muslim, and the southern, mainly Christian, Ivorian factions.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>The New Forces are not thought to be a match for the Ivorian army and would need help from foreign troops if Ouattara were to attempt to oust Gbagbo by military means. ECOWAS seems to be readying itself to do that, in the form of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG).</p>\n<p>ECOMOG has previously intervened in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau. The operation in Liberia was noted for the extent of the looting and corruption on the part of ECOMOG forces, which earned them the nickname “Every Car or Movable Object Gone”. ECOMOG would need logistical and other technical support from the great powers. Their intervention would in this sense be a cover for an extension of more direct colonial authority over Ivory Coast.</p>\n<p>French defence minister Alain Juppé has said that his country’s troops stationed in Ivory Coast are ready to protect French citizens, but would only intervene directly with a UN mandate. But if Ouattara called on their help as president, they could intervene under a French-Ivorian defence treaty that dates back to 1961. <strong>The Financial Times has warned that French intervention would be counterproductive, but with French troops already on the ground this must be one of the most likely outcomes of the conflict over the presidency</strong>.</p>\n<p><strong>Ouattara’s call for a general strike has undoubtedly followed consultations with his French and US backers</strong>. It is uncannily similar to the mass action discussed between Zimbabwean opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and the US embassy in Harare which has been revealed in the exposed WikiLeaks cables. Tsvangirai agreed to plan strike action for the Christmas holidays when schools, public buildings and many businesses would be closed anyway.</p>\n<p>The strike call in Ivory Coast is a cynical manoeuvre, intended to give Ouattara some semblance of popular legitimacy, while possibly providing the pretext for a foreign military intervention. <strong>If the strikers came under attack from the Ivorian military, which is still loyal to Gbagbo, then an invasion by West African troops with French and US backing could be presented as a humanitarian operation</strong>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>I think the White House is backing Ouattara. And I’m sure Gbagbo didn’t do himself any favors by refusing to talk to President Obama.</p>\n<p>Daniel Drezner at <a href=\"http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/06/a_provocative_question_about_the_ivory_coast\">Foreign Policy</a> has fantasies of a surgical strike by US special forces citing <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12131518\">this BBC report</a> in which Mr. Ouattara is trying to encourage a strike against Gbagbo, saying he could be taken out without starting a civil war or killing Ivoirians.</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Legitimate force doesn’t mean a force against Ivorians,” Mr Ouattara told reporters on Thursday, AFP news agency reports.</p>\n<p>“It’s a force to remove Laurent Gbagbo and that’s been done elsewhere, in Africa and in Latin America, there are non-violent special operations which allow simply to take the unwanted person and take him elsewhere.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Unfortunately the unwanted person has sometimes been the winner of a democratic election, whose removal the US has engineered or facilitated, as with Aristide in Haiti or Zelaya in Honduras or the failed attempts to oust Chavez using proxies. And the US, in the person of Ambassador Ranneberger, backed Kibaki in his <a href=\"http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/01/coup-in-kenya-.html\">coup</a> against what should have been a successful election in Kenya, plunging the country into violence, then forced a power sharing agreement on the country when the coup was so outrageously obvious and widely condemned that it could not stand.</p>\n<p>One thing we do know about US policy in Africa, it has relentlessly repeated the same mistakes year after year decade after decade. This includes backing and arming both sides in some conflicts and sponsoring dictators and coup makers, training the militaries that terrorize their people. The present attempts to militarize the continent with the Africa Command, and its shores with <a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/seabase-diplomacy/\">seabasing</a>, are just the most recent and vigorous example of this energetic and relentless rush in the wrong direction. It would be fabulous material for comedy if it weren’t so lethal.</p>\n<p>Ouattara is a free market fundamentalist and practitioner of the zombie economics so favored by the <a href=\"http://www.rgemonitor.com/us-monitor/253342/social_origins_of_the_american_corporate_predator_state\">corporate predator state</a>, policies that helped damage the Ivoirian economy and many more developing economies, the policies that are currently bringing down the US economy. He is also the legitimate winner of the election, chosen by the voters in Ivory Coast and all parties should respect that.</p>\n<p>Samuel Adjei Sarfo provides more detail on the election itself and events as they transpired. Follow this link for details of the electoral process and events: <a href=\"http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=200465\">Ghana’s Policy On The Ivorian Crisis</a>. Sarfo is an advocate for military intervention. He is justly afraid of a possible power sharing agreement, <a href=\"http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomerPage/features/artikel.php?ID=200515\">writing</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Of this kind of arrangement [power sharing], Kenya and Zimbabwe point the way to its insufficiency and danger. <strong>That kind of arrangement [power sharing] sets up a paradigm for the demise of democracy in Africa</strong>. Why must the winner of elections compensate himself by playing second fiddle to the loser of that election? In the Ivorian situation in particular, such an arrangement is superfluous because power-sharing already existed, and the election was conducted to give meaning to democratic rule through the direct franchise of the Ivorian people, and to end the civil war and the unpopular power-sharing arrangement.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Of course power sharing can be advantageous to outside predators. It keeps a government weak and divided, unable to properly protect itself, its people, and resources.</p>\n<p>The situation in Ivory Coast may already be having an unfortunate effect on democracy in Africa, from the Financial Times January 4 Congo rulers use crisis to review poll laws:</p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Ivory Coast’s disputed election may have become Africa’s latest get-out-of-democracy-free card</strong>, after the Democratic Republic of Congo, the vast mineral-rich country to its south, announced it wants to revise its constitution to avert a similar fate.</p>\n<p><strong>The government of Congo</strong>, which suffers from a conflict in its east that has displaced more than 1.4m people in the past 18 months alone, said this week it <strong>would seek to do away with a second round in presidential elections</strong> due to be held this year, a move many regard as a pretext for an early victory for Joseph Kabila, the incumbent president.</p></blockquote>\n<p>I don’t know what will happen next. Gbagbo’s position is untenable. I don’t think military intervention is a good idea, see many of the arguments above. Although I do understand the arguments for an ECOWAS intervention. If military intervention occurs, there are certain to be ugly unintended consequences, ugly consequences that should be anticipated, and some ugly consequences that are intended. It should be possible to use pressure and diplomatic negotiation to resolve the situation. Keeping talking, and talking, and talking more is about the only way to resolve issues where the parties are determined not to compromise.</p>\n<p>________<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/07/09ABIDJAN406.html\">09ABIDJAN406</a>, ELECTIONS IN COTE D’IVOIRE: THE MYTH AND THE REALITY<br>\ncable July 2009 via Wikileaks<br>\nhttp://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/07/09ABIDJAN406.html</p>\n<p>________<br>\nSee my later post:<br>\n<a href=\"http://crossedcrocodiles.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/cote-divoire-military-intervention-vs-constitutional-legitimacy/\"><strong>Côte d’Ivoire – Military Intervention Vs Constitutional Legitimacy</strong></a>for more information on exactly what happened and what it means going forward.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>The Memory Bank has never truly been a blog. Its purpose has always been self-publishing, the first place to put my papers and videos, and where from the beginning I made my book of the same name available.</p>\n<p>Now I have decided to blog about a book I want to write in the coming months. It’s working title is <em>Africa’s Urban Revolution</em>. It is about what happened in Africa during the twentieth century (as opposed to what didn’t happen — ‘development’) and the prospects for significant economic improvement in the next half-century. It is about Africa’s place in world history and its relationship to the shift of economic power from West to East. This book has been brewing for over four decades since my first and only prolonged fieldwork experience in the slums of Accra. It is thus about building a vision of world history out of ethnography.</p>\n<p>I announced this book four years ago. It was then called <em>The African Revolution.</em> There are some thirty posts listed here under that category for anyone interested in exploring the prehistory of this moment.</p>\n<p>I hope to post 3-5 times a week until I am done. What I plan is a counter to Afro-pessimism, not exactly Afro-optimism, but on that end of the spectrum.</p>\n<div style=\"text-align:left\"><p> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=Blogging+Africa%E2%80%99s+Urban+Revolution+http%3A%2F%2Fthememorybank.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D1381\" title=\"Post to Twitter\"><img src=\"http://thememorybank.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/en/twitter/tt-twitter.png\" alt=\"Post to Twitter\"></a> <a href=\"http://twitter.com/home/?status=Blogging+Africa%E2%80%99s+Urban+Revolution+http%3A%2F%2Fthememorybank.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D1381\" title=\"Post to Twitter\">Tweet This Post</a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/TRnl3MRtsyI/AAAAAAAABBc/gDEYVSuqqAs/s1600/milesdavisgilevansplus19milesahead.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"386\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/TRnl3MRtsyI/AAAAAAAABBc/gDEYVSuqqAs/s400/milesdavisgilevansplus19milesahead.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br>\n<b>by Nick DeRiso</b> <br>\n<br>\n<i>Miles Ahead </i>was initially billed by Columbia Records, in the flatly obvious tone of the day, as \"Miles Davis plus 19, with <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Gil%20Evans\">Gil Evans</a>.\"<br>\n<br>\nRight. Still, it was that last guy, the 20th man, who was the important one.<br>\n<br>\nAfter a burst of creativity in the late 1940s -- the clearest result being the very cool but obviously embryonic <i><a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/08/gerry-mulligan-shorty-rogers-miles.html\">Birth of the Cool</a></i> on Capitol -- Evans didn't work with Miles Davis again until the late 1950s. Davis seemed better for the reunion, as this record touched off an incredible rejuvenation for someone who had already done seminal work with the jazz legend <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Charlie%20Parker\">Charlie Parker</a>.<span><br>\n<br>\n<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/TRnl8hcTTeI/AAAAAAAABBg/_u3ff27Deac/s1600/milesdavisandgilevans.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"148\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/TRnl8hcTTeI/AAAAAAAABBg/_u3ff27Deac/s200/milesdavisandgilevans.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a></div>Highlights, and there are many, included the title track (embedded below), <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Dave%20Brubeck\">Dave Brubeck</a>'s \"The Duke,\" and \"The Maids of Cadiz\" by Leo Delibes, Davis' initial stab at reformulating European classical music. <br>\n<br>\nIn fact, <i>Miles Ahead </i>-- an underappreciated gem which I guess should be filed here as part of <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Forgotten%20series\">our ongoing Forgotten Series</a>, it once featured the above since-removed hipster-cool cover image -- marks the beginning of a striking second period of collaborative vitality for both <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Miles%20Davis\">Miles Davis</a> and for Gil Evans: Next from these two came <i>Porgy and Bess</i>, issued a year later; and then <i>Sketches of Spain</i> from 1960, both also on Columbia Records. Too, arguably the best recordings by Evans and Davis apart from each other as band leaders are from this period, as well: Miles' 1959 <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2009/01/miles-davis-kind-of-blue-legacy-edition.html\"><i>Kind of Blue</i></a> and Gil's 1960 Impulse LP <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2010/09/gimme-five-forgotten-jazz-gems-from.html\"><i>Out of the Cool</i>.</a><br>\n<br>\nThere's a newer digital version of <i>Miles Ahead, </i>from 1997, with a remaster job by original producer George Avakian. He took the session's (superior, in terms of sound) mono tapes and cleaned up a few glitches from that first analog-to-digital transfer. Namely, Avakian eliminated some hiss and extraneous noises -- and linked both sides at their mid-album intersection, which you couldn't do with vinyl.<br>\n<br>\nNothing wrong with that, I suppose. Even so, there was something about the roundness, and the upfront bass, that mono brought so brilliantly to these sessions. Call me old: On most days, I still prefer how <i>Miles Ahead</i> sounds on my turntable. <br>\n<br>\nThey kept the newer album cover, too. <br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/jvks2xDhwyE?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\nThose are quibbles, though. We move on ... These sets -- featuring talented sidemen like <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Wynton%20Kelly\">Wynton Kelly</a>, Lee Konitz, <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Paul%20Chambers\">Paul Chambers</a> and Art Taylor -- are infectious, loose and sheer genius. <br>\n<br>\nEvans said they were done in three, three-hour sessions -- with no rehearsals. His chromatic, counter-rhythmic charts are bluesy, new and sure. Throw in Miles' long, cerulean notes -- and there are still few recordings of any kind that approach <i>Miles Ahead</i>.<br>\n<br>\n</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8367705548617137551-438475812336224442?l=www.somethingelsereviews.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/n0argi6ohlbaa56i35go4j7peg/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.somethingelsereviews.com%2F2008%2F07%2Fmiles-ahead-miles-davis-with-gil-evans.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/somethingelsereviews/JjnG/~4/2AbKQbeEEXg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "My week in Jos",
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"content" : "<div style=\"line-height:normal;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm\"><i>I wrote this article for NEXT newspaper last year after a rattling trip to Jos. I’ve republished it here following the recent reports of several bomb blasts in the city a few days ago.</i></div><div style=\"line-height:normal;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm\"><span style=\"line-height:24px\"><br></span></div><div style=\"line-height:normal;margin-bottom:.0001pt;margin-bottom:0cm\"><i></i><span style=\"line-height:24px\">My parents and I arrived in Jos on a Sunday evening in January. Just as we entered the city limits, we were stopped at a police checkpoint. </span></div><div style=\"line-height:18.0pt\"><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lVWueR2uEAU/TRfizLaISvI/AAAAAAAAAF0/3hSvyjkceac/s1600/102_0017.JPG\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"239\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lVWueR2uEAU/TRfizLaISvI/AAAAAAAAAF0/3hSvyjkceac/s320/102_0017.JPG\" width=\"320\"></a></div>“Oga, go softly,” the officer said. “Jos is hot o.”<br><br>“What happened?” my father asked.<br><br>“Na crisis,” was the man’s reply as he waved us on.<br><br>We were silent at that. This is not the first violent upheaval the city has known. The plateau is cool and peaceful; a lush landscape dotted with breathtaking rock formations. But since the early 2000’s it has been ripped apart by violence. Relations between the indigenous people, who are mainly Christian, and the mostly Muslim Hausa have never been very good and in 2001, those tensions erupted into a violent outbreak that left hundreds dead and even more homeless. Since then, the situation has only grown worse, with crises breaking out every few years.<br><br>Our first night was uneventful. My parents rose early Monday morning so that my father could take a taxi back to Abuja. When my mother returned, we went to the orthopaedic hospital, which was her main reason for coming to town. After the hospital, we headed to Bukuru market to pick up some groceries. We had not been to our home in the suburbs of the city in months, and beyond a few tubers of yam and some non-perishables, we did not have much food.<br><br>However, we noticed that the market was unusually empty for a Monday morning. None of the traders we usually shopped from had opened their stalls. Just as we found a parking spot, we saw a cloud of dust in the distance. Suddenly, the streets were choked with people running in all directions. Young men on motorcycles, taxis and commercial buses were vying with each other on the narrow road.<br><br>“They’re coming!” someone shouted. “They’re coming!”<br><br>My mother and I did not wait to find out who “they” were. We got back into the car and manoeuvred through the throng back to the house. We did stop at a nearby grocery store to pick up a few provisions. We were sure it was just people panicking; we would go back for our main goods tomorrow.<br><br>That night, Bukuru market burned. We did not know this when we awoke. My mother had another appointment at the hospital and we went straight there first thing that morning. While my mother was in the theatre room preparing for her treatment, I noticed the crowd in the waiting room was growing restless. Many were gathered in clusters talking excitedly. That was when I learned of the damage to the market. A group of young men – no one knew for certain if they were Christians or Muslims – had rampaged through. They would break into locked stores, loot them then set them ablaze.<br><br>As we talked, tall man in an impeccable suit swooped in. He was the hospital’s director. A 24-hour curfew had just been imposed, he informed us, and all his non-essential staff were to return home immediately. Patients were to leave as soon as their procedures were completed. The hospital was going on lockdown. Someone switched on a radio and we huddled around it hoping for some useful news. But, it seemed as if every radio station had been transported to the Soviet Union circa 1960. All they could offer were bland statements from the governor’s office “exhorting citizens to diligently follow the curfew to ensure the safety of lives and property.” No word as to what was happening, who was responsible, nor what was being done to fix the situation.<br><br>My mother came out of the theatre room. Her doctor had told her of the curfew, so we returned home. Our intention to visit the market was now a lost cause. At home we surveyed our stores. Three tubers of yam, four packets of instant noodles, a bag of cous-cous, some tomatoes and peppers we had bought on our way into town, some acha – a local grain, a packet of spaghetti, two loaves of bread, a box of tea and a jar of coffee. If we ate sparingly: a light breakfast, a small lunch and dinner, our haul would last us four or five days. But of course, it would not come to that. Jos had had crises before, we were sure this would all blow over in a day or so. All we had to do was sit tight and wait it out.<br><br>That afternoon, I watched in silent horror as the sky blackened with smoke and the sounds of gunfire filled the air. When the wind blew just so, we could hear shouting and screaming from Bukuru town just beyond our walls. Every now and then, we heard helicopters thunder past, headed for town. My mother was glued to her phone, calling friends and family to hear the latest news. And the worst part was, the man my father hired to be our security guard in the house turned out an utter failure.<br><br>L______ is a small man with a mouth full of rotting teeth. He cannot be more than 25 years, but poor hygiene and a persistent drinking habit has left him looking decades older. When we first arrived Sunday evening, we found our front gate hanging open and no sign of the security guard. My father tried to call the man and failed to reach him. So, he locked the gate and went to bed. Sometime towards nightfall, we heard a knock on the back door. It was L_______. He had scaled the back wall to enter the compound – something our tenants had reported he did often, but he had vehemently denied. When my father confronted him, he could only smile vapidly and offer vague excuses. His brother was sick, he told us, all the while reeking of alcohol.<br><br>Tuesday afternoon as the world shook with the sounds of small explosions, L_______ came to us asking for permission to go to the junction at the end of the road “to get something.” My father had confiscated his set of keys so that he could not leave without our knowledge. My mother turned him down. He spent the rest of the evening quivering with fear with every shot that rang out and pacing like a caged animal.<br><br>On Wednesday we woke to reports that death squads of men dressed as soldiers were going from house to house in Bukuru, killing anyone who opened their doors to them. A friend of my mother’s reported seeing one of these men caught at an army checkpoint. He was found out only because his uniform was out of date and he was wearing sneakers – which soldiers never do. Throughout that day, every time someone knocked on our gate, my heart leapt to my throat. Knowing L______, he would probably open the door, then scale the wall and leave us to our fate. That night, as we heard reports of widespread looting of abandoned homes. The guards from all the houses in our neighbourhood formed a security detail to patrol our street. They lit a bonfire at the junction and took turns keeping vigil all through the night.<br><br>Thursday morning, we could still hear staccato bursts of gunfire – this time we were told it was the soldiers. The government had sent out the army in full force to quell the violence, and I did not doubt they were doing just as much damage as the rampaging youths. Many of my mother’s friends – including our next door neighbor had sought refuge at a nearby police barracks. There, they endured cold nights with little food or water.<br><br>By now, Jos city had lost its allure and we wanted nothing better than to start up the geriatric Benz and have this trip be a memory fading behind us. My uncle, my father’s younger brother, had offered to drive us back to Abuja, but he cautioned us to wait one more day. We still had no reliable reports as to where the worst violence was. No use running out only to be caught in the crossfire.<br><br>Friday morning, with the curfew scaled back to an eight-hour window, we set out. This was the first time we had left the compound in nearly a week. The town was unrecognizable. People clutching their meagre possessions lined the road desperately seeking any form of transportation they could find. The burned-out hulks of cars and trucks littered the roads. We passed shops and houses gutted by fire. At every corner, stone-faced soldiers wielding Kalashnikov rifles had set up makeshift checkpoints and were searching every vehicle on the road. At one checkpoint, an irate soldier had us empty the contents of every item we carried onto the roadside. Police officers rode about on motorcycles looking a little out of their element. The only fuel station in town had been set ablaze when someone drove a truck into its main building. The smell of ash hung thick in the air.<br><br>In the days since our return, I have learned that nearly 200 people were killed in the conflict. A prominent Igbo businessman was cut down along with his two sons when he tried to keep looters from invading his home. Many of my mother’s friends have decided to leave the town. Several of them lost their homes and businesses. Meanwhile, the government has made the usual noises about looking into the causes of the conflict and bringing all the perpetrators to book. I doubt it is more than just talk. When an uneasy peace returns once again to the plateau, everyone will go about their business as if nothing happened. As if such clashes are a plague of locusts – appearing without cause and disappearing into the ether. Until next time. </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8506921431589903878-7172429552300708856?l=chineloonwualu.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/koranteng/\">amaah</a> posted a photo:</p>\n\t\n<p><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/koranteng/5284448234/\" title=\"me and abena fifth anniversary\"><img src=\"http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5125/5284448234_8f14b3b292_m.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"180\" alt=\"me and abena fifth anniversary\"></a></p>\n\n<p>dining alfresco in Sonoma</p>"
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"title" : "The Christmas sermon",
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"content" : "<p>Another year over, and what have we done? Once more, I muse philosophically on matters of risk and return, at annoying length (at least I cut out the footnotes this year). But first, perhaps, a little quasi-seasonal story:</p>\n\n\t<p><b>The Great Homeopathic Cocktail Bar</b><br>\n<span></span><br>\nDecember, as we all know, is the month when people who never go out, go out. All the cheer and goodwill and merrymaking is apt to render the pubs and dive bars more or less uninhabitable, and even the expensive places less than congenial. So it was lucky that I first came across the World’s Greatest Homeopathic Barman in the dour month of January, season of short pockets and long evenings.</p>\n\n\t<p>The world was decidedly out of the party mood, but I wasn’t; memory fails me as to whether it was a horse or a South American republic, but I’d achieved a minor coup of the financial sort and was looking for somewhere to erase the sweet pain of all that money. Walking down Cornhill between the tube stop and the Leadenhall, I noticed that a new place had opened up on the site of an Irish-themed pub which had recently taken authenticity to extremes by going bankrupt. I shoved open the door and went in.</p>\n\n\t<p>There’s a kind of sublime beauty to an unreviewed and poorly signed licensed premises, on a notorious graveyard street and newly opened in the worst month of the year. A small room can feel as empty as the Negev Desert at four o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, you know, and this was only Tuesday. I was more or less the only thing in the place that hadn’t been sketched in by Edward Hopper, but hey ho. To have made a bolt for the door and somewhere with a fireplace would have seemed like kicking the place while it was down.</p>\n\n\t<p>As so often in all manner of circumstances, I found myself deciding on a course of action by pondering the maxim “What Would <span>JK </span>Galbraith Do?”. Since the answer is nearly always something like “written a couple of best-sellers, had a three-martini lunch with the President, then scooted off to his chalet in Gstaad to get some quality skiing in before dispensing bons mots at a party with Edith Piaf and a couple of Agnellis”, I find it strangely comforting to know that I don’t have the talent to do the right thing, and thus might as well please myself. By way of minor homage, I ordered three martinis, to arrive sequentially.</p>\n\n\t<p>I’ll say this for the chap, his timing was excellent. As the glass collar round the top of the liquid extended, he began to pour. As the lemon peel made its first coquettish bump against my top lip, I could hear the sweet Latin percussion of the stirring-spoon. And as I put the empty glass down, the ring of crystal on zinc was answered within a semiquaver by the slightly heavier bump of a full glass of the same. Quite a trick to work out the speed at which I was drinking, particularly from a noncylindrical glass, and fast work to match pace with a thirsty young stockbroker (as I then was). Clearly, this was an attentive craftsman close to the height of his mixological powers. The actual drink, however, was filthy.</p>\n\n\t<p>After a second and half way down the third, I decided to take an interest in why this might be the case. Not in a chemical or culinary sense, it was glaringly obvious what was wrong there. But rather, my curiosity was piqued by the sociological, psychological and hell, even political nexus of causes and effects which had brought this swill to my glass. You never know with these things, it might have an interesting root cause; I recall a particularly profitable operation in Brent Crude that had begun by politely inquiring of an Aberdonian trawlerman why he was not drunk. Expecting not much more than a gob full of acession-state-accented apologies, but in the general spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained, I broke the monastic silence of the place.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Young man”, I ventured (I was, it pains me to say, a bit of a knob in those days), “Let me first reassure you that I am not angry” (I had something of a combative face in those days). “But I am, however, curious, as to why you have just served me three glasses of undiluted room temperature gin, and I am sure that you must be just as curious as to why I drank them. Shall we compare notes?”</p>\n\n\t<p>It was a conversational gambit designed to start things off on the right foot, the right foot being the one into which I had persuaded my shoemaker to install a steel toe-cap, the better to pursue advantage in crowded conditions on the Northern Line. But I was surprised to discover that the fellow’s consternation had little to do with fears of violent reprisal, but were mainly motivated by a sort of existential crisis of confidence.</p>\n\n\t<p>Lukas, it seemed, had served mixed drinks with the best of them at the Paris Ritz, the Waldorf-Astoria and everywhere else on that circuit. But he’d jacked it in and taken up a defunct lease in the City, to follow a vision; the vision of bringing the crude pseudoscience of bartending together with the noble art of homeopathic medicine. The cocktail he had painstakingly constructed for me had been made from a base of gin, mixed with gin from a bottle which had once contained a drop of vermouth, and stirred assidously over gin from a bottle which had once contained a sliver of ice. Lukas had been up all the night before, pouring and re-pouring the gin, to ensure that these original ingredients had long since been rinsed away.</p>\n\n\t<p>In principle, of course, this dilution and redilution ought to have raised the concoction to its apotheosis; a sort of divine essence of all the martini’s possibilities. In practice, the fact that I had unerringly identified the contents as warm gin, and rather cheap off-brand gin at that, had been a crestfalling experience and one that threatened to undermine the integrity of the whole concept. Of course the fact that <i>I</i> don’t believe in homeopathy or any of that horse-manure was no comfort to the man. The whole point of the sweet science of homeopathic bartending is that it’s meant to work even if you don’t believe in it. Lukas was at the point of questioning whether a series of articles in the Journal of Consciousness Expansion were really a sound basis for a business plan.</p>\n\n\t<p>Now I hate to see a grown man cry for longer than eight or nine minutes, so I soon befriended the plucky little battler and encouraged him to “get back up on that horse”. Perhaps the homeopathic martini was a step too far for the early days – he should try easier cocktails and work up to it. So I had a homeopathic screwdriver – warm cheap supermarket vodka. A homeopathic daiquiri – warm cheap supermarket rum. All night we toiled, talking like brothers about everything and nothing; sadly none of the glassware survived our frequent bitter rages, but we found a supply of paper cups, apparently pilfered by the previous owners from a nearby McDonald’s. Until (and I maintain that this is how it happened – the intellectual property lawyers be damned) I had my inspiration.</p>\n\n\t<p>We were on our third or fourth attempt at a homeopathic Manhattan. Lukas had lined up four identical bottles of supermarket scotch, labelled “Heritage Bourbon”, “Aromatic Bitters”, and so forth to indicate the molecules each had once contained. The drink was at the point of assembly when I drawled, with perhaps an elegant hint of slobber …</p>\n\n\t<p>“Curious, isn’t it, that such a rigorously constructed homeopathic drink should be garnished with a <i>whole</i> maraschino cherry?”. Lukas looked at me with a wild expression, rather like that of Victor Frankenstein on being asked if he’d thought about switching power suppliers. In a flash, he had drawn back the offending cherry from its position immediately above my cup, hurled it onto the bar-top, pricked it with a needle and shaken the needle in the direction of the cocktail, from a safe distance of six feet. It was as brilliant a piece of improvised dilution as I’d seen in my life up to that point.</p>\n\n\t<p>I sipped the drink. It was nectar. It was even cold.</p>\n\n\t<p>Our celebrations were intense, of course, and ended in filth and in prison as these things often do. But a sensation had clearly been born.</p>\n\n\t<p>I was but an infrequent visitor over the next six months – although Lukas considered me an honoured friend, I was inconveniently barred from the three surrounding streets for a short while, meaning I could only attend by the use of a helicopter. But I read the reviews and they were extraordinary. Critical opinion was not wholly favourable, true – a fair number of reviewers thought that The Great Homeopathic Cocktail Bar was a dingy hole serving paper cups of warm cheap spirits, and I could see their point. But the general consensus was that it was largely irrelevant whether Lukas was a master of gastronomic libations or a deluded nerk selling rotgut. It was something more important than that.</p>\n\n\t<p>Whatever the merits of the actual drinks, it was said, the modern consumer was aching for a bartender who would provide a personal connection and recognise them as an individual, rather than simply churning out formulaic remedies to their symptoms. And Lukas was good at that – he had a pair of those dark, searching soulful eyes that are described as “almost human” when they occur in spaniels. And, of course, the patrons appreciated the way in which he rendered himself vulnerable to them, simply by the act of serving such terrible drinks. At any point, a stag party from Liverpool or somewhere might have blown into the bar, not realising they were in the presence of greatness, and trashed the place in angry disgust. Punters appreciate it when a man lays his neck on the line to that extent.</p>\n\n\t<p>As time went on, however, the novelty faded, and the dog days of the summer holidays were not kind to Lukas and his Great Homeopathic Cocktail Bar. Things in fact reached such a pass that one day in August, while dancing an improvised celebratory jig down Cornhill in recognition of a triumph in the Ashes (or in the collateralised debt market, I forget which), I found that the bouncers which had previously been placed outside Lukas’ door to beat back the baying crowds had instead grabbed me by the scruff and chucked me in. The place was cavernous once more, filled with only a few local alcoholics, their numbers bolstered by half a dozen tourists who had read an old <i>Time Out</i> in a bus station and thought the place was still fashionable. Even I could see that it wasn’t.</p>\n\n\t<p>The problem, of course, as the host confided to me over a lachrymose whisky-sour, is that the provision of a humane, personal, individual connection is something that really doesn’t have much in the way of economies of scale. In order to pay the ground rent, Lukas needed to shift X glasses over the bar per evening, and when divided by X, the amount of time provided by the licensing hours made it more or less impossible to give each homeopathic beverage more than about a minute and a half. “How do you engage with a holistic individual, in ninety seconds?”, he pleaded.</p>\n\n\t<p>To ask the question is to answer it, of course, and I think we came up with this one independently at the same time (as I have later testified under oath). The problem was one intrinsic to homeopathy, and thus it must have a homeopathic solution. And because it was a very serious homeopathic problem, the solution would have to be correspondingly weak.</p>\n\n\t<p>Henceforth, Lukas would make fleeting eye contact with one customer, for about half a second, every third alternate Wednesday if there was an R in the month. This would be the sole and total extent of his personal consideration of them; otherwise they were to be treated strictly as an undifferentiated mass of service units. Diluted in thus fashion, the human engagement and involvement of his service would be unimaginably powerful.</p>\n\n\t<p>Well, I don’t need to tell you what a success that was; if you were around in London, and maintained even the most casual interest in the nightclub scene, you’ll remember it. All through the autumn, he packed them in, and the Christmas party season was looking amazing. What with one thing and another (and a short but vigorous argument with one of the bouncers, who was later deported for unrelated reasons), I didn’t get back there myself until the shortest day in December. And thank God I did.</p>\n\n\t<p>Any bar in the City is going to be pretty unpleasant in the last week before hols, and a fashionable one serving paper cups full of warm spirits more so than most. It was heaving, crushed, shoulder to shoulder and cheek to jowl. I hopped on my left foot and kicked shins with my right, and eventually hacked out a path to my favourite spot at the bar. Everything was about as merry as it was disgusting, but Lukas was stressed to breaking point and clearly in pain. He was leaping about, pouring drinks three at a time, desperately trying not to make eye contact with anyone.</p>\n\n\t<p>It couldn’t last, of course – have you ever tried to simultaneously avoid the gaze of two hundred people, all of whom are trying to catch your eye? And when it did, my god, it was awful. The crowd <i>turned</i>, like a mobbing of crows, angrily waving their suddenly-disgusting cocktails. Thank heaven Lukas had the luck or foresight to have continued serving his drinks in paper cups, because if that lot had glass in their hands, I doubt he’d have lived. Like the man of action I sometimes am, I rushed back and bustled him out into the bar kitchen. Here was a man in dire need of a pep talk.</p>\n\n\t<p>“Lukas!” I shouted, grasping his lapels for emphasis and kicking his shins to shut him up. “Your customers are furious! How much do you care about your customers, Lukas?”</p>\n\n\t<p>“I care!”, he sobbed unattractively. “I care so much! Homeopathic drinks are my life! I care so, so much about those people”.</p>\n\n\t<p>“No, you’re not listening”, I growled. “How much do you care? How much passion do you have? <i>How much do you care</i>?”</p>\n\n\t<p>“I really, really care!” The tears and snot were flying in all directions, in distinctly more than homeopathic quantities.</p>\n\n\t<p>I lost all restraint and started shaking him. “HOW <span>MUCH DO YOU CARE</span>, LUKAS? <span>HOW MUCH DO YOU CARE</span>?!”. A paper cup flew through the open door and hit him in the face. It appeared to be full of warm spittle.</p>\n\n\t<p>Thankfully, the penny dropped shortly before he lost consciousness. Possibly he understood what I meant; perhaps the paper cup broke his will. Either way, he did that Baron Victor stare again, and hissed:</p>\n\n\t<p>“<i>I hardly care at all! I once cared, but now I am almost completely indifferent! <span>I COULD NOT POSSIBLY CARE LESS</span>!</i>”</p>\n\n\t<p>Have you ever seen a crowd go from friendly, to violent, and then just like that, back to happy again? Astonishing. The pressure-wave of concentrated bonhomie had us both grasping onto the fittings for support. By the time I left they were singing songs in his honour and chanting his name.</p>\n\n\t<p>Obviously, it went from strength to strength since then. The concept got franchised to death of course – I hear that there are chains of bars all over the MidWest serving warm, half-diluted cocktails to rapturous customers. Lukas, professional to the last, takes infinite pains not to find out about them or to display more than an atom of interest in their management or standards. You might have been to one without knowing it.</p>\n\n\t<p>And as I’ve mentioned, there’s a fair old amount of litigation going on – a private equity fund made a homeopathic investment, and there was some disagreement as to whether this meant they put up a hundredth of a penny and got 90% of the equity, or vice versa. Every now and then Lukas’ firm of homeopathic lawyers ask me for a witness statement; I write the letter “e” in the top corner of a large piece of paper and it seems to satisfy them, but I really honestly want no further involvement, even if it means sacrificing my due credit for nearly all the crucial innovations. I’m just happy to know that if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then I’m probably the safest man in Europe.</p>\n\n\t<p><span>THE END</span></p>\n\n\t<p><hr></p>\n\n\t<p>Well, after reading that I think you can agree that we’re all 2800-odd words nearer our deaths. But is there an important point to be made here about the nature of risk and reward? Probably not, but there’s a sort of semi-attached one.</p>\n\n\t<p>Which is related to <a href=\"http://ohgoodale.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/down-with-craft-beer/\">this piece of sterling common sense</a> from Phil Edwards, proprietor of the <a href=\"http://gapingsilence.wordpress.com/\">gaping silence</a> blog. It’s a psot targeted at “craft beer”, which is related to a point I’ve made myself in the past – that beer and whisky, unlike wine, are industrial products rather than agricultural ones, and that small-batch production of either is a very modern development of somewhat questionable sense.</p>\n\n\t<p>But I think I’d like to take this for the time being in a somewhat different direction, one which is rather at a tangent to Phil’s cultural point, and one which, Mr Angry commenters may be pleased to hear, probably doesn’t involve mentioning Budweiser all that much. Instead, consider Guinness, the pre-packaged, industrially brewed pasteurised commodified nitrokeg beer that somehow gets a free pass from ale enthusiasts.</p>\n\n\t<p>Now, Guinness is beloved to statisticians, of course, for inventing the t-distribution. And it’s worth thinking about why it was that a turn-of-the-century brewery would be interested in the ratio of the a normally distributed variable to the square root of a chi-square distributed variable divided by its degrees of freedom. And the answer, of course, is that William “Student” Gosset was responsible for quality control in the Guinness brewery, and thus was very much in need of a distribution which would tell him exactly how significant the variations were in the characteristics of his various samples, and whether they indicated an underlying problem.</p>\n\n\t<p>The development of the science of quality control in the twentieth century is really interesting, and another example of a road not taken by economics, but that’s not really my point. The point I’m currently interested in is that many of the things which people think about in terms of “risk management” are actually problems of quality control.</p>\n\n\t<p>The reason that shifting your thinking from “risk management” to “quality control” is an interesting thing to do is that it gets you away from a creeping cultural assumption that risk is in some way related to return. This is in fact, as <a href=\"http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/\">Eric Falkenstein</a> keeps proving, not even true in its paradigm case, the stock market – more or less however you measure it, high risk shares have lower average returns, not higher. Eric has a complicated theory of why this might be the case, involving benchmarking and the role of institutional investors, but I think it’s simpler than that – it’s just that the main source of risk in the world is mistakes, that a “high risk” share is one that has a lot of bad surprises happening to it, and that it’s not particularly complicated to understand why a prevalence of mistakes and bad surprises isn’t correlated with higher returns.</p>\n\n\t<p>Consider booze once more; the (possibly fictitious) barman in <a href=\"http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/deming_w11.html\">this</a> article (via Unfogged comments), the basis for Lukas in my story, doesn’t sell “industrial liquor” – he refuses to stock any brand that produces more than a thousand cases a year. What can we say about a distillery that operates on that scale? Well, that unless it is superlatively well-run (and in many cases even then), it is going to see considerable variation in the taste of its product from batch to batch.</p>\n\n\t<p>It is logically possible that this variation might be a good thing – that each case of liquor will taste wonderful in a distinctive and separate way. But it’s massively more likely that any such variation is going to take the form of some batches being of inferior quality. The risk is wholly skewed to the downside, which is why even small brewing and distilling operations take the utmost pains to eliminate batch-to-batch variation – and of course there is an economy of scale here, because the cost to Diageo of throwing away a single poor-quality distilling run is proportionately much smaller than to a micro-scale producer.</p>\n\n\t<p>Of course, dogmatism about the superiority of industrial product is just as silly as dogmatism about superiority of craft production. In some cases the random variation really can be a good thing. There are such things as vintage years in wines, and it is possible for improvised music to deliver things that composed music really doesn’t. But they’re very much the exceptions; as someone who listened to a lot of heavy metal in the 1980s, I can report back that the improvised guitar solo is not necessarily a thing of wonder; in general, a lot of the problem with jazz is basically one of quality control.</p>\n\n\t<p>I think everyone can see where I’m going with this; to the wider point that Frank Furedi and similar commentators are right to say that over the period since the war, modern society has become increasingly obsessed with risk reduction, but wrong to say that this is a bad thing. “Risk” is the risk that something bad will happen, which is why people want to get rid of it. And it is for the most part not correlated with anything good in any kind of straightforward way; if we all threw away health and safety regulations, we wouldn’t actually get a new Internet invented or a massive surge of freedom and well-being, we’d just get the occasional broken toe and bout of food poisoning.</p>\n\n\t<p>And looking at the things that can’t be fitted into this model, and at the kinds of risks which really are related to returns, gives you more of an appreciation of what we actually really mean by risks. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs take great big risks with their livelihoods (and furthermore, take <i>uninsurable</i> risks), but notoriously, they tend to be absolutely obsessive about quality-control issues – they don’t take needless unrewarded risks. Not coincidentally, film stuntmen seem to make a similar distinction between the risks they’re taking and things which are quality-control issues; the guy who is about to jump his car over a flaming building will be mightily careful about the fitting of his safety harness.</p>\n\n\t<p>And so there we are. I think perhaps a more practical bit of advice than you might find in <i>The Black Swan</i> is to a) recognise that this is an industrial world, and that most risks aren’t worth taking, but b) to recognise that the man who proposes to live off the public dole simply by virtue of owning a million dollars’ worth of treasury stock isn’t really morally all that far above any other kind of bludger, and so c) to take a few, well organised risks, with a clear view of the benefit that you anticipate from taking them, and d) be as tough as you can on the quality control. Happy Christmas, Eid, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Yul, Diwali (actually that one’s gone), or whatever other Winterval you choose to celebrate, and here’s hoping that next year, whatever else it brings, will be slightly less full of avoidable mistakes than recent ones.</p>"
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Nostalgia, according to Webster's New World Dictionary<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote1sym\" name=\"sdfootnote1anc\"><sup>1</sup></a>, is “a longing for something far away or long ago”. We all feel it, and it seems to play a larger role in our lives the older we get. Which makes perfect logical sense because the older we get the more we think about the “good old days”. Eventually there comes a point where there are more days in the past than in the future.<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote2sym\" name=\"sdfootnote2anc\"><sup>2</sup></a></p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">I recently went with my wife and our two children to her high school reunion down in Centreville, Maryland. She graduated from Gunston Day School, class of 1985. I never had an experience like that when I was in high school (or college for that matter). Since Gunston at the time was a boarding school, my wife lived there during the school year and obviously went back home to New Jersey when summer came around. I never left home. I took the bus to high school, and I commuted to college. When we arrived at that reunion, I could feel that nostalgia even though I never went there. I could tell my wife had this sense of such joy from remembering all her best friends from high school. That was accompanied by a feeling that you can never get back to those days, the sadness, the brink of tears.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">It's that mix that describes nostalgia for me.\r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">It is interesting, when you happen to look at a picture of yourself or a family member from years ago. You get that feeling there is this almost dreamlike sense that you or he/she were somehow a different person back then.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">I can remember reading a few articles about cell replacement of the human body. The rate of cell replacement varies but one thing is certain, cells are constantly dying and being replaced.<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote3sym\" name=\"sdfootnote3anc\"><sup>3</sup></a></p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">This could explain why we often feel that the picture of you from 10 years ago definitely looks slightly different but often gets us to think, “Wow, I can't believe what I was thinking back then”.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">In purely scientific terms, we were a different person back then.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">This is especially true when I see pictures of my father. To be honest, I would have to see a picture of him prior to August 27, 1994 which is when he had a terrible accident while working on a roof of a house. My father slipped off of a ladder and fell about twenty feet and landed on his head that day. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, was in a coma for about three weeks, and had to undergo extensive rehabilitation to be able to walk and talk and perform basic functions. He eventually was able to come home, fittingly, just in time for the holidays.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Looking at my father today, an outsider would never imagine anything was wrong or that he is different than the way he was 16 years ago. One thing that has never changed, however, is my father's obsession with classic movies, television shows, and music. Actually, I would argue that he is more obsessed with those things now than he ever was. Could it be because he is getting older or because he remembers a time prior to him getting hurt? Either way, he is searching for the “good old days”.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">It makes me think about the movies that I loved growing up and how I can't turn away when they're on the television. Back to the Future comes to mind as one of the all-time greatest movies for me<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote4sym\" name=\"sdfootnote4anc\"><sup>4</sup></a>. Not only does it bring back my childhood memories from the 80s, it also manages to weave in that 1950s era magic.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">As I'm writing this it is early December and Christmas is approaching<span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,serif\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote5sym\" name=\"sdfootnote5anc\"><sup>5</sup></a></span>. Nostalgia will help Coca-Cola to sell more of their beverage products through the use of an old-time Santa caricature on their bottles. Other companies, such as Maxwell House, will also try to sell their products by pushing the allure of the “good old days” and playing on our memories of childhood.<a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote6sym\" name=\"sdfootnote6anc\"><sup>6</sup></a> These companies will no doubt be showcasing their products during commercials played in between and during our favorite christmas movies. Christmas is full of nostalgia. Who can forget being a kid waiting for Santa to show up and bring you your presents? Nostalgia is tradition. I hope that when reading this you get a sense of how important it is to provide good memories for our children, grand children, nieces and nephews. No matter how bad people may have had it growing up, they only seem to remember the good parts. Selective memory seems to be a predominant characteristic of those who live in and love the past.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">It's for this reason that for every bad part of life, we need to provide or create a positive one. In time, these positive ones will weigh more.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Speaking of time, and movies, makes me think about Doc Brown's Delorian time machine<span style=\"font-family:Times New Roman,serif\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote7sym\" name=\"sdfootnote7anc\"><sup>7</sup></a></span>. I wish I had one. If I couldn't change the course of our lives, at least I would like to provide my father with some more great memories. At least then he could wax nostalgic with a bigger smile on his face.</p>\r\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0in\">Merry Christmas everyone.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left;margin-bottom:0in\">*********************************************************</p>\r\n<div>\r\n<p style=\"text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote1anc\" name=\"sdfootnote1sym\">1</a>The Fourth Edition, 2003</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote2anc\" name=\"sdfootnote2sym\">2</a>I am not taking “life after death” into consideration. I also understand that number of future days is impossible to calculate.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote3anc\" name=\"sdfootnote3sym\">3</a>If the reader is interested, just google: “cell replacement in the human body” or some variation thereof</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote4anc\" name=\"sdfootnote4sym\">4</a>I would argue that it is the greatest trilogy ever made. Please no hate mail from Star Wars fans.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote5anc\" name=\"sdfootnote5sym\">5</a>I understand there are other holidays out there. My family and I celebrate Christmas.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote6anc\" name=\"sdfootnote6sym\">6</a>If you really want to watch the “Peter” ad campaign I'm sure you can find it on youtube</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<div>\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/#sdfootnote7anc\" name=\"sdfootnote7sym\">7</a>I apologize if you haven't watched Back to the Future and have no idea what I'm talking about. Wait I take that back. Go watch it now.</p>\r\n</div>\r\n<p></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F12%2Fnostalgia.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=GKcvq5k-NMA:Y-O_AplEY_s:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo5x77W5FI/AAAAAAAADVE/YtOt5DTT8tA/s1600/tjjjjjjjjjj.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"277\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo5x77W5FI/AAAAAAAADVE/YtOt5DTT8tA/s320/tjjjjjjjjjj.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div> long time we had no reggae,but I always love and listen to new African reggae-another Zion volume is getting ready here,and as Tiken Jah has<br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo7O4_NbsI/AAAAAAAADVM/UZh6Flq1Vo8/s1600/TJFcdh.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo7O4_NbsI/AAAAAAAADVM/UZh6Flq1Vo8/s320/TJFcdh.jpg\" width=\"319\"></a></div><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo6fOqQiwI/AAAAAAAADVI/eePm8bFnEBU/s1600/TikenJah1.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo6fOqQiwI/AAAAAAAADVI/eePm8bFnEBU/s320/TikenJah1.jpg\" width=\"143\"></a>a very nice new record out where he mixes reggae with more traditional sounds,let's remember some of his great past chapters<br><br><span style=\"color:#999999\"><br>At the beginning of '99 Tiken locked himself away in the studio and began work on his new album. He went on to tour Burkina Faso and Guinea later that year, but the highlight of his career in '99 was a series of concerts in New York and Philadelphia where he appeared on stage with a Jamaican backing band.<br>In May '99, Tiken's album \"Mangercratie\" was released in France. Shortly afterwards, the group Sinsemilia got in touch with the Ivorian reggae star and asked him to support them on tour. Throughout the summer and autumn of that year Tiken played an extensive series of concerts with the group, appearing at all the top French music festivals including \"Fourvière\" in Lyons and the \"Francofolies\" in La Rochelle. Tiken’s new album, \"Cours d'Histoire\" (History Lesson) was released in Ivory Coast at the end of that year. The album, which had been mixed in Jamaica, scored a huge hit with critics and music fans right across West Africa. “Cours d’histoire” featured Tiken's usual social and political discourse, but also included songs such as \"Descendant\" which explored his personal relationship to African tradition and his ancestors.<br>Shortly after the putsch masterminded by General Gueï in December 1999, Tiken went back into the studio in Ivory Coast to record a series of new songs intended to remind the country’s new head of state of the promises he had made to the population.</span><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo7yQE6ZkI/AAAAAAAADVQ/WE1n_v45zT4/s1600/tjld05.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><span style=\"color:#999999\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"287\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4KjiXr1ScXA/TQo7yQE6ZkI/AAAAAAAADVQ/WE1n_v45zT4/s320/tjld05.jpg\" width=\"320\"></span></a></div><span style=\"color:#999999\"><br></span><br><span style=\"color:#999999\"><br></span><br><span style=\"color:#999999\"> His album "Le Caméleon" was released solely in Ivory Coast in 2000, at the same time as "Cours d'Histoire" hit record stores in France. A few months later, Ivory Coast entered another turbulent period in its political history with rival factions rioting on the streets after controversial election results. Tiken's outspoken criticism of corrupt politicians and abusive regimes made him a more potent protest symbol than ever and thousands of young Ivorians adopted him as a role model.</span><br>from<br><a href=\"http://www.rfimusique.com/siteen/biographie/biographie_6251.asp\">http://www.rfimusique.com/siteen/biographie/biographie_6251.asp</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?8nlxjqbkvibj1i3\"><span style=\"color:lime\">Cours d'histoire</span></a><br><br><br>plus the live bootleg<br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?5j1032qcpblnlhz\"><span style=\"color:red\">Live in Dakar </span></a><br><br><br><br><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/xzR3JS609dI?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US%26rel%3D0&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br><span style=\"font-family:arial,sans-serif\"><span style=\"font-size:14px;line-height:15px\"><b><br></b></span></span><br><i><span style=\"color:#cccccc\">and thanks to gamer123134613461346 for the video upload</span></i><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1000399530001564608-3678532023404544630?l=freedomblues.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "When you ever get on a bus for a long journey here in Ghana, you have got yourself into a world of many possible original Ghana moments. And you can never regret it, I tell you. Yesterday, I had to make a very quick dash from Accra to Takoradi and back before 4pm. A marathon <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=inghana.wordpress.com&blog=15516995&post=136&subd=inghana&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/12/17/the-immigrant-life/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/K31tSsPVTwQ/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>For the final assignment of a class I teach on Media and Africa at The New School I asked students to make short video profiles of African immigrant experiences in New York City. Most, if not all, of the students had never blogged before, nor filmed, much less edited something for public viewing. None of the films are longer than 7 minutes. The films are equally powerful and involved immense effort on the part of the students and I have links to all the videos here, but let me highlight two of them in this post. The short film above, “The Big Dreamer,” above, tells the story of Lookman Mashood, co-owner of Buka, a Nigerian restaurant that opened this year in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn. (Robert Sietsema, <a href=\"http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-07-27/restaurants/buka-serves-up-the-slimy-sauces-and-goat-heads-of-nigeria/\">Voice food critic</a>, checked it out already.)</p>\n<p><span></span></p>\n<p>The second film, below, is a profile of a young, Nigerian-American singer, <a href=\"http://www.myspace.com/tigreband\">Tigre Fisher</a>:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/12/17/the-immigrant-life/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/EIVQFRnLcS4/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>Other videos covered immigrant performers <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4VVEBdHS7k&feature=player_embedded\">on Broadway</a>, the relationship between African-Americans and African immigrants <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPczvBQleR4&feature=player_embedded\">in Harlem</a>; the travails of African diplomats at the United Nations; and a Nigerian chief who lives <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqBBUrcFa68&feature=player_embedded\">in Queens</a>.–<strong>Sean Jacobs</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/18461/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=18461&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:left;margin-right:1em;text-align:left\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_juptlbdb560/TQYdBdi6LJI/AAAAAAAACKo/BDSQaq05dJY/s1600/1989-06-29-001.JPG\" style=\"clear:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"400\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_juptlbdb560/TQYdBdi6LJI/AAAAAAAACKo/BDSQaq05dJY/s400/1989-06-29-001.JPG\" width=\"270\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">June 29, 1989 (photo: Ton Verhees)</td></tr></tbody></table>According to <a href=\"http://showbizxklusivs.blogspot.com/2010/12/dr-remmy-ongala-passes-on.html\">this report</a> <b>Remmy Ongala</b> has died on Monday morning December 13, 2010 in Dar-Es-Salaam, Tanzania. Born in 1947 in the Kivu province of eastern Congo, Remmy played with several bands in Congo before moving to Tanzania. He himself in an interview in 1989 (<a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?8h5ggfh51a2sl7w\">audio 1</a>) mentioned <b>Orch.Grand's Mike Jazz</b>, based in Bukavu, where he played with <b>Rachid King</b>, who he called \"his brother in Washington\". When King was invited to the US in 1978, Remmy was contacted in Bukavu by <b>Mzee Makassy</b> (<a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?k1g55195qdpb3ub\">audio 2</a>). He played with Orchestra Makassy until Makassy himself left for the UK in 1980, selling his instruments as he was going to buy new ones in Europe. When ex-O.K. Jazz guitarist <b>Mose 'Fanfan' Sesengo</b> didn't feel like waiting for Makassy and decided to start his own orchestra called \"<b>Matimila</b>\", he invited Remmy to join him. Remmy agreed but with the intention to go back to Makassy as soon as he had returned. But when Makassy returned he refused to take back the <i>defectors</i>. After about a year and a half Fanfan announced he would move on, and left Remmy in charge of Matimila.<br><br>Remmy Ongala was known among his fans as the 'witchdoctor', a nickname which amused him, as he confessed in 1989 (<a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?couvu3bdjjly2au\">audio 3</a>). Maybe he also liked the implied reference to \"le Sorcier de la guitare\", <b>Franco</b>, who was certainly Remmy's main musical hero and a major influence on his music (<a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?cp2paazbvz7wn94\">audio 4</a>).<br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_juptlbdb560/TQYzp8_EgmI/AAAAAAAACKs/FuHJc_SG2r8/s1600/AHD-%2528MC%2529-6009-sleeve.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"186\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_juptlbdb560/TQYzp8_EgmI/AAAAAAAACKs/FuHJc_SG2r8/s200/AHD-%2528MC%2529-6009-sleeve.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a>I have met Remmy several times in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he struck me as a very passionate and sincere musician, whose main ambitions were with his public. \"Singing for the poor\" (see my <a href=\"http://wrldsrv.blogspot.com/2009/08/talakaka.html\">earlier post</a>) with Remmy Ongala was no cliché.<br><br>As a tribute to this great man and true African I would like to share with you this cassette which was released in 1989. It is a good example of Ongala in his purest form. <br><br>May he rest in peace.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.adrive.com/public/3896b524613f382e2c4ec2e11d2d7f594f8f463eaa1a8a42aedc5a7c95d36e67.html\">AHD[MC] 6009</a><br><br>PS: the four fragments of the 1989 interview can also be downloaded as one file <a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?0m9y4bzrunz8gaz\">here</a>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7791963494354887351-7346081948560698479?l=wrldsrv.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><div>\n<h4>By Nate Barksdale</h4>\n<img title=\"Cardus5\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b4a455970c-800wi\" alt=\"Cross section\">\n\n<h5>Originally published in the print edition of <a><em>Comment</em></a>, 1 September 2010</h5>\n</div>\n<p>My latest online column <a href=\"http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2037/\">Comment Magazine</a></p>\n<p>Foucault's pendulum has fallen. On April 6, the steel cable snapped and sent it crashing onto the polished floor of the Musée des Artes et Metiers in Paris. The 28 kilogram brass weight ended its 159-year career—the dented bob is, a museum spokesperson affirmed, beyond repair—doing what it was meant to do: obeying the law of gravity. I have to admit I shed a tear (or at least the idea of a tear) for the fallen bit of scientific history, not because I'd visited the pendulum myself, or even read the 1988 Umberto Eco novel which takes its title and climax from the now-not-swinging orb. I have my own tangled history with pendulums—one stretching back, depending how you count it, decades, even centuries. It's quite a bit of weight to bear, but a tale worth telling.</p>\n<p>\n\n</p>\n<p>Fifteen years ago, I took a physics course in "classical mechanics"—the sort of stuff figured out by Newton and his contemporaries: laws of falling bodies, what happens when billiard balls bounce off one another, that kind of thing. The whole course was mostly word problems and formulas—math aided by the occasional diagram. At the end of the semester, though, there was one lab exercise: we were supposed to construct a pendulum, and then use it to measure <em>g</em>, the earth's gravitational constant—the acceleration due to gravity, or how fast an object gains speed as it falls. If you know the length of a pendulum, and how long it takes to swing from side to side (think of the ticking of a grandfather clock), you can calculate <em>g</em>. Of course there's no real need to calculate <em>g</em>—Galileo did this for us, three hundred years ago, experimenting with dropped balls of different weights. What he found out was that falling bodies, regardless of their weight, accelerate at the same rate—which is, when you switch it into the metric system, 9.8 meters per second, per second. What Galileo discovered by dropping balls, we physics students were to verify and document with our swinging weights.</p>\n<p>I should say from the start that when our professor assigned us this project, he was not out to make things particularly difficult or complicated. The idea was that we would string our pendulums in dorm rooms or campus stairwells—record the data, make the calculations, write them up, and be done in an hour or two. Gravity is a simple and consistent force, but for my friend Dave and me, the pendulum would swing another way, driven by forces less predictable and—for us at least—more powerful than those of simple science. The laws of physics are the same everywhere. But for the purposes of this story, place becomes not just relevant, but essential.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p><a style=\"display:inline\" href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b45e41970c-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"800px-The_death_of_general_warren_at_the_battle_of_bunker_hill\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b45e41970c-320wi\" alt=\"800px-The_death_of_general_warren_at_the_battle_of_bunker_hill\"></a></p>\n<p>Two hundred thirty-five years ago, during the first year of the American Revolution, Boston was under siege. The British army, headquartered in the city, was more powerful than the colonial fighters but remained cut off from the surrounding countryside. In June of 1775, the loyalist troops moved to expand the area under their control, taking a strategic hill or two on the perimeter of the city. When the colonial fighters heard that the British were aiming to the high ground in Charlestown, across the river from the city center, they erected some preemptory fortifications on Breed's and Bunker Hills and laid in wait. The battle took place on June 17: the rebels fought fiercely, but eventually the British broke through their lines and overran Breed's Hill, their highest redoubt, battling the retreating rebels across the lower crest of Bunker Hill as they retreated to Cambridge to regroup. The British got their ground, but at great cost, winning the day but sustaining the more significant casualties. They even lost the battle's name, which went not to lofty Breed's but to Bunker, where the colonials had done less fighting but sustained the larger portion of their losses.</p>\n<p>A few weeks before our project was due, Dave had walked the Freedom Trail, a collection of historical sights around downtown Boston. He'd paused at the site of the Boston Massacre, taken in the Old North Church (which sent the signal that started Paul Revere on his famous ride), and, in a little park overlooking Charlestown, climbed the Bunker Hill Monument: an obelisk of Quincy granite, the same shape and half the height of the Washington Monument. When it was completed in 1842, it was the tallest structure in North America.</p>\n<p>I don't know exactly David was thinking as he ascended those steps—about the battle and its historical importance (a Pyrrhic victory for the British, a surprise confidence-booster for the colonials), perhaps about architecture, civic pride, the nature of monuments themselves. But when he got to the top, and peered down the central well descending straight to the tower's base, he saw not history, but scientific inspiration.</p>\n<p>The longer a pendulum is, the slower it swings. The slower it swings, the more accurate the measurements you can make of its cycles, and the more refined a calculation can be made for <em>g</em>: <em>g</em> = 4π<sup>2</sup>L/T<sup>2</sup></p>\n<p>Our assignment was to construct a pendulum a few feet long; what Dave saw was the chance to swing one a hundred times longer, turning the very forces of American history and memory towards the task of scientific measurement. When he pitched the idea to me a few days later, I immediately recognized its brilliance. It was overkill, but science rewards ambition—as would, we assumed, our awe-struck professors and fellow students. So Dave put in a call to the National Park Service. Somewhat surprisingly, our request was granted.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b46016970c-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"DanielWebster_ca1847_Whipple_2403624668-crop\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b46016970c-320wi\" alt=\"DanielWebster_ca1847_Whipple_2403624668-crop\"></a></p>\n<p>In 1825, as the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill approached, the good citizens of Boston and Charlestown decided that something needed to be done to commemorate the revolutionaries' victorious defeat. Committees were formed, pledges were made, a $100 design competition was held. The winner was Solomon Willard, a Boston stone-carver and model-maker who had submitted a classical obelisk of granite bricks, nearly double the height of the tallest ancient Egyptian model. A grand ceremony was held on the June 17 anniversary, the Marquis de Lafayette (in town for the weekend) laid the cornerstone, and then-congressman Daniel Webster gave one of his trademark orations:</p>\n<p><blockquote>We wish that this column, rising toward heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object to the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden him who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise! let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit.</blockquote></p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>Of the day itself, here's what I remember: it was one of those hazy midwinter Boston days when there's snow on the ground but only in dirty patches, and everyone pretty much stays inside. We got ourselves to Charlestown by bus and then by foot, ascended the hill and stepped inside the stately classical visitor center near the obelisk. The ranger on duty welcomed us and, after a brief chat, escorted us to the monument. We walked through the studded wooden doorway and into the tower's base, and stood in the cold stone alcove at the base of the stairs. As the ranger unlocked the iron gate that keeps people out of the tower's central well, he told us that a professor in the 1850s set up a pendulum in the tower to prove something or other about the manner of the earth's rotation. We took this as a sign of the rightness and nobility of this venue. He also told us that by sometime in February, the door to the monument would freeze shut, and they'd have to wait until it thaws before visitors could go up again. With that, he wished us luck and retreated back into the heated visitor center.</p>\n<p>We paused for a minute to survey the situation and breathe in the icy monumentality of the task at hand. Craning our necks, we could see a tiny slatted circle centered above us; all else was blackened stone. The chamber, seven feet in diameter, felt a little crowded with the two of us plus a large pillar-and-plaque replica of the first monument erected on the battle site—the replica, like the original, commissioned by King Solomon's Lodge, a local Masonic group. We took out our supplies: a spool of 12-pound-test nylon fishing line, a three-liter soda bottle which Dave had rescued from his dorm room trash can and I'd patiently refilled at the visitor center's water fountain; our lab notebooks; my stopwatch; a couple of ballpoint pens. I pocketed the line and we began the long ascent.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>Two years after Lafayette laid the cornerstone they had to dig it up and lay it again, a task made easier by the lack of anything yet built above it. The 1820s gave way to the 1830s, the 1830s to the 1840s, and the monument grew only haltingly, a course or two of granite at a time (huge blocks brought down from Quincy on a horse-drawn railroad) and then for years on end, no progress. Amidst the pointed spires of Boston, the incomplete Monument was just a stub on a hill, fast becoming a national embarrassment. Property owners on the lower slopes talked of buying out the site and tearing the thing down to save the neighbourhood. Luckily for Charlestown (and for the history of American feminism), the women of Boston decided enough was enough: they formed their own committees, sent out appeals, and achieved what their husbands could not. Funds were raised, the work recommenced, and the capstone was laid during the summer of 1842, and on June 17, 1843, on the 68th anniversary of the battle (and the 18th of the groundbreaking), the Bunker Hill Monument was dedicated. Lafayette was unavailable (he'd died in 1834), but Daniel Webster was brought back to deliver another lengthy oration. After a brief rundown of the monument's builders and funders (including a much-deserved shout-out to "the winning power of the sex" who'd brought in the final needed cash), Webster dashed the hopes of those waiting for him to top his first Bunker Hill address, suggesting that the greater eloquence lay not with himself but with the stack of granite behind him:</p>\n<p><blockquote>It has a purpose, and that purpose gives it its character. That purpose enrobes it with dignity and moral grandeur. That well-known purpose it is which causes us to look up to it with a feeling of awe. It is itself the orator of this occasion. It is not from my lips, it could not be from any human lips, that that strain of eloquence is this day to flow most competent to move and excite the vast multitudes around me. The powerful speaker stands motionless before us.</blockquote></p>\n<p>+ + +</p><p>We climbed the 294 spiral steps to the top of the tower, a granite chamber lit by four rectangular windows affording a dingy but still beautiful panorama—Charleston, Chelsea, Somerville, Cambridge, Boston; the Charles and Mystic Rivers; the harbour leading out to Massachusetts Bay. The ceiling overhead was a smooth stone vault, pointed at the center like a gothic arch. At the apex a thick iron staple was fixed into the stone. Here was where the former pendulum must have hung; sadly for us, it was too high to reach. We turned our attention to the iron grate in the middle of the floor, set in the pavement like a four-foot manhole cover. By kneeling down and squinting through the bars, you could just make out the dim light coming in from the bottom of the well.</p>\n<p>The fishing line spool wouldn't fit through the grate, so we tied my keychain to the end of the line and, as Dave began to lower it, I rushed back down the stairs to meet it at the bottom. I gave a shout to Dave, who tied off the top of the line to the metal grate and tromped down the spiral steps to join me.</p>\n<p>Our first attempts to hang our bottle-bob were unsuccessful; the line kept stretching each time we retied, lowering the pendulum to the floor. Finally, though, we got it steadily hovering waist-high—a scientific instrument of incredible accuracy, constructed of plastic and liquid, and set to swing at the center of one of the United States' national treasures. If it hadn't been so bitterly cold at the center of that dark stone well, I would have wept at the beauty and synchronicity of it all.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b4972b970c-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"Pendule_de_Foucault\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b4972b970c-320wi\" alt=\"Pendule_de_Foucault\"></a></p>\n<p>In the winter of 1851, in Paris, the forty-two year old physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault hung a six-and-a-half foot pendulum in his cellar laboratory, and with careful measurements of the movement of its swinging arc offered experimental proof of the earth's rotation. Over the next few months he repeated the experiment with ever longer pendulums in ever more exalted venues, till on March 31, at the Emperor Louis Napoleon's request, he swung with great acclaim his twenty-eight-kilogram brass sphere from a 220-foot wire strung from the domed ceiling of the Paris Pantheon. "Thence," reported <em>Putnam's Magazine</em> a few years later, "throughout the world, a pendulum mania extended, until a monster pendulum threatened to become essential in every respectable household."</p>\n<p>Eben Norton Horsford, recently having been appointed to a professorship in the applied sciences at Harvard, was a respectable man, and when the news of Foucault's triumph reached American shores, he knew what he had to do. With the university's backing, the permission of the Monument's caretakers, and the help of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association, Professor Horsford had his own monster pendulum swinging in the Bunker Hill Monument by mid-summer. His preparations were somewhat more exacting than Dave's and mine: he had the grating lifted from the top of the central well and the monument-within-a-monument removed from the bottom chamber, allowing the pendulum to hang unimpeded from the capstone staple. All the ventilation holes between the well and staircase were sealed, and wooden structures were added top and bottom to stop any air currents from interfering with the pendulum's swing. The Charitable Mechanics constructed an elaborate sighting apparatus at the base to allow for precise observation of the pendulum's motion. It was only in selecting the weight that Professor Horsford allowed location to get the better of him, choosing a 32-pound cannonball that had been fired by the British that June day in 1775. This he set into motion using Foucault's own exacting method, pulling it back with a single thread, which was then burned with a candle to release the weight, minimizing the chance of human interference in its motion.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>I gingerly pulled the soda bottle a couple feet to the right and simply let it go. Very, very slowly the pendulum began to swing—or rather to move eerily back and forth across the chamber. We started to realize that maybe things wouldn't be as simple as we'd thought. The whole advantage of having such a long pendulum was that it would let us make incredibly accurate measurements of its rate of oscillation. The problem with this was, though, that it moved so slowly that it was hard for us to figure out just when our weight changed direction at all. At the peak of each swing it just seemed to hang there, motionless, for several seconds, before slowly starting to inch back towards the center of the well. And, as I said, it was dark, and it was cold. My fingers were so numb I could barely work the stopwatch.</p>\n<p>We discovered another problem: 195 feet of fishing line has a lot of bounce in it; our pendulum moved up and down as well as side to side. This meant, as any student of classical physics will tell you, that our pendulum was also a spring, subject to its own harmonic equation: T=2π√(m/k)</p>\n<p>We had no idea how to combine the two formulae, so Dave and I gathered our waning excitement and tried to make the best of things: steadying the bottle to minimize the vertical motion, and getting what we thought were one or two good stopwatch measurements of its oscillation before deciding we were done. Dave sprinted up the stairs to cut the pendulum loose; halfway up, I heard his echoing footsteps slow and cease, replaced by pained gasps.</p>\n<p>"Are you ok?" I shouted.</p>\n<p>"Yes . . . just . . . ran . . . too . . . fast . . . " came the wheezing reply. Visions of heart attacks danced in my head; I pictured myself at the memorial service, delivering the eulogy: "He died young, but at least he died for science." Dave made it to the top, but our mutual lightheadedness probably clouded our judgment in what we did next. I don't know what we'd expected that much fishing line to do when we let it drop down the well—coil itself neatly?—but when Dave cut the line, what landed at my feet a second or two later was a foot-wide hairball of inextricably tangled monofilament. It was late, and the gravity of our error did not sink in. We packed up our stuff, thanked the ranger, and headed back to campus as the sky grew dark.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>Professor Horsford had his troubles too. The cannonball didn't swing straight; its behaviour was at times erratic. The sighting device only worked from certain angles. The convenient staple in the tower ceiling restricted the pendulum's motion. He worried about the time it took him to look from the pendulum to his pocket watch and back. But it was not the dead of winter; the door was in no danger of freezing shut, and so he persevered, tested and retested, figured out ways around his difficulties, tried additional approaches.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>That night, back in the dorm, we regrouped to plug our data into the pendulum equation and revel in our exactitude. But in a warm room, the data did not look so complete. We quickly realized we were missing the very thing that we should have known from the outset: we had no real idea of the most important starting condition, our pendulum's length. Our initial plan to measure the cut-down line a tape-measure's-length at a time was foiled by the Gordian knot of nylon in my backpack.</p>\n<p>We furrowed our brows. We paced. We bemoaned our fate. But then I had an Alexanderine thought: what if we could measure the line without untangling it? We ran to the organic chemistry lab and commandeered a highly accurate digital scale. By comparing the weight of the ball to the weight of a known length of line, perhaps . . . but every time we ran the numbers we kept getting lengths much taller than the full monument's height.</p>\n<p>Technology failed us, so we turned to history and sprinted for the library. After a few frenzied searches for blueprints in various stacks and archives, the best I managed to find was a cross-section elevation drawing of the structure, showing the well, the staircase and the upper room, but lacking any scale or measurements. I pulled out my National Park Service brochure, which had the official height, and tried to gauge the interior proportions from the drawing. I came up with something between 190 and 200 feet. The whole point of a long pendulum had been accuracy, but now we could only guess the length within five percent.</p>\n<p>Still, at least we had some numbers. With tempered pride cranked them through the equation the equation to reveal . . . a value for <em>g</em> in excess of 11 m/s/s, far off our target 9.8. This should have been the end of our endeavour. Alas, rather than letting reality call our data into question, we decided it had to be the other way round. "I know!" David said. "Didn't they tell us that the value of g varies depending on location? If there's greater-than-average mass near the point where we're measuring, that might explain our result! There must be some sort of heavy matter concentrated under the obelisk!" It was a thin thread to hold on to, but hold on we did, all the way to the geology library, where I confidently asked to see any and all magnetometric maps of the Boston area. There was a gigantic, gravity-bending iron deposit under Bunker Hill, and I was going to find it.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>Eventually Professor Horsford found the numbers he needed, uncabled his cannonball, and wrote up with a full description of his efforts for the August 1851 meeting of the American Academy of Scientists. There was a longer paper on the Foucault replication, and a shorter one about something he'd noticed along the way, how on sunny days the dead-center point of the pendulum moved a half an inch to the northwest, returning to dead center when clouds or night appeared—evidence of the sun-kissed Quincy stones' expansion in the heat. It was this discovery, and not the pendulum swing, that <em>Putnam's Magazine</em> thought worth noting in its report: "Daily, the summit of that proud pile was found to trace an approximate elliptic orbit of about half an inch major axis, offering thus on homage to the great luminary . . . "</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b49e6e970c-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"Themoon\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b49e6e970c-320wi\" alt=\"Themoon\"></a></p>\n<p>Magnetometric maps, it turns out, are not so easy to read, and my iron lode stayed hidden. I tried another library or two for books on gravity, on old New England, on anything tangentially tied to Bunker Hill. By this point, Dave and I had finally given up, retreating to our separate rooms to slog through our separate, deeply flawed write-ups. I filled my lab book's gridded page with a brief description of our experiment and of the possible reasons for its surprising result. I tried to maintain a scientific distance in the write-up, but I felt my anger coming to a head. I'd completed the assignment in the most impressive way imaginable, but I had the wrong result! I looked around my dorm room for inspiration. Two minutes and thirty seconds later, I was dangling a bar of hotel soap from ten inches of mint-flavoured dental floss. I disdainfully flicked it with my index finger, glared at my stopwatch while the thing went through ten quick oscillations in ten seconds. Ten seconds more and I'd run the new numbers through the equation, arriving at a perfect, accurate 9.8. Now well nigh furious, I rushed my write-up to conclusion with a pithy statement about the irony of big projects gone wrong, put down the pen and shut the book.</p>\n<p>During the last review section before the final exam, my graduate student teaching fellow, a kindly former professional ballerina with an alarming habit of tripping over things, returned my opus. Regarding the historical nature of our project, she had no comment. The equations themselves, and the lack of a proper estimation of my percentage error, were all that mattered. I'd missed the point entirely, and was lucky to slip through with a B-minus.</p>\n<p>+ + +</p>\n<p>"Suppose," the Gospel says, "one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, eThis fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'" Darn good advice.</p>\n<p>A little over a year after Professor Horsford's pendulum came down, Daniel Webster went to his reward in Marshfield, Massachusetts, thirty miles southeast of Bunker Hill, after uneloquently falling off his horse. His dying words were "I still live."</p>\n<p>Léon Foucault made important discoveries regarding magnetism and optics, was made an officer of the Legion d'Honneur and a member of the Royal Society. He died in 1868.</p>\n<p>The Bunker Hill Monument's national fame soon faded; the excitement surrounding its completion gave way to mild embarrassment. Herman Melville's 1855 satirical novel <em>Israel Potter: His Fifty Years in Exile</em> included a three-page dedication "TO HIS HIGHNESS THE BUNKER-HILL MONUMENT," chipping away at Webster's solemn edifice by engaging the obelisk conversationally (the dedication is signed "Your Highness's / Most devoted and obsequious, / THE EDITOR").</p>\n<p>It hardly mattered. By then the nation's obelisk obsession had shifted to the nation's capital, where construction of the Washington Monument had not only gotten under way but had, in another echo of Bunker Hill, run out of funds and ground to a halt. For twenty-five years, the first president would be memorialized by a crane-topped marble stump at the center of the National Mall. The monument was finally completed in 1888, forty years after groundbreaking.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b4a034970c-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"2943769198_608af0161c_b\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0148c6b4a034970c-320wi\" alt=\"2943769198_608af0161c_b\"></a><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0147e0aab9d3970b-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"CK0005-01-72dpi\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0147e0aab9d3970b-320wi\" alt=\"CK0005-01-72dpi\"></a></p>\n<p>Professor Eben Horsford went on to greater, stranger things. A few years post-pendulum, he invented and commenced manufacturing a wildly successful double-acting baking powder. He died in 1893, a wealthy man, having spent his latter years and part of his fortune trying to prove that Boston had been colonized by Vikings 500 years before Columbus. He dug around a bit in his neighbourhood, found some suspicious foundations, and had a granite plaque installed along a Cambridge sidewalk, reading "On this spot in the year 1000 Leif Erikson built his house in Vineland." A few miles further up the Charles he descried signs of a more massive Norse settlement. To aid the imagination, in 1889 Horsford had a tower built of round grey river-stone, with a central winding stair of 67 steps (no room, alas, for a pendulum), to commemorate the supposed Viking fortress.</p>\n<p>Despite our errors in judgment, ambition, and lab practice, Dave and I both did all right in our physics course. After the final exam, Dave stopped by to tell our professor, a rather intimidating Nobel laureate, about our experimental misadventures. The professor laughed and laughed, then listed a dozen possible sources of error that we hadn't even begun to imagine, and laughed some more.</p>\n<p>In the end, though, the hard sciences weren't for either of us. Dave turned his sights toward American literature, and after a bit more intellectual zigging and zagging, I wound up studying the history of science, having decided that the most interesting part of science was the stories of the scientists themselves. The rest of my years in Boston, whenever I rode the subway as it rises over the Viking-prowed Longfellow bridge, I liked to look out on the Charleston side, taking in the Monument's still-impressive height, and imagining, beneath its winking red beacon, a long transparent nylon thread, connecting past and present, folly and grace, our most impressive plans and their undoings, tracing movements far beyond the work of mere equations.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0147e0aabac7970b-pi\"><img style=\"display:block;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\" title=\"800px-Leif_Erikson_Marker_Cambridge_MA\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0147e0aabac7970b-320wi\" alt=\"800px-Leif_Erikson_Marker_Cambridge_MA\"></a></p></div>"
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"content" : "<p>The Level3/Comcast dispute (peering costs) has attracted a lot of attention. The articles and blog posts on the subject have been numerous and diverse, ranging from highly emotional (“bandwidth stealing”) to technical (<a href=\"http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/comcastlevel3.ars\">Ars Technica </a>). The fact that “peering” and “transit” are not household subjects does complicate the discussion: for many it is easier to discuss grand concepts than this complex issue of interconnection.</p>\n<p>What struck me is the absence of numbers: what kind of money are we talking about? Given the heated discussion in which AT&T has decided to chip in there must be serious money involved somewhere.</p>\n<p>First of all: what would be the size of the bill Comcast wants to send to Level3?</p>\n<p>A little research (and some kind friends) showed what the current standard (paid) peering offer of Comcast is: USD 0, 5 per month per Mbps of bandwidth. This is what Comcast wants you as a network to pay if the Comcast customers request traffic originating from (or through) your network and you deliver it at the front door of Comcast. (One could debate if paying is reasonable at all, given the economic fact that Level3 is willing to deliver data deep in Comcast’s network which saves Comcast money, but that is not the point I am trying to make.).</p>\n<p>Level3 has <a href=\"http://www.level3.com/index.cfm?pageID=491&PR=958\">added CDN capacity of 2.9 Tbps for the Netflix deal</a>. If Level3 does all the CDN business for Netflix, it is for approx. 12 mio customers (19 mio in total end of 2010, 60 % use the download service: source <a href=\"http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/21/netflix-users/\">http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/21/netflix-users/</a>)</p>\n<p>The average CDN bandwidth per customer calculates to 0, 25 Mbps, which shows an oversubscription ratio of the CDN servers of 10:1 (Netflix streams HD at minimum 2,600 Mbps, source <a href=\"https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Netflix\">https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Netflix</a> ).</p>\n<p>Not all Netflix customers buy broadband access with Comcast: Comcast has approx. 20 % of the market in the USA with <a href=\"http://www.marketwatch.com/story/comcasts-profit-more-than-doubles-2010-02-03\">approx. 14-15 mio broadband subscribers</a>.</p>\n<p>For arguments sake, let’s assume all 2.9 Tbps sent to Netflix customers has to be paid for (peering costs) at USD 0, 5 per month per Mbps: USD 1.5 mio per month or USD 0,125 per customer per month. A drop in the bucket for Comcast or Level3. So what is the big deal?</p>\n<p>My hypothesis is: the imminent loss of lucrative broadcast TV revenue.</p>\n<p>The TV service is the main cash flow generator of a cable company. After the early “piracy” period and the consecutive introduction of (compulsory) licensing deals with TV stations, a symbiotic relationship has been developed between the distributor (cable) and the TV networks. A large and popular TV network can demand to be paid by the distributor per subscriber. The distributor creates packages of TV stations, sometimes padding the list with stations they own themselves, and sets a price. The consumer gets a take-it-or- leave-it option, making life easy for the TV network.</p>\n<p>New entrants (TV) have a difficult time: they have to pay to get a “place on the shelf”, or even give the cable company <a href=\"http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/12/an-applications-agnostic-approach.php\">20 % or more</a> of the shares.</p>\n<p>New TV distributors have a hard time too: the TV stations require them to pay a lot more per subscriber than the established cable company, or even refuse a license (like in the Netherlands, BBC1/2)</p>\n<p>The result is a very large TV market share for cable companies within their geographical footprint, a good to high ARPU (over <a href=\"http://www.marketwatch.com/story/comcasts-profit-more-than-doubles-2010-02-03\">USD 111 per month</a> for Comcast) and a fantastic EBITDA ratio.</p>\n<p>What if subscribers “cut the cable” and subscribe to Over-The-Top services like Netflix? The cable company becomes disintermediated and has to make its money by offering broadband access and voice, and/or expand in other services like Comcast does. Whatever they do, it is very difficult to build a new business generating the same revenue and margin.</p>\n<p>My guess is that this dispute with Level3 is a test case of some kind, driven by the danger of disintermediation.[ Update] And I am not the only one that thinks so: Susan Crawford just <a href=\"http://scrawford.net/blog/the-big-squeeze/1423/\">blogged about the squeeze Netflix might be put in</a> to eliminate their business model. The <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/business/media/13bewkes.html\">words of Time Warner’s executives </a>do not seem to bode well: copyright is a monopoly which can and will be “inherited” by distribution channels until compulsory licensing is reinstalled.</p>\n<p>[ Update: added link to Susan Crawfords post and Time Warner article]</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fdisintermediation%2F&linkname=Disintermediation\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fdisintermediation%2F&linkname=Disintermediation\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fdisintermediation%2F&linkname=Disintermediation\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fdisintermediation%2F&title=Disintermediation\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p>"
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"title" : "A Prayer for Aretha Franklin--"Aretha at Her Peak"",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TQDsnfaSNZI/AAAAAAAACX4/vrzqvalNliY/s1600/amazing-grace.jpg\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:391px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TQDsnfaSNZI/AAAAAAAACX4/vrzqvalNliY/s400/amazing-grace.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Aretha at Her Peak</span><br>by Mark Anthony Neal<br><br>In January of 1972, two months short of her 30th birthday, Aretha Franklin walked into the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church Los Angeles to record a live gospel album. Backed by the Southern California Community Choir, under the direction of her longtime friend and mentor the Reverend James Cleveland, the subsequent recording by Franklin eventually sold over two-million copies and remained the best selling Gospel album of all time for more than twenty years. Firmly established as the “Queen of Soul” and still more than a decade away from the caricature that she has become, Aretha Franklin was at the peak of her artistic powers when she recorded <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span>. More than 35 years after its release, the album stands as the best testament of Franklin’s singular genius.<br><br>A <span style=\"font-style:italic\">New York Times</span> review of Aretha Franklin’s <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Young, Gifted and Black</span>, published in March of 1972, was tellingly titled, “Aretha’s Blooming Thirties.” In the review, critic Don Heckman describes Young, Gifted and Black as “an extraordinary eclectic set of material.” To date, Franklin had earned six Grammy Awards, nearly a dozen gold singles and several gold albums; Franklin was easily the most commercially successful black women vocalist ever. Culled from sessions recorded in late 1970 and throughout 1971, <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Young, Gifted and Black</span> marks the beginning of what might be called Franklin’s most sustained period of artistic genius.<br><br>Franklin’s decision to record tracks like Elton John’s “Border Song,” Jerry Butler’s “Brand New Me,” Lennon and McCartney’s “The Long and Winding Road” and Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted and Black,” alongside originals like “Day Dreamin’,” “All the King’s Horses” and the infectious “Rock Steady” was as much about an artist who had warranted the right to record anything she wanted, as it was about a woman, who felt she finally had control over her life and career.<br><br>Living in New York City, after years of being in the shadow of her father, the legendary preacher Reverend C. L. Franklin, and under the professional guidance of her first husband Ted White, Franklin’s writes in her autobiography <span style=\"font-style:italic\">From These Roots </span>(1999) that in the period that she recorded <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Young Gifted and Black</span> she felt “free and willing to take creative risks.” (141) “In my mind’s eye” Franklin adds, “I see those days as a tremendous growth period and declaration of my independence. I was rediscovering myself.” (146) Part of that rediscovery, apparently entailed Aretha going back to the church.<br><br>Franklin is adamant in her memoirs, that <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span> didn’t mark a return to church, in a spiritual sense, but “when I say ‘took me back to church,’ I mean recording in church. I never left church. And I never will.” (150) Franklin’s very first recording “Never Grow Old” was recorded in her father’s church in 1956. Her first album Songs of Faith was released a year later and contained recordings collected from live performances done while on tour with her father. In the interim years between that release and Amazing Grace, Franklin had, with others, been largely responsible for mainstreaming the black Gospel aesthetic in popular music and culture.<br><br>Though Franklin had long desired to make a fully-fledged live Gospel recording, the immediate impetus for <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span> might have been one of Franklin’s most triumphant performances—her three night stand with King Curtis at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in March of 1971. The engagement resulted in the recording <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Live at the Fillmore West </span>(recently re-issued as <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Don’t Fight the Feeling: Live at the Fillmore West</span>). Introducing Franklin and her music to one of the iconic sites of late 1960s and early 1970s counter-culture seemed like a risky endeavor at the time. As writer Mark Bego describes the venue in his book Aretha Franklin: The Queen of Soul, “There were no chairs and bleachers…the audience sat cross-legged on the floor, or stood up and grooved to the music being performed on stage. People in the audience freely passed around joints during the shows.” (137)<br><br>It was Jerry Wexler, Franklin’s longtime producer, who was largely behind the Fillmore West engagement, resisting the natural inclination for the public and critics to simply see Franklin as a Soul singer. Wexler is quoted in Bego’s book “we want these longhairs to listen to this lady. After that they’ll be no problems.” Franklin still had to deliver, and she did, tackling material like Stephen Stills “Love the One Your With” and Bread’s “Make It With You” for the first time. By the time Franklin digs deep into the well of black spirituality, with the assistance of Ray Charles, on a nearly 30-minute rendition of “Spirit in the Dark” on the last night of her engagement, it was clear that the largely Hippie crowd had themselves been sanctified. In his book <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and the Rise and Fall of American Soul</span>, scholar and critic Craig Werner writes, “‘Spirit in the Dark’ evokes the sense of political community that seemed to be slipping away.” (184) As Franklin writes about that night, “soul oozed out of every pore of the Filmore. All the planets were aligned right that night, because when the music came down, it was as real and righteous as any recording I’d ever made.” (139) With <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span>, Franklin would capture that same energy, in what was nothing short of an old-fashioned revival.<br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TQDsxdHYT7I/AAAAAAAACYA/Dh4ZrHQ_oHk/s1600/Sydney-Pollack-s-Amazing-Grace-with-Aretha-Franklin-finally-surfaces_header_image.jpg\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:218px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TQDsxdHYT7I/AAAAAAAACYA/Dh4ZrHQ_oHk/s400/Sydney-Pollack-s-Amazing-Grace-with-Aretha-Franklin-finally-surfaces_header_image.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>“Aretha Franklin returns home,” is how one critic described <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span>, and indeed much of the preparation for the two nights of performances at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church was intended to make Franklin feel at home. In the mix were members of Franklin’s regular studio band including guitarist Cornel Dupree, bassist Chuck Rainey, and drummer Bernard Purdie. In addition her father, Reverend C.L. Franklin, who provided remarks on the second night and gospel singer Clara Ward were in attendance for the recording. As Franklin admits in<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> From These Roots</span>, “Along with my dad, Miss Ward was my greatest influence. She was the ultimate gospel singer—dramatic, daring, exciting, courageous…She took gospel where gospel had never gone before.” (153)<br><br>If<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> Amazing Grace</span> was a homecoming, it was because the recording recalled Aretha’s home life two decades earlier, when a young ambitious and talented musician and choir director James Cleveland was living in the Franklin household. Of Cleveland, Franklin would later write, “James helped shape my basic musical personality in profound ways…I was blessed to meet James so early in his career.” (41) By the time that Cleveland joins Franklin for the Amazing Grace sessions, he had long been established as one of the leading gospel stars of his generation, most well known for his composition “Peace Be Still” and his stunning arrangements for choirs. Cleveland was himself at the peak of his powers in 1972. Franklin’s longtime producer Jerry Wexler realized as much and recalls that the “arrangements were between [Franklin] and James Cleveland. Those arrangements, some of them were traditional—and some of them were things that she and James Cleveland put together.”<br><br>Franklin’s involvement in the production of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span> was no small matter. As Franklin rather pointedly expresses in her memoir, “As much as I appreciated the soulful studio environment in which Atlantic placed me and the sensitive musicians who played by my side, one point was deceptive and unfair: I was not listed as a co-producer.” Franklin later told Gerri Hirshey in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music</span> (1984), “I always worked on my sound, my arrangements, before I went into a studio with a producer.” Hirshey confirms this point: “there’s no better evidence than Aretha’s own notes from those fabled sessions. They are written in a girlish, slanted hand on yellow legal pads. They actually look like homework, as Aretha claims they were.”(243) It was to Wexler’s credit that he understood from the beginning of his work with Franklin in 1967, that she had the best idea about how she should sound. Franklin’s piano playing on many of her Atlantic recordings to that point was a testament to that understanding. Franklin’s point was that she needed to get formal recognition for her co-producer status. <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span> is the first Franklin recording in which she is listed as a co-producer.<br><br>The song list from the first night of the live recording reveals the eclecticism that would become the hallmark on Franklin’s recordings in this era. Pop standards like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the 1945 musical Carousel (the song was an early hit for Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles), were chosen alongside traditional gospel fare like “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “Precious Memories,” (popularized by Sister Rosetta Thorpe), original tunes like Clara Ward’s “How I Got Over” and even Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy,” which Franklin opens with. Franklin’s eclecticism was a product of the multiple worlds her success forced her to bridge. Nowhere was this more apparent than her medley of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand/You’ve Got a Friend” which combines the most well known compositions of the “Father of Gospel,” Thomas A. Dorsey (whose Chicago church, Cleveland got his start in) and singer-songwriter Carole King, whose “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Women” was one of Franklin’s signature recordings.<br><br>The brilliance of Franklin’s seamless performance of the songs is not simply the acknowledgement of great songs from the American Songbook, but the realization of Franklin’s own cultural gravitas which had the impact of elevating Dorsey—largely unknown to Franklin’s mainstream fans—to the level of King, who at the time had been acknowledged as the quintessential singer-songwriter of her generation. Franklin’s efforts are akin to what scholar and critic Walton M. Muyumba (borrowing from Tim Parrish) calls “democratic doing and undoing.” Writing about the improvisational techniques of another African-American musical genius, Charlie Parker, Muyumba writes in his book <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Shadow and Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation and Philosophical Pragmatism</span>, “Parker’s music ‘undoes’ status quo American musical performance theories by offering new modes for ‘doing’ or improvising American music.” (31)<br><br>In addition Franklin’s merging of Dorsey and King can be read as an act of generosity; a generosity that would be realized again a year later when Franklin gave her Grammy Award for Best Rhythm Blues Performance (awarded for Young, Gifted and Black) to former label-mate Esther Phillips, whose <span style=\"font-style:italic\">From a Whisper to a Scream</span> was also nominated. Noted critic Leonard Feather described Franklin’s recognition of Phillips as “a rare noblesse oblige gesture”—a term that translates into the “obligation of nobility.”<br><br>What ultimately makes <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Amazing Grace</span> such a powerful index of Aretha Franklin’s talent, was the response of the audience—traditional church goers among fans, critics, gospel royalty and the curious. Cleveland makes note of the atypical crowd in his opening comments telling the audience “I’d like for you to be mindful though, that this is a church, and we’re here for religious service…we want you to give vent to the spirit. Those of you not hip to giving vent to the spirit, then you do the next best thing.” By the time Aretha segues into “How I Got Over” after her stirring duet with Cleveland on “Precious Memories,” it is clear that the crowd has caught the spirit; “How I Got Over” elicits a false start as Cleveland tells folk, “you know ya’ll threw us off just then, don’t clap ‘till we get it open.”<br><br>The crowd was thus ripe when Franklin delivers what might be the definitive performance of her career. “Amazing Grace” is the most traditional of all traditional hymns and there has not been a Gospel singer (or Country or Blues singer for that matter) worth their salt that hasn’t spent some time putting their unique spin on the song. For all of those suspicious of Franklin’s seemingly sudden desire to come “back home” to the Church, this was the performance that would put all concerns to rest . Clocking in at over 16 minutes, including Cleveland’s touching introduction, “Amazing Grace” features Franklin unadorned with simply the accented backing of organist Ken Lupper and Cleveland on piano. Critic David Nathan perhaps says it best describing the “emotional nakedness” of Franklin’s performance. The performances has the feel of a testimony or even a spiritual purging, and the crowd was in-step with Franklin through every turn of phrase and melismic flourish. Hirshey recalls that Cleveland “stayed at the piano until he broke down in tears” during the performance. “Amazing Grace” would be Franklin’s closing number on the opening night and there was little reason to believe that she would match the emotional level of her performance on “Amazing Grace.”<br><br>The second night of performances opens with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and Gaye’s “Wholy Holy”—two of the four songs performed on both nights. Perhaps anticipating a letdown from the first night’s closing performance, Cleveland says to the crowd, with regards to the opening hymn, “you only get out of it, what you put in.” Cleveland’s warning wasn’t necessary. After a rather perfunctory performance of the opening tracks, Franklin begins a sequence of five songs that is as impressive as any suite of songs recorded within the idiom of African American music.<br><br>Beginning with a rousing rendition of the hymn “Climbing Higher Mountains,” Cleveland slows the tempo with an improvised Blues riff on the song (doing call and response opposite Franklin), that serves as an introduction to the hymn “God Will Take Care of You.” The significant action in the song occurs nearly two-thirds in when Cleveland again ascends to the mic, urging the crowd to a higher level. “Over in the sanctified church, when they begin to feel like this” Cleveland exhorts “All the saints get together and they join in a little praise. I wonder can I get you to help me say it one time” as the crowd yells “yeah” several times in unison, before the musicians unleash a torrent of sanctified rhythm. This section of the performance can be best described as the “pedagogy of Black Gospel” as Cleveland literally provides instruction for “catching the spirit” at the same time making transparent the more intimate details of African-American community. The sheer brilliance of the moment is that Cleveland was essentially using the segment as a musical transition from a spiritual ballad to a down-home stomper—you can hear Cleveland on the piano cueing the musicians and the choir for “Old Landmark’s” cold start—highlighting the genius that is often born of utility.<br><br>The crowd is spent when the pace shifts again for Franklin’s stellar version of The Caravan’s classic, “Mary Don’t You Weep.”—and fittingly so, as Franklin begins her own version of Gospel pedagogy. At the time of the recording, The Caravans were largely known as Gospel’s first super-group, counting the legendary Albertina Walker, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews and Shirley Caesar among its ranks at one time or another. Cleveland was an accompanist for the group in the mid-1950s. The Caravans were to Gospel in the 1950s and 1960s, what Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers were to Jazz; a high end finishing school for the genre’s elite. Given this legacy, it was only fitting that Franklin would perform one of the group’s most well known songs.<br><br>The song, originally recorded by the Fisk Jubilee Singer in 1915, tells the story of Lazarus of Bethany—a figure that, in Biblical lore, is brought back from death by Jesus. Ostensibly a song about the power of Jesus to deliver believers from adverse conditions, Franklin’s performance of the song offers an interesting commentary for Black America at a historical moment functioned, in part, as an extended moment of collective grief and mourning, in the aftermath of the murder of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (a close confidante of Franklin’s father) and others such as Fred Hampton, Bunchy Carter, students at Jackson State and countless others who sacrificed their lives in support of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Franklin and Cleveland’s arrangements transform “Mary Don’t You Weep” into a dirge, but in the spirit of much of the best of black expressive culture, builds on cathartic possibilities.<br><br>Franklin is midway through the song when she begins to explicitly retell the story of Lazarus—her vocals vacillating between singing and preaching, not unlike the style in which her father was well known for—recreating Jesus’s resurrection of Lazarus. As Franklin sings, “Jesus said ‘for the benefit of you, who don’t believe, who don’t believe in me this evening, I’m gonna call him three times.’ He said ‘Lazarus,’ hmmmm ‘Lazarus,’ hear my, hear my voice ‘Lazarus’…he got up walking like a natural man.” At face value, Franklin’s “Mary Don’t You Weep” is a powerful example of Gospel music’s capacity to perform exegesis, but I’d like to suggest something much more. In Franklin’s hand, “Mary Don’t You Weep” resurrects the very idea of progressive community—a concept of community that was literally under siege when Franklin made her recording. Less an act of resurrecting of a mythical “savior,” Franklin’s performance was an attempt to recover “beloved” community—a community that as constituted in the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church during those two nights in January of 1972, was a metaphor for the kind of “imagined” community that would have the capacity to elect a Black President more than three decades after Franklin’s performance.<br><br>Franklin, ends the suite with a 15-minute version of “Never Grow Old”—a song she first recorded as teen—seemingly putting an exclamation point on the inexhaustible idea of “beloved” community (“I have heard of a land on the far away strand, ’Tis a beautiful home of the soul”). By the time Franklin and Cleveland concluded the evening with a second rendition of “Precious Memories,” after impromptu comments from Reverend C.L. Franklin, it was evident to many in the audience, that they had been witness to something that was genuinely transcendent. They didn’t just witness one of the greatest singers of the 20th Century at her peak, but arguably the peak moment of a musical tradition that had, indeed, changed the world.<br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-1554083995825817092?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Côte d'Ivoire: Ivorian Refugees Arrive in Liberia And Guinea Amid Election Dispute - UN",
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"title" : "James "Moody's Mood for Love" Moody Goes Home",
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"content" : "<iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"http://www.youtube.com/embed/ckxMozZZLzA\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"273\" width=\"325\"></iframe><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-size:78%\">from the Los Angeles Times</span><br><br></div><span style=\"font-size:85%\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Moody's improvised solo on 'I'm in the Mood for Love' became a jazz classic. A version with lyrics added became a cross-genre hit and has been recorded by Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Amy Winehouse and others.</span><br></span><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br><a href=\"http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-james-moody-20101210,0,5483254.story\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-style:italic\">James Moody dies at 85; jazz saxophonist and flutist</span></a><br>by Don Heckman, Special to The Times<br><br>James Moody, a jazz saxophonist and flutist whose improvised solo on a recording of the song \"I'm in the Mood for Love\" became a jazz classic, died Thursday in San Diego, where he had lived in recent years. He was 85 and had pancreatic cancer.<br><br>His death was confirmed by a spokeswoman for the San Diego Hospice.<br><br>The recording, made in Stockholm in 1949, became a rare jazz hit as an instrumental. When singer King Pleasure recorded Eddie Jefferson's lyrics for Moody's improvisation in 1954, it became a cross-genre hit, subsequently recorded by singers ranging from Van Morrison, George Benson and Aretha Franklin to Tito Puente and Amy Winehouse. Moody, himself, frequently sang the version with lyrics in his live performances.<br><br>The original improvisation was recorded on alto saxophone, an instrument Moody had not been playing at the time.<br><br>\"Up to this point, I had been playing strictly tenor saxophone,\" he told Times jazz writer Leonard Feather in 1988. \"At one session, I noticed that Lars Gullin, the Swedish saxophonist, had an alto sax lying around. I said, 'Do you mind if I try it out?' \"<br><br>Moody did not initially expect to record with the alto, however, and the song came to life only as a spontaneous, last-minute addition to the session.<br><br>\"The producer decided we needed an extra tune,\" he recalled. \"But [he] didn't have any music prepared. I suggested making 'I'm in the Mood for Love,' and we went ahead and did it, in one take, with me playing this beat-up alto saxophone. Well, you know what happened.\"<br><br>Universally called by his last name by friends and fans alike, Moody was warm and amiable, invariably greeting acquaintances with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The same qualities were present in his instrumental playing, as well, which matured in sync with the arrival of bebop in the mid-'40s. Quickly grasping the complexities of the new style, with its extended harmonies and shifting rhythms, Moody added an appealing melodic flow to his improvised solos, expressed in instrumental timbres approaching the qualities of the human voice.<br><br>\"Over the years, Moody has become so free — not in a random fashion, but a scientific freedom — that he can do anything he wants with the saxophone,\" Moody's contemporary, saxophonist Jimmy Heath, told Down Beat magazine's Ted Panken. \"He has true knowledge. He is in complete control.\"<br><br>Feather, reviewing a Moody performance for The Times in 1972, agreed. \"Moody brings to his tenor saxophone an immense sound,\" he wrote. \"Relying on the natural tone quality....he offers hard-hitting, stimulating jazz, rooted in the idiom fathered by [ Charlie] Parker and [ Dizzy] Gillespie.\"<br><br>Like his lifelong friend and mentor, trumpeter Gillespie, Moody was able to find a convincing balance between entertainment and art — a balance that eluded many of his contemporaries. In any given set, he would frequently juxtapose long, inventive improvisations against his witty vocal renderings of \"Moody's Mood For Love,\" then switch to a humorous paraphrase of \"Pennies From Heaven\" titled \"Benny's From Heaven,\" topped off with another briskly exploratory solo.<br><br>Moody's easygoing manner, wry humor and musical versatility served him well in a career in which he moved deftly from alto and tenor saxophones to clarinet and flute. His rich resume included — in addition to his continuing jazz performances with small groups and big bands — stints in which he backed the likes of Elvis Presley, Redd Foxx, Liberace and the Osmonds.<br><br>In 2005, he added an unusual sidebar to his busy career when he made a cameo appearance in the Clint Eastwood-directed film, \"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,\" as a porter in a law office who walks an imaginary dog. Moody frequently joked about the fact that he only had one line to say: \"Yessir. Patrick do like his morning walk.\"<br><br>The affection with which Moody was viewed by musicians, celebrities and fans was on full display in several musical parties celebrating his milestone birthdays. His 75th anniversary, which took place at New York City's Blue Note jazz club, was released as a live recording titled \"Moody's Birthday.\"<br><br>\"I think you're looking at a man who knows love and knows how to accept it and give it without hiding, without treating it as if it was some sort of weakness,\" Bill Cosby, who hosted Moody's 80th birthday celebration concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall, said in an interview with the Copley News Service. Moody \"has taught me integrity, how to express love for your fellow human beings, and how to combine and contain manhood and maturity.\"<br><br>James Moody was born March 26, 1925, in Savannah, Ga., and was raised in Reading, Pa., and Newark, N.J. His father was a trumpeter, his mother a dedicated jazz fan.<br><br>\"My mother loved jazz,\" he told Calvin Wilson in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. \"She had records by Chick Webb, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Jimmy Lunceford, and I heard those records playing at home. I'm thankful for that, because she could've been a doo-wop person, and that would have been a drag.\"<br><br>Moody was born with a hearing defect in his left ear. Initially undiagnosed, it made it difficult for him to hear questions in class. Because of his poor grades, he was sent to a school for retarded children. The malady was properly treated when he entered high school in Newark, where his grades improved and he began to play the alto saxophone, a gift from an uncle.<br><br>After serving in the Army Air Forces from 1943 to '46, Moody joined Gillespie's band and made his own first recording, \"James Moody and His Bebop Men.\" He moved to Europe in the late '40s, remaining there until 1951, performing with Miles Davis and others, and recording \"I'm in the Mood for Love.\"<br><br>Settling in New York City in the early '50s, he led various ensembles — including a septet that played jazz-influenced rhythm & blues — made a series of recordings for Argo, and worked with Gillespie, an association that would continue intermittently until Gillespie's death in 1993. A brief period working with Las Vegas show bands in the '70s was followed by a return to jazz and the leadership of his numerous ensembles. In the late '80s, he was a founding member of Dizzy Gillespie's United Nation Orchestra.<br><br>Moody, a multiple Grammy nominee, was chosen an NEA Jazz Master in 1998.<br><br>Survivors include his wife of 21 years, Linda; a brother, Lou Watters; a daughter, Michelle Bagdanove; sons Patrick, Regan and Danny McGowan; four grandchildren and one great grandson.<br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-6363389066957150883?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "Googlers have published two papers recently at academic conferences detailing new specialized databases that are heavily used within Google.<br><br>The first paper is a USENIX 2010 paper describing Percolator. Percolator is the database powering Caffeine, which is Google's new system to provide fresher search results by adding new documents and updates to documents to their search index in near real-time. <br><br>The Percolator paper is titled \"Large-scale Incremental Processing Using Distributed Transactions and Notifications\" (<a href=\"http://www.google.com/research/pubs/archive/36726.pdf\">PDF</a>). An excerpt:<blockquote><i>We have built Percolator, a system for incrementally processing updates to a large data set, and deployed it to create the Google web search index. By replacing a batch-based indexing system with an indexing system based on incremental processing using Percolator, we process the same number of documents per day, while reducing the average age of documents in Google search results by 50%.<br><br>Percolator is built on top of the Bigtable distributed storage system .... Percolator was built specifically for incremental processing and is not intended to supplant existing solutions for most data processing tasks. Computations where the result can't be broken down into small updates (sorting a file, for example) are better handled by MapReduce. Also, the computation should have strong consistency requirements; otherwise, Bigtable is sufficient. Finally, the computation should be very large in some dimension (total data size, CPU required for transformation, etc.); smaller computations not suited to MapReduce or Bigtable can be handled by traditional DBMSs.</i></blockquote>Percolator is a specialized database that adds new consistency guarantees (as well as triggers, which they call \"observers\") to Bigtable. One thing that is interesting is how specialized this system is. Percolator, for example, is in no way intended for online operations and can, in some cases, delay a transaction for tens of seconds due to stray locks. But, that is fine for the near real-time search index update task for which it is designed.<br><br>The second paper is a VLDB 2010 paper on Dremel. Dremel is a column store database designed to be orders of magnitude faster for some interactive database queries than MapReduce.<br><br>This paper is titled \"Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets\" (<a href=\"http://sergey.melnix.com/pub/melnik_VLDB10.pdf\">PDF</a>). An excerpt:<blockquote><i>Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing.<br><br>Dremel can execute many queries over such data that would ordinarily require a sequence of MapReduce (MR) jobs, but at a fraction of the execution time. Dremel is not intended as a replacement for MR and is often used in conjunction with it to analyze outputs of MR pipelines or rapidly prototype larger computations .... Dremel provides a high-level, SQL-like language to express ad hoc queries. In contrast to layers such as Pig and Hive, it executes queries natively without translating them into MR jobs.</i></blockquote>The paper includes some fun motivational examples describing how people use Dremel for rapid prototyping of new ideas. There is a huge advantage in spending just seconds rather than hours to examine the potential of a new feature for a classifier or a new signal for relevance rank. Dremel lets Googlers twiddle the feature multiple times to optimize it in just a few minutes, then run a big, multi-hour MapReduce job to get the final data, a huge advantage over rivals that might take days to do the same investigation.<br><br>Dremel, like all column stores, it works best when selecting just a few columns from the data, but that is a very common case well worth optimizing for. One fun aside briefly mentioned in the paper is that they see another order of magnitude or two speedup if they can stop after only looking at 98% of the data or so because waiting for straggler chunks causes big slow downs. So, if you are willing to have (unusually slightly) inaccurate results, you can get huge boosts in speed from stopping queries early. That is also not new, but again a very common case and worth thinking about.<br><br>In both of these papers, what I find so remarkable is how willing Google is to build specialized databases to speed up tasks. Percolator can only be used for tasks have huge data, strong consistency requirements, and can tolerate occasional latency of tens of seconds, but that is perfect for near real-time search index updates. Dremel can only be used for selecting a few columns of data, but it is extremely common that a MapReduce job wants to ignore almost all the data in each record. It reminds me of the specialized search index structures and kernel twiddles <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeff-dean-keynote-at-wsdm-2009.html\">Google does</a>, which are other interesting examples of the lengths Google is willing to go to maximize the usefulness of their internal tools and the performance of their systems.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-6405718100740549119?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GeekingWithGreg/~4/t00bxolaXP4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Free e-Book: This is Not a Love Poem",
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"content" : "<br><div> </div> <div><img style=\"float:left;margin:0pt 10px 10px 0pt;width:200px;height:320px;border:0pt none\" src=\"http://img.ymlp.com/niiayikwei_notlovesm.jpg\" width=\"300\" align=\"left\" height=\"447\">So,</div> <div><br> I am making a digital leap. <span style=\"font-size:10pt\">Between 2002 and 2005, I performed over 500 times in poetry venues around the world. To keep true to my self-imposed stipulation to never perform the same set twice, I wrote at an incredible rate during the period and I have now decided to share these writings for free in two e-books. The first is some of the more overtly political stuff I performed (mainly in the US) as well as the last piece I performed, taken straight from my Book of Rhymes - a few weeks ago - at the RAP Party at the Albany at the invitation of Inua Ellams</span><span style=\"font-size:10pt\">. The file is in ePub format, but because of the cover image (as shown on the left) it's in a zip file and the download options are below. While it's virtually free, I had to set the book up on Payloadz, so it will cost you the name of a rapper - 50 Cents<br></span></div><br>- Payloadz ($0.50): <a href=\"http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=903102\">http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=903102</a><br> The second e-book will be all love poems and will be out in early January. It will also be free-ish. Enjoy! <div></div> <div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/31917037-6421920873497289211?l=thought.niiparkes.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "LAURENT GBAGBO MUST NOT BE GIVEN ANOTHER CHANCE TO BURN COTE D’IVOIRE DOWN!",
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"content" : "<p>LAURENT GBAGBO MUST NOT BE GIVEN ANOTHER CHANCE TO BURN COTE D’VOIRE DOWN!<br>\nTuesday December 07, 2010<br>\n<strong>By Cameron Duodu</strong></p>\n<p>To many Ghanaians, Cote d’Ivoire is a second natural home. I am one of these Ghanaiana, for it is the only country in the world I know where I can step into a taxi and be able, straight-away, to speak to the driver in my own tongue. 150 years of colonial boundaries mean little, I found out there.</p>\n<p>It is the only place where, after I have checked into my room in a hotel, the first song I hear on the hotel radio is a popular Ghanaian hi-life. </p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>More important, once when my little 8-year-old son was separated momentarily from the rest of the family during a shopping spree in Abidjan, and found himself lost, he was able to take a taxi to where the family’s host worked — a huge international bank– and get him to come down, while the taxi driver waited patiently! Not a hair on his young head was harmed, and he did it all without being able to speak a word of French. </p>\n<p>I’ve often wondered, in retrospective terror, how the taxi driver had the goodness of heart not to worry about getting paid? </p>\n<p>That was the wonderful country that Cote d’Ivoire that was. Its people were generally friendly and open; and its ability to attract tourists was unbeatable.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>Once, Air Afrique, the much-lamented African route-master, invited me to be its guest. Camped at the Hotel Ivoire, we went to a new tourist attraction each day. </p>\n<p>The one I most vividly remember is the “adults-only” beach resort at Assouinde, where a hotel called Jardin d’Eden provides everything that one can imagine being offered in the real Garden of Eden. Good surfing, tasty prawns skewered in the shell, cold beer — it was indeed heaven. </p>\n<p>But Cote d’Ivoire was living on borrowed time. By the time its first President, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, died in December 1993, he had ruled for over 40 years. One of his fiercest opponents was a college lecturer called Laurent Gbagbo, who stubbornly defied Houphouet, endured persecution and bravely stood against Houphouet in the first multi-party elections held in 1990.</p>\n<p>This doggedness endeared Gbagbo to those who aspired to live under a democracy in Cote d’Ivoire. Houphouet-Boigny died at the age of 85 in December 1993, and Gbagbo watched with interest as Houphouet’s party, the Democratic Party of Cote d’Ivoire (PDCI) tore itself apart in a succession race. It was the former finance minister and substantive chairman of the National Assembly, Henri Konan Bedie, who emerged on top. </p>\n<p>Among Houphouet’s appointees who lost out to Bedie was Alassane Dramane Ouattara, whom Houphouet had appointed prime minister after plucking him back home from the IMF (where Outtara was a deputy managing director) to put him in charge of the [Central] Bank of West Africa, before appointing him prime minister.</p>\n<p>Bedie, however, soon began to dig his own political grave. </p>\n<p>He embarked upon a policy of “Ivoirite”, which was plainly tribalistic. The policy sought to deprive people who were born in, and had lived in Cote d’Ivoire, but who had one or two parents born in a neighboring country, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal or Niger — the neighboring countries that Frnce had once knit together into a federation with Cote d’Ivoire — of their Ivorian citizenship. </p>\n<p>It was an unjust policy, for apart from the fact that most of the people affected did not know their “ancestral” homes too well, it also negated the contribution they had made to the wealth of Cote d’Ivoire, mainly with their labour on cocoa and coffee farms, saw-mills and timber-yards. </p>\n<p>The absurdity of the policy was amply demonstrated when Ouattara, who had been deemed fit enough to be appointed Prime Minister, was told, in July 1999, that he was a “foreigner” (from Burkina Faso) and therefore the electoral code did not allow him to participate in the coming presidential election. </p>\n<p>The absurd and cruel nature of Ivoirite that cooked Bedie’s political goose, for there were many soldiers, artisans, technicians, teachers and civil servants who found their civil rights nullified overnight in the country of their birth. In December 1999, a group of soldiers toppled Bedie. They appointed General Robert Guei, who, they believed, was in sympathy with their sentiments, to be president. Guei was supposed to organise free elections and hand over power to whoever won. </p>\n<p>But Guei had also been bitten by the xenophobic bug, and prevented Ouattara from contesting. however, he allowed Gbagbo to contest, believing that he could rig the election nd frighten Gbgbo off.</p>\n<p>Guei duly announced that he hd won. But the Ivorian electorate were having none of it, and taking to the streets in their thousands, chased Guei out of power. </p>\n<p>Gbagbo became President. Everyone heaved a sight of relief, hoping that Gbagbo, who had been in opposition for so long, would rule as a genuine democrat, treat other opposition leaders with respect and organise free and fair elections in which the Ivorian people’s voice would truly carry the day.. </p>\n<p>But instead, Gbagbo largely resurrected the selfsame foul ethnocentric policies that had brought Bedie and Guei to grief. He was eventually forced to enter a series of bizarre alliances of convenience with Ouattara, which always seemed built on sand. Eventually, the pretence at co-operation between the two men was torn away, and they launched a full armed conflict against each other in 2002. </p>\n<p>Cote d’Ivoire was split in two: Gbagbo and his acolytes reigned in Abidjan, in the south, while Ouattara’s supporters, calling themselves “The New Forces”, held sway in the northern with their capital at Bouake.</p>\n<p>Africans, French and other world leaders tried to mediate and reunite the country. At each negotiated “agreement”, Gbagbo did not hide the fact that he wanted to have the upper hand, or nothing. Ouattara indulged him, waiting for the definitive election that would expose Gbagbo as a regional, not a national leader.</p>\n<p>The current crisis was caused by Gbagbo, after postponing the all-important presidential election year after year, finally agreeing to hold the election in November 2010. But those who had eyes to see could have observed that before the election, there was much trouble over the “identity cards” that were to be used in registering voters. Reason? To try and prevent “foreigners” from voting! “Déjà vu-deja vu” was how one wit described described the situation. </p>\n<p>But worse, while giving in on the identity card issue, Gbagbo cleverly “booby-trapped” the election-result announcement mechanism beforehand. Somehow, he had got the UN and everyone else involved in organizing the election to take their eyes off the ball, while he inserted a harmless-looking provision in the electoral regulations, stipulating that after the Independent Electoral Commission had collated the results, they would be passed on to the Constitutional Court, which would “certify” them. A mere formality, right?</p>\n<p>Wrong! Whereas the Independent Electoral Commission announced that in the decisive second round of the presidential election, Ouattara had obtained over 54% and Gbagbo, less than 45%, and so OPuattara had won, the Constitutional Court said some of the votes cast for Ouattara in the northern part of the country were “invalid“ and that when these “onvalid” votes were taken out of the total number of votes cast, Gbagbo got 51% of the votes! So it was Gbagbo who had won. </p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission was denied access to national radio and television. Indeed, Gbgbo, acting with “malice aforethought”, shut down almost all the media in the country. He also closed the country’s borders. </p>\n<p>Gbagbo next swore himself in as President. Ouattra too got himself sworn in as President. The spectre of Kenya, Zimbabwe and Togo — where similar podt-election debacles had occurred — beckoned to Cote d’Ivoire.</p>\n<p>What has happened is a clear case of an incumbent using the apparatus o the state to steal an election, while the international players — the UN, the AU and ECOWAS, as well as France, the US and the European Union — all watch in disbelief and call unanimously on Gbagbo to show statesmanship and stand down after losing the election. </p>\n<p>But will they unite in imposing measures that will make Gbagbo give up his silly attempt to steal the election or just go for the usual pious appeals that are ignored as soon as they are made?</p>\n<p>I find it troubling that the UN in particular (which has 9,000 soldiers in Cote d‘Ivoire) and the other actors in this bizarre Ivorian business, could not have gathered enough intelligence on the ground to detect Gbagbo’s intentions beforehand and have allowed him to reach a position where he may succeed in stealing the election. </p>\n<p>If they had had an idea of what he was planning — and they should have — they could have checkmated him before he could bring the country once more to the brink of civil war.</p>\n<blockquote><p>For instance: what did they think the enormous brouhaha over the identity cards was all about? Answer (in case they still don’t get it: to deprive Ouattara’s supporters of the right top vote. Why would Gbagbo want to do that? Answer: Because he knows the demographic profile o Cote d’Ivoire very well, and it accords Ouattara am inbuilt majority of votes, if voters go by their ethnicity. And Gbagbo had not scrupled to use the ethnic card, hadn’t he? Doesn’t it cut both ways? </p>\n<p>When the results were being delayed, what did the international observers think was happening? </p>\n<p>When an Electoral Commission official was physically prevented from announcing one set of results, by the simple act of a Gbagbo supporter whipping the papers out of his hands and tearing them to pieces in full view of the media and the public — what did that portend or signify?</p></blockquote>\n<p>It is not good enough for officials entrusted with<br>\nensuring that elections are carried out peacefully in a volatile situation — such as the Ivorian one — to take the “good faith” of the main actors, especially the incumbent government, for granted. </p>\n<p>Any blood that is shed — and God forfend none is shed — will be upon the heads of many bureaucrats who saw and heard Gbagbo, but were fooled by his smile, without being able to penetrate into his psyche to get the true meaning of why he smiles so much.</p>\n<p>Now, the human fire-extinguishers are all making a beeline for Cote d’Ivoire. The most high profile of them is ex-President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. He has experience of the ways of the Ivorian actors, for he managed to get an agreement between Gbagbo and the “New Forces” to come into operation in 2004.</p>\n<p>However, the ink was hardly dry on it when it began to fall apart. So it will be a miracle if Mbeki can find a way through the current impasse and give Cote d’Ivoire another chance for peace. The regional body, ECOWAS is also putting in itys oar. Bit is notoriously fond o brokering power-sharing arrangements, whereas Africa is now ripe for mature politics, which means someone must lose so that another one may win. That is the rule in democratic politics and those who can’t accept it must leave the field. Does Gbagbo think America’s racist groups were enamoured of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008? They were not, but they remembered the civil war their country had once fought, and got the message that it was accept Obama rule or go to the barricades. Gbagbo has imbibed enough politics from his friends in the “Socialist International” not to comprehend this, and he must be made a pariah in the world unless he respects the votes of his countrymen and steps dwon.</p>\n<p>It is so sad that one man’s insatiable lust for power has been allowed to summon the vultures of civil war to come and hover over Cote d’Ivoire once again — hungry as ever, for the flesh of our fellow African brothers and sisters. Africa must unite to deny these vultures the usual diet that the greed and stupidity of some African politicians so often lays out for the vultures to feast upon.</p>"
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"title" : "“Two-handed engine”: Wikileaks, the Defense of Diplomatic Secrecy, and East Timor",
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"content" : "<p><em>This is a long post, almost 7000 words, so proceed with caution. It began with Wikileaks and Scott Gilmore’s article “In Defense of Secrecy,” but most of it’s about East Timor and the larger problem — which I recognize in retrospect as the motivation — of our apparent inability to see what diplomats and militaries do as part of the same thinking apparatus; no matter how clichéd Clausewitz has become, we use a different set of paradigms to judge what the Defense department does from what the department of State does. This is a dangerous double standard. </em></p>\n<p><em> </em></p>\n<p>The logic behind leaking diplomatic cables seems to be different than the logic behind producing a document like the “Collateral Murder” video. The latter is a recognizable piece of muck-raking in the classic sense, since the aesthetic and ethical response is it designed to provoke is horror: showing us video of an Apache helicopter killing non-combatants (and letting us hear the disregard for human life in the voices of the pilots as they did so), the point of the video was to take something that repetition has rendered banal — “collateral damage” — and re-stage it as unnatural, perverse, horrible, and unacceptable, as “collateral murder.”</p>\n<p>While Wikileaks also released the unedited footage, Raffi Khatchadourian’s <em>New Yorker </em><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian\">piece</a></span><em> </em>focuses on the ways Wikileaks tried to shape its reception, cutting the raw tape to emphasize the parts they wanted to emphasize, adding captions, and framing it with an inflammatory title and a George Orwell quote (“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind”). And in describing how Wikileaks went about deciding where and how to edit the video — choosing that title, for example, instead of the less explicit “Permission to Engage” — Khatchadourian gives us space to see the video through the lens which Defense Secretary Robert Gates offers us:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“These people can put anything out they want and are never held accountable for it.” The video was like looking at war “through a soda straw,” he said. “There is no before and there is no after.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>There is certainly some validity to this argument. Wikileaks did work to shape the narrative by making decisions about what to show us and what <em>not </em>to show us. Calling it “murder” before we’ve even seen the event is not a act of passive journalism, and if Wikileaks is working to publicize events in our world which we were not otherwise cognizant of, they are doing so with purpose and intent, as a kind of civil disobedience, working as hard to <em>make</em> the story as they are to simply report it.</p>\n<p>But there’s nothing “simple” about reporting “the story.” All “facts” come to us embedded in contextual cues and narratives that prompt us on how to respond. When we see an American military helicopter firing on shadowy faceless figures carrying an unidentifiable object, after all, do Americans remember that they are Americans as they watch? And reflect on how Americans have been the targets of terror attacks by shadowy faceless figures, maybe like these? If we’ve been conditioned by television and films to regard Arabs as dangerous villains — and <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_N4BcaIPY\">we have</a></span> – is the way we respond to <em>these </em>moving images influenced by <em>those </em>moving images? Is it relevant that we hear the voices of the pilots — making them persons, present to us, legible to us — while their victims are faceless ciphers? Are we influenced by video games that play out this very scenario, with <em>us </em>in the cockpit? As we struggle to make sense of the event we see in front of us, does it influence us that one interpretation — murder — will make us feel bad and uncomfortable, while the other — justifiable, collateral damage — will make us feel <em>less </em>bad?</p>\n<p>I think the answer is yes to at least some of these questions at least some of the time. As consumers of news, we are sometimes passive and sometimes active; sometimes we question what we see and look straight on at the things that make us uncomfortable, and sometimes we don’t. And the way we can be <em>most </em>comfortable about the world we live in is to forget how often and how pervasively we get manipulated by the people who serve us our news, to pleasantly overlook how carefully packaged and framed and edited and commented upon every image and word we ever receive <em>already</em> is.</p>\n<p>After all, the alternative to Wikileaks’ editing that footage is for someone else to edit it, and if we look critically at and question the way that Wikileaks has presented it to us — and we <em>should </em>do that — then we should also criticize the alternative that Secretary Gates wants us to view. Which is to not view it at all. In this sense, while Khatchadourian’s <em>New Yorker </em>piece is more or less fair as far as it goes, it doesn’t go very far: Assange is shown editing and crafting and interposing himself between us and “reality,” while Secretary Gates — the man who denied Reuters’ FOIA requests for the footage — is given to us as media critic, the guy pointing out to us how our reality has been distorted by the villainous Julian Assange. The man who suppressed the tape in its entirety is heard complaining that Assange has suppressed parts of it. But both are doing more or less the same thing: Assange gives us a picture of the event that makes it look like murder, while Gates gives us a picture of the even in which it is not.</p>\n<p>Leaking those diplomatic cables, on the other hand, would seem to be something altogether different, which is part of why the conversations about Wikileaks have changed. Wikileaks <em>has </em>“cooperated” with the US government in a certain ways (through the mediation of the big newspapers) to redact certain aspects of the leaks; they are not, despite the hyperbolic claims of their detractors, releasing information indiscriminately. One could certainly still complain that they’re not discriminating in the <em>right </em>ways. But where Gates complained that the “Collateral Murder” video had been altered, arguing that it could not be trusted because it didn’t show the <em>whole </em>story, the problem with what Wikileaks is doing now — say its critics — is that the cables have not been <em>sufficiently </em>altered, that certain information can and should legitimately be kept secret. I want to fixate on this argument — the argument for the value of secrecy as such — because it comes from a different place than Gates’ lament about the perniciously edited footage. There, Gates implicitly conceded that we have some basic right to know the truth, and that the problem is simply that we‘ve been denied it: if you could only see the <em>whole video</em>, he argues, you would understand that our soldiers are just doing their job. Here, the line is the opposite: if only things could be kept secret, they say, all would be well.</p>\n<p>I think it would be fair to say that we in the United States have a certain tradition of being, if not <em>skeptical </em>of the military, at least open to the argument that the military has to be watched pretty closely. Americans love us some soldiers, but we nevertheless tend to presume, at a certain basic and conceptual level, that the job of the soldier is to be beholden to civilian leadership and public oversight. It’s in the constitution both of our laws and of our assumptions about what the military <em>is</em>, which is why we have neither a tradition nor the real possibility of direct military political leadership. I suspect, then, that this is why conservatives work so hard to lionize the soldiery: since the military is constitutionally and conceptually subordinate to the civilian leadership and mass public, insisting that they almost never do bad things — that they are supernaturally <em>good </em>human beings — is a way of easing up on the kind of actual oversight and civilian control over the military that we constitutionally presume. The non-military always has the <em>right</em> to oversee the military, but if — as Gates’ statement presumes — we don’t <em>need </em>to, if we can trust them, then we won‘t actually have to. We give our soldiers free rein in practice, just not in theory.</p>\n<p>However, to say that because we can <em>trust </em>the military, we don’t need to rigorously oversee their actions, is a significantly different argument than the argument which is made in explicit defense of the positive value of diplomatic secrecy. Gates is not arguing that it is a positive good for the military to operate without supervision; even in our hyper-militarized society, that’s still a relatively minority position. His point, informed by long military tradition, is simply that oversight is superfluous, <em>not </em>that its absence is, actually and in and of itself, a positive necessity.</p>\n<p>The argument in direct defense of diplomatic secrecy comes from a different place, and from a different set of rhetorical principles. <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://buildingmarkets.org/blogs/blog/2010/11/29/in-defense-of-secrecy/\">This article</a></span> <strong>– </strong>“In Defense of Secrecy” –<strong> </strong>was written by former Canadian diplomat Scott Gilmore, and seems more or less representative (it’s a <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron%20Bady/Desktop/In%20Defense%20of%20Secrecy\">blog post</a></span> he wrote last Tuesday which was then picked up by a the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wikileaks-just-made-the-world-more-repressive/article1818157/\">Globe and Mail)</a></span>.</p>\n<p>The heart of his argument is that what diplomats <em>do </em>is work for human rights, and that they use secret cables to do it. “The third most common topic in the WikiLeaks cables is human rights,” he argues — with a graph to prove it — and portrays “American diplomats doing the same thing we were trying to do in Indonesia: Make the world a little better.” He talks in some lurid detail about his posting in Indonesia during the two and half decades the Suharto regime was committing genocide on the East Timorese people, and closes with this “Thankfully, for the Timorese at least, WikiLeaks did not exist in the 1990s.”</p>\n<p>There are three propositions here that we need to disentangle: (A) American diplomats essentially work to “make the world a little better,” (B) the people of East Timor were significantly helped, in some way, by diplomats like him, and (C) just as Wikileaks is today impeding the efforts of American diplomats to do what they do, if Wikileaks had existed in 1999, it would have impeded the efforts by American and Canadian diplomats to “make the world a little bit better.”</p>\n<p>I disagree with all three of these propositions, and I’ll explain why, at ponderous length. But first, let us take in the rest of Scott Gilmore’s account of himself:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…while posted in Jakarta, my job was to find out as much as I could about the human rights abuses being committed by the Indonesian government, and to help apply whatever pressure we could on Jakarta to make them stop. I wrote cables back to Ottawa that would raise the hair on the back of your neck. Describing abuses that make me sick even now to think about them. <strong>These cables gave my government the ammunition it needed to lean heavily on the Indonesian leadership at the UN and at summits like APEC</strong>.</p>\n<p>…Every few months, I would go visit a small white-washed school in the hills of Indonesian occupied Timor. The young teacher who ran the school would cheerfully bring me into her office, and we would chat about small things while her uniformed students would serve us strong coffee and homemade buns. Once the students left and closed the door, she would open her desk drawer and hand me horrifying photos of disinterred bodies. The Timorese resistance would dig up the fresh graves of torture victims, take photos for evidence, and pass them through their secret network to the teacher, who would then pass them to me and other diplomats. <strong>With that information we knew what the Indonesian military was doing and that the government in Jakarta was lying to the international community. And we could confront them, and we could pressure them to change. And ultimately, thanks to the perseverance of the Timorese and the efforts of thousands of diplomats and activists and politicians, this worked. The international arm twisting led to a referendum, and Timor is now independent. </strong></p></blockquote>\n<p>Again, there is an implicit chain of propositions here that add up to a coherent narrative: (A) diplomats need information about abuses in order to do their job of making the world a little bit better, (B) secretly transmitting that information back to their government is necessary to protect their sources so as to maintain the flow of information, (C) the “international arm twisting” which that information enabled “led to a referendum, and Timor is now independent,” and (D) East Timor is lucky it had American and Canadian diplomats on its side.</p>\n<p>All of these claims seem to me to be at least irresponsibly exaggerated. I say this mainly because I know enough about the broadly accepted historical narrative that’s emerged about what happened in 1999 to see all the places where Gilmore is diverging from it. I distrust his account of how genocide was stopped in East Timor because I trust Geoffrey Robinson’s account in <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=142nuDzaU2sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=geoffrey+robinson+how+genocide&source=bl&ots=Go1iywsvqy&sig=pkfa6WntOjD2Mrzkv_xifWEEzFA&hl=en&ei=2Gz-TOK-CYy-sQOc-9ivCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false\">his book </a>with the subtitle “How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor,” and in which paints a very different picture of what was going on in 1999. But most of all, I’m struck by the completely and incompatibly different version of the story that the same Canadian diplomat told in <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://this.org/blog/2010/01/19/interview-scott-gilmore/\">this interview</a></span>, a short eleven months ago, when he wasn‘t prompted by Wikileaks to defend the noble calling of secret diplomacy.</p>\n<p>As he tells it there, at the time he joined the foreign service and was posted to Indonesia, the Suharto regime that had, by then, been murderously repressing East Timor for almost 24 years “was falling apart”:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The government was collapsing, Suharto, the dictator, had resigned, and so I volunteered for it and was sent out to Jakarta. And because I was a low man in the embassy I was given the crap files and one of them was East Timor, because at that time it was a forgotten conflict, there was nobody on the ground, the UN wasn’t there. The only foreigners anywhere near it were nuns and the Red Cross.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Even this, by the way, is bizarre; in 1998 (when Suharto resigned), East Timor was a forgotten conflict? Huh? In 1991, journalists Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn witnessed the Santa Cruz massacre, in which the Indonesian military killed 270 people who had gathered for the funeral of a young man killed by the Indonesian military earlier. In 1996, Catholic Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta, Timorese resistance spokesman (in exile in Australia), were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And while Indonesia was intransigent right up until the moment when it wasn’t, NGO’s, the Catholic church, and the international press were making East Timor into a big noisy deal throughout the entire 90‘s. It says a lot more about the diplomatic bubble he was encased in that he would consider it forgotten than about Eat Timor itself.</p>\n<p>But anyway, here’s the part where the story he told a year ago starts to diverge from his story of last week:</p>\n<blockquote><p>I would go out every couple of months to silently bear witness, to talk to the nuns very furtively, to find out what the latest atrocity was, (or human rights abuse), to record what was actually happening on the ground and report that back up to Ottawa and our permanent mission in New York. It was very depressing and very upsetting, and a very futile exercise as a junior diplomat.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Catch all that? Reporting atrocities to Ottawa was a “futile exercise”; instead of giving his government “the ammunition it needed,” Gilmore’s point is that recording what was actually happening on the ground was “to bear silent witness,” an experience of the uselessness of diplomacy which upset and depressed him. He’s telling a story of his disillusionment with the foreign service.</p>\n<p>Then, once the uselessness of diplomacy has been thoroughly demonstrated:</p>\n<blockquote><p>What happened was that, bizarrely, one day, the new Indonesian president just announced he was going to hold a referendum for independence for the Timorese. And suddenly what became a lost cause became the <em>cause celebre</em>.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Diplomacy? “A lost cause.” The reasons the referendum came? Not a hard-bargained diplomatic concession in the face of Western pressure (as in his “international arm twisting led to a referendum”), but a bizarre and unexpected decision on the part of the new president of Indonesia which took everyone by surprise.</p>\n<p>He continues:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The UN arrived and the donors arrived and the media arrived, and there was only about two or three of us at the time, Western diplomats: somebody for the US embassy, somebody from the Australian embassy and myself, who actually had been paying any attention, who knew any of the Timorese, who could speak the local language, who knew how to get a hold of the guerrillas. So we had very valuable skills for a short period of time and so it wasn’t long going from that to working for the UN because, frankly, there weren’t very many Timorese experts…I had a very strange job. It was a very unique UN mission because it was one of the first times the UN actually ran the country, as opposed to just trying to broker peace or maintain peace. The UN was running everything from the health department to creating the East Timorese defense force and I landed in an office called the National Security Advisory office, where myself and a colleague who I had actually known from grad school, found ourselves sitting across a desk from each other at a very young age, doing things like designing with the defense agency for what East Timor should look like, or with the intelligence agency for what East Timor’s supposed to look like, and actually trying to create these things on behalf of the Timorese.</p></blockquote>\n<p>I don’t want to dismiss what Scott Gilmore may or may not have done in 1999; unless his story is completely fabricated (and there’s no real reason to think it is), the man did dangerous work in a very good cause. So good on him for that. I am a bit skeptical of the way he makes himself and a handful of other diplomats the only (white) people “who actually had been paying any attention, who knew any of the Timorese, who could speak the local language, who knew how to get a hold of the guerrillas.” This seems deeply wrong to me; if you read accounts of the country in that period <em>not </em>written by former Canadian diplomats, it seems clear that there were a great many East Timorese people who had been paying attention, spoke their own language, and could get hold of the guerillas (especially when they <em>were </em>them), and that there wasn’t even a great shortage of great white fathers either. But let that go.</p>\n<p>What <em>really </em>interests me in this old account is the way he nowhere emphasizes the role played by diplomats in secretly shuttling information back to their bosses in Ottawa and Washington. What interests me even more is that his story in the year-old interview is consistent with the one Robinson tells in his book (and in everything else I’ve read on the subject), in which the 1999 referendum not only comes out of nowhere, has very little to do with what was happening on the island, and took most Western observers and diplomats completely by surprise, but which also was followed up with a profoundly ineffective diplomatic effort to: convince the Indonesian military to run a really fair and peaceful election.</p>\n<p>In other words, after 24 years of institutionalized repression, torture, murder, and more torture and murder, the US state department’s perspective on the situation was that it was up to the Indonesian military to keep the peace in East Timor. Apply enough diplomatic pressure on the fox and it will turn into a really good guard of the henhouse.</p>\n<p>Surprisingly, that didn’t happen at all. Instead, in the lead up to the referendum in 1999, the Indonesian military secretly worked to form and organize local militias of Timorese who were loyal to Indonesia to use systematic violence and suppress the vote for independence. The violence wasn’t secret. The whole <em>point </em>of mass repression was that it had to be widely known, to everyone, or it wouldn‘t work. And this is where another genocide might have happened; had the UN not intervened when it eventually did, with peacekeeping troops, it certainly would have gotten very, very bad.</p>\n<p>Here is what Robinson, who was in East Timor at the time, has to <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=142nuDzaU2sC&lpg=PR1&ots=Go1iywsvqy&dq=geoffrey%20robinson%20how%20genocide&pg=PA187#v=onepage&q&f=false\">say </a>about that moment:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…however obvious the need for peacekeepers seemed to those who had been in East Timor, the idea never got off the ground. The reason was simple: in the course of negotiations in April 1999 and the months leading up to the ballot, it was either ignored or actively opposed by elements within the UN Secretariat and key powers on the Security Council, most notably the United States. <strong>This is not to say that these powers remained silent in the face of mounting violence. There was plenty of criticism, and even some veiled threats, for example, at a donors meeting for Indonesia in Paris in late July </strong>and again as voting day approached. In the final weeks of August, for instance, President Clinton wrote to President Habibie warning that relations with the United States would b e seriously damaged if mass violence occurred during or after the ballot. <strong>But peacekeepers were never mentioned. Instead, the concerned states stuck steadfastly, one might even say pigheadedly, to the position that security was the responsibility of the Indonesian authorities.</strong></p></blockquote>\n<p>Without UN peacekeepers, it is worth re-iterating, things would have gotten much, much worse. The most you can say for Western diplomatic efforts is that they eventually succeeded in convincing Indonesia to allow peacekeepers to enter the country. But there’s nothing else they <em>could </em>have accomplished, no matter how much “ammunition” Scott Gilmore provided them with. The Indonesian military were the bad guys in this situation and Indonesian President Habibie was the villain. The only thing standing between the people of East Timor and the paramilitary forces that had been killing and torturing them for decades was, eventually, the UN. And the main obstacle to UN action was the United States.</p>\n<p>Which starts to bring us closer to the real issue here: the US not only didn’t care about humanitarian issues in East Timor, it was — as it had been for decades — actively working to train and support the Indonesian military during the 24-year period in which the Indonesian military was the primary instrument of genocidal repression in East Timor. This is not controversial or disputed. This is not a wild conspiracy theory. The turning point in the crisis — the APEC summit which Gilmore specifically mentions — was when Clinton suddenly announced (well after the referendum) that (A) if Indonesia didn’t suddenly get serious about not repressing the Timorese any more, UN intervention would be necessary, and (B) the US was suspending its military co-operation programs with the Indonesian military.</p>\n<p>One thing to point out, then, is Scott Gilmore’s very unfortunate choice of metaphor in describing how secret diplomatic “cables gave my government the ammunition it needed to lean heavily on the Indonesian leadership at the UN and at summits like APEC.” In his testimony in front of Congress, for example, Allan Nairn spoke about being the last journalist in Dili, when the violence was at its height (during the APEC summit), and seeing <em>actual </em>American ammunition littering the ground. In other words, if those cables gave Scott Gilmore’s government the <em>metaphorical </em>ammunition to use against Indonesia, it seems worth pointing out that, at the exact same time, the Indonesian government was using <em>actual ammunition</em> against the people of East Timor, ammunition that was actually given to them by the US. Allan Nairn’s congressional <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=TAs5RSWNYvkC&lpg=PA168&ots=oexxMkLStX&dq=A%20few%20weeks%20ago%2C%20as%20Dili%20was%20burning%20and%20as%20the%20UN%20had%20evacuated%2C%20as%20foreign%20journalist%20had%20left%2C%20I%20had%20the%20opportunity&pg=PA168#v=onepage&q=A%20few%20weeks%20ago,%20as%20Dili%20was%20burning%20and%20as%20the%20UN%20had%20evacuated,%20as%20foreign%20journalist%20had%20left,%20I%20had%20the%20opportunity&f=false\">testimony </a>is worth quoting at some length on this point:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“A few weeks ago, as Dili was burning and as the UN had evacuated, as foreign journalist had left, I had the opportunity to be, I think, probably the last foreign journalist left on the streets of Dili. And I was walking around in the early mornings going from one abandoned house to another. You could hear the militias coming around the corners with their chopper motorcycles. They would fire into the air and honk their horns as they were about to sack and burn another house.</p>\n<p>And you also found littering the streets, hundreds upon hundreds of shell casings. They came from two places, one from Pindad [PT Pindad: Pusat Industrial AD. Army Industries Center], the Indonesian military industries, which have joint ventures with a whole list of U.S. companies. And the other from Olin Winchester of East Alton, Illinois. These cartridges had been recently shipped in to Battalion 7444, one of the territorial battalions in Timor, and then issued to the militiamen. As you can see from these photos, they come in the new white Olin Winchester boxes, twenty cartridges to a box. These were amongst the bullets that they were using to terrorize Dili.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>US military support for Indonesia goes a lot deeper than this, of course,<a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron%20Bady/My%20Documents/east%20timor%20final%20post.doc#_ftn1\"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> and I will continue in a moment. But we first need to just linger a moment on the fact that exactly the kinds of atrocities which Scott Gilmore talks about, the atrocities which he needs diplomatic cables so he can secretly document “what the Indonesian military was doing,” are atrocities being done with US military hardware and by militiamen directly trained by the Indonesian military, which was directly trained by the American military. Which side of the story do we chooses to emphasize?</p>\n<p>Allan Nairn’s point, in front of Congress, was that the US’s support of Indonesia is the central problem. Having been actually <em>present </em>during the 1991 massacre in Dili (many years before Scott Gilmore would accidentally go to East Timor), Nairn takes a big picture approach to the conflict, and he began his <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=TAs5RSWNYvkC&lpg=PA168&ots=oexxMkLStX&dq=A%20few%20weeks%20ago%2C%20as%20Dili%20was%20burning%20and%20as%20the%20UN%20had%20evacuated%2C%20as%20foreign%20journalist%20had%20left%2C%20I%20had%20the%20opportunity&pg=PA163#v=onepage&q&f=false\">testimony </a>by situating American support for Indonesia in 1999 in the context of US support for Indonesia over the entire 24 years of its occupation of East Timor:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“Back in December 1975, when the Indonesian military began consulting with Washington about a possible invasion, they promised they could crush Timor within two weeks. General Ali Murtropo came to the White House and met with General Brent Scowcroft. President Ford and Henry Kissinger went to Jakarta and sat down with Suharto. And then, sixteen hours later, the invasion was underway. The paratroopers dropped from US C-130’s. They used new US machine guns to shoot the Timorese into the sea.</p>\n<p>In 1990, when I first went to Timor, the intelligence chief Colonel Gatot Purwanto confirmed that by that time their operation had killed a third of the original population.</p>\n<p>On November 12, 1991, when the troops marched on the Santa Cruz cemetery, they carried U.S. M-16s. They didn’t bother with warning shots. Amy Goodman and I stood between them futilely hoping to stop them from opening fire. But they opened fire systematically and they kept on shooting because, as the national commander, General Soestrisno, explained: “These Timorese are disrupters; such people must be shot.”…</p>\n<p>At no time during these years of slaughter did the US government executive branch ever decide that the time had come to stop supporting the perpetrators. President Carter and Richard Holbrooke sent in OV-10 Broncos and helicopters. Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton sent in weapons, multilateral financing, and sniper trainers…</p>\n<p>In recent weeks, commentators have criticized the United States for failure to intervene, for not sending in foreign troops fast enough to stop the Indonesian army’s final burst of Timor terror.</p>\n<p>But Mr. Chairman, I want to make the point today that <strong>intervention is not the issue</strong>. The Clinton doctrine and the questions flowing from it do not apply in Timor or Indonesia because the killing is being perpetrated with the active assistance of the United States. <strong>The United States is not an observer here; it is not agonizing on the sidelines. It has instead been the principle patron of the Indonesian armed forces. The issue is not whether we should step in and play policeman to the world, but whether we should continue to arm, train, and finance the world’s worst criminals.”</strong></p></blockquote>\n<p>To return to Scott Gilmore, I have no particular reason to think that he, personally, did anything but honorable and commendable work in East Timor, and every reason to believe that in the moment when it was possible for him to do some good on one of the dark places of the earth, he did his best. That’s not what I’m arguing; foreign service diplomats are not the bad guys here. But the attempt to make them into the <em>good </em>guys is somewhere between ignorant and disingenuous; you cannot be the voice of a government that kills people and pretend that your efforts to stop them from being killed don’t have to be stacked against your governments efforts to help kill them. Without active Western military and diplomatic support for the Suharto regime — starting in 1965, when the real atrocity was committed (over a million communists and suspected communists killed), and continuing past 1999 — the genocide in East Timor could never have happened; in 1975, it was diplomatic pressure from the US, Australia, and the UK that stifled any outcry in the UN, and that was the pattern for the entire history of the “conflict.” Again, this isn’t even secret; in his memoirs, our ambassador to the UN during the initial 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notoriously <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=142nuDzaU2sC&pg=PA63&dq=The+United+States+wished+things+to+turn+out+as+they+did,+and+worked+to+bring+this+about.+The+Department+of+State&hl=en&ei=EW7-TMqcBIz6sAOH0dCvCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20United%20States%20wished%20things%20to%20turn%20out%20as%20they%20did%2C%20and%20worked%20to%20bring%20this%20about.%20The%20Department%20of%20State&f=false\">described </a>what he did in the UN at that time:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“The United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.” (245-7)</p></blockquote>\n<p>In other words, if East Timor “was a forgotten conflict” when Scott Gilmore got there, and if “the UN wasn’t there,” it was because the West (starting with but not limited to the US) had worked hard to make sure that this was so. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, stopping “dominoes” in Asia was vastly more important to the “free world” than anything so piddling as hundreds of thousands of people in East Timor. If you agree with that calculus, fine. But you can’t pretend that human rights ever amounted to anything even close to the importance that the US placed on “strategic considerations,” like maintaining good relations with Jakarta. As Daniel Southerland put it in 1980, “in deferring to Indonesia on the issue, the Carter administration, like the Ford administration before it, appears to have placed big-power concerns ahead of human rights.”<a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron%20Bady/My%20Documents/east%20timor%20final%20post.doc#_ftn2\"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a></p>\n<p>This is why we have to look at what our military does and what our diplomats do in the same context. They are only two different faces of the same state, two different functions and ways of doing things, but ultimately in service of the same goals. We have to scrutinize our diplomats with precisely the same rigor with which we need to oversee our military. And in that sense, it’s worth noting that one of the ways Allan Nairn was able to document American-Indonesian cooperation in the events leading up to 1999 was <em>a leaked diplomatic cable</em>. Here is how he closed his testimony to Congress:</p>\n<blockquote><p>One point I want to make about the constant Pentagon argument. The argument for training is: Well, when you train officers it gives you access to them. It teaches them good values and so on. Those arguments are summarized in this cable. This is a cable from Ambassador Roy to CINCPAC [commander in chief, Pacific].</p>\n<p>He makes all the arguments about how when we train officers, they get good values. They rise in the ranks. And then to clinch the argument, it cites examples of the best and brightest of the Indonesian officers who’ve been trained by the U.S.</p>\n<p>These are the examples they cited. General Feisal Tanjung, who became the commander in chief of the Indonesian armed forces, one of the most notorious, hardline, repressive officers; [Lieutenant] General Hendropriyono, one of the legendary authors of repression in Indonesia, who was involved in Aceh. He’s the man who commanded Operation Cleanup in Jakarta prior to the ’94 APEC summit. This was the operation in which they swept through the streets, picked up street vendors, petty criminals, prostitutes; executed many of them, according to human rights grups. Major General Sihombing, a longtime Intel man who became deputy chief of the secret police. [Major General] Agus [Wirahadikusumah] who has a less egregious human rights record than the others. His main distinction is he’s bought a lot of U.S. weapons for the Indonesian military.</p>\n<p>And then their final example of the best and the brightest was General Prabowo, the most notorious of all the Indonesian officers; also one of the most extensively US- trained officers, famous for his participation in torture in Timor, West Papua, Aceh; for the kidnappings in Aceh.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Again, I don’t want to pretend that Western diplomacy never did any good. At APEC, in 1999, Clinton signaled that the US was now ready to allow the UN intervention into East Timor that would, eventually, stop the militia violence and lead to a shaky peace. But it wasn’t human rights abuses that led him to do it, nor was there any doubt, at that point, that the Indonesian military was behind the atrocities that were happening. The reason Allan Nairn was the last journalist in Dili was that all the others had been driven out by the violence, and the reason we knew the Indonesian military was behind it was that we were training and advising the people who did it.</p>\n<p>But what happened in East Timor was a broad change in strategic priorities; human rights became relevant only once Indonesia was no longer so important as an ally, and once Suharto was no longer “our kind of guy,” as Clinton notoriously once called him. Richard Falk <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=TAs5RSWNYvkC&lpg=PA156&ots=oexxMkLUtX&dq=basic%20change%20in%20East%20Timor%E2%80%99s%20prospects%20resulted%20from%20an%20overall%20transformation%20of%20the%20geopolitical%20climate%2C%20as%20well%20as%20from%20the%20play%20of%20internal%20forces%20within%20Indonesia&pg=PA156#v=onepage&q&f=false\">describes </a>what happened this way:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“…the basic change in East Timor’s prospects resulted from an overall transformation of the geopolitical climate, as well as from the play of internal forces within Indonesia. In the wake of the end of the Cold War, concerns about global strategic alignment were considerably weakened…Such an altered context was then deeply influenced by Indonesia’s fall from International Monetary Fund (IMF) grace in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Instead of Indonesia being seen as the darling of the second generation of Asian emerging markets, it was now being castigated as the kingpin of “crony capitalism,” and its once admired and pampered leader, Suharto, was condemned as an Asian autocrat whose time of useful service to Indonesia had long passed.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Suharto resigned, as Falk tells it, because we didn’t <em>need </em>him any more, and because he had become an embarrassment. He became the fall guy, and his promoted vice president declared a referendum on independence in East Timor (A) to clean up the image problem that Indonesia had because of it, and (B) because he thought that the military could swing the election the way they wanted it to go. That it didn’t work out that way doesn’t contradict the basic bad faith of the plan from the start.</p>\n<p>The reason it <em>didn’t</em> work out, the reason the UN intervened when we did, is complicated. But note how secret diplomatic cables don’t in any way play into Geoffrey Robinson’s <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=142nuDzaU2sC&lpg=PR1&ots=Go1iywszvy&dq=geoffrey%20robinson%20genocide&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q&f=false\">account</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>A careful reconstruction of the decisions and events of mid-September 1999, against the background of this literature, suggests that the intervention was the result of an unusual conjuncture of historical trends and events that distinguished that moment decisively from the situation in the late 1970’s. These included: the presence of a good many foreign observers and journalists in the midst of the post-ballot violence; the credibility and strength of the international NGO and church networks that exerted influence on their governments, and mobilized popular demonstrations around the world, most notably in Canberra and Lisbon; the impact of myriad acts of conscience and extraordinary courage by East Timorese; a temporary shift in prevailing international norms and legal regimes that strongly favored humanitarian intervention in cases where national governments commit crimes against their own populations; the presence in a position of power of a strong proponent of humanitarian intervention in such circumstances — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and the recent memory of egregious UN failures to protect civilians from mass killings in comparable situations, notably in Rwanda and Srebrenica.</p></blockquote>\n<p>What I am suggesting, then, is that the decision to intervene militarily in East Timor in mid-September 1999 stemmed from an unusual, but, temporary, confluence of historical trends and political pressures that briefly altered the calculus by which key states assessed their national interest, making inaction more costly than humanitarian intervention. Tat view accords well with Samantha Power’s argument [in <em>“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide</em>] about the reasons for US inaction in the face of genocide in the twentieth century. US failures, she argues, can be traced to the fact that there have been no significant domestic political costs to such inaction.</p>\n<p>It is impossible to read Robinson’s book — or pretty much everything else I’ve read on the subject — and not come away with a very different impression of the role played by Western diplomats in East Timor than the one described by Scott Gilmore in his recent column. As agents of their states, they did what their states wanted them to do. And when someone like Gilmore was in East Timor at a time when what was wanted was to “bear silent witness,” well, that’s pretty much all someone like him is going to be able to do. States only care about human rights when they have some reason to care. Most of the time they don’t.</p>\n<p>On the other hand, Robinson and Samantha Power emphasize that what makes states suddenly break with history and care about, say, a little thing like genocide, is when a lot of people start demanding that they care. If inaction has political cost, states will act. And if there’s one thing that the secrecy of diplomatic cables will <em>not </em>accomplish, it’s making citizens angry about inaction, or about actions done in their name.</p>\n<p>East Timor is a special case; as Robinson specifically notes, the UN was able to do the right thing in that moment because a whole bunch of factors were just right: the cold war was over, Indonesia was disgraced, the war on terror had not yet begun, and shameful memories of non-intervention in Rwanda and Bosnia still stung in the collective memory. And this confluence of unusual factors brought about a unique state of affairs, where suddenly a jaded diplomat, a person who was accustomed to being able to do nothing about the horrors he was documenting to apathetic or ineffective officials in Ottawa, was able to be on the right side by working for the UN. Popular pressure from citizens who read Allan Nairn’s journalism, for example, demanded action; Kofi Annan worked very hard to create a coalition of forces to stop the violence; and the US, for a time, fell into line.</p>\n<p>Would we do so now? Doubt it. Indonesia is a massive nation full of Muslims, in case you haven’t heard, and friendly dictators who fight terrorism on our behalf are our favorite kind of ally. If a few eggs get broken, etc. And the main thing that the Wikileaks cables have revealed — just like the cable that Nairn read in front of congress in 1999 — is confirmation of exactly these sorts of complicities. We now have <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.ethiopianreview.com/content/30550\">confirmation</a></span> that we were behind the humanitarian clusterfuck that Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia has turned out to be, for instance, an invasion that was necessary because of all those scary Muslims in Somalia, and possible because of our close relationship with Ethiopia. Just like we already knew that our military was behind Indonesia’s military which was behind the militia violence in Timor, we already “knew,” in a certain sense, that the US gave Ethiopia the green light to invade. They wouldn’t have done so without our approval any more than Indonesia would have invaded in 1975 without it. But Wikileaks fills in some of the gaps. Now we have proof.</p>\n<p>I don’t know how to highly to value that proof; I’m not sure whether Wikileaks just adds to a store of knowledge that we already have or if it represents something new. But the idea that it’s a bad thing to know more about the how the governments that act in our names <em>actually</em> behave is laughable, and the idea that impeding their ability to act secretly prevents them from advancing the cause of justice and human rights, it seems to me, is utterly without merit. There may be a human rights argument against what Wikileaks does; it may be that they’ve been sloppy in the data they’ve released. But given how many times I’ve seen that charge laid at their feet, and how completely unsupported by any credible evidence it has been, without exception, I’m not willing to give people like Gilmore the benefit of the doubt. If anyone has actual examples of a time when government secrecy was used for something other than exerting force in support of self-interest, I’d like to hear it. But until then, I’m going to continue to assume, as usual, that the only check on the amorality of the state is a moral citizenry. And the only way that citizens can <em>act </em>as a check on the state’s amorality is when they know what their government is doing. Hiding cables from the public does the opposite of accomplishing that.</p>\n<div>\n<hr size=\"1\">\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron%20Bady/My%20Documents/east%20timor%20final%20post.doc#_ftnref1\"><sup><sup>[1]</sup></sup></a> As Nairn points out “The units on the ground that were specifically running the militia operation included some of those most intensely trained by the United States,” and he names a series of Indonesian military individuals and units coordinating the militia operation in Timor who were “graduates of US IMET and intelligence training.”</p>\n</div>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Aaron%20Bady/My%20Documents/east%20timor%20final%20post.doc#_ftnref2\"><sup><sup>[2]</sup></sup></a> CSM, “US Role in Plight of Timor: An Issue That Won’t Go Away,” March 6, 1980. I’m not sure “deferring” is the right word, but let it pass.</p>\n</div>\n</div>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2808/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2808&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Jean-Claude Derey : Les anges cannibales",
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\">Je pensais avoir fait le tour de la question sur l'enfant-soldat. Du moins, de ce qui en est dit sous l'angle du roman. Avec Ahmadou Kourouma et son Allah n'est pas obligé, avec Emmanuel Dongala et son <a href=\"http://gangoueus.blogspot.com/2007/08/emmanuel-dongala-johnny-chien-mchant.html\">Johnny Chien Méchant</a> ou encore avec Uzodinma Iweala et ses <a href=\"http://gangoueus.blogspot.com/2009/03/uzodinma-iweala-betes-sans-patrie.html\">Bêtes sans patrie</a>, Léonora Miano et <a href=\"http://gangoueus.blogspot.com/2009/12/leonora-miano-les-aubes-ecarlates.html\">les aubes écarlates</a>... C'était sans compter sur ce roman publié par <a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Derey\">Jean Claude Derey</a> en 2004, dont la lecture m'a été proposée par <a href=\"http://ceciledequoide9.blogspot.com/\">Cécile</a>. C'est aussi cela la blogosphère, ce type d'échanges inattendus et enrichissants.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ce roman a mis un peu de temps à prendre son envol. La première phase de ce texte m'a fait un peu penser sur certains sujets à Johnny Chien Méchant. Les parents de Yondo sont sommairement exécutés par les troupes du Général Mosquito qui vient d'investir Freetown. Le père était un journaliste engagé, qui après avoir loué la rebellion de Mosquito, s'était lancé dans une série d'articles pour dénoncer les exactions de ce rebelle. C'est en personne que le chef militaire est venu dessouder cet adversaire usant de la plume. Son épouse est violée et tuée. Yondo survit à cet épisode de façon "miraculeuse", l'arme du major devant l'éliminer s'étant enrayée... Son petit frère et sa grande soeur sont embarqués par les miliciens...</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ce sont les pas de Yondo que le lecteur suit. Il s'accroche tant bien que mal à ce qu'il peut dans cette ville où les voisins que vous avez entretenu deviennent des charognards de la pire espèce, où l'aide des ONG s'avère être une mascarade sans nom.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TPqn2HMVRmI/AAAAAAAACIM/8wcMzh5MeD4/s1600/PC030091.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TPqn2HMVRmI/AAAAAAAACIM/8wcMzh5MeD4/s400/PC030091.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div>Mais la plume de Jean Claude Derey devient pour moi innovante dès qu'il commence à décrire l'embrigadement par les troupes de Mosquito. Peut-on dire que Yondo plonge au coeur des ténèbres à partir de ce moment? Quand on a vu ses parents être exécutés, son frère et sa soeur enlevés, on pourrait en douter, mais ce ne furent que les prémices d'une lente descente aux enfers. Dans ce monde où les rebelles s'emploient à deshumaniser des enfants soldats pour les transformer en des hordes cannibales semant viol, terreur, assassinats et amputations des bras pour priver les populations de la possibilité de tenir un bulletin de vote, on se souvient de ces images de Sierra Léone, Yondo s'accroche à ce bouquin de Joseph Conrad. La référence au roman <a href=\"http://romansetlectures.canalblog.com/archives/2008/05/09/9113641.html\">Au coeur des ténèbres</a> m'a quelque peu ému ou troublé, c'est selon. Je ne sais pas vraiment ce que Derey veut véhiculer en évoquant cette plongée dans un autre âge d'un explorateur chargé de clichés colonialistes et racistes. En quoi ce texte peut inspirer quoique soit à Yondo...<br><br>Au delà de ce point, la plume de Jean-Claude Derey est sublime dans la description de ces tueurs adolescents, anges car l'écrivain arrive à aller au-dessous de la carapace de ces trancheurs de mains, de ces violeurs, cannibales. Il n'use pas du style pour faire des effets. Il dit les choses. Yondo parle. Il retrouve son petit frère, avec un moignon entrain de pourrir, le perd... Yondo tente de garder ses mains propres, protégé un major de 20 ans qui le prend sous son aile...Il tente de garder ce soupçon d'innocence que tous autour de lui tentent de lui arracher, enfants-soldat, Mosquito...<br><br>Je suis reconnaissant à Cécile qui m'a proposée cette lecture d'un auteur qui avait secoué la blogosphère en s'attaquant, avec la même barbarie que les enfants-soldats de ce roman, à une blogueuse un peu trop critique sur sa dernière parution...<br><br><blockquote>Singeant la voix flûtée de Cut Hands :<br>- Mon meilleur souvenir? C'est quand on a aligné deux cent villageois et que j'ai eu droit de les descendre avec une mitrailleuse de gros calibre!<br>Ils te plongeront dans une rivière de sang et tu trouveras ça bien et bon! Chaque matin, en compagnie de Blood, tu t'enverras une petite coupe pour gagner la force et rouler des mécaniques comme cette tapette de Rambo.<br>Son mégot atterrit aux milieux des eaux.<br>Un silence, puis :<br>- Ce ne sont pas des monstres, Yondo, juste des mômes malchanceux qui se sont trouvés au mauvais endroit... Comme toi et moi... Qui ont mal tourné pour sauver leur peau... Qui hurlent en dedans... Blood? Il avait neuf ans quand il est arrivé ici. Il pleurnichait devant son prisonnier à amputer! Et maintenant...<br>Tu leur ressembleras, petit... Ni meilleur, ni pire... Tu brilleras encore comme une étoile, mais tu seras mort depuis longtemps...</blockquote><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Page 163, Edition du Rocher</span><br><br>Bonne lecture<br><br><span style=\"font-size:large\"><a href=\"http://www.editionsdurocher.fr/ouvrage_rocher-590-Les_Anges_cannibales-EdR.html\">Jean-Claude Derey, Les anges cannibales</a></span><br>Edition du Rocher, paru en 2004, 254 pages<br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-6758660188890385871?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "USA v. Crippen — A Retrospective",
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"content" : "<p>Some readers may be aware that <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/xbox-modder-tria/\">I was called upon</a> to perform as an expert witness in a <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/no-deal-in-xbox-modding-case-trial-begins/\">landmark case</a>, USA v. Crippen, where for the first time an individual, Mr. Crippen, was charged with an alleged violation of the criminal portion of the DMCA statute. There have been numerous civil cases over the same statute, but this is the first time that a felony conviction could result from a court case.</p>\n<p>As reported by <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/crippen-dismissed/\">numerous sources</a>, the case was dismissed after the first witness’ testimony. This would be as if two armies brought all their artillery and troops to a border, fired a single shot, and then one side surrendered, realizing that there is no point incurring casualties for a war they cannot win. And thanks to <a href=\"http://www.lectlaw.com/def/d075.htm\">double-jeopardy</a> provision of the US constitution, Mr. Crippen cannot be tried again, since a jury was assembled for his trial. It is a remarkable victory for Mr. Crippen’s defense: as <a href=\"http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War\">Sun Tzu said in The Art of War</a>, “The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities”.</p>\n<p>On the surface, it’s hard to appreciate how unique this case is. Not only is it the first of its kind, it’s rare for a US prosecutor to dismiss their case. I’m told that typically, the US government does not go to trial unless they are sure to win the case — they win 90+ % of their cases, with a typical outcome resulting in a plea bargain because of the strong evidence they prepare prior to filing the case. I’m also told that despite the <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/xbox-judge-riled/\">prosecutor’s alleged misbehavior</a> <a href=\"http://www.crimeandfederalism.com/2010/12/-allen-chiu-unethical-prosecutor-forced-to-dismiss-xbox-modding-case.html\">in the case</a>, his pedigree is prestigious (<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UCLA_School_of_Law\">UCLA is a top-15 law school</a>) and his career trajectory is toward a top spot as a judge or politician. And, as I’m learning, neither the prosecution nor the defense leave much to chance in the court of law — so kudos to the defense for educating the judge on terms such as “fair use” and “homebrew”, and applying overwhelming pressure to “crack” the prosecution: a job well done. To be fair, the case was without precedent, so the <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/no-deal-in-xbox-modding-case-trial-begins/\">prosecutor was unaware</a> of basic things, such as the US government’s own guidelines for evidence in prosecuting crimes related to the DMCA. In this case, the US government had to demonstrate that Crippen knew he was violating the DMCA, an element missing from the original evidence but introduced in a surprise statement by the first witness.</p>\n<p>However, in a broader legal sense, the trial is a cliffhanger. In some respects, it’s a setup for prosecutors to prepare a stronger, more informed case in the future. Before a case goes to trial, each side must disclose all their evidence and facts to the opposition (and, in fact, part of the reason the prosecution had to dismiss was because they had failed to do just that — it is improper to withhold both exculpatory, and in this instance, impeaching evidence <a href=\"http://www.conservapedia.com/Giglio_v._United_States\">(Giglio v United states)</a>). </p>\n<p>As a corollary, the prosecution has a full copy of my prepared testimony. My role as an expert witness is to testify, as an unbiased expert, upon the facts of the case. By dismissing the case before a public hearing of all testimony, the prosecution gets to see the entire roadmap (of which my testimony is a small part) for a defense without its disclosure to the public. </p>\n<p>A problem with technology-related cases is that they are never as simple as they seem. The evidence presented by the US government included 150 non-original games in Crippen’s possession, along with two Xboxes that prior to Crippen’s modification, did not play copied games; but, after such modification, they did. As I mentioned earlier in this post, the US government does not go to trial unprepared. </p>\n<p>While the true facts are not as simple, raw facts are essentially useless to a jury. The real challenge for me personally was to take a world of technical jargon full of one-way hashes, modular exponentiation, prime numbers, finite fields of characteristic two, stealth sectors, lead-ins, lead-outs, and reflectivity measurements using a laser and a four-quadrant photodetector and boil it down into a set of factually correct statements that any lay jury could not only understand, but feel confident enough to use to decide upon two felony counts.</p>\n<p>So, for the purpose of encouraging discussion, criticism, and education, here are some of the key concepts I was to present in the case. </p>\n<p>First, it’s important to clarify some basic cryptography terms (click on all images for larger, more readable versions).</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_datacontrols.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_datacontrols_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>The common use of “encryption” or “scambling” is tantamount to an “access control” insofar as a work is scrambled, using the authority imbued via a key, so that any attempt to read the work after the scrambling reveals gibberish. Only through the authority granted by that key, either legitimately or illegitimately obtained, can one again access the original work.</p>\n<p>However, in the case of the Xbox360, two technically different systems are required to secure the authenticity of the content, without hampering access to the content: digital signatures, and watermarks (to be complete, the game developer may still apply traditional encryption but this is not a requirement by Microsoft: remember, Microsoft is in the business of typically selling you someone else’s copyrighted material printed on authentic pieces of plastic; in other words, they incur no loss if you can read the material on the disk; instead, they incur a loss if you can fake the disk or modify the disk contents to cheat or further exploit the system). </p>\n<p>Simply put: </p>\n<li>Digital signatures leave a document’s body completely readable, but attach an unforgeable signature that is irrevocably tied to an unmodifiable version of the document.\n</li>\n<li>Watermarks leave a document’s body completely readable, but attach an unforgeable physical mark that is irrevocably tied to the physical disk itself. </li>\n<p>Relating this back to <a href=\"http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap12.html\">the DMCA statute</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\n1201(a)(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. </p>\n<p>1201(a)(3)(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>So the first question upon which a jury must deliberate is: given that the document is entirely readable despite anti-counterfeit measures, do these anti-counterfeit measures constitute an effective access control that requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work?</p>\n<p>To further educate upon that question, it’s important to demonstrate an example of a system where data cannot be accessed, and contrast it to one where it is. The image below compares and contrasts a <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Scramble_System\">CSS-protected</a> DVD to the systems used in the Xbox360. </p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gamevdvd.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gamevdvd_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>As one can see, on the left, I could access all kinds of images, text, etc. on an Xbox360 DVD. On the right, on the other hand, an authentic DVD secured with a fairly established access control, such as CSS, reads back as gibberish until I can circumvent the scrambling with either a legitimate or illegitimate key. </p>\n<p>Now, per the DMCA statute:</p>\n<blockquote><p>\n1201(a)(1)(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. </p>\n<p>1201(a)(3)(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure…\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>So the next question the jury must deliberate upon is, does an Xbox360 optical disk drive (ODD) modification descramble a scrambled work, decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure?</p>\n<p>To further education upon that question, it’s important to understand what an Xbox360 ODD modification does; the requisite background to this is “how does an Xbox360 ODD work in the first place?”. Below is a diagram that outlines, in simplified terms, the flow of authenticating an Xbox360 game disk.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gameplay.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gameplay_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>As you can see, the ODD is responsible for returning measurements of watermark features (such as reflectivity) that are not burnable by a regular DVD burner. </p>\n<p>What the ODD modification does is redirect these requests to verify the watermark to an “answer table” contained in what amounts to a few files on the copied disk:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_copydisk.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_copydisk_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>The most important fact to be cognizant of in this system is that the “answer table” is not contained anywhere within the Xbox360 ODD mod applied by Mr. Crippen. Without the user of the modification <em>also</em> contributing the “answer table”, the mod is entirely incapable of performing any function. This is demonstrated by what happens if, for example, the “answer table” is missing or damaged:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gamenotplay.jpg\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/usvcr_gamenotplay_sm.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>In the case that the “answer table” is lacking from the disk inserted into the ODD, the disk will not play. Thus, the question is: given that the user of the modified Xbox360 (in this case, the private investigators and agents that the government hired) must also materially participate in the “process” by providing an “answer table”, is the mod alone sufficient to justify felonious conduct?</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the answer is: “we don’t know”. Since the case was dismissed, the answer to this question is a cliffhanger; and the prosecution, now educated, should have a clearer roadmap for future actions under the criminal provision of the DMCA; I wouldn’t count on them making the same mistakes twice. Technical facts, such as the ones outlined in this post, and disclosed to the prosecution, don’t change from case to case … but the individuals, specific evidence, and overall angle of the case <em>can</em> change. </p>"
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"title" : "Glorious, elaborate, profane insults of the world",
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"content" : "An open Reddit thread entitled \"What are your favorite culturally untranslateable phrases?\" rapidly degenerated into a collection of rollicking, profane, grotesque insults, each more alarming and delightful than the last. Read the whole thing, of course, but here are some of the <em>less</em> profane examples:\n\n<blockquote>\n<img src=\"http://craphound.com/images/2039364281_d914bcad1f.jpg\"><br>\n* The Dutch phrase for giving too much attention to insignificant details is \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17q29a\">ant fucking</a>\". \n<p>\n* Afrikaans: \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17plww\">Jou mammie naai vir bakstene om jou sissie se hoerhuis te bou Vieslik</a>!\" your mother engages in prostitution in order to raise funds for the building materials necessary to construct a brothel from which your sister will operate.\n<p>\n* German: \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17p48i\">backpfeifengesicht</a>\" - a face in need of slapping\n<p>\n* Finnish: \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17pae4\">Kyrpä otsassa</a>\" - a vulgar way to say you're incredibly annoyed. It means that you have a dick in your forehead (should be visualized as hanging forward, rather than actually in your forehead, for some reason).\n<p>\n* Finnish: \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17pncu\">pilkunnussija</a>\" - a comma fucker; someone who corrects little or meaningless things.\n<p>\n* Spanish: \"<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/c17omqk\">Está tratando de cagar mas alto de lo que le da el culo</a>\" - He's trying to shit higher than his ass can reach. \n\n</p></p></p></p></p></blockquote>\n\n<a href=\"http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/efee7/what_are_your_favorite_culturally_untranslateable/?sort=confidence\">What are your favorite culturally untranslateable phrases?</a>\n<p>\n(<i>Image: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewbain/524196647/\">Okay, so it's funny.</a>, a Creative Commons <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en\">Attribution (2.0)</a> image from andrewbain's photostream</i>)\n<div>\n<em> </em><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/22/vintage-profanity-la.html#previouspost\">Vintage, profanity-laced cable complaint that was hand-to-handed ...</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2009/01/23/senators-bill-to-ban.html#previouspost\">Senator's bill to ban profanity - Boing Boing</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=6584ef1c6de27c5167b50055cd7d0a65&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=6584ef1c6de27c5167b50055cd7d0a65&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechCons&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/UK9uKcv2TkY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p>"
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"title" : "A drug called EBITDA",
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"content" : "<p>This <a href=\"http://eurotelcoblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/absence-of-persuasive-incentive.html\">recent (brilliant) post by James Enck</a> touches on the absence of an incentive by shareholders to change a telco. Their view of the company is quite simple and staightforward:</p>\n<p><em>Investors on the whole view incumbent telcos in mature markets as reliable sources of cash, like utility businesses.</em></p>\n<p><em>………..</em></p>\n<p><em>So as, say, a pension fund portfolio manager, you have a company with a reliable dividend yield higher than some of the yields on offer in the “high yield” bond space at the moment, theoretically with lower risk, so why wouldn’t you want to own it? And why would you encourage the management to do something which might put that at risk, particularly if you have limited confidence in them to actually execute it? So you urge them to just keep doing what they do, better, with fewer people, and to hand over any excess cash to you, because you can invest it more efficiently than they can.</em></p>\n<p>It sent me down memory lane. At one point in my career I had the opportunity to see the (financial and operational) inside of a very succefull division of a larger conglomerate. Very succesfull? Replace that with a cashcow even beating cable companies in terms of EBITDA. (EBITDA is an acronym for in laymens words “all the cash generated by a company after subtracting all the bills and wages that have to be paid”). Cable companies like Comcast and Ziggo report EBITDA percentages of more than 50 % of their revenue, this company generated more cash per Euro of sales.</p>\n<p>Yet the CFO of the division complained bitterly. In his view the high cashflow was an addictive and deadly drug. First of all it was a sign that the management of the company did not see any good investment opportunity which would generate the future cashcow: he saw it as a sign of near certain decline of this particular business in the future. He told me that this great “tree” of a business made it nearly impossible for any innovative idea to get enough attention, energy and stamina to survive the rocky early stages. The innovators who fought with tooth and nail to get this business going were enjoying their pension, the current management was a different breed (sic!). Any new idea was judged against the success of the main business and was expected to become almost as successful.</p>\n<p>Secondly on corporate level (where management was rotating every half a decade) the joy of having a great cashcow had been replaced by an expectation, already communicated in future plans and investor relations. Our CFO complained about laziness and the tendency to embark on Great Adventures with high riscs “because you had this great cushion to hide your mistakes, or worse borrow excessive amounts of money with this collateral”.</p>\n<p>No business is the same, but the observation that too much of good thing (EBITDA) can be lethal stands.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fa-drug-called-ebitda%2F&linkname=A%20drug%20called%20EBITDA\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fa-drug-called-ebitda%2F&linkname=A%20drug%20called%20EBITDA\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fa-drug-called-ebitda%2F&linkname=A%20drug%20called%20EBITDA\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F12%2Fa-drug-called-ebitda%2F&title=A%20drug%20called%20EBITDA\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p>"
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"title" : "Health care cruelty in Arizona",
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"content" : "<p><b>HEALTH CARE CRUELTY IN ARIZONA....</b> I know states have to make difficult spending decisions, especially when tax increases are deemed worse than death, but Arizona's cuts affecting transplant patients <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/us/03transplant.html?ref=us\">are just heartbreaking</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Even physicians with decades of experience telling patients that their lives are nearing an end are having difficulty discussing a potentially fatal condition that has arisen in Arizona: Death by budget cut.\n\n<p>Effective at the beginning of October, Arizona stopped financing certain transplant operations under the state's version of Medicaid. Many doctors say the decision amounts to a death sentence for some low-income patients, who have little chance of survival without transplants and lack the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to pay for them.</p>\n\n<p>\"The most difficult discussions are those that involve patients who had been on the donor list for a year or more and now we have to tell them they're not on the list anymore,\" said Dr. Rainer Gruessner, a transplant specialist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. \"The frustration is tremendous. It's more than frustration.\"</p></p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Patients who were in line for transplants have been ruled ineligible -- because they don't have enough money. Arizona's Medicaid program was helping, and now it's not, leaving those facing death to scramble to try to somehow raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.</p>\n\n<p>As for the politics of this, Arizona's right-wing governor, Jan Brewer (R), said the transplant cuts are necessary because of \"Obamacare,\" the conservative shorthand for the Affordable Care Act.</p>\n\n<p>But this literally adds insult to injury. Brewer signed these health care cuts into law on March 18. President Obama signed health care reform into law on March 23.</p>\n\n<p>If Brewer wants to support a policy that leaves sick, innocent Arizonans facing impossible, life-threatening choices, she can try to defend it. But lying about her own misdeeds, hoping the public is so easily fooled that she can blame the White House for a policy that came <i>after</i> her own, is pretty disgusting.</p>\n\n<p>\"We made it very clear at the time of the vote that this was a death sentence,\" said state Sen. Leah Landrum Taylor (D). Republicans didn't listen, and now they're blaming Obama. It's pathetic.</p>"
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"title" : "Generalized Automatic Email Response",
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"content" : "<p>UPDATE: Thank you all so much for the wonderful responses to this post on Twitter, which I will appreciate so much after never reading them.</p><p>I have been having a lot of trouble managing my email. This causes some people who email me to get very upset. I was thinking I would try to automate the response so as to leave people who email me smiling, happy, satisfied, and in love with me. Here goes:</p><p><strong>Thank you for your wonderful email – hearing from you is one of the best things to happen to me today.</strong></p><p>Allow me to elaborate further:</p><p>1. If you are an automatic mass mailing to a huge number of people, THEN:</p><ol><li> I will never read your email.</li><li> That’s OK, because you will never read this reply.</li><li> Almost everyone else on your list will respond likewise.</li></ol><p>2. If I don’t know you, and you are asking me for help or advice on something, THEN:</p><ol><li> I love what you’re doing! You are great!!</li><li> Please read the part of my writings where I argue the aid of poorly informed strangers is often not very helpful.</li><li> This applies very much to the likelihood that I would be of any use to you whatsoever.</li></ol><p>3. If I do know you, but somehow I have failed to answer your previous email, it is because:</p><ol><li> I hate you.</li><li> I am an arrogant prima donna jerk who is ignoring you.</li><li> I am disorganized, absent-minded, forgetful, and indecisive, and so have already forgotten whether I answered you already, what the answer was, and what the answer should have been, and I’m really sorry and always will be.</li><li> The only correct answer in this case is (c)</li></ol><p>4. If you invited me to something very noble and honorable, and I have failed to respond, it is because:</p><ol><li> Consider possibilities (a) through (c) in 3 above.</li><li> The only correct answer in this case is (c)</li></ol><p><strong>Thanks again for your lovely email! Please write again soon!</strong></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Series: US embassy cables: the documentsPrevious | Next | Index</p>\n<p><strong>US embassy cables: Nicolas Sarkozy’s personal diplomacy in Africa is hamfisted</strong></p>\n<p>guardian.co.uk,\t Tuesday 30 November 2010 21.30 GMT<br>\nArticle history<br>\nWednesday, 13 August 2008, 17:08<br>\nC O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 07 PARIS 001568<br>\nSIPDIS<br>\nEO 12958 DECL: 08/13/2018<br>\nTAGS PREL, PINR, ECON, MARR, PHUM, XA”>XA, FR”>FR<br>\nSUBJECT: FRANCE’S CHANGING AFRICA POLICY: PART II (FRENCH<br>\nIMPLEMENTATION AND AFRICAN REACTIONS)<br>\nREF: PARIS 1501<br>\nClassified By: Political Minister-Counselor Kathleen Allegrone, 1.4 (b/ d).</p>\n<p>Summary<br>\nThe French president aims to make more businesslike the once colonial approach to France-Africa relations. But his “bedside manner needs fine-tuning” in his dealings with African leaders. He is described as brusque, rude, occassionally wildly digressing from the official line, or else making no effort to hide the fact that he is simply reading aloud from crib-sheets in meetings. Key passage highlighted in yellow.</p>\n<p>Read related article<br>\n1. (C) SUMMARY: France’s new Africa policy has received mixed reviews from Africans uncertain as France moves away from the “France-Afrique” model. Some Africans seem to accept the outlines of the new policy, some have expressed misgivings about replacing the familiar with the unknown, and some have pushed back, with the French having to make their own adjustments in both tone and substance. Meanwhile, the French continue to refine their policy and to implement it, with a few notable stumbles along the way, such as the Bockel case involving Gabon. They have tried to give fresh impetus to difficult relations with countries such as Angola, Rwanda, Djibouti, and Madagascar, with mixed results. In broader terms, the French are also working to put in place revamped structures, particularly their military presence in Africa (Part III, septel), to reflect the new policy. END SUMMARY.</p>\n<p>2. (C) Reftel describes “France-Afrique,” the model that dominated France’s Africa policy for most of the 20th century. Believing that globalization, the fading of colonial and post-colonial sensibilities, and economic and political realities called for a new model, President Nicolas Sarkozy initiated change soon after taking office in May 2007. He announced a new policy based on transparency, accountability, arms-length dealings, a calculation of interests, and a dialogue among equals. He sought to strip relations of what he viewed as sentimental and historical relics of the colonial era, which had stifled relations and fostered an unhealthy cycle of dependency and paternalism. Both sides would henceforth conduct relations crisply, efficiently, and openly. This cable discusses African reactions to Sarkozy’s policy and French steps to implement it. Part III (septel) focuses on structural changes the French are making as part of the new policy, centered on France’s military presence in Africa.</p>\n<p>Pre-Election Image Problems<br>\n———————-</p>\n<blockquote><p>Immigration and Africa3. (C) Sarkozy’s new Africa policy may have been a disquieting change in course for Africans, yet not a surprise to them. Many Africans were wary of Sarkozy before he took office. As Interior Minister, a job he held twice under President Chirac, Sarkozy was well known for his no-nonsense law-and-order views. At Interior, Sarkozy made remarks that raised flags about his sensitivity toward France’s minorities, particularly those with origins in Africa, either the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa. In June 2005, after the killing of a young boy in a troubled Paris suburb with a high number of minorities, Sarkozy said he would clean the area out “with a Karcher,” referring to a German high-pressure, water-hose cleaner. At the time of the November 2005 riots in France, Sarkozy described the rioters as “voyous” (thugs) and “racaille” (scum, rabble), the latter term generating strong critical responses from France’s minorities and from others worried about their Interior Minister’s (and possible next President’s) views on ethnic issues</p></blockquote>\n<p>———————-</p>\n<p>4. (C) Sarkozy compounded these concerns during a visit to Mali and Benin in May 2006 as Interior Minister. Shortly before the trip, he had proposed changes in France’s immigration laws, which became the focal point of his visits and prompted demonstrations against him in both countries. Malians and Beninois perceived as anti-African his proposals for tightening the system then in place. During the trip, Sarkozy contrasted his vision of relations with Africa with that of Chirac, and defended his immigration bill as a harbinger of a “new relationship” with Africa, “cleaned up, simplified, and balanced away from the slag of the past.” In Benin on May 19, 2006, he stated: “We must get rid of this network from another time, these officious emissaries who have no mandate other than the one they invent for</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 002 OF 007</p>\n<p>themselves. The normal functioning of institutions should prevail over the officious networks that have produced so much that is bad.” Africans criticized the substance of his immigration proposals while the French press noted archly that Sarkozy was obviously campaigning for the Presidency and saying things normally within the French President’s proper domain.</p>\n<p>5. (C) Immigration remains an important sub-theme to Sarkozy’s Africa policy, and is one of the hottest of hot-button issues in France. Advocates of stricter controls fear the prospect of floods of Eastern Europeans and migrants from all corners of Africa, the Arab world, and the Mediterranean entering France and then benefiting from its generous social programs and taking jobs, without assimilating and becoming “French.” Sub-Saharan Africans are a visible, and to some French, an unwelcome presence in France’s urban areas, with much social commentary from left and right on their long-term effect and their ability to integrate and assimilate. Some wonder whether a French national sports team can really be “French” with so many players of Arab or African origin (notwithstanding the recent successes of French teams of diverse origins).</p>\n<p>6. (C) Upon becoming President, Sarkozy installed close associate Brice Hortefeux as Minister of Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Co-Development, a ministry that had never previously existed. Combining issues relating to immigration, integration, and, especially, “national identity” into a single executive body raised eyebrows among some observers, who believed that creating such a ministry not only indicated the priority Sarkozy placed on these matters but also carried overtones of the appeal Sarkozy made to right-wing, nationalist voters (i.e., Le Pen’s National Front camp) during the final stages of his campaign duel with Socialist Segolene Royal.</p>\n<p>7. (C) Sarkozy and Hortefeux have emphasized the benefits that a reformed immigration policy would provide Africans. The French have concluded agreements with several African countries establishing new procedures. One such agreement is with Gabon, concluded on July 5, 2007, during a visit by Hortefeux. The accord (1) facilitates travel between the two countries by business persons, professionals, family members, and those with medical needs; (2) enlarges employment possibilities for Gabonese in certain professions desiring to establish themselves in France; (3) extends residency permits for French in Gabon to five years; (4) prescribes procedures for treating clandestine entrants; and (5) increases bilateral cooperation in countering fraudulent documents. The agreement, which on its face provides advantages to both sides, nonetheless became part of a France-Gabon spat that included other issues, as described later in this message.</p>\n<blockquote><p>8. (C) Some Africans have disapproved of another part of Sarkozy’s immigration policy — the program to test DNA to verify kinship as a basis for immigration. Legislation for such a program was initiated when Sarkozy was at Interior and has since been enacted after overcoming legal and political obstacles. African reaction has been negative, with one article — from Mali in October 2007 — capturing Africans, dismay: “We have known, since the Second World War, after the success of our ancestors, the Senegalese riflemen, in the liberation of France from the hands of Nazi Germany, that our compatriots along with so many other Africans have no longer been welcome on the banks of the Seine. But to go so far as to examine the blood of people to control the migratory flow represents an unqualified case of cynicism and lowers France to the level of nations where racism gains more and more ground.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>9. (C) The DNA testing program appears to be going forward. In June 2008, Hortefeux announced during a visit to Cape Verde that France would begin its first pilot program there in September. Cape Verde is one of nine countries (with Angola, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, and Pakistan) where France plans to start</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 003 OF 007</p>\n<p>the program in the September 2008 timeframe. Cape Verde authorities reportedly responded that they “took note of this demarche of consultation” but chose not to comment on this “unilateral French decision.” Hortefeux said that “our new immigration policy is understood and shared by our African friends.”</p>\n<p>Dakar, July 2007</p>\n<p>—————-</p>\n<p>10. (C) With his stints at Interior, his provocative remarks, and the outline of this new immigration policy as backdrops, Sarkozy went to Dakar in July 2007. He had just won favorable reviews for organizing an international conference on Darfur in June, one of his first acts as President, which ostensibly demonstrated his interest in Africa. On July 26 at the University of Dakar, he delivered the first of three speeches outlining France’s new Africa policy. He did so carrying a fair amount of baggage, certain to face a skeptical, if not hostile, audience. Consistent with his aggressive image, he gave a hard-hitting speech, which, as noted reftel, was written by Special Advisor Henri Guaino and not cleared through normal MFA and Presidency channels. The Dakar speech is worth examining because it was the public introduction to Africans on their turf of both Sarkozy as President and of the policies he planned to pursue. That the speech was not vetted by GOF staff perhaps lends it an air of authenticity that would have been absent had it been sanitized.</p>\n<p>11. (C) In the Dakar speech, Sarkozy said: “I did not come to erase the past, which can’t be erased. I did not come to deny either the faults or the crimes, for there were faults and crime…. I have come to propose, to the youth of Africa, not to have you forget this tearing apart and this suffering, which cannot be forgotten, but to have you overcome and surpass them…. Africa bears its share of responsibility for its own unhappiness. People have been killing each other in Africa at least as much as they have in Europe…. Europeans came to Africa as conquerors. They took the land and your ancestors. They banned the gods, the languages, the beliefs, the customs of your fathers. They told your fathers what they should think, what they should believe, what they should do. They cut your fathers from their past, they stripped them of their souls and roots. They disenchanted Africa.”</p>\n<p>12. (C) Sarkozy said that the colonist “took but I want to say with respect that he also gave. He constructed bridges, roads, hospitals, dispensaries, schools. He rendered virgin land fertile, he gave his effort, his work, his knowledge. I want to say here that not all the colonists were thieves, not all the colonists were exploiters…. Colonization is not responsible for all of Africa’s current difficulties. It is not responsible for the bloody wars Africans carry out with each other. It is not responsible for the genocides. It is not responsible for the dictators. It is not responsible for fanaticism. It is not responsible for the corruption, for the lies. It is not responsible for the waste and pollution…. The problem of Africa, and permit me as a friend of Africa to say it, is there. The challenge for Africa is to enter more into history. It is to draw from within itself the energy, the strength, the desire, the willpower to listen to and to espouse its own history. The problem of Africa is to stop always repeating, to stop always trotting out, to free itself from, the myth of the eternal return, to understand that the Golden Age, which Africa never stops longing for, will never come back because it never existed.”</p>\n<p>13. (C) Many African critics viewed the speech as condescending and paternalistic, two aspects of France-Afrique Sarkozy said he wanted to banish. Prominent Africans faulted Sarkozy’s ideas, including then-AU Commission Chairperson Konare, who said: “This speech was not the kind of speech we were hoping for…. It reminded us of another age, especially his comment about peasants.” Konare was referring to a passage that critics found</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 004 OF 007</p>\n<p>especially demeaning: “The drama of Africa is that the African man has not entered enough into history. The African peasant, for millennia, lives with the seasons, where the ideal life is to be in harmony with nature, and he knows only the eternal recycling of time marked by the rhythm of repetition without end of the same gestures and the same words. In this imagination, where everything always recycles, there is no place for either human adventure or for the idea of progress.”</p>\n<p>1</p>\n<blockquote><p>4. (C) South Africa President Mbeki, one of the few African leaders to react favorably, reportedly wrote to Sarkozy: “What you have said in Dakar, Mr. President, indicates to me that we are fortunate to count on you as a citizen of Africa, as a partner in the protracted struggle to achieve the renaissance of Africa within the context of a European renaissance and the rest of the world.” Perhaps not coincidentally, Sarkozy chose Cape Town as the site for the third speech in his Africa policy series (to the dismay of francophone Africa), identified South Africa as a strategic partner, and, upon France’s assuming the EU Presidency in July 2008, sponsored, as one of the Presidency’s initial acts, the first EU-South Africa Summit (in Bordeaux on July 25). As Presidential Advisor Romain Serman has observed, one of Sarkozy’s operating principles is “reward the good, punish the bad.”\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>Reining Him In and Slowing Him Down</p>\n<p>———————————–</p>\n<p>15. (C) After Dakar, Sarkozy went to Gabon, where elder statesman and France-Afrique supporter President Bongo received him with full honors. Sarkozy reportedly hesitated before going; visiting a France-Afrique stronghold, site of a French military base, and source of valuable commerce (especially petroleum) could smack of the old-style courting and role playing he claimed he wanted to forego. In the end, he relented: “Omar Bongo is the dean of African heads of state and, in Africa, being the dean, that counts.” Bongo offered full pomp and circumstance, with festive crowds chanting “vive la France, vive Sarkozy, vive l’amitie franco-gabonaise,” and banners proclaiming this friendship prominently displayed. To some observers, the message was clear: “You say that France-Afrique is a thing of the past but, if Africans really are equal partners, we have some say in the matter as well, and we say that France-Afrique is not in all respects so bad.” Sarkozy reportedly did not expect that kind of visit or that Bongo would offer a different reality.</p>\n<p>16. (C) Sarkozy has in other ways shown himself to be out of step, with his bedside manner needing fine-tuning. Presidential Advisor Remi Marechaux says that when Sarkozy is confident on substance or at ease with an interlocutor, he speaks freely without relying on briefing material. This occasionally causes problems when he strays from “official” policy, with others then steering the discussion back on course. When he is less familiar with an issue or with an interlocutor, he will read talking points verbatim, with little attempt to disguise what he is doing, sometimes thumbing through briefing books looking for information while his interlocutor is speaking.</p>\n<p>17. (C) Sarkozy does not like to waste time and likes to get to the point, perhaps to excess. When President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea met with Sarkozy in November 2007, support staff on both sides were tardy in settling into place. Sarkozy did not wait and launched into his talking points as the staff filed into the meeting. Sarkozy engaged in no small talk and the meeting was over in minutes, to the bewilderment of his visitors. Our contacts at the Presidency indicate Sarkozy has since made an effort to be more “diplomatic,” but one wonders whether he would ever dare to treat a Western head of state in such a cursory manner, under any circumstances.</p>\n<p>18. (C) Flush with his early success at helping liberate Bulgarian medical workers long detained in Libya on dubious</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 005 OF 007</p>\n<p>charges, Sarkozy decided to intervene personally in Chad after the Zoe’s Ark effort to smuggle supposed Darfur orphans to France was discovered and the perpetrators detained. Sarkozy went to Chad early in November 2007 and negotiated the release of some of the detainees. After returning to Paris, he thought of going there again to free those still in custody but decided against it. He was advised not to make a second trip as France could not afford having him set a precedent by personally rushing off and responding to and managing a relatively low-level crisis. Chad President Deby no doubt appreciated the visit Sarkozy did make, which probably increased Chad’s leverage, as Sarkozy had put his own prestige in play.</p>\n<p>Bongo Up, Bockel Down, France-Afrique Still Kicking</p>\n<p>—————————-</p>\n<p>19. (C) Jean-Marie Bockel became State Secretary for Cooperation and Francophonie (reporting to the Foreign Minister) when Sarkozy took office. Bockel, a Socialist, is a veteran politician and Mulhouse’s mayor since 1989, and was Commerce Minister 1984-1986. On January 15, 2008, he gave an interview to Paris daily Le Monde, stating boldly (and perhaps rashly) that “I want to sign the death certificate of France-Afrique.” Asked why it seemed that not much had changed despite Sarkozy’s promise of a new Africa policy, Bockel said: “France-Afrique is moribund…. It’s not a question of morale, but helping with development. For, because of the faulty governance in certain countries, our policy of cooperation, despite its many forms, doesn’t allow for progress commensurate with our effort.”</p>\n<p>20. (C) Continuing, Bockel said that ineffectiveness prevailed because “bad governance, the wastage of public finds, the carelessness of certain administrative and political structures, the predation of certain leaders — everybody knows these factors or supposes them. In total, of USD 100 billion annually in aid for Africa, USD 30 billion evaporates. Certain countries have important petroleum resources, but their populations don’t benefit. Is it legitimate that our aid is distributed to countries that waste their own resources? We must re-examine conditionalities, to evaluate the effectiveness of our aid.”</p>\n<p>21. (C) Bockel’s comments did not sit well with some Africans, notably Gabon President Bongo. A slow-moving French judicial investigation of the holdings in France of certain African leaders, among them Bongo, was in progress even before Sarkozy went there in July 2007. The investigation reportedly indicated that Bongo owned or was involved in the ownership of 33 properties in France, including a Paris mansion valued at 18 million euro (currently, about USD 27.15 million). The French press picked up this case and did some investigating and reporting of its own. The Gabonese took umbrage, with their MFA stating its intention to “reflect” on the course of Franco-Gabonese relations and mentioning a “cabal” and a “plot against Gabon and its president.”</p>\n<p>22. (C) Relations took a turn for the worse when, early in March 2008, France expelled two Gabonese for apparent visa/residency problems. Gabon immediately responded, noting that “there are many French in Gabon in irregular situations. They can be taken to the border if, during police controls, they don’t justify their presence with proper documentation.” Gabon then raised the reciprocity provisions of the immigration accord signed the previous July (para 7, above). The noise level, mostly on Gabon’s side, increased.</p>\n<p>23. (C) And then the noise suddenly stopped, after the March 18 announcement that Bockel would no longer be Secretary of State for Cooperation and Francophonie, to be replaced by Alain Joyandet. Although officially denied, it was commonly accepted that Bockel had to go in order to make peace with figures such as Bongo. Media reports on the French holdings of African leaders also seemed to disappear at that time and so did the investigations. For his part,</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 006 OF 007</p>\n<p>Bockel issued a “no regrets about anything I said” statement, as he trundled off to his new job as Secretary of State for Veterans Affairs.</p>\n<p>24. (C) The Bockel case is significant because it shows that “killing” France-Afrique is easier said than done; that France-Afrique has a life of its own, with vested interests on the African side that the French perhaps underestimated when deciding on the new policy; that African leaders can manipulate France-Afrique for their own ends as well as the French can or could; that a clever, skillful leader like Bongo can fight far above Gabon’s weight and humble a French politician of Bockel’s stature; and that France should take care in not trifling with Africans (which is what Sarkozy said in Dakar that France would no longer do). Bold talk of “signing France-Afrique’s death certificate” ended with Bockel’s departure and has not resurfaced. Bongo made his point.</p>\n<p>Wins, Losses, Draws, and ???</p>\n<p>—————————-</p>\n<p>25. (C) Sarkozy indicated that implementation of his new policy would take place on a clean slate, that he would not be a prisoner of the past or the problems that existed prior to his presidency. Bongo partly refuted that notion. The Sarkozy government has tried to improve problematic relations from earlier times, with only limited success.</p>\n<p>– ANGOLA: Relations were long frozen because of the Falcone Affair, the complex arms trafficking case that dates to the Mitterrand and Chirac eras. French commercial activities in Angola after the scandal broke have continued without much hindrance but political relations have been very limited. Frustrated that the Falcone issue continued to influence relations and with an eye toward expanding business with resource-rich Angola, Sarkozy broke the ice with a short meeting with President Dos Santos during the September 2007 UNGA, and followed up with a visit to Angola on May 23, 2008. One shared issue of concern is the trial in France of some 42 defendants (including high-profile figures such as Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, President Mitterrand’s son and a former “Mr. Africa” at the Presidency) and what that trial may reveal in terms of Angolan culpability in the affair. Angolans now appear ready to handle whatever dirty laundry the trial brings to light. Although still at an early stage, Sarkozy’s outreach to Angola seems promising, and should be considered a “win” for both sides.</p>\n<p>– RWANDA: Relations, precarious even before the 1994 genocide, collapsed in November 2006 when then-anti terrorism Judge Bruguiere issued an investigative report that implicated President Kagame and other senior Rwandans in the events of 1994. The Rwandans immediately broke relations with France. The French have since tried to improve relations, arguing that neither side should hold the other hostage over events dating to 1994 and before. They stress that France’s judiciary (i.e., a judge such as Bruguiere) enjoys an independence that renders it immune from internal GOF attempts to influence it. Seeking reconciliation, Foreign Minister Kouchner met with President Kagame on January 26, 2008, in Kigali. Despite French optimism that the two sides can “compartmentalize” the genocide issue, Rwanda is not amenable to doing so, landing another hammer blow with the August 2008 report accusing French officials at the highest levels of complicity in the genocide. With relations getting worse and not better, Rwanda must be considered a “loss.”</p>\n<p>– DJIBOUTI: The Borrel Affair, involving the 1995 death of French judge Bernard Borrel, who was working on assignment in Djibouti when he committed suicide (or was killed), continues to cloud relations. Both sides long considered his death a suicide but Mrs. Borrel was convinced he was murdered for having found evidence of Djiboutian wrongdoing. She filed several legal proceedings in France; one resulted in the March 2007 conviction in absentia of two senior Djiboutian figures for witness tampering.</p>\n<p>PARIS 00001568 007 OF 007</p>\n<p>– DJIBOUTI (cont,d): Despite periodic upheavals, the two sides managed to isolate the case until the convictions, which took place a few weeks before Sarkozy’s inauguration. Soon after becoming President, Sarkozy met with Mrs. Borrel and the GOF abruptly shifted position, saying that Borrel’s death was not a suicide but the result of foul play. It is not clear if the shift stemmed from a new evaluation of the evidence or from Sarkozy’s desire to ally himself with Mrs. Borrel, whom the French public and media have viewed sympathetically. Djiboutians protested, countering that Borrel, if not a suicide, died because of involvement in a pedophile ring. Relations seemed destined to deteriorate but then France provided important help to Djibouti during its June 2008 border dispute with Eritrea. France’s military base in Djibouti so far has not been a bargaining chip in the Borrel case. Relations with Djibouti, while delicate, seem to be holding in place, with both sides enjoying a “draw.” That said, the Borrel issue remains unresolved and its unfolding will likely continue to affect relations.</p>\n<p>– MADAGASCAR: To these wins, losses, and draws, one must add an abject “surrender” — Sarkozy’s agreeing to Madagascar President Ravalomanana’s recent request that then-Ambassador to Madagascar Gildas Le Lidec be replaced after some six months at post. Ravalomanana reportedly thought that Le Lidec was “unlucky,” citing negative developments in other countries that coincided with Le Lidec’s postings. One of France’s most experienced diplomats, Le Lidec had been ambassador in Japan, Cambodia, C.A.R., DRC, and Cote d,Ivoire before Madagascar, where he announced his departure at this year’s July 14 fete. When asked, most GOF contacts shake their heads and sigh, making muted comments about Sarkozy’s bending backward too far to placate Ravalomanana and ending a veteran public servant’s honorable career by humiliating him. Whether Le Lidec’s dismissal represents a one-off or signals a new-found intention on Sarkozy’s part to please African leaders remains to be seen.</p>\n<p>One Year Later</p>\n<p>————–</p>\n<p>26. (C) Over a year into Sarkozy’s five-year term, his Africa policy has yielded positive results for both French and Africans but has not been the clean-sweeping “out with the old, in with the new” success he was first seeking. In our view, he underestimated the scope of the challenge and overestimated his abilities as a relative outsider bringing his fabled dynamism to the task. He was tone-deaf to some of the dynamics developed over decades of France-Afrique and his pace and rhythm (let alone his policies) did not accord with that of many African counterparts. In saying openly that he wanted to end France-Afrique, Sarkozy inadvertently gave it a new spark of life, as Bockel learned the hard way.</p>\n<p>27. (C) Nonetheless, the energy that Sarkozy is imparting stands in favorable contrast to the stagnation characterizing Africa policy during Chirac’s final years. Sarkozy’s main shortcoming concerning Africa may be that in his haste to end an admittedly shopworn policy, he launched himself into doing so without having completely integrated the lessons that were to be learned from it.</p>\n<p>28. (C) Part III, the final segment of this series (septel), will explore other aspects of France’s implementation of its new Africa policy, focusing on its military posture in that region.</p>\n<p>Please visit Paris’ Classified Website at: http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Fran ce</p>\n<p>STAPLETON</p>"
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"content" : "<p>On the radio, there’s some talk show banter going on. A new study says men who kiss their wives every morning live five years longer than the ones who don’t. </p>\n<p>The driver says to me, “I’d kiss my wife every morning if she’d let me!” He’s got a sweet laugh. A small guy, bundled against the cold. He touches his chin. “In fact this morning I told her this was her last chance to kiss my smooth cheek until summer. I’m gonna grow a beard to keep warm. Never had a beard before but I gotta do something, I freeze in these cars.”</p>\n<p>“Did she kiss you?”</p>\n<p>“Yeah, she’s a good girl, my wife. We couldn’t be more different. She reads books all the time, I don’t touch the stuff. I never even went to high school, but somehow we get along real good.” </p>\n<p>We’re driving along the river, the traffic is slow. I’m watching his pitted face, his shy smile. “I met her in the car. A customer. I picked her up by the hospital and we talked so much I forgot where I was supposed to be driving her! She said that was alright. We had breakfast the next couple mornings and then she moved in. Eight years.”</p>\n<p>He’s on a roll now, and I’ve no inclination to stop him. He’s telling the kind of stories I always think the cabbies might be making up. The kind that are a little too cute. But I believe him.</p>\n<p>“I grew up over there,” he says, pointing across the river to a row of project towers. “I started dealing drugs when I was 12. I tell you, drugs gave me a good life. I had money, I went all over the world. I went places I don’t remember going but people tell me I was there.” </p>\n<p>“Then I had to get cleaned up. My clock ran down. So here I am. I’m doing ok. I work, people work.” </p>\n<p>This looks bitter on the page but he’s not. He is laughing his sweet laugh. He is, I find out later, dying slowly of the things you would expect. His liver, he says, but not his heart.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/municipalarchive.wordpress.com/420/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/municipalarchive.wordpress.com/420/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=municipalarchive.wordpress.com&blog=3626641&post=420&subd=municipalarchive&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "Not many events can match the absurdity of what happened at Ivory Coast's electoral commission last night. It was a sad and yet hilarious demonstration of the bullying tactics of Gbagbo's cronies, and a first sign of blind panic within the presidential camp. As a crowd of local and foreign journalists prepared to film the announcement of partial results, aides to the particularly crude Interior Minister Desire Tagro grabbed the results sheets from the hands of a dumbfounded commission spokesman and marched off in anger, saying the \"proper procedure\" had not been followed. Later on, as Tagro's secretary decided to hold his own press conference at the steps of the building to announce the results were invalid, the vice-president of the commission stepped in, drove the short stocky man into a corner, and used both hands to push the crowd of journalists down the steps. \"You don't have the right to speak,\" he shouted at Tagro's man. \"Shut up!\" It was a long and eventful evening, and today will undoubtedly have more drama in store.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37035709-4052237902243647735?l=nofoodforlazyman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Laugh If You Must, But It Is Published in a Refereed Journal",
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"content" : "<div><p><img src=\"http://img.skitch.com/20101202-byxs511wwrihgy5rcac24kucbr.jpg\"></p>\r\n</div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=ZkcX8Lt1jtw:5oFY-fECDKg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=ZkcX8Lt1jtw:5oFY-fECDKg:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~4/ZkcX8Lt1jtw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Why do we need database joins?",
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"content" : "<p>In a <a href=\"http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2010/06/28/nosql-or-nojoin/\">recent post</a>, I argued that the current <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL\">NoSQL</a> trend could be called NoJoin. My argument boils down to the fact that SQL entices you to normalize your data which creates complicated schemas. Meanwhile, NoSQL database systems use simple schemas and are therefore easier to scale out.</p><p>Curt Monash has a <a href=\"http://www.dbms2.com/2010/11/29/document-database-without-joins/\">reasonable post</a> where he points out that <strong>we need joins because we normalize</strong>. Furthermore, he offers reasons for normalization:</p><ul><li>To simplify the programming of the updates. Simply put, if the string “Montreal” appears once in your database, and the city changes its name, it is trivial to do the update. This applies mostly when you have complex schemas.</li><li>For faster updates. Updating a single entry in a database is much faster than searching and updating for all occurrences of the value “Montreal”. This is mostly applicable when you have large update volumes.</li></ul><p>However, the case against joins is even stronger than what suggests Curt:</p><ul><li>Normalization is good if you have to maintain a complex schema. But how complex would your schema be if you stopped over-normalizing your data? I have seen university databases made of hundreds of tables. The average query is well over 256 characters and involves dozens of joins. It is simply impossible to make sense of the content of any one table. Building new applications on top of this mess is expensive and bug prone. Complexity is bad for your health.</li><li>Database engines can physically normalize the data automagically. And indeed, many database compression techniques are types of normalization. Have you ever noticed how sluggish your enterprise database is? Complex schemas rarely scale well, no matter what your database textbook says.</li></ul><p>The dogma of normalization too often leads to <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overengineering\">over-engineering</a>. We are so afraid that a programming error could leave the database in a wrongful state that we invest massively in inflexible schemas. In turn, this over-engineering comes back to haunt us when we need to be more agile, or to scale out.</p><p><strong>Example: </strong></p><p><strong> </strong>Suppose you want to design a database of research papers. Let us simplify the problem by omitting the paper identifiers, the dates, and so on. Let us also assume that there is only one author per paper. Maybe your main table looks like this:</p><table border=\"1\"><tbody><tr><th>authorID</th><th>author name</th><th>publisher</th><th>title</th></tr><tr><td>smith01</td><td>John Smith</td><td>Springer</td><td>Databases are bad</td></tr><tr><td>lampron01</td><td>Nathalie Lampron</td><td>IEEE</td><td>The other guy is wrong, databases are good</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Being helpful, your friendly database expert points out that your database schema is not even in the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_normal_form\">second normal form</a>. Clearly, you are an amateur. Being helpful, he creates a secondary table which maps the authorID field to an author name. And voilà! You have saved storage, and won’t ever get someone’s name wrong. Updates to someone’s name will be much faster in the future.</p><p>But wait?!? What if Nathalie gets married and changes name? And indeed, people have their names changed all the time. Yet, we never retroactively change the names of the authors on a paper. Maybe you never thought about it, but many ladies hold two or more names in their lifetime. Did the bunch of guys in IT knew about this? (As an aside, are the digital librarians worried at all about researchers changing name and seeing their publication list cut in half? Yes: See update below.)</p><p>My point is that normalization effectively enforces dependencies decided upon when you created the schema. These envisioned dependencies break down all the time. Life is complicated. I could come up with hundreds of examples. <strong>Strict normalization makes as much sense as the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_method\">waterfall model</a>.</strong></p><p>What about the physical layer? Because normalization has removed entire fields from the main table, you might think that normalization will save storage! That may well be true on the database engine you are using. However, other database engines will automatically detect the dependencies and compress the data accordingly. In this case, it is trivial to discover that there is a bijective (1-to-1) mapping between author ID and author name. And if the bijectivity breaks down, the database engine will simply have to work a bit harder to compress the data. Your code won’t break down. It won’t need to be retested. (To be fair, I don’t know if any database system gets this right.)</p><p><strong>Update:</strong> Apparently, <a href=\"http://tclab.kaist.ac.kr/~otfried/\">Otfried Cheong</a>—a Computer Science professor in Korea—once published as Otfried Schwarzkopf. At least, the two names are merged on <a href=\"http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/c/Cheong:Otfried.html\">DBLP</a>. It suggests that DBLP can cope with researchers changing their name.</p> <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?a=9GCzEOrO42c:1itegM291Ow:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?i=9GCzEOrO42c:1itegM291Ow:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/daniel-lemire/atom/~4/9GCzEOrO42c\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "My Favorite JavaScript Design Pattern",
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"content" : "<p>I thought it might be interesting to look at a JavaScript design pattern that I use a great deal. I settled on it gradually, over a period of time, absorbing and adapting influences from various sources, until reaching a pattern that offers the flexibility I need.</p>\n<p>Let me show you an overview, and then look at how it comes together:</p>\n<pre><code>function MyScript(){}\n(function()\n{\n\n var THIS = this;\n\n function defined(x)\n {\n return typeof x != 'undefined';\n }\n\n this.ready = false;\n\n this.init = function(\n {\n this.ready = true;\n };\n\n this.doSomething = function()\n {\n }; \n\n var options = {\n x : 123,\n y : 'abc'\n };\n\n this.define = function(key, value)\n {\n if(defined(options[key]))\n {\n options[key] = value;\n }\n };\n\n}).apply(MyScript);</code></pre>\n<p>As you can see from that sample code, the overall structure is a <dfn>function literal</dfn>:</p>\n<pre><code>(function()\n{\n ...\n\n})();</code></pre>\n<p>A function literal is essentially a self-executing scope, equivalent to defining a named function and then calling it immediately:</p>\n<pre><code>function doSomething()\n{\n ...\n}\n\ndoSomething();</code></pre>\n<p>I originally started using function literals for the sake of <dfn>encapsulation</dfn>—any script in any format can be wrapped in that enclosure, and it effectively “seals” it into a private scope, preventing it from conflicting with other scripts in the same scope, or with data in the global scope. The bracket-pair at the very end is what executes the scope, calling it just like any other function.</p>\n<p>But if, instead of just calling it globally, the scope is executed using <a href=\"http://www.devguru.com/technologies/ecmascript/quickref/apply.html\"><code>Function.apply</code></a>, it can be made to execute in a <strong>specific, named scope</strong> which can then be referenced externally.</p>\n<p>So by combining those two together—the creation of a named function, then the execution of a function literal into the scope of the named function—we end up with a single-use object that can form the basis of any script, while simulating the kind of inheritance that’s found in an object-oriented class.</p>\n<h2>The Beauty Within</h2>\n<p>Look at that first code example, and you can see what flexibility is offered by the structure of the enclosing scope. It’s nothing you can’t do in any function, of course, but by wrapping it up in this way we have a construct that can be associated with <em>any</em> named scope.</p>\n<p>We can create multiple such constructs, and associate them all with the same scope, and then all of them will share their <dfn>public data</dfn> with each other.</p>\n<p>But at the same time as sharing public data, each can define its own <em>private data</em> too. Here for example, at the very top of the script:</p>\n<pre><code>var THIS = this;</code></pre>\n<p>We’ve created a <dfn>private variable</dfn> called <code>THIS</code> which points to the function scope, and can be used within private functions to refer to it—exactly the same trick as going <code>\"self = this\"</code> to create a reference for inner scopes.</p>\n<p>Other private variables, declared the same way, can share the uppercase convention if they define constant data (however declaration using <code>const</code> instead of <code>var</code> should be avoided, because it’s not well-supported).</p>\n<p><dfn>Private functions</dfn> can be used to provide internal utilities:</p>\n<pre><code>function defined(x)\n{\n return typeof x != 'undefined';\n}</code></pre>\n<p>Then we can create <dfn>public methods and properties</dfn>, accessible to other instances, and to the outside:</p>\n<pre><code>this.ready = false;\n\nthis.init = function()\n{\n this.ready = true;\n};\n\nthis.doSomething = function()\n{\n};</code></pre>\n<p>We can also create <dfn>privileged values</dfn>—which are private, but publicly definable, in this case via the public <code>define</code> method; its arguments could be further validated according to the needs of the data:</p>\n<pre><code>\nvar options = {\n x : 123,\n y : 'abc'\n };\n\nthis.define = function(key, value)\n{\n if(defined(options[key]))\n {\n options[key] = value;\n }\n};\n</code></pre>\n<h2>Wrapped Up!</h2>\n<p>All of these features are what makes the construct so useful to me. And it’s all wrapped up in a neat, self-executing <dfn>singleton</dfn>—a single-use object that’s easy to refer-to and integrate, and straightforward to use!</p>\n<p>So what do you think? Is this a pattern that’s familiar to you, or do you have something else you like to use?</p>\n<p style=\"margin-top:2em\"><em>Thumbnail credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/superkimbo/3121815917/\">superkimbo</a></em></p>\n<div>\n<div><strong>note:</strong>Want more?</div>\n<p>If you want to read more from James, subscribe to our weekly tech geek newsletter, <em><a href=\"http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/\">Tech Times</a></em>.</p>\n</div>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=a20c855fb4d9ebb49389e2877a6ae32c&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=a20c855fb4d9ebb49389e2877a6ae32c&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechBiz&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.23023.rss.TechBiz.1721,cat.TechBiz.rss\">"
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"title" : "Why is Xinmao bidding for Draka?",
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"content" : "<p>The answer is suggested by Hendrik Rood (Stratix):</p>\n<p>“There are only 4 complete patent portfolio’s for fibre optic manufacturing in the world</p>\n<p>* Corning (USA)</p>\n<p>* Draka Comteq (Netherlands)</p>\n<p>* Sumitomo (Japan)</p>\n<p>* Fujikura (Japan)</p>\n<p>The rest of the fibre optic industry works on licenses of one of these four leading firms. It seems someone in China thinks this is the opportunity to buy a full scale optical fibre patent portfolio.”</p>\n<p>Very likely.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/facebook?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F11%2Fwhy-is-xinmao-bidding-for-draka%2F&linkname=Why%20is%20Xinmao%20bidding%20for%20Draka%3F\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/facebook.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Facebook\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/digg?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F11%2Fwhy-is-xinmao-bidding-for-draka%2F&linkname=Why%20is%20Xinmao%20bidding%20for%20Draka%3F\" title=\"Digg\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/digg.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Digg\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/add_to/stumbleupon?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dadamotive.com%2F2010%2F11%2Fwhy-is-xinmao-bidding-for-draka%2F&linkname=Why%20is%20Xinmao%20bidding%20for%20Draka%3F\" title=\"StumbleUpon\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/icons/stumbleupon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"StumbleUpon\"></a> <a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/favicon.png\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p>"
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"title" : "The Singularity in Our Past Light-Cone",
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"content" : "<blockquote><span><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: Yet\nanother semi-crank pet notion, nursed quietly for many years, now posted <strike>in\nthe absence of new thoughts</strike> because\nreading <cite><a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2010-10.html#half-made\">The Half-Made\nWorld</a></cite> brought it back to mind.\n</span></blockquote>\n\n<p>The Singularity has happened; we call it \"the industrial revolution\"\nor \"the long nineteenth century\". It was over by the <a href=\"http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/on-veterans-day/\">close of 1918</a>.\n\n<p>Exponential yet basically unpredictable growth of technology, rendering\nlong-term extrapolation impossible (even\nwhen <a href=\"http://bactra.org/future.html\">attempted by geniuses</a>)? Check.\n\n<p>Massive, profoundly dis-orienting transformation in the life of humanity,\nextending to our ecology, <a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/flynn-beyond/\">mentality</a> and\nsocial organization? <a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/nations-and-nationalism/\">Check</a>.\n\n<p>Annihilation of the age-old constraints of space and\ntime? <a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9780674021693\">Check</a>.\n\n<p>Embrace of the fusion of humanity and\nmachines? <a href=\"http://bactra.org/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html\">Check</a>.\n\n<p>Creation of vast, inhuman distributed systems of information-processing,\n<a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9780801846137\">communication</a> and\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/beniger/\">control</a>, \"the coldest of all cold monsters\"?\nCheck; we call\nthem <a href=\"http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html\">\"the\nself-regulating market system\"</a>\nand <a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9780674940529\">\"modern\nbureaucracies\"</a> (public\nor <a href=\"http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/spring08/governance/DeLong,%20B.-Corporation-1997.pdf\">private</a>),\nand they treat men and women, even those whose minds and bodies instantiate\nthem, <a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9780807056431\">like\nstraw dogs</a>.\n\n<p>An implacable drive on the part of those networks to expand, to entrain more\nand more of the world within their own sphere? Check. (\"Drive\" is the best I\ncan do; words like \"agenda\" or \"purpose\" are too anthropomorphic, and fail to\nacknowledge the radical novely and strangeness of these assemblages, which are\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/cognition-in-the-wild/\">not even intelligent, as we\nexperience intelligence</a>, yet ceaselessly calculating.)\n\n<p>Why, then, since the Singularity is so plainly, even intrusively, visible in\nour past, does science fiction persist in placing a pale mirage of it in our\nfuture? Perhaps: the owl of Minerva flies at dusk; and we are in the late\nafternoon, fitfully dreaming of the half-glimpsed events of the day, waiting\nfor the stars to come out.\n\n<p><em>Manual trackback</em>: <a href=\"http://www.gearfuse.com/a-beating-of-wings/\">Gearfuse</a>;\n<a href=\"http://johnkurman.blogspot.com/2010/12/singularity-yet-again.html\">Random Walks</a>;\n<a href=\"http://text-patterns.thenewatlantis.com/2010/12/less-than-singular.html\">Text Patterns</a>;\n<a href=\"http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/12/the-singularity-has-already-happened.html\">The Daily Dish</a>;\n<a href=\"http://slackwire.blogspot.com/2010/12/singularity-is-over.html\">The Slack Wire</a>; \n<a href=\"http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012742.html\">Making\nLight</a> (I am not worthy! Also, the <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=Nl-vaAdJD3MC&pg=PA378\">Nietzsche quote</a> is perfect);\n<a href=\"http://jsbangs.wordpress.com/2010/12/02/a-curious-thesis/\">J. S.\nBangs</a>;\n<a href=\"http://www.dailygrail.com/News-Briefs/2010/12/News-Briefs-01-12-2010\">Daily Grail</a>;\n<a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2010/12/08/the-goggles-do-nothing/\">Crooked Timber</a>;\n<a href=\"http://www.peterfrase.com/2010/12/social-science-fiction/\">Peter\nFrase</a>;\n<a href=\"http://sfwinners.blogspot.com/2010/12/steampunk-wars.html\">Blogging\nthe Hugo Winners</a>;\n<a href=\"http://peadarcoyle.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/singularity-in-our-past-2/\">The Essence of Mathematics Is Its Freedom</a>;\n<a href=\"http://der-augenblick.blogspot.com/2010/12/singularity-is-not-in-our-past.html\">der Augenblick</a>;\n<a href=\"http://mondayevening.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/the-singularity/\">Monday Evening</a>;\n<a href=\"http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2010/12/lego-antikythera-machine-and-musings.html\">The Duck of Minerva</a> (appropriately enough);\n<a href=\"http://www.longstoryshortpier.com/2011/01/03/obversity\">Long Story, Short Pier</a> [\"the owl flies at dusk; it is always dusk; we can no longer tell a black thread from a white\"];\n<a href=\"http://cloggie.org/wissewords2/2011/01/10/its-not-called-the-third-wave-for-nothing/\">Wis[s]e Words</a>\n\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_the_great_transformation.html\">The Great Transformation</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_scientifiction.html\">Scientifiction and Fantastica</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "tales by the moonlight #1",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9KRvm2_omrk/TOMKXuI2JjI/AAAAAAAAFKs/AY9x5QKU2vs/s1600/A-1-sm.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9KRvm2_omrk/TOMKXuI2JjI/AAAAAAAAFKs/AY9x5QKU2vs/s1600/A-1-sm.jpg\"></a><br><br><i><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">well it's full moon today, not like you can tell from the London skies, so ...</span></i><br><br>Back in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enugu\">Enugu</a> city, east of Nigeria, in my younger days getting ready for school was the usual routine (<span style=\"font-style:italic\">border line chaotic</span>). My older brother, myself and sister would bundle into the bath, get ready for school, and go across the street to Mama Okey's yard to buy breakfast. breakfast was ritual fried bean cake/fritter (<a href=\"http://www.avartsycooking.com/2010/06/akara-fried-bean-cake/\">Akara</a> in the lingo) and maize pap, sorta custard like (called Akamu). it was bare joke business cos Mama Okey was loud as hell and always cussin' the labourers who bought breakfast there. Okey, her second son, was our best friend so we to get extras. life was simple and fun for the three young kids. Then strange rumours started hitting the street. People living in her yard would complain of being attacked at night and having terrible nightmares. They were waking up with scratches all over their body and ish like that. the street was shook. My dad thought it was all nonsense and allowed us to keep going there but people started avoiding the place.<br><br>One morning on the usual breakfast run we saw a large crowd gathered round the entrance of Mama Okey's house. No sign of her or her food stall. A large aggressive black cat had accidentally trapped itself in a food basket in the backyard. no known owner of the pet. witchcraft business afoot. one of the tenants, a lorry driver, brought the trapped cat out to the front of the house and ordered everyone out. One by one the residents filed out. The only people that hadnt appeared was Okey and his Mums. Lorry man hollered a few times but no response. Everyone was scared and no one made a move to knock on her door. After some crowd driven delibration they decided to let the cat out and see what happens. My young mind was like yeah right. Lorry guy pulled the lid off and cat jumped out the basket. mr cat meowed loudly, scaled the wall and was gone. That moment Mama Okey's door creaked opened. The biggest stampede in the east of nigeria ensued. I and my siblings were 10 paces ahead of the crowd.<br><br>They moved out that morning and I never saw Okey or his Mum again.<br><br>On hindsight it was all rubbish and could be easily explained. but i aint hanging around to find out.<div><br></div><div><i><span style=\"font-size:small\">when in doubt? run</span></i></div><br><br><br><a href=\"http://www.avartsycooking.com/2010/06/akara-fried-bean-cake/\"><img style=\"margin:0 10px 10px 0;width:320px;height:213px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9KRvm2_omrk/TOh7yeWDAwI/AAAAAAAAFK0/Ao8JCUb0azg/s320/akara1-600x399.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span><span style=\"font-size:small\">best thing since sliced bread. actually preferred it with custard</span></span></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6471248371228098126-5823601570943723531?l=swankanddirect.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "A Trip to the Big Apple and Escaping the Black Hole of Tragedy",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<p>The last few weeks have been pretty emotional and quite busy for our family. I received a call from producers of The Nate Burkus Show who were looking to do a 'while you were sleeping' episode in our home where they refurbished or remade a room for a a spouse (or family) member while they were unawares and over night. They wanted to do this for my wife and for the cleveland area audience. So, for a whole week or so, I had to help them coordinate the logistics remotely so they could come in and out smoothly.</p>\n<p><div>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/kJDljvnCDeGjqumazzyvnbkfCllCebrCHGkuBbkFFwzsgHoEbJgGHDjyjrGb/P1017354.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017354\" height=\"375\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/kJDljvnCDeGjqumazzyvnbkfCllCebrCHGkuBbkFFwzsgHoEbJgGHDjyjrGb/P1017354.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/AaermuywAshhojysrdClFpHdrBrqdDzCdnujqrAxpElFlHgFrjfmrkGHkskH/P1017357.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017357\" height=\"667\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/AaermuywAshhojysrdClFpHdrBrqdDzCdnujqrAxpElFlHgFrjfmrkGHkskH/P1017357.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/vmBbgtwEwvlkpmzoJIIllJsybxoqEbJHfvefjqwcDvhjaveaAobiseobahiu/P1017363.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017363\" height=\"768\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/vmBbgtwEwvlkpmzoJIIllJsybxoqEbJHfvefjqwcDvhjaveaAobiseobahiu/P1017363.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/GguzbCwgdsArzcmbuIloIJctiEAsCFEwdsJmJdHhCxtwdJuCnFxekygEwHAi/P1017368.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017368\" height=\"571\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/GguzbCwgdsArzcmbuIloIJctiEAsCFEwdsJmJdHhCxtwdJuCnFxekygEwHAi/P1017368.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/qkGicyBesqnJpGqczkvnnpnxnhpicCfGlDJvGxnnEGllaiklteutkmJfstur/P1017366.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017366\" height=\"908\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/qkGicyBesqnJpGqczkvnnpnxnhpicCfGlDJvGxnnEGllaiklteutkmJfstur/P1017366.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/hFmgloCezvCjqvDEBiyJfHHmqmBgxfnAbbAbCHAzpuolcvphEuyDahGCphFd/P1017370.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017370\" height=\"325\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/hFmgloCezvCjqvDEBiyJfHHmqmBgxfnAbbAbCHAzpuolcvphEuyDahGCphFd/P1017370.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/kqpcpIywBFAjujtfGGygIBpyqHuJipeGffokdsFHbIltqxmhaokGooIiivIJ/P1017381.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017381\" height=\"686\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/kqpcpIywBFAjujtfGGygIBpyqHuJipeGffokdsFHbIltqxmhaokGooIiivIJ/P1017381.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/qBEnAclcinAeuwEGxwJkwfohnnEADpEmoagIppyukvnhFjJrrziHpgoamahA/P1017391.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img alt=\"P1017391\" height=\"375\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-11-17/qBEnAclcinAeuwEGxwJkwfohnnEADpEmoagIppyukvnhFjJrrziHpgoamahA/P1017391.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"500\"></a>\n<div><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/a-trip-to-the-big-apple-and-escaping-the-blac\">See the full gallery on Posterous</a></div>\n</div>\nNow, the first thing I asked them was if it was going to be discreet. For my family, our home is very sacred and there are rooms in it that are essentially hallowed ground despite the fact that it is very different from the home it was before the fire. For one thing, the room that they chose only needed to be refurbished since - on account of an incredibly philanthropic community effort - that floor had already been reconstructed.</p>\n<p>It was alot of fun, very emotional, and cathartic for me to close some of the loops in the narrative of surviving the violent ebbs and flows of life. This was definitely more fun than I have had in a while. It was a great opportunity for Roschelle to have a stage to talk about some of the themes that are important to the both of us (and Andrea): Patient advocacy (as it relates to technology and law), organ procurement advocacy, surviving the violence of life, etc. </p>\n<p>Andrea Stricker - community organizer and logistics manager extraordinaire - was instrumental in keeping us all sane. She helped coordinate Roschelle's schedule so she was out of the house with the two tornadoes that are Nkiru (9 months) and Ngozi (2 years) and upstairs during the night. I (and almost all of the crew) literally had no sleep that night as they moved in furniture and incredibly personal effects (such as family albums with pictures, etc.) into a space that has seen jubilant love, gut wrenching fear, bustling reconstruction by various local union members, neighbors and friends, etc. - the full anthropological range.</p>\n<p>The room has been completely transformed in a personal way and we are still trying absorb the sum total of it all. Some days, I wonder if thousands of years henceforth, how much of the history of the events of a house remain. One of the items they moved into the living room was a pair of columns that (we were told) were build in the 18th century. </p>\n<p>I don't know anything about them, which house they were a part of, whether the house they were a part of suffered moments of tragedy similar to the house they have been moved into and (in particular) into the location they were moved into (a location where so much utter destruction occurred). Given how old they are, they must have their own history and memories that others might have chosen to forget and that I may never come to know about and not knowing them might help in being able to appreciate them for the great work of art and architecture they are.</p>\n<p>I don't think people should be so quick to relocate from a home where disasters (natural or otherwise) have occurred. The fear of wandering specters and/or perpetually revisited memories is only as much of a problem as we let it and this is proven certain by the fact that we don't have any fear about being in that house (at least to that effect), despite the fact that there are many people we know who have great trepidation stepping into it. So, being able to transform that room and facilitate the journey along the determination to not allow our house to be defined by the events that occurred in it was a special thing.</p>\n<p>Soon after they shot the 'revealing' (as they call it), they returned to New York and we flew out on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. That first shot is of Ngozi, who sat with me and I was lucky enough that she was sleepy just before boarding and - after having her ultimate pacifier (her "ba ba") - slept most of the way. </p>\n<p>On the way to the hotel, Roschelle convinced the driver to pass through the heart of the African American Harlem Renaissance, stopping by Silvia's, Central Park, and the Apollo. I was doing too much contemplation and observation to take as many pictures as I wanted, but I did get a few in front of the Apollo. </p>\n<p>Given all the incredible history of the building, it seemed much smaller physically and belies its historical stature. The hotel we stayed in is was in uptown Manhattan. Soon after arriving, we turned the hotel rooms into a control center for a toddler and infant (as you can see in the picture of Nkiru rummaging through our things)</p>\n<p>The last shot is of us heading to the CBS/BET studios in the Limo they were nice enough to pick us up in. Outside the studios was this enormous line of people waiting to be in the audience of the BET taping where Cello was performing (we ran into him coming back from the on set taping at the elevators).</p>\n<p>It was very interesting seeing the belly of the beast that carefully prepares the media that churns the vast entertainment engine of America. Everything is carefully coordinated, and it reminds me slightly of <a href=\"http://www.jinni.com/movies/the-truman-show/photos/\">The Truman Show</a>. I learned a few things that I found interesting:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The tapings of interview scenes are not continuous but can involve1-5 takes per 30 minutes</li>\n<li>The framework of the narrative is stitched together with a priori editing work that is filled in with onset footage in a very coordinated way</li>\n<li>Editing is a major part of how such things are put together</li>\n</ul>\n<p>All in all, it was alot of fun but it was stark reminder of why I subscribe to the philosophy that once you understand that change is inevitable (and perceive its wave form), you learn to not become a slave of the amplitude of the wave. Soon after we returned, my father became ill and had to come to the Heart and Vascular Institute.</p>\n<p>The last few weeks, I have been reminded of my mortality and the mortality of the people I love in my life, of the wave form of change, and the importance of securing your family as insurance to the violent twists of life. Keeping together the assemblage that is my family is hard work, but it is even harder to navigate without that foundation. </p>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/a-trip-to-the-big-apple-and-escaping-the-blac\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/a-trip-to-the-big-apple-and-escaping-the-blac#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "tales by the moonlight #3",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9KRvm2_omrk/TOMKXuI2JjI/AAAAAAAAFKs/AY9x5QKU2vs/s1600/A-1-sm.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9KRvm2_omrk/TOMKXuI2JjI/AAAAAAAAFKs/AY9x5QKU2vs/s1600/A-1-sm.jpg\"></a><br><br><br><i>I stand on the London Bridge station platform, staring at the full moon. I admire her ageless beauty, my beautiful moon. harbinger. They say if you walk backwards seven times in a circular motion under a full moon you'll go mad. Lunar madness. I'm mesmerized by her brilliance. As I stare at her my thoughts travel back in time. A few years back. exact place, exact time. It's like I'd been standing there for an eternity. Rooted. This a tale is sad tale. all names have been changed to protect the innocent.</i><br><i></i><br><i>I see her in a distance, walking towards me, slow paced, autum leaves twirling around her feet...</i><br><br>It was another hectic day at the office. surrounded by people who had sold their corporate souls. suffocating. my existence mundane and today's like any other day. routine. repeatable. uneventful. I sat down, face in my newspaper, blotting out reality with cheap news stories. always bad news. I feel someone sit down in the seat opposite me. I looked up and my heart skips a beat. she was the most beautiful being I'd ever seen. bleached out hair, caramel sundae skin complexion, luscious lips. All nubian. I couldnt help but stare. she had this big sony headphones on, bobbing her head to an unheard beat. easy on the soul. she looked at me and our eyes locked.<br><br>\"you are very beautiful\"<br>she took off her headphones.<br>\"huh? what did you say?\"<br>slightly husky voice. sexy.<br>\"what's your name?\"<br>she blushed. and smiled.<br>\"Brooklyn. Brooklyn Masala\"<br><br>i'd not heard a less cynical voice in months. I smiled and stared out the train window. I looked up at the moon. my beautiful moon. framed against the sky as the city raced by. harbinger. I turned back to her. she was staring at me. quizzical. a smile crept over her face.<br><br>\"It's beautiful isn't it\"<br><br><div><div style=\"text-align:left\">*****************</div><br>We lay by the bay window, locked in each other's arms, naked as sin and perspiring. it was very hot and we'd been at it. craven, reckless abandon. licking, biting, eating. couldn't get enough of each other. rough yet very passionate sex. the air was thick with the scent of fornication, incense, and ganja. we'd been smoking all day. and fucking each other. uncaring in our lust. spent.<br><br>*****************<br><br>\"you love my daughter right?\"<br>Strong St. Lucian accent.<br>\"come on mummy what kind of question is that? of course i do\"<br><br>We all laughed though I was really uneasy with such direct questioning.<br><br>\"mum leave him alone!\"<br>\"I've heard of these Nigerian men. to fast\"<br><br>Again laughter as I sought for words to defend myself. We'd had a very nice sunday lunch and were clearing the plates. I'd drank my fair share of the wine and was feeling quite tipsy. Not in the right state to defend anything. I and Mum carried the dishes into the kitchen. She put her plates down and turned to face me. I could see where Brooklyn's beauty had come from.<br><br>\"I want you to do something for me\"<br>\"Ok. what?\" I asked smiling.<br>\"Sign your name on this wine cork. as a sign of your love for my daughter\"<br>\"but\" I wasn't so sure about this.<br>\"Look if you really love her like you say you'll sign it\"<br><br>I had no response. I felt bullied. unease. still what harm could it do I reasoned to myself? I signed it and she put it in the top drawer. We washed the dishes and returned to the front room. Mum said she was tired and excused herself. I told Brooklyn nothing about it.<br><br>*****************<br><br>We stood in the clinic. She'd been crying all day. I felt like crying but my resolve was absolute. Ever since I found the picture of I, Brooklyn and the unborn child sailing into the sunset. Very well drawn, nicely detailed. That one drawing shook me. I knew I couldn't do this. I wasn't ready to be a father. I greeted the initial news with enthusiasm but it was short lived. The whole thing was too much, to early. I knew my course of action signalled the end. Only memories would mark this relationship. As they led her into the theatre she begged I reconsider but my heart was hardened.<br><br>*****************<br><br>\"You bastard. I knew it was going to turn out like this\"<br>\"Look you don't understand it's not like that\"<br>\"I will deal with you and you'll come back here begging\"<br>\"Don't threaten me. this is between I and your daughter\"<br>Her family faced off. I was outnumbered. spent. incapable of fighting through the emotional fog. All I could think of was going home and smoking a big fucking spliff. I couldn't care less how they felt. It was overwhelming. I turned and walked away.<br><br>\"You'll see. You're doomed\"<br><br>As I walked home that night I realized it was a full moon. I shuddered at the sight of her. my harbinger. I got home, lay on the bed and passed out. The first nightmare was immediate.<br><br>*****************<br><br>For weeks after I couldn't sleep. At the first instance of sleep I'ld wake up sweating and very shook. In my dreams babies screamed and cried, begging for mercy at the sight of me. I was always this monstrous figure, weilding a kitchen knife, backing them into a corner. I was waking up bedraggled. In a condition of deterioration. I was losing my mind. couldn't work. couldn't eat. disfunctional. My house was a mess with rubbish strewn all over the place, plates and stuff unwashed. I hadn't shaved since that day. I saw no way out. But worse bothered me, something that hadn't fully destroyed what clarity I had left.<br><br>In my dreams I felt the presence of something else. An unwelcome presence. Watching. Almost unholy. I couldn't put my finger on it. This scared me the most. Everytime I turned to face it I'ld wake up screaming. One morning I decided to confront this faceless torment. I knew this thing was the source of my torment. My punishment for misdeeds. slow execution. I was desperate and needed to do something before I went completely mad. Lunar mad. I walked to a store, bought the strongest Rum I could find and headed home. What I needed to do couldn't be done at night. I was too afraid. It had to happen that afternoon. I had to sleep. I had to confront this that threatened to take my sanity. Perhaps I was already insane from guilt and fantastic remorse and didn't even know it. I poured out a mug of Rum. Perhaps I was ready to go. I drained the mug, paused for a minute to clear my throat, grabbed the bottle and guzzled the rest. As I sucked on the bottle greedily I couldn't care less. I was drunk instantly. The devil's juice invaded my system. With my senses blown I staggered from the sofa trying to make my way to the bed. I collapsed.<br><br>I woke up with a start. I was disoriented. I stared at my watch. I'd been asleep for sixteen hours. The room was pitch dark. Nothing made sense. I realized I was on my bed and couldn't figure how I had got there. A sense of relief washed over me. I had slept for the first time in three weeks. I was also very hungry. I got up, walked to door and threw the switch. The sight that greeted me scared me witless. All the wallpaper had been ripped off of my bedroom wall. the floor was covered with ripped paper. I looked at my hands incredulously. My hands were covered in blood dripping from my ripped nails. I sank to the floor trembling uncontrollably. But I knew what to do. How to stop this madness.<br><br>*****************<br><br>\"who is it?\"<br>\"me\"<br>\"what do you want?\"<br>\"nothing. I came to bring the rest of your stuff. and see how you are\"<br>\"you know my mum will kill you if she sees you here. she's upstairs\"<br>\"I'll take my chances.\"<br>she was so beautiful. I didn't know what to say or do. but I was there for other reasons.<br>\"you look very thin and unkept\"<br>\"Dont worry about me. Look put your stuff away and lets talk yeah.\"<br>\"I dont want to talk to you. It's to late for that\"<br>\"Look put it away and come back down.\"<br>she regarded me deeply. like she was looking for a sign.<br>\"Ok\"<br>\"can I pour myself a drink of water?\"<br>\"yeah go ahead I'll be back\"<br>I walked quickly into the kitchen. my heart beating really fast. I had to act. I had to find the wine cork. and very fast. I pulled the drawer and rummaged. my heart stopped. there lay my cork in a small plastic bag with some other stuff. It had all sort of markings on it and few red feathers had been stuck on. My punishment. I quickly pocketed it and made to walk out the kitchen. As I stepped out the door I bumped into her Mum. I almost shrieked. She looked at me, and darted into the kitchen pulling the drawer open. She looked frantically, found nothing and looked up at me. That moment I bolted. She came out the kitchen, grabbing at me, screaming.<br><br>\"Thief! Thief! I will kill you, bring it back!!\"<br><br>I shoved her aside, breaking free. I broke through the front door into the bright sunlight, running. never looking back. I ran and ran and ran and ran.<br><br>The nightmares stopped that night.<br><br>*****************<br><br><i>I saw Brooklyn a few weeks ago. I pulled my baseball cap down low to conceal my face. I feared recognition but I had to gaze upon her face. one more time. The years had taken nothing from her. beautiful as ever. Fine wine. She was wearing a buisness suit and looking very well. I had heard she is a top director in some company and doing very well. I'm very glad and happy for her. She deserved better from me. I pause. I wonder. What exactly did her mum do to me? Did her mother still wish to harm me? It's almost full moon...</i></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6471248371228098126-7942491307946711046?l=swankanddirect.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><p>When I saw him he had only a couple of months to live, and the days I spent at his chairside were hardly pleasant. He had adopted a mask of stoic resignation to his fate (the best way to induce guilt in the living), so I feigned a cheerful ignorance of it (the best way to induce envy in the dying).</p>\r\n<p>I found him in <em>The Wheatsheaf</em> with a woman by his side, surrounded by sycophants and nursing a large whiskey. A Florence Nightingale of the single malt. He was talking about hurricanes.</p>\r\n<p>“It’s no wonder Hurricane <em>Alan </em>caused so much damage. A wind with a crap name obviously has something to <em>prove</em>. Hurricane Robert – fine. Probably rattles a few roofs. Hurricane Alice – expends its fury at sea. But can you imagine Hurricane Darren? Or tropical storm Kylie? That’s when you run for the cellar. Fear an anticyclone with a chip on its shoulder!”</p>\r\n<p>People sitting round his wheelchair proposed other names for storms, and laughed as he assessed their ferocity. “Hurricane Arnold? A closet queer. Expect gusty wind and localised flooding”. As the sun set over the Caribbean, the one English pub on the island was full of uncontrived mirth. Choosing a lull in the chatter, occasioned by one of his coughing fits, I suggested the name ‘Percy’. After all, that is what he’d christened me.</p>\r\n<p>A dissolute life led to the full. That is how he’d like to be remembered, and the first part is literally true. He was soluble in anything. He certainly managed to wow my mother and her crazy family for a couple of years, and even though she hated him for the rest of her life, you could tell that all her attempts to love anyone else were futile. She certainly never remarried, and nor (as far as I know) did she ever seek a divorce.</p>\r\n<p>So he started off Hurricane Percy with a huge pompous thunderstorm, but then he had the decency to stop mid-sentence when he recognised who I must be, and to the obvious astonishment of his woman and his disciples I wheeled him outside and sat on a bench next to him.</p>\r\n<p>I had imagined this moment for most of my life, and yet neither of us could think of anything to say. He had coloured my life by his absence rather than his presence, and apart from a Y chromosome there was little I could think of that he’d actively done to influence me. I’d occasionally got a birthday present on April 25<sup>th</sup> – a hundred dollar bill twice and a backgammon board also twice – but I was born in September. That’s <em>his</em> birthday.</p>\r\n<p>He broke the ice by saying “I’m sorry”, and then “I’m dying”. Both turned out to be individually true, but at the time I thought they were connected. Actually, that was true too. He was truly sorry that he was dying.\r\n</p>\r\n\r\n<p>It’s always impossible to make amends. When something is done it’s done, and you can only compensate for it. But anyway, I felt no anger or resentment anymore, to this little charismatic man coughing himself to death. I suppose I just wanted to fix him in my mind, as a person not a caricature. People who don’t know their parents have trouble really knowing themselves.</p>\r\n<p>So after the pleasantries (Him, seriously: “I’m glad you’ve come. I really don’t have long now”, Me, breezily: “Well, who ever really knows how long they’ve got? I might get hit by a bus tomorrow!”) I started talking about myself, and strangely enough I found myself colouring in an entirely fictitious thirty years. It started off true – the bits that he might have known anyway – but my first from Cambridge, and the terrible things I’d seen as a war correspondent, and my subsequent divorce, were all made up. I still don’t know why I painted this exotic picture of myself. Perhaps this sort of mendacity is heritable.</p>\r\n<p>Maybe I wanted to excite envy or pity, but I saw neither. His amused, intelligent expression was punctuated twice by sobs which turned into coughs, but neither in sensible reaction to anything I’d just said. I was glad that I’d excited some form of emotion, even if it was only the sentimentality of the imminently extinguished, but it was evidently a private puzzle.</p>\r\n<p>I went inside to get two more whiskies, which I meanly put on his tab, but when I came back I found he was asleep. I studied him as I drank them both, and found myself rather admiring his leathery, laughed-in face. I fancied I could see mischief rather than malice, and keenness rather than cunning. Tomorrow I would ask him how they got there.</p>\r\n<p>I woke him up to tell him I was leaving, just as he’d apparently done to me more than three decades previously.</p>\r\n<p>The following day I found him sitting at exactly the same table, the only clue that he’d moved at all being the appearance of a tie round his neck. He laughed when I asked him if he’d been to church, and said “once”. This is what else he’d done since 1980:</p>\r\n<p>Run a bar in Morocco. Run a bar in Egypt. Worked for the Israeli intelligence service. Helped British intelligence during the handover of Sinai in 1982. Went to California in pursuit of a girl half his age. Lost the girl and bought a restaurant. Bought cocaine and lost the restaurant. Driven to Mexico. Driven to Guatemala. Met a girl. Opened a guest-house. Opened a second guest-house. Made a lot of money (“Did you get my birthday presents?”) and sired a son. Lost a lot of money and sired a daughter. He made it sound like they were connected.</p>\r\n<p>He’d then moved on again, this time to Honduras where he’d opened a dive-shop. Did I dive? No, I lied, petulantly. He obviously had a knack with tourists, for very soon he’d had enough money to buy a sailing boat and to open an underwater photography business as well. He’d sold the Scuba shop and sailed up through the Caribbean, where he’d gone back to his main love: running a bar. This, in fact, was his, and the underwater photography business now had branches from the Bay islands to Martinique.</p>\r\n<p>I must have looked surprised when he said this (and I’m afraid my mental cash-register made a loud ‘kerching’ noise), because he looked me square in the face, and with evident satisfaction said that yes, his children would be well looked-after when he was gone.</p>\r\n<p>It was obviously frustrating to be riddled with cancer at only 63, but he plainly looked back over his colourful life with pleasure. I was in a mellower mood, and we chatted about the islands (and his businesses). Suddenly something happened which tipped me out of my new-found hammock. A handsome boy of about 18 came outside and said “Dad, Maria phoned. She wants to stay over with one of her school friends tonight.”</p>\r\n<p><em>Que?</em> I’d automatically assumed that he’d abandoned his other offspring as well. And what about the women at his side last night? Seeing my astonishment he laughed and said “I’ll have been married for twenty years if I make it ‘til June the fourth.”</p>\r\n<p>But what about Penny? Somehow it made it easier to deal with him leaving my mother if he’d never settled with <em>anyone</em> for long, even though I suppose it made him less of a bastard as a person.</p>\r\n<p>“I loved your mother very much, and I hope you understand why I had to leave her.”</p>\r\n<p>I explained through gritted teeth that I’d never understood, and that even though I wasn’t old enough to remember him when he left, some part of me would never forgive him. Not just for leaving me without a father, but for breaking the kind, honest, vulnerable woman that had been my mother.</p>\r\n<p>The sadness I’d seen briefly yesterday returned to his brown eyes. “You mean she never told you?” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it away angrily.</p>\r\n<p>“Told me what?”</p>\r\n<p>“The reason I left. That I found out she’d had several affairs. Between a year and six months before you were born. That I’m not your father.”</p>\r\n<p>And because my mother is dead, and I would never know who my real father was, that is how I lost one bastard and discovered another.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F11%2Fbastard.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=Zv6nUFA_P_c:Mq6TuSj4LgE:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Quantifying informality in Latin America",
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"content" : "<p>In a series of <a href=\"http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/informality\">earlier posts</a>, I discussed a number of findings about informal (unregistered) firms in 6 African countries, including Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Madagascar and Mauritius. These findings were based on Informality Surveys collected by the <a href=\"http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/\">Enterprise Analysis Unit</a> to better understand the functioning of the informal sector—a large sector for which we have virtually no systematic data. Recent estimates suggest that for the world as a whole, between 22.5 and 34.5 percent of all economic activity occurs in the informal economy; for countries in the lowest quartile of GDP per capita, the estimates range between 29 and 57 percent (<a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1672174\">La Porta and Shleifer, 2008</a>).</p>\n<p>The Informality Surveys have now been expanded beyond Africa, covering the Latin American countries of Argentina and Peru. For data junkies like me, this is exciting for at least three reasons. First, comparing Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) provides insights into how the structure, conduct and performance of informal businesses vary with the level of economic development. Of course, region-specific factors other than the level of economic development that may affect informal firms will need to be carefully weeded out.</p>\n\n\n<p>Second, learning from our experience in Africa, the Informality Surveys in Latin America have been better designed to allow for a comparison of informal businesses across more and less developed regions within Argentina and Peru. For this reason, the sample size of the surveys has been greatly increased from the Africa surveys. Comparison between firms within a country is attractive because this approach removes confounding country-level factors like national economic policies and culture.</p>\n<p>Third, to the surprise of many, the survey of formal (registered) firms in LAC conducted by the <a href=\"http://www.enterprisesurveys.org/\">Enterprise Analysis Unit</a> in 2006 revealed that a large proportion of firms reported <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1007349\">competition from informal firms</a> as a serious problem for their business—a strong indicator that informality is a serious (though neglected) issue in the LAC region. This naturally whets my appetite to see exactly what the large chunk of informal firms in LAC look like and how different they are from their formal counterparts.</p>\n<p>As of now, the Informality Surveys for two Latin American countries are going through their final quality control checks and should be made public soon. Once the data junkies have had a chance to sort through the data, I’ll be reporting back here on the PSD blog with these new findings.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=3qOgaeR09r8:sPZdXv4pK4w:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=3qOgaeR09r8:sPZdXv4pK4w:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?i=3qOgaeR09r8:sPZdXv4pK4w:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=3qOgaeR09r8:sPZdXv4pK4w:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?a=3qOgaeR09r8:sPZdXv4pK4w:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/PSDBlog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PSDBlog/~4/3qOgaeR09r8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "I’ve been ruminating for a few days on <a href=\"http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/11/neoliberal-economists-agonistes.html\">this post by Brad DeLong</a> defending Larry Summers. Here is Brad’s version: Summers (and Brad himself) welcomed the massive leverage taken on by the trading houses, since this would serve to shift money from the hands of risk averse small savers to large risk-accepting institutions. Since returns to the first group are historically much lower than to the second, this should lead to faster economic growth. The unforeseen flaw proved to be the inability of the Fed, this time around, to clean up the mess when some of the risky bets soured. This was understandable, says Brad, because the Fed had been able to do the job repeatedly in the past. If the Fed had been able to tidy things up properly in 2007-08, we would have been able to return to a higher-risk, higher-growth trajectory, and all would have been well.<br><br>In order to understand the deeper assumptions on which Brad’s argument depends, and to see why it should be called a “finance perspective”, we need to deconstruct this crucial word, risk.<br><span><br>Risk, as Brad and Larry see it, is about the variability of returns, the building block of modern financial models. With more variability comes an increased likelihood of episodes in which losses are bunched, so it is necessary to have a player, like the Fed, who can steer us through them. Otherwise, there is little social cost (as opposed to the private costs of the liquidity-constrained) to shifting the allocation of investable funds from the those with a low tolerance for beta to those with a high tolerance.<br><br>This would be a reasonable assessment, if the risk Brad refers to is the risk that brought down the global economy, but it wasn’t. The financial crisis that triggered the crash was not the result of a random stochastic swing, or not primarily. It was due to the accumulation of multiple risks that are real and visible, although not present in financial models. What were they?<br><br>In no particular order, here are a few:<br><br>1. Global systemic risk (aka global imbalances). Huge, persistent current account deficits were financed by unsustainable accumulations of debt, not only in the US but also in the peripheral European countries that are now under the gun. Since the debts are denominated in reserve currencies (dollars and euros), they did not trigger forex crises, which might have relieved them, if in a disorderly way. Instead, the process continued until the borrowers were simply unable to service, once the bubble dynamics (refinance through asset appreciation) came to a sudden stop.<br><br>2. Bubble dynamics. Housing bubbles inflated in the deficit countries in broad daylight. It should have been obvious that when the bubbles popped, a large amount of paper would have to be repriced, and this in turn posed risks for financial institutions. What we didn’t realize until too late was that a mountain of derivatives had been built on top of the original bubble-prone assets, and that they had infiltrated portfolios everywhere.<br><br>3. Institutional failure. The current crisis has exposed shoddy behavior in all corners of the system. Mortgage originators threw out all standards and saddled vulnerable borrowers, disproportionately minority, with unserviceable debts. They misrepresented the assets they transferred to the banks, and the banks didn’t care, because they were packaging them to sell. Rating agencies didn’t care. Regulators didn’t care. Cynicism was universal. One of the eternal lessons of markets—all markets—is that the unraveling of behavioral standards is a significant risk whenever the financial returns to deception are large and the institutions of monitoring and control are weak.<br><br>4. Distributional effects. During the era of de facto deregulation, the US financial sector metastasized and raked in half of all corporate profits. On the eve of the crash, the average compensation for workers—all of them—in this sector had reached $100,000, and this does not include bonuses, which were estimated to average $200,000 each (although not all employees received them). In other words, the financial sector alone accounted for a noticeable portion of the overall increase in income inequality, which in turn caused many hard-pressed households to substitute credit for income in order to maintain living standards. The gross inequalities of the last few decades—megaprofits for a few and stagnation for the many—have been risky.<br><br>These risks, in conjunction with excessive leverage in the financial sector, crashed the economy. Most of them, however, play no role in the category of “risk” as it appears in financial models. What’s going on here?<br><br>In my opinion, this leads us to a deeper, cultural level. Risk in its narrow financial sense is abstract and disembodied. It pertains to no specific industry, practice or moment in history. It has no particular context; it applies to every activity in general and none in particular. In other words, it is a typical product of the information revolution of the twentieth century, the intellectual shift that gave us digital communications, genetic sequencing, and, of course, the computer. It is based on the notion that standardized bits of information can be extracted from any actual entity or event, and that the manipulation of these bits can achieve almost any goal for the system from which they were extracted. A useful metaphor is the container revolution in shipping. The container is abstract and universal, the same unit no matter what or how much it holds. Container logistics is essentially unrelated to the specifics of who is shipping what. Financial flows are the containers of economics; it is the function of finance, as the sector that controls these containers, to regulate the entire system algorithmically.<br><br>This view of the world as being reducible to disembodied information is widespread among the highly educated, especially if they are conversant with digital technology. Actually, Brad puts it better than he realizes: “....the most powerful lobe of my brain is the one that is always running an instantiation of the Larry Summers thought emulation module on top of its native wetware code.” Exactly.<br><br>It is possible to be an adherent of the disembodied-information-school-of-almost-reality without being a believer in finance as the rational control center of a modern economy, but in practice the first eases the way toward the second. Why should we worry about whether a mortgage monger in Cleveland has fudged the paperwork on a house that’s been flipped to a laid-off machinist, when the whole system can be optimized by tweaking the way “risk” is priced and allocated by financial markets?<br><br>And that, of course, leads to the question about self-interest, which has also been part of the Summers story. What difference does it make that economists who touted the wonders of deregulated finance were also handsomely rewarded by the financiers? Surely they don’t tailor their economic views to their bank accounts, do they?<br><br>My guess is that Summers, like the others who cashed in during the boom (and may be re-cashing today), really, truly believes that the people who have made him rich are doing the Lord’s work. Finance, for him, remains the command center of economic life, and it is necessary that smart people operate these controls and are given the latitude to get the job done. As is usually the case with ideology, it isn’t possible to disentangle the intellectual sources of belief from those of expediency.<br><br>As for the rest of us, I hope we realize that a principal goal of economic reform should be to shrink finance. There should be a much smaller financial sector, and it should make a lot less money. Its size and wealth are out of all proportion to its actual contribution to the actual economies we inhabit. This is not a “luddite” call to eliminate sophisticated methods of pricing assets and moving money. A dynamic economy depends, as it always has, on the ability to move resources from where they are earned to where they are needed. But return once again to the container revolution: it has vastly improved shipping, but shipping (fortunately) remains a small part of overall economic life. Most of the employment and earnings belong to those who make or sell stuff, if not in the most equitable way, and the folks who move it from point A to point B are a small part of the story.</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4900303239154048192-2547520686100845630?l=econospeak.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Bill Keegan, the <em>Observer</em>’s economics commentator, tells a <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/14/william-keegan-just-like-the-1980s\">nice story</a> about how the Labour Leader, Michael Foot, lampooned Sir Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher’s policy guru, in the early 1980s. Foot, says Keegan, gave</p>\n<blockquote><p>a virtuoso display in a speech which had both sides of the Commons in stitches. He was referring to Sir Keith Joseph, who had played the role of John the Baptist to Thatcher. Foot was speaking when, as now, the Conservatives were conducting a frontal assault on the fabric of British society. He had long tried to recall, said Foot, of whom the right honourable gentleman (Joseph) reminded him. It had suddenly come to him: in his youth, Foot had gone to the Palace Theatre in Plymouth on Saturday nights, where a “magician-conjuror” used to take a gold watch from a member of the audience, wrap it in a red handkerchief, and smash it “to smithereens”. Then, while the audience sat there in suspense, a puzzled look would come over his countenance, and he would say: “I’m very sorry – I’ve forgotten the rest of the trick.” Foot concluded: “That’s the situation of the government.”</p>\n<p>Well, I suspect that is also the position of the present government. Thatcher at least had the excuse of fighting double-digit inflation. This government has invented an excuse – namely that the cuts are required to avoid the treatment that the bond markets have been meting out to Greece, Ireland and Portugal.</p>\n</blockquote>"
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"title" : "West Africa: 'Raped in Guinea, Then Raped Again in Senegal'",
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"content" : "<div><p>I have heard it said that there are now as many semiconductor chips on the planet as grains of rice. It is an arresting thought. And as I take my technical interests towards open source software, cloud and devops, I am breathing a whole new gulp of oxygen in what goes on in the state of the art. Take <a href=\"http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pathelland/archive/2009/11/02/trip-report-hpts-high-performance-transaction-systems-workshop-part-1-of-the-trip-report.aspx\">these guys for example</a>. </p>\n<p>There are several ideas behind the speculation I'm about to lay down. The first is based on this reality. The computer sector is outperforming the rest of the economy by leaps and bounds. It's not only doing well, it's doing very well. Somewhere over at TableauPublic, which I can't find and has been making me leave this draft in Park for too long, is a set of charts that show which companies have cash and which have debt. When you look at companies like General Electric it's downright scary. When you look at companies like Apple, they seem to do no wrong. Times change but what if the double dip comes and times get desperate?</p>\n<p>Over the long term, there doesn't seem to be any end to the number of excellent and productive ideas that have always been basic to IT. And it gets easier to see them become reality. Back just 10 years ago, I couldn't even imagine today's future and I'm in the industry. Everyone was saying 'the last mile' could not be overcome - that is fiber to the home. Everyone was saying that video on demand was impossible. Now Netflix is bigger than Blockbuster. People were trying and failing. After the dot com bubble, nobody had any idea what to do. The idea the Amazon would do what it has done with EC2 was inconceivable by most of us. When Microsoft was forced to separate IE from Windows and allow other browsers in, they speculated that a company like Netscape would take market share by doing things just through the browser, but nobody dreamed that Google would become what it is. In the year 2000 only the geekiest of us had MP3s and the consensus was that nobody could break the hammerlock of DRM. Now Apple runs a DRM free universe of music on demand. Moore's law has ten more years, at least. That means that the iPhone 7 might have a terabyte on it. </p>\n<p>All of those innovations are extra cool, but the fundamental economics of IT can still be expressed in very simple ways. The key term is 'disintermediation'. What will computer and communications tech allow people to do for themselves that they used to need third parties for? To jump the gun a bit, I will suggest banking, and when that happens ohh doctor!</p>\n<p>First off, the fundamental thing that IT gives is the ability to overcome time and distance. It enables human intercommunications on levels never achieved in the history of mankind. In and of itself, this is an economy pulled out of a hat. Without disintermediating planes, trains and automobiles, there are new ways that people interact that make IT a non-zero sum game. Look at a movie from the 80s and find all of the plot holes and crazy situations that could have been obviated by today's cell phone networks and GPS. </p>\n<p>Whenever I hear it said that reading and writing online saves a tree, I also know that it saves oil and electricity. What people tend to forget is that computing owes its very existence to the ability to engineer devices that sense very minute changes in electrical state. IT is energy efficient by definition.</p>\n<p>What's happening to crowds these days is something very unusual. People have their own networks, and communicating with them and their paths makes an extraordinary difference in attention and focus. Many people may not quite know what to think about virtual friends, but the opportunity to have multiple online networks is a new social skill. Your telepresence will be a bigger status symbol than your car. The hardware and networks into your home will be more important than your lawn. For those of us in the business, that future is now. </p>\n<p>Let me ask you. Do you remember the classified ads? </p>\n<p>Newspapers and broadcast TV are being redefined. You might laugh about Hulu today, but people laughed at Tivo five years ago. If you think Apple TV is important now, wait until film is completely passe. What's happening on the edges of digital networks is critical. Devices like the <a href=\"http://cobb.typepad.com/cobb/www.red.com\">Red camera</a> system and the iPhone are changing everything. Given what I know about the infrastructure that is coming, YouTube and Facebook and eBay are just the beginning. </p>\n<p>I think that in the not too distant future, much of banking is going turned on its head. If you think about banking as a collection of discrete trusted financial transactions, there are many classes of these things that can be disintermediated from the banks of today. It's already happening at <a href=\"https://squareup.com/\">Square</a>. And look at what people are doing for themselves at <a href=\"http://www.prosper.com/\">Prosper</a>. </p>\n<p>Back in 1996, I was thinking about the cloud before it had such a name. In my conception, I couldn't imagine that people would trust ISPs to retain their digital assets. So I imagined that only banks would have the financial ability and trust. Now Google does it for free, and Backblaze does it for $50 a year. When you accumulate about 10TB of digital assets, you're going to have to trust people too, and they will be a different set of names. Let us not forget that when I started out in this business, corporate managers would not *think* of using computer systems to transact trusted financial matters. The idea of a manager approving an expense reimbursement without physically touching a receipt was unthinkable in 1990. Now think about Western Union, and money orders. That's a shrinking business. </p>\n<p>In short, there are more and more ways the American economy is going digital, and there are fewer and fewer barriers. Young entrepreneurs are building software systems that disintermediate back office protocols. Every workflow in every business is being optimized by IT - it may be some time before you don't have to go to the DMV to renew your license, but I bet you a team of 10 people could build the system in six months. </p>\n<p>White collar and intellective work is changing. Permanently. That is going to have a tremendous positive effect on the energy efficiency of the American economy. In education, in the professions, in business, finance, banking, insurance, medicine, law, publishing, music, film and all the visual arts.</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/BWZR/~4/Vd3s94eKEbs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "Nigeria: Remembering an Activist, Fifteen Years After his Execution",
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"content" : "<p><span>By <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/eremipagamo-amabebe/\" title=\"View all posts by Eremipagamo Amabebe\">Eremipagamo Amabebe</a></span> \n</p><p>On November 10th, fifteen years ago, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa#cite_note-2\">Ken Saro-Wiwa</a>, a prominent activist and outspoken critic of the oil industry in Nigeria, was executed along with eight of his associates. Saro-Wiwa was known throughout the world for his nonviolent activism on behalf of the Niger Delta, a region <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/06/26/worldwide-the-oil-spills-that-dont-make-the-news/\">devastated by the by the oil industry</a>. He was a hero for many Nigerians, and his execution inflamed the international community against the notoriously authoritarian regime of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sani_Abacha\">Sani Abacha </a>and the practices of Royal Dutch Shell.</p>\n<p>Saro-Wiwa and his associates, dubbed the ‘Ogoni nine', were accused in the murder of four chiefs, members of a rival faction in the organization that advocated for their home region, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogoni_people\">Ogoniland</a>. Saro-Wiwa and the eight other leaders of the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Survival_of_the_Ogoni_People\">Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People</a> were tried by a special military tribunal convened by the Abacha regime, a tribunal which was perceived as being so corrupt that <a href=\"http://www.globalgovernancewatch.org/ngo_watch/seeds-of-ngo-activism-shell-capitulates-in-sarowiwa-case\">nearly all the defense lawyers on the case resigned in protest</a> (witnesses in the trial later admitted to being bribed to give false testimony). Nevertheless, the nine were convicted and sentenced to death; despite international outcry, shortly after the conviction they were hung.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.blacklooks.org/2010/11/creation-myths-remembering-ken-saro-wiwa/\">Sokari</a> at <em>Blacklooks</em> remembers the day Saro-Wiwa was executed:</p>\n<blockquote><p>I still remember the day, a Friday. The immediate week before the execution there was a scramble by heads of states, religious leaders, human rights organizations and individuals to try to prevent the hanging by appealing to General Abacha. Right until the very moment we all persuaded ourselves it would not happen. On the Saturday morning I remember clearly lying in bed staring at the ceiling when the phone rang. It was a call from a relative in Port Harcourt telling me what I already knew but was now confirmed. Eight members of MOSOP, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Barinem Kiobel, Fexlix Nuate, John Kpuinen, Daniel Gbokoo, Baribor Bera, Nordu Eawo, Saturday Doobe, Paul Levura had been executed.</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.mynewhitmanwrites.com/2010/11/remembering-ken-saro-wiwa.html\">Myrne Whitman</a> writes of Saro-Wiwa's influence on her:</p>\n<blockquote><p>[Sara-Wiwa's writing] made references to the abuse he saw around him, as the oil companies took riches from beneath the soil of Ogoni land, and in return left them polluted and unusable. The[y] fed into my world view of how the world worked, and why I needed to tell my own story however I could.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Writing on the <em>NigeriansTalk</em> blog, <a href=\"http://nigerianstalk.org/2010/11/10/remembering-ken/#respond\">Temie Giwa</a> remembers Saro-Wiwa:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Ken Saro Wiwa has been my hero for as long as I can remember… I am in awe of his passion and commitment to his people. His bravery in fighting, even though he predicted his death two years before, forces me to attempt to live a life of service and to not be afraid. His commitment to literature, the exacting world of satire, and his passion for business are all concepts I hope to emulate.</p></blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>He was a man that stood for his principles. He hated war but he waged it against those who exploited his people. He was a peaceful man who died for a terrible crime he did not commit. He was a product of the best that there is in the Nigerian spirit and for that I have hope for our nation.</p></blockquote>\n<p>In the wake of the November 10th execution, the families of the Ogoni nine <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/27/ken-saro-wiwa-shell-oil\">brought a suit against Shell</a>, the primary oil company operating in the region. They accused the multinational of crimes against humanity, alleging Shell's complicity in torture, shootings, illegal detention and other abuses carried out by the Abacha regime. In June 2009, fourteen years after the execution, the suit was <a href=\"http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-09/world/saro-wiwa.transcript_1_ken-saro-wiwa-ogoni-people-collective?_s=PM:WORLD\">settled</a> for $15.5 million, with Shell denying responsibility for the nine deaths. After the proceedings, the <em>Guardian</em> <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/09/shell-pr-saro-wiwa-nigeria\">reported on</a> classified documents which revealed Shell's PR strategy at the time of the executions: in a series of internal memos, the company outlines a plan to “create coalitions, isolate the opposition and shift the debate”, win over “middle of the road” activists to Shell's agenda, and cozy up to the press.</p>\n<p><strong>Visit the <a href=\"http://remembersarowiwa.com/\"><em>Remember Saro-Wiwa</em> website</a> to hear audio about the current situation in the Niger Delta, or visit the <a href=\"http://remembersarowiwa.com/\">MOSOP website</a> for further updates.</strong></p>"
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"content" : "<p>\nSince <a href=\"http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/spdy\">SPDY</a> has surfaced, one of the oft-repeated topics has been its use of TLS; namely that the SPDY guys have said that they’ll require all traffic to go over it. <a href=\"http://www.belshe.com/2010/07/21/fixing-a-hole-where-the-rain-gets-in-the-era-of-tls-everywhere/\">Mike Belshe dives into all of the details in a new blog entry</a>, but his summary is simple: “users want it.”\n</p><p>\nI don’t think it’s that simple.\n</p><h3>\nTrust\n</h3><p>\nI trust my ISP, to a point; I have a business relationship with them, so I don’t worry too much about them doing traffic analysis on what I surf and when I surf it. Likewise, they have a business relationship with their transit providers, and so on, right on to the Web sites I surf. Sure, it might go through a peering point or two, but the fact is that end to end, there is a series of trust relationships that are somewhat transitive; it’s how the Internet — a network of networks — works.\n</p><p>\nThese relationships work pretty well; the Internet has been routing around technical and not-so-technical problems for a long time now. And, looking at the threat profile of the modern Web, this is borne out; the vast majority of attacks on the Web are on the endpoints; either in the browser, on the OS, or on the server, or some combination of these. \n</p><p>\nLet’s replay that;<em> the vast majority of vulnerabilities and actual issues on the Web will not be improved one bit by requiring every Web site in the world to run TLS</em>.\n</p><p>\nI’m not saying man-in-the-middle attacks are non-existent, but changing the <strong>entire</strong> Web to run over SSL/TLS is a drastic move, and we need solid, well-defined motivation for making such a big change. People look at me like I’m crazy when I talk about having a Web without JavaScript, but I’d wager any amount of money it’s the lynchpin in several orders of magnitude more loss (whether you’re counting in dollars or units of personally identifying information) than man-in-the-middle attacks.\n</p><p>\nHowever, I can imagine there are a few situations where allowing the user, rather than the server, choose whether to use SSL might be helpful.\n</p><ol>\n<li>If I’m accessing the Web over an untrusted wireless connection, I probably don’t want even the more innocuous traffic overlooked; many sites still don’t use SSL, and their cookie-based authentication can be replayed.</li>\n<li>Likewise, if (in the words of <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103759/\">Bad Lieutenant’s</a> Harvey Keitel) I Do Bad Things — for whatever that means in my current context — I probably don’t want my neighbour / family / boss / government looking over my shoulder.</li>\n</ol><p>\nIn both of these cases, however, it’s less intrusive to establish a trust relationship with a third party — e.g., using a TLS-encapsulated HTTP proxy, or a full VPN — and use that service to avoid these issues. Both approaches are usable today.\n</p><p>\nThe fact that these services aren’t taking off like gangbusters tells me that Mike’s “the users want it” isn’t the whole story.\n</p><h3>\nThe Cost\n</h3><p>\nThe other half of the story is the lost opportunities of making TLS mandatory. \n</p><p>\nThe Web is built upon intermediation — whether it’s your ISP’s proxies, your IT department’s firewalls and virus checkers, Akamai’s massive farms of content servers, or the myriad other ways people use intermediation (yes, that’s a plug for <a href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/mnot/stupid-web-caching-tricks\">my latest talk</a>). SPDY is not intermediary-friendly for several reasons, but wrapping it all in mandatory TLS makes it a non-starter. Mike’s assertion that use of proxies is “easing” isn’t backed by any numbers that I’ve seen.\n</p><p>\nSecondly, the server-side cost of TLS is still an issue for some. Sure, if you’re Google or another large Web shop, you can afford the extra iron and the insane amount of tuning that’s necessary to make it work. If it is as easy as Mike paints it on the server side, and if the users want it, why is TLS still relatively rare on the Web?\n</p><p>\nMike also scoffs at those who point out that it’ll make debugging more difficult, brushing this concern aside as supporting the habits of “lazy developers.” I don’t think this is fair; the Web and the Internet took off at least in part because it was easy to debug. Those huge stacks of ISO specs didn’t win at least in part because they weren’t. Again, not everyone has the ability to hire Google rock star developers. \n</p>\n<p>Obviously, the characteristics of SPDY-over-TLS works really well for Google. However, the Web is not (yet) just Google, and any big change like this is going to affect a <em>lot</em> of people.</p>\n\n<h3>\nIs It Political?\n</h3><p>\nTo me, requiring TLS in an application protocol feels like a political decision, not a technical one. Good protocols are factored out so that they don’t unnecessarily tie together requirements, overheads and complexity. “Small Pieces Loosely Joined” isn’t just a saying, it’s arguably how both Unix and the Internet were successfully built. \n</p><p>\nI’m quite sympathetic to arguments that government snooping and interference is bad — whether it’s American, Chinese or Australian — but protocols make very poor instruments of policy or revolution. Governments will work around them (either with the finesse of getting back doors in, or the brute force approach of blocking all encrypted traffic). \n</p><h3>\nCan we improve things? Sure.\n</h3><p>\nAll of this is not to say that we can’t make things better incrementally, without resorting to the all-or-nothing approach. Starting by make SSL/TLS better, along the lines that Mike and others have talked about, is a great start; when we do have to use it, it needs to be as easy as possible, both for the end user and the server side. \n</p><p>\nFirst, there’s a fair amount of current <a href=\"http://blog.jclark.com/2007/10/http-response-signing-strawman.html\">interest in</a> — and at least <a href=\"http://www.gtisc.gatech.edu/npsec09/papers/1569236031.pdf\">one group actively working on</a> — signing HTTP responses. If we can verify the integrity of the response body and headers with low overhead, a whole class of issues goes away without adversely affecting the Web. If it’s done correctly, you’ll be able to tell at a glance whether the content you’re looking at has been changed along the way, or cached outside of its stated policy.\n</p><p>\nSecond, for the cases when the user does want to opt into privacy, we need to make SSL proxies easier to use. \n</p><p>\nFinally, HTTP Authentication needs to be better. Not a big surprise, really, but Cookies are a very limited and tricky-to-get-right vessel for credentials. This isn’t an easy problem (mostly because once you start defining a new authentication scheme, you quickly find yourself boiling an ocean), but again I’d say it’s easier than requiring TLS for the entire Web.\n</p>"
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"content" : "Google Fellow Jeff Dean gave a talk at Stanford for the EE380 class with fascinating details on Google's systems and infrastructure. Krishna Sankar has a <a href=\"http://doubleclix.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/google-a-study-in-scalability-and-a-little-systems-horse-sense/\">good summary</a> along with a link to video (<a href=\"http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/101110-ee380-300.asx\">Windows Media</a>) of the talk.<br><br>Some fun statistics in there. Most amazing are the improvements in data processing that have gotten them to the point that, in May 2010, 4.4M MapReduce jobs consumed 39k machine years of computation and processed nearly an exabyte (1k petabytes) of data that month. Remarkable amount of data munching going on at Google.<br><br>The talk is an updated version of Jeff's other recent talks such as his <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/10/advice-from-google-on-large-distributed.html\">LADIS 2009 keynote</a>, <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeff-dean-keynote-at-wsdm-2009.html\">WSDM 2009 keynote</a>, and <a href=\"http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/10/challenges-from-large-scale-computing.html\">2008 UW CS lecture</a>.<br><br>[HT, <a href=\"http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/12/stuff-the-internet-says-on-scalability-for-november-12th-201.html\">High Scalability</a>, for the pointer to Krishna Sankar's notes]<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6569681-3133219409878345021?l=glinden.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Madness of Crowds: Sell-by-dates",
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"content" : "<p>My aunt Phoebe – bless her – is obsessed by sell-by dates. I say “bless her”, but really it is infuriating to watch her reverently examine the label on some perfectly edible packet of broccoli or bacon, and then ruthlessly consign it to the pedal bin. In vain do I remonstrate with her, pointing out that there are now two dates on each label – the “display until” and “use by” – and that while her Cheddar or chives may have passed the former they remain safely within the bounds of the latter. “Ooh,” she’ll say, shaking her snowy head. “You say that, but best be on the safe side . . .” Ker-chung!</p>\n<p>What makes Phoebe’s behaviour all the more deranging is that she grew up on a farm in the 1930s, drinking unpasteurised milk fresh from the cow and eating meat that was hung until it was as high as a . . . well, you all know what rotten meat smells like. I say to Phoebe: “Revered Aunt, surely with your upbringing you’re well placed to make your own judgement about what’s fit for human consumption, and don’t need to be a passive tool of this shamefully wasteful system?”</p>\n<p>And then I go on to explain how the entire food labelling protocol has evolved, not so much to guarantee the health of the consumer, but rather to maintain the stock control of the retailer. I point out that the “display by” label is there to ensure that perishable products are repeatedly moved to the front of the shelf, or rack, or the top of the gondola, so as to minimise costly wastage.</p>\n<p>The correct way of regarding sell-by dates, therefore, is as a form of temporal marginal preference enacted by the business upon the individual. In order to maximise my turnover, the supermarket thinks to itself, I will choose him rather than her, because he has troubled to look at the display-by label and acted accordingly. William Burroughs observed of heroin that it was a unique kind of product, because rather than it being sold to people, people were sold to it. But Burroughs was being disingenuous, and his characterisation was only of an extreme – and quasi-outlawed – form of late-capitalist consumerism.</p>\n<p>In truth, under conditions of optimal distribution, all people are sold to all products at both ends of the supply chain. Food producers are compelled to accept the enormous discounts imposed by the retailers’ de facto price cartels, while food consumers are driven to carry about sugar snap peas or sugar for a few days before discarding them. The entire point of the process is not to sustain the people, but to facilitate the viral spread of the products.</p>\n<p>“Don’t patronise me, young man!” my aunt will invariably say once I reach this point in my analysis. “You forget that I grew up during the Great Depression – and I know a thing or two about getting by on very little.” When she reacts like this, I’ve pretty much achieved what I was after: middle-aged men invariably bait older people so that we can fraudulently earn the ascription “young”. But while Aunt Phoebe may have witnessed the terrible consequences of speculative fever (and what is this particular madness, if not the human correlate of an asset bubble?), it hasn’t stopped her falling victim to all the delusions perpetrated by 21st-century retailing.</p>\n<p>So what, I hear you chide, should I do in order to avoid becoming the passive tool of some Parmesan? Are you saying I should wilfully ignore sell-by dates? Or that I should buy only stuff I find in the cut-price bin? To which my reply is: neither. On the contrary, what we should all do is only buy the stuff that’s at the back of the shelf, the rack, or the bottom of the gondola. This simple act, if undertaken by the masses, will completely banjax the system – in a matter of days the supermarkets’ stock-control systems will break down and they’ll be chock-full of rotting food.</p>\n<p>The “ker-chung!” of a cosmic pedal bin will awake us zombies from our merchandising fugue. No longer will we totter along the aisles, brainlessly checking sell-by dates. Within a matter of weeks, wholesale breakdown will have happened and the hegemony of the products will have collapsed. I like to think that I’ll be at Aunt Phoebe’s shoulder on that magnificent day when, once more, she finds herself standing in a street market, contemplating a rotten mangel-wurzel and jingling a few heavy copper coins in her palsied hand.</p>"
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"title" : "Rough draft poem: Document, what art thou?",
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"content" : "<em>I am the <a href=\"http://dbpedia.org/resource/Data\">Data</a> Container, Disseminator, and Canvas.<br>\n\nI came to be when the cognitive skills of mankind deemed oral history inadequate.<br>\n\nI am transcendent, I take many forms, but my core purpose is constant - Container, Disseminator, and Canvas.<br>\n\nI am dexterous, so I can be blank, partitioned horizontally, horizontally and vertically, and if you get moi excited and I'll show you fractals.<br>\n\nI am accessible in a number of ways, across a plethora of media.<br>\n\nI am loose, so you can access my content too.<br>\n\nI am loose in a cool way, so you can refer to moi independent of my content.<br>\n\nI am cool in a loose way, so you can refer to my content independent of moi.<br>\n\nI am even cool and loose enough to let you figure out stuff from my content including how its totally distinct from moi.<br>\n\n<strong>But...</strong>\n<br>\n\nI am possessive about my coolness, so all Containment, Dissemination, and Canvas requirements must first call upon moi, wherever I might be.<br>\n\n<strong>So...</strong>\n<br>\n\nIf you postulate about my demise or irrelevance, across any medium, I will punish you with confusion!<br>\n\n<strong>Remember...</strong>\n<br>\n\nI just told you who I am. <br>\n\n\n<strong>Lesson to be learned..</strong>\n<br>\n\nWhen something tells you what it is, and it is as powerful as I, best you believe it.<br>\n\nBTW -- I am Okay with HTTP response code 200 OK :-)\n</em>"
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"title" : "The inhumanity of humanitarian war aid",
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"content" : "The conventional wisdom was that Sierra Leone’s civil war had been pure insanity: tens of thousands dead, many more maimed or wounded, and half the population displaced—all for nothing. But [Dutch journalist Linda] Polman had heard it suggested that the R.U.F.’s rampages had followed from “a rational, calculated strategy.” The idea was that the extreme violence had been “a deliberate attempt to drive up the price of peace.” ... Addressing Polman as a stand-in for the international community, [the Sierra Leone rebel leader] elaborated, “You people looked the other way all those years. . . . There was nothing to stop for. Everything was broken, and you people weren’t here to fix it.”<br><br>In the end, he claimed, the R.U.F. had escalated the horror of the war (and provoked the government, too, to escalate it) by deploying special “cut-hands gangs” to lop off civilian limbs. “It was only when you saw ever more amputees that you started paying attention to our fate,” he said. “Without the amputee factor, you people wouldn’t have come.” The U.N.’s mission in Sierra Leone was per capita the most expensive humanitarian relief operation in the world at the time. The old rebel believed that, instead of being vilified for the mutilations, he and his comrades should be thanked for rescuing their country.<br><br>Is this true? Do doped-up maniacs really go a-maiming in order to increase their country’s appeal in the eyes of international aid donors? Does the modern humanitarian-aid industry help create the kind of misery it is supposed to redress? That is the central contention of Polman’s new book, “The Crisis Caravan: What’s Wrong with Humanitarian Aid?” (Metropolitan; $24), translated by the excellent Liz Waters. Three years after Polman’s visit to Makeni, the international Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Sierra Leone published testimony that described a meeting in the late nineteen-nineties at which rebels and government soldiers discussed their shared need for international attention. Amputations, they agreed, drew more press coverage than any other feature of the war. ...<br><br>“Yes, but, good grief, should we just do nothing at all then?” Max Chevalier, a sympathetic Dutchman who tended amputees in Freetown for the N.G.O. Handicap International, asked Polman. ... Polman insists that conscience compels us to consider that option.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">--Philip Gourevich, New Yorker, on <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/10/11/101011crat_atlarge_gourevitch?currentPage=all\">moral hazard created by good intentions</a></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8488318894246769506-4653797449717862783?l=jamesjchoi.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "IBM Bakes Analytics Into Lotus Connections 3.0",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"Lotus Connections\" src=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/lotus_connections_1110.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"148\"> <a href=\"http://ibm.com\">IBM</a>'s obsession with analytics made its way into social networking today with the announcement of <a href=\"http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/\">Lotus Connections</a> 3.0. New analytics driven features include recommendations of other users to connect with based on shared interests and content recommendations based on past actions. IBM also announced support for Android to compliment its existing iOS and Nokia S60 support.</p>\n<p align=\"right\"><em>Sponsor</em><br><a href=\"http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=22902&cb=22902\"><img src=\"http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14&cb=22902&n=22902\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n\n<p>Lotus Connections is IBM's internal social media suite and features profiles, blogs, wikis, bookmarking, status updates. We covered last year's launch of Lotus Connections 2.5 <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/08/lotus-connections-25-real-social-features.php\">here</a>. The suite is also available in a more limited <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/06/ibm-expands-its-saas-offerings-with-lotuslive-connections.php\">hosted SaaS version</a>.</p>\n\n<p>We first reported on IBM's analytics obsession <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/10/we-are-here-at-the.php\">just over a year ago</a>. We took a look at how IBM's business analytics technology differs from other vendors' approaches <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/10/ibm-still-gobbling-up-business.php\">here</a>. IBM seems to be concentrating its efforts on real-time analytics systems that can return information without being queried. Infoworld has great coverage of this <a href=\"http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/innovation-matters-jeff-jonas-connects-the-invisible-dots-842\">here</a>.</p>\n\n<p>IBM has been steadily increasing its intelligence and analytics holding. To cite just a few, the company purchased Cognos in 2007, <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/ibm-snatches-up-companies-left-and-right.php\">SPSS</a> last year, and <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/ibm-buys-real-time-analytics-company-coremetrics.php\">Coremetrics</a> and <a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">Netezza</a> this year.</p>\n\n<p>Effective analytics would certainly be one way to compete in an increasingly crowded enterprise social media marketplace. And considering its Coremetrics acquisition and <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/07/kicksapps-partners-with-ibm-to.php\">partnership</a> with <a href=\"http://kickapps.com\">KickApps</a>, it appears to be taking social CRM seriously. The obvious next step is to start stitching some of this stuff together.</p>\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/11/lotus-connections-analytics.php#comments-open\">Discuss</a></strong><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/bh8m03d07dnj95a0qa1ma5k32c/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Fenterprise%2F2010%2F11%2Flotus-connections-analytics.php\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:FFnlKYwJmN0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:Ij26kaj3iuU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:C2pbw5bZMiI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=hIG5fJSvfKY:MefesA2d9jE:OqabYuBsmOY\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/hIG5fJSvfKY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Massive Nollywood bust in Brooklyn",
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"content" : "<div><img src=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/files/nigeria_1_0.jpg\"></div><p>\nMy hometown is cracking down on pirated Nigerian films, the <i>New York Times </i><a href=\"http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/Alvaro%20Uribe%20subpoenaed%20in%20U.S.%20death%20squad%20lawsuit\">reports</a>: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tThis week, officials seized more than 10,000 counterfeit DVDs from nine\n\tstores in Brooklyn in what prosecutors and representatives of the\n\tNigerian film industry said would be a serious effort to regulate the\n\ttrade of Nigerian films in the United States. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tCalling the bootleggers "parasitic crooks," the Brooklyn district attorney, <span>Charles J. Hynes</span>, promised Thursday that "people will go to jail," though his office announced no arrests. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tThe Nigerian film representatives said Brooklyn had become one of the\n\tlargest Nollywood audiences outside of Africa, with the films becoming\n\tpopular not just among African immigrants, but also among\n\tAfrican-Americans and people from the Caribbean.[…]\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tBehind Mr. Hynes were several people who had reason to be pleased by\n\tthe announcement, including Tony Abulu, the president of the United\n\tStates-based <a href=\"http://fanmovieland.com/\" title=\"Web page about the association.\">Filmmakers Association of Nigeria</a>, who said he had asked Mr. Hynes to act against the counterfeiters. \n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tPainting the piracy as an act of national theft, Mr. Abulu said, "The\n\tsweat and blood of Africa, both on the continent and in the U.S., will\n\tnot go to waste." He said that the police in the Bronx had also moved\n\tagainst counterfeiters, but not to the same extent. \n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nIn terms of sheer quantity, Nigeria<a href=\"http://www.un.org/apps//news/story.asp?NewsID=30707&Cr=nigeria&Cr1=\"> surpassed the United States</a> as the world's largest film producer last year, cranking out nearly 900 straight-to-video feature productions per year. Other accounts put the number <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/7226009\">even higher</a>. While the production quality still lags behind Bollywood and Hollywood, thanks to their snappy storytelling, univeral themes and high drama, these movies are clearly finding an international audience.\n</p>\n<p>\nOn the other hand, it's a little rich for Abulu to be getting on his high horse about the "sweat and blood of Africa" spilling out onto Flatbush Avenue given the high level of piracy back home in Nigeria. By some estimates, <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/node/7226009\">as much as half</a> of the industry's revenue is lost due to its poor distribution network. Nollywood's fans in Brooklyn are likely enjoying these films the same way audiences in Lagos do. \n</p>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seydou_Ke%C3%AFta_%28photographer%29\">Seydou Keïta</a>, self taught Malian portrait photographer, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/nevilletrickett/sets/72157618962638310/with/3576367940/\">shot some of the most renowned portraiture of 1940 - 1960's Bamakan society.</a><br><br> Seydou's portraits were produced as small photos that could be easily mailed back often to their families in rural Mali. After being noticed by a French photographer, he eventually became known internationally for his portraits with expositions at Centre Pompidou and the Gagosian Gallery.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/arts/22rips.html?_r=1\">NY Times on Keïta</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/fotografos/keita/\">Interview with Keïta</a><br>\n<br>\nMany of the photos played on the contrast in patterns of African clothing and backdrops of similar fabrics. This type of clothing is known as batik. It is the common style of clothing in West Africa, from Ghana to Senegal. But it actually came from Java, brought back to Africa by, amongst other things, by W. African soldiers who served in Indonesia between 1810 and 1862.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CB0QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpanafrican.com%2Fdocs%2Fvol2no5%2F2.5_African_Print.pdf&ei=rJnPTIy3KIiosAOY7vmFBA&usg=AFQjCNHL_s4yebgIb2Oko7N7mPTM0uuRwQ&sig2=A2dKP0BBDVy0R8HcGst08A\">The \"African Print\" Hoax: Machine Produced Textiles Jeopardize African Print Authenticity</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://2thewalls.com/post/91429763/dutch-wax-prints\">Veritable Wax Hollandais</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://thecraftbegins.com/wordpress/2010/02/05/african-wax-print-fabric/\">Batik kimonos</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.metafilter.com/87633/To-dye-for\">(previously)</a><br>\n<br>\nAnother Bamako photographer of note, shooting a bit later into the 60/70s Bamako is <a href=\"http://www.lensculture.com/sidibe.html?thisPic=100\">Malick Sidibé.</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/malick_sidibe.shtml\">Interview with Sidibé</a><br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuRIQebQOr0\">Short documentary</a><br>\n<br>\nLastly, Manu Dibango plays tribute to the West African photo studio and the pioneering work of artists like Keïta and Sidibé in his music video <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCg4giPYQoI\">\"Woa.\"</a><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=nDsZrLsm6Uk:rcGef-rQCIs:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=nDsZrLsm6Uk:rcGef-rQCIs:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Apple's responsibility as a superpower",
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"content" : "<p>Apple has decreed that <a href=\"http://daringfireball.net/2010/10/apple_no_longer_bundling_flash_with_mac_os_x\">Flash must die</a> and developers everywhere have shown up with shovels to dig its grave. Now, I’m no dear friend of Flash and I think the energy that is being poured into improving <span>HTML5</span> on account of its future demise is wonderful for the web. But that doesn’t make me feel any better about Apple’s demonstration of might.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>Today we cheer because Flash is every Real Web Developer™’s favorite piñata and what’s more fun than seeing a giant bat it around. It of course doesn’t help that Adobe is a big, stodgy software company with plenty of dysfunctional products. They play the role of a sympathetic victim poorly.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>My fear is that Apple will take the expedited death of Flash as an invitation to play king maker with increased abandon. Apple is fighting everyone on all fronts. They’re on the outs with Sony, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, and an endless list of other companies. What technology or technique is next on the hit list? (Think what happened or didn’t to Blue-ray, <span>USB3</span>, Java).</p>\n\n\n\t<p>The fact that this is just a general sense of unease about what Apple-the-superpower might do next is exactly why this is so harmful. Once you start flexing your muscles, everyone will be fearing they’re next.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?a=lP7LEUQqYoE:DLnBtB-o1dI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?a=lP7LEUQqYoE:DLnBtB-o1dI:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/37signals/beMH/~4/lP7LEUQqYoE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Ramblers Dance Band (Re-Up)",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IPE-dBSxpcY/R-z3nJQ_LfI/AAAAAAAABnw/IUueACbQZ_o/s1600-h/DSC01612.JPG\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IPE-dBSxpcY/R-z3nJQ_LfI/AAAAAAAABnw/IUueACbQZ_o/s400/DSC01612.JPG\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>A Highlife LP on the Decca label from West Africa recorded in 1969. <br><br>The sleeve notes say-<br><br>\"It is over a decade now since Decca started recording local artists in West Africa. During this stretch of time dance bands have sprouted and wilted away to die in the true tradition of musicla groups. Somehow one band has satyed around longer than most; it seems to have succeeded where others have failed. The Ramblers Dance Band, nearly eight years old, have introduced glamour to the West African Highlife scene. the band have provided it's dance fans with their highlife tunes, while for those who prefer to listen it has supplied the necessary innovations to the traditional forms.\"<br><br><br>\"From its early development in Ghana through the 1970s, Highlife was Africa's first big popular music trend. Evolving from the the music of society bands and military marching bands, Highlife music re-africanized these contemporary instrumental ensembles, adding local percussion, indigenous rhythms and crafting local lyrics around powerful local themes. Highlife, named for the lifestyle of the high society Africans who were its early patrons, was the first major popular music trend in West Africa. Some of Nigeria's early highlife luminaries Bobby Benson, Cardinal Rex Lawson, EC. Arinze, Stephen Amechi, Inyang Henshaw, Celestine Ukwu and many others are still revered to this day. Though highlife lost some of its national power during the Civil War years, Highlife Heavies like Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe and Oliver DeCoque remain powerful National forces. Recentely a young generation has worked to put highlife back on the map.\"<br><br>Discover more about Nigerian Highlife <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Nigeria\">HERE</a><br><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?zzmzmdwm2gg\">Ramblers Dance Band - Ekombi</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?wnz5mydzmy5\">Ramblers Dance Band - Agyanka Dabre</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?ygjziynkmgg\">Ramblers Dance Band - Ama Bonsu</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?ziiqjiwdj2u\">Ramblers Dance Band - Nyame Ne Nyhehyee</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?bzeuumq5zz2\">Ramblers Dance Band - Nyame Mbere</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?nn2nrmianyh\">Ramblers Dance Band - Alome</a><br><br><a href=\"http://www.mediafire.com/?wcyzqvivyjy\">Ramblers Dance Band - Knock On Wood</a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/15815883-2897757143425422241?l=bootsalesounds.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Eastern Europe gets its first black mayor",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5d41U9Qy-Xo/TMsbgpospfI/AAAAAAAAAew/MOYzk6yDACA/s1600/26-bossman_481499a.gif\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:320px;height:218px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5d41U9Qy-Xo/TMsbgpospfI/AAAAAAAAAew/MOYzk6yDACA/s320/26-bossman_481499a.gif\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><p> <span style=\"font-style:italic\">From </span><a style=\"font-style:italic\" href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/call-me-bossman-eastern-europe-gets-its-first-black-mayor-2116419.html\">The Independent</a><span style=\"font-style:italic\">, By Vesna Peric Zimonjic in Belgrade</span><br> </p> <div>A Ghanaian doctor dubbed \"the Slovenian Obama\" has been elected mayor of the tiny town of Piran, becoming the first black person to hold such an office in Eastern Europe.</div><div><div> <p>Dr Peter Bossman, 55, a member of the Social Democratic Party, narrowly won out over the incumbent with 51.4 per cent of the vote. He celebrated his victory with his wife Karmen and two daughters and promised his 18,000 constituents that he would improve their already high living standards and take action against the town's drug problems. He also promised to introduce electric cars. \"My victory shows a high level of democracy in Slovenia,\" Dr Bossman said, before waxing lyrical about his adopted homeland. </p><p>\"I fell in love with this country,\" he told Reuters. \"Slovenia is my home. Even my first impression of the country was good, it was so clean and green.\"</p> <p>That warmth was returned by many Slovenians, whose imaginations were captured by Dr Bossman's story. On local news sites people described the election as \"an important thing in the country\" and \"a very symbolic event\". \"We proved that tolerance does live here after all,\" a Facebook user said in his message to the new mayor. </p><p>But the medical doctor's route to Slovenia has not always been so blessed. Dr Bossman is the son of a personal friend and physician of the first leader of independent Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. He spent his childhood living in northern Africa, Switzerland and Great Britain, where his father helped found Ghanaian embassies. </p><p>\"I always knew I'd be a doctor, and I wanted to study in Britain, but things turned into different direction,\" he said in an interview with local media. </p><p>More than three decades ago, he was forced to leave Ghana after being persecuted by the military regime that overthrew Mr Nkrumah. The only place he could go to study was the former Yugoslavia. He hoped it would be Belgrade, but instead he was sent to the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana. He met his wife at the university and after graduation they moved to the coastal town of Piran. </p><p>Mr Bossman said that he had experienced problems because of the colour of his skin in the past, but that all that had changed over the last decade. </p><p>\"Now I have no problems at all,\" he said. \"I think people no longer see the colour of my skin when they look at me.\"</p><p>Mr Bossman's story coincides with a wider change in Slovenian attitudes to foreigners. Thousands of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks became illegal residents in 1992 when the government deleted 25,671 people from official records because they did not apply for citizenship. Many fought long legal battles to prove their right to remain in Slovenia, gravely tarnishing the country's image as an idyllic Alpine nation. But at last this year they have been able to regain their residency status.</p><p>But Mr Bossman insists that his political agenda is limited to the town of Piran. \"I'm happy to be the mayor, I live here,\" he said. \"I have no further political ambitions. I promised my patients I'll remain their doctor after the elections. My doors will be always open for them. Here on the coast, people do not look at the colour of my skin, they know what kind of man I am.\"</p></div></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/33635645-3315018523800146113?l=circa1957.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Name that Ware October 2010",
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"content" : "<p>By popular demand, the Ware for October 2010 is shown below:</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/29/us/20101030-PLANE-4.html\"><img src=\"http://bunniestudios.com/blog/images/ntw_october_10.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>You may already be familiar with the image. This was the circuit board attached to the bottom of a toner cartridge found in a “<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/29/us/20101030-PLANE-4.html\">suspicious package</a>” on a UPS plane earlier today. I’ve had several people write-in to request that I make this device the ware for the month to see what opinions readers have on the identity of the circuit board. The ten-second look at the board places it pretty solidly as a cell phone motherboard; there is a vibrator motor at the top left, customary RF lids to cover the radios, and a size and connector layout consistent with a low-end feature phone. </p>\n<p>I’m guessing some reader can probably ID this down to the make and model from this picture alone…</p>"
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"title" : "Pakistan floods: Forgotten... but not gone",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/91153?ns=guardian&pageName=Pakistan+floods%3A+Forgotten...+but+not+gone%3AArticle%3A1471548&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Pakistan+floods+2010+%28News%29%2CNatural+disasters+and+extreme+weather+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Mohammed+Hanif&c7=10-Oct-30&c8=1471548&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FPakistan+floods\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>When devastating floods hit Pakistan, the world rushed to help. But while the horror has slipped from our TV screens, millions remain stranded</p><p>Last month, in a camp set up for flood refugees outside Pakistan's southern city of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkur\" title=\"\">Sukkur</a>, a group of men and boys gathered around the medical tent complaining about the rising cases of stomach infections. "They give us food that's too spicy," they said.</p><p>\"What do they give you?\" I asked a young man.</p><p>\"Korma,\" he said. \"But they put too many spices in it. We don't like these spices.\"</p><p>A relief worker at the camp who overheard our conversation cursed under his breath. \"They get to eat korma every day and still they complain.\" The implication was clear: could they afford to eat korma before this flood made them homeless? Shouldn't they be grateful?</p><p>I heard a similar refrain later in the month when I tried to explain the scale of the devastation to a businessman friend in an area that had been spared by the floods. "Did the media ever report on how these people lived before the floods? They lived just like they are living now: on the road, without running water, without toilets."</p><p>It's not lack of sympathy, but lack of imagination. Most of the 20 million people affected by the worst floods in the country's history lived in abject poverty before, but they didn't live like this. They weren't homeless, chasing charity trucks on the country's highways. They had a roof over their heads. The reason we didn't see them on our television screens was because they were busy, eking out a living from the land and fussing over their buffalo, their goat, or a few chickens. I grew up in a village where a whole family could be raised – children sent to schools, new clothes bought once a year, daughters married off – with the income that a buffalo's milk brought in.</p><p>In the initial days of the floods, many rescue workers were angry and frustrated when people refused to be rescued without their cattle. Not because these animals were like family members, but because they were their only revenue stream, their life insurance and their children's future. This was the kind of poverty where people might get to eat korma only at weddings or their landlords' funerals, but they had some control over the combination of salt and chilli powder they put in their pots. It's called dignity.</p><p>A television journalist accompanying me on a visit to the flood relief camps spent a whole day trying to capture the lives of children in these camps. In the evening he told me that he felt disappointed. "All day I searched through my lens but their faces, their eyes, don't have the kind of desperation, the suffering, you see after a disaster of such magnitude." He said this like a committed professional who wasn't able to do his job properly. Maybe it wasn't just lack of empathy, I thought. It was a kind of emotional blindness caused by watching too much distant suffering on our television screens. In an era in which unmanned drones carry out Nintendo Wii-like wars and 16-year-old boys blow themselves up in mosques and shrines, we want our disasters neatly packaged. We expect our tragedies to look spectacular and last around five minutes, before we are regaled with a human interest story with an uplifting ending. There have been those, of course: <a href=\"http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/6508497-swimming-cow-saves-mistress-from-drowning-in-flood-waters\" title=\"\">a cow did save its owner's life</a>, and a woman gave <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2010/aug/27/pakistan-flooding\" title=\"\">birth on the roadside</a> before she was shifted to a camp and given lots of baby clothes. But 500,000 women are likely to give birth in similar conditions during the next six months, and seven million people are still without shelter, three months after the floods began.</p><p>Mostly what we see on our screens are millions of people living under a charpoy, the family bed, often the only household item they managed to salvage before water took everything away. We see them huddled around a makeshift stove, boiling rice, borrowing a pinch of salt from each other. Sometimes we see them muttering that it's Allah's will. Very occasionally, they are blocking a road to protest at the government's indifference. We see young mothers who have aged rapidly, herding their children to a lone hand pump, forcing them to take a shower. They have not had much training in how to look miserable for our TV cameras.</p><p>The list of what flood victims need to rebuild their lives is astonishingly short and inexpensive: seed for the next crop, fertilisers, some form of subsidy on electricity and irrigation water, and, if you want to be really generous, some financial help to rebuild their homes. The lucky ones were handed about £170 in cash after they were forced to return to their still-flooded homes. (\"Did they ever see so much cash in their lives?\") Many more have just given up and gone back to their muddy farms and collapsed houses.</p><p>Pakistan's government and its friends have failed these 20 million people. Saudi Arabia and the US, two of Pakistan's oldest and closest allies (and, just to remind ourselves, the countries at least partially responsible for Pakistan's many raging battles), have together promised Pakistan $600m in flood aid. Yet only this week they have agreed on a <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/us-saudi-arabia-arms-deal\" title=\"\">$60bn deal</a> for military hardware that includes, among other things, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_UH-60_Black_Hawk\" title=\"\">Black Hawks</a> and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Helicopters_MH-6_Little_Bird\" title=\"\">Little Birds</a>. You can't make korma with those.</p><p>During the first few weeks, the UN secretary general <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_Ki-moon\" title=\"\">Ban Ki-moon</a> called the flood a slow-moving tsunami. It might have disappeared from our TV screens, but it is still moving. What survived the flood will be destroyed by our collective lack of imagination and our shrinking attention span.</p><p>• Photographer Gideon Mendel travelled with <a href=\"http://www.actionaid.org.uk/102571/pakistan_floods_appeal.html\" title=\"\">ActionAid</a>. See his Pakistan film at <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/video\" title=\"\">guardian.co.uk/video</a>.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan-flood\">Pakistan floods</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/natural-disasters\">Natural disasters and extreme weather</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan\">Pakistan</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/mohammed-hanif\">Mohammed Hanif</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2010%2Foct%2F30%2Fpakistan-floods-aftermath\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<blockquote><p>\n<strong>Interview transcript: John Kufuor</strong><br>\nPublished: October 25 2010 21:18 | Last updated: October 25 2010 21:18</p>\n<p>John Kufuor, the Oxford-educated lawyer with nearly half a century’s experience in Ghana politics, left office last year after completing two terms as president – the constitutional limit. A rival party won power, and despite there being only a few thousands votes between the two main political parties, the transition went ahead smoothly. Yet although Mr Kufuor has won plaudits for his democratic record, his management of the country’s economy, which grew rapidly under his rule, has come under sustained attack from some quarters of the new administration. Notably, the criticism has touched on his stewardship of oil discoveries made first under his watch in 2007, and which have the potential to transform Ghana’s economy for better or worse. <strong>William Wallis,</strong> FT Africa editor caught up with Mr Kufuor in London recently to discuss his legacy and Ghana’s prospects as it awaits first oil on December 1st.</p></blockquote>\n<p>FT: I gather you are not very happy with the way things are going back home?</p>\n<p>JK: I feel saddened because in the 8 years I had as president I tried to give all I had to move Ghana forward. And truly when you look at the records, things moved steadily as never before since independence. I ended up very honourably expecting things to carry on smoothly. Unfortunately things haven’t worked out that way.</p>\n<p>FT: There is no great personal animosity between yourself and President Mills?</p>\n<p>JK: I don’t know of any. My predecessor (Jerry John Rawlings) during my 8 year tenure kept on insulting me throughout. But it was not like that between me and Professor Mills.</p>\n<p>FT: But Mills has not gone out of his way to attack you.</p>\n<p>JK: It is not with Mills. But the way things are happening, things are not friendly towards Kufuor.</p>\n<p>FT: But there are many people who think things were similar when you took over, that you went after President Rawlings, and you did not give him any credit for the progress that did take place during his long tenure?</p>\n<p>JK: They are only trying to give a dog a bad name. Did I arrest Rawlings?</p>\n<p>FT: No but some of his people were arrested.</p>\n<p>JK: Who are those people?</p>\n<p>FT: Tsatsu Tsikata (former head of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation) for example.</p>\n<p>JK: Please check the records. Let’s talk about happier things.</p>\n<p>FT: But is it not rather worrying in terms of the evolution of the political system, that there seems to be this tit for tat evolving between the main parties?</p>\n<p>JK: Please. I did not go after people …</p>\n<p>FT: Even so, people looking at Ghana, might be worried that the system has become vindictive, that the two main parties are fairly evenly split structurally but venomously opposed to each other not so much on issues but as a result of personalities.</p>\n<p>JK: We needn’t be so split. And truly I was hoping my tenure would be like a watershed divide from the earlier politics of coups, vindictiveness and confiscation of assets and detentions without trial. In my time during 8 years none of these things happened. When my term ended, and the votes were declared by the electorate, I obeyed. Even with some of my people questioning. But I said that was the constitution. If anyone felt aggrieved let them go to court.</p>\n<p>FT: Some people say this was because you preferred the idea of Professor Mills taking over than your own party candidate, Nana Akuffo Addo?</p>\n<p>JK: No. That is far from the truth. I did everything to support my candidate. But at the end of the day the electoral commission declared for Professor Mills so I handed over to Mills. You perhaps don’t want to remember but even before the third round of votes, I felt forced to make a statement that whomever the electoral commissioner would declare winner, I would hand over to in January. Is that a person that would subvert his own candidate? I just wanted the constitution to be respected.</p>\n<p>FT: Were you worried during that period? Because some of your own supporters have suggested there was the very real threat of a coup during that period.</p>\n<p>JK: The coup would have happened if I had ignored the electoral commission and declared an emergency. The time I made that statement we had only about ten days or so left to the constitutional deadline for transfer of power. We had gone to do that outstanding election that would have been decisive, to canvass for my candidates. Unfortunately I got there and Kofi Busia’s (former Prime minister 1969-72) family had gone to court seeking a restraint order against the electoral commission.</p>\n<p>Suppose I had sided with my side going to court to restrain the electoral commission it would have meant frustrating the electoral commission from holding the election and then we couldn’t have met the constitutional deadline of 7th January. So the only way for me to stay on would have been to declare a state of emergency. And on what basis? So I had to consider the whole thing. Then I said 7th of January I will hand over power to whoever the electoral commission announced. Anyone who felt aggrieved could go to court. So I drove back to Accra a distance of some 100 miles. That’s what happened. The implication was that I would be staging a coup.</p>\n<p>FT: The implication being that might prompt another kind of coup?</p>\n<p>JK: Well if you do it? I just didn’t feel there was justification for me to flout the electoral process.</p>\n<p>FT: Given how tight all this was how worrying was it for Ghana?</p>\n<p>JK: It was worrying for Ghana because it felt like the whole thing was hanging on a thread. To us before the election we felt by our track record it was clear people would return us. Then we saw this thing. So we were so startled. But what’s happened has happened.</p>\n<p>FT: Do you believe the election then was lost because of foul play?</p>\n<p>JK: If it was foul play then I would have been duty bound to say no.</p>\n<p>FT: But there was a bit of foul play on both sides?</p>\n<p>JK: Whatever it is the results did not justify my staying in power beyond January 7th.</p>\n<p>FT: Given that the stakes are now in some respects much higher in Ghana politics because of the oil, do you think the electoral system is sufficiently strong?</p>\n<p>JK: Before I stepped down as president in my last appearance of parliament, I didn’t think it was right for an electoral commissioner to be given security of tenure to hang on indefinitely. There are three of them who have been there since 1990.</p>\n<p>FT: Hasn’t that given them protection from political interference?</p>\n<p>JK: There is protection and protection. Can you imagine a match between Chelsea and Arsenal for example, being fixed with a permanent referee year in year out?</p>\n<p>FT: But if you compare Mr Afara-Gyan to electoral commissioners in other African countries who can be dismissed by the president …</p>\n<p>JK: No. No I am not going that way. I am not for presidents appointing the electoral commission. But I think the system should be ingenuous enough to evolve, so that the electoral commission as an institution should also feel accountable to the polity. Not only that I believe we have come to the stage all over the world where going biometric for voting and for the electoral register will help us a lot. There the fears of impersonation, people coming across borders to swell votes, would be addressed.</p>\n<p>FT: But that isn’t happening is it?</p>\n<p>JK: Well. We have over two years to go. We can introduce it and the outcomes of elections would be pure and everyone would be happy to live with it whether you won or you lost. It would be fair.</p>\n<p>FT: Why do you think your party did lose the election?</p>\n<p>JK: Democracy is difficult. And I would say the two main parties have their strongholds which seem equal in strength. My party any day with little effort might command something like 45 percent of the popular vote. The other party might come, if not equal, close to that. The votes in between that each side are playing for would be something like 10 to 15 percent. These people would be influenced by the performance of government and by campaign propaganda.</p>\n<p>FT: by real issues?</p>\n<p>JK: Well if you remember in our time petroleum prices jumped through the roof. Food prices went up. So the man caught in between will be looking for example at the ex pump price of kerosene. If he would be used to paying 20 cedis and suddenly it jumps to 30 cedis, then woe betide the president of the day. They will say this is an unfriendly government: it doesn’t think of the ordinary man. It will cost you votes. Then there are also the small parties and the swing of these parties which will depend on negotiations, accommodation and that sort of thing. When you look at the votes in 2008 elections. The first round my candidate led, needing only 23,000 votes to win outright in a voter population of 4.9m. The runner up was the current president.</p>\n<p>In the second round there was a swing and the smaller parties seemed to have shifted.</p>\n<p>FT: Did your party not lose the elections because in the last two or three years of your rule there was a marked deterioration in governance, and even in the last year …</p>\n<p>JK: That’s not true. That’s not true. Let me be specific. The last year why, because there was a budget overshoot, a fiscal deficit.</p>\n<p>FT: It was massive, unprecedented.</p>\n<p>JK: 14.5 percent? What was Britain’s overshoot?</p>\n<p>FT: But it was at a time that the gold price was soaring, cocoa prices were soaring</p>\n<p>JK: What was the gold price compared to the crude oil price shooting up? We had budgeted $60 a barrel only to find that the price had shot up to $147. The important thing in an election year is to be able to roam with the budget. That’s what my government was trying to do. So we capped when the crude oil price hit beyond $120 against the budgeted $60, we said everything more would be absorbed by the state. That’s where the trouble came. Then with the escalating crude oil prices came food price rises, sugar, rice, wheat and freight costs. So there was this knock on effect.</p>\n<p>FT: But you were also in fiscally expansionary mode ahead of the vote …</p>\n<p>JK: We didn’t do anything from the budget. This is why even now people refer to Ghana as a beacon of economic stability. Even now, we are very strict with the macro-economy. But that year, 2007, 2008 we were caught in this global thing, and there was no way we could escape except for the government to absorb, subsidizing things. We were very sure it was temporary, and we were also sure we were coming back to power and could correct it within the first year. And what with the credit worthiness, the oil thing had made such a big splash internationally, everyone was looking at Ghana. Investors were coming in.</p>\n<p>If you look at the cocoa sector for example we had the two biggest American processors building plants in Ghana, ADM and Cargyll. Cadburys had come back to Ghana. Nestle had moved headquarters from Cote d’Ivoire to Ghana. We were in the ascendancy. So we were very confident that by absorbing the destabilizing effect of the crude oil market, we were doing the right thing for the economy and for our people and also for our government to come back to power.</p>\n<p>FT: It is said you blew the proceeds of the $750m Eurobond you issued on absorbing the oil price rise.</p>\n<p>JK: That is the biggest, biggest lie. I believe the current government itself wrote to the IMF and World Bank confirming how the Eurobond was disbursed for the energy sector, for roads.</p>\n<p>FT: When I asked them they told me that a significant proportion of the proceeds went towards paying off debts at the Tema oil refinery.</p>\n<p>JK: Please. Is that not to do with the crude oil we refined? It is energy. Look when you are managing anything flexibility can be a virtue. What not to do is get too fixed and rigid. But I tell you I know that around $500m of the Eurobond was disbursed for the energy sector with all its ramifications. It could be the Tema refinery, it could be electricity with the thermal plants we had to install. And then the roads sector, and this had been ongoing. You know Accra, all the arterial roads leading to Accra have been tackled very seriously.</p>\n<p>FT: I have also looked at some of the energy projects from that time, for example the Balkan energy project …</p>\n<p>JK: Balkan Energy, are you talking about the barge? Do you know the history? They took a loan of $100m from Japan to build the barge in Italy in the 1990s where after it had been built it remained until we came to power 5 or 6 years later. We had to come and pay the demurrage and ship it to Ghana only to discover that even the pond it was supposed to stay in was plugged up. So we had to leave it at the naval base in Takoradi, for years while we went round doing the whole thing. By which time there was rust in the equipment, we had to deal with that. We do not accuse the people who did this whole thing, pretending irresponsibly that there was gas to fuel this thing when there was none. The propaganda is too much.</p>\n<p>FT: They were expecting the West Africa Gas Pipeline to begin supplies.</p>\n<p>JK: Who got the West Africa Gas Pipeline going? I did. I took a loan. It was part of my friendship with Obasanjo. The thing was on the drawing board from the 1990s but hadn’t seen the light of day. Why? Because Ghana couldn’t paid its share of the equity. And without Ghana paying the equity of something like $90m the partners just wouldn’t even start.</p>\n<p>FT: To go back to the barge. My understanding is that Balkan energy claims to have invested $100m in fixing up the barge. People at the VRA say it doesn’t look like that much has been spent. According to the contract they now pay a $10m annual fee to lease the barge, and bill the government something like $40m in return as a capacity charge.</p>\n<p>JK: But is it because they are producing the energy? Definitely this didn’t happen in my time.</p>\n<p>FT: But this is the terms of the contract which was concluded in your time. Plus the company gets to set the fuel price on top. By most standards this seems like a pretty ropey deal for Ghana.</p>\n<p>JK: I tell you the barge had been done in such a way it locked up capital. The previous government had borrowed on the pretext of having the energy to fuel it and for many years the thing was left in Italy with the interest accruing against Ghana and then demurrage. It was my government that brought it back to Ghana. When we brought it we knew there was no gas to fuel it so we were forced to use diesel, we tried to take it to the pond but the place was silted up.</p>\n<p>FT: Could we move onto the subject of Kosmos and EO?</p>\n<p>JK: Thank you for that. Because that is where I feel so saddened. For once I am almost tempted to believe it, when people say that oil finds are a curse, that there might be something in it. I don’t want to believe it yet.</p>\n<p>FT: Why are you so sad?</p>\n<p>JK: Before I came to power, I made a statement and it was captured on the front page of the Graphic. In 1999, 2000. I said I believed my party would win and come to power and in our tenure we will strike oil. I criticized the then government for failing to get oil because of the unfriendly atmosphere for the private sector that prevailed. They didn’t know how to bring the right people in. I made this statement because I had been travelling here and in the US. In the US I went to Houston. The friends of the party gave a big reception for me. It was there that I met some Ghanaians. And I challenged then. I said look here. Everyone says Houston is the oil capital. You are here, you are not helping to get some serious explorers from Ghana. We are coming to power in may time, we must strike oil. So whatever opportunities you have, bring the people for us to strike. And I was so worked up because I couldn’t understand why Nigeria to the east and Cote d’Ivoire to the west all had struck oil. And Ghana sat in between always moaning about poverty. Immediately I came to power I, in a way, restructured the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation.</p>\n<p>First I appointed a chairman who immediately set to work. But in ways I thought might not go to the target. So I shifted again and got a new team and it was this new team that made it its policy to promote the blocks. They went to Asia, Europe, American everywhere. They talked to the Chinese, CNOOC, to come.</p>\n<p>FT: At the time the oil price was fairly depressed, no?</p>\n<p>JK: That might be it. But you don’t take an exploration block today and tomorrow strike. It takes years. We invited the Indian national oil company. They also came and then went away. Before Kosmos was introduced by two Ghanaians. At that time there was no oil. We had come to meet Dana, a British company, which had a block for 5 or 7 years previously, I believe, but which just couldn’t raise the resources. They just couldn’t raise the resources to drill. Their term lapsed but we extended it for a year. Ennex came later. It was made up of the geologists and geophysicists who worked for Dana and Philips and Vanco. They knew the field. They must have felt it was there to find. They were just technical. To explore you needed huge resources and those they couldn’t raise.</p>\n<p>Their time was extended but then they gave up. But the people from Kosmos came … with financial resources. They were backed by Blackstone and Warburg Pincus.</p>\n<p>The attractive thing was that they were the first people to strike oil for Equatorial Guinea. And at that time I would have given my right arm for Ghana to strike oil. The Ghanaians brought these people with a new name.</p>\n<p>FT: These Ghanaians were the chairman of the ruling NPP party in the USA, and a party figure in Houston?</p>\n<p>JK: Well. Let me tell you. Before I came to power, I had gone there to Houston. That was I believe the first time I got talking to Owusu. People say Kufuor’s friend.</p>\n<p>FT: But Edusei was your friend?</p>\n<p>JK: Edusei was my chairman.</p>\n<p>FT: But also your friend of long date.</p>\n<p>JK: Well not only that. Don’t forget there was no oil. And Edusei I will tell you is a very proud professional running his own clinic in Washington and that sort of thing. He wasn’t a man of straw I picked to go and front. He was the chairman of my party in the whole of North America. When I went before I came to power he accompanied me everywhere. I went to Houston with him. And at this reception where I said I want us to strike oil, and I want them to help get us focussed explorers they were present. So he and Owusu brought Kosmos. I believe that must have been 2003/4. Immediately I came to power 2001…the North American party sent a petition signed by over 100 people that I should make Edusei ambassador in Washington. I turned him down. That is the truth.</p>\n<p>FT: But you offered him an ambassadorship in Malaysia?</p>\n<p>JK: He turned it down. He said he would rather stay to do his practise. I was embarrassed. Later a year or two later Switzerland became vacant and to assuage the wounded pride and all that I invited him to be Ghana’s ambassador in Switzerland. He was dragging his feet. But I told him of the attractions, Geneva, good schools for children. I sensed that if he wanted to be a diplomat that was the place to prepare him for the job.</p>\n<p>FT: But during that period when you appointed him he was already negotiating the Kosmos deal both with the government and the company.</p>\n<p>JK: No. It was after I had rejected him. O(wusu) was the commodities manager of Shell. He wasn’t a small man. So the two of them came and that made their presentation. It was all the more convincing because Owusu knew what he was about. In fact I learnt that before I came to power he was one of the people who came with Vanco. That had been a line of business for Owusu. And now with Edusei they came naturally I had to pay attention to them.</p>\n<p>FT: But the central allegation in the whole investigation, leaving aside the details, was that it was their connections, Edusei and Owusu, to you that enabled Kosmos to get a deal that is more favourable than others before (and after) them.</p>\n<p>JK: Let me show you a table of what transpired before my tenure.</p>\n<p>FT: I have looked at research by Wood Mackenzie. They estimate that the terms of the West Cape 3 points block compared to the terms of Deep water Tano will cost Ghana $3.8bn over the lifespan of the Jubilee field.</p>\n<p>JK: This is what happened in my tenure. There are 13 companies with blocks … Please, everything is here. Check the tables. The other thing you shouldn’t overlook, where Kosmos got the block there hadn’t been any 3d studies on the block. Unlike Tullow that took over from Dana where the 3d had been done. The GNPC made a point that whilst the royalty or whatever there was a point difference because Dana had done the basic work and Tullow was the beneficiary and for that could not be given the same duty or whatever as Kosmos, that was going to the extra cost of doing 3d.</p>\n<p>FT: What has consolidated suspicion in Ghana about that deal is that subsequent little stakes in the oil blocks also went to friends of yours. For example Nick Amartefei with the Aker block. Koffi Esson and Kodjo Alatta who were involved with the Tullow block.</p>\n<p>JK: Why are they not being probed?</p>\n<p>FT: They have been probed.</p>\n<p>JK: Kodjo Alatta is an 80 year old politician starting from Kwame Nkrumah’s time through Busia. We are very personal friends. He brought Kofi Esson and Tullow. Kofi Esson I never knew before. Kodjo Alatta I knew. He could walk to my house. He brought Kofi Esson and said they had British partners.</p>\n<p>My overriding concern was to get oil for Ghana. And if people I knew would bring them, why not? Tullow got its block and eventually struck and I then saw Kodjo Alatta didn’t even have a stake. Suppose it was my practise to benefit unduly from people introducing these companies and I did it with E and O. I would do it with Kodjo Alatta and Kofi Esson.</p>\n<p>FT: What about EO, there are suspicions that you have shares in EO?</p>\n<p>JK: What I am trying to tell you: If Kufuor would ask for shares with EO, he would ask for shares with Kodjo Alatta. Kufuor would ask for shares with Vittol. He would ask for shares with everybody.</p>\n<p>FT: The problem though for you now if you look at all these blocks they have people connected with you or your party, and it looks like you divvied up the oil among political cronies. And now that oil has been found, these blocks could deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to people connected with your party. Is it not understandable that the government that came in started having a look at this stuff?</p>\n<p>JK: Let them look. Because I perhaps I would also be looking. But I would not go disqualify or abrogate contracts that have been executed under the authority of parliament. I would never violate contracts.</p>\n<p>FT: Even if they are not in the interests of the country?</p>\n<p>JK: Otherwise you attack contracts and it would be illegal. Take them to court and prove their guilt. So why don’t they take them to court to establish that?</p>\n<p>FT: How do you get round this problem of perception that there are all these little stakes that could deliver lots of money … to people connected to you?</p>\n<p>JK: Have they delivered lots of money? Let me tell you again talking about whispers and perceptions. Vittol was a trader with the previous regime and was reputed to be one of the biggest oil traders with strong connections to the previous regime. They got a block in my tenure. They are there and I believe they also have struck gas in shallow waters. They are not my friends.</p>\n<p>FT: So you spread it around?</p>\n<p>JK: What I am trying to say whoever came with a viable plan, because due diligence was always done. We looked out for technical competence and financial capability. If you had these two things, our overriding concern was to get oil for Ghana. I didn’t go out and penalize anyone because of associations or perceptions or whispers which is what is happening now. That is the difference.</p>\n<p>FT: But somehow the perception has stuck of a period creeping cronyism.</p>\n<p>JK: No matter what. Look. You have heard of the executive jet Sarkozy helped me to get. What are they saying? Right now they are quiet and they have the plane. What about the Jubilee house (presidency building)? Anything that Kufuor did they want to tarnish. But if they had been careful not to use propaganda too much they would know that those things were being done for Ghana, for posterity. Kufuor’s term was up. Kufuor was never going to use that plane. He was never going to live in the Jubilee house. But see the venom with which they attack whatever Kufuor did. And that oil was struck by Kosmos after over 100 years of search. So naturally they thought that if Kufuor and his chairman and friend had got these people it means his party. Is this fair? Can we build a country on this basis?</p>\n<p>FT: In terms of perceptions, if you have got a big resource that has been discovered and it looks like people from only one group, ethnic or political, are profiting, it can be destabilising, no?</p>\n<p>JK: Who are the Ghanaians involved in Vanco? Are they related to Kufuor?</p>\n<p>FT: I believe the current managing director of GNPC was formerly involved with Vanco.</p>\n<p>JK: Whose friend is he? I am telling you, did I remove them? Now he is in the saddle does it mean that all the money is going to Tsatsu Tsikata (former head of GNPC) and his friends?</p>\n<p>FT: I have no idea. But this is what oil does, it divides people and gets them fighting.</p>\n<p>JK: That is why say now I am almost forced to believe that finding this thing might be a curse. As I have told you before I came to power I had told the world I would do everything to get oil for Ghana. Thank God I did and thank god Kosmos came with whatever recommendations and introductions of Owusu and Edusei. These are very serious people in their own right.</p>\n<p>FT: But strictly given that he was a party official the fact that he was awarded a stake in the oil block and paid by Kosmos …</p>\n<p>JK: Whatever stake Edusei has was from Kosmos, not government.</p>\n<p>FT: Can I just go back to that detail, because it is what triggered the investigation and triggered the due diligence done by Anadarko which was given to the Department of Justice in Washington. This raised a number of red flags. One of the reasons was that Dr Edusei was a party official who was named as an ambassador. The FCPA regulations in the US say that any payment or payment in kind to a party or government official (that could influence a contract allocation) constitutes a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practises Act.</p>\n<p>JK: Are you sure that there was something like a party official in this?</p>\n<p>FT: You told me yourself he was the chairman of the NPP in the USA?</p>\n<p>JK: No, but he was a party official not a government official.</p>\n<p>FT: Yes but in the FCPA regulations in the USA it says “party official or government official.”</p>\n<p>JK: The Department of Justice in Washington has investigated this matter at a cost of $12m over a year and has come out and said there is no substance to this. The DOJ is an American institution. If this body that holds authority to investigate corruption after a 2 year investigation says there is nothing to hold onto, who is anybody to still say now even the FCPA itself should be suspect. Aren’t we shifting the posts?</p>\n<p>FT: In terms of what has happened subsequently, this venomous dispute between Kosmos, Ghana and Exxon. Should Ghana have let this Exxon deal go ahead?</p>\n<p>JK: Please I haven’t been party to this. I have been saddened because the time that Ghana should have been euphoric and have carried on to attract more good will and investments too, it seems we have wasted this. We have got ourselves entangled in matters outside the shores and jurisdiction of our country. When you are having to tackle huge majors like ExxonMobil, you are a small country, up and coming with good prospects, I don’t think you should have gotten involved with that. We all have to pick our ways in this world. It is very complicated. My wish is that Ghana should have some peace so that the undoubted potentials would be worked on for the benefit of all the people. As it is people talk of surrogate relationships.</p>\n<p>FT: You mean geo-strategic battles?</p>\n<p>JK: Right now that doesn’t help. If it is not good to treat with one side, how good is it to treat with the other side? And why should this young and beautiful country be drawn in quarters that will be serving only the ends of vested interests?</p>\n<p>FT: Speaking about this geostrategic tussle that is happening, it looks like the current government on the rebound from the ExxonMobil dispute has been pinged over to the Beijing camp?</p>\n<p>JK: The reality of China is prevalent around the world and I do not know the details of the relationship that are now beginning to show. I am fine with Beijing, with India, with Japan, with America, with everybody. I believe that any government should operate from the base of trying to serve the interests for the benefit of the country it governs. I am not criticizing as I don’t know the details. But I hope it will be based on feasible studies and committed to projects and be transparent and accountable.</p>\n<p>FT: What do you think Ghanaians think of all this. Clearly there was some popular hostility to ExxonMobil. But I get the impression the common man in Accra who is seeing some of his business taken away by Chinese traders, and who have seen the collapse of the textile industry, is not necessarily very pro Chinese. In fact many Ghanaians seem pro American.</p>\n<p>JK: So what do we do? Going here is not good. Coming there is also difficult. Everything boils down to the government. Government has a duty to convince the people that it is out to serve their best interests whatever they do.</p>\n<p>FT: How good a job is the current government doing at that?</p>\n<p>JK: I am outside Ghana and I have advised myself not to sound critical of efforts back at home. Secondly, I am a human being and I may be rather biased. So these are things I want to be careful about.</p>\n<p>FT: But you said yourself you are saddened. Is this more because a company that came in during your tenure has had all these problems and is having a difficult time recouping its investment and leaving?</p>\n<p>JK: When Kosmos announced the find the whole country was jubilant especially when it came out that it was perhaps the single biggest find in the whole of Africa in ten years. So we all thought at long last.</p>\n<p>FT: Although you were very cautious at first.</p>\n<p>JK: I wouldn’t come out because I was in Busia’s government when there was the first discovery was made by Philips in 1971 and the minister rose showing a small bottle of oil. And we had come to Britain to talk about the debt review. Unfortunately the minister showed the bottle of oil, and immediately the creditors pulled out and said now you are oil rich. Within a few months the soldiers toppled our government and the oil never came.</p>\n<p>FT: Do you think there should have been a capital gains tax in place to tax companies such as Kosmos on the way out?</p>\n<p>JK: … going for capital gains tax you would be destroying the motivation of the investors. And don’t forget in our time we invited the Commonwealth office to send technocrats to advise us because of our anxiety to find people to explore. They sent people in 2003 and whatever we did was in line with the advice they gave. I believe the state was looking after itself very well in this. We handled the situation far better than all the noise you are hearing.</p>\n<p>FT: Do you think this whole dispute could cost the current government the (2012) election?</p>\n<p>JK: My overriding concern is that the people should be able to exercise their rights with the least corrupt practises and manipulation, and this is why I have recommended a biometric system.</p>\n<p>FT: How do you find the mood in Ghana at the moment? This is should be a hopeful time but in fact it seems rather poisonous?</p>\n<p>JK: I don’t know why things are as they are. There are unfounded allegations everywhere. If you put them before court they accuse you of spoiling the party.</p>\n<p>FT: Could you play a role in diffusing some of this tension?</p>\n<p>JK: If there is anything I could do to bring the tension and self doubt down I would do it. And to make Ghana happy. Because really we are entitled. Everything should be going in the right direction for us. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like that.</p>\n<p>FT: Do you think we should be worried then about Ghana?</p>\n<p>JK: Since you have declared yourself a friend of Ghana then you should be concerned … Left to the people of Ghana things should come together well to serve the entire community. The social policies, of education for all children at the expense of the state, national health insurance, the laying of the infrastructure, the rail system, all these things should come together to make the people happy.</p>\n<p>FT: And that is happening?</p>\n<p>JK: In my time we launched all those things and my hope was that the succeeding regime would follow up.</p>\n<p>FT: And are they?</p>\n<p>JK: I don’t want to talk. The policies seem to be in place. But management and implementation may be different … So these are the things that should be engaging us: spreading the wealth all over to make everybody hopeful. That should be the over riding preoccupation, not nit picking and casting mud all over the place. We should follow due process and the rule of law. That is very necessary.</p>\n<p>FT: What about plans under way and that you initiated to manage the revenues from the oil are spent?</p>\n<p>JK: We put the bill in. I believe the government withdrew it perhaps to reshape it but we are yet to get the law to set the framework of how to use the revenues dedicating some to social ends, like to support education healthcare infrastructure and grow industry. Because we want petrochemical industries. All these things. You have to also invest some funds for the future like is done in Norway.</p>\n<p>FT: It seems you feel rather hard done by President Kufuor, that you haven’t been given sufficient credit for the things you did in office and perhaps you should for example have won the Mo Ibrahim prize (for democratically elected presidents who rule wisely and leave office to elected successors)?</p>\n<p>JK: That is for them to decide. I set out from a young age to try to contribute to uplift my nation and I was privileged to have come as far I came to be president of Ghana. From my side of the political divide, you can imagine, since the time our founding father introduced party politics to Ghana in 1947, I was the one privileged to have brought the party to power two consecutive times, to have exited not through a coup d’etat but by constitutional means. My mentor, Busia, had only 2 years 3 months in spite of genuine efforts he made. Soldiers kicked us out. After him we remained in the wilderness from 1972 to 2001. And then the 8 year period we were in power the GDP of Ghana more than quadrupled. We didn’t have to confiscate anyone’s assets. Press freedom was the best the country had known.</p>\n<p>FT: Are assets being confiscated now?</p>\n<p>JK: I am talking of my time. Now they are grabbing cars! Don’t let me talk too much. People who were given plots of land in Accra to build, now they come and in spite of people having paid, now they come and take the land back. So I wonder what is happening.</p>\n<p>In my time. Cocoa for instance. 2001 we produced 370,000 tonnes. By the time I was leaving produce had doubled to over 700,000 tonnes and we were targeting 1m tonnes to compete with Cote d’Ivoire. The cocoa processors before we were exporting beans. Now we have Cargyll, Barry Callebaut, ADM, Cadburys we have all of them now in Ghana. And then the millennium challenge account we got from America, $547m of free money dedicated to modernizing and commercializing agriculture.</p>\n<p>FT: Is part of the reason you sound disappointed now, that anyone who has experienced the exhilaration of that office, who stops it will inevitably feel let down.</p>\n<p>JK: If where you left off you found whoever came would take it forward you would be a very proud man. But where instead of it being carried on people cast aspersions, and say look there is corruption here and corruption there. That word corruption is the most abused word. They say it, they allege it, you challenge. There is no proof and then they won’t leave you alone.</p>\n<p>Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.</p>"
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"content" : "<pre>Pricewatch.com currently (2010-10-26) lists a 2TB drive (“Seagate\nST32000542AS Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache\nSATA 3.0Gb/s”) for US$120 with free shipping in the US, and that\nappears to be a typical price. US$120 for two terabytes is\nUS$7.5 × 10⁻¹² per bit.\n\nI pay AR$100 per month for my internet connection here in Argentina;\nlast I checked, I could download stuff from abroad over it at 31\nkilobytes per second, although this varies considerably. AR$100 is\nabout US$25, so if I were downloading constantly at an average of 31\nkilobytes per second, I would be paying US$3.8 × 10⁻¹¹ per bit. In\npractice, I don’t download at full speed 24/7, not least because the\nlatency on the poorly-configured cable modem goes to hell, so I\nactually pay more for this.\n\nThe interesting point about the above is that, for me, downloading\nsome piece of data costs about five times more than buying disk space\nto store it. If I bought that 2TB drive, it would take me 24 months\nof constant full-speed downloading to fill it, which would cost\nUS$600.\n\nDownloading an ebook\n--------------------\n\nTo sharpen this point further, suppose I’m downloading a copy of Uncle\nTom’s Cabin from Manybooks.net. It takes me about a minute to\nnavigate the site to find and download the book, which is an\nopportunity cost of about US$2.00. The .mobi-format file is 657200\nbytes, which takes about 21 seconds to download ($0.0002), and until I\ndelete it, it occupies that amount of space ($0.00004). And reading\nit will take about four hours, an opportunity cost of about US$480.\n\nWhat about energy costs? I’m using a US$300 computer to do the\ndownloading, which is consuming about 100 watts. Straight-line\ndepreciation of the computer over three years yields a depreciation of\nUS$0.00026 during the 81 seconds, and 100 watts at a sort of average\nretail cost of electricity of US$0.10 per kilowatt-hour is US$0.00023.\n\n |---------------------+----------+---------+------------|\n | what | how much | of what | cost (US$) |\n |---------------------+----------+---------+------------|\n | navigate site | 1 | minute | 2.00 |\n | download file | 657200 | bytes | 0.0002 |\n | store file | 657200 | bytes | 0.00004 |\n | depreciate computer | 81 | seconds | 0.00026 |\n | 100 watts | 81 | seconds | 0.00023 |\n | read book | 4 | hours | 480.00 |\n |---------------------+----------+---------+------------|\n | total | | | 482.00073 |\n |---------------------+----------+---------+------------|\n\nBy comparison, a 384-page paper copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin costs\nUS$4.00 on Amazon.\n\nThe Amazon “Swindle” (so-called because even after you buy it, Amazon\nstill controls it) and similar devices have removed the need to\nconsume US$4 worth of paper (and US$40 or so worth of laser printer\ntime, at least at the rates charged around here) to read the book\ncomfortably, at least if you read substantially more than 30 books.\n(One downside of this is that Amazon, since they still control the\ndevice, can send your books to the memory hole if it decides it\ndoesn’t like them, as they famously did with copies of _1984_. For\nthe time being, they probably can’t do the same with copies on your\nhard disk.)\n\nFor non-laborers\n----------------\n\nFor people who can’t sell their time for money, there is a remarkable\nthing in the above. The cost of downloading the ebook, exclusive of\nthe cost to their time, is US$0.00073. This is a substantial\nreduction from the US$4.00000 cost of the paper copy. But it is only\navailable to them if they have a computing device like the Swindle or\nthe OLPC XO that can display the text to them comfortably.\n\nStraight-line depreciating a US$139 Swindle over three years yields a\ncost of US$0.02 for the four hours needed to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin,\nwhich swamps all the downloading costs. But it’s still substantially\nless than the US$4.00 for the paper copy.\n\nA device that cost an order of magnitude less --- perhaps with\ntext-to-speech --- would lower the effective cost to the non-laborer\nof reading ebooks by an order of magnitude.\n\nFor non-text\n------------\n\nThe above makes clear that the limiting factor in access to textual\ninformation is no longer the cost to transmit and store it; the costs\nof transmitting and storing it are about 30 times less than the\ndepreciation cost of displaying it, and about five orders of magnitude\nless than the opportunity cost of a laborer like me taking the time to\nenjoy the information. Other forms of information require many more\nbits per second, but they can be enjoyed at only a slightly higher\nsame cost per second, until you get to formats like JPEG, MP3, and\nMPEG.\n\nGeographical reach\n------------------\n\nThe curious inversion that I’m in, where it costs more to fill the\ndisk than to buy it, has not yet reached much of the US, and will take\neven longer to reach Japan and Korea. However, it has already reached\nmuch of the world, and there’s no reason to expect the exponential\ngrowth lines to fail to cross everywhere the way they’ve already\ncrossed here. Disks continue to halve their cost per bit every 15\nmonths, while internet bandwidth continues to halve its cost per bit\nevery 4 years or so.\n\nThere are places that pay even more than I do. New Zealanders tell me\nthat typical broadband there costs NZ$60 per month plus NZ$2/GB. If\nwe assume 30GB as typical, that adds up to NZ$4/GB, which is US$3/GB,\nor US$3.8 × 10⁻¹⁰ per bit, ten times as high as the price I pay.\n\nSome interesting corpus sizes\n-----------------------------\n\nWhat kinds of things could you fill a 2TB disk with?\n\n |--------------------------------------+--------+-----------------------|\n | what | size | contents |\n |--------------------------------------+--------+-----------------------|\n | English Wikipedia (compressed) | 6.1GB | 2 million articles |\n | (uncompressed) | 27GB | same |\n | (all historical revisions, 7-zipped) | 31GB | same, plus history |\n | Project Gutenberg April 2010 DVD | 7.8GB | 29500 published books |\n | Current Debian stable source (5.0.6) | 16.8GB | lots of free software |\n | Debian i386 binaries | 18.5GB | same, but compiled |\n |--------------------------------------+--------+-----------------------|\n\nAll of those together only add up to 74GB. I don't know of any place\nto download two terabytes of data.\n\nPossible consequences\n---------------------\n\nThe rapidly falling price of disk storage --- and the more slowly\nfalling price of network bandwidth --- seems likely to have some\ninteresting effects in the coming years. \n\nFirst, perhaps the market for bigger and bigger disks will collapse,\nsince most people don’t generate enough data locally to fill their\ndisks, or they do so only with the expectation of being able to share\nit over the internet with their friends and family and beyond. We’re\nalready seeing this to some extent as many computers have switched\nentirely to SSDs and no longer use spinning disks.\n\nSecond, perhaps secondary means of transferring data will gain more\nimportance. LAN parties, local wireless networks, and physically\nshipping disks from one place to another may become more widely used,\nas it becomes comparatively more difficult to copy around\nhigh-resolution digital photographs, amateur movies, crawls of the\nentire World-Wide Web, and so on.\n\nThird, perhaps deletion of files will become less important --- and\nless easy in the user interface. Certain kinds of files, such as the\naforementioned high-resolution digital photographs, will still need to\nbe deleted because they weren’t interesting enough to share. But old\nversions of text documents, software, copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin?\nDelete only for privacy and security reasons.\n\nFourth, perhaps disks will be normally sold pre-filled with files ---\nmovies, books, snapshots of Wikipedia, massive quantities of free\nsoftware, and so on.\n\nFifth, perhaps software to tell when you already have a file on your\ndisk, and can thus avoid downloading it, will become more important.\nContent-based naming schemes like the ones used in Git and BitTorrent\ncould facilitate this enormously. In some cases, these can be used to\nfind when other computers physically near you have the files as well.\n(BitTorrent is a good example of this, although it has some trouble\nwith NAT.)\n\nSixth, perhaps software will become much more aggressive about using\nlocal disk to avoid downloading stuff over the network.\n\nSeventh, an increasing range of material would ideally be downloaded\noptimistically (“prefetched”), especially when the connection is idle.\n21 seconds of my time waiting costs on the order of US$0.70; 21\nseconds of use of my internet connection costs US$0.0002. So even if\nI only ever read one out of every 3500 things that was optimistically\ndownloaded, I’m still better off. Even at a much lower time\nopportunity cost, reading 1% of the prefetched text would make it a\nbetter deal.\n\n</pre>"
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"title" : "Who is going to need a database engine in 2020?",
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"content" : "<p>Given the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data\">Big Data</a> phenomenon, you might think that everyone is becoming a database engineer. Unfortunately, writing a database engine is hard:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concurrency_(computer_science)\">Concurrency</a> is difficult. Whenever a data structure is modified by different processes or threads, it can end up in an inconsistent state. Database engines cope with concurrency in different ways: e.g., through <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_(database)\">locking</a> or <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-Version_Concurrency_Control\">multiversion concurrency control</a>. While these techniques are well known, few programmers have had a chance to master them.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_(computer_science)\">Persistence</a> is also difficult. You must somehow keep the database on a slow disk, while keeping some of the data in RAM. At all times, the content of the disk should be consistent. Moreover, you must avoid data loss as much as possible.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>So, developers almost never write their own custom engines. Some might say that it is an improvement over earlier times when developers absolutely had to craft everything by hand, down to the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree\">B-trees</a>. The result was often expensive projects with buggy results.</p>\n<p>However, consider that even a bare-metal language like C++ is getting support for <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-tree\">concurrency and threads</a> and esoteric features like <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expressions\">regular expressions</a>. Moreover, Oracle working hard at killing the <a href=\"http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/365575/java_politics_brews_conflicts_between_oracle_jcp_participants/\">Java Community Process</a> will incite Java developers to <strong>migrate to better languages</strong>.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in-memory databases are finally practical and inexpensive. Indeed, whereas a 16 GB in-memory database was insane ten years ago, you can order a desktop with 32 GB of RAM from Apple’s web site right now. Moreover, memory capacity <a href=\"http://www.singularity.com/charts/page58.html\">grows exponentially</a>: <strong>Apple will sell desktops with 1 TB of RAM in 2020</strong>. And researchers <a href=\"http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/memory/resistive-ram-gains-ground\">predict</a> that non-volatile <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistive_RAM\">Resistive RAM</a> (RRAM) may replace DRAM. <strong>Non-volatile internal memory would make persistence much easier.</strong></p>\n<p>But why would you ever want to write your own database engine?</p>\n<ul>\n<li>For speed, some engines force you use nasty things like stored procedures. It is a drastically limited programming model.</li>\n<li>The mismatch between how the programmer thinks and how the database engine works can lead to massive overhead. As crazy as it sounds, I can see a day when writing your engine will save time. Or, at least, save headaches.</li>\n<li><strong>Clever programmers can write much faster specialized engines.</strong></li>\n</ul>\n<p>Obviously, programmers will need help. They will need <strong>great librairies to help with data processing, data compression, and data architecture</strong>. Oh! And they will need powerful programming languages.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?a=KmpGUFmxtPg:61unMgYhpE4:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?i=KmpGUFmxtPg:61unMgYhpE4:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/daniel-lemire/atom/~4/KmpGUFmxtPg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Britain’s Austere Future: Zombie Flick or Godzilla Movie?",
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"content" : "<div><p><a href=\"http://triplecrisis.com/britains-austere-future/\">Mark Blyth</a> over at <a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f55c2ef1970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Mark\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f55c2ef1970b-320wi\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Mark\"></a> Triple Crisis:</p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>In my first triple crisis piece I wrote about John Quiggin’s new book thesis concerning Zombie Economic ideas. Lead zombie of the moment is the idea of fiscal austerity as the way out of the crisis, despite oodles of evidence to the contrary. In short, we need to cut budgets to restore fiscal sanity, and we know that this is the way forward since small open economies in the 1980s (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark) that cut their budgets still grew. The economic (ir)rationale for this has been pointed out by Krugman, Stiglitz, and others. But for me the most interesting, and most tragic part of this story, are the distributional consequences of these policies, and the politics that they engender.</p>\r\n<p>The first problem with such a policy is that if it works at all, it only works when everyone else is growing. If everyone else shrinks at the same time then what is individually rational becomes collectively disastrous, and viciously zero-sum. The second problem, the distributional one, is who pays for this debt crisis? The answer is ‘not those who made the mess in the first place’ – namely, finance. Instead, the double ‘put’ (quite literally) is on those who can afford it least, lower income taxpayers and consumers: once in the form of the bailouts, lost revenue, and lost growth, and now twice in the form of the fiscal consolidation (zombie-slashed public services) needed to pay back the debt generated from the bailout.</p>\r\n<p>It is in this context that the much-anticipated budget cuts of the British government announced last week come to the fore. Britain has embarked upon a giant natural experiment to settle the stimulus versus austerity debate once and for all by plumping for austerity, and on a truly epic scale.</p>\r\n<p>As Reinhardt and Rogoff remind us, approximately eighty percent of the time you have a banking crisis it will be followed by a sovereign debt crisis. As the public sector levers up to compensate for the fall in private spending, deficits are generated and new debt issues become a necessity. The UK economy was hit harder than many of its European peers when finance imploded because a full quarter of all British tax receipts came from the financial sector. This, plus the effect of the British economy’s automatic stabilizers, resulted in a budget deficit of 10.1 percent of GDP by 2011, with British government debt issues rising to 58.5 percent of GDP to plug these gaps. This ‘death spiral,’ so the argument of the British government goes, has to be reversed since ever-increasing debts will lead to ever-increasing interest payments, eventually turning Britain into Greece. To avoid this the proposed sacrifice is a $128 billion reduction in public spending over four years, which it is hoped will reduce the budget deficit from 10.1 percent of GDP to 2.1 percent by 2014. Virtue, it seems, favors the bold.</p>\r\n</blockquote></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F10%2Fbritains-austere-future-zombie-flick-or-godzilla-movie.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=9I9HSi3cNsU:vhqeOakpFD8:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Essay: Why Sisterly Chats Make People Happier",
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"title" : "Ecuadorean wins Spain's first siesta contest",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/85171?ns=guardian&pageName=Ecuadorean+wins+Spain%27s+first+siesta+contest%3AArticle%3A1470252&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Spain+%28News%29%2CEcuador+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Associated+Press&c7=10-Oct-24&c8=1470252&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FSpain\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Pedro Soria Lopez wins €1,000 after sleeping – and snoring – for 17 minutes in busy Madrid shopping mall</p><p>A 62-year-old Ecuadorean man managed to ignore the uproar of a crowded Madrid shopping centre and snore loudly enough to win what was billed as Spain's first siesta championship.</p><p>Organisers yesterday proclaimed unemployed security worker Pedro Soria Lopez the champion after he slept for 17 minutes.</p><p>They said his snoring on Tuesday registered 70 decibels – the equivalent of the noise of someone talking loudly. That earned him extra points and enough to defeat the runner-up who had slept for 18 minutes.</p><p>\"Oh I am so happy to be the first champion,\" said Soria Lopez before collecting the €1,000 winning cheque. \"My wife made me do this, but then they couldn't wake me up. Naturally, the lunch I had before with the €7 (£6) they had given me helped.\"</p><p>The somewhat tongue-in-cheek nine-day contest, which ended yesterday , was organised by the recently formed <a href=\"http://www.campeonato-de-siesta.com/\" title=\"National Association of Friends of the Siesta\">National Association of Friends of the Siesta</a> and sponsored by a shopping mall in Madrid's working class Carabanchel district.</p><p>The aim was to promote a revival of a custom that some believe is in danger of vanishing because of modern life.</p><p>\"People are so stressed out they can't take siestas any more,\" said a spokesman, Andres Lemes. \"Studies show it's a healthy practice that recharges your batteries.\"</p><p>Each of the 360 sleepers that took part in the contest got just one shot. There were individual prizes for snoring, odd sleeping positions and wearing striking pyjamas.</p><p>Contestants in groups of five were given 20 minutes to lie down on blue couches and timed by a doctor with a pulse-measuring device to determine how long they spent snoozing. A judge perched on an umpire's seat awarded points for position, snoring ability and apparel.</p><p>\"It's not a scientific study, obviously,\" said Dr Lila Chuecas, who monitored the contestants. \"The idea is to encourage people to practice a healthy habit.\"</p><p>She said less than 30% of contestants managed to nod off, given the surrounding noise of giggling youths and parents screaming at their kids. Loud, thumping pop music pounded continuously from the numerous stores all around.</p><p>The sofas were lined up in parallel numbered lanes like those of an athletics race, and eight rounds were held per day.</p><p>On Saturday, one young girl showed up in pink, heart-striped pyjamas and snuggled up to a brown furry bunny. An older man wore a Santa hat and had a cushion stuffed under his T-shirt.</p><p>Two Americans studying in Madrid read about the contest on the internet and won second and third place in their individual round. \"I think I fell asleep, but someone kept kicking my couch,\" said Asya Kislyuk, 21, of Indianapolis. \"We will now go forth to be the ambassadors for the siesta,\" she joked.</p><p></p><p>Organisers said they planned a bigger championship next year, and may even take it abroad.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/spain\">Spain</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ecuador\">Ecuador</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2010%2Foct%2F24%2Fecuadorean-wins-spain-first-siesta-contest\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"categories" : [ "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/read", "user/10262491203628253725/state/com.google/starred", "Reggae", "Music", "Jamaica", "The Guardian", "Obituaries", "Music" ],
"title" : "Gregory Isaacs obituary",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/37853?ns=guardian&pageName=Gregory+Isaacs+obituary%3AArticle%3A1470737&ch=Music&c3=Guardian&c4=Reggae+%28music+genre%29%2CMusic%2CJamaica+%28News%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CCentral+America+and+Caribbean+Travel&c6=David+Katz&c7=10-Oct-25&c8=1470737&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Music&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FReggae\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Reggae musician known as the Cool Ruler who scored a big hit with Night Nurse</p><p>Gregory Isaacs, who has died of cancer aged 59, was one of reggae music's most popular singers. Known as the Cool Ruler for his exceptionally suave and emotive voice, Isaacs scored many hits during the 1970s and 80s, including the perennial favourite Night Nurse, and remained active as a recording artist, live performer and producer in the decades that followed. Although best known for romantic ballads, delivered with a hint of vulnerability, he also excelled at songs of social protest and work that expressed unwavering pride in his African heritage. However, his long-term drug use and involvement in criminal activity led to long periods of incarceration and repeated arrests, hastening his physical decline.</p><p>Isaacs was born in Fletcher's Land, a particularly neglected patch of the ghetto in the Jamaican capital, Kingston. His father left for the US during his childhood, so Gregory and his younger brother, Sylvester, were raised by their mother in the rough streets of nearby Denham Town. Showing a natural aptitude for singing, Isaacs began making an impact on talent contests during his teens (often as a duo with Sylvester). He was inspired by stars such as Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, as well as local acts including Alton Ellis and the Melodians, but named his mother as his first vocal role model, since he used to hear her singing while she ironed.</p><p>In 1968, Isaacs recorded and produced a duet, Another Heartache, with an aspiring singer from the neighbourhood, Winston Sinclair, but the song sank without a trace. His next effort, Ballroom Floor, was recorded for Prince Buster, after receiving a personal recommendation from a local gangster, Lester Lloyd Coke (aka Jim Brown). In the same era, Isaacs sold marijuana on behalf of Toddy Livingston, father of the singer Bunny Wailer.</p><p>Isaacs subsequently formed a trio, the Concords, with two other hopefuls, recording a number of impressive tunes for Rupie Edwards in 1969, of which the most notable was Don't Let Me Suffer. Other stirring solo singles, such as Too Late and Lonely Man, followed. By 1970 he had formed the independent label African Museum with a fellow singer, Errol Dunkley. They found instant success with Dunkley's Movie Star and Isaacs's moderately popular My Only Lover (featuring the Wailers' backing band), before Dunkley broke away to found his own label. Isaacs's first substantial hit, All I Have Is Love, was produced by a perceptive downtown promoter, Phil Pratt, in 1973. The following year, he scored an even bigger hit with Love Is Overdue, the first of several for the producer Alvin \"GG\" Ranglin, who soon issued Isaacs's debut album, In Person (1975).</p><p>As his songwriting skills matured, Isaacs shifted focus to address social injustice, in work that expressed longing for his ancestral African homeland, and grew dreadlocks as a sign of his commitment to the Rastafari faith. At Lee Perry's Black Ark studio, he cut the anthem-like Mr Cop in 1976 and the censorious Black Against Black, which decried self-destructive ghetto violence. After the release of the self-produced concept album, Mr Isaacs (1977), he received a major career boost in 1978 by signing to Virgin Records for the album Cool Ruler and making an appearance in the feature film Rockers. The 1979 Virgin follow-up, Soon Forward, included the chart-topping Mr Brown and a popular title track which was one of the first recordings to make use of the production skills of Sly and Robbie.</p><p>A shift to Charisma Records' subsidiary Pre in 1980 brought the album Lonely Lover and its follow-up, More Gregory, the latter featuring the Jamaican chart success Top Ten. Both albums were backed by the Roots Radics band, with whom Isaacs toured the UK in 1980-81. Night Nurse (1982), issued by Island, was his most commercially successful set to date, but just as he reached a pinnacle of popularity, problems arose. He was imprisoned in Jamaica following the discovery of an unlicensed firearm at his home, and he also served time for cocaine possession. He addressed his experiences of prison in the subsequent Island release, Out Deh! (1983).</p><p>After recording the relaxed Private Beach Party album for the producer Gussie Clarke in 1985, he cut less impressive work for a number of relatively unknown producers. Then, in 1987, another cocaine bust prompted him to go into rehab. This was followed by a more productive period that peaked with the release of Red Rose for Gregory (1988), a hit dancehall album issued by Clarke, and featuring the outstanding single, Rumours.</p><p>Although Isaacs would score a few more Jamaican chart hits, record for the British label Acid Jazz, open a recording studio in Jamaica, and launch the singing career of his son Kevin, he continued to use drugs. This resulted in several patchy releases, the loss of a number of his teeth, and a reputation for unreliability. Nevertheless, he maintained a loyal fan base, both at home in Jamaica and overseas.</p><p>He is survived by his wife Linda and several children.</p><p>• Gregory Anthony Isaacs, singer, songwriter and record producer, born 15 July 1951; died 25 October 2010</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/reggae\">Reggae</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/jamaica\">Jamaica</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/david-katz\">David Katz</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2010%2Foct%2F25%2Fgregory-isaacs-obituary\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Garry Trudeau: 'Doonesbury quickly became a cause of trouble'",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/5576?ns=guardian&pageName=Garry+Trudeau%3A+%27Doonesbury+quickly+became+a+cause+of+trouble%27%3AArticle%3A1470746&ch=Books&c3=Guardian&c4=Comics+%28Books+genre%29%2CBooks%2CNewspapers%2CUS+news%2CUS+politics%2CPress+and+publishing%2CMedia&c5=Press+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CUS+Elections&c6=Ed+Pilkington&c7=10-Oct-26&c8=1470746&c9=Article&c10=Feature&c11=Books&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FBooks%2FComics\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>The creator of America's first and best satirical daily newspaper cartoon talks about 40 years of upsetting politicians and editors</p><p>The first Doonesbury strip, published 40 years ago today, seems naive looked at through modern lenses. It begins with a character so sparsely drawn he barely exists, though you are intrigued immediately by the American football helmet he is wearing while sitting in an armchair.</p><p>He is joined by a scraggy-haired young man with a pencil for a nose and the letter O to represent his glasses. This is Michael Doonesbury and the helmeted football player is his new college roommate, BD. Little did their creator Garry Trudeau know when he sketched out that first awkward encounter between them, published on 26 October 1970, that he had just made comic history. Nor did he have any idea that he was embarking on a journey that would stretch into the indefinite future and that those scratchy beginnings would turn into <a href=\"http://www.doonesbury.com/\" title=\"Doonesbury\">a chronicle of modern times</a>.</p><p>The strip had come about almost by chance. Trudeau had been having a bit of fun as a third-year Yale student, dabbling with a sports cartoon called Bull Tales based on a real-life quarterback in the local team called Brian Dowling. Trudeau expected the strip to die at the end of that football season. But the cartoon was spotted by a book editor who thought he'd take a punt on it. Out of the blue, Trudeau, at the tender age of 21, was invited to turn the strip into a syndicated newspaper feature, an extraordinary privilege given the national exposure and the almost tenure-like terms it offered – with contracts lasting 20 years.</p><p>\"I had given no consideration to a career in cartoons,\" Trudeau says now. \"I thought I was on track to become a graphic designer. So I asked for a one-year contract. My editors howled with laughter.\"</p><p>You could say that was the first Doonesbury joke, and readers have been howling with laughter ever since. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1569255,00.html\" title=\"G2: My Doonesbury Hell\">And not just laughing.</a> They've been frowning, shouting, crying, blushing – the full gamut of emotions – as a result of a strip that broke the mould of the comic page and shattered countless conventions. Over the last four decades Doonesbury has established itself as so much more than a traditional cartoon. It is a soap opera, a tragedy, a comedy, an investigative agency, a liberal political commentary, a scourge of pomposity and corruption, a humanitarian exercise, all rolled into one.</p><p>We are sitting in the east-side Manhattan apartment that Trudeau uses as a studio. I'd expected some scruffy garret quarters, a sort of scraggy-haired bricks-and-mortar equivalent of that first Doonesbury. Instead Trudeau welcomes me into a very light and pleasant space with a wonderful view over Roosevelt Island. The room is richly carpeted and the walls lined with pictures by New York artist David Levinthal. The centre of the room is dominated by a draughtsman's board, on which the latest strip is being crafted.</p><p>Trudeau's working day has changed remarkably little in 40 years. He begins it by what he calls \"marinating the news\", devouring the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal at home a few blocks away in the company of his wife, former television journalist Jane Pauley. \"Mostly I'm just waiting for something to happen, in me, and mostly it does.\"</p><p>He starts with a subject, and from that the week's offering evolves, produced as a block of six days' strips. The one he's currently working on sees Jeff Redfern in Afghanistan trying to sell the products of his company Overkill to Hamid Karzai. That's pretty typical of what he does, Trudeau says, \"taking these highly improbable characters and having them collide with real events\".</p><p>Trudeau takes me to a back room where volumes of his past work are stored in a cupboard, with his original pencil drawings stacked alongside the inked versions that are done for him by an associate. "In the old days I didn't much value the pencil originals," Trudeau tells me. "So for the first 20 years my Friday ritual would be that as I faxed the last one I would take the six drawings and throw them in the trash can."</p><p>Lining this back room are framed magazine covers, six Newsweek and two Time, each one devoted to Doonesbury. That in itself tells a story. When Trudeau began his syndicated cartoon he entered a world where the comics page was almost entirely non-topical and devoid of any political reference.</p><p>That was partly the result of logistics – strips had to be drawn six weeks in advance in order to circulate them to newspapers across America – and partly because cartoons were meant to be just that: politics-free, family-friendly fun.</p><p>Within a year of those tentative beginnings Trudeau had torn up the rules of the cartoon strip and begun rewriting them, one strip at a time. His work was risque, spikey and above all of the moment. \"I was writing about the issues of my day – sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, politics. That was wholly new to comics, which were broad in their humour and rarely touched on anything remotely topical.\"</p><p>Was he aware of what he was doing? "One of the great things of being young is that you're not aware, you lack self-consciousness," he says. "I was wholly clueless about the things I was not supposed to be doing. I didn't set out to be a troublemaker, though quite quickly the strip became a cause of trouble."</p><p>That's an understatement. In contrast to his fellow cartoonists, who were busily drawing fluffy animals and naughty schoolchildren, Trudeau waded into Vietnam, Watergate, feminism, abortion, hypocrisy in the White House, pot smoking and sex. Though he himself came from a moderate Republican background, Trudeau found himself manning the barricades of the counter-culture.</p><p>\"It was the cauldron, the late 60s, when I began to think as an adult. All hell was taking place, the Black Panthers were on trial, students were shot in the Kent State protests, war was waging on the other side of the globe, it was very hard not to be swept up in all of that.\"</p><p>Printers loved him. He pushed his deadlines further and further back, to make the strip more and more live. One printer in Kansas City, Trudeau learned years later, did so much overtime setting his strips that he bought a yacht with the extra earnings and called it Doonesbury.</p><p>But editors had kittens. And the owners of local newspapers had fits. Several began cancelling the strip altogether, or censoring its wilder equence in which Zonker extols the virtues of \"fine, uncut Turkish hashish\" to a young child.</p><p>Dozens more dropped the sequence in February 1976 when Andy Lippincott was introduced, the first gay character to appear on the comics page. In November of that year more than 30 newspapers scrapped a four-day tease in which Joanie and Rick Redfern (who later spawned Jeff) end up lying in a postcoital embrace in bed. The Bangor Daily News blocked out that final frame with the weather forecast (\"Fair, cold, highs in the 30s\").</p><p>Censorship was straightforward, and Trudeau never complained because he says \"I knew the editors were caught between a rock and a hard place\". More sinister was the decision of about a third of the papers that carried him to switch him from the comics to the editorial page alongside their political commentators. \"We resisted the move,\" Trudeau says. \"For the simple reason that there are far more readers on the comics page than on the comment page and you want to be where the reader is.\"</p><p>Watergate was the point of no return. Trudeau provoked indignation and adoration in equal measure when his character Mark Slackmayer, a radical DJ, declared Nixon's former attorney general, John Mitchell, "guilty, guilty, guilty!" even before he had been charged. The Washington Post commented sniffily that "If anyone is going to find any defendant guilty, it's going to be the due process of justice, not a comic strip artist."</p><p>But the Washington Post hadn't counted on the tenacity and the thick skin of Garry Trudeau. As he wrote on the 25th anniversary of Doonesbury, \"Satire is unfair. It's rude and uncivil. It lacks balance and proportion, and it obeys none of the normal rules of engagement. Satire picks a one-sided fight, and the more its intended target reacts, the more its practitioner gains the advantage. And as if that weren't enough, this savage, unregulated sport is protected by the United States constitution. Cool, huh?\"</p><p>But it must have been scary, I ask him, having such opprobrium thrown at him when he was still so young and so new to the trade.</p><p>"Yes I suppose it was. And very distracting. I found myself crisis managing almost as much as I was creating. I made a decision about three or four years into it, that I better step back from giving interviews. Once I did that I found it quite suited me. I found that not having a public profile was not hurting the work, and it freed me up to be the satirist I wanted to be. It also had the unintended consequence of creating a mystique of Trudeau as a hermit, but that wasn't it at all."</p><p>Trudeau has maintained that publicity blackout, and with it the mystique of the silent artist, right up to this day. Our meeting marks something of an emergence for him, out of the cave into which he crawled in the 1970s and back into the glare of a public existence.</p><p>The reason for his decision to end his almost four-decade-long state of purdah is that he wants to lend his support to a new collection of his work, 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective. The book is a vast tome that runs to 695 pages, yet it contains just 13% of the total strips produced.</p><p>Trudeau explains that he and his collaborators decided to focus on the characters and their relationships, rather than the more topical storylines, which in many cases would now have lost their relevance. "There is nothing worse than annotated humour," he says.</p><p>The characters resonate over the years, starting with that initial odd couple. Trudeau invented the name Doonesbury by combining doone – boarding-school slang, he says, for \"a good-natured dufus, a clueless sort without any mean to them\" – with the ending of the name of his friend Charlie Pillsbury. \"Charlie was like that, innocent but with a kind of grace, and to my amazement he's been perfectly happy with this association, which just proves he's a doone.\"</p><p>Then there was BD, the original star of Bull Tales. Trudeau's BD was as obtuse and arrogant as the real BD was admirable and self-effacing. Trudeau didn't know Dowling, but much later they met and became friends, and the former quarterback has been supportive of his fictitious namesake.</p><p>Such positive feedback was not forthcoming from the model for Duke, the self-obsessed, utterly unscrupulous epitome of evil who has sent a chill down readers' spines for all these years. He was a parody of gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson, who was deeply resentful of it, seeing his Doonesbury appearance as a form of copyright infringement. Thompson sent an envelope of used toilet paper to Trudeau and once memorably said: \"If I ever catch that little bastard, I'll tear his lungs out.\"</p><p>\"One never knew quite how seriously to take that, though he did shoot his assistant in later life,\" Trudeau notes.</p><p>Other public figures whom Trudeau targeted were no less undignified in their responses. Donald Trump called him a \"jerk\" and a \"total loser\". When Trudeau invoked Frank Sinatra's links with the mafia in an astonishing strip that ended with a photograph of the singer cavorting with his mob friends, Ol' Blue Eyes made the mistake, during a concert at the Carnegie Hall, of attacking not just Trudeau but also his wife – who was a big television sweetheart at the time. \"Well, that's the first rule of the neighbourhood, you don't go after the women and children,\" Trudeau says. \"The audience booed him, which must have come as a shock to Sinatra.\"</p><p>The lesson of all this is that when Doonesbury comes calling, do not react, no matter how hurtful the things the strip says about you. It will only make Trudeau redouble his attack if you do. It was funny how few of his victims understood that basic principle, not least the politicians. Dan Quayle, whom he depicted as a feather, wailed that Trudeau had a vendetta against him. George Bush the elder was incapable of not responding, saying he wanted to "kick the hell out of him". Jeb Bush once came up to Trudeau at a Republican convention and cautioned him to "walk softly". "And of course that just encouraged me, I knew I was on the right track. I could never understand why they took it so personally. Satire is a form of social control, it's what you do. It's not personal. It's a job."</p><p>Trudeau is now on to his eighth president, who turns out to be one of his hardest. Obama he sees as a \"raging moderate\"; and satirists don't do well with moderates as \"there's not a whole lot to get hold of\".</p><p>He's also on to the third generation of characters. Doonesbury and BD have both procreated and now, he says, \"it's about time for the second wave of characters to have children. That's a frightening thought.\"</p><p>Though the original duo have grown older, they continue to be anchors of the strip. BD led the way into Trudeau's current passion, exploring the traumas and travails of the wounded warrior. It's been <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/27/iraq.iraqandthemedia\" title=\"The Guardian: Doonesbury at war\">Trudeau's device for dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanisatan</a> – opposing the wars, yet honouring the men and women who have given everything to them. BD's loss of a leg at Fallujah, followed by his removal, finally, of his helmet, was a poignant symbol of sacrifice. \"He had had his helmet on him for 35 years. When it came off it conveyed that he was now vulnerable and his life had changed for ever. I had to figure out who the new BD would be.\"</p><p>So many years, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doonesbury_characters\" title=\"List of Doonesbury characters\">so many characters</a>, so many strips. Fourteen thousand in all. Doesn't he ever fear he will grind to a halt, lose his edge, have nothing more to add? "I try not to permit myself that feeling. It's like climbing a mountain – you don't look down. I don't want to contemplate the possibility too deeply that one week I'll come up blank."</p><p>Has that ever happened?</p><p>"Oh yes. All the time. Thanks for not noticing."</p><p><em>40: A Doonesbury Retrospective is published today by Andrews McMeel, priced £65. We have five copies to give away. For your chance to win, visit </em><a href=\"http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/customPage.do?CMSFragment=CompetitionsPage.jsp&title=Competitions%20-%20Guardian%20Bookshop\" title=\"Guardian Bookshop Competitions\"><em>guardianbookshop.co.uk/competitions</em></a><em>.</em></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/comics\">Comics</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/newspapers\">Newspapers</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics\">US politics</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing\">Newspapers & magazines</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/edpilkington\">Ed Pilkington</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fbooks%2F2010%2Foct%2F26%2Fgarry-trudeau-doonesbury-40\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<p><span>By <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/janine-mendes-franco/\" title=\"View all posts by Janine Mendes-Franco\">Janine Mendes-Franco</a></span> \n</p><p>“Is not policyholders we bailing-out, is the richest, smartest characters in the country”: <a href=\"http://afraraymond.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/cl-financial-bailout-these-turbid-times/\">Afra Raymond</a> is tired of the “Anansi antics” when it comes to the CLICO bailout and says he expects better from the country's “elected rulers”. </p>"
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"content" : "<p><span>By <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/janine-mendes-franco/\" title=\"View all posts by Janine Mendes-Franco\">Janine Mendes-Franco</a></span> \n</p><p>Jamaican reggae icon <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Isaacs\">Gregory Isaacs</a>, popularly known as the “Cool Ruler”, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/25/gregory-isaacs-dies-aged-59\">died this morning</a> at this home in London, after a long battle with cancer. Possessing one of the most soulful voices in the reggae genre, Isaacs was probably best known for his song “Night Nurse” (from <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Nurse_%28album%29\">the 1982 album</a> of the same name). The Jamaican <a href=\"http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2010/10/gregory-isaacs-1951-2010-rip.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEVfd+%28Geoffrey+Philp%27s+Blog+Spot%29\">blogosphere</a> has been active <a href=\"http://www.yardflex.com/archives/007606.html\">upon hearing news of his death</a>, as have been social media sites like <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#search?q=gregory%20isaacs\">Twitter</a> and <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/onthegroundnews/posts/124404904285127\">Facebook</a>, with fans paying tribute to his life and music. </p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/K6oYyG0KcvQ?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US%26rel%3D0&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<small><em>Gregory Isaacs singing Night Nurse; video from <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6oYyG0KcvQ\">YouTube</a>. </em></small> </p>\n<p><em>On the Ground News Reports</em>‘ Facebook status, which is copied to the group's <a href=\"http://twitter.com/onthegroundjm\">Twitter account</a>, posts this update:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://twitter.com/onthegroundjm/status/28710117806\">Confirmed: News of the death of the legendary Reggae artiste Gregory Isaacs has seen him become the top trending topic on Twitter with almost 20 tweets per minute being posted of him.</a></p></blockquote>\n<p>Tweets about the late musician can be found under the hashtags <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#search?q=Issacs\">#Isaacs</a>, <a href=\"http://twitter.com/search?q=RIP+Gregory#search?q=RIP%20Gregory\">#RIP Gregory</a>, <a href=\"http://twitter.com/#search?q=Night%20Nurse\">#Night Nurse</a> and #RIP Gregory Isaacs.</p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http://www.yardflex.com/archives/007607.html\">YardFlex.com</a></em> calls Isaacs “a true Jamaican icon”, saying:</p>\n<blockquote><p>He has done a lot in waving the reggae flag. We wish his family, friends and fans the strength to go through this difficult time.</p></blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/2010/10/25/rip-gregory-isaacs/\">Antilles</a></em>, the blog of The Caribbean Review of Books, notes that:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Isaacs was <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/02/arts/recordings-view-gregory-isaacs-the-ruler-of-reggae.html\">once described</a> as “the most exquisite vocalist in reggae, his pliable baritone equally at ease with silken ballads and slinky dance grooves.”</p></blockquote>\n<p><em><a href=\"http://www.thewickedesttime.com/2010/10/rest-in-peace-to-cool-ruler-gregory.html\">The Wickedest Time</a></em> finds it hard to say goodbye: </p>\n<blockquote><p>It's so sad for me to announce that another reggae icon has left us this morning at the age of 59. It's always a sad day when you lose greatness and we, his fans, feel it too.</p>\n<p>Reggae music lost another legend. Rest Peacefully Gregory Isaacs, we love you!</p></blockquote>\n<p><small>\n<div>The thumbnail image used in this post, <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/7443878@N04/2461337570/\">“Gregory Isaacs May 2008″</a>, is by Tach_RedGold&Green, used under <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en\">a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license</a>. Visit <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/7443878@N04/\">Tach_RedGold&Green's flickr photostream</a>.</div>\n<p></p></small> </p>"
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"content" : "<blockquote>It is of great interest<br>to compare Yehoshua and Anokye;<br>The latter murdered in his deep sleep<br>by the firing of a musket –<br>the gun not even pointed at him.<br>From such a death there is no resurrection:<br>thus perished the hope of a Guan elixir.<br><br>Mark here one notable divergence:<br>Whereas Yehoshua is documented four-fold or more<br>Anokye lives on in a multitude of tales<br>Each morphing in time and space.<br><br>So in the remote gospel according to McCaskie<br>Anokye approaching the town discovered<br>it was his own funeral in full swing:<br>Disgusted, Anokye turned and walked away,<br>presumably into the forest, and thus disappeared.<br><br>Yehoshua, on the other hand,<br>was done to death in a most grisly fashion,<br>hanging from a wooden stake for all to see –<br>and how can we not shed a tear, a tear! at least.<br>Yet Magic Man even in death, Yehoshua fled the grave!<br>He rose from the dead! and for emphasis,<br>rose also into the air and thus disappeared.<br><br>It may well be<br>Magic Men all like to vanish<br>preservéd bones are not the fashion<br>for prophets thus revered.<br>In which case the manner in which one disappears<br>is how the trump is held.<br>Grant Yehoshua this:<br>levitating in the light of day<br>Out-of-doors, and in sight of many –<br>this was a master touch.<br>Beaten perhaps, only by Elijah's<br>terrific ascent into the stratosphere<br>flaming chariot and all that:<br>Elijah wins on dramatics.<br><br>In any case, we are told<br>Yehowa engineered Yehoshua's great escape<br>and had planned the whole thing for an eternity.<br>But as I am sure you will agree,<br>it all was done with a very nice touch.<br>Add Elijah's case, and one concludes<br>Yehowa cannot be beaten at this game.<br><br>But unlike Yehoshua, Anokye was altogether earthly,<br>with no relations in high places – much less a father;<br>and so stayed put wherever.<br>(The lesson has been well learned in this country:<br>nepotism springs from this).<br><br>Centuries on and Yehoshua is leading,<br>Anokye creeping behind, a shaky image.<br>And as in the name of Yehoshua, Anokye's fame is dimmed,<br>We, his people have been thrashed,<br>and our heads are forced to bow, and bow...<br>Anokye... next time, walk on water! Next time, be crucified!<br>Next time have connections, preferably to Yehowa.<br><br>How shall we poetically approach Anokye?<br>Or sing of his powers, and<br>Create a buff shine for our own black mysterian?<br>Shall we resurrect this Magic Man?</blockquote><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-6914952550105224855?l=oneghanaonevoice.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/42493?ns=guardian&pageName=Notorious+malaria+mosquito+strains+evolving%3AArticle%3A1469494&ch=Society&c3=Guardian&c4=Malaria+%28Society%29%2CScience%2CBiology%2CSociety%2CImperial+College+London%2CWorld+news&c5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CHigher+Education%2CHealth&c6=Press+Association&c7=10-Oct-21&c8=1469494&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Society&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FSociety%2FMalaria\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>New research finds two malaria mosquito strains could become immune to effects to control them</p><p>Two strains of Africa's most notorious malaria mosquito are evolving into new species, research has shown.</p><p>The discovery has implications for combating malaria, since it means the insects could become immune to control strategies.</p><p>Scientists studying the mosquito <em>anopheles gambiae</em>, which is chiefly responsible for spreading malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, found two strains were rapidly diverging in their genetic make-up, despite appearing physically identical.</p><p>Dr Maria Lawniczak, a member of the team from Imperial College London, said: \"From our new studies, we can see that mosquitoes are evolving more quickly than we thought and that unfortunately, strategies that might work against one strain of mosquito might not be effective against another. It's important to identify and monitor these hidden genetic changes in mosquitoes if we are to succeed in bringing malaria under control by targeting mosquitoes.\" Genetic differences between the two strains, known as M and S, were scattered throughout the insects' DNA, said the researchers, writing in the journal Science.</p><p>The changes had occurred in areas likely to affect development, feeding behaviour, and reproduction.</p><p>A further study comparing the two strains showed they seemed to be evolving differently.</p><p>This was thought to be in response to different environmental factors such as larval habitats, infectious agents and predators.</p><p>Co-author Professor George Christophides, also from Imperial College, said: \"Malaria is a deadly disease that affects millions of people across the world and amongst children in Africa, it causes one in every five deaths. We know that the best way to reduce the number of people who contract malaria is to control the mosquitoes that carry the disease. Our studies help us to understand the makeup of the mosquitoes that transmit malaria, so that we can find new ways of preventing them from infecting people.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/malaria\">Malaria</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/biology\">Biology</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/imperialcollegelondon\">Imperial College London</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fsociety%2F2010%2Foct%2F21%2Fmalaria-mosquito-resistant-strains-found\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"content" : "<p>Six years ago, early in my tenure at Berkman, I wrote <a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2004/10/13/around-the-world-for-010-per-kilo/\">a blog post</a> that tried to calculate the cost of shipping water from a bottling plant in Yaqara, Fiji to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was interested in unpacking the everyday mystery of container shipping – how is it possible that we can sell a product for a couple of dollars a bottle despite shipping it 8,000 miles around the world – and in the odd idea that atoms might be more mobile than bits, as we get lots more Fiji water in the US than Fijian music, movies or news.</p>\n<p>My estimate then was that a 40′ container filled with Fiji water would cost roughly $5000 to deliver from Suva, Fiji to Cambridge – I came up with the estimate based on a variety of statistics about international shipping that I bent and welded into a Fiji/Massachusetts estimate. At $5000 a container and 24,000 kilograms per 40′ box, it would cost $0.21 for a liter bottle of Fiji water to make the 8,000 mile journey. Not free, but a small fraction of the retail price of a bottle of “premium” imported bottled water.</p>\n<p>I had occasion to return to this blogpost today – I’m working on a book, and this Fiji example features in it. So I decided to recalcuate the numbers and see if I could find an answer that’s more defensible and satisfying. </p>\n<p>Turns out I got a few details wrong. First, the 24,000kg figure applies to smaller, 20′ containers – the limit for 40-footers is 30,480kg. And the price from Suva to Cambridge for a 40′ container is just slightly higher – $5,540.30. That comes out to $0.18 per liter, three cents less than I calculated six years ago. </p>\n<p>These new figures come from my new favorite toy, <a href=\"http://www.maerskline.com/appmanager/\">Maersk’s online shipping rates calculator</a>. The Danish superfirm <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._P._Moller-Maersk_Group\">A.P. Møller – Mærsk Gruppen</a> is the largest shipping group in the world, with offices in 135 countries, 120,000 employees, and roughly 600 container ships, capable of carrying more than 2 million 20′ containers at any given time. They’ve also got a thoroughly badass IT system, which they’ve now made accessible to the general public. </p>\n<p>Okay, it’s not exactly Amazon.com, or even Fedex. To use Maersk’s calculator, you need to register with the site, download a client browser certificate and accept three server certificates from Maersk before you can access their secure site. But once you do, it’s just a few short clicks before you can calculate the cost of shipping a 20′ container of “umbrellas, sun umbrellas, walking-sticks, seat-sticks, whips, riding-crops and parts thereof” (yes, that’s one of the available categories, along with “bone and meal”, “ores, slag and ash” and “straw, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esparto\">esparto</a>, other plaiting materials and articles of straw, esparto, other plaiting materials) from Auckland to Dubai: $2451.02</p>\n<p>The main thing I’ve found playing with Maersk’s calendar: distance doesn’t matter as much as demand. Americans buy a lot of atoms from China. The Chinese don’t buy nearly as many from the US. A 40′ container filled with household goods, shipped from Shanghai to Houston, TX costs $6169.93. Reverse the trip and ship the same container from Houston to Shanghai and the cost is $3631.07. That’s because <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/worldbusiness/29iht-ships.html\">60% of containers on ships coming from the US to China are empty</a>, which means Maersk and other shippers are desperate to sell container space.</p>\n<p>(The 2006 New York Times article that offers that 60% empty container statistic suggests that lots of full containers are coming to China from raw-materials rich countries like Australia, Brazil and the Middle East. That suggests we should see the opposite pattern – expensive containers from Sao Paolo to Shanghai and cheap ones in the other direction. Nope. $5101.70 from Shanghai to Sao Paolo, $1930.59 in the other direction. Perhaps containers from China to Brazil are riding the same ships as those to the US and paying the same premiums?)</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2010/10/Screen-shot-2010-10-20-at-9.30.30-PM.png\"><img src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2010/10/Screen-shot-2010-10-20-at-9.30.30-PM-300x298.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-10-20 at 9.30.30 PM\" width=\"300\" height=\"298\"></a><a href=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2010/10/Screen-shot-2010-10-20-at-9.33.21-PM.png\"><img src=\"http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/wp-content/2010/10/Screen-shot-2010-10-20-at-9.33.21-PM-250x300.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Screen shot 2010-10-20 at 9.33.21 PM\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p>Maersk also offers a set of maps that help you get a sense for how these trade routes actually work. It’s a four day trip from Suva to Auckland on the Pacific Islands Express, and then the bottles of Fiji water are transfered to OC1, the Oceania Americas Service. The Pacific crossing is a long one – 18 days to the Panama Canal, a quick stop in Cartagena, and we’re in Philadephia 25 days out of Auckland. It’s a truck ride from Philly to Cambridge, and that short hop is responsible for $950 of the total transit cost. </p>\n<p>As I poke through these maps, schedules and tariffs, I feel like I’m glimpsing a secret world. Part of it may come from the sheer poetry of the names. Shipping routes include “<a href=\"http://www.maerskline.com/link/?page=brochure&path=/routemaps/newnetwork/Oceania/The_Boomerang\">The Boomerang</a>” and the “<a href=\"http://www.maerskline.com/link/?page=brochure&path=/routemaps/newnetwork/Oceania/The_South_China_Australia_Yo_Yo\">The South China/Australia Yo-yo</a>” and connect ports like <a href=\"http://www.worldportsource.com/ports/NGA_Tin_Can_Island_Port_TCIP__1726.php\">Tin Can Island</a> (Apapa, Nigeria, the main port for Lagos). And part comes from the sense that these routes and rates, the infrastructure that supports an economy where transPacific bottled water is possible, are the ley lines of globalization, radiating a mysterious and sinister power.</p>\n\n<span>\n<a href=\"http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Slashdot It!\"><img src=\"http://slashdot.org/favicon.ico\" height=\"16\" width=\"16\" alt=\"[Slashdot]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Digg This Story\"><img src=\"http://digg.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[Digg]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://reddit.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Reddit\"><img src=\"http://reddit.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[Reddit]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Save to del.icio.us\"><img src=\"http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[del.icio.us]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F\" title=\"Share on Facebook\"><img src=\"http://www.facebook.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[Facebook]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://technorati.com/faves?add=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F\" title=\"Add to my Technorati Favorites\"><img src=\"http://technorati.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[Technorati]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&output=popup&bkmk=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Save to Google Bookmarks\"><img src=\"http://www.google.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[Google]\"></a>\n<a href=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ethanzuckerman.com%2Fblog%2F2010%2F10%2F20%2Fthe-ley-lines-of-globalization%2F&title=The+ley+lines+of+globalization\" title=\"Stumble it!\"><img src=\"http://www.stumbleupon.com/favicon.ico\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" alt=\"[StumbleUpon]\"></a>\n</span>"
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"title" : "Technologies",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://pernille.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834522fa869e20133f45d515e970b-320wi\" alt=\"\" width=\"256\" height=\"342\">Pernille <a href=\"http://pernille.typepad.com/afterafrica/2010/09/last-year-i-went-up-and-down-uhuru-street-in-dar-es-salaam-to-find-kangas-for-the-tropenmuseum-in-holland-and-their-exhibit.html\">writes </a>that:</p>\n<blockquote><p>“The fact that Zitto Kabwe is reporting via <a title=\"Zitto Kabwe on Twitter\" href=\"http://twitter.com/zittokabwe\">Twitter</a>, <a href=\"http://zittokabwe.wordpress.com/\">blog</a>, <a title=\"Zitto Kabwe on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/zittokabwe/\">Flickr</a> and <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/#!/zittokabwe?ref=ts\">Facebook</a> from Kigoma North, while at the same time operating an election campaign with traditional elements - like the <a title=\"Ngoma\" href=\"http://pernille.typepad.com/afterafrica/2010/08/zitto-running-for-kigoma-north.html\">ngoma</a> and the kanga – is a clear fact of Africa 2010. An Africa in between tradition and modernity.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>To me, it just shows how useless categories like “modernity” and “tradition” are, here. The printed kanga shipped from India is no less “modern” than a twitter feed, and no more. These aren’t the terms that will tell you anything interesting about what is going on. These are terms that will prevent you from saying anything new about what is <em>actually</em> interesting.</p>\n<div style=\"width:510px\"><a href=\"http://wayneandwax.com/?p=82\"><img title=\"Techno-modernity!\" src=\"http://farm1.static.flickr.com/139/378041262_c78ac048fe_d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"395\"></a><p>(from Wayne; click through)</p></div>\n<p>Today, I’ll be talking in my class about Cowrie shells and “modernity,” and I’ll do a version of the following little talk, which I’m excerpting from a <a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/shell-games-keziah-jones-and-things-fall-apart/\">blog post</a> of a year ago:</p>\n<blockquote><p>If you’ve read <em>Things Fall Apart</em> – and if you haven’t, for shame! – you’ll recall that before the missionaries show up, Umuofia has a thriving economy based on the cowrie shell, an economy which gets radically shifted around after the white folks start dropping benjamins and palm oil kernel becomes a thing of great price, with tragic consequence. It’s a narrative about falling apart, as the title proclaims, so there’s an easy reading in which the difference between a local economy based on local indigenous production gets crushed and supplanted by outside economic forces.</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/islands_oceans_poles/maldives_pol_1999.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"291\" height=\"435\"></p>\n<p>The thing about cowrie shells, though, is that they are about as non-indigenous as they could possibly be: the shells used for money by isolated villages in the backcountry Niger delta, as it happens, came from the Maldives, twelve-hundred islands in the middle of the Indian ocean.</p>\n<p>How, you ask, did they get there? Well, I’ll tell you. They were used as ballast by slave ships. If you care to know all about it, you can read Johnson and Hogendorn’s <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books%3Fid=Id9Hy3atLhMC&dq=cowrie+shells&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0\">The Shell Money of the Slave Trade</a>, or you can be satisfied with my brief sketch: since the cowrie shell happens to have all the qualities one needs of currency (accurately countable, incredibly durable, and with just the right balance between being cheap but not being of unlimited supply) it went from being a East Indian trade object in the pre-European hegemony era to being (around the turn of the 18<sup>th</sup> century) the primary merchandise used to trade for African slaves.</p>\n<p>A “Dutch Gentleman,” for example, <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=Id9Hy3atLhMC&pg=PA111&dq=%22Formerly+twelve+thousand+weight+of+these+cowries+would+purchase%22&ei=_RPMSfyaIoG0kwTfh8TrAg\">lamented</a> that “Formerly twelve thousand weight of these cowries would purchase a cargo of five or six hundred negroes, but those lucrative times are now no more; and the negroes now set such a value on their countrymen that there is no such thing as having a cargo under twelve or fourteen tons of cowries.” As far back as the 14<sup>th</sup> century, Ibn Battuta visited the Maldives and described how: “They gather this animal in the sea and then put them in holes in the ground until the flesh rots, leaving the white shell…. They exchange [the shells] for rice with the people of Bengal, who also use them as currency. They also sell them to the people of Yemen, who ballast their ships with them instead of with sand. These cowries are also used in the lands of the blacks. I saw them being sold in Mali and Gawgaw at a rate of 1150 per dinar.”</p>\n<p>Paul Lunde <a href=\"http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.seas.of.sindbad.htm\">tells</a> us that the exchange rate at that time was 400,000 cowries to the dinar (or more), which was 1/350 of the rate those currencies traded for in Mali, “a proportion that gives an idea of the profits possible in the cowry trade if the shells could be transported far enough from their place of origin. And they were transported great distances: After Yemeni ships, Portuguese, Dutch and English ships also carried them as ballast, and huge quantities were auctioned to slavers in Amsterdam and London in the 18th century.” And then, presumably, shipped onward to West Africa.</p>\n<p>This is one of those facts that its good to have on hand when teaching <em>Things Fall Apart</em>; after all, treating the novel like a “first contact” story gets a little strained when you reflect that the “pre-colonial” money used by these isolated natives actually connects them to a global trading network that spans centuries. And I’m pretty sure that Chinua Achebe knew this – or if he didn’t I’m going to pretend – because it makes the story of <em>Things Fall Apart </em>a lot more interesting to recognize Umuafia’s isolation as more apparent than real, a globalizing exclusion rather than a primitive insularity.</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2563/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2563&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "You never think you'll have to do CPR, until you have to do it",
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"content" : "I decided to work from home because I'd been suffering from a cold. At about 1030 I popped out of the house to buy a coffee from a local coffee shop; it's very cold in London today and a bucket of warm coffee sounded good. I never got the coffee because life threw something random at me.<br><br>To get to the coffee shop I passed down a little alleyway close to my home, and there lying at the end of the alley was an old man. At first I thought it might be a drunk, but as I got closer I saw a man in his 70s seemingly trying to get up. I bent down and offered to help him. He seemed like he didn't want me to bother him, but something bad struck me at once. His lips were blue.<br><br>I talked to him briefly and he told me he felt very tired. He didn't seem to want to get up. I decided to call <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number)\">999</a> and get an ambulance. <br><br>I went back to the man and knelt down beside him waiting for the ambulance. Suddenly he stopped. He stopped breathing and moving. I looked for a pulse in his wrist and then in his neck. Nothing. I immediately called back 999 (they had asked me to do so in this eventuality). The call log on my phone tells me that just five minutes had elapsed between calls. They directed me to put him on his back, head back and start CPR. I have to say that the operator was great: clear instructions.<br><br>I'm the sort of person who's done the <a href=\"http://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/First-aid\">Red Cross First Aid</a> course twice and so I knew what to do and was almost immediately compressing his chest to the rhythm of the <a href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27221281/\">Bee Gees' Staying Alive</a> with the phone operator counting along with me. No, I'm not being funny. The rhythm of that song is ideal for CPR.<br><br>I was 100 compressions into the CPR when the ambulance service arrived and took over. They worked on him in the alleyway and eventually put him in the ambulance and took him to the hospital. Between my first call and the arrival of the ambulance nine minutes elapsed. Thanks, <a href=\"http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx\">NHS</a>!<br><br>I don't know if he survived. It's not my place ask.<br><br>But I will ask you, dear reader, this: go take a course on first aid. It won't take long and you'll carry that knowledge around in your head until the day when life throws you something random.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/19303585-1067520385249175893?l=blog.jgc.org\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "John Legend and the Roots: hearts, minds and soul",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/24559?ns=guardian&pageName=John+Legend+and+the+Roots%3A+hearts%2C+minds+and+soul%3AArticle%3A1467831&ch=Music&c3=Guardian&c4=John+Legend%2CUrban+music+%28Music+genre%29%2CRap+%28music+genre%29%2CR%26B+%28contemporary+music+genre%29%2CSoul+%28music+genre%29%2CMusic%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CCulture&c5=Pop+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CUS+Elections&c6=Angus+Batey&c7=10-Oct-19&c8=1467831&c9=Article&c10=Interview%2CFeature&c11=Music&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FJohn+Legend\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>John Legend and the Roots' album of 60s and 70s protest songs is no mere history lesson – it's an open letter to a divided America, they tell Angus Batey</p><p>Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson (pronounced with a "q"), leader of hip-hop band the Roots, is standing in the basement of a Greenwich Village record shop, flicking through a rack of secondhand 7in vinyl. "We spoke on it first," he says, explaining the genesis of his group's latest collaboration with R&B star John Legend, "and then I guess the second part was doin' my headache . . ." Headache? The 39-year-old musician and DJ trails off, then chuckles. "I'm sorry – I was reading Chaka Khan titles!"</p><p>Before his search for new records derailed his train of thought, ?uestlove, it turns out, had meant to say \"homework\", not \"headache\". And on Wake Up!, the album the Roots and Legend have just released, that homework shows: the record sees these very different musicians investigating their shared musical and political heritage.</p><p>It is, for the most part, a collection of cover versions of tracks from soul music's most heavily politicised era. These are songs of protest, angst and inspiration, soaked in the argot of the civil rights movement, and written as the optimism of the 1960s gave way to the 70s of Vietnam, Watergate and racial tensions of a subtly different kind. Every track sounds as if it could have been written last week: from the <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvSfeanNFIM\" title=\"Curtis Mayfield-penned Hard Times\">Curtis Mayfield-penned Hard Times</a>, about lives lived on the margins of solvency in a cold-shoulder America, to <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4RyYtkifTM\" title=\"I Can't Write Left-Handed\">I Can't Write Left-Handed</a>, Bill Withers's tale of a disabled veteran returning home after a distant war.</p><p>The two musicians met when Legend was studying in the Roots' home town of Philadelphia. Specific recollections of their meeting are hazy, though ?uestlove does recall being given a copy of one of the demos Legend made when he was still known as John Stephens. But the two men formed a particular bond in the last few years through their shared concern for an America that has elected its first black leader – both men volunteered for the Obama campaign – but where the splits in society seem to be widening by the day. Capitalising on this atmosphere of unrest are the Tea Party protesters, Sarah Palin and Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech was seen as a provocative attempt to appropriate the civil rights movement.</p><p>\"It was a big triumph to elect a black president of America,\" Legend says, \"but it revealed a lot of the tension and resentment that other people might feel. It's still very contested what it means to be American, and who gets to stake a claim to being American. All these things are real civil rights issues that are being contested right now.\"</p><p>Initial discussions over which songs to record took place in 2008 – when, despite the hope and optimism of Obama's campaign, both men found plenty of evidence of the chasms separating black and white in America. "I had thought this was the beginning of the post-racial period," says ?uestlove, "but during the primaries, my eyes began to open. I was doing grassroots campaigning for Obama, and I would phone Democrats to make sure they're registered. I would use another name, so they didn't know what race or colour I was; some of them were completely honest about how they felt, thinking that it was a white guy calling. You'd ask who they were gonna vote for, and sometimes you'd get an answer like, 'I would never vote for him, because I think he's a Muslim and he's gonna destroy the country.' "</p><p>Legend, who has played for Obama at many Democrat events – most recently Sunday's rally at the Ohio <sup></sup>stadium – agrees. \"Some of the things people say about him – that he's a Muslim imam from Kenya who came to subvert American democracy and capitalism – are pretty amazing.\" Obama refers to Legend as a friend.</p><p>These days, Legend is best known for such pop-soul chart hits as <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMpkWiex60\" title=\"Ordinary People\">Ordinary People</a> and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-AbEO6J8s0\" title=\"Green Light\">Green Light</a>, and the Roots for the \"day job\" they took up in March last year as house band on the NBC TV show <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ilnbtV_1Ag\" title=\"Late Night with Jimmy Fallon\">Late Night With Jimmy Fallon</a>. So people may be surprised to hear them collaborating on a track as angrily political as <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz0WZmQN4Z4\" title=\"Mike James Kirkland's 1972 track Hang On In There\">Mike James Kirkland's 1972 track Hang On In There</a>, with its repeated refrain of: \"This is my country – you can't make me leave/ You can't make me love the way you treat me.\"</p><p>In a country where schoolchildren salute the flag before lessons and sports fans stand for the national anthem before football matches, tracks like Hang On In There are powerfully charged. The song spits its patriotism through clenched teeth; it seeks to shame those who ignore America's failings. The sentiments are still as urgent and as vital as they are divisive. \"It's easy to do, 'This is how bad life is', but Hang On In There really deals with the emotion, with how some of us are really upset,\" says ?uestlove.</p><p>Legend interjects. \"Hang On In There is really about who's American, whose country is it? Even though black people have had a very difficult relationship with America, and have had the best and worst of America, we still feel like we are American. This is our country, too.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/johnlegend\">John Legend</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/urban\">Urban music</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/rap\">Rap</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/r-and-b\">R&B</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/soul\">Soul</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama\">Barack Obama</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/angusbatey\">Angus Batey</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2010%2Foct%2F19%2Fjohn-legend-roots-interview-obama\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Children of Kinshasa",
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"content" : "<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/TtE2sTIS9z4?fs%3D1&width=500&height=306\" width=\"500\" height=\"306\"></iframe></p>\n<p>If you have seen the 1987 movie <em><a href=\"http://newsreel.org/video/LA-VIE-EST-BELLE\">La Vie est Belle</a></em> (<em>Life is Rosy</em>), you probably remember the aspiring musician Kourou (played by Papa Wemba) getting himself in some trouble in <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTmlU_Garns\">this scene</a>. Here, in the latest single <em>Enfants du pays</em> taken from the album <em>Crise de Nègre</em>, <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/07/28/review-heritage-congo/\">Pitcho</a> and his man DJ Aral masterfully revisit Papa Wemba’s featuring theme song. Shot in Kinshasa, the clip also introduces Fredy Massamba.–<strong>Tom Devriendt</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/15431/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=15431&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The plight of the African intellectual – a moral fable",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/map_outline_africa.gif\"></a>Once upon a time, there were two great lands: Donorlandia and Africa. Donorlandia had many intellectuals who opined about the solutions for Africa, who received much attention in the media of Donorlandia. Few African intellectuals received as much, or even any, such attention when they discussed their own land.</p>\n<p>Donorlandia’s intellectuals could work for great universities, or for think tanks, or for aid agencies. What’s more the aid agencies and charitable foundations often gave no-strings-attached funding to the independent intellectuals at think tanks or universities who worked on Africa, or created new Research Centers on Africa. Independent African intellectuals had small cash-starved African universities or think tanks, and they received hardly any no-strings-attached funding from Donorlandia’s aid agencies or charitable foundations.</p>\n<p>The main option for African intellectuals was to work for aid agencies, where they would no longer be independent, be reporting to non-African bosses, and where their insider perspectives on Africa were seldom appreciated. Independent African intellectuals who criticized aid agencies were vilified and marginalized.</p>\n<p>Intellectuals from Donorlandia led individual aid projects or research studies for Africa. Intellectuals from Africa could work for these projects or studies or research centers, but they had little hope that their insights about local culture or conditions would be respected or reflected in the projects and studies. Projects or studies or research centers led by independent African intellectuals did not receive funding from aid agencies or charitable foundations.</p>\n<p>Some of the very best African intellectuals left Africa and became independent in the great universities or think tanks or research centers of Donorlandia. But the aid agencies and charitable foundations disqualified these African intellectuals from leading projects or research centers, due to Fear of the evil spirit called Brain Drain.</p>\n<p>Donorlandia had once given international scholarships to encourage even more intellectuals in other lands like America-Latina — so much so that by later times, such intellectuals were now making policy and dealing as equals with aid agencies in America-Latina. But Fear of Brain Drain had paralyzed aid agencies and charitable foundations in Africa in later times, and there were few or no international scholarships to encourage African intellectuals.</p>\n<p>African intellectuals bravely persisted under such adverse conditions, believing that one day many more of them also could be independent, that one day they could lead their own projects, think tanks, and research centers, that one day they could be the ones to comment on their own continent and receive the attention they deserved.</p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color:#808080\">Editorial note: This fable is based on many informal discussions I have had over many years with African intellectuals, who for obvious reasons do not want their names used (with the occasional rare <a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/2009/02/begin-it-now-the-inspirational-success-of-ashesi-university-in-accra-ghana/\">exception</a>). I use the literary form of a fable precisely because of this restriction, which means none of the statements can be verified. If it resonates with you the reader, then maybe it’s of some use. If not, then feel free to dismiss it for lack of verifiable proof.</span></em></p>"
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"title" : "I’ve Heard That Before",
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"content" : "<p>We moved to Freetown for my dad’s work when I was seven years old.<br>\nThere was a woman in the house the night we arrived, she made us dinner, helped us unpack and helped us get settled in.<br>\nMy dad who had moved a few months ahead of us said she was his house keeper of sorts; she cooked his meals and kept the house tidy.<br>\nA few years later the woman become my stepmother and I would call her ‘Mommy’</p>\n<p><a title=\"Backs by Elsbro, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsbro/4924559198/\"><img style=\"border-width:0px\" src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4924559198_23a537c57a.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Backs\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p>My friend Eve dated an older man when we were teenagers.<br>\nEve had always been mature for her age.<br>\nBy Sixteen she’d loved two men (boys, really), each affair had been deep, passionate and tumultuous.<br>\nThe next year she declared that she was done dating boys!<br>\nOne day while playing house with the older-man boyfriend, his fiancée returned from where ever she’d been.<br>\nNot like a mirage, although she could very well be, because E. had no clue he had a fiancée.<br>\nTo explain her presence in his life, the man told his fiancée that Eve helped him out around the house and cooked his meals.</p>\n<p><a title=\"Hall by Elsbro, on Flickr\" href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsbro/4923977331/\"><img style=\"border:0px\" src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4099/4923977331_4b1f7ff794.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Hall\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\"></a></p>\n<p>I head towards the apartment in excitement; it’s going to be a surprise.<br>\nI see them on the balcony and pause halfway through pulling my keys out the keyhole.<br>\nIt’s the peppy girl from upstairs, the one whose constant peppiness exhausts us.<br>\nThey’re having brunch, she made pancakes…<em> “it’s delicious, you’ve got to try it”</em>, he says.<br>\nShe giggles and flails about, she’s so happy to see me, it’s great to have me back, and life is just so great.<br>\nAnd just then, when no explanation was needed, when silence was enough, he said it;<br>\n<em>“Kate’s been helping me out a bit around here while you’ve been gone”.</em></p>\n<p>©2010 <a href=\"http://elsbro.com/blog\">the whinery 2.0</a>. All Rights Reserved.</p>.<p><a href=\"http://www.addtoany.com/share_save\"><img src=\"http://elsbro.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png\" width=\"171\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Share\"></a> </p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?a=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?a=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?i=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?a=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?i=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?a=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?i=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?a=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:66VmDHf5eaU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/TheWhinery20?i=yG8BgaVq9bM:EOlyJ31D-Vw:66VmDHf5eaU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheWhinery20/~4/yG8BgaVq9bM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "\"Personalized Content Recommendation on Yahoo!\" (Next Week at the Statistics Seminar)",
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"content" : "<blockquote><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: Of limited interest if you\n(1) will not be in Pittsburgh on Monday, or (2) do not use the\nWeb.</blockquote>\n\n<p>One of the first things I have the students\nin <a href=\"http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/350/\">data mining</a> read is\n<a href=\"http://www.theonion.com/articles/amazoncom-recommendations-understand-area-woman-be,2121/\">\"Amazon.com\nRecommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband\"</a>,\nfrom <a href=\"http://www.theonion.com/\">America's finest news source</a>. The\ntopic for next week's seminar is how to harness the power of statistical\nmodeling to make recommendation engines even more thoughtful, attentive,\ndelightful and broad-minded (all qualities for which statisticians are, of\ncourse, especially noted in our personal lives).\n\n<dl>\n<dt><a href=\"http://research.yahoo.com/Deepak_K_Agarwal\">Deepak K. Agarwal</a>,\n\"Personalized Content Recommendation on Yahoo!\"</dt>\n<dd><em>Abstract:</em> We consider the problem of recommending content to users\nvisiting a portal like Yahoo!. Content for each user visit is selected from an\ninventory that changes over time; our goal is to display content for billions\nof visits to Yahoo! to maximize overall user engagement measured through\nmetrics like click rates, time spent, and so on. This is a bandit problem\nsince there is positive utility associated with displaying content that\ncurrently have high variance. Each user can be interpreted as a separate\nbandit but they all share a common set of arms given by the content\ninventory.</dd>\n<dd>Classical bandit methods are ineffective due to curse of dimensionality\n(millions of users, thousands of content items to choose from). We take a\nmodel based approach to the problem and reduce dimension by sharing parameters\nacross bandits and arms. In this talk, we describe latent factor models that\ncapture interactions between users and content through multiplicative random\neffects model. We describe scalable methods to fit such hierarchical models\nthrough a Monte Carlo EM approach. Approximate model fitting in a Map-Reduce\nframework for massive datasets (that cannot fit in memory) is also\ndescribed.</dd>\n<dd><em>Time and place</em>: 4--5 pm on Monday, 18 October 2010, in Doherty Hall A310\n</dd></dl>\n\n<p>As always, the seminar is free and open to the public.\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_enigmas_of_chance.html\">Enigmas of Chance</a>\n</span></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "her body is the land - Krissy Darch",
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"content" : "<blockquote>Vanilla Ice on the loudspeaker says <i>kick it one time boyyyy</i><br>mine deeper harder faster now<br>be a miner for a heart of gold<br>it’s illegal<br>not the taking<br>just if you don’t have a permit<br>her body is the land where all you need is a license<br>to plunder<br>the paper work becomes an extension of the violence<br>signatures and lines and hands that sign<br><br><i>galamsey</i>, they call us<br>we are illegal miners<br>after the same thing as those licensed ones really<br>(the aura of licenses)<br>survival<br>(the aura of survival)<br>the desire to have children<br>we don’t have papers or permits<br>sometimes we use mercury<br>it gets into the water<br>the children have sores and rashes<br>but our operation is the same if<br>smaller<br>no funding from the government<br>no sustainability<br>inspectors<br>no heavy equipment just our hands<br>grassroots plunder<br>I take from the earth with my own hands<br>economy is not abstract here<br>there’s economy and the economy<br>burning down the skin of the legs of the girl down the river<br>like the skin of a grape<br>she will be a porter like her mother<br>and carry<br>nuggets from the earth<br>the newspapers say it’s criminal<br>we know<br>it’s just criminal<br>on a smaller scale<br><br>we take gold out of the earth<br>we take and we take it<br><br>we were born here in the gold<br>nothing will make us stop<br><br>*<br><br>hope, like gold<br>can be traded<br><br>wrested from the ground with mercury<br>how many rashes and rivers to extract this hope?<br>hope is a dirty word here<br>a nugget covered in dirt<br><br>they send in the journalists for human rights<br>(as opposed to the ones who aren’t)<br>who cut tiny openings through which<br>the story comes in spurts<br>between the squeeze of the lede and the nut graf<br>and the two line quotes<br>gold and mercury coming out<br>between business finance culture leisure<br><br>*<br><br>we travel from town to town<br>she carries and she cooks<br>and when I come home covered in mercury<br>she hides me in her body<br>she hides me in her body to hold me back from the world<br><br>*<br><br>Canada goes for gold<br>gold standard<br>gold rush<br>gold wash<br>gold collar worker<br>goldschläger<br>gold digger<br><br>*<br><br>men make nations<br>and call them she<br>draw borders, set limits, regulate and sell off rights<br>of access<br>and call that project she<br>God bless our homeland Ghana<br>and make our nation great and strong<br>as it lives this divided life<br>what men say it is<br>and all the things it really is.<br><br>*<br><br><i>Gold running beneath the children’s feet<br>under those mud huts and malnourished children, the news says<br>in an imagined whisper<br>gold<br>they don’t even fuckin know it</i></blockquote><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-8972771430449671092?l=oneghanaonevoice.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Roadside kiosks are the future of sustainable Urban Design.",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TKn9Q6PedjI/AAAAAAAAGbk/6h8dWFl0L-E/s1600/dk.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"180\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TKn9Q6PedjI/AAAAAAAAGbk/6h8dWFl0L-E/s320/dk.png\" width=\"320\"></a></div>The BBC interviews <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=ted+fellow\">TED Fellow</a> <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=Osseo-Asare\">DK Osseo-Asare</a> asking the question \"...how do you revamp what some deride as a blight on the face of <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/search/label/urbanization\">African cities</a>, into an emblem of forward-looking <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=design\">design</a>?...\" Listen <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009zykn#p00bbhvp\">here</a><br><div><h6 style=\"font-size:1em;margin:1em 0 0 0\">Related articles by Zemanta</h6><ul><li><a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2010/09/kiosk-culture-by-dk-osseo-asare.html\">Kiosk Culture by DK Osseo-Asare</a> (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)</li></ul></div><div style=\"height:15px;margin-top:10px\"><a href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"><img alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=4604d732-4d83-4040-ac23-ac2cc1d2c8a8\" style=\"border:none;float:right\"></a><span></span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5905104-4070227091584974656?l=timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Deep Cuts: George Benson \"Valdez In The Country\" (1976)",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TK6E25n31FI/AAAAAAAAA9M/QMQF0Jw0VP4/s1600/george_benson1.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"254\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TK6E25n31FI/AAAAAAAAA9M/QMQF0Jw0VP4/s320/george_benson1.jpg\" width=\"320\"></a></div><strong>by Pico</strong> <br>\n<br>\nWhen we last visited a George Benson recording, it was about his <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2006/07/george-benson-other-side-of-abbey-road.html\">remake of the still fresh-out-the-oven <i>Abbey Road</i></a>. Fast forward seven years later, to 1976: Benson had just ended his long and artistically successful stint with CTI Records, having been enticed back to the majors by Warner Brothers. Warners put Tommy LiPuma in charge of producing Benson's records and the relationship, which spanned four years and four albums, transformed the guitarist/singer from a jazz star to a jazz-pop superstar. His ascension in status started right off with the jazz record everyone knows about, <i>Breezin'</i>, and the two hits it spun (\"Masquerade,\" \"Breezin'\").<span> <br>\n<br>\nThose hits would be followed up next year with his burnin' live version of \"On Broadway,\" from <i>Weekend In L.A.</i>, but the hit-less <i>In Flight</i> is a forgotten stepping stone from his first Warners to his third. Attempting to capitalize on the surprise success of \"Masquerade,\" LiPuma and Benson made four of the six tracks on <i>In Fight</i> include his soulful vocals. Aside from that, it's a <i>Breezin'</i> redux, and once again, conductor Claus Ogerman was enlisted to dump buckets of cushy orchestration on even the funky numbers. Yes, it's my main pet peeve with the LiPuma era, because Benson was in command of one of the tightest soul-jazz units ever with Phil Upchurch (rhythm guitar) and Ronnie Foster (keys) carried over from the CTI days, and adding Stanley Banks on bass guitar, original Head Hunter Harvey Mason on drums and the ever-present Ralph McDonald on percussion. LiPuma evidently thought that diluting the fiercely taut funk would make more people buy the records, but it moved the music into danceable Muzak territory.<br>\n<br>\nSometimes, even Ogerman's heavy handedness couldn't stop the inspired grooves, and \"Valdez In The Country,\" one of <i>In Flight</i>'s two instrumentals, is one of those times. \"Valdez\" is a Donny Hathaway cover from his 1973 <i>Extension Of A Man</i> album, and not one of his better known songs. Perhaps the reason for this is because Hathaway was known as a singer, but this number was conceived as an instrumental in its original form. Hathaway led the way with an electric piano, and it was fairly loose groove. In contrast, Benson & Co. retains the basic melody but adds a dark, two-chord sequence used in the intro and visited again for a portion of Benson's solo part, providing a contrast to the main chord sequences. The strings are heavier there, accentuating the dark overtones, then recede when the theme is played by Benson's indestructible unit. <br>\n<br>\nBenson plays that theme by way of his famed octaves. Smooth, flawless and nimble, Montgomery could only dream about doing it this well. But where Benson excels on this song is where he excels on so many other ones: he plays equally melodically and rhythmically at a high level. He is always precisely in the pocket and somehow consistently finds the best notes to play and he doesn't even break a sweat doing so. A couple of generations of imitators have followed closely listening to records like this one, and as yet none of them does it as well as he does. <br>\n<br>\n\"Valdez\" is picked out of dozens of other examples of Benson's amazing fretwork I could have chosen, simply because Hathaway wrote a damned good whistle-able earworm. It's one of the handful of tunes I haven't been able to get out of my head for, oh, about the last thirty years now. George Benson's voice may have helped to make him a jazz-pop superstar, but all the commercially driven product he's pumped out over the years does nothing in my mind to obscure his craftsmanship of the highest order.<br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/Sydd1Czbx3M?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<br>\n</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8367705548617137551-355508698135422640?l=www.somethingelsereviews.com\" alt=\"\"></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/n0argi6ohlbaa56i35go4j7peg/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.somethingelsereviews.com%2F2010%2F10%2Fdeep-cuts-george-benson-valdez-in.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/somethingelsereviews/JjnG/~4/ZvBWtaT43x8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Developing intuitions about data",
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"content" : "<p>\nIn <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/the-laws-of-information-chemis.html\">The laws of information chemistry</a> I mentioned that my local high school uses a <a href=\"http://keene.k12.nh.us/documents/Weekly_Calendar.pdf\">PDF file</a> to publish the school's calendar of events. Let's look at some different ways to represent the calendar entries for Oct 6, 2010. First I'll divide these representations into two major categories: \"What People See,\" and \"What Computers See.\" Then I'll discuss how the various formats serve various purposes.\n</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>Category 1: What People See</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>\nHere's a piece of the PDF file for the week of Oct 4, 2010.\n</p>\n\n<div style=\"width:573px;height:auto;padding:10px;margin:15px 0 15px 0;border:1px solid #ddd;font-style:italic;text-align:left\"><a href=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-pdf.png\"><img src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-pdf.png\" width=\"573\" border=\"0\" alt=\"How the PDF looks to a person\" style=\"margin-bottom:15px\"></a><br>\n<p style=\"width:573px;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic\">Fig. 1a: How the PDF looks to a person</p></div>\n\n<p>\nAnd here's how the same entries might look in Google Calendar (or in any other calendar program).\n</p>\n\n<div style=\"width:573px;height:auto;padding:10px;margin:15px 0 15px 0;border:1px solid #ddd;font-style:italic;text-align:left\">\n<a href=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-gcal.png\"><img width=\"573\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-gcal.png\" style=\"margin-bottom:15px\"></a><br>\n<p style=\"width:573px;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic\">Fig. 1b: How the calendar looks to a person</p></div>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>Category 2: What Computers See</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>\nThe PDF file describes fonts and layout in a highly structured way. But the calendar's data -- dates, times, descriptions -- only lives in free-form text. Computers use it to enable people to read or print that text.\n</p>\n\n<p><br>\n<div style=\"width:573px;border:1px solid #ddd;padding:10px;margin-bottom:15px\"><br>\n<p>10/6</p><br>\n<p><br>\n-Junior class NECAP testing info. Meeting block 4 (aud.)<br><br>\n-Rain date for AP Env. Sci. trip to Monadnock 7:30 am-3 pm (Davenson/Sintros)<br><br>\n-Field trip: Physics to Arnone’s 7:40-11 a.m. (Lybarger/Romano) List will be sent. <br><br>\n-Senior workshop: “Tips & tricks for writing your college essay 8:05-8:45 & 1:200-2:02 (GCR) <br><br>\n-New teacher workshop 2:15-3:00 p.m. (PCR) “Guidance & Special Ed. Responsibilities”<br>\n</p><br>\n<p style=\"width:573px;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic\">Fig. 2a: How the data in the PDF file looks to a computer</p><br>\n</div></p>\n\n<p>\nWhen your browser renders the calendar, it sees a mixture of HTML and JavaScript. Computers use that mixture to enable people to read, print, and also interact with the text.\n</p>\n\n<pre>\n<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>TR class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">lv-row lv-newdate lv-firstevent lv-alt</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span>\n<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">\n<</span>TH class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>lv<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>datecell rowSpan<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,140,0)\">5</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>A class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>lv<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>datelink \nhref<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">javascript:void(Vaa('20101006'))</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span>Wed Oct <span style=\"color:rgb(0,140,0)\">6</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>A<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>TH<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span>\n\n<p><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>TD class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">lv-eventcell lv-status</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span> <span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>TD<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span></p>\n\n<p><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>TD 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style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>TD<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span></p>\n\n<p><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>TD class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">lv-eventcell lv-titlecell</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><br>\n<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>DIV id<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>listviewzYzFmYT<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">.</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">.</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">.</span>b2tAZw20101006 class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>lv<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>zippy <br>\nonmousedown<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">Waa(event,'listview','YzFmYT...b2tAZw','20101006');return false;</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>DIV<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span></p>\n\n<p><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>DIV class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>lv<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>event<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>title<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>line<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>A style<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">COLOR: #1f753c</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span> class<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>lv<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>event<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>title <br>\nonmousedown<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">Waa(event,'listview','YzFmYT...b2tAZw','20101006');return false;</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span> <br>\nhref<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(0,0,230)\">javascript:void(0)</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,0,0)\">\"</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">-</span>Junior class NECAP testing info<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">.</span> Meeting block <span style=\"color:rgb(0,140,0)\">4<br>\n</span> <span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span>SPAN dir<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">=</span>ltr<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">(</span>aud<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">.</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">)</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>SPAN<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>A<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span> <span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\"><</span><span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">/</span>DIV<span style=\"color:rgb(128,128,48)\">></span><br>\n</p></pre>\n\n<p style=\"width:600px;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic;margin-bottom:15px\">Fig. 2b: How the HTML looks to a computer</p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<p><br>\nA calendar application or service that knows how use a standard format called iCalendar will receive a structured representation of the data. It relies on that structure to identify, recombine, and exchange the dates, times, and descriptions.<br>\n</p></p>\n\n<div style=\"width:590px;border:1px solid #ddd;padding:10px;margin-bottom:15px\">\n\n<p>BEGIN:VCALENDAR<br><br>\nPRODID:-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN<br><br>\nVERSION:2.0<br><br>\nBEGIN:VEVENT<br><br>\nDTSTART:20101006T113000Z<br><br>\nDTEND:20101006T190000Z<br><br>\nDTSTAMP:20101005T172506Z<br><br>\nUID:bccvmn5aooodokincjbgl8crc0@google.com<br><br>\nCREATED:20101005T161914Z<br><br>\nDESCRIPTION:<br><br>\nLOCATION:<br><br>\nSUMMARY:-Rain date for AP Env. Sci. trip to Monadnock 7:30 am-3 pm (Davenso<br><br>\n n/Sintros)<br><br>\nEND:VEVENT<br><br>\n<br><br>\n<p style=\"width:590;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic\">Fig. 2c: How the iCalendar feed looks</p><br>\n</p></div>\n\n<p>\nIf a <a href=\"http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-daboo-et-al-icalendar-in-xml-06\">proposed format called xCalendar</a> is approved as a standard, and is widely adopted by calendar applications and services, then calendar applications or services might also use that format to identify, recombine, and exchange dates, times, and descriptions.\n</p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<pre><br>\n<span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">icalendar</span> <span style=\"color:#666616\">xmlns</span><span style=\"color:#808030\">=</span><span style=\"color:#0000e6\">\"</span><span style=\"color:#666616\">urn</span><span style=\"color:#800080\">:</span><span style=\"color:#40015a\">ietf:params:xml:ns:icalendar-2.0</span><span style=\"color:#0000e6\">\"</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">vcalendar</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">properties</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">prodid</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">prodid</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">version</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>2.0<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">version</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">properties</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">components</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">vevent</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">properties</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtstamp</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>20101005T172506Z<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtstamp</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtstart</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>20101006T113000Z<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtstart</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtend</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>20101006T190000Z<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">dtend</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">uid</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>bccvmn5aooodokincjbgl8crc0@google.com<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">uid</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">summary</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"><</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span>-Rain date for AP Env. Sci. trip to Monadnock 7:30 am-3 pm <br>\n(Davenson/SintrosEvent #2<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">text</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">summary</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">properties</span><span>></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">vevent</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">components</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n <span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">vcalendar</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n<span style=\"color:#a65700\"></</span><span style=\"color:#5f5035\">icalendar</span><span style=\"color:#a65700\">></span><br>\n</pre></p>\n\n<p style=\"width:600px;border-top:1px solid #ddd;padding:5px 0 0 0;text-align:left;font-style:italic;margin-bottom:15px\">Fig. 2d: How an xCalendar feed might look</p>\n\n<p><br>\n<p><br>\nNote that Fig. 2c (iCalendar) and Fig 2d (xCalendar) look very different. The iCalendar format uses lines of plain text to represent name:value pairs. The xCalendar format use a package of nested XML entities to represent the same data. Technical experts can, and do, endlessly debate the pros and cons of these different approaches. But for our purposes here, the key observations are:<br>\n</p></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\">\nFig. 2c and Fig. 2d contain the same data\n\n<p><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\"><br>\nComputers can reliably extract that data</li></p>\n\n<p><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\"><br>\nComputers can transform either format into the other without loss of fidelity</li></p>\n\n<p><li style=\"margin-bottom:10px\"><br>\nComputers can also transform either format into one that's more directly useful to people -- e.g., HTML or PDF<br>\n</li></p></li></ul>\n\n<p>\nIt's also worth noting that this simple name:value technique, which has been the Internet calendar standard for over a decade, is broadly useful. Curators of <a href=\"http://elmcity.cloudapp.net\">elmcity calendar hubs</a>, for example, follow a <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/the-power-of-informal-contract.html\">convention</a> for representing name:value pairs as tags, attached to Delicious bookmarks, that have the form name=value. A similar convention enables any calendar event, made by any calendar program, to specify the URL for the event and the categories that it belongs to. In this week's companion article on <a href=\"http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/2124-how-to-parse-keyvalue-pairs-in-c/\">answers.oreilly.com</a> I show how to extract these name:value pairs from free text.\n</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>A taxonomy of representations and purposes</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>\nLet's chart these representations and arrange them according to purpose.\n</p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table style=\"border:none;border-collapse:collapse;margin-bottom:20px;width:600\"><td><br>\n<tbody></tbody></td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr style=\"background:#ddd\"><td><br>\n<th align=\"center\">What people see</th><td><br>\n<th align=\"center\">Why?</th><td><br>\n<th align=\"center\">What computers see</th><td><br>\n<th align=\"center\">Why?</th><td><br>\n</td></td></td></td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr><td><br>\n<td colspan=\"4\"><p style=\"width:100%;margin:5px 0 5px 0;border-top:1px solid #fff\"></p></td><td><br>\n</td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin:auto;border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-pdf-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig. 1a: pdf</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo view and print<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;width:200;border-width:1px;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin:auto;border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-pdf-as-text-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig 2a: pdf</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo enable people to view and and print<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><table><tr><td><br>\n<td colspan=\"4\"><p style=\"width:100%;margin:10px 0 10px 0;border-top:1px solid #ddd\"></p></td><td><br>\n</td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table><tr></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-width:1px;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-gcal-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig. 1b: html</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo view, print, and interact<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-width:1px;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin:auto;border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-gcal-as-html-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig 2b: html</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo enable people to view, print, and interact<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><table><tr><td><br>\n<td colspan=\"4\"><p style=\"width:100%;margin:10px 0 10px 0;border-top:1px solid #ddd\"></p></td><td><br>\n</td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table><tr></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td> </td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td> </td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"border-width:1px;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin:auto;border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-as-ical-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig 2c: iCalendar</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo enable data to flow reliably and recombine easily<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table><tr><td><br>\n<td colspan=\"4\"><p style=\"width:100%;margin:10px 0 10px 0;border-top:1px solid #ddd\"></p></td><td><br>\n</td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td> </td></table></p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table><td> </td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"border-width:1px;padding:10px\"><br>\n<img style=\"display:block;margin:auto;border-style:solid;border-width:thin\" src=\"http://jonudell.net/images/khs-weekly-as-xcal-icon.png\"><br>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;font-style:italic;margin:5px 0 0 0\">Fig 2d: xCalendar</div><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><td style=\"vertical-align:middle;border-style:none;padding:10px;width:100px\"><br>\nTo enable data to flow reliably and recombine easily<br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p><br>\n</p>\n\n<p>\nTo most people, all four items in the What Computers See column are roughly equivalent. They're understood to be computer files of one sort or another. But when computers use these files on our behalf, they use them in very different ways. The first two uses enable people to read, print, and interact online. The latter two enable computers to exchange data without loss of fidelity, so that other people can read, print, and interact online.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nThe laws of information chemistry say that if we want to exchange data, we must provide it in a format that's useful for that purpose. In this example the PDF and HTML formats aren't; the iCalendar and xCalendar formats are. To most people it's not obvious why that's so. Our brains are such powerful pattern recognizers, and we know so much about the world in which the patterns occur, that we can look at Fig. 2a and see that the text clearly implies a structure involving dates, times, titles, and descriptions. Computers can't do that so easily or so well.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nComputers are, of course, getting smarter all the time. Google Calendar's Quick Add feature is a perfect example. I used it to create the example shown in Fig. 1b, and it did a great job of parsing out the times and titles of the events. But that was only possible because I inserted the events, one at time, into a container that Google Calendar understood to represent Wed Oct 6. It wouldn't be able to import the original free-form text that was the original source for the PDF file. No other calendar program could either. \n</p>\n\n<p></p>\n<h2>The surprising difficulty of structured information</h2>\n<p></p>\n\n<p>\nIt's counter-intuitive that computers don't recognize structure easily or reliably. But so are many other things. For example:\n</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>You have $100. It grows by 25%, then shrinks by 25%. Do you end up with more or less?\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>\nYou can live a long time without ever developing an intuition that the final amount is less. And you may be profoundly harmed because you lack that intuition. If you have it, you most likely didn't acquire it all by yourself. Either <a title=\"Khan Academy: Growing by a percentage\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2jVap1YgwI\">somebody taught it to you</a>, or nobody did.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nAlthough our sample PDF file contains no structured representation of the events that it exists to convey, it does contain some other structured data:\n</p>\n\n<p><br>\n<table style=\"margin:15px 0 15px 0\"><td><br>\n<tr><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Title</td><td><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Microsoft Word - weekly draft</td><td><br>\n</td></td></tr></td></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr><td><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Made_by</td><td><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Word</td><td><br>\n</td></td></td></tr></table></p>\n\n<p><table><tr><td><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Created_with</td><td><br>\n<td style=\"border:1px solid #ddd\">Mac OS X 10.4.11 Quartz PDFContext</td><td><br>\n</td></td></td></tr><td><br>\n</td></table></p>\n\n<p>\nFrom this we learn that that calendar originates in Microsoft Word. Why Word instead of a calendar program? Available cloud-based applications include Google Calendar and Hotmail Calendar. On the Mac desktop where the document originated, there's Apple iCal. If one of these alternatives were even considered, a number of valid concerns would arise:\n</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li> It's cumbersome to enter data into a calendar program's input fields; it's much easier and quicker to type into a Word table</li>\n\n<p><li><br>\nThe document doesn't only contain structured data, it is also a textual narrative. Calendar programs don't flexibly accomodate narrative.</li></p>\n\n<p><li><br>\nThe webmaster knows how to post a PDF, but wouldn't know what to do with dual outputs from a calendar program (one for humans to read, another for computers to process).</li><br>\n</p></ol>\n\n<p>\nAnd if alternatives were considered, we could discuss those concerns:\n</p>\n\n<ol>\n<li> Yes, it is more cumbersome to enter data into a calendar program. But do we want students and teachers and parents to be able to pull these events into their own calendars? Do we want the events to also be able to flow automatically to community-wide calendars? If so, these are big payoffs for a fairly small investment of extra effort. And by doing things this way, we'll demonstrate the 21st-century skills that we say our students need to learn and apply.</li>\n\n<p><li>Yes, it's true that calendar programs don't accomodate narrative. But we're publishing to the web. We can use documents and links to build a context that includes: the calendar in an HTML format that people can read, print, and interact with; the calendar in another format that can syndicate to other calendars; narrative related to the calendar.</li></p>\n\n<p><li><br>\nYes, but the webmaster needn't even be tasked with this chore. Various tools -- some that we already have and use, others that are freely available -- enable us to publish the desired formats ourselves. </li><br>\n</p></ol>\n\n<p>\nSince alternatives are almost never considered, though, the ensuing discussion almost never happens. Why not? Key intuitions are missing. Some kinds of computer files have different properties than others, and thus serve different purposes. Structured representation of data is one such property. If we are trying to put data onto the web, and if we want others to have the use of that data, and if we hope it will flow reliably through networks to all the places where it's needed, then we ought to consider how the files we choose to publish do, or don't, respect that property.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nNobody is born knowing this stuff. We need to learn it. Schools aren't the only <a href=\"http://www.khanacademy.org/\">source of instruction</a>. But they ought to teach core principles that govern the emerging web of people, data, and services. And they ought to cultivate intuitions about when, why, and how to apply those principles.\n</p>\n\n<p><br><br>\n<p><strong>Related:</strong></p></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li> <a href=\"http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/2124-how-to-parse-keyvalue-pairs-in-c/\">How to parse key/value pairs in C#</a></li>\n<li> <a href=\"http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/the-laws-of-information-chemis.html\">The laws of information chemistry</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://blogs.oreilly.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=57&tag=elmcity&limit=20&IncludeBlogs=57\">See all Radar elmcity stories</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://answers.oreilly.com/tag/elmcity\">See all Answers elmcity stories</a></li>\n</ul>\n<br>\n\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:JEwB19i1-c4\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?i=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:JEwB19i1-c4\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=Q4mVUCmQKj4:IFAeh4cyYCs:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/oreilly/radar/atom?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~4/Q4mVUCmQKj4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>Excerpt from <em>FOLLOW ME DOWN</em><br>\nBy Kio Stark<br>\n(Red Lemonade, June 2011)</p>\n<p> On Sundays the whole neighborhood sleeps late. There must have been rain at dawn, for now the streets and the trees have taken on the darker hue and shimmer that the water leaves on their surfaces as it evaporates back into the sky. All the colors are rich and saturated, the peeling bark of the sycamore, the green weeds, the mangled red tricycle that sits on the curb awaiting the trashmen’s visit. I spool a roll of film into one of my old plastic toy cameras. It’s light and imprecise. My cameras are a good excuse to see the neighborhood, to stop and stare. The camera opens a space for that, and people always ask what I’m doing. They are puzzled, generally, by the antiquated equipment and the things they see me shooting: the buildings and the places where the buildings used to be. The surface of the canal, lambent with marbled oil. The trees and weeds overtaking the things man has left in his wake. </p>\n<p>This morning I go first to the playground. There’s a young woman there who I know a little, Carlina. She’s tall and curvy and her clothes are always sculpted to set her roundness at best advantage. Even when she’s in sweats, as she is now. She’s watching her son, who is in constant motion, circling the playground and mounting its obstacles. He’s around 6, I think. She waves. “You’re taking pictures again? What’s up with that?”</p>\n<p>She asks me that every time she sees me with a camera. At first I tried to explain, I showed her some prints. But that’s not really what her questions are really about. It’s the meaningless but meaningful conversation of the street. She is acknowledging me as familiar, as a known quantity. I return the gesture. “You guys are out early.”</p>\n<p>\t“He’s hit a new surge of testosterone or something. If I don’t take him out and run him in the morning he’s hell all day long. Swings at everybody. Gets all pent up and sinks his teeth in another kid’s arm. Jesus, men. You know?”</p>\n<p>\tTake him out and run him. Like a dog or a horse. I just nod. Then I have an idea. I set the camera down on the flat edge of a bench and point it at the jungle gym, the speeding boy. I hold the shutter open for a long time, maybe a minute. The picture will be washed out with light, the physical structures barely visible. And the boy will be a blurred streak of motion, pure energy and light. I try it a few times, varying the time the shutter is open.</p>\n<p>\tThe boy’s mother turns away to take a phone call. She seems uncomfortable, tries to hustle the caller off the phone. “I’m not in a good place to talk. We’re outside. Hold on.”</p>\n<p>\tShe turns to me. “Can you watch him? I just have to deal with something.” She taps the phone. “Ten minutes. It’s one of those kind of delicate matters, you know?”</p>\n<p>\tNo problem, I tell her. I load another roll of film and keep shooting the boy’s flashing speed. When she comes back, he’s hanging upside-down from the monkey bars, resting. She hollers him over, in the commanding tone of mothers and generals. It works. He drops down and trots to her side. She waves at me. “Thanks,” she says and turns quickly back into the tall housing project building she lives in. I wait a while, watching, hoping for a rustle at a window that will show me which apartment is hers. But nothing happens. Eventually I move on.</p>\n<p>I loop through the neighborhood, down by the canal and back. When I get home, my lover Jimmy is sitting on the stoop. He doesn’t like phones, he is undaunted by waiting. “I was in the neighborhood,” is what he says every time I find him like this. It’s a joke that’s always funny. He lives four blocks away.<br>\nHe slides a hand around my calf as I climb the steps, and stands up to follow me into the house. I turn on the ceiling fans and a breeze picks up through the apartment, from the kitchen’s wide back windows out to the narrower ones overlooking the street. </p>\n<p>In my living room, a mosaic of photographs covers one long wall. I add a few new ones every week or so, and I shuffle them around, reworking the schemes, seeing which rules make better compositions. Jimmy stands in front of the wall now, giving it his fullest scrutiny.</p>\n<p>“You changed it. It’s by dominant color,” he observes, pointing at the wall. “The greens of the plants. The gray of the fences and the empty buildings. The red of the bricks and the rust.”</p>\n<p>“I think it’s too much,” I say.</p>\n<p>“Too much how?”</p>\n<p>“Too obvious.” I step back and consider the wall a moment. I don’t like the workings of my mind to be so easy to guess, but that’s only part of my discomfort. “You don’t see the pictures anymore, just a field of color. It blinds the eye to detail.”</p>\n<p>“Never any people,” Jimmy says. It’s not the first time he’s observed this, and he’s pleased with himself.<br>\n“People are only interesting to me in motion,” I tell him. “But that’s not really why. This is about a world without people at all. After people. That’s what all these are,” I tell him. I’m pacing now in front of the wall, pointing, caught up in my own convictions. “These are the ruins we leave behind. The foolish pride of our skyscrapers and our factories, left empty and grown over with weeds.”</p>\n<p>Jimmy sits down on the couch while I’m talking, and looks up at me, a little confused, a little smitten. “They’re pictures of impermanence,” he says, working it out. “You’re taking pictures of an idea.”<br>\nI chose Jimmy because I thought he was someone else. A nice guy who plays guitar and doesn’t think too hard about things. I had him all wrong, and that complicates my hours with him in a way that makes me shrink into myself. I suppress the uneasy feeling by kneeling down and unzipping his pants.</p>\n<p>*<br>\nOne night, I get home from work in the late evening. Carlina is down on the corner in a bathing suit and shorts, her waist like the curve of a guitar. She’s fanning herself with a newspaper and talking to Julio, a short guy who watches over the corner. He’s got a big belly, an incongruous handlebar mustache. He’s always smiling but I don’t buy it at all. Now there’s music playing softly from someone’s open window. Julio and Carlina wave at me as I stand in the doorway shuffling through the mail. There’s an envelope that doesn’t belong here. It’s to “Hombre Cinco,” and it isn’t my address. I look closer. It’s dirty, the stamp is years out of date, the canceling marks are illegible now, there’s no way to know when it was mailed. It looks as though it were rescued from the dungeon of a dead letter office. </p>\n<p>\tI should give it back to the postman. But I don’t.</p>\n<p>\tThe address on the envelope isn’t far away. A few blocks, down by the canal. Just off the industrial street where the whores walk at night. I have to wait until morning.</p>\n<p>\tBy the time I get out the door the next day, Julio’s already watching the corner, under cover of the burnt-out store’s fiberglass awning. “Hello mami,” he calls out. “You go to work?”</p>\n<p>\t“Just a walk,” I tell him. I don’t like to linger with Julio. He starts asking questions. Who is my boyfriend and do I need any help around the house. I hurry down the street that fronts the canal. </p>\n<p>\tThe address I’m looking for is on a stub of a street, half a block long, cut short by the canal and a yellow diamond sign that says, simply, “END.”<br>\n\tThere’s a sofa near the drooping fence that borders the canal. A man rises from it and staggers up to me. “Look at that face. I’m gonna marry you. I’m gonna buy you an apart- -no, a house. Gonna get a job, go back to school. Okay?”</p>\n<p>\t“Okay,” I say, backing away from the sour stink of him. There’s no one else around. Even Julio is too far away to help me. The man keeps walking, muttering to himself. </p>\n<p>\tHe lurches away toward the empty park. When he’s out of sight, I turn back to the little street. One side is the solid wall of a warehouse, casement windows behind cast iron cages. The other side has three little townhouses with ugly siding, dirty white, hospital green, mud brown. I count the house numbers. Where a fourth would be, at the end of the street, is an empty lot. That’s the one I’m looking for.</p>\n<p>\tI go down and grab the big steel lock that binds the gates with a rusty chain, rattle it a little as though it might give. It holds fast. The lot is narrow and deep. The pavement is going to seed as grass and weeds push up through the cracked blacktop. Ivy snakes through the links of the cyclone fence and into the razor wire that crowns it. There’s a great sprawling Paulownia tree shading the back, and smaller ones pushing up all around the edges, growing out of the paltry, toxic dirt. Those trees grow fast, but still, the lot must have been vacant for decades.</p>\n<p>\tMaybe that’s all there is to it.</p>\n<p>\tI keep the letter in my pocket and head for the post office. My fingers graze its surface, feeling the grit collected in its limbo years.</p>\n<p>\tThe line is long and slow. There’s a man up near the front of the impatient line, rocking a sleeping baby back and forth in a cheap stroller. He’s got the blackest hair and his skin is rosy brown. Finally it’s his turn, and there’s something a little frightened in the way he approaches the window. He’s holding out a tissuey paper, a carbon of some kind of official form. His words are soft and incomplete as he says to the clerk, “I need a photocopy. Can I do here?” She shakes her head. “No?” he asks, still a little hopeful. “I can not do that here?” The clerk waves him away.</p>\n<p>\tHe turns the stroller around and wheels it slowly toward the door. He’s looking at the paper in his hand. He’s navigating strange territory, things don’t work the way they work at home. He’s almost at the door when a fat woman steps out of the line, clucking her tongue at the whole situation. “Over there,” she tells him, pointing out the window. “Across the street at the Arab store. They do it.” She pats him on the arm. “Just cross the street, honey.”</p>\n<p>\tI would swear he is about to cry. The moment is frozen. I’m still six or seven people from the clerk’s window. I touch the letter in my pocket. I step out of the line. I’m keeping a secret I meant to turn loose. I hurry toward the door, just in time to hold it open for the man and his stroller. Up close I see it’s not tears he’s holding back. It’s rage.</p>\n<p>\tThe letter stays in my bag all day at work. At night, in my kitchen, I stare at the stove. It would be so simple. But a little steam and suddenly you’re a felon. I’m not sure yet. I slide the envelope between two fingers and feel the edges of something less pliable than the worn paper. It’s a rectangle. Thicker than a folded letter. A photograph.</p>\n<p>\tMy phone rings, and I pin the envelope onto the fridge with a tiny magnet, adding it to the haphazard collage of scraps and postcards. It works the wrong way, I always forget. Display a thing, and it becomes invisible. </p>\n<p><em>You can take a look at the cover</em> <a href=\"http://municipalarchive.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/follow-me-down-cover/\"><em>here</em></a>.</p>\n<p>© 2010 Kio Stark</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/municipalarchive.wordpress.com/397/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/municipalarchive.wordpress.com/397/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=municipalarchive.wordpress.com&blog=3626641&post=397&subd=municipalarchive&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>Clark Terry is one of the most prolific living jazz musicians, <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f229c4970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"ClarkTerry\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f229c4970c-350wi\" style=\"width:333px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"ClarkTerry\"></a> having appeared on a staggering 905 known recording sessions. On trumpet, he probably is the most recorded in history. To give you a sense of how many sessions 905 is, Ernie Royal appeared on 661, Louis Armstrong on 629 sessions, Harry "Sweets" Edison on 563, Conrad Gozzo on 547 and Dizzy Gillespie on 501. In some cases, Clark was recording weekly, month after month.</p>\n<p>Clark spent the 1950s in the trumpet section of Duke Ellington's orchestra. He also recorded as a <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f22b81970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Terry\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f22b81970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Terry\"></a> leader and sideman on dozens of dates. What makes Terry's sound so special is a signature ability to swing hard and punctuate with confidence—without ever broiling his notes. Clark always leaves the ear with warm, pretty tones, mostly by bending notes slightly for flavor.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">In Part 1 </span></strong>of my brief interview with the legendary trumpet player on Friday, Clark, 89, talked about growing up in St. Louis, playing in the Navy and working with Charlie Barnet and Duke Ellington: </p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\"><strong>JazzWax:</strong> What was St. Louis like in the 1930s? <br><strong>Clark Terry: </strong>St. Louis was very prejudiced when I was <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d25ae7970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Mississippi-riverboat-cruises\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d25ae7970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Mississippi-riverboat-cruises\"></a> growing up but it was a good jazz town. All the riverboats used to stop there heading up and down the Mississippi River. The boats brought many musicians into the area who were looking for work in town and in Kansas City. As a result, St. Louis was a good jumping off point to get established. Rent was cheap, the food was good and the ladies were beautiful [<em>laughs</em>].<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> What did your parents do?<br><strong>CT: </strong>My mother died when I was very young. I don’t know how or why she passed. My older sister Ada Mae took over. My father worked on the tanks for the local gas company. He always had calluses on his feet, and I had to sandpaper them. We had a big family. I had eight sisters and two brothers. <br><br><strong>JW: </strong>Where did you learn how to play the trumpet?<br><strong>CT: </strong>My oldest sister’s husband was a tuba player. He showed me the fingering, which was pretty much the same <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d25f19970b-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Picture 3\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d25f19970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Picture 3\"></a> for a trumpet. Our family was big, so there was no money for lessons. I made my first trumpet out of a piece of wrinkled up tubing and a lead pipe mouthpiece on the end. [Pictured: A young Clark Terry]<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> How did it sound?<br><strong>CT:</strong> Horrible. I made sounds on it. Eventually the neighbors got tired of hearing the noise and chipped in to raise $6 to buy me a pawnshop trumpet [<em>laughs</em>]. It was just a raggedy pawnshop horn, but between it and the one I played in high school, I was happy. I played all the time. I mean all the time. I loved to practice all day long.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> Where did you learn to read music?<br><strong>CT:</strong> At Vashon High School. Mr. Otis and Mr. Wilson were very good teachers. I also listened to a lot of Fats Waller [pictured] <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f233e4970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Fats Waller\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f233e4970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Fats Waller\"></a> records. One of the few times I had saved enough to go hear a band live I went to see Duke Ellington’s orchestra. I didn’t look at them and think to myself, “I’m going to play with that band someday.” But I sure dreamed about it a lot.<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> How would you describe the St. Louis sound? <br><strong>CT:</strong> When I was a kid, everything in St. Louis having to do with trumpet was hinged on one player—Charlie Creath. His name was pronounced “Creth,” <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f234fb970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Okeh-8477a\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f234fb970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Okeh-8477a\"></a> and he was called King of Cornet. As he went, so went jazz trumpet playing there. Everyone tried to play like him. But there were a lot of other good trumpet players in St. Louis when I was a little kid in the '20s, like Dewey Jackson with his Musical Ambassadors and, Shorty Baker in the '30s. <br><br><strong>JW: </strong>Did you ever see Miles Davis, who was from East St. Louis?<br><strong>CT: </strong>Miles followed us around a lot. He had a lot of respect for me and for Dizzy [Gillespie]. Miles wouldn’t change anything he was doing unless—he said—“Clark or Dizzy told me to” [<em>laughs</em>].<br><br><strong>JW: </strong>Where were you stationed in the Navy?<br><strong>CT:</strong> I was at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d26567970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"G294760\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d26567970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"G294760\"></a> from 1942 to 1945. The bands there were fantastic. The musicians were in barracks No. 1812. We all lived there, in the same place. We were on duty known as ‘ship’s company’—which meant we were permanently stationed on the base. Our job was to form bands from the recruits who were musicians. After the bands were formed, they shipped them out to Naval bases around the world. [Photo: Pianist Hazel Scott signing autographs at the Great Lakes facility in December 1943]<br><br><strong>JW:</strong> What did you do all day?<br><strong>CT:</strong> We had a lot of time on our hands, so we jammed all day long. A lot of older professional cats who were there taught us youngsters chord changes and musicians’ habits. Guys like Paul Campbell who had played with Fats Waller and Lester Young. <br><br><strong>JW:</strong> When you were discharged, you joined Charlie Barnet’s band?<br><strong>CT: </strong>Yes, he was a beautiful person. He wrote Duke [Ellington] a <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f23b22970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Charlie_Barnet_Jazz_History\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f23b22970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Charlie_Barnet_Jazz_History\"></a> letter about me, saying, “I have this young trumpet player in my band. I think you better give him a listen. I think you need him in your band.” I loved Charlie.<br><br><strong>JW: </strong>You joined Count Basie's band first in the late 1940s. How did that happen? <br><strong>CT:</strong> Basie was always scouting. He sent his people to listen to me. They’d all tell me that I should join Basie’s band. Finally Basie’s wife came around and started talking to me about joining. So I did. I used to practice a lot during this period, working on a doodle tonguing system I came up with. With this system, you sounded the way an auctioneer talks. <br><br><strong>JW: </strong>How did you wind up in Duke’s band in 1951?<br><strong>CT:</strong> Duke used me as a sub a couple of times for Francis <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d26700970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Picture 1\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d26700970b-300wi\" style=\"width:275px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Picture 1\"></a> Williams. Soon enough I was full time with the band. I was very excited. It’s hard to fathom how I felt. I was very, very grateful and realized I was playing in a band I had dreamed about for years. [Photo: Clark Terry and Johnny Hodges (right) in Duke Ellington's band]<br><br><strong>JW: </strong>Duke was a very spiritual guy, wasn’t he? <br><strong>CT: </strong>Yes, he was. But I never got really, really close to Duke. He was closest with baritone saxophonist Harry Carney and <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d267c9970b-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"070214_CL_DukeEllingtonEX\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d267c9970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"070214_CL_DukeEllingtonEX\"></a> traveled with him. Harry drove him. Duke was very friendly with the musicians, but he also was aloof. His arrangements were fantastic. Some of them were written out, some sketched out and some were just ideas that Duke orchestrated. Those charts sounded so good.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax tracks: </span></strong>Clark Terry with <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f25d9d970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Picture 6\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f25d9d970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Picture 6\"></a> Charlie Barnet's band in 1947 can be found on <em>Charlie Barnet: Town Hall Jazz Concert </em>at iTunes. The sound isn't great but dig the hip action.</p>\n<p>Clark Terry with Count Basie's band in the late 1940s can <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f25dd0970c-popup\" style=\"float:left\"><img alt=\"Picture 8\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487f25dd0970c-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Picture 8\"></a> be found at iTunes on <em>Count Basie: At the Royal Roost: 1948</em>. (That's Anita O'Day singing on the sample of <em>How High the Moon</em>.)</p>\n<p>One of Clark's earliest recordings with Duke Ellington is <em>A Tone <a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d28b91970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Picture 9\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4d28b91970b-250wi\" style=\"width:250px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Picture 9\"></a> Parallel to Harlem (The Harlem Suite)</em> from 1951, which can be found on <em>Ellington Uptown</em> at iTunes.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">A</span><span style=\"color:#ff0000\"><strong> sp</strong>ecial JazzWax thanks</span></strong> to Hal McKusick.</p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax clip: </span></strong>In October 1950, the Basie Octet recorded a <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpPehptG3yw\">film short</a> in New York. <em>One O'clock Jump</em> here features Basie on piano, Buddy De Franco on clarinet, Clark on trumpet, Wardell Gray on tenor sax, Freddie Green on guitar, Jimmy Lewis on bass and Gus Johnson on drums...</p>\n<p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jazzwax/~4/iDWXpCFTNCk\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "PARLIAMENT-FUNKADELIC / “P-Funk Live Mixtape”",
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"content" : "Do you wanna dance?<br><br>By the early seventies, the golden era of black self-determination in the USA, every black person who had half a brain was involved, in one way or another, at actualizing black empowerment. Even those who were opposed in principle to “black power” were engaged in trying to mold America into a more egalitarian society and thus even when integration was the goal, the actualization of that goal demanded that blacks be raised from a position of inferiority to equality. <br><br>On the cultural side, such activism created a climate in which artists not only were socially and politically involved in daily life but the general outlook became one of reaching for the stars. We literally thought everything was possible, if not today, surely by tomorrow!<br><br>Today we know the sixties/seventies as a golden era of black music: Motown, Atlantic, Blue Note, Prestige, Stax, Philly International, Curtom and bunches of smaller independent record labels produced an unmatched catalogue that remains a standard for today’s popular music. One interesting wrinkle is the ascendancy of Parliament/Funkadelic, bka P-Funk.<br><img width=\"341\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"235\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/george%20clinton%2006.jpg\" alt=\"george clinton 06.jpg\" title=\"george clinton 06.jpg\"> <br>Prime P-Funk was literally a spin-off from 1. James Brown, who was a kingdom unto him own superbad self, 2. Motown, where George Clinton cut his musical teeth but quickly departed, and 3. Jimi Hendrix, who brought the screaming lead guitar to the forefront. Of course there were other elements but those three are the foundation and James Brown was both a influential musical cornerstone as well as a direct source of musicians—first it was bassist Bootsy Collins, and then Maceo and Fred Wesley (who morphed into P-Funk’s “horny horns”). James Brown was the progenitor of modern funk and P-Funk was the perfection thereof.<br><br>You can call me Chinese because I was born in interesting times. My birthdate is 24 March 1947. I was active in the civil rights movement while in high school: sitting-in (and getting arrested), picketing, voter registration. By the seventies I was a delegate to the sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1974; had led a delegation to the People Republic of China in 1977; and was a member of a Pan-African Nationalist organization, Ahidiana, that operated an elementary school, and was active in community organizing especially around police brutality. When I was in my early twenties, black music was at it’s highest overall level. From 1970 to 1983, I was the editor of <i>The Black Collegian</i> magazine and writing on the regular about the music, which included writing and publishing over 100 interviews featuring a wide range of black artists.<br><br>Indeed, I was present when the mothership first landed. The premiere of that iconoclastic musical event was at the Municipal Auditorium located, appropriately enough, in New Orleans’ Congo Square. I was sitting in the first balcony with an excellent view of the whole stage. When they called down the mothership the first thing that happened was a small model mothership attached to a wire flew from the back ceiling down to the stage. As it passed overhead, I remember being underwhelmed—label promo man Tom Vickers had promised me it would be a not to be missed event. That small cardboard or tin foil or whatever-it-was-made-of contraption hardly qualified.<br><br>The music was jamming but the special effects wasn’t so special. The model disappeared behind the stage curtain. The band was whipping harder as if to make up for the failure of the model mothership to wow the audience. Then the dry ice smoke started, and lights starting blinking, and HOLY SHIT GODDAMN… a big ass spaceship started descending over the stage. I mean a BIG ASS SPACESHIP. This wasn’t no play toy model nothing. This was THE MOTHERSHIP. <br><img width=\"347\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"260\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/george%20clinton%2007.jpg\" alt=\"george clinton 07.jpg\" title=\"george clinton 07.jpg\"> <br>At that point I wasn’t the only one jumping up, screaming, and shaking my ass to the music. The whole auditorium was throbbing. We could hardly believe our eyes. Then they pushed this sixteen-or-so foot ladder up to the mothership. Mind you the band has locked into a fifth gear and the whole place was going ape-shit nuts. Which is when the door on the spaceship slide open and a sun-glasses-wearing George Clinton dressed in white fur from head to toe stepped onto the ladder and just stood there for what was probably no more than a couple of minutes.<br><br>You know the Christian rapture belief that at the appropriate time God is going to send a chariot of some sort to collect the hundred-and-some thousand believers, well this wasn’t Jesus but it was certainly a preview of what it was going to feel like. By now we were all delirious with joy. Certainly we had just been saved from the blahs. From that point on, anything was possible.<br><br>You ever saw a black man dressed in fluffy white descend from on high? I don’t know how he did it in those platform boots but my man’s swag was literally a strut. And when he touched down on the stage the party was on in full effect. I don’t remember what happened next. It was sensory overload. I had just seen a spaceship land and this wasn’t no unidentified flying object. This was the mothership connection.<br><img width=\"340\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"512\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/george%20clinton%2004.jpg\" alt=\"george clinton 04.jpg\" title=\"george clinton 04.jpg\"> <br>It is important to understand the collective unconscious evidenced by the majority of blacks in the diaspora. We all dream of flying. This was a soundtrack for our deepest desires.<br><br>So this week’s Mixtape is an hour-and-a-half attempt to replicate the sublime creative chaos of P-Funk at its zenith, which was a collective of probably twenty-some musicians, singers, dancers cavorting on the stage. Throw away your damn watch. P-Funk was known to go until morning light, literally. A P-Funk performance was a potent mix of heavy funk, Hendrix inspired rock, and gospel inflected vocals (including a chorus) garnished by a running cosmic rap from Dr. Funkenstein.<br><br>This musical mélange was created live, in real time, right before you very eyes, straight on into your earhole. A P-Funk concert was damn near a religious experience. <br><img width=\"337\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"225\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/george%20clinton%20098.jpg\" alt=\"george clinton 098.jpg\" title=\"george clinton 098.jpg\"> <br>In the eighties and the nineties there were attempts to recapture the P-Funk experience but the times had changed. Yes, the notes and the beats could be replicated but the collective consciousness was not there so the music didn’t feel the same because in fact the heads in the audience were not in the same place.<br><br>Many, many commentators on the music miss the importance of the audience and the consciousness of that audience. Transcendental music requires people who ready to rise up and while there will always be small pockets of people ready to take a trip, prime time P-Funk happened when whole communities were ready ride.<br><br>The general community consciousness is the missing ingredient but the cycle will return. That is the way life has always been. Ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. <br><br>Listen to the last track on the Mixtape and you will hear the instructions. Swing down sweet chariot. Stop and let me ride…<br><br>To be continued. Surely…<br><br><b>—Kalamu ya Salaam</b><br><br><br><u><i><b>P-Funk Live Mixtape Playlist</b></i></u><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/pfunk%20live%20cover%2001.jpg\" alt=\"pfunk live cover 01.jpg\" title=\"pfunk live cover 01.jpg\"> <br><a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FP-Funk-Earth-Tour-Parliament%2Fdp%2FB000001FOJ%2F&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Live: P Funk Earth Tour</i></font></a><br>01<b> “Dr Funkenstein” </b><br>02 <b>“Tear The Roof Off The Sucker Medley”</b><br>03 <b>“Dr. Funkenstein’s Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication Medley”</b><br>04 <b>“Comin’ Round The Mountain”</b><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/pfunk%20live%20cover%2002.jpg\" alt=\"pfunk live cover 02.jpg\" title=\"pfunk live cover 02.jpg\"> <br><i>Live 1976-93</i> (out of print)<br>05<b> “Cosmic Slop” </b><br>06 <b>“It Ain’t Illegal Yet”</b><br>07 <b>“Funkentelechy”</b><br>08 <b>“Into You”</b><br>09<b> “Aquaboogie”</b><br>10 <b>“Children Of Production”</b><br>11 <b>“Mothership Connection”<br></b><br><br>"
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"title" : "Hawala Tech and Banks in Somalia",
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"content" : "<p>Somalia is intriguing. Since they 7th century they’ve been refining and working within their <em><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeer\">Xeer</a></em> system of community law and have a violent aversion to the authority of any centralized government. It’s also one of the most entrepreneurial, hard-edged business cultures around. For instance, there are currently 7 mobile operators, offering better and more varied services (at lower prices) than almost any other country in the region. </p>\n<p>Why I’m interested in Somalia is two-fold. First, I’m interested in watching how the international community tries to force central government on a society that clearly abhors it and functions without it. Second, Somalia is a fascinating study for anyone watching the African tech and business scene. Out of one of Africa’s harshest environments, entrepreneur’s thrive.</p>\n<h3>Hawala (money lending) and remittances</h3>\n<p>Somali’s have been using the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala#How_Hawala_works\">Hawala</a> form of money transfer for centuries, to the tune of approximately $1.6 billion annually. Somalia, per capita, has one of the largest diaspora populations in the world. One in eight Somali’s live abroad. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the remittances they send make up approximately 40% of urban household income, averaging out at $132/per. </p>\n<p>(<em>sidenote: my ongoing thoughts are that it is no longer a digital divide solely between rich/poor in Africa, but between urban/rural</em>)</p>\n<p>While the political <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Barakaat\">ramifications</a> of Hawala are hugely important and interesting in the post-9/11 world, what I find more pertinent are the mechanics and how technology is changing the way it works.</p>\n<p>The East African newspaper put out a good visualization today on the way that Hawala currently operates in the form of remittances from Western nations to the Middle East and finally to Somalia. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) serves as a central clearing house for both simple cash transfers and more complicated import/export relationships.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hawala-somalia.jpg\"><img src=\"http://whiteafrican.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/hawala-somalia-500x373.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Visualization of Hawala in Somalia\" width=\"500\" height=\"373\"></a></p>\n<p>As can be seen, the person in the US or Europe gives money to a branch agent in their country. This is sent to a central country clearing house, then onto a UAE clearing house, then to a Somali agent and finally to the individual who collects the funds in Somalia. </p>\n<p>It used to be that Somali local private operators could only communicate by HF radio (yes, they did it before this via trust networks, family ties and paper), but when the mobile phone revolution hit Africa in the 90′s the communications were made more efficient. At first this was through satellite phones, and now by the robust local mobile phone network.</p>\n<h3>Banks and Hawala</h3>\n<blockquote><p>“Modern banks will always ask lots of questions and ask you to fill in lots of forms, our people are used to Hawala, we know it very well.” (via <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4038799.stm\">BBC</a>)</p></blockquote>\n<p>There are no commercial banks in Somalia. The country’s relationship with international creditors has been frozen for over 20 years and has a national debt of $3.3 billion, of which 81% of that is in arrears. It’s safe to say that no one is going to lend money to Somalia anytime soon. </p>\n<p>The most attractive economic growth would seem to stem from Hawala organizations opening up arms that do commercial, formal banking. Wealth generation without the ability to access debt and credit is more difficult than if you have those tools available – for businesses and for individuals.</p>\n<p>I just got back from Mombasa, and there are large amounts of money being imported into Kenya and invested, both at the coast and in Nairobi. Somali’s have clearly shown their enterprise ability and entrepreneurial spirit, there are great swaths of the city that are almost 100% Somali owned now. However, until the communities there figure out a way for life and business growth to be more tenable, the investments will continue to flow to Somalia’s more secure neighboring countries rather than building their own.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?a=UZcMjH-g8Og:wC79DllVIXw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?a=UZcMjH-g8Og:wC79DllVIXw:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/white_african?i=UZcMjH-g8Og:wC79DllVIXw:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/white_african/~4/UZcMjH-g8Og\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "This is an article about a statistic",
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"content" : "(Inspiration <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1\">here</a>.)<br><br>A numerical variable was today reported to have either increased or decreased or remained constant. Depending on which one, this may represent a record value for this variable, a dramatic rise or fall since whichever point in time is required to show a dramatic rise or fall, or nothing whatsoever. In a development which is probably entirely unrelated, although there is no way the business editor will admit this and publish this bit, the FTSE-100 share index rose or fell slightly on the news.<br><br>Speaking to this website, a spokesman for a lobby which claims to care about the current value of this variable said that the integer demonstrated clearly that the lobby was right. The spokesman said that the government must act, that the government must immediately stop acting, or perhaps that the current value of the variable showed that although insufficient, the government's policy was a step in the right direction. In any case, it demonstrated the enduring relevance of their members' concerns.<br><br>Reached for comment, the Ministry of Variable said that it was going to take tough action on the number. Friends of the minister said he or she fully understood their concerns, but that he or she would not be stampeded into action. However, the minister will say, modernisers would not be held back in the comfort zone by variable interests. The Shadow Minister for Variable said that the government was relying on a fundamentally flawed measurement and that their own preferred measure showed that the variable should be significantly higher or lower. He or she accused National Statistics of twisting their measurement of the variable to suit the government of the day. The Minister's office retorted that they would take no lessons on variable from a party that had allowed the value of variable to rise to record levels, fall to record levels, or stagnate at a constant level when they were last in office. <br><br>The Campaign For or Against Variable said that the public were in danger and the precautionary principle should be applied. \"So-called statisticians claim that this level of variable is perfectly safe, but how can anyone really know? Also, the weekly level of variable has been recorded as being as high or low as X in the last six months, when the statisticians say there is only a 5% chance of this. So how come it's happened once in 24 weeks?\"<br><br>The mean value of variable over the last 20 years is Y, and it typically varies as much as Z year-on-year. Over the long term, variable in the UK is typically A% higher or lower than the average of OECD countries, EU countries, or the world. On the basis of variable's distribution and standard deviation, this week's value could be expected about every B years, and therefore this news is either important or pure noise. To be more accurate, the variable should perhaps be given as a percentage of GDP, as a per-capita value, a median value rather than a mean, or as a percentage of some total or broader average. It's very likely that this may be explained better by drawing a graph. Unfortunately, this paragraph was edited out of the final article, or quite possibly the author never bothered to write it in the first place.<br><br>Both the people we spoke to in the street, because they looked likely to say something sensational, who recognised variable but didn't bother us with comments like the paragraph above said they were deeply frightened and baffled by the issue.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-8113940396088116921?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023275807\">Fifteen years in Korea</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/eightyearsinjap00holtgoog\">eight years in Japan</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/nineyearsinnipo00faulgoog\">nine years in Nipon</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023123007\">half a century in China</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fortyfiveyearsin00rich\">forty-five years in China</a>, <a href=\"http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11754\">forty years in South China</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023494127\">twenty-six years in China</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/twoyearsinforbi00linggoog\">two years in the Forbidden City</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/thirtyyearsinmo00chrigoog\">thirty years in Moukden</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/thirtyyearsinthe002085mbp\" title=\"also Mukden\">thirty years in the Manchu Capital</a>, <a 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href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/anemigrantsfive00hancgoog\">five years in the free states of America</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fouryearsinseces01kent\">four years in Secessia</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/twentyfiveyears00edwagoog\">twenty-five years in the Black Belt</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fiftyyearsinchai00ball\">fifty years in chains</a>.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/biographyofrevhe00isaa\">Forty years among the Jews</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/MN41705ucmf_8\">twenty years among the Mexicans</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/12yearwildindian00beldrich\">twelve years among the wild Indians of the plains</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fortyyearsamongi00bjone\">forty years among the Indians</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fifteenyearsamo01greegoog\">fifteen years among the Mormons</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/seventeenyearsam00gome\">seventeen years among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fromforecastleto00jone\" title=\"containing an account of a wonderful revival upon the sea!\">fifty years among the sailors</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/twelveyearsamon01perrgoog\">twelve years among the colored people</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/fortyyearsamongo00brotuoft\">forty years among the old booksellers of Philadelphia</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031200268\">ten years among the mail bags</a>, <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/thirtyfiveyears00fenngoog\">thirty-five years in the Divorce Court</a>, <a href=\"http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18040\">thirty years in hell</a>.<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=z08-D0k3FbA:xCRq7suM2QE:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img 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"title" : "When Kellogg's \"invented\" adding sugar to cereal",
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"content" : "<img src=\"http://craphound.com/images/0_45e26_30a0be7_orig.jpeg\"><br>\nHard to believe they didn't win a Nobel prize for this.\n<p>\n<a href=\"http://community.livejournal.com/vintage_ads/2220759.html\">Simple Discovery</a>\n<div>\n<ul><li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2007/06/28/cereal_straws_powder.html#previouspost\">Cereal Straws -- powdered sugar-cereal drinking straws</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2010/07/21/post-cereal-food-fit.html#previouspost\">Post cereal: food fit for a monster</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/05/28/refined-sugar-cereal.html#previouspost\">Refined sugar cereal lighting system is delicious ...</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2010/08/31/frankenmascot-all-th.html#previouspost\">Frankenmascot: all the cereal mascots in one</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2010/01/20/post-4.html#previouspost\">Sugar Smacks + Spock</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/17/the-evolution-of-sug.html#previouspost\">The evolution of Sugar Bear </a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2010/04/29/cream-of-wheat-1956.html#previouspost\">Cream of Wheat 1956 ad: breakfast is better with ice-cream ...</a></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://boingboing.net/2009/06/04/heartbroken-cereal-l.html#previouspost\">Heartbroken cereal litigant loses suit over non-existence of ...</a></li>\n</ul>\n</div>\n<p><a href=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/02/when-kellogs-invente.html\"><img src=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://www.boingboing.net/2010/10/02/when-kellogs-invente.html\" height=\"61\" width=\"51\"></a><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=392b2667a682e88af13def33b08e1846&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=392b2667a682e88af13def33b08e1846&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechCons&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/usw19LqWq3o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p></p>"
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"title" : "Today's Tragedy in Abuja",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KOq6AlodkJI/TKXtsjPGQwI/AAAAAAAAC3g/ULmQGnqW434/s1600/t1larg.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"225\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KOq6AlodkJI/TKXtsjPGQwI/AAAAAAAAC3g/ULmQGnqW434/s400/t1larg.jpg\" width=\"400\"></a></div><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Last night we had a group of friends round for dinner to celebrate my 41</span><sup><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">st</span></sup><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> birthday. Without trying to sound smug, I am fortunate to count some keen minds as mates, who never fail to impress in their analysis of their beloved country, Nigeria. But, just now, it seems that no one really knows what is going to happen – both with the elections, and more generally, with Project Nigeria. After the party, at midnight, we headed down to the area near Millennium Tower, a half-completed building site near the National Mosque. From behind razor wire, we looked on at the celebrations an invited few dignitaries were privileged to watch. I was filled with a sense of sadness that yet again, ordinary Nigerians were being excluded from the main event.</span><br><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">At 10 this morning, still a little blurry from the night before, the alert came in on my Twitter client (from NEXT) that Jomo Gbomo, the mythical spokesman from MEND, had said that there would be bombs in and around Eagle Square at 10.30. I retweeted the NEXT message. A few others did the same. In the following few minutes, the general sense was that it was more hot air and blather from a weakened organisation. I reminded myself at the same time that Henry Okah’s house in Jo’burg had been raided the day before by South African police on a tip off from Nigeria. I speculated that the two events might be connected. Then, I left it and went to make coffee.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">At 10.15, a friend called, and told me both the UK and US Embassies were issuing warnings to stay indoors among their staff and expats. The message was that the threats were both real, specific and credible. I decided to put off a jaunt into town to take pictures of Nigerians celebrating Independence. The Twitterverse started to hot up. I tweeted that there was a heightened security alert among the diplomatic corps. Still there was scepticism that anything would happen.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Then, around 10.30-10.40 I heard what I thought was a thunder-clap. It had started to rain by then. However, the sound wasn’t quite like thunder – it was more of a powdery boom from far away. I suspect now that what I heard was the sound of the bomb – only a couple of miles from my house close by the Arcade Hotel on Shehu Shagari. By this time, I had logged on to watching the official celebration online via live streaming from Eagle Square.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">I followed the tweets coming in commenting on the schoolchildren dancing, followed by a powerful show of military hardware. We could all finally understand why Abuja has thrummed with the sound of helicopters and planes flying by in the past week. </span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">And then, a tweet came through from my friend Egghead, who was somewhere outside Eagle Square. There had been an explosion. Tweets started to flood in, with Egghead cited as a “Reuters witness”. Apparently a tear gas canister had been accidentally discharged in a corner of the square. I tweeted that I hoped that this was the cause of the explosion story. And then Egghead confirmed that there had been two car bombs. He must have walked down from Eagle Square on Shehu Shagari in the direction of the Hilton. In one particularly stark tweet a few minutes later, he mentioned that he was looking at dead bodies.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">As more information on Mend’s act of terrorism filtered through on Twitter and started to appear on the news wires, the celebration continued on in Eagle Square. It was hard to imagine that the security forces were not aware of what was going on barely 500 metres away. President Goodluck gave a speech and awarded medals. The day had taken on a surreal and tragic hue. News then came in of a bus burning on Airport road. Was this a multi-location terrorist attack? A tweet came in that two ‘arab men’ had been seen on powerbikes just before the car bomb went off. As usual with all things on twitter, it takes longer than traditional media to get confirmation. As I write at 15.40, this witness report has yet to be confirmed and may not be true. Awful images taken at the scene started to appear online, and the BBC published a <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11453668\">video clip</a> taken shortly after the explosion. A confused man could be seen trying to crawl away from the site of the explosion. It was hard to believe this was all happening in boring-old Abuja.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">It’s a bitter pill to swallow to consider this: MEND were far better prepared to ‘celebrate’ Nigeria’s 50</span><sup><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">th</span></sup><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> Independence Anniversary than anyone else. There must have been months of planning involved to create a car bomb as powerful as this. What is worrying is that it shows how easily Abuja can be infiltrated by terrorists – the area around Eagle Square must have been packed with security operatives and yet a huge car bomb exploded close by. As I write, the terrorists are most likely still within the FCT, celebrating the success of their awful mission: the murder of innocent Nigerians.</span></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">While many if not most Nigerians have deep sympathy for the conditions in which Niger-Deltans are forced to live, its very hard to see how this IRA-style act of terrorism on the nation’s capital is going to do Mend any favours in the short or the medium term. The military response may well be heavy – we have now seen the helicopters and the fighter planes. It adds a troubling new dimension to the stalling issue of the 2011 elections. And it leaves many Nigerians wondering whether they should celebrate at all. A tragic day for Nigeria.</span></div><div><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-6965661063115109091?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "This is a news website article about a scientific finding | Martin Robbins",
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"direction" : "ltr",
"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/82173?ns=guardian&pageName=This+is+a+news+website+article+about+a+scientific+finding+%7C+Martin+Robbi%3AArticle%3A1457096&ch=Science&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Science%2CPress+and+publishing%2CDigital+media%2CMedia&c5=Press+Media%2CDigital+Media%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly&c6=Martin+Robbins&c7=10-Oct-05&c8=1457096&c9=Article&c10=Blogpost&c11=Science&c13=&c25=The+Lay+Scientist&c30=content&h2=GU%2FScience%2Fblog%2FThe+Lay+Scientist\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>In the standfirst I will make a fairly obvious pun about the subject matter before posing an inane question I have no intention of really answering: is this an important scientific finding?</p><p>In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of \"scare quotes\" to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever.</p><p>In this paragraph I will briefly (because no paragraph should be more than one line) state which existing scientific ideas this new research \"challenges\". </p><p>If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims.</p><p>This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like \"the scientists say\" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. </p><p>In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won't provide a link because either <em>a)</em> the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, <em>b)</em> I can't be bothered, or <em>c)</em> the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published. </p><p><em>\"Basically, this is a brief soundbite,\"</em> the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. <em>\"The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on,\"</em> she or he will continue.</p><p>I will then briefly state how many years the scientist spent leading the study, to reinforce the fact that this is a serious study and worthy of being published by <del>the BBC</del> the website. </p><p><strong>This is a sub-heading that gives the impression I am about to add useful context.</strong></p><p>Here I will state that whatever was being researched was first discovered in some year, presenting a vague timeline in a token gesture toward establishing context for the reader. </p><p>To pad out this section I will include a variety of inane facts about the subject of the research that I gathered by Googling the topic and reading the Wikipedia article that appeared as the first link. </p><p>I will preface them with \"it is believed\" or \"scientists think\" to avoid giving the impression of passing any sort of personal judgement on even the most inane facts. </p><p>This fragment will be put on its own line for no obvious reason.</p><p>In this paragraph I will reference or quote some minor celebrity, historical figure, eccentric, or a group of sufferers; because my editors are ideologically committed to the idea that all news stories need a \"human interest\", and I'm not convinced that the scientists are interesting enough. </p><p>At this point I will include a picture, because our search engine optimisation experts have determined that humans are incapable of reading more than 400 words without one.</p><p> </p><p><strong>This subheading hints at controversy with a curt phrase and a question mark?</strong></p><p>This paragraph will explain that while some scientists believe one thing to be true, other people believe another, different thing to be true. </p><p>In this paragraph I will provide balance with a quote from another scientist in the field. Since I picked their name at random from a Google search, and since the research probably hasn't even been published yet for them to see it, their response to my e-mail will be bland and non-committal.</p><p><em>\"The research is useful\"</em>, they will say, <em>\"and gives us new information. However, we need more research before we can say if the conclusions are correct, so I would advise caution for now.\"</em></p><p>If the subject is politically sensitive this paragraph will contain quotes from some fringe special interest group of people who, though having no apparent understanding of the subject, help to give the impression that genuine public \"controversy\" exists.</p><p>This paragraph will provide more comments from the author restating their beliefs about the research by basically repeating the same stuff they said in the earlier quotes but with slightly different words. They won't address any of the criticisms above because I only had time to send out one round of e-mails.</p><p>This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space. </p><p>The final paragraph will state that some part of the result is still ambiguous, and that research will continue. </p><p><strong>Related Links:</strong></p><p><a href=\"http://www.answersingenesis.org/arj\">The Journal (not the actual paper, we don't link to papers).</a></p><p><a href=\"http://www.wbschool.org/\">The University Home Page (finding the researcher's page would be too much effort).</a></p><p><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOU8GIRUd_g\">Unrelated story from 2007 matched by keyword analysis.</a></p><p><a href=\"http://www.jabs.org.uk\">Special interest group linked to for balance.</a></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing\">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media\">Digital media</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/martin-robbins\">Martin Robbins</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p>"
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"title" : "Dennis Brown – The Promised Land 1977-79",
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"content" : "<p><em>The Promised Land 1977-79 </em>includes the entire <em> Joseph’s Coat of Many Colours</em> LP and seven additional tracks from Dennis Emmanuel Brown’s very own D.E.B. Music label. A stunning set that floored me upon my first listen. Some of the most powerful roots music I’ve ever heard and has been in constant rotation for years. For an artist as prolific as Dennis Brown was, this, in my opinion, represents his work at its peak. Simply extraordinary and simply essential.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://rapidshare.com/files/331595732/Dennis_Brown_-_The_Promised_Land.zip\">Dennis Brown – <em>The Promised Land 1977-79</em>; Blood and Fire, 2003</a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.bloodandfire.co.uk/cds/sleeves/bafcd039.pdf\">Liner notes written by Steve Barrow</a></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://rapidshare.com/files/331595732/Dennis_Brown_-_The_Promised_Land.zip\"><img title=\"Dennis Brown - Promised Land\" src=\"http://www.thegoldbrick.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Dennis-Brown-Promised-Land.jpg\" alt=\"Dennis Brown - Promised Land\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\"></a></p>\n"
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"title" : "Hello",
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"title" : "The Gangster Prince of Liberia",
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"content" : "Adam Higginbotham <a href=\"http://www.adamhigginbotham.com/Archive/Writing_files/CHUCKIE%20TAYLOR.pdf\">wrote an interesting article in 2007</a> about Chuckie Taylor's reign of terror in Liberia. (Note: PDF link)<br><br> <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_McArther_Emmanuel\">Charles Arther Emmanuel</a> aka Chuckie, was an accomplice in the atrocities committed by his dad, former Liberian strongman Charles Taylor. <br>\n<br>\nA petty criminal in Florida before going to Africa, Chuckie is the first person to stand trial in the U.S. <a href=\"http://www.humanrightsusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=167&Itemid=150\">under the Convention Against Torture</a>. Chuckie was sentenced to <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/09/charles-taylor-jr-torture-liberia\">97 years in prison in 1999</a>.<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=o-tQjDgI_-k:JYTIRIgolTQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=o-tQjDgI_-k:JYTIRIgolTQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Casely-Hayford",
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"content" : "<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"float:right;margin-left:1em;text-align:right\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TJzzjhu_UOI/AAAAAAAAGak/oOFKhbDOzDU/s1600/caseley.png\" style=\"clear:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"149\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TJzzjhu_UOI/AAAAAAAAGak/oOFKhbDOzDU/s200/caseley.png\" width=\"200\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><span style=\"color:#545454;font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:17px\">J</span><span style=\"color:#545454;font-family:Arial,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:17px\"><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">oe Casely-Hayford with his son, Charlie Photo: Ben Weller</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table>\"...The <a href=\"http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2009/09/26/cutting-a-dash-in-dalston-joe-casely-hayford/\">Casely-Hayford</a> ethos represents a unique expression of freedom created when conformity threatens identity, or convention restricts spontaneity; we fuse this expression of the free spirit with the very particular gestures of English <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=tailoring\">sartorialism</a>. The House aims to distil a multitude of ideas into a simple pure entity: innovation through tradition...\"-<a href=\"http://www.casely-hayford.com/\"><i>website</i></a><br><div><h6 style=\"font-size:1em;margin:1em 0 0 0\">Related articles by Zemanta</h6><ul><li><a href=\"http://hypebeast.com/2010/08/caselyhayford-2010-autumnwinter-double-breasted-jacket/\">Casely-Hayford 2010 Autumn/Winter Double Breasted Jacket</a> (hypebeast.com)</li><li><a href=\"http://hypebeast.com/2010/08/joe-casely-hayford-for-john-lewis-2010-fallwinter-collection/\">Joe Casely-Hayford for John Lewis 2010 Fall/Winter Collection</a> (hypebeast.com)</li><li><a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2010/09/these-arent-carvings.html\">\"These Aren't Carvings...\"</a> (africaunchained.blogspot.com)</li></ul></div><div style=\"height:15px;margin-top:10px\"><a href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"><img alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=016b187c-35e3-46af-a6f0-57430eda42d5\" style=\"border:none;float:right\"></a><span></span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5905104-689111595483747802?l=timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "On Black Sisters' Street",
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">“They often talk about it: the standing and waiting to be noticed by the men strolling by, wondering which ones are likely to tip well, and which not. From their glass windows they watch the lives outside, especially the men’s. It is easy to tell those who have stumbled on the Schipperskwartier by mistake. Tourists with their cameras slung around their necks, mostly Japanese tourists who do not know Antwerp, seduced by the antiquity of the city and deceived by the huge cathedral, wander off and then suddenly come face to face with a line-up of half-dressed women, different colours and different shades of those colours. They look and, disbelieving, take another look. Quickly. And then they walk away with embarrassed steps. Not wishing to be tainted by the lives behind the windows.”</span><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">I lived in Liege for over a year in the early 1990s. This city in francophone southern Belgium is apparently unremarkable; a European urb that has yet to recover from the soot of its industrial past. The Belgian equivalent of Stoke-on-Trent. When my pal and I were trying to organise our Erasmus year studying philosophy in Europe, we had had something a little more glamorous in mind, and definitely something francophillic. Tours perhaps, or Strasbourg. Lyons at least. But Belgium was the line of least institutional resistance, and Liege was where we found ourselves.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Looking back, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Liege sur Meuse</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> has become a phantasmagoric city of the mind. I’m grateful for the time I spent there. Hidden dreams and desires lurk still, beneath the threshold of my consciousness. An infinity of stone steps reaching up, via occluded gardens, to medieval palaces where talented Belgo-Italians play bebop deep into the night in louche bars. Restaurants designed like swimming pools in deserted factories, with cultivated men playing huge board-games in surreal side rooms. A chiaroscuro pall cast over cobbled streets. Piss swilling into drains from a thousand alfresco penises. Liege was and still is an </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">unheimlich</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> city, where mittel-Europa catholicism sprinkles its ritual powder like snow: in hidden corners, shrines to the Virgin, forever fresh with flowers; </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Paques</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> celebrations that last for days, resolved only by alcohol, the sound of the drum and mistresses spent in the arms of mistresses. Between the cracks in the mottled seminarial stone, catholic yearnings forever sprouting forth.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> <br><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Prostitution was part of it all. There were two red light districts in Liege, one near the Gare Liege-Guillemans and the other, at the back of the Rue Leopold near the footbridge to the </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Outremeuse</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">. The one near Guillemans was the upmarket option: young European women in catalogue lingerie, with plastic stickers of accepted credit cards near the doors. The other place was far more gothic; haggard vixens draped in leather and torn fishnet, idling for an impoverished cash-only clientele.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">And so it all seemed to my innocent eyes. Something in the place haunted me as the years passed. The memories folded in each other: parallel love affairs with a woman and with jazz; the genesis of arcane philosophical detours; the design of Lucky Strike cigarette packets and sex for sale, behind glass. As the years passed, a gathering desire to be back in the depths of Europe, chimed intermittently, like the quiet bell in the far-off village. There is a specific type of nostalgia for the foreign cities of youth which threatens the bounds of velleity: to wander once again to the place where vivid memory was set becomes an irresistible impulse.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">And so, over a decade later, I headed back, on the pretext of visiting a friend in Maastricht. The first thing I noticed at Guillemans was the red light district had gone. Or maybe it was never in the place my memory had allocated it: a shear wrought by time on the mind’s cartography. The second area was now populated with young black women, dancing and beckoning from behind the neon lit windows. They were signs of a shift in the economy of desire. I walked quickly on. The city had also developed; yawning cavities of rubble had been filled with glass and glitz. I struggled to find my way about and had no way of finding anyone that I had known. The jazz club which soldered my ears to Miles and Coltrane was no more. I was bereft in the primal scene of youthful departure. The dissonance had added another layer to my strange desire for Liege. I must return again.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">A few years later, in quite another part of Europe, I found myself, at a later stage of philosophical development. I was bound for the </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Collegium Phenomenologicum</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">, a philosophical retreat held each year in </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Citta di Castello</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> in Perugia. It was a thrill to go at last; I had never had the funds during my years as a doctoral student. Many of the celebrated “continental” philosophers participated, one year or another. </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">The getting there would be part of it: from Stanstead to Rome airport and then the train to Arezzo, with the final leg by bus. As Tuscany skidded by from inside the metal and plastic interior of the train, it felt like a journey to the heart of things, or to the heart of thought. An English woman told me about her vineyard on a hill close by.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">By the time I boarded the bus at Arezzo, the delight of travel had receded; I was by now keen to just arrive, find the hotel and meet my fellow </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">penseurs</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">. As my mind began to slumber, the bus stopped in some forgotten village and about ten young black girls got on. I was immediately perplexed: who were they? Where did they come from? Where were these girls going and what were they going to do? They were about fourteen or fifteen at most. They sat around me. One had a Walkman and danced to the music. They all wore jeans and had pink bags and chewed gum. Their talk was girlish, their perfume garish. I tried to listen, to understand what they were doing there, but the scene refused to be set. They spoke in a mixture of fast pidgin and an African language I was yet to recognise. I turned back in my seat. And then, as the bus sped on, out of the window I noticed girls in laybys, standing, staring up as we passed. And the shock of what it all meant finally drenched me with ice-water. Young African girls, a long way from home, selling their bodies, deep in the Italian countryside. </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">But these girls are too young! The thought-protest repeated itself. As the bus twisted and turned on its way to the historic town of Sansepolcro, each widened space would feature a young girl, advertising herself. Always alone, always black, precipitously vulnerable against a stunning renaissance backdrop. Sex and the shadow of death amid the cypresses. And then, the road widened, and a man on a bicycle in racing gear, shaking hands goodbye with two young African women, emerging from behind a bush, a post-coital grin on his face. Stop by stop, the girls alighted. By the time we arrived in Citta di Castello, I was alone on the bus, shocked by had transpired. Back then, I had no idea of the thriving sex trafficking of young Nigerian girls to Italy.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">These are some of the capsules of time that flood back to me as I read <a href=\"http://www.chikaunigwe.com/\">Chika Unigwe’s</a> devastating novel, </span><a href=\"http://www.amazon.co.uk/Black-Sisters-Street-Chika-Unigwe/dp/0099523949/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1285357819&sr=8-1\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">On Black Sisters’ Street</span></a><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">. Unigwe’s second book follows the lives of four African sex workers, Sisi, Ama, Efe and Joyce, as they hustle their lives away in Antwerp, in Flemish speaking north Belgium. Language and diamonds aside, a town probably quite a bit like Liege: ancient and industrial and solemn and leery. The four women dream of glamorous futures while swilling beer and falling in and out of friendship. As the narrative progresses, the cat-fight between them quells, for a specific reason. Sisi has died and no one knows how or why. The event brings the remaining trio together. Their Madam gives them the day off. Unigwe deftly weaves the back-stories together on that day of mourning as they sit on the black sofa in the unlovely living room. All the girls have been trafficked by Dele, a bear of a man with scant command of English and a shag pile carpet in his cavernous office on Randle Avenue in Lagos. The stories the girls tell each other in those desolate hours after the death are knives sharp enough to slice into any human heart; Ama running from sex abuse at home, Joyce fleeing from Janjaweed ultra-violence in Sudan via a failed relationship in Lagos, Sisi and Efe from the gloomy horizons of impoverished destinies in the slums of Lagos.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">The narrative structure of </span><b><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">On Black Sisters’ Street</span></b><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> is simple but highly effective. In the aftermath of the death of a friend, shared stories among the ‘sisters’ begin the prolonged work of healing and the transition from non-self to selfhood. Sisi’s sordid end, and the sorrows that led each to Belgium are the two points of trauma the three young women share that bring them together. The stories they tell begin the work of redemption. At the beginning and on arrival, each woman had taken on an assumed identity. The transition from Nigeria to Belgium created an existential void. In a sense, each woman left their identity behind, and had not yet taken up a new sense of self along with the fake passport that got them into Europe. Each exists therefore in a sort of limbo or hiatus being, between a horror that was and a prophecy that is not yet. In the new world of Antwerp, each develops their own coping mechanism. For instance, when Sisi is finally found a window and can move out of working the bar:</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">“She learned to stand in her window and pose in heels that made her two inches taller. She learned to smile, to pout, to think of nothing but the money she would be making. She learned to rap at the window, hitting her ring hard against the glass on slow days to attract stragglers. She learned to twirl to help them make up their minds, a swirling mass of chocolate flesh, mesmerising them, making them gasp and yearn for a release from the ache between their legs; a coffee-coloured dream luring them in with the promise of heaven. She let the blinking red and black neon lights of her booth comfort her, leading her to the Prophecy.”</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">The agency of the sex worker is affirmed in passages like this, at the same time as the distance between active self and pleasure is maintained. Pleasure or even happiness remains deferred, in the form of the dream of the life that will take place once the mortgage to the fat pimp in Lagos is paid off. The novel is all the more powerful for the crystalline dramaturgy of Unigwe’s language. For instance, in the scene where </span><i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Oga</span></i><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> Dele decides to try out Ama before she is packed on her way to Antwerp, she writes,</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">“He pulled Ama close and she could feel his penis harden through his trousers.</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">‘I shall sample you before you go!’ he laughed. The sound that stretched itself into a square that kept him safe. Lagos was full of such laughter. Laughter that ridiculed the receiver for no reason but kept the giver secure in a cocoon of steel.”</span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">Chika Unigwe’s </span><b><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">On Black Sisters’ Street</span></b><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"> is a shockingly powerful read, exposing the lives of women who are far from home and from familiarity, using the power of story to weave a sense of belonging amid the cold strangeness of northern Europe. It shocks me just as I was shocked back on that bus in Perugia. There is however a form of therapy at work in the text, for both the characters, and for the reader. For the women, the tragedy of Sisi’s passing is the moment when the surface is broken: artificial identities and stories that cannot be told cede to narrative integrity: three selves meet and recognise each other in that tawdry red living room. </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">“They do nothing. They are in unknown territory here, having always had a relationship which skimmed the surface like milk. They have never before stirred each other enough to find out anything deep about their lives…The territory they are charting is still slippery. They are only just beginning to know each other.” </span></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\"><br></span> </div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif\">And for us, we think back to all those other windows we may have passed. For the stagnight wolf pack over from England, or the Japanese tourist missing his way, or for the alienated divorcee, or for the trembling virgin, or even the young philosopher, these streets present a gratuitous street porn, good for a laugh or even for a quick release. And yet, behind those windows there are shattered lives and fractured dreams resolving to mend. And there, amidst the shadows and the death, as Unigwe reminds us, we may find solidarity and even love. </span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-7187376956036635988?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Great catch by Egyptian blogger <a href=\"http://waelk.net/node/25\">WaElk</a>.</p>\n<p><strong>This is the original photo:</strong></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://beirutspring.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/peacetalks_whitehouse_ap_605.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\"></p>\n<p><strong>This is the one that displayed in state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper:</strong></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://beirutspring.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/mubarak-4-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\"></p>\n<p>And I thought that after the <a href=\"http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/\">Iranian Photoshop missile crisis</a> the region’s propagandists would have learned their lessons..</p>\n <img src=\"http://beirutspring.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-feed-statistics/feed-statistics.php?view=1&post_id=3447\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?i=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?i=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?i=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?a=v4344nmTUug:8zX0C95ZOFU:J3aVl1i_38o\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/beirutspring/fb_feed?d=J3aVl1i_38o\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/beirutspring/fb_feed/~4/v4344nmTUug\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "How to Build a Course on Haitian Literature",
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"content" : "<div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">How do you construct courses about Haiti? Or, what are some classes that you have taken that focus exclusively on Haiti? This semester both of my classes have a Haitian focus: "Haiti Chérie: Haitian Literature and Culture" and "Haitian Studies 101 or Haiti and Globalization." The former is in the department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the latter for the African and African Diaspora Studies Program. In compiling my syllabi and preparing to teach I have been confronted with what has become an increasingly daunting task. How to you cover the vastness of Haitian history, the depths of Haitian culture, and the vicissitudes of Haitian literature, and the ebbs and flows of Haitian politics with nuance and complexity in one short semester? I set out to begin with the books. What are the essentials? Moreover, how do I approach teaching such a range of material knowing that this would probably be the first and only class on Haiti my students may take?</span></div><div></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">I set out to begin with the books. What are the essentials? The French department class appears to be a bit more straightforward due to its literary focus. The interdisciplinary approach to literature as I see it necessitates examining history along side other fields such as anthropology and sociology so I was determined to use other sources such as historical documents, films and music. Since the title of my course is Haiti Chérie I let my students listen to the original version of the song during the second week. Doing so allowed me to give them a taste of “sound studies” as a new field in African diasporic studies, encouraging them to listen to these novels for their rhythms, sonorities and musicality rather than only for the words. I also gave them an excerpt of l’Acte d’independence to expose them to work from that formative historic time period.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Certain books from the literary canon like Jacques Roumain’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Gouverneurs de la Rosée </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">and Jacques Stephen Alexis’ </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Compère Général Soleil</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> were among the first I placed on the syllabus. I also wanted to be sure to introduce them to important literary movements such as La Ronde, indigenisme and spiralisme. The Roumain novel helped to cover indigenisme, but I was at a loss for which to include for the latter. Despite my abiding desire to include something by Frankétienne ultimately I decided that some of his work might be too challenging for my students at this level. I decided to limit my discussions of these movements to lecture notes that would provide the students with an overview of what they entailed. </span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">I am also deeply committed to teaching contemporary authors, understanding that, as Barbara Christian once put it in “The Race for Theory,” writing disappears unless we read it and talk about it. For contemporary Haitian authors I had on my original list Evelyne Trouillot, Gary Victor, Lyonel Trouillot, and Kettly Mars. Trouillot’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">La chambre interdite</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> could allow me to be more inclusive at the level of genre since it is a book of short stories. I taught </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">La chambre…</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> two years ago in a survey of francophone literature and know how well Trouillot’s range of topics connected with students. Pairing Mars’ </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Saisons sauvages</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> with Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Colère </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">would give me two for one, allowing me to explore the role of intertextuality as well as the category of “roman de la dictature.” </span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Another area to cover is Haitian writers living in the diaspora. I began with the Canadians—Marie-Célie Agnant, Dany Laffériere, Gérard Étienne, JJ Dominique. Marie-Célie Agnant’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">La dot de Sara</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> was particularly compelling for how it addresses the themes of “ici” and “là-bas” and cross generational understandings of Haitian identity. Reading Louis-Philippe Dalembert, and Fabienne Pasquet could broaden our discussion to authors who did not live in francophone countries, introducing us to the contested notion of the francophone category to begin with. I even considered for a brief moment teaching Edwidge Danticat in translation by using </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Le cri de l’oiseau rouge</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> but that desire was only fleeting as I attempted to whittle down the list. </span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Then of course there was the elephant in the room, given the demographics at my university, the majority of my students will have had little to no exposure to Haiti, Haitian culture and literature; at the same time I could expect to have several Haitian born and Haitian-American students at the very least. How do I teach about the earthquake? To this end I added a few pieces from the collection of </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Haiti parmi les vivants. </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">This book would certainly offer my students an indigenous source of information about the earthquake to measure against all of the outside information they had surely been exposed to.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">With a semester made up of only 12 weeks and a limit for how much reading I can assign in a week (a mere 100 pages!) I was in a real quandary about how to divide my syllabus since I needed to pare it down to only five books. In the end I chose the following:</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">1. Jacques-Stephen Alexis, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Compère Général Soleil</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> (1955)</span><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">2. Kettly Mars, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Saisons Sauvages</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> (2010)</span><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">3. Fabienne Pasquet, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">L’Ombre de Baudelaire</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> (1999)</span><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">4. Jacques Roumain, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Gouverneurs de la Rosée</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> (1944)</span><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">5. Lyonel Trouillot, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Bicentennaire</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> (2004)</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The list, while not perfect managed to combine canonical authors with others my students certainly may not have heard of, classic novels with more contemporary ones, contemporary and diasporic writers. In the end some of these choices had to be made vulgarly, for example I opted for Trouillot’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Bicentennaire </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">over Victor’s L</span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">e diable dans un thé à la citronnelle </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">purely based on the length and number of weeks in the semester. Likewise, I did not include a Haitian-Canadian author only because </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">La dot de Sara</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> was on back order at the school bookstore, leaving me with Pasquet alone to represent the diaspora. However I still hope to at the very least include a story from Agnant’s </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Le silence comme le sang</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> or a piece by Lafferiere. In terms of poetry I decided to limit myself to the complete works of Rene Depestre, René Philoctète's </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Poèmes des îles qui marchent</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> and the anthology </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Brassage! A Trilingual Anthology of Haitian Poetry by Women. </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> The other required texts are: </span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"><br></span></div><div></div><div><b><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Poetry:</span></span></b><br></div><div><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">René Dépestre, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Rage de vivre : œuvres poétiques complètes</span></i></span><br></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Me voici</span></span></i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><br></div><div><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Poésie et révolution</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><br></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">L’âge de Papa Doc</span></span></i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><br></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Alleluia pour les femmes jardins </span></span></i><br></div><div><br></div><div><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">René Philoctète, </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Poèmes des îles qui marchent </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">[excerpts]</span></span><br></div><div><br></div><div><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Brassage : Une anthologie poétique de femmes haïtiennes </span></span></i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">[excerpts]</span></span><br></div><div><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> Mon pays, </span></span></i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Marie-Thérèse Colimon-Hall</span></span><br></div><div><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Filles des iles, filles des Antilles, </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Lyssa Laraque-Piquion</span></span><br></div><div style=\"text-indent:0.5in\"><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Que vive Haiti, </span></span></i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Mona Salgado </span></span><br></div><div><br></div><div><b><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Films :</span></span></b><i><span lang=\"FR\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span></i></div><div><span style=\"font-family:"Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:Times\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">1. </span></span><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">L’homme sur les quais/ Man by the Shore, </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Raoul Peck (1994</span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:"Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:Times\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">2. </span></span><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The Agronomist</span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">, Jonathan Demme (2004)</span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:"Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:Times\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">3. </span></span><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">The Price of Sugar </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">(2007)</span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">4. </span><span style=\"font-family:"Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:inherit\"> </span></span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, the Pillar of Society </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">(2008) by Marc Schuller</span></div><br><div><br></div><div><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">As I think back to what I learned about Haiti as an undergraduate and graduate student I remember the frequent revision of the classics such as CLR James’ The Black Jacobins and Jacques Roumain’s Les </span><i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">Gouverneurs de la rosée. </span></i><span style=\"font-family:inherit\">In fact both books were the token book by a Haitian author for at least two classes that I took in my academic career. Teaching a class with an exclusive focus on Haitian authors allowed me the luxury of including more than merely the one text, but the challenge I encountered was how to choose from such a rich list of authors and manage to cover the range of themes, movements, historical events, time periods, and political moments that make up Haitian literature. </span></div><br>RMJC<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4536157195893661148-7064604136338741737?l=tandenou2.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>\n<em>\nToday’s post is a guest post by Baron Schwartz. He originally posted his entry on his <a href=\"http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2010/09/07/a-gentle-introduction-to-couchdb-for-relational-practitioners/\">blog</a> where we liked it so much that he allowed us to reprint it here. Thank you Baron!\n</em>\n</p>\n<p>\n<em>\nBaron Schwartz is an expert on MySQL and LAMP performance and\nscalability. He’s the Chief Performance Architect at <a href=\"http://www.percona.com/\">Percona</a>, where he\nhelps customers architect and build some of the largest LAMP\napplications around. He is the lead author of <a href=\"http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101718\">High Performance MySQL</a>.\nHe has created several popular open-source software projects,\nincluding Maatkit. He posts regularly on the <a href=\"http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/\">MySQL Performance Blog</a>\nand the <a href=\"http://www.xaprb.com/blog/\">Xaprb blog</a>.\n\n</em>\n</p>\n\n\n<p>CouchDB is a document-oriented database written in Erlang that addresses a particular “sweet spot” in data storage and retrieval needs. This blog post is an introduction to CouchDB for those of us who have a relational database background.</p>\n\n<p>A CouchDB database doesn’t have tables. It has a collection of documents, stored in a B+Tree. A document is a collection of attributes and values. Values can be atomic, or complex nested structures such as arrays and sub-documents. When you add a document to a database, CouchDB stores it in the B+Tree, indexed by two attributes with special meaning: <code>_id</code> and <code>_rev</code>.</p>\n\n<p>CouchDB lets you store related data together even if it isn’t all the same type of data; you can store documents representing blog posts, users, and comments — all in the same database. This is not as chaotic as it sounds. To get your data back out of CouchDB in sensible ways, you define views over the database. A view stores a subset of the database’s documents. You can think of them as materialized partial indexes. You can create a view of blog posts, and a view of comments, and so on. Each view is another B+Tree. It stays up-to-date with the changes you make to the database.</p>\n\n<p>You can structure your documents any way you want. There is no fixed schema. If you decide after a while that you want to add tags to your blog posts, you can simply write new posts with a collection of tags and save them into the database. Old posts won’t have tags, but that’s OK; if your application code can read the old format and write the new format, you have an application that doesn’t need a fixed schema.</p>\n\n<p>Updates are never done in-place. Everything is copy-on-write. New revisions are saved into the database as new documents, obsoleting old ones, and CouchDB increments the _rev property each time. To update a document, you fetch it, change it, and send it back, specifying the <code>_id</code> and the most recent <code>_rev</code>. If someone else changed the document in the meantime, your _rev is stale, and your update fails. You must re-fetch and re-save; you can’t lock a document.</p><p>CouchDB runs on HTTP and JSON. All of its operations, such as store and retrieve, are standard HTTP requests. The documents themselves are represented in JSON. You can talk directly to CouchDB with curl, Ajax, and anything else that can speak HTTP. There is no “protocol” other than this. CouchDB isn’t just Web-friendly, it is actually made of the same technologies that the Web is made of. You query CouchDB by specifying the database, document ID, view name, and so forth directly in the URL. For example, to fetch a blog post document from the “blog” database, you might issue a <code>GET /blog/helloworld</code>. Queries against views and other objects have simple clean URLs, too.</p>\n\n<p>CouchDB uses special documents, called “design documents,” to store JavaScript code in the database. The code defines the views I mentioned earlier. Another thing you can store is validation functions. This is code that CouchDB executes when you save a document to the database. It accepts a document as input, and can reject it, so you do have control over the schema of documents — it doesn’t have to be a free-for-all. In the blog application, you can have a validation function that starts by enforcing “every document must have a “type” property, and its content must be one of (post,user,comment).” Then you can have separate validation logic for each type of document.</p>\n\n<p>Design documents can also contain something called “show functions.” CouchDB will execute the function’s code in response to HTTP requests to that URL, and send the resulting data back as an HTTP response (as usual). With show functions, you can store entire applications inside the database. Your browser might never even know that it’s talking to a database directly, instead of a web server with a database behind it.</p>\n\n<p>CouchDB isn’t designed for arbitrary queries at runtime. You can only query one view, show function, or database at a time. You can’t do joins. You can’t do arbitrary <code>GROUP BY</code> and <code>ORDER BY</code>. You have to decide in advance what operations you’re going to need, and build views for them. You can then issue requests to those views, essentially the equivalent of key lookups and range scans with a few basic options such as an offset, limit, and reverse order. Now, having said that, you <em>can</em> define views that reduce the database down to aggregates, create a custom ordering, and so on. You <em>can</em> define the equivalent of the relational “project” operation inside your view code.</p>\n\n<p>Here’s how: a view is a map-reduce operation. A view is defined in two parts, the map and the reduce. The map is not optional; it generates the contents of the view. It is a JavaScript function. CouchDB iterates over the database and feeds each document into the function, collects the results, and inserts them into the view’s B+Tree index. Inside the view function’s code, you emit key-value 2-tuples.</p>\n\n<ul><li>The key will identify the tuple in the index that’s built to store this view. It can be simple or complex, so you can create a view that’s keyed by [this,that,the_other_thing]. The view will be ordered by the same thing; that’s how B+Trees work.</li>\n<li>The value you emit is whatever you want the B+Tree to store at its leaf nodes, and can also be complex (it’s a document, like any other).</li>\n</ul><p>The “reduce” part of the operation is optional. It computes what is stored in the non-leaf nodes of the B+Tree index. For example, you can use it to create aggregates, such as summing up counts of comments. In addition to the reduce part of the code, the is a “rereduce”. The rereduce is called as the operation is invoked on higher and higher non-leaf nodes, all the way to the root of the tree. CouchDB knows how to take advantage of the data that’s stored by these reduce and rereduce operations, so for example, it doesn’t necessarily have to descend all the way to the leaf nodes and scan in order to count how many documents match a particular query.</p>\n\n<p>An important thing to know about all this code is that nothing is allowed to have side effects. You can’t modify the database in a view definition, for example. Documents are immutable; it’s all copy-on-write. You get input; you can specify output; that’s it, period. It’s a form of functional programming. Why do we care? Because it keeps things simple and elegant, and enables all kinds of nice properties and functionality, such as replication and eventual consistency and cache expiry and scaling to multiple nodes and so on.</p>\n\n<p>The database file is append-only. Old versions don’t automatically get cleaned up. The database grows forever until you compact it. This process builds a new database and then does a swap-and-discard. The append-only, copy-on-write design makes backups easy, and data corruption unlikely.</p>\n\n<p>CouchDB comes with a “graphical user interface” called Futon. It’s built right into the database, and surprise! — it works through HTTP and Ajax. You just fire up CouchDB, point your Web browser to <code>/_utils</code>, and go. It’s a fun way to explore CouchDB.</p>\n\n<p>With all that in mind, why would you want to use CouchDB instead of a relational database? For most things I’m involved with, I want a relational database. But I got asked recently to help with a database that’ll store records about people. Although nobody has implemented anything yet, it’s a terrible match for a relational database, and an excellent fit for a document-oriented one. The inputs are going to be arbitrary documents with different structures, such as census records, birth records, tax records, estate and probate records, marriage records, and so on. Nobody knows what it’s going to store in the future. When people build “flexible schemas” in relational databases, they usually go for the so-called EAV or EBLOB models. In other words, they aren’t using the database relationally at all, and it simply doesn’t work well. This type of project needs a document-oriented database.</p>\n\n<p>I’ve left out a lot of important details, but the point of this post is to understand the high-level CouchDB concepts and how they’re implemented, so you can reason for yourself about it. If you’ve read this far and you think that CouchDB might be a good fit for your needs, I encourage you to take a look at <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596155891/?tag=xaprb-20\">CouchDB, The Definitive Guide</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>About 6 weeks ago I started a short internship at Last.fm. For my project I wanted to explore Last.fm’s data to learn how listening preferences vary with the listener’s age and gender. Apart from the science, the most important thing I found is that you can make awesome plots with this information.</p>\n\n\t<p>I started by making a chart to show what kind of music you “should” be listening to if you really want to fit in with the most common artists in your age range and gender:</p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_artists.png\"><img src=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_artists_small.png\" title=\"Artists\" alt=\"Artists\"></a></p>\n\n\t<p>The sizes of the artists’ names indicate how popular they are, while their position shows the gender mix and average age of their listeners. Based on the positions of the larger names, it’s already obvious which age category is most common amongst Last.fm users. </p>\n\n\t<p>So, you can now use this plot to decide which music you might want to listen to. For example, if you are a healthy young male in your early twenties, you probably should listen to bands such as <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Iron%2520Maiden\">Iron Maiden</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Metallica\">Metallica</a>. <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Gorillaz\">Gorillaz</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Radiohead\">Radiohead</a> might just be acceptable. If you get older you can then switch to artists like <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Neil%2520Young\">Neil Young</a> and <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Genesis\">Genesis</a>. It’s all quite obvious really.</p>\n\n\t<p>Of course, when I realized what nice plots I could make, I tried it on several other types of data as well. Tags for example: </p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_tags.png\"><img src=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_tags_small.png\" title=\"Tags\" alt=\"Tags\"></a></p>\n\n\t<p>You can use it in the same way as the previous plot. Apparently females like using band names as tags (<a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/Super%2520Junior\">Super junior</a>, <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/music/McFly\">McFly</a>), while males prefer finding lots of ways to say the same thing (<a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/metal\">m</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/thrash+metal\">e</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/groove+metal\">t</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/math+metal\">a</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/heavy+metal\">l</a>, <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/jazz\">j</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/jazz+guitar\">a</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/jazz+piano\">z</a><a href=\"http://www.last.fm/tag/jazz+instrumental\">z</a>). Most importantly we have just used science to prove that men don’t listen to much k-pop.</p>\n\n\t<p>Obviously music is the most important data that’s available at Last.fm, but there are some other profile items that can be interesting too. The words used in the ‘About Me’ section on users’ profile pages might even lead to the most interesting plot of them all:</p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_words.png\"><img src=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_words_small.png\" title=\"Words\" alt=\"Words\"></a></p>\n\n\t<p>There are actually so many fun facts about this plot that it’s just best to check it out yourself. The most obvious one is which hobbies you “should” have depending on your gender. Or you can find out at what age you should retire. </p>\n\n\t<p>I used all of this to create a fun <strong><a href=\"http://playground.last.fm/demo/genderplot\">new playground demo</a> that enables all Last.fm users to compare themselves with their friends</strong>. This is the <a href=\"http://playground.last.fm/demo/genderplot?users=Daddallo+klbostee+evilrix+nova77LF+gamboviol\">plot for the data and recommendations team</a> for example:</p>\n\n\t<p><a href=\"http://playground.last.fm/demo/genderplot?users=Daddallo+klbostee+evilrix+nova77LF+gamboviol\"><img src=\"http://cdn.last.fm/blog/posts/genderplot_mir_small.png\" title=\"Playground demo\" alt=\"Playground demo\"></a></p>\n\n\t<p>We’ve even thought of those of you who like to print their visualisations as a poster by providing a <a href=\"http://playground.last.fm/demo/genderplot/plot?users=Daddallo+klbostee+evilrix+nova77LF+gamboviol&artists=50&pdf=True\">bigger <span>PDF</span> version</a> that has more artist names on it.</p>\n\n\t<p>Hopefully you’ll enjoy this demo as much as we did. In any case, we’d love you all to <a href=\"http://www.last.fm/group/Playground/forum\">let us know what you think</a>.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>\nA <a href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBRdqjK1tyx1J1WHoBrUEdo2Z77QD9ICSSPG0\">strange story</a> of 80 men <a href=\"http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gBRdqjK1tyx1J1WHoBrUEdo2Z77QD9ICSSPG0\">trapped in geopolitical limbo </a>since the end of the Cold War: \n</p>\n<blockquote>\n\t<p>\n\tTesgaye, once an aspiring fighter pilot, was one of 80 Ethiopian\n\tcadets sent to a Soviet military training facility in the remote\n\trepublic of Kyrgyzstan in 1989 to master the art of flying combat\n\taircraft.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\t"At that time in Ethiopia there was a military\n\tgovernment, and because of an agreement between the Soviet Union and\n\tEthiopia, they used to train pilots for the country's air force,"\n\tTesgaye explained.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tWithin two years, both the Soviet Union and\n\tEthiopia's Marxist regime had collapsed, forcing the cadets to think\n\tcarefully about their options for their future in a strange and foreign\n\tland.\n\t</p>\n\t<p>\n\tAlmost 20 years later, still fearing reprisals back home\n\tfor the small role he played in the brutal rule of deposed Marxist\n\tleader Mengistu Haile Mariam, Tesgaye is marooned here — a world away\n\tfrom a family that has grown older without him.\n\t</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nThe cadets have endured some horrific racial abuse during their time in exile, an ironic parallel to the thousands of Kyrgyz migrant workers who receive similar treatment in Russia. \n</p>"
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><img title=\"6bJournalist-Nachtwey-Corbis-435x289\" src=\"http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/6bjournalist-nachtwey-corbis-435x289.jpg?w=435&h=289\" alt=\"\" width=\"435\" height=\"289\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Many probably have seen the above picture, emblematic of the daring lengths photographers have to go to record an important event. However, very few people would have noticed that the photographer at the centre was James Nachtwey, one of the greatest photojournalists alive, and that the photo was taken by David Turnley — another great photojournalist covering the same event: post-election violence in South Africa in 1994. Although neither Nachtwey or Turnley were the members of the Bang-Bang Club — the notorious group of four photographers (Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, Joao Silva) who covered South Africa in the last years of the Apartheid — they worked closely with the members of the Club.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Today, we mistakenly recall that South Africa’s transition from Apartheid was largely conflict-free. However, the backlash from white supremacists was not negligible in those tumultuous months leading up to the election: some whites called for a separate, whites-only homeland, while others formed neo-Nazi movements. Although the anti-election Freedom Alliance gradually lost its influence, violence persisted, abetted by the police (as it was later discovered). A state of emergency had to be declared and troops had be to deployed in some provinces to help residents to go to the voting booths undeterred. The elections took place under intense international pressure (on regional presidents) and scrutiny. The election was chaotic: there was no voter registration list, and the balloting had to be extended for three days to accommodate some 22 million voters who had newly won their right to vote.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Nachtwey would win his fourth Robert Capa medal for covering the violence that followed the election as some accused election fraud. He would also witness the clash between peacekeepers and the African National Congress that killed Ken Oosterbroek and injured Marinovich.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">For more information about the Bang-Bang Club, see the movie of the same name, starring Ryan Phillippe, that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/politics/\">Politics</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/david-turnley/\">David Turnley</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/james-nachtwey/\">James Nachtwey</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/the-bang-bang-club/\">the Bang-Bang Club</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3735/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=3735&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p>"
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"content" : "<div><p>I had published a link and a long excerpt from <a href=\"http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2010/09/michael-ohare-on-the-class-war.html\">Michael O'Hare's rant after reading University of Chicago Law Professor Todd Henderson.</a></p>\n\n<p>And now somebody purporting to be University of Chicago Professor Todd Henderson writes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I'm shocked and saddened at the personal nature of these attacks. Wow.</p>\n \n <p>As for Mr. Deling' attacks...</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I would like to note for the record that I have not made any attacks, or indeed comments at all--that all I did was to republish pieces of Michael O'Hare's attack. And I was thinking if I had any comments worth reading or any time to write them down, and deciding that I did not.</p>\n\n<p>But being called \"Deling\" makes me think I have no choice. </p>\n\n<p>So here is the rest of the comment by Professor Henderson (or the guy purporting to be him):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>let me make just two observations. First, according to several tax sites, my taxes will go up by thousands, not down. I'm not a tax lawyer, so I'm not sure why.</p>\n \n <p>Second, his [i.e., Michael O'Hare's] attempted budget leaves out a large category--education and daycare. This year, they will come close to $60,000, which is about $165 per day. Subtract this from the crude budget and that leaves $80 per day for five people. </p>\n \n <p>But all this avoids the question of why we think the government will better allocate some part of whatever my income is.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>So here is what I have to say:</p>\n\n<p>Back in 2000, the U.S. government's long-term budget was out of balance--although not by all that much. The government had, you see, made promises--very popular promises--for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without proposing sufficient funding streams to pay for those promises. So back in 2000, looking forward, we had a choice: raise taxes, or \"bend the curve\" by cutting the growth of spending.</p>\n\n<p>Instead of doing either of these, we elected George W. Bush. Two wars. A big (and ill-advised) defense buildup that is very unsuited to protecting us from Al Qaeda and company. A huge unfunded expansion of Medicare. Plans for the unfunded expansion of Social Security that came to nothing. However, instead of raising taxes George W. Bush reduced them.</p>\n\n<p>This simply does not work. As Milton Friedman liked to say, to spend is to tax. If the government spends somebody will pay for it. And if you don't levy the taxes to pay for it now all that means is that the person who owes the taxes does not know it yet.</p>\n\n<p>So unless Professor Henderson (or whoever) has plans for serious cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and National Defense--and I see none on offer--his last point about government allocation is simply moot. George W. Bush has already allocated it with his defense buildup and Medicare Part D. Taxes are going up over the next decade--barring cuts of 1/3 to Medicare, etc. They can either go up smartly or we can pretend they don't have to go up, in which case they go up stupidly. The argument for small government was lost long ago, and was lost again and anew in the past decade with Medicare Part D and the wars of George W. Bush. I believe Todd Henderson was a deserter in that war--a supporter of George W. Bush, and of his unfunded Medicare Part D expansion, and of his wars of choice. So I don't think he has standing to make the small government argument--some people do, but he does not.</p>\n\n<p>But Mr. Henderson's (or whoever's) comment and his post were, overwhelmingly, not an argument for a small government. </p>\n\n<p>They were an argument that whatever taxes were paid, he should not have to pay more than he is currently paying because it is unfair: he is not \"rich\".</p>\n\n<p>As best as Michael O'Hare could determine (and Professor Henderson or whoever it is does not challenge him), the Henderson annual family budget is this:</p>\n\n<p>$455,000 a year of income, of which:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>$60,000 in student loan payments</li>\n<li>$40,000 is employer contributions to 401(k) and similar retirement savings vehicles</li>\n<li>$15,000 is employer contributions to health insurance</li>\n<li>$60,000 is untaxed employee contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles</li>\n<li>$25,000 building equity in their house</li>\n<li>$80,000 in state and federal income taxes</li>\n<li>$15,000 in property taxes</li>\n<li>$10,000 for automobiles</li>\n<li>$55,000 in housing costs for a $1M house (three times the average price in the Hyde Park neighborhood</li>\n<li>$60,000 in private school costs for three children</li>\n<li>$35,000 in other living expenses</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And of this budget, Professor Henderson (or whoever) writes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby.... [W]e have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive. If our taxes rise significantly... the (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center...</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Now it is time for a reality check on this \"most working Americans.\" The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big expenses in the Henderson family budget--their $60,000 a year in contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars--are simply out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Half of all households make less than $50,000 a year--the Hendersons make nine times that. 90% of households make less than $100,000 a year--the Henderson's make 4.5 times that. The Henderson's are solidly in the top 1% of American households, in the select 1% group that receives more than $350,000 a year.</p>\n\n<p>By any standard, they are really rich.</p>\n\n<p>But they don't feel rich. They have a cash flow problem. When the bills are paid at the end of the month, the money is gone--and they feel that they have to scrimp.</p>\n\n<p>I know how they feel. My household income is of the same order of magnitude than theirs (although somewhat less) and we too had to juggle assets quickly when it developed that an error in Reed College's housing system had caused them not to charge us $5,000 that we owe. We too have chosen to put our income in places (tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, building equity, housing, private college costs) where we think it is better used than $200 restaurant meals, $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, or $75,000 automobiles. But I don't think that I am not rich.</p>\n\n<p>Professor Henderson's problem is that he thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles. And even half a million dollars a year cannot be you all of that.</p>\n\n<p>But if he values the high-end consumption so much, why doesn't he rearrange his budget? Why not stop the retirement savings contributions, why not rent rather than buy, why not send the kids to public school? Then the disposable cash at the end of the month would flow like water. His problem is that some of these decisions would strike him as imprudent. And all of them would strike him as degradations--doctor-law professor couples ought to send their kids to private schools, and live in big houses, and contribute to their 401(k)s, and also still have lots of cash for splurges. That is the way things should be.</p>\n\n<p>But why does he think that that is the way things should be?</p>\n\n<p>And here is the dirty secret: Professor Henderson thinks that that is the way things should be because he knows people for whom that is the way it is.</p>\n\n<p>Cast yourself back to 1980. In 1980 a household at the bottom of the 1% rich households in America had an income equivalent in today's dollars $190,000 a year. They know of 1000 people--900 of them poorer than they are in income brackets 90-99% and 100 people richer than they are in the top 1% income bracket. The 900 people poorer than them back in 1980 had incomes from $85,000-$190,000 a year. Those are, if you are sitting at the bottom of the top 1%, the middle class who are not as successful as you. You don't look downward much. Instead, you look upward. Of the 100 above you, 90 in 1980 had incomes less than three times their incomes. And they would have known of 1 person of that 100 who was seven times as rich as they were. </p>\n\n<p>Thus Professor Henderson in 1980 would have known who the really rich were, and they would on average have had about four times his income--more, considerably more, but not a huge gulf. He would have known people who were truly rich, and he would have seen himself as one of them--or as almost one of them.</p>\n\n<p>Now fast forward to today. Today a household at the bottom of the 1% rich households in America has an income of nearly $400,000 a year--the income of that slot in the labor market has more than doubled, while the incomes of those at the slot at the bottom of the 10% wealthy has grown by only 20% in two decades. The 900 people he knows in the 90%-99% slots have incomes that start at $110,000 a year. Compared to Henderson's $455,000, they are barely middle class--\"How can they afford cell phones?\" Henderson sometimes wonders. </p>\n\n<p>But he wonders rarely. He doesn't say: \"Wow! My real income is more than twice the income of somebody in this slot a generation ago! Wow! A generation ago the income of my slot was only twice that of somebody at the bottom of the 10% wealthy, and now it is 3 1/2 times as much!\" For he doesn't look down at the 99% of American households who have less income than he does. And he looks up. And when he looks up today he sees as wide a gap yawning above him as the gap between Dives and Lazarus. Mr. Henderson doesn't look down. </p>\n\n<p>Instead, Mr. Henderson looks up. Of the 100 people richer than he is, fully ten have more than four times his income. And he knows of one person with 20 times his income. He knows who the really rich are, and they have ten times his income: They have not $450,000 a year. They have $4.5 million a year. And, to him, they are in a different world.</p>\n\n<p>And so he is sad. He and his wife deserve to be successful. And he knows people who are successful. But he is not one of them--widening income inequality over the past generation has excluded him from the rich who truly have money.</p>\n\n<p>And this makes him sad. And angry. But, curiously enough, not angry at the senior law firm partners who extract surplus value from their associates and their clients, or angry at the financiers, but angry at... Barack Obama, who dares to suggest that the U.S. government's funding gap should be closed partly by taxing him, and angry at the great hordes of the unwashed who will receive the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments that the government will make over the next several generations.</p>\n\n<p>Do I wish that Professor Henderson had a little more self-knowledge? Yes. Is it pathetic that somebody with nine times the median household income thinks of himself as just another average Joe, just another \"working American\"? Yes. Do I find it embarrassing that somebody whose income is in the top 1% of American households thinks that he is not rich? Yes.</p>\n\n<p>Do I hope to educate him so that he has a better grasp on reality and better understanding of America and of public policy? Yes. </p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p>Here is Henderson's original post:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"http://truthonthemarket.com/2010/09/15/we-are-the-super-rich/\">We are the Super Rich « Truth on the Market</a>: The rhetoric in Washington about taxes is about millionaires and the super rich, but the relevant dividing line between millionaires and the middle class is pegged at family income of $250,000. (I’m not a math professor, but last time I checked $250,000 is less than $1 million.) That makes me super rich and subject to a big tax hike if the president has his way.</p>\n \n <p>I’m the president’s neighbor in Chicago, but we’ve never met. I wish we could, because I would introduce him to my family and our lifestyle, one he believes is capable of financing the vast expansion of government he is planning. A quick look at our family budget, which I will happily share with the White House, will show him that like many Americans, we are just getting by despite seeming to be rich. We aren’t.</p>\n \n <p>I, like the president before me, am a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and my wife, like the first lady before her, works at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where she is a doctor who treats children with cancer. Our combined income exceeds the $250,000 threshold for the super rich (but not by that much), and the president plans on raising my taxes. After all, we can afford it, and the world we are now living in has that familiar Marxian tone of those who need take and those who can afford it pay. The problem is, we can’t afford it. Here is why.</p>\n \n <p>The biggest expense for us is financing government. Last year, my wife and I paid nearly $100,000 in federal and state taxes, not even including sales and other taxes. This amount is so high because we can’t afford fancy accountants and lawyers to help us evade taxes and we are penalized by the tax code because we choose to be married and we both work outside the home. (If my wife and I divorced or were never married, the government would write us a check for tens of thousands of dollars. Talk about perverse incentives.)</p>\n \n <p>Our next biggest expense, like most people, is our mortgage. Homes near our work in Chicago aren’t cheap and we do not have friends who were willing to help us finance the deal. We chose to invest in the University community and renovate and old property, but we did so at an inopportune time.</p>\n \n <p>We pay about $15,000 in property taxes, about half of which goes to fund public education in Chicago. Since we care the education of our three children, this means we also have to pay to send them to private school. My wife has school loans of nearly $250,000 and I do too, although becoming a lawyer is significantly cheaper. We try to invest in our retirement by putting some money in the stock market, something that these days sounds like a patriotic act. Our account isn’t worth much, and is worth a lot less than it used to be.</p>\n \n <p>Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby so we can both work outside the home. At the end of all this, we have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive.</p>\n \n <p>If our taxes rise significantly, as they seem likely to, we can cut back on some things. The (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center, but these are only a few hundred dollars per month in total. But more importantly, what is the theory under which collecting this money in taxes and deciding in Washington how to spend it is superior to our decisions? Ask the entrepreneurs we employ and the new arrivals they employ in turn whether they prefer to work for us or get a government handout.</p>\n \n <p>If these cuts don’t work, we will sell our house – into an already spiraling market of declining asset values – and our cars, assuming someone will buy them. The irony here, of course, is that the government is working to save both of these industries despite the impact that increasing taxes will have.</p>\n \n <p>The problem with the president’s plan is that the super rich don’t pay taxes – they hide in the Cayman Islands or use fancy investment vehicles to shelter their income. We aren’t rich enough to afford this – I use Turbo Tax. But we are rich enough to be hurt by the president’s plan. The next time the president comes home to Chicago, he has a standing invitation to come to my house (two blocks from his) and judge for himself whether the Hendersons are as rich as he thinks.</p>\n</blockquote>\n</div>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=xZ9CZjO3Jyg:0yFDKb6kfio:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?a=xZ9CZjO3Jyg:0yFDKb6kfio:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~4/xZ9CZjO3Jyg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Fatou Diome : Celles qui attendent",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TJH3nxryzeI/AAAAAAAACF8/yowsenCVgLI/s1600/Diome.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"266\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TJH3nxryzeI/AAAAAAAACF8/yowsenCVgLI/s400/Diome.jpg\" width=\"400\"> </a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\">© uzaigaijin</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\"></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">Il existe des textes comme cela où vous vous demandez si l’auteur va tenir le rythme, la cadence, la qualité qu’il a distillé au début de son roman. Si la pertinence de son analyse, l’exploration profonde de l’âme humaine à laquelle il s’est engagé ne va pas être remise par un scénario incohérent. Alors vous continuez votre lecture, de surprise en surprise, pris par le style relevé, la langue célébrée, dans un univers qui vous échappe complètement même quand vous pensez en connaître un bout.</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">C’est dans cet huis clos passionnant dans sa forme, douloureux sur le fond que je me suis enfermé avec Fatou Diome. Dans ce long roman où la voix, non les voix de celles qui attendent quelque part en Afrique un homme, un mari, un fils parti à l’aventure pour l’Europe s’exprime. Ici, ce sont des jeunes sénégalais d’une île sérère qui bravent l’Atlantique pour rejoindre l’Espagne, pour sombrer ensuite dans la clandestinité.</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">Fatou Diome pose deux personnages centraux. Deux femmes. Bougna et Arame. Elles sont amies, avec des tempéraments différents et elles évoluent dans des contextes matrimoniaux très spécifiques. Bougna est une co-épouse dans un foyer polygame où elle tente de s’imposer par tous les moyens. Inconsciemment, elle n’a sûrement jamais intégrée les valeurs de partage de ce système. Elle est égoïste, centrée sur ses propres hantises, concernée par son désir d’être reconnue face à une première épouse peu disserte mais dont la réussite de la progéniture par pour elle et renforce jalousie et rancœur dans l’âme de Bougna.</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">Arame, elle, a été mariée de force un rescapé des guerres coloniales, grognon, irascible, stérile. Cet homme ne déverse que bile amer et insultes sur son entourage, enfermé dans l’enfer de sa déchéance physique et de secrets enfouis. Le fils aîné d’Arame est mort en haute mer dans le cadre de la pêche. Et son fils cadet, Lamine, le seul qui lui reste, est au chômage sans aucune perspective d'avenir.</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">Alors que chaque jour est un challenge pour nourrir la ribambelle de gamins aimants que sont ses petites-filles et petits-fils ainsi que son mari grabataire, sa comparse animée par des intentions retorses, lui propose un deal délicat en lui vantant les possibilités d’une réussite possible pour leurs garçons par le biais d’une traversée vers l’Espagne...</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\">Ce qu’il advient de nos clandestins, on ne le sait que très tard dans le déroulé du roman. C’est l’attente de ces femmes, de ces mères qui ont réussi à marier leurs fistons. C’est aussi l’attente de ces épouses modelées dans ce système qui vivent l’absence mythique de cet homme émigré sensé faire fortune et apporter espoir à sa famille. Sauf que les chimères ne se concrétisent pas, les appels se font rares et les mandats sporadiques...</div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br>De toutes ces attentes, qui diffèrent pour chacune de ses femmes, celle de Coumba épouse de Issa, le fils de Bougna est la plus pathétique. Épouse aimante et fidèle, mère dévouée, sa voix est celle qui porte le mieux la détresse de ces femmes car elle est la seule dont la démarche est complètement désintéressée. La charge de son discours est l'une des plus belles réussites de ce roman. C'est aussi le personnage sur lequel s'acharne le destin avec une cruelle efficacité. Enfin le destin, suivez mon regard...<br><br><br><blockquote>Les coups de fil s'étaient largement espacés. Les femmes accusèrent le coup. Mais on finit toujours par s'inventer une manière de faire face à l'absence. Au début, on compte les jours puis les semaines, enfin les mois. Advient inévitablement le moment où l'on se résout à admettre que le décompte se fera en années; alors on commence à ne plus compter du tout. Si l'oubli ne guérit pas la plaie, il permet au moins de ne pas la gratter en permanence. N'en déplaise aux voyageurs, ceux qui restent sont obligés de les tuer, symboliquement, pour survivre à l'abandon. Partir c'est mourir au présent de ceux qui demeurent.</blockquote><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Page 195, éditions Flammarion</span></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br>Par ce roman, je découvre un texte magnifique de Fatou Diome. Un propos critique mais complet sur une petite communauté sénégalaise, sur les rapports complexes entre le nord et le sud, l'illusion de l'eldorado européen, sur la vanité du paraître, sur l'amour, sur les femmes, sur l'attente de celles qu'on ne voit pas, le tout porté par une très belle plume. Celle de Fatou Diome.<br><br><div style=\"text-align:center\"><blockquote>Ceux qui nous oublient nous assassinent </blockquote></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TJSWQq6lSeI/AAAAAAAACGE/GKqqd6j5UgI/s1600/P9180337.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TJSWQq6lSeI/AAAAAAAACGE/GKqqd6j5UgI/s400/P9180337.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div></div><div align=\"justify\" style=\"margin-bottom:0cm\"><br></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><a href=\"http://editions.flammarion.com/Albums_Detail.cfm?ID=38869&levelCode=litterature\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Fatou Diome, Celles qui attendent</span></a><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\">Editions Flammarion, 1ère parution en 2010, 327 pages</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:justify\">Voir la critique de Nathalie Philippe sur <a href=\"http://www.culturessud.com/contenu.php?id=279\">Cultures Sud</a> et celle de <a href=\"http://fibromaman.blogspot.com/2010/07/fatou-diome-celles-qui-attendent.html\">Clara</a>. </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-2837357285897624653?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Myth Of Razors And Razor Blades",
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"content" : "The story of Gillette and the famous \"razors and razor blades\" business model is legendary at this point. The story goes that King Gillette revolutionized business by coming up with the strategy of selling razors cheaply, but then locking people in to expensive disposable razors, where the margin existed. This strategy has become so well-known that it's mentioned all the time and seen in lots of other industries as well, especially the technology industry. It's seen as the basis for console video games (consoles cheap, games expensive), printers (printers cheap, ink expensive), mobile phone service (phones cheap, service expensive), etc. \n<br><br>\nOf course, various business strategists who discuss the razor-razor blade business model suggest that there are some key rules to making this work: for example, many feel that there needs to be some level of lock-in, that prevents competitors from entering the high margin part of the market. That is, if someone else can just sell the high margin razorblades, then why would Gillette make the low margin (or negative margin) razors, since customers might just go elsewhere for the blades?\n<br><br>\nWell, it turns out that an awful lot of both the history and the theory turn out to be <b>totally wrong</b> when it comes to Gillette and the razor/razor blade market. <a href=\"http://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/24633924545\">Felix Salmon</a> points us to Randy Picker's latest paper, which <a href=\"http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1676444\">explores the myths of the razors-and-blades story</a> as it applies to Gillette -- and the counterintuitive reality of what actually happened. I don't think the real story is quite as surprising or confusing as Picker makes it out to be -- other than the surprising fact that the common \"story\" we've all heard turns out to be wrong.\n<br><br>\nWhat Picker found, first of all, is that Gillette really didn't use the cheap razors and expensive blades strategy at all in the early years. In fact, it went the opposite direction, and charged an extremely <b>high price</b> for the razors. While other razors went for closer to $1, Gillette charged $5 for its razor (with a set of 12 blades). As Picker notes, this represented about 1/3 of a week's wages at the time, and made it a luxury item. While there were some convenience factors, other safety razors entered the market soon and charged a lot less than Gillette for both razors and blades... and Gillette kept its prices high.\n<br><br>\nAnd here's where patents enter the story.\n<br><br>\nGillette received patents in 1904 on both the razor and the blade. As Picker notes, conventional wisdom would suggest that this is the perfect point for Gillette to have used the famed razors-and-razor blades strategy, since it could use the patents to exclude competitors from offering compatible blades. But, it did not. The same \"conventional wisdom\" would then argue that once the patents expired, and others could offer compatible razors, the razors-and-blades strategy would not work. And yet, it was after the patents expired and when there were compatible blades on the market that Gillette finally went to this form of strategy.... and its sales and profits shot up.\n<br><br>\nPicker suggests that none of this makes sense. He says without exclusion via things like patents, a razors-and-blades strategy shouldn't work, because there would be no lock-in on the platform (razors), and there would be competitors who would just offer the blades, undercutting Gillette, which would have to eat the costs on the cheap razors. Meanwhile, without the lock-in, users could just jump ship to a competitor at will, since the platform was so cheap.\n<br><br>\nI'd argue, however, that it actually makes perfect sense, the more you think about it. With patents, Gillette priced the razors (and, potentially, the blades) artificially high, creating a smaller, artificially limited market. This has long been our complaint with patents in general. Once the patents expired, and actual direct competition became more of an issue, then Gillette finally had to price to the market, capturing a much larger segment of the market, driving up revenue and profits because of it. As for why once the patents were no longer a serious issue, this strategy still worked, I think Picker underestimates both the value of brand loyalty and convenience, as well as mental transaction costs.\n<br><br>\nThat is, even if others offer compatible blades for Gillette products, people are generally loyal to the overall platform brand if it hasn't done them wrong. Not <i>everyone</i> will be, of course. There will always be some pure price shoppers who look for the best deal. But many people will remain generally loyal to Gillette, and with more customers coming in due to market pricing, the net benefit could be much greater. On top of that, people don't want to have to worry about whether or not the blades will really fit or really work as well. They're likely to feel more comfortable going with the brand name that is the same as the razor maker, <i>knowing</i> that it will work, and that there's a level of quality involved. Choosing a different brand of blade involves risk and mental transaction costs that many users just won't want to bother with.\n<br><br>\nThe whole thing is quite fascinating in thinking about these kinds of business models. Printer companies, especially, might learn a thing or two, as they've now become quite aggressive in <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100824/02553110751.shtml\">using patents</a> to block competitors from offering compatible ink cartridges or ink refills. But, the example of Gillette suggests they could be better off not fighting it, but focusing on providing better quality that doesn't annoy users quite so much.\n<br><br>\nSeparately, I should also note that this is why I think that the classic (now, apparently mythological) Gillette razors-and-blades business model is <b>not</b> quite the same as the <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939.shtml\">business models I suggest</a> when it comes to infinite and scarce goods. That's because the classic Gillette story (as opposed to what really happened, apparently) would require lock-in. But the give away the infinite and sell the scarce setup is to not worry about lock-in, since that tends to piss people off, but rather focus on providing value so that people are comfortable buying from you -- which seems to be a bit closer to what actually happened with Gillette.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/blog/entrepreneurs/articles/20100915/23234611035/the-myth-of-razors-and-razor-blades.shtml\">Permalink</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/blog/entrepreneurs/articles/20100915/23234611035/the-myth-of-razors-and-razor-blades.shtml#comments\">Comments</a> | <a href=\"http://www.techdirt.com/blog/entrepreneurs/articles/20100915/23234611035/the-myth-of-razors-and-razor-blades.shtml?op=sharethis\">Email This Story</a><br>\n <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=ca99e2418e9be20c5dde53e1e3fbd7ec&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=ca99e2418e9be20c5dde53e1e3fbd7ec&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechBiz&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29198.rss.TechBiz.8626,cat.TechBiz.rss\"><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=VKi9NASOqDc:pJrBa1cA5gY:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?i=VKi9NASOqDc:pJrBa1cA5gY:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.techdirt.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?a=VKi9NASOqDc:pJrBa1cA5gY:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/techdirt/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/VKi9NASOqDc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Herman Leonard (1923-2010)",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:justify\"><img title=\"ELF03\" src=\"http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/elf03.jpg?w=663&h=490\" alt=\"\" width=\"663\" height=\"490\"></p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Perhaps only the most enthusiastic jazz fan would recognize Herman Leonard as the ingenious artist behind smokey, backlit photographs that defined the jazz age. However, his photographs are instantly recognizable classics of performers such as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra. A protege of the great Yousuf Karsh, Leonard was encouraged by Karsh to break out on his own. Starting in the late 1940s, Mr. Leonard not only followed jazz as a musical genre but helped define it too. He used the cigarette smoke present in the clubs as if it were a part of the music itself, and also followed the musicians behind the scenes too.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">His memorable photos were countless: Ella Fitzgerald in Paris in 1960, eyes closed in fierce concentration, with a rivulet of sweat coursing down her cheek; unmistakable silhouette of Frank Sinatra; Louis Armstrong munching a sandwich while looking at bottles of champagne; Armstrong lighting a cigarette as Duke Ellington looks on from the piano, a still life of sheet music, cigarette, a Coke bottle, a porkpie hat and a saxophone case that defined Lester Young; silver and smoke portrait of Dexter Gordon; Dizzy Gillespie with his bebop big band, Art Blakey on a drum solo; Duke Ellington and his writing partner, Billy Strayhorn, sharing a cigarette break in Paris; Thelonious Monk at the keyboard; Lena Horne laughing in front of a microphone; and the list goes on. Of all these, the above photo I chose was that of Ella Fitzgerald, in 1949, singing at a New York nightclub as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman looked on from a front-row table. (See all of his great images <a href=\"http://www.morrisonhotelgallery.com/set/default.aspx?setID=1063&photographID=2357\">here</a>, and collected in <em>The Eye of Jazz</em> (1985).</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">Jim Marshall captured rock and roll stars behind the scenes; William Claxton, Lee Friedlander and Annie Leibowitz all depicted off-guard moments of individuals and bands. But Herman Leonard captured jazz itself—not only its passion and spontaneity but its sound and smell too. After his archival prints were lost to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Leonard became the subject of the BBC program, documenting his painful journey home and his efforts to rebuild his life’s work. It was fittingly called <em>Saving Jazz </em>for Mr. Leonard who died last month (14th August 2010) at the age of 87 immortalized jazz. The jazz age lives on in his photos.</p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify\">\n<br>Filed under: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/culture/\">Culture</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/obituary/\">Obituary</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/category/society/\">Society</a> Tagged: <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/herman-leonard/\">Herman Leonard</a>, <a href=\"http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/jazz/\">jazz</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/iconicphotos.wordpress.com/3719/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=iconicphotos.wordpress.com&blog=7457205&post=3719&subd=iconicphotos&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></p>"
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"title" : "Thursday Poem",
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"content" : "<span><span><span><span><span>False Documents<br></span></span></span></span></span><br>They ran the numbers twice for you<br>giving you the benefit of the doubt<br>but you knew the computer at the other<br>end of the officer’s PDA would not find<br>your brown number in its little black index. <br>You drove exactly one mile per hour below the speed<br>limit. You buckled your baby into his car seat according <br>to instructions. You signaled for exactly three seconds <br>before you turned left. You wanted to hide the Subway wrappers,<br>the empty box of Orbitz gum. Evidence of Big Macs.<br>You wanted to drink the Mountain Dew before it turned toxic<br>in the hot Phoenix sun as you asked, doesn’t this green <br>sludge make me American enough? But you didn’t <br>move because you knew the officer would have taken <br>that for gun-finding or drug-hiding or some other supposed<br>Mexican sport. You with your hands at ten and two<br>wondered how long the bus ride the officer would take you <br>on would last and whether they would provide any water. <br>You wondered, as the officer put hand to holster, <br>how dangerous it would be to down that Mountain<br>Dew then and there, in the wide-open American air.<br><br><br><em>by Nicole Walker<br>Boston Review; July/August 2010</em><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F09%2Fthursday-poem-2.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=gTYQgYd65Og:NEQ-IlJwopU:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Your Meritocracy In Action",
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-weight:bold\">A Short Guide To The Bullshit-Based Economy</span><br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">International finance - </span>A <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit</span> <span style=\"font-style:italic\">money-</span>based notional market in which <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financiers <span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span>and <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Banks </span>compete and/or co-operate with each other to see who can die with the most <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Toys</span>.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><br>Financier - </span></span>A person who handles large amounts of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit money, </span>usually involving large transfers into untraceable accounts in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bermuda</span>. A highly-trained professional who makes <span style=\"font-style:italic\">investments </span>for which he or she is yet to be <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_L._Madoff\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">arrested</span></a>.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bank </span>- A <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financial Institution </span>which handles large amounts of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit money </span>before begging the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Taxpayer </span>for a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bailout</span>.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Investor - <span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span>A person giving <span style=\"font-style:italic\">actual money </span>to a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financier </span>in the hope of a reasonable return, often from the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">taxpayer</span>. The <span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span> </span><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Sucker; </span>the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Mark</span>.<span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><br><br>The Taxpayer - You</span>; the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Patsy. </span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><br></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><a href=\"http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/553163\"><br>Money Heaven</a> - </span>Afterlife for <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit money, </span>from which there is no return<span style=\"font-style:italic\">.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8cbb76b4-cae7-11dd-87d7-000077b07658.html\">Credit Default Swap</a> - <span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span>Financial contract in which one party takes <span style=\"font-style:italic\">actual money </span>from another in exchange for a promise to return a larger sum on the occurance of Event <span style=\"font-style:italic\">(x)</span>, before transferring the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">actual money </span>into an untraceable account in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bermuda </span>and begging the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Taxpayer </span>for financial aid.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><a href=\"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/madoffs-operations-just-one-big-lie-1090565.html\">Innovation</a> - </span>Ingenious method by which a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financier </span>turns <span style=\"font-style:italic\">actual money </span>into <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit money, </span>and uses it to buy <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Toys.</span><br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financial Scandal - </span>What happens when a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financier </span>gets a little bit too <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Innovative </span>and is caught in possession of a few<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> </span>more <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Toys </span>than society deems tasteful.<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> </span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span><br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bailout - </span>Event in which <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Banks </span>rob the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Taxpayer's Children</span> at gunpoint, then offer to lend the same money back to their parents at very reasonable rates.<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Recession - </span></span>Financial downturn in which you lose your job and the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financiers </span>and <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bankers </span>promise to cut down on <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Fraud </span>for a while. <span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><br></span><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Meritocracy - </span>Social system by which the brightest and best are promoted to the highest positions, from where they are able to magically generate vast sums of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">bullshit money </span>with which to buy <span style=\"font-style:italic\">toys, </span>before begging the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Taxpayer </span>for a <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bailout</span> and being <span style=\"font-style:italic\">arrested.<span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><br></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Regulation - </span>Governmental mechanisms designed to ensure that the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Financiers </span>and <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bankers </span>can transfer the maximum amounts into undetectable bank accounts in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bermuda. </span><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><br>Democracy - </span>Political system in which the <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Taxpayer </span>decides which party should be in charge of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Regulation. </span><br><br>That will be £499.99, please - all credit cards accepted.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http://res1.blogblog.com/tracker/30169939-8930210353725597115?l=flyingrodent.blogspot.com\"></div>"
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"title" : "In Which The Author Drinks Seven Beers Then Makes Strategic Proposals For Concluding The War In Afghanistan",
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"content" : "<p><em><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">Charlie</span></em></p><p><em><span style=\"font-weight:bold\"></span>Britain could have stationed aircraft carriers offshore in order to suport operations in Jugoslavia...</em></p><p><em><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">FlyingRodent</span></em></p> <p><em>Britain could've stationed Mecha-Godzilla offshore in order to support operations in Yugoslavia, to roughly the same effect, i.e. none whatsoever. </em></p><p>So went the chat at the cheerful <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Hey, Let's Stage a Complete Renewal Of Progressive Politics Right Here In The Church Hall! </span>website <a href=\"http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/07/06/supporting-a-cut-in-our-defence-budget/\">Liberal Conspiracy</a> this week, on the subject of multi-million pound military hardware and its utility in modern warfare.</p><p>It's an urgent issue, given the casualties British forces are taking in Afghanistan right now. Newspaper articles I've seen today have called for more helicopters and better armour, especially troop transports.<br></p><p>Well, British squaddies have been getting killed in Afghanistan for seven years now without any noticeable progress or the government taking any serious flak about it, so I think it might be time to make a suggestion of my own.<br></p><p>It's a question of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">What Could Be Done In Theory </span>versus <span style=\"font-style:italic\">What Can Actually Be Done In Reality. </span>Why spend a fortune on armoured vehicles when we could use the Earth's natural resources? </p><p>Check this out, for example... <a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LWATvIMoPtw/Slei2TCOhqI/AAAAAAAABno/9rlK-5e-GhE/s1600-h/Not+a+Good+Plan.bmp\"><img style=\"margin:0px auto 10px;display:block;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_LWATvIMoPtw/Slei2TCOhqI/AAAAAAAABno/9rlK-5e-GhE/s400/Not+a+Good+Plan.bmp\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a></p><p>From what I can tell, this has been the standard order of battle for British forces in Afghanistan for at least five years, i.e. being airdropped onto a Helmand plain or the side of a mountain to provide the Taliban with something to shoot at.</p><p><br>Well, the problem we have here looks to me like the famous - and probably apocryphal - story of how the Americans tried to solve the problem of writing in space. Remember, pens can only write because gravity pulls ink downwards, and there's no gravity in a vacuum. The urban myth I heard says that the Americans spent a million dollars on a pen that would force ink downwards artificially - the Russians, on the other hand, were alleged to have said <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Fuck it, we'll use pencils.</span><br></p><p>We have the same story here. There's a form of armour that would offer British soldiers 100% bullet and blast-proof cover that military strategists have overlooked. I call it \"The Curvature Of The Earth,\" and the secret to protecting our boys is to make sure that there's at least a thousand miles of rock between British soldiers and the enemy. We could do this by staging a tactical withdrawal to, say, Aldershot - very popular with squaddies, in my experience.<br></p><p>By way of demonstration...<br></p><p><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LWATvIMoPtw/SlejS7GDR8I/AAAAAAAABn0/U-kHq7mqdZ4/s1600-h/Its+a+million+to+one+shot+but+it+might+just+work.bmp\"><img style=\"margin:0px auto 10px;display:block;text-align:center;width:320px;height:306px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LWATvIMoPtw/SlejS7GDR8I/AAAAAAAABn0/U-kHq7mqdZ4/s320/Its+a+million+to+one+shot+but+it+might+just+work.bmp\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a></p> <p><br></p>Readers might think this is inappropriate and flippant stuff to be posting in a time of war, but I would argue that my idea a) will work and b) will not cost hundreds of millions of pounds.<br><br>On that basis, I commend it to the MoD.<br><br>Note: This proposal is conditional on several factors, the most important being that I'll go back to the drawing board and start from scratch if the Powers That Be have, at long last, come up with some kind of detailed proposal or set of commands for achieving victory that doesn't involve dropping squaddies into the middle of nowhere and letting the Taliban take potshots at them. I'm no expert, but I believe military strategists call it a \"plan\".<br><br>Note2: The Soviet-Afghan war produced <a href=\"http://www.9thcompany.com/\">the Russian version</a> of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Full Metal Jacket - </span>it's a very dodgy film on several levels, in my opinion, but it provides a primer for taking on potentially-unwinnable conflicts. Let's not talk about <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Beast Of War. </span><span><br><br>Note3: Anybody else notice how the word <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Vietnam </span>stopped cropping up in the press since President Obama got elected?<br></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/30169939-3230615115655385871?l=flyingrodent.blogspot.com\"></div>"
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"content" : "Salisu Suleiman<br><br><br>You know the traffic light has stopped you, but still zoom on, only to be flagged down by traffic wardens who have strategically positioned themselves for that very purpose – not before the lights to deter potential offenders, but after, to arrest actual offenders. For one split instant, you consider speeding off, assured in the knowledge that the wardens do not have the vehicles to chase, nor the gadgets to track you. <br><br>But you stop, and like vultures, they get into your car. You drive to a corner and negotiate. They demand for five thousand naira or threaten to take you to court. You plead or insult them into taking two hundred naira. Both sides are satisfied. <br><br>A few days later, officers of the Federal Road Safety Corps mount a roadblock to check drivers and vehicle documents. Your driver’s license expired ages ago. Your car does not have insurance or up to date registration. It is seized by stony faced officers. Soon, a friendlier officer comes along and offers you tips on how to ‘escape’ the problem. After artful negotiations, you end up parting with thousands of naira and the car is released. Life goes on. <br><br>Not long afterwards, you are stopped by customs officers who demand the original import duties of your car. Nobody knows if they have the powers to do that, but uniforms represent very powerful tools of oppression in Nigeria. Of course you do not have the documents because the car was smuggled in with forged papers. This could be a serious offense, but you negotiate your way out of it with several thousands of naira and a warning to go and get genuine documents. Both of you know it will not happen. <br><br>Then you run into a police checkpoint on a highway. The officers are heavily armed and will brook no nonsense. You do not have proof of ownership, so the car is not yours. To prove that the car is actually yours, you are also forced to part with a couple of hundreds of naira. You curse them. You pray that the money will never be of use to them. <br><br>You invoke calamities on them and their future generations yet unborn. They do not care. They’ve heard more curses and more invectives rained on them by other motorists. If you do not cut your losses by quickly leaving the scene, you may end of a victim of ‘accidental discharge’ or shot for resisting arrest. <br><br>A friend or relative is in hospital with a health problem. You get there, only to be told that the sick person is yet to see a doctor despite waiting for hours. You immediately take charge. You locate the relevant officials and soon, your patient is moved to the front of the line. Miraculously, he sees a doctor within minutes. The hospital pharmacy tells you that there are no medicines and refers you a private pharmacy owned by his friend or relative. You smile knowingly. A few more notes (one issued by the doctor, and the others by the CBN) exchange hands. Again, by some form of miracle, medicines appear. <br><br>At school, there is a carryover that you have been unable to deal with. Your friends and classmates tell you that no matter how much you try, you’ll never pass cross that bridge. Eventually, you find out that the course has a fee that has to be paid. Through intermediaries (usually the class rep or other classmates, you pay the fee and the carryover immediately varnishes. Depending on how much you ‘dropped’, you may end of with a distinction. <br><br>You get home one day to find that your water supply has been cut. You immediately call a contact at the water board who tells you there is nothing he can do since there is a mass disconnection of defaulters going on. Joke. You see the manager and ‘settle’ with him and he orders that you be immediately reconnected. The bill is torn up. <br><br>Every so often, NEPA decides to remind Nigerians that it is still alive, so even without giving you any light, they issue a huge bill you must pay or else be disconnected (from what, you may be tempted to ask). But you know the game and play along. You part with a few thousands and the enormous bills are erased from the central computer. Don’t ask how. <br><br>A niece or nephew has been unable to secure admission into a university despite trying several times and is becoming despondent. Since you know that our universities can only take a tenth of the candidates seeking admission every year, you make a call or two, drop a bribe or two and your candidate’s names makes it to the admission list. That the candidate may not be able to meet academic pursuits is not your problem. After all, you have just proved that marks can be bought and sold. When the time comes....<br><br>So having bribed, cajoled, threatened and bought your way through life, who then has the moral right to say that votes were rigged, or government corrupt?<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8645399025059309116-4467618929800293208?l=suleimansblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Roots of American Rage",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRBscOqHWXiOlf35PPF3LrKicgbdircpPBSZfMsg_J39Sdg7_o&t=1&usg=__47pa856ebSRbyIuZpiJ6KkmFEm0=\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\">Dinesh D’Souza has a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Obamas-Rage-Dinesh-DSouza/dp/1596986255\">book </a>coming out (oh-so-cleverly riffing on <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/4643/\">Bernard Lewis</a> in describing “The Roots of <del>Muslim </del>Obama’s Rage”), and a version of it is <a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_print.html\">the cover article</a> for Forbes. It’s a moronic article, but when Newt Gingrich started<a href=\"http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem_print.html\"> rolling around </a>talking about how Obama’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” viewpoint explains everything about the man, and calling the article brilliant, a lot of people noticed; for reasons which are worth thinking about, what Gingrich does and says is taken seriously.</p>\n<p>The first and most obvious response is that D’Souza is a nightmarishly incoherent thinker, and that this is a nightmarishly incoherent article. <a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/2bxpcuu\">Timothy Burke</a> and <a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/279hmj2\">the Economist</a> say all you need to know about that, really. But the real problem posed by D’Souza is whether his argument is so pernicious it requires a response or whether it’s so stupid it calls for apathy. <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2267179/\">Dave Weigel</a>, for example, suggested that the real reason D’Souza exists — as a publishing phenomenon — is “that there is literally no conservative argument too “crazy” to be obsessed over by liberals,” and that “[e]very time a new one surfaces, they try to run it out of the mainstream by drawing extra attention to it.” I find the argument that the people driving the D’Souza phenomenon are liberals who denounce the book to be pretty weak, though. His ability to make liberals angry isn’t what causes people to <em>buy</em> the book, since people who are willing to entertain ideas like his tend to be more or less completely unacquainted with the media outlets where liberals express that outrage. And it wasn’t liberals that put the excerpt on the cover of Forbes, since people don’t buy a subscription to a magazine that outrages them. Nor was it liberals that put the book in Gingrich’s hands.</p>\n<p>A book like this one can get published, it seems to me, because it provides an apparently scholarly version of what the angry bigots out there want to hear: Obama is an alien seeking to take away what’s rightfully ours. Think of the phrase “why do they hate us?” (the superstructure of <a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1990/09/the-roots-of-muslim-rage/4643/\">Lewis’ original manifesto</a>): it never has to get answered to fulfill its primary function, distinguishing “them” from “us” on the basis of “their” rage. The fact that D’Souza explains the origin of Obama’s rage is far less important than way articles like his reinforce the notion that he <em>has </em>it. And nothing in D’Souza’s painfully vast leaps of logic has anything to do with what the article all the more effectively asserts by not bothering to assert: Obama hates you, whitey. Demonstrating his argument to be specious does nothing to dismantle the points he doesn’t even argue (or have to).</p>\n<p>In that context, both liberal indignation at D’Souza and D’Souza himself really <em>are</em> irrelevant. His books get published — and Gingrich hawks them — because there are people out there that want to hear those ideas and because Gingrich and co. want their votes. There are people for whom “Kenyan, anti-Colonial” not only makes sense as an epithet, but scans as anti-American. Where do these people come from?</p>\n<p>There are lots of ways to approach this particular problem. I’ll probably write a bit on this, as it happens to nicely intersect with the sorts of things I’ve been writing and reading about in my great sprawling dissertation. But to start off, I want to re-state that D’Souza really is, himself, irrelevant. The writer of <a href=\"http://tinyurl.com/279hmj2\">this Economist article</a> does good work demonstrating why someone from D’Souza’s background might be insane in the particular way he is, but this shouldn’t lead us to make the same mistake D’Souza himself makes: explaining a widely shared belief in terms of a formative experience that is <em>not</em> widely shared. The fact that Obama is in favor of things that most Democrats are in favor of, for good or for ill, is not well explained by circumstances that are particular to him but <em>not </em>to most Democrats. But by the same token, while the fact that D’Souza would pen that fever dream of an article might make more sense when we take his personal background into account, his personal biography doesn’t explain why someone like<em> Newt Gingrich</em> would pick it up and run with it. What makes a white American, for example, find “Kenyan, anti-colonial” to signify in terms of <em>their </em>hatred of <em>us</em>?</p>\n<p>For a start, and only for a start, try <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,940578,00.html\">this article</a> from TIME in 1960, published on the doorstep of independence in Kenya but recalling the “Mau Mau” insurgency of the early-mid fifties:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Like African leaders everywhere, the men who organized the Mau Mau faced one basic difficulty in forging a nationalist spirit: for the ordinary African, a man’s overriding loyalties are to his family and his tribe. By compelling Mau Mau members to violate not only Christian ethics but every tribal taboo as well, says Corfield, Mau Mau leaders deliberately reduced their victims to a state where a man who took the Mau Mau oath was cut off “from all hope, outside Mau Mau, in this world or the next.” To achieve this, the Mau Mau leadership forced its recruits, voluntary or involuntary, to seal their oaths by digging up corpses and eating their putrefied flesh, copulating with sheep, dogs or adolescent girls, and by drinking the famed “Kaberichia cocktail”—a mixture of semen and menstrual blood. And when he was assigned to kill an enemy of the movement, a sworn Mau Mau pledged himself to remove the eyeballs of his victim and drink the liquid from them.</p>\n<p>Once the blood lust had been aroused to this pitch, the oath taker was easily led to kill his own father or mother, wife, child or master at Mau Mau command. And any local Mau Mau leader devising a fouler ritual was under obligation to pass along his recipe immediately to his less inventive colleagues. Since there were seven basic oaths, which could be taken over and over again, Mau Mau ceremonies thus became perpetual orgies. The result was that, when a Mau Mau convert did repent and vomit out his story to authorities, he sometimes ended by humbly asking to be taken out and shot. His sense of absolute degradation and “absolute sin,” says the Corfield report, left him no choice.</p></blockquote>\n<p>I could spend some time demonstrating why almost every aspect of that article is at least as innocent of truth as D’Souza’s, but that’s not really the point. You’ll just have to take my word for this– Mau Mau violence porn is a genre unto itself (I’m going to view Ruark’s <em>Something of Value </em>soon, so expect a post on that) and it as accurately chronicles what really went on in the Kenyan highlands as <em>Birth of a Nation </em>tells the story of reconstruction. Which is an apt analogy, actually. But what Americans know about “Kenyan, anti-colonial” — to extent that they know anything at all — comes from stuff like this, also from TIME, stories of white women <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817688,00.html\">shooting </a>their knife-wielding home-invading black rapists or <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,818214,00.html\">the rumor</a> that “Negro nursemaids had been ordered by the Mau Mau to murder white babies in their charge.” Or just this:</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://cairsweb.llgc.org.uk/images/ilw1/ilw2003.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"382\"></p>\n<p>Update 9/16: <a href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/weigel/archive/2010/09/16/the-d-souza-boomlet.aspx\">Apparently</a> Glenn Beck and Ralph Reed have hopped on the D’Souza bandwagon.</p>\n<p>Update #2, 9/16: <a href=\"http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/\">TexasinAfrica</a>, who once actually <a href=\"http://texasinafrica.blogspot.com/2009/04/turned-into-newt.html\">read parts of</a> Newt Gingrich’s dissertation on the Belgian Congo — which answers so many old questions, yet raises so many horrible new ones — has this to say about what that yeoman’s work taught him:</p>\n<blockquote><p>For those of you who have better things to do on a Thursday morning, suffice it to say that I’m not surprised by any of this. Gingrich liked colonialism. Especially the Belgian variety, which limited the vast majority of Congolese to a sixth-grade education, taught children that God wanted them to obey the exploitative colonial authorities, and was the reason the country had fewer than 20 university graduates and no indigenous doctors at independence. Which was one of the reasons the country immediately erupted into chaos, which made it possible for Joseph Mobutu to take over, which allowed him to loot the public treasury for three decades, which caused a breakdown in public service provision, which kept Mobutu using public funds to manipulate patronage networks in his favor, which fell apart with the end of the Cold War when funds dried up, which laid the groundwork for the chaos that would erupt after the Rwandan genocide (which, let’s not forget, was caused in part because of – you guessed it – Belgian colonial education policy that favored the Tutsis for educational opportunities, thus breeding resentment among the Hutu, which set off a chain of rounds of ethnic cleansing that led to the 1994 genocide), which spilled over into the Congo, which led to a series of wars, which were only partly settled in 2003 and that have, so far, caused more than 5 million deaths of perfectly innocent people.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Update #3, 9/16: D’Souza made the mistake of complaining about the Columbia Journalism Review’s <a href=\"http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/forbes_shameful_obama_dinesh_dsouza.php\">criticism </a>of his article, which was the wrong thing to do. You wouldn’t like CJR <a href=\"http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/dinesh_dsouza_digs_himself_in.php\">when they’re angry</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2417/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2417&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>Pianist Bill Evans died 30 years ago today. I attended the service for \n<a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4360148970b-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"Bill Zavatsky portrait by Margaretta K. Mitchell_1\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f088340133f4360148970b-350wi\" style=\"width:333px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Bill Zavatsky portrait by Margaretta K. Mitchell_1\"></a> Evans in September 1980 at St. Peter's Church in the base of New York's Citicorp Center. I still remember poet Bill Zavatsky [pictured] reading his poem, <em>To the Pianist Bill Evans.</em> As a tribute to Evans, here is Zavatsky's poem:</p><blockquote><blockquote><p><strong>To the Pianist Bill Evans</strong></p>\n\n<p><em>When I hear you<br>\nplay "My Foolish Heart"<br>\nI am clouded<br><br>\nremembering more than</em>\n<em><br>\nScott LaFaro's charred bass<br>\nas it rested<br><br>\nagainst a Yonkers wall</em>\n<em><br>\nin its transit<br>\nfrom accidental fire<br><br>\nlike a shadowy</em>\n<em><br>\ngrace note<br>\nexploding into<br><br>\nrhythms of Lou</em>\n<em><br>\ninsanely driving<br>\n"Man, we're late!"<br><br>\nhis long curved bass</em>\n<em><br>\nstraining the car<br>\ninterior, a canvas swan<br><br>\nmy hand clutched,</em>\n<em><br>\nfingered, refingered:<br>\nsteel strings as<br><br>\nof the human neck</em>\n<em><br>\nthe vulnerable neck<br>\nthe neck of music<br><br>\nsqueezed by hands</em>\n<em><br>\nthe fragile box<br>\nof song, the breath<br><br>\nI crushed out of the music</em>\n<em><br>\nbefore I killed<br>\nby accident<br><br>\nwhatever in me</em>\n<em><br>\ncould sing<br>\nnot touching the keyboard<br><br>\nof terrible parties</em>\n<em><br>\nand snow<br>\nsnow<br><br>\nfalling as canvas and</em>\n<em><br>\nwood and hair flamed<br>\nbehind a windshield<br><br>\nI imagined being</em>\n<em><br>\ntrapped inside, still<br>\nsee it in my heart<br><br>\nour terror magnified</em>\n<em><br>\nnote by note<br>\npurified each year<br><br>\nthe gentle rise</em>\n<em><br>\nand circle of<br>\ncinders in<br><br>\nFebruary air</em>\n<em><br>\nin their transit<br>\nfrom fire<br><br>\ninto music,</em>\n<em><br>\ninto memory, a space<br>\nwhere heroin<br><br>\ndoes not slowly wave</em>\n<em><br>\nits blazing arm,<br>\nlike smoking ivory<br><br>\nteeth and fingers</em>\n<em><br>\nscorched by the<br>\nproximity<br><br>\nof cigarettes laid</em>\n<em><br>\non anonymous piano<br>\nlips that crush<br><br>\nour function, in-</em>\n<em><br>\ntransigent wire,<br>\ninanimate wood<br><br>\nof another century</em>\n<em><br>\nwe must save by song!<br>\nfor which we are paid!<br><br>\ncontinuing to be</em>\n<em><br>\nused, insisting<br>\nour hands present<br><br>\nthemselves</em>\n<em><br>\nand keep<br>\non taking our hands</em></p>\n\n<p><strong>—Bill Zavatsky</strong></p>\n\n</blockquote></blockquote>\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax note:</span></strong> Poet Bill Zavatsky will be appearing tonight at New York's <a href=\"http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/downstairs/Performances.asp?sdate=9/15/2010&from_cal=0\">Cornelia Street Cafe</a>, along with Laurie Verchomin, Evans' lover at the time of his death, who will be reading from her upcoming memoir. For my five-part interview with Laurie on her time with Evans, go <strong><a href=\"http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/08/interview-laurie-verchomin-part-1.html\">here</a></strong>.</p>\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">In case you missed</span></strong> the broadcast of Ross Porter's [pictured] dynamic and revealing \n<a href=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487560d44970c-popup\" style=\"float:right\"><img alt=\"58013_porter_ross_2\" src=\"http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f08834013487560d44970c-250wi\" style=\"width:125px;margin:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"58013_porter_ross_2\"></a> 1979 interview with pianist Bill Evans, you now can hear it as a podcast at Jazz.FM91 <strong><a href=\"http://www.jazz.fm/player/ondemand/index.htm\">here</a></strong>. Just check the box to the right of the last item on the list and click the blue play button.</p>\n\n<p><strong><span style=\"color:#ff0000\">JazzWax clip:</span></strong> <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrWQndgX1QU\">Here's </a>Bill Evans, Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell in Helsinki, Finland, in 1970 playing Johnny Mandel's <em>Emily</em>...</p>\n\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/wrWQndgX1QU?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US%26color1%3D0xcc2550%26color2%3D0xe87a9f&width=450&height=385\" width=\"450\" height=\"385\"></iframe></p>\n\n<p></p>\n\n<p></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Jazzwax/~4/LEmrsq-5a60\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "A conversation with Alice Walker",
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"content" : "In what she called a conversation (which was actually the 11th annual Steve Biko Memorial Lecture), Professor Alice Walker spoke about her experiences of and in Africa. It wasn’t in that usual “Africa is a beautiful country” kind of way, but it exemplified what I think is a view of Africans, black Africans, held (mostly) by some [...]<img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=boosfromthepews.wordpress.com&blog=3607375&post=78&subd=boosfromthepews&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Scramble for Vinyl",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-14005\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/09/14/collection-cultures/29476_413133910989_529365989_5112265_1384749_n/\"><img title=\"29476_413133910989_529365989_5112265_1384749_n\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/29476_413133910989_529365989_5112265_1384749_n.jpg?w=500&h=560\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"560\"></a><br>\n<span></span><strong>By Chief Boima</strong></p>\n<p>Spurred on by the rise of sampling in Hip Hop and electronic music and despite a downturn in vinyl production, in the 80′s and 90′s a rich vinyl collecting culture exploded in places like the U.S., Europe, and Japan. For years young hip DJs from the city, travelled to forgotten about record shops in backwater towns, the dusty basements of aging record collectors, or the back rows of an inner-city record shop looking for rarities that seemed to pop out of thin air. Collectors scoured their neighbors backyards for rare jazz, rock, and funk, motivated by unnamed sample sources, hoping to find that illusive breakbeat. The best DJs were the ones with the deepest crates. Around the early 00′s, Hip Hop stopped using samples and turned back towards synthesizers, the Internet started a deeper collective crate, and a vital source of inspiration dried up. For collectors, all the stones seemed to be overturned, the market had too many buyers, and people, starting to realize the value of what they had, turned to E-bay to make money off of their collections. With much of the rare vinyl being plundered locally, a few intrepid explorers decided to try their luck in uncharted territory. Of course, they made their way to Africa.</p>\n<p>The above map and scenario may both be a little hyperbolic, but it does seem that the current mad-dash for rare African vinyl could be analogous to Europe’s 19th Century Scramble for Africa, a mad-dash for rare African minerals. There is a trend among rare-groove DJs to “find fortune” in the (re)discovery of musical gems in places where the value of vinyl and recorded music from the past has diminished. Just go to your local record shop (if one still exists) and peruse the display shelves to encounter dozens of new releases celebrating the recently uncovered recordings of Africa’s unknown musical heritage. The image of these guys as plundering opportunists isn’t helped by their reception in “The West”. As one music writer puts it,”Frank Gossner’s DJ sets burst with exclusive tracks that are so rare that they can’t be heard anywhere else on this planet” (from ChoiceCuts.com.) Rare music from planet Africa!?! Who wouldn’t want to get a piece of that?</p>\n<p>On the other hand, vinyl culture has been long dead in most African countries. Perhaps these diggers are doing a service by restoring historical and cultural memory. Much of the music they are interested in is music from the Independence era, an important and optimistic time period. Many of the artists they are tracking down have been retired for years and some enjoy a revival. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Orchestra Baobab, Mulatu Astatke, are all touring and enjoying popularity with a young hip crowd. For various reasons in places like Benin, Senegal, and Ethiopia (and also the U.S.) younger generations don’t know the previous generation’s contribution to the popular musical landscape. The DJs are engaging in a pop culture archeology to teach the masses about their own history, and at the same time are showing Europeans and Americans that our shared tastes and desires prove that we’re not that different after all. The European powers of the 19th century, sought to change the face of the continent through the colonial project. In contrast, the boldest vinyl diggers amongst us are trying to preserve what’s being lost.</p>\n<p>Perhaps then, what we have to question is for who’s value is it being preserved? My biggest criticism is not that they are going to Africa to shed light on these “lost” recordings and forgotten about artists. I’m instead worried that they concentrate too much on those forms of music that fit nicely into the story that they, the DJs, want to tell about the music. The cataloging tendency tends to be a colonial one. Also, many of the DJs and label owners, perhaps because of its shared lineage with Hip Hop, have concentrated on Afro-Beat, or have given more weight to genres that are popular in the west like Rock and Funk. For African artists, these are generally styles that artists often used as tools, or influences to fuse with their own popular local styles. The reissue train has been slow to recognize larger genres in Africa like Soukous, Highlife, or Benga, unless they find an artist that has an added funk or rock influence. In the past the tendency was to look for “authentic” music that sounded more “traditional.” Are they now shying away from things that sound too … African?</p>\n<p>If you’re interested in discovering more about the history of African pop, now is a better time than ever. While the blogging world may at times suffer from its own imperial tendencies, there have been some great free sources of information on African pop music history like <a href=\"http://bennloxo.com/\">Benn Loxo du Taccu</a>, <a href=\"http://likembe.blogspot.com/\">Likembe</a>, with <a href=\"http://combandrazor.blogspot.com/\">Comb and Razor</a>, and <a href=\"http://acbia.wordpress.com/\">Africolombia.</a>*</p>\n<p>For a nice visual on the typical digging journey, check out the trailer for Frank Gossner’s yet to be released documentary, Take me Away Fast.</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/09/14/collection-cultures/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/hTzJjsS8-Zw/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>*I have to mention that South America is included in this “colonial project” as well, but it is through visits to Colombia that <a href=\"http://www.soundwayrecords.com/\">Soundway Records</a> met the rich vinyl collecting culture <a href=\"http://www.soundwayrecords.com/catalogue/palenque-palenque.html\">of Colombia’s northern coast</a>, a community in the midst of its own project to preserve African musical history. It’s an interesting comparison to look at the contrast between a community mediated project motivated by their own cultural heritage, and one that is more motivated by a commercial venture.</p>\n<p>* Chief Boima is a DJ and cultural activist based in New York City. He is joining AIAC and this is the first of regular posts on music culture that he will doing for us.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/14004/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=14004&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "A massacre is not a massacre by Ghassan Hage",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11313.shtml\"><span>A massacre is not a massacre</span></a> <br>\n<span>Ghassan Hage, <i>The Electronic Intifada,</i> 3 June 2010 <br>\n<br>\n<span> <table align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" style=\"width:483px\"><tbody>\n<tr> <td><img alt=\"\" border=\"1\" height=\"322\" src=\"http://electronicintifada.net/artman2/uploads/2/100603-massacre-poem.jpg\" width=\"483\"> </td> </tr>\n<tr> <td><span>Occupation is not occupation (Anne Paq/<a href=\"javascript:void(0);\">ActiveStills</a>)</span> </td> </tr>\n</tbody></table><br>\nI don't write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems.<br>\n<br>\nLong ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;<br>\nI was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;<br>\nThey also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.<br>\nAnd when naive old me saw freedom fighters they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters, and that resistance was not resistance.<br>\nAnd when, stupidly, I noticed arrogance, oppression and humiliation they benevolently enlightened me so I can see that arrogance was not arrogance, oppression was not oppression, and humiliation was not humiliation.<br>\n<br>\nI saw misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.<br>\nBut they told me that they were experts in misery, racism, inhumanity and concentration camps and I have to take their word for it: this was not misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.<br>\nOver the years they've taught me so many things: invasion was not invasion, occupation was not occupation, colonialism was not colonialism and apartheid was not apartheid.<br>\n<br>\nThey opened my simple mind to even more complex truths that my poor brain could not on its own compute like: \"having nuclear weapons\" was not \"having nuclear weapons,\" \"not having weapons of mass destruction\" was \"having weapons of mass destruction.\"<br>\n<br>\nAnd, democracy (in the Gaza Strip) was not democracy.<br>\nHaving second class citizens (in Israel) was democracy.<br>\nSo you'll excuse me if I am not surprised to learn today that there were more things that I thought were evident that are not: peace activists are not peace activists, piracy is not piracy, the massacre of unarmed people is not the massacre of unarmed people.<br>\n<br>\nI have such a limited brain and my ignorance is unlimited.<br>\nAnd they're so fucking intelligent. Really.<br>\n<br>\n<i>Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne.</i></span> <br> </span><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/janerubio/~4/zDuTweVrdzE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "How to Make Time for Innovation: Kindling's Idea Recommendation Engine",
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"content" : "<p><img alt=\"Kindling logo\" src=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/kindling_logo_0910.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"53\"> Getting employees to actually submit ideas into innovation management software may be an issue for some enterprises. But for others, idea overload is the real issue. <a href=\"http://www.kindlingapp.com/\">Kindling</a>, a SaaS innovation management vendor, learned that executives at two of its major corporate clients stopped using Kindling because they were overloaded with ideas. Kindling is trying to change that by <a href=\"http://www.kindlingapp.com/blog/leap-forward-for-idea-management/\">introducing</a> a new feature: an idea recommendation engine.</p>\n<p align=\"right\"><em>Sponsor</em><br><a href=\"http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/ck.php?n=21782&cb=21782\"><img src=\"http://d.ads.readwriteweb.com/avw.php?zoneid=14&cb=21782&n=21782\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a></p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"Kindling recommendation engine screenshot\" src=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/kindling_recommendations_0910.jpg\" width=\"510\" height=\"431\"></p>\n\n<p>Although innovation management has been around for years, pioneered by companies like <a href=\"http://www.imaginatik.com/\">Imaginatik</a>, interest has accelerated recently. We recently identified <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/09/3-trends-in-idea-management.php\">three key trends</a> in idea management, but the are continues to, well, innovate.</p>\n\n<p>Kindling's recommendation engine starts off with a short questionnaire aimed at determining users' interests - it's similar to the ones presented when you start using <a href=\"http://netflix.com\">Netflix</a> or <a href=\"http://hunch.com\">Hunch</a>. Users can opt to answer only a few questions or continue to answer many questions.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"Kindling recommendation engine screenshot 2\" src=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/images/kindling_ideas_0910.jpg\" width=\"527\" height=\"268\"></p>\n\n<p>Users can display the reason a particular idea was suggested and downgrade certain selection criteria to improve Kindling's recommendations. Although the recommendation engine's utility remains unproven, Kindling product manager Tim Meaney is optimistic that this transparency and feedback mechanism will help make it very smart very quick.</p>\n\n<p>Other new features include a redesigned backend and support for user groups.</p>\n\n<p>Existing features for organizing ideas include the ability to list ideas by popularity, votes, number of comments, the \"Ideas I'm Watching\" section that allows users to follow the comments and activity on particular ideas, and a highly configurable e-mail notification system.</p>\n\n<p>Kindling can act as a stand alone solution or integrate with <a href=\"http://microsoft.com\">Microsoft</a>'s Outlook and SharePoint. Users can export ideas to Excel, or use the application's API to export ideas in a variety of ways. \"We don't feel entitled to your data,\" Meaney says, \"If you decide to leave Kindling at any time, you can bring your data with you - we won't keep any of it.\"</p>\n\n<p>Kindling was spun out of the New York City based consulting firm <a href=\"http://arc90.com/\">Arc90</a>. The product was released in 2009 (see <a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/kindling_digging_for_small_com.php\">our coverage</a>) and has landed several big-name clients like <a href=\"http://www.fool.com/\">The Motley Fool</a>, <a href=\"http://www.symantec.com/\">Symantec</a> and <a href=\"http://www.medtronic.com\">Medtronics</a>.</p>\n<strong><a href=\"http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/09/how-to-make-time-for-innovatio.php#comments-open\">Discuss</a></strong><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/bh8m03d07dnj95a0qa1ma5k32c/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.readwriteweb.com%2Fenterprise%2F2010%2F09%2Fhow-to-make-time-for-innovatio.php\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:FFnlKYwJmN0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=FFnlKYwJmN0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:Ij26kaj3iuU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=Ij26kaj3iuU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:C2pbw5bZMiI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=C2pbw5bZMiI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?i=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?a=bHUnowVjwFY:XB3ol2n8N2Q:OqabYuBsmOY\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/readwriteweb?d=OqabYuBsmOY\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/bHUnowVjwFY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Future is Rated “B”",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/TI-RQYc7fjI/AAAAAAAABTI/OPMLWjsnY-I/s1600/AronWiesenfeld_IntoTheUnknown.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"183\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-b-kpMH_7eM/TI-RQYc7fjI/AAAAAAAABTI/OPMLWjsnY-I/s200/AronWiesenfeld_IntoTheUnknown.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a></div>[<a href=\"https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=1zHu7m6YcHzOHlFCq5k6PuqLotDM6J7vWDIBnX91B9MrO3UPabSneW2kbNgjM&hl=en\" style=\"color:#3d85c6\">Auf Deutsch</a>: <i>\"Ich hoffe sie erkennen hier das Muster; Zuerst wird eine Nation ein bisschen senil, dann offensichtlich dement, dann komplett durchgedreht nacktherum-rennend-sich-mit-eigenen-Fäkalien-einschmierend wahnsinnig. Danach schadet sie sich selbst.\" </i>Vielen Dank, Alexander!]<br><br>[<a href=\"http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=7520\" style=\"color:#3d85c6\">In italiano</a>, a cura di Roberta Papaleo: <span><i>Spero che stiate cominciando a vederci uno schema: prima un paese diventa un po’ senile, poi un notevole demente, poi un completo pazzo da legare che se ne va in giro nudo ad imbrattarti di feci. Poi si fa del male da solo.</i>]</span><br><br>My voluminous fan mail has made me aware of a curious fact: many of my readers seem persuaded that the future is either <i>Mad Max</i> or <i>Waterworld</i>. As far as they are concerned, there just aren't any other options. What's more, some people have even tried to venture a guess as to which of the two it shall be by watching what I do. I live on a boat, and that is apparently an indication that the future must be <i>Waterworld</i>-like. But I have also been seen rattling around town on a rusty old motorcycle, and that is taken as an indication of a more <i>Mad Max</i>-like future.<br><br>It saddens me that so few people bring up the film <i>Blade Runner</i>, and it is even more sad that George Lucas's <i>THX 1138</i> or Jean-Luc Godard's <i>Alphaville</i> are almost never mentioned, because these particular films have in many ways proven to be predictive of the present rather than just the future. Take <i>THX 1138</i> for example: it is about some people who live in a sealed-off climate-controlled environment, are on a compulsory regimen of psychoactive drugs, are assigned their mates by a computer program, and watch pornography that is piped into their living rooms in order to relax after work. When they refuse to take their meds, they are abused by robot-like police armed with electric cattle-prods. When one of them escapes into the wilderness, it turns out that the police lack the budget to hunt him down. That may have seemed a bit exotic and futuristic back in 1971 when Lucas filmed it, but now describes the people who live down the street. <i>Alphaville</i>, on the other hand, is vaguely reminiscent of some of my more interesting business trips.<br><br>People seem uncomfortable with the idea that works of fiction can predict the present, because the present is supposed to be reality, not fiction. The future, on the other hand, is fair game, because it is supposed to be purely fictional: it is common wisdom, you see, that the future is unknowable. The artists are free to paint the future any color they like, while the more scientifically-minded approach it by formulating alternative scenarios. It is useless to try to tell them that there is just the one scenario, apparently written by some incompetent hack, and that, even though it stinks, it is high time they stopped flapping their gums about alternative ones and started auditioning for a role in this one, since it happens to be the only one that is actually being produced.<br><br>For the benefit of those who believe that the future is fictional but that the present is real it may be helpful to point out that the present is largely fictional as well. Here's a perfectly good example: do you remember those valiant freedom-fighters who expelled foreign invaders from their ancient land—the mujahideen? What do you think happened to them? Well, they've been rebranded as the Taleban, and are now evil. Same Pashtun tribesmen (or their sons) toting the same AK-47s and carrying out the same missions against strangely similar infidel invaders are, by the simple act of renaming, transformed from valiant warriors to cowardly fiends.<br><br>The people whose job it is to write the fiction that we are expected to accept as our one real and true present don't seem to have much of an imagination. They also seem to have had a rather short reading list and lift their ideas from just a handful of slender volumes. George Orwell's <i>1984</i> and Aldous Huxley's <i>Brave New World</i> are their particular favorites, along with Franz Kafka's <i>The Trial</i>. Take, for instance, the cult of Osama bin Laden as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks: it is an image of the perpetual enemy of the state lifted straight out of Orwell. Osama was a sickly CIA operative who succumbed to renal failure a long time ago and who was posthumously demonized using some grainy amateur videos and some muffled audio tapes featuring some other CIA operative. For years now Osama's restless and lonely ghost, clad in white robes and towing a broken dialysis machine across rugged and bare mountain passes of Waziristan has been relentlessly hunted by a swarm of endlessly circling Predator drones. The war in Afghanistan is currently costing the US a billion dollars a day. Sorry to bring up yet another “B” movie, but how much did <i>Ghostbusters</i> charge per visit?<br><br>I have no wish to debate these topics, and would urge you to shy away from them as well. There are just a few people who know enough about them, and they generally have no wish to debate them either. There is nothing in it for them—or anyone else. Just about everyone else is either wallowing in blissful ignorance or has been subjected to a mind control process used in advertising: proof through repetition. Here is a contemporary example: a purely fictional phenomenon from the 9/11-season of 2010 known as “The mosque at Ground Zero.” The kernel of truth behind this mainly fictional story is the proposed Islamic cultural center, not a mosque, to be built at a location that is nowhere near Ground Zero, but we now live in a realm of compulsory fiction, reinforced through repetition in the echo-chamber of the media, which makes truth irrelevant. Once the media start ranting and raving like that, it becomes hard for them to stop, and next they trot out some obscure evangelical pastor from Florida who wants to burn a stack of Korans, and they cannot for the life of them stop talking about him either. When in response violent demonstrations erupt in already violent places that are patrolled by US soldiers, that just adds spice to this already wonderful story. I hope that you are beginning to see a pattern here: first a country goes a little bit senile, then noticeably demented, then completely stark raving running-around-naked-smearing-feces-all-over-yourself insane. Then it hurts itself. Individual insanity is rare, but group insanity is, unfortunately, the bane of societies that are nearing their end.<br><br>It would seem that, if you are a certain kind of popular author, a good way to ensure that the future comes to resemble your worst nightmares is to write a novel about them. This has certainly worked for Orwell, Huxley and Kafka. But there is also an alternative: compose your own fiction instead of accepting anyone else's, then go ahead and turn it into reality. A good first step might be to write a short story. It can be very short, and it doesn't even have to be particularly interesting. Something as trivial as this might do for starters: “The next morning she woke up and, instead of having a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee for breakfast, she fasted until sundown.” And then, the next morning, she woke up, and something curious happened: this short story came to life, and so it came to pass. Next came other stories, each a bit longer than the previous one, bridging the present and the future in new ways, and eventually spanning decades. And as these decades rolled by, these stories too came to life.<br><br>This, as I see it, is the best way forward in a depressed and increasingly demented and accident-prone country that is heading straight for collapse, where the present (reality, what people think is going on, common notions of the state of things) is degenerating into useless noise—the clamor of clueless but self-important people desperately begging you to continue giving them your attention, so that they can stuff your head with more “B”-rated trash. But if you ignore them long enough, they will go away. Don't hope, don't wish, don't dream, but do write your own fiction and use it to create a present that works for you. Invent places for yourself and for those you care about in your stories about the future, and then go ahead and live in them. You don't have to settle for anyone else's “B”-rated nonsense. And don't let anyone tell you that you are crazy or that you are living in a dream. It's not a dream, dammit, it's a work of fiction!<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28495039-597709291492314090?l=cluborlov.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Cocoa corruption 101",
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"content" : "Once upon a time, a man was invited to a lavish New Year’s party organized by one of the cocoa barons of Ivory Coast. The baron had built three villa’s with cocoa money, and each villa was styled in a different theme (‘classic’, ‘modern’, etc). The affable baron was also known for proudly displaying a grand piano he didn’t know how to play. After innumerable glasses of champagne, the man staggered home, but not before the host had handed him an envelope to thank him for his presence. The envelope contained the equivalent of €300. They had never met before “so the amount I received was probably low”, the man said. At least 50 other guests attended the party, which meant the host had spent at least €15,000 on thank-you notes alone. <br> <br>Ivory Coast is the world’s biggest producer of cocoa beans and the national cocoa industry is the biggest facilitator of corruption. Today, 24 former executives of state-controlled cocoa agencies stand trial on charges of fraud and embezzlement. The host of the lavish New Year’s party was Henri Amouzou, chairman of the board of the cocoa development fund FDPCC. He also served as administrator of a company selling overpriced jute bags to the fund. The corruption probe started in 2007 and resulted in a confidential report that was published, in part, by a local newspaper until the state prosecutor detained the editor of the newspaper on charges of theft. <br><br>The details that can still be found online make for interesting reading material. “Between March and April 2007, Henri Amouzou received €212,000 from the board of management to go round and raise awareness about the regeneration of cocoa. The problem is the tour never occurred. Between 2004 and 2008, so-called legal costs incurred by the fund amounted to a staggering €2 million. In January 2008, the management board mandated the executive secretariat to reimburse expenses advanced by Amouzou – thus, the payment came after the legal costs had already been incurred and, curiously, it does not state the amount he ‘lent’ to the fund.\" <br><br>Investigators also discovered that the FDPCC lawyer had transferred €305,000 to Amouzou’s personal account in Monaco. \"Worse, they established that the FDPCC had 19 ghost accounts controlled by Amouzou. One such account, entitled ‘cocoa fund’, was opened in June 2003 with a deposit of €4.5 million, debited 94 times for amounts larger than €30,000, and closed in 2006.”<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/37035709-714518791376807491?l=nofoodforlazyman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Internet as a Commons",
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"content" : "<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">One of the\nadvantages of a long intercontinental flight is the uninterrupted time\navailable to read and think. Three seemingly unrelated authors and the puzzle\nof data hogs and net neutrality started to become connected after a couple of\nhours and a short nap. If only not to forget the line of thinking, here is an\nextensive post.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">There is a\ngrowing interest in the work of </span><span lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom\">Elinor Ostrom</a></span><span lang=\"EN-US\"> (Nobel Prize winner economics)\nand her husband on social institutions: methods of cooperation between people\nthat cannot be characterized as \"state\" nor \"market\". Lately I have been\nwondering if one could approach the issue of congestion in oversubscribed\nbackhauls ( aka \"bandwidth hogging\") or the issue of Net Neutrality as a\nparticular instances of \"commons\" that could be ruled by social institutions.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">A commons\nproblem is defined by her as how to arrange for a long term productive use of a\nlimited<span> </span>resource system, like ocean\nfishing. </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The use of\na limited resource backhaul connection (connecting a large number of\nsubscribers to an interconnection point) can be viewed as a commons problem in\nmy humble opinion. </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">A Net\nNeutrality debate pertains to the commons of the Internet. In my world view the\n\"Internet\" is a commons created by the voluntary cooperation of autonomous networks in exchanging traffic to and from all destinations. </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Ostrom\nexplains in her book \"Governing the Commons\"<span> \n</span>how 3 influential ideas have led to the view that either the State as\npower center or the Market (private property and free trade) are the solution\nto commons problems. But the empirical reality is that neither the State nor\nthe Market have been uniformly successful in long term productive commons\narrangements.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">She points\nto the issue that the \"State\" solution is prone to erroneous decision making,\ncreating worse situations than before. If enforcement fails the ravaging of the\nresource is almost guaranteed, exactly the opposite of what is the goal. The\n\"privatize everything and free the market\" solution creates costly transactions,\ninefficiencies because of the fragmentation and costly governance structures,\nsusceptible to capture by the largest players that can influence the external\ngovernance to bend in their direction. And in many cases it is impossible to\neffectively cut up the commons in pieces.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">She shows\nthat voluntarily commitment to a strategy and its enforcement (a social\ninstitution) is a third option that can be successful in governing a commons. A\nnumber of rules for success have been identified by her. One is that social\ninstitutions can be nested in greater social institutions: a good example is\nthe exploitation of groundwater basins on the West Coast of the USA.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Van\nAsseldonk e.a. have written several papers on the relationship between\n(economic) network morphology (</span><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/TVA_morphology.PDF\">TVA_morphology.PDF</a>) and entropy ( <a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/TVA_configuration.PDF\">TVA_configuration.PDF</a>).</p><p>Networks in economic sense are seen\nas a cooperation between actors with their individual competences to create\nhigher productivity than they can achieve individually. Networks are\ncharacterized by both their interconnectivity (number of links between actors)\nand their concentration (distribution of links over actors). The combination\nleads to a mathematical calculated level of entropy, a level of flexibility\nand/or chaotic behavior.<span> </span>Too little\nentropy and the network cannot adapt to a changing environment. Too much entropy\nand the stability is gone, every perturbation leads to erratic changes and loss\nof energy.</p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The\nremarkable observation is that in natural occurring complex systems a certain\nentropy level seems to be optimal, leading to a concentration distribution that\nis described by the famous Power Law.<span> \n</span><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert-L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Barab%C3%A1si\">Barabas</a>i has written extensively (\"Linked\") on networks that have such a\nconcentration distribution, other authors show that it can be found in many,\nmany networks.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Van\nAsseldonk e.a. have extended the theory to how different networks morphologies\n(aka organizational structures) cope with the demands for decision making.\nDecision making is defined as searching within a given variation space for an\noptimal solution, using a given number of different competences of the actors\nin the network (aka more or less specialized people or departments).</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">As the\nsearchable variation space (lets say, the complexity of the environment you\nwant to manage) grows and the number of competences you need to involve in the\nsearch grow, the search costs grow exponential and quickly become larger than\nthe production cost of the solution.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><span> </span>The industrial hierarchy/bureaucracy is the\nfirst to succumb, a networked organization holds out longer.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">How does\nall this tie together?</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Ostroms\nobservations on the ineffectiveness of the State concur with the search costs\nobserved by van Asseldonk; either you have a bloated State (too much drain), or\na small State that cannot search the space and makes grave errors and does not\nhave the resources to enforce. The same applies to the market solution, only\ntransferred to the external governance and transaction structures needed in a\nprivatized solution for the commons (if at all possible).</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Her local social\ninstitution has neither of the disadvantages and is highly adaptable. It can be\nnested in greater institutions which seems to be comparable to the \"small\nworlds linked through larger nodes\" images conjured by Barabasi in describing\ncomplex networks. The scale free<span> </span>power\nlaw connectivity distribution relates to the natural balance between\nadaptability and stability.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Back to\ncongestion and Net Neutraility.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The\ngovernance of the commons \"Internet\" is achieved by the autonomous networks amongst each other. There are bodies to create and modify the rules of <span> </span>cooperation. Some unwritten rules for exchanging and interconnecting to\ncreate an addressable space are used in practice. Some of them are agreements, some of them are technical standards, some of it in the implementation of technology (TCP/IP congestion managenent implementation for example). </span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Unlike many people seem to think, the users of the commons<span> </span>\"Internet\"\n(including the companies) have not been a party in this governance structure,\nup till now. The State is intervening (on behalf of them?) now that some powerful\nnetworks want to change the rules unilaterally. Which is the source of the\ncurrent state of discussions.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The\ninteresting intellectual challenge is to apply the guidelines as identified by\nOstrom for a succesfull commons and see if they could fit the problem.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The first\nstriking failure is that up till now the users of the commons do not\nparticipate in the governance of the commons, nor can they be sure that the ISP as entry-point to the Autonomous Networks represents them correctly. An institutional problem.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The second failure is that there is no\ntransparency on how the commons is used by users, which is technical question.\nWould it be possible to see how other users of the backhaul are using this\ncommons? And to establish together with your ISP rules on behavior or on\ninvestmenst in more capacity?</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">More on\nthis subject in future posts....</span></p>"
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"title" : "The Running of the Dead, Part 4",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/28weeks-runners.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/28weeks-runners.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-1/\">PART 1 IS HERE.</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-2/\">PART 2 IS HERE.</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/articles/the-running-of-the-dead-part-3/\">PART 3 IS HERE.</a></p>\n<p><strong>28 Days Later: The Set-up, continued</strong></p>\n<p>Let’s rewind a few sentences:</p>\n<p>Occasionally, a young woman catches herself daydreaming about someone really close to her dying—not because she wishes it—not at all—but because she is compulsively rehearsing in her head how terrible it would be. So she daydreams, despite herself, that her boyfriend is dead and then she rushes to the living boy and surprises him by saying: <em>I love you so much</em>! <em>28 Days Later </em>is like that, except it’s the government, and not your boyfriend, who has died in the daydream’s car crash or cancer bed. The movie opens up for you the morbid headspace to mourn the government, even though we currently still have one.</p>\n<p>There’s a variation on that same sinister reverie that zombie movies regularly spin; we can call it Having to Kill Someone You Love. In <em>28 Days Later</em>, the harsh lesson goes like this: If a living person turns in your presence, “you have ten or twenty seconds to kill them. It can be your father or your sister or your best friend.” Scenes of this kind, in which intimates get euthanized, are all over the zombie film. They are as basic to the genre as transformation scenes are to werewolf movies. They are, indeed, an adaption of those very scenes: accelerated and moonless turnings in which the dog never makes it out of the vet’s office; lycanthropic kittens drowned in sacks.</p>\n<p>But then what we’ve just spotted is a continuity, a convention that carries over from slow zombies to fast. Both types of zombie movies go in for transformation scenes; nothing has changed on that front. And this, in turn, prompts a rather interesting question: How does the Hobbsean orientation of the fast-zombie movie reframe the genre’s usual conventions? <em>28 Days Later</em> may break with the Romero-era zombie movie in a few basic ways, but most of Romero’s conventions it actually takes over intact. The possibility we now need to consider is that those innovations are so drastic that they change the meanings even of those features that the movies most obviously share, simply by supplying them with a new context.</p>\n<p>The best way to follow this out is simply to watch <em>28</em>’s first mercy killing: A survivor gets infected, looks left, imploringly, past the camera; one of his comrades immediately leaps across the screen—to put him down—except all she has is a machete, and the viewer has to sit through seven sharp, moist swats. That the woman is black and the man white brings to the surface the scene’s historical provocation: A black woman hacks a white guy to death with the Third World’s iconic weapon, the curved blade that Africans and Caribbean islanders have lying around, the knife for whacking bush and coconuts and political rivals. In 2002, the image might still have brought Rwanda to mind, which reference-point is not wholly irrelevant, since one way of summarizing <em>28 Days Later </em>would be to say that it is asking you to imagine Britain as a “failed state,” when that last is the current Hobbsean term of art.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Machete.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Machete.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"338\"></a></p>\n<p>Now the important point is that if we were watching this scene in a Romero movie, we could probably guess its effects, since Romero specializes in setting up equivalences between zombies and human survivors; in forcing viewers, that is, to conclude that there isn’t very much difference between people and zombies after all (since the condition of zombism is the condition of our stupid, little lives, &c). We could say something similar of <em>28 Days Later:</em> the scene is quite conspicuously brutal, and the woman with the blade manifestly displays the ferocity of her zombie-opponents, and though this familiar line wouldn’t exactly be wrong, it wouldn’t really be right either. The scene presents an unusually good opportunity, in fact, to specify the fast-zombie movie’s Hobbsean labor: When the living people in Romero start acting like zombies, this discredits them; it makes them scary. And that’s not true of <em>28 Days Later</em>. The woman commits murder right in front of us, and that act doesn’t discredit her, doesn’t make her scary. Her <em>situation</em> is scary, but she isn’t, because the killing has been explained in advance by the movie’s Hobbsean frame, to the effect that people living without a government don’t have any choice but to act like zombies or savages. The obligation to kill is part of the horror. Hobbes’s entire point is that people living in a stateless condition don’t get to choose to be good people; life without a government requires brutality from <em>everybody</em>. When you slowly realize, watching <em>Night of the Living Dead</em>, that nearly all of the survivors are as violently brain-dead as the zombies, it’s a crushing experience—anyone who remembers that movie’s final credits will know what I mean: They force you to reevaluate everything that’s come before. But in <em>28 Days Later</em>, the realization comes early and is no kind of surprise; it is simply built into the scenario.</p>\n<p>This point is then amplified in a bit of a dialogue a few scenes later. The hero and the woman with the machete are looking at an old photograph, from Before, a smiling middle-class family, cinched in close together, laughing father, beaming mother, ungrudging teenager caught in a group hug. The hero remarks that they look like “good people.”</p>\n<blockquote><p>MACHETE: Good people? … Well, that’s nice, but you should be more concerned about whether they’re going to slow you down.</p>\n<p>HERO: Right, because if they slowed you down…</p>\n<p>MACHETE: …I’d leave them behind…</p>\n<p>HERO: …in a heartbeat…</p>\n<p>MACHETE: …yeah.</p>\n<p>HERO: I wouldn’t.</p>\n<p>MACHETE: Then you’re going to wind up getting yourself killed.</p></blockquote>\n<p>The movie, in other words, turns the photograph into an occasion for a colloquium on the domestic virtues: sentiment, fellow feeling, and the like. The hero is talking like a Christian or benevolent liberal, and it is another one of the distinctive features of zombie movies as a form that they render that position—the position of a generic goodness—utterly impossible. The hero has to be weaned of his decency, and we will know that he has achieved this new moral consciousness when we witness him kill a (zombie) child.</p>\n<p>The point is complicated, though. By the time the movie ends, the liberal and the killer will have moved in together, into a northern cottage, with the girl in the photograph as their adopted daughter, and so have reinstituted a humanist ethics or at least a coziness; their values get un-transvaluated. This gets us back to Hobbes and the authoritarian Right, whom we can now distinguish from the Nietzscheans by pointing out that they precisely don’t want the condition of pre- or post-humanist savagery to persist. They don’t want people to have to be beasts. Indeed, they want people <em>to be able</em> to act like Christians or benevolent liberals, but in order for this to happen—and this is the properly political, which is to say structural and so anti-ethical moment in Hobbes’s thinking—in order for this to happen, in order for you to be a decent person, there has to be some fundamental shift in the political order, or rather, politics as such has to be born. Political society has to constitute itself. The problem, then, for a Hobbsean is that liberals and Christians fail to grap the close conjunction between their decency and the exercise of force, fail to grasp that kindness and the police go together, that the police make kindness possible, which means that kindness will never be able to <em>substitute </em>for the police.</p>\n<p><em>28 Days Later </em>has worked out a way of telegraph this idea visually, in what is probably the most clever sequence in the entire movie. The two survivors—the Hero and Lady Machete—have worked out that there are other living humans in London, at least a few of them, hiding in an apartment high above the city. They sneaky-pete their way up the building’s stairwell and down the corridor toward the apartment’s door, where they see this figure…</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-1.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"313\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-1.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>…who turns into this figure…</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-3.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"349\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-3.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>…who turns into this figure…</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-4.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"344\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Frank-4.jpg\"></a></p>\n<p>It’s all something of a sick joke: First we encounter an unmovable paramilitary cop; he mutates into a balaclav’d thug, marching straight for the camera, in a shot borrowed directly from slasher movies; and this killer then peels off his mask and reveals himself to be … Brendan Gleeson, an actor of excellent good cheer, boozy and lummoxing, a kind of human wassail. The idea here is that open-hearted, hospitable middle-class people and the riot police actually go together, though not usually in a single person. Such, at least, is the Hobbsean take on the issue. What the movie has done is taken the two sides of bourgeois society, usually experienced at a confusing distance from one another, and welded them back into a single figure—the softie and the cop, the teddy bear and the guy who’ll push your face in—and thereby bodied forth the interdependence of those positions, which is what liberals putatively never <em>get</em>.</p>\n<p><strong>•28 Days Later: The switcheroo</strong></p>\n<p>So we can say that <em>28 Days Later </em>forces us to imagine a certain crisis, the complete breakdown of political order into terrorism and savagery. And in the history of political thought that idea comes with a built-in solution: Strengthen the state, strengthen the police, the military, the executive. Expand the emergency powers of the central authorities. It is this fantasy that the movie puts into play. The first half of the movie follows a group of survivors as they straggle across a de-populated England trying to get to whatever is left of the state: the Army’s last uninfected platoon, garrisoned in an old manor house, chanting the Hobbsean mantra: “We are soldiers. … Salvation is here. … We can protect you.” One of the civilians has preemptively echoed the point: “The soldiers could keep us safe.”</p>\n<p>At this point I might as well just out and say what the movie does to this fantasy, which is that it explodes it into little bits. That is the single most important fact about <em>28 Days Later</em>, that it drives you into the arms of the soldiers, convinces you to look to them for refuge, and then turns the soldiers into monsters in their own right, mostly because they plan to begin a breeding program upon the bodies of the two surviving women and so immediately default on their promises of asylum. There are obvious precedents for this: In the later stages of the movie, Boyle begins borrowing shots from <em>Apocalypse Now</em>, and these are so many visual nudges, reminders that the underlying scenario is straight out of <em>Heart of Darkness</em>: The last outpost of civilization turns out to be a whirring freak show. So a borrowed plot, though it is fascinating all the same to watch a certain Conradianism well up unexpectedly within the horror movie. For Colonel substitute “Major” and for Kurtz substitute “West”—that’s the movie’s human villain—“He’s insane!” someone shouts—Major West, which name is of course allegory reverting back to plain-speech.</p>\n<p>But then most people aren’t going to be chasing down the literary history while watching a movie, so perhaps it’s more appropriate to explain <em>28 Days Later</em> as a basic exercise in emotional manipulation: It sets you up to want the soldiers, to be desperately pro-military, and then once you get your wish and end up face to face with the Tommies, it makes them creepy—not exactly like the monsters—the distinction will matter—but in their own way fiendish. It forces you to experience them as oppressive. No-one calls soldiers “grunts” because they’re <em>polished. </em>And to call them “dogfaces” suggests only that the enemy had better be shooting silver ammo.<em> </em>Such, anyway, is Boyle’s con, his trick. He seems to be making all of the Right’s moves—and just when the time comes to put the Right’s solution in place, he undoes it instead—and thereby makes clear that he was playing a different game all along.</p>\n<p>Let me take another crack at it: <em>28 Days Later</em> swaps out the problem of sovereignty or political order and puts another, entirely different problem in its place. At its most basic level, this is a point about the plot, and so about your actual, minute-by-minute experience of the movie, if you’re watching it for the first time. It looks like it’s going to be a straightforward trek movie, in which the credits will roll once our heroes find the army unit. In a different kind of movie—the kind of movie that Boyle lets you think for a while he has made—the soldiers would constitute a happy ending. But as soon as the survivors arrive at the army’s aristocratic headquarters, the soldiers mutate into a new problem. Authority stops being the solution and becomes instead the crisis. The hero, in other words, will have to learn to fight the soldiers—and not the zombies he thought he was fighting all along. Here’s another way of gauging how curious <em>28 Days Later </em>is: The movie’s longest fight sequence, its protracted-final-action-horror showdown, involves the zombies barely at all; it pushes them to the periphery, in a clear indication to the audience that they should stop worrying so much about the goddamned zombies already. More: By that point, the hero is, if anything, aligned with the zombies; he is literally fighting <em>alongside</em> them. Boyle, having carefully tutored you into the statist position, is violently reversing course, and will now insist that you take up the anti-statist position. <em>28 Days Later </em>has the structure of a movie arguing with itself; it is a grindhouse paradox or splattery antinomy.</p>\n<p>This plot point—expectations established, then violated—in turn houses a rather sly visual puzzle. It’s a variant of the machete problem: That final fight is spiked with a series of uncanny shots in which it becomes increasingly hard to tell whether the hero has been infected or not, whether or not he has turned zombie.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Jim-zombie.jpg\"><img src=\"http://people.williams.edu/cthorne/files/2010/08/Jim-zombie.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"470\" height=\"327\"></a></p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">•The camera pans slowly around an army truck, and catches the hero pressed up against its slats, still and seething, his eyes blotted out by shadow. The sound track supplies what is either a loud wheeze or a soft grunt: a growl. From this point on, we are watching a horror movie run in reverse, in which the hero is inserted into the shots typically reserved for the monsters and the soldier-villains are tricked out with all the visual conventions of victimhood.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">•The hero flits past the camera, barely more than a shadow himself, which is another monster shot: two seconds borrowed from an <em>Alien </em>movie. And by bringing in an actual raging zombie just a little after that, the movie makes you wonder for real whether the hero hasn’t been infected, because it puts the contagion on the scene, dangerously close.</p>\n<p style=\"padding-left:30px\">•The fight moves to the manor house, where there are two figures on the rampage: the hero and the zombie who doesn’t bake, now unchained. The hero spends the entire sequence wet, bloodied, and shirtless, his face distorting in the old building’s blown glass windows.</p>\n<p>The eye’s confusion is actually a political test. The hero is trying to destroy the bearers of authority; our ordinary word for that is revolution. So by the end of <em>28 Days Later</em> there are three positions available to the characters where earlier there were only two: 1) The savage or the terrorist; 2) the state and its protections; and now 3) the revolutionary. So in these shots the movie is posing another tough question: Is the hero zombie or human? Can you tell the difference between a savage and a revolutionary? Or more to the point: Can you tell the difference between a terrorist and a revolutionary? That’s a profound question, one that has lost none of its moment.</p>\n<p>You can also pose a version of that question from inside the revolutionary’s head. The revolutionary has to ask himself what he is doing when he unleashes his own rage or taps into the rage of other people. Can you set that violence loose, direct it, and still rein it in once it has done what you needed it to do? The movie becomes a meditation on the basic problem of revolutionary violence. And the movie doesn’t stay up in the air on this issue. It resolves the paradox by deciding, via its own writerly dictates, that you <em>can </em>do this—you can direct violence to good ends. It comes down on the side of the revolutionary, although revolution is depicted here as a good old-fashioned quest to rescue the maiden from the lair.</p>\n<p>It all comes down to this: <em>28 Days Later</em>, the movie that for all intents and purposes created fast zombies, was already the movie that demystified them. The subgenre stands permanently indicted by its own author and source. Boyle’s movie<em> </em>is not the progenitor to <em>[REC]</em> and <em>Quarantine </em>and the <em>Dawn </em>remake and Justin Cronin’s vampire-zombie novel <em>The Passage</em>; it is their accuser, the one that calls them out on their despotism and <em>aufgehobener </em>race-hate.</p>\n<p>A movie that initially expends all of its ingenuity getting us to love sovereignty ends by getting us to love instead sovereignty’s overturning. And there is one more gotcha secreted away inside of that big one: Boyle is an Irish director born in England. All we have to do is keep that in mind and then think about who survives in this movie. At first, there are three adult survivors: an Englishman, a black woman, and an Irishman. The hero is Irish, though the dialogue never once pauses to remind you of this. The first word he speaks, other than “hello,” is “Fadder” — hesitantly addressed to a zombie priest, both question and greeting: “Fadder?” In fact, the actor playing the Englishman is also Irish, so he’s nearly a Dubliner in disguise. The more important point is that the movie kills him off, but then it’s already killed off <em>all </em>the adult English, which means that the people left to repopulate England are the Jamaican woman and the man from Cork, and that the seeds of the new nation will barely include Angles, Saxon, Normans, or anyone else who has typically kept that land in copyhold.</p>"
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"title" : "Rodney Saint-Eloi : HAITI, kenbé la!",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TILGKmPTl7I/AAAAAAAACE0/7BX2Z-8sQL8/s1600/P8310322.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TILGKmPTl7I/AAAAAAAACE0/7BX2Z-8sQL8/s400/P8310322.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><strong>Haïti, redresse-toi</strong> en créole. En terminant cet ouvrage, je me demande si des mots simples peuvent relever un pays en ruines, si la succession de séismes humains ou naturels peut cesser par une simple formule incantatoire. « Haïti, kenbé la ! ». En terminant ce livre témoignage de <a href=\"http://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile/paroles/saint-eloi.html\">Rodney Saint-Eloi</a>, homme de lettres haïtien, éditeur, fondateur des <a href=\"http://www.memoiredencrier.com/\">Editions Mémoire d’encrier</a>, je me pose la question de la place, de l’intérêt, de la portée de ces mots cochés sur papier, ces mots qui racontent la souffrance, l’espérance, le combat d’un peuple qui ploie sous le poids des éléments en furie. A quoi peuvent servir les mots.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"></div><br><div style=\"text-align:center\">L’Evangile de Jean commence avec cette affirmation : « Au commencent était la parole ».</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">On peut interpréter ce passage dans n’importe quel sens, mais j’apprécie l’idée que la parole est créatrice de toute chose. Même quand elle n’est que témoignage, loin de la fiction et bien ancrée dans la réalité.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Rodney Saint-Eloi était avec Dany Laferrière au moment où le <span style=\"font-size:large\">goudou-goudou</span> commence. Ceux qui ont lu les premiers propos du <a href=\"http://blackbazar.blogspot.com/2010/01/dany-laferriere-me-reconte.html\">lauréat du Prix Médicis 2010</a>, rentré à Montréal peu de temps après la catastrophe, s’en souviennent.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ce texte commence donc avec l’atmosphère du tremblement de terre et de cette fête de la littérature dans ce pays si pauvre matériellement, mais si riche de sa culture. Les écrivains arrivent, les organisateurs se démènent car le programme est ambitieux. Puis vint le goudou-goudou. 35 secondes et un pays qui bascule encore plus dans l’horreur.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Si l’écrivain s’autorise quelques flashbacks, le récit reste dans son ensemble linéaire. Le scribe raconte ce qu’il voit. Il y a des anecdotes qu’on lui rapporte. Il y a ce qu’il entend à la radio. Si les premières pages sont écrites dans un style ampoulé, la voix de Saint-Eloi se veut très rapidement plus naturelle et transmet mieux son ressenti sur ce qu’il perçoit. Il réussit à échapper au misérabilisme, ce que rapporte Saint-Eloi relève à la fois de l’abattement et du désir de faire face en fonction de ses ressources, comme ces jeunes qui continuent de jouer au jeu de dames comme de coutume, quelques jours après le séisme. Certaines images pourront surprendre. Mais c’est Haïti.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Si Saint-Eloi évoque la solidarité entre les auteurs dans les premières heures du tremblement de terre, Trouillot, Laferrière et lui-même pour prendre des nouvelles des proches, plus on avance dans le texte et dans le temps, plus son analyse se montre global. </div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Rodney Saint-Eloi revient sur la violence de la société haïtienne, les taches encore présentes du passé colonial, les antagonismes qui continuent d’écraser les communautés de ce pays. Le temps du séisme, le sentiment que tous les haïtiens sont logés à la même enseigne, malgré leurs divisions.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">L’espoir est surement dans le message que lui adresse le grand écrivain Frankétienne peu de temps après son retour à Montréal où il broie du noir <em><span style=\"color:#4c1130\">« Je continuerai à écrire et à peindre. L'attribut de Dieu est sa perpétuation. Même sous les décombres, j'attends le Nobel. Et note bien ceci: je ne mourrai pas sans le Nobel»</span></em>. Celui qu’il désigne comme « un génial mégalomane », abattu quelques heures après le goudou-goudou, rêve de nouveau de conquérir le monde par ses mots et par son œuvre, dans sa demeure en reconstruction. C’est Haïti, sans démagogie, dévastée, mais digne. L'espoir est haïtien.</div><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><blockquote><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Cela fait deux jours et on dirait une éternité. tant de voix trébuchées. tant de murs lézardés. Désormais la ville est divisée en deux factions, celle qui est debout et qui respire sans en savoir la raison, et celle qui est ensevelie sous les gravats. La nouvelle histoire du pays débute par ce cri perçant qui fendille le ventre de la terre : rafales de mitrailleuses lourdes, tremblements des toits, craquelure des chaises. Une houle sans nom engrange, tranquille, la mémoire des choses. Un grand bruit de tonnerre, on croirait que le diable bat sa femme. Tous les visages sont fissurés. Tous les corps. Les morts paraissent sérieux sous les décombres. Ils ont sur la figure une balafre secrète.</div></blockquote>Page 178, Editions Michel Lafon<br><br><span style=\"font-size:large\">Rodney Saint-Eloi, Haïti, kenbé la!</span><br>Editions Michel Lafon, 1ère parution en 2010, 267 pages </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-2866568080844473935?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Wayne Rooney's prostitute 'Juicy Jen' says \"I am not a call-girl but a horizontal cheerleader\"",
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"title" : "Kipling’s Swastika",
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"content" : "<p>It’s not that I’m <em>totally </em>startled to find this as the manner in which that great Anglo-Indian, Rudyard Kipling represents himself on the <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=ljEJAAAAIAAJ&dq=kim%20kipling&pg=PP12#v=onepage&q&f=false\">title page</a> of the 1922 printing of <em>Kim:</em></p>\n<p><img src=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=ljEJAAAAIAAJ&pg=PP8&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2rTK--zpEeUwyFJhBTLJHbFygBAg&ci=342%2C523%2C404%2C330&edge=0\" alt=\"\" width=\"232\" height=\"190\"></p>\n<p>But there is still a certain interesting shock in coming across it. In one sense, as we know, the swastika took on a whole other meaning after the Nazi party made it their icon, a usage which drowned out most of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_use_of_the_Swastika_in_the_early_20th_century\">the other usages of the symbol </a>(or close variations) in the West. It ceased to signify in terms of what had made it meaningful for the people who had deployed it; now it just means “Nazi.” Like the name “Adolf,” an arbitrary sign has been made to bear the burden of historical atrocity.</p>\n<p>Yet traces like this — which Kipling took steps to erase after the Nazis “defiled beyond redemption” a symbol that had been his trademark for decades — help bring into focus the <em>legibility </em>of the Nazi party and idea in its own time. Which is exactly why that symbolic resonance had to be erased: Kipling and Hitler were playing versions of the same game, establishing a lineage of whiteness that could imagine into existence the pure Indo-European ancestor that Heinrich Schliemann was to have found, with the Swastika, in the ruins of Troy. Kipling had used the swastika as his moniker because it invested him — icon of the British Raj – with the authenticity of an antiquarian Orientalism, articulating his whiteness not in <em>opposition </em>to, but by <em>means of</em>, the connection to an Indo-European original. That was a powerful move; it allowed the British in India, for example, to pose not as barbaric newcomers who had conquered and sacked a civilization far older and more advanced than them, but as the true heirs of its oldest primogenitor. But after Hitler, I wonder if more than the symbol was tainted for Kipling. Did he give the meaning the icon had for him? Did he gave up the things it had stood for? Amnesia is almost the opposite of confession, so one never knows (which is precisely the point).</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2394/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2394&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Kiosk Culture by DK Osseo-Asare",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.ted.com/fellows/view/id/108\">TED Fellow</a> and <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2010/03/africentri-city.html\">blogger</a> <a href=\"http://osseo-asare.com/\">DK Osseo-Asare</a> founder of the <a href=\"http://www.lowdo.net/\">Low Design Office</a> speaks to Beyond Profit:<br><blockquote><table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;text-align:center\"><tbody><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TIDW3VlIg8I/AAAAAAAAGXk/Uxcvo1f8zhw/s1600/kiosk.png\" style=\"margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"118\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_VfdGlmUwjFQ/TIDW3VlIg8I/AAAAAAAAGXk/Uxcvo1f8zhw/s320/kiosk.png\" width=\"320\"></a></td></tr><tr><td style=\"text-align:center\">Photo courtesy of low design office</td></tr></tbody></table>One area where Osseo-Asare hopes to use collaborative <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=architecture\">architecture</a> is through the “kiosk culture” of Ghana. Informal shacks and buildings made of reused <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=materials\">materials</a> line Ghanaian streets, home to <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=microenterprise\">microenterprises</a> and <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/2008/09/appeal-to-african-elites-for-cottage.html\">microindustry</a>. While these buildings are technically illegal, they are an integral part of Ghanaian <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/search?q=culture\">culture</a> and daily life. “People expect ubiquitous micro-enterprise, [like] the ability to buy water or mobile phone credits from a vendor at virtually any point in the city,” Osseo-Asare says. Why then, are city planners trying to wipe out such structures, and replace them with factories?<br>“Kiosk culture is an existing model for survival <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/search?q=city\">in the city</a> that can also become a bottom-up strategy for advancing local <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=fabrication\">fabrication</a> and sustainability,” Osseo-Asare says. Instead of eradicating kiosk culture in the growing city of Tema, Ghana, he and his team are working to build stronger, more environmentally friendly microstructures. Their first project is “bamboo lifecycling”: <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=bamboo\">growing bamboo</a> in an <a href=\"http://africaunchained.blogspot.com/search/label/urbanization\">urban setting</a>, and using it to build temporary and mobile infrastructures. After use, discarded building materials can be used as low-cost and low-impact <a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/search?q=cooking+fuel\">cooking fuel</a>.</blockquote>More <a href=\"http://beyondprofit.com/ted-talks-to-beyond-profit-dk-osseo-asare/\">here</a><br><div><h6 style=\"font-size:1em;margin:1em 0 0 0\">Related articles by Zemanta</h6><ul><li><a href=\"http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2010/07/culture-of-generative-hacking.html\" rel=\"nofollow\">A Culture of Generative Hacking</a> (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)</li></ul></div><div style=\"height:15px;margin-top:10px\"><a href=\"http://www.zemanta.com/\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"><img alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" src=\"http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=7ca2b7c7-60f4-4e37-b938-df9822c17ad6\" style=\"border:none;float:right\"></a><span></span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5905104-6206901261059101215?l=timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "WordCram: An open-source Wordle-like library",
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"content" : "If you're a programmer, and you want to create Wordle-like effects in your own software, then you couldn't do much better than to start with <a href=\"http://wordcram.wordpress.com/\">WordCram</a>. WordCram is an excellent new open-source project, designed to work as an extension library for the <a href=\"http://processing.org/\">Processing</a> programming environment. I like the way it's designed. I like how simple it is to use. I <b>love</b> that the source is freely available, so that you can study it, learn from it, and improve it. Please go check it out, and give <a href=\"http://invisibleblocks.wordpress.com/\">the author</a> some love."
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"title" : "Banksy Strikes Again",
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"content" : "<p>One of <a href=\"http://www.banksy.co.uk/\">Banksy’s</a> most recent works, this time in Detroit.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://anjalir.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/banksy-detroit-self-opt_2103.jpg\"><img title=\"banksy-detroit-self-opt_2103\" src=\"http://anjalir.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/banksy-detroit-self-opt_2103.jpg?w=595&h=396\" alt=\"\" width=\"595\" height=\"396\"></a></p>\n<p>Via <a href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2010/07/20/banksy-does-detroit.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+boingboing/iBag+(Boing+Boing)&utm_content=Google+Reader\">Boing Boing</a>.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/anjalir.wordpress.com/2112/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=anjalir.wordpress.com&blog=9058167&post=2112&subd=anjalir&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The Telephone Conversation",
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"content" : "<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/YFRHZL3OIeM?fs%3D1%26hl%3Den_US&width=640&height=385\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"></iframe><span style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:19px;font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;font-size:13px\"><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">\n<br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">It seems that since it was written, almost every Nigerian child has been made to study Soyinka's 1959 poem, the Telephone Conversation, and remembers the experience fondly. Non-Nigerians may not quite realise how important this poem is in Nigerian consciousness. The YouTube clip is slightly artless, but at least it introduces the poem to the poem-averse. Better to read the real thing though:</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><b><span style=\"font-size:medium\">\n<br></span></b></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><b><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Telephone Conversation</span></b></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">by Wole Soyinka\n<br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">\n<br>The price seemed reasonable, location\n<br>Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived\n<br>Off premises. Nothing remained\n<br>But self-confession. \"Madam,\" I warned,\n<br>\"I hate a wasted journey—I am African.\"\n<br>Silence. Silenced transmission of\n<br>Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,\n<br>Lipstick coated, long gold rolled\n<br>Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.\n<br>\"HOW DARK?\" . . . I had not misheard . . . \"ARE YOU LIGHT\n<br>OR VERY DARK?\" Button B, Button A.* Stench\n<br>Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.\n<br>Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered\n<br>Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed\n<br>By ill-mannered silence, surrender\n<br>Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.\n<br>Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--\n<br>\"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?\" Revelation came.\n<br>\"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?\"\n<br>Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light\n<br>Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,\n<br>I chose. \"West African sepia\"--and as afterthought,\n<br>\"Down in my passport.\" Silence for spectroscopic\n<br>Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent\n<br>Hard on the mouthpiece. \"WHAT'S THAT?\" conceding\n<br>\"DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.\" \"Like brunette.\"\n<br>\"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?\" \"Not altogether.\n<br>Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see\n<br>The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet\n<br>Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused--\n<br>Foolishly, madam--by sitting down, has turned\n<br>My bottom raven black--One moment, madam!\"--sensing\n<br>Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap\n<br>About my ears--\"Madam,\" I pleaded, \"wouldn't you rather\n<br>See for yourself?\"</span></span></div></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-4577660651309501244?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Brazil's agricultural miracle: How to feed the world",
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"content" : "<p>The emerging conventional wisdom about world farming is gloomy. There is an alternative</p><p>THE world is planting a vigorous new crop: “agro-pessimism”, or fear that mankind will not be able to feed itself except by wrecking the environment. The current harvest of this variety of whine will be a bumper one. Natural disasters—fire in Russia and flood in Pakistan, which are the world’s fifth- and eighth-largest wheat producers respectively—have added a Biblical colouring to an unfolding fear of famine. By 2050 world grain output will have to rise by half and meat production must double to meet demand. And that cannot easily happen because growth in grain yields is flattening out, there is little extra farmland and renewable water is running short.</p><p>The world has been here before. In 1967 Paul Ehrlich, a Malthusian, wrote that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over… In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Five years later, in “The Limits to Growth”, the Club of Rome (a group of business people and academics) argued that the world was running out of raw materials and that societies would probably collapse in the 21st century. ...</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=ccmu7X5oX8o:tJeMw9Zpzco:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/economist/full_print_edition/~4/ccmu7X5oX8o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "A Remake Of France v West Germany, 1982.",
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"content" : "<p align=\"center\"><img src=\"http://cdn.worldcupblog.org/www.worldcupblog.org/files/2010/08/1982_fra_ger_03_2749_full-lnd.jpg\" alt=\"1982_fra_ger_03_2749_full-lnd\" width=\"512\" height=\"341\"></p>\n<p>The piece below – a piece rather than video – is a rather astonishing remake of the final 15 minutes, the penalties, of the semifinal between France and West Germany in 1982. Astonishing in its labor, nuanced accuracy and sheer simplicity. These are everyday people doing largely everyday things, movements which normally wouldn’t turn a single head, but combine to recreate a World Cup semifinal.</p>\n<p>Block off a quarter hour today – it’s well worth it.<br>\n<span></span></p>\n<p>The description:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>“Refait” is a remake of the football WorldCup match between France and Germany (Seville, Spain, 1982). Shot by Pied La Biche in Villeurbanne (France), every aspect of the fifteen last minutes of the match was carefully reconstructed : players, positions, gestures, intensity, drama etc. It consists in shifting the traditional game area into the urban environment. Each sequence takes place in one or several locations and then the city temporarily becomes the lab for unsual experiments. The soundtrack is made up of the original commentaries mixed with interviews of the audience recorded during the shooting. </em></p></blockquote>\n<p>The remake:</p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http://player.vimeo.com/video/9426271\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\"></iframe>/<br></p>"
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"title" : "Brazilian agriculture: The miracle of the cerrado",
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"content" : "<p>Brazil has revolutionised its own farms. Can it do the same for others?</p><p>IN A remote corner of Bahia state, in north-eastern Brazil, a vast new farm is springing out of the dry bush. Thirty years ago eucalyptus and pine were planted in this part of the cerrado (Brazil’s savannah). Native shrubs later reclaimed some of it. Now every field tells the story of a transformation. Some have been cut to a litter of tree stumps and scrub; on others, charcoal-makers have moved in to reduce the rootballs to fuel; next, other fields have been levelled and prepared with lime and fertiliser; and some have already been turned into white oceans of cotton. Next season this farm at Jatoba will plant and harvest cotton, soyabeans and maize on 24,000 hectares, 200 times the size of an average farm in Iowa. It will transform a poverty-stricken part of Brazil’s backlands.</p><p> Three hundred miles north, in the state of Piaui, the transformation is already complete. Three years ago the Cremaq farm was a failed experiment in growing cashews. Its barns were falling down and the scrub was reasserting its grip. Now the farm—which, like Jatoba, is owned by BrasilAgro, a company that buys and modernises neglected fields—uses radio transmitters to keep track of the weather; runs SAP software; employs 300 people under a gaucho from southern Brazil; has 200km (124 miles) of new roads criss-crossing the fields; and, at harvest time, resounds to the thunder of lorries which, day and night, carry maize and soya to distant ports. That all this is happening in Piaui—the Timbuktu of Brazil, a remote, somewhat lawless area where the nearest health clinic is half a day’s journey away and most people live off state welfare payments—is nothing short of miraculous. ...</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?i=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?a=KRxnM796bVs:PuHp_JR9s8Q:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/economist/full_print_edition?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/economist/full_print_edition/~4/KRxnM796bVs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Reclamation",
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"content" : "<p>Just because it’s worth remarking on how deeply perverse it is for Glenn Beck to want to “reclaim the civil rights movement” because “we were the people that did it in the first place,” here’s Beck’s take on civil rights counterposed with a marginally important figure within the movement, Martin Luther King, Jr:</p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://mediamatters.org/research/201007170001\">Beck</a>: “the movement of the 1960s has been perverted and distorted” by people “like the Reverend Al Sharpton telling people that Martin Luther King’s dream was really about redistribution of wealth…I don’t remember that. Really?”<br>\n<a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=qo9r4_rnrasC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=%22but+now+we+are+dealing+with+issues+that+cannot+be+solved+without+the+nation+spending+billions+of+dollars+and+undergoing+a+radical+redistribution+of+economic+power.%22&source=bl&ots=KJ9W#v=onepage&q=%22but%20now%20we%20are%20dealing%20with%20issues%20that%20cannot%20be%20solved%20without%20the%20nation%20spending%20billions%20of%20dollars%20and%20undergoing%20a%20radical%20redistribution%20of%20economic%20power.%22&f=false\">King</a>: “…we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars — and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power.”</p></blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201005200048\">Beck</a>: “Who were the civil rights marchers?…They weren’t crying for social justice, they were crying out for equal justice.”<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.wmich.edu/library/archives/mlk/transcription.html\">King</a>: (in his speech <a href=\"http://www.wmich.edu/library/archives/mlk/transcription.html\">“Social Justice”</a>) “we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.”</p></blockquote>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201006220024\">Beck</a>: “They have infiltrated our churches” and “confused the gospel with government-run programs.”<br>\n<a href=\"http://mediamatters.org/rd?to=http%3A%2F%2Fmlk-kpp01.stanford.edu%2Fprimarydocuments%2F680318-000.pdf%23page%3D3\">King</a>: “If America does not use her vast resources to end poverty … she too will go to hell.”</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2353/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2353&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Gil Noble Interviews Abbey Lincoln (1979)",
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"title" : "The life story of the mosquito.",
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"content" : "We welcome a thunderstorm after sweltering days. The air clears, the temperature goes down. And, damn, the mosquitoes hatch.<br><br>[<a href=\"http://www.slate.com/id/2264944/?from=rss\">more ...</a>]<br><a href=\"http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/slate.rss/politics;pos=ad9;tile=9;ad=rss;sz=479x40;ord=4215\"><img src=\"http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/slate.rss/politics;pos=ad9;tile=9;ad=rss;sz=479x40;ord=4215\" border=\"0\" vspace=\"5\"></a> <br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:ea7403a66ee463096fae97895458c552:msHxapwNY12BXghW6TuNPFO3bz17kH9w5CcQlALAGsLVW1rK0w859nTH%2BTD8r0X1%2FGqhMQjwPLFiAP0%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Facebook\" alt=\"Add to Facebook\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:e46d7e8d60b7fbba9a2e196db3b8bca7:jY5SWAPccBV83UGsvr43lqnCLVpq4rX7FYpQFlq63inTWZv6W2Fy7S%2BXZe9YH%2BHZ%2BfHF1ViHa0ufuOY%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Twitter\" alt=\"Add to Twitter\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/twitter.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:b4b3f9ed9823097b9ab199d2ccb28d20:Vgrhz%2B9DKrvHmUZznLgm5l2DKslR4JJuJFyMCLn5V8GypwED5U5KO8MAK0mSANvEe9a9loxVm295zw%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to digg\" alt=\"Add to digg\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:56f831de0b2a49e77fcb30700f5fba58:SVc5zz9AEHgvErV9Wzd2krR3Diyc%2BPeO%2Bz1VbI6t0vZqnZcEP3AeaZ2g7eh2OmHYwjrewwOBZzR6KQ%3D%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to Reddit\" alt=\"Add to Reddit\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:ee3100d4ee383f23d157bfbf7ffbda84:Lop4T9HkfER73May0bwnPMIh0bnAsadiy10Vfgs7oJTYuKedpH8tLJxa6ZidIsh31hsnDse2f1Ha5D0%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" alt=\"Add to StumbleUpon\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif\"></a>\n <a style=\"font-size:10px;color:maroon\" href=\"http://www.pheedcontent.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:0c8df919fde866ac3262a7f1c51397a3:bDrvsLMfRZ6lbvAdORWS72swfk9xTvwL5jxIarwqNv8FlJh3FB%2BQSVoxGynqMy2KNge%2BTuV0XmWLQ0o%3D\"><img border=\"0\" title=\"Email this Article\" alt=\"Email this Article\" src=\"http://images.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthisHF.gif\"></a>\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=News&partnerID=167&key=segment\"><img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29918.rss.News.34533,cat.News.rss\"><br>\n<img src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?kw=\"> \n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=64&kw=Mosquito\">Mosquito</a> - <a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=64&kw=Temperature\">Temperature</a> - <a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=64&kw=Insecta\">Insecta</a> - <a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=64&kw=Flora+and+Fauna\">Flora and Fauna</a> - <a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=56c197246c16a0b58ce904cabba6a322&p=64&kw=Diptera\">Diptera</a>"
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"title" : "'When I'm Called Home': Remembering Abbey Lincoln",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/THO2sjKSyHI/AAAAAAAACCo/x0-7MCUgRsQ/s1600/Abbey+2\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:300px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/THO2sjKSyHI/AAAAAAAACCo/x0-7MCUgRsQ/s400/Abbey+2\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">Obscured by time, this jazz singer leaves behind an impressive legacy.</span><br><br><a href=\"http://www.theloop21.com/society/when-i%E2%80%99m-called-home-remembering-abbey-lincoln\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">When I'm Called Home: Remembering Abbey Lincoln</span></a><br>by Mark Anthony Neal<br><br><span style=\"font-size:85%\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\">“I’ve always been concerned with the story I’m telling. This music is social. Our music is social. Nobody cares whether it sounds pretty or not. Can you tell the people what its like to be here?”—Abbey Lincoln in LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s <span style=\"font-weight:bold\">I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft</span></span></span><br><br>When Abbey Lincoln gave her last breath on the morning of August 14, 2010, she left a legacy, that though obscured by time and ignorance, marks her as one of the most singular Black artists of the 20th Century. Though it is important to remember Lincoln as one of the truly original jazz vocalists ever, there are few artists who could claim to have been as obsessed with using her art—as singer, songwriter, essayist (she contributed to Toni Cade’s groundbreaking anthology <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Black Woman</span>), painter and actress—as a vessel to explicate the full humanity of herself and the people, that she often claimed, were inside of her.<br><br>Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in August of 1930 in Chicago, Lincoln came of age on a farm in Calvin Center, Michigan. Like many aspiring artists from that era, Lincoln was profoundly affected by the music of Billie Holiday. As Lincoln recalled with journalist Lisa Jones in a 1991 New York Times interview, “My father worked in the houses of wealthy people who gave him recordings. The first singer I heard on record was Billie Holiday when I was 14.” Two decades later Lincoln would be favorably compared Holiday, though she would struggle throughout much of her early career to escape the shadows of both Holiday and the formidable mythology that has been erected in her name.<br><br>After apprenticing in various places including Honolulu and California, where she had initially moved after graduating high school, and taking the name Gaby Lee, Lincoln began to be managed by lyricist Bob Russell. It was Russell who suggested another name change—Abbey Lincoln—and who helped Lincoln sign with the noted Jazz label Riverside, where she recorded four albums beginning with <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love</span> (1956), <span style=\"font-style:italic\">That’s Him</span> (1957), <span style=\"font-style:italic\">It’s Magic</span> (1958) and <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Abbey is Blue </span>(1959). On Lincoln’s debut, recorded with the Benny Carter Orchestra, Riverside tried to position Lincoln as the sexy, girl-next-door torch song singer and it was in that vein that Lincoln appeared in the film <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Girl Can’t Help It </span>(1956), wearing the same dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Gentlemen Prefer Blondes</span> (1953). When Lincoln appeared on the cover of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Ebony Magazine</span>—in Monroe’s red dress—her fate as yet another “silent” pretty face seemed assured. But like her contemporary Eartha Kitt, Lincoln had another vision for herself.<br><br>Read the Full Essay @ <a href=\"http://www.theloop21.com/society/when-i%E2%80%99m-called-home-remembering-abbey-lincoln\"><span style=\"font-size:180%\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold\">theLoop21.com</span></span></a><br></div><br><div><a name=\"data:post.title\"><img src=\"http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" style=\"border:0pt none\" height=\"16\" width=\"125\"></a></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-3827613605899495624?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "IT TURNS OUT.",
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"content" : "<p>James Somers has a good <a href=\"http://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out\">analysis</a> of \"it turns out,\" beginning by saying that <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29\">Paul Graham</a> knows how to use the phrase: \"He works it, gets mileage out of it, in a way that other writers don’t. That probably sounds like a compliment. But it turns out that 'it turns out' does the sort of work, for a writer, that a writer should be doing himself.\" He goes on to explain convincingly what he's talking about, concluding:<blockquote>In other words, <i>because</i> “it turns out” is the sort of phrase you would use to convey, for example, something unexpected about a phenomenon you’ve studied extensively—as in the scientist saying “…but the E. coli turned out to be totally resistant”—or some buried fact that you have recently discovered on behalf of your readers—as when the Malcolm Gladwells of the world say “…and it turns out all these experts have something in common: 10,000 hours of deliberate practice”—readers are trained, slowly but surely, to be <i>disarmed</i> by it. They learn to trust the writers who use the phrase, in large part because they come to associate it with that feeling of the author’s own dispassionate surprise: “I, too, once believed X,” the author says, “but whaddya know, X turns out to be false.”</blockquote></p>\n\n<p>Readers are simply more willing to tolerate a lightspeed jump from belief X to belief Y if the writer himself (a) seems taken aback by it and (b) <i>acts as if they had no say in the matter</i>—as though the situation simply <i>unfolded</i> that way.It turns out, though, that (as pointed out by a couple of commenters) Douglas Adams expressed the same thought in <i>The Salmon of Doubt</i>:</p><p><a href=\"http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003969.php#more\">Continue reading \"IT TURNS OUT.\"</a></p>"
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"title" : "Hypermedia: data as a first-class element",
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"content" : "<p>\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/aleksiaaltonen/1353854380/\" title=\" bridge too far\">\n<img src=\"http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1365/1353854380_a3e5f87d4e_t.jpg\" align=\"right\">\n</a>\nas i prepare for my \n<a href=\"http://restfest.org/workshop\" title=\"Hypermedia Hacking w/ Mike Amundsen\">Hypermedia Workshop</a>\nfor <a href=\"http://restfest.org\" title=\"REST Fest 2010\">REST Fest 2010</a> this september, i am reviewing lots \nof material regarding hyper\n[<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermedia\" title=\"Hypermedia\">media</a> |\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext\" title=\"Hypertext\">text</a> |\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperdata\" title=\"Hyperdata\">data</a> | etc.].\nalong the way, i pulled up the always entertaining \n<a href=\"http://www.slideshare.net/royfielding/a-little-rest-and-relaxation\" title=\"A little REST and Relaxation\">slide deck</a>\nfrom <a href=\"http://roy.gbiv.com/\" title=\"Roy T. Fielding\">Roy T. Fielding</a>'s talk at\n<a href=\"http://wiki.apache.org/apachecon/ApacheConEu08PresentationSlides\" title=\"ApacheConEu08PresentationSlides\">ApacheCon Europe - 2008</a>.\nthe deck itself is notable for it's clarity and simplicity. i still enjoy reviewing it years after i first saw it.\n</p>\n<blockquote>\nSPOILER ALERT: i love the \"Relaxation\" section (e.g. \"Clearly it's time to start messing with minds.\")\n</blockquote>\n<h4>hypermedia is...</h4>\n<p>\nhis summary of Hyper[text|media] is a case in point. i've included a re-working of this part of this presentation (see slide 50)\nas an example of his clean and direct approach. BTW - the next three items are lifted directly from his slides w/o editing.\n</p>\n\n<dl>\n<dt>non-linear documents</dt>\n<dd>\n<p>\"By 'hypertext,' I mean non-sequential writing - text that branches and allows choices\nto the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series\nof text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways\"\n</p>\n<p align=\"right\">\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson\" title=\"Ted Nelson\">Theodor H. Nelson</a>\n</p>\n</dd>\n<dt>selectable GUI controls</dt>\n<dd>\n<p>\n\"Hypertext is a computer-supported medium for information in which many interlinked\ndocuments are displayed with their links on a high-resolution computer screen.\"\n</p>\n<p align=\"right\">\n<a href=\"https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.cognexus.org/Hypertext-_An_Introduction_and_Survey_(1987).pdf\" title=\"Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey\">Jeffrey Conklin</a>\n</p>\n</dd>\n<dt>data-guided controls</dt>\n<dd>\n<p>\"The simultaneous presentation of information and controls such that the information becomes the affordance through\nwhich the user obtains choices and selects actions. Hypertext does not need to be HTML on a browser; \nmachines can follow links when they understand the data format and relationship types\"</p>\n<p align=\"right\">\n<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Fielding\" title=\"ROy T. Fielding\">Roy T. Fielding</a>\n</p>\n</dd>\n</dl>\n<h4>data as first-class elements</h4>\n<p>\nnote that Fielding's description of hyper[media|text|data] is more than just linking text (non-linear documents) or \nenhancing the user interface (selectable GUI controls) and is not limited to a particular data format (HTML). for Fielding, \n<i>\"simultaneous presentation of information and controls\"</i> means the message is more than raw data - it also contains application controls. \nin addition, Fielding asserts these controls are <i>\"the affordance through which the user obtains choices.\"</i> \nIOW, the details on how users can change the current state of the application is contained <b>within the message itself</b> \n(not in the application code running in the client).\n</p>\n<p>\nthis view of hypermedia elevates the role the message itself plays in the design & implementation of distributed \nnetwork applications and is a key aspect of the \n<a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm\" title=\"Representational State Transfer (REST)\">REST</a> \narchitectural style defined in Fielding's \n<a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm\" title=\"Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures\">dissertation</a>. \nthe importance of this aspect of Fielding's work has been acknowledged in the book\n<a href=\"http://www.softwarearchitecturebook.com/\" title=\"Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice\">Software Architecture: Foundations, Theory, and Practice (2010)</a>:\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n\"REST not only gives data elements first-class status, they surpass in importance both processing and connecting elements.\"\n</p>\n<p align=\"right\">\n(<a href=\"http://www.ics.uci.edu/~taylor/\" title=\"Richard Taylor\">Taylor</a>, \n<a href=\"http://csse.usc.edu/~neno/\" title=\"Nenad Medvidovic\">Medvidovic</a>, & \n<a href=\"http://www.antconcepts.com/~edashofy/\" title=\"Eric Dashofy\">Dashofy</a>)\n</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>\nin my current work, this understanding that data itself can be a first-class element in software architecture has lead to my study of \n<a href=\"http://amundsen.com/hypermedia/\" title=\"Hypermedia Types\">Hypermedia Types</a>;\ntheir nature, role, and influence on the design and implementation of distributed network applications. the results of that study\ncan be applied directly to the process of actively designing and documenting (hyper)media-types when implementing WWW applications.\n</p>\n<h4>\nand that's what my Hypermedia Workshop is all about.\n</h4>"
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"title" : "How Poems Work #1 - L. S. Mensah on Kwesi Brew's "The Sea Eats Our Lands"",
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"content" : "<em>This week's post is an experiment for <em>One Ghana, One Voice</em>. \"How Poems Work\", which we hope will become an occasional series on the site, aims to give <em>OGOV</em> poets an opportunity to talk about some of their favourite poems previously featured on the site. Before starting in, we want to take a moment to acknowledge <a href=\"http://www.arcpoetry.ca/\">Arc Poetry Magazine</a>'s <a href=\"http://www.arcpoetry.ca/howpoemswork/\">How Poems Work</a> series, which directly inspired this one. We hope you enjoy this offering, and join the conversation yourself.<br><br>Note: <em>OGOV</em> is on vacation next week - a new poem and profile will be posted on September 4th.</em><br><br><br><blockquote><strong>The Sea Eats Our Lands - Kwesi Brew</strong><br><br>Here stood our ancestral home:<br>The crumbling wall marks the spot.<br>Here a sheep was led to slaughter<br>To appease the gods and atone<br>For faults which our destiny<br>Has blossomed into crimes.<br><br>There my cursed father once stood<br>And shouted to us, his children,<br>To come back from our play<br>To our evening meal and sleep.<br>The clouds were thickening in the red sky<br>And night had charmed<br>A black power into the pounding waves.<br><br>Here once lay Keta.<br>Now her golden girls<br>Erode into the arms<br>Of strange towns.</blockquote><br><br>The poetry of Kwesi Brew (1928-2007) exhibits a cut-to-the-bone starkness. In his hands, nature and the supernatural are unforgiving in their relentlessness to humans. For Brew the good old days either never happened, or indeed were not that rosy. What is now is what has always been, and this is why his is a poetry at ease with the anxieties of the modern African. Even when it looks back, his work makes no demands for a return to the past; instead it dismantles the myth of a bucolic past. For example, in his poem “Ancestral Faces” the ancestors <em>slipped into the limbo of time</em>, to watch us, the living, go about our business. In the end <em>they saw us, / and said: They have not changed</em>. In other words, the ancestors recognised themselves in the living.<br><br>Brew's “The Sea Eats Our Lands” not only picks up some of the ideas mentioned above, but also contributes to that sub genre of what <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Moore_(scholar)\">Gerald Moore</a> calls “Africa's rich marine poetry”. Moore rightly mentions <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edouard_Maunick\">Edouard Maunick</a> (<em>Les Maneges de la mer</em>, Presence Africaine 1964) and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Tati_Loutard\">Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard </a>(<em>Poemes de la mer</em>, Yaounde, 1968), but one could also think of <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Cape-Coast-Castle-Collection-Poems/dp/9964701705\">Kwadwo Opoku-Agyemang</a>(<em>Cape Coast Castle</em>, 1996), <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_de_Graft\">Joe de Graft</a> (“The Old Sea Chain”), <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenrie_Peters\">Lenrie Peters</a> (“On a Wet September Morning”), <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Okara\">Gabriel Okara</a> (“One Night at Victoria Beach”) and <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Awoonor\">Kofi Awoonor</a> (“<a href=\"http://home.koranteng.com/writings/sea-eats-the-land-at-home.html\">The Sea Eats The Land at Home</a>”).<br><br>Brew's poem captures the gradual decline of Keta, a coastal Ghanaian town, due to marine erosion. It is a tightly locked sequence of three stanzas, each of which begins with a spatial determiner, rooting both speaker and reader into place. For this reason the first stanza starts <em>here</em>, the second continues over <em>there</em> and the third brings us back <em>here</em>. We end where we started, with the persona standing guard over what is left of his ruined home.<br><br>Back to the first stanza. The narrator's ancestral home has fallen, he informs us, despite countless sacrifices to the gods. All that is left is the wall, itself crumbling for faults which our destiny / has blossomed into crimes. Though we are not told the specific nature of these faults, we are made are aware that they have metastasised. The problem is first noticed in the home, specifically the family’s sacrificial alter, the point of contact between man and deity.<br><br>In the second stanza the narrative pulls back a bit, this time to frame the desolation in both meteorological and metaphysical terms. The reader is immersed even more firmly into what happens when a community gets on the wrong side of its gods. At the heart of this is a multigenerational curse, and all are obliged to serve time, even the speaker’s own father. There are two things peculiar with the curse. First, whoever inherits it comes to the realisation that the only condition that offers respite is childhood. However, since no one can remain a child forever, the curse awaits everyone. Second, the curse is infused with colour symbolism – red and black being the colours of mourning in Ghana. <em>The clouds were thickening in the red sky / And night had charmed / A black power into the pounding waves</em>. Red is associated with bleeding, danger and things forbidden, and ''appears in various shades at the longer-wavelength end of the visible spectrum''. This community would bleed itself out, and omens have been signposted for all to see, even in the sky. Black consists “optically in the total absence of colour”, again, there is no way out of this. In between <em>red</em> and <em>black</em> appears <em>night</em>, that time between sunset and sunrise. Night is significant here because it is the talisman which activates the sea's destructive impulse, out of sight and far from any help.<br><br>In the third stanza the speaker removes himself from the scene, and in what Seamus Heaney calls “the thin quatrain”, focuses on the plight of the community’s women. Even as it swallows everything in its way, the carnivorous sea rejects the town's female inhabitants and only men are allowed to carry this burden. Under the onslaught of the curse, the old patriarchies still undergird conceptions of what contributions women, the other half of the population may make. Theirs is simply to pack and leave, to <em>erode into the arms / Of strange towns</em>. They are denied any chance to rebuild their crumbling town. It is true that these <em>strange towns</em> might provide opportunities for renewal, for there they would have the chance to start again, but only at the expense of their own community. The narrator returns to colour symbolism again, and Keta's golden girls would lose their shine and be stripped of their identities once they venture into other towns. Gold, that symbol of permanence, turns to dross under the onslaught of this curse.<br><br>By the end of the poem we realise that the poet is telling us a morality tale, complete with a lesson. This is the story of how Keta became its own Atlantis, how all the men disappeared, and how the women survived but not intact. By incorporating the morality tale, we see how Brew absorbs an older narrative structure from the folk tradition.<br><br>There are two ways one could look at this poem over all. First, that it is not for nothing that the persona takes us through his history, for his intention is to make us identify and empathise with his town’s destiny. He is aware his gods and ancestral cults have failed him, and realises any positive outcome would have to depend on human agency. His community has come to an end as a viable entity because his people appealed to the wrong kind of god. This is why he is no longer willing to stand by the old mandate and maintain the supposedly unchanging bond between man and the supernatural. Through the power of the printed word he leaves the reader to carry this fight on. He trusts the reader to make an appeal on his behalf, this time to a secular god – the political state – because the resources needed to turn his town’s fortune around are only available to the secular state.<br><br>Second, one could argue that the persona is convinced this is the end of the road, period. He takes the time to allow us a peek into his world so that he can pass on the knowledge that no system of thought endures forever. At any rate, when he is gone, there will be no one to worship his old gods. Both humans and the supernatural failed to realise that Keta's problem has always been one of geological determinism, and no amount of libations can turn the sea back. Just as the sea nibbles at the land until there's nothing left, so do whole cultural systems come to end, and when they do, no amount of shoring would hold them up.<br><br>While this essay situates Brew’s poem within the African marine poetic tradition, its approach is by no means exhaustive. It would be wrong to think that the seascape poetry of Africa is modern. There is a wealth of material from sea shanties, lullabies and work songs if one pays any attention to the traditions of coastal people. The extract below is my own translation of a Ga folk song:<br><br><em>Wote nsho le naa</em> (We went to the beach)<br><em>Fen nye wo</em> (We were cold, so cold) <br><em>Wotee woya wu nsho le</em> (We took a swim) <br><em>Obi le yagbla tsaani</em> (While your child hauled in a seine net)<br><br><br>Another way to access this particular poetic tradition is to take a close look at the poetry about slavery, For this, one could turn to poets like Tati Loutard and Opoku-Agyemang. Again this is not new. The dirge below, translated from Ewe, is believed to have been composed by captives waiting to be carried off by slave ships. Gbodzo was the name of the local slave trader.<br><br><em>Avie mata na Gbodzo yee</em> (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears)<br><em>Avie mata na Gbdozo yee</em> (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears)<br><em>Fu nade gbe</em> (The sea may roar)<br><em>Ga nade gbe yee</em> (The irons may clank)<br><em>Nye wukula meva hade o</em> (The rower has not yet arrived)<br><em>Avie mata na Gbodzo yee</em> (I shall rub Gbodzo with tears) <em><span style=\"font-size:78%\">(1)</span></em><br><br>The dirge above offers an insight into the influences of a poet like Kofi Awoonor whose “<a href=\"http://home.comcast.net/~amaah/writings/sea-eats-the-land-at-home.html\">The Sea Eats The Land at Home</a>”(the other Keta poem), I urge the reader to take a look at. There is a way in which texts allude to, complicate and enrich each other. Both poems assume a social realist stance, harnessing artistic practice in the service of a common good – the plight of Keta. However, each incorporates different traditional narrative forms to achieve very different outcomes. Brew's narrator, in the manner of a story teller imparting a morality tale, takes an almost dispassionate tone. On the other hand, Awoonor's – a dirge, occupies a more personal imaginative ground, its tone accusatory, and as is the case with all dirges, a complaint against prevailing conditions.<br><br><br><span style=\"font-size:78%\"><em>(1) </em>Acheampong, E. (2001) 'History, Memory, Slave-Trade and Slavery in Anlo (Ghana)', Slavery and Abolition, 22: 3, 1-24 </span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-4256177147509009228?l=oneghanaonevoice.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "Let me start with simple definition of personalization and customization. Term <i>personalization</i> means user can perform changes visible only to that user. Term <i>customization</i> means user with admin privileges can perform global changes, visible to all users. I decided give you this simple explanation, because while browsing Oracle resources and related blogs, I saw many confusing statements. For example, something similar like - <i>we can apply personalization by customizing</i>. In this blog post I'm not describing predefined <i>seeded customizations</i>, but focusing on user performed runtime <i>personalization</i> and <i>customization</i>. You can achieve <i>personalization</i> functionality within standard ADF framework enabled with MDS. For <i>customization</i> functionality need to use Oracle WebCenter component - Composer. Today I will describe how to use these two together.<br><br>First we should take a look, what we can get from Oracle documentation:<br><ul><li><a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/web.1111/b31974/adding_security.htm#CHDBJEAJ\">30.5 Defining ADF Security Policies </a>. <i>Table 30-6 Securable Actions of ADF Page Definitions</i> describes Customize, Edit and Personalize security actions. These actions are used by Oracle WebCenter framework. Customize enables Oracle WebCenter Composer editing with admin privileges. Personalize allows to edit in scope of one user. Edit allows to use Oracle WebCenter Composer for these users granted with Personalize action.</li><li><a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/webcenter.1111/e10273/security.htm#BGBJEBIC\">Step 3: Add ADF Security Policies to Your Application</a>. There is Oracle WebCenter tutorial, where we can read about customization functionality. However, it doesn't work - obviously some configuration steps missing.</li><li><a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_page_editor_mds.htm#CHDEEGEE\">10.3 Adding Customization Layers to View and Edit Modes: Example</a>. This section describes how to configure Oracle WebCenter Composer for personalization and customization.</li><li><a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/webcenter.1111/e10148/jpsdg_page_editor_security.htm#CHDBCDAF\">11.2.3 How to Customize the SessionOptions Object to Include Customization Policy</a>. Finally, you need add ADF Security related configuration for Oracle WebCenter Composer.</li></ul><div>My goal today is to join all this information together and provide more hints not described in documentation. Download sample application - <a href=\"http://jdevsamples.googlecode.com/files/PersonalizationCustomization.zip\">PersonalizationCustomization.zip</a>. All examples from this post are based on this sample, you need to have Oracle WebCenter JDeveloper extension installed to run this application.<br><br><b>UserCC</b> class from Oracle documentation contains static user reference <b>scott</b>. I have modified this to retrieve current user name from security context:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDobo2FjII/AAAAAAAAEIU/nzTQCy4eTNY/s1600/1.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDobo2FjII/AAAAAAAAEIU/nzTQCy4eTNY/s320/1.png\"></a></div><br>As per documentation, I have created all required Java classes to support Edit and View layers:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDo4XMt6YI/AAAAAAAAEIc/U2X82FpYbm4/s1600/2.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDo4XMt6YI/AAAAAAAAEIc/U2X82FpYbm4/s320/2.png\"></a></div><br>User customizations and personalizations are enabled to be stored across sessions with MDS. This option is needed to store changes for ADF components, Oracle WebCenter Composer is working without this option as well:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDpYMahkRI/AAAAAAAAEIk/oEyawRBbMwU/s1600/3.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDpYMahkRI/AAAAAAAAEIk/oEyawRBbMwU/s320/3.png\"></a></div><br>I have change customization class from SiteCC to UserCC, this enables personalization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDp5EHMx5I/AAAAAAAAEIs/Xd41sPman5E/s1600/4.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDp5EHMx5I/AAAAAAAAEIs/Xd41sPman5E/s320/4.png\"></a></div><br>Session options factory is class must be configured in adf-config.xml to enable customization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDqPpx7h_I/AAAAAAAAEI0/HEfiGdENayE/s1600/5.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDqPpx7h_I/AAAAAAAAEI0/HEfiGdENayE/s320/5.png\"></a></div><br>As per documentation, additionally you need to declare Oracle WebCenter Composer servlet in web.xml.<br><br>ADF Security defines two application level roles - <b>admin</b> and <b>customer</b>. Admin role is granted with <b>Customization</b> permission:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDrCXHtuPI/AAAAAAAAEI8/Y7HnfV7dNlA/s1600/6.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDrCXHtuPI/AAAAAAAAEI8/Y7HnfV7dNlA/s320/6.png\"></a></div><br>Customer role is granted with <b>Personalization</b> permission only:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDrQyZd-pI/AAAAAAAAEJE/ifywKTJ1Vi0/s1600/7.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDrQyZd-pI/AAAAAAAAEJE/ifywKTJ1Vi0/s320/7.png\"></a></div><br>Session options factory class as per documentation, defines two layers - Edit and View. You can see that Edit layer is applied on global level (its when Oracle WebCenter Composer is invoked to perform customization). View layer is applied on global and user levels (this means each user will see global customizations and their own personalizations):<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDr00gD_FI/AAAAAAAAEJM/z6cuiKff3kc/s1600/8.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDr00gD_FI/AAAAAAAAEJM/z6cuiKff3kc/s320/8.png\"></a></div><br>If Oracle WebCenter Composer is On, Edit layer is enabled, otherwise - View layer:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDsFFQtf0I/AAAAAAAAEJU/HzX4JnQW5SY/s1600/9.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDsFFQtf0I/AAAAAAAAEJU/HzX4JnQW5SY/s320/9.png\"></a></div><br>I have declared two users - <b>scott</b> (<b>admin</b> role) and <b>john</b> (<b>customer</b> role). Now I open application with admin role user scott - it brings blank screen and option to invoke Oracle WebCenter Composer (<b>Edit</b>):<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDuA4odE3I/AAAAAAAAEJc/k8AsEExSg0s/s1600/10.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDuA4odE3I/AAAAAAAAEJc/k8AsEExSg0s/s320/10.png\"></a></div><br>Oracle WebCenter Composer invoked to perform customization visible to all users:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDuUFd3liI/AAAAAAAAEJk/xo2D-ptgCsg/s1600/11.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDuUFd3liI/AAAAAAAAEJk/xo2D-ptgCsg/s320/11.png\"></a></div><br>I can add my custom ADF Task Flow with Employees data from extended Resource Catalog:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDu1qElMDI/AAAAAAAAEJs/Dp6Vpd7pV14/s1600/12.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDu1qElMDI/AAAAAAAAEJs/Dp6Vpd7pV14/s320/12.png\"></a></div><br>Through composer we can change visual and layout properties:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDvGxrw0KI/AAAAAAAAEJ0/L3dBesKg0GU/s1600/13.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDvGxrw0KI/AAAAAAAAEJ0/L3dBesKg0GU/s320/13.png\"></a></div><br>Customization is done, user scott can close Oracle WebCenter Composer. Now the same user performs personalization - removes PhoneNumber column from Employees table. This change will not be visible to other users, because it is personalization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDvtS-XEXI/AAAAAAAAEJ8/fHuARBdk_xA/s1600/14.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDvtS-XEXI/AAAAAAAAEJ8/fHuARBdk_xA/s320/14.png\"></a></div><br>In order to perform personalization on table and column components, you must declare them in tag configuration:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDwAUj6jiI/AAAAAAAAEKE/DhmEX5dZbEo/s1600/15.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDwAUj6jiI/AAAAAAAAEKE/DhmEX5dZbEo/s320/15.png\"></a></div><br>We can see two folders in MDS repository - <b>site</b> and <b>user</b>. All customizations are stored inside <b>site</b> and personalizations inside <b>user</b>. This means customizations will be visible to all users and personalizations per specific user only:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDwgIac4RI/AAAAAAAAEKM/FoUByzhDU9Q/s1600/16.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDwgIac4RI/AAAAAAAAEKM/FoUByzhDU9Q/s320/16.png\"></a></div><br>I login as user <b>john</b> and can see Employees table added by user <b>scott</b> (customization), I can see PhoneNumber column as well (because it was user <b>scott</b> personalization):<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDxDzAn1fI/AAAAAAAAEKU/TWeLcmivmxU/s1600/17.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDxDzAn1fI/AAAAAAAAEKU/TWeLcmivmxU/s320/17.png\"></a></div><br>User <b>john</b> is not allowed to perform customization, only personalization - Oracle WebCenter Composer is disabled for this user. User removes all columns, except FirstName, LastName and PhoneNumber:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDxkA91orI/AAAAAAAAEKc/cpb1kbpPKdA/s1600/18.png\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDxkA91orI/AAAAAAAAEKc/cpb1kbpPKdA/s320/18.png\"></a></div><br>As we can expect, this personalizations are not visible for user <b>scott</b>:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDx6glE-_I/AAAAAAAAEKk/HPn1cDTne4g/s1600/19.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDx6glE-_I/AAAAAAAAEKk/HPn1cDTne4g/s320/19.png\"></a></div><br>Now we take a better look, what Personalize permission means. Let's revoke it from <b>customer</b> role:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDyPn_dK6I/AAAAAAAAEKs/A89ucbiblq4/s1600/20.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THDyPn_dK6I/AAAAAAAAEKs/A89ucbiblq4/s320/20.png\"></a></div><br>We can't personalize anymore elements created by Oracle WebCenter Composer - WebCenter Customizable Components (in a Panel Customizable or Show Detail Frame). There is no option to disclose, resize or delete:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD0fSgi5II/AAAAAAAAEK0/oh0wUtDMGWg/s1600/21.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD0fSgi5II/AAAAAAAAEK0/oh0wUtDMGWg/s320/21.png\"></a></div><br>I enable Personalize permission again:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD04530UhI/AAAAAAAAEK8/GqcQ32d2TMI/s1600/22.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD04530UhI/AAAAAAAAEK8/GqcQ32d2TMI/s320/22.png\"></a></div><br>Now user with customer role is able to do personalization and remove Employees table added through Oracle WebCenter Composer customization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD1Qhk3IYI/AAAAAAAAELE/wj7gI4NPzhc/s1600/23.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD1Qhk3IYI/AAAAAAAAELE/wj7gI4NPzhc/s320/23.png\"></a></div><br>Personalization is successful, however user granted with Personalize permission only is not allowed to invoke Oracle WebCenter Composer and add custom ADF Task Flow from Resource Catalog:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD11H7NlGI/AAAAAAAAELM/ureW1yin2yo/s1600/24.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD11H7NlGI/AAAAAAAAELM/ureW1yin2yo/s320/24.png\"></a></div><br>Only user <b>scott</b>, who is granted with Customize permission can do this:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD2YR4M9lI/AAAAAAAAELU/Yd4kgQ1gt4Y/s1600/25.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THD2YR4M9lI/AAAAAAAAELU/Yd4kgQ1gt4Y/s320/25.png\"></a></div><br>Now I will describe how to apply personalization through Oracle WebCenter Composer, so user who is not granted with Customize permission will be able to invoke Composer as well.<br><br>We need to add one more customization layer, this time only <b>UserCC</b>:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEQrTzek6I/AAAAAAAAELc/q_eporjgPio/s1600/26.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEQrTzek6I/AAAAAAAAELc/q_eporjgPio/s320/26.png\"></a></div><br>I gave Edit Personal Layer name for this layer. Now we need to modify layer switch logic. Edit layer will be initialized only in that case, when current user is granted with <b>admin</b> role. In all other cases, Oracle WebCenter Composer will be opened in Edit Personal Layer - this means personalization will be applied:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THER1b2inII/AAAAAAAAELk/BGpMT7wH_GU/s1600/27.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THER1b2inII/AAAAAAAAELk/BGpMT7wH_GU/s320/27.png\"></a></div><br>In order to open Oracle WebCenter Composer, in addition to Personalize permission, we need to grant Edit permission:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESHV2u7SI/AAAAAAAAELs/6JrvjQ0JM20/s1600/28.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESHV2u7SI/AAAAAAAAELs/6JrvjQ0JM20/s320/28.png\"></a></div><br>User <b>john</b>, with Personalize and Edit permissions is able to open Oracle WebCenter Composer and perform personalization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESaIFd7xI/AAAAAAAAEL0/Xdx12X456_k/s1600/29.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESaIFd7xI/AAAAAAAAEL0/Xdx12X456_k/s320/29.png\"></a></div><br>Personalization - Employees table:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESssLSAlI/AAAAAAAAEL8/lDuGjY-rc8E/s1600/30.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THESssLSAlI/AAAAAAAAEL8/lDuGjY-rc8E/s320/30.png\"></a></div><br>John Employees List personalized table:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THES66vivDI/AAAAAAAAEME/riTTZ6-_c0U/s1600/31.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THES66vivDI/AAAAAAAAEME/riTTZ6-_c0U/s320/31.png\"></a></div><br>Because user <b>john</b> was allowed to do only personalization, another user <b>scott</b> will not see any changes:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THETOIZfiVI/AAAAAAAAEMM/OMsMCcnV5ek/s1600/32.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THETOIZfiVI/AAAAAAAAEMM/OMsMCcnV5ek/s320/32.png\"></a></div><br>We know that user <b>scott</b> is allowed to perform customization, let's test how it works. User <b>scott</b> will add the same Employees ADF Task Flow and name it - Global Employee List:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THET2zui_hI/AAAAAAAAEMU/yjwXUiVqPSA/s1600/33.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THET2zui_hI/AAAAAAAAEMU/yjwXUiVqPSA/s320/33.png\"></a></div><br>It should be visible for user <b>john</b> as well, because it is customization. Yes, user <b>john</b> can see both tables now - one comes from personalization and another from customization:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEULn4_RwI/AAAAAAAAEMc/i4dK6Jnq0QI/s1600/34.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEULn4_RwI/AAAAAAAAEMc/i4dK6Jnq0QI/s320/34.png\"></a></div><br>If user <b>john</b>, don't want to see global list of employees, he can perform personalization further and remove this customization. It will be removed only for this specific user:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEUoylABUI/AAAAAAAAEMk/kev-zl1Q27A/s1600/35.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEUoylABUI/AAAAAAAAEMk/kev-zl1Q27A/s320/35.png\"></a></div><br>Now user <b>john</b> can see only his personalizations, no global customizations:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEU6L9tJxI/AAAAAAAAEMs/P9FJ7VXmIfg/s1600/36.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEU6L9tJxI/AAAAAAAAEMs/P9FJ7VXmIfg/s320/36.png\"></a></div><br>As expected, another user <b>scott</b>, can see customizations (even they were removed by user <b>john</b> - personalized):<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEVRfTHOoI/AAAAAAAAEM0/ZxpD7qLyCbA/s1600/37.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_OSq71i5oy0c/THEVRfTHOoI/AAAAAAAAEM0/ZxpD7qLyCbA/s320/37.png\"></a></div><br></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5874979429188093780-1807393745138837235?l=andrejusb.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Alain Mabanckou : Demain j'aurai vingt ans",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TG8FmKsOH9I/AAAAAAAACEc/7GN1kBDGtl4/s1600/P8210310.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"300\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TG8FmKsOH9I/AAAAAAAACEc/7GN1kBDGtl4/s400/P8210310.JPG\" width=\"400\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Nous sommes dans les années 70 en république populaire du Congo, du coté de Pointe-Noire, la capitale économique de ce pays. C'est un régime marxiste-léniniste qui s'applique. Michel a entre neuf et dix ans. Il est le fils unique de maman Pauline et il fait partie de la grande famille de papa Roger qui l'a choisi pour fils. </div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Son oncle René est un marxiste exalté donnant une place importante à Marx, Engels et Lénine dans son salon et qui n'hésite pas en parallèle à spolier son entourage familial de tous les biens matériels issus des héritages successifs.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Michel nous conte les personnages hauts en couleur de son enfance dans un quartier populaire de Pointe-Noire et l'apprentissage de la vie d'un mome. Par l'amitié de Lounès, le fils du tailleur du quartier. Par l'amour de Caroline, la soeur de Lounès. Par la rivalité de Mabélé, un prétendant de Caroline, footballeur, castagneur et lecteur de Marcel Pagnol. Par le sens des responsabilités de papa Roger. Par la folie de Petit Piment, qui fut dans un autre vie un étudiant en philosophie et un cadre d'entreprise. Par la détresse de sa mère dans son désir de concevoir d'autres enfants. Par maman Martine, sa deuxième mère...</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Ce que le regard de Michel restitue, c'est à la fois l'atmosphère de ce quartier, l'ambiance d'une époque où etre traité de \"capitalistes!\" ou \"impérialistes!\" au Congo était la pire des insultes. Mais <a href=\"http://www.alainmabanckou.net/Biographie/\">Alain Mabanckou</a> brosse également par les nouvelles que papa Roger écoute de <a href=\"http://www1.voanews.com/french/news/\">La voix de l'Amerique</a>, les hauts faits de l'actualité internationale de l'époque, comme les frasques d'Idi Amin Dada, la chute et les pérégrinations du Chah d'Iran, la neutralisation de Jacques Mesrine ou les otages du Liban... </div><br><a href=\"http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs285.snc4/40590_422987457419_586007419_4769882_4020443_n.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs285.snc4/40590_422987457419_586007419_4769882_4020443_n.jpg\" width=\"240\"></a><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Je trouve très interessant la manière avec laquelle il rappelle combien cette actualité façonne l'imaginaire de la jeunesse de ce que l'on appelait le Tiers monde. Michel écoute avec la meme attention que son père, ce poste radio ainsi que les interprétations passionnées de papa Roger.<br><br>Ce roman alterne à la fois entre la réalité de ce que Michel voit autour de lui et cette intrusion du lointain.<br><br>Mabanckou utilise une écriture qui permet d'exprimer le ressenti de Michel, de mieux rentrer dans l'imaginaire en gestation de cet enfant. De comprendre ses mécanismes de défense face l'absurdité des choix des adultes ou encore dans une lutte féroce pour gagner le coeur d'une fille. Par les mots plutot qur par les poings.<br><br>L'interet de ce roman réside dans ces petites étincelles d'émotion que nous transmet Michel, dans son désir d'etre accepté et d'etre aimé.<br><br>Pour terminer, il est difficile d'évoquer un texte du romancier congolais sans les références littéraires qu'il sème avec extase dans ses livres. Il y a en une qui traverse tout l'ouvrage : celle à Arthur Rimbaud. dont le visage sourit à Michel. C'est assez amusant de voir cet enfant se débattre pour tenter de rentrer et comprendre un texte de ce poete.<br><br>Un roman qui m'a replongé dans une époque où je revais d'avoir 20 ans jour. Ce titre, <b>Demain j'aurai vingt ans</b>, est inspiré d'un vers de <a href=\"http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=personne&no=3879\">Tchicaya U Tam'si</a>, celui qu'on appelait aussi le Rimbaud noir. Un très beau roman.<br><br><blockquote>A table, chez tonton René, on me fait asseoir à la mauvaise place, juste en face d'un vieux Blanc qui s'appelle Lénine et qui n'arrete pas de me regarder alors que moi, je ne le connais pas et que lui ne me connait pas. Moi aussi, comme je ne suis pas d'accord qu'un vieux Blanc qui ne me connait pas me regarde méchamment, eh bien je le regarde droit dans les yeux. Je sais que c'est impoli de regarder les grandes personnes droit dans les yeux, c'est pour ça que je regarde en cachette sinon mon oncle va s'énerver et me dire que je manque de respect à son Lénine que le monde entier admire.<span style=\"font-size:x-small\"><br></span></blockquote><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">Page 16, Editions Gallimard</span></span><br><span style=\"font-size:large\"><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"> </span><br></span><br><a href=\"http://www.gallimard.fr/rentreelitteraire/AlainMabanckou.htm?gclid=CMeL7qnVy6MCFVFd4wodXAizvQ\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Alain Mabanckou, Demain j'aurai vingt ans</span></a><br>Editions Gallimard, 382 pages, paru le 19 aout 2010<br><br>Photo - Crédit C. Blache</div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-4321803107842794955?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Ungar and Walter Berglund on the American anti-sublime",
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"content" : "<div><p>So like everybody else, I read Jonathan Franzen's <i>Freedom</i> last week, and like everybody else I loved it. I think I'm going to be limiting my dose of Franzen criticism in the near future, having already made my decision whether to read the book and all, but I did read <a href=\"http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/67497/\">Sam Anderson's take on the novel in <i>New York</i> magazine</a> this week. Anderson claims (pretends?) that he would have found Franzen's crankiness about the environmental and cultural degradation of America tiresome if Franzen weren't a genius in his creation of plot and character. \n\n<p>This, I confess, was not quite the problem that I had to overcome, but mine was related. My problem, rather, was the irony with which Franzen handles that crankiness. Perhaps to shield the reader from direct contact with his anger, Franzen places it largely in the mind and voice of Walter Berglund, Midwestern do-gooder, who is falling apart. I found myself reading dour judgments about the ecologial and cultural degradation of America that to me sounded justifiable and even spot-on but which were being framed within the novel as symptoms of nervous breakdown and by-products of romantic frustration. Here's Walter Berglund explaining his distress to an old friend:\n\n<blockquote>I couldn't sleep at night. I couldn't stand what was happening to the country. . . . It was like having acid thrown in my face every time I passed the city limits. Not just the industrial farming but the sprawl, the sprawl, the sprawl. Low-density development is the <i>worst</i>. And SUVs everywhere, snowmobiles everywhere, Jet Skis everywhere, ATVs everywhere, two-acre lawns everywhere. The goddamned green monospecific chemical-drenched lawns. . . . This was what was keeping me awake at night. . . This fragmentation. Because it's the same problem everywhere. It's like the internet, or cable TV—there's never any center, there's no communal agreement, there's just a trillion little bits of distracting noise. We can never sit down and have any kind of sustained conversation, it's all just cheap trash and shitty development.</blockquote>\n\n<p>To which every molecule in my being wanted to say, <i>Amen,</i> self-incriminatingly, but plot twists conspired to remind me that Walter's thinking had drifted a little south of healthy. \n\n<p>Since I happened to read <i>Freedom</i> in between cantos of <i>Clarel</i>, Herman Melville's 500-page epic poem about a tour to the Holy Land, I happened to notice that Melville, like Franzen, also took the precaution of voicing his angriest rants through fictional characters recognized by others inside his literary work as not altogether sane. Here's <a href=\"http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Clarel/Part_4/Canto_9\">Ungar</a>, a Civil War veteran, taking a dim view of the English-speaking peoples' loud religiosity and triumphalist crowing about free trade:\n\n<blockquote>The Anglo-Saxons—lacking grace<br>\nTo win the love of any race;<br>\nHated by myriads dispossessed<br>\nOf rights—the Indians East and West.<br>\nThese pirates of the sphere! grave looters—<br>\nGrave, canting, Mammonite freebooters,<br>\nWho in the name of Christ and Trade<br>\n(Oh, bucklered forehead of the brass!)<br>\nDeflower the world's last sylvan glade!</blockquote>\n\nMy marginal note: \"Franzenesque!\" </p></p></p></p></div>\n<img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Steamthing/~4/KXiKYxR9yfs\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "All who travel these streets, beware<br>He silently approaches approaches without care.<br>The son of nobody, an autocratic friend<br>Lingering around just about every street's bend.<br>He plans, he schemes, he works around the theme:<br>\"Road Accident\".<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8387955023567983785-6226044445331926666?l=urban233.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "the cost of electricity during Ramadan",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://bdnews24.com/nimage/2010-08-18-15-14-00-inner-IMG_1222.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://bdnews24.com/nimage/2010-08-18-15-14-00-inner-IMG_1222.jpg\"></a></div>Street hawkers in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, are apparently making under-the-table deals for illegal connections to public electrical lines, <a href=\"http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=170990&cid=2\">bdnews24</a> reports. The hawkers are apparently using the juice so they can run small light bulbs in order to sell their wares at night.<br><br>Authorities told bdnews24 that the number of street hawkers rises during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. The amount of power pilfered by the city's estimated 100,000 hawkers could amount to 10MW per day--in a city that is stressed for adequate power.<br><br>One hawker confirmed that he paid an unauthorized 'lineman' 1,000 taka ($14 US) for the hookup and 50 per day (or about 75 cents) for the power. Another said he paid twice as much.<br><br>According to the <a href=\"https://www.desco.org.bd/index.php?page=tariff-rate\">Dhaka Electric Supply Company</a>, legal electricity for commercial use can be had for a flat rate of 5.58 taka (about 8 cents) per unit of use. So the hawkers are likely being ripped off, perhaps by as much as 800 percent.<br><br>The obvious solution: instead of hunting down the law-breaking hawkers, crack down on the fake utility workers and provide the hawkers with safe, legal hookups where they will pay the official rate.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7631633385048306686-941809250653782760?l=stealthofnations.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Abbey Lincoln obituary",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.8/745?ns=guardian&pageName=Abbey+Lincoln+obituary%3AArticle%3A1439330&ch=Music&c3=Guardian&c4=Jazz+%28Music+genre%29%2CUS+news%2CFilm&c5=Jazz%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=John+Fordham&c7=10-Aug-15&c8=1439330&c9=Article&c10=Obituary&c11=Music&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FJazz\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Jazz singer, actor and civil rights activist strongly influenced by Billie Holiday</p><p>If Abbey Lincoln was overwhelmed by the responsibility of being proclaimed \"the last of the jazz singers\", she never let it show. As her great contemporaries and principal influences among the classic female jazz vocalists fell away – with Billie Holiday the first to go, in 1959, and Betty Carter the last, in 1998 – Lincoln steadfastly maintained her dignified, almost solemn, focus; her tart, deftly timed Holiday-like inflections, and her commitment to songs that dug deeper into life's meanings than the usual lost-love exhalations.</p><p>And, like Ella Fitzgerald, who all her life took to a stage as if she were surprised to find anyone had come to see her, Lincoln became the opposite of a celebrated jazz diva. In some of her London performances during the 1990s, she would sit quietly beside the piano, tugging at her clothes, like someone who had wandered into the action by accident. Lincoln, who has died aged 80, began performing and recording around 1957, when Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Carmen McRae were all in their prime, and Holiday was still at work, though the latter's voice was by then an instrument on which some raucous years had left an audible mark.</p><p>Lincoln was born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago, the 10th of 12 children, but raised on a farm in Michigan. She loved performing as a small child, and listened to music constantly – later recalling hearing Holiday and Coleman Hawkins on a hand-cranked Victrola gramophone. Anna Marie moved with her mother to Kalamazoo, Michigan, when she was 14, and began to sing with local bands. But by the early 50s she had left the district and begun singing professionally in California (at the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles) and in Honolulu, Hawaii. She adopted other stage-names, including Gaby Lee, before settling on Abbey Lincoln in 1956, and shortly afterwards made her first recording with the saxophonist Benny Carter's band.</p><p>Though she made a debut recording as a leader in the mid-1950s (Affair … a Story of a Girl in Love, for Liberty Records), Lincoln was primarily a club singer, with a distinctive though still unformed sound at this time, but a restless curiosity and intelligence made her gravitate toward the company of some of the most progressive jazz musicians of the period – including the pianists Thelonious Monk and Mal Waldron, and the drummer Max Roach.</p><p>Roach, one of the most powerful influences on the rhythmic thinking of the bebop pioneers of a decade before, introduced Lincoln to the producer Orrin Keepnews at Riverside Records in 1957. Her first release was That's Him! – a session displaying the maturing talents of both a powerful musical force and a strong character, and featuring a pedigree bebop lineup including the trumpeter Kenny Dorham, the saxophonist Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis's piano/bass combination of Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers, and Roach. Though only in her 20s she was already giving the conventional mannerisms of jazz standard-singers ironic twists. She was later to declare that Roach's arrival in her life was the moment at which she found her way as a jazz artist, but these early recordings suggest that her individuality had been developing over a longer period.</p><p>She was also beginning to write her own material and starting to find work as an actor. Other late-50s recording sessions included It's Magic and Abbey Is Blue, with the latter featuring a startling rendition of the John Coltrane anthem Afro-Blue. In autumn 1960, Lincoln participated in the recording of one of the most celebrated jazz contributions to a wider political and social context, Roach's We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. An ambitious splicing of work-song rhythms, the authoritative tenor sax of Hawkins counterbalancing Booker Little's mercurial bop trumpet playing, multi-percussion ensemble sections and Lincoln's sometimes raging vocals, Freedom Now became a milestone in jazz history. The following year, Lincoln recorded Straight Ahead, with Hawkins, Little and Roach from the Freedom Now lineup, plus the multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy among other guests.</p><p>Lincoln's explicit emotionalism and liberties with pitching and intonation sometimes seemed to push her intentions and execution to the verge of separation – contemporary acquaintances including Monk and Charles Mingus were also expanding her ideas and technical ambitions – but she sounded nonetheless like an artist inhabiting a musical world increasingly her own, particularly on such tracks as the boldly vocalised Blue Monk, which Monk himself endorsed.</p><p>In 1962, Lincoln married Roach, recorded less (she was writing and acting more, and becoming involved in civil rights campaigning) and was devoting considerable energy to film acting by the end of the decade – she played opposite Ivan Dixon in Nothing But a Man (1964) and alongside Sidney Poitier and Beau Bridges in For Love of Ivy (1968).</p><p>Lincoln's marriage to Roach lasted until 1970, and in 1973 she made the uneven People in Me recording for Verve (the high-profile jazz label adopted her for the rest of her working life), built around the concept of her spirit being possessed by female singing pioneers, including Bessie Smith and Holiday. In 1975, Lincoln visited Africa, where her political consciousness was recognised, and politicians in Guinea and Zaire gave her the names Aminata and Moseka. She also took to lecturing at schools and universities, taught theatre studies at California State University at Northridge, and began to collect a succession of awards for her creative and community work.</p><p>Though the Abbey Sings Billie (1987) set revealed unexpected insecurities in what ought to have been a straightforwardly heartfelt tribute to a primary inspiration, Lincoln confirmed the respect she was held in by younger players when she guested on the British saxophonist Steve Williamson's debut CD, A Waltz for Grace, in 1989, and The World Is Falling Down (1990) indicated a confident renaissance both for her singing and her increasingly poetic and evocative lyric-writing.</p><p>The singer's occasional tendency to take herself and her message seriously, to the point of histrionics, lent unevenness to a succession of discs through that decade, but You Gotta Pay the Band (from 1991, with a waning but still poignant Stan Getz on saxophone) was superb material supported by a superb ensemble, and A Turtle's Dream (1994) much the same, with the guitarist Pat Metheny among the guests.</p><p></p><p>As she grew older, and surrounded by a coterie of admirers and imitators, Lincoln's influence on contemporary jazz singing became all the clearer. Her sumptuous sounds, steely determination and lazily patient timing resurface all over the work of the contemporary singer Cassandra Wilson. She offered rising vocalists alternative angles from which to approach Holiday, her own model. And she confirmed how effectively character, expressiveness and experience can triumph over the ravages of time. Her repertoire retreated from polemic (though her status partly rests on securing a place for social-issue songs more usually associated with folk music than jazz) and returned to more personal materials in her 60s. When promoting the 1998 CD Wholly Earth, Lincoln did not hide from the impact of the passing years on her intonation, but her performances were miniature triumphs just the same.</p><p>She made the Lionel Hampton song Midnight Sun a vehicle for long, imperceptibly trembling sustained sounds and rich contralto notes broken by sudden impassioned cries. I'll Be Seeing You would recapture the defiant rawness of Holiday, and if Mr Tambourine Man was an example of her occasional inclination toward unwise choices, even the gravelly intimacy of Louis Armstrong and the drama of Nina Simone could emerge in it.</p><p>Lincoln also made the albums Over the Years (2000), It's Me (in 2003, the year she received the National Endowment for the Arts NEA Jazz Masters Award) and Naturally (2006).</p><p>In 2007, she made a swansong album, Abbey Sings Abbey – a poignant collection of new originals, covers of favourites such as Leonard Bernstein's Lucky To Be Me, a bold <em>a capella</em> account of Tender As a Rose and a distinctive reinvention of Windmills of Your Mind, with a superb Joe Lovano on saxophone. As she once said: \"I live through music and it lives through me.\" It was no exaggeration.</p><p>Lincoln is survived by her brothers, David and Kenneth Wooldridge, and her sister, Juanita Baker.</p><p><em> </em>• Abbey Lincoln (Anna Marie Wooldridge), singer, born 6 August 1930, died 14 August 2010</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/jazz\">Jazz</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnfordham\">John Fordham</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2010%2Faug%2F15%2Fabbey-lincoln-obituary\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Ice-T cleared following New York arrest",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/23195?ns=guardian&pageName=Ice-T+cleared+following+New+York+arrest%3AArticle%3A1440582&ch=Culture&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Ice-T%2CMusic%2CHip+hop+%28music+genre%29%2CCulture+section%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news&c5=Pop+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Sean+Michaels&c7=10-Aug-18&c8=1440582&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Culture&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FIce-T\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Rapper has unlicensed driving charges dismissed after prosecutors admitted there had been a clerical error</p><p>Ice-T found himself on the right side of the law yesterday, after unlicensed driving charges were dropped by New York prosecutors. State lawyers admitted there had been a clerical error when the rapper was <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/21/ice-t-arrested\" title=\"arrested last month\">arrested last month</a>. \"That's what I'm talking about! Dismissed!\" Ice-T shouted into the court. Turning to the crowd outside, he added: \"You appreciate that!\"</p><p>In July, Ice-T and his wife were pulled over in Manhattan by a man described by the rapper as a \"punk bitch rookie cop\". The police officer took Ice-T into custody, citing his undone seatbelt and, more seriously, an invalid licence with expired insurance. \"[It was] some bullshit they made up,\" Ice-T complained at the time.</p><p>The court seems to have at least partly agreed with him. Assistant district attorney Jessica Barron explained the state suspended Ice-T's licence in 2008, believing he hadn't purchased insurance; in fact, the rapper had moved to New Jersey, obtaining a licence and insurance there. The department of motor vehicles failed to register the change.</p><p>\"I knew I didn't do anything wrong,\" Ice-T, born Tracy Marrow, told the Wall Street Journal. \"You gotta have yourself a good lawyer in these types of things.\" Although the man who co-wrote Cop Killer has moderated his hostility against police – he said he has no plans to sue the offending officer – he hasn't minced words. \"Everybody heard I called the cop a punk bitch,\" he explained. \"The reason I did that was because he pretty much was a punk bitch.\"</p><p>Yesterday, Ice-T mostly seemed happy to put this behind him, joking that he would now head to Disneyland. \"I hate courts,\" he said. \"I'm not coming back.\" As for the immature hip-hop heads itching for time behind bars, the 52-year-old had some measured advice: \"Street credibility has nothing to do with going to jail,\" he wrote on <a href=\"http://twitter.com/FINALLEVEL/status/21426852451\" title=\"Twitter\">Twitter</a>, \"it has everything to do with staying out.\"</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/ice-t\">Ice-T</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/hip-hop\">Hip hop</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa\">United States</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/seanmichaels\">Sean Michaels</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmusic%2F2010%2Faug%2F18%2Fice-t-cleared-following-arrest\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "In Memoriam",
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"content" : "One of the tallest trees in the forest of jazz has fallen: Abbey Lincoln passed away on Saturday. If you've never heard her, you must: you can see a magnificent performance of \"First Song\" (music, Charlie Haden; words, Abbey) on YouTube.<br><br>There are many recordings to choose from, but my own favorite is <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The World is Falling Down</span> from 1990. Listen to her utterly distinctive version of \"How High The Moon,\" from that album: you will never hear any other version again without comparing it unfavorably to this one. (Jackie McClean, whose sound on the alto sax seems to be what the word \"keening\" was invented to describe, is a brilliant accompanist here.) A close second is from early in her career, the album <span style=\"font-style:italic\">That's Him</span>, featuring the saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins and Max Roach, Abbey's husband-to-be, on drums.<br><br>RIP, Abbey.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4900303239154048192-320691905313344518?l=econospeak.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Mechanics of a Curse",
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"content" : "A girl in a compound house* loses her phone in broad daylight. About ten people were close enough to have filched the phone. A day steals by, and the phone has not been found. The ‘Landlord’ calls a house meeting. There is fulsome denial all round, and free-flowing suspicion-spiel. In the middle of the din, the victim takes a white egg from under her clothes, calls on a deity with a disturbing name to slay the thief, and shatters the egg on the floor. Two of the cruellest accusers immediately drop to their knees, and confess to the crime in rapids and waterfalls. The Landlord prevails on the girl to revoke the murderous curse. She calls for a bowl of water with a charcoal chip in it; this she sweeps over the egg remains. Then, there is peace. The curse is revoked. Is everything really that easy? I lost a pocket calculator I really loved seventeen years ago. I want an egg right now!<br><br>* Compound House - A house with a walled compound and several detached or semi-detached rooms or apartments usually given out for rent.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7564356874518161776-4499007191977330199?l=antirhythm.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-left:10px;margin-top:10px\">\n\t\t\t<a href=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnudges.org%2F2010%2F08%2F09%2Fwhich-orange-juice-carton-holds-more-juice%2F\"><br>\n\t\t\t\t<img src=\"http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnudges.org%2F2010%2F08%2F09%2Fwhich-orange-juice-carton-holds-more-juice%2F&source=nudgeblog&style=normal\" height=\"61\" width=\"50\"><br>\n\t\t\t</a>\n\t\t</div>\n<p>Pricing guru <a href=\"http://iterativepath.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/price-realization-through-creative-packaging/\">Rags Srinivasan</a> snaps two Tropicana containers that he says follow a “proven principle” in creative packaging: Changes in size do not appear as large when made in all three dimensions versus when they are changed in just one dimension.</p>\n<p>What’s the reason for making these changes?</p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Customers are trained on the price they pay – more often they buy a product at a price the more they become tuned to any price changes. The price they remember becomes their reference price – any increases over reference price will be seen negatively. So brands use the only other lever available to them for better price realization : reduce their marginal cost by 10-20%.</span></p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://nudges.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Tropicana.png\"><img title=\"Tropicana\" src=\"http://nudges.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Tropicana.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"483\" height=\"221\"></a></p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">To Rags: Are certain categories of consumer products more disposed to constant creative packaging changes? Your comment seems to suggest that staples are product where we should expect these changes most frequently. Chips are one product where the bags are always changing. Who even know exactly what size tortilla chip bag they are buying now unless they look carefully? Why aren’t pasta sauce jars changing more? Or are they?<br>\n</span></p>"
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"title" : "The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.",
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"content" : "<p>\nEvery fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nIt's hard to describe it in words.\n</p>\n\n<p>\nSo, I use pictures.\n</p>\n\n\n<p>\nRead below for the illustrated guide to a Ph.D.\n</p>\n\n <p><a href=\"http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/\">Click to read more</a></p>"
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"title" : "Independence",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/08/09/independence/www-featureshoot/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-13307\"><img src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/www-featureshoot.jpeg?w=500&h=332\" alt=\"\" title=\"www.featureshoot\" width=\"500\" height=\"332\"></a>Image: <a href=\"http://www.paulsika.com/paulsikafull/\">Paul Sika</a></p>\n<p>“I’ve kept some distance from the 50th anniversary,” my friend says, “because I’m being doubted.” A few days ago he went online to check his voter eligibility status. My friend was born in Côte d’Ivoire and has always been Ivorian, nothing else. He travels back to Côte d’Ivoire for Christmas or, recently, to bury his parents, on his valid Ivorian passport. One would think this made him eligible to vote, but the voter rolls are the domain of a different agency. For more than a decade people from the north of the country, or whose last name suggests they might be from the north, have had trouble getting registered to vote. My friend is from the north. Several times in the past few years he has come to the consulate in New York armed with his passport, his old identity cards, various notarized statements, to make his case to the election officers who have deployed across the country and its diaspora. Now the file status gets posted online but the process behind it is as murky as ever. This time my friend found his name on the latest provisional voter list, subject to some unspecified further confirmation. This is better than last year, when his application was turned down. Being of a stubborn nature, my friend took the time to press his case. Many others didn’t bother.</p>\n<p><span></span>Now Côte d’Ivoire is turning 50 — it became independent on August 7, 1960 — and my friend, whom any African would recognize as obviously Ivorian by accent, physiognomy, body language, tastes and sense of humor, doesn’t feel eager to celebrate. His friend Auguste has been pressing the gang to gather but it won’t be an independence party as much as a summer gathering of the old crew. Most of them have been in the United States for a decade or more, and with families and jobs and moves they don’t see each other as often as they’d like. Many are still in the northeast but others have moved to Atlanta, to big houses with dens and decks and finished basements in diverse suburbs with good schools. Some are Americans now, so the question of voting back home no longer applies. Among the crew, arguments about origins and national status briefly simmered ten years ago but never stuck. After the 2002 civil war left the country split in two, with a dysfunctional national unity government of southern loyalists and northern rebels, those with close ties back home positioned themselves as they saw fit, supporting one or another party or claiming indifference. Since the elections were due in 2005 but have been postponed over and over ever since, any differences of political opinion have long given way to the general lassitude. In Côte d’Ivoire the government loyalists and former rebels have gained so much material advantage from the status quo that both are happy to prolong the procedural farce that results in voter rolls that are never finalized and election logistics that are never quite ready. The two big opposition parties, which emerged from the old ruling party that oversaw Côte d’Ivoire’s prosperity in the 1970s, are on the outside looking in. My friend and his crew grew up in that old order, got good educations and started careers as engineers and accountants just as things were falling apart. They left before things got worse. Those who stay involved don’t let the politics get in their way, and certainly not alter their friendships.</p>\n<p>Lately, many in the crew have been spending more time in Côte d’Ivoire, some to pursue opportunities in the fluid economic situation there, others because their US immigration status is resolved and they can travel back and forth without anxiety. While Abidjan celebrates independence, a bunch will get together in Bassam, the old colonial capital and beach town that is just an hour’s drive down a long seaside road through the coconut palms, lined with small resorts and outdoor bars with thatched cabanas. Bassam has become a gathering place for the crew ever since one of them, the one from New Jersey who cast his lot early on with the president’s party, landed a sinecure as head of a future free-trade zone in Bassam that no one seems actually interested in implementing. With an office and car and nice house and so little to do that he’s uncomfortable — he’s a finagler, but he’s not lazy — he has welcomed his friends for open-ended visits, a kind of decompression chamber between their American lives and the needs of their extended families in Abidjan and the village, the sick relatives and funerals and nephews and nieces who need school fees and uniforms and sponsorship for foreign universities, since the local one barely functions anymore. In Bassam they are taking care of each other as well. The one who lives in the South Bronx, in a grimy apartment in a building with fights outside and chicken bones strewn in the stairwell, has been camped out in Bassam for months. He’s Muslim and doesn’t drink, and he’s enlisted the others in long, daily power-walks on the beach, a group of men in their late forties getting fit American-style, startling the vendors and the prostitutes.</p>\n<p>They’re in Bassam now, those ones and the one from Atlanta who hosted the big New Years’ bash, and the one who came all the way from Abidjan to that party and then nearly got killed in the Haiti earthquake when he went to visit friends in the Ivorian UN contingent there, and others too. They send my friend text messages. He’ll be with the northeastern crowd at Auguste and Christine’s — they’ve moved out of Mattapan and into one of the suburbs behind Quincy. They won’t ignore the 50th anniversary of independence, but they won’t really observe it, either. “The Dioula have this expression,” my friend says. “Ton dougou, c’est là où c’est bon pour toi. Wherever things are going well for you, that’s your village.”</p>\n<p>– <strong>Siddhartha Mitter</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/13264/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=13264&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "African needs a history lesson that Naomi Campbell can’t provide",
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"content" : "<p>Based on her reticent posture in Holland today, Naomi Campbell may be hoping to receive more unsavory gifts from some present or future African dictator in the years ahead. The super-model, cross-examined as a “hostile” witness in the criminal case against deposed Liberian dictator Charles Tayler, pointedly denied that she knew that <a href=\"http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/video-of-naomi-campbells-blood-diamond-testimony/?scp=1&sq=naomi%20campbell&st=cse\">the bag of diamonds</a> she received in 1997 while on a visit to South Africa came from Taylor. Disputing testimony from her agent at the time that indeed Taylor tried to ignite an affair with her, Campbell — a legendary beauty afflicted with an infantile mind — seemed intent on signaling to other African dictators that she is not the kind of women who gets an illicit gift and then gabs. She even went so far as to dis the rough diamonds she received, calling them “pebbles.”</p>\n<p>The prosecutors with a United Nations war-crimes tribunal want to show that Taylor directly dealt in illicit diamonds, using them to lubricate his dictatorship and float his lifestyle. That the court must rely on such flimsy evidence as the Campbell affair suggests that Taylor’s trial is verging on the trivial. The major questions about his role ought to include an examination of the U.S. government’s role of installing him in power and, perhaps, helping him remain in power long after he vacated the peculiar “reservation” that his C.I.A. liasons envisioned for him. That a UN war-crimes tribunal persists in conceiving of Taylor’s crimes in the most narrowest of fashions — as if he was a shoplifter caught on a clumsy encounter with Harrod’s — highlights the limitations of human-rights law. The big crimes committed by Taylor go well beyond the scope of any war-crimes mandate and hark back to an era when really “big men” in Moscow, Washington and Havana called the shots in many African countries. What’s needed much more than criminal trials of deposed African dictators is a kind of truth-and-reconciliation commission on how the Cold War contest between the U.S. and the Soviet Union distorted African societies from top to bottom and consumed some of the continent’s best and brightest.</p>\n<p><em> </em></p>"
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"title" : "Misplaced jealousy",
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"content" : "<p>It’s been too long, for the simple reason that I have been keeping busy with some fairly intensive work involving lots of travel in eastern Congo. Time to reach out to you the reader to ask for your contributions. Some call this crowdsourcing. Anyway, if you or your Kinois friends have any photos, links or snippets related to life in Kinshasa, please send them in for consideration. (Contact info is on the <a href=\"http://www.solokinshasa.com/?page_id=2\">About</a> page.)</p>\n<p>Specifically, it would be nice to start a collection of the enigmatic slogans in Lingala, French and occasionally English, adorning Kinshasa’s taxibuses. If you can note them down or snatch a photo, please do so. To start us off, and to illustrate why these slogans merit attention for their humour and philosophical insight, Thomas sent me this selection of his favourites (to which I <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">can add</span> have added rough translations <span style=\"text-decoration:line-through\">in due course</span>). My own shorter list will follow shortly.</p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ballon d’or – <em><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballon_d%27Or\">Golden ball</a></em></li>\n<li>Plein de bonne manière – <em><a title=\"some examples of usage\" href=\"http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22de+bonne+maniere%22+%2BKinshasa&form=QBRE&qs=n&sk=&sc=1-25\">Full of good manners</a></em></li>\n<li>Rien que la prière – <em>Nothing but prayer</em></li>\n<li>L’homme doit se battre – <em>Man must struggle (after a <a title=\"Chemin de Fer\" href=\"http://bcbg-les-anges-adorables.skyrock.com/2361255339-Extrait-du-nouvel-album-solo-pour-2011-CHEMIN-DE-FER-L-HOMME-DOIT-SE.html\">Wenge BCBG album</a>)</em></li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ3xq5raJMI\">Article 15</a> – <em>Debrouillez-vous, fend for yourself</em></li>\n<li>Air France, <a title=\"Congolese airline named after the forest in South Kivu which first sheltered the AFDL rebellion\" href=\"http://www.hba.cd/\">Hewa Bora</a>, <a title=\"Belgian airline which went bust - now SN Brussels\" href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabena\">Sabena</a>, Air Bus One…</li>\n<li>Sans boulot sans valeur – <em>Jobless = worthless</em></li>\n<li>Terminator</li>\n<li>Dieu seul le sait – <em>God only knows</em></li>\n<li>Vaincre la haine – <em>Conquer hatred</em></li>\n<li>Avocat – <em>Lawyer</em></li>\n<li>Dieu ne dort pas – <em>God doesn’t sleep</em></li>\n<li>L’homme simple – <em>The ordinary man</em></li>\n<li>Tais-toi jaloux – <em>Shut up, jealous one</em></li>\n<li>Code PIN</li>\n<li><a title=\"A 1982 Tabu Ley LP title\" href=\"http://www.groovecollector.com/liste/p_produit.cfm?lng=2&seller=0&what=&srt=4&poch=&bargain=&news=&chunksize=24&currency=5&stringa=tabu%20ley%20rochereau&stringt=&spop_id=&exact_search=0&pagination_easy_mode=0&n_ref_list=&general_state=&search_mode=1&list_index=&n_ref=108989303&tete=tabu%20ley%20rochereau&fmt=0&categ_rech=0&page=1&alpha=0\">Jalousie mal placée</a> – <em>Misplaced jealousy</em></li>\n<li>Hitler</li>\n<li>Dieu n’a jamais été corrompu – <em>God has never been corrupted</em></li>\n<li>Dinosor</li>\n<li>Champion du Congo</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/congoblog/4025430569/in/set-72157622635222090/\" title=\"a policy frequently declared and derided, notably vis a vis corruption and human rights abuses by the army\">Tolérance zéro</a></li>\n</ul>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?a=e8Asg5nHaAE:l-xGV2AApak:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?a=e8Asg5nHaAE:l-xGV2AApak:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SoloKinshasa/~4/e8Asg5nHaAE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Light Up Nigeria: facts and stats about electricity in Nigeria",
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The </span></span><a href=\"http://www.lightupnigeria.org/\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Light Up Nigeria</span></span></a><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> Twitter feed </span></span><a href=\"http://twitter.com/bubusn\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">published</span></span></a><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> a series of compelling tweets this morning. I've pasted them all below, more or less in the order they appeared. Read and absorb the complexity of the mess:</span></span><div><span style=\"font-size:medium\"></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><br></span><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><span style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:normal normal normal 7pt/normal 'Times New Roman'\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">1881: year Electricity was first generated in England. 15 yrs before Nigeria</span></span></span></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><span style=\"font-family:Georgia,serif\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></span></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">1896 The year electricity was first generated in Nigeria. Place was Ijora, in Lagos.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">60KW - Nigeria's generation capacity in 1896. :)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Kainji Dam: The oldest, still functional power plant in Nigeria, is about 40 years old.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">48% - percentage of Nigerians who have NO source of power, 114 years after we first generated power in Nigeria....</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">40%: percentage of the population served by the National grid</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">60%: The average percentage of time when the 40% served by the grid don't have power.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Kainji Dam: What it was designed produce 760MW, What it is producing now: 400MW. Why? Faulty parts</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">3: Number of Hydro Plants in Nigeria. 1939: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 1000: What they generate</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">11: Number of Thermal Plants in NG. 5976: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 2589: What they generate</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">There are 16 ongoing power generation projects designed to generate 12,500MW for the national grid</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">If the projects were completed today, Nigeria would have 20,000MW capacity in generation. BUT....</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">BUT... The National transmission grid is only designed to carry 4,800MW. So 75% of that capacity will useless...</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">But it also gets WORSE. Some of the electricity generated is \"lost\" in transmission. (Transmission Loss)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Transmission losses usually should not exceed 7%. This means that if 100MW is generated, at least 93MW should get to u!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The Transmission losses on the Nigerian grid is 35%!!!!! So if 100MW is generated only 65MW gets to you!!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Please find a diagram of the NG transmission system attached. Notice the TX losses?? http://yfrog.com/114n5g</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Transmission losses in Nigeria are the highest in the world. more than 3 times what is normal.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Even if we generate 2000GW, our grid will only be able to carry 4800 MW and 1,600MW of that will be WASTED</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">So why does the Nigerian transmission grid have such a high loss?? Sabotage! Illegal Connections, Poor Equipment</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">There were 12 cases of sabotage of the transmission grid in Nigeria in 2008 alone. (TCN)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">N1m. The amount in Naira paid to Ajibode Community as reward 4 assistance in apprehension of two powerline vandals in 08.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">30 years: The average age of the equipment on the National grid. Older than most of you!!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">To illustrate the capacity issues on the National grid consider the following example:</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">River State spends $161m to generate 275MW. Capacity of Grid into Rivers 100MW. 175MW: what RSG paid 4 they don't get</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Rivers State is only getting 40% benefit of their own investment because of grid limitations. :)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Over 90 transmission projects are ongoing, to add an additional 9,000MW to the capacity of the grid</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Even if all 90 transmission projects are completed, There will still be a shortfall of 10,000MW in capacity. God dey.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><br></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">But even if we complete all these projects... the biggest question is HOW WILL THEY BE MAINTAINED?</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">For more information on the status of power generation projects: http://bit.ly/cs056D Jan 2010, but still current.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">EFCC survey (published 2010), PHCN ranked least performing & least honest, less than political parties or the police!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">According to the same survey, 82% of the businesses surveyed admit they have bribed PHCN for \"better treatment\"</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">If we are bribing PHCN, will they not be corrupt?</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">N7/KWh - How much we buy power in Nigeria. N18/KWh - About how much it costs to generate</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">N11/KWh - About how much of your electricity bill Govt. pays for you (subsidy). *shrug*</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">How much of our PHCN bills do we really pay? Lets do a small check. :)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">950m - how much in naira Consumers in the Diobu Business Unit in PH Rivers State alone owed PHCN as at March 2010</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">98bn - Amount in naira owed to PHCN by FGN MDA as at April 2009.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">70bn - Amount owed in debt to PHCN due to unsettled bills as march 2010 - Minister of State for power.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">So if the customers and the govt. are owing PHCN, how do the staff get paid?</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">If you are not getting paid or paid well, are you more likely to collect bribes from saboteurs?</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Now lets talk about gas. Gas is the source of fuel for 40% of all power generated in Nigeria.</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Nigeria produces 4.2bcfd of gas every year. 55% of that is flared (burnt up)</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The amount of gas flared in Nigeria creates about 70 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. BIG pollution</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Imagine stacking up $2.5bn in $100 notes and burning them up in a huge inferno? That’s what we do when we flare gas!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The amount of gas we flare can provide electricity for ALL OF Sub-Saharan Africa</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">But that is not all. The amount of gas we flare is equivalent to $2.5 BILLION every year!!</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The state of Florida has 55,460MW generating capacity. About 10 times that of Nigeria</span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:36.0pt\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">·</span></span><span style=\"font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Texas can generate 104,966MW of electricity - beat that with a stick. :D</span></span></p> <p style=\"margin-top:2.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:2.0pt;margin-left:0cm\"><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"> </span></span></p> </div></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-188970644612703872?l=www.naijablog.co.uk\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Miserable Pursuits",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRh0jfXuJm_s2YvzOKFXVorA3AIwGtWlRkOLiznlCIJ8iVCm5M&t=1&h=167&w=167&usg=__qmlHX4ad6V_9Gi35hgKdX6wMado=\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"200\" src=\"http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRh0jfXuJm_s2YvzOKFXVorA3AIwGtWlRkOLiznlCIJ8iVCm5M&t=1&h=167&w=167&usg=__qmlHX4ad6V_9Gi35hgKdX6wMado=\" width=\"199\"></a></div><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">[<a href=\"http://dierotenschuhe.blogspot.com/2010/08/kultur-der-armut.html\" style=\"color:#741b47\">Auf Deutsch</a>. Vielen Dank, Mrs. Mop] </span><br><br><span style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:15px\">As I write this, I am on the train to Washington, to attend a conference sponsored by the Community Action Partnership on \"The New Reality: Preparing Poor America for Harder Times Ahead.\" The agenda will include in-depth discussions of employment, food, housing, health care, security, education, transportation, and even the somewhat touchy-feely subjects of community cohesion, communication, and, last but not least, right before the cocktail hour, culture. The recommendations will be rolled into a report and the conclusions will be presented at CAP's annual conference later this month.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">Poor America would conceivably be a place of few good jobs, nasty food, dilapidated housing, unaffordable health care, oppressive yet ineffectual security, education programs replete with dinosaur-riding Jesuses, transportation networks composed of run-down pickup trucks and potholed roads, not much more community cohesion than there is now, and communication still dominated by the corporate media.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">But then what about that strange little topic showing up at the very bottom of the list—culture? We'd expect the poor to be uncultivated, unlettered and uncouth, but beyond that, shouldn't we expect a culture of poverty to evolve, as an adaptation to being poor? To an anthropologist, culture is an adaptive mechanism that evolves in order to enable humans to survive and thrive in a wide variety of environments. To others, it may be a matter of dancing a jig or of strumming an instrument while crooning. To me, culture is, first and foremost, a matter of literature.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">The Russian author Eduard Limonov wrote of his experiences with poverty in America. To his joy, he discovered that he could supplement his cash earnings with public assistance. But he also quickly discovered that he had to keep this joy well hidden when showing up to collect his free money. It is a curious fact that in America public assistance is only made available to the miserable and the downtrodden, not to those who are in need of some free money but are otherwise perfectly content. Although it is just as possible to be poor and happy in America as anywhere else, here one must make a choice: to avoid any number of unpleasant situations, one must be careful to hide either the fact that one is poor, or the fact that one is happy. If free public money is to be obtained, then only the latter choice remains.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">It is another curious fact that vast numbers of Americans, both rich and poor, would regard Limonov's behavior as nothing short of despicable: a foreign author living in America on public assistance while also earning cash! It seems reasonable that the rich should feel that way; if the poor can't be made miserable, then what exactly is the point of being rich? But why should the poor particularly care? Another cultural peculiarity: what dismays them is not the misappropriation of public funds. Tell them about the billions wasted on useless military projects, and they will reply with a yawn that this is just business as usual. But tell them that somewhere some poor person is eating a free lunch, and they will instantly wax indignant. Amazingly, Americans are great believers in Lenin's revolutionary dictum: \"He who does not work, does not eat!\" One of the rudest questions you might hear from an American is \"What do you do for a living?\" The only proper response is \"Excuse me?\" followed by a self-satisfied smirk and a stony silence. Then they assume that you are independently wealthy and grovel shamefully.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">Most shockingly, there are many poor Americans who are too proud to accept public assistance in spite of their obvious need for it. Most Russians would regard such a stance as absurd: which part of \"free money\" don't these poor idiots like—the fact that it's money, or the fact that it's free? Some Russians who are living in the US and, in trying to fit in to American society, have internalized a large dose of the local hypocrisy, might claim otherwise, but even they, in their less hypocritical moments, will concede that it is downright foolish to turn down free money. And rest assured, they will mop up every last penny of it. Mother Russia didn't raise any dummies.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">But let us not blame the victim. What causes these poor souls to leave money on the table is just this: they have been brainwashed. The mass media, most notably television and advertising, are managed by the well-to-do, and incessantly hammer home the message that hard work and self-sufficiency are virtuous while demonizing the idle and the poor. The same people who have been shipping American jobs to China and to India in order to enhance their profits want it to be generally understood that the resulting misery is entirely the fault of the miserable. And while the role of the pecuniary motive may be significant, let us not neglect to mention the important fact that producing mass misery is a high-priority objective in and of itself.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">You see, these are very difficult times to be rich. It used to be that having a million dollars made you a millionaire—but not any more! Now, to be perfectly safe and completely insulated from economic reality you need at least ten million, if not more, and the more you have, the more unnerving become the wild undulations of the financial markets and the dire prognostications of the experts. It is getting to the point that you can make a plausible guess at a person's net worth based on how nervous and miserable they look.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">Recently, I had a chance to see this misery on display. We spent a week vacationing on outer Cape Cod. We sailed there and back (the wind is free) and anchored while there (the municipal moorings are quite affordable). We rowed ourselves ashore and back in our home-made plywood dink and bicycled around picking edible mushrooms along the bike path. This time of year, this part of Massachusetts is overrun by stampedes of shiny late-model SUVs with New York and New Jersey license plates. They are driven by various subspecies of the middle-aged well-to-do American Office Ogre—the lawyer, the doctor, the dentist, the banker, the lobbyist and the corporate businessman—the people who are attempting to run off with all the loot. The majestic scenery is somewhat spoiled by these surly, scowling, raspy-voiced ogres and their flabby, overmedicated wives with voices like an unoiled hinge. When not aimlessly driving around, they sit in upscale restaurants, toying with their food and gossiping menacingly. They have long forgotten what it means to be happy and carefree, and their labored attempts at feigning enjoyment are painful to watch. You can be sure that the sight of poor but happy people makes them quite livid.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">I am not gloating. I do feel sorry for these poor rich people, and I even have good news for them: their condition is far from incurable. I know people who went prematurely gray, lost weight and often woke up screaming while watching their last $500,000 in savings dwindle to nothing, buried under a pile of debt, but once the cash is burned off and the dour creditors abscond with what remains of the property, there is much less for them to worry about, and this gives them a chance to reevaluate what is important, what is essential, and what gives them pleasure. And so, where there is sorrow there is also joy, and we need not grieve for the poor rich people excessively, because the way things are going their problems are likely to resolve themselves spontaneously. Keep in mind that, compared to the formidable, often insurmountable challenges faced by those who attempt to escape poverty, becoming downwardly mobile is as easy as falling off a log, and, with a bit of foresight, can be done in comfort and style.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">I have good news for America's poor as well. Although they are exceedingly unlikely to ever become any richer, they are, in fact, quite rich enough already. Recently I heard a story on NPR about a poor family that went around looking for discounted food items at various groceries and stopping at the food pantry—in their own private minivan! And so here is a poor family that owns what in many parts of the world would amount to a bus company! When they couldn't find enough discounted foods to buy, they still had enough to feed their children, while the adults skipped meals. This is healthy: hunger is symptomatic of a good appetite, and, given the excessive girth of most Americans, periodic fasting is a prudent choice. What's more, they sounded reasonably happy about their lot in life.</span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><br><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">And so, a poor but happy and carefree future may yet await a great many of us, both idle rich and idle poor—one happy though rather impoverished family. But in order to achieve that we would have to change the culture. Let it be known that free lunch is a very good thing indeed, no mater who's eating it or why, and never mind that Lenin said that \"He who does not work, does not eat.\" And while we are at it, let's also dispense with the hackneyed adage that \"Work will set you free\" (</span><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:italic;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">Arbeit Macht Frei</span><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">) which the Nazis liked to set </span><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"> in wrought iron </span><span style=\"background-color:transparent;color:black;font-family:Arial;font-size:11pt;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\">atop the gates of their concentration camps. Let us consign the communists and the fascists and the capitalists to the proverbial scrapheap of history! Let us instead gratuitously quote Jesus: \"Behold the lilies of the field, how they grow. They labor not, neither spin. And yet for all that I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his royalty, was not arrayed like unto one of these... Therefore take no thought saying: What shall we eat? or What shall we drink? or Wherewith shall we be clothed? ... Care not therefore for the day following. For the day following shall care for itself. Each day's trouble is sufficient for the same self day.\" Amen.</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28495039-6789312838495470619?l=cluborlov.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Nike (still) likes big butts",
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"content" : "<p>It seems Nike has officially jumped on the bandwagon for big butts. In their new ad promoting butt-enhancing shoes, an ethnically-ambiguous woman is shown in what appears to be a pair of panties, tennis shoes and a cut-off tank. This ad follows <a href=\"http://10steps.sg/wp-content/uploads/article99/27-nike-women.jpg\">a similarly booty-minded campaign</a> from 2005 which shows off the curves of a dark-skinned model. Why the change?</p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/salon/index/~4/swmolDUDKpA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Incognito - Transatlantic RPM (2010)",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TFWC6RaP4kI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/fbZdJP5aQZk/s1600/bluey2.jpg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0;width:320px;height:320px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TFWC6RaP4kI/AAAAAAAAA1Y/fbZdJP5aQZk/s320/bluey2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><strong>By Pico</strong><br><br>Last week, that venerable soul-jazz outfit out of London Incognito released a new disc <em>Transatlantic RPM</em>, an occasion we marked with a couple of streams to songs to tracks on that record (<a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2010/07/preview-incognito-releases.html\">click here</a> to listen to the streams of \"Lowdown\" and \"Gotta\"). Now, it's time to delve into this platter, but first, a little background:<span><br><br>Incognito has always been about the musical vision of one man, producer/songwriter/guitarist Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick, one of the driving forces behind the soul-jazz or "acid" jazz revival of the 1990's. Born in the African island nation of Mauritius, Maunick's family moved to England around the time he was nine, and he eagerly absorbed the thriving London r&b music scene of the seventies. He co-founded the disco-funk band Light of the World (named after a Kool & The Gang LP) in 1978, but the band made only a handful of records over the next few years before breaking up. Maunick formed Incognito with one of the LOTW bandmate Paul "Tubs" Williams just a year later, and their first album <em>Jazz Funk</em> first appeared in 1981. After then, Williams left and the band went into a ten year hiatus but came back with <em>Inside Life</em> (1991) just as acid jazz was exploding in the UK and his group soon became one of this genre's biggest acts, releasing an album at least every other year since then. Using a revolving cast of sharp musicians and soulful vocalists, Maunick has been able to reinvigorate the music of <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/08/one-track-mind-stevie-wonder-that-girl.html\">Stevie Wonder</a>, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rufus with Chaka Khan, Roy Ayers and <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2010/06/somethingelsetribute-heatwave-oh-yes-we.html\">Heatwave</a> with new songs (or occasional covers of songs from the classic era, like <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/08/one-track-mind-ronnie-laws-always-there.html\">Ronnie Law's \"Always There\"</a>) and new production touches.<br><br>Incognito records are hugely consistent; they never stray far from their brass-fired, ass-wiggling crystal ball formula Maunick established from the get-go. Although it's a formula that has been successful, that doesn't keep Bluey from occasionally trying new twists on records to keep the group out of a rut while staying in the groove. He inserted some Sergio Mendes styled tastes of Brazil for <em>Who Need Love</em> (2003) and went for a (relatively) more stripped down and laid back vibe for <em>Bee + Things + Flowers</em> (2006). <em>Transatlantic RPM</em>, brings its own nice little twist with it: guest appearances with major star power.<br><br>Maunick shows off that star power right away on the lead-off track with a remake of the <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search?q=Boz+Scaggs'\">Boz Scaggs'</a> 1977 classic "Lowdown." There isn't a lot that he does differently with the original arrangement of the song but it hardly matters, because the passionate vocal performances by both Chaka Khan and the Sicilian soul crooner sensation Mario Biondi make this a remake worth listening to. Though taped separately on Italian and American soil, Khan and Biondi blend their voices in and around each other in a perfect duet. Khan reappears on a tune she co-wrote with Maunick, "The Song," a mid-tempo r&b tune in the style of classic <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/08/one-track-mind-ramsey-lewis-sun-goddess.html\">Earth, Wind & Fire</a>. Which is appropriate since Al McKay from the classic EW&F lineup adds his recognizable tasty jazz guitar licks to the song. Songwriting and singing Motown legend Leon Ware adds his voice to a soul song that hearkens back to Teddy Pendergrass' salad days. The spoken-word poetess Ursula Rucker adds her unique singing style to "Gotta," speaking the lyrics but often in tune with the melody; it's not quite rap, and not conventional singing, but a unique approach that catches your attention and commands focus on the lyrics. Biondi returns to supply his powerful pipes to the dancefloor workout "Can't Get Enough."<br> <br>Elsewhere, Maunick utilizes the vocal talents of lesser-known but talented names like Tony Momrelle, Joy Rose, Vanessa Haynes, and Incognito's most prominent vocalist, Maysa (Leak). Luckyiam.PSC adds a new school rap to an old school grooves for \"Everything That We Are,\" the only obvious nod to more current musical trends on the record. The highlights of the these tracks include the Rose-sung nostalgic disco boogie \"1975,\" full of references of the year, from the death of <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Cannonball%20Adderley\">Cannonball Adderley</a> to the birth of rapper 50 Cent. Maysa puts her expressive vocals to good use on the light, agreeable groove of \"Your Sun My Sky.\"<br><br><em>Transatlantic RPM</em> was a dream come true for Maunick, to be able to work with artists he's idolized as a kid growing up in the northern London district of Tottenham, but like all previous Incognito albums, it's his celebration of their music that is the main theme of this one. Although the songs aren't as uniformly memorable as the last CD <em>Tales From The Beach</em> (2008), <em>Transatlantic</em> is accomplished and a pretty good representation of the Incognito brand. 1975 hardly ever seemed to be so alluring as it does when you listen to an Incognito record like this one.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8367705548617137551-5841234308513677879?l=www.somethingelsereviews.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Murphy’s Computer Law",
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"content" : "<p>A long time ago, my family took a trip to Expo ‘86 in Vancouver, with stop offs in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In LA, we went on the Universal studio tour, something which I basically have no memory of. I did get a memento, though—a poster entitled “Murphy’s Computer Law” with a bunch of humorous computing “laws” on it. This poster went up in my room, accompanied me to college and has been in most of my offices at Microsoft. However, a few years ago, a corner ripped off in a move. Then while it was sitting around waiting to be repaired, it got a bit stained. And then I realized just how dated and ratty the thing looked. So, I figured it’s time to retire it. However, I would like to hang on to the “laws” since some of them are are still quite pertinent, even if some are quite outdated. So here they are, on my “permanent record:”</p> <p>Murphy’s Computer Law: </p> <ol> <li>Murphy never would have used one. </li> <li>Murphy would have loved them.</li> </ol> <p>Bove’s Theorem: The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.</p> <p>Brooks’ Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.</p> <p>Canada Bill Jones’ Motto: It’s morally wrong to allow naïve end users to keep their money.</p> <p>Cann’s Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.</p> <p>Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.</p> <p>Deadline-Dan’s Demo Demonstration: The higher the “higher-ups” are who’ve come to see your demo, the lower your chances are of giving a successful one.</p> <p>Deadline-Dan’s Demon: Every task takes twice as long as you think it will take. If you double the time you think it will take, it will actually take four times as long.</p> <p>Demian’s Observation: There is always one item on the screen menu that is mislabeled and should read “ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.”</p> <p>Dr. Caligari’s Come-back: A bad sector disk error occurs only after you’ve done several hours of work without performing a backup.</p> <p>Estridge’s Law: No matter how large and standardized the marketplace is, IBM can redefine it. [<em>ed, later “Microsoft”, now “Apple,” I guess</em>]</p> <p>Finagle’s Rules:</p> <ol> <li>To study an application best, understand it thoroughly before you start.</li> <li>Always keep a record of data. It indicates you’ve been working.</li> <li>Always draw your curves, then plot the reading.</li> <li>In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.</li> <li>Program results should always be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.</li> <li>Do not believe in miracles. Rely on them.</li> </ol> <p>Franklin’s Rule: Blessed is the end user who expects nothing, for he/she will not be disappointed.</p> <p>Gilb’s Laws of Unreliability:</p> <ol> <li>At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.</li> <li>Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.</li> <li>Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.</li> <li>Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.</li> </ol> <p>Gummidge’s Law: The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the general public.</p> <p>Harp’s Corollary to Estridge’s Law: Your “IBM PC-compatible” computer grows more incompatible with every passing moment.</p> <p>Heller’s Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.</p> <p>Hinds’ Law of Computer Programming:</p> <ol> <li>Any given program, when running, is obsolete.</li> <li>If a program is useful, it will have to changed.</li> <li>If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.</li> <li>Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.</li> <li>The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.</li> <li>Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.</li> <li>Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write English.</li> </ol> <p>Hoare’s Law of Large Programs: Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out.</p> <p>The Last One’s Law of Program Generators: A program generator creates programs that are more “buggy” than the program generator.</p> <p>Meskimen’s Law: There’s never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.</p> <p>Murphy’s Fourth Law: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage with be the one to go wrong.</p> <p>Murphy’s Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure.</p> <p>Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. [<em>ed: words to live by</em>]</p> <p>Nixon’s Theorem: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on.</p> <p>Nolan’s Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance.</p> <p>Osborn’s Law: Variables won’t, constants aren’t.</p> <p>O’Toole’s Commentary on Murphy’s Law: Murphy was an optimist.</p> <p>Peer’s Law: The solution to a problem changes the problem.</p> <p>Rhode's’ Corollary to Hoare’s Law: Inside every complex and unworkable program is a useful routine struggling to be free.</p> <p>Robert E. Lee’s Truce: Judgment comes from experience; experience comes from poor judgment.</p> <p>Sattinger’s Law: It works better if you plug it in.</p> <p>Shaw’s Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. [<em>ed: also known as “Bob’s Law”</em>]</p> <p>SNAFU Equations:</p> <ol> <li>Given an problem containing N equations, there will be N+1 unknowns.</li> <li>An object or bit or information most needed will be least available.</li> <li>Any device requiring service or adjustment will be least accessible.</li> <li>Interchangeable devices won’t.</li> <li>In any human endeavor, once you have exhausted all possibilities and fail, there will be one solution, simple and obvious, highly visible to everyone else.</li> <li>Badness comes in waves.</li> </ol> <p>Thoreau’s Theories of Adaptation:</p> <ol> <li>After months of training and you finally understand all of a program’s commands, a revised version of the program arrives with an all-new command structure. [<em>ed: also known the “Office Principle\"</em>]</li> <li>After designing a useful routine that gets around a familiar “bug” in the system, the system is revised, the “bug” is taken away, and you’re left with a useless routine.</li> <li>Efforts in improving a program’s “user friendliness” invariably lead to work in improving user’s “computer literacy.”</li> <li>That’s not a “bug”, that’s a feature!</li> </ol> <p>Weinberg’s Corollary: An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.</p> <p>Weinberg’s Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.</p> <p>Zymurgy’s First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to recan them is to use a larger can.</p> <p>Wood’s Axiom: As soon as a still-to-be-finished computer task becomes a life-or-death situation, the power fails.</p><img src=\"http://panopticoncentral.net/aggbug/24825.aspx\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Africa/ Latin America: Performing Hierarchy",
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"content" : "Still on the issue of African women working as maids in Europe and the Middle East.<br><br>With the recent Lebanon sporting club expose --or scandal of a Kenyan maid getting thrown out of a 3rd floor window in Saudi Arabia earlier this year--in mind, the art project and exhibit below by French-U.S. photographer Justine Graham and Colombian visual artist Ruby Rumié, which got written up in IPS last"
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"title" : "Subtleties",
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"content" : "<div><div>\n<h4>By Nate Barksdale</h4>\n<img alt=\"Cardus5\" title=\"Cardus5\" src=\"http://natebarksdale.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a672d95c970c0133f2a8cbf3970b-800wi\">\n\n<h5>Originally published in <a href=\"http://www.natebarksdale.com/\"><em>Comment</em></a>, 11 June 2010</h5>\n</div>\n<p>My latest online column <a href=\"http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/2037/\">Comment Magazine</a></p>\n<p>One Friday night in the early 1990s, my family rented an old black-and-white foreign film for our weekend's entertainment. I don't recall the movie's title, let alone what any of us thought of it when we viewed it, but I remember very clearly a bit of promotional copy on the front of the VHS cassette's cardboard slipcase, in the space usually reserved for Siskel and Ebert's thumbs: NOW WITH YELLOW SUBTITLES!</p>\n\n\n\n<p>I'd never thought of subtitles as having (let alone needing) colouration. It was like being told that you can pour lemonade on your breakfast cereal: I guess it's technically possible, but what would be the point? Now, many years and Google searches later, I realize that those yellow subtitles did merit at least some of the excitement. For decades, the standard way to apply subtitles to a movie had been an intricate process in which tiny two-point letters were etched into a finished print of the movie using a combination of letterpress plates, chemical washes, and—as technology progressed—lasers. Subtitles were white because the film emulsion beneath them had been scraped or burned away—the light shone through the letterforms' pure celluloid. It worked well enough for a dark scene shown in a darkened theater, but less so on television, and woe to the foreign film that ventured into the bright outdoors: translations hid out in the grass, got lost in the snow.</p>\n<p>I guessed this latter bit during the course of the film—apparently to the exclusion of forming any long-term memories about plot or title—and by the time the credits rolled, I'd concluded that the yellow subs' reason for existence was also their downfall: they kept the dialogue legible at the expense of never letting you forget that you were reading something foreign to the original film. Though they solved a technical problem, the yellow video subtitles undermined one of the main attractions of movie subtitles: the assumption that we can dive into another culture and, aided by comfortable, transparent technology, breathe as we're accustomed.</p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Still from Fellini's <em>8½</em> (1963). Not the movie I've been talking about, but you get the idea.</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale01.JPG\" alt=\"Still from Fellini's 8½ (1963)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n \n<p>All stories, even true ones, become fictions in their telling. Cinema is fiction upon fiction, making use of compressed and guided views, techniques of editing, novel ways of seeing, all of which have grown and evolved over more than a century of story upon story, film upon film. Subtitles, at least when they're not included in the initial release, scrape out their own fictitious space. You have all the challenges of translation—how to transfer the content and nuance of speech from one voice to another—with the added technical constraints that whatever's said must fit into short, center-justified, grammatically correct semantic units of no more than two lines, to remain on the screen for no less than one and no more than six seconds.</p>\n<p>I got those last bits from the European Association for Studies in Screen Translation's \"<a href=\"http://www.transedit.se/code.htm\">Code of Good Subtitling Practice</a>,\" which makes for interesting reading. The stipulation for grammatical correctness, for instance, references subtitles' role as a model for literacy. And it's heartening to know that there's a robust spoiler-alert clause in article 15 of the Code: \"Subtitles must underline surprise or suspense and in no way undermine it.\"</p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Character exposition via subtitle, in Buster Keaton's <em>College</em> (1927)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale02.JPG\" alt=\"Character exposition via subtitle, in Buster Keaton's <i>College</i> (1927)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n \n<p>Subtitles precede the movies, having had a long and healthy career in printed matter of all types. They worked their way into the silent cinema as printed cards explaining or commenting on what was happening in the filmed sequences. Now these title cards are called intertitles, but in the day they were simply subtitles. For instance, in her 1916 book <a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=mKfqsV7ckgUC&dq=subtitle&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q=subtitle&f=false\"><em>How to write for the \"movies\"</em></a>, Louella O. Parsons offers what might be the earliest version of Rule 16 of the Subtitler's Code, about the dangers of the too-long subtitle:</p>\n\n<blockquote>You cannot be prodigal in your language and interpose any unnecessary flowery phrases; footage is too precious. Neither must you express yourself in the stilted words of a child just learning to talk.<br><br>\nAs an apt illustration of the too long subtitle we might give:<br><br>\n\"It is surely the inevitable will of God that has brought this affliction upon us. We must in this adversity bow our heads to His commands.\"<br><br>\nThat is all very well if you have one thousand feet of film at your disposal to give to your subtitle, but when you have a limited amount of footage why not be sensible and merely say:<br><br>\n\"God's will be done.\"</blockquote><br>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\"> </font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale03.JPG\" alt=\"Anita Loos, Expert Creator of Movie Subtitles\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n<p>A year later, <a href=\"http://www.natebarksdale.com/\">Everybody's Magazine</a> ran a glowing profile of Anita Loos, who made her name subtitling Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers and D.W. Griffith epics. Loos's subtitles for Griffith's 1916 epic <em>Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages</em> even employ footnotes to help viewers keep track of the film's millennia-spanning quadruple-plotline. Of Loo's craft the journalist writes:</p>\n\n<blockquote>The subtitle has only been in vogue a few years. It differs from the title—the wording between scenes which describes the action of the picture that is to come—in that it need not attend to business. It is meant only for the audience, and though at times in the supposed speech of the characters in the film, it may be a mere comment outside the picture and addressed to the audience like the aside of our fathers' theatre.</blockquote><br>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Silent film subtitle with explanatory footnote, <em>Intolerance</em> (1916)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale04.JPG\" alt=\"Silent film subtitle with explanatory footnote, Intolerance (1916)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n<p>That's what I miss about the post-talkie school of subtitles. Often, waist-deep in the swamp of some obscure foreign film, what I want most is not to know what the characters are saying but to get an explanation of what's going on, or just an acknowledgement of the strangeness of the story and the oddness of the foreign film-watcher's predicament (which, among other things, keeps us from really looking at the actors' faces). The only time this sort of meta-commentary comes in the sound era is in <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subtitle_%28captioning%29#Subtitles_as_a_source_of_humor\">cinematic spoofs</a> like <em>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</em> or the films of Carl Reiner.</p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">A rare humourous subtitle from the sound era. <em>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</em> (1975)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale05.JPG\" alt=\"A rare humourous subtitle from the sound era. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n \n<p>Generally, though, when looking for subtitular humour, it's up to the viewer to discover his own. Subtitles, once suitably legible, generally do their best to disappear; it's only when something goes wrong in the presentation that their workings and complexity become apparent.</p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Bollywood superstar Sharukh Khan: Not as good as Michael Jordan, but good enough in <em>Kuch Kuch Hota Hai</em> (Hindi, 2000)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale06.JPG\" alt=\"Bollywood superstar Sharukh Khan: Not as good as Michael Jordan, but good enough in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Hindi, 2000)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n \n<p>Every month or two my friends will get a late-night email from me containing a fuzzy picture of my TV screen frozen in a moment in which the subtle subtitle machinery has gone wrong. The film in question is usually from India; Bollywood movies (and their regional equivalents) present a unique subtitling situation. First of all, the target idiom is generally a variety of Indian English, which of course makes sense given the speech of both translator and average viewer, meaning that even perfect execution will often look odd to American eyes.</p>\n\n<p>Secondly, Indian movies are generally quite long, and I've noticed that the quality of the subtitles generally plummets by the time you enter the third hour of the film: grammar goes slack, dialogue becomes terse, there are long awkward stretches where you hear voices but see no words. I figure the screen translation economics work out such that somewhere around the one hundred twentieth minute, anyone still watching is sufficiently committed to the film that there's no additional return on investment for perfecting the subtitles that remain. I imagine a video editing suite somewhere in the suburbs of Mumbai or Chennai, where the key moment arrives and the lead translator hands off the balance of the film to some sub-subtitler and heads outside for a well-deserved <em>masala dosa</em>.</p>\n \n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">A third-hour subtitle from <em>Alai Payuthey</em> (Tamil, 2000)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale07.JPG\" alt=\"A third-hour subtitle from Alai Payuthey (Tamil, 2000)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n<p>Finally, though, the greatest amount of South Asian subtitle strangeness often boils down to Article 12 of the Code: \"Songs must be subtitled where relevant.\" It's in their songs that Indian films dip deepest into translation-defying metaphor. There's only so much that can be done: the words may correspond but the underlying sentiment remains amusingly, thrillingly novel.</p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Romantic song lyric from <em>Mullum Malarum</em> (Tamil, 1978)</font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale08.JPG\" alt=\"Romantic song lyric from Mullum Malarum (Tamil, 1978)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n \n<p>\"I love watching movies with subtitles,\" a friend told me recently. \"They make me feel so smart!\" There's something to that observation, especially when one knows enough of the film's language to pick out familiar words as the translations flash by on the screen's lower third. When I watch a film like Fatih Akin's wonderful <em>The Edge of Heaven</em>, my high school German comes streaming back. At least, it seems that way. I get the pleasant surface recall without the work of actually stringing sentences together on my own. <em>Das wird viel, um, schwerer sein?</em></p>\n\n<table width=\"500\" align=\"center\"><caption style=\"text-align:center\" align=\"bottom\"><td><font size=\"-1\">Speaking German in <em>The Edge of Heaven</em> (2007) </font></td></caption><tbody><tr><td><img src=\"http://www.cardus.ca/assets/data/images/2010/2010-06-11-NBarksdale09.JPG\" alt=\"Speaking German in The Edge of Heaven (2007)\" hspace=\"0\" vspace=\"10\" width=\"500\" align=\"top\" border=\"0\"></td></tr></tbody></table><br>\n\n<p>Sometimes I take the smartness game too far and try to watch a film in one language I've studied, with the DVD subtitles set in another (say, a Hindi film with Spanish subs). The end result is usually a headache-inducing mental tug-of-war that yields, if such a thing is possible, negative comprehension. I ask myself, why would a person do that? Not to feel smarter, certainly not to get more out of the movie. Could it be that I love watching movies with subtitles because they make me feel dumber?</p>\n<p>There's something to that as well. Watching movies that take place outside the realm of one's cultural fluency always involves a tension of desires: we want to be transported, we want to fit right in. There's something comforting about not-quite-comprehension, about speech in all its nuance whittled down to one or two lines on the screen, coloured for contrast but still—when it works out right—invisible.</p></div>"
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"title" : "How to miss a coup",
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"content" : "<p>Start by leaving the country a few days before the event (not that you know it’s going to happen). About five days is good, say, around July 22, 1990. Make sure the place you’re going is far from any established West Indian community. Northern California is a workable option.</p>\n<p>On the morning of the event (i.e. <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaat_al_Muslimeen_coup_attempt\">July 27, 1990</a>), sit down in your friend <a href=\"http://intenselives.blogspot.com/\">Gillian Goddard</a>’s cottage in Menlo Park, type up a television script on Gillian’s friend Dan’s <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Plus\">Mac Plus</a>, print it out and take it to a nearby copy shop, e.g. Kinko’s. From the shop, fax the script to your colleagues Walt and Danielle in Trinidad, who, later that day, will use it to shoot a segment of the television show you’re working on together. The act of faxing the script also inserts you—tenuously—into Walt and Danielle’s more heroic narrative related to the event, though of course you don’t know this at the time.</p>\n<p>Take the train into San Francisco, trawl around the city like a tourist then in the afternoon meet up with Gillian in order to hitch a ride back to Menlo Park. While sitting in the car in rush-hour gridlock on US-101, fiddle with the dial on the radio and happen upon a National Public Radio (NPR) report about an <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaat_al_Muslimeen_coup_attempt\">attempted coup</a> in your home country of Trinidad and Tobago!</p>\n<p>Marvel at the coincidence of your landing, just at that moment, upon a news report about a nation that would otherwise receive scant coverage even on public radio, but exhibit incredulity. Await the jingle at the end of the report announcing that what you just heard was a comedy segment. When, instead of a jingle, you hear another report about something bad happening in some other part of the world, freeze for a few seconds. Then try to recall whether, five days before, there had been any sign or indication that something like this was going to happen. Decide that there hadn’t.</p>\n<p>As it would be some years yet before either you or Gillian—or most of the world’s citizens—acquires a cell phone, sit patiently in traffic until you get back to Menlo Park, but once there, rush to the answering machine which is pulsating with voice messages. Be amused at Gillian’s Washington DC-based sister’s succinct “They had a coup! Call me!”. Wonder how all the Trinidadians on the west coast had managed to get hold of Gillian’s number. Return calls. Answer new calls that come in. Lament the fact that nobody has any real information.</p>\n<p>Even though the phone lines to Trinidad are perpetually busy, keep trying to get through to family, but make sure you have a list of questions prepared, as long distance calls aren’t cheap and <a href=\"http://www.skype.com\">Skype</a> hasn’t yet been invented, nor has the <a href=\"http://www.magicjack.com/\">MagicJack</a>. Lament the absence, in northern California, of a real West Indian community such as exists in New York or Washington D.C. or south Florida or even Atlanta, and discuss how this limits your access to the choicest rumours and to folks who know folks who had managed to get through to somebody in Trinidad who knows somebody who knows what’s going on. Experience feelings of profound isolation.</p>\n<p>Keep the radio tuned to NPR. Make sure you tune in to an NPR report in which journalist Ira Mathur is interviewed from Port of Spain about the horrors to which your homeland is being subjected while sitting on the bonnet of the car in Stinson Beach, in the atmospheric Marin Headlands, looking out at the magnificent Pacific. Note it as one of the most bizarre juxatpositions of your lifetime.</p>\n<p>Leave California for New York. Wait it out there for what seems like—or may well be, as you don’t yet record all your trips using as-yet-to-be-dreamed-of services like <a href=\"http://www.dopplr.com\">Dopplr</a> and <a href=\"http://www.tripit.com\">TripIt</a>—weeks. Watch that single, worrying image on CNN of Port of Spain with a plume of smoke wafting up from the middle of the city over and over again; listen to the West Indian radio stations; talk to folks on the phone—but still feel you have no idea what’s going on in your homeland, except that the insurgents have surrendered and there’s now a curfew. Write letters (longhand, as you’re still five years from getting an e-mail account) to friends in various places announcing that you might end up staying in the US.</p>\n<p>Be deeply envious of your friends Walt and Danielle, who were in fact shooting your script when news of the insurrection reached them, and who, with all other work brought to a standstill by the events, report that they’ve been venturing out with the camera to capture coup-related action.</p>\n<p>Keep harassing the airline to put you on a flight back home. Settle eventually for one that connects in Miami, even though it means spending an awful night in Miami International Airport.</p>\n<p>Return to Trinidad. Fail to remember, 20 years later, who collected you at the airport, what you saw from the car on the way home, what you felt when you finally walked through the doors of the home you weren’t sure you’d ever see again.</p>\n<p>Wonder if 20 years is really that long or if there’s some other reason you’ve shoved those memories aside.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?i=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?a=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:JEwB19i1-c4\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog?i=OPXhLvON7Ek:7EzAwYI3M3o:JEwB19i1-c4\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CaribbeanFreeRadioBlog/~4/OPXhLvON7Ek\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "[from abenadove] The Secret Museum of Mankind · Volume Two · Africa · Page 91",
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"content" : "<p>"With keen, cunning eyes, framed for effect in rings of scar patterns, he sits by his primitive stock of quackeries. He is one of the men who have kept many millions of Congo natives attached to cannibalism, and held many more forest negroes to the practice of indescribable abominations. Expert in hypnotism, trances, and sleights of hand, he rules the village"</p>\n <span>\n <a href=\"http://www.delicious.com/save?url=http%3A%2F%2Fian.macky.net%2Fsecretmuseum%2Fpage_2.91.html&title=The%20Secret%20Museum%20of%20Mankind%20%C2%B7%20Volume%20Two%20%C2%B7%20Africa%20%C2%B7%20Page%2091&copyuser=abenadove&copytags=bitterroots+research+healers+traditional+medicine+fetish+congo+africa+stereotypes+racism&jump=yes&partner=delrss&src=feed_google\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"add this bookmark to your collection at http://www.delicious.com\"><img src=\"http://l.yimg.com/hr/img/delicious.small.gif\" alt=\"http://www.delicious.com\" width=\"10\" height=\"10\" border=\"0\"> Bookmark this on Delicious</a>\n - Saved by <a title=\"visit abenadove's bookmarks at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove\">abenadove</a>\n to\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged bitterroots\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/bitterroots\">bitterroots</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged research\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/research\">research</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged healers\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/healers\">healers</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged traditional\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/traditional\">traditional</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged medicine\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/medicine\">medicine</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged fetish\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/fetish\">fetish</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged congo\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/congo\">congo</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged africa\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/africa\">africa</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged stereotypes\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/stereotypes\">stereotypes</a>\n <a rel=\"tag\" title=\"view abenadove's bookmarks tagged racism\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/abenadove/racism\">racism</a>\n \t\t\t- <a rel=\"self\" title=\"view more details on this bookmark at Delicious\" href=\"http://www.delicious.com/url/fee2bbf22929d8154cd89ca92e89fa3d\">More about this bookmark</a>\n </span>"
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"title" : "Obama’s Legacy: Afghanistan",
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"content" : "by Garry Wills\n <br><br>\n\n\n<p><div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"width:470px\">\n <img style=\"margin:0\" src=\"http://184.73.187.38/media/img/blogimages/GettyImages_103051830_jpg_470x390_q85.jpg\" alt=\"\">\n\n <p>Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images</p>\n <p>A US soldier at a base in the Dand district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, July 23, 2010</p>\n\n</div>\n\n\n\n</div>\n</p>\n<p>Most presidents start wondering—or, more often, worrying—about their “legacy” well into their first term. Or, if they have a <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2009/nov/03/one-term-president/\">second term</a>, they worry even more feverishly about what posterity will think of them. Obama need not wonder about his legacy, even this early. It is already fixed, and in one word: Afghanistan. He took on what he made America’s longest war and what may turn out to be its <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jun/22/mcchrystal-does-not-matter/\">most disastrous one</a>.\n</p>\n<p>It is time for me to break a silence I have observed for over a year, against my better judgment. On June 30, 2009, I and eight other historians were invited to a <a href=\"http://politics.usnews.com/news/obama/articles/2009/07/15/obamas-secret-dinner-with-presidential-historians.html\">dinner with President Obama</a> and three of his staffers, to discuss what history could teach him about conducting the presidency. I was asked shortly after by several news media what went on there, and I replied that it was off the record. I have argued elsewhere that the imposition of secrecy to insure that the president gets “candid advice” is a cover for something else—making sure that what is said about the people’s business does not reach the people. But I went along this time, since the president said that he wanted this dinner to be a continuing thing, and I thought that revealing its first contents would jeopardize the continuation of a project that might be a source of information for him.\n</p>\n<p>But there has been no follow up on the first dinner, and certainly no sign that he learned anything from it. The only thing achieved has been the silencing of the main point the dinner guests tried to make—that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson. At least four or five of the nine stressed this. Nothing else rose to this level of seriousness or repeated concern.\n</p>\n<p>I will let others say what they want (some already have). But I will now reveal what I contributed that night. I told him that Richard Nixon had advised Ronald Reagan not to make too many public statements himself—let others speak on a daily basis, and save his appearances for big issues. Obama replied that he would speak less often in the future, but at the moment no one else in his administration could command the attention that he did. He added that Secretary Clinton had some ability to get the public’s ear, but she could not speak on domestic issues like the economy.\n</p>\n<p>When Obama said that he was surprised that the left was so critical of him, I said that it would continue to be critical so long as he issued <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/jun/22/power-grab/\">signing statements</a> before passage of a law. He asked which one I objected to, and I said that any are unconstitutional. At the end of the meal, he went around the table one time more to ask if there was a final bit of advice we would give. When my turn came, I joined those who had already warned him about an Afghanistan quagmire. I said that a government so corrupt and tribal and drug-based as Afghanistan’s could not be made stable. He replied that he was not naïve about the difficulties but he thought a realistic solution could be reached. I wanted to add “when pigs fly,” but restrained myself.\n</p>\n<p>Jonathan Alter, in <a href=\"http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/aug/19/why-has-he-fallen-short/\"><em>The Promise</em></a>, becomes almost rhapsodic when describing the President’s official <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/05/AR2009120501376.html\">Afghanistan review sessions</a>, to reach “the most methodical security decision in a generation.” But no one in those meetings said that the Afghanistan war was a <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26warlogs.html\">sure loser</a>, a thing not to be pursued in the first place. The only voice of dissent that we know of was Vice President Biden’s calling for a smaller troop increase (ten or fifteen thousand or so) and more drone attacks. The main point made by the historians he consulted was not referred to by Alter—one of the deleterious effects of governmental secrecy. The President might have been saved from the folly that will be his lasting legacy. But now we are ten years into a war that could drag on for another ten, and could catch in its trammels the next president, the way Vietnam tied up president after president. \n</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?a=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nyrblog?i=gbaX2jJnFbM:HcX0LVi0vgQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nyrblog/~4/gbaX2jJnFbM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p>From <em>Nature:</em></p>\r\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\">\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef013485bba0c1970c-popup\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Mos\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef013485bba0c1970c-250wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px;WIDTH:250px\"></a> Every day, Jittawadee Murphy unlocks a hot, padlocked room at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, to a swarm of malaria-carrying mosquitoes (<span>Anopheles stephensi</span>). She gives millions of larvae a diet of ground-up fish food, and offers the gravid females blood to suck from the bellies of unconscious mice — they drain 24 of the rodents a month. Murphy has been studying mosquitoes for 20 years, working on ways to limit the spread of the parasites they carry. Still, she says, she would rather they were wiped off the Earth. That sentiment is widely shared. Malaria infects some 247 million people worldwide each year, and kills nearly one million. Mosquitoes cause a huge further medical and financial burden by spreading yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, Chikungunya virus and West Nile virus. Then there's the pest factor: they form swarms thick enough to asphyxiate caribou in Alaska and now, as their numbers reach a seasonal peak, their proboscises are plunged into human flesh across the Northern Hemisphere.</p>\r\n<p>So what would happen if there were none? Would anyone or anything miss them? <span>Nature </span>put this question to scientists who explore aspects of mosquito biology and ecology, and unearthed some surprising answers.</p></blockquote>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html\">here.</a></p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F07%2Fecology-a-world-without-mosquitoes.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=-4SgoGnnWeo:Ae1_8CvFuWo:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "HUGH MASEKELA / “Stimela Mixtape”",
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"content" : "<img width=\"345\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"229\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela 53.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 53.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2053.jpg\"> <br><blockquote>“The coal train is a motherfucker.”<br><a href=\"http://www.mahala.co.za/art/curse-of-the-coal-train/\"><b>—Hugh Masekela</b></a><br></blockquote>We’ve ridden these rails before, been all over these tracks (see <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2008/12/15/hugh-masekela-%E2%80%9Dstimela%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">here</font></a> and <a href=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/2006/05/27/hugh-masekela-%E2%80%9Cstimela%E2%80%9D/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">here</font></a>), the difference this time we’re taking the whole journey following the song over the years, grasping the politics behind the tones and textures and not just simply enjoying the melody and rhythms.<br><b><br>“Stimela”</b> is both a curse and an analysis, a deep political shout out to and for the sufferers, and simultaneously one of, if not, “the” most requested song at Masekela concerts.<br><img width=\"342\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"245\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2049.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 49.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 49.jpg\"> <br>In February of 2010, Hugh Masekela premiered a major program he called Songs of Migration and of course <b>“Stimela” </b>was one of the centerpieces. <br><br>The train was the main mechanism of forced migration in South Africa. The coal trains were the dominant mode of transport ferrying conscripted black male labor to the gold and mineral mines in and around Johannesburg to do extremely dangerous work for extremely little pay.<br><img width=\"345\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"255\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2027.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 27.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 27.jpg\"> <br>The brilliance of Masekela’s song is that Masekela makes the train live through sound. Not just the choo-choo chug-a-lugging of the rhythm but also the whistles and the steam, the rocking, and, more importantly, the dislocation and emotional ripping of families and community, the separation of urban exploitation and toil from traditional land and cultural community. You don’t have to speak a South Africa language to understand the feeling and to feel the pain.<br><br>Hugh Masekela is an excellent instrumentalist. His horn crackles and notes burst forward in a passionate outpouring, but on <b>"Stimela"</b> it’s Hugh’s vocal work that aptly and brilliantly dominates. With his voice he does a creative call and response: he is both the laboring men cursing the train, and the train itself carrying the workers to an accursed circumstance. <br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2035.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 35.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 35.jpg\"> <br>Over the years, Masekela developed a verbal prologue that effectively contextualizes the song. Even people who have never heard about conscript labor under apartheid, even an audience of people who are truly ignorant of the conditions decried by the song, even those who know nothing are given a glimpse of what hell under earth looks like, and if not an intellectual understanding, certainly an emotional portrait.<br><br>The last version, the quarter hour rendering in concert at the Haymarket in Johanesburg is special because whereas <b>“Stimela”</b> is specifically grounded in the historic South Africa reality, Masekela has now opened the song to expressed solidarity with exploited laborers who work life-threatening jobs worldwide. Masekela is no less proud to be South African, but he now recognizes and communicates to us the urgency of solidarity in the face of global capitalism. <br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2016.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 16.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 16.jpg\"> <br>Yeah, I know, it seems like I’m trying to freight down a good song with a whole lot of extraneous political analysis. But that is precisely the importance of <b>“Stimela”</b>—the song is both emotionally potent and politically astute. Hugh Masekela’s prologue powerfully preaches both the politics of the situation and communicates the passion of those resisting dehumanization.<br><br>Most of the songs in the Songs of Migration program are South African but Masekela includes both an Afrikaans song (“Sarie Marais”) and a Yiddish folk song, both represent elements of the South African experience. Hugh is not blinded by racial essentialism. He knows that not just blacks were forced into migration. And <a href=\"http://www.mahala.co.za/art/curse-of-the-coal-train/\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">Hugh also knows</font></a> “migration is always the result of social and political upheaval, poverty, war and colonialism.”<br><br><b>“Stimela”</b> has developed into a conscious statement but it started as an unconscious expression at a low point in Hugh’s career. And I’m not exaggerating when I say “low point.” Listen to how Hugh describes his situation in the early seventies in the United States.<br><blockquote>"I felt like a total failure. I had destroyed my life with drugs and alcohol and could not get a gig or a band together. No recording company was interested in me and I had gone full circle from major success to the point where my life was worse than when I had left South Africa 11 years earlier."<br><a href=\"http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-09-coal-train-coming\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><b>—Hugh Masekela</b></font></a><br></blockquote>Early success had turned into a disaster as attempts to start his own record company failed and he was bedeviled by the majors shunning him because of his politics, which he did not see as separate from the core of his music. He ended up retreating to Woodstock, where he and some friends rented a house Masekela used as a refuge.<br><br>When he got to the place where he would be staying there was a piano. Masekela recounted the composing experience in an <a href=\"http://za.mg.co.za/article/2010-07-09-coal-train-coming\"><font color=\"#cc0000\">interview with Gwen Ansell</font></a>. <br><blockquote> "I ran to the piano and began to sing a song about a train that brought migrant labourers to work in the coal mines of Witbank, my birthplace." His friends said: "’That’s a mean song. When did you write it?’ I said, between phrases: ‘I didn’t write it. It’s coming in now.’ The song was Stimela. I sang it from beginning to end as if I had known it for a long time."<br> "For me," he said, "songs come like a tidal wave … At this low point, for some reason, the tidal wave that whooshed in on me came all the way from the other side of the Atlantic — from Africa, from home."<br></blockquote><img width=\"341\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"228\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2043.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 43.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 43.jpg\"> <br>By the mid-seventies Masekela left the States and returned to Africa. He went to Ghana, and to Guinea, and afterwards to other countries in Central and Southern Africa, and finally not until over thirty years later with the fall of apartheid, Hugh Masekela was able to return home to South Africa. He was no longer a young man.<br><br>Hugh could have retired—or, more probably, Hugh couldn’t retire. He was temperamentally incapable of withdrawing from the struggle. For Masekela the end of apartheid marked the beginning of the even harder job of reconstruction—phase two of life-long struggle. <br><br>In the post-apartheid era, conscious artists such as Masekela now dedicated their lives to pulling together the pieces of their history and passing it on to younger generations to assist in building a new society based in part on prior struggles and the culture that enabled older generations to survive unbelievable horrors.<br><br>Born April 4, 1939 in Witbank, South Africa, Hugh Masekela is now a dynamic septuagenarian force on South Africa’s cultural scene in the new millennium. He says he has a storehouse of ideas and memories he plans to bring to the stage and to the bandstand.<br><img width=\"338\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"363\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2019.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 19.jpg\" title=\"hugh masekela 19.jpg\"> <br>We are all blessed by this man’s vigor and steadfast commitment to cultural and consciousness. Enjoy these diverse and wide ranging readings of Hugh Masekela’s signature song <b>“Stimela.”</b><br><br><b>—Kalamu ya Salaam<br><br><br><u><i>“Stimela” Mixtape Playlist</i></u></b><br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela cover 01.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela cover 01.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%20cover%2001.jpg\"> <br>01 <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FBest-Hugh-Masekela-Century-Masters%2Fdp%2FB000HT366Y%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1280115070%26sr%3D8-3&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>The Best of Hugh Masekela Twentieth Century Masters </i></font></a><br>This is the first recorded version, 1974 on the now out of print album <i>I Am Not Afraid</i>. This version is available, however, on a number of compilations including the new <i>Hugh! The Best of Hugh Masekela</i>. <br><br><img vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela cover 02.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela cover 02.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%20cover%2002.jpg\"> <br>02 <b>“Stimela (Jazzanova Remix)”</b> - <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHugh-Best-Presented-Till-Bronner%2Fdp%2FB003NDS47M%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1280115259%26sr%3D8-37&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Hugh! The Best of Hugh Masekela </i></font></a><br>This is a new remix from the latest Hugh Masekela compilation that covers mostly Hugh’s recordings from the seventies but also includes a handful of new material such as this remix.<br><br><br><img width=\"337\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"224\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela 50.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela 50.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%2050.jpg\"> <br>03 <i>Concert with Paul Simon </i><br>I’m not sure but I think this is a bootleg from the Paul Simon Live in Africa DVD but I’m not certain, so I can’t supply a link or even a picture of the cover. <br><br><br><img width=\"299\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"299\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela cover 04.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela cover 04.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%20cover%2004.jpg\"> <br>04 <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHope-Hugh-Masekela%2Fdp%2FB00005YUFK%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1280115291%26sr%3D8-1&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Hope </i></font></a><br><br><img width=\"300\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela cover 05.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela cover 05.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%20cover%2005.jpg\"> <br>05 <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FGrazing-Grass-Best-Hugh-Masekela%2Fdp%2FB0012GMUWC%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1280115316%26sr%3D8-5&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Grazing In The Grass: The Best of Hugh Masekela </i></font></a><br>Be careful. There are a number of compilation albums and a number of different versions of <b>“Stimela.”</b> This version is available on this particular album, which is not to be confused with the “best of” album cited for the opening track 01.<br><br><img width=\"307\" vspace=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" height=\"307\" border=\"0\" title=\"hugh masekela cover 06.jpg\" alt=\"hugh masekela cover 06.jpg\" src=\"http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/hugh%20masekela%20cover%2006.jpg\"> <br>06 <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FLive-Market-Theatre-2CD-SET%2Fdp%2FB000R9YE56%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dmusic%26qid%3D1280115368%26sr%3D8-2&tag=breathoflife-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325\"><font color=\"#cc0000\"><i>Live At The Market Theater </i></font></a><br><br><br><br>"
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"title" : "Laver's Law of Fashion",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Laver\">James Laver</a> was a museum curator for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from the ‘30s through the ‘50s. He was also a fashion theorist and historian who conceived Laver’s Law — an attempt to make sense of the fashion trend lifecycle.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>Here is Laver’s Law:</p>\n\n\n<table cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" border=\"0\" width=\"100%\">\n<tr>\n<td width=\"150\" style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Indecent</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">10 years before its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Shameless</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">5 years before its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Outré (Daring)</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">1 year before its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left;font-weight:bold\">Smart</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left;font-weight:bold\">Current Fashion</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Dowdy</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">1 year after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Hideous</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">10 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Ridiculous</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">20 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Amusing</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">30 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Quaint</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">50 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Charming</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">70 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Romantic</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">100 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;border-bottom:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">Beautiful</td>\n<td style=\"font-size:13px;padding:5px;border-top:1px solid #e8e8e8;border-bottom:1px solid #e8e8e8;text-align:left\">150 years after its time</td>\n</tr>\n</table>\n\n\t<p><br>\nStanley Marcus, the former president of Neiman Marcus, recounts in his memoir <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Minding-Store-Stanley-Marcus/dp/157441139X\">Minding the Store</a> how Laver’s Law was used by Neiman Marcus clothes buyers in the late 60’s. There was a heated internal debate on whether the trend for that next year would still be the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniskirt\">mini skirt</a> (which was the current fashion) or the longer <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniskirt#1970s\">midi skirt</a>. Marcus asked Laver point blank if the mini skirt was dead. Laver told him that the mini skirt had at least another 2 years to go — against expert opinion at the time.</p>\n\n\n<blockquote>His forecast was right, the midi was a complete flop, many women continued to wear the miniskirt, and those who couldn’t or wouldn’t make up their minds went into the pants suit. Pants were bound to come, but the skirt-length controversy made pants acceptable at an accelerated rate.</blockquote>\n\n\t<p>The brilliance of this timeline is that it can be applied to nearly all creative mediums — not just fashion but also art, design, architecture, and even music. <strong>Smart</strong>, or Current Fashion, doesn’t have a particular time frame attached to it. Something can be smart for 1 year or a even few years.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>Think back to some of the trendy things of the past and you’ll see how it applies: <a href=\"http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/090122/Apple-Steve-Jobs/Rainbow-Imacs_l.jpg\">candy colored iMacs</a>, <a href=\"http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs25/f/2008/178/2/c/Victorian_Wallpaper_1_by_MJK_Stock.jpg\">Victorian wallpaper</a>,<a href=\"http://www.fonthaus.com/showings/emigre/Igif/EM21164.gif\"> Emigre fonts</a>, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM72iWami9M\">Disco</a>, <a href=\"http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/images/1915-1920/1920_3058.jpg\">Sears homes of the 1920’s</a>, <a href=\"http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/category.jsp?_DARGS=/urban/catalog/common/highlited_itemcount.jsp_A&_DAV=false&itemCount=80&navCount=&navAction=jump&id=TRENDS_PREPPY&100712trends\">Preppy clothes</a>, <a href=\"http://www.panic.com/blog/2009/12/panic-retro-art/\">Atari video game box covers</a>, and <a href=\"http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=388\">Braun products of the late-50’s early 60’s</a>.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>Hitting that sweet spot around Daring and Smart when you’re trying to design, create or sell something is crucial. There’s even a market for Dowdy too, right? Just look around at your local mall or shopping center. Just remember that in a few years it’ll start to look bad. In 10 years it’ll look <span>REALLY</span> bad. Then, after some time, it will be appreciated — or even revered — again. I take comfort that something like Comic Sans (theoretically) will have a shot at being beautiful in 100 years time.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?a=lAyjVK-SOrM:KT7SvqRU1QU:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?a=lAyjVK-SOrM:KT7SvqRU1QU:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/37signals/beMH?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "5 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT AFRICA",
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">By Tolu Ogunlesi</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"></span></strong><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01348589cc59970c-popup\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"></a></span></strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">1.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Africa their Africa</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01348589cc59970c-popup\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Africa\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01348589cc59970c-320wi\" style=\"BORDER-BOTTOM:black 0px solid;BORDER-LEFT:black 0px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px;BORDER-TOP:black 0px solid;BORDER-RIGHT:black 0px solid\" title=\"Africa\"></a>When Western tourists talk about Africa somehow it seems to me that what they really mean is East and Southern Africa, places like Namibia and Kenya and Botswana and parts of Uganda where you will find safaris and zebras and elephants and lakes in abundance. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">When I think of Tourists' Africa I almost never think of Nigeria. </font><a href=\"http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mUO2rh_ht1wJ:travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_928.html+nigeria+travel+alert&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">Tourists stay away from a country like Nigeria</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> – those masses of foreigners to be seen at the arrival terminal of the Lagos International Airport (MMIA) are diplomats and NGO-types and oil workers and journalists and researchers, and maybe spies. (And of course the occasional ‘Nigerian letter’ victim desperately hoping to recover a lost fortune). For most of them there will be the lure of money to be made / earned – as hardship allowance or crazy business profit. Nigeria is one country where foreigners come to make money, not fritter it away on guided tours and lakeside resorts. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">In the Congo they will be aid workers and diamond-seeking businessmen and gorilla savers; ditto the Sudan (minus the gorilla-savers and businessmen). In Liberia and Sierra Leone they will be IMF and World Bank officials. In Guinea Bissau they will mostly be <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/09/drugstrade\">cocaine merchants and US drug enforcement agents</a>.\n</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">2.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">i-frica</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">If Africa didn’t exist, the world – the West, actually – would have had to invent it. If they failed, then China would have succeeded. Indeed the anthropologist and Africa specialist John Ryle </font><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/01/africa\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">wrote</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\">, in his review of Richard Dowden’s <em>Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles</em>, in the London Guardian: </font></span><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">“In an important sense, “Africa” is a western invention. Despite attempts by visionaries to promote unity among the states that inherited dominion from Europe's retreating empires, African politicians have never paid anything more than lip-service to the pan-African ideal.”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">But we could even take that concept of invention to the extreme; beyond the invention of African "unity" to the invention of Africa itself.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Think of a planet without Africa, without what British journalist and author of 3 important books about the continent, Michela Wrong described (speaking on behalf of all foreign journalists) as “Africa’s various trouble spots, our professional bread and butter.”<span> </span></font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span></span>I repeat this: If Africa didn’t exist the West would have had to invent it. If Africa didn’t exist, where would all that aid money go? Saving Europe’s poor? Or bailing out Greece and Iceland? Certainly not; it would have gone instead towards providing grants for publishers and novels churning out books about an 'imaginary continent of Africa', where the only thing that worked would be the dysfunction. If Africa didn't exist, what we today know as Sci-fi would be set on a continent known as 'Africa'.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">What would the slave plantations of the New World have done in the absence of Africa? What would Mungo Park have done? David Livingstone? Lord Lugard? Lord Palmerston? Ryszard Kapuscinski? Bob Geldof? What would the World Bank and IMF be without Africa? </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">If Africa didn’t exist, Steve Jobs would have come to the rescue with the i-frica. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"></font></span> </p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">3.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">The epidemic of the angry African</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Ever since the arrival of television Africa has been greatly defined by its children. Kwarshiorkoed Biafran kids – with bloated bellies and flies in the eyes – shocked the world in the final years of the 1960s, and galvanized a massive humanitarian operation, the modern beginnings of the billion-dollar charity industry. A decade and half later the theatre of pity moved to Ethiopia. Bono and Bob Geldof (as we know them today) were born. The hungry African child motif took its place as the unifying metaphor for a continent of grossly disparate parts. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">And then in the 1990s the helpless African child got tough competition, in the form of the child soldier. In place of the begging bowl, the African child now held a Kalashnikov. There’s an entire genre of literature built around these children; books like Chris Abani’s <em>Song for Night</em>, Ahmadou Kourouma’s <em>Allah Is Not Obliged</em>, Uzodimma Iweala’s <em>Beasts of No Nation</em>; Ishmael Beah’s <em>A Long Way Gone</em>, China Keitetsi’s <em>Child Soldier: Fighting For My Life.</em></font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Today, decades later, another image is emerging, that will both reflect and define the image of the continent in the years to come. It is the angry African. She is everything that the child victim is not: educated, privileged, in many cases domiciled in the west. She is angry at the portrayals of Africa by Western media. She foams at the mouth when she sees the <a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1993805,00.html\">TIME Magazine essay</a> on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, has a JPEG file of the Economist’s famous “The Hopeless Continent” cover on her memory stick; can quote Binyavanga Wainana’s essay <a href=\"http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1\">“How to write about Africa”</a> line by rib-cracking line; and is an avid reader and commentator on blogs and websites, mind an automated search engine programmed with one word: "Africa". </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">The angry African is as helpless about her anger as the hungry African child is about her hunger. But unlike the hunger the angry African’s anger is justified; every bit of it. She has taken the AK47 from the child soldier, emptied it of its lead and filled its cartridges with ink instead.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">True, African anger at Western portrayal is not new. Long before now there was Achebe (to mention only one example) and his trenchant critique of Joseph Conrad. There was the postcolonial anger of the sixties and seventies. So what’s new? The internet, maybe, which has succeeded in multiplying access to the instigators of the anger as well as to means of expressing it. If there were only a handful of angry Africans before now (mostly sequestered in Ivory Towers), today there are armies of them, let loose on the internet. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Backed up by blogs and Twitter and Facebook, angry Africans can wield their anger effortlessly. Beware, all you misinterpreters of the continent. Being well-intentioned will probably no longer save you. There’s a lot to learn from what recently happened to TIME Africa Bureau chief, Alex Perry, </font><a href=\"http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/07/02/times-alex-perry-responds-to-fair/\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">here</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\">.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"></font></span> </p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">4.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Africa is the past – and the future</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Ever heard of the Rift Valley? It’s the place in East Africa where scientists tell us humans first learned to walk on two feet, and from where the humans who today occupy other parts of the world commenced their wandering. The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine 2009 summer issue had as its lead </font><a href=\"http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/jm-ledgard/exodus\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">a fascinating piece titled: “We’re all African now.”</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">In it J.M. Ledgard writes: “According to potassium-argon dating, hominids lived here for 900,000 years. They made handaxes which they used to butcher the hippos, zebras and baboons they hunted and scavenged… The Kenyan anthropologist Louis Leakey uncovered a Homo erectus skull here in the 1940s; the brain cavity was disappointingly small. There must have been grunts, gestures with stones, blood, the sky blotted with vultures, ape children kept back in the darkness…”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Ledgard goes on to declare: “We are all Africans. We originated in Africa. That is proved by the continent’s rich genetic inheritance. Africans are more diverse than the rest of humanity put together, because they are drawn from the pool of humans who did not leave…”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Africa is indeed the world’s past. In its darkest recesses lies overwhelming shame – the shame of slavery, of colonialism, of neocolonialism – </font></span><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> fuelling the guilt of the world. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">But Africa is also the future. <a href=\"http://www.eurodad.org/uploadedFiles/Whats_New/Reports/China_in_Africa.pdf\">Ask China</a>. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01348589ce4b970c-popup\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"African-submarine-fibre-optic-cables\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef01348589ce4b970c-320wi\" style=\"BORDER-BOTTOM:black 0px solid;BORDER-LEFT:black 0px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px;BORDER-TOP:black 0px solid;BORDER-RIGHT:black 0px solid\" title=\"African-submarine-fibre-optic-cables\"></a> </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Ask Europe in a few decades, when its streets will teem with pensioners, beneath whose combined weight economies will totter; when it’d be easier to find a mosquito in Germany, than a teenage German.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">55 percent of the world’s cobalt is in Africa, as are 15 percent of the world’s arable land, 16 percent of its gold, 89 percent of its platinum, and a sixth of its population. Add China and India and Western Europe, the resulting landmass would still be smaller than Africa.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">There is </font><a href=\"http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">an invasion of fibre-optic cabling</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> across huge swatches of the continent, that is certain to smash much of the invisible ceiling that has kept Africa on the ground floor while the world inches towards the penthouse. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">It is a fact that it is now much harder than ever before to be a dictator on the continent. Vicious wars have ended in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Angola. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Africa, the scar of yesterday (In 2001 Tony Blair called the African situation “a scar on the conscience of the world”) is also the potential star of tomorrow. It</font></span><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\"> is where the guilt of the world will be assuaged.</font></span></font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"></span> </p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">5.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><strong><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">How to read about Africa:</font></span></strong></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">I have <a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/03/spilling-ink-on-africas-fires.html\">written before about the 'ink-attracting' nature of Africa’s many fires</a>. Africa has turned the world into firefighters; firefighters with cash and ink in their hoses. What many do not bother to realize is that there are as many “experts” from within as from without.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">In a You-Tube Q & A session with readers, </font><a href=\"http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/westerners-on-white-horses/\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was asked</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> why his “columns about Africa almost always feature black Africans as victims, and white foreigners as their saviors.” </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">His interesting response: “The problem that I face — my challenge as a writer — in trying to get readers to care about something like Eastern Congo, is that frankly, the moment a reader sees that I’m writing about Central Africa, for an awful lot of them, that’s the moment to turn the page. It’s very hard to get people to care about distant crises like that. One way of getting people to read at least a few grafs in is to have some kind of a foreign protagonist, some American who they can identify with as a bridge character.”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">So there – we meet the lazy American reader who cannot engage with a piece unless he sees either of the following: a “Donate” button or a White Character created by a White Expert. </font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">It is important for Americans interested in learning about Africa to read not just the Western interpreters of Africa but also the Africans who daily spill ink about a continent they care very much about and probably know more about than many of the foreign experts ever will. Please read the Nicholas Kristofs -- but also make sure to read the </font><a href=\"http://thenationonlineng.net/web3/columnist/sunday/tatalo-alamu/index.1.html\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">Tatalo Alamus</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> and the </font><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-IXu-sw0Vk\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">Reuben</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\"> </font><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuben_Abati\"><font color=\"#800080\" face=\"Calibri\">Abatis</font></a><font face=\"Calibri\">.</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">In his 2007 TED lecture Chris Abani said: “If you want to know about Africa, read our literature. And not just Things Fall Apart, because that would be like saying I've read, Gone With the Wind, and so I know everything about America.”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">Speaking in 2008, author of <em>Things Fall Apart</em> Chinua Achebe told Transition Magazine: “The last five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and now the time has come for Africans to tell their own stories.”</font></span></p>\n<p style=\"MARGIN:0in 0in 6pt\"><span style=\"LINE-HEIGHT:115%;FONT-SIZE:10pt\"><font face=\"Calibri\">They have since started telling those stories. You only need to pay a little more attention. </font></span></p></div>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F07%2F5-things-you-didnt-know-about-africa.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=mBGOGPN9SbU:BKWnwyW0Llg:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "Via <a href=\"http://www.schneier.com/blog\">Bruce Schneier's</a>, an interesting paper in <em>PNAS</em> on false positives and looking for <a href=\"http://www.pnas.org/content/106/6/1716.full\">terrorists</a>. Even if the assumptions of profiling are valid, and the target-group really is more likely to be terrorists, <em>it still isn't a good policy.</em> Because the inter-group difference in the proportion of terrorists is small relative to the absolute scarcity of terrorists in the population, profiling means that you hugely over-sample the people who match the profile. Although it magnifies the hit-rate, it also magnifies the false positive rate, and because a search carried out on someone matching the profile is one not carried out elsewhere, it increases the chance of missing someone.<br><br>In fact, if you profile, you need to balance this by searching non-profiled people more often.<br><br><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/23/deepwater-horizon-oil-rig-alarms\">The operators of <em>Deepwater Horizon</em></a> disabled a lot of alarms in order to stop false alarms waking everyone up at all hours. Shock! In some ways, though, that was better than <a href=\"http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/03/alarm_fatigue_linked_to_heart_patients_death_at_mass_general/\">this story about a US hospital</a>, from comp.risks. There, a patient died when an alarm was missed. Why? Too many alarms, beeps, and general noise, and people had turned off some devices' alarms in order to get rid of them.<br><br>Unlike Transocean, they had a solution - remove the off switches, because that way, they'll damn well <em>have</em> to listen. At least the oil people didn't think that would work. Of course, they didn't think that if your warning system goes off so often that nobody can sleep when nothing unusual is going on, there's something wrong with the system.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5467119-153024082035195121?l=yorkshire-ranter.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"width:272px\"><img title=\"seinfeld\" src=\"http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/seinfeld.jpg\" alt=\"Getty images\" width=\"262\" height=\"174\"><p>Getty images</p></div>\n<p><em>By Ryan McNeely</em></p>\n<p>Avinash Dixit (Princeton Professor, emeritus) has published a <a href=\"http://www.princeton.edu/~dixitak/home/Elaine.pdf\">charming paper</a> examining the economics of “<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sponge\">The Sponge</a>” episode of <em>Seinfeld</em>, where the contraceptive sponge is being taken off the market and Elaine is suddenly confronted with a finite supply of sponges. Dixit explains that “Every time she dates a new man, which happens very frequently, she has to consider a new issue: Is he “spongeworthy”? The purpose of this article is to quantify this concept of spongeworthiness.” The paper is extremely technical, but uses familar concepts and pop culture references to explain quantitatively rigorous economic decision-making functions. And here I think we can <a href=\"http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/07/21/the-economics-of-seinfeld/\">learn another lesson</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>The idea for the research came about as Prof. Dixit, a fan of the show, recently caught a rerun of the sponge episode. The author of “Investment Under Uncertainty” decided to draft his paper and showed it to a few colleagues. <strong>He held off on releasing it</strong>, but since publishing it on his site says the reaction has been “entirely favorable.” <strong>Traffic on his site indicates that since he published the Seinfeld paper last month, it has been downloaded “100 times more than any of my serious work.”</strong></p></blockquote>\n<p>This doesn’t surprise me in the least. I had never read one of Prof. Dixit’s papers until now, and I’m a student studying economics and public policy at the school where he taught. More academics should in fact incorporate references to real-world or fictional examples of the phenomena they are describing in order to enhance the interest and effectiveness of their work. Note that Dixit did not “dumb down” any of the actual economic modeling in his paper, he simply explained the models succinctly using an episode of <em>Seinfeld</em>.</p>\n<p>Deep down, Dixit understands the inaccessibility of most academic work: “Sometimes, I sit and read all these academic papers…They can be extremely long, 70 pages or more. I sit there, and I think of Elaine when she was watching ‘The English Patient’ and she just busts out that it’s too long. Sometimes, I can relate.” I’m glad Dixit overcame his initial hesitancy to publish a paper that would appeal to a mass audience, because now I’ve learned something. People can’t learn from a paper if they don’t read it.</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=QTakjNHJAQc:t5YCNhBn3sI:H0mrP-F8Qgo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/QTakjNHJAQc\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Could a vacuum tube computer be fast?",
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"content" : "<pre>I don’t understand why pre-transistor computers were so slow. It seems\nlike they could have run a thousand times faster than they did, at\nspeeds comparable to personal computers of the 1980s, in merely\ndesk-sized cases, for prices lower than some vacuum-tube computers\nthat actually existed.\n\n(Edited from my comments on [a blog post by Mark VandeWettering] [4].)\n\nI’ve been thinking a lot about tubes recently. The 955 acorn tube came\nout in 1933 and could amplify a 500MHz signal then; so why were tube\ncomputers so slow? You’d think that would allow you to run a\nbit-serial full-adder at at least a hundred megabits per second, but\nactual machines of the 1950s ran at more like a hundred kilobits. I’m\npretty ignorant about vacuum tubes and microwave circuit design, so it\ncould be something really obvious.\n\nThere were entire *computers*, like the LGP-30, that had under 100\nvacuum tubes, and even fairly fast computers like the Bendix G-15 that\nhad under 500. So I’m not proposing they should have built *bigger*\ncomputers. I’m proposing they should have built *smaller* ones in\nwhich the tubes switched more often, and I don’t know why they\ndidn’t. Was it a lack of theory? (As Alan Yates points out in the\ncomment thread, asynchronous logic is still relatively underdeveloped\neven today.) A lack of fast storage devices? (There’s no way you could\nget megabits per second out of the drums of the time.)\n\nMicrowave-frequency circuitry built out of vacuum tubes — with coaxial\ntransmission lines of carefully matched lengths, etc. — wasn’t a new\nproblem in the late 1950s. There had been radar systems of some\ncomplexity since the 1930s, which I believe is what the 933 was\ndeveloped for.\n\nDrum computers (like the IBM 650 and 704, the LGP-30, and the G-15)\nand delay-line computers (like the ACE and UNIVAC) very commonly\nworked bit-serially, which eliminates the carry path length problem in\ne.g. 32-bit-wide adders. There’s no obvious reason why you couldn’t\nstore the bits of a word on adjacent tracks of a drum instead of\nbit-serially on a single track, but I think it was very atypical to do\nso.\n\nThere were some tubes which could store multiple bits in one tube; I\nthink Dekatrons, which could store almost 4 bits, were the most common\nof these. And of course there were the 1024-bit Williams tubes. But\nboth Dekatrons and Williams tubes were *really* slow, around 10 000ns,\nthe Dekatrons because they’re gas tubes and the Williams tubes, well,\nI don’t know why.\n\nROM lookup tables are labor-intensive to make by hand, but fairly\ninexpensive and very reliable; for N words of M bits, you need about\nNM/2 diodes (semiconductor diodes were used in radios before 1910, and\ngood, cheap ones were available from about 1950) and 2M decoders of √N\noutputs each (ideally, M of them sourcing current on their outputs and\nM sinking it, but otherwise you can use an extra transistor or triode\nper output on M of them). The Apollo Guidance Computer used “rope\nmemory”, which I think used a single N-way decoder instead of 2M\n√N-way decoders, and ferrite cores instead of diodes, but the\nprinciple was the same.\n\n(You may be able to dispense with the decoders if you have an\nalready-decoded input handy, like the output of a Dekatron. I’ve been\ntrying to figure out how hard it would be to build an arbitrary\nfinite-state machine of up to ten states out of a Dekatron and some\nhandmade diode ROM. I think you’d need at least ten more amplifiers\n(e.g. power transistors or triodes) to pull the new cathode of the\nDekatron below zero, and you might need an additional Dekatron to\nlatch the old output during the transition. But Dekatrons are really\nslow, anyway.)\n\nAlan Yates suggested prototyping such a device in 7400-series TTL\nintegrated circuits. The idea of prototyping in ICs is a good one, but\nI think 7400 might be the wrong series to use; even a 74S04 typically\nhas a 3ns propagation delay, which means that you’re going to go too\nmuch above 300MHz even with a single-gate path-length, and a plain\n7404 is quite a bit worse. Also, they’re a lot less finicky about\nlow-current EMI than CMOS and, presumably, than vacuum tubes, since\nboth IGFETs and “Audions” are basically capacitive-input devices, and\nvacuum tubes typically require quite high voltages, so they might not\nflush out certain issues. (If electromagnetic noise was present, it\nmight screw up a vacuum-tube or CMOS machine, but not a TTL machine.)\n\nUnfortunately, even modern 74HC04s seem to be pretty slow, like 8ns:\napparently 8× slower than the 955 triode from 1933. (But that 500MHz\nnumber probably means it can linearly amplify a 500MHz sine wave; can\nyou get it to do something noticeably nonlinear a billion times a\nsecond? I have no idea. It might take a little longer to saturate\nit. Turing’s ACE notes give a number of 8ns, but I suspect that the\nACE, like most vacuum tube machines, wasn’t built with acorn tubes.)\n\nI don’t know if you’ve seen this, but Tom Jennings designed and, I\nthink, started building a small, very slow tube computer in the last\nfew years, called the [Universal Machine] [0]. I think he might not\nhave been doing much on it lately.\n\nIt seems like, for machines operating at microwave frequencies,\n*electrical* delay lines might be superior to latches and cores for\nregisters. Apparently [you can buy 500 feet of cable-TV cable for\nUS$40] [1] now, and I think the prices on alibaba.com can go down to a\nquarter of that. At 1Gbps (at which speed you’d have to splice in some\namplifiers if you use ordinary TV cable) that would be about 600 bits,\nand at 100Mbps it would be about 60 bits. A few spools of that would\ngive you some pretty serious register capacity.\n\nTuring [actually considered electric delay lines] [2] for the ACE,\nalthough his notes suggest he was considering doing FDM (presumably\nCW?) around 30GHz in a copper waveguide, not just dumping unmodulated\npulses one at a time into a bunch of coaxial cables. His survey table\nshows them as better than acoustic delay lines in every way, often by\nan order of magnitude, except for being twice as expensive. Yet he\ndevotes 11 pages of the proposal to explaining how to make acoustic\ndelay lines work, and nine words to electric delay lines.\n\nSome intuition about how this could work might come from “WireWorld”,\nwhich is a toy, a cellular automaton for digital logic; being a CA, it\nincorporates transmission-line delay naturally. A few years back I\nbuilt a bit-serial full-adder in it, but with the propagation delays\nof the gates and the transmission delays, it took about 21 generations\nfor the carry to cycle back around and be ready for the next bit. But\neach gate could process a pair of bits every 4 generations\nsmoothly. (As you can imagine, this took quite a bit of tweaking of\nthe transmission line lengths.)\n\nIt turned out that you could feed five bit-interleaved pairs of\nnumbers through it, bit-serially, and it would correctly produce their\nfive sums bit-interleaved on its output.\n\nI doubt I’ll ever work with a logic family in real life where that\ntrick works in exactly that way. Signals in real cables aren’t pure,\nsingle-directional, and self-reshaping; they’re fuzzy and get fuzzier\nas they travel, they slosh back and forth in the transmission line\nwhenever they encounter the slightest change in impedance, they ring\nin weird places, they jump from one line to another, they glitch from\ntiming skew, and so on. But it was still inspirational.\n\nAnyway, so there’s probably something I don’t understand that makes\nthis a lot harder than it sounds.\n\n[0]: <a href=\"http://wps.com/J/UM/\">http://wps.com/J/UM/</a>\n[1]: <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/ColeMan-Cable-92003-45-08-500RG6U-CoaxCable/dp/B0013AZ4WA/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1267507841&sr=8-16\">http://www.amazon.com/ColeMan-Cable-92003-45-08-500RG6U-CoaxCable/dp/B0013AZ4WA/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1267507841&sr=8-16</a>\n[2]: <a href=\"http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/p/p01/P01-047.html\">http://www.alanturing.net/turing_archive/archive/p/p01/P01-047.html</a> "memo “Proposed Electronic Calculator”, by Alan Turing, probably from 1945, p.47, online thanks to the Turing Archive for the History of Computing"\n[4]: <a href=\"http://brainwagon.org/2010/02/28/tubes-who-uses-tubes-anymore/comment-page-1/\">http://brainwagon.org/2010/02/28/tubes-who-uses-tubes-anymore/comment-page-1/</a>\n\n</pre>"
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XimOh2AYlL8/TECx-sMcU5I/AAAAAAAAFqY/jWz3ALHdjU8/s1600/butt_1024x768.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:320px;height:240px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XimOh2AYlL8/TECx-sMcU5I/AAAAAAAAFqY/jWz3ALHdjU8/s320/butt_1024x768.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><blockquote></blockquote>The mainstream media's cultural anthropology of Negro staples is something that always irks me. Every 3-4 months, some clueless moron in New York will suddenly \"discover\" something about black folks that we've known for years, and trivialize it to the point that you'd swear you were watching an episode of National Geographic. We've already seen the media go in on <a href=\"http://www.averagebro.com/2010/03/yet-more-bad-news-for-single-black.html\">The Lonely Black Woman Industrial Complex</a>™ this year. Now, the New York Daily News, after oh, only a few thousand years, discovers that women of color have bigger butts, and men (of all colors) happen to like them. Shocker! <br><br>On a related note: the sun is hot, the sky is blue, grass is green, and Keyshia Cole's voice is like a dog whistle. Anyways...<blockquote>Make way! Big bums are shaping up to be the summer of 2010's hottest trend.<br><br>Serena Williams reveals that it took her years to accept her curvy backside, joining other full-figured celebrities embracing their broader bottoms this beach season. Kim Kardashian says she finally appreciates her round rear. Madonna's daughter Lourdes loves shorts that make your butt look big. And a new book celebrates bulging booties.<br><br>Not since Sir Mix-a-Lot's 1992 hit \"Baby Got Back\" has so much praise been paid to the posterior.<br><br>Williams admits that it wasn't until she turned 23 that she realized she'd never have the same shape as her sister Venus. \"I'm super-curvy,\" the 28-year-old tennis titan says in the August issue of Harper's Bazaar. \"I have big boobs and this massive butt.<br><br>Even tiny-tushed women are coming out in support of heftier hinds. In the same issue of Harper's Bazaar, Cameron Diaz admits to envy when asked if her butt was a career-booster. \"That's funny, because most booties that propel girls are usually the bigger booties,\" says the 37-year-old actress. \"I have a little tiny one, but it is, nonetheless, juicy.\"<br><br>And Rapper Ice-T's wife, 31-year-old swimsuit model Nicole (Coco) Austin, has been making waves for baring her huge bum on the beach in a thong bikini.<br><br>Before giving birth to a son last week, Dannii Minogue, a judge on Britain's \"X-Factor,\" found her fanny expanding. But her ex-rugby player boyfriend, Kris Smith, didn't mind.<br><br>\"Even when I moan, ‘My butt's getting bigger,' he says, ‘It's beautiful, I love every bit,' \" the 38-year old actress/singer told InStyle UK.</blockquote>This is just some downright shoddy reportage, even for the NY Daily News. And for the record, I thought white folks discovered big butts were attractive about 10 years ago when J-Lo blew up. Guess I was wrong.<br><br>I think it's sorta odd, curious that this new \"trend\" uses women of, uhhh, shall we say, dubiously obtained booties as evidence. Anyone with common sense can look at Ice T's wife <s>Coke Ho</s> CoCo and tell she's had plenty of help from surgeons. Depending on whom you ask, the same applies to Kardashian, a woman who seems intent on mangling her face until she eventually looks like Lil' Kim. That's Lil' Kim circa 2010 of course, not the pug nosed, brownskinned, and far prettier Kimberly Jones, circa 1995. And using a pregnant British woman who probably will try and lose that excess a$$ the moment she drops that baby as a case study? Wigga please.<br><br>Seriously, NY Daily News, are ya'll actually calling women's natural body types a \"Hot Summer Trend\"? F'real?<br><br>Fail.<br><br><b>Question: Do you find the New York Daily News' sudden, shocking discovery of Apple Bottoms appalling, trivial, or merely indicative of the lack of basic understanding of people of color by some in the media?</b><br><br><a href=\"http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/fashion/2010/07/12/2010-07-12_rearing_to_go_big_butts_are_summer_2010s_hottest_trend.html#ixzz0thAPD5k7\">Rearing to go! Big butts are summer 2010's hottest trend [NYDailyNews]</a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2696165851183554268-297595641924856205?l=www.averagebro.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "From the archive, 16 July 1966: Colour bar ends at all London stations",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.8/99500?ns=guardian&pageName=From+the+archive%2C+16+July+1966%3A+Colour+bar+ends+at+all+London+stations%3AArticle%3A1427366&ch=From+the+Guardian&c3=Guardian&c4=Race+issues+%28News%29%2CRail+transport+%28News%29%2CUnions+%28UK%29%2CTransport+policy%2CTransport+UK+news&c5=Policy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Eric+Silver&c7=10-Jul-16&c8=1427366&c9=Article&c10=&c11=From+the+Guardian&c13=From+the+archive+%28series%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FFrom+the+Guardian%2FRace+issues\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Originally published in the Guardian on 16 July 1966</p><p>The colour bar at Euston station and St Pancras goods station ended yesterday and Mr Asquith Xavier, the West Indian guard who brought it into the open, is to be offered the job he was refused.</p><p>Mr Leslie Leppington, British Railways divisional manager, announced after final negotiations with local leaders of the National Union of Railwaymen that no grade would in future be closed to coloured workers anywhere in the London division. He was prepared to appoint a properly qualified coloured stationmaster, and volunteered to resign if discrimination could ever again be proved.</p><p>The abandonment of a colour bar, which is acknowledged to have persisted for 12 years at Euston, was reinforced yesterday by the British Railways Board.</p><p>Mrs Barbara Castle, Minister of Transport, said in a written answer to Mrs Lena Jeger (Lab. Holborn and St Pancras S.) that the board had \"re-emphasised to all concerned throughout the undertaking the need for vigilance to prevent discrimination, and for using every endeavour to resolve… difficulties when they do arise.\"</p><p>The Euston colour bar was first made public last weekend by Mr James Prendergast, an NUR official at Marylebone. Mr Xavier, one of his members and an experienced guard, had received a letter telling him that he had been rejected for a job at Euston because of the ban on coloured men.</p><p>Guards at Euston earn anything from £10 to £15 a week more than those elsewhere. The ban covered guards and porters. At St Pancras goods station it was limited to porters and all the supervisory grades to which porters could be promoted.</p><p>Mr Leppington said yesterday that he had been assured by union representatives at Euston that Mr Xavier would receive the same welcome there as any other new guard. He was writing immediately to Mr Xavier offering him the job. Mr Xavier went into hospital this week with a stomach ulcer, but the Euston job will be available for him as soon as his present post has been filled.</p><p>The Standing Conference of West Indian Organisations last night welcomed Mr Leppington's announcement, but expressed scepticism about whether it really meant the end of every type of colour prejudice in British Rail. The conference called for an independent inquiry into discrimination in all nationalised industries and in London Transport.</p><p>Complaints of discrimination constantly reach the Race Relations Board and such bodies as the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination. They are usually very hard to prove. <strong>Eric Silver</strong></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/race\">Race issues</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/rail-transport\">Rail transport</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/tradeunions\">Trade unions</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/transport\">Transport policy</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/transport\">Transport</a></li></ul></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Ftheguardian%2F2010%2Fjul%2F16%2Farchive-colour-bar-ends-at-all-london-1966\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "new developments in AI",
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"content" : "Thanks to popular culture, we have a good idea of what to expect when “strong” AI arrives. Machines attain consciousness? Prepare to be harvested as food. Detroit introduces talking cars? “Hello, Kit“.\nWhat to expect in the near-term is less clear. While strong AI still lies safely beyond the Maes-Garreau horizon1 (a vanishing point, perpetually fifty [...]"
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"title" : "A Genuine Taste For It",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_weVvsG8I/AAAAAAAAHkQ/RN7UySxrGt0/s1600/Manhunter1.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:256px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_weVvsG8I/AAAAAAAAHkQ/RN7UySxrGt0/s400/Manhunter1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>You should probably know that I’m a pretty dull person with relatively boring taste in things that can sometimes fall right in line with the mainstream. I think CHEERS is the best sitcom ever, to me THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY is the funniest film the Farrelly Brothers have ever made and I may as well admit that in all honesty when it comes to films based on the novels of Thomas Harris I prefer Jonathan Demme’s THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS to Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER. Demme’s film was justifiably deemed a classic so quickly that it’s allowed the hardcore auteurists out there to pick up the slack in favor of the earlier film. It’s probably helped that Mann’s career has come a long way in the past few decades while Demme’s career has gone in other directions away from the mainstream, clearly showing that the man’s interests lie elsewhere (speaking for myself I can respect someone who marches to their own drummer but still feel that Demme’s post-SILENCE career has to be one of the biggest disappointments of the past twenty years of film). THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS was of course a massive hit (domestic gross: $130 million), won five Oscars including Best Picture and so much of it has seeped into pop culture that its most famous elements have long since crossed the line into parody. In contrast, MANHUNTER, based on the novel “Red Dragon”, is the more sedate procedural, critically respected but a box office disappointment (domestic gross: $8.6 million), eschewing blatant serial killer thrills for instead attempting to truly examine how such things get under your skin and doesn’t necessarily deliver in the way you might expect. It also offers a presentation of its most famous character in a way that, whatever else you might want to say about it, doesn’t offer much interpretation for spoofing. <br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_yUIK4p6I/AAAAAAAAHlA/fc0zU6oDDsc/s1600/Manhunter9.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:170px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_yUIK4p6I/AAAAAAAAHlA/fc0zU6oDDsc/s400/Manhunter9.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>At least part of my preference is due to my own personal experience. Seeing THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS on its opening weekend back in February 1991 was an electric experience of the sort that I have rarely experienced in a theater before or since, where I genuinely felt a charge through the audience as if it was witnessing something truly exciting, truly memorable. That memory is certainly an emotional response for me, a feeling I retain to this day and such a reaction is not something that MANHUNTER, released less than five years earlier in August 1986 by DEG, ever goes for—it’s not so much a more intellectual approach as it is a clinical one and while it doesn’t work as well for me its best moments are there, unavoidable, in some cases unexplainable. And yet those scenes and moments never quite coalesce into a whole as effective as some of it truly is. With MANHUNTER’s reputation growing through the years along with the status of its director the film recently screened at the New Beverly for a Saturday midnight show. As it turned out, I didn’t think the movie exactly came off as ideal for the late hour—it may actually be the quietest serial killer movie ever made, the famous use of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” excepted, but even in this context getting to study some of these images on the big screen had its own rewards. <br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_zq9VQBxI/AAAAAAAAHlI/ORu_RA4UFis/s1600/Manhunter3a.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_zq9VQBxI/AAAAAAAAHlI/ORu_RA4UFis/s400/Manhunter3a.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Retired FBI specialist Will Graham (William Petersen) who has the ability to think just like the killers who he pursues is talked into coming back to the job for one more case by his former boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) against the wishes of wife Molly (BRAZIL’s Kim Greist) to help catch a serial killer who has been snidely dubbed the ‘Tooth Fairy’ who has been known to brutally kill entire families. Graham’s investigation includes him having to meet with Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) a brilliant psychopath whose capture was the reason for Graham leaving in the first place. As Will continues to pursue the Tooth Fairy he once again has to deal with these feelings he has been able to keep buried as his family is suddenly forced to go into hiding and the Tooth Fairy himself, actually named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) finds himself falling in love with a beautiful blind co-worker Reba McClane (Joan Allen) who he thinks may be his one chance at a normal life. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_xN7FmzRI/AAAAAAAAHko/X5qJylai7aQ/s1600/Manhunter2.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:253px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_xN7FmzRI/AAAAAAAAHko/X5qJylai7aQ/s400/Manhunter2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>It diminishes both films to compare them so directly and the two directors are different enough in their basic approaches that it really seems pointless--one imagines Mann and Demme not having enough in common to carry a conversation over dinner, let alone taking source material that shares certain characters and approaching them in the same way. In comparison to Demme’s much more humanistic approach with the Bernard Herrmann-like power of Howard Shore’s score, MANHUNTER is much quieter, introspective as if its trying to force us into paying attention to what’s happening—its opening credits are just a few steps close to being totally silent as if reminding the audience to listen (and look) closely for the next two hours. MANHUNTER has appeared in several different versions over the years including a single network airing back in the nineties which nonsensically retitled it RED DRAGON: THE PURSUIT OF HANNIBAL LECTER in order to capitalize on the growing Lecter popularity. The different cuts (even reading up on the film I can’t tell how many there really are. Four? Five? Six?) seen on tape, disc and cable in addition to the original theatrical release are par for the course for Mann who never seems to tire of tinkering with his films past the point of theatrical release (I imagine him at home right now, recutting some section of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS for a new Blu-Ray release. Does he work on old STARSKY AND HUTCH scripts too?). Since I’m not an expert on this film like some people are I couldn’t state all the differences but I certainly noticed that the 2001 Anchor Bay DVD I’m checking out as I write this for reference is missing what for me seeing it at the New Beverly was a key point of dialogue spoken by Will Graham, providing a point of clarity to his feelings on who he’s pursuing (“As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable…”) so the whims of Mann in reworking his films clearly know no end of frustrations. The degree of obsession his films express makes this understandable but no matter what, MANHUNTER, watching it at home or at the New Beverly, is always MANHUNTER. It’s a work that at times reaches almost masterful levels yet I constantly feel at a distance from it as if a silk screen is in the way preventing me from reaching some further understanding of it all. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_z4mIfsAI/AAAAAAAAHlQ/MtLa0GyCWQA/s1600/Manhunter5a.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_z4mIfsAI/AAAAAAAAHlQ/MtLa0GyCWQA/s400/Manhunter5a.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Maybe Kubrick is an obvious point of comparison in its portrayal of obsession but more than that the film puts me in the mind of William Friedkin and not just because Petersen had just starred in TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A. the previous year. Actually, it’s not even that the style of MANHUNTER feels all that much like Friedkin but there is a certain attention to detail as well as the basic idea of observing process which causes certain moments to stick out—those crime scene photos left out on the plane so the young girl gets an unfortunate look at them is one, or Graham somehow trying to focus on the grass in front of him after the trauma of his meeting with Lecktor--but I feel distanced from the cool style, stark angles with architecture to match, the overwhelming feeling of Blue & White that screams some of my least favorite traits of the eighties (I never got into the MIAMI VICE TV show all that much back in the day either—maybe I’ve got a mental block to this type of thing) along with some music that works great and some that is, for me, the worse the decade has to offer such as the song “Heartbeat” over the end credits, for one. It causes me to mentally check out on occasion, wondering if this is deliberately elliptical storytelling or if we’re just missing a reel of vital info, searching for that extra layer just as I get lost in gazing at those birds flapping behind Petersen in one of his reveries as the character gazes at his wife. Part of Mann’s M.O. seems to be to avoid the expected suspense at certain points and the late appearance of Joan Allen’s surprisingly forward character throws us just as it throws Dollarhyde—we don’t know what to make of this expression of seeming warmth any more than he does. Elements like this mean that I always feel like I’m studying MANHUNTER more than watching it. This isn’t a bad thing at all but there are points where I wonder if there aren’t a few drawbacks. <br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_w-BjoU9I/AAAAAAAAHkg/MtGxX8tdch8/s1600/Manhunter3.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:251px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_w-BjoU9I/AAAAAAAAHkg/MtGxX8tdch8/s400/Manhunter3.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>The fractured narrative of MANHUNTER, screenplay adaptation written by Mann, includes not introducing its ‘villain’ until nearly the halfway point but even if the already incarcerated Lecter/Lektor character didn’t happen to become much more famous later on (in a film which used the spelling of the character from the original novel), it’s possible that the Tooth Fairy would still be overshadowed by the handful of appearances of Dr. Hannibal Lecktor as played by Brian Cox. With only a fraction of the screen time Anthony Hopkins had in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, a performance which became legend by the end of that film’s opening weekend, Cox brings a chilly force to his few minutes, a power that is unexplainable in its own way—several years after I first saw this film for the first time on cable just about all I remembered was the calm, chilly power he has in casually getting Will Graham’s home address during the phone call scene. If it were his only appearance it might be considered one of the best one-scene performances of all time but his earlier meeting with Graham is almost as powerful in how the two actors play it (his third scene, where he and Graham confer via phone late in the film, isn’t at all bad but doesn’t feel quite so essential to me, maybe because the narrative has moved past Lecktor by that point). The humor of this character, tossed off as he places a stick of gum in his mouth feels almost offhand, just as any of the spare pieces humor in the film does, like the technician who offers, “You’re so sly, but so am I,” when making a discovery, which I know was once said by Phil Hartman on an episode of NEWSRADIO. <br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_xi2R3qhI/AAAAAAAAHkw/Fu1Vazy8Bag/s1600/Manhunter5.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_xi2R3qhI/AAAAAAAAHkw/Fu1Vazy8Bag/s400/Manhunter5.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>With the meaning of the Red Dragon and its relation to Dollarhyde that the novel took its title from (for the record, I’ve read the books of SILENCE and HANNIBAL but never this one so all I have to go on is my perception of the film) feeling like it has been de-emphasized in accordance to its removal from the title (the existence of certain stills indicate how much was really shot to tie into the mythos) it seems to mean that when Dollarhyde’s death pose recalls the look of the Dragon doesn’t have as much resonance as it probably intended to at one stage. The point of MANHUNTER appears to be observing the process of how these characters studiously move through this case to a point where its no longer safe for their own stability, but Mann as director also somewhat makes it about his own experimentations with structure, with periods of silence and oblique jump cuts in the climax (not as noticeable in the print as it’s always been on video for me, but maybe it was the late hour). He’s not interested in the machinations of the plot as much as examining what this is all doing to the character of Will Graham as he studies this case of a killer who invades white upper middle class households. It’s a world that I imagine Graham would like he and wife Molly to be a part of, but it’s not something he’s able to do and his tiny beachfront house with no backyard (how the Tooth Fairy seems to gain access to each of the homes he invades) feels appropriately like a place to hide out from the world. Mann prominently focuses on the trauma that the lead character once went through and is now going through again, feelings he articulates to his son played by David Seaman in the strangest supermarket scene ever shot and even if it didn’t contain the most distracting continuity errors in the history of film it would still feel like these several minutes are more about the Kubrickian prominence of the cereal boxes behind William Petersen more than anything the two are discussing. It doesn’t help but the child actor playing the son isn’t particularly good either (among other non-actors distractingly sprinkled throughout the film) and it occurs to me that all of the strengths and weaknesses in the film are best exemplified in this one scene. A foreground we desire to pay attention to in danger of being overwhelmed by a background that for reasons which come off as mysterious makes its presence known whether it should or not. It winds up revealing the best and worst of what Michael Mann is capable as a director, all in what would in most other director’s hands be a simple dialogue scene. I’ll gladly state that I worship at the altar of HEAT, THE INSIDER as well as parts of COLLATERAL and don’t wish to hear from anyone saying otherwise…but there are times in some of his other films where the flaws that result in spite of (or is it because of?) his obsessive quest for perfection are impossible to ignore. They’re just as clear in the frame as those damn cereal boxes. <br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_x1tJQI6I/AAAAAAAAHk4/TFIW12TLSCw/s1600/Manhunter7.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_x1tJQI6I/AAAAAAAAHk4/TFIW12TLSCw/s400/Manhunter7.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Petersen delivers a strong conviction to the character, bringing the viewer into his eyes and selling the scenes where he does nothing but talk aloud, piecing together the puzzle, not something every actor could pull off without getting bad laughs. Greist and Farina both strong support, Tom Noonan’s inherent oddness as Dollarhyde barely seems to warrant calling him a villain…he’s just somehow other, compulsively watchable every single second he's onscreen. Stephen Lang (one of the best things in Mann’s PUNLIC ENEMIES is enjoyably sleazy as Freddy Lounds and Joan Allen is greatly effective in her relatively brief screen time, making me wonder what her character is like when she’s not suddenly finding herself in a serial killer thriller. Chris Elliott turns up briefly as one of the FBI analysts (in an interview years later he confessed to feeling bad that his presence may have caused some unfortunate laughter), Benjamin Hendrickson brings some intriguing officiousness to his brief portrayal of Dr. Chilton (an extra Chilton scene exists, just not cut into the film) and Frankie Faison, Barney the orderly in the three Lecter films with Hopkins, is seen as Lt. Fisk. A number of bit players seem to be non-actors, some more distracting than others in their appearances—this is one of those areas that I think Friedkin succeeds at more. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_wtwTi0hI/AAAAAAAAHkY/5TWo78QFIzc/s1600/Manhunter8.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:170px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_wtwTi0hI/AAAAAAAAHkY/5TWo78QFIzc/s400/Manhunter8.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Even if I feel somewhat resistant to it, the nature of what Mann and cinematographer Dante Spinotti achieve with their framing of these stark images is at times impossible to shake and reminds me of Tarantino’s comment spoken once at the New Beverly that when Michael Mann went all-digital we lost him as an artist. Whatever my feelings on its drawbacks, the film’s approach to the serial killer format has been influential—I’m no fan of the TV show CRIMINAL MINDS but I see much more MANHUNTER in there than SILENCE (For the record, I haven’t brought up Brett Ratner’s RED DRAGON, the film that remade this with Hopkins because, really what’s the point?). Taken on its own, MANHUNTER exists as a record of Mann’s style in development on its way to greatness which hadn’t revealed itself yet. If there’s something in there I don’t respond to it may be me, it may be the film. It may be my own expectations or even limitations. Or maybe I just haven’t looked closely enough yet. But, like every film I encounter, I can only really judge what I see with my own eyes. <br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_0I4ZpbLI/AAAAAAAAHlY/EvAY8N7ZKUw/s1600/ManhunterP2.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:256px;height:400px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/TD_0I4ZpbLI/AAAAAAAAHlY/EvAY8N7ZKUw/s400/ManhunterP2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2118574901486983093-2128527213139673662?l=mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "One Track Mind: Curtis Mayfield - \"Freddie's Dead\" (1972)",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TD_cO66sAII/AAAAAAAAA0E/_QP1iJBmAR4/s1600/curtis_mayfield1.jpg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0;width:320px;height:314px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_rlkraNz2WZQ/TD_cO66sAII/AAAAAAAAA0E/_QP1iJBmAR4/s320/curtis_mayfield1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><strong>by Pico</strong><br><br>As the sixties turned into the seventies, soul, like rock, got tougher and edgier. In 1971 alone, Sly Stone's <em>There's A Riot Goin' On</em>, Marvin Gaye's <em>What's Going On</em> and <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2010/03/quickies-new-release-roundup-2010-vol-1.html\">Gil Scott-Heron</a>'s <em>Pieces Of A Man</em> raised the stakes in R&B that was serious, far-reaching and influential to several generations. Others like the <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/07/somethingelsetribute-temptations.html\">Temptations</a>, Donny Hathaway, Isaac Hayes, James Brown and later on, <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/08/one-track-mind-stevie-wonder-that-girl.html\">Stevie Wonder</a>, also raised social consciousness or at the least moved away from strictly topics of love. Their music likewise got deeper, more complex and turbulent.<span><br><br>Curtis Mayfield was in the middle of it all. As the main man in the Impressions during the prior decade, he was already moving in that direction with the group, having penned hits like \"People Get Ready,\" \"We're A Winner\" and \"Keep On Pushing.\" He put himself firmly in the vanguard of this movement toward harder and politically charged soul with his first solo post-Impressions album <em>Curtis</em>, but his opus came two years later in 1972 with his soundtrack for the blaxploitation film <em>Superfly</em>. It was hard to believe that his frank depictions of inner city life revealed an understanding of social strife as deep as his mastery of sophisticated production techniques. For this themed soul album, Mayfield composing pen had never been mightier. And the centerpiece song of this great work is \"Freddie's Dead.\"<br><br>\"Freddie's Dead\" is where all of Mayfield's strengths, of which there were many, coincided at their peaks. He builds the music from an insistent, funky riff, that's delivered in unison by a fuzz guitar, bass and flute. The strange, contrasting timbre this creates is the hook you can't get out of your mind even if you tried. He also intelligently leverages a string orchestra with his now-familiar use of harps, laying it gently on top of the tough groove. At one point, he even calls in a plunged trombone, an Ellingtonian twist that fits right in with the more contemporary wah-wah guitars and urban rhythms. <br><br>Mayfield didn't just create the track, he sang it, too, and that's where yet another part of his genius shined. Maybe he was no Gaye, but his high-register voice that easily slipped in and out of falsetto sung with conviction and sincerity was just as emblematic of soul as Marvin's was. The lyrics he sang of a man who wasted away his life by being a junkie was weighty already, but then Mayfield expands the personal story to society at large when he opines:<br><br><em>We're all built up with progress<br>But sometimes I must confess<br>We can deal with rockets and dreams<br>But reality, what does it mean<br>Ain't nothing said<br>'Cause Freddie's dead</em><br><br>The song made it up to #4 on the U.S. pop chart and #2 on on the R&B chart. Curtis Mayfield was pushing out the boundaries of soul music, but America was ready to follow him.<br><br>And if you take all the elaborate production out of this song, you still have a great song:<br><br><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/qZlWDjoiJhc%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br><br><br><br></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8367705548617137551-7924476140026027075?l=www.somethingelsereviews.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Quelques notes sur Black bazar et Verre cassé au Lavoir Moderne Parisien",
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"content" : "<b><span style=\"font-size:large\">Black Bazar d’Alain Mabanckou, adapté et interprété par Modeste Nzapassara (Mardi, Mercredi à 21h)</span></b><br><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">C’est au Lavoir Moderne Parisien que le roman Black Bazar de l'écrivain congolais Alain Mabanckou est adapté depuis le début du mois, tous les mardis et mercredis du mois de Juillet.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Je dois tout de suite et sans détour vous dire que j’ai apprécié l’interprétation de cette pièce. Modeste Nzapassara déploie toute la mesure de son talent de comédien pour donner libre expression au fessologue, personnage épique aux allures de dandy, pathétique amant refoulé, dépouillé de sa belle, et qui tente par l’écriture de se remettre de ses déboires conjugaux.</div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4773943783_e42a88e9e4.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4773943783_e42a88e9e4.jpg\" width=\"240\"></a></div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">N’ayant pas lu ce roman d' <span style=\"font-size:large\">Alain Mabanckou</span>, j’ai néanmoins reconnu dans la construction de la pièce, la structure qui a fait le succès de Verre cassé : la truculence, le rire, l’ironie, l’auto dérision si chers aux personnages du romancier, puis le drame, la fêlure individuelle, voir l’imposture à laquelle Alain Mabanckou ne cesse de renvoyer ses lecteurs. Dans <span style=\"font-size:large\">Black bazar</span>, c’est le monde du paraître qui caractérise si bien la société des ambianceurs et des personnes élégantes, j’ai nommé la SAPE, qui tombe sous les griffes de l’auteur.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Modeste Nzapassara qui semble s’être parfaitement imprégné du discours de l’écrivain met magnifiquement en scène cette duplicité du sapeur. Le fessologue, dandy, écrivain en herbe, spécialiste de la fesse porte un regard sur cette population qui l’entoure dans ce milieu de l’immigration africaine à Paris qui s’apparente aux personnages qui rôdent près du <span style=\"font-size:large\">Lavoir Moderne Parisien</span>, du côté de Château Rouge. Un regard caustique. Mais il entend aussi ce que l’on dit de lui. Comme le discours un poil raciste, de ce voisin français, qui ne comprend qu’un homme descende jeter sa poubelle en demi-dakar, bref bien mis. </div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Mon esprit s’est surpris à voir les murs de la salle s’effondrer et Modeste Nzapassara poursuivre son récital dans les rues du quartier du LMP, tellement son jeu, ses tirades vibraient en phase avec l’atmosphère du milieu ambiant. Le déroulement de la pièce n’est pas linéaire. Il suit plutôt les états d’âme du fessologue. Ce qui peut rendre ardu la compréhension de cette pièce. Mais la cohérence de l’ensemble permet au spectateur de ne pas lâcher son fil d’Ariane.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Que trouve-t-on derrière le rire, la mascarade ? Vous le saurez surement en allant voir cette pièce qui m’a donnée envie de passer à la lecture du roman. Pièce que le comédien joue seul ,peut-être pour mieux illustrer la solitude du fessologue, de l’immigré, de l’homme tout simplement. Bien sapé, cela va de soit.</div><br><b><span style=\"font-size:large\">Verre cassé d’Alain Mabanckou, adapté et interprété par Fortuné Batéza (jeudi, vendredi 21h)</span></b><br><span style=\"font-size:large\"><br></span><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><span style=\"font-size:large\">Fortuné Batéza</span> est venu de Kinshasa pour nous livrer sa partition sur le roman qui a rendu populaire Alain Mabanckou : j’ai nommé Verre cassé. Inutile de présenter ce texte tant de fois chroniqué sur la blogosphère, là où les lettres africaines ont tant de mal à trouver un écho. Histoire de souligner l’influence de l’auteur.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">J’aurai tendance à comparer les deux adaptations de ces romans en considérant que les charnières de ces derniers semblent très proches. Pourtant les choix ne sont pas les mêmes, tant sur la mise en scène que dans le jeu des deux acteurs. Fortuné Batéza joue beaucoup plus dans le registre du théâtre populaire congolais. Ce qui n’a rien de péjoratif, puisqu’il a beaucoup plus de chance de toucher le public africain. Ce qui se traduit le prix d’interprétation qu’il a obtenu justement avec <span style=\"font-size:large\"><b>Verre cassé</b></span>.</div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TDzms4qhfhI/AAAAAAAACD8/0l7kNmCNNj4/s1600/P7090275.JPG\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"240\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/TDzms4qhfhI/AAAAAAAACD8/0l7kNmCNNj4/s320/P7090275.JPG\" width=\"320\"></a></div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Il interprète donc tous les personnages qui ont fait rire ceux qui ont ouvert et lu ce roman étonnant. L’homme aux pampers, Robinette, Mouyéké l’escroc...Il met en scène les réflexions ubuesques du dictateur en panne de communication. J’ai personnellement trouvé qu’il y avait un déséquilibre puisque dans son adaptation, Batéza donne beaucoup plus de poids à la première phase du roman qui est une franche rigolade et une accumulation de caricatures, qu’à la seconde partie du roman où le lecteur que je suis, était rentré dans l’intimité de Verre cassé (le personnage), dans son drame, dans sa solitude. De plus, on ressent un peu moins le texte, la langue de Mabanckou.</div><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Néanmoins, le jeu du comédien kinois pallie à ces légers manquements et réussit à tenir le rythme de cette pièce très intéressante.</div><br>A voir et à faire voir au <a href=\"http://www.rueleon.net/\">Lavoir Moderne Parisien</a><br>35 rue Léon, Paris 18ème arrondissement<br>Réservation au 01.42.52.09.14<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-6619882216620620705?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div><blockquote><em>All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave\n things alone,\n<br>you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing \nalone,\n<br>you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post \nalone, it\n<br>will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white,\n you\n<br>must be always painting it again: that is you must always be having a\n<br>revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post, you must have a\n new\n<br>white post. But this, which is true even of inanimate things, is in\n a\n<br>quite special and terrible sense true of all human things.</em>\n <p>\n -- G.K. Chesterton</p></blockquote><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/typepad/BWZR/~4/Xc0GrfedlLo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></div>"
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"title" : "Uganda: Bloggers react to bomb blasts",
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"content" : "<p><span>By <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/rebekah-heacock/\" title=\"View all posts by Rebekah Heacock\">Rebekah Heacock</a></span> \n</p><p>Soccer fans gathered in bars and restaurants around the globe to watch the final game of the World Cup last night. In Uganda, these celebrations were interrupted when bombs exploded at two popular nightlife spots in Kampala, the country's capital.</p>\n<p>Ugandan media are <a href=\"http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/956230/-/x22qm4/-/\">reporting</a> over 40 deaths so far, with dozens more injured in the explosions. Ugandan police have <a href=\"http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/725545\">suggested</a> that Somali militant group al-Shabab was behind the attacks. One of the group's commanders <a href=\"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/11/uganda-bomb-world-cup_n_642336.html\">recently called</a> for attacks against Uganda, which contributes troops to the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia. The group has praised the attacks but has not claimed responsibility.</p>\n<div style=\"width:385px\"><a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ug_bombs.png\"><img src=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ug_bombs-375x248.png\" alt=\"Victims of two deadly bomb blasts in Kampala wait for treatment at Mulago Hospital.\" title=\"ug_bombs\" width=\"375\" height=\"248\"></a>\n<p>Victims of two deadly bomb blasts in Kampala wait for treatment at Mulago Hospital. Photo by <a href=\"http://trevorsnapp.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Bombs-hit-Kampala/G0000hyHu1ShO834/I0000g40kKbQh.pM\">Trevor Snapp</a>. Used with the photographer's permission.</p>\n</div>\n<p>Ugandan blogger <a href=\"http://gayuganda.blogspot.com/2010/07/bombs-in-kampala.html\">Gay Uganda writes</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Uganda attacked. Really, it is humanity attacked. Who has the gall to be happy at such atrocity? Apparently, Somali insurgents are happy. Because they are fighting African Union troops in Somalia, who have stopped them from establishing an Islamic state under Sharia law.</p>\n<p>….What I see are country mates, human beings who were doing nothing worse than watching a football match who were killed and maimed, in the name of ideals that they may have no real thought about, actions that they cannot control in the least.</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https://bazanye.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/enter-title-here/\">Ernest Bazanye</a> cautions against jumping to conclusions about who set off the bombs too soon:</p>\n<blockquote><p>It’s too early to say who is responsible or why, and even though it is whispered abroad that it was a pair of suicide bombings staged by Al-Shahab, the Somali terrorist organization. We should know by now that the truth doesn’t get here that soon and that any conclusions now would be premature.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Trevor Snapp, a documentary photographer living in Kampala, was at Mulago Hospital, where many of the victims were taken, after the bombings. <a href=\"http://trevorsnapp.com/blog/2010/07/12/the-new-terrorism-bombs-in-uganda/\">He writes</a>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Family members milled around the front reception area while doctors and bodies covered in blood were rushed in and out of surgery. In the surgery hallway a man’s body lay in the floor bleeding by his head, it was impossible to know if he was dead or alive. A few feet away in a small storage locker, staff had created a makeshift morgue, 6 bodies lay on the tiles, some had their clothes blown off. They were all young.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Many bloggers are shocked that the bombings happened in Kampala, widely known as one of Africa's safest capital cities. <a href=\"http://inanafricanminute.blogspot.com/2010/07/tragedy-in-kampala.html\">Joshua Goldstein</a>, a <a href=\"http://globalvoicesonline.org/author/joshua/\">former Global Voices author</a> who used to live in Kampala, describes the locations where the bombings took place:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Kampala's Rugby Club is a sprawling bar, adjacent to the pitch, where many of Kampala's college students come to hang with their buddies. If Uganda had fraternities, this is where they would throw their parties. Here the smart set drink Nile Special with reggae and hip hop blasting in the background. On weekend days the same crew watch rugby, collars popped to block the sun. </p>\n<p>….Across town Ethiopian Village, down the street from the American Embassy, is in the dead center of Kabalagala, the Las Vegas of Kampala. The restaurant, the most high end of the half dozen or so Ethiopian restaurants within 500 meters, sits at the intersection of Ggaba Road and Tank Hill Road. In the afternoon, Ethiopian dissident journalists pass their exile by chewing miraa and discussing the day's news. At night, the neighborhood lights up with bars and dance parties.</p></blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http://sleekandwild.com/?p=255\">Sleek</a> writes:</p>\n<blockquote><p>To give this a little perspective, I’ll point out that up-til now, Kampala has been one of those places where at 03:00 AM, one can walk from one end of the city to the other. And that we are the kind of people to complain about rising fuel prices, high Pay As You Earn taxes, impossible airtime charges…basically a very high cost of living. But in all this, we’ll still go to that new hangout place and pay UGX 5,000 for a beer. And we fill the place to the point that you literally have to fight your way to the bar to get a drink. And that’s the average hangout.</p>\n<p>And then you hear about bomb blasts…</p></blockquote>"
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"title" : "London Court Sentences 3 to Life in Airline Bomb Plot",
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"content" : "<p>How I love to go out hunting on a bright Sunday morning—though it’s not my style to shoot furry/feathery/finny animals. <em>My</em> game is to get up early and stalk a wily factoid.</p>\n<p>A <a href=\"http://moleseyhill.com/blog/2009/05/25/how-many-bugs/\">posting</a> from Mat Roberts, whose <a href=\"http://moleseyhill.com/blog/\">blog</a> I’ve recently discovered, sent me out this morning to chase down a passage in <em><a href=\"http://plus.maths.org/issue21/reviews/book4/index.html\">How Long Is a Piece of String</a></em>, a book by Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham:</p>\n<p><img title=\"Don't be picky about the formula. Yes, it's true, S could be zero. We can handle that, if necessary, with a slightly more elaborate version.\" src=\"http://bit-player.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/eastaway-wyndham-p160.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"passage from Eastaway-Wyndham, page 160\" width=\"450\" height=\"329\"></p>\n<p>The concept here seemed familiar, but the term “Lincoln Index” was new to me. Lincoln who? What index?</p>\n<p>Google offered some useful clues. (Also a generous helping of false scents—books about Honest Abe that happen to have an index.) Without even clicking on a link I had the general context:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The <em>Lincoln Index</em> provides a way to measure population sizes of individual animal species. It is based on a capture/mark/ recapture method…</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>So we’re talking ecology and population biology. The original idea was not to catch the same typo twice but to catch the same furry/feathery/finny creature twice. Interesting. However, the first couple of web pages that Google sent me to (<a href=\"http://www.offwell.free-online.co.uk/lincoln.htm\">here</a> and <a href=\"http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/2222.html\">here</a>) told me nothing about Lincoln. And, oddly, I found no Wikipedia entry for “Lincoln Index.” If it’s not in Wikipedia, does it exist?</p>\n<p>With a little more poking around, I stumbled upon another clue that seemed promising: a <a href=\"http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/jcabbott/courses/bio208web/labs/populations/populations.htm\">mention</a> of “the Lincoln-Pearson equation for estimating population size.” I was still in the dark about Lincoln, but Pearson is quite a familiar figure. Surely that’s Karl Pearson, the pioneering statistician, who did much of his work in the biological sciences and might very well have come up with a scheme for estimating population sizes.</p>\n<p>Back at Google, though, searching for “Lincoln-Pearson” turned up nothing pertinent other than the page I’d come from (though I <em>did</em> learn that Karl Pearson “read in chambers in Lincoln’s Inn” during his early years studying law).</p>\n<p>More beating the bushes. Eventually I realized I had wandered into a blind alley. Somebody needs to hire a pair of proofreaders: The formula is not “Lincoln-Pearson” but “Lincoln-Petersen.” Try <em>those</em> names at Google and you’ll get an abundance of useful pointers. (You’ll also learn that Abraham Lincoln died in Petersen’s Boarding House, across the street from Ford’s Theater. Google is not just a search engine but also a coincidence engine.)</p>\n<p>The particular web page where I finally got the correct names (<a href=\"http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/fw353/Estimate.htm\">notes for a course at North Carolina State University</a>) explains that capture-mark-recapture methods</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>are used extensively to estimate populations of fish, game animals, and many non-game animals. The approach was first used by Petersen (1896) to study European plaice in the Baltic Sea and later proposed by Lincoln (1930) to estimate numbers of ducks. Petersen’s and Lincoln’s method is often referred to as the Lincoln-Petersen Index, even though it is not an index but a method to estimate actual population sizes. (Should it not be the Petersen-Lincoln Estimate?)</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>I decided to pursue Petersen first—and immediately ran into a few further bibliographic brambles. Some citations spell the name “Petersen” and others “Peterson.” Some give the initials “C. G. T.” and others “C. G. J.” or “C. J. G.” The date might be 1895 or 1896 or 1897. Here’s what I believe to be a correct citation:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Petersen, C. G. J. 1896. The yearly immigration of young plaice into the Limfjord from the German Sea. <em>Report of the Danish Biological Station to the Home Department</em> 6:1–48.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>Wikipedia identifies our elusive author as Carl Georg Johannes Petersen (1860-1928). He was a founder of the Danish Biological Station, which was not in fact a station but a mobile laboratory—a decommissioned naval vessel that was moved around from year to year. In 1895, Petersen took the station to the Limfjord, a chain of bays, lakes and channels cutting across the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark. There he studied the plaice fishery. (Back to Wikipedia: “The European plaice is a right-eyed flounder belonging to the Pleuronectidae family.” But let’s not get started on right-eyed and left-eyed flatfish, or we’ll never get to the end of this.)</p>\n<p>Petersen’s report is <a href=\"http://www.archive.org/details/reportofdanishbi06dans\">available online</a>, scanned from a copy belonging to the library of the Marine Biological Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and hosted by the Biodiversity Heritage Library of the Internet Archive. A second surprise: The report is written in English. But on reading through it I find only vague and murky connections between the work Petersen reports and the mark-recapture method of estimating populations. There’s nothing resembling the <em>E<sub>1</sub>E<sub>2</sub>/S</em> formula.</p>\n<p>Petersen <em>does</em> describe a series of capture/mark/recapture experiments. A few hundred plaice were caught and marked by attaching numbered buttons, then put back in the water. Fishermen who recaught the labeled fish in later months were asked to report them. But the purpose of this study was not to estimate the total population; instead, Petersen used before-and-after measurements of the marked fish to estimate their growth rate.</p>\n<p>In a much larger experiment, some 82,580 plaice (somebody must have counted them!) were transplanted into the fjord, and 10,900 of the fish were marked by having a hole punched in their dorsal fin. The number of marked fish was recorded as the plaice were caught during the coming year. It’s not clear whether the aim of this project was to estimate the total population, but in any case it didn’t work. The fraction of marked fish in the transplanted batch was about 1/7, but the marked fraction in the subsequent catches was 1/5. Petersen remarks, “This result is very strange,” and I have to agree.</p>\n<p>When Petersen did try to estimate the plaice population, he didn’t rely on a recapture scheme. He went out with seine nets designed to dredge up every bottom fish in a measured plot, then extrapolated from the density of fish per unit area.</p>\n<p>The whole report is fascinating fishy stuff, but it leaves me wondering just how Petersen came to be given credit for the resampling idea. As far as I can tell, it’s not to be found in this paper.</p>\n<p>Having chased down Petersen, I turned back to Mr. Lincoln. Without much trouble I was able to identify the work in question:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Lincoln, F. C. 1930. Calculating waterfowl abundance on the basis of banding returns. <em>United States Department of Agriculture Circular</em> 118:1–4.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p><img title=\"Credit: U.S. Geological Survey\" src=\"http://bit-player.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/fredericklincoln.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"portrait of Frederick C. Lincoln in his office, with stuffed duck.\" width=\"220\" height=\"289\">The author was Frederick C. Lincoln, who was <a href=\"http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/BBL/homepage/lincoln.htm\">bird-bander-in-chief</a> in the U.S. for some 25 years. The agency he founded has since migrated from the Department of Agriculture to the U.S. Geological Survey and become the Bird Banding Laboratory.</p>\n<p>Google returns hundreds of works that cite Lincoln’s paper (including some quite far afield from population biology). But tracking down the USDA document itself was not so easy. If the USDA has it online, I wasn’t able to locate it. But a search of <a href=\"http://www.worldcat.org/\">WorldCat</a> eventually turned up an archive in the <a href=\"http://catalog.hathitrust.org/\">Hathi Trust Digital Library</a> where you can page through <a href=\"http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=umn.31951d02969945h;page=root;seq=640;num=81\">Lincoln’s pamphlet</a> in a copy scanned by Google at the University of Minnesota library.</p>\n<p>Lincoln gives only a brief and informal account of the recapture idea, but the basic principle is stated clearly enough:</p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>If in one season 5,000 ducks were banded and yielded 600 first-season returns, or 12 percent, and if during that same season the total number of ducks killed and reported by sportsmen was about 5,000,000, then this number would be equivalent to approximately 12 per cent of the waterfowl population for that year, which would be about 42,000,000.</p>\n</blockquote>\n<p>It’s not hard to translate this formula from the language of duck hunters into the language of proofreaders. The first reader finds 5,000 typos and the second spots 5 million; 600 of these errors are common to both lists, and so the total number of typos is:</p>\n<p><img src=\"http://bit-player.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/typos-eqn.png\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\\frac{5\\,000 \\times 5\\,000\\,000}{600} = 41\\,666\\,667\" width=\"208\" height=\"34\"></p>\n<p>So that’s my reward for a morning spent out hunting: 42 million typos.</p>\n<p>Does Frederick Lincoln deserve credit for the Lincoln Index? I’d say he has a good claim, except that Pierre Simon de Laplace <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\" title=\"text added 2010-07-12\">had the same idea</span> more than a century earlier. In 1802 Laplace applied his method to estimating the (human) population of France. But maybe that’s a story for another Sunday morning.</p>\n<p><strong>Epilogue</strong>. This is not really a story about typos, or about fish and ducks. It’s about finding things—about the phenomenal ease of chasing facts on the world wide web. Does a marked fish have any hope of escaping recapture there?</p>\n<p> </p>"
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"title" : "When Federated Search Bites",
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"content" : "<div><p><strong></strong></p><strong><p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">I</span> <span style=\"font-weight:normal\">am\nprobably stepping on some folks’ toes. My apologies.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">First,\nlet me explain what I mean by federated search. Federated search:\nconducting a search against “n” source systems via a broadcast mechanism\nwithout the benefit or guidance of an index. This is somewhat like\nroaming the three buildings of the Library of Congress looking for a book title\n… without benefit of a card catalog.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">I am\nspeaking specifically about environments where the systems in the federation\nare heterogeneous, are physically dispersed, were not engineered for federation\na priori, and are not managed by a common command and control system. </span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">By way of\nexample, an airline might have a payroll system containing employees, a\nreservation system containing flight reservations and a watch list database\ncontaining people that are not permitted to fly. If this airline\nimplemented federated search the data in these three systems would remain in\nthese three systems. Searches (whether invoked by users or machines) are\nthen broadcast to each source system. Note: Source systems receive\nqueries for information they may or may not have, and as we shall see, receive\nqueries for data they may have but have no means to locate in any efficient\nmanner.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Federated\nsearch works fine if the goal is simply a reference system used to answer\nperiodic inquiry. Such systems could be described as forensic in nature –\nwhen there is something of interest, one can look for it. Think of such\nfederated search environments as systems where “the data only speaks when spoken\nto.” If this is what an organization needs, and there are a small number\nof queries and a finite number of source systems, federated search is a fine\noption.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Most\norganizations are not living in a world where “after-the-fact forensic\ndiscovery delivered only when asked” is acceptable. </span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Most\norganizations have some obligation to make sense of what they know. For\nexample, the airline should know if the person added to the watch list is\nalready an employee or already has a flight reservation. Ideally, the\nmoment such facts become knowable, someone or some system should be\nnotified. Think of this as “the data speaks to itself.” I call this</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">data finds data</span></em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">. </span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">This\nnotion of</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">data finds data</span></a><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">implies the “data is the query.” As\neach new piece of data enters the organization, the organization has just\nlearned something. And it is at this exact moment in time that one (a\nsmart system) must ask: Now that I know</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">this</span></em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">,\nhow does this relate to what I already know? Does this matter, and if so\n… to who? </span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Whether\nthe data is the query (generated by systems likely at high volumes) or the user\ninvokes a query (by comparison likely lower volumes), there is no\ndifference. In both cases, this is simply a need for “</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/11/discoverability.html\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">discoverability</span></a><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">” – the ability to discover if the enterprise\nhas any related information.</span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">If\ndiscoverability across a federation of disparate systems is the goal, federated\nsearch does not scale, in any practical way, for any amount of money. \nPeriod. It is so essential that folks understand this before they run off\nwasting millions of dollars on fairytale stories backed up by a few math guys\nwith a new vision who have never done it before.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">I will\nspare you the gory details of that day in 1996 when I came to witness such a\nfederated search system. Multi-million dollar, very smart, middleware developed\nover a number of years was sitting atop a reported 2,000 data stores and 50B\nrows of data. Watching this large federated search system really drove\nhome a series of epiphanies about the problems of federated search. \nFortunately, the purpose of this particular system was a reference/forensic\nsystem that only had to respond to a relatively low volume of queries,\nprimarily generated by users. And getting an incomplete answer from\ntime-to-time would not be the end of the world.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">To\nexplain why federated search bites I will lay out three basic goals, three\nnotional source systems, and four nasty problems (let’s call them\nchallenges). Mind you, the greater the number of source systems, and the\ngreater the transactional volumes, the more impossible it becomes to discover\nsimilar data across dissimilar systems (data finds data).</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">GOALS</span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Goal 1:\nBecause the data must find the data, this means for every record added or\nupdated in the federation one must determine if this information is related to\nany other records in the federation. Such discoverability must be able to\nkeep up with transactional volumes therefore must be near-real-time. </span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">[Note: To keep this really simple let\nus say</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">related</span></em><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">only means: shares an exact passport\nnumber, address, or phone number.]</span></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"font-weight:normal\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n</span><p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Goal 2:\nUsers should be able to pose queries themselves. </span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Although, as it turns out, this goal\ndoes not matter because the discoverability properties needed to deliver on\nGoal 1 can just as easily be applied to this goal.</span></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"font-weight:normal\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n</span><p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Goal 3:\nThe federated search system must be scalable across hundreds or more disparate\nsource systems. </span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">As such,\nnew source systems must be able to be added to the federation without adverse\nconsequence to existing source systems in the federation, otherwise, the\ngreater the number of systems the more unmanageable the environment.</span></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"font-weight:normal\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n</span><p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">SYSTEMS</span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Using the\nairline example, let’s say the three notional systems look like this:</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">System 1:\nA commercial-off-the-shelf payroll system (20K employees, <16 CPU’s, 200\ntransactions a day (subject to data finds data), system running at 90%\nutilization).</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">System 2:\nAn airline reservation system (100M reservations, <265 CPU’s, 2,000\ntransactions a second, system running at 97% utilization).</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">System 3:\nA watch list database (subjects of interest) running on a commercial-off-the-shelf\nSQL database (1M records, <8 CPU’s, 1,000 changes a day, system running at\n80% utilization).</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">CHALLENGES</span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Challenge\n1: How will a new watch listing record containing a passport number (in System\n3) efficiently locate related reservations records (in System 2) which share\nthe same passport number? Here is the problem: An airline reservation\nsystem is typically designed to search on things like reservation number or\nfight number and date of departure</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">not</span></em><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">passport number. Source systems\nare optimized for their purpose –maintaining only the necessary indexes. \nAnd, if by chance passport number is an indexed and searchable field in the\nairline system, are the addresses and phone numbers indexed as well? And\nwhat about the key values in unstructured comment fields? Due to this\nissue, federated search can produce incomplete results because a source system\nmay contain related records but cannot find them. Note: It is not\npractical to re-engineer every source systems to maintain all conceivable\nindexes.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Challenge\n2: How will the payroll system (System 1) keep up with the flood of queries\ngenerated by the reservation system (System 2)? Here is the problem: The\npayroll system does not have the compute resources to sustain thousands of\nqueries a second; it was not designed for that. Now maybe you are\nthinking why would you do that? Well data finds data is used to construct\ncontext (determine what one knows) in order to determine the right course of\naction. In this oversimplified example, maybe the airline likes to know\nwhen current or former employees make reservations so the right offers are\nmade. Maybe terminated employees are not provided the same kind of offers\nas other former employees. Note: It is not practical to re-host the\nhardware of every source system such that it will be able to sustain the\ncumulative transactional volume of the federation.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Challenge\n3: New information can be located during the federated search that warrants a\nre-query of the source systems. This is recursive. Imagine if the\nquery is for a passport number that only exists in the watch listing\ndatabase. But what if the watch listing database contains a matching\nrecord which reveals a new phone number? This newly discovered\ninformation, ideally, must be used to re-query the federated systems. For\nexample, maybe there is a record in the reservation system with the same phone number\nand maybe this reservation contains a new address! Here is the\nproblem: With each new feature discovered one must consider re-querying the\nsource systems (again). Note: The hardware at each source system would\nnot only have to support the transactional volume of the federation – but the\nrecursive queries on top of that.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Challenge\n4: Can you be sure all systems, across all the time zones, are all on-line, all\nat the same time? What if the fourth system added to the federation is a\nsmall, desktop application running a Microsoft Access database – will this\nsystem be left on-line at night and have high availability, failover system\nstanding by? The issue is: Heterogeneous systems have non-uniform\navailability.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">[Theatrical\npause]</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Just</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">how</span></em><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">sure am I that federated search cannot\nhandle discoverability at scale? How about this: First person to describe\na scalable federated search system that delivers on the goals and overcomes\nthese technical challenges … in a practical way e.g., without having to re-host source system hardware …\nI’ll write you a personal check for $25,000 (see small print below).</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">So, if\nfederated search is not the ideal approach for discoverability at scale, then\nwhat is?</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Discovery\nat scale is best solved with some form of central directories or indexes. \nThat is how Google does it (queries hit the Google indexes which return\npointers). That is how the</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">DNS</span></a><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">works (queries hit a hierarchical set of\ndirectories which return pointers). And this is how people locate books\nat the library (the card catalog is used to reveal pointers to books). </span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Once a\ndirectory reveals a pointer, you can go fetch it. </span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Federated fetch</span></em><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">does scale. Yes, the source\nsystem will have to be on-line, in the same way the floor at the library must\nbe open. Yes, the user will have to have access privileges. And\nyes, there are other challenges like the need to keep the directory current and</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/04/to_know_semanti.html\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">semantically\nreconciled</span></a><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">(to overcome\nthe recursive issues described in Challenge 3). </span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">But, at least these are all tractable\nproblems!</span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">Truthfully,\nI would love to be proven wrong here for a variety of reasons</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><em><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">e.g.,</span></em><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">the privacy ramifications of having\nlarge centralized database directories. Although, on the brighter side,\nthe directory approach to discoverability results in fewer copies of the data\nfloating around. And another plus may be that data governance\n(accountability, oversight,</span><span><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_audit.html\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">immutable audit\nlogs</span></a><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">, etc.) is going to be\nvastly easier to manage with a smaller number of central directories.</span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">[Small\nPrint: Offer good for two years from the date of this posting. If you\nhave a solution in mind no need to physically prove it, just explain it on\npaper in plain English such that the average propeller-head can read it and go\n“oh yeah, that would work.” But, don’t spend too much time on this as\nit’s obviously not a fair challenge. I’m just trying to make a point as\nit seems a number of organizations, each desperate to quickly solve large scale\ndiscoverability, are being sold on the notion of federated search. An\nabsolute waste of money.</span></span><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"></span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\"> </span></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><span style=\"font-weight:normal\">RELATED POSTS</span></span></span></span><span style=\"color:black\"></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial initial\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/01/federated_disco.html\"><span>Federated Discovery\nvs. Persistent Context – Enterprise Intelligence Requires the Later</span></a></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial initial\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/07/data-finds-data.html\"><span>Data Finds Data</span></a></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/04/to_know_semanti.html\"><span>To Know Semantic\nReconciliation is to Love Semantic Reconciliation</span></a></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial initial\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/08/its_all_about_t.html\"><span>It’s All About the\nLibrarian! New Paradigms in Enterprise Discovery and Awareness</span></a></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white;background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial initial\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/11/discoverability.html\"><span>Discoverability:\nThe First Information Sharing Principle</span></a></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/05/what_came_first.html\"><span>What Came First,\nthe Query or the Data?</span></a><span> </span></span></p>\n\n<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">\n\n<p style=\"margin-top:7.5pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;line-height:14.25pt;background:white\"><span style=\"color:black\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/02/immutable_audit.html\">Immutable Audit\nLogs (IAL’s)</a></span></p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></strong><p></p></div>"
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"title" : "Talib Kweli on the Politics of Oil: Ballad of the Black Gold",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t<p>Spotted this new Talib Kweli song, called the <em>Ballad of the Black Gold </em>in a hypem <a href=\"http://agrumpyoldmanwithabeard.blogspot.com/2010/07/video-reflection-eternal-ballad-of.html\">link</a> (you can watch the video there). Very timely given the recent BP mess. Much respect to Talib for going into some of the history of Oil politics in Nigeria; an excerpt from Verse 2 is below: <br> <img src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2010-07-09/ydgaofylvecmhegunAHmoGdEhjlzknmxBjtvEfEbwEoBuhxkBeAIqwjoukDb/reflection-eternal-revolutions-per-minute1-450x450.jpg.scaled500.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\">\n</p>\n<blockquote>\n<br>Nigeria is celebrating 50 years of independence <br>They still feel the colonial effects of Great Britain's presence <br>Dictators quick to imitate the West <br>Got in bed with oil companies and now the place is a mess <br>Take a guess, which ones came and violated <br>They oiled up the soil, the Ogoni people was almost annihilated <br>But still they never stayed silent <br>They was activists and poets using non-violent tactics <br>That was catalyst for soldiers to break into they crib <br>Take it from the kids and try to break'em like a twig <br>And make examples of the leaders; executed Saro-Wiwa,<br>Threw Fela's mom out the window right after they beat her <br>In an effort to defeat hope. Now the people's feet soaked in oil [?] <br>So the youth is doing drive-bys through speed boats [?] <br>They kidnap the workers, they blowing up the pipelines <br>You see the fires glowing in the nighttime</blockquote>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/talib-kweli-on-the-politics-of-oil-ballad-of\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://copia.posterous.com/talib-kweli-on-the-politics-of-oil-ballad-of#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"content" : "An eagerly-awaited submarine cable linking West Africa to Europe has gone live, paving the way for cheaper and more reliable internet access in one of the world's fastest-growing telecoms markets.<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/57is5peu2i11hlunkujrbvuku0/300/250#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wired.com%2Fepicenter%2F2010%2F07%2Fundersea-cable-set-to-boost-west-africa-broadband%2F\" width=\"100%\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wired/index/~4/r6-3E1UhNz0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The five most important algorithms?",
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"content" : "<p>Bernhard Koutschan posted a compilation of the <a href=\"http://www.risc.jku.at/people/ckoutsch/stuff/e_algorithms.html\">most important algorithms</a>. The goal is to determine the 5 most important algorithms. Out of his list, I would select the following five algorithms:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search_algorithm\">Binary search</a> is the first non-trivial algorithm I remember learning.</li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform\">Fast Fourier transform (FFT)</a> is an amazing algorithm. Combined with the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem\">Convolution theorem</a>, it lets you do magic.</li>\n<li>While <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function\">hashing</a> is not an algorithm, it is one of the most powerful and useful idea in Computer Science. It takes minutes to explain it, but years to master.</li>\n<li><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_sort\">Merge sort</a> is the most elegant sorting algorithm. You can explain it in three sentences to anyone.</li>\n<li>While not an algorithm per se, the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_Value_Decomposition\">Singular Value Decomposition</a> (SVD) is the most important Linear Algebra concept <em>I don’t remember learning as an undergraduate</em>. (And yes, I went to a <a href=\"http://www.math.toronto.edu/\">good school</a>. And yes, I was an A student.) It can help you <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoinverse\">invert singular matrices</a> and do other similar magic.</li>\n</ul>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?a=lIgnUXwWaTE:FL7qQp4WwQ0:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/daniel-lemire/atom?i=lIgnUXwWaTE:FL7qQp4WwQ0:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/daniel-lemire/atom/~4/lIgnUXwWaTE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Perceptions",
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f20fddb3970b-popup\" style=\"display:inline\"><img alt=\"Kash art emp corner\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f20fddb3970b-580wi\" style=\"width:580px\"></a> <br>Sughra Raza. <em>Power on. Karachi, March, 2010.</em></p><p>Digital Photograph.</p><p>Note to Abbas: challenge #2 for you: location of this photograph?</p><p>Have you figured out the first one yet?!</p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/300/250#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F07%2Fperceptions.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=lsftvc4xMuc:OKCXKxIXRfY:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "FIFA World Cup '10: Black Star Tragedy",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TC9nP_1CcfI/AAAAAAAAB5g/vhwiBahSks4/s1600/Black+Stars.jpg\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:292px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TC9nP_1CcfI/AAAAAAAAB5g/vhwiBahSks4/s400/Black+Stars.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><a href=\"http://blogs-dev.oit.duke.edu/wcwp/2010/07/03/black-star-tragedy/\"><br></a><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><a href=\"http://blogs-dev.oit.duke.edu/wcwp/2010/07/03/black-star-tragedy/\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-style:italic\">Black Star Tragedy</span></a><br>by Laurent Dubois<br><br>Football, we learned last night during the Ghana-Uruguay game, is the most effective tool for mass torture every devised by the human race. A vast majority of the over eighty thousands fans in the stadium, and millions of viewers throughout the world, were left speechless and unwound by what we saw unfold. For me, it was a little bit like reliving the final of the World Cup in 2006, with an early euphoria followed by an equalizer, then a game dragging on and on into penalties, with Gyan’s missed shot at the last minute playing the role of Zidane’s head-butt as the dramatic and decisive instant of the night. The sorrow, the indignity, the sense of unfairness of it all was too much to even contemplate. For many people throughout the world, the Cup essentially ended yesterday with the elimination of Brazil and Ghana. For all those who hoped, for a brief time, that this would be the year for an African team to go further than any had before, the remaining games seem somehow sapped of meaning.<br><br>The night began very differently. The atmosphere in the city was electric yesterday, with everyone in South Africa seemingly behind Ghana, and the flags and emblems of the country everywhere. The symbolism of it all was, of course, great. Fifty years ago Ghana’s independence began the wave of decolonization on the continent. In 1966 Ghana’s president, Kwame Nkrumah, led a boycott of the World Cup by African nations unhappy with the fact that only one of he sixteen berths in the competition was reserved for either an African team or an Asian team. The boycott was successful, and set in motion a long process through which African countries have gained more power within FIFA. The South African World Cup was in some sense the culmination of that long process. To see Ghana advance to the semi-finals, which no African country ever has in the World Cup, would have been a fitting and inspiring confirmation that things have changed, and that they can change, in the world of football.<br><br>Of course, there was reason to be cautious. Though Ghana was the last of the African teams in the tournament, it is a young team and weakened substantially in its striking power by the absence of Michael Essien. They had played well against the U.S., but had seemed less convincing in the group phase and only advanced thanks to the loss by Serbia to Australia. They might pull it off, we all knew, but it was going to be tough.<br><br>For the game, however, most had thrown caution to the wind. You could find a few small Uruguay flags to buy on the way in to Soccer City, but mostly it was every kind of merchandise in the colors of Ghana. Fans from all over the world decked themselves out in Ghana scarves (I picked up a rather handsome one!), Ghana hats, Ghana gloves, Ghana face paint, and waved small and large Ghana flags. There were of course groups of the famous stalwart Black Star fans as well. Everyone knew what the right outcome was, it seemed. And as the game began, it seemed like Ghana was in a position to win. They played beautifully. They were exciting to watch. The charged the goal, seeking openings in the tough Uruguayan defense, and seemed technically superior in many of the encounters. And then came Muntari’s goal.<br><br>The rest of the story is I can not quite bear to run through. But that it so happened that a Uruguay defender, pushing the ball out with his hands, prevented a Ghanaian goal, and that what football can offer in response is a penalty kick. And that it fell to Gyan, a young player who on a team with Essien had come to bear the burden of Ghana’s attack, to take that penalty, and who under the pressure hit the bar. And that the burden of the loss falls on him rather than on the Uruguayan who cheated. And that this, it seemed, simply devastated the team, which was not able to rally effectively during the penalty kicks. And that all of the urging on, the beautiful cacophony and integrated vuvuzelas of the crowd, the millions of prayers, among them mine, repeatedly spoken during the match, that all of that led to what it did is unbearable. To watch Gyan, sobbing uncontrollable, consoled by his teammates on the pitch, was – like the entire match – purely gut-wrenching.<br><br>Read the Full Essay @ <a href=\"http://blogs-dev.oit.duke.edu/wcwp/2010/07/03/black-star-tragedy/\"><span style=\"font-weight:bold;font-size:180%\">Soccer Politics</span></a><br></div><br><div><a name=\"data:post.title\"><img src=\"http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" style=\"border:0pt none\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\"></a></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-8585946408228918047?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Reconciliation after genocide is just another form of torture",
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"content" : "<div><p>Susie Linfield in <em>Guernica</em>:</p>\r\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\">\r\n<p><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f207e704970b-popup\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"ScreenHunter_03 Jul. 03 17.13\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133f207e704970b-800wi\" style=\"BORDER-BOTTOM:black 1px solid;BORDER-LEFT:black 1px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px;BORDER-TOP:black 1px solid;BORDER-RIGHT:black 1px solid\" title=\"ScreenHunter_03 Jul. 03 17.13\"></a> “Reconciliation” has become a darling of political theorists, journalists, and human-rights activists, especially as it pertains to the rebuilding of postwar and post-genocidal nations. Nowhere is this more so than in the case of Rwanda. Numerous books and articles on the topic—some, though not all, inspired by Christian teachings—pour forth. It can plausibly be argued, of course, that in Rwanda—and in other places, like Sierra Leone and the Balkans, where victims and perpetrators must live more or less together—reconciliation is a political necessity. Reconciliation has a moral resonance, too; certainly it is far better than endless, corpse-strewn cycles of revanchism and revenge. Yet there is sometimes a disturbing glibness when outsiders tout the wonders of reconciliation, as if they are leading the barbarians from darkness into light. Even worse, the phenomenological realities—the human truths—of the victims’ experiences are often ignored or, at best, treated as pathologies that should be “worked through” until the promised land of forgiveness is reached. This is not just a mistake but a dangerous one; for it is doubtful that any sustainable peace, and any sustainable politics, can be built without a better, which is to say a tragic, understanding of those truths.</p>\r\n<p>No one has described the victims’ experience more astutely or intransigently than Jean Améry—writer, <em>résistant</em>, Jew—who was captured by the Gestapo in 1943 and survived (or, as he insisted, did not really survive) Auschwitz and other camps. Améry’s relative anonymity is a shame, for he wrote some of the most original, incisive, and discomfiting essays on torture and genocide ever penned—essays that are, sad to say, still strikingly relevant, and that challenge current ideas about what reconstruction after genocide might look like. Despite the restrained irony of Améry’s voice, his writings accumulate into an accusatory howl.</p></blockquote>\r\n<p>More <a href=\"http://www.guernicamag.com/features/1853/linfield_7_1_10/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Emailmarketingsoftware&utm_content=1083584105&utm_campaign=GuernicaJuly12010Newsletter&utm_term=LivingwiththeEnemy\">here</a>.</p></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F07%2Freconciliation-after-genocide-is-just-another-form-of-torture.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=cDaKYfBeqZw:mmm1N_KwN5I:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p><img title=\"evidence\" src=\"http://monicaacoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/evidence-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"215\">I find comfort in those two tones that indicate that an episode of a “<a href=\"http://www.nbc.com/Law_and_Order/\">Law and Order</a>” franchise is coming on. I don’t mind watching reruns because I’ve usually forgotten the outcome. I feel the same way about the “<a href=\"http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/\">CSI</a>” franchises and the television show “<a href=\"http://www.fox.com/house/index1.htm\">House</a>.” This might be my personal television vice, but I suspect that it’s part of a wider fascination with evidence. That is, many people have become increasingly interested in various forms of evidence– through technology, skepticism, a need for healing or a quest for justice – and how it plays out around us.</p>\n<p>These television shows affirm some of my beliefs about the world: I love that we always leave evidence of our presence in the world. I’m interested in what evidence counts – and what’s left out – when decisions get made. I realize that it often takes a team of people to figure out what’s going on.</p>\n<p>I thirst for evidence.</p>\n<p>This desire for proof can also be found in faith communities. Christian scriptures often portray Jesus’ disciples as asking him for a sign. There’s one example in <a href=\"http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=John+6:24-35&vnum=yes&version=nrsv\">John 6:30</a>.</p>\n<p>So the disciples said to Jesus, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? <strong></strong></p>\n<p>This suggests to me that even when people have committed themselves to a cause or teaching or community, they still want proof that they’re on the right track. In this case, the disciples want proof of God’s presence.</p>\n<p>Theologians and philosophers of religion have filled volumes talking about proofs for the existence of God. Thinkers from <a href=\"http://www.iep.utm.edu/anselm/\">Anselm of Canterbury</a> to <a href=\"http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/kant.htm\">Immanuel Kant</a> argue that we know God exists because of what we see in the world – from creation to a sense of human morality. (Of course they are referring to a particular Christian God with certain attributes.)</p>\n<p>Likewise, religious scholars have also written extensively about religious experience. In this category, we ask: How do I know God is present? How do I know that God is with me?</p>\n<p>In <em><a href=\"http://www.psychwww.com/psyrelig/james/toc.htm\">Varieties of Religious Experiences</a></em>, <a href=\"http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/\">William James</a> interviews a number of devout Christians and concludes that people themselves know when they have experienced God. The evidence people give ranges from charismatic expressions to internal senses of peace and love.</p>\n<p>Some communities demand more objective data. That is, other people should be able to confirm that God is present. Some insist that the ability to handle snakes or speak in tongues is necessary proof of the indwelling of God. Others find power in rituals like baptism and Eucharist. Still others argue that God’s presence should be manifest in good works and moral behavior.</p>\n<p>The same questions can be asked in the context of depressive conditions. How do I know? What is my evidence?</p>\n<p>Therapeutic communities are very good at gathering evidence. If I understand the DSM model correctly, many mental health conditions are determined by aggregating symptoms. Clinicians look at the evidence before them, and use this data to assess, treat, and hopefully heal. There are checklists and markers and questions. They seem to be asking the question:</p>\n<p>How do we know when something is wrong?</p>\n<p>In the midst of this accumulation of information, there’s something people rarely ask me when it comes to depressive conditions:</p>\n<p><strong>How do you know you are well?</strong></p>\n<p>Is it an internal feeling? New behaviors? Or does one simply fail to show the symptoms that declared one’s condition in the first place?</p>\n<p>Here I learn from the faithful. Faith communities do not ask for proof of God’s absence. They inquire about affirmation of God’s presence. This questioning reminds me that wellness is more the absence of negative symptoms. Wellness is something positive. Wellness can actually be normal.</p>\n<p>How do you know you are well?</p>\n<p>For me, it’s small things.</p>\n<p>Every day activities are everyday (not monumental feats).</p>\n<p>Breakfast tastes good.</p>\n<p>I laugh.</p>\n<p>I need bits of evidence that I can piece together. Although my faith persists when I feel horrible, I’m more like the disciples than I want to admit. I need signs and wonders that I’m on the right path.</p>\n<p>In a world that’s often more interested in what’s wrong, I find power in the evidence, however small it may be, that things are good.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>A dozen theologians <a href=\"http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/How-the-Holy-Spirit-Moves-Today\">on how the Holy Spirit is at work today</a><br>\n<a href=\"http://monicaacoleman.com/downloads\">my survivor strategies</a><br>\n<a href=\"http://www.revmonicaonfb.com/\">Connect with me on facebook</a></p>"
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"title" : "African plantations: the trend towards scale in African agriculture",
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"content" : "<p>The push by foreign investors to form large aggregations of land in Africa — plantations, in a word — is getting lots of attention and concern, but the reality on the ground is inconclusive about the potential for peril. Foreign investors may simply be dumb or naieve about the returns on aggregating farm land in a region of the world where historically plantations have not proved either practical or profitable. Africa is not, and never has been, Latin America. Assemblng land, meanwhile, is one achievement. But growing crops profitably requires much more than land and even farm labor, which is not actually plentiful in Africa either (because most farmers have their own land and want to work it). Crops, whether grown on plantations or in small plots, require water and sometimes fertilizer. The crops also must reach markets, some of them distant. Even if the owners of the plantation purchase all of their output, they must still move output in a timely fashion. And if they plan on exporting crops out of Africa, the logistics of international transport may be prove daunting.</p>\n<p>So there is no reason to imagine that African planations will suddenly become numerous in parts of Africa (such as Ethiopia and Ghana) where they haven’t historically been. But if plantations do arise, alternative exist to the prospect of wage labor. Perhaps the most compelling alternative is for small farmers themselves to form cooperatives, in order to achieve production scale. Or they can themselves <a href=\"http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9807E6DA1330F937A25752C0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=5\">contract directly with a large buyer</a> — a practice I’ve described in detail in The New York Times regarding the case of the American cotton merchant, Dunavant — in order to benefit from the undeniable movement towards scale in African agriculture. In some parts of Africa, such as a tea plantation I once visited in Malawi, “outgrower” arrangements with farmers who live outside of the plantation proper provide them with both a ready buy for a cash crop, and technical assistance in growing it. A new study from a British development agency, the International Institute for Environment and Development. offers a review of Africa’s “plantation future” and its alternatives. While the authors presume too-bright a scenario for corporate farming in Africa, <a href=\"http://www.iied.org/pubs/display.php?o=12566IIED\">their survey of alternative “business models” for small farmers</a> in Africa (and elsewhere) is valuable and timely.</p>"
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"title" : "In which Dunning-Krueger meets Slutsky-Yule, and they make music together",
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"content" : "<blockquote><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: Over 2500 words on how a\npsychologist who claimed to revolutionize aesthetics and art history would have\nfailed undergrad statistics. With graphs, equations, heavy sarcasm, and long\nquotations from works of intellectual history. Are there no poems you could be\nreading, no music you could be listening to?</blockquote>\n\n<p>I feel I should elaborate my <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2010-06.html#martindale\">dismissal</a> of Martindale's <cite>The Clockwork\nMuse</cite> beyond a mere contemptuous snarl.\n\n<p>The core of Martindale's theory is this. Artists, and still more consumers\nof art, demand novelty; they don't just want the same old thing.\n(They <em>have</em> the same old thing.) Yet there is also a demand, or a\nrequirement, to stay within the bounds of a style. Combining this with a\nnotion that coming up with novel ideas and images requires \"regressing\" to\n\"primordial\" modes of thought, he concludes\n<blockquote>\nEach artist or poet must regress further in search of usable combinations of\nideas or images not already used by his or her predecessors. We should expect\nthe increasing remoteness or strangeness of similes, metaphors, images, and so\non to be accompanied by <em>content</em> reflecting the increasingly deeper\nregression toward primordial cognition required to produce them. Across the\ntime a given style is in effect, we should expect works of art to have content\nthat becomes increasingly more and more dreamlike, unrealistic, and bizarre.\n\n<p>Eventually, a turning point to this movement toward primordial thought\nduring inspiration will be reached. At that time, increases in novelty would\nbe more profitably attained by decreasing elaboration — by loosening the\nstylistic rules that govern the production of art works — than by\nattempts at deeper regression. This turning point corresponds to a major\nstylistic change. ... Thus, amount of primordial content should\n<em>decline</em> when stylistic change occurs. [pp. 61--64, his emphasis;\nthe big gap corresponds to some pages of illustrations, and not me leaving out a lot of qualifying text]\n</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Reference to actual work in cognitive science on creativity, both\ntheoretical and experimental (see, e.g.,\nBoden's <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0003569X\">review</a> <a href=\"http://web.archive.org/web/20031204140343/http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/34/\">contemporary</a>\nwith Martindale's work), is conspicuously absent. But who knows, maybe his\nuncritical acceptance of these sub-Freudian notions has lead in some productive\ndirection; let us judge them by their fruits.\n\n<p>Here is Martindale's Figure 9.1 (p. 288), supposedly showing the amount of\n\"primordial content\" in Beethoven's musical compositions from 1795 through\n1826, or rather a two-year moving average of this.\n\n<center>\n<img src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-original.png\" width=\"450\">\n\n\n</center>\n\nLet us leave to one side the very difficult questions of how\nto <em>measure</em> \"primordial content\"; Martindale, like too many\npsychologists, is slave to <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2008-01.html#borsboom\">quite confused ideas</a> about <a href=\"http://sites.google.com/site/borsboomdenny/BorsboomEndOfCV2009.pdf\">\"construct\nvalidity\"</a>. The dots are the moving averages, the solid black line is a guide\nto the eye, and the dashed line is a parabola fit to the moving averages. In\nthe main text, Martindale combines the parabolic trend with a second order\nautoregression, getting the fitted model (p. 289)\n<center>\nPC<sub>t</sub> = -1.59 + 0.23<i>t</i> - 0.01 <i>t</i><sup>2</sup> + 0.58 PC<sub><i>t</i>-1</sub> - 0.55 PC<sub><i>t</i>-2</sub>\n</center>\nwhich, he says, has an R<sup>2</sup> of 50%. Primordial content is supposed to\ngo up as an artist (or artistic community) \"works out the possibilities of a\nstyle\", but go down with a switch to a new, fresh style. Martindale tries\n(p. 289) to match up his peaks and troughs with what the critics say about the\ndevelopment of Beethoven's style, and succeeds to his own satisfaction, at\nleast \"in broad outline\".\n\n<p>Now, here is the figure which was, so help me, the second run\nof <a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-on-beethoven.R\">some R code</a>\nI wrote.\n\n<center>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-1.pdf\"><img src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-1.png\" width=\"450\"></a>\n</center>\nHere, however, instead of having people try to figure out how much primordial\ncontent there was in Beethoven's music, I simply took Gaussian white noise,\nwith mean zero and variance 1, with one random number per year, and treated\nthat exactly the same way that Martindale did: two-year moving averages, a\nquadratic fit over time (displayed), and a quadratic-plus-AR(2) over-all model,\nwhich kept 45% of the variance. My final fitted model was\n<center>\nPC<sub>t</sub> = -0.61 + 0.15<i>t</i> - 0.004 <i>t</i><sup>2</sup> + 0.63 PC<sub><i>t</i>-1</sub> - 0.51 PC<sub><i>t</i>-2</sub>\n</center>\n\nWas this a fluke? No. When I repeat this 1000 times, the median R<sup>2</sup>\nis 43%, and 28% of the runs have an R<sup>2</sup> greater than what Martindale\ngot. His fit is no better than one would expect if his measurements are pure\nnoise.\n\n<center>\n\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-sampling-dist.pdf\"><img src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-sampling-dist.png\" width=\"450\"></a>\n</center>\n\n<p>What is going on here? All of the apparent structure revealed in\nMartindale's analysis is actually coming from his having smoothed his data,\nfrom having taken the two-year moving average. Remarkably enough, he realized\nthat this could lead to artifacts, but brushed the concern aside:\n\n<blockquote>\nOne has to be careful in dealing with smoothed data. The smoothing by its very\nnature introduces some autocorrelation because the score for one year is in\npart composed of the score for the prior year. However, autocorrelations\nintroduced by smoothing are positive and decline regularly with increase lags.\nThat is not at all what we find in the case of Beethoven — or in other\ncases where I have used smoothed data. The smoothing is not creating\ncorrelations where non existed; it is magnifying patterns already in the\ndata. [p. 289]</blockquote>\n\n<p>What this passage reveals is that Martindale did not understand the\ndifference between the autocorrelation function of a time series, and the\ncoefficients of an autoregressive model fit to that time series. (Indeed I\nsuspect he did not understand the difference between correlation and regression\ncoefficients in general.) The autoregressive coefficients correspond, much\nmore nearly, to the <em>partial</em> autocorrelation function, and the partial\nautocorrelations which result from applying a moving average to white noise\nhave <em>alternating</em> signs — just like Martindale's do. In fact,\nthe coefficients he got are entirely typical of what happens when his procedure\nis applied to white noise:\n\n\n<center>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-ar-coefficients.pdf\"><img src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/martindale-replica-ar-coefficients.png\" width=\"450\"></a>\n<br>Small dots: Autoregressive coefficients from 1000 runs of Martindale's\nanalysis applied to white noise. Large X: his estimated coefficients for\nBeethoven.\n</center>\n\n<p>I could go on about what has gone wrong in just the four pages Martindale\ndevotes to Beethoven's style, but I hope my point is made. I won't say that he\nmakes every conceivable mistake in his analysis, because my experience as a\nteacher of statistics is that there are always more possible errors than you\nwould ever have suspected. But I will say that the errors he's making —\ncreating correlations by averaging, confusing regression and correlation\ncoefficients, etc. — are the sort of things which get covered in the\nfirst few lessons of a good course on time series. The fact that averaging\nwhite noise produces serial correlations, and a particular pattern\nof <em>autoregressive</em> coefficients, is in particular famous as the\nYule-Slutsky effect, after its two early-20th-century discoverers.\n(<a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Slutsky\">Slutsky</a>,\ninterestingly, appears to have thought of this as an actual explanation for\nmany apparent cycles, particularly of macroeconomic fluctuations under\ncapitalism, though how he proposed to reconcile this with Marx I don't know.)\nI am not exaggerating for polemical effect when I say that I would fail\nMartindale from any class I taught on data analysis; or that every single one\nof the undergraduate students who\ntook <a href=\"http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/490/\">490</a> this spring has\ndemonstrated more skill at applied statistics than he does in this book.\n\n<p>Martindale's book has about 200 citations in Google Scholar. (I haven't\ntried to sort out duplicates, citation variants, and self-citations.) Most of\nthese do not appear to be \"please don't confuse us with that rubbish\"\ncitations. Some of them are from intelligent scholars,\nlike <a href=\"http://www.thevalve.org/go/member/99/\">Bill Benzon</a>, who,\nthrough no fault of their own, are unable to evaluate Martindale's statistics,\nand so take his competence on trust. (Similarly\nwith <a href=\"http://www.denisdutton.com/martindale_review.htm\">Dutton</a>, who\nI would <em>not</em> describe as an "intelligent scholar".) This trust has\nprobably been amplified by Martindale's rhetorical projection of confidence in\nhis statistical prowess. (Look at that quote above.) — Oh, let's not\nmince words here: Martindale fashions himself as someone bringing the gospel of\nquantitative science to the innumerate heathen of the humanities, complete with\nthe expectation that they'll be too stupid to appreciate the gift. For many\nreaders, those who project such intellectual arrogance are not just more\nintimidating but also <em>more credible</em>, though rationally, of course,\nthey shouldn't be. (If you want to suggest that I exploit this myself, well,\nyou'd <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/552.html\">have a point</a>.)\n\n<p>Could there be something to the idea of an intrinsic style cycle, of the\nsort Martindale (like many others) advocates? I actually wouldn't be surprised\nif there were situations when some such mechanism (shorn of the unbearably\nsilly psychoanalytic bits) applies. In fact, the idea of this mechanism is\nmuch older than Martindale. For example, here is a passage from Marshall\nG. S. Hodgson's <cite>The Venture of Islam</cite>, which I happen to have been\nre-reading recently:\n\n<blockquote>After the death of [the critic] Ibn-Qutaybah [in 889], however, a\ncertain systematizing of critical standards set in, especially among his\ndisciples, the "school of Baghdad". ... Finally the doctrine of the\npre-eminence of the older classics prevailed. So far as concerned poetry in\nthe standard Mudâi Arabic, which was after all, not spoken, puristic\nliterary standards were perhaps inevitable: an artificial medium called for\nartificial norms. That critics should impose some limits was necessary, given\nthe definition of shi`r poetry in terms of imposed limitations. With the\ndivorce between the spoken language of passion and the formal language of\ncomposition, they had a good opportunity to exalt a congenially narrow\ninterpretation of those limits. Among adîbs who so often put poetry to\npurposes of decoration or even display, the critics' word was law. Generations\nof poets afterwards strove to reproduce the desert qasîdah ode in their\nmore serious work so as to win the critics' acclaim.\n<p>Some poets were able to respond with considerable skill to the critics'\ndemands. Abû-Tammâm (d. <i>c</i>. 845) both collected and edited\nthe older poetry and also produced imitations himself of great merit. But work\nsuch as his, however admirable, could not be duplicated indefinitely. In any\ncase, it could appear insipid. A living tradition could not simply mark time;\nit had to explore whatever openings there might be for working through all\npossible variations on its themes, even the grotesque. Hence in the course of\nsubsequent generations, taste came to favor an ever more elaborate style both\nin verse and in prose. Within the forms which had been accepted, the only\nrecourse for novelty (which was always demanded) was in the direction of more\nfar-fetched similes, more obscure references to educated erudition, more subtle\nconnections of fancy.\n<p>The peak of such a tendency was reached in the proud poet al-Mutanabbi',\n"the would-be prophet" (915--965 — nicknamed so for a youthful episode of\nreligious propagandizing, in which his enemies said he claimed to be a prophet\namong the Bedouin), who travelled whenever he did not meet, where he was, with\nsufficient honor for his taste. He himself consciously exemplified, it is\nsaid, something of the independent spirit of the ancient poets. Though he\nlived by writing panegyrics, he long preferred, to Baghdad, the semi-Bedouin\ncourt of the Hamdânid Sayf-al-dawlah at Aleppo; and on his travels he\ndied rather than belie his valiant verses, when Bedouin attacked the caravan\nand he defended himself rather than escape. His verse has been ranked as the\nbest in Arabic on the ground that his play of words showed the widest range of\ningenuity, his images held the tension between fantasy and actuality at the\ntautest possible without falling into absurdity.\n<p>After him, indeed, his heirs, bound to push yet further on the path, were\noften trapped in artificial straining for effect; and sometimes they appear\nsimply absurd. In any case, poetry in literary Arabic after the High Caliphal\nPeriod soon became undistinguished. Poets strove to meet the critics' norms,\nbut one of the critics' demands was naturally for novelty within the proper\nforms. But such novelty could be had only on the basis of over-elaboration.\nThis the critics, disciplined by the high, simple standards of the old poetry,\nproperly rejected too. Within the received style of shi`r, good further work\nwas almost ruled out by the effectively high standards of the\n`Abbâsî critics. [<a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/0226346838\">volume I</a>, pp. 463--464, omitting some diacritical\nmarks which I don't know how to make in HTML]</p></p></p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Now, it does not matter here what the formal requirements of such poetry\nwere, still less those of\nthe <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qasidah\">qasidah</a>; nor is it\nrelevant whether Hodgson's aesthetic judgments were correct. I quote this\nbecause he points to the very same mechanism — demand for novelty plus\nrestrictions of a style leading to certain kinds of elaboration and content\n— decades before Martindale (Hodgson died, with this part of his book\ncomplete, in 1968), and with no pretense that he was making an original\nargument, as opposed to rehearsing a familiar one.\n\n<p>But there are obvious problems with turning this mechanism into the\nUniversal Scientific Law of Artistic Change, as Martindale wants to do. Or\nrather problems which <em>should</em> be obvious, many of which were well put\nby Joseph (Abu <a href=\"http://inversesquare.wordpress.com/\">Thomas</a>)\nLevenson in <cite><a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9781597405928\">Confucian China and Its Modern Fate</a></cite>:\n\n<blockquote> Historians of the arts have sometimes led their subjects out of\nthe world of men into a world of their own, where the principles of change seem\ninterior to the art rather than governed by decisions of the artist. Thus, we\nhave been assured that seventeenth-century Dutch landscape bears no resemblance\nto Breughel because by the seventeenth century Breughel's tradition of\nmannerist landscape had been exhausted. Or we are treated to tautologies,\naccording to wich art is "doomed to become moribund" when it "reaches the limit\nof its idiom", and in "yielding its final flowers" shows that "nothing more can\nbe done with it" — hece the passing of the grand manner of the eighteenth\nentury in Europe and the romantic movement of the nineteenth.\n\n<p>How do aesthetic valuies really come to be superseded? This sort of thing,\npurporting to be a revelation of cause, an answer to a question, leaves the\nquestion still to be asked. For Chinese painting, well before the middle of\nthe Ch'ing period, with its enshrinement of eclectic virtuosi and connoisseurs,\nhad, by any "internal" criteria, reached the limit of its idiom and yielded its\nfinal flowers. And yet the values of the past persisted for generations, and\nthe fear of imitation, the feeling that creativity demanded freshness in the\nartist's purposes, remained unfamiliar to Chinese minds. Wang Hui was happy to\nwrite on a landscape he painted in 1692 that it was a copy of a copy of a Sung\noriginal; while his colleague, Yün Shou-p'ing, the flower-painter, was\ndescribed approvingly by a Chi'ing compiler as having gone back to the\n"boneless" painting of Hsü Ch'ung-ssu, of the eleventh century, and made\nhis work one with it. (Yün had often, in fact, inscribed "Hsü\nCh'ung-ssu boneless flower picture" on his own productions.) And Tsou I-kuei,\nanother flower-painter, committed to finding a traditional sanction for his\nart, began a treatise with the following apologia:\n\n<blockquote>When the ancients discussed painting they treated landscape in\ndetail but slighted flowering plants. This does not imply a comparison of\ntheir merits. Flower painting flourished in the northern Sung, but Hsü\n[Hsi] and Huang [Ch'üan] could not express themselves theoretically, and\ntherefore their methods were not transmitted.</blockquote>\n\n<p>The lesson taught by this Chinese experience is that an art-form is\n"exhausted"when its practitioners think it is. And a circular explanation will\nnot hold — they think so not when some hypothetically objective\nexhaustion occurs in the art itself, but when outer circumstances, beyond the\nrealm of purely aesthetic content, has changed their subjective criteria;\notherwise, how account for the varying lengths of time it takes for different\npublics to leave behind their worked-out forms? [pp. 40–41]</p></p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Martindale seems to be completely innocent of such considerations. What he\nbrings to this long-running discussion is, supposedly, quantitative evidence,\nand skill in its analysis. But this is <em>precisely</em> what he lacks. I\nhave only gone over one of his analyses here, but I claim that the level of\nincompetence displayed here is actually <em>entirely typical</em> of the rest\nof the book.\n\n<p><em>Manual trackback</em>: <a href=\"http://evolvingthoughts.net/2010/07/02/the-man-with-two-links/\">Evolving Thoughts</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bottlerocketscience.blogspot.com/2010/07/exhausting-art.html\">bottlerocketscience</a>\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_cognition.html\">Minds, Brains, and Neurons</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_writing_for_antiquity.html\">Writing for Antiquity</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_the_commonwealth_of_letters.html\">The Commonwealth of Letters</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_learned_folly.html\">Learned Folly</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_enigmas_of_chance.html\">Enigmas of Chance</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "in which one man single-handedly dissects the Church in Ghana...",
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"content" : "Well my cyber buddy Ian has been at it again - this time he's written a highly charged, controversial (and long but well worth the read), take on the whole church-culture in Ghana. I've quoted many sections of the <a href=\"http://www.modernghana.com/newsthread1/281977/1/121656#showcomments2\">article</a>, originally posted on Modern Ghana, below. Comments, thoughts? I'm sure there will be many!<br><span style=\"font-weight:bold\"><br>\"I clearly remember my very first church experience in Ghana. I had only been in the country for two weeks, still chewed my fufu, hadn't perfected the foot-shuffling, buttock-protruding, handkerchief-waving church dance, and couldn't yet understand Twi (which the whole service was held in). Nobody was translating for me, so there I sat for four hours in a bewildering new environment, lost in a sea of vernacular. The telling moment came when the collection pot came around. Only then did the announcer see fit to switch to English. They were happy to let God's words slip by untranslated, but made sure I knew when it was time to put my hand in my pocket. I left there with the question I still ask myself: do these churches exist for religious purposes, or financial purposes?<br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCnulRpmHSI/AAAAAAAABk4/Vrg-TDgQYFg/s1600/25+years+in+ministry-med.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0pt 0pt 10px 10px;width:308px;height:308px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCnulRpmHSI/AAAAAAAABk4/Vrg-TDgQYFg/s320/25+years+in+ministry-med.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br>One of my white brothers recently told me a similar, yet far more shocking story. A certain pastor fooled his flock by telling them to bring out their cash so that he could sanctify it for them and make it magically multiply in the future. His killer business strategy was revealed when he convinced the people to leave all their money in his blessing plate. After all, it had now been blessed and would return to them a hundredfold, so they shouldn't worry. Open any newspaper and you'll be reminded of how close to Lucifer some of our Christian pastors are. Last time I read the Bible, it didn't say anything about impregnating your own daughter, defiling the choirgirls and buying BMWs with church funds. From what I see, our Christian churches here are little more than dens of depravity and delusion. At least the churches I see in Europe and America offer some succour to the afflicted, by opening free 'soup kitchens' and offering a place for the homeless to lay their heads. These massive Ghanaian churches, meanwhile, stay empty and padlocked while the vulnerable kayayo girls and mental patients sleep on the pavements with the mosquitoes, rainstorms and rapists.<br><br>Anyway, how can a Ghanaian ask an Englishman if he goes to church? It's like an Englishman asking a Ghanaian if he knows how to eat fufu. Isn't it my people who brought the Bible and Africa's first Christian churches to your people while they were still worshipping rocks and rivers, performing human sacrifices, wearing magical amulets and praying to gods with a small g? It's only through the perspiration and malaria-fuelled deaths of generations of dedicated European missionaries that Christianity has been able to penetrate the Dark Continent. These were the first foreigners who, after over 400 years of European pillage and plunder, wanted to provide something for you, not take something from you.<br><br>Before the “White Fathers” came along, your country had no churches, schools, clinics, written language, or bicycles. Or do you think that the Methodist, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches, with their attached schools, are African inventions? Anyone who has graduated from Akropong, Amedzopfe or Aburi Training Colleges owes a debt of gratitude to the missionaries for building these mountaintop establishments. Any Ghanaian who has sworn on the Bible, celebrated Christmas, or hung a cross in their homes couldn't have been able to do so if these 19th century missionaries had stayed in Europe. We brought the churches and Bible; you added the noise pollution and the falling on the floor.<br><br>But when we brought the Bible, were we doing you a service or a disservice?<br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn30_nA3cI/AAAAAAAABlA/FWNRnmySUoo/s1600/livingstone1-3.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:582px;height:319px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn30_nA3cI/AAAAAAAABlA/FWNRnmySUoo/s400/livingstone1-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>Study their history, and you will find that these Christian missionaries were definitely not the angels they made themselves out to be, and that their supposed philanthropic intentions deserve to be questioned.<br><br>It's currently being revealed that the Catholic Church is little more than a worldwide paedophile club- I bet their Fathers have loved coming here over the centuries and seeing all the naked, obliging African children running about. Like most Europeans, these people came here for colonisation, exploitation and fornication. They must have been rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect being able to exchange a few Bibles, crosses and candles for so many diamonds, gold nuggets, slaves, sex slaves and shiploads of prime timber.<br><br>They seem to have forgotten what the Bible says as soon as they brought it here. But, despite all this wickedness and deceit, their churches have proliferated in Ghana, with very little of the old beliefs surviving. Was the Bible accepted here because, just like mirrors, beads and metal pots, it was something new and shiny from 'aborokyire' (abroad), and because your people have been brainwashed to believe that everything from overseas is always more desirable than anything available locally?<br><br>I often wonder how Christianity has taken such a massive hold in Africa, at the expense of deep-rooted and widely followed traditional religions. I'm also very interested in the practices and beliefs of traditional West African religion before the white missionaries came. Were your ancestors living like savage heathens lost in a void of Godlessness? Did they have no sense of spiritualism and awe for the natural world? Had they never considered questions like “Where am I from?”, “Who made me?” and “What is my purpose?” The answer, of course, is that the idea of a Supreme Creator God is native to Africa, and not a foreign import, and that religion was in Africans' blood for millennia before the arrival of the Bible on these shores. The early seafarers sent home stories of primitive cannibals who needed to have their souls saved through regime change, religious instruction and 'Westernisation'. They made sure that they invented a new derogatory language to describe the poor Negro “pagans” and “animists” who were practising “fetishism” and “ancestor worship”. All these were terms coined by racist and blinkered Europeans who failed to mention that religious beliefs had been extensively honed and practised in Africa prior to the Testaments even being written. Before West Africans were force-fed the Bible, local names showing a belief in and the uniqueness and supremacy of God were widespread.<br><br>I'm one of the few white men who actually takes these ancient beliefs seriously, whilst doubting the continental acceptance of a new, revealed religion which actually promotes racism, slavery and murder. I strongly believe that the ancient powers are still with us, even if most of you have forsaken them and joined the God Squad. I've been to churches in Ghana and felt no inspiration or spiritual uplifting, only a lightening of my wallet and a severe earache. I've also been sitting meditating by myself in the forests, on the mountaintops and by the riversides, and felt closer to The Creator than ever before.<br><br>Do you think I'm talking a load of bollocks? If so, then you must also claim that all the beliefs, traditions and rituals of your ancestors are a load of bollocks too, and few Ghanaians are prepared to say that. It is the ancient traditional religion, with its guiding tenets of protection of the environment, taboo practices, adherence to the law, respect for personal relationships, and peace, which seems much more attractive and conscious to me than a modern Christian religion which allows warmongering, human bondage, materialism and littering.<br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn7Cpif2RI/AAAAAAAABlo/MJ6TBFMIMzM/s1600/langrel.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:496px;height:208px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn7Cpif2RI/AAAAAAAABlo/MJ6TBFMIMzM/s400/langrel.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>For the happy-clappers and Bible-bashers who refuse to admit that these ancient traditions constitute a religion, I quote the 60-year old words of Mbonu Ojike:<br><br>“If religion consists in deifying one character and crusading around the world to make him acceptable to all mankind, then the African has no religion. But if religion means doing, rather than talking, then the African has a religion.”<br><br>The ancient religions taught Africans how to live; Christianity seems to have only taught them how to make noise and pray for financial blessings. Why are you still begging for riches when He's already answered all of your prayers thousands of years ago? What more do you want Him to do for you? He's created for you a land full of foods, teeming rivers and ocean, fertile soil, 80 percent of the world's natural resources and precious minerals, a “Tree of God” with a hundred different uses, and abundant sunshine and rainfall. You lucky buggers- what more do you need? Why do you need money on top of all these blessings? And have you ever read the Bible? You don't even have to get past the first chapter before learning that He charged you to have dominion over all His creations, not sit down pleading for more while the white man comes and takes it all.<br><br>In fact, God has blessed Africa so richly that some people are blaming the slow pace of the continent's development on these very blessings. They argue that anybody who has an accessible abundance of natural resources, foods, water, building materials, medicines and alcohol in their environment will never strive to invent or develop anything more advanced, because they don't have to. Why should the African care about building concrete edifices, developing communications infrastructure, or using satellite technology, when he has everything he needs already?<br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn6WJ3IKTI/AAAAAAAABlg/4_Ri249qHDE/s1600/21521038.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:594px;height:397px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn6WJ3IKTI/AAAAAAAABlg/4_Ri249qHDE/s400/21521038.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a><br><br>If your wine comes straight from a tree, your meat is running around the compound for free, and your soil is so fertile that you just need to spit watermelon seeds onto your garden to make a watermelon farm, then why would you bother breaking into a sweat and inventing distilleries, supermarket chains and tractors?<br><br>The European, on the other hand, wasn't so blessed by God, and found himself stuck on some meagre, freezing piece of rock with no mangoes to pluck, no guinea-fowl to slaughter, and no gold to sell. He was forced to invent clothes factories, indoor heating and nitrogenous fertiliser. If not, he would still be dressing in animal skins, living in caves and eating turnip soup every day. So, the African, happy with his lot and able to obtain all life's necessities without straying too far from his hammock, had no need for material development. The obroni (white man), on the other hand, if he didn't want to die in childhood, had to force to develop his environment and invent new technologies. So ingrained are these different mentalities and attitudes towards development, that it has been suggested that if all the Americans came to live in Ghana, and all the Ghanaians went to live in America, then both countries would change irrevocably. Within twenty years, the Americans would have developed Ghana so much that they would want to make it their permanent home, and the Ghanaians would have made America so dirty and badly-maintained that the Americans would never want to go back there.<br><br>It wasn't until I arrived in Africa that I came across the term “God-fearing”, heard everywhere, from the pastors' sermons and church notices to the tro-tro inscriptions and internet dating sites. Is God meant to be some frightening, fiery, fearsome fiend, ready at the drop of a hat to devour me or strike me down with furious vengeance? I thought that was the Devil. I prefer the term “God-loving”. I love God, I don't fear Him. And I know He loves me: He wouldn't have made me, given me a working brain, and sent me to live in beautiful Ghana if He didn't. If Ghanaians really do fear God, don't you also fear invoking His wrath by your misuse of His blessings? Don't you think that He might appreciate from you a little less praying and a little more doing? On top of that, I'm sure Jesus would appreciate it if you stopped painting him as a white man in all your pictures.<br><br>And there are obviously very few people left who have faith in, or fear of, the abosom. Otherwise we wouldn't be destroying their enchanted natural environments by chopping down all the trees, encouraging soil erosion, and filling the rivers with mercury. Just don't say I didn't warn you when the sea deity punishes you with an oil slick larger than the Gulf of Mexico, in return for all the shit and plastic bags you've been dumping in there. And the drilling companies only spend billions of dollars to clean it up when it affects the Americans; they won't give a fuck when Ghana's beaches become the same colour as its people.<br><br>Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps all these people taking time off work to go and speak in tongues and drop their pure water sachets in Achimota forest will have their souls saved when 'Atemuda” arrives, and I'll go straight to hell for writing such a blasphemous article. (I just hope it's Ghana hell, where there's no electricity for the electric chair, the nails for the bed of nails have been stolen, the gas for the eternal fires is finished, and the Ghanaian devil never turns up for work because he used to be a civil servant.)<br><br>Perhaps I should go and join the foot-stampers and fist-clenchers in the church next door to help them repeatedly shout “IN THE NAME OF JESUS!” a little bit louder, instead of reading my history books. Or maybe I just want to live a good life now and do what I can in this world, instead of waiting in the mud and dirty, potholed streets for my turn to enter paradise.<br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn4a9U78jI/AAAAAAAABlQ/tnshfSgBmvs/s1600/south-africa-2009_11altardoc.jpg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0pt 10px 10px 0pt;width:357px;height:268px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DnXDQGcPK04/TCn4a9U78jI/AAAAAAAABlQ/tnshfSgBmvs/s320/south-africa-2009_11altardoc.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a> Should we spend our whole lives praying to God for salvation in Heaven, or should we look to our own amazing brains and able bodies to help us in our pursuit of happiness on Earth? Every human being needs faith and a moral code of conduct, but do we really need all-night church services and fourteen days of prayer and fasting to achieve it? Like the rest of the good people of Ghana, I follow nine of the Ten Commandments, but I don't feel the need to dress up and go and advertise it at full volume every Sunday morning. I recognise the value of life, and the duty I have in this world, rather than waiting and praying for the riches and paradise of the next world.<br><br>Let's end with someone you do take seriously, and think about what Bob meant when he sang:<br><br>“Preacher man don't tell me, heaven is under the earth. I know you don't know what life is really worth. Most people think, Great God will come from the sky, take away everything and make everybody feel high. But if you know what life is worth, you would look for yours on Earth.”<br><br>So now you see the light, are you gonna stand up for your rights?<br><br>Ian Utley is the author of<br>“Culture Smart! Ghana, the essential Guide to Customs and Culture”<br><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span><span style=\"font-style:italic\"><span style=\"font-style:italic\"></span></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8851511451028936152-118363992169738251?l=hollisramblings.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s3qR1IWHXYM/TBOIyAGQytI/AAAAAAAACdY/YFx6Bg-CpjM/s1600/2499517538_e26f867ee8.jpg\" style=\"clear:right;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s3qR1IWHXYM/TBOIyAGQytI/AAAAAAAACdY/YFx6Bg-CpjM/s320/2499517538_e26f867ee8.jpg\" width=\"264\"></a></div><br>\n<br>\n<br>\nshit ain't been the same since lauryn said, <a href=\"http://tan3000.tumblr.com/post/648072112/lauryn-hill-off-the-mtv-unplugged-album\">nah</a><br>\nchappelle went, <a href=\"http://theassimilatednegro.blogspot.com/2006/07/dave-chappelle-is-dead-long-live.html\">nah</a><br>\na lot of TAN's saying, nah<br>\nbadu and jay elec are on some <a href=\"http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1604287/20090204/badu_erykah.jhtml\">partially</a>, <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fypz6xC1cTI\">nah</a><br>\neven diddy's <a href=\"http://tan3000.tumblr.com/post/657210114/for-real-im-tired-of-keeping-my-mouth-shut\">spazzing</a><br>\nkanye <a href=\"http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/03/is_this_the_best_all-caps_kany.html\">all capping</a><br>\nNAH,<br>\nso while you clapping<br>\nat these smart n's rapping<br>\nany poor new yorkers in <a href=\"http://www.newyorker.com/\">the new yorker</a>?<br>\nnah<br>\nthey ain't look @whatyouselling<br>\nain't hearing what you telling<br>\nthat <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr8glaM4ruM\">pop-rock</a> ain't culture<br>\ni ain't cooking what you smelling<br>\nson, my fam is global<br>\nthe <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can't_Stop_Won't_Stop\">universal local</a><br>\nthe universe is loco<br>\nn's puff and look at <a href=\"http://realtalkny.uproxx.com/2009/05/topic/topic/vixens/new-photos-of-coco-in-smooth-magazine/\">coco</a><br>\nblack people soul food<br>\nwhite people <a href=\"http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/03/48-whole-foods-and-grocery-co-ops/\">whole foods</a><br>\nasian peeps grabbing they chopsticks<br>\n<a name=\"more\"></a><br>\nhot shit<br>\ngot these girls in a hurt locker<br>\non some <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GxSDZc8etg\">blowing they box</a> shit<br>\ni'm a <a href=\"http://www.illdoctrine.com/2008/08/a_beginners_guide_to_no_homo.html\">no-no</a><br>\nmy homos on some stroking they cock shit <br>\nyou can't stop this<br>\nuntil i'm top of the top list<br>\nat the bottom of topless<br>\nbars<br>\nseen feathered and tarred <br>\nuntil i scream weathered and scarred<br>\nlets raise the bar beyond your dreams<br>\nthat stay tethered to <a href=\"http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/06/11/lady-gaga-paparazzi-mets/\">stars</a> ---<br>\nwho is he?<br>\n<a href=\"http://tan3000.tumblr.com/archive\">tan 3 kizzy</a><br>\nplan to tell your kiddies<br>\nraise your hands and grab your titties<br>\nstand up,<br>\ny'all know the f'ing city<br>\nword, i am that shit <br>\nmake the rest smell shitty<br>\nletting u fools hate, why try-and fuck with me?<br>\nbetter to lose weight, <a href=\"http://tan3000.tumblr.com/post/635415147/wow-this-is-50-cent-looking-very-christian\">die trying like 50</a><br>\n<br>\n++<br>\n<br>\nhere's how the game works<br>\na lot of heads is stupid<br>\nso if you're smart you act a little less stupid<br>\nmake money off the stupids<br>\nmaking money for a stupid<br>\nthen you bag it up, sell it<br>\nput that on a loop...<br>\nchill people, pause, i ain't trying to call you stupid…<br>\nit's all living, but how you living might be kinda stupid<br>\ndon't take me too literal<br>\nbut you looking for residuals<br>\non someone else's visual<br>\nthat's gonna take a miracle,<br>\nbut yo, i ain't trying to get all spiritual…<br>\njust shake it up, make you look a little at your rituals<br>\neverybody's on some tough tough<br>\na lot of other rough stuff<br>\nbut ain't nobody tough tough<br>\nwhen kids is on some <a href=\"http://justjared.buzznet.com/2007/03/31/hilary-duff-kids-choice-awards-2007/\">duff duff</a><br>\nso maybe take a puff puff<br>\nchill and pass the huff huff<br>\nblow me down blow me down<br>\nnah son, hold me down<br>\nand don't bluff<br>\nlike y'all not f'ing with this<br>\npoly-phonetic <a href=\"http://theassimilatednegro.blogspot.com/search/label/Trends%20I%20Started\">godly-prophetic </a><br>\nhighly <a href=\"http://www.chron.com/entertainment/photogallery/Web_Hunks.html#17753586\">photogenic</a><br>\nevery blog or rapper [now] looking mildly pathetic<br>\nwhen i keep it real<br>\nthey looking highly hypothetic<br>\nget [thy] <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/theassimilatednegro\">face in a book</a><br>\nor to digging me on reddit<br>\nbrain needing calisthenics<br>\niv, call paramedics<br>\nb4 u o-d, <br>\non my <a href=\"http://theassimilatednegro.blogspot.com/2008/12/chang-interview-part-1-brand-named-hip.html\">substance</a> or <a href=\"http://vimeo.com/4447631\">aesthetics</a><br>\nhow long until they get it<br>\neternal sunshine<br>\nnever b forgetted<br>\nRAP's charlie kauffman <br>\nwhen i *cough* and<br>\nget you lost in my \"Being the Boss Man\"<br>\nbout to finally buzz<br>\nlike the finale of lost and<br>\nyo cuz …cuz<br>\n...<br>\n....<br>\nlet me avail ya<br>\nno more troubling thoughts<br>\nthe bubbling that brought around<br>\nthis clown juggling thoughts<br>\ndowntown doubling-down <br>\nin a <a href=\"http://www.altrec.com/the-north-face/mens-nuptse-jacket\">down bubble</a> and shorts<br>\nspraying these mother-fuddle-duddlin' brown stains for sport...<br>\n<br>\n...just rhymes, white byron crawford, black gawker, kinda awkward, etc<br>\n<br>\n<span style=\"font-size:small\"><i>(image </i></span><a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/7333299@N06/2499517538/\"><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i>via</i></span></a><span style=\"font-size:small\"><i>)</i></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/16210951-6022178956442527040?l=theassimilatednegro.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheAssimilatedNegro/~4/Ul56WpJaU4o\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Aloe Blacc & The Grand Scheme Turn 'Billie Jean' Out",
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"content" : "I'm not going to spoil this post with more words than are really necessary. The simple facts of the matter are that you need to get to clicking on this video as soon as humanly possible. I have heard several versions of <b>Michael Jackson</b>'s \"Billie Jean.\" Somber ones, punked out ones, jazzy ones and even <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPOqE7k56nc\">Brazilian ones</a>. But what <strong>Aloe Blacc & The Grand Scheme</strong> have done with their Hawaiian Silky-fied version of \"Billie Jean\" is akin to hopping in your '69 Cadillac, driving down to a rent party and squeezing on some firm flesh underneath a red light in a basement. Catch my drift? Now get to it.<br>"
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"title" : "The Year of the Death of José Saramago",
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"content" : "<p>\n\n\t“We mourn the man whom death takes from us, and the loss of his miraculous talent and the grace of his human presence, but only the man do we mourn, for destiny endowed his spirit and creative powers with a mysterious beauty that cannot perish.”\n\t—from The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis\n\n\tOn June 18, 2010, the Portuguese writer José Saramago dies at the age of eighty-seven after a long illness. The cause is multiple organ failure. The government announces ...</p>\t\n<p>\n \n</p>\n\n <div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?a=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/wwborders?i=9g8ogYfD3UU:eDfOkmkr9KQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwborders/~4/9g8ogYfD3UU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<blockquote><br>Weep not<br>African child<br>Smile not<br>As you partake initiation into adulthood.<br>The old ladies will have a wrong perception<br>through their tirade.<br>They will lay a guilt trip on you.<br>Acquiesce.<br>Take this egg.<br>Eat!<br>Like the octogenarian with no teeth.<br>Tour this township<br>Like it is one of the tournament’s trophies won<br>With a bandana of clothes<br>Almost naked<br>The communities will see how matured you are.<br>The men will consider making you a spouse<br>The boys will have a good reason to lust.<br>Weep not<br>African child<br>Smile not<br>Womanhood has just arrived.</blockquote><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-1391687171716146591?l=oneghanaonevoice.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The Game at Its Best: Beautiful Struggler Responds",
"published" : 1277415240,
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TCPQpbtQKYI/AAAAAAAAB3o/CuqZtH1xa9M/s1600/boondocks.jpg\"><img style=\"width:400px;height:400px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_206Vk7BcsTg/TCPQpbtQKYI/AAAAAAAAB3o/CuqZtH1xa9M/s400/boondocks.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br><br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><b><i><a href=\"http://thebeautifulstruggler.com/2010/06/a-pause-for-the-cause.html\">A \"Pause\" for The Cause</a></i></b></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">by Sister Toldja</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">I got hip to The Boondocks comic strip when I was in high school. You know that feeling Roberta Flack described in “Killing Me Softly”, the whole “singing my life with his words” thing? Yeah, Aaron McGruder gave me alla that. I’d read the strip online daily, print it out and share it with my parents, hang it up in my locker. I bought every collection of strips that came out and totally obsessed over all things Boondocks. I was extremely hyped about the animated series…until it aired. It’s funny, where the strip was hilarious and smart, where the print comic was brilliant. I have some other complaints too, but overall, I just find the show to be decent.</div><div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">But then you have this week’s episode, “Pause”. McGruder takes on both Tyler Perry and the “pause”/”no homo” phenomenon in one fell swoop. Brilliant. Hilarious. And, most of all, courageous. The writer isn’t hardly the first one to criticize Mr. Perry’s work publicly; Spike Lee has done it and lesser known writers go at him all the time. But McGruder goes in quite differently than anything I’ve seen or read thus far.</div></div><div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">The plot: Granddad decides to audition for a “Winston Jerome” play. We learn through Huey’s narration that Jerome’s plays typically feature an educated, successful and virtuous Black woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to an abusive dark complexioned man, until she is saved by Jesus and the love of a light-skinned blue collar man. Granddad is chosen as the “light-skinned, good haired” leading man in “Ma’ Finds Herself A Man” because he’s Jerome’s type. He then finds himself forced to join the playwright’s “homo-erotic Christian theatre cult” (I TOLD YOU HE WENT IN!) and temporarily abandons his family for the chance at stardom.</div></div><div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">McGruder nails the likely reason a lot of actors reduce themselves to the Perry factory via a brief appearance by Kadeem Hardison as himself. Sitting next to Grandpa at the audition, he quips “What, I’m supposed to wait for the next Akeelah And The Bee to pay my mortgage?” He also lampoons the way in which Perry seems to use his relationship with Jesus as his line of defense for any criticism of his work:” …(I) would never ever kiss a man. That would be homosexual and against my Christian faith. But Jesus wants us to be actors first and heterosexuals second…but when I go on stage, Jesus wants me to become (Ma’Dukes)…“, quoth Jerome in his attempt to convince Grandpa to kiss him on stage.</div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\">Read the Full Essay @ <b><i><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><a href=\"http://thebeautifulstruggler.com/2010/06/a-pause-for-the-cause.html\">The Beautiful Struggler</a></span></i></b></div><br><div><a name=\"data:post.title\"><img src=\"http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" style=\"border:0\"></a></div></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/13096878-5265548053705350247?l=newblackman.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Explicit writings you should not read at work or anywhere else you can could into trouble for reading extremely explicit blog posts",
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"content" : "Not Safe For Work writings by <a href=\"http://www.chelseasummers.com/\">Chelesa G. Summers</a> are below the fold. <br> She writes on personal things such as <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2009/05/meditations-on-a-cat-and-his-nasty-ass.html\">nasty cats</a> and <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2009/07/spencer-t-jones-the-dog-of-my-life.html\"> gorgeous dogs</a> and <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2006/07/spandex_lucite_.html\">the pain of exercising</a>, but mostly she writes about sex. In all sorts of ways, she writes about sex and related subjects, such as being <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2006/03/boygirlboy.html\">the girlmeat in a boybread sandwich</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2005/04/deep_throat_dee.html\">the thrill of oral sex</a> and <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2005/12/swallow_a_brief.html\">deep throating</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2007/04/eta_1149_am.html\">the pang of missing a lover</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2006/03/modifier.html\"> tender roughness wrapped in love</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2006/10/in_defense_of_m.html\">the joy of big fake tits</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2009/12/those-fornicating-sentences-on-a-grammatology-of-fucking.html\">grammatology of fucking</a>, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2010/05/more-rejected-tailpieces-fumbling-deaf-dumb-and-blind.html\">a grey area between consent and protest (may have triggers for some)</a> and <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/chelseagirl/2007/08/being-read-my-r.html#more\">just how well a reader can really know a person who writes about these subjects</a>.\n\nMore can found at her blog, <a href=\"http://prettydumbthings.typepad.com/\">Pretty Dumb Things</a>.<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=Fv8HhPPKiv4:wKTZ_-QvVaQ:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=Fv8HhPPKiv4:wKTZ_-QvVaQ:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"content" : "<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id%3D12432238%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26color%3Dffffff%26fullscreen%3D1&width=500&height=281\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\"></iframe></p>\n\n<p>Warning: this video contains spoilers, violence, and cinematic greatness. </p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Many friends after seeing my video \"Tarantino vs Coen Brothers\" requested me to do a new video duel of directors, so I decided to do now a tribute to my two favorite directors, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese, were 25 days re-watching 34 films, selected more than 500 scenes, and a hard work editing.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://vimeo.com/10531136\">Tarantino vs. Coen Brothers is here</a>; and <a href=\"http://kubrickfilms.tripod.com/id93.html\">here's Scorsese on Kubrick</a>, in which I was delighted to learn that Scorsese thinks, as I do, that Eyes Wide Shut is underrated.</p> <strong>Tags:</strong> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Martin%20Scorsese\">Martin Scorsese</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/movies\">movies</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/remix\">remix</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/Stanley%20Kubrick\">Stanley Kubrick</a> <a href=\"http://kottke.org/tag/video\">video</a>"
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"title" : "On Critical Mass",
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"content" : "<p>I finally got around to carefully reading \"A Theory of the Critical<br>\nMass...\" by Oliver, Marwell, and Teixeira. Now I'm asking: what took<br>\nme so long? </p>\n<p>The article formalizes the notion of critical mass in collective<br>\naction. It identifies two main independent variables that can<br>\ninfluence the \"probability, extent, and effectiveness of group actions<br>\nin pursuit of collective goods\":</p>\n<ul>\n<li>The form of the \"production function\" that relates \"contributions of<br>\n resources to the level of the collective good\". Two important<br>\n categories of production functions are: (a) <em>decelerating</em>: the<br>\n \"first few units of resources contributed have the biggest effect on the<br>\n collective good, and subsequent contributions progressively less\"; (b)<br>\n <em>accelerating</em>: \"successive contributions generate progressively<br>\n larger payoffs; therefore, each contribution makes the next one more<br>\n likely.\"\n</li>\n<li>The \"heterogeneity of interests and resources\" in the population of<br>\n potentially interested actors.\n</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The authors then show that the problems and opportunities for<br>\ncollective action are very different for accelerating vs. decelerating<br>\nproduction functions and for homogeneous vs. heterogeneous populations<br>\nof actions. I'm not going to summarize the findings: the paper is a<br>\njoy to read, so I mostly want to urge you to do that. </p>\n<p>However, there were a couple of ideas that I found particularly<br>\nrelevant to issues in open content systems that I care about, so I did<br>\nwant to mention them.</p>\n<p>First, this work looks at critical mass in \"public\" goods, where all<br>\nthe value is created by a group of people. This is true for many open<br>\ncontent systems: Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap are two good<br>\nexamples. However, this isn't true of other systems, including our<br>\nCyclopath bicycle routing system. Cyclopath began with a nearly<br>\ncomplete transportation map created from Mn/DOT data and with a good<br>\nobjective route-finding algorithm that did not require user<br>\ninput. While we have shown that user input improves route-finding<br>\nsignificantly and that algorithms based on user input are better than<br>\npurely objective algorithms, I think it's fair to say that most of the<br>\nvalue of the Cyclopath \"good\" already was present before any user<br>\ncontributions were made. It's interesting to consider how the concepts<br>\nof this paper can be applied to a system like Cyclopath.</p>\n<p>Second, Oliver at al. show that with decelerating production<br>\nfunctions, the optimal outcome would be achieved if the *least*<br>\ninterested people contribute first and the *most* interested people<br>\ncontribute later. This obviously isn't the way it usually works. They<br>\npoint out that one way to make this happen is for the most interested<br>\nparties to \"hold back\"; perhaps they can offer \"matching<br>\ncontributions\" to entice less interested parties to contribute early<br>\nin the process. This might suggest new strategies for<br>\nintelligent-task-routing-like strategies to elicit participation in<br>\nopen content communities.</p>\n<p>Third, many of the illustrative examples the authors give concern the<br>\ndifferent opportunities for collective action in \"upper middle class\"<br>\nvs. \"lower income\" neighborhoods. I wonder: what's the equivalent of<br>\nan \"upper middle class\" open content system?</p>\n<p>Fourth, the notion of \"interest\" presumed here is one of direct<br>\ntangible personal benefit: if I give N dollars, I'm increasing the<br>\nchances that I'll receive M dollars (M >> N). However, we know that<br>\nmany contributors to open content systems (and many 'volunteers', too)<br>\ncontribute for other types of reasons, e.g., they \"believe\" in the<br>\npublic good, they are altruistic, or they want to build a<br>\nreputation. For example, in Cyclopath, our most active editors don't<br>\nrequest many routes. For another example, other researchers have shown<br>\nthat there are many users in discussion forums who just answer<br>\nquestions and don't ask any of their own.</p>\n<p>Fifth, finally, and simply, I'd like to empirically measure the<br>\nproduction function in various open content systems. I suspect that in<br>\nmany cases it is decelerating: i.e., early units of contribution are<br>\nproportionally more valuable. I'd also like to measure this for<br>\nindividual users. Doing this calculation requires a way to measure the<br>\nglobal quality of an open content system as well as the quality for a<br>\nparticular user. We can do both of these for Cyclopath. We can do the<br>\nlatter for MovieLens... not sure about the former.</p>"
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"title" : "What A Beautiful Game!",
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"content" : "<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/what-a-beautiful-game/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/YGc6Kld7nzc/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span><br>\nI watched the USA-Slovenia game this morning and I’m not bothered by Coulibaly’s calling a foul in minute 86 that took back the goal that would have given the USA the victory. In fact, I’m kind of enjoying it. A lot.</p>\n<p>But for two different reasons. First, here’s why I’m not that bothered. If you look at the individual play, I’ll grant you it’s a mess; Coulibaly called USA’s Carlos Bocanegra for holding onto Slovene Jejc Pecnik illegally around the time Maurice Edu scored the goal, also around the time half a dozen other players fouled each other as well. As Simon Hayden <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061803437.html\">pointed out</a></span>, the real problem is that it’s become normal for free kicks to become free-for-alls, as this one did. It’s not like the foul made the goal possible, really, but you know what? It <em>was </em>a foul and he called it. And especially when there are a bunch of fouls like this, the refs tend to give the benefit of the doubt to the kicking team, to minimize the number of goals that come as a result of foul play. It was the sort of call he might — to put it this way — much more easily <em>not have called</em>, but it also was a not completely <em>totally </em>unreasonable call, just <em>sort of </em>bad.</p>\n<p>Which is why the real point to make here is that bad calls are a part of the game. For example, when Clint Dempsey threw a high elbow early in the match, Coulibaly didn’t call a thing. And the free kick in the 86<sup>th</sup> minute should never have happened either; Jozy Altidore needs to save the clip of himself running into a Slovene and then falling down as if fouled for his Oscar reel, since it was a magnificent performance, and he well deserved the free kick for it. But you win some, you lose some; the fact that Coulibaly called more fouls for the US than against them is just one of those things. And if the USA was any other team than the USA, I would sympathize with them for catching a rough break; after getting their asses handed to them by a really charged up Slovenia in the first half, they returned the favor in the second, and good on them for it. They <em>earned </em>that tie — the Donovan goal, in particular, was <em>real </em>pretty — after earning an embarrassing loss in the first half of the game. But a tie was really all they earned; they dominated the second half after the Slovenes dominated the first. A tie seems about right.</p>\n<p>What makes me really <em>happy,</em> however, is all you self-righteous American pig dogs crowing about how you had the game stolen from you. Welcome to the fucking World Cup! Does it taste bitter? Does it burn? Now hold that there, right there, on your tongue, for about a century. There! Welcome! The World Cup <em>is </em>pain, princess. Which is why I’m delighted to see people like <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/06/18/the-goal-that-wasnt/\">Joe Posnanski</a></span> or <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/soccer/world-cup-2010/writers/peter_king/06/18/slovenia.usa/\">Peter King</a></span> as just the first of the many insufferable sports buffoons we’re going to be hearing from in the next few days, the first of many American soccer idiots to demonstrate that we‘ve finally arrived. I mean that: no real soccer nation can be complete without jabbering idiots believing the world is against them because they lost and the refs are totally in the bag for the Slovenians, cause you know the Slovenes, right? Notorious for something, I’m sure, once we figure out who they are. Or <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmPMswnB5I4\">this lovely inebriated fool</a></span>, who stumbles over the name Slovenia and pronounces FIFA “fie-fa” as he proclaims about the anti-USA bias while walking through my neighborhood. It makes me happy to finally live in a country — and a neighborhood — where people can be insufferable asses about soccer. USA! USA! USA! The <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://soccer.fanhouse.com/2010/06/18/koman-coulibalys-referee-united-states-slovenia-world-cup-wikipedia/\">people who defaced Coulibaly’s wikipedia page</a></span>, by the way, get a special zunguzungu seal of approval; well done, boys. Now if you can just get a good street riot started, you’ll really take the USA to the next level.</p>\n<p>(I’ve been to Slovenia, by the way; it’s a beautiful country. Just wanted that out there, to bolster my smug patronizing aura. To order two beers, say “dva pivo.”)</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/soccer/world-cup-2010/writers/peter_king/06/18/slovenia.usa/\">Peter King</a></span>’s SI column, for example, is really just run of the mill chauvinism; his dark mutterings about how Coulibaly — “from the landlocked West African country of Mali” — must be unprepared for his job since he only previously refereed in the African Cup of Nations is the sort of sports-commenter crypto racism that the US has been producing more and more of lately, but which has been pretty standard issue in Europe for quite a while. We’ll need more of that in the days to come, but don’t fool yourself: every newspaper in England has at least half a dozen writers capable of turning out that kind of performance at the drop of a hat. And his wailing indignation just demonstrates what an amateur hour dog and pony show he’s running. You get the idea that he really does think he’s the first soccer commentator to demand accountability from FIFA, which I bet he even knows how to pronounce. I hope someday he has the chance to cry and moan after a ref takes away his victory in the semifinals or the quarterfinals, or even the finals themselves. And maybe, just maybe, someday <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://abhisays.com/gaming/maradonas-hand-of-god-goal.html\">God himself</a></span> will reach down onto the pitch and hand victory to his opponents.</p>\n<p>But it’s Joe Posnanski who <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2010/06/18/the-goal-that-wasnt/\">truly showed promise today</a></span>. After a truly amazing story about some lady who doesn’t even <em>like </em>baseball just happening to be in the stands when Nolan Ryan threw his seventh no-hitter — and take note, kids, the incredible rambling tangent circling wide and than back is where the pros shine — he pivots suddenly to talk about the injustice we’ve just seen in Johannesburg:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…I thought about her Friday morning as I watched the United States soccer team put together one of the most remarkable comebacks in the history of the World Cup. I thought about her and all those people in America who were watching world class soccer more or less for the first time.</p>\n<p>And I was thinking just what an overmatched referee named Koman Coulibaly cost us all.</p>\n<p>Understand: This was Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter. This was Jerry West’s 60-foot shot. This was Montana to Clark in the end zone. This was Bobby Orr’s flying goal. This was the young Tiger Woods at Augusta. This was all those things multiplied several times because this was happening on the giant stage, in the world’s biggest sporting event. A team does not come back from a 2-0 halftime deficit to win in the World Cup. It doesn’t happen. It had NEVER happened. In soccer at the World Cup level — with its impossible mix of passion and fury and consequence and vuvuzelas — each goal is a minor miracle. Two goals is something like insurmountable, especially when a team has shut you out for an entire half.</p></blockquote>\n<p>First of all, when Posnanski wrote that “A team does not come back from a 2-0 halftime deficit to win in the World Cup,” I suspect that what he meant to say was “I don’t care about 1970’s quarterfinal when <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/world_cup_2010/8670763.stm\">West Germany came back from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2</a></span> because it didn’t involve the USA (Go USA!).” Or perhaps he meant to say “I also don’t care about West Germany’s comeback from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 against Hungary in 1954, nor do I care about Portugal’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_DPR_national_football_team#1966_World_Cup\">1966 comeback</a></span> from being down 3-0 to win 5-4, for the same reason. Go USA!”</p>\n<p>He’s right about the miracle part, though, which is why I hold out hope he might someday be a real soccer writer. Every goal is a miracle. But Americans have been so used to the idea that God Bless America Fuck Yeah, and for so long, that we’re slow to remember the God of the World Cup is not your namby-pamby hippie love and peace God or your moronic God who gives a shit about your high school Basketball game, <em>no, </em>this is your old testament God smiting the shit out of people for no damn reason. Get used to it. Get used to losing, and feeling like the universe is against you <em>because it is</em>. Like flies to wanton boys are we to the soccer Gods. They disallow our goals <em><em></em></em>for their sport. <em></em></p>\n<p>But the rest of that piece, <em>Oh! </em>Cry me a river.<em> </em>The business about how “what an overmatched referee named Koman Coulibaly cost us all”? As if every ref isn’t <em>always </em>overmatched. As if the rules don’t state that the ref doesn’t have to say why he called a foul for a reason. As if it isn’t the point that a huge honking element of luck lives in the game and sometimes the not-better team wins. Ask Spain about that. Ask Germany. The not-better team <em>often </em>wins. And using the phrase “cost us” is like hanging a sign around your neck saying “I’ve never had to lose regularly enough to realize that it feels like life.” And the plaintive “Two goals is something like insurmountable, especially when a team has shut you out for an entire half,” makes me wish I had the world’s tiniest violin to play for him, for his pain in his team not having been rewarded for realizing — half way through the game — that maybe, just maybe, the way to get out of a hole is to <em>stop digging!</em> For Americans, that’s not bad.</p>\n<p>And yet what really makes everything fall into place is this last monologue, in which he has the incredible stones to demand that “the World” transform its game so it can better pander to — no, seriously — <em>American fans who aren’t really into Soccer: </em></p>\n<blockquote><p>The world has grown used to the foggy quirks of soccer — extra time, diving, stretchers for players who immediately run back out on the pitch, calls made without explanation. But most of us are not used to these things. And, for so many, this was a lousy introduction to the fog.</p>\n<p>In the end, the draw gives the United States an excellent chance of advancing to the knockout round. If the U.S. beats Algeria, it probably will move on. But a victory would have given the U.S. an excellent chance to win the group. And a victory would have given a lot of people all across the country a moment to remember … and a story to tell when people asked, “So, when did you become a soccer fan?”</p>\n<p>Instead, it will baffle a lot of people who wanted something to remember. And it will give a lot of people who didn’t like soccer in the first place a chance to say: “What the heck was that?”</p></blockquote>\n<p>What if that lady had wandered into Arlington and complained that a no-hitter was really boring and that maybe they should move the mound farther away from the plate to make it more exciting? Not so much, huh? So maybe the point of the World Cup isn’t <em>actually </em>to interest as many oblivious Americans as possible to a sport the rest of the world is doing a nice job with all by themselves. Maybe they like their World Cup more or less the way it is, and maybe a whole bunch of Americans who think the rules should be changed because the rules didn’t allow US TO WIN are sort of hilariously adorable. And maybe openly acknowledging that Americans will only like soccer if they win at it isn’t quite the <em>most persuasive </em>way to argue that the rules should be changed to match American expectations? It is, however, a nice start for my country, who I may even start rooting for from now on. USA!</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2139/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2139&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"content" : "<p><b>Banking Hall Woes</b>: Last week I spent about 6 hours in 6 different banking halls, trying to deposit or withdraw cash, make cross-bank transfers, utility payments and complete other bank transactions. Some observations:<br>- Banks with several empty ‘teller’ windows even as customers queues get very long<br>- Employees who sit at the front desk but don’t serve customers as they do back office transactions, reports & reconciliations<br>- Disinterested employees who’d rather gossip in vernacular than serve customers<br>- @kainvestor tweeted: it takes 1 hour, 2branches and 4 tellers to get one foreign bankers cheque done at #StanChart. Still waiting #fail<br>- Customers who ‘book’ places in the queue. As the queue shortens near the front, they walk up from where they have been sitting and edge back in front of the person, who they had queued with thirty minutes earlier<br>- Older banks like Barclays as you to being a passport photo and get a referee signature to open an account, while new banks like equity bank and family staff will snap your picture with a digital camera.<br>- There are no more developments in e-banking being rolled out in Kenya; new bank - customer interface deployments are in the areas of phone/mobile/m-banking <br>- Despite the millions of masses on mobile banking, the bulk of business in Kenya is cheques-based. Cheques remain awkward, prone to errors, and are resented as a form of payment as recipients have to wait for up to four working days to get money from the date they present their cheques. Assuming there are no r errors clear over four working days<br>- From a Central Bank of Kenya 2009 <a href=\"http://www.centralbank.go.ke/downloads/bsd/annualreports/bsd2009.pdf\">2009 supervision report</a> you can get an idea which banks halls are likely to be crowded going by their number of deposit customers: Equity Bank is No. 1 with 4.0 million followed by Co-op bank with 970,000, KCB 751K, Barclays 748K, and Family 574K. Least crowded may be banks like City Finance 654, UBA 832, Development bank 1,022, Middle East 1,462, and Equatorial 1,981.<br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o23NlRELjKE/TBjVt4AIdLI/AAAAAAAABCM/xgnK2ABu940/s1600/mpesaonipad.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_o23NlRELjKE/TBjVt4AIdLI/AAAAAAAABCM/xgnK2ABu940/s320/mpesaonipad.jpg\"></a><i>(images from Afromusing’s post on <a href=\"http://afromusing.com/2010/06/15/kenya-how-to-get-safaricom-3g-on-your-ipad\">how to get Safaricom 3G on your ipad</a>)</i><br><br><b>Mobile money banking solutions</b> Banks have tried to minimize the prevalence of queues, usually longest at month ends rather than mid-month, by offering alternative channels such as mobile banking and ATM facilities. A few years ago, the push was to develop Internet based banking, but that seems to have been set aside by the industry to focus on (mobile) phone-based avenues.<br>Last month also brought M-kesho, a partnership between mobile giant Safaricom and a leading bank Equity Bank. This one was very notable as it was marketed as one in which Equity Bank account holders could earn interest on money saved through their mobile phone - and this has been widely written about widely: <br><br><i>From the blogs</i> - <a href=\"http://www.iddsalim.com/blog/2010/05/19/ok-since-everyone-is-masturbating-on-mkesho-lemmi-chime-in\">Idd Salim</a>. Nothing new, Zain Zap has done this since 2007, but Safaricom is like Man U. They have ‘refs‘ who favor them game after game and win battles that are not even their own.<br>- <a href=\"http://kainvestor.blogspot.com/2010/05/round-up-on-low-end-i-dont-want-to.html\">Kainvestor</a>: Too complex and not particularly new<br>- <a href=\"http://wherehermadnessresides.blogspot.com/2010/05/safaricom-and-equity-bank-and-m-kesho.html\">Rombo</a> , Safaricom's 17,500 M-Pesa agents will now operate as part of Equity Bank (account opening, withdrawal/deposit) which has 80 branches countrywide<br>- <a href=\"http://blog.majibu.com/m-kesho-the-new-baby-born-of-m-pesa-and-equity-bank\">Majibu</a>: (after M-kesho) Safaricom can do better - by working with local developers and allowing them to develop on their platform. Safaricom needs to learn from the likes of Apple, the success of the iStore is because each developer is given an equal chance. <br>- <a href=\"http://whiteafrican.com/2010/05/20/mkesho-linking-banks-and-mobile-payments\">White African</a>: As others have pointed out, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking and new. Why is it big then? It’s big because of who is doing it: the giants of the banking (equity) and mobile sector (Safaricom).<br>- @wanjiku suggested that her bank, Family bank should partner with Zain<br><br><i>Others</i> - A comment at the <a href=\"http://technology.cgap.org/2010/05/18/m-pesa-meets-microsavings-with-equity-bank-deal-in-kenya\">CGAP</a> who advised on the creation of M-pesa noted that hopes that system failures that plague m-pesa will be a thing of the past<br>- Equity Bank’s CEO made one comment on TV, about how this made sense as they (Equity) had launched a mobile banking application (EAZZy), but they found over time that could not compete with M-pesa so were folding it to join M-pesa. <br><br><b>More mobile variants</b>: What does that mean for other banks? Despite @wanjiku’s earlier suggestion Family Bank went ahead and signed with Safaricom, not Zain, upgrading their existing mobile application into one called <a href=\"http://www.familybank.co.ke/Info/Familynk%20-%20Simu%20Yako,%20Benki%20Yako\">existing mobile banking application</a> into new called <i>Pesapap</i>which also allows transfer from account to/from m-pesa and mobile service providers Cellulant rolled out at the same time with one called <a href=\"http://www.capitalfm.co.ke/business/Kenyabusiness/New-mobile-commerce-platform-for-Kenya-4284.html\">lipuka</a><br><br><i>Other thoughts on agency banking Vis a Vis m-kesho</i> - Safaricom has very subdued brochures about M-kesho – with which one can transfer funds to from their bank account at Equity and all the benefits (micro savings) and<a href=\"http://www.equitybank.co.ke/News/EB_Safaricom_Account.pdf\">product hype</a> is by the Equity side. Odds are that most of Equity’s 4 million customers are M-pesa account holders already <br>- M-pesa cash has been held in trust by CBA Bank since its inception. Will Equity angle for a piece of that?<br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o23NlRELjKE/TBjWRsx-EdI/AAAAAAAABCU/Mt31QWMUIv8/s1600/3Gonipad2.jpg\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_o23NlRELjKE/TBjWRsx-EdI/AAAAAAAABCU/Mt31QWMUIv8/s320/3Gonipad2.jpg\"></a><br><b>Enter Agency Banking</b>: The sub-text of M-kesho and other variants is the emergence of agency banking in Kenya, a process endorsed by the Government of Kenya to bring more banking services to more of the (unbanked) population. Agency banking is supposed to take customers out of the bank halls and out to kiosks and villages; as @Rombokins noted, <i>Equity Bank scales up from having 80 branches, and can now (potentially) sell its products through 17,000 agents </i> of M-pesa. <br>CBK recently published their <a href=\"http://www.centralbank.go.ke/downloads/bsd/GUIDELINE%20ON%20AGENT%20BANKING-CBK%20PG%2015.pdf\">Agency Banking Gudelines</a> which include provisions on what agents can and can do<br><br><i>Can Do</i>: - Agents can be limited liability companies, cooperative societies, parastatals, trusts, partnerships or individuals. Agent applicants are judged based on their network (number of agents per province), services to be provided, anti-money laundering procedure, strategy and financial projections envisioned from agency business. Other factors considered will be company registration documents, audited accounts, availability of funds, bad credit reference, reputation, unclear source of funding, or criminal prosecution – which are some of the reasons for an application to be struck out. Also a license can be withdrawn if an agent is loss making, or a sole proprietor passes on <br>- agent may provide services to multiple institutions (no contract between institution and agent shall be exclusive and an )<br>- All agent settlements must be in real time<br>- Agents must receipt all transactions<br>- Some of the services agents can perform include cash deposit/withdrawals, loan repayments, bill payments, <br>Salary payments, debit cards, collection of mail<br><br><i>Can’t do</i>: Faith based, non-profit, non government organizations are <i>not eligible</i> to engage in agency banking<br>- Agents may not use such names as 'bank', 'finance' in their brands <br>- <b>agents may not charge customers for services directly </b><br>- Agents may not transact when system is not operating (e.g. m-pesa downtime?) <br>Agents may not open accounts, offer guarantees, or appraise loans <br>- agents may not undertake cheques deposit or encashment (cash only) and may not transact in any foreign currency<br><br><b>Summary</b>: Banks still require that customers come to the halls, for most services, but with agencies can they get served better (and perhaps cheaper) elsewhere? The use of dealers and agents helped transform the telecommunications sector in the span of a decade - from having a monolithic giant (Kenya post & telecommunications) where Kenyans had to queue and buy lines, pay for equipment and other bills (and which served ~100,000 customers) to now where customers able to do the same at kiosks all around the country (serving 20 million customers) Can banks mirror the phone model of growth through agents? It’s a tough call as the safekeeping of money or the incurring of a debt (by taking a loan) is one that calls for caution on the part of the customer.<br><br>But taking a loan is a sophisticated process - as most customers need to ask the loan officer what rate am I getting? what is the payback and installment? Even if someone is desperate and signs for a loan without reading an agreement, or swipe a credit card readily, they will over time come to learn the cost of transacting as they will read and review documents, especially if they feel the are being shortchanged. It seems that lending is beyond the training and capacity of agents - and the CBK has recognized this by limiting them to being amedium for repayments. So if you want to get a loan with m-kesho, you get that information from a (trained) Equity loan officer, not an M-pesa agent.<br><br>Finally, micro-savings or savings by poor people is more about the principal, not interest. i.e there has to be a mandatory obligation to save, which is difficult for someone trying to build up savings to revoke. E.g. group schemes, chamas, investment clubs, SACCO’s have an obligation to save that binds its members through a social bond of their mutual up-liftment. An obligatory commitment is also a factor in larger savings programs like mortgages or pensions.</p><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/9317825-4245829688509513997?l=bankelele.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "THE KILLER INSIDE HIM: REFLECTIONS IN A SHATTERED GLASS ON MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM'S THE KILLER INSIDE ME",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdok3PjJTI/AAAAAAAAB0Q/w7F1S36GtWE/s1600/KIM+poster.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0pt 0pt 10px 10px;width:124px;height:124px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdok3PjJTI/AAAAAAAAB0Q/w7F1S36GtWE/s400/KIM+poster.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>There was a moment, about halfway through Lou Ford's beating of the masochistic prostitute Joyce Lakeland, when I started to feel squirmy, and I am not often put off by violence in films. When Lou later beats to death his fiance Amy Stanton, it wasn't quite as queaze-inducing, though it was perhaps uglier, because Amy's submission to Lou up to then has been mental, not physical, and Amy has twice nearly extracted herself from it.<br><br>Michael Winterbottom's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span> is arguably the most faithful adaptation of Jim Thompson yet, if anything bringing Thompson's soiopathic killer into sharper focus and catching the strange hallucinatory character of Thompson's manic depressive prose very well. Winterbottom has ridden out the inevitable furore over the film's graphic violence, eventually coming to the public position that his aim was to make it so unpleasant that the audience couldn't get a cathartic lift from it (assuming no one in the audience is another Lou Ford). However, the difference between the violence against the women and the less graphic deaths of men in the film leads one to suspect that Winterbottom saw the misogynist streak in Thompson, the sexual nature of the violence, as an area he wished to explore in greater detail. It's also noteworthy that much of the worst of the violence is done with sound effects, and while the camera focuses on Casey Affleck's Ford, registering the deep coldness behind the character.<br><br>Ford is not only a sociopath, but he's a cop, and he is played brilliantly by Affleck. As we saw in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Assassination Of Jesse James</span> (where he played Bob Ford, presumably no relation) and in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Gone Baby Gone</span>, he is a master of keeping internal turmoil under wraps, letting the audience to work out the character along the way. Lou Ford gives him the perfect role to do that, and he makes the best of it; the bland faces of his life in public and his life in the privacy <a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdo0pBAtgI/AAAAAAAAB0o/8ea9LDQLd2I/s1600/KIM+Alba.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0pt 10px 10px 0pt;width:135px;height:62px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdo0pBAtgI/AAAAAAAAB0o/8ea9LDQLd2I/s400/KIM+Alba.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>of his own house contrasting with the forces inside him which, we are led to believe, are released by the pleasure in violent sex that Joyce (played by Jessica Alba) opens up to him. In the film, it is as if this sex triggers him, reminding him of who he really is, and everything else flows from that, a flow Affleck keeps tightly under control. I can't think of a star with the same qualities; the actors Affleck most reminds me of are Hurd Hatfield (an easy parallel exists between Affleck's Bob Ford and Hatfield in <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Left Handed Gun</span>) and, as we shall see below, Timothy Carey.<br><br>Winterbottom remains very faithful to the novel, to the point where Thompson's almost fever-dream recollection of Lou's childhood, looking for the 'explanation' of why he is the way he is, remains difficult to figure out. In the novel it's clear; Lou's father is a doctor, who indulges in sado-masochistic sex with his housekeeper Helene; when he discovers she has initiated Lou, he receives the first and only beating of his life. Lou consults his father's books on aberrant psychology, as if trying to discover for himself what he really is. Because he is aware that he does not fit in. It's what makes his scenes with Amy (Kate Hudson) so unpleasant, because she exists only to the extent she can make him fit in, yet he's resisted any chance to make their relationship one that would fit into society; that the society accepts their affair is one of the small indicators that appearance isn't reality in Thompson's world.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span> was the first of Thompson's novels for Lion Books, and probably the most autobiographical of any of his books after his first two, more mainstream novels. His father was a disgraced sheriff, who treated young Jim with violent cruelty, and Thompson's family was supposedly the basis for the criminal and incestuos Fargos in his second book, <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Heed The Thunder</span>. This is 1950s America, in West Texas, and Winterbottom and DP Marcel Zyskind capture the hot dusty simmering beneath the pleasant surface; once or twice they refer a little too explicitly to Edward Hopper; people often link Hopper and Noir, not always successfully, at least in part because the images are so well known, and in part because they don't necessarily convey a sense of violence lurking underneath.<br><br>The connection that usually gets overlooked, because of the emphasis on Lou's violent sexuality, is that all the killings in the film grow out of simple corruption, the kind of small town small-scale venality that lies at the heart of much neo-noir (big cities seem to present a bigger challenge to noirists in our era than they did in the 40s and 50s). But when you think about the other great film adaptations of Thompson's work, you see the links running through.<br><br>The best is Bertrand Tavernier's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Coup De Torchon</span> (1981) based on Thompson's novel <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Pop. 1280</span>, which was published twelve years after <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span>, in 1964. Tavenier (see the IT interview with <a href=\"http://irresistibletargets.blogspot.com/2008/10/talking-crime-films-with-bertrand.html\">him here</a>) relocated the story from Texas to French colonial Africa, which makes the racial undercurrents of the novel even more telling. Sheriff Nick Corey in that book is the only lawman in a small town; it's set earlier than <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span> and it doesn't have the undertones of 1950s conformity that Winterbottom draws out nicely. By now, Thompson was much more pessimistic and nihilistic than he'd been in 1952, and had drunk a hell of a lot more too). In fact, one of the films it recalls<a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdotZ7dyYI/AAAAAAAAB0g/y13c-umY3mo/s1600/KIM+Invas.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0pt 0pt 10px 10px;width:135px;height:90px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdotZ7dyYI/AAAAAAAAB0g/y13c-umY3mo/s400/KIM+Invas.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a> (see the publicity still with the front-lit Affleck and Hudson in a car) is the original <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Invasion Of The Body Snatchers</span>, in the sense that Lou Ford is acting out the life of a normal American in the 50s, while a so-called 'alien' lurks underneath.<br><br>In the novel, Thompson makes a point of the 'welcome to Central City' signs on the highway in an out of town. One points out that the population has grown tenfold, the other warns against picking up hitchhikers because they might be escaped lunatics. I think the connection is clear, and re-emphasised 12 years later in the title of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Pop. 1280</span>.<br><br>Thompson's books lend themselves to exploitation; it's a temptation for film makers to simply jump on the salacious elements and run with them, while simultaneously making the 'heroes; more appealing characters. It's almost painful to watch Stacey Keach trying to work against that in the original version of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span>; as if only he among the film's makers understood what was going on. In that context it's interesting that three of the four most faithful versions of Thompson novels have been made by non-American directors, as if Thompson's point, made in his pulp writer stream of subsconscious, were more obvious to outsiders, or perhaps less unsettling to them. My other two contenders were both made in 1990, Stephen Frears' <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Grifters</span> (though its screenplay is by the American Donald Westlake), and James Foley's much-underrated <span style=\"font-style:italic\">After Dark, My Sweet</span>, where even the naming of the characters, 'Kid' Collins and 'Uncle Bob' suggests Thompson's obsession with incest and abuse. (Another notable foreign adaptation, Alain Corneau's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Serie Noir</span> (1979), I haven't seen). The runners-up would include Maggie Greenwald's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Kill-Off</span> (1989—it was a bumper time for Thompsons) an off-beat take on neo-noir that doesn't quite catch Thompson's essence, while Sam Peckinpah's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Getaway </span>(1972) is more interesting as classic Peckinpah than neo-Thompson. What's interesting too is the way in which elements recur in all the novels and films, and the ways they are turned around.<br><br>In <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Getaway</span> (recall that Peckinpah worked on <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Invasion Of The Body Snatchers</span> for Don Siegel) Doc McCoy is less of a psychopath than in the book; Steve McQueen wasn't going to play evil, and Al Lettieri's Rudy is around to bear that burden. And the ending, which in its own way works, is not as apocalyptic as the novel. Winterbottom's ending, if anything, is even more apocalyptic than Thompson's, an explosion that recalls Aldrich's version of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Kiss Me Deadly</span>. In the end Peckinpah is more concerned with reaffirming his angel/whore view of women than integrating them, though of course when they're integrated in Thompson's fashion, they die.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Grifters</span> incest theme in one reflected slightly in the Helene character, who's far more ambiguous as far as her role in the film, and it would be easy to mistake her for Lou's mother. What is consistent is the way Winterbottom's film attempts to put the blame on her, more than the novel did, for Lou's inhumanity, just as the film can make Angelica Huston take the blame for John Cusack's character, which anyway the film tones down.<br><br>Thompson did two screenplays for Stanley Kubrick; both times Kubrick tried to snatch screen credit away from him. <a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdpfBa1oVI/AAAAAAAAB04/JTI7ArzwF_k/s1600/KIM+killing.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0pt 0pt 10px 10px;width:130px;height:98px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdpfBa1oVI/AAAAAAAAB04/JTI7ArzwF_k/s400/KIM+killing.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>On <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killing</span> (1956), his original credit was for dialogue, but arbitration from the Writer's Guild got it changed; certainly there is a lot of Thompson, beyond Lionel White's novel, in that book—the loser characters played by Jay C Flippen, Elisha Cook, and Timothy Carey have elements of Thompson's alcoholic fatalism, while Carey's encounter with James Edwards' black car park attendant was taken farther in Thompson's late novel Child Of Rage. And the ending smacks of Thompson, though endings are usually problematic for him—because his heroes are doomed to lose, he often writes them into corners and needs to go apocalyptic in order to get them out. Then again, it may be the only way they (and he) can face this world.<br><br>Kubrick brought Thompson back to write the screenplay of <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Paths Of Glory</span> (1957), though Calder Willingham was then hired and star Kirk Douglas preferred his version. Thompson wound up listed third, behind Willingham and Kubrick in the credits, though, according to Thompson's biographer Robert Polito, much of Thompson's original survives intact. Douglas obviously would not have wanted his character's heroism reduced, but the corruption among the top officers, and the fatalistic attitudes of the ordinary soldiers (again Timothy Carey, and though he's far more over the top, I still see Carey Affleck in him). Despite the problems with credits, Kubrick commissioned two more screenplays from Thompson, including <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Lunatic At Large</span>, which was rediscovered in Kubrick's papers after he died, and has raised the possibility of a new Thompson film. It's currently in development, with Sam Rockwell and Scarlet Johannson attached. Around that time Thompson had his first heart attack, and Kubrick moved on to <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Spartacus</span> and then <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Lolita</span>, and never returned to cheap noir. Thompson's books would continually be optioned on the cheap, or he would be commissioned to write screenplays for chump change (he had to sue Sal Mineo to get paid the bare minimum for one), among those who mooted projects were Orson Welles and Sam Fuller, each suited in his own way to Thompson's material—after all how far is Hank Quinlan from a Thompson character? He also was hired to write a script called <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Bo</span> about hoboes, for Robert Redford, a mix that seems somewhat less likely. Thompson wrote scripts for a couple of TV shows I have a dim but respectful memory of—a cavalry western called <span style=\"font-style:italic\">McKenzie's Raiders </span>which starred Richard Carlson (no relation) and a mob thriller called<span style=\"font-style:italic\"> Cain's Hundred</span>--and did lots of hackwork. He died not long after the release of the first <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Killer Inside Me</span>, for which he also received very little.<br><br>I go into his biography because where Winterbottom's <span style=\"font-style:italic\">Killer</span> <a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdo01xbeUI/AAAAAAAAB0w/soydFjdGFpY/s1600/KIM+book.jpeg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0pt 10px 10px 0pt;width:79px;height:121px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_oSbKSEt1pNs/TBdo01xbeUI/AAAAAAAAB0w/soydFjdGFpY/s400/KIM+book.jpeg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\"></a>differs from the usual take on Thompson, is exactly why the novel itself holds up so well, and why I think it is the best Thompson adaptation yet. The modern audience is enthralled by Thompson's gutter world; they love the tales of the sad-sack alcoholic navigating his way around Hollywood, they love the darkness as if it were an antidote to the anodyne pre-packaged world around them; the era of the 90s onward could be seen as a rebirth or repacking with better technology of the 1950s. But where <span style=\"font-style:italic\">The Killer Inside Me</span> stands apart is precisely the manner in which Lou Ford is not only indistinguishable from his fellow humans, but works at making it that way. He is not Phillipe Noiret's louche sheriff, nor is he a crook or gambler or sad sack worker who we know from the start is born to lose. Lou Ford works at being a perfectly normal American, and this is what Jim Thompson seemed to find the most horrific of all. He didn't believe in the American Way—any hitchhiker might be an escaped lunatic, any pleasant cop a Lou Ford. In his world it usually took a woman to set the fuse burning, and that's what makes the violence so upsetting, because it is rage against the self, the self that recognises it is different and punishes those who don't.<br><br><span style=\"font-style:italic\">NOTE: This essay will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)</span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/413013422636027916-2594158938458061243?l=irresistibletargets.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "England Are Not the Only Team at this World Cup to Struggle to Break Opponents Down",
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"content" : "<p style=\"text-align:center\"><strong> <img src=\"http://cdn.worldcupblog.org/england.worldcupblog.org/files/2010/06/OwenHeskeyR0309_468x4541.jpg\" alt=\"OwenHeskeyR0309_468x454\" width=\"468\" height=\"454\"></strong></p>\n<p align=\"center\"><em>Number nines like Owen are being usurped by the likes of Heskey: Milito, Huntelaar, Gignac and Pazzini started on the bench for their teams. </em></p>\n<p><strong>Holland, Brazil, Portugal, Cote D’Ivoire, Uruguay, France, Argentina, Italy and England have seven goals between them so far in South Africa, in spite of extended spells in possession: compelling evidence that containing tactics are outmanoeuvring attacking intent, if watching the games wasn’t enough for you.<span></span></strong></p>\n<p> Why then, are the goals not flowing for the<a href=\"http://wba.theoffside.com\"> footballing aristocracy</a>? The proletariat have improved but they haven’t changed their game; the likes of the USA and Paraguay, to name but two, allowed big-name opponents to come onto them last time as well and no reason is forthcoming why that should become more effective now. </p>\n<p>No, it is the nobility, following Italy’s victory in Germany, who have begun to change. Watching that Italy side, along with Barcelona over the past couple of years, playing with strikers who do much more than score, Fabio Capello and his like have begun to twitch at the prospect of offering any player a mandate limited to the scoring of goals: pressing the opposition and supplying the midfielders is apparently the new putting it in the back of the net.</p>\n<p>Examples of that shift in philosophy aren’t difficult to find: on Monday Van Persie moved out wide for the Dutch looking to create, last Friday Nicola Anelka drifted to the left for the French and on Saturday Emile Heskey looked to supply knock-downs to midfielders, albeit from a central position, for England. Those men have replaced the archetypal number nines: Ruud Van Nistelrooy, David Trezeguet and Michael Owen for their countries.</p>\n<p>Whilst in the past the men lacking outstanding international goalscoring records were seen as a burden, managers are beginning to see the Van Nistelrooy or the Owen, who ’<em>only</em>‘ scores goals, as the luxury item to be sacrificed in the name of prudence. With this logic as the backdrop, the initially puzzling dichotomy that is ’overall time on the ball going up and number of goals going down’ becomes entirely straightforward. </p>\n<p>Hope remains for the rest of the tournament in the form of a compromise. A number of outstanding talents capable of both scoring and contributing more widely to the team promise to emerge. Wayne Rooney, given the chance at playing up front on his own, could create and score for England just as he has for Manchester United and Van Persie is likely to offer a more convincing effort next time out against Japan. Didier Drogba’s fleeting appearance yesterday also hinted at a player who can offer the knock-downs of a Heskey and the goals of an Owen. </p>\n<p>Unlike the Dutch and the Ivorians though, Fabio Capello might not be willing to embrace a more liberal approach to his star striker’s role. England’s manager delegates only with strict, specific instruction and exceptions are not made – not even for Wayne Rooney. Pundits and fans have called all week for Rooney to play up front on his own as both creator and scorer, but Capello is unlikely to trust him with such an open brief.</p>\n<p>The solution for England may be more similar to that of Argentina, who could bring in Champions League final goalscorer Diego Milito and France, who prolific Ligue 1 striker waiting in the wings. Capello said last night that he was considering playing Jermain Defoe over Heskey. For the ‘knocking-off’ of the smaller teams We could well be about to go back to the old-fashioned number nines.</p>"
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"title" : "Maputo: decaying grandeur of Africa's ageing starlet",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/35725?ns=guardian&pageName=Maputo%3A+decaying+grandeur+of+Africa%27s+ageing+starlet%3AArticle%3A1410831&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Mozambique+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c6=David+Smith+%28Africa+correspondent%29&c7=10-Jun-10&c8=1410831&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=David+Smith%27s+letter+from+Africa&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMozambique\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Mozambique city has a sense of an old town slowly disappearing under layers of sediment</p><p>In life, as in art, it is hard to beat those brilliantly lit shafts of emotion that shine through the fog of daily stuff and nonsense.</p><p>In Maputo, Mozambique, I watched President Armando Guebuza walk a red carpet and open a private health clinic aimed at the country's middle class. He took a tour of the facility, including a cosmetic clinic with views over palm trees and the deep blue Indian Ocean.</p><p>A female member of staff gave Guebuza a smile and walked him around the clinic, speaking in apparently confident Portuguese. He surprised her at the end by reaching out and shaking her hand before departing.</p><p>It was then, as soon as he left the room, that I saw the young woman gasp with pleasure and relief. Another member of staff beamed and gave her a big hug. The woman had probably rehearsed all night for her meeting with the president and was evidently moved and overwhelmed by this profound event in her life. She was almost tearful. Witnessing the authenticity of the emotion, I found myself moved too.</p><p>A day later, I stood outside an official white building beside the Hotel Avenida. On the steps stood a newly married couple in suit and white dress, surrounded by relatives, young and old, including children bearing white cushions. On either side were columns of men and women singing with joy.</p><p>The bride and groom, looking nervous and unsmiling, stepped down into a waiting car bedecked with ribbons. Moments later another couple appeared, this time far more confident and at ease. Again, family members gathered around and sang in melodies of breath-catching beauty.</p><p>An elderly lady in a colourful traditional costume and headwrap took centre stage at the bottom of the steps and danced a jig in time to the songs. A woman clung to a tiny baby. Another, wearing a pink dress, looked on from under a tall hairdo constructed with painstaking care.</p><p>Just beyond the gate slow traffic, fruit sellers and street hawkers carried on oblivious on Avenida Julius Nyerere. But I stood and stared and felt involved in the ritual, and wondered if the newlyweds would later remember the white-faced stranger witnessing this defining moment of their lives.</p><p>I travelled around Maputo with the perfect in-car soundtrack: the sultry jazz of South African singer Sibongile Khumalo. It seemed to fit perfectly the easy pace, the tangerine sunlight and the glimpses of decaying colonial grandeur as I made my way to Costa do Sol for a seafood platter with green wine.</p><p>There were art deco palaces that might have once blazed light but now stood grim and grimy. In the ruined shell of a once elegant building a tree had taken root and flourished. There was a sense of an old city slowly disappearing under layers of sediment. By the waters of Maputo, TS Eliot could have sat down and wept another Waste Land.</p><p>The majestic railway station, designed by Gustav Eiffel exactly a century ago, stands tall and defiant with its domed roof, clock face, ornate balconies and arched entrance. In front of it at sunset, there were long queues of people waiting for a bus.</p><p>Beyond the entrance were two vintage locomotives and some decrepit trains that looked like they were going nowhere. I climbed aboard and saw rows of filthy seats and a huge hole in the floor. But stepping down past tired-eyed station dwellers, I found a bistro with tiled walls, a giant paper lampshade and an ambience thick with ghosts.</p><p>People told me Maputo was haunting, ambiguous and not like anywhere in Africa. \"It's a colourful place but the buildings are grey,\" said one.</p><p>It was true that even its indefinability was hard to define. But I felt I gained a little insight at the national art museum, a parade of nightmarish grotesques worthy of Goya or the Chapman brothers.</p><p>Alberto Chissano's giant sculpture Sem titulo depicts a series of warped heads interconnected by bones. Another sculpture shows a bald creature, mouth agape in a laugh or cry, arms wrapped around the neck of a passive victim. Several paintings are crammed with bodies, some brown, some a hellish red, one with eyes that dart about in mutual suspicion. If they had voices, they would scream.</p><p>This was art that felt impossible to divorce from the struggle against centuries of Portuguese colonial rule and the furious civil war that followed until the early 1990s. It was an insight into the national id.</p><p>I came away thinking of Maputo as an ageing actress from Hollywood's golden age staring at herself in a dressing room mirror, the face careworn and pockmarked, but made beautiful by the radiance of an inner light undimmed.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mozambique\">Mozambique</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidsmith\">David Smith</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fworld%2F2010%2Fjun%2F10%2Fmaputo-city-mozambique-letter-from\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Making Blank Spaces",
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"content" : "<p>In 1899, Joseph Conrad’s Marlow <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=0CtkE6tNapUC&lpg=PP1&ots=BmFFEb3fQL&dq=heart%20of%20darkness&pg=PA12#v=onepage&q=map%20blank&f=false\">remembered when Africa was still a blank space</a></span>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, `When I grow up I will go there.’ The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven’t been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour’s off. Other places were scattered about the hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won’t talk about that. But there was one yet–the biggest, the most blank, so to speak– that I had a hankering after.</p>\n<p>True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery– a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness…</p></blockquote>\n<p>In <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=QnYUAAAAIAAJ&dq=british%20east%20africa%20safari&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false\">Abel Chapman</a></span>‘s 1908 safari book, however, we are reassured that East Africa is still, despite the excesses of those horrid Boers in South Africa, a blank space :</p>\n<blockquote><p>South Africa when the world was young—that is, when we were young—represented to those who had inherited an adventurous spirit, and in whose breast a love of the wild was innate, something that approached the acme of terrestrial joys. Thereaway, our earlier lessons had taught that, co-existent with the humdrum monotony of a work-a-day world, there yet survived a vast continent still absolutely unknown and unsubdued by man, and across whose vacant space there sprawled, inscribed in burning letters on the map, that vocal word, ” Unexplored.” To no subsequent generation, as this world is geologically constituted, can a similar condition ever recur…after a quarter of a century, when there came at length opportunity to visit the far-away veld of South Africa, already its long-dreamt charm had faded. During the second half of the nineteenth century the erewhiles wondrous fauna of the sub-continent had steadily, incredibly melted away before Boer breechloaders.</p>\n<p>…</p>\n<p>These gloomy forebodings have fortunately proved baseless—have been scattered to the four winds by events that followed. South Africa as a virgin hunting-field exists no longer; yet such spectacles of wild-life as fifty years ago adorned its veld and karoo, with all the glory of a pristine fauna every whit as rich, may yet be enjoyed elsewhere in that vast continent. It is no longer to the regions beyond the Zambesi that the hunter must turn attention—those regions where Mr. Selous in my own time (since we were at Rugby together in the ‘sixties) has earned pre-eminence among naturalisthunters of all ages. No, the centre of attraction has shifted northwards, far northward—to the British territories that lie around the equator. There some of Nature’s wildest scenes, practically unchanged since the days of creation, may yet be enjoyed. More than that. These new regions are accessible as South Africa never was at its zenith; for these new hunting-grounds are reached by steam all the way, on land and sea—a simple three-weeks’ journey by ocean liner and corridor train.</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2119/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=2119&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"title" : "The cinema of recontextualized relationships: Colin Marshall talks to filmmaker Andrew Bujalski",
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"content" : "<div><em><strong>Andrew Bujalski</strong> is the young director of the films </em>Funny Ha Ha<em>, </em>Mutual Appreciation<em> and </em>Beeswax<em>, which is newly available on DVD. Though Bujalski's funny, realistic movies are often considered by critics to be of a similar genius to other independently-produced pictures of the 2000s focusing on the personal relationships of twentysomethings, they possess an intellect and an aesthetic all their own.</em> <strong><em><a href=\"http://www.colinmarshall.org/\" title=\"Colin Marshall\">Colin Marshall</a> </em></strong><em>originally conducted this conversation on the public radio program and podcast </em><strong><a href=\"http://www.colinmarshallradio.com/marketplace/\" title=\"The Marketplace of Ideas\">The Marketplace of Ideas</a></strong><em>. </em>[<a href=\"http://media.libsyn.com/media/colinmarshall/MOI_Andrew_Bujalski.mp3\" title=\"MP3\">MP3</a>] [<a href=\"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=266539442\" title=\"iTunes link\">iTunes link</a>]<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a0dc970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Bujalski1\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a0dc970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Bujalski1\"></a> Watching your three films, I feel like <em>Beeswax</em> is starkly distinct from the two that precede it, but I can't put my finger on exactly why. What would you say to that?</strong><br><br>I would probably agree, for starters. Are you asking me to put my finger on it?<br><br><strong>Yeah, obviously you're the closest person to that film in existence. I can't quite articulate why. It <em>feels</em> different. I can't exactly point to reasons why it's so different, but why do you think it's so different from <em>Funny Ha Ha</em> and <em>Mutual Appreciation</em>?</strong><br><br>I could get into a million reasons, which are mostly minutia. One of the things about being so close to a film is, I do sort of see the forest for the trees and the trees for the leaves. I could start with technical things: we shot widescreen format, which we hadn't done on the earlier films. I could go into the fact there are twins at the center of it, which is very different, too, from the other films. All of them have been written for the people who ultimately played the leads, none of whom were professional actors but all of whom had a particular kind of charisma that I thought would translate onscreen. <br><br>Of course, those are very different kinds of charismas. That's another thing that's different about this film. What the Hathcher sisters, Tilly and Maggie, who play the twins in the film, brought to it is... there's something about their energy which is a little more inward, not quite like anything I was used to seeing on screen myself and was really interested to try to put at the center of a movie and see what happened. The audience has to lean forward a little bit to see what they're doing. I think — of course, I'm very attached to the film — I think they're miraculous in it. The rhythm of it is a little different. It's more plot-heavy, more exposition-heavy. Certainly, that was another challenge. I could go on and on.<br><br><strong>This procedure of creating a film, of conceiving a film starting with the fact that you know somebody and wanted to see if they could carry a film, it's something you've talked about in othe r interviews and have done with the previous two films as well. What sort of things bring these people to your attention as possible leads, whether the Hatcher Sisters or the stars of <em>Funny Ha Ha</em> or <em>Mutual Appreciation</em>?</strong><br><br>Maybe it comes from having spent too much time at the movies as a kid. It might not be healthy to look around the world and say, \"How would this translate in the movies? What would this be like if I were asking it to hold together the center of a narrative?\" I think everybody knows somebody who they think, \"Oh, that guy could be a movie star.\" Not that I've asked these people to be \"movie stars\" with everything that entails today. <br><br>In no case have I written films I thought were biographical of these people, per se. <em>Beeswax</em> is not the true story of the Hatchers any more than <em>Funny Ha Ha</em> is the story of Kate Dollenmayer and <em>Mutual Appreciation</em> is the story of Justin Rice. I took what I could imagine them projecting onscreen, how I imagined what they do in their ordinary lives, and translated that into the realm of the performer. I've noticed that, when you ask people to act — and this is probably true of professional actors as well — most people pick out something about themselves to exaggerate. People tend to want to do caricatures of themselves. You start from there, and then you can craft it in one direction or another. What is this essence of you that we can translate into a performance? Is there a story to be built around that?<br><br><strong>Was the essence these actors would pick out from themselves and exaggerate the same thing you saw in them that you wanted to use? I can imagine that being ideal — they pick out the same thing you see — or they pick out something completely different, and you've got to make a different movie. Has that happened?</strong><br><br>Certainly, yeah. There are surprises throughout the production process. Anything you try to boil down in concrete terms — there are always swerves and surprises. If somebody ate something weird for breakfast, they might come in in a different mood than you expected. <br><br>With <em>Beeswax</em>, I had a vague notion of the story, but I hadn't begun to write it. I went to the girls and asked them if they would... first of all, it's a huge commitment. You're asking somebody who is not a professional actor to take quite a bit of time and quite a bit of emotional energy to give to a project like this. As we all get older, it becomes harder for people to find the time to do these. First, I asked if they would even be interested. They both seemed game for it. We did a little screen test, and at first I had a notion of what these two roles would be. We switched it. <br><br>We did one run-through of a scene with Maggie playing the small business owner and Tilly playing her sister, and then we did it again and switched the roles. My initial instinct had been to cast the opposite of the way I ended up actually doing the film. I thought I would have Maggie play Jeannie the small business owner, and it became clear from that screen test that what they were going to bring of themselves to the roles instinctually — it was much more interesting the opposite way. Tilly was bringing a certain reservation. There was an inwardness and even maybe a defensiveness that I thought could be really, really interesting, if we used it right, in the Jeannie role. <br><br>This was a situation where, early on in the process, before I'd written the script, where something made me think very differently about how I was going to approach this. That's at the macro level. On the micro level, when you're on set, you always have to be paying attention to what the actors are bringing, and looking for ways to make that make the film more interesting.<br>\r\n<strong>It seems like you have an interesting relationship to — how to put it? — the way your own imagination and what you envision for a film interacts with all the other minds involved. It sounds like that's both the biggest challenge and also something you absolutely need to do what you do. Does that make any sense?</strong><br><br>That makes perfect sense. My wife is a novelist, and I often envy her for not having to deal with all the pragmatic headaches that come with filmmaking. I also know that I wouldn't survive doing what she does. She goes off to a room by herself; everything has to come from within her. I think that would eventually drive me insane. <br><br>When it's working, it's great fun; it's a great feeling to be able to feed off the energies of others. Directing is a very strange job. If you go to a movie set and look around, you see lots and lots of people: everybody's running around, everybody has specific jobs to do. On a good movie set, everybody's very talented and good at their jobs. The director's the one person who doesn't really... <em>do</em> anything. Everybody else has some specific task to fulfill, and the director theoretically is, in some cosmic, alchemical way, shaping everything. But it's very unclear what the job really is. Ultimately, it's just about channeling other people's energies and then taking the credit.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a1d3970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:left\"><img alt=\"Bujalski2\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a1d3970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Bujalski2\"></a> Is the fact you're feeding off of these energies, shaping them, is that why you tend to work with actors who you have some existing relationship with, who you're already friends with? Is it easier for you — obviously, the answer should be yes — to work with energies of people you got to know in a non-moviemaking capacity?</strong><br><br>It's certainly helpful in terms of knowing what those energies are, just having a better read on the people. That said, there are a lot of people who work on these films: some are old friends, others I did just meet in the context of making the film. It's probably a limitation of sorts, but I wouldn't really know how to work with somebody I didn't essentially already like and get along with. I get along with most people, so it's not too narrow a framework, but I do find I've always worked better communicating in the language of personal rapport as opposed to some elevated language of craft.<br><br><strong>To get back to the characters in <em>Beeswax</em>, I was thinking of the contrast between the characters of this film and the characters of the previous two. It seems to me that what people often bring up as far as the differences between this film and its predecessors — what's the Chuck Klosterman quote — the ones before being about people \"beyond college but unprepared for life.\" It seems like the characters in <em>Beeswax</em> are — I'm not saying it's a difference in kind, but — a little further out of college, a little more prepared for life. Is that an acceptable way to put it?</strong><br><br>I'm not sure what constitutes preparation for life. For better or worse, we're all in it and it's moving at a constant speed, although sometimes it seems like it's speeding up. Certainly, the characters are a little older, which is a by-product of the fact that... I keep getting older. I think I object to the notion that any of the characters are \"unprepared for life,\" or that they would ever get more prepared. I'm not sure exactly what they're supposed to be preparing for. There's jobs, there's adult responsibilities, so forth and so on. But those come at you one way or another.<br><br><strong>Would you say the concept of preparation for life itself is maybe ill-defined, not that useful?</strong><br><br>It seems that way to me. Of course, someday I'll have a teenage child, and I will throw that same notion at him and say, \"Get prepared for life.\" The world has changed so much. I showed <em>Funny Ha Ha</em> in Florida a few months ago, at a college. There was a hand raised during the Q&A, and the guy said to me, "This all seemed very familiar, but when was younger, this would be the kind of behavior exhibited in teenagers. I wouldn't expect it from people in their twenties." <br><br>Whether or not that's a fair or accurate assessment I don't know, but it does seem like there is a kind of ever-extending adolescence in our culture and in whatever subset of the culture I exist in. But I also noted that, in terms of marriage and family and all these things, my father was 25 when I was born. My wife is pregnant now, I'm 33. Just taking that as rough estimate of how much things have slowed down in a generation. It takes you that many extra years to get to the same place. But does that mean I was less prepared for life? Not necessarily. I just think the world was moving at a different pace.<br><br><strong>I want to know what you think of the way the press about your films, the reviews and the discussions and the reactions, think about your characters. Obviously, you've had such a huge role in making these films, and you have a lot of understanding for these characters — I would say compassion for your characters. Even the people who like your movies a lot often will regard your characters as one step up from drifters. How do you feel about that?</strong><br><br>Mixed feelings. I don't want to step on anybody's toes who's trying to take their own feeling away from the films. I never would say, \"No, you're wrong.\" I will say, I've never gone into the films as a sociologist or ethnographer. That's something that, sometimes, the films are tagged with: \"This is an ethnographic study of middle-class white people in their twenties.\" I can only say that was never my approach or intent. <br><br>I always looked at it — again, stuck in the minutia — at this very basic level of character and story. I cared a lot about these characters, and I cared a lot about what was happening to them, what paces I was putting them through. I've always looked at it, maybe naïvely, in a much more general sense. <em>Funny Ha Ha</em>, for me, was a story about a young girl trying to find her way in the world much more so than it was a story about the challenges of communication in the 21st century or whatever the bloggers or the people writing their theses might say about it.<br><br><strong>There is a certain amount of grandness that reviewers use. I suppose you don't really feel that until you are the subject, or your work is the subject, of one of those high-flown reviews.</strong><br><br>It's a peculiar position to be in, but I grew up in that same movie-watching culture and movie critical culture. I go to movies and come out of them using words I learned in college to describe them, so I don't want to say that's the wrong way to approach it. When you make a film, you fantasize about this platonic idea of the audience member, somebody who comes in with open eyes and an open heart, ready to experience it on a personal level. <br><br>That's the thing I most wish for an audience member, just that they go in there willing and ready to have their own personal experience of the film, and have it relate to their own life and not go into it thinking about something else they read about it or some other movie. Of course, that's unavoidable. That's how a lot of us watch movies these days. But it's not my dream<br><br><strong>That openness you hope for, is it a hope that springs from not seeing a lot of it around, or is it a hope completely separate from what you actually do see in audience members? That's not a very clear question, but —</strong><br><br>I think I get it. The hope springs from my best experiences of the movies. I've had the best time and the most moving experiences when, either by intent or coincidence, I have come to it open. Certainly, some of my favorite movies I just happened to stumble into not knowing anything about them. That's a really hard experience to wrap up and market. <br><br><em>Funny Ha Ha</em> had this great journey. I \"finished\" that film in 2002 — of course, in one way or another, it's still a presence in my life today — but it took until 2005 to have an official theatrical release. When I finished the film, I was very unconnected in the world of independent film distribution or even the festival circuit. It was very slow getting attention for that film, working its way to wider attention. <br><br>In a way, that film had a perfect build, where at first people really could come to it free of preconception. I think that was the best way to see it, and I'm happy we got to draw that out on as large a scale as we could. It becomes unrepeatable, and of course, I don't have the time now to let a film build its audience for three years. I'm too busy for that. But it was nice to go through it that way, and I do think it was ideal for that film.<br><br><strong>With <em>Funny Ha Ha</em>, this is the question that comes to mind. It seems to me that one of two things could be true, but not both: it could've found success because it is <em>extremely</em> accessible, because it's a milieu, to use one of those words you learn in college, that people will be super-familiar with — it's pulled from the lives of so many — or it could be very <em>inaccessible</em>, because it doesn't look or feel like a \"regular movie.\" I could see either. Do you think either did have an effect, positive or negative?</strong><br><br>I think both. The harshest critics of the first two films have always been what you would imagine to be the target audience. The most vituperative reviews would be written by someone who is 23 and just out of college, saying, \"That's supposed to be my life and it's not. Here's a detail they got wrong,\" a very sharp critical eye to it. That's also a certain kind of — I don't want to get too deep into this — self-loathing endemic to people at that place in their lives of the American white middle class right now. There's not a huge desire to see something too familiar represented onscreen.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a234970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Bujalski3\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a234970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Bujalski3\"></a> Kind of a \"close to home\" feeling?</strong><br><br>I think so. Again, maybe that's self-serving to say. Certainly, it's the impression I've gotten.<br><br><strong>Has that decreased over time? You're now on number three. The characters in <em>Beeswax</em> are distinctive enough that I don't know how many audience members are going to think they're like them in ways that are obvious. But maybe they do. Maybe I'm predicting wrong and maybe there's more identification this time around?</strong><br><br>I really don't know. What identification there has been is not necessarily right on. Again, I've always gone into it thinking not about representing a certain social class and not about ethnography but about very, very specific characters. My hope is that, in doing so, they will seem flesh-and-blood enough to be relatable and familiar. But everybody who walks into that theater has a different experience of life. <br><br>The films, to a fault, have always avoided trying to cue the audience and tell the audience what they should be making of a situation at a given point. This is the thing I think people who don't enjoy my films and don't get into them find most infuriating: they're never being told what the movie's about. It can drive people crazy. It only works if you are willing to find your way in and figure out what it means to you, or what it feels like to you, maybe more importantly. <br><br>The most exciting thing is, when I do talk to people about the films and go to screenings, people come out with wildly different opinions. While the film may decline to tell you, \"This person's a hero, this person's a villain,\" nonetheless people do want to make those judgments themselves. People do come out and say, \"I loved this guy, I hated that guy.\" The next person will have felt exactly the opposite. To me, that's when it feels like it's working well, when two very different viewpoints can look on the scren and see something that makes sense to them, that feels like a complete world to them, but tak away very different conclusions from it.<br><br><strong>This notion that the films don't tell the audience what they're about — I think, as a lover of cinema, that's a good thing. I look for that in movies. That's maybe the number one quality my favorite movies share: what they are about is not \"obvious\" and certainly not dictated by the film itself. But there is a side effect. Just last night, my girlfriend was asking me what <em>Mutual Appreciation</em> was about. I was saying, \"Well, it's about this guy, a musician, who turns up in New York and complicates the lives of his friends there. He's at some parties that go on too long.\" I could tell I wasn't really selling it. It boils down to me saying, \"You just have to watch it.\" Is that a quality you find in your own favorite movies?</strong><br><br>A feeling that I love, sitting in a movie theater, is the feeling of being just one step behind, of watching the movie, being completely engaged, and feeling like I'm just a little behind and trying to figure it out, trying to catch up, Obviously, if you fall too far behind, you get frustrated, you give up, or you say, \"This is horseshit. They're leaving me behind on purpose.\" You might have to bleep that. Sorry.<br><br>When the world feels complete up there, you're always willing to go after it. That's always been my goal, to get something up onscreen that makes a certain kind of sense. If there are mometnts of obtuseness, if there are moments of confusion, hopefully they ring true and make the thing all the deeper. That's part of using nonprofessional actors. Not to disparage profesisonal actors — obviously, 99 percent of my favorite movies are my favorite movies because of the work done by professional actors — but there's a way in which I think part of what a professional actor is trying to do is clarify and help the audience understand what the scene is about. For these films, I didn't want that kind of clarification. <br><br>For better or for worse — I don't know if I intended it to be — <em>Beeswax</em> may be the most challenging of my films. Part of that is this real desire and drive to point away from that clarification. I really enjoy watching characters try to figure out things happening to them, but I always want it to have an inherent logic and make sense. I like feeling a step behind, and I kind of like it when the caracters are a step behing, when they're trying to catch up to the movie, too.<br><br><strong>As a filmmaker working on your own projects, is it even possible that you could have actors very precisely articulate what a scene is about? Are you actually conceiving a scene with this concrete idea you can write down about what it is \"about\"?</strong><br><br>Yes and no. I need to know what I'm doing as a writer. I need to know where the movie's going. Directing a film, you have to play god. That's the job, and you can't abdicate your responsibility, but, by the same token, you're not god. There are always going to be things beyond your control. You try to use them, you try to work with them, to make the film more interesting. I have found myself, as a writer, when I go back to take another pass, to write the next draft, sometimes, in an early draft, I will come too close to a line of dialogue that says, \"Here's what the scene is about.\" That's always the first thing I cut, because it seems to make the scene more interesting to have people trying to discover that thing, or going toward it, or going around it, or going near it, than bounding off it.<br><br><strong>Some of the critics that I really like, when they write about your films, they bring up a usual suite of themes: ethics, morality, various forms of social confusion and maybe crossed wires or slight miscommunication. It's the ethics and morality component that I find the most interesting. Do you actually see those as being common themes throughout your three films? In <em>Mutual Appreciation</em> especially, you can see the worldviews as cross-purposes, and the \"twenty different motivations at once\" you once talked about in an interview that characters operate with. Is that a constant through your films so far?</strong><br><br>I think so. Probably more so as they go. <em>Beeswax</em> literalizes that motif inasmuch as there's some threatened legal battle at the center of it. A lot of the narrative drive of that film comes from one character afraid she's going to be sued by her business partner. That's directly about not only a moral-ethical standoff which may metastasize into this legal battle, but also the difference between how people conceive of things officially, how you write it down in your legal contract, and how you thought you were relating to that person. <br><br>Any time I've ever signed any kind of contract, it's caused me great anxiety. I always look at the words on the paper and think, \"When we talk on the phone about this, this is not the way we're talking about it. This is a whole different language. This is a whole different agreement.\" That always has fascinated me, the difference between the official story and how people actually relate to each other.<br><br><strong>This recontextualization of relationships — you talk about moving something that's been a friendly arrangement into the world of law and contracts and legal language and lawsuits and what have you. It gets me thinking about how you can see that kind of recontextualization in <em>Funny Ha Ha</em> and <em>Mutual Appreciation</em>. <br><br>My first impulse is to say that characters struggle in those movies have certain relationships between one another that are tacit, that they don't talk about directly. When they do try to transfer those relationships to words, when they try to define them, it ends up becoming a dog's breakfast. It's this muddle they can't figure out, at least for a while. They're trying to define who they are to each other. Is that too far to extend this, or do you think that's accurate?</strong><br><br>I buy it. I don't know that I have much to add.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a2dc970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:left\"><img alt=\"Bujalski4\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ef57a2dc970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Bujalski4\"></a> You buy it, but was it anything you thought or was it just kind of how they came out?</strong><br><br>I think it's just how it came out. Ultimately, a lot of these questions about where these motifs come from, where these themes come from probably just come from my own muddled-mouthedness.<br><br><strong>You can see the clash of worldviews in your movies, but you can also see — I want to get an idea of what elements of your own worldview are present in there as well. You've talked elsewhere about how you can't conceive of characters as being evil or villianous, inherently. That's another quality in my favorite movies: there aren't \"bad guys,\" nor are there necessarily \"good guys.\" Is that a quality of movies you like as well, or is that just the way you find you create characters?</strong><br><br>It would be interesting to try to do, because obviously I live in the same world that everybody else does, in which there are highly villianous acts undertaken all the time. Where do those come from? Do they come from bad people or somebody who was abused as a kid, and that's the reason why they're going to take it out on somebody else? Where do these things come from? I never meet somebody and think, \"That's a bad guy.\" I might think, \"I don't like that guy\" or, \"I don't want to deal with that person\" or, \"I don't understand this person.\" That's a common one. My wife makes fun of me for this: sometimes we see a movie, and occasionally I will say, \"I didn't like that movie. That movie's a piece of crap.\" More often, I'll say, \"I didn't get it,\" which is how I tend to feel about things I don't relate to. <br><br>Maybe evil is something I just don't relate to; I don't get it. It's too easy for me to say, \"That's person is possessed by the devil.\" It makes more sense for me to say, \"I don't know where that came from. I don't understand it.\" I want to be ginger about that, because I know ther eare people in the world who have been injured by villianous acts. I would never say to that person, \"You just need to try harder to understand the person who killed your family.\" Maybe that is a worthwhile endeavor, to try to understand the person who killed your family, but I understand why you might not want to hear that if you're that person. We may be way off topic here.<br><br><strong>That's okay. There is no topic. Besides, I think it is pertinent. With this issue of \"bad\" people versus the \"non-bad\" ones —</strong><br><br>This was a big question when we were doing <em>Beeswax</em>. The Amanda character, the business partner, who may or may not be suing Jeannie, who drives a lot of the story — Anne Dodge, who played that role, was afraid her character was the villain in the script. She didn't want to be the villian. To some extent, that was something we had to work through on set: I would find her wanting to soft-pedal the character and I would say, \"Don't do that. Give the character her due and push it the way the character would. I don't see her as a villain and I don't think you should either.\" <br><br>She's somebody who has a very, very different perspective than Jeannie. She's frustrated and giving trouble to this nice person at the center of the story. People have come out of that movie and said, \"Oh, I hate Amanda, Amanda's a bitch.\" Other people come out of the film, and I think the film makes it very possible for you to say, \"Huh. Maybe she has a point.\" She may seem villianous in a certain context, and narrative film asks you to think that whoever's giving the lead character a hard time is the villain, but there's a lot of evidence in the film that Amanda might be on to something.<br><br><strong>In the first few scenes in which she appears, I did feel something of a dislike for her. I couldn't put my finger on why, because I wasn't totally clear on what objection Jeannie had to Amanda and vice versa. finishing up the movie, Amanda does seem more sympathetic, but at the same time, it does seem to me that the actual conflict between them isn't laid out clearly enough to prevent people from seeing what they want to see in Amanda, or even in Jeannie. Is that what you found?</strong><br><br>Yes, that sounds exactly right. I think it's also true of those conflics in general. That was also my feeling going into it. It is not explicit in the film exactly what the crux of their argument is, so we talked about it, we said, \"Here could be some points of contention. Here's maybe how this all grew.\" But ultimately, I feel like partnerships that end up in disorder, it's almost invariably a situation of personality conflict: people who don't think about the world the same way being forced to work together. <br><br>Although you might think you like each other, when it really comes down to it, when things get difficult, when you have to work together day after day, it's hard not for these personality conflicts to erupt. Like a marriage, either you figure out how to work together, or things devolve. That's where this movie finds these characters, in this devolved place, trying to figure out how they got there, which is always fascinating to me. You take people who try to look at things — each of them is looking at the situation rationally, but they have different ideas of what rational is.<br><br><strong>This idea of personality conflict, two sides who are looking in a rational way at the same core issue but coming to a conflict — obviously this is at the center of so much drama throughout history, drama in the sense of wrought drama as well as drama in regular life. It's a fixture as well of super-super-super-mainstream movies. Many of them are about a personality conflict, in a broad sense, the same kind of thing you might use. <br><br>In a lot of those very mainstream movies, it is resolved in a textbook way. There's a standard set of resolutions for the kind of problems a mainstream movie might use. <em>Beeswax</em> ends before the resolution of a certain thing, if that's vague enough. Do you find that, in life, these personality conflicts can get resolved, or are they perpetual? Is that maybe why they interest you?</strong><br><br>Great question. What do you think? I think some people work their way to their own personal version of a resolution. You can cut off ties with somebody and say, \"That person's out of my life, therefore the issue is resolved.\" But is it? I don't know.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0134828709db970c-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Bujalski5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0134828709db970c-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Bujalski5\"></a> It does become an issue of defining resolution, which itself sounds like a pretty thorny thing to get into.</strong><br><br>Yeah.<br><br><strong>Your films get talked about so often as, \"They're not plot, they're character.\" It's the sort of film I enjoy, and you probably do as well, or else you wouldn't be making them. You've talked in other interviews about how you started, as a kid, going to movies all the time: watching <em>Return of the Jedi</em>, <em>Friday the 13th Part V</em>, <em>Rocky III</em>. These films are very, very plot-driven. What was your path, as a lover of cinema, from plot to character, from liking one to liking the other in larger doses?</strong><br><br>I don't know if it's anything so direct. Partially, this is just the journey from being five years old to getting older. When I come out of a blockbuster and say, \"I didn't get it,\" it's just how you watch movies. Rocky is a very vibrant character, for me, was and is. Maybe all those movies are always character-based in my mind.<br><br><strong>It's more an issue of perception? A movie might not actually be this percentage plot, this percentage character? It just depends on what you're looking for?</strong><br><br>Absolutely, there's no question that my experience has shown to be that people have different ways of watching movies. Some people can't handle my films because the way they watch a movie does not allow for this kind of storytelling. They can't process it. It's like not being able to digest certain enzymes. <br><br>I saw <em>Iron Man 2</em> a few days ago and had a great time; I really liked it. One of the things I liked about it — I'll really get in trouble if I spoil <em>Iron Man 2</em> — the climactic battle with the supervillain was not that long. I was kind of amazed at how relatively concise it was. I don't go to most blockbusters, so I'm not completely up to date on them, but it's my impression that, in recent years particularly, those things are supposed to drag on forever. <br><br>Not that the movie lacks for robots punching each other — it has a ton of that — but that stuff is not the most fun stuff for me, robots punching each other. There are other things that really endeared the film to me. But there are other people who go to the movie and really, really, really want to see robots punching each other, and really get something out of that that I don't quite understand. I'm not going to take that away from anybody; I couldn't take that away from anybody if I wanted to. But it's just another way of watching movies.<br><br><strong>I haven't seen either of the <em>Iron Man</em> films, but I have heard they're blockbuster action movies that set themselves apart from, say, a <em>Transformers</em> or a <em>Transformers 2</em> — I don't know if there's a third one, but — a <em>Transformers 3</em> by having a very — \"nuanced\" is maybe too much — distinctive character in the person of Iron Man himself. Do you think that's true, and you respond to that?</strong><br><br>That's a big part of it, but it also could be what I ate for breakfast. I liked the second <em>Iron Man</em> better than the first one, which I think is a minority opinion. I just enjoyed the way it moved; structure means a lot to me. There are all these things I expect to see in a modern Hollywood movie, and it moved much more reasonably than those. Let's not spend 45 minutes on the final battle. Not that I felt underserved by the final battle; the final battle was fine. It was great. <br><br>But there were a lot of choices in <em>Iron Man 2</em> that maybe were more character-centric, if I think about it. They were spending time on things and they were building things in a way that I found a lot more relatable than what blockbusters are in the habit of doing these days. I think it's very, very similar steroids in major-league athletics: every script is on steroids now. It takes a lot of the fun out. For me, that does not produce the artistic equivalent of a home run, but obviously, for many viewers it does.<br><br><strong>I'm interested by the attitude you have displayed toward the dynamic between blockbusters with steroided scripts and everything else, movies that aren't driven in that same way. A lot of people I talk to who are young filmmakers, young cinephiles, or who like the kind of movies you make, they'll adopt what I would call a much worse attitude. They'll say, \"Oh, audiences are stupid, America's stupid, producers are stupid, money is stupid —\"</strong><br><br>Money is stupid. I'll go with that one.<br><br><strong>What does that mean to you, \"Money is stupid\"? I need some clarification from a filmmaker here.</strong><br><br>Over the years, I've developed a fair amount of confidence in my abilities as a filmmaker. If the word came down that it's time to go out and make a movie, I feel confident that I could bring back something good. Whether or not it's great depends on how lucky we are and how in the zone I am, but I believe I can consistently make good films, and I hope do that for the rest of my life, if I'm able to. <br><br>I have <em>no</em> confidence in my ability to produce and participate in the commercial marketplace. The commercial marketplace has always made me very nervous, probably more so than is necessary. That's something I need to get over. But money has one goal, which is to produce more money. If you look at the kind of films that come out of that, they're not usually the best films. Something like <em>Iron Man 2</em>, which i enjoyed, is a kind of aberration — sneaking one past the gates. It's also this cluster of good forune: Jon Favreau, making that film, had a certain amount of good taste. <br><br>You read interviews with him, and he talks about how he had to fight the cast, Robert Downey in the first one, Mickey Rourke in the second one. You look at these films and go, \"Of course. These guys make the movie.\" That's somebody in a position of power who had the juice to push against the money, in one sense, although obviously it worked out fine and the money is happy.<br><br><strong>It seems to me, though, that a director controls many things, but the one thing a director can't really control is the financial return. There's so many players, as you know better than me, between the director and the people paying at the other end, the audience members, the people buying the DVDs. There's all this distribution stuff and all these rights issues, where it plays, who's screening it and all that. In a real sense, <em>can</em> you care, as a director, about the money it makes? Of course you do care, because the money it makes affects you, but does it make sense to care?</strong><br><br>I wish I didn't. I've made three fairly cheap, fairly small films where there was no expectation for them to be blockbusters by any means. But I've always gone into it, for better or worse, for better <em>and</em> worse, refusing to think about money until the movie's done. When the movie is done and we're ready to bring it into the world, the we can talk about how to market it. I'm not interested in talking about how to market it before we make it. Maybe that's naïve, maybe that's childish, maybe that needs to change, <br><br>I've always felt like the one thing that the vast majority of movies that are relased in the marketplace have in common is that they were, in some way, designed with that marketplace in mind. Obviously, the studios have made a science out of it and it's hit or miss in the indie world. Most movies that are made, somebody, somewhere has an idea of how they're going to get their money back. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. <br><br>I always thought, \"Well, if I take that out of the equation, I open up a whole other spectrum of things I can do as a filmmaker.\" There's all kinds of movies that just can't get made from that mindset, so if I remove sustainability from the list of priorities, there's a lot more i can do and a lot more that I'm interested in. That's another thing I'm stuck with: a lot of the things I'm interested in go hand-in-hand with ways to lose money.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef013482870abe970c-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:left\"><img alt=\"Bujalski6\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef013482870abe970c-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 5px 5px 0px;WIDTH:400px;HEIGHT:218px\" title=\"Bujalski6\"></a> It seems like we've reached a point where the sort of aesthetic you've worked in and at least a handful of other pretty well-known filmmakers of your generation and younger have worked in — that's become a reognized way of making films that are good and that people appreciate and that are attractive, in some sense, to audiences. <br><br>But it seems to me that also brings about the conditions where — I hesitate to use the word \"suit,\" but — some suit might say, \"Hey, now that these sorts of movies about twentysomethings made kinda lo-fi are hot, here's what we do: we market this movie to these twentysomethings, it's gonna be made to look deliberately 16-millimeter-y, deliberately directionless protagonists,\" a super-engineered version of <em>Funny Ha Ha</em>. Is that actually a condition that has obtained? Is the money world interested in making the cynical <em>Funny Ha Ha</em>s at this point?</strong><br><br>I don't think so. Basically, what it comes down to is, these days anybody can log on to Boxofficemojo.com and see what these movies gross. They don't gross that high. There are a lot of reasons for that, and certainly the independent world in general — depending on your definition of \"crisis\" — there is a kind of crisis right now, where it's very, very hard to make the money back on anything \"independent.\" Even the things you think would have been indie hits ten years ago, certainly twenty years ago, are having a lot more trouble today for a variety of reasons. <br><br>That's a lot of excuses. What I'm trying to say is that my movies haven't made a lot of money, and so any suit looks at that first before they think about what they might be able to pillage from it. Certainly, a business-savvy person might look at my films and say, \"There's something we can use here,\" but they're not going to try to replicate those films.<br><br><br><em>All feedback welcome at colinjmarshall at gmail.</em></div><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/qa9grlp9t4j66u0busmu6ckd4s/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3quarksdaily.com%2F3quarksdaily%2F2010%2F05%2Fthe-cinema-of-recontextualized-relationships-colin-marshall-talks-to-filmmaker-andrew-bujalski-.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?i=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?a=wLc0IweYjeA:Jf_J0sTs3xM:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/3quarksdaily?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Task Flow Design Paper Revised",
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"content" : "Thanks to some discussion over at the <a href=\"http://groups.google.com/group/adf-methodology\">ADF Methodology Group</a> and contributions from Simon Lessard and Jan Vervecken I have been able to make some refinements to the <a href=\"http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/11/collateral/adf_task_flow_design.pdf\">Task Flow Design Fundamentals</a> paper on OTN.<br>As a bonus, whilst I was making some edits anyway I've included some of <a href=\"http://frank.thepeninsulasedge.com/\">Frank Nimphius's</a> memory scope diagrams which are a really useful tool for understanding how request, view, backingBean and pageFlow scopes all fit together.<br>"
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"title" : "On the nature of reconciliation (guest essay)",
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"content" : "<i>Editor's note: The following is an email sent to me in response to <a href=\"http://blackstarjournal.blogspot.com/2010/04/nature-of-reconciliation.html\">my essay on the nature of reconciliation</a>. It is published here with the permission of the author.</i><br><br>by Rufus Arthur Wilderson<br><br>Your post on the views of Africans towards reconciliation struck a chord with me. As much as the diverse views of an entire continent can be generalized, I think yes, Africans do have a greater propensity to live and let live than is seen in Eurasia.<br><br>My first anecdote comes from my brief time in college, I want to say 2005-2006 time frame. For some reason Somalia was in the news; maybe the piracy was starting to get bad. At the time I was attending an African Studies course, and the professor was a somewhat world-weary type who had been an ambassador and was able to add a lot of color to the discussion of the Horn of Africa, including all the nuances and shifting alliances during the Cold War and Ogaden conflict (someone should make an opera out of it). His conclusion looking at Somalia? \"It is better to have a bad government than no government at all\". That was it, verbatim. Of course, this was about the same time that Zimbabwe had been making the news for bulldozing slums, so this struck me as a somewhat odd outlook on matters. Considering the state of life in Somalia though; perhaps it is not entirely unjustified.<br><br>The second anecdote comes from the excellent book <a href=\"http://site.booksite.com/7226/showdetail/?isbn=9781400031429\">In Search of Zarathustra</a>, and dates to about the seventies or so when the author was having adventures in Afghanistan and Iran. <br><br>He had come to explore the ruins of an old Zoroastrian fire temple and met a community elder just before mid-day prayers. He asked about the temple. The elder said the temple was haunted, and the site of a great battle between Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and the local tyrant. The lesson from that is that while centuries-long or even millennia-old grudges and events are remembered in much of the world, they are not necessarily remembered accurately! Perhaps there was some ancient battle at that site, but the story had become hopelessly distorted over time as it was told and retold for whatever didactic or political reasons were expedient at the time.<br><br>To me, as an American, both views seem strange. I have been taught, ultimately via the Enlightenment tradition, that it is not only justified to fight injustice, but that it is a moral imperative to do so. The American emphasis on the individual leaves me feeling a bit odd with the idea of punishing someone because our ancestors five generations ago were in a battle. Why should that matter to us, now?<br><br>It is tempting to think that the American outlook has the best balance of emphasis on social justice tempered with the mercy of easy forgiveness and individual, rather than group accountability. This is probably provincial though, and I suspect such a world view works best and flourishes only in a prosperous and stable environment. In an environment where even basic necessities like clean water or food could be hard to come by and life could be beset by all manner of natural and man made privations, fighting overmuch for social justice would seem like foolish idealism. Better to live and let live and get on to more important basic necessities. In an environment with a greater degree of prosperity and wealth, but with shifting alliances and organized national militaries all around like Eurasia has had for most of the past three thousand years, too much forgiveness and too much forbearance with tyrants might be the complacency that gets one's entire tribe destroyed in the next war.<br><br>Or at least that's what comes to mind for me. I could be making up just-so stories based on vague generalizations about people and places; always a risk in sociology.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5237946-6699905601976079989?l=blackstarjournal.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Smart Sensemaking Systems, First and Foremost, Must be Expert Counting Systems",
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"text-autospace:none\"><span style=\"line-height:19px\">I wrote an article with the\nabove title.<span> </span>This article has since been\npublished in the proceedings of the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://rahs.org.sg/t2_irahss10_ats.html\"><a href=\"http://app.hsc.gov.sg/public/www/content.aspx?sid=1930\">International Risk Assessment\nand Horizon Scanning Symposium 2010 (IRAHSS)</a></a></span> in Singapore.</span></p><p style=\"text-autospace:none\"><span style=\"line-height:19px\"></span>[Opening Excerpt]</p><p style=\"margin-left:.5in\"><em>Man\ncontinues to chase the notion that systems should be capable of digesting\ndaunting volumes of data and making sufficient sense of this data such that novel,\nspecific, and accurate insight can be derived without direct human\ninvolvement.<span> </span>While there are many major\nbreakthroughs in computation and storage, advances in sensemaking systems have\nnot enjoyed the same significant gains.<span> </span></em><em> </em></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-left:.5in\"><em>This\narticle suggests that the single most fundamental capability required to make a\nsensemaking system is the system’s ability to recognize when multiple\nreferences to the same entity (often from different source systems) are in fact\nthe same entity.<span> </span>For example, it is essential\nto understand the difference between three transactions carried out by three\npeople versus one person who carried out all three transactions.<span> </span>Without the ability to determine when\nentities are the same, it quickly becomes clear that sensemaking is all but\nimpossible.<span> </span></em></p>\n\n<p><span style=\"line-height:19px\">Full article <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/IRAHSS_Expert_Counting.pdf\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/IRAHSS_Expert_Counting.pdf\">here</a></a>.<span> </span></span></p><p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\">I find most organizations have\nunderestimated this principle: If a system cannot count, it cannot\npredict.<span> </span>While I covered this point in some\ndetail in a <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/08/asserting-context-a-prerequisite-for-smart-sensemaking-systems.html\">previous\npost</a>, this new article is more complete and has a section entitled <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\">Expert\nCounting Systems: Essential Ingredients For Sensemaking</span> which<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"> </span>covers\nsuch issues as:</p><ol style=\"margin-top:0in\"><li>Expert counting engines should not rely on training data.</li>\n <li>Counted\n entities should accumulate features.</li>\n <li>Entities\n believed to be the same should be asserted as same.</li>\n <li>Expert\n counting benefits from favoring the false negatives.</li>\n <li>New\n observations should reverse earlier assertions.</li>\n <li>Full\n attribution/pedigree of each observation should be maintained.</li>\n <li>It\n should be fast in order to digest the historical data.</li>\n <li>It\n should be real time so that counting assertions can be made as the\n transaction is happening, in time to do something about it.</li>\n</ol>\n\n<p style=\"text-autospace:none\"><span style=\"color:black\">Anyway, long story short, e</span>xpert counting is\nnon-trivial, especially at scale, and <span style=\"color:black\">lots more must\nbe done in this area.</span></p><p style=\"text-autospace:none\"><span style=\"color:black\"></span><span style=\"line-height:19px\">Miscellaneous Note:<span> </span>Over the years I’ve sometimes used the term <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/04/to_know_semanti.html\">Semantic\nReconciliation</a> (recognizing two things are the same despite having been\ndescribed differently) to describe counting.<span> \n</span>And, many have heard me or others using the term <a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/09/entity-resoluti.html\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/09/entity-resoluti.html\">Entity\nResolution</a></a> or Identity Resolution.<span> \n</span>Yes, more words that relate to counting … especially with respect to\npeople or organizations: is this about one person or two?<span> </span>Unfortunately, trying to explain these terms\nto non-technical people has been a bit of work, so now in an attempt to make\nthe concept more consumable … maybe the term “Expert Counting” is an\nimprovement.</span></p><p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"line-height:15px\"><br></span></p><p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"line-height:15px\">RELATED POSTS</span></p>\n\n<h3 style=\"margin-top:.75pt;line-height:14.25pt\"><font face=\"'Times New Roman'\" size=\"4\"><span style=\"font-size:16px;font-weight:normal\"><h3 style=\"margin-top:.75pt;line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#6699cc;font-weight:normal\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2009/08/asserting-context-a-prerequisite-for-smart-sensemaking-systems.html\">Asserting\nContext: A Prerequisite for Smart, Sensemaking Systems</a></span></h3>\n\n<p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/04/to_know_semanti.html\"><span style=\"color:purple\">To Know Semantic Reconciliation is to Love Semantic\nReconciliation</span></a></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/07/context-a-must-.html\"><span style=\"color:purple\">Context: A Must-Have and Thoughts on Getting Some …</span></a></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/09/entity-resoluti.html\"><span style=\"color:purple\">Entity Resolution Systems vs. Match Merge/Merge Purge/List\nDe-duplication Systems</span></a></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2006/01/sequence_neutra.html\">Sequence\nNeutrality in Information Systems</a></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"text-autospace:none\"><span style=\"color:#333333\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/06/big_breakthroug.html\"><span style=\"color:purple\">Big Breakthrough in Performance: Tuning Tips for\nIncremental Learning Systems</span></a></span></p>\n\n<h3 style=\"margin-top:.75pt;line-height:14.25pt\"><span style=\"font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";color:#6699cc;font-weight:normal\"><a href=\"http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2010/03/on-a-smarter-planet-some-organizations-will-be-smarterer-than-others.html\">On\nA Smarter Planet … Some Organizations Will Be Smarter-er Than Others</a></span></h3></span></font></h3>\n\n<p> </p></div>"
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"title" : "Africa on Film: Tarzan!",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-9980\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/06/04/africa-on-film-tarzan/tarzan-2/\"><img title=\"tarzan\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/tarzan1.jpg?w=500&h=333\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\"></a></p>\n<p>Few other authors in the 19th and 20th centuries made greater contributions to Hollywood’s racist images of Africa than Edgar Rice Burroughs – Tarzan’s creator.</p>\n<p>During his lifetime, Burroughs mastered the staple “jungle” movie that has characterized films set in Africa since the early part of the 20th century. The scope of Burrough’s “Africa” work is quite impressive from a man that never stepped foot on the continent. His Tarzan series originated in 1912 with <em>Tarzan of the Apes, </em> and continued on through 46 other features plus countless spin-offs (did anyone catch Brendan Fraser’s brilliant performance in <em>George of the Jungle [1997]</em>?).</p>\n<p>For this short review, I look specifically at two films: <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z8AB02yqK0\">Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932)</a> and <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKASlfG8_c\">Tarzan Escapes (1936)</a>, both starring Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan (above).</p>\n<p><span></span> In <em>Tarzan, the Ape Man</em>, Jane Parker comes to Africa to visit her father, who is on a hunt for ivory. Tarzan abducts Jane and after the initial terror has worn off, Jane realizes that she likes Tarzan and that jungle life suits her.</p>\n<p>The trailer for <em>Tarzan, the Ape Man</em>:</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/06/04/africa-on-film-tarzan/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/ntwSGBWCRIw/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>In <em>Tarzan Escapes</em>, a white hunter tries to cage Tarzan to bring him back to “civilization” where he can profit from the “white ape” as a public spectacle. The specifics of neither narrative are important for this discussion. I’m more interested in the overall thematics and ideas, of not only these two films, but Tarzan in general.</p>\n<p>The trailers for <em>Tarzan Escapes</em>:</p>\n<p>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq47gK_guMQ&w=500&h=307&rel=0]</p>\n<p>Tarzan films are a perfect visual representation of colonialism. The dichotomy between civilized and savage, which is to say, white and black, is represented in the character’s actions, costumes, and dialogue. White characters carry on in the jungle as if they own the place while black characters are merely the background dwellers. In fact, audiences are invited to relate more closely to the animals than the black humans. But black representations in these films could hardly qualify as human. Blacks are the lazy natives, the savages, the pygmies (little people in blackface in <em>Tarzan Escapes </em>– another problematic unto its own), but “people” they are not.</p>\n<p>Just like whites in Africa during colonialism, whites in Tarzan films have managed to escape the stiff moral and social confines of the metropole. Africa is a fantastic playground as well as a blank canvas where white desires are addressed and explored. These desires include, but are not limited to: escape from money and material possessions, being saved by a hyper-sexualized jungle being, and exhibiting dominance over all living creatures. And of course, Africa is a place to explore the fear surrounding the unknown savage Other.</p>\n<p>However, representations of black savage Others are not simply a fetishized white fear, during the early Tarzan era they were also used as propaganda to justify colonial activity. It was very important for Hollywood to paint black Africa as savage to win the support of people back home for colonial expansion; a “the savages need us” message. Ultimately too, it acted as a cover-up for the real savages. I find it interesting that <em>Tarzan Escapes</em> is set in King Leopold’s Congo at a time when the Belgians were raping the land for all it was worth and halving the population through horrific modes of killing (if there is any question about that, read K<em>ing Leopold’s Ghost</em> by Adam Hochschild).</p>\n<p>I want to be fair to Hollywood by suggesting that the racist images of Africa prevalent in the Tarzan films have changed over time. For instance, films about Africa no longer star white characters, and the weight of the narrative is no longer carried by white love stories. Take for example Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly in <em>Blood Diamond </em>(2006)<em> </em>– oh wait. Popular films about Africa no longer show black bodies being killed en masse. And black characters these days have some sense of agency. Take for example black characters in <em>The Constant Gardener (2005) </em>- oh wait.</p>\n<p>The questions going forward are: has anything changed? Are there popular films on Africa that step outside of the Tarzan paradigm?</p>\n<p>– <strong>Allison Swank</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9978/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=9978&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"content" : "<p>There is so much to love about Senator Knott’s recent ode to ragheads in America. I mean this seriously. </p>\n\n<p>I adore how he’s open about this feelings for “f#!king ragheads.” This guy is a Southern Conservative straight out central casting, he’s racist, bigoted, xenophobic and stupid although not uninformed. He actually knows who Sikhs are and where India is, that just doesn’t stop him from saying “We’re at war over there,” demonstrating he’s not a bigot because he’s ignorant, he’s ignorant because he’s a bigot. This can’t be cured by education. All ragheads are the same to him, and before the non-Sikh readers get too smug, he probably hates you as well.</p>\n\n<p>But all of this is just the sundae. The cherry on top, my absolute favorite part is this:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Knotts says he believed Haley has been set up by a network of Sikhs and was programmed to run for governor of South Carolina by outside influences in foreign countries. [<a href=\"http://www.free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992209084141467&act=post&pid=11860406103619087\">link</a>]</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>ZOMG! She’s the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manchurian_Candidate\">Manchurian Candidate</a>, the sleeper Sikh! </p>\n\n<p>What I can’t figure out is what he’s so afraid she’s do once she’s activated. After all, the original Manchurian Candidate tried to whack the POTUS, and something tells me you wouldn’t be unhappy about that at all.</p>\n\n<p>What will she do that would make you unhappy? Will her father attend her inauguration in a turban? Will she take down the confederate flag and replace it with the Indian one? Will she start teaching evolution in schools? Will she refuse to be sworn in with her hand over the bible and hold an ardaas instead?</p>\n\n<p>Or maybe … she’ll invite DJ Rekha to the Governor’s mansion to play … Bhangra! Whoops, sorry Senator, the Raghead-in-Chief has already done that in the White House, the nations’ political bhangra-virginity has already been lost:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“I want to thank DJ Rekha who’s been spinning a little East Room Bhangra for everybody mixing a hip-hop beat with the sounds of her heritage; making a uniquely American sound that may not have been heard in the White House before,” Obama said amidst laughter and applause. [<a href=\"http://www.ptinews.com/news/666831_DJ-Rekha-s-Bhangra-enthralls-Obama-at-White-House\">link</a>]</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Although, maybe you do have a point. That first Bhangra in an executive residence was soo good, that we want to do it again and again, promiscuously, with different executive residences, in all fifty states around the country! Next stop, Louisiana, where Piyush is going to Bhangra the BP blues away!</p>\n\n<p>Sorry Senator, you lost the civil war and you’re going to lose the culture war too. In fact, your raghead comment just caused the former county GOP chair to declare her 2012 challenge to you [<a href=\"http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/SC_Senator_gets_challenge_after_raghead_line.html\">link</a>]. But thank you for playing, and thanks for all the laughs!</p>\n\n\n\n\n<p></p><p><b>Who linked:</b></p>\n<i><a href=\"http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5994\">T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k link</a></i><p></p>"
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"content" : "<b>Gaza Flotilla - now what the heck's that all about?</b><br><br>I have a theory, based on no evidence above and beyond my usual jaundiced, cynical and generally horrifying view of human nature[1].<br><br>I take as my starting point the following - given the presence of various dodgy Gallowayite Turkish organisations[2] on that ship, and the fact that guns are not difficult to get hold of in Turkey, it seems interesting to me that not a single firearm was apparently found on board that ship. My evidence for this claim is that if there had been, christ knows we'd have heard no end of it.<br><br>And from there, I argue that this isn't <a href=\"http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2010/05/pyongyang-on-the-levant.html\">Cheonan</a> - it's \"SADDAM'S WMD!!!!\" mark two.<br><br>After all, would we have been having anything like this conversation if the Israeli government had opened up its press conference with a photo of its commandoes posing next to a big fuck-off pile of AK47s and RPGs? Course not.<br><br>My canny theory about what happened is that the Israelis had convinced themselves that the flotilla were gun-running, didn't bother to check, and acted accordingly, planning roughly the clustereff that actually happened, presuming that the justificatory material would be found after the event. And then it wasn't and oooerr, oh shit. This would also explain why the <a href=\"http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2010/06/02/why_israels_narrative_flotilla_attack_failing_so_badly\">post facto media strategy</a> (via Henry) was so totally incoherent - it was built around a corpus delicti that didn't arrive.<br><br>I never know whether to be relieved or distressed at the seeming fact that the power of Empire is seemingly in the hands of people who aren't up to the job of organising a simple frame-up.[3]<br><br>[1]Francois Mitterrand will always be a hero of mine despite his manifold failings, for his answer to an interviewer who once asked him what quality was necessary for success in politics. He considered the question carefully before answering \"Bleakness of the soul\".<br><br>[2]By \"Gallowayite\" in this context, I mean that IHH basically supports Hamas because they're the existing government of Gazan Palestinians and is thereby prepared to give money to them with no strings attached, something which I personally regard as a stupid thing to do, but let's be specific here. I tend to regard the Israeli government's accusation of IHH having provided anything more to Hamas than the aforementioned NSA cash as poorly sourced and accusations of Al Qaeda links as being actually laughable.<br><br>[3]My guess is that coppers are more dangerous enemies than soldiers, because they work together in units for longer and so they instinctively don't grass on each other and they have more institutional knowledge about getting their story straight. Therefore, in most circumstances, a cop can do much worse things to you than a soldier can. Most of the really nasty people of the last century worked for secret[4] police forces, even in military dictatorships.<br><br>[4] \"Secret\" apparently has a particular sense of \"unaccountable\" which I don't think is in the OED (though I don't have the OED to hand). Very few secret police organisations are \"secret\" in any normal meaning of the word.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3699020-110013653542575117?l=d-squareddigest.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Kristof promotes the missionary position",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-9397\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/23/nicholas-kristof-prefers-the-missionary-position/20100218-nick-2/\"><img title=\"20100218-nick\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/20100218-nick.jpg?w=500&h=276\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"276\"></a></p>\n<p>Via @Siddhartha Mitter: ”… The Great White Savior really outdid himself with this one. A blame-the-poor classic with particularly overt Calvinist moral messaging, even less appreciation than usual for colonial legacy, public finance and global economics, and that condescending Kristof brand of Savior Feminism Lite that verges on misandry.”</p>\n<p>What Siddhartha is talking about; Nicholas <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/opinion/23kristof.html\">Kristof’s latest column</a>. Here’s the intro:</p>\n<p><strong>There’s an ugly secret of global poverty, one rarely acknowledged by aid groups or U.N. reports. It’s a blunt truth that is politically incorrect, heartbreaking, frustrating and ubiquitous: It’s that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed. Much suffering is caused not only by low incomes, but also by shortsighted private spending decisions by heads of households.</strong></p>\n<p><span></span>Kristof then finds a Congolese child–it plays well with American readers to focus on children, he has argued somewhere else–whose parents cannot afford to pay his school fees but have cheap cellphones and occasionally have a drink.</p>\n<p>And then he brings up Bill Easterly’s favorite economist Esther Duflo to endorse his 19th century views in which Westerners, and particularly white Westerners, decide whats good for poor, third world, mostly black, particularly black people, and then he babbles on about microlending. I am tired. — <strong>Sean Jacobs</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/9396/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=9396&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"content" : "<div><p><strong><span style=\"FONT-STYLE:italic\">Alexander Theroux</span></strong><em> is the author of stories, poetry, essays, fables, critical studies and such novels as </em>Three Wogs<em>, </em>Darconville's Cat<em>, </em>An Adultery <em>and his latest, </em>Laura Warholic: Or, The Sexual Intellectual<em>, which came as Theroux's first novel in two decades</em>. Rain Taxi <em>calls the book "</em><em>a massive, 878-page compendium of vituperation against contemporary society, jabs at pop culture, exposés of office politics, and exploration of life and love in modern times," an encyclopedic novel that's "wandering, erudite, funny, opinionated, didactic, repetitive.<strong>" <a href=\"http://www.colinmarshall.org/\" title=\"Colin Marshall\">Colin Marshall</a></strong> originally conducted this conversation on the public radio program and podcast </em><strong><a href=\"http://www.colinmarshallradio.com/marketplace/\" title=\"The Marketplace of Ideas\">The Marketplace of Ideas</a></strong><em>. </em>[<a href=\"http://media.libsyn.com/media/colinmarshall/MOI_Alexander_Theroux.mp3\" title=\"MP3\">MP3</a>] [<a href=\"http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=266539442\" title=\"iTunes link\">iTunes link</a>]</p><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb70f970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Theroux1\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb70f970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Theroux1\"></a> About the new book: you can't really understand it unless you get to know the characters, and you get to know them very well through the course of the book. The protagonist, Eugene Eyestones — tell us a little bit about him.</strong><br><br>I've always been interested in a person that was both idealistic and something of a failure. Vladimir Nabokov once pointed out that every character is a little ramification of the author, so I've distributed some of my hostilities and fascinations and occasional quirks to him. I wanted to have him as a kind of <em>raisonneur</em> and a satirical point of departure for the multifarious views on life that are presented in the book. He's the thread through the book, which is not to say that he's normal or well-balanced.<br><br><strong>You say you give him a few qualities, a few opinions of your own. Which ones are the most prominent in him that you took for yourself?<br><br></strong>It's really hard to say, because, as Goethe once said, all writing is confession. In away, I've distributed myself throughout the book in various characters. John Keats once pointed out that Shakespeare maybe had a very empty personality, he might have been a very bland person, because he gave away his personality, the various voices that he had, to different people as various as Prospero, Lady Macbeth, you name it. I can't really say there's a one-to-one correspondence to much in Eyestones. His rooms, in many ways, echo mine: I have a lot of books, I have a portrait of Dostoevsky, blah blah blah. <br><br>But I think I can be found in other characters with equal force. There's an occasional shotgun in the corner, metaphorically speaking. My toothbrush over there, a particular vase in the room, but I can't deny that I'm in other places as well. I distributed myself throughout, and probably have as bland a personality as Keats argued Shakespeare had <strong>—</strong> not to make any major analogies here, by the way.<br><br><strong>You talk about Eyestones' idealism. He has a huge number of ideals, strongly held. What ideals of his really define him for you?<br><br></strong>He has an elevated view of women, although a lot of people would argue, vociferously, the opposite direction. His expectations are high. The genre of this novel is a satire. Through dramatic irony, I try to present him as a corrective to the wayward world, the quark-reversal world, the nutty world, the excessive world, the secular world. His point of view I like to think is balanced, although, as I say, a lot of people wouldn't agree. Laura Warholic attacks him three-quarters of the way through the book for a lot of lunatic excesses she finds in him, but a lot of those excesses and ideals <strong>—</strong> let's take one to make this clear. <br><br>He's kind of disbelieving in the possibility of democracy. Indeed, he sees it as a leveling force. I spent quite a bit of time on an essay on democracy in this book, which aims in the direction of trying to talk about couples. There's a certain kind of democracy required of people involved in coupledom. You have to settle on man and woman <strong>—</strong> in these days, man and man, whatever <strong>—</strong> he's kind of doubtful about the possibility of that being successful. That would be one example. There are many I could go into, but that would be one.<br>\n<strong>Would you call Eyestones the kind of guy who looks around and is constantly disappointed by the world, or — I guess in the book you show him having a few moments of not being disappointed, but they are few and far between. Primarily, he's disappointed, correct?<br><br></strong>Yeah, he's very disappointed. After I wrote <em>Darconville's Cat</em>, I was going through a period of feeling loveless and was talking to a psychiatrist. I was teaching at Harvard at the time. I recapitulated a lot of my life. I had been in a monastery for a short time and been in a seminary, but I had gone hither and yon, traveled a bit. My psychiatrist was looking in a querulous way and said to me, which seemed like a periodic remark, "You're always trying to get out of the world." That lead me to a minor disquisition on death, because, indeed, we're all having to get out of the world eventually. But he found that the case. <br><br>I would say yes, to answer your question: Eyestones is very much disappointed, as satirists are. People like Cervantes <strong>—</strong> again, I'm not making analogies with myself and Shakespeare or Cervantes <strong>— </strong>pyrotechnic writers, satirists in general, are very disappointed in the world. Spanking the world is part of their ambition. There's a great tradition of being disappointed and inflicting pain. There's a personal, partisan, no-punch-pulling involved. <br><br>My book hasn't been well-received; it's been basically ignored. I think it's a very important novel, but it's been ignored by people. I even had a hard time getting editors' attention: it's too long, it's too pyrotechnic, it's too multisyllabic, it's too opinionated, it's endless, there are longueurs, there are digressions. But one of the criticisms is that it's pitiless, even cruel and unsparing. That's what people are not used to. They're used to Tom Wolfe's jokey and affectionate lashings-out, kind of cartoon explosions. You have to look at Hunter Thompson's attacks to see real cruelty. <br><br>I don't know anybody that's doing the kind of <strong>—</strong> this book is not being written by anybody, this kind of prose, this kind of writing, because it's too savage, too unflinching. People just don't want this. "Why do you have such attitudes?" people tell me. "You're so extreme! You're so opinionated! This is so savage!" But satire, my point is, is savage. I'm thinking of a remark that Nathanael West made in <em>The Day of the Locust</em>, when he said, "Nothing is sadder than the truly monstrous." <br><br>I find the world monstrous. Just in the news, that Israel won't let eight Palestinian Fulbrights <strong>—</strong> and the way the United States has cravenly rolled over and let Israel dictate whether these eight scholars, high-minded people, can't even get out of that horrible place in Gaza to come to the United States to be Fulbrights <strong>—</strong> that's the kind of thing I'm attacking. That's the kind of pain I'm inflicting. That's the kind of no-punch-pulling, unsparing, pitiless, even cruel attitude that I try to launch in the book. We're living in a really savage time.<br><br><strong>You mention how people would criticize the book about the degree of savagery in it. It made me think of the large cast of characters and how many of the secondary characters, perhaps all of them, launch into very long tirades against whatever —<br><br></strong>There's a lot of ethnic attacks. I decided to pull no punches. I'm not going to go on record in personalizing any of these things, but I had great delight in holding the mirror up to a lot of attitudes held today by many people. There is a kind of savage cast of characters, in short. <br><br>I couldn't get the attention of a lot of editors for this book; I can't even find an agent. I notice some of my books on the internet, people remark that I'm grumpy or unapproachable. It's amazing to me that this seed has got into the ground, because I'm not grumpy at all. I've pulled certain triggers in this novel and other of my novels, but I could go into Yeats' fear of the anti-self: your writing is the opposite of what you are. I don't know if you know that theory, but it's always intrigued me. <br><br>I'll drop this subject in a minute, but his point was that John Keats suffered great unhappiness from Fanny Brawne, whom he loved and didn't love him back, but his poetry's very happy. Dante, according to Yeats' theory, was a very sensual person. Why? Because Yeats pointed out that his writing is spiritual, that the artist is always directing his attention to the mask rather than the face. I hope I'm being clear here.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb78a970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:left\"><img alt=\"Theroux2\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb78a970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 5px 5px 0px\" title=\"Theroux2\"></a> It's interesting that the criticism would be toward you, but attributing the opinions of your characters. The opinions of your characters conflict. They would attribute those to you, and call <em>you </em>the savage one?</strong><br><br>It's called negative capability, the idea of attributing to the author the attitudes of his characters. That's one of the reasons I had difficulty. Certain editors just sent it back. I'm convinced that most editors, of course, couldn't tell a good manuscript from a box of shingles. I seriously mean that. So many good books have been refused. <br><br>I've always been accused of being a loony and a savage, but I had real high hopes for the book because, in a way, it's a potpourri of a lot of my thought. I remember reading once, Steinbeck had great ambitions for <em>East of Eden</em>. He thought he could never do again, at the time that was published, the compilation of opinions that he distributed to his characters. I had that kind of feeling. <br><br>It's in the genre of the encyclopedic, learned novel, but it's seen as too long, too learned, too pyrotechnic, too encyclopedic. I just want to turn a corner here for a minute, because, in light of all that, I really wanted to write something that was funny. My belief is, this novel is comic <strong>—</strong> and it does have a lot of comic intentions <strong>—</strong> senses of humor don't translate very easily or well.<br><br><strong>You mention that the novel has not been recognized as comic, as it is. Why do you think that is?<br><br></strong>I don't think I'm seen as someone worthy of major attention. When I was at graduate school at the University of Virginia, Annie Dillard was a friend of mine. She went to Hollins College, and I would see her periodically. Her novel <em>Pilgrim at Tinker Creek</em> was reviewed by Eudora Welty. I'm just getting into a grumpy point here, but it clarifies my answer. So Annie Dillard's book was reviewed by a very large-hearted, noble person, whom you know. Eudora Welty gave it a very hyperbolic review, and she won the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Dillard did. <br><br>But my book was given to a complete yahoo from the <em>New York Times Book Review</em>, the kind of <em>sine qua non </em>of reviews in the United States. If you don't get a good review in the Sunday <em>New York Times</em>, your book basically goes into the drink. Anthony Burgess picked my novel <em>Darconville's Cat</em> as one of the best hundred books written since World War I, but it was badly reviewed by a grudging halfwit who taught at Amherst, a professor. The book died in its cradle in 1982, and only later, when a large-hearted and rather insightful critic, Anthony Burgess, reviewed it. <br><br>A lot of writers will say, "Oh, this is just sour grapes and complaints," but my novel <em>Laura Warholic </em>was reviewed by a dunce. A complete dunce, and a rivalrous novelist, I gather. It gave no attention to the book, to the 900 or so pages of the book, whereas someone in a Princeton review gave it their full attention. Not necessarily praise, but a full, large-hearted, open-hearted, humble attention. You can't write a book over the course of four years and have it read in a grumpy Saturday afternoon by some maleducated nitwit and have the book be understood. <br><br>When the book was given a short shrift in the <em>Book Review</em>, I knew a decade or more would go by. But I promise you, this is the most important novel published this year. One of the things I loathe about Rush Limbaugh is self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, but I'm trying to honestly tell you that if people get in to see the fine grain of this book and patiently read it from A to Z, they will come to agree with me. I'm not saying they'll like me or like everything they read in it, but there's a long-winded, self-promoting digression.<br><br><strong>These critics, the one that didn't quite handled the book as you —</strong><br><br>Or that ignored it. <br><br><strong>The ones that didn't ignore it, the ones that did review it: of those, of the things they misunderstood about the book, what do you think was the most misunderstood element? What did they most not get about <em>Laura Warholic</em>?<br><br></strong>Before I attempt to answer that question, I have to tell you that no first-rate critic has read it. John Updike, who promised that he'd review the book, just sat on his hands. There are some very disturbing themes in this novel. We live in a very scrimp time, when people are ill-disposed to really want to push the boat out for a book. I was hoping people like Joyce Carol Oates or Annie Proulx <strong>—</strong> whom I know and is a friend of mine <strong>— </strong>and John Updike might have actually given it a bit of help, just some kind of attention. <br><br>So I want to answer your question by first saying, nobody <strong>—</strong> and I don't want to use the word "important" here in a class or an elitist sense <strong>—</strong> but nobody of significance has reviewed the book. The nitwits that have reviewed the book have picked up some pathetic things. Let me just make one point: when I was teaching at Yale, the woman that was raped in Central Park by five or six savages really bothered me. I wrote an article where I said they were monkeys and didn't deserve the space they inhabited. I didn't use the word "monkeys" as a codeword for black or African-American people, but it was seen that way.<br><br>That was a horrible event, and a misguided remark of mine. I really have no problem at all in that department. But the reviewer in the <em>Book Review</em> brought this whole thing up that had nothing to do with anything in the novel at all. He put a racial tinge on the novel that it didn't have. It's so easy to read a satire and be offended. Did you know that Daniel Defoe once wrote an essay called "On the Unreasonableness of Christianity" in order to point out that it was reasonable? But he used a satirical mode. Daniel Defoe was put into the stocks in London and humiliated, completely misunderstood. I do have some black characters in the novel, but this maleducated herbert that reviewed the book managed to find these little quirks, little spins that he put on it, to be offended <strong>—</strong> organized himself to be offended.<br><br><strong>You think he was looking for a reason to be offended?</strong><br><br>I just think he was a grudging small potato that didn't want to read this book in the way it was written, with a rather large Tintoretto-esque canvas, and be willing to read it and find this or that worthy of attention. I'm not looking for praise, by the way, in any of this; I'm looking for attention and intelligence, an intelligent response. It doesn't have to be favorable. The format of satire is a very dicey genre.<br><br><strong>Do you think the prime stumbling block for critics was the length of the book, or, as you said, the themes of the book?<br><br></strong>I'm going to answer that question by saying this: human nature can be very dark. You can come to someone's house for dinner. Say a couple invites people to dinner and puts a large centerpiece on the table, the best silver, the best wines. It's very common for people to leave that kind of dinner and, rather than be delighted and full of praise for the effort that went into it, says, "Who do they think they are? All that gussied-up, that table, did you notice that centerpiece?" <br><br>I just think the book is long, large, opinionated, quarrelsome, angular. Dwarves and pusillanimous people can't take it. I'm going to make another pathetic analogy, but it's always depressed me, reading the Gospels, how Jesus of Nazareth was so poorly treated. Now, this is no analogy I'm making between me and Christ; I'm just trying to point out that it's so typical for Christ to come and preach <strong>—</strong> the first time he came into the synagogue, he was asked to read a scroll of Isaiah, and he read it. He was criticized for pontificating about it. He was criticized because his father was a carpenter, he was criticized because he was from Nazareth, he was criticized for being an upstart. Three years later, he was crucified. <br><br>We don't appreciate bounty, I guess is my conclusion. I realize, by the way, in this conversation I've compared myself to Shakespeare, Christ, Cervantes...<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb819970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Theroux3\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb819970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Theroux3\"></a> For the benefit of the audience who have not read <em>Laura Warholic</em> yet, we should get a little more into the characters and what happens between them. We've discussed Eyestones. The title character, Laura Warholic herself — quite possibly the least appealing woman I have ever read in any book. What is she? Who is she?</strong><br><br>First of all, I was interested in presenting the foreground couple as not just another Romeo and Juliet or Seinfeld and whatever that woman is. I was interested in having a mismatched, odd couple. Eyestones is as bewildered with Laura as Laura is bewildered that she's with him. When I say "with him," they don't fit in any definable way. He exploits her to some degree and regrets it all along, using a lot of her quirks and attitudes in the column he writes. She sees him as a kind of safeguard or sanctuary for the rather unhappy and ass-backwards life she's living. <br><br>It happens so often in life that these people are together in a kind of odd, non-Kodak-moment world, where they lean against each other like straw people, are occasionally happy with each other, are competitive with each other. That mismatch, to me, allowed for a lot of the sparks in the writing. I didn't want to have another standard Hollywood or television couple that's played by Meg Ryan and <strong>—</strong> who's that hydrocephalic actor? Tom Hanks. It's a very odd couple, in short.<br><br><strong>What kind of relationship would you say Eyestones and Laura even have? It's not what you would call a romantic relationship, in any sense. </strong><br><br>It's true. It's not even a Relationship with a capital R. It's really a kind of... union. But then you could say, is it a union? I address it in that essay on democracy. Are they a couple? Is a couple a pair? Are they a pair? Are they matched? These nouns don't work: pair, couple <strong>—</strong> I hope you can understand my working-class Boston accent, by the way <strong>—</strong><br> union, relationship, they're all insufficient to talk about the way these people fall into step, which they don't really even do. Do you remember Horton the elephant, sitting on the egg? It has to do with that.<br><br><strong>Laura, she's so very unappealing, so unattractive, rail-thin, possibly the flakiest person I've ever heard of in life or in fiction, commits to nothing, really <em>is</em> nothing, leads a very desultory lifestyle. What could Eyestones possibly want from someone like this?<br><br></strong>In a negative way, he has a kind of messianic compulsion to take care of her. It's pity, which is a vice, according to Graham Greene in the novel <em>Brighton Rock</em>. I don't know if you know that novel. He has a kind of horrible messianism in the way that the protagonist in Ford Madox Ford's <em>The Good Soldier</em>, Ashburnham, has, this kind of misguided messianism. But at the same time he cares for her and tries to help her out of the messes and situations she's in. The novel takes place between a September and a New Year's Eve, but it flashes back a couple of years, so it's not like a lifetime relationship. It's kind of tangential, but there's an argument that there are hundreds and thousands of this kind of couple in the world.<br><br><strong>There's a lot more than anybody reading the book would think?</strong><br><br>You see people at the checkout counter over at a Stop & Shop or an A&P or a Piggly Wiggly store, there's Mike and there's Harriet. "Harriet, go get the beans!" "Would you hold this cart for a minute?" It's so easy to think that these couples are three-dimensional and organized and he's next to her, but I have trouble with that in fiction. If you look closely at that couple <strong>—</strong> it is a novel of cognition, and the great novels are all cognitive, in a way <strong>—</strong> you're always wondering why Ishmael is friendly with Queequeg. What is the commitment of these people to Ahab? <br><br>When I was teaching that novel, I used to always explain that when he's listening to Father Mapple's sermon, looking a paintings of the whale at the beginning of that novel, it's a point of departure for the cognitive requirement that the reader has to try to figure out, "What's the meaning of this?" I mention in the novel that that's the purpose of living. What is the <em>meaning</em> of life? We're going to each hang up this phone and go about our day, but the non-seeker, the person that's not looking for meaning <strong>—</strong> I'm asking a person to do that in life as I'm asking myself, in the same way that I'm asking the person that wrote the review. <br><br>You have an obligation as a reviewer and as a liver of life to seek meaning, to find the meaning, to turn over stones. I was at church yesterday: people were walking out after the post-communion, talking at the back of the service, a perfunctory five-minute sermon. I'm sounding really epistemological, but people don't want meaning! They don't want to find the significance of things.<br><br><strong>Is that observation that people don't want to find meaning part of the foundation of this book when you began to write it? That was a theme you knew you wanted to hit?<br><br></strong>Each page is a mountain. I worked very hard to make almost every page worthy to be read. I have great respect for readers, but they very rarely live up to my dream counterpart. I think people just want to go the beach with a beach read. You look at the bestseller list, you look at trashy novelists like John Grisham <strong>—</strong> people want a good detective novel. So many writers are rewarded for absolute trash. I don't even think the genre itself is a very high watermark at this point.<br><br><strong>You mean literature entirely?<br><br></strong>Yeah. Using my novel as a benchmark, I think people just don't want anything complicated. Flem Snopes in the Snopes trilogy, there's one point where someone's trying to sell him a horse. He doesn't buy the horse, the wily Flem Snopes. When he's walking away, someone asks him why he didn't buy the horse, and Flem Snopes said, "I didn't believe what the person was saying. It wasn't complicated enough." My books are too complicated. This particular novel is too complicated.<br><br><strong>Is this the most complicated novel you've ever done?<br><br></strong>It's my longest and most ambitious effort.<br><br><strong>Has it been less well-received than all of your others?<br><br></strong>It hasn't been received at all. I think it sold 6,000 books. It wasn't reviewed. I haven't seen one intelligent review, one worthy review, or one review that really addresses it. People listening to this are just going to think I'm so crabby and, in such a self-inflated way, saying, "Oh, woe is me," but we're talking about serious books. When I review a book, I consider it almost a mission, not a trade, to review it with all my strongest intelligence and my largest heart. I <a href=\"http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116432708006731531.html\" title=\"reviewed\">reviewed</a> <em>Against the Day</em>, Thomas Pynchon's book. I spent a long time trying to come to terms with that book as a reviewer.<br><br><strong>And what publication was that for?<br><br></strong><em>The Wall Street Journal</em>. I think it was the first review of that book, by the way.<br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb889970b-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:left\"><img alt=\"Theroux4\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0133ee4eb889970b-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 5px 5px 0px;WIDTH:250px;HEIGHT:378px\" title=\"Theroux4\"></a> What did you think of the book?<br><br></strong>I thought parts of it were very inaccessible. I was just in Estonia the last three or four months, and re-read <em>Gravity's Rainbow</em>. I didn't fully announce it in my review of <em>Against the Day</em>, but a lot of Thomas Pynchon is very inaccessible, math and scientific areas that I guess you could really apply <strong>—</strong> but he's relentless. <br><br>I tried to make this book very readable, with short chapters. Dostoevsky once advised someone to write short chapters, and I always was very appreciative in his novels that the chapters were short. A book is an artifact; you have to be able to pick it up and put it down. Thomas Pynchon doesn't allow you to get certain footholds in his books. I think it's a great fault, and I think it's a kind of vanity on his part. It may be even a closet refusal; he's hiding in experiment, in some ways. Why obfuscate? <br><br>I claim that every single sentence in <em>Laura Warholic</em> is understandable, but there are places that are so obfuscated in <em>Against the Day</em> and <em>Gravity's Rainbow</em>, so outré that you can't put your arms around it. That's his failure as a writer. I once, in a review, criticized John Ashbery for writing obfuscatory lines in poems that made no sense whatsoever. He took great umbrage and wrote me a nasty letter, but you know, I think it's a great fault in a writer. <br><br>Great writers can be understood. Henry James' <em>The Sacred Fount</em> is a novel I find complicated, unnecessarily. There are certain writers that just are offensive because they can't be read clearly. I'm proud of the fact that my books can all be read. You might have to look up a word or go back a few pages to check something out, but that was one of the difficulties I've always had in Pynchon's novels. He's intentionally obfuscating.<br><strong><br>In discussions about a certain style of writing, I'll often hear Thomas Pynchon and you clumped into the same group of what they call "maximalist" writers.</strong><br><br>I've never seen my name linked with him at all.<br><br><strong>I've seen it a couple times in the last few days. It's not like I'm constantly seeing it, but I hear it put under the umbrella of maximalism. Is that a term you've heard attached to yourself a whole lot?<br><br></strong>I've heard that attached to me. Thomas Pynchon's wife was once my agent, and never really helped me much. I don't know if she saw me as a rival, but I love Pynchon. I think he has a great sense of humor, and he's so brilliant. That's the tragedy, with a small t, in his books: I have a doctorate in literature, and I'm often left completely outside that cathedral, when I'd like to be a worshiper inside. I understand maybe 82 percent of his books. That other percentage, it's sad that there's no foothold for me there. Maybe there are other people that don't have that complaint, but that's my complaint. I do have a pyrotechnic or maximalist prose style.<br><br><strong>If you only understand 82 percent of Pynchon's books, how much do you think the average Pynchon reader — and there are quite a few of them — gets from his books?</strong><br><br>There's a real cult to him. You can go to his books with goodwill. We have short life, so you can't spend your life <strong>—</strong> I think I understand a great, great, great percentage, maybe 97 percent, of <em>Ulysses</em>, because it's a very lucid novel, a very funny novel, very rewarding. I think the average person bails on Pynchon almost all the time. I know there's a big web site and a great cult for him, but I think he has a lot of bailers out there.<br><br><strong>I wanted to get back to the subject of Eugene and Laura. Eugene is the Sexual Intellectual of the title; he has the sex column for the magazine <em>Quink</em>. Does Laura serve him as a kind of specimen for that?</strong><br><br>He sees her really as a kind of test for things that he's thinking. Now let me just say this: I think the sexual <strong>—</strong> and I'm not just talking about pornography at all <strong>—</strong> the ways peoples' sex lives are, their preoccupations, what they like, the way their lives are led, is a very interesting subject and a key to the door of the complexity of man. I've always had an amazing interest <strong>—</strong> not a priapic interest at all <strong>—</strong> in some of the excesses and lunacies and remarkable instances that are worthy of writing down about the sexual behavior and attitudes of people. <br><br>That was one of my ambitions in writing the book. It's an interesting subject to me; it's one of the side rooms of love. You find this in all great novels: in Proust, in Dickens' books to a degree. I was fascinated with that thematic thread in the book. There is a kind of tour de force involved in having Eyestones pivot from observations he makes of Laura, but indeed of many of the other characters in the book, along with his own <em>a priori</em> opinions, before he takes this job, to make this a kind of leitmotif of the novel. <br><br><strong>There is one chapter called "What in Love or Sex Isn't Odd?", which lists a whole bunch — and I mean a <em>whole </em>bunch — of facts relating to sex throughout the history of man that are, in fact, odd. Throughout the entire book, there are many odd facts dropped, sometimes in list form. Were these facts that you knew the knew the topic of the book and then researched, or were they things you happened to know, that aligned with your interests?<br><br></strong>I'm a very wide reader, so there are things I remembered, things I observed, things I read, things I heard. But let me ask you a question: did you enjoy that chapter?<br><br><strong>In fact, I did enjoy that chapter. One of my favorites.<br><br></strong>Because you can't not enjoy that chapter! One critic pointed out that it was like eating potato chips: you just have to keep going. It's nothing more than enunciations of real facts about some of the sexual proclivities and oddities and excesses of people. It can't be read with anything but delight, no matter what your attitude may be about me and my writing. I knew that chapter would be interesting to anybody, because if that's not interesting, you're dead! You're dead if you don't find that interesting. There's almost nothing salacious in it, and there's very little salacious in this novel. <br><br>I take no pride in that nudge-nudge stuff. I was a lifeguard in the early sixties and was reading <em>Lolita</em>. A cop came over, because he'd heard of the novel. There's no four-letter words in it; there's very little that's salacious in the book. There's a patina of salacity in the book. The cop took the book aside and predictable came back in about 20 minutes and said, "It sucks!" He threw the book down, because he was looking for the blue pages that are just not there. I'm sure you agree that there's nothing salacious in that chapter and very little or nothing salacious in the book.<br><br><strong>I wanted to ask about how the reactions differ between the chapter we just mentioned and a chapter that comes earlier in the book, which is an essay from Eugene Eyestones that was submitted to <em>Quink </em>and that his editor, Warholic, rejected. They cover similar ground: sex-related insights —</strong><br><br>You're talking about a chapter called "The Controversial Essay". This is one of the bookends of the novel, because I find the subject fascinating. I'm just going to recapitulate the chapter quickly: it's kind of one of my "beliefs," and I put "beliefs" in quotation marks, that a lot of women have difficult in the creative department. Not that they're not better-skilled at it, at times, than men, but a woman has to rise above her biology, in a way, to sculpt. A woman, in housing a child <strong>—</strong> and there are some real subtleties in this argument you have to pay attention to <strong>—</strong> her DNA is arranged to support that baby. She has a great creativity that defines her that men don't have. <br><br>It's my theory <strong>—</strong> again, I could argue the opposite if I felt like it, I'm going to launch this pro and I could launch the con if you want <strong>—</strong> that men, to a degree, are sterile. We don't feel the asperity of having a child as fathers. So we write novels, we sculpt, as attempts to be creative, whereas a woman has to rise above her biology to that. She does it, often, better than men. I'll never be as great a novelist as George Eliot, say. A woman has to get into a certain frame of mind to create, and in that essay I tried to support that argument. It's a very controversial, seemingly fascist argument. There's no misogyny involved at all. <br><br>I once gave a lecture at Radcliffe when I was teaching at Harvard in the seventies. I was toying with thus subject in a very amicable way, and of course this was an age <strong>—</strong> '74, '74 <strong>—</strong> when, you know, the feminist movement was in high gear. I didn't even get five sentences out of my mouth when a student said, "I'd like to stick a bread knife into you." It's a very long and very complicated chapter, and a person has to read this from A to Z to see what I'm getting at. <br><br>I tried to give, in a capsulized, way, what the book is about. It touches on some of the things, as you point out accurately, are later touched on in various parts of the novel. It's called "The Controversial Essay" because most people are prone to misunderstand it, but in fact it glorifies the nature of women, although a lot of people won't agree with that. This is one of the things about this novel: if you looked at it with a half a brain or in a couple of hours, you're not going to be doing justice to the pages.<br><br><strong>I want to ask a bit more about Laura herself. I've mentioned — twice, I think — how unappealing she is. Why did you want to make her so repulsive?</strong><br><br>I wanted to make her not fully repulsive as much as an angled character. She's a bookend to the character Rapunzel in the novel, who's hyperbolically presented as almost perfect. Remember her?<br><br><strong>I couldn't forget.<br><br></strong>She's kind of the alternate Laura, but in that magnetic field between the two people, I've tried to make hay. There are places where Laura Warholic is actually commendably ironic, praiseworthily energetic, if not pretty. People say that the sign of a great female character is energy. Becky Sharp in <em>Vanity Fair</em>, even Tom Sawyer's girlfriend <strong>—</strong> is it Becky Thatcher? <strong>—</strong> Natalya Rostova in <em>War and Peace</em> <strong>—</strong> the sign of a great character is not necessarily good looks but energy. That's one thing Laura has in the book. She's indolent as far as having a job, but I think she can be, if not praised, then at least appreciated in the dimension of energy. <br><br><strong><a href=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0134817e7213970c-pi\" style=\"FLOAT:right\"><img alt=\"Theroux5\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://www.3quarksdaily.com/.a/6a00d8341c562c53ef0134817e7213970c-800wi\" style=\"MARGIN:0px 0px 5px 5px\" title=\"Theroux5\"></a> She does have energy, but what is that energy directed toward?</strong><br><br>It's directed toward surviving. That seems to be her main ambition.<br><br><strong>Just biological persistence?<br><br></strong>Yes, although it doesn't lead to a happy ending, we both know.<br><br><strong>The cast of characters behind Eugene and Laura, the large number of them: there's members of the office of <em>Quink</em> and many more besides. Most of them you describe with a certain amount — I guess a lot — of grotesquerie. Many of them are grotesque, and they're bulging, and they have odd hair and strange styles of dress. I don't know if you'd even call it ugly, at a certain point. Kind of like a kaleidoscope of weirdness. Was that a conscious choice, to make everybody so eccentric?</strong><br><br>It's kind of a satirical vehicle. One may think of people like Flannery O'Connor. She once said that the world is blind, so you have to draw large figures; the world is deaf, so you have to shout loud. That famous essay of hers, I think it's in a book called <em>The Habit of Being</em>. I have a character that's anti-Semitic, I have a person that attacks god, I have a gay person, I have a person that stutters, I have a person that's a miser. There was a Latin writer named Theophrastus and a French writer named La Bruyère. I'm well aware that types that intrigue me, defined, even if you may think in a lame way, to make some satirical points about people. It is a kind of rogue's gallery, a very crippled aggregate of characters. Some are winning, but some are not. There's always a comic thrust behind it.<br><br><strong>One of the other things critics have said about the book is that there's no plot. I disagree with that, and I would imagine you disagree, but how do you respond th that charge?<br><br></strong>I've been accused of that before. For instance, in <em>Darconville's Cat</em>, where there's a very serious plot. Over the course of 800 or 900 pages <strong>—</strong> I read one critic that said I just wrote a bunch of essays and basically have no talent as a fiction writer, that this is just a compilation of essays. It's a ludicrous point, because there's an actual story from the beginning to the end of this book. But your question's well taken, and I will drop the story in order to make a chapter I felt I need to put in there. <br><br>You can look at <em>Moby-Dick</em>, for example, and say the longueurs just destroy the novel, but I never felt that for a minute, because of the importance of what the whale is: his size and dimensions have to be pointed out. The cetological chapters are totally important in that novel. Melville is supporting the story with those seeming digressions. I'm actually trying to support my novel, the props of this novel, with occasional essays. I wrote a novel called <em>An Adultery </em>once with a chapter on adultery. There are digressions on painting in that novel. But only a fool will read the book and say that, because the story is not directly kinetic from A to Z without any stops over <strong>—</strong> the encyclopedic novel is always stopping. <br><br>Henry Fielding did it constantly in <em>Tom Jones</em>. Melville did it in <em>Moby-Dick</em>. Joyce does it in <em>Ulysses</em>, but the story is always brought forward. I defend this novel: the story is always being brought forward from the beginning to the end. It just, dunces don't want to stop and watch those digressions, and that's why dunces always complain about the cetological chapters in <em>Moby-Dick</em>. "They're just boring!" they say. "I want to find out if Ahab's gonna die!" they say. "Whatever happened to Fedallah? Get to the goddamn point, Melville!" You know?<br><br><strong>Is this problem just the very nature of the encyclopedic novel, that it faces stumbling blocks to a wide audience because it has these digressions?<br><br></strong>Yeah, because people are just not learned. That's why bad music is played on the radio. I mentioned Rush Limbaugh before; that's why he's popular! Because he's a moron! The other day <strong>—</strong> I listen to him periodicially <strong>—</strong> he was trying to boast that he knows classical music. He never went to college. I'm not making an elitist point here, but he's a stupid man. Widely listened-to people are often stupid. He's an absolute dunce. He makes about five grammatical mistakes every half-hour. He's a limited intelligence. <br><br>That's why he's popular, because people don't want to think! They don't want to have their feet put to the fire. They don't want to look up a word! They don't want to listen to that allusion! That's why I'm basically very sympathetic to Thomas Pynchon, because I deeply appreciate the work he's done in his books. Rush Limbaugh's almost the archetype of the fool. He thinks he's popular because he's intelligent and reasonable. He's popular because he's a dunce!<br><br><strong>He thinks he's popular for the same reasons Thomas Pynchon has his cult following?<br><br></strong>I can't explain the cult following. I can't believe that so many people can read him on a high level. I'm bewildered a bit by the so-called cult. I know that his name's always mentioned, but sometimes people, in a relay race, take <strong>—</strong> what is that thing that's passed off? <br><br><strong>The baton.</strong><br><br>They'll take the baton and almost programmatically mention Pynchon in relation to the learned writer or the encyclopedic novelist, but I'm dubious about how wide his readership is.<br><br><strong>I've been thinking a lot, in recent days, about any creative effort, especially writing, being — the usual saying is, "a war against cliché." How much of a war against cliché are you engaging in when you write?<br><br></strong>A total war against cliché. I used to teach a fiction course in various universities and always say, "Great writing is an assault against cliché." That's the lameness of so many bad writers. I don't want to make enemies in listing bad writers, but so many bad writers that are popular, they just don't work at avoiding the clichés. It's so easy to fall into those clichés. It's so painful to read them. I once had to review an Ann Rice novel called <em>Taltos</em> for the <em>Chicago Tribune</em>. I was just throwing the book across the room. Just stick figures <strong>—</strong> she's awful. And yet she's hugely popular.<br><br><strong>Why do readers let that off the hook, do you think?<br><br></strong>People just are not that intelligent. It's going to be one of my complaints when I go before the great throne: "Why didn't god make more intelligent people?" I'm asking that a human being be more than intelligent. A person has to be loving and charitable and kind and godly and decent. But a person should be intelligent. The purpose if living is to find the <em>meaning</em> of it! You have to find the meaning of living! And you have to drag your body through life and your mind through life and your spirit through life, but you have to try to fill your mind and fill your soul and fill your spirit. <br><br>But people are lame; they don't want to be taxed. When people call up Rush Limbaugh and say, "It's an honor to speak to you," I want to shoot myself. It's such an offense! An offense against the first commandment. I don't think people really want to examine their hearts or their minds or their spirits. That's my answer. They don't want to read complicated books, they don't want to listen to Mozart, they don't want to study hard, they don't want to be patient and listen to why somebody's suffering. They don't want to let Fulbright scholars come to the United States.<br><br><strong>Is <em>Laura Warholic</em> one of your biggest blows against that?<br><br></strong>It is. It's a total attack upon mediocrity, that novel.<br><br><br><em>All feedback welcome at colinjmarshall at gmail.</em></div>"
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"title" : "China and Africa",
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"content" : "<p><em>By Matthew Yglesias</em></p>\n<p>Paul Kedrosky notes the <a href=\"http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2010/05/what_happened_t.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+InfectiousGreed+(Paul+Kedrosky's+Infectious+Greed)&utm_content=Google+Reader\">remarkable takeoff in African GDP</a> starting in 2003:</p>\n<p><center><img src=\"http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-gdp-1.png\" alt=\"africa-gdp 1\" title=\"africa-gdp 1\" width=\"500\" height=\"199\"></center></p>\n<p>Ryan Avent says you’re seeing <a href=\"http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2010/05/africa\">the China effect</a>: “Around the beginning of the last decade, rapid Chinese growth began placing upward pressure on a range of <a href=\"http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/1631\">commodity prices</a>.”</p>\n<p>Obviously the question becomes how sustainable this boom is. Traditionally the problem for countries that are commodity-exporting their way to prosperity is two-fold. One is that your commodity exports drive up the price of your currency, which reduces the competitiveness of your industries in other tradable sectors. You become a country that sells copper (say) abroad to finance imports of all other kinds of things. Second is that while in the initial phase rising commodity prices make your country more prosperous and in the second phase continued price growth drives investment that further drives prosperity, sooner-or-later the increase in investment tends to drive the price of the commodity back down to earth and then where are you? So what you’ve normally seen is countries riding a commodity price boom-bust whipsaw and never achieving any kind of sustainable development. Will we see that again, or will China manage to keep moving up the value chain to the extent that eventually Africa and other poor places start to take its place as low-cost manufacturing hubs and so forth?</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?a=QdesCrTt6W4:ptMPlx9hhr8:H0mrP-F8Qgo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/matthewyglesias?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/matthewyglesias/~4/QdesCrTt6W4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<blockquote><br>greasy propaganda apples for peasants<br>bourgeoisie for sweating corruption omelet<br>villagers for cassava and diet coke<br>streets for hip hop and toy guns<br>school uniform for phd studies and bible for my daughter<br>wreath for saint valentine<br>roses for saint paul <br>revolutions changed and revolutions unchanged<br>canister for fat breakfast<br>bullet for big supper<br>i am fasting the supper and breakfast<br>sun born with vaseline on its forehead<br>moonrise with cancer on its breasts<br>tender skin of stars split by ghetto politics<br>kindas blowing condoms with lung wind<br>elders blowing balloons with broken hearts <br>another revolution<br>another liberation <br>another slice of politics<br>another rumble of hunger<br>another for the priest. <br>sweat drops, raindrops, tear drops<br>raindrops, teardrops, sweat drops<br>the breath of my pen stink </blockquote><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7555516329392912719-2786769744727477383?l=oneghanaonevoice.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<p>\nOne weekend last year I was hiking with my dog along the Washington Street Extension in Keene, NH. It’s the old Route 9, now an abandoned road that runs alongside Beaver Brook and climbs up to <a href=\"http://www.newenglandwaterfalls.com/waterfall.php?name=Beaver%20Brook%20Falls%20%28Keene%29\">Beaver Brook Falls</a>. The road has been returning to nature since before we came to Keene. It’s lined on both sides, for over a mile, with 25-year trees that now entangle a course of utility cables. On that hike last year, I wondered if the owner of those cables might want to take a look and maybe schedule some pruning.\n</p>\n<p>\nI tried calling the power company first. Directory services gave me the main number, but I failed repeatedly to find any path through the IVR system that would enable me to report the problem. When I got home I also failed to find <a href=\"http://www.psnh.com/Residential/SafetyCenter/TreeTrimming.asp\">the PSNH web page</a> that has number to call: 1-800-662-7764. (Menu path: Residential or Business -> Safety Center -> Tree Trimming. Effective search: <i>tree trimming</i> not <i>report a problem</i>.) When I tweeted my query to <a href=\"http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/01/12/a-conversation-with-psnh-about-the-ice-storm-social-media-and-customer-service/\">Martin Murray</a> (@psnh), though, he got back to me promptly. It turns out these aren’t power cables, they’re telephone cables.\n</p>\n<p>\nSo I tried to report the problem to <a href=\"http://fairpoint.com/\">Fairpoint</a>. Again there was no obvious way to do it online. And I couldn’t find anybody at the phone company who would answer the phone on the weekend. Eventually I got distracted by other things and never followed up.\n</p>\n<p>\nFast forward to yesterday. I’m hiking with my dog along the same abandoned road. The 25-year trees are now 26-year trees. And some big 60- and 80-year trees, tilting on banks eroded by spring floods, threaten to bring down the cables.\n</p>\n<p>\nSo I call again. There’s got to be some way to report this, right?\n</p>\n<p>\nIt becomes a game. Every path through the IVR system leads, after much delay — and, infuriatingly, an advertisement — to a message saying that business hours are Monday through Friday, 9 to 5. I might have tried the website again, but:\n</p>\n<p>\na) I am not carrying a connected, browser-equipped device.\n</p>\n<p>\nb) You are the fracking phone company. Answer the phone!\n</p>\n<p>\nFinally somebody answers. It’s Patrick, in Internet tech support.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Patrick</b>: What’s your phone number for DSL service?\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Me</b>: 603.355.xxxx\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Patrick</b>: And what operating system are you using?\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Me</b>: Never mind that, here’s the deal. I’m standing on the old Washington Street Extension, looking at what I suppose is Keene’s Internet trunk. There are 26-year-old trees entangling it for a mile. And right here, at pole 13-T, there are 60- and 80-year old trees leaning at a 45-degree angle over the cables. They’re going to bring those wires down in the next big ice or wind storm, if not before.\n</p>\n<p>\nLook, I know this isn’t your department, but I’m having a hell of a time finding anybody at Fairpoint who cares about this. There must be some way to report the problem.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Patrick</b>: I totally get what you’re saying. But you’ve reached the lowest guy on the totem pole. And, I hate to say it, but this really isn’t my department.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Me</b>: I know. But you’re several hops closer to the right department than I am. Can you please just take a report, email it to your supervisor, and cc me on the email?\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Patrick</b>: OK, hang on…done.\n</p>\n<p>\n<b>Me</b>: Thanks Patrick! You may have just prevented a whole shitload of Internet technical support calls!\n</p>\n<hr>\n<p>\n<b>Update</b>: Got these responses from @MyFairPoint on Monday AM:\n</p>\n<blockquote><p>\n@judell Hi, Jon – thanks so much for the heads up (just saw your tweet come up in our alerts). I really appreciate you looking out!</p>\n<p>@judell Also, our active acct is @MyFairPoint and we’re working to ramp up our social media efforts, so expect to hear more soon! Thx again!</p>\n<p>@judell – I’ll see what I can do based on this and your attached article. ^JP\n</p></blockquote>\n<p>Nice!</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/jonudell.wordpress.com/2437/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=blog.jonudell.net&blog=109309&post=2437&subd=jonudell&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<p>While the rice is cooking I open the front door and stand, interrogatively, with my coffee mug in my hand. I hope to achieve a “law-abiding resident with a legitimate right to information” effect. The uniformed men grimace, pretend not to see me and lean over the tape to examine the abandoned medical supplies. The plain-clothed man is still in conference on his mobile but nods at me theatrically from over the road and mouths “I’ll be with you in a minute”. His estimate is inaccurate. I stand, I hope nonchalantly, for what feels like five, and feel truculent. “Laters”, he says cheerily at the end of the call and I wonder whether it was official business. He walks over to where I stand in the gateway. “Well as you might have guessed, this is a crime scene” is his opening remark. His blue eyes are unpleasantly - almost impossibly - close set, his lips full and very pink. “But don’t worry. It wasn’t a shooting, it wasn’t anyone from this street, it’s nothing to do with anyone living here, it was just one of those random things. And we hope nobody’s going to die.” The incantation of reassurance was well-rehearsed. I say “ok, thanks, that’s great” and turn back into the house and hasten to reassure the boys. “It’s absolutely nothing to do with this street or anyone here” I repeat, “just a totally random event” I add, “nothing to worry about at all” I embroider. “That’s good” says B1 absently, “at least it won’t affect the property prices”. I am flabbergasted by this reaction but already they have turned back to their game which, inevitably, involves killing things. After supper I twitch the net curtains again and see that the police tape has gone.</p>"
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"content" : "<p><strong><em>Telco 2.0 Top Stories</em></strong><br>\n<ul><li><strong><em>Broadband Connectivity</em></strong>: <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/05/telco_20_news_review_18.html#nsn\">NSN on how to be a happy pipe</a></li><li><strong><em>Strategy & Finance</em></strong>: <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/05/telco_20_news_review_18.html#torange\">T-Orange's \"Everything Everywhere\", a super-wholesale operator?</a></li><li><strong><em>Regulation</em></strong>: <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/05/telco_20_news_review_18.html#india\">Indian spectrum auctions gone wild, government hits Vodafone for £1bn</a></li><li><strong><em>Technology Disruptions</em></strong>: <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/05/telco_20_news_review_18.html#vzwlte\">VZW's LTE rollout strategy, AT&T sticks with HSPA</a></li><li><strong><em>Advertising 2.0</em></strong>: <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/05/telco_20_news_review_18.html#ibm\">IBM - the $140bn opportunity in business analytics</a></li></ul></p>\n\n<p><em><strong>Telco 2.0 Best Practice Live!</strong> Virtual (online) event, 28-30 June 2010, <strong>FREE</strong> to attend. Registration now open <a href=\"http://www.telco2bestpracticelive.com/\">here</a>. We're delighted with the support we're getting from the industry for this important project designed to show the 'art of the possible', with senior representatives preparing special material, for example: <strong>Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson; Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, CEO, Dialog Group; JP Rangaswami, Chief Scientist, BT Group</strong>. If you have a best practice case study you'd like to promote, contact <a>tim.cook@stlpartners.com</a></em></p>\n\n<p>What if being a bit-pipe wasn't such a bad idea after all? <a href=\"http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=46300&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10\" name=\"nsn\">Nokia Siemens Networks</a> published a study into the economics of mobile data (document <a href=\"http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/sites/default/files/document/Mobile_broadband_A4_26041.pdf\">here</a>) that suggests it's possible to provide up to 5GB of data transfer per user per month profitably. Doing so requires a flat-architecture IP network, a rigorous focus on efficiency, and some counter-intuitive factors; the more heavily trafficked cells are the cheapest to serve. It also strongly suggests that this segment of the business has major economies of scale, so being a <a href=\"http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2010/05/from-dumb-pipe-to-happy-pipe.html\">\"happy pipe\"</a> may be restricted to the biggest operators. That would suggest that the biggest operators might be better off pursuing a wholesale platform strategy supporting many applications, MVNOs, content players, and the like.</p><p>Meanwhile, the data repricing begins: <a href=\"http://www.telecoms.com/20288/operator-backlash-against-fair-usage-policies-begins/\">Vodafone</a> has abolished its 500MB usage cap, and instead is planning to simply charge users who go over the cap more. You will need to work at it, as the line is drawn at 500MB, after which a further £5 is charged for the next 500MB, so this is aimed at the heaviest of the heavy users. <a href=\"http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=5973\">Sprint</a> announced that there will be no usage cap on their WiMAX network.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=46299&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10\" name=\"torange\">T-Mobile UK and Orange</a> have announced the brand for their network-sharing joint venture - \"Everything Everywhere\", which sounds about right for an infrastructure-focused wholesale business. They're also putting a lot of emphasis on their combined retail presence. This raises an interesting point. What could your telco do with its retail assets? Your upstream customers might need forward and reverse logistics and a high-street presence, just as they need connectivity and a call centre.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33109&email=html\">DTAG</a> posted rather good figures for Q1 - adjusted EBITDA was up 1.6%, but net profit was up from €655m to €900m, with cash flow also doing well. The fixed-line base, by the way, is declining by 6.6% year on year. It was results week for <a href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33137&email=html\">Zain</a>, which reported revenues up 11%, excluding the African businesses in advance of the sale to Bharti Airtel. NTT <a href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33134&email=html\">announced a big jump in profits</a>, essentially all down to good results at DoCoMo, and promised to return cash to shareholders. No less than <a href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33133&email=html\">three</a> Brazilian operators reported Q1s this week - Oi (you may <a href=\"http://www.telco2.net/blog/2008/06/oi_paggo_a_disruptive_brasilei.html\">remember them</a>) showed strong growth in profits after successfully integrating its acquisition of Brasil Telecom, UOL boasted of a 37% jump in ad revenue, and Telefonica's local division reported shrinkage in both revenue and profits as the core voice business was squeezed.</p>\n\n<p>India's spectrum auction is fast becoming a sort of scaled-down version of the European spectrum hysteria of 2000; the bidding war is running in parallel with a vicious price war driven by multiple new entrants, many of which are going to be eliminated. <a href=\"http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=46303&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10\" name=\"india\">The Indian government is delighted</a>; they're proposing to make Vodafone and Bharti pay again for their GSM spectrum holdings, marking their value to the market for 3G spectrum. Unsurprisingly, the industry is displeased, but it's difficult to see what they can do about it if they want to stay in India - so Vodafone may have to fork out as much as a billion, on top of the £4.5bn they paid for Hutch-Essar back in 2007.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=33139&email=html\" name=\"vzwlte\">Verizon Wireless</a> is looking at ways of covering the expensive rural markets of the US with LTE that won't use too much capital. The idea is to rent chunks of the carrier's $4.5bn worth of 700MHz spectrum to small regional carriers, who would build out their own LTE networks and then provide service to Verizon customers under a wholesale/roaming agreement. The details will be settled on a case-by-case basis. They've also started <a href=\"http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2010/05/14/vzw-starts-lte-marketing-is-a-commercial-trial-in-the-wings/\">a low-key publicity effort</a>.</p>\n\n<p>AT&T, meanwhile, <a href=\"http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/14/atandt-to-cover-about-250m-people-with-hspa-by-years-end/\">promised to get HSPA at 14.4Mbps to 250 million people by the end of the year</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Ben Verwaayen's recent trip to New Zealand <a href=\"http://www.telecoms.com/20208/alcatel-lucent-to-compensate-telecom-nz-over-3g-network-failings/\">has been explained - Alcatel-Lucent is going to pay Telecom NZ</a> $100m in compensation for the poor performance of the 3G network they built there. Apparently the Radio Network Controllers were the awkward squad, which is a handy data point.</p>\n\n<p>There's another <a href=\"http://www.telecomtv.com/comspace_newsDetail.aspx?n=46302&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10\">reorganisation</a> on at Nokia; the new setup creates a division for marketing and distribution, another for \"Mobile Phones\", which means the Series 40 devices, and \"Mobile Solutions\", which includes all the high-end devices, Symbian, MeeGo, Ovi, and all software activities. Anssi Vanjoki gets the nod for Mobile Solutions. In an ominous touch, <a href=\"http://www.telecoms.com/20305/android-ported-to-nokia-n900-internet-tablet/\">hackers persuaded a N900 to run Android 2.1</a>.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2010/05/13/comcast-over-the-top-and-the-giant-ipad-remote/\">Comcast</a> showed off an application for the Apple iPad that makes it function as a remote control for your TV. A remote control the size of a dinner plate, that is. BT, meanwhile, showed off its own <a href=\"http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7724240/BT-to-launch-tablet-computer-to-rival-iPad.html\">tablet device</a> - is this their idea of what comes after the house phone?</p>\n\n<p>HTC <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/may/12/iphone-android\">sued Apple over alleged patent infringements</a>, demanding they stop selling iPhones, iPads, and iPods Touch at once. Bill Ray is <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/ipad_subsidy/\">sceptical of the iPad's chances</a>. </p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/iphone-warrant-affidavit-confirms-impropriety\">The Electronic Frontier Foundation defends the finders of the lost iPhone 4</a>, in what is unquestionably the most Californian news story in Telco 2.0's history. More seriously, workers at an Apple subcontractor in China <a href=\"http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/wintek-employees-sue/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Ftechbiz+%28Wired%3A+Tech+Biz%29\">are suing</a>, and Apple has tried to patent <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/apple_location_specific_content_patent/\">absolutely any form of location-based service, as far as we can make out</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Google, meanwhile, <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/google_to_stop_selling_nexus_one_online/\">has stopped selling Nexus Ones direct-to-customer</a>; instead, the webstore will \"showcase a range of Android devices\". It's increasingly clear that Android's success - in the same story, we learn that Androids are outselling iPhones - has led to Google losing control of it. Arguably, in fact, Google losing control of Android is <em>why</em> it's such a success - all the vendors, all the developers, and all the operators can do business with it.</p>\n\n<p>Palm's official blog, meanwhile, <a href=\"http://blog.palm.com/palm/2010/05/an-update-on-the-palm-app-catalog.html\">apologised for the failure of their app store</a>, which went down and left customers without apps they'd paid for, or without updates for apps they'd already installed. Skype <a href=\"http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=5977\">is looking away from Windows Phone</a> and concentrating on iPhone, Android, and Symbian.</p>\n\n<p>SAP, meanwhile, <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/16/sap_sybase_why/\" name=\"ibm\">bought Sybase</a> for a cute $5.8bn. It's being <a href=\"http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2010/05/13/compare-and-contrast-sapsybase-vs-oracle-in-telecom/\">suggested</a> that SAP specifically wants Sybase's telecoms BSS/OSS products, in-memory database technology, and Sybase Unwired, its platform for enterprise mobile apps. </p>\n\n<p>Perhaps more telling as to the \"why\" of the deal is this <a href=\"http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2010/05/its-new-killer-app.html\">IBM story</a>. At their annual investor briefing, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano said that they were planning to spend up to $20bn on acquisitions in the Business Analytics and Optimisation sector, where their existing businesses were growing at 16%. They reckon the total market opportunity is of the order of $140bn - data really is the business of our time. Meanwhile, CEBP specialists Dialogic <a href=\"http://blog.connectedplanetonline.com/unfiltered/2010/05/13/veraz-gobbled-up-by-dialogic-in-mobile-apps-play/\">bought Veraz Networks, an IP NGN vendor</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Another major <a href=\"http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE64F0J420100516\">meta-analysis</a> shows no evidence that THE RAYS will eat your brain. On the other hand, Facebook might. It was the week of Facebook rage; <a href=\"http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/facebook-should-follow\">the EFF demands they stick to their declared principles</a>, but it really went off when <a href=\"http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/\">Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying that maintaining more than one identity was a sign of \"a lack of integrity\"</a>. As if by magic, a <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/17/facebook_update_privacy_risk/\">search engine appeared</a> that lets you search Facebook for embarrassing status messages.</p>\n\n<p>And finally, we know there is plenty wrong with the Digital Economy Act, but this is <a href=\"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/stephen_timms_stabbed/\">going too far</a>.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:hdPvn2Pb5K0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=hdPvn2Pb5K0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:cVN-8bUJP8g\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=cVN-8bUJP8g\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:IBeup6RJC6M\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=IBeup6RJC6M\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:nVKJB-ivDxU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=nVKJB-ivDxU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?a=aVhx6DosQno:XspbTapdfDQ:7YCFdcdasZE\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Telco20?d=7YCFdcdasZE\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Telco20/~4/aVhx6DosQno\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:left\">This post is an introduction to LHIC, which is something I've been working on recently.</div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><div style=\"text-align:left\"><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lEtJcKnwI/AAAAAAAAACg/q0MJMNOZjjI/s1600/slides.pdf-1.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><span style=\"color:black\"></span></a><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lEtJcKnwI/AAAAAAAAACg/q0MJMNOZjjI/s1600/slides.pdf-1.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lEtJcKnwI/AAAAAAAAACg/q0MJMNOZjjI/s320/slides.pdf-1.png\"></a></div><div style=\"text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lEtJcKnwI/AAAAAAAAACg/q0MJMNOZjjI/s1600/slides.pdf-1.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><br></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lAgLOatDI/AAAAAAAAAAw/gYI-iCGmkHw/s1600/slides.pdf-2.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lAgLOatDI/AAAAAAAAAAw/gYI-iCGmkHw/s320/slides.pdf-2.png\"></a></div><span style=\"font-family:Arial;font-size:small\"><span style=\"font-size:13px\"><span style=\"font-family:'Times New Roman'\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></span></span><br>Also known as a reverse proxy cache, web accelerator, etc – it's a specific type of shared cache that is shared by <b><i>all clients</i></b>, and is generally within the same organisational boundary as the origin server.<br><br>It's a layer, and as such it may actually consist of one or many peered 'instances', this research does not define how such a peering mechanism would work between instances, and this is definitely an area for future work. For our purposes here we'll consider the gateway cache layer to be one complete component.<br><br>The primary objective for a gateway cache is to <b>minimize demand</b> on origin servers.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lAuQUPKSI/AAAAAAAAAA4/Knyx0pRgvMU/s1600/slides.pdf-3.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lAuQUPKSI/AAAAAAAAAA4/Knyx0pRgvMU/s320/slides.pdf-3.png\"></a></div><br>All caches work by leveraging one or more of the 3 principal caching mechanisms:<br><br><ul><li>Expiration</li><li>Validation</li><li>Invalidation</li></ul><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lA3YiPSII/AAAAAAAAABI/2MZ8gSMOE3M/s1600/slides.pdf-4.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lA3YiPSII/AAAAAAAAABI/2MZ8gSMOE3M/s320/slides.pdf-4.png\"></a></div><br>The downsides to expiration are primarily that it's inefficient, and difficult to manage.<br><br>It's inefficient because the expiry period is always limited in length to the resource's greatest potential volatility. This is particularly inefficient for resources which depend on human interaction and have periodic and dynamic volatility.<br><br>It's difficult to manage because the more efficiency you try to squeeze out of it, the greater the risk to the integrity of the cached information - this puts pressure on questions that are already very difficult to answer such as; What should the rules be? Where are those rules stored? How are those rules governed over time?<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBL0WHbYI/AAAAAAAAABQ/6u3aDm2ZFhE/s1600/slides.pdf-5.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBL0WHbYI/AAAAAAAAABQ/6u3aDm2ZFhE/s320/slides.pdf-5.png\"></a></div><br>Ensuring freshness is a property of the validation mechanism which does have significant benefits, however this is at the expense of the server side which will still handle each request and incur processing and I/O costs. This is therefore not useful for gateway caching since the primary objective is minimizing demands on the server.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBT6tVb5I/AAAAAAAAABY/q6dInnbn5ec/s1600/slides.pdf-6.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBT6tVb5I/AAAAAAAAABY/q6dInnbn5ec/s320/slides.pdf-6.png\"></a></div><br>Using a combination of both expiration and validation will effectively give you the best of both worlds, but you will still inherit the problems that come with the expiration mechanism.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBaZF0UHI/AAAAAAAAABg/JhxxD_EPfCs/s1600/slides.pdf-7.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lBaZF0UHI/AAAAAAAAABg/JhxxD_EPfCs/s320/slides.pdf-7.png\"></a></div><br>Invalidation-based caching works by keeping responses cached right up until their resource's state is altered by a client request. Therefore, in order to rely on invalidation exclusively, the cache must intermediate interactions from <b>all clients</b>, and is therefore a mechanism that is only really suited to gateway caches, and not to normal shared (i.e. forward proxy) or client-side caches.<br><br>In HTTP terms an invalidating request is any non-safe request that receives a 200 or 300 response, <a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lC70IGpnI/AAAAAAAAABo/tSQovWE6_RU/s400/sequence.png\">this sequence diagram</a> demonstrates how invalidation can work in practice.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDhpsv8lI/AAAAAAAAABw/YabyR8xXZiM/s1600/slides.pdf-8.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDhpsv8lI/AAAAAAAAABw/YabyR8xXZiM/s320/slides.pdf-8.png\"></a></div><br>All REST constraints play important roles in enabling cache-ability in general, however the main enabler of invalidation is the uniform interface, and specifically <b>self-descriptive messages</b>. The uniform interface and self-descriptiveness of messages empower layering in REST and crucially it enables intermediaries like caches to <b><i>make assertions about client-server interactions</i></b>. It is these assertions that are the key to the invalidation mechanism.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDp0b26gI/AAAAAAAAAB4/j8Eb6jrFqlw/s1600/slides.pdf-9.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDp0b26gI/AAAAAAAAAB4/j8Eb6jrFqlw/s320/slides.pdf-9.png\"></a></div><br>What are the benefits of invalidation-based caching?<br><br>Invalidation-based caches have self control; they are governed naturally and dynamically by client-server interaction. This makes them much easier to manage, ensures freshness, and operates with best-case efficiency in which responses are only invalidated when absolutely necessary. This best-case efficiency results in responses being cached for the longest possible period minimising contact with origin server, and bandwidth consumed.<br><br>So.. why isn't this really used? Because there are common problems when building systems with HTTP, that cause the mechanism to fail.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDxI0a9sI/AAAAAAAAACA/tFprMh4eUOk/s1600/slides.pdf-10.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S9lDxI0a9sI/AAAAAAAAACA/tFprMh4eUOk/s320/slides.pdf-10.png\"></a></div><br>There are other types of problem and variations on these two, they just happen to be the most common.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S-_UH_b4zMI/AAAAAAAAAG0/uHoZ_vevGk0/s1600/slides.pdf-11-big.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S-_UH_b4zMI/AAAAAAAAAG0/uHoZ_vevGk0/s320/slides.pdf-11-big.png\"></a></div><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><br>In a perfect world resources are granular and don't share state. At all. So - in the perfect world example above, the collection is simply a series of links. This does, however, require any client to make several subsequent requests for each item resource. This behaviour is generally considered overly 'chatty' and inefficient and therefore in the real world clear identification of resources and their state is traded-away for network efficiency gains.<br><br>This trade-off has consequences for invalidation..<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--cYI5fzrI/AAAAAAAAAFk/UELSY_uxn80/s1600/slides.pdf-12.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--cYI5fzrI/AAAAAAAAAFk/UELSY_uxn80/s320/slides.pdf-12.png\"></a></div><br>How would an intermediary answer that question?<br><br>The right answer should be \"None.\" or at least \"I don't know.\"<br><br>Given that URI's are essentially opaque it should, as far as intermediaries are concerned, have no effect. Using assumptions of perceived URI hierarchy is brittle and restrictive - what happens if this item belongs to more than one composite collection?<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--ca4IwPyI/AAAAAAAAAFs/xbvktCAlmq4/s1600/slides.pdf-13.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--ca4IwPyI/AAAAAAAAAFs/xbvktCAlmq4/s320/slides.pdf-13.png\"></a></div><br>It's common practice to treat representations as resources in their own right, and expose them with their own URIs. This creates the same kind of situation as the composite resource problem in which these 'representation resources' share state invisibly.<br><br>You could propose to solve this by making assumptions using 'dot notation' however this is again ignoring the opacity of URIs and is brittle and restrictive.<br><br>There are other examples in which the existing approach to invalidation is made impossible, but they all revolve around the same core problem:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--cdon7P1I/AAAAAAAAAF0/e7kP0BFBHh8/s1600/slides.pdf-14.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--cdon7P1I/AAAAAAAAAF0/e7kP0BFBHh8/s320/slides.pdf-14.png\"></a></div><br>Composite and split resources are problems because they <b>reduce visibility</b>.<br><br>Resources share state, and are therefore dependent, but the uniform interface lacks the capability to express this as control-data; and it is therefore not visible to intermediaries.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--hmdoKctI/AAAAAAAAAGU/kbvfMuclq1E/s1600/slides.pdf-15.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--hmdoKctI/AAAAAAAAAGU/kbvfMuclq1E/s320/slides.pdf-15.png\"></a></div><br>Link headers can be used to \"beef up\" the uniform interface by expressing these invisible dependencies as link relations.<br><br>Standardising the link relations allows these links to be used as control data within the uniform interface; thus increasing <b>self-descriptiveness of messages</b> and <b>visibility</b>.<br><br>This is named \"Link Header-based Invalidation of Caches\" (LHIC). There are two types of LHIC:<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--kFWtj2rI/AAAAAAAAAGc/OYhrmvpTAMc/s1600/slides.pdf-16.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--kFWtj2rI/AAAAAAAAAGc/OYhrmvpTAMc/s320/slides.pdf-16.png\"></a></div><br>LHIC-I is a simple mechanism that can be thought of as \"pointing out\" affected resources in the response. This gives the origin server dynamic control over the invalidation.<br><br>In order to secure the LHIC-I mechanism from DoS attacks in which any/all cached objects could be indicated for invalidation, it is likely that a same-domain policy would have to be adopted.<br><br>The purpose of this type of link relation is to simply increase visibility of the invalidating interaction itself.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S-_UKqLq-7I/AAAAAAAAAG8/Lr056Pp34LE/s1600/slides.pdf-17-big.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S-_UKqLq-7I/AAAAAAAAAG8/Lr056Pp34LE/s320/slides.pdf-17-big.png\"></a></div><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"></div><br>LHIC-II is a more complex mechanism that can be thought of as dependent resources "latching on" to one another. This effectively creates a 'dependency graph' within a gateway cache which can be queried against each invalidating request. LHIC-II is therefore capable of allowing invalidation to cascade along a chain of dependencies, whereas LHIC-I is only capable of handling first level dependencies.<br><br>The purpose of this type of link relation is to increase overall visibility in the system, ahead of an invalidation taking place.<br><br><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--oCqQ8NoI/AAAAAAAAAGs/k_b87jYw9h0/s1600/slides.pdf-18.png\" style=\"margin-left:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_jFGx4ndcvY4/S--oCqQ8NoI/AAAAAAAAAGs/k_b87jYw9h0/s320/slides.pdf-18.png\"></a></div><br><br>LHIC-II does not suffer the drawbacks of LHIC-I, however it is more complex to implement and does not allow dynamic control of invalidation by origin servers.<br><br>The optimal approach is to implement both methods; this allows for both dynamic control by origin servers, and cascading invalidation.<br><br><span style=\"font-size:x-large\"><b>Conclusion..</b></span><br><br>LHIC injects lost visibility back into the web<br><br>The resulting caching mechanism is<br><ul><li>Very efficient</li><li>Ensures freshness</li><li>Easily managed</li><li>Leverages existing specs</li></ul><div>Thoughts, comments, suggestions all welcome! :)<br><br></div>"
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"title" : "Mind your language: Wales, Belgium and other units of measurement",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/41381?ns=guardian&pageName=Wales%2C+Belgium+and+other+units+of+measurement%3AArticle%3A1400194&ch=Media&c3=Guardian&c4=Science%2CLanguage%2CPress+and+publishing%2CDaily+Telegraph%2CThe+Times+%28Media%29%2CThe+Guardian+%28Media%29%2CThe+Observer+%28Media%29%2CJeremy+Clarkson+%28Media%29%2CMedia%2CWales+%28News%29%2CLuxembourg+%28News%29%2CBelgium+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c6=David+Marsh&c7=10-May-17&c8=1400194&c9=Article&c10=Comment%2CBlogpost&c11=Media&c13=&c25=Mind+your+language+blog&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMedia%2Fblog%2FMind+your+language\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>Jeremy Clarkson was quite right when he dismissed 'the size of Luxembourg' as a meaningless comparison</p><p>Jeremy Clarkson had a point – and that's not something you hear me say every day (indeed, any day) – when in a recent Sun column he challenged the scientists (or \"eco-ists\" as Jezza termed them) who had described a slab of ice that had broken away from Antarctica as \"the size of Luxembourg\".</p><p>\"I'm sorry but Luxembourg is meaningless,\" said Clarkson, pointing out that the standard units of measurement in the UK are double-decker London buses, football pitches and Wales. He could have added the Isle of Wight, Olympic-sized swimming pools and Wembley stadiums to the list.</p><p>A Guardian letter writer, commenting on the same story, endorsed the argument: \"I would have had some difficulty even if the chunk had been described in terms of the size of Wales. Could you tell us how big it was in football pitches or Olympic swimming pools?\"</p><p>As Nancy Banks-Smith has noted: \"Any plague spot of indeterminate location is always compared to Wales. Wales is not quite sure how to take this.\"</p><p>The comparison crops up regularly – a dozen times in the Guardian and Observer in the last year; more than 70 in other national papers. It is most popular with travel writers, who helpfully inform us, for example, that a particular mangrove swamp in India – reached incidentally by an \"iconic bridge\" – is \"half the size of Wales\" (Independent), whereas Botswana is \"twice the size of Wales\" (Sunday Telegraph).</p><p>Perhaps, as with metric and imperial measurements, such comparisons should be given convenient abbreviations: SoWs (size of Wales), SoBs (size of Belgium), OSPs (Olympic swimming pools), DDBs (buses) and so on. Thus the Kruger national park in South Africa measures 1 SoW (Daily Telegraph), as do Lesotho (London Evening Standard) and Israel (Times), whereas Lake Nzerakera in Tanzania is 2 SoBs (Observer).</p><p>We would need a currency converter to establish how many OSPs would be filled by the Deepwater oil spill, but I can confirm that the slick is half an SoW (Times).</p><p>In G2 last month we revealed: \"All the gold that has ever been mined would make a cube [equivalent to] a stack of Routemaster buses four deep, four high and four long\" – under my system, that would be rendered much more handily as 4x4x4 DDBs. A Guardian report in March headlined \"Isle of Wight-sized asteroid killed dinosaurs, scientists say\" led to the following calculation from a reader: \"So 1bn Hiroshimas = 1 (Isle of Wight) x 20 (speeding bullets).\" He added: \"Who needs E=mc<sup>2</sup>?\"</p><p>At times the most carefully calibrated calculations can go awry. So we learn that Helmand province in Afghanistan is \"four times the size of Wales\" (Daily Telegraph, 2 December 2009) only to find a few weeks later that it has apparently shrunk to \"the size of Wales\" (Daily Telegraph, 29 January 2010).</p><p>You may think this is all an Olympic swimming pool-sized storm in a teacup. And it's true that – along with calculations of the \"if all the hotdogs served at the Cup final were joined up they would reach Jupiter and back\" variety – they are harmless, if meaningless and unhelpful, even for people such as me who have been to Wales (on a double-decker bus) and Belgium.</p><p>The style guide advises against using such lazy and cliched units of comparison. Maybe we need alternatives. I suggest \"quite big\", \"big\" and \"very big\".</p><p>But why, you may ask, are we never told what the size of Wales actually is? And, for that matter, the size of Belgium? For the record: the size of Wales is 20,779 sq km (8,022 sq miles). The size of Belgium is 30,528 sq km (11,787 sq miles).</p><p>To help you visualise it, that's one and a half times the size of Wales.</p><p><a href=\"mailto:style.guide@guardian.co.uk\" title=\"\"><em>style.guide@guardian.co.uk</em></a></p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/language\">Language</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pressandpublishing\">Newspapers & magazines</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/dailytelegraph\">Daily Telegraph</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/thetimes\">The Times</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/theguardian\">The Guardian</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/theobserver\">The Observer</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/jeremyclarkson\">Jeremy Clarkson</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/wales\">Wales</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/luxembourg\">Luxembourg</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/belgium\">Belgium</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidmarsh\">David Marsh</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fmind-your-language%2F2010%2Fmay%2F17%2Fmind-your-language-david-marsh\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "New ADF Design Paper Covering Task Flows",
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"content" : "Just published to OTN today is a new paper that I've put together <a href=\"http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/11/collateral/adf_task_flow_design.pdf\">Task Flow Design Fundamentals</a>. This paper collates a whole bunch of random thoughts about ADF Controller design that I've collected over the last couple of years. Hopefully this will be a useful aid to help you think about your task flow design in a more structured way."
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"title" : "American Imperialism, 1902",
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"content" : "<p>I’m still rolling the discussion from the previous post over in my head, but I can’t not post this piece I just came across from turn of the last century journalist Poultney Bigelow, who’s writing about the American occupation of the Philippines. It sort of speaks for itself, not only in how little the American military’s mode of operation has changed but in the rhetorical frames through which patriotic journalists write about and explain atrocities. You can read “How to Convert a White Man Into a Savage” right <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://books.google.com/books?id=WeDhAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA1159&ots=TDJeV1JMjr&dq=Poultney%20Bigelow%20%22How%20to%20Convert%20a%20White%20Man%20into%20a%20Savage%22&pg=PA1159#v=onepage&q=Poultney%20Bigelow%20%22How%20to%20Convert%20a%20White%20Man%20into%20a%20Savage%22&f=false\">here</a></span>, but I’ve more or less quoted most of it:</p>\n<blockquote><p>HE was a blue-eyed, fair-haired youngster, maybe twenty-five years old—tall, deep chested, a head carried high on a muscular and shapely neck. He won me by his frank, direct smile—an infallible index of temperament…We were chatting in a group after dinner at the West Point mess. The talk ran into the Philippines. I was curious to know whether our troops had ever practiced torture upon the natives…I should like to reproduce the simplicity and directness of what I heard that night—the refreshing absence of bombast, the flash of the eye, the quality of vocal vibration that accompanies truth.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Ah, the American soldier! This fellow will be played by <a href=\"http://true-blood.net/gallery/albums/cast-season1/ASkarsgard_generationkill.jpg\">Alexander Skarsgård.</a><em></em></p>\n<blockquote><p>” Can I tell you anything about the Filipino? Very little. I have been several thousands of miles through those islands, but I cannot say that I have seen fifty of the enemy. They are expert scouts; they have complete machinery for carrying news of our movements and the moment our little column starts the news is at once flashed along ahead and on both sides by means of the telegraph, heliograph, flags, smoke columns or runners. The people who entertain us, who wait on us, who proclaim themselves our <em>amigos</em>—our friends—they are, and of necessity must be, our secret enemies. If they did not give proof of their loyalty to the <em>insurrectos, </em>not only would they themselves be assassinated, but all their family would suffer the same fate, and probably be tortured into the bargain. The reason why this treachery is universal is that the peace-loving Filipinos do not trust the United States—are not sure that Uncle Sam intends to keep the Stars and Stripes floating there. None of our officers are yet clear as to the exact policy of our Government, and it is not strange therefore that the average native should adopt a course which is, after all, the least of two evils.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(Catch that? The insurgency is because they <em>aren’t sure we’ll stay</em>)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“One evening the village gave us a grand <em>fiesta </em>or reception; it was in honor of the American Commissioner, who had come to establish civil government and to listen to the native protestation of love for the American Constitution. All passed off delightfully. The notable men among the native officials rose in succession and spread themselves in oratory loyal to the United States. We were assured that all the towns of the district felt as they felt, that we would have a pleasant journey from one point to another, receiving the loyal welcome of every community. Our Civil Commissioners were delighted, and the fact was cabled to Washington as evidence that all that was needed was gentle government. Next day I started out with a small escort to occupy the next town and had not gone far when an old woman met us with the advice to turn back, for there were <em>insurrectos </em>in our path…We were about fifty men and we soon ran up against some five hundred of them, who only stood a short time and then disappeared, leaving a dozen or so of dead and wounded. Of the dead Filipinos, two were identified as orators <em>who had entertained us </em>on the previous evening with professions of undying love and loyalty!</p></blockquote>\n<p>(It’s so hard to find good natives these days)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“What in other countries would be called marching, in the Philippines is creeping along like a tiger. There are no roads to speak of; we have to follow trails through a jungle so thick that one can move but in single file—can see but a few feet in any direction. The natives are masters of the art of making traps for wild beasts, and they hunt United States soldiers after the same fashion. They dig in our path pits skillfully masked, so that our men fall into them and are impaled on poisoned stakes. And then at unexpected intervals a thread is stretched in the grass at their feet, and when that is snapped a bent sapling springs into position with several poisoned spears attached. You cannot enter a deserted cabin without running the risk of letting loose a spring of this sort with some poisoned spearheads attached; usually the mere stepping on the sill or front doorstep is the signal.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(IED’s. Why won’t they stand and fight?)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“One of these traps nearly finished me. Fortunately the spears passed me— one in front, one behind—half an inch of variation would have done the business. I cannot tell exactly what the poison is, but it is supposed to be animal decomposition. At any rate, it is effective. One of my men was struck by such a spear trap in the left side. He was treated immediately, but without effect. His extremities turned black—his nose, his feet, his fingers—and he soon died in great agony. It was hard to sit by the poor fellow and watch his torments without being able to do anything for him. After his death our surgeon cut the part open where the spear had gone in and drew off several tablespoonfuls of a blackish matter, which he pronounced as something wholly strange to his experience—certainly a deadly and a swift poison.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(I love that he literalizes his titular metaphor; the white man is literally being turned black.)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“We creep through the jungle with little worry regarding bullets, but at every step watching for trace of a trap or a poisoned spear—an enemy more dangerous than a snake, equally difficult to see. After a few horrible deaths by these hidden weapons, we hit upon the device of taking a prisoner and letting him show us the way. We held him by a rope so that he could not suddenly disappear in the brush, and now and then even a native was killed by the poison of his fellows—possibly by the very spear he had himself placed in position! Yes, it’s brutal, it’s revolting to a white man; yet we’re ordered to do it; if we don’t we are guilty of military insubordination ; if we do we are branded as cruel!</p></blockquote>\n<p>(A certain fascinating vascillation between “we hit upon” and being “ordered to do it” that we still see; is the source of atrocities the orders from above or the occasional bad apple? And, of course, the real victim is the American soldier.)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“War in the Philippines consists mainly in creeping up and down the country in search of an enemy, who retires as we advance, who advances as we retire. He never attacks save when our men are in a hopeless minority; his tactics are those of the red Indian. So long as we confine ourselves to marching up and down after him he has no objection to the war lasting forever; for our occupation brings a great deal of money into the country, and this money is spent mainly among the natives who pretend to be friendly, but are in truth supporting the popular cause. From a strictly military point of view, therefore, the only thing we can do, and the only thing that has so far brought us forward in the direction of peace, is to make war upon the whole population and to conduct it with so much determination that the whole Philippine population will recognize the fact that they are dealing with a force that must be obeyed.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(Quite literally, he is making war on an entire national population in order to bring peace to that nation. “<span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%BFn_Tre\">We had to destroy the village to save it</a></span>.”)</p>\n<blockquote><p>“War then resolves itself into wholesale devastation. Every house that can harbor a native must be burned, every store of food must be carried away or destroyed; every animal that can assist the enemy must be shot (notably the water buffalo), and, harder still, every man, woman and child must be regarded as an enemy. It was piteous to me when I saw dead on the ground the body of a twelve year old boy. The sergeant who had shot him told me he had done it with reluctance, but he had to shoot. The youngster died <em>with a gun </em>in his hands! We do not to-day think of Grant, or Sherman, or Sheridan as monsters of cruelty, yet even against our Christian kinsfolk of Virginia and Georgia they issued orders under which whole sections of fertile country were converted into a wilderness, women and children turned out as beggars into the roads, every male treated as a prisoner of war!</p></blockquote>\n<p>(We often forget that the American civil war was one of the first examples of total war, long before bombing of civilian cities came to be commonplace, but Americans in the late 19<sup>th</sup> understood quite well what the price of union victory had been.)</p>\n<blockquote><p>Not one of the officers I met who had campaigned in the Philippines had seen torture by the water cure or heard of its being used by authority. But all united in declaring that the natives practiced torture freely upon one another, and that if a white man ever practiced it upon a native it was in a case where he knew that said native was concealing arms and required but small pressure to induce him to reveal his secret.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(No white man would ever do such a thing, except maybe if they did it was totally necessary. The child I tortured was a terrorist!)</p>\n<blockquote><p>I venture to think that my friends of the Peace Congress could do no greater service to humanity than to revise our school histories so that these might teach not merely the gaudy and glorious side of warfare, but at the same time the dark and monotonous murder which is sometimes an ally in imperial progress.</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1992/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=1992&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"content" : "<p><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/us/11spice.html\">This case</a>, pitting the fatal-paprika-allergy-warning dog vs. the co-worker with the serious allergy to canines has great facts and a knotty legal problem — surely it is coming to a moot court or mock trial near you?</p>\n\n<blockquote><p>Fearing a fatal encounter with paprika, Ms. Kysel’s parents and grandparents chipped in to buy her an allergy-detection dog, which works much like a narcotics-sniffing dog. After she had extensive talks with her employer, the City of Indianapolis, officials gave her permission to take the dog to work. The golden retriever, named Penny, cost her family $10,000 — it jumps up on Ms. Kysel whenever it detects paprika.</p>\n\n<p>On the first day Ms. Kysel took Penny to work, one of her co-workers suffered an asthma attack because she is allergic to dogs. That afternoon Ms. Kysel was stunned when her boss told her that she could no longer take the dog to work, or if she felt she could not report to work without Penny, she could go on indefinite unpaid leave. She was ineligible for unemployment compensation because of the limbo she was put in.</p></blockquote>\n\n<p>Perfect.</p><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?a=VuNUa-v6msE:9BC-ESfXsbE:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?a=VuNUa-v6msE:9BC-ESfXsbE:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?a=VuNUa-v6msE:9BC-ESfXsbE:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?a=VuNUa-v6msE:9BC-ESfXsbE:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/discourse2?i=VuNUa-v6msE:9BC-ESfXsbE:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Friction a non Socratic dialogue",
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"content" : "Robert Waldmann<br><br><br>John Q. Policymaker is driving a minivan. Maynard Keynes is in the passenger seat, Ed Prescott and Robert Lucas are in the second row of seats and Eugene Fama and John Cochrane are in the back seats.<br><br>John Q: We are heading for a cliff !<br>Maynard: slam on the brakes.<br><br>Prescott: I don't see how brakes work. Alan Greenspan has had fewer traffic accidents, since he stopped using brakes. I know some people still teach about friction in third rate departments, but they aren't really advancing the science. You'll go just as fast whether you slam on the brake or not. In modern bicycle theory it is assumed that there is no friction so the concept of \"braking\" is meaningless.<br><br>Maynard: Don't listen to him. Slam on the brake pedal. We're all about to die.<br><br>John C: Yes this is a stressful situation and in stressful situations it is tempting to turn to the fairy tales of our childhood.<br><br>Maynard: It's not a fairy tale. It's a brake. It's worked before. <br><br>John C and Eugene in unison: Brakes are supposed to work because the disk spins under the brake shoes. If the disk is spinning we are going forward. Therefore brakes can't slow us down. There is a logical contradiction between saying we should brake and that we shouldn't keep going forward.<br><br>John Q: You guys in the back seats, don't just tell me Maynard is wrong. Tell me what to do to avoid going over the cliff.<br><br>Robert L: Serious analysis is a difficult process and requires a step by step approach, starting with simple frictionless models. We expect to have a useful model in roughly thirty years.<br><br><br><br><br>Robert W: If you think I'm exaggerating explain exactly what is overstated in the above dialogue.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5048766-142767819777237281?l=www.angrybearblog.com\" alt=\"\"></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?a=PxqJWo6KQ0c:xbSj3Goz7S0:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/blogspot/Hzoh?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/Hzoh/~4/PxqJWo6KQ0c\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Drogbacité",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-8128\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/07/drogbacite/7fda4b2a0706402a2ba07a1c583a-grande/\"><img title=\"7fda4b2a0706402a2ba07a1c583a-grande\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/7fda4b2a0706402a2ba07a1c583a-grande.jpg?w=500&h=345\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"345\"></a></p>\n<p>Didier Drogba is all the rage now–”Time” named him to the magazine’s annual ‘<a href=\"http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984949_1985240,00.html\">100 Most Influential People</a>,” largely because of his actions <a href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/07/ivorycoast200707\">to unite warring factions</a> in Cote d’Ivoire’s civil war through football. As a result, Drogba apparently has god-like status in his homeland. So much so that he even spawned a dance and music style: Drogbacite.</p>\n<p>At <a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/06/world-cup-university/\">a recent panel</a> on the 2010 World Cup I hosted at The New School that view of Drogba’s influence basically held. Not so quick says my man Siddhartha Mitter, journalist and music critic, who is eminently qualified on matters Ivorian.</p>\n<p>In the post, below, Siddhartha puts us straight about Drogbacite, particularly Drogba’s claims about the music named for him. The post is worth reading just for the valuable music education — <strong>Sean Jacobs</strong></p>\n<p><strong><span></span>Siddhartha Mitter</strong></p>\n<p>(1) I need to set the record straight about Drogbacité– the whole “Drogba is God in RCI [the Republic of Cote d'Ivoire]” thing was highly overstated during the panel discussion. Here’s the original “Drogbacité” song by one-hit-wonder Shanaka Yakuza back in 2006. The football-move references kick in around 1:25.</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/07/drogbacite/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/65Kq41gIiDg/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>(2) Compilation CD marketers, foreign football geeks, and <a href=\"http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,2002932,00.html\">Drogba</a> himself all ran with the concept of course. But as a dance it came and went — just another ephemeral craze (like konami, prudencia, grippe aviaire, décalé chinois, etc) within the overall genre of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup%C3%A9-D%C3%A9cal%C3%A9\">coupé-décalé</a>.</p>\n<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x2cs90&width=480&height=360\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\"></iframe></p>\n<p>(3) The “cité” suffix in Drogbacité picks up on the original style that launched coupé-décalé, “Sagacité,” invented in 2003 by the late Stéphane Doukouré aka Douk Saga. Drogbacité hit at a high-water mark for coupé-décalé, which may have run out of steam a little at this point, with zouglou making a comeback.</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/07/drogbacite/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/TwBJ8_V0_TE/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<p>(4) Drogba is an immense star in RCI and did play a strong role in national reconciliation, though the portrayal given on the panel was a bit over the top. But he’s neither the first nor last footballer to be made a musical icon, going back to the late ’80s with Abdoulaye Traoré “Ben Badi,” the ASEC-Africa rivalry, or former national team captain Gadji Céli, who became a singer.</p>\n<p><span style=\"text-align:center;display:block\"><a href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/07/drogbacite/\"><img src=\"http://img.youtube.com/vi/znVnQMxBAVk/2.jpg\" alt=\"\"></a></span></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/8014/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=8014&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"title" : "World Cup University",
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"content" : "<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7982\" href=\"http://africasacountry.com/2010/05/06/world-cup-university/vuvuzela_2730-3/\"><img title=\"vuvuzela_2730\" src=\"http://africasacountry.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/vuvuzela_2730.jpg?w=500&h=166\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"166\"></a></p>\n<p>So earlier this week we did have the 2010 World Cup panel, the one I organized and dubbed “Africa’s World Cup.” It was a great turnout–nice packed room. The Youtube video should be up soon. All the panelists turned: Austin Merrill from Vanity Fair’s <a href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/online/fairplay/\">Fair Play</a> soccer Blog, Time journalist <a href=\"http://tonykaron.com/category/glancing-headers/\">Tony Karon</a>, and the writers <a href=\"http://thebinj.blogspot.com/2007/05/most-authentic-real-black-africanest.html\">Binyavanga Wainaina</a> and <a href=\"http://www.tejucole.com/\">Teju Cole</a>. I kept order. We had a blast and I am going to post the Youtube video of the event early next week.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile if you can’t wait for the video and want to get a flavor of the discussion, <a href=\"http://www.vanityfair.com/online/fairplay/2010/05/letter-from-lagos.html\">here</a>‘s a link to a “statement” Mr Cole read as his opening remarks to the panel. Then there’s this wry post by SF on the great soccer blog, <a href=\"http://theoffsiderules.blogspot.com/2010/05/afternoon-of-soccerdemia.html\">The Offside Rules</a>, about proceedings. SF captures the mood of the event very well.</p>\n<p>But enough introductions, here’s SF’s post (I don’t think he’ll mind if I copy it here):</p>\n<p><span></span><strong>Yesterday I went to college. Or to a college I should say. There was a panel discussion entitled Africa’s World Cup at The New School here in Manhattan that sounded crushingly academic but kind of like soccer nerd heaven so I gave up my afternoon to it. So did about 25 other NYers of all stripes who braved the gauntlet of co-eds in summer dresses to show up as well.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>Hosted by </strong><strong>Sean Jacobs, assistant professor at the graduate program in International Affairs, the panel included <em>Time</em> magazine senior editor</strong><strong> Tony Karon, </strong><strong>Austin Merrill of Vanity Fair’s Fair Play blog and writers </strong><strong>Binyavanga Wainaina and </strong><strong>Teju Cole. Aside from Austin all of the panelist hailed from the The Place Formerly Known As The Dark Continent</strong><strong>™ and brought some very unique perspectives on the upcoming World Cup.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>There was so much ground covered over the 2+ hours of discussion that it’s almost impossible to concoct anything bordering on a complete recap but here’s a few interesting bullet points</strong><strong>Africa is being presented almost as a country, not a continent, by advertisers. Check out recent ads by Puma and Coca-Cola and you could almost get the idea that a multitude of country’s are hosting the event, not just South Africa.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>* Very few Africa-based players will actually participate in the first World Cup to be held on the continent. Most of the African teams will field a side made up of players who ply their trade in Europe.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>* Drogba is dam near a God in Africa; dirty dude has even inspired a genre of dance music called <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mVWZclL6kI\">“Drogbacite”</a> in West Africa.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>* African club football is screwed. It’s easier for people to keep up with Euro soccer than local leagues because it’s on free TV; imagine how much harder it would be to sell people MLS on FSC if the EPL, La Liga and Serie A were available on NBC, CBS and ABC.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>* Loads of brainy soccer humor from this bunch. You know you are nestled firmly amongst the football intelligentsia when the entire room is ROTFL to jokes whose punchlines center on a player being Andalusian, Basque or Catalan.</strong></p>\n<p><strong>* But no matter how connected to soccer these people are, by and large they don’t appear to be connected to American soccer at all. Not the Africans, not the Americans, not the African-Americans. When one person mentioned the U.S. team the room let out a collective laugh that is probably still echoing around the room 24 hours later; it’s always depressing when people so passionate and knowledgeable are so dismissive.</strong></p>\n<p>Mos def. Only one snag: SF misrepresents our feelings about US soccer. It is not true that we were dismissive of US soccer. The belly laughs only happened after Mr Cole had suggested the US national team would win the World Cup. Even SF has to agree that’s funny.</p>\n<p>– Sean Jacobs<strong><br>\n</strong></p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/africasacountry.wordpress.com/7979/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=africasacountry.com&blog=8438986&post=7979&subd=africasacountry&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"title" : "Nazi pedophile, torturer, cult leader in Chile dies",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbrands/165855793/\"><img alt=\"vill.jpg\" src=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/28/vill.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"401\" style=\"text-align:center;display:block;margin:0 auto 20px\"></a><p>\n\n<img alt=\"schaferth.jpg\" src=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/28/schaferth.jpg\" width=\"175\" height=\"100\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 20px 20px 0\">Nazi pedophile, torturer, and cult leader <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Sch%C3%A4fer\">Paul Schäfer</a> died in a prison hospital in Chile last week. The German-born Evangelical Christian raped children, founded and ruled over <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Baviera\">a Jonestown-like agricultural commune</a>, and oversaw a torture and assassination outsourcing service for <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile_under_Pinochetn\">the bloody regime of Augusto Pinochet</a>. One of the men Schäfer is suspected to have \"disappeared\" on behalf of Pinochet was an American citizen, <a href=\"http://www.weisfeiler.com/boris/\">Boris Weisfeiler</a>, in 1985.<p> <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/world/25schaefer.html\">Here's a <em>New York Times</em> obit</a>, <a href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/25/AR2010042503221.html\"><em>Washington Post</em> here</a>, a <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4340591.stm\">BBC article when Schäfer was arrested</a> in 2005. <p>\nBy far the most comprehensive article I found about the history of \"Colonia Dignidad\" (aka \"Villa Baviera,\" or \"Bavarian Village,\") and all of the evil committed there: <a href=\"http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-torture-colony/\">The Torture Colony, by Bruce Falconer in <em>The American Scholar</em></a>. A fascinating and disturbing read; great journalism on a horrible subject.\n\n<blockquote>Few outsiders ever gained access to the Colonia while its reclusive leader remained in power. An old Chilean newsreel, however, filmed at Schaefer's invitation in 1981, provides a rare picture of life inside the community, a utopia in full and happy bloom. The footage shows a bucolic paradise of sunshine and verdant fields set among clean, fast-flowing rivers and snowy peaks. Its German inhabitants improve the land and work their trades. A carpenter assembles a new chair for the Colonia's school. A woman in a white apron bakes German-style torts and pastries in the kitchen. Teenaged boys clear a new field for planting. Children laugh and splash in a lake. Schaefer himself, wearing a white suit and brown aviator sunglasses, takes the camera crew on a tour. Standing next to the Colonia's flour mill, he extols the quality of German machinery. \"We bought this mill in Europe,\" he says in broken Spanish. \"It is 60 years old, but we have not had to do any repairs on it.\" </blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n<p>\nAnd nearby that mill, the mass graves and torture cellars. The easy joke to make here is that with a C.V. like his, no-one sheds tears when you die—but the further loss for victims is that he was not tried for all the crimes for he was suspected of having committed. Chile's president Sebastián Piñera said Saturday, "There is another justice that never ends, which is divine justice."\n\n\n<p>\nRandom fact: as a student, Schäfer gouged out his own right eye while using a table fork to tie an uncooperative shoelace.\n<p>\n<small><em>(<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbrands/165855793/\">PHOTO</a>: The entrance of \"Colonia Dignidad\" in Chile, a Creative Commons-licensed photo from Flickr user <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbrands\">Robert Brands</a>.)</em></small><br style=\"clear:both\">\n<br style=\"clear:both\">\n<a href=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d01a3606dc8ab0ddba5de06aca57cf2d&p=1\"><img alt=\"\" style=\"border:0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d01a3606dc8ab0ddba5de06aca57cf2d&p=1\"></a>\n<img alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://ib.adnxs.com/seg?add=25366&t=2\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~4/ctXP2d27OA8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "An American Chernobyl",
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"content" : "<div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://www.minnpost.com/client_files/alternate_images/12391/mp_main_wide_DeepwaterHorizon452.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" height=\"137\" src=\"http://www.minnpost.com/client_files/alternate_images/12391/mp_main_wide_DeepwaterHorizon452.jpg\" width=\"200\"></a></div>[Update June 10: <i>Many people have had this same realization since I published this post. <a href=\"http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/10/94053/2632\" style=\"color:#0b5394\">Here</a> is an excellent, detailed summary that details the similarities, with links to resources.</i>]<br><br>The drawing of parallels between industrial accidents is a dubious armchair sport, but here the parallels are just piling up and are becoming too hard to ignore:<br><ul><li>An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 spewed radioactive waste across Europe </li></ul><ul><li>A recent explosion and sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform is spewing heavy oil into the Gulf of Mexico</li></ul>These accidents were both quite spectacular. At Chernobyl, the force of the explosion, caused by superheated steam inside the reactor, tossed the 2500-tonne reactor lid 10-14 meters into the air where it twirled like a tossed penny and came to rest back on the wrecked reactor. The cloud of superheated vapor then separated into a large volume of hydrogen gas, which detonated, demolishing the reactor building and adjoining structures. At Deepwater Horizon, a blowout of a recently completed oil well sent an uncontrolled burst of oil and gas, pressurized to over 10,000 psi by the 25000-foot depth of the well, up to the drilling platform, where it detonated, causing a fire. The rig then sank, and came to rest in a heap of wreckage on top of the oil well, which continues to spew at least 200,000 gallons of oil a day. Left unchecked, this would amount to 1.7 million barrels of oil per year, for an indefinite duration. This amount of oil may be enough to kill off or contaminate all marine life within the Gulf of Mexico, to foul the coastline throughout the Gulf and, thanks to the Gulf Stream, through much of the Eastern Seaboard, at least to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina and possibly beyond. A few tarballs will probably wash up as far north as Greenland.<br><br>The Chernobyl disaster was caused more or less directly by political appointeesm: the people in charge of the reactor control room had no background in nuclear reactor operations or nuclear chemistry, having got their jobs through the Communist Party. They attempted a dangerous experiment, executed it incompetently, and the result was an explosion and a meltdown. The Deepwater Horizon disaster will perhaps be found to have similar causes. BP, which leased and operated Deepwater Horizon, is chaired by one Carl-Henric Svanberg—a man with no experience in the oil industry. The people who serve on the boards of directors of large companies tend to see management as a sort of free-floating skill, unrelated to any specific field or industry, rather similarly to how the Soviet Communist party thought of and tried to use the talents of its cadres. Allegations are already circulating that BP drilled to a depth of 25000 feet while being licensed to drill up to 18000 feet, that safety reviews of technical documents had been bypassed, and that key pieces of safety equipment were not installed in order to contain costs. It will be interesting to see whether the Deepwater Horizon disaster, like the Chernobyl disaster before it, turns out to be the direct result of management decisions made by technical incompetents.<br><br>More importantly, the two disasters are analogous in the unprecedented technical, administrative, and political challenges posed by their remediation. In the case of Chernobyl, the technical difficulty stemmed from the need to handle high level radioactive waste. Chunks of nuclear reactor fuel lay scattered around the ruin of the reactor building, and workers who picked them up using shovels and placed them in barrels received a lethal radiation dose in just minutes. To douse the fire still burning within the molten reactor core, bags of sand and boron were dropped into it from helicopters, with lethal consequences for the crews. Eventually, a concrete sarcophagus was constructed around the demolished reactor, sealing it off from the environment. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, the technical difficulty lies with stemming a high-pressure flow of oil, most likely mixed with natural gas, gushing from within the burned, tangled wreck of the drilling platform at a depth of 5000 feet. An effort is currently underway to seal the leak by lowering a 100-ton concrete-and-steel \"contraption\" onto it from a floating crane and using it to capture and pump out the oil as it leaks out. I think \"sarcophagus\" sounds better.<br><br>The administrative challenge, in the case of Chernobyl, lay in evacuating and resettling large urban and rural populations from areas that were contaminated by the radiation, in preventing contaminated food products from being sold, and in dealing with the medical consequences of the accident, which includes a high incidence of cancer, childhood leukemia and birth defects. The effect of the massive oil spill from Deepwater Horizon is likely to cause massive dislocation within coastal communities, depriving them of their livelihoods from fishing, tourism and recreation. Unless the official efforts to aid this population are uncharacteristically prompt and thorough, their problems will bleed into and poison politics.<br><br>The political challenges, in both cases, centered on the inability of the political establishment to acquiesce to the fact that a key source of energy (nuclear power or deep-water oil) relied on technology that was unsafe and prone to catastrophic failure. The Chernobyl disaster caused irreparable damage to the reputation of the nuclear industry and foreclosed any further developments in this area. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is likely to do the same for the oil industry, curtailing any possible expansion of drilling in deep water, where much of the remaining oil is to be found, and perhaps even shutting down the projects that have already started. In turn, this is likely to hasten the onset of the terminal global oil shortage, which the US Department of Energy and the Pentagon have forecast for 2012.<br><br>Translate \"industrial accident\" into Russian and back into English, and what you get is \"technogenic catastrophe\". This term got a lot of use after the Chernobyl disaster. It is rather more descriptive than the rather flaccid English phrase, and it puts the blame where it ultimately comes to rest in any case: with the technology, and the technologists and politicians who push it. Technology that can and sometimes does fail catastrophically, causing unacceptable levels of environmental devastation, is no good, regardless of how economically necessary it happens to be. It must be shut down. In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we are already hearing that expansion of deep-water drilling is \"dead on arrival\". This could be the beginning of the end for the huge but dying beast that is the petrochemical industry, or more such accidents may be required for the realization finally to sink in and the cry of \"Shut it down!\" to be heard.<br><br>The energy industry has run out of convenient, high-quality resources to exploit, and is now forced to turn to resources it previously passed over: poor, dirty, difficult, expensive resources such as tar sands, heavy oil, shale, and deep offshore. Under relentless pressure to do more with less, people are likely to try to cut corners wherever possible, and environmental safety is likely to suffer. Before it finally crashes, the huge final effort to wring the last few drops of energy out of a depleted planet will continue to serve up bigger and bigger disasters. Perhaps the gruesome aftermath of this latest accident will cause enough people to proclaim \"Enough! Shut it all down!\" But if not, there is always the next one.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/28495039-26406985240514369?l=cluborlov.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Interview de Joss Doszen sur le Clan Boboto",
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"content" : "<div style=\"text-align:justify\"><div style=\"clear:both;text-align:center\"><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/S-C0frHyucI/AAAAAAAACA0/Eb51PBEYIyQ/s1600/GetAttachment.aspx.jpg\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_kl-8Cz-TJDI/S-C0frHyucI/AAAAAAAACA0/Eb51PBEYIyQ/s320/GetAttachment.aspx.jpg\"></a></div>Joss Doszen est l'auteur de deux romans, dont <a href=\"http://gangoueus.blogspot.com/2010/05/joss-doszen-le-clan-boboto-conte-urbain.html\">Le clan Boboto</a> que je viens de chroniquer. Un troisième roman est en préparation. J'ai bien aimé ce roman sur une famille dans la tourmente d'un quartier sensible de France. Ce jeune franco-congolais a la gouaille de ses personnages, ricane sur certaines questions, mais finalement, mérite qu'on s'arrête sur son travail. A vos marques! En gras mes questions et en italique, les réponses de Joss Doszen.<br><b><br></b><br><b>Joss Doszen, vous commencez votre roman par un prologue où vous revenez sur l’historique de ce quartier «La Zone négative », les flux passés et la composition actuelle de la population de cette cité. Est-ce un déterminisme justifiant la posture et l’évolution de vos personnages ?</b></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><i>Il était important pour moi de montrer à tous ceux qui de loin voient les « cités » comme des zones de guerre ne produisant que des clones d’échecs que même en étant du même endroit( ?). De plus j’ai écrit ce prologue suite à une longue discussion avec un amoureux de l’urbanisme qui m’a raconté l’émergence des cités du côté de Lille et de l’Est parisien et ça ressemblait de façon effrayante à un reportage vu deux ans plutôt sur l’histoire de la ville de Liverpool. J’ai eu envie de raconter les histoires de ces ville-espoirs devenus des cloaques.</i></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>On sent que les mots ont un sens important chez vous que ce soit en français ou lingala. Vous désignez cette cité par « La zone négative ». Pourquoi pas « La zone interdite » ? </b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>La zone négative n’est qu’un clin d’œil à mon enfance de passionné de comics américains. C’était un univers parallèle dans lequel les 4 fantastiques voyaient leurs pouvoirs se décupler… Donc rien de très « littéraire » comme référence (sourire). Mais c’est vrai que le sens est là. Cette expression n’est pas là par hasard.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Je reviens sur ce concept de « zone négative » par lequel vous désignez le quartier des Boboto. Elle contient en elle une symbolique très forte. Est-ce l’idée que vous vous faites de l’impact des quartiers dits « sensibles » en France : une influence essentiellement négative tant pour la collectivité nationale que pour les habitants qui les habitent ?</b> <br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Là, 100% oui. En France le mot « banlieue » est essentiellement lié à des choses sombres, échecs, violences, trafics, chômage… Et malheureusement cela n’impacte pas que ceux qui sont en dehors de cette « zone négative » mais aussi et plus encore ceux qui vivent dedans qui se dévalorisent encore plus que d’autres. Moi j’ai toujours vécu dans des quartiers populaires que se soit en Afrique ou en Europe et je ne me suis jamais senti concerné par ces zones négatives.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Vous avez choisi dans ce roman de présenter au travers de cette famille, plusieurs figures de la banlieue : le sans-papier, le chef de gang, le camé, le grand frère. Est-elle crédible cette famille selon vous?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Rires. Je ne cherche pas la crédibilité. Ceci est un roman, pas une biographie ou une œuvre sociologique. Je ne cherche rien d’autre que de donner quelques heures de lectures agréables tout en essayant de faire passer des messages simples. Il faut voir ce livre comme un bon film de gangsta type Boyz’n the hood, Scarface ou </i><i><a href=\"http://www.premiere.fr/film/New-jack-city#\">New Jack city</a></i><i>. Rien d’autres. Et si, en même temps, je peux dire aux gens « hé les gars, faites un tour dans la tête de ce sans papier qui cours après un mariage blanc, peut-être verrez-vous que c’est un homme simplement, et pas une espèce de monstre étrange », pourquoi me priver ?</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Bien qu’appartenant à un clan relativement soudé, les éléments de la fratrie ont des parcours singuliers, des difficultés propres et extrêmement</b><b> </b><b>cloisonnés. Même si certains choix malheureux ont des impacts sur le clan. Est-ce votre idée de la famille africaine en Europe, à savoir chacun même sa barque dans son coin tout en essayant maintenir un lien vital avec la famille ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Non l’idée n’est pas là. L’idée était surtout de dire que nous pouvons être de la même famille, avoir eu la même éducation mais « recevoir » son quartier et sa vie de façon totalement différente. <br>La seconde chose que je voulais mettre en avant c’est aussi le fait que même dans les familles qui semblent les plus soudées, chacun a son jardin secret, ses blessures et les gens peuvent vivre ensemble sans jamais vraiment se connaitre.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Un personnage a retenu mon attention. Scotie. Doué, ambitieux et audacieux, il réussit une intégration économique pour le moins inattendue dans le système capitaliste ambiant Après le racket, la drogue et le proxénétisme, il tente de faire basculer son business dans le recyclage de</b><b> </b><b>l’argent sale. Pouvez-vous revenir sur ce personnage ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Rires. Scotie c’est mon délire. Scotie c’est d’abord ma culture films ghetto US. Ma culture New Jack city ou La cité de la peur. J’ai pris un plaisir incroyable à écrire ce chapitre car je me suis lâché et j’ai même dû me censurer pour garder un certain équilibre avec les autres personnages. Rires.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Mais Scotie c’est aussi celui qui dit aux gens que la banlieue n’est pas synonyme de manque d’intelligence. Scotie c’est aussi celui qui ne subit pas son environnement. Contrairement à ses frères il ne rêve pas de « se barrer de la cité ». Il n’est pas dans ce cliché français de penser que tous les banlieusards sont dans Alcatraz et n’ont de cesse de vouloir partir. </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Scotie c’est aussi celui qui choisit. L’intelligence n’a pas de moral, la morale ne se transmet pas génétiquement. Paradoxalement je crois qu’il est plus désespéré que Mina par ce dead-end qu’ont vécu les parents. Il a choisi la façon optimum de ne pas suivre leur.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>C’est en plus quelqu’un qui est en retrait, c’est un observateur qui ne s’implique pas, qui ne se dévoile pas, mais qui aime tirer les ficelles. Il ne cherche pas les lumières de la gloire et sait se mettre en arrière-plan. J’adore ce personnage, je pourrais en parler des heures !</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><br><b>L’émancipation de Scotie est peu orthodoxe, celle d’un maffieux des cités qui fait évoluer son business vers le CAC 40, mais correspond-t-elle à une réalité sur le terrain ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Rires. Ceci est un roman. Il ne faut pas chercher de réalité ou de véracité. Kaizer Sauzée n’existe pas ! Rires.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Plus sérieusement je ne crois pas que les vrais bandits du CAC40, tous issus des grandes écoles pour les français ou des grandes universités privés chez les anglais par exemple, – en plus d’être d’une certaine bourgeoisie – laisseraient aussi aisément la place à un banlieusard aussi doué soit-il. </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Vous semblez avoir une maîtrise du sujet tant votre transcription de vos personnages sonne juste. Est-ce du vécu ? Une observation acérée du quotidien ou une imagination fertile ?</b></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Un peu des trois. Je ne fais pas science-fiction, je suis un hyper curieux et j’ai toujours été un rêveur. Ensuite, c’est le rôle de comédien du stylo – et du clavier – de faire le reste.</i></div><span style=\"font-family:'Times New Roman',serif;font-size:12pt\"><br> </span> <br><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>La voûte de cet édifice que constitue le clan Boboto semble être soutenue par Mina, ce frère aîné qui supplante son père parti en Afrique, mais s’il y a un reproche à faire à ce roman, c’est le vide que vous laissez concernant les ressources de ce personnage. Il n’y a pas un legs entre lui et son père et pourtant il prend ses responsabilités. Mina, personnage de fiction ?</b></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><br></i><br><i>Le roman à l’origine était conçu autour de Mina puis les autres personnages ont fait leur apparition et c’est vrai qu’au final, je me suis focalisé sur l’histoire du clan et Mina s’est un peu dilué dans l’ensemble. </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Je n’effleure que le parcours de Mina qui est celui qui se pose le plus de question sur sa place en Europe, son africanité, sa responsabilité de grande-frère « à l’africaine » qui assume son rôle, quitte à ce qu’il l’enferme un peu. Ce n’est pas non plus un superman capable de tout faire tout seul. Il a le soutien de Schearo, sa mère, Chico… J’avoue qu’avec le recul je pense avoir sacrifié Mina au profit du Clan. Mais n’est-ce pas son destin ?</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Si on note un abus du point virgule dans votre texte, une ponctuation discutable, ce qui pourrait embarrasser le lecteur ou la lectrice </b><b> </b><b>se trouve dans une expression très crue des états d’âme vos personnages masculins. Approche quelque peu inquiétante, voir violente que l’on retrouve chez la plupart des auteurs issus de la banlieue. En gros, la jeunesse de banlieue a-t-elle le monopole d’une certaine vulgarité ? Qu’est-ce-que cela signifie pour vous de transmettre les états d’âme de vos personnages par cette forme de langue ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Concernant la ponctuation il y a simplement le fait que je sois nul dans son utilisation. Rires. Mais aussi le fait que j’écris comme si j’étais dans une réunion et que j’étais chargé de faire le procès verbal. Il faut que je note au fil de l’eau et je n’ai pas le temps pour les fioritures. Les mots me viennent vite, en torrent et il faut que je les sorte sinon je les oublie. Ensuite c’est la galère pour essayer de « redresser » le texte en utilisant la ponctuation à bon escient.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>J’utilise le « je » tout au long de mon roman car je SUIS le personnage. Et si je suis dans ma tête je ne filtre pas mon langage. L’intelligence social consiste à adapter son vocabulaire en fonction de son auditoire, mais quand on est son propre auditoire on ne s’applique pas de filtre, donc on utilise toute la palette de vocabulaire que l’on a. « Que nenni » côtoie sans honte « c’est relou » parce que l’on est seul dans sa tête. Et quand on a entre 16 et 20 ans, que l’on est dans un environnement violent, que l’on est dans une période de stress dans sa vie (exemple Bany), le langage fleuri n’est pas vraiment de mise.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Quand au sexe omniprésent, je rappelle que les personnages ont entre 15 et 20 ans et à cet âge là, ils ne doivent pas être rares ceux qui pensent énormément au sexe.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Le passage d’un</b><b> </b><b>personnage à un autre se fait par le biais d’un poème, d’un slam voir d’un rap, d’une parole exprimée en anglais, en français ou en lingala. Pouvez-vous nous en dire plus sur cette démarche originale ?</b></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><br></i><br><i>J’écris beaucoup de textes. Slam, rap, poème, qu’importe le nom qu’on leur donne. Mais je ne me sens pas le talent de publier un recueil de texte complet. Donc je les insère dans mes romans pour faire une sorte de respiration entre 2 chapitres. S’ils ont l’air de plaire, j’en suis heureux sinon, le lecteur passe au chapitre suivant.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>J’aime le fait de pouvoir dire des choses différentes en utilisant des langues différentes. En lingala je peux utiliser des images impossibles à retranscrire en français et le côté direct de l’anglais permet une expression très dynamique. Le français reste la langue avec laquelle je peux le plus facilement jouer, créer.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Le retrait des parents a un impact important et négatif dans le développement des éléments de ce clan. Vous ne faites pas porter l’entière responsabilité des situations scabreuses à la seule « cité » ? Est-ce le regard général que vous portez sur ces banlieues, à savoir la faillite des parents comme éléments clef d’explication de la violence d’une certaine jeunesse.</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>On me dit souvent « c’est parce que tu n’as pas d’enfant que tu dis ça », parce que je suis capable de dire d’un gamin de 2 ans « ce petit est une future racaille » rien qu’en voyant ses parents. Quelques soient les raisons de leur démission, pour moi la première responsabilité des enfants qui « partent en cacahuète » est celle des parents. </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Le contexte est important, décisif. C’est une des conditions nécessaires à l’échec d’éducation, mais la seule condition suffisante c’est le facteur « parent ».</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Boboto signifie « bonté » voir « amour » en lingala. Vous désignez par ce nom, ce clan dont vous décrivez les membres qui dépassent les simples liens du sang. Dans la dureté de ce quoi doivent faire face les Boboto, ce sentiment semble être le seul ciment qui empêche l’édifice de s’écrouler. Vous y croyez ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>J’y crois très fort. Je crois au fait que la famille c’est plus que le sang. Les liens du sang dans nos cultures africaines sont parfois étouffants, et parfois nous font oublier que le « prochain » peut-être le pharisien. Dans ce livre il y a beaucoup de personnages « secondaires » qui sont d’une importance capitale dans la maison Boboto. Aucun n’est à négliger ou à enlever.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Vous avez un style très particulier, très direct, très collé à l’humeur de personnages et leur contexte. C’est une approche éloignée d’une narration classique. Pouvez-vous vous exprimer sur les influences sur votre écriture, quelles sont les auteurs qui vous inspirent ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>En premier lieu j’aime ce jeu de rôle qui consiste à me glisser dans la peau d’un personnage. Au lieu de « raconter » les situations sentiments on s’oblige à les vivre et à les faire vivre à celui qui lit. C’est risqué car le lecteur à tendance à perdre de vue la limite entre le conte et le conte et vous identifie à vos écrits. Mais je trouve qu’il y a plus de force dans le « je », au risque de passer pour un narcissique.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Dans mes lectures je n’ai pas vraiment de référence. Je suis un passionné de space opéra et d’héroic-phantasy depuis mon adolescence. L’étrange destin de Wangrin est mon livre de chevet depuis mes 17 ans. J’ai encore en mémoire « le soleil des indépendances » de Kourouma et je crois avoir lu tous les Guy Des Cars, Agatha Christie… Je suis un boulimique de la lecture. </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Je dirais pourtant que de lire, enfin, des auteurs anglo-saxons en version originale m’a décomplexé. Entre Richard Wright, Alex Wheatle, </i><i><b><a href=\"http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Slim\">Iceberg Slim</a></b></i><i> ou </i><i><b>Naiwu Osahon</b></i><i> il n’y a absolument rien en commun. Même pas la langue tellement ils l’utilisent tous de façon différente. Ils écrivent comme ils sont avec les mots de leur éducation, de leur culture sans chercher à rentrer dans des codes littéraires. Grâce à eux j’ai compris que si je voulais écrire dans un roman « je vais te chicoter » ou « faut pas me chercher palabre », je pouvais.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Il s’agit d’une auto-édition. Par choix ou par obligation ?</b><br><br></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Les deux. Mon premier manuscrit de « Pars mon fils va au loin et grandis » a été envoyé à 1é éditeurs. Je n’ai reçu que 3 réponses « positifs » via des courriers qui me disaient – pour aller vite – « votre livre sera vendu 16 euros, vous toucherez 8% de la somme à partir du 500<sup>e</sup> exemplaires vendus. Signez la et faites nous un chèque de 5000 euros ». </i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Je venais de faire connaissance avec les éditeurs à compte d’auteur et j’étais dans une période ou je tirais le diable par la queue (pour rester poli). J’étais un peu choqué de voir que dans ce pays, en gros, si on n’a pas d’argent on n’a pas le droit d’être lu. J’aurais pu aussi envisager le fait que j’étais complètement nul, mais je suis trop narcissique pour ça (rires).</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Aujourd’hui c’est un choix. Je ne cracherai pas sur un diffuseur le jour où j’aurai le chiffre de vente d’un best-seller, mais vu mon rythme de vente, je sais gérer. De plus, à partir du moment où je me suis décidé à tout faire moi-même j’ai commencé à apprendre – difficilement – un nouveau métier. J’ai appris à négocier mes devis avec les correcteurs, les imprimeurs, les graphistes ; à faire du porte à porte – sans beaucoup de succès – auprès des libraires, à tenter d’attirer (sic) l’attention des gens médiatiques. En fait, aujourd’hui je fais exactement ce que j’aurais voulu qu’un éditeur fasse pour moi pendant que moi, alors pourquoi courrai-je après eux ? C’est sur que ce n’est pas comme ça que je deviendrai millionnaire, mais bon… (Rires)</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><br></div><div style=\"border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;border:none;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm\"><div style=\"border:none;padding:0cm;text-align:justify\"><b>Pourriez-vous proposer 5 ouvrages de référence que vous aimeriez faire découvrir</b><b> </b><b>aux lecteurs de ce blog ?</b></div></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i>Je ne serai pas très original :</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><span style=\"font-size:x-large\">Brixton rock</span></i><i> de </i><i><a href=\"http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth5181C8791187f1FF07sgw2124D73\">Alex Weathle</a></i><i>, un britannique d’origine jamaïcaine dont l’écriture suinte les rues de Brixton,</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><span style=\"font-size:x-large\">PIMP</span></i><i> de </i><i><a href=\"http://www.mouvementdunid.org/Pimp-memoires-d-un-maquereau\">Iceberg Slim</a></i><i>, ancien macro américain. Attention, âme sensible s’abstenir, mais c’est très jouissif !</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><a href=\"http://afrokpata.blogspot.com/2010/03/letrange-destin-de-wangrin-damadou.html\"><span style=\"font-size:x-large\">L’étrange destin de Wangrin</span></a></i><i> de Hampaté Ba. Pour moi c’est aussi nécessaire de l’avoir lu que de connaitre l’histoire des quatre mousquetaires de Dumas ou Hamlet de Shakespeare</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><span></span><a href=\"http://mabouquinerie.canalblog.com/archives/2010/02/09/16848832.html\"><span style=\"font-size:x-large\">Le portrait de Dorian Gray</span></a> d’Oscar Wilde<span></span></i><i> que je cite surtout pour la préface. </i><i><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Magnifique. J’y ai pioché mon slogan « To reavel art and conceal the artist is the art’s aime »</span></i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"><i><a href=\"http://echosdutogo.haverford.edu/articles/icone-urbaine\"><span style=\"font-size:x-large\">Icone urbaine</span></a></i><i> que je lis en ce moment, de Lauren Ekué. Ça ressemble un peu à du « sex and the city » raconté par une afro-européenne. Je découvre.</i></div><div style=\"text-align:justify\"> </div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/104300315399051243-4164406685566607394?l=gangoueus.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Charles Mingus, \"Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus\" (1963)",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/S-F_wpjbY8I/AAAAAAAAAyw/sq4xSEP9Ba4/s1600/charles_mingus.jpg\"><img style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 10px 10px;width:269px;height:400px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/S-F_wpjbY8I/AAAAAAAAAyw/sq4xSEP9Ba4/s400/charles_mingus.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><strong>NICK DERISO: </strong>Bassist Charles Mingus, an enlightening yet stormy presence, clearly felt he had unfinished business with some of his earlier work. So, he used \"Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus\" and a move to the more creatively open Impulse! label to take another pass at them.<br><br>That turned into a dramatic remodeling project for Mingus.<br><br>In fact, he rips them up, pieces them back together, speeds them up, slows them down, drives them into the ditch, then reattaches all the dented parts. <br><br>\"MingusX5,\" as I always called it, would eventually become less about reevaluation than about true rediscovery -- and, for me, every bit the creative triumph of more widely praised efforts like \"The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady,\" \"Mingus Ah Um\" and the posthumous \"Epitaph.\" <br><br><span>Mingus was still working within a Dixieland-style collective improvisation, and amid this spectacular din of sound, we should probably expect complexity. The marvellously complex Mingus doesn't disappoint.<br><br>Adept at both an almost naughtily playfulness in the opener -- a redo of \"Haitian Fight Song\" called \"II B.S.\" (sound out the Roman numeral, then refer to the vernacular for the following two letters), featuring tenor saxist Booker Ervin and pianist Jaki Byard -- as well as the sensual curiosity of the \"Nouroog\" update \"I X Love,\" Mingus is freed to experiment as composer, arranger and performer.<br><br>Mingus was also playing around with his band, updating the same basic cast as 1963's \"Black Saint\" by adding reedman <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/2008/07/somethingelsetribute-jazzs-greatest.html\"><strong>Eric Dolphy </strong></a>-- who completes one of the very best groupings ever constructed by the mercurial bassist. \"MingusX5\" allows every player to somehow make the other better. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/S-F8-7FAefI/AAAAAAAAAyo/ClwVCtYcwG0/s1600/mingusx5.jpg\"><img style=\"float:left;margin:0 10px 10px 0;width:200px;height:200px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9n816j7EPLw/S-F8-7FAefI/AAAAAAAAAyo/ClwVCtYcwG0/s200/mingusx5.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a>A more turbulent theme can be found in \"Celia,\" in keeping with its subject matter. (Mingus is said to have written it in tribute to his ex-wife, and even includes at one point just a hint of \"The Lady In Red,\" referencing her hair color.) Altoist Charlie Mariano is highlighted here, as well as on \"I X Love,\" and he adds to the innate drama.<br><br>That tension finds its zenith during an amped up take on \"Better Get Hit in Yo' Soul,\" presented in 6/8 time yet boasting an interesting countermelodic grit. On the closing \"Hora Decubitus,\" a rewrite of \"E's Flat Ah's Flat Too\" which the bassist said meant \"At Bedtime,\" Mingus' 10-member group -- with a notable turn at this point by Dolphy -- turns up the fire, putting a fierce exclamation point on this album.<br><br>But even in moments of reflection, however, Mingus challenges himself, and those around him, to dig deeper. <br><br>Given an opportunity to pay tribute to a childhood hero in <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Duke%20Ellington\"><strong>Duke Ellington</strong></a>, on \"Mood Indigo\" <em>(embedded below)</em>, Mingus sets the tone with a virtuoso solo. Later on \"Theme For <a href=\"http://www.somethingelsereviews.com/search/label/Lester%20Young\"><strong>Lester Young</strong></a>\" (also known as \"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat\"), there is a quiet, almost tenderly reflective solo from Ervin -- in keeping with the tune's origin: Mingus reportedly wrote it at a New York club on the night he heard of Young's passing.<br><br>That underscores the tough spirituality that still makes Mingus so intriguing. <br><br>He was a straight talker but also a seeker of things, someone who questioned it all -- including himself and his own work. As well known for his volatility as for his ambition, Mingus took everyone on his journey -- starting with the sidemen. <br><br>That helped Mingus, when everything came together, draw out such memorable performances from those around him. \"MingusX5\" was one of those times.<br><br><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/Jl--643tTe4%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x5d1719%26color2%3D0xcd311b&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br><br>Purchase: <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mingus/dp/B000003N7Y\"><strong>Charles Mingus - Ming<em>us Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus</em></strong></a></span><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8367705548617137551-3458640493391498272?l=www.somethingelsereviews.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Faisal Shahzad: Another Well-Heeled Terror Suspect",
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"content" : "<p><center><img alt=\"faisal shahzad.jpg\" src=\"http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/faisal%20shahzad.jpg\" width=\"272\" height=\"362\" style=\"text-align:center;display:block;margin:0 auto 20px\"></center>\nOne detail about Faisal Shahzad’s family background in Pakistan that caught my eye is the disclosure of his father’s military background. As has been widely reported, Shahzad was arrested on suspicion of attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square, New York Monday night. Shahzad has been a U.S. citizen since 2009, and he had been working in the finance industry until sometime in 2009. He and his wife owned a house in Connecticut until the bank foreclosed on it last fall. </p>\n\n<p>In Pakistan, Shahzad does have some relatives in Karachi, but his father’s family lives near Peshawar, in a suburb called Hayatabad. <a href=\"http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=237595\">This story in the International News</a>, a Pakistani newspaper, states that his father is a retired Air Vice Marshal in the Pakistan Air Force. </p>\n\n<blockquote>Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq, father of Faisal Shahzad, the accused in New York’s failed bomb plot, hurriedly vacated the family home in Hayatabad town here late Tuesday apparently to avoid attention. <br><br>\n\nEyewitnesses said he packed some belongings in a vehicle and left the house located in Phase IV of the posh Hayatabad town along with male and female members of the family. Their destination wasn’t known.<br><br>\n\nEarlier, members of the media, in particularly TV crews had converged on the house in a bid to talk to family members and learn more about Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested Tuesday in the US on charges of plotting the vehicle bomb attack and now accused of an attempted act of terrorism. However, nobody in Air Vice Marshal (R) Baharul Haq’s household or the neighbours were ready to talk to reporters. A Geo TV reporter was shown outside the house trying to engage in conversation with neighbours. Some people in the neighbourhood expressed ignorance about Faisal Shahzad’s arrest in the US. (<a href=\"http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=237595\">link</a>)</blockquote>\n\n<p>What is there to learn from this? First, I think it reaffirms that potential terrorists could come from virtually any economic and educational background; a surprising number of major terror suspects in recent years have had advanced degrees (Shahzad has an MBA). Second, there’s hardly a long history of identification with extremist ideology here. With a big smile and a bluetooth headset in his ear, he looks like he should be selling me cell phone accessories at the AT&T store, not wiring amateur bombs. Finally, this guy is the son of a senior officer in the military, a powerful institution in Pakistan, with several other male family members apparently also in the military. They are undoubtedly deeply embarrassed by all this. </p>\n\n<p>In the days and weeks to come, I’m sure we’ll learn more about Faisal Shahzad. Judging from the many mistakes he made in assembling a bomb (with the wrong kind of fertilizer! propane tanks that weren’t opened! completely useless wiring and timers!), my guess is that he had little, if any, “training.” It seems more like a version of the American dream gone horribly awry: something snapped. </p>\n\n\n\n\n<p></p><p><b>Who linked:</b></p>\n<i><a href=\"http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/5943\">T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k link</a></i><p></p>"
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"title" : "Has Globalization Stolen the World Cup Magic?",
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"content" : "<p><img src=\"http://i.cdn.turner.com/sivault/multimedia/photo_gallery/0906/history.june29/images/pele-1958.cut.jpg\" width=\"400\"><br>\n<em>Who is this kid? Pele terrorizes Sweden in 1958</em></p>\n<p>Nobody outside of Brazil had heard of the 17-year-old who exploded onto the international stage in the 1958 World Cup in Sweden with a display of skill, audacity, guile, vision and sheer exuberance that was to make Pele a global household name for the next half-century.</p>\n<p>His status as the global symbol of football excellence was all the remarkable considering that the world only got to see him three more times at the quadrennial World Cup tournaments, culminating in 1970. Pele, after all, played his weekly club football for Rio De Janeiro’s Santos, whose games weren’t available on satellite TV.</p>\n<p>There are many reasons why World Cup 2010 won’t surprise us with a new Pele, but the first should be obvious: today any teenager even half as talented would likely be on the books of Barcelona or Arsenal already, and therefore a familiar face to European club football’s massive global TV audience.</p>\n<p>Think Alexandre Pato, the 20-year-old Brazilian striker who joined AC Milan at 18, or Manchester United’s marauding 19-year-old Brazilian fullbacks, Rafael and Fabio da Silva, who signed at 17, a year older than Spanish midfield supremo Cesc Fabregas was when he joined Arsenal.</p>\n<p>In Pele’s era, the world’s best players met only at the World Cup. Today they play each other once or even twice a week while the whole world watches.</p>\n<p>Last year’s Champions League final between Barcelona and Manchester United was the world’s most-watched sports event of the year, with an audience of 209 million. And a lot more than that were expected to tune into the recent Real Madrid-Barcelona Spanish league showdown.</p>\n<p>It’s not hard to see why: El Clasico, as the Spanish fixture is known, pitted the world’s two best players, Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo against one another, with a supporting cast stronger than either would find in his national team.</p>\n<p>The fact that the European game now features all the world’s soccer heroes is the reason you’re as likely to see a Chelsea or Arsenal shirt being worn at a mall in Shanghai or San Diego as in a Baghdad demonstration or Mogadishu firefight.</p>\n<p>Almost without exception, today the world’s best players play their club football in Europe. Brazil’s and Argentina’s World Cup squads will be picked almost entirely from Europe-based players, and those will also be the mainstay of the likes of Uruguay, Chile and Honduras. Ivory Coast took just one home-based player to the recent African Nations Cup in Angola, and Ghana is likely to do the same at the World Cup. Don’t expect any in Cameroon’s squad, while there are unlikely to be more than two or three in Nigeria’s squad.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article428369.ece/Has-globalisation-stolen-the-World-Cup-magic-\">Read the rest here</a></p>"
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"title" : "The map history of an unhappy place, 1829-present",
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"content" : "<p>In the greater Horn of Africa, the talk is of civil war, genocide, tyranny, interstate war, failed states, fragile peace. Where did this all come from?</p>\n<p>One perspective is given from Europeans’ maps of this area. The maps below are cropped so as to cover the exact same area from the Tropic of Cancer to the Equator, from 20 degrees longitude to the tip of the horn (approx. 50 degrees longitude). The maps are from early 1800s (exact data unknown), 1829, 1885, 1906, 1924, and the Present. The place names appear early on: Darfur, Somalia, (or earlier versions of those names, like Nubia for Sudan, Abyssinia for Ethiopia), but the borders are remarkably unstable.</p>\n<p>Among the forces at work changing the map are Europeans’ increasing knowledge of the area, the expansion of European colonial control, European border changes, and Ethiopian expansion. Somehow it led to the present mix of tragic mess, cultural richness, and potential for hope.</p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Africa-horn-early-1800s1.gif\"><img title=\"Africa-horn-early-1800s\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Africa-horn-early-1800s1.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"270\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-18291.gif\"><img title=\"africa-horn-1829\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-18291.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"312\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-1829.gif\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa_1885_horn.gif\"><img title=\"africa_1885_horn\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa_1885_horn.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"285\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-1906-cropped.gif\"><img title=\"africa-horn-1906-cropped\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-1906-cropped.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-1924-cropped.gif\"><img title=\"africa-horn-1924-cropped\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-1924-cropped.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"303\"></a></p>\n<p><a href=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-modern.gif\"><img title=\"africa-horn-modern\" src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/africa-horn-modern.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"301\"></a></p>\n<img src=\"http://aidwatchers.com/wp/?ak_action=api_record_view&id=4123&type=feed\" alt=\"\">"
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"title" : "I think you’ll find that’s my line, Seamus",
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"content" : "<p>Further thoughts on “Ship of Fools” by Fintan O’Toole …</p>\n\n\t<p>In so far as these things matter, I totes claim bragging rights over calling the end of the bubble in Ireland, in writing in October 2006 and my only regret is that I changed jobs and started doing something else before I had time to milk it[1]. My basic point at the time was that the rental yield on Irish property at the time was estimated at 3.25% (Daft.ie had begun to calculate a rental yield index, tragically too late – I believe unless someone knows different that at the time I was in possession of the only even acceptably accurate time series of data on Irish rental yields), and that with the most recent <span>ECB</span> rate rise to 3.75%, the logic of the myopic-expectations buy-or-rent model[2] was about to start working in reverse. As it did. I’ve mentioned on a number of occasions that in actual fact, this was a policy-caused bubble, and that’s true in Ireland as well. But of course, the actual mechanisms by which a bubble is inflated, since they are based on a combination of the winner’s curse and limited liability, tend to involve the sorts of tales of sharp elbows, social capital and low risk aversion which can be made to look absolutely awful with the benefit of hindsight and/or in a court of law. So let the games begin …<br>\n<span></span></p>\n\n\t<p>Of course, there’s a world of difference between “Ship of Fools” and Dean Baker’s “False Profits”. For one thing, although at a very high level the Irish boom was a product of the <span>ECB</span>’s need to keep the rust belts of France and Italy out of depression, there is not much mileage in an Irish commentator calling for the <span>ECB</span> governor to be sacked. And so it is that Fintan O’Toole’s “Ship of Fools” concentrates less on the high-level policy failures and more on the nuts-and-bolts of the shady deals and unwise decisions that let the Irish boom get so big and so much more destructive than, say, the Spanish one. Henry has written on this in detail, so I’ll hand over that to him, both because I don’t have the detailed knowledge, but more importantly for the reason that I think any British person writing about the Irish economic situation at the moment really needs to check his motives.</p>\n\n\t<p>Which is to say that, hey Irish people, shall I tell you a secret? That economic miracle of yours – it just killed us inside. The Gore Vidal proverb[4] doesn’t capture the half of it. My God. Even me, commenting on this site of all sites, couldn’t occasionally resist <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2006/08/22/free-lunch-and-irish-breakfast/#comment-169430\"> the occasional outburst</a> of <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2003/12/18/small-country-big-job/#comment-11445\">sheer green-eyed jealousy</a> at any signs of the Irish contributors mentioning that the place seemed to be doing all right these days. I can’t find the bit where I literally started going “look it’s all housing and construction you know, it’ll end in tears” to Kieran, but I vividly remember it happened. And this was not an untypical attitude among Brits during the period.</p>\n\n\t<p>Part of the reason of course was that during the boom years, Ireland did take the advantage to export some incredible, complete, total and utter pricks to the rest of the world in the hope that they’d stay gone. I mean, it hardly behoves a London stockbroker to make a comment of this sort, but even by that benchmark the newly enriched Irish business/political class turned up some world-beaters. And, like the Icelanders they floated a fair couple of companies on the London market that turned out to be not quite as great as they’d appeared, and like the Icelanders, they were given to occasionally, usually when drink had been taken on, providing us with lectures about the secret of their economic success which gave the strong impression of having been cribbed from <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/01/the-way-of-the-leprechaun/\">Thomas Friedman books</a>.</p>\n\n\t<p>Unlike the Icelanders, of course, there was always a certain amount of edge to the relationship between us and the Irish Raiders though. For one thing, of course, there was the legacy of empire[5]; it really was not so long ago that <a href=\"http://crookedtimber.org/2008/11/28/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-london-irish-social-services-industry/\">Irish people</a> in London were treated as somewhere between an oppressed minority and a public health problem[6].</p>\n\n\t<p>For another, though, there was never any real threat to us from the Vikings. Broadly speaking, the financial community knew what they were up to. They were a bunch of foreigners with seemingly no clue what they were doing, more or less unlimited amounts of money borrowed from their local banks, a burning ambition to pick up iconic and prestigious business assets, and seemingly no concept at all of a fair or even reasonable valuation. People like that, one finds, are generally well liked in Throgmorton Street; you might have to put up with the odd economics lecture, but usually they’ll make it worth your while to hang on. Generations of such ambitious foreigners have breezed through the City, usually leaving with armfuls of previously unshiftable dogs and sans wallet. Come one come all, as long as you pay cash etc.</p>\n\n\t<p>The Irish, on the other hand … well, what was their big idea? From the late 90s onward, it was clear that Ireland was determined to become the entrepot and offshore haven between Europe and America, sitting in the North Atlantic with a low tax rate, a population of intelligent and creative people with somewhat lax morality, a loose system of financial regulation with slap-on-the-wrist enforcement, in general a place where you went in order to do things that you were slightly ashamed of and didn’t want to do back home. And well … isn’t that, kind of, our job? I think this was the real source of English ressentiment of the Irish miracle – after all, even the most ancient of enemies can reconcile and make up, but <i>competitors</i> are opposed to each other by definition.</p>\n\n\t<p>And that, I think, shows us what the underlying social reality is behind the corpus delicti set out in “Ship of Fools”. The difference between the two places, and the reason why the City abides, bruised and humiliated but still here, while the Financial Centre in Dublin currently looks really rather past-tense, is that the sort of brinkmanship that is required to play the regulatory arbitrage game, and to make sure that the get-er-done mentality of the best dealmaking lawyers and bankers doesn’t get <i>totally</i> out of hand, is one of the ultimate ‘thick’ social institutions. The kind of culture under which the most dreaded punishment is the “cold shoulder” of the Takeover Panel is not something you can throw up overnight.</p>\n\n\t<p>So anyway, it turns out that this review was more in the <span>LRB</span> style of a semi-attached essay but what can you do? Go read Henry’s post, he’ll tell you what the book was about.</p>\n\n\n\t<p>[1] The publication of that report gave me one of the only moments in my career which would make a good anecdote for a Michael Lewis book. I was, unsurprisingly, not popular with Irish investors and ended up doing a tour of Dublin to explain myself. At the end of a long day, I found myself in front of a character who started his speech by saying “well, you know, of course I’m not an economist like yourself, I’m just a thick Paddy me …”. Having basically lost both all patience and all hope of getting any business, I launched into a short speech, the gist of which was[3] “excuse me mate, when I was a teenager I worked on the Holyhead-Dun Laoghire ferry, and during that period I met enough colourful Irish characters to last me a lifetime. The other thing I learned was that when you hear an Irish person talking to an English person and describing themselves as “just a thick Paddy”, you should check your wallet”.</p>\n\n\t<p>[2] “Myopic expectations” – in my model, agents assumed that the current level of interest rates would prevail forever. “Buy versus rent model” – just what it sounds like, based on my assessment of the typical financing structure. It wasn’t quite as simple as that, but it wasn’t much more complicated.</p>\n\n\t<p>[3] Of course, as is traditional for a mass-market business thriller, it didn’t happen <i>exactly</i> like that. Also I was lying at the time – my brother had worked on the ferry, not me.</p>\n\n\t<p>[4] “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies”</p>\n\n\t<p>[5] During the Celtic Tiger years, and after reading excerpts from Liam Kennedy’s <a href=\"http://www.sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/mope_moping_and_mopery/\">essay</a>, I used to find it a useful technique when in the presence of an Irish person (or, frankly, an Englishman or American with any hint of Irish heritage) who I believed to be whining, to theatrically exclaim “400 years of oppression and now this!”[8]. I’m not saying it was big or clever, or even completely free of bigotry. I’m just saying it worked. Probably still does.</p>\n\n\t<p>[6] I actually live in a rather chichi leafy avenue in North London, and there are still people in my street who remember when my attractive Georgian townhouse was occupied by three <i>large</i> Irish families. There are one of two aging Irish tramps hanging round the area who appear on the occasions I’ve spoken to them to be utterly confused about what happened to what had previously been a quite well-defined social role.</p>\n\n\t<p>[7] Actually, eight hundred years, as Henry reminded me.</p>"
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"content" : "<p>When you install WebCenter Spaces, in addition to the admin server, you end up with three WebLogic managed servers:</p>\n<ul>\n<li>WLS_Spaces: hosts WebCenter Spaces</li>\n<li>WLS_Portlet: hosts standards-based and PDK-Java portlets</li>\n<li>WLS_Services: hosts the WebCenter social computing services</li>\n</ul>\n<p>One of beauties of the flexible architecture of the Fusion Middleware is that you can easily decouple any of the components, and manage/scale them out as you need. So, what if you wanted to create a dedicated managed server for your portlets or for your custom WebCenter portal applications?</p>\n<p>To create your new managed server, you have three tools to choose from. Create your new managed server using:</p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jython script</strong>: fully scriptable. This option comes with a sample managed server creation script, available for download from OTN, see under <a href=\"http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/webcenter/release11_demos.html#administration_samples\">WebCenter Administration Sample</a>. The download contains three scripts, a text file with instructions, a properties file with information about the target server, and the Jython script itself. This properties file allows you to specify administration-specific settings for your new managed server, including the URL used to manage the server, admin user name and password, as well as the purpose you want to create your managed server for:\n<ul>\n<li>serverType=WebCenter: to host WebCenter custom portal applications</li>\n<li>serverType=Portlet: to host portlets</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n<li><strong>WLS Admin Console</strong>: browser-based. After creating the managed server, you have to manually configure the shared libraries.</li>\n<li><strong>FMW Control</strong>: browser based. After creating the managed server, you have to manually configure the shared libraries.</li>\n</ul>\n<p>The Administrator’s Guide for Oracle WebCenter covers these steps in detail under <a href=\"http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E14571_01/webcenter.1111/e12405/wcadm_deploy.htm#BABEJEEA\">7.1.3.1 Creating and Provisioning a WebLogic Managed Server Instance</a> section.</p>\n<br> Tagged: <a href=\"http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/tag/custom-application/\">custom application</a>, <a href=\"http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/tag/jython/\">jython</a>, <a href=\"http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/tag/managed-server/\">managed server</a>, <a href=\"http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/tag/portlet/\">portlet</a>, <a href=\"http://pmoskovi.wordpress.com/tag/python/\">python</a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gofacebook/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/facebook/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gotwitter/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/twitter/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/pmoskovi.wordpress.com/577/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=pmoskovi.wordpress.com&blog=3868398&post=577&subd=pmoskovi&ref=&feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\">"
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"title" : "While Feverish, I Solve the Problem of Economics",
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"content" : "<div><p><em>[The following was cobbled together from notes, some newish and some oldish, while the author was under the influence of a mounting fever (mild flu, nothing serious). Nations are advised not to reform their financial markets on the basis of it without first consulting a credentialed economist, who should, of course, not really be trusted, either.]</em>\n\n</p>\n\n<p>In a chapter midway through Jane Austen's <em>Mansfield Park</em>, the characters sit down to an early-nineteenth-century card game called Speculation. The spice of the game seems to have been that players had a chance to bid on cards that might prove useful to them later; it seems to have offered a chance to play at capitalism, the way the Monopoly board game does today. The game of Speculation is new to some of the characters, and Henry Crawford , an heir and something of a dandy, is obliged to manage the hand of the dotty matron Maria Bertram as well as his own. The cognitive burden of this double hand hardly weighs him down. To the contrary, in simultaneous conversations he not only details his plan for improving his friend Edmund Bertram's parsonage but also flirts with Edmund's naïve cousin Fanny Price. He's playing, in other words, not only two hands but also three games at once: cards, real estate, and love. Austen renders his dangerous ease as a monologue: \n\n</p><blockquote>\"The air of a gentleman's residence, therefore, you cannot but give it, if you do any thing. But it is capable of much more. (Let me see, Mary; Lady Bertram bids a dozen for that queen; no, no, a dozen is more than it is worth. Lady Bertram does <em>not</em> bid a dozen. She will have nothing to say to it. Go on, go on.) By some such improvements as I have suggested, (I do not really require you to proceed upon my plan, though by the bye I doubt any body's striking out a better)—you may give it a higher character. You may raise it into a <em>place</em>. From being the mere gentleman's residence, it becomes, by judicious improvement, the residence of a man of education, taste, modern manners, good connections. All this may be stamped on it . . . <em>You</em> think with me, I hope—(turning with a softened voice to Fanny).—Have you ever seen the place?\"</blockquote>\n\n<p>Henry Crawford's moral defect is the same in all three fields: he doesn't play for any higher purpose—only to take the next trick. Edmund high-mindedly objects that tastefulness isn't a merit in a parsonage, and Fanny is immunized against Crawford's romantic attractions by her apparently hopeless but nonetheless devoted affection for Edmund. But though Crawford does no serious damage in this scene, he is nonetheless condemnable, according to Austen's moral laws, by the evidence the scene provides. He is in real estate a flipper, and in romance a flirt. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>Every historical period has its predominant economic metaphors, and they seep into its culture. Not long ago, I had coffee with an undergraduate who reported that he had just read Derrida and Lacan on Poe and was excited by the idea that criticism might be the new literature. Twenty years ago, when I read Derrida and Lacan on Poe, my professors teased me the same exciting possibility. It occurs to me now that the idea is about as old as, and has certain structural parallels to, the notion that finance is the new manufacturing. Like criticism over literature, finance traditionally supervised manufacturing yet was thought to be parasitic upon it and less \"creative\" than it. And then at some moment, often specified on Michael Lewis's authority as the 1980s, finance began to have the reputation of requiring more intellectual acumen than manufacturing and to attract the brighter and more modish talents. Similarly (though hard numbers are very hard to come by), academic criticism started to pay better than the creation of literature—certainly it offered more stability and social prestige. For a young American to ignore the economic signaling and go into manufacturing or literature rather than finance or criticism, he would have to be either idealist or dunderheaded. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>But I'm digressing, from a topic I haven't even announced yet. A more familiar economic metaphor of our day is that of depression and stimulus. The metaphor goes like this: There is a mystifying complex system (the brain, the economy), and when the system is running well, a perspicuous diagnostic index is maintained by the system at a high level (personal happiness, Dow Jones industrial average). If misfortune blights the system, this index drops, and sometimes, for somewhat mysterious reasons, the same self-regulating feedback loops that sustain the index against minor buffeting in good times can hold it down at a new low level after a crisis (unhappiness, recession), depriving the system of the opportunity to recover fully. Science, according to the metaphor's logic, has the answer. By a temporary stimulus (Prozac, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), the index can be \"re-set\" to its earlier, higher level. The stimulus is not supposed to last; it is to be understood as a course of treatment; the individual is not being addicted to a drug, nor the nation to welfare. Once the system has been reset to the proper level, the stimulus can be safely discontinued. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>Thus is a reductive idea of Keynesian economics assimilated to a popular understanding of Prozac, or vice versa. It seems, however, to be wrong, at least about Keynesian economics.\n\n</p>\n\n<p>I should admit here that I am more or less illiterate about economics, and that what I understand of Keynes derives from my reading of articles by <a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/print/article/how-i-became-keynesian\">Richard Posner</a>, <a href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/generaltheory\">Aaron</a> <a href=\"http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/Keynes\">Swartz</a>, and <a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all\">Paul Krugman</a>, further stimulated by Ben Kunkel's essay \"Full Employment\" (<a href=\"http://nplusonemag.com/full-employment\">excerpt here</a>) and reinforced by articles like <a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08/joseph-stiglitz/the-non-existent-hand\">this one by Joseph Stiglitz</a>. I shall now proceed to blog with impressive and daunting authority nonetheless. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>The popular story about the Great Depression is that America pulled itself out of it by the great stimulus of World War II, and insofar as I understand what the latter-day Keynesians are saying, the popular story is wrong, or at least, insufficiently descriptive. World War II did stimulate the American economy, but the treatment was successful not merely because it provided America with an enormous new demand for goods. The decisive nostrum was a change in the terms of the social contract between the few and the many. For the sake of winning the war, the elites of America (and other democracies) ensured the cooperation of their working and middle classes by giving them a more dignified place at the economic table. Wages rose; the distribution of wealth in America became more egalitarian. To be numerical about it, during World War II, the share of income that went to the richest tenth of Americans <a href=\"http://elsa.berkeley.edu/%7Esaez/saez-UStopincomes-2007.pdf\">dropped from 45 percent to 32.5 percent</a>, and didn't rise again until the 1970s. In other words, during the long period of American economic growth sometimes referred to as the Golden Age (unsatisfactory libertarian explanations of whose demise Kunkel deftly explodes in his recent <em>n+1</em> essay), the country shared its wealth more broadly than before or after.\n\n</p>\n\n<p>Why did this help? According to classical economics, it shouldn't. Buying power is buying power, and if more of it is in the hands of the rich, so what. Their money is just as good. But according to Keynes, there is a problem with concentrating wealth in the hands of the rich: they don't spend as much of it. They aren't, after all, in need. “Consumption — to repeat the obvious — is the sole end and object of all economic activity,” writes Keynes, in a sentence quoted by Swartz. That is, money in the bank is for the interim worthless; its value is suspended until it is put into use. Give a rich person ten dollars, and he is likely to put nine dollars in his savings account. Give a poor person ten dollars, and he will have spent all ten by lunchtime on food and services, and its beneficiaries will be people who have to work for a living and who are therefore more likely to spend it themselves. The original ten dollars, if spent by a person of modest means, will multiply their value as they work their way through the economic system. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>A large GNP, Keynes believed, isn't enough to keep an economy ticking if too great a share of the profits goes to the rich, because the rich will just hoard, and hoarding cancels money's value. \"It is . . . conceivable,\" writes Kunkel, \"that the rich could spend enough to maintain a sufficient level of consumer demand\"; Kunkel notes that \"the US approached just such a strategy over the last dozen years, with help from the delirious increase of asset prices.\" Conceivable, Kunkel writes, but not likely. The strategy would only work if the rich could be induced to spend on a scale of inhuman grandiosity—if, Keynes writes (in another quote from Swartz), \"millionaires find their satisfaction in building mighty mansions to contain their bodies when alive and pyramids to shelter them after death, or, repenting of their sins, erect cathedrals and endow monasteries or foreign missions.\" The successful stimulation of a national economy is much more likely if, instead, workers are paid a living wage, and use it to buy T-shirts, I-pads, flour, and eggs. Posner summarizes: \"It is consumption, rather than thrift, that promotes economic growth.\"\n\n</p>\n\n<p>To return to literature for a moment, to adopt the Keynesian perspective is to prefer Henry James's understanding of the world over Jane Austen's. In Austen's <em>Mansfield Park</em>, Fanny Price wins out because she modestly expresses no desire, keeping her love hidden in the confidence that by chance Edmund will some day recognize it. She hoards. Lucky for Fanny, she lives in a novel by Jane Austen, who rewards her abstention from desire by bestowing Edmund upon her in the end. But in real life, as opposed to novels, young people grow old, and habits of solitary life calcify. Hoarding is a poor strategy for love, or so runs the moral of Henry James's <em>Spoils of Poynton</em>, in which Fleda Vetch restrains herself, much like Austen's Fanny, from acting on a wish to seize the objects of her desire—a man and his lovely furniture—only to have them perish, never properly appreciated by anyone. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>Did the rich cause the recent recession and ongoing world economic crisis by keeping too large a share of profits for themselves and then hoarding it? Why would they do such a thing? It could be because, as Keynes also suggests, we're approaching an era of sufficient capital and the euthanasia of the rentier class. In other words, thanks to global competition, it may have become nearly impossible in recent years to find a return on investment that paid more than the costs of risk and inflation. In desperation, the rich threw their capital into wasteful, essentially usurious schemes. As Thomas Geoghegan explained in <a href=\"http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/04/0082450\">an April 2009 <em>Harper's</em> article</a>, \n\n</p><blockquote>With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing.</blockquote>\n\n<p>If the money thrown away by the rich had been given to the poor, the poor would have bought things with it that actual people actually needed and wanted. It could be argued that by buying securities of low-quality mortgages, or by raising the credit-card limits of people who wouldn't be able to make good on their debts, the rich somehow <em>were</em> giving their money to the poor. But the rich <em>didn't</em> give the money, is the rub; they bought with it the right either to long repayment of usurious debt or to repossession of overvalued property—in either case, to something not worth its stated value. Without anyone having wanted it to happen, the government became the default investor in the fall of 2008, as Keynes foresaw would happen when the rentiers panicked. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>The moral of the story seems to be that when the rich have most of the money and hoard it, the symbolic value of money becomes somewhat unreal—the conversion of money, which is imaginary, into value, which is real, breaks down. I wonder [<em>here the patient's temperature was decidedly triple-digit—ed.</em>], further, whether a continuing of the process of hoarding might precipitate a reversion to something like feudalism—to a system in which force is deployed to perpetuate a rigid system of economic obligations. New feudal lords would look to our modern eyes like mafiosi, not like dukes and duchesses, because viewed through a lens of bourgeois morality, aristocrats are mafiosi. They think a different ethic applies to them than to others in society, they are proud of their history of using force and terror to ensure profits, and they think of economic enterprise as largely a zero-sum game. If the super rich can't get a return out of productive investment in a free market, why not buy force and political power so as to keep a class of people in long-term economic bondage? Occasionally, one could also make a small killing on the side by seizing the hoard of a rival. This sounds melodramatic, but feudalism remains a compelling way of life psychologically, as much popular entertainment attests, and the absurd flowering of corruption in, say, the New York State legislature hardly reassures one that civic virtue will be sufficient to protect America from it. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>I am thinking out loud (or online, anyway) here, not necessarily claiming that I've figured anything out. I think what I find most intriguing is the idea in Keynes that there is a mismatch between the real-world meaning of economic transactions and the nominal values assigned to them by monetary accounting. It's very strange to think that if you put too much money into a few people's bank accounts, the economy might falter. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>As a thought experiment, while I couldn't sleep the night before last [<em>i.e., fever—ed.</em>], I imagined an island with a hundred inhabitants, who live off of fish and breadfruit. Every so often an islander finds the shell of a whelk on the beach, and in time it occurs to the islanders to use these shells as a currency for trading fish and breadfruit. Breadfruit must be eaten while they're ripe, and fish before they spoil, but shells last indefinitely. The durability of the shells misrepresents the nature of fish and breadfruit, but it makes possible new kinds of bargains. Thanks to shell-based trade, someone who catches two fish today can sell his extra fish for a shell, and use the shell to buy someone else's extra fish tomorrow without having to predict in advance who among his peers is going to have caught an extra fish tomorrow. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>Even in this simple model, there's an obvious gap between the accounting that the shells make possible and the real exchanges of value on the island. Consider what happens when an islander stumbles across a previously undiscovered whelk shell. He as an individual and the island economy as a whole are suddenly one shell up, but he hasn't added a shell's worth of value to the happiness or well-being of the island. An islander who dedicates himself to hunting for shells might end up doing a shell's worth of scavenging work for every shell he finds, but he still won't be contributing a shell's worth of value to the community.\n\n</p>\n\n<p>Consider what happens when islanders strike a more complex kind of deal with one another. Suppose several islanders pool their shells and give ten shells to one among them, who buys the labor of other islanders and fashions a better canoe. With this canoe, the borrower is able to fish further from land and is able to repay the lenders with a quantity of fish equal in value to eleven shells a month later. Maybe, to keep the accounting square, he even trades his catch for eleven shells, and is able to return eleven shells for the ten he was given. Unlike the beachcomber, the lenders and the borrower in this case <em>have</em> added a shell's worth of value to the common weal. They haven't added any new shells to the number of shells in circulation, but the borrowers have added a shell to their official wealth, and this is the sort of complex, win-win transaction that makes currency and capitalism so desirable. \n\n</p>\n\n<p>But the islanders might strike still another kind of bargain. A group might pool their ten shells and give them to an individual who proceeds to trade them over the next ten days for ten fishes procured by others, which he then simply eats. This improvident borrower promises to find another shell for every month that passes with his debt unpaid, but he doesn't have a plan for how to pay it. He pays in dribs and drabs, and his repayments are often offset by the monthly addition of a new shell to his debt; maybe he never pays the full debt off in his lifetime. In essence the lenders have used their shells to turn a citizen into something like a slave. If the borrower keeps paying long enough, or the borrower's family decide to rescue him with a large lump-sum payment, the loan may not in the end be unprofitable to the lenders. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that the borrower pays back enough, in the end, to reward the lenders at a rate of interest equivalent to that obtained when one gets eleven shells a month after loaning ten. The lenders have added a shell to their wealth, but nothing has been added to the community. No fish have been caught that would not have been caught without the transaction. On the contrary, an islander has been put into a state of indefinite servitude and unprofitable (to him) overwork, which may affect his well-being, and in all likelihood the shell-piles of his friends and family have been diminished.\n\n</p>\n\n<p>Productive investment and usury share a certain family resemblance and may even look identical when considered in terms of shells won and lost, but are very different in their real effects. All I'm trying to show, by these cases of shells found on a beach, earned by enterprise, or squandered in bad loans, is that there is a mismatch between real wealth and its measurement in money. In the short term, and in day-to-day transactions, the mismatch is so minor and the consequences so trivial that it is ignored, and the price of a thing feels like its real value, to most of us most of the time. Imagine, though, that the islanders continue to live happily for several generations, that one family is particularly thrifty, and after a couple of hundred years, it so happens that ninety-nine islanders have one shell each, and one islander has a billion. Are his billion shells really worth a billion shells? Leave to one side one's intuitive sense that such a state of affairs must have been led up to by a long history of criminal exploitation. My point is that all the rich man really has is a billion shells. Each shell represents a portion of a fresh fish, or rather, a portion of the labor power that goes into catching the fish, but the fish don't exist yet, and it is far from clear that the rich man will be able to trade all his shells for what they represent. Because the rich man and his ancestors have been hoarding their wealth, a lot of fish that might have been caught over the years haven't been; the opportunity to catch and eat them is gone forever. What the rich man has is a set of claims on the labor of his fellow citizens, but he and his fellow citizens only have a certain number of days left to live, and his fellow citizens are only capable of catching a certain number of fish and gathering a certain number of breadfruit in excess of what they need every day to survive, so they might not be able to honor his claims, even if they wanted to. The rich man will never be able to cash his chits in. The value of his shells has become unreal. \n\n</p>\n\n<p><em>[I had got this far in my argument when a friend from Porlock showed up, and I'm afraid I lost my train of thought after that . . .]</em></p></div>"
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"title" : "Rest in Peas: The Unrecognized Death of Speech Recognition",
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"content" : "<p>\n\t \n<p><span style=\"font-size:small\"><div>\n<img alt=\"Rest_in_peas_sm3\" height=\"539\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-08-08/hFasAhwyFtguaIJtilpaFwGudFmorAxgltwttrAAGHDCzzJjvvrvlJEtsuiv/Rest_in_peas_sm3.jpg.scaled980.jpg\" width=\"633\">\n</div>\nPushing up daisies </span><span style=\"font-size:x-small\">(Photo courtesy of <a href=\"http://www.creativecoffins.com/mediapics/Creative_Coffins_Portfolio/coffins_files/Media/pea%20coffins%20grass/pea%20coffins%20grass.jpg?disposition=download\">Creative Coffins</a>)</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-small\"> </span><span style=\"font-size:large\">Mispredicted Words, Mispredicted Futures</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much to computers—which made them ten times more error-prone than humans. Humans expected that computer understanding of language would lead to artificially intelligent machines, inevitably and quickly. But the mispredicted words of speech recognition have rewritten that narrative. We just haven’t recognized it yet.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">After a long gestation period in academia, speech recognition bore twins in 1982: the suggestively-named Kurzweil Applied Intelligence and sibling rival Dragon Systems. Kurzweil’s software, by age three, could understand all of a thousand words—but only when spoken one painstakingly-articulated word at a time. Two years later, in 1987, the computer’s lexicon reached 20,000 words, entering the realm of human vocabularies which range from 10,000 to 150,000 words. But recognition accuracy was horrific: 90% wrong in 1993. Another two years, however, and the error rate pushed below 50%. More importantly, Dragon Systems unveiled its Naturally Speaking software in 1997 which recognized normal human speech. Years of talking to the computer like a speech therapist seemingly paid off.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">However, the core language machinery that crushed sounds into words actually dated to the 1950s and ‘60s and had not changed. Progress mainly came from freakishly faster computers and a burgeoning profusion of digital text.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Speech recognizers make educated guesses at what is being said. They play the odds. For example, the phrase “serve as the <em>inspiration</em>,” is ten times more likely than “serve as the <em>installation</em>,” which sounds similar. Such statistical models become more precise given more data. Helpfully, the digital word supply leapt from essentially zero to about a million words in the 1980s when a body of literary text called the Brown Corpus became available. Millions turned to billions as the Internet grew in the 1990s. Inevitably, Google <a href=\"http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2006/08/all-our-n-gram-are-belong-to-you.html\">published</a> a trillion-word corpus in 2006. Speech recognition accuracy, borne aloft by exponential trends in text and transistors, rose skyward. But it couldn’t reach human heights.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><div>\n<img alt=\"Nist_benchmarks_3\" height=\"450\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-08-08/hFcbExlbdrvebJvEEygcGxtsEtieaDGypAFeHFwCjDrkhEetGHlJAxJtzgku/NIST_Benchmarks_3.jpg.scaled980.jpg\" width=\"591\">\n</div>\n</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"><span style=\"line-height:115%\">Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology </span><a href=\"http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/mig/publications/ASRhistory/index.html\"><span style=\"line-height:115%\">Benchmark Test History</span></a><span style=\"line-height:115%\"> </span></span></p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:large\">“I’m sorry, Dave. I can’t do that.”</span></h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">In 2001 recognition accuracy topped out at 80%, far short of HAL-like levels of comprehension. Adding data or computing power made no difference. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University checked again in 2006 and found the situation <a href=\"http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~marc/misc/proceedings/lrec-2006/pdf/802_pdf.pdf\">unchanged</a>. With human discrimination as high as 98%, the unclosed gap left little basis for conversation. But sticking to a few topics, like numbers, helped. Saying “one” into the phone works about as well as pressing a button, approaching 100% accuracy. But loosen the vocabulary constraint and recognition begins to drift, turning to vertigo in the wide-open vastness of linguistic space.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The language universe is large, Google’s trillion words a mere scrawl on its surface. One <a href=\"http://clas.mq.edu.au/infinite_sentences/index.html\">estimate</a> puts the number of possible sentences at 10<sup>570</sup>. Through constant talking and writing, more of the possibilities of language enter into our possession. But plenty of unanticipated combinations remain which force speech recognizers into risky guesses. Even where data are lush, picking what’s most likely can be a mistake because meaning often pools in a key word or two. Recognition systems, by going with the “best” bet, are prone to interpret the meaning-rich terms as more common but similar-sounding words, draining sense from the sentence.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:small\"><div>\n<img alt=\"Jaume_plensa_twenty_nine_psalms\" height=\"392\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-08-08/kblFiAbuApEoilDmEekbtiCbCskpxflajqGfivbcIltyDknEnEkFhJsgpIAd/Jaume_Plensa_Twenty_Nine_Psalms.jpg.scaled980.jpg\" width=\"520\">\n</div>\nStrings, heavy with meaning.</span> <span style=\"font-size:xx-small\">(<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/tais/129197471/in/set-72057594108104988/\">Photo</a> credit: t_a_i_s)</span></p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:large\">Statistics veiling ignorance</span></h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Many spoken words sound the same. Saying “recognize speech” makes a sound that can be indistinguishable from “wreck a nice beach.” Other laughers include “wreck an eyes peach” and “recondite speech.” But with a little knowledge of word meaning and grammar, it seems like a computer ought to be able to puzzle it out. Ironically, however, much of the progress in speech recognition came from a conscious <em>rejection</em> of the deeper dimensions of language. As an IBM researcher famously put it: “Every time I fire a linguist my system improves.” But pink-slipping all the linguistics PhDs only gets you 80% accuracy, at best.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">In practice, current recognition software employs some knowledge of language beyond just the outer surface of word sounds. But efforts to impart human-grade understanding of word meaning and syntax to computers have also fallen short.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">We use grammar all the time, but no effort to completely formalize it in a set of rules has succeeded. If such rules exist, computers programs turned loose on great bodies of text haven’t been able to suss them out either. Progress in automatically parsing sentences into their grammatical components has been surprisingly limited. A 1996 look at the state of the art <a href=\"http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/HLTsurvey/ch3node9.html\">reported</a> that “Despite over three decades of research effort, no practical domain-independent parser of unrestricted text has been developed.” As with speech recognition, parsing works best inside snug linguistic boxes, like medical terminology, but weakens when you take down the fences holding back the untamed wilds. Today’s parsers “very crudely are about 80% right on average on unrestricted text,” according to Cambridge professor Ted Briscoe, author of the 1996 report. Parsers and speech recognition have penetrated language to similar, considerable depths, but without reaching a fundamental understanding.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Researchers have also tried to endow computers with knowledge of word meanings. Words are defined by other words, to state the seemingly obvious. And definitions, of course, live in a dictionary. In the early 1990s, Microsoft Research developed a system called MindNet which “read” the dictionary and traced out a network from each word out to every mention of it in the definitions of other words.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Words have multiple definitions until they are used in a sentence which narrows the possibilities. MindNet deduced the intended definition of a word by combing through the networks of the other words in the sentence, looking for overlap. Consider the sentence, “The driver struck the ball.” To figure out the intended meaning of “driver,” MindNet followed the network to the definition for “golf” which includes the word “ball.” So driver means a kind of golf club. Or does it? Maybe the sentence means a car crashed into a group of people at a party.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">To guess meanings more accurately, MindNet expanded the data on which it based its statistics much as speech recognizers did. The program ingested encyclopedias and other online texts, carefully assigning probabilistic weights based on what it learned. But that wasn’t enough. MindNet’s <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=69624\">goal</a> of “resolving semantic ambiguities in text,” remains unattained. The project, the first undertaken by Microsoft Research after it was founded in 1991, was shelved in 2005.</span></p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:large\">Can’t get there from here</span></h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">We have learned that speech is not just sounds. The acoustic signal doesn’t carry enough information for reliable interpretation, even when boosted by statistical analysis of terabytes of example phrases. As the leading lights of speech recognition <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/80528/SPM-MINDS-I.pdf\">acknowledged</a> last May, “it is not possible to predict and collect separate data for any and all types of speech…” The approach of the last two decades has hit a dead end. Similarly, the meaning of a word is not fully captured just by pointing to other words as in MindNet’s approach. Grammar likewise escapes crisp formalization. </span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">To some, these developments are no surprise. In 1986, Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores audaciously concluded that “computers cannot understand language.” In their book, <em>Understanding Computers and Cognition</em>, the authors argued from biology and philosophy rather than producing a proof like Einstein’s demonstration that nothing can travel faster than light. So not everyone agreed. Bill Gates <a href=\"http://www.canopusresearch.com/billgwfz.html\">described</a> it as “a complete horseshit book” shortly after it appeared, but acknowledged that “it has to be read,” a wise amendment given the balance of evidence from the last quarter century.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Fortunately, the question of whether computers are subject to fundamental limits doesn’t need to be answered. Progress in conversational speech recognition accuracy has clearly halted <em>and</em> we have abandoned further frontal assaults. The research arm of the Pentagon, <a href=\"http://www.darpa.mil/\">DARPA</a>, declared victory and withdrew. Many decades ago, DARPA funded the basic research behind both the Internet and today’s mouse-and-menus computer interface. More recently, the agency financed investigations into conversational speech recognition but shifted priorities and money after accuracy plateaued. Microsoft Research persisted longer in its pursuit of a seeing, talking computer. But that vision became increasingly spectral, and today none of the Speech Technology group’s <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/srg/#projects\">projects</a> aspire to push speech recognition to human levels.</span></p>\n<h1><span style=\"font-size:large\">Cognitive dissonance</span></h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">We are surrounded by unceasing, rapid technological advance, <em>especially</em> in information technology. It is impossible for something to be unattainable. There has to be another way. Right? Yes—but it’s more difficult than the approach that didn’t work. In place of simple speech recognition, researchers last year proposed “cognition-derived recognition” in a <a href=\"http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/80528/SPM-MINDS-I.pdf\">paper</a> authored by leading academics, a scientist from Microsoft Research and a co-founder of Dragon Systems. The project entails research to “understand and emulate relevant human capabilities” as well as understanding how the brain processes language. The researchers, with that particularly human talent for euphemism, are actually saying that we need artificial intelligence if computers are going to understand us.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Originally, however, speech recognition was going to lead to artificial intelligence. Computing pioneer Alan Turing <a href=\"http://loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html\">suggested</a> in 1950 that we “provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.” Over half a century later, artificial intelligence has become prerequisite to understanding speech. We have neither the chicken nor the egg.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Speech recognition pioneer Ray Kurzweil piloted computing a long way down the path toward artificial intelligence. His software programs first recognized printed characters, then images and finally spoken words. Quite reasonably, Kurzweil looked at the trajectory he had helped carve and prophesied that machines would inevitably become <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil#The_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines\">intelligent</a> and then <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines\">spiritual</a>. However, because we are no longer banging away at speech recognition, this new great chain of being has a missing link.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">That void and its potential implications have gone unremarked, the greatest recognition error of all. Perhaps no one much noticed when the National Institute of Standards Testing simply stopped benchmarking the accuracy of conversational speech recognition. And no one, speech researchers included, broadcasts their own bad news. So conventional belief remains that speech recognition and even artificial intelligence will arrive someday, somehow. Similar beliefs cling to manned space travel. Wisely, when President Obama cancelled the Ares program, he made provisions for research into “game-changing new technology,” as an advisor <a href=\"http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8489097.stm\">put</a> it. Rather than challenge a cherished belief, perhaps the President knew to <a href=\"http://robertfortner.posterous.com/16466980\">scale it back</a> until it <a href=\"http://researchclub.posterous.com/space-age-entering-eclipseunnoticed\">fades away</a>.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:xx-small\"><div>\n<img alt=\"Dragon_naturally_speaking_mentions\" height=\"309\" src=\"http://posterous.com/getfile/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-08-08/BFIAfztblxIJiFhiIvcqDcjlFckzdaDgeEixdoiuFjwdcBsqhdsswyIBGnww/Dragon_Naturally_Speaking_mentions.jpg.scaled980.jpg\" width=\"692\">\n</div>\nSource: <a href=\"http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=dragon+naturally+speaking&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=a\">Google</a></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Speech recognition seems to be following a similar pattern, signal blending into background noise. News mentions of Dragon System’s Naturally Speaking software peaked at the same time as recognition accuracy, 1999, and declined thereafter. “Speech recognition” shows a broadly <a href=\"http://news.google.com/archivesearch?as_user_ldate=1996&as_user_hdate=2010&q=speech+recognition&scoring=a&hl=en&ned=us&q=speech+recognition&lnav=od&btnG=Go\">similar pattern</a>, with peak mentions coming in 2002, the last year in which NIST benchmarked conversational speech recognition.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">With the flattening of recognition accuracy comes the flattening of a great story arc of our age: the imminent arrival of artificial intelligence. Mispredicted words have cascaded into mispredictions of the future. Protean language leaves the future unauthored.</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">---------------------------</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Related: <a href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2010/05/spark-114-may-23-25-2010/\"></a></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><a href=\"http://www.cbc.ca/spark/2010/05/spark-114-may-23-25-2010/\">Dude, where's my universal translator?</a> (CBC radio show)</span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Dutch translation of Rest in Peas: <a href=\"http://computerworld.nl/article/11924/de-onbegrepen-dood-van-spraakherkenning.html\" title=\"De onbegrepen dood van spraakherkenning\">De onbegrepen dood van spraakherkenning<br></a></span></p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><a href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php\">Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain</a><br></span></p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><a href=\"http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php\"><br></a></span></h2>\n\t\n</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://robertfortner.posterous.com/the-unrecognized-death-of-speech-recognition\">Permalink</a> \n\n\t| <a href=\"http://robertfortner.posterous.com/the-unrecognized-death-of-speech-recognition#comment\">Leave a comment »</a>\n\n</p>"
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"title" : "Two Kinds Of People In The World",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xdEP6_rQI/AAAAAAAAHKI/1nKkZznSNCk/s1600/GoodBad1.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:313px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xdEP6_rQI/AAAAAAAAHKI/1nKkZznSNCk/s400/GoodBad1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Within the past week I unfortunately had to deal with some serious computer issues so there were some stress-filled days. It’s all taken care of now and luckily everything worked out fine but it still slowed me down quite a bit and I was unable to finish a few pieces like I had planned. There will be more to come but for now here are a few thoughts on a recent event that took place here in L.A. <br><br>In case you follow this sort of thing, the very first TCM Classic Film Festival was recently held in the heart of Hollywood, garnering a fair amount of press coverage as well as huge crowds. That’s very nice to hear, and I’m grateful to have TCM at home these days but since the whole thing was, shall we say, fairly pricey—several hundred for passes, $20 for single tickets—and I’m still a man without employment I didn’t spend much time there. I don’t think that I wasn’t the only person who felt that way about the prices but judging by the large numbers of people who apparently came from out of town to attend it could be said that the festival wasn’t really designed for people who live in L.A. anyway. I doubt another year will pass before the likes of IN A LONELY PLACE shows somewhere in this town and I’ve been fortunate to see people who appeared like Tony Curtis and Martin Landau speak at various screenings in the past but people who don’t live here don’t get quite so many opportunities. <br><br><a href=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xd2ESwdvI/AAAAAAAAHKY/Qc_s_LJ8hfg/s1600/GoodBad2.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:172px\" src=\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xd2ESwdvI/AAAAAAAAHKY/Qc_s_LJ8hfg/s400/GoodBad2.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>That said, I’m a little jealous of anyone who got to see SABOTEUR with Norman Lloyd present. But fortunately the amount of choices we have to see films projected in theaters lately here in L.A. is fairly wide-ranging on any given weekend, even the one when the festival was going on. On that particular Friday night I drove out to Santa Monica to see an American Cinematheque screening of Alan Rudolph’s hard-to-see WELCOME TO L.A. and I also went to the Saturday midnight screening of TERROR IN THE AISLES (Really, why are NIGHTHAWKS and THE SILENT PARTNER in there?) but that obviously wasn’t TCM related either. And events were also happening elsewhere--a few thousand miles away in Illinois at the exact same time was the annual Ebertfest with certain <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heBKmLarkAQ\">panels</a> that looked pretty amazing. And none of this even takes into account the wide amount of non-repertory film festivals being held these days. But as far as the TCM festival up in Hollywood goes I couldn’t help but notice that at least one person I know who sees movies practically every day and is always at the New Bev didn’t attend at all to the best of my knowledge, I’m guessing mostly because of the high ticket prices. Maybe there’s a tinge of jealousy, but it just makes me think that this whole show was really for the tourists with the money to spend more than it was for the true believers down in the trenches in this town who will go to the Silent Movie to see some little known thriller from the 70s or LACMA to see the Jean Renoir series or Joe Dante's Movie Orgy at the New Beverly or to the Egyptian to see some small noir that hasn’t played theaters for fifty years. If you were at that WHISTLER double bill several weeks back or at the WELCOME TO L.A. screening you’re probably ok in my book. <br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xedy63NmI/AAAAAAAAHKo/Qv6LDPBGo5k/s1600/GoodBad4.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:173px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xedy63NmI/AAAAAAAAHKo/Qv6LDPBGo5k/s400/GoodBad4.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>But points to TCM for this festival which seemed extremely well-organized when I was there and it was exactly what it promised to be—a tribute to the love of film. Maybe what I’m also dwelling on is how some of the press coverage like a haphazardly researched <a href=\"http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/04/tcm-classic-film-festival-humphrey-bogard-treasure-sierra-of-madre.html\">post</a> on the Los Angeles Times website seemed to treat the large crowds as some sort of surprise, an anomaly, a shock that people actually wanted to see films in black & white that weren’t in 3D. Interestingly, I got word from the New Beverly that when they showed GONE WITH THE WIND beginning on the Sunday of the festival was that it packed the place just like the over-three-hour LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS did when I saw it there last December, to just name a few titles. The regular midnight shows there have been drawing good crowds, last year’s temporary announcement that LACMA would be ending their film series sparked a virtual uproar and the recent Cinematheque noir fest at the Egyptian packed the place regularly with well over 100 people being turned away on opening night. It’s not getting much coverage in the Times but something seems to have clicked with people, like there’s suddenly something in the air that has led to a desire to see films in the theater, at least here in Los Angeles. We’ve got both locations of the Cinematheque, the New Beverly, LACMA, the Silent Movie, the Nuart, the Billy Wilder Theater and others so it really is a wonderful time in this town for that. The article claims that it took these old films and made them fresh. Maybe it did, but they’re certainly not the first around here to do that, unless you weren’t paying attention. It also suggests a sort of traveling TCM festival to with titles—including recent ones, which seems to totally miss the point—screened digitally, something that doesn’t bother to take into account how that the vast majority of the festival was very deliberately not done in some scam-artist digital projection format like is the case so much these days. With a few key exceptions—and I only heard good things about the digital projections—most of the films shown by TCM were in fact on 35 mm as they should be, as well as 70m in a few cases. This is something that the people who traveled from afar, the ones who were actually paying those prices that I didn’t, care about and deserve. I’m a member of the American Cinematheque but when the Egyptian showed some titles on digital a few months back I heard a number of people out there saying “Well, I would have gone if it wasn’t digital…” These are films. We need to see them on celluloid, with the flicker of the projection there as it should be and presented in the best way possible, something which is possible if attempted otherwise what’s the point? It brings to mind New Beverly owner Quentin Tarantino’s recent comment about how he’ll “burn the place down” before allowing digital projection to be the norm there, but the specifics of this issue apparently allude the Los Angeles Times, which only seems interested in how new and shiny things like digital can be, particularly if they’re in 3D. <br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xdNM4GvVI/AAAAAAAAHKQ/C0-e0XRW0KM/s1600/GoodBad5.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:169px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xdNM4GvVI/AAAAAAAAHKQ/C0-e0XRW0KM/s400/GoodBad5.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>So the festival seems to have been a success with a return next year already announced and I’m glad for that, even if I did feel a little excluded from all the fun. Maybe I’ll be in better financial shape next year. As it was, the only time I decided to break my self-imposed rule and not spend any money on this thing was on the Sunday morning of the festival. That was the occasion of the Grauman’s Chinese screening of THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY with none other than the 94 year-old Eli Wallach in person. When I thought about it for ten seconds I realized that there was no way I was going to miss this if I could help it. And can you blame me? As far as I’m concerned for that one day, for those few hours, the Chinese was a cathedral. And a crowded one too, filled with people very excited to give Eli Wallach what turned out to be several standing ovations during his appearance. His sitdown with TCM host Robert Osbourne before the film covered various points of his career including the film we were about to see (“I didn’t know I was going to be The Ugly”), turning down the role in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY that won Sinatra the Oscar, working on THE MISFITS with Marilyn Monroe and reuniting with Clint Eastwood decades later for a cameo in MYSTIC RIVER. Ninety-four years old (“When I die, I’ll stop,” as he put it) he’s already been seen in Polanski’s THE GHOST WRITER this year and this autumn he’ll be in WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS. There’s no other way to put it—the combination of hearing Eli Wallach speak before us to be shortly followed by the legendary shriek of the Ennio Morricone theme moments later brought tears to my eyes from the beauty of all this, from being in the legendary actor’s presence and seeing this brilliant film in this wonderful place. It was really just a taste I got of this festival but in this case it turned out to be all I really needed. <br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xf714jutI/AAAAAAAAHKw/Qkn7T36qqss/s1600/GoodBad6.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:171px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xf714jutI/AAAAAAAAHKw/Qkn7T36qqss/s400/GoodBad6.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>The print screened of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY at the Chinese seemed to come from the film’s 2003 restoration which restored nineteen minutes to the running time so, not new, it did bear it’s share of scratches at points but so what. I’ve watched this version numerous times on DVD and never grow tired of it with that massive screen putting the spotlight on all those huge Techniscope close-ups with a particular reminder of how cool it can be to watch Lee Van Cleef move through the frame with that angular face of his. There’s very little I can add to everything that’s been written about this film that Quentin Tarantino has called “the best film ever made” and right now I’m not sure that he’s wrong. Even running three hours in the restored cut the film doesn’t have a single dull moment--I may think that the restored grotto scene where Tuco recruits his old friends feels slightly out of place but I'm going to complain about more Tuco? And for all the visual mastery it’s easy to forget how well the story is laid out with several of the additions—such as Angel Eyes’ considerate treatment of the confederate soldier—adding considerable depth to this tale of these three bandits making their way through the civil war in search of the gold, floating above it all but each one pausing at different times to reveal how aware they are of this madness, of so many men wasted so badly. And I found myself wondering about the backstory of these three guys who each seem to know, or at least be aware of each other. Tuco even knows that Blondie knows Angel Eyes when he points him out. It may simply be a storytelling shortcut but it also implies a rich history of this universe around them. Clint is so cool. Van Cleef is too. And it can probably never be overstated how important the feisty humanity that Eli Wallach brings to the nasty Tuco really is. In the end, maybe all I need to say that I can now die having seen and heard the “Ecstasy of Gold” sequence of Eli Wallach running around that enormous cemetery at Grauman’s Chinese.<br><br><a href=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xgVDuWi0I/AAAAAAAAHK4/wmBrBuR6GFM/s1600/Grauman%27s-Chinese-Theater-(2).jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:300px\" src=\"http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xgVDuWi0I/AAAAAAAAHK4/wmBrBuR6GFM/s400/Grauman%27s-Chinese-Theater-(2).jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Yes, the Chinese, which hasn’t been one of the hotter spots in town lately, hurt by possible mismanagement by Mann Theatres, the white elephant nature of the Hollywood & Highland complex, not to mention how most of the good bookings have gone to the nearby Arclight lately. A few months back THE BOOK OF ELI ran in the main theater for nine weeks, something I doubt was very profitable. Since I hadn’t seen it I went one lazy afternoon in the middle of that ninth week out of curiosity as well as to see if I’d be the only one there. As it turns out, I wasn’t—there were two other people there. But while watching a movie in that massive, empty palace was enjoyable, there’s no doubt about that but it does feel like there’s a valuable resource being lost in that theater these days and whatever my other feelings about all this it was wonderful to once again be part of a packed audience at that place which represents an important piece of Hollywood history and used right can be a truly magical place. <br><br><a href=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xhpegogyI/AAAAAAAAHLI/0-UV4SLaMZ0/s1600/GoodBad8.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:400px;height:171px\" src=\"http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xhpegogyI/AAAAAAAAHLI/0-UV4SLaMZ0/s400/GoodBad8.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><br>Just over an hour into THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY those heavenly voices of Ennio Morricone’s music gradually appear on the soundtrack as that fateful stagecoach makes its appearance for Blondie and Tuco to find. It plays as a form of divine intervention, sent from the Gods, just as this film with this score playing in this place plays like that to me. As long as celluloid still flickers through a projector this feeling will hopefully still be possible. I look forward to the second TCM festival, which I hopefully will get to spend more time at than the first, but more than that I look forward to the next year of seeing films at my favorite haunts around this city, the ones that are always there. At times like this when I sometimes feel like I’m drifting I need those places more and more to show me films that I love and films that I have yet to discover, never being certain when I’ll once again stumble across a hidden treasure. I’m very fortunate to have them nearby. <br><br><a href=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xgieLOlcI/AAAAAAAAHLA/_wJifu3cC7Y/s1600/GoodBadP.jpg\"><img style=\"display:block;margin:0px auto 10px;text-align:center;width:272px;height:400px\" src=\"http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_McI_KJIXOq0/S9xgieLOlcI/AAAAAAAAHLA/_wJifu3cC7Y/s400/GoodBadP.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"></a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2118574901486983093-2089240997631755136?l=mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"content" : "<span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Dubai makes me wish Ballard was still here to describe it. It is the closest we have to seeing what human life would amount to on another, less hospitable planet. A slave economy that built the most startling canyons of tall buildings, now with a sleek futuristic overhead metro system. Some episodes from my day here:</span></span><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">At the airport, the musclebound Muscovite (at least I imagined he was), waiting by the barrier. His biceps are as well defined as his face is puglike. Eventually, his blonde bombshell from Kiev arrives (again, in my mind). Another henchman mills around in the background. A few minutes later, their car screeches out of the car park. A large Chrysler that looks like a Bentley driving towards the skyscrapers. Late for a meeting with the Columbians, or D Company perhaps.</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Three Japanese women taking tea in the foyer of the hotel. Their postural elegance belongs in an Ang Lee film. Who would not be entranced? Are they airline crew or the wives/travelling geishas of visiting diplomats?</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The crowds gathering in front of the double height aquarium at Dubai Mall. A 2 metre shark floats benignly by. Sting rays flap like stunned birds in slo mo. Inside the tank, visitors can be seen, looking up from inside a transparent tunnel.</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Staring up at the Burj Khalifa. So tall, yet so much smaller than a mountain. I wonder: did anyone die building it? Close by, 40 story buildings that stand incomplete, the cranes frozen in time, waiting for money to come through from Abu Dhabi. No one buys property in Dubai anymore.</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">An anoxeric British woman shops for food at Organics. She moves about on crutches. She wills herself to buy a flapjack but then doesn't eat it.</span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">Ali, the Yemeni taxi driver. He complains that the North get everything: the capital city, the higher wages, the favours. That's why he had to leave. He works up to 90 hours a week. Ali's sees his wife and three kids once a year. </span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\"><br></span></span></div><div><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"><span style=\"font-size:medium\">The Philippino working girls, arriving in the bar for the evening's labours..</span></span></div><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/8686769-5338125776508095344?l=naijablog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "The clever Australian FttH architecture",
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"content" : "<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">As a\nproponent of evaluating FttH topologies (shared and point-to-point) on their\npath dependencies and option values I have been looking forward to see how the\nAustralians would make their choices.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">One of the\nfactors that make their case interesting is the utility infrastructure\napproach. The Australian Government has decided that a country wide open FttH\ninfrastructure is required and will be deployed.<span> </span>Deploying FttH in vast countries like the USA\nand Australia poses its own challenges compared with dense urban countries like\nthe Netherlands.<span> </span>Often citied issues are\nthe lower densities of housing so a shared fiber architecture must be\nunavoidable, and<span> </span>very low density rural\nareas which are deemed unaffordable.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The\nrecently published architecture of the Australian FttH network show an\nintelligent and interesting approach (courtesy Peter Ferris for explaining some\ndetails) . The first observation is that even in a vast country like Australia\npeople live closely huddled on a small part of the land. </span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/Australia%20density-1052.html\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/Australia%20density-thumb-450x193-1052.gif\" width=\"450\" height=\"193\" alt=\"Australia density.GIF\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 20px 20px 0\"></a></span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p>67 % Of the\npopulation lives in the top 50 urban areas, if you include the major rural areas\nyou can reach 85 % of the addresses in 1,5 % of the land. So it makes sense to\nprovide 93 % of the addresses with FttH and the remaining with radio (5%) and\nsatellite (2%).</p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">For the 93% which will get FttH they have chosen for a surprising combination of options in\ntheir architecture. The next-best-thing to full point-to-point in my opinion,\nfull with potential to support different kinds of technologies and future upgrades\nif and when needed. <span> </span></span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Let me\nfocus on the interesting choices: overprovisioning in a point-to-point topology\nin the deepest part of the last mile, underprovisioning in the concentrated\nparts of the outside plant.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The basic\nbuilding block of their architecture is a group of up to 200 addresses. A fiber\nlocal loop is deployed with 3 (!) fibers per address. In an aerial deployment\n12 local drop fibre connectors (preterminated drop line, no splice needed) are\nmade available on the poles per 4 addresses and used when and how required. The\nsame approach is used for underground cabling. This setup will allow for layer\n1 unbundling future expansion, support of point-to-point Ethernet to businesses, multiple ISP's to same address, support for 3G/wifi mobile broadband and so\non.</span></p><p>All fibers\nfor these 200 addresses concentrate in a Fiber Distribution Hub (FDH), a\ncabinet in the street or cleverly combined with other uses like a seat in the\nparc. In the FDH the connections are made to either a splitter (for PON) or a\nsingle fiber (point-to-point) in ducts leading toward higher layers of the\nnetwork. <span> </span>It is even foreseen to change\nthe splitters for filters if WDM becomes financially viable.</p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Up to 16\nFDH's are concentrated into a Fiber Serving Area Module (FSAM, max 3200 addresses).\n<span> </span>The capacity in the concentration\ncabling initially deployed is enough to support PON as a technology to each\nhome, plus some extra for businesses and other uses.<span> </span>Some sort of redundancy is built in by an interesting\n\"dual-loop\" structure by geographical separate paths in the connection of FDH's\nto FSAM location. If needed the capacity to one or more FDH's can be increased\nby deploying more cables in that path.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/fdh-1055.html\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/fdh-thumb-500x367-1055.gif\" width=\"500\" height=\"367\" alt=\"fdh.GIF\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 20px 20px 0\"></a></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"> </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">The FSAM is\na planning construct initially but it allows also for future expansion. The\nnumber of addresses is ideally suited to be served by a prefab active equipment\ncabinet (know as Controlled Environment Vaults, or APOP's in the Netherlands),\nif needed. </span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/CEV-1058.html\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/CEV-thumb-450x378-1058.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"378\" alt=\"CEV.jpg\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 20px 20px 0\"></a></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><i>(Controlled Environment Vault</i></span><span lang=\"EN-US\"><i>)</i></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\">These CEV's bear a lot of resemblance to the prefab APOP's Reggefiber\ndeploys outside city centres. They can be truckrolled to a given location,\nplaced within a day.</span></p><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/AAPOP-1064.html\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/AAPOP-thumb-300x230-1064.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"230\" alt=\"AAPOP.jpg\" style=\"float:left;margin:0 20px 20px 0\"></a><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><i>(Reggefiber prefab APOP)</i></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\"><br></span></p><p><span lang=\"EN-US\">At the\nstart FSAM's are just a passive concentration point for cabling to the Fibre Acces Node (FAN). Again some redundancy is\nintroduced by geographical different routes for the cabling to the FAN exchange / central office, maximum size 76,800\nlocations/adresses.</span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">It makes a\nlot of sense for the geography with lots of suburbanity. The key is having\nspace in the street for these FDH cabinets. Just install a lot of point-to-point\nfiber in the part where a lot of labor is required (you don't want to redo that\never) and allow for all kinds of upgrades , options for expansion, unbundling\nlocations, active equipment deeper into the network, as you see fit in the\nfuture. </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">Smart guys,\ndown under.</span></p>"
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"content" : "<div><p>If you ask me, there have been fewer travesties to the majesty of the blues than the lyrics penned by Guru. One thing anyone should insist on is grammar. Guru gets a fifty fifty. Listening to Jazzmatazz was like living on the border of sun and shadow on Mercury. It's never as comfortable as it should be. </p><p>On the one hand, when Guru put the gangsta in GangStarr, it was righteously good rap. 'Sights in the City' has to be his best cut ever, and it bordered on great. No anthology of Acid Jazz would be complete without Guru. But then when he approached jazz standards, it puts a hole so deep in your heart that it's hard to forgive. Somewhere in that hole is the memory of what he has done, and I have practiced the dissociation long enough to have forgotten the damage done. So I'm cool and I don't want to remember. Still, a cut like 'Loungin' is just methodically wrong. </p><p>According to the people I used to hang with and do the hiphop hermeneutic thang, all props went to DJ Premier for arranging the coolest cuts ever, and then some more for putting up with Guru's lyrics and diction. The thing was, as an innovator, there was nowhere else to go. Nobody knows the names of the rappers of Buckshot LeFonque and so nobody could approach what Guru was up to, nobody except Lucien and MC Solaar and that angle of the Native Tongues. Asking for another Guru was like asking for a second 'A Different World'. (I was going to say Cosby Show, but that would be doing Guru too much of a favor). The connoisseurs would demand it, but the broader market (according to the producers) wouldn't support it.</p><p>My remedy was going towards French Rap, something of a guilty pleasure, because I knew some of it was gangsta. Nevertheless, Lucien was all that, bi-lingually. </p><p>You could say that Acid Jazz survived. You had the Brand New Heavies and others. Certainly The Roots came up behind Guru, vulgar as they were. The best of that lot were the one hit wonders who worked as Metrics with Steve Coleman. A lot of R&B got hiphop/jazzified starting with (ick) Erika Badu and on down the line to John Legend (finally) and the lost, forgotten and nevertheless magnificent and as far as I'm concerned the greatest talent of them all Frank McComb. And we should not forget India Arie or D'Angelo. But on the pure hiphop side, it kinda all began and kinda all ended in the English language with Guru. He ran it like a rapper should, even he never consummated his own skills up to par with what he would have had to if he was more mainstream. </p><p>What saved him of course was the music, and for that he is forgiven, and will also not be forgotten. Guru was the closest that mainstream rap music got to permanently edifying itself for the better and properly taking on the mantle and responsibility of jazz. That was a lot to swallow and it has never really been done. But the elements are all there. </p></div>"
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"title" : "Baloji revives the cha cha",
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"content" : "<p><iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id%3D11233928%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26show_title%3D1%26show_byline%3D1%26show_portrait%3D0%26color%3D%26fullscreen%3D1&width=400&height=300\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\"></iframe></p>\n<p>Another fine, fine video from <a title=\"Baloji's website\" href=\"http://www.baloji.com\">Baloji</a>: <em>Le Jour d’Après/Siku ya Baadaye (Indépendance Cha-Cha)</em>, from his album, <em>Kinshasa Succursale</em>. In an <a title=\"A Polaroid Story\" href=\"http://apolaroidstory.wordpress.com/category/polaroids/baloji/\">interview with Ouni</a>, Baloji (a <em>Mikiliste</em>/’Afropean’ who has Congolese origins but lives in Belgium) described how the album was recorded in just six days here in Kinshasa:</p>\n<blockquote><p>There are approximately 35 musicians involved, a band, a fanfare… It was a very hectic process. I wanted to be spontaneous, old fashion way, no professional studio tools, nothing clean, basically a sound with a rawness to it and a real feeling. Also, I wanted to emphasize the sound of the guitar. Guitar is not often or rarely associated with ‘urban’ music and more used in ‘white’ music. But in Africa, for example for the TINARIWEN (guitar poets and soul rebels residing from the Sahara deserts) , the guitar is a standard in their music. Basically it’s just the way you play it that makes the ultimate difference.</p></blockquote>\n<p>(For those who prefer interviews you can listen to, Cedric Kalonji has an <a href=\"http://www.cedrickalonji.net/interview-avec-baloji/\">audio clip</a> just for you.)</p>\n<p>A word about the original <em><a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAJgWH7GCqo\">Indépendence Cha Cha</a></em>. While Congolese delegates including Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu negotiated the terms of independence with Belgian officials and drafted a provisional constitution, Joseph Kabasele and African Jazz recorded three spontaneous, joyous musical salutes to the process: <em>Indépendance Cha Cha</em>, <em>Table Ronde</em> and <em>Vive Lumumba Patrice</em>. The first of these was a huge hit at home and abroad, and became the popular anthem for independence struggles across the continent:</p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Indépendance cha cha tozui e<br>\nOh! Kimpuanza cha cha tubakidi<br>\nOh! Table Ronde cha cha ba gagné o<br>\nOh! Dipanda cha cha tozui e</em></p>\n<p>(Independence cha cha, we’ve won it<br>\nOh! Independence cha cha, we’ve achieved it<br>\nOh! The round table cha cha, we’ve pulled it off<br>\nOh! Independence cha cha, we’ve won it)<br>\n[the word for independence is given in French, Lingala and Kikongo]</p></blockquote>\n<p>It was almost as if the band had helped seal the deal. A new recruit to the band, Charles Hénault, told Gary Stewart about their overwhelming reception on return to Kinshasa from a European tour:</p>\n<blockquote><p>cars were waiting for us. And we rode around all of [Leopoldville], oh la la!, the modern city and the old city. People were screaming, they threw flowers at us. It was crazy. It was crazy. It was almost like a president’s motorcade. It was incredible. And the horns, and the noise. The noise as though there were some big wedding going on.</p></blockquote>\n<p>For his part, Kabasele was proud to tell a Congolese newspaper, “I assure you that, to some degree, we confirmed for the other nations that the Congo was old enough to enjoy its independence”. (Both quotes are from Gary Stewart’s highly recommended book, <em><a href=\"http://www.afropop.org/explore/book_review/ID/1/\">Rumba on the River</a></em>.)</p>\n<p>(See the earlier post with <a href=\"http://www.solokinshasa.com/?p=165\">another Baloji video</a> shot in Kinshasa.)</p>\n<div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?a=bxOJZy1AVJg:l-jrsEXX9Mw:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?a=bxOJZy1AVJg:l-jrsEXX9Mw:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/SoloKinshasa?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SoloKinshasa/~4/bxOJZy1AVJg\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "In To Africa",
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"content" : "<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/the-next-empire/8018\">A Glimpse of the World</a> <br>All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built, ports deepened, <a href=\"http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-in-the-press/march-2010/resource-wealth-need-no-longer-be-a-curse/\">commercial contracts signed</a> -- all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose <a href=\"http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=54042225\">appetite for commodities</a> seems <a href=\"http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/04/21/the-vital-role-of-chinas-pork-prices/\">insatiable</a>. Do China's grand designs promise the transformation, at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation? <a href=\"http://www.howardwfrench.com/\">The author</a> travels deep into the heart of Africa, searching for answers. <br> <a href=\"http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2838c558-4e2f-11df-b48d-00144feab49a.html\">World Bank unit to finance Chinese Africa venture</a><br>\nThe World Bank's private sector arm has signed its first deal to finance Chinese investment in Africa, a move it hopes will help to discourage violations of human rights and environmental standards.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/world/asia/24navy.html?pagewanted=all\">China Expands Naval Power to Waters U.S. Dominates</a><br>\nChina wants warships to escort vessels crucial to the country's economy, from the Pacific to the Middle East.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/04/the-onion-shows-the-path-to-quality-journalism/39227/\">Report: China To Overtake U.S. As World's Biggest Asshole By 2020</a><br>\nAccording to a new report released Monday by a panel of top economists and social scientists, the People's Republic of China will overtake the United States as the world's dominant asshole by the year 2020.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/04/installment-2-of-china-today-conversations/39078/\">China Has all Their Eggs in Our Basket</a><br>\nThe main theme of this second conversation is which country has the leverage over the other, via China's enormous loans to and investments in the United States. Ma and I see this more or less the same way -- but in quite a different way from what you'd think based on mainstream coverage of the topic or, especially, US talk shows or political speeches.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/04/us-trade-wham-o-moves-back-to-america.html\">Wham-O Moves to America</a><br>\nWham-O moving its production of Frisbees, hula hoops and pool noodles from China to the U.S. is reverse colonialism. Does that mean, as Americans, we're going to have to put our own antifreeze in our toothpaste?<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/civil-liberties-learning-from-china.html\">Civil Liberties: Learning from China</a><br>\nHere's the point of comparison between the impending Arizona situation and China: it's <a href=\"http://i.imgur.com/zr3bL.jpg\">no fun</a> knowing -- as citizen and foreigner alike know in China, and as Hispanic-looking people in Arizona soon will -- that you can be asked to show proof of your legality at an official's whim. But if it's sobering to think that the closest analogy to a new U.S. legal situation is daily life in Communist China, we should also look on the bright side. With some notable and serious exceptions, I typically did not see Chinese police asking for papers on a whim. Usually something had to happen first. Maybe soon the Chinese State Security apparatus can travel to Arizona and give lectures to local police and sheriffs. They can explain how to avoid going crazy with a new power that so invites abuse. \"Civil Liberties: Learning from China\" can be the name of the course.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://delicious.com/ethanz/China+Africa\">Ethan Zuckerman's China and Africa Bookmarks</a><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?a=9ECzYbEwE0Q:I57F8lN216Q:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Metafilter?i=9ECzYbEwE0Q:I57F8lN216Q:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div>"
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"title" : "Return of \"Homophily, Contagion, Confounding: Pick Any Three\", or, The Adventures of Irene and Joey Along the Back-Door Paths",
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"content" : "<blockquote><em>Attention conservation notice</em>: 2700 words on a new paper\n on causal inference in social networks, and why it is hard. Instills an\n attitude of nihilistic skepticism and despair over a technical enterprise you\n never knew existed, much less cared about, which a few feeble attempts at\n jokes and a half-hearted constructive suggestion at the end fail to relieve.\n If any of this matters to you, you can always check back later and see if it\n survived peer review.</blockquote>\n\n<p>Well, we decided for a more sedate title for the actual paper, as opposed to the <a href=\"http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/633.html\">talk</a>:\n<dl>\n<dt>CRS and <a href=\"http://www.acthomas.ca/comment/\">Andrew C. Thomas</a>,\n\"Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social\nNetwork Studies\", <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4704\">arxiv:1004.4704</a>,\nsubmitted to <cite><a href=\"http://smr.sagepub.com/\">Sociological Methods and\nResearch</a></cite></dt>\n<dd><em>Abstract:</em> We consider processes on social networks that can\npotentially involve three phenomena: homophily, or the formation of social ties\ndue to matching individual traits; social contagion, also known as social\ninfluence; and the causal effect of an individual's covariates on their\nbehavior or other measurable responses. We show that, generically, all of these\nare confounded with each other. Distinguishing them from one another requires\nstrong assumptions on the parametrization of the social process or on the\nadequacy of the covariates used (or both). In particular we demonstrate, with\nsimple examples, that asymmetries in regression coefficients cannot identify\ncausal effects, and that very simple models of imitation (a form of social\ncontagion) can produce substantial correlations between an individual's\nenduring traits and their choices, even when there is no intrinsic affinity\nbetween them. We also suggest some possible constructive responses to these\nresults.</dd>\n<dd><a href=\"http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/homophily-confounding/\">R code for our simulations</a></dd>\n</dl>\n\n<p>The basic problem here is as follows. (I am afraid this will spoil some of\nthe jokes in the paper.) Consider the venerable parental question: \"If your\nfriend Joey jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?\" The fact of the matter\nis that the answer is \"yes\"; but why does Joey's jumping off a bridge mean that\nJoey's friend Irene is more likely to jump off one too?\n<ol>\n<li> <em>Influence or social contagion</em>: Because they are friends, Joey's\nexample inspires Irene to jump. Or, more subtly: seeing Joey jump\nre-calibrate's Irene's tolerance for risky behavior, which makes jumping seem\nlike a better idea.\n<li> <em>Biological contagion</em>: Joey is infected with a parasite which\nsuppresses the fear of heights and/or falling, and, because they are friends,\nJoey passes it on to Irene.\n<li> <em>Manifest homophily</em>: Joey and Irene are friends <em>because</em>\nthey both like to jump off bridges (hopefully with bungee cords attached).\n<li> <em>Latent homophily</em>: Joey and Irene are friends because they are\nboth hopeless adrenaline junkies, and met through a roller-coaster club; their\ncommon addiction leads both of them to take up bridge-jumping.\n<li> <em>External causation</em>: <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_(1940)\">Sometimes</a>, jumping off a bridge is the only sane thing to do:\n<center><a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TacomaNarrowsBridgeCollapse_in_color.jpg\"><img width=\"200\" src=\"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/TacomaNarrowsBridgeCollapse_in_color.jpg\"></a></center>\n</li></li></li></li></li></ol>\n\n<p>For Irene's parents, there is a big difference between (1) and (2) and the\nother explanations. The former suggest that it would be a good idea to keep\nIrene away from Joey, or at least to keep Joey from jumping off the bridge;\nwith the others, however, that's irrelevant. In the case of (3) and (4), in\nfact, knowing that Irene is friends with Joey is just a clue as to what Irene\nis really like; the damage was already done, and they can hang out together as\nmuch as they want. The difference between these accounts is one of causal\nmechanisms. (Of course there can be mixed cases.)\n\n<p>What the statistician or social scientist sees is that bridge-jumping is\ncorrelated across the social network. In this it resembles many, many, many\nbehaviors and conditions, such as prescribing new antibiotics (one of the\nclassic examples), adopting other new products, adopting political ideologies,\n<a href=\"http://research.yahoo.com/pub/2210\">attaching tags to pictures on\nflickr</a>, <a href=\"http://icanhascheezburger.com/\">attaching mis-spelled\njokes to pictures of cats</a>, smoking, drinking, using other\ndrugs, <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide\">suicide</a>, <a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/0226741001\">literary\ntastes</a>, coming down with infectious\ndiseases, <a href=\"http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/357/4/370\">becoming\nobese</a>, and <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.a2533\">having bad acne or\nbeing tall for your age</a>. For almost all of these conditions or behaviors,\nour data is purely observational, meaning we cannot, for one reason or another,\njust push Joey off the bridge and see how Irene reacts. Can we nonetheless tell\nwhether bridge-jumping spreads by (some form) of contagion, or rather is due to\nhomophily, or, if it is both, say how much each mechanism contributes?\n\n<p>A lot of people have thought so, and have tried to come at it in the usual\nway, by\ndoing <a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/regression.html\">regression</a>.\nMost readers can probably guess what I think about that, so I will just say:\ndon't you wish. More sophisticated ideas,\nlike <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/math.ST/0609201\">propensity score\nmatching</a>, have <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0908800106\">also\nbeen tried</a>, but people have pretty much assumed that it <em>was</em>\npossible to do this sort of decomposition. What Andrew and I showed is that in\nfact it isn't, unless you are willing to make <em>very</em> strong, and\ngenerally untestable, assumptions.\n\n<p>This becomes clear as soon as you draw the\nrelevant <a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/graphical-models.html\">graphical\nmodel</a>, which goes like so:\n\n<center><a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/latent-homophily.pdf\"><img width=\"300\" src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/latent-homophily.jpg\"></a></center>\n\nHere <i>i</i> stands for Irene and <i>j</i> for\nJoey. <i>Y</i>(<i>i</i>,<i>t</i>) is 1 if Irene jumps off the bridge on\nday <i>t</i> and 0 otherwise; likewise <i>Y</i>(<i>j</i>,<i>t</i>-1) is whether\nJoey jumped off the bridge yesterday. We want to know whether the latter\nvariable influences the former. <i>A</i>(<i>i</i>,<i>j</i>) is how we\nrepresent the social network --- it's 1 if Irene regards Joey as a friend, 0\notherwise. Lurking in the background are the various traits which might affect\nwhether or not Irene and Joey are friends, and whether or not they like to jump\noff bridges, collectively <i>X</i>. Suppose that, all else equal, being more\nsimilar makes it more likely that people become friends.\n\n<p>Now it's easy to see where the trouble lies. If we learn that Joey jumped\noff a bridge yesterday, that tells us something about what kind of person Joey\nis, <i>X</i>(<i>j</i>). If Joey and Irene are friends, <em>that</em> tells us\nsomething about what kind of person Irene is, <i>X</i>(<i>i</i>), and so about\nwhether Irene will jump off a bridge today. And this is so <em>whether or\nnot</em> there is any direct influence of Joey's behavior on Irene's, whether\nor not there is contagion. The chain of inferences — from Joey's\nbehavior to Joey's latent traits, and then over the social link to Irene's\ntraits and thus to Irene's behavior — constitutes what\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/621.html\">Judea Pearl</a> strikingly called a\n\"back-door path\" connecting the variables at either end. When such paths\nexist, as here,\n<i>Y</i>(<i>i</i>,<i>t</i>) will be at least somewhat\npredictable from\n<i>Y</i>(<i>j</i>,<i>t</i>-1), and sufficiently clever regressions will detect\nthis, but they <em>cannot</em> distinguish how much of the predictability is\ndue to the back door path and how much to direct influence. If this sounds\nhand-wavy to you, and you suspect that with some fancy adjustments you can duck\nand weave through it, read the paper.\n\n<p>To switch examples to something a little more serious than jumping off\nbridges, let's take it as a given that (as \n<a href=\"http://christakis.med.harvard.edu/\">Christakis</a>\nand <a href=\"http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/\">Fowler</a> <a href=\"http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/357/4/370\">famously\nreported</a>), if Joey became obese last year, the odds of Irene becoming obese\nthis year go up substantially. They interpreted this as a form of social\ncontagion, and one can imagine various influences through which it might work\n(changing Irene's perception of what normal weight is, changing Irene's\nperception of what normal food consumption is, changes in happiness leading to\nchanges in comfort food and/or comfort alcohol consumption, etc.). Now suppose\nthat there is some factor <i>X</i> which affects both whether Joey and Irene\nbecome friends, and whether and when they become obese. For example:\n<ul>\n<li> becoming friends because they both do extreme sports (like jumping off\nbridges...) vs. becoming friends because they both really like watching the\ngame on weekends and going through a few six-packs vs. becoming friends because\nthey are both confrontational-spoken-word performance artists;\n<li> friendships tend to be within ethnic groups, which differ in their\nculturally-transmitted foodways, attitudes towards voluntary exercise, and\noccupational opportunities;\n<li> (for those more fond of genetic explanations than I am): friendships tend\nto be within ethnic groups, so friends tend to be more genetically similar than\nrandom pairs of individuals, and genetic variants that predispose to obesity\n(in the environment of Framingham, Mass.) are more common in some groups than\nin others.\n</li></li></li></ul>\nSo long as we cannot measure <i>X</i>, the back-door path linking Joey and\nIrene remains open, and our inferences about contagion are confounded. It\nwould be enough to measure the aspect of <i>X</i> which influences link\nformation, or the aspect which influences obesity; but without that, there will\nalways be many ways of combining homophily and contagion to produce any given\npattern of association between Joey's obesity status last year and Irene's this\nyear. And it's not matter of not being able to decide among some causal\nalternatives due to limited data; the different causal alternatives all produce\nthe same observable outcomes.\n(<a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/manski-on-identification/\">More on this\nnotion of \"identification\".</a>)\n\n<p>Christakis and Fowler made an interesting suggestion in their obesity paper,\nhowever, which was actually one of the most challenging things for us to deal\nwith. They noticed that friendships are sometimes not reciprocated, that Irene\nthinks of Joey as a friend, but Joey doesn't think of Irene that way —\nor, more cautiously, Irene <em>reports</em> Joey as a friend, but Joey doesn't\nname Irene. For these asymmetric pairs in their data, Christakis and Fowler\nnote, it's easier to predict the person who named a friend from the behavior of\nthe nominee than vice versa. This is certainly <em>compatible</em> with\ncontagion, in the form of being influenced by those you regard as your friends,\nbut is there any other way to explain it?\n\n<p>As it happens, yes. One need only suppose that being a certain kind of\nperson — having certain values of the latent trait <i>X</i> — make\nyou more likely to be (or be named as) a friend. Suppose that there is just a\none-dimensional trait, like your location on the left-right political axis, or\nperhaps some scale of tastes. (Perhaps Irene and Joey are neo-conservative\nintellectuals, and the trait in question is just how violent they like their\n<a href=\"http://www.nypress.com/article-8822-black-metal-nation-what-do-norwegian-dirtheads-and-richard-perle-have-in-common.html\">Norwegian\nblack metal music</a>.) Having similar values of the trait makes you more\nlikely to be friends (that's homophily), but there is always an extra tendency\nto be friends with those who are closer to the median of the distribution, or\nat least to <em>say</em> those are who your friends are. (Wherever\nneo-conservatives really are on the black metal spectrum, they tend to say, on\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/000165.html\">Straussian grounds</a>, that\ntheir friends are those who prefer only the median amount of church-burning\nwith their music.) If Irene thinks of Joey as a friend, but Joey does not,\nthis is a sign that Irene has a more extreme value of the trait than Joey does,\nwhich changes how much their behavior predicts each other. Putting together a\nvery basic model of this sort shows that it robustly generates the kind of\nasymmetry Christakis and Fowler found, <em>even when</em> there is really no\ncontagion.\n\n<p>To be short about it, unless you actually know, and appropriately control\nfor, the things which really lead people to form connections, you really have\nno way of distinguishing between contagion and homophily.\n\n<p>All of this can be turned around, however. Suppose that you want to know\nwhether, or how strongly, some trait of people influences their choices.\nFollowing a long tradition\nwith <a href=\"http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a2\">many\nillustrious exponents</a>, for instance, people are very convinced that social\nclass influences political choices, and there is indeed a predictive\nrelationship here, though many people are\n<a href=\"http://redbluerichpoor.com/\">totally wrong</a> about what that\nrelationship is. The natural supposition is that this predictive relationship\nreflects causation. But suppose that there <em>is</em> contagion, that you can\ncatch ideology or even just choices from your friends. Social class is\ndefinitely a homophilous trait; this means that an opinion or attitude or\nchoice can become entrenched among one social class, and not\nanother, <em>simply</em> through diffusion, even if there is no intrinsic\nconnection between them. And there's nothing special about class here; it\ncould be any trait or combination of traits which leads to homophily.\n\n<p>Here, for example, is a simple simulation done using\nAndrew's <a href=\"http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ElectroGraph/index.html\">ElectroGraph</a>\npackage. \n<center>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/diffusion-initial-act.pdf\"><img height=\"400\" src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/diffusion-initial-act.jpg\"></a>\n</center>\nTo explain: Each individual has a social type or trait, which takes one of two\nvalues and stays fixed — think of this as social class, if you like.\nPeople are more likely to form links with those of the same type, so when we\nplot the graph in a way which brings linked nodes closer to each other, we get\na nice separation into two sub-communities, with all the upper-class\nindividuals in the one on top and all the lower-class individuals in the one\nbelow. Also, each individual makes a "choice" which can change over time,\nwhich again is binary, here "red" or "blue". Initially, choices are completely\nindependent of traits, so there's just as much red among the high-class\nindividuals as among the low.\n\n<p>Now let the choices evolve according to the simplest possible rule: at each\npoint in time, a random individual picks one of their neighbors, again at\nrandom, and copies their opinion. After a few hundred such updates, the lower\nclass has turned red, and the upper class has turned blue:\n<center>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/diffusion-midway-act.pdf\"><img height=\"400\" src=\"http://bactra.org/sloth/diffusion-midway-act.jpg\"></a>\n</center>\nAnd this isn't just a fluke; the pattern of color separation repeats quite\nreliably, though which color goes with which class is random. If you wanted to\nbe more quantitative about it, you could, say, run a logistic regression, and\ndiscovery that in the homophilous network, statistically-significant prediction\nof choice from trait is possible, but not in an otherwise-matched network\nwithout homophily; you can see those results in the paper. A bit more\nabstractly, when I\nlearned <a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/cellular-automata.html\">cellular\nautomata</a> from <a href=\"http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/cook.html\">David\nGriffeath</a>, one of the topics was something called the \"voter model\", which\nis just the rule I gave above for copying choices. On a regular\ntwo-dimensional grid, the voter model\n<a href=\"http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/archive/recipe72.html\">self-organizes from\nrandom noise</a>\ninto <a href=\"http://psoup.math.wisc.edu/archive/recipe7.html\">blobs of\nhomogeneous color</a>\nwith <a href=\"http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.aop/1176992521\">smooth\nboundaries</a>; this is just the corresponding behavior on a graph. As I have said\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/neutral-cultural-networks.html\">several</a> <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/404.html\">times</a> <a href=\"http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.4911\">before</a>,\nI think this phenomenon — correlating traits and choices by homophily\nplus contagion — seriously complicates a lot of what people want to do in\nthe social sciences and even the humanities, but since I <em>have</em> gone on\nabout that already, I won't re-rant today.\n\n<p>In their own way, each of the two models in our paper is sheer elegance in\nits simplicity, and I have been known\nto <a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/517.html\">question the relevance of such\nmodels for actual social science</a>. I don't think I'm guilty of violating my\nown strictures, however, because I'm not saying that the processes of, say,\nspreading political opinions really follows a voter model. (The reality\nis <a href=\"http://www.powells.com/partner/27627/biblio/9780521542234\">much\nmore complicated</a>.) The models make vivid what was already proved, and show\nthat the conditions needed to produce the phenomena are not actually very\nextreme.\n\n<p>My motto as a writer might as well be \"the urge to destroy is also a\ncreative urge\", but in this paper we do hold out <em>some</em> hope, which is\nthat even if the causal effects of contagion and/or homophily cannot be\nidentified, they might be bounded, following the approach pioneered by\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/reviews/manski-on-identification/\">Manski</a> for\nother unidentifiable quantities. Even if observable associations would never\nlet us say exactly how strong contagion is, for instance, they might let us say\nthat it has to lie inside some range, and if that range excludes zero, we know\nthat contagion must be at work. (Or, if the association is <em>stronger</em>\nthan contagion can produce, something else must be at work.) I suspect (with\nno proof) that one way to get useful bounds would be to use the pattern of ties\nin the network to divide it into sub-networks or, as we say in the\ntrade, <a href=\"http://bactra.org/notebooks/community-discovery.html\">communities</a>,\nand use the estimated communities as proxies for the homophilous trait. That\nis, if people tend to become friends because they are similar to each other,\nthen the social network will tend to become a set of clumps of similar people,\nas in the figures above. So rather than just looking at the tie between Joey\nand Irene, we look at who else they are friends with, and who their friends are\nfriends with, and so on, until we figure out how the network is divided into\ncommunities and that (say) Irene and Joey are in the same community, and\ntherefore likely have the similar values of <i>X</i>, whatever it is.\nAdjusting for community might then <em>approach</em> actually adjusting\nfor <i>X</i>, though it couldn't be quite the same. Right now, though, this\nidea is just a conjecture we're pursuing.\n\n<p><em>Manual trackback</em>: <a href=\"http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/04/contagion_and_homophily.html\">The Monkey Cage</a>;\n<a href=\"http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/04/30/shalizi-on-the-confounding-of-contagion-and-homophily-in-social-network-studies/\">Citation Needed</a>;\n<a href=\"http://healthyalgorithms.wordpress.com/2010/05/11/network-theory-in-health-metrics/\">Healthy Algorithms</a>;\n<a href=\"http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2010/05/links-and-notes.html\">Siris</a>;\n<a href=\"http://sarcozona.org/2010/05/02/what-ive-noticed-53/\">Gravity's Rainbow</a>\n\n<p><span>\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_networks.html\">Networks</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_enigmas_of_chance.html\">Enigmas of Chance</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_complexity.html\">Complexity</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_social_science.html\">Commit a Social Science</a>;\n<a href=\"http://bactra.org/weblog/cat_selfcentered.html\">Self-Centered</a>\n</span></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p></p>"
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"title" : "Wake The President",
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"content" : "<p><em>By Simon Johnson, co-author </em><a href=\"http://13Bankers.com\"><em>13 Bankers</em></a></p>\n<p>Most days we can coast along, confident that tomorrow will be much like yesterday. On a very few days we need to look hard at the news headlines, click through to read the whole story, and then completely change a large chunk of how we thought the world worked. Today is such a day.</p>\n<p>Everything you knew or thought you believed about the European economy – and the eurozone, which lies at its heart – was just ripped up by financial markets and thrown out of the proverbial window.</p>\n<p>While you slept, there was a fundamental repricing of risk in financial markets around Europe – we’ll see shortly about the rest of the world. You may see this called a “panic” and the term conveys the emotions involved, but do not be misled – this is not a flash in a pan; financial markets have taken a long hard view at the fiscal and banking realities in Europe. They have also looked long and hard into the eyes – and, they think, the souls – of politicians and policymakers, including in Washington this weekend.</p>\n<p>The conclusion: large parts of Europe are no longer “investment grade” – they are more like “emerging markets”, meaning higher yield, more risky, and in the descriptive if overly evocative term: “junk”.<span></span></p>\n<p>This is not now about Greece (with 2 year yields reported around 20 percent today) or Portugal (up 7 basis points) or even Spain (2 year yields up 27 basis points; wake up please) or even Italy (up 6 basis points). This is no longer about an IMF package for Greece or even ring fencing other weaker eurozone economies.</p>\n<p>This is about the fundamental structure of the eurozone, about the ability and willingness of the international community to restructure government debt in an orderly manner, about the need for currency depreciation within (or across) the eurozone. It is presumably also about shared fiscal authority within the eurozone – i.e., who will support whom and on what basis?</p>\n<p>It is also, crucially, about stabilizing the macroeconomic situation without resorting to more unconditional bailouts. Bankers are pounding tables all across Europe, demanding that governments buy out their position – or bring in the IMF to do the same. We again find ourselves approaching the point when the financial sector will scream: rescue us all or face global economic collapse.</p>\n<p>The White House did not see this coming – and the Treasury’s attention was elsewhere. The idea that we can leave this to the Europeans to sort out is an idea of yesterday. Today is very different and much more scary.</p>\n<p>President Obama is wide awake and working hard. Someone please tell him what is really going on.</p>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/baselinescenario.wordpress.com/7335/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=baselinescenario.com&blog=4979860&post=7335&subd=baselinescenario&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"title" : "The mystery of Naomi Campbell and the blood diamond | Hadley Freeman",
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"content" : "<div><img alt=\"\" src=\"http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/61141?ns=guardian&pageName=The+mystery+of+Naomi+Campbell+and+the+blood+diamond+%7C+Hadley+Freeman%3AArticle%3A1391556&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=Celebrity%2CNelson+Mandela+%28News%29%2CCharles+Taylor%2CABC+%28US+media%29&c6=Hadley+Freeman&c7=10-Apr-28&c8=1391556&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"></div><p>You may not have heard this story. Allow me to lower your brow. And then mop it</p><p>Newspaper columns are, apparently, supposed to be agenda-setting. They're supposed to made of the silken fabric of the zeitgeist, then studded with the sequins of aperçus and interwoven with the silver thread of wit, like a cheap sarong from Monsoon that has been<strong> </strong>left floating on the sales rack. And so, with just eight days to go before the general election, it would make sense to talk politics. Will Clegg ally himself with Cameron? Will Mandelson ally himself with the Queen and become the next ruler of this country?</p><p>But I don't want to talk about any of those things. I want to talk about the mystery of Naomi Campbell and the blood diamond.</p><p>Occasionally, a story comes along that is just so stuffed with glories it is hard to believe it's not from the pen of Chris Morris. Naomi Campbell and the blood diamond is one such story. Perhaps you have heard a whisper of this tale from a downmarket rag. Because you are a Guardian reader and your brow is raised high, it is likely you have not. Allow me to lower your brow. And then mop it.</p><p>Our tale begins one evening in 1997 in the home of Nelson Mandela, a man whose saintliness is never to be questioned. His unwavering fondness for Slugger Campbell is, therefore, one of those things that most of us are just too mortal to understand.</p><p>Campbell was spending the night at Mandela's house, as was Mia Farrow. I reiterate, it is not for humble mortals to query Mandela's social circle. The main thing is, something may have happened that night. Whether it did or not may not ever be fully known. But if it did, the UN-backed special court in The Hague would quite like to know.</p><p>Our story now fast-forwards almost a decade, and Farrow has just remembered something about that party round at Nelson's. According to her, the next morning Campbell came to her and said that in the middle of the night, some representatives from one Charles Taylor gave her a diamond. \"I just thought, 'What an amazing life Naomi has!'\" Farrow told ABC News.</p><p>Doesn't she just. You see, there was a small detail that I omitted about that 1997 slumber party: along with Campbell and Farrow, there was one other house guest – namely Taylor, the former president of Liberia who is on trial in The Hague for atrocities committed in Sierra Leone, including orchestrating the raping, torturing, killing and eating of hundreds of thousands of people.</p><p>Naomi Campbell, Mia Farrow and President Charles Taylor: you gotta hand it to Mandela, the man sure knows how to compile a guest list. Isn't it funny how, <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/qa\" title=\"Guardian: The Q&A\">while Mandela is always everyone's fantasy dinner guest</a>, he opts for the dream team of Campbell and Taylor? But I digress.</p><p>Here the story might have died, were it not for the fact that Taylor is now on trial for some really inconvenient, you know, things; and were it not also for the fact that, if Taylor did give Campbell a diamond – something that he has denied, along with many other things he is currently denying these days – it could have been a blood diamond. This is not a diamond that is covered in blood, like the ones on Campbell's phone after she embeds it in a maid's skull, but rather a diamond given to Taylor by the junta to purchase arms for the Sierra Leone rebels from South African armament manufacturers.</p><p>Campbell's spokeswoman insisted that the model was "co-operating with prosecutors". And again, there this story might have languished, were it not for the fact that Campbell's several bouts of anger management have failed to take root.</p><p>Last week, ABC News tried to go where The Hague could not by getting Naomi to answer some questions. Now is one of those times when I regret having chosen the written word as my instrument because, really, you're just going to have to put down this newspaper and <a href=\"http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/naomi-campbell-snaps-at-abc-news-10446725\" title=\"Naomi Campbell Snaps at ABC News\">get online to watch this interview</a>, in order to see how it looks when a person's soul leaves their body and is replaced by the cold hard eyes of a killer – as is what happens when the reporter repeatedly asks after the alleged diamond. Naomi then jerks her head, as if showing small children what \"in a huff\" looks like, stands up and – accidentally, on purpose, who can say? – punches the camera.</p><p>This story came at a good time for me. Last week, I made what some might call "a slighting reference" to Mr Sean Penn and his occasional international rescue efforts in this newspaper. I was duly rebuked by a fellow journalist who had recently been in Haiti, claiming that not only was Penn doing lots of good there, but that he "pulled the internet link to stop other people twittering about how cool they were to be saving the world".</p><p>This was an extremely disturbing revelation: a celebrity who is not only doing good for charity, but who is not a subscriber to the Philosophy of Demi – that if a good gesture is not recorded on Twitter, and ideally illustrated with a picture of oneself holding a cute brown child in one's lap, then it is not worth doing.</p><p>For a few minutes, my entire world view went fuzzy, and every lesson I'd ever learned from Team America seemed tenuous. Wait . . . wait . . . are some celebrities OK? Are their occasional efforts at international diplomacy not entirely laughable?</p><p>To calm myself down, I turned on the TV and there was Naomi, punching a camera when asked if she was given a blood <sup></sup>diamond by an African despot. Thank you, Naomi. Thank you.</p><div style=\"float:left;margin-right:10px;margin-bottom:10px\"><ul><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/celebrity\">Celebrity</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/nelsonmandela\">Nelson Mandela</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/charles-taylor\">Charles Taylor</a></li><li><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/abc\">ABC</a></li></ul></div><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/hadleyfreeman\">Hadley Freeman</a></div><br><div><a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk\">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href=\"http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html\">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds\">More Feeds</a></div><p style=\"clear:both\"></p><p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/tnjfgs37ucnl649hfpb0neurik/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fcommentisfree%2F2010%2Fapr%2F28%2Fnaomi-campbell-blood-diamond\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>"
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"title" : "Gigabit Society: Broadband as a utility",
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"content" : "<p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"><i>( This lenghty post is more or less the presentation I was planning to give at Fiberfete before the ashcloud ruined my intinerary. Instead of sheets I have created an essay on the subject. Please read on after the break, the good stuff is over there).</i></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"><br></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"><br></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">In my view 2010 will be designated as the year where we<span> </span>passed from Megabit per second (Mbps) into the Gigabit per second (Gbps) society. <span> </span>In every major market Gbps access for consumers is tested or delivered to the public. The prices are dropping fast because the hardware for FttH networks has made major jumps in price-performance. <span> </span>For Ethernet ports a 1 Gbps port and a 100 Mbps port nowadays have the same cost.</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"> </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">For some people a Gigabit is unimaginable: what on earth could you possibly want to do with this abundance?</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">Their problem is that scarcity blocks your imagination, like a nomad in the desert searching for water. For someone living in the desert water is life. You nourish your camel or horse and hope your water supply will last until the next oasis. No other use of water comes to mind, of course not. </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"> </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">For someone living near the Niagara Falls all kinds of new applications of water suddenly become possible:<br>- energy generation</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">- cooling</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">- entertainment (waterskiing, scuba diving, boating, sailing, swimming, waterglides,<br>fountains, rowing, beach life, surfing etc.)<br>- irrigation<br>- transport of goods<br><br>Abundance nourishes imagination. Like the dry seed waiting for water, imagination is the seed lying dormant within all of us, waiting for the opportunity to bloom. </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"> </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">It is the same with broadband as with water.</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"> </span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\">Fortunately more and more people see the potential of abundance in communication to create an improved society, the Gigabit Society.</span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0px;border-top-width:0px;border-right-width:0px;border-bottom-width:0px;border-left-width:0px;border-style:initial;border-color:initial;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-size:1em;font-weight:normal\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10pt;color:rgb(105,105,108)\"> </span></p> \n <p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><font color=\"#69696C\"><br></font></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;line-height:115%;color:#69696c\">Like the OECD in their recent <a href=\"http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/43/42799709.pdf\">report</a><span> </span>NETWORK DEVELOPMENTS IN SUPPORT OF INNOVATION\nAND USER NEEDS DSTI/ICCP/CISP(2009)2, <span> </span>december<span> </span>2009:</span></p>\n\n<blockquote style=\"margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px\"><p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><i><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">High-speed communication\nnetworks are a platform supporting innovation throughout the economy t<span style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);font-style:normal\"><i><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">oday in much the same way\nelectricity and transportation networks spurred innovation in the past. Future i<span style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);font-style:normal\"><i><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">nnovations in many sectors\nwill be linked to the availability of high-speed, competitive data networks and n<span style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);font-style:normal\"><i><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">ew applications they support.\nThe emergence of many of these innovative services tied to broadband are v<span style=\"color:rgb(51,51,51);font-style:normal\"><i><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">isible today in four key\nsectors: electricity, health, transportation and education.<span> </span></span></i></span></span></i></span></span></i></span></span></i></span></span></i></p></blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">\"A\nplatform supporting innovation like electricity and transportation networks\"\nsounds to me like the description of a utility. <span> </span>After all, a utility has more goals than solely\na fat bottom line.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">How about providing\nthe lowest possible price (while retaining profitability), as the utility or\nplatform supports the rest of society, provides the input for many value\nstreams? How about the maximizing the usefulness <span> </span>and benefits to society at the same time?\nMetrics as important as profitability.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">When the\ncurrent broadband networks, even the fiber based Gbps ones are judged with\nthese goals in mind it becomes clear that the ideal platform is not there yet.\nBroadband as a utility needs a conceptual jump forward.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The\ntraditional \"triple play\" approach of operators is unimaginative to start with.\n<span> </span>Maybe the simple \"everything over the\ntop = Internet\" concept is the source of the slow development of innovative high\nbandwidth services for these 4 key sectors mentioned by the OECD. And the\npractical issues of home networks and integrating applications in the home are\nstill a nightmare.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">Take for\ninstance smart grids and metering of energy. The bandwidth and latency requirements\nare so low that you easily could support the transport of bits now over DSL or\ncable. Yet the utility companies fear the security risk, are<span> </span>very worried about everything that can go\nwrong in the home network (modem, router, cabling, power, interference with\nother applications, who has to solve these issue, who will pay for the\nunnecessary truckrolls etc.).<span> </span>They are\nwilling to pay for the transport, but who has the billing relationship, what\nhappens if the consumer changes ISP or (nightmare) terminates the wired\nInternet connection ( temporary lack of money, dispute, switch to wireless,\netc.).</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">Or take\ntelepresence for professional purposes, working at home. A good two-way\ntelepresence facility is essential for telework as people value the social\ninteraction of the workplace (and bosses like to keep an eye on everybody).<span> </span>Telepresence is very demanding on the\nnetwork so a low overbooking ratio is needed while communicating. <span> </span>Relatively expensive but a very good business\ncase for the employer who very well might want to pay for the communication\nfacility. But hey, nobody wants to create a backdoor into corporate systems or\npay for a connection that is (ab-)used for private entertainment or unknown activities.\n</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">In these\nand all other cases a daunting task is shifted around like a hot potato: who\nwill configure and maintain the firewall/router/network at the home? Who will\nsolve problems? <span> </span>Professional support is\nway too expensive, most consumers do not have the skills.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">Fortunately\nthere are solutions which will takes us in the right direction. It so happened\nthat my ideas overlapped with work in progress by <a href=\"http://www.genexis.nl/\">Genexis</a> in the Netherlands. The\nfollowing is the result of a recent inspiring discussion with Gerlas van der\nHoven, their CEO. </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:9.6pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">The key\nconceptual step is to define a \"Neutral Termination Unit\" (NeTU) in the home. (For\nthe sake of argument we assume a FttH access network).<span style=\"mso-spacerun:yes\"> </span>The physical fiber line terminates in the\nNetU.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The NeTU\nsolves the above issues by allowing multiple independent networks with\nassociated services to be configured in a simple and reliable way, to make it\npossible that each (virtual) network can be billed separately.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The NeTU\nis active, needs power but only performs a limited number of functions. It\ncould be described as a minimal fibermodem that is redesigned to act as a\nplatform for a number of physical \"apps\" (P-apps). It will be cheaper than a modem because\nit is minimal......</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">A P-app is\na physical device ( a piece of electronics with software) that is designed to\nbe user-pluggable in the NeTU. The NeTU gives the P-app physical support, power\nand a connection to the broadband network.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:9.6pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The trick\nis that the NeTU recognizes the P-app and automatically provisions a specific <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_LAN\">VLAN</a>\nover the access line to the nearest aggregation point (exchange, central\noffice, cabinet). A VLAN creates a virtual connection to the exchange. <span> </span>Each P-app has its own VLAN, <span> </span>its own IP-space and so on. <span style=\"mso-spacerun:yes\"> </span>The P-app has its own connectors to be used by\nthe consumer or the application.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">With a\nGbps capability in the access line it is no problem to have multiple VLAN's\nthat do not interfere with each other, as long as the total cumulative allocated\ncapacity to all VLAN's is below that maximum. <span> </span>Virtualization in the access line. If you stay\nbelow the maximum capacity there is no congestion problem in the access line,\nthe congestion problems appear in the backhaul where traffic is aggregated.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">In the\nexchange the VLAN's are separated and recombined per type of P-app., fed into backhaul\nspecific for each type of P-app. This allows for very diverse qualities and\nprices per type of P-app.<span> </span>For instance a\nvery \"thin\" but highly reliable en secure backhaul for smart meters directly to the energy companies, or a \"thick\"\nbackhaul for telepresence, or an oversubscribed backhaul for Internet access.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">In the\nhome a P-app is the gateway for a home network and specific applications. The first\nP-app will be the \"triple play\" P-app, providing the traditional voice, TV and\nInternet access with routing, firewall and wifi.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The\nconsumer buys a<span> </span>P-app, or receives it\nfrom their ISP, plugs it in and voila. Do you want to change your ISP? Just\nunplug the P-app and change it to a different one.</span></p><p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"><a href=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/P-app1-1046.html\"><img src=\"http://www.dadamotive.com/assets_c/2010/04/P-app1-thumb-280x202-1046.jpg\" width=\"280\" height=\"202\" alt=\"P-app1.JPG\" style=\"float:right;margin:0 0 20px 20px\"></a></span></p><p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"><br></span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">A second\nP-app could be the smart meter P-app, provided and paid for by the utility\ncompany. They require a secure sealed connection to the smart meter in the\nhome.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">A third\nP-app could be the telepresence/work P-app, provided by corporate IT, with a\nspecific connection to your work PC or laptop (maybe even with its own wifi).</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The\ninterface between P-app and NeTU is standardized so there is a market for third\nparty P-app developers. <span> </span>And it allows the\nconsumer to plug and play with P-app's.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">Any\ncombination of P-apps can be supported. In theory the smart grid/metering P-app\ncould be the only one, no triple play needed.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">One of the\nmost interesting P-app's is one where the consumer might be paid by the\noperator for allowing the application to be installed.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-line-height-alt:9.6pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">It is\nclear the demand for mobile data communication is outpacing the available\ncapacity. <span> </span>The number of<span> </span>smartphones and 3 G dongles is <span> </span>exploding, as well as the use of the devices.\nThe mobile operators cannot increase the number of cell-towers and/or the\ncapacity per cell-tower fast enough. The fact that this is a laborious and\nexpensive process doesn't help.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">So offloading\ndemand to pico-cells and wifi access points (connected to the fixed residential\nbroadband network) <span> </span>becomes a lifesaver.\nThe pattern is already visible in Japan. Softbank is so desperate that they\nsubsidize access points and fixed lines, if only the consumer will allow them\nto connect a picocell/accesspoint for roaming mobile data customers.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">A Dutch\nconsulting company (<a href=\"http://www.eemvalley.com/Mambo/index.php\">Eemvalley</a>) has proposed a P-app that creates a 3G/wifi\npicocell and access point for the operator at the location of the home of the\nconsumer. <span> </span>Using the 802.1.x protocol a\nseamless roaming experience can be created for the customers of the operator in\nthe neighbourhood of that home. The backhaul is provided by the VLAN for this\nP-app over the access line.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\">So with\nthe roll-out of fiber and NeTU's <span> </span>an\noperator creates an cheap and fast method to improve ubiquitous<span> </span>high speed access, for a very low price. A\nvery attractive idea in dense cities with many users.</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">FttH as\nthe solution for mobile broadband.....</span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\"> </span></p>\n\n<p><span lang=\"EN-US\">With NeTU's,\nVLAN's and P-app's we can create the next level of Broadband as a Utility. </span></p>\n\n<p style=\"margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt\"><span lang=\"EN-US\" style=\"font-size:10.0pt;color:#69696c\">The good\nnews is that all technology is available, tried and tested, and affordable. Just\nthe packaging and the tooling needs to be developed and tested in real life.</span></p>"
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"title" : "WATCH BBC'S 'WELCOME TO LAGOS' PARTS 1 & 2 (VIDEO)",
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"content" : "<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/gpj9j2u4qhugienhvcd5luf71g/468/60#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nigeriancuriosity.com%2F2010%2F04%2Fwatch-bbcs-welcome-to-lagos-parts-1-2.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"60\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>The BBC documentary 'Welcome to Lagos' has become relatively controversial. Some see it as a positive depiction of the poor but ingenious in Nigeria's teeming commercial center, Lagos. Others see it as a negative and derogatory attempt by a foreign media outlet to <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2010/03/lagos-is-not-5th-worst-city.html\">once again</a> insult Lagos and Nigerians.<br>\n<br>\nWhile the program was available to a mostly European audience, viewers in America were unable to watch this documentary until now. Below are 6 clips that comprise Part 1 of the documentary. A link to watch Part 2 is also available below. Part 3 of the documentary is yet to air but will be uploaded as soon as it does. <br>\n<br>\n<a name=\"more\"></a><br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/sHKLIpz9F5c%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/cdAMXM0m8aU%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/Bnbt0kbHiz0%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/DCuJTp3edzQ%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/ogzdkAbGMT4%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/DRoyK_4_76o%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\nWhat do you think about what you have seen thus far? Is it fair to categorize the documentary as dismissive of Lagos and Nigerians? Or, are supporters correct that this is a positive portrayal of one of the busiest and most successful African cities?<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2010/04/bbcs-welcome-to-lagos-part-2-video.html\">To see Part 2, click here</a>.<br>\n<br>\n<a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2010/04/watch-bbcs-welcome-to-lagos-part-3.html\">To see Part 3, click here.</a> <br>\n<br>\nHattip to Dr. U for sending this in.<br>\n<br>\nFrom The Archives:<br>\n- <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2009/11/elite-living-effizy-in-lagos.html\">Elite Living & 'Effizy' in Lagos</a><br>\n- <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2009/11/lagos-one-of-worlds-most-expensive.html\">Lagos - One Of The World's Most Expensive Cities</a> <br>\n- <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2009/02/nigerian-curiosity-of-2008.html\">The Nigerian Curiosity of 2008</a><br>\n- <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2009/09/creating-better-cleaner-lagos.html\">Creating A Better & Cleaner Lagos</a><br>\n- <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2009/02/nigeria-is-home-to-worlds-largest-cyber.html\">Nigeria is Home To The World's Largest Cyber Cafe</a><div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1259678905729324935-5311405315690634562?l=www.nigeriancuriosity.com\" alt=\"\"></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:I9og5sOYxJI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=I9og5sOYxJI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:3XSh_JyuPpU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=3XSh_JyuPpU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=J_jWp1Q8bRo:o5SpouPB0-k:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU/~4/J_jWp1Q8bRo\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "The nature of reconciliation",
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"content" : "Al-Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips (a former BBC journalist) has <a href=\"http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2010/04/27/reconciliation-lessons-africa?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter\">an interesting blog on reconciliation in Africa</a>. In it, he suggests that one of the things Africans do better than people in other parts of the world is to figure out how to live with each other after conflict. He cites the tension and difficulties in places like Bosnia and Northern Ireland following prolonged civil conflict. He notes that people in Africa would find it absurd to be <b>fixated by the outcome of a 14th or 17th century battle.</b> <br><br>He adds that in African countries <b>from Mozambique, to Angola, to Sierra Leone, rebel and government forces that fought on opposite sides in brutal civil wars, marred by atrocities and massacres, are now united in national armies, and apparently oblivious to recent divisions.</b><br><br>He also cites post-conflict stability in places like Biafra/Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. Philips concludes that the lessons Africans take from conflicts is <b>that the price of disunity is too high to pay.</b><br><br>Yet that approach has its own flaws. Countless dictators, from Mobutu to Meles Zenawi, have exploited this very sentiment. The Rwandan dictatorship itself, praised by Phillips, uses the pretext of unity to crush all opposition... as <a href=\"http://www.greenchange.org/article.php?id=5168\">the newly formed Rwandan Democratic Greens were the latest to learn first hand</a>.<br><br>In the mid-90s, both Sierra Leone and Liberia were embroiled in savage civil wars, which sent hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, including Guinea where I lived. Countless Guineans complained about the sclerotic, corrupt rule of Gen. Lansana Conté and his cabal. But few were willing to rise and challenge the dictatorship. When I asked why, I was told that Conté's regime was bad but at least the repressive stability was better than the alternatives they saw on the southern border, with women and children having their limbs chopped off by drugged boy soldiers.<br><br>But that forced unity has a price of its own. The forced unity didn't solve any of Guinea's myriad of problems; it simply delayed their explosion for a decade or so. When the problems finally did erupt, beginning with the general strike of 2007, it was not pretty. There were riots, at least one major massacre, mass rapes, reports of small scale ethnic cleansing and very real fears (expectations in some quarters) of a Liberia/Sierra Leone-style full scale civil war.<br><br>Thanks to the intervention and strong will of a sane military man, Gen. Sékouba Konaté, and to mobilization of the international community and especially of Guinean civil society, the country appears to have gotten past the worst of it. If not for a fortunate sequence of events (including an unmitigated disaster with an unexpected silver lining), things could have been much, much worse. <br><br>Phillips makes the valid point that honest dialogue is essential to move forward in post-conflict situations. But true reconciliation involves a voluntary partnership of equals not fake 'unity' imposed at the barrel of a gun.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/5237946-8865733598377100012?l=blackstarjournal.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "BBC'S WELCOME TO LAGOS PART 2 (VIDEO)",
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"content" : "<p><iframe src=\"http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~ah/f/gpj9j2u4qhugienhvcd5luf71g/300/250?ca=1&fh=280#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nigeriancuriosity.com%2F2010%2F04%2Fbbcs-welcome-to-lagos-part-2-video.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"280\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\"></iframe></p>Here are the remaining parts for Part 2 of the above titled documentary.<br>\n<br>\nA link for Part 3 is available below. <br>\n<a name=\"more\"></a><br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/HQZFy0K5v0I%26hl%3Den_US%26fs%3D1%26color1%3D0x2b405b%26color2%3D0x6b8ab6&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/0AHFp2FXo5g%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1&width=480&height=385\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/KnslQRxhEHM%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1&width=425&height=344\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/aCgxAXOfSzo%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1&width=425&height=344\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/AZIrHy_eVsk%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1&width=425&height=344\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\n<iframe src=\"http://reader.googleusercontent.com/reader/embediframe?src=http://www.youtube.com/v/NWTOSKyAX2g%26hl%3Den%26fs%3D1&width=425&height=344\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"></iframe><br>\n<br>\nPart 3 is available <a href=\"http://www.nigeriancuriosity.com/2010/04/watch-bbcs-welcome-to-lagos-part-3.html\"><b>here</b></a>.<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1259678905729324935-4721526416073370099?l=www.nigeriancuriosity.com\" alt=\"\"></div><div>\n<a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:I9og5sOYxJI\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=I9og5sOYxJI\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:63t7Ie-LG7Y\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=63t7Ie-LG7Y\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:dnMXMwOfBR0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=dnMXMwOfBR0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:YwkR-u9nhCs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=YwkR-u9nhCs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:3XSh_JyuPpU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=3XSh_JyuPpU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:l6gmwiTKsz0\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=l6gmwiTKsz0\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?i=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:gIN9vFwOqvQ\" border=\"0\"></a> <a href=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?a=4fb669cMu9w:e4iPR9g7YzY:TzevzKxY174\"><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU?d=TzevzKxY174\" border=\"0\"></a>\n</div><img src=\"http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nigeriancuriosity/fpFU/~4/4fb669cMu9w\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\">"
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"title" : "Scamming my way through India",
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"content" : "Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's writing has such a seductive power. The writer, like a snake charmer, takes you into her world with her words, and before you know it, you're done. Done? Yes, done reading her text. This is what she displays not only in her beautiful novel, \"I Do Not Come To You by Chance,\" but also in this piece, \"Scamming my way through India.\"<br>She's relentless in her attempt to warn Nigerians off their God-given mission of destroying Nigeria (oh sweet home) and Nigeria's image (oyooyo image). Here's Tricia:<br>\"Now, there’s a limit to what we Nigerian writers can do, how far we can go in salvaging our country’s international reputation using carefully crafted words. We can convince the world that our brothers swiping dollars off unsuspecting mugus are simply ensuring that dependent siblings have a good education; we can suggest that our sisters labouring through their privates in Italy are merely guaranteeing that aging parents spend their final days in comfort. But how on earth are we to explain away hijacking someone else’s creativity and boldly entering it for an international competition? Surely, there are quicker—and saner—ways of making a few hundred pounds.\"<br><br><a href=\"http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5557544-146/story.csp\">ENJOY</a>!<div><img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1494812361809757392-6162182328460754132?l=africanliteraturenews.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"></div>"
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"title" : "Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules",
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"content" : "<div><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;background-color:transparent;font-family:'Times New Roman';line-height:normal;font-size:medium\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Last Tuesday morning I sat in my pyjamas, reading Clay Shirky’s essay, “</span><a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Collapse of Complex Business Models</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">” while waiting for the kettle to boil. The essay struck me as interesting, the kettle whistled, I went to eat breakfast.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">That evening I reread the essay more closely, and the closer I read it, the less I liked it. At sunrise the essay had been an entertaining set of anecdotes built around an intriguing core idea; by sunset it had wilted, revealed as an entertaining set of anecdotes pulled from all over the map in the vain hope that there might, somewhere, be a theme that would hold them together.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">It’s not the first time I have had this reaction to a Clay Shirky essay, and as each essay he writes gets a lot of attention (published earlier this month, googling [Shirky “Collapse of Complex Business Models”] already returns over 150,000 hits) it might be worth sketching out why he, along with other influential speakers who use a similar style, consistently fail to provide substance even as they succeed in reaching and influencing a large audience. So here are the Four Rules of Big Ideas: techniques the masters use to make that keynote more stimulating, that essay more likely to catch fire, all without doing too much thinking.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The thesis of Shirky’s essay, in case you haven’t read it, is that the nature of bureaucracy is such that traditional media companies, faced with declining revenues, are unable to cut production expenses, and so are headed towards collapse. </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Despite his title, the stories he tells </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">are not a problem of “complex business models” but of “expensive production”, </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">and even though it is uncredited, many readers will recognize the core of the essay from that other Clay, Christensen’s </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Innovator’s Dilemma</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></p><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Everybody likes a story, and Clay Shirky tells a good one. Collecting stories is not difficult: if you think about a subject long enough, all kinds of tangential happenings remind you of it, so you’ll get a good selection to draw from before long. Sometimes these stories are only peripherally connected to the theme you are developing, but that doesn’t matter because their role is not to advance your argument in any material way. Their role is to contribute to the impression of a widely-read, eclectically educated piece of writing and to keep your audience off balance, not sure where you are going next. </span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In 1983 Nobel Prize winner Roald Hoffmann visited the chemistry department at McMaster University. As the audienced assembled, Professor Ed Hileman leaned over a chair and said to me and other graduate students: “You watch - he’ll give an interesting talk but there will be no questions”. And he was right. Hoffmann’s talk was an extension of his </span><a href=\"http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1981/hoffmann-lecture.html\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Nobel lecture</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, a fascinating exposition of how the orbital symmetry rules he had developed could be extended to explain the structure of hundreds of organometallic complexes and clusters. But his talk answered all the questions it raised, and by answering them, sealed off avenues where questions could have been asked. </span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">If you want to provoke discussion, logic and detail are not your friends. Instead, don’t worry about loose ends and half-expressed ideas - just keep the audience’s interest and provide colour, and let them fill in the gaps later. Make sure your audience is not sure what’s coming next, not sure if they quite understood what they just heard. That’s what makes for good entertainment. It’s the First Rule of Big Ideas: </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">tell stories and think by analogy</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Here is the shortest of the stories in Clay Shirky’s essay:</span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Dr. Amy Smith is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where she runs the Development Lab, or D-Lab, a lab organized around simple and cheap engineering solutions for the developing world.</span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Among the rules of thumb she offers for building in that environment is this: “If you want something to be 10 times cheaper, take out 90% of the materials.” Making media is like that now except, for “materials”, substitute “labor.”</span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The loose analogy with cheap engineering solutions tells us nothing new about the media and its problems. Why invoke it then? Well, it does suggest that successful engineering solutions for the developing world are evidence in favour of the thesis of the essay, although they are not, and it brings MIT on side with the argument, which can’t be bad. This is how stories and analogies work - they suggest connections between different fields, connect solutions to different problems.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">But stories and analogies should be a </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">starting point</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> for thought, and not its terminus. They should be the spark that prompts more analytical, more rigorous investigation and introspection, testing out your idea to see where it fits reality and where it fails. In this essay, and in some of his others (see below) anecdotes are all there is, and that’s just not good enough.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Clay Shirky tells no fewer than five separate stories in his short essay. He explains how his title is taken from a book called </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Collapse of Complex Societies</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">; he tells a story about a consulting engagement he had at AT&T; he spins his short MIT story; he talks about a web video comedy called </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In the Motherhood</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> and how ABC failed to turn the web video into a successful TV series; and he talks about Charlie biting his brother’s finger on YouTube. Charming, each and every one, but what you might not notice on a first casual reading is that there is little to hold them together or back them up. Switching from story to story keeps the reader off-balance and makes it seem plausible that there is, in fact, a coherent mechanism behind the anecdata if only we were quick enough to catch it as the stories fly by. But there isn’t. The resolution never appears. There is nothing behind the curtain.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Aside: here is Clay Shirky writing about YouTube:</span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) </span></p><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">which is, as of this date, no longer true. The most watched video made in the last five years shows Lady Gaga and a group of hired models dancing on an elaborate set in a video that embodies complex production methods, that is part of the Vevo channel (a joint venture between Google and major record labels) and that features product placements by Nemiroff Vodka, Parrot by Starck, Carerra sunglasses, and HP Envy [</span><a href=\"http://josh.my/2009/11/lady-gagas-new-video-is-weird-has-lots-of-product-placements/\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">link</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">]. Now </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">there </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">is a complex business model.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">As a further aside, analysts Visible Measures add in all copies of a video together with spoofs and pastiches, and their </span><a href=\"http://www.visiblemeasures.com/hundred\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">list</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> of the top fifteen videos is as follows.</span><ol>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Soulja Boy: Crank Dat (music video: Universal) - 722,438,268</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Twilight Saga: New Moon (film: Summit Entertainment) - 639,966,996</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Beyonce: Single Ladies (music video: Sony) - 522,039,429</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Michael Jackson: Thriller (music video: Epic Records) - 443,535,722</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Gummy Bear Song (music video: Gummibear International) - 394,327,606</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Lady Gaga: Poker Face (music video: Universal) - 374,606,128</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Lady Gaga: Bad Romance (music video: Universal) - 360,020,327</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">TImbaland: Apologize (music video: Mosley Music Group) - 355,404,824</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Susan Boyle: Britain’s Got Talent (TV: Freemantle/ITV) - 347,670,927</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Twilight (film: Summit Entertainment) - 343,969,063</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Modern Warfare 2 (video game: Activision) - 339,913,412</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Jeff Dunham: Achmed the Dead Terrorist (TV) - 328,891,308</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Mariah Carey: Touch My Body (music video: Universal) - 324,057,568</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Charlie Bit My Finger Again (user generated) - 288,666,331</span></li>\n<li style=\"list-style-type:decimal;font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Michael Jackson: Beat It (music video: Records) - 286,279,009</span></li>\n</ol>\n<span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">It seems that complexity has its place after all.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">A natural response to this complaint would be that this one particular video is not “the point”; that I don’t “get it”, that it is not what the essay is really “about”. After all, Clay also writes this sentence:</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In the future, at least some methods of producing video for the web will become as complex, with as many details to attend to, as television has today, and people will doubtless make pots of money on those forms of production. </span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">And here is one benefit of building an essay on anecdata: you can always argue that a particular story is “not the point”. To take it one step further, here is </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">the Second Rule of Big Ideas: </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">make the point catchy, but make it ambiguous</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">. As Thomas Friedman has said, “He who names an issue, owns it”, so a memorable name (”The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”) counts far more than an accurate one, and an oracular title is the best of all. The title of Shirky’s essay is not up there with that of his next book “Cognitive Surplus”, which is an obvious attempt to coin a new phrase, but it does use the rule.</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> The Collapse of Complex Business Models </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">has a ring of down-to-earth pragmatism about it: if you are slave to an obsolete business model, then you get what you deserve. But a business model is a strategy for matching costs to revenues in such a way that you end up with a profit, and all he really writes about is one part of a business model: production costs. Why then not call it “The Collapse of Complex Production Methods”? My guess is that, consciously or not, Clay chose “business model” because it is a bigger, more abstract, and less concrete concept than “production costs” and using “business models” keeps the point of the essay ambitious, ambiguous and open to interpretation.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The rule extends beyond the title into the text itself. Clay has a reputation for being plain-spoken and jargon-free, but that’s not really accurate. He doesn’t load up his talks and essays with the jargon of the field he is talking about (culture), but he does sprinkle them with jargon from many places, leaning most heavily to economics and engineering. H</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">e borrows liberally from economics with his talk of “the marginal value of complexity”, Coasian transaction costs, and also the ”supply-and-demand curve” (really?). He switches to engineering when he refers to societal collapse as “sudden decoherence” and discussed negotiations that “took place in the grid of the television industry”, and to business lingo with his talk of “ecosystems” and supply curves going “parabolic”. The language is colourful, and it carries the reader along. It speaks to his natural audience of geeks and techno-enthusiasts, but the lack of precision keeps the audience on its toes while hinting, again, at deeper truths behind the anecdotes. But there appear to be no such truths; we are left with theoretical language without the theory.</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The five stories in Clay’s essay follow a practice attributed to </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Economist</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">, which is the Third Rule of Big Ideas: </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">simplify and exaggerate</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">. Take the one about network television’s failure to translate Web TV program </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In The Motherhood </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">to the mainstream. Clay writes this:</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Once the show moved to television, the Writers Guild of America got involved. They were OK with For and About Moms, but By Moms violated Guild rules. The producers tried to negotiate, to no avail, so the idea of audience engagement was canned (as was </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">In the Motherhood</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> itself some months later, after failing to engage viewers as the web version had).</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The critical fact was that the negotiation took place in the grid of the television industry, between entities incorporated around a 20th century business logic, and entirely within invented constraints. At no point did the negotiation about audience involvement hinge on the question “Would this be an interesting thing to try?”</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The message is clear: unions and media corporations are inflexible dinosaurs, unable to deal with the chaotic creativity of the digital 21st century. </span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">He could have chosen other stories with other messages. Media corporations are not as inflexible as Shirky would have us believe. Rupert Murdoch, one of the media barons Clay quotes as a dinosaur, is an expert at reducing production costs and limiting union rights (Wapping, anyone?). And has Clay not noticed reality television? The networks have been hugely successful at cutting the cost of Writers’ Guild members from their balance sheets over the last ten years.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">On the other side, the brave new world is not so different. For a small startup to be bought by a large company and ground down by the bureaucratic pressures of its new environment is not unique to the media business: it’s commonplace in the software industry too. And there are many “complex business models” in the digital world that Clay chooses to ignore: Google’s partnerships with major media companies, the licensing complexities of Facebook’s ever-changing privacy rules and third party APIs, Amazon’s outsourcing of warehousing through its complex partner programs - these business models are not just complex, they are positively byzantine, charting ever more circuitous and indirect routes between production and revenue. They just don’t appear in the stories he tells.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Useful though they are, the rules of telling stories, keeping the core idea ambiguous, and following the “simplify and exaggerate” maxim can only go so far in bringing your audience on to your side. The Fourth and Final Rule of Big Ideas is to play on our natural identification with the underdog by casting the anecdotes and your overarching theme in a rebellious and revolutionary light. The stories Clay tells may be diverse in terms of their origin, but they share a common tone, which is that of the creative individual (hooray!) against the stuffy institution (boo!); the plucky and resourceful underdog (go Charlie!) versus the monolithic, massive but ultimately stupid corporation (down with ABC!). </span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Back to his Charlie story again:</span><br><p style=\"margin-left:36pt;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Expensive bits of video made in complex ways now compete with cheap bits made in simple ways. “Charlie Bit My Finger” was made by amateurs, in one take, with a lousy camera. No professionals were involved in selecting or editing or distributing it. Not one dime changed hands anywhere between creator, host, and viewers. A world where that is the kind of thing that just happens from time to time is a world where complexity is neither an absolute requirement nor an automatic advantage.</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">But Charlie didn’t “just happen” because Charlie is not the only story here. As YouTube became a phenomenon, those 174 million-and-counting views could only be delivered by acres of these:</span><p></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;background-color:transparent;font-family:'Times New Roman';line-height:normal;font-size:medium\"><span size=\"4;\" style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\"><img src=\"http://noticiastech.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/servidores_en_datacenter.jpg\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;background-color:transparent;font-family:'Times New Roman';line-height:normal;font-size:medium\"><span size=\"4;\" style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\">housed in several of these:</span><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\"><br></span></span></p><p style=\"margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;background-color:transparent;font-family:'Times New Roman';line-height:normal;font-size:medium\"><span style=\"color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline\"></span><span size=\"4;\" style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\"><img src=\"http://media.charleston.net/img/photos/2008/03/06/bizlede_google.jpg\"><br></span></span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span size=\"4;\" style=\"font-family:Arial\"><span style=\"font-size:15px;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Complexity is not going away. It’s just moving to a different spot in the production chain, and as it moves so does the balance of power.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Years ago companies like P&G, Coca Cola and the other manufacturers would dictate to the stores that sold their goods how to do so, mandating marketing campaigns and product positioning. But now the balance of power has now shifted closer to the customer - to Wal-Mart and the retailers, who send Coca Cola back to change the taste of their drink and who tell P&G to pay for the privilege of managing Wal-Mart’s shampoo shelves. Amazon and Google are trying to become the Wal-Mart of the cultural world, increasingly dictating terms to their suppliers. But while the stories of Amazon and Google are part of today’s reality, they are not stories Clay wants to tell because they don’t fit his agenda. He would rather stick with Charlie and the finger biting. And that populism is a problem, partly because for all his promotion of the underdog Clay ends up consistently on side of the free market and against collective efforts by working people to gain a respectable source of income.</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span></p><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#222222;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">If the problems with </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The Collapse of Complex Business Models </span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">were restricted to that essay I would be more forgiving, but they show up elsewhere too. In a recent </span><a href=\"http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morozov_shirky10/morozov_shirky10_index.html\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">conversation</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> with Evgeny Morozov on</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> Digital Power and its Discontents</span><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"> Clay talks about the 1959 Krushchev-Nixon “kitchen debate”, jumps to Iran, then immediately to Singapore’s efforts at censorship, and on to Burma, to China, and to Belarus and to his favourite author Habermas. He covers a lot of ground, but never stops to look around or to reflect on what we can learn from one case - he’s on to the next before you can stop him. </span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">And when Clay talks about “a public that can... self-synchronize”, asks “how much is the political sensitivity of the [Iranian] regime titrated to the price of oil?” and suggests that Iran is “acquiring a kind of technological auto-immune disease” it is impossible not to think that he is more concerned with the novelty of his images than with actual clarity or, in fact, meaning.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">The same goes for the ambiguous title of his forthcoming book, “Cognitive Surplus”. In the lecture it has grown from (text version </span><a href=\"http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/04/looking-for-the-mouse.html\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000099;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">here</span></a><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">) he talks about the role of gin in the industrial revolution, about Wikipedia’s article on Pluto, about a Wiki map of crime in Brazil, about Gilligan’s Island, and about a friend’s four-year-old daughter looking for a mouse. It’s entertaining but there is more cuteness than substance to the title. I look forward to reviewing it.</span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><p style=\"text-align:center;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt\"><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">* * *</span></p><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\"></span><br><span style=\"font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:#000000;background-color:transparent;font-weight:normal;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap\">Towards the end of his conversation with Evgeny Morozov, Clay observes that “This is one of the really interesting things about these questions, ... you very quickly get a kind of philosophic vertigo. You think you’re asking a question about Twitter, and suddenly you realize you’re asking about, say, Hayek and markets.” I can only say: Clay, vertigo is not inevitable, it is a choice you have made, and maybe you should make a different one.</span><p></p></div>"
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"content" : "<p>Henry Louis Gates <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23gates.html?ref=opinion\">argues</a></span> that because Africans participated in the slave trade,</p>\n<blockquote><p>“the problem with reparations may not be so much whether they are a good idea or deciding who would get them; the larger question just might be from whom they would be extracted.”</p></blockquote>\n<p>Indeed. The Asante empire has been getting a free pass for years and enough is enough. Actually, I think the whole issue of reparations for slavery misses the point; the US has a moral debt to pay its black citizenry for the century between emancipation and civil rights, and that’s where the best claim for affirmative action comes from, if you ask me (the way black people were essentially shut out of the new deal, for instance, tells you as much about income inequity in the present day US than slavery alone).</p>\n<p>I do, though, struggle in vain to figure out where Gates’ irritation comes from; I assume that this is an old hobby horse of his and that the “Africans did it too!” thing is just the latest way of making the argument against reparations. It’s sort of a weak claim, and relies on you not actually knowing anything about the best kinds of claims made in favor of reparations; his whole “but it’s more complicated than that” rhetoric can only function to the extent you have an over-simplistic view of the reparations argument (as his attack on <em>Roots</em> demonstrates).</p>\n<p>Apparently a lingerie ad aimed at “plus-size” women is verboten and stricken from our nation‘s delicate airwaves. Sociological Images <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://contexts.org/socimages/2010/04/23/plus-sized-women-in-lingerie-too-hot-for-tv/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving+%28Sociological+Images%3A+Seeing+Is+Believing%29&utm_content=Google+Reader\">goes to town</a></span> on why Victoria’s Secret ads are ok, but not this:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…the thin, young, beautiful, able-bodied white woman is the idealized woman. And the idealized woman is sexy, indeed, but not sexual. Sexy women attract attention; they inspire desire, but they don’t have desires of their own. A sexy woman hopes that a man will like the look of her and take action. But she’s not sexual. She doesn’t take the action herself. Doing so immediately marks her as suspiciously unfeminine. [OTOH] Fat women are often characterized as sexual threats. How many comedies have relied on the scary fat woman (of color) trying to get some? It’s so funny, right? Because she’s gross <em>and</em> aggressive! She wants you and she doesn’t care what <em>you</em> want and so the fact that she’s fat doesn’t stop her. Scary!</p></blockquote>\n<p>One commenter suggested that “The threat inherent in this commercial is that this woman owns her sexuality and she uses it for her own pleasure. She’s not an object of the male gaze. She’s not posed there to be a selfless object of desire.” and I think that’s right, sort of. But it’s the particularly <em>unregulated</em> nature of that pleasure that makes her scary; women who own and use their own sexuality are not, necessarily as such, “threatening”; it’s the fact that instead of desiring to be desired (but having no desire for sex as such herself) the commercial so clearly equates sex with appetite (for one thing, she has an appointment for “lunch with Dan” that clearly means “sex with Dan,” and the euphemistic entanglement of eating and having sex in the context of a “plus-size” lingerie ad is important, as another commenter pointed out:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…when we look at a stick thin woman, we know that she is someone who suppresses their natural appetites, and through that she achieves a twisted kind of purity. I’ve often said that thinness is the new virginity. A larger woman – however contrived and conformant in other ways – is coded as someone who does not exercise that steely level of control and denial over her natural urges. In the context of the ad, the lingerie, the fact that she’s leaving to meet a man etc., we’re led to conclude that she is going to have sex, but not in the pornified sence of offering her body up as a passive and performative visual masturbation aid, but in the real sense of participatory pleasure-seeking desire.</p></blockquote>\n<p>“The next mishandled key term is <em>feminine</em>” is a pretty damning sentence <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n03/toril-moi/the-adulteress-wife\">in a review</a></span> of the new translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s <em>The Second Sex. </em>Toril Moi has many more sentences like it in her absolutely scathing :</p>\n<blockquote><p>‘Man’ and ‘woman’ should be ‘the man’ and ‘the woman’, since we are dealing with generic examples (as in ‘the woman leads, the man follows’), not with universals (‘woman is night; man is day’). ‘Feminine refusal’ is also wrong: we are not dealing with a specific kind of refusal (the feminine as opposed to the masculine kind), but with the woman’s refusal or resistance. (Beauvoir is not trying to tell us how the woman resists, just that she does.) The sentence structure and the punctuation are awkward. There are several translation errors: <em>s’assouvir</em> doesn’t mean to ‘relieve oneself’ but to ‘satisfy’ or ‘gratify’; in this context <em>profonde</em> means ‘underlying’ or ‘deep-seated,’ not ‘profound’. The phrase ‘reduce to his mercy’ piles up errors: <em>à merci</em> is not the same thing as <em>à sa merci</em>; <em>réduire</em> in this context doesn’t mean ‘reduce’ but rather ‘dominate’ or ‘subdue’; thus <em>réduire à merci</em> actually means ‘subdue at will’. And <em>force musculaire</em> means ‘muscular strength’ not ‘muscular force’, which is a phrase mostly used by scientists trying to explain the physics of muscle contractions; <em>permettre</em> here means ‘enable’ or ‘allow’, not ‘permit’. This isn’t an isolated example.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Ari Kelman’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100510/kelman\">nice piece</a></span> on extinction rhetoric at the turn of the century:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Throughout <em>Nature’s Ghosts</em>, Barrow sympathizes with the naturalists he studies yet almost never ignores their warts. Hornaday, for instance, was often a crank, his advocacy for animals born in part out of anxieties over racial decay. In 1913 he published a 400-page call to arms, <em>Our Vanishing Wildlife</em>, demanding protection for threatened species. In one breath he extolled the virtues of “gentlemen sportsmen,” the white knights who, he argued, formed the “bone and sinew of wild life preservation.” But in the next he damned so-called pot hunters, people who took game to feed their families. African-Americans and Southern European immigrants, whom he referred to as “pestilence that walketh at noonday,” came in for especially harsh treatment. Hornaday had plenty of company–men like Theodore Roosevelt and Madison Grant who, Barrow suggests, “tended to be deeply ambivalent about the forces of modernity that were transforming the American landscape.” Their ambivalence often manifested itself as racism, xenophobia or blood lust. During his 1909 expedition to Africa, Roosevelt assured the world of his virility by sponsoring a genteel blood bath: eleven elephants, fourteen rhinoceroses and seventeen lions counted among the more than 500 animals killed for sport.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Warts and all, hmmm… “Ambivalence” that “manifests as racism, xenophobia, or blood lust” is a very sympathetic way to put it; I tend to think that there’s actually a much more organic relationship between racism and that style of naturalism (in a word, the “Malthusian”) and I’m writing a dissertation to demonstrate it in the case of Roosevelt, who went to great links to convince his readers that blood lust was the farthest thing from his mind on his very scientific expedition to British East Africa.</p>\n<p>He wrote that “game butchery is as objectionable as any other form of wanton cruelty or barbarity“ and the phrase is a kind of leitmotif for him (“I object to anything like needless butchery” and, in reference to another hunter “he has not a touch of the game butcher in him”) and defended himself from the charge, later, by proclaiming that “I can be condemned only if the existence of theNational Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned.” In fact, Roosevelt would begin to distinguish the virtue of cruelty-free scientific hunting from “game butchery” in the same terms in which someone like Captain C.H. Stigand would distinguish white big game hunting from African hunting. Stigand would admit (in ways Roosevelt tended not to) that “The native is a keen hunter,” but he would go on to assert that “his hunting instinct is derived from a love of meat and a lust of killing [rather] than from any sporting feeling.” And in the forward to Stigand’s 1913 <em>Hunting the Elephant in Africa</em>, Roosevelt made the same sort of point: “More and more of late years the best type of big game hunter has tended to lay stress on the natural history of the regions into which they have penetrated, and to make his book less and less a catalogue of mere slaughter.”</p>\n<p>Benjamin Kunkel <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n08/benjamin-kunkel/into-the-big-tent\">on Frederic Jameson</a></span>’s new big book of little pieces:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…such a mood of provisionality or hesitation runs throughout his work. For all the consistency of his commitments, he has not produced worked-out arguments and scholarly findings so much as a tissue of hints, hypotheses, recommendations and impressions. It would be easy to find many sentences in Jameson starting like this one: ‘Now we may begin to hazard the guess that something like the dialectic will always begin to appear when thinking approaches the dilemma of incommensurability …’ Such accumulated qualifications – and yet ‘always’.</p></blockquote>\n<p>Matt Taibbi’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.mensjournal.com/the-nfl-draft-decoded\">nightmarish love for the NFL draft</a></span>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>…with its creepy slave-auction vibe and armies of drooling, flesh-peddling scouts, it has an excessive, perverted side that the drafts of other sports lack. NFL scouts who crisscross the country in search of raw football talent aren’t looking for future stars with marketable faces and personalities the way NBA scouts do, and they’re not interested in wide-eyed high school kids with fairy-tale dreams of making the Show the way baseball scouts are. NFL scouts are looking for raw gladiatorial muscle whose sweat-drenched faces will be hidden under helmets as coaches drive them to be rapidly ground into hamburger over the course of what, for most of them, will be ridiculously short (three and a half seasons, on average), injury-plagued, nonguaranteed-contract careers.</p>\n<p>This is about as dark and freaky as our sanitized modern American mainstream culture ever openly admits to being. These are bloodless corporate enterprises using advanced scientific and economic metrics to measure the material worth of human flesh down to the half-pound, the 16th of an inch. Which would be horrifying and morally repulsive under normal circumstances, but when added to a strong rooting interest in your home team, can become for certain people one of those guilty pleasures you just can’t give up because you enjoy it so much, like jerking off while hanging yourself in the shower.</p></blockquote>\n<p>How <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.themonkeycage.org/2010/04/the_right_creates_financial_cr.html\">financial cycles correlate with politics</a></span>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Financial cycles of boom and bust are as old as finance itself—a fact that has led some observers to infer that human nature may be a fundamental cause of financial cycles. But “politics” also influences financial cycles by way of government policies and regulations. I argue that policies and regulations vary predictably with the partisan character of the government, creating a partisan-policy financial cycle in which conservative, pro-market governments preside over financial booms while left-wing governments are elected to office after crashes.</p>\n<p>My sample consists of all bank-centered financial crises to hit advanced countries since World War II, including the current “Subprime” crises—a total of 27 cases. I find that governments in power prior to major financial crises are more likely than the average OECD country to be right-of-center in political orientation. I also find that these governments are more likely than the OECD average to be associated with policies that predict crises: large fiscal and current account deficits, heavy borrowing from abroad, and lax bank regulation. However, once a financial major crisis occurs, the causal arrow flips and government partisanship becomes a consequence of crises. I find that the electorate moves to the left after a major financial crisis, and this leftward shift is associated with changes in government partisanship in that direction</p></blockquote>\n<p>A great piece (thanks Drew) on the <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.tnr.com/print/article/books-and-arts/toward-new-alexandria\">dumb way academia makes itself irrelevant</a></span>:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Look at JSTOR (if you can). There you find the evidence-based, source-critical foundations of sociology, anthropology, geography, history, philosophy, classics, Oriental studies, theology, musicology, history of science and so on. They are all closed to the public. It is wonderful, of course, that high-energy physics and string theory are open to all. But is it not ironic that we have opened the gates only to that scholarship which few professors, let alone members of the public, have the cognitive capacity and appropriate training to grasp?</p>\n<p>The opportunity costs for society are self-evident. But what about the opportunity cost for scholars? For example, the public has set itself the task to rewrite knowledge for the public domain through Wikipedia and the like. Should not these sites be hyperlinked with JSTOR? By excluding the public from their scholarly literature, academics make it impossible for amateurs to use sound research methodologies, critically examining evidence by cross-referencing and source analysis. Scholars then critique the public’s output for not being sufficiently academic. Academics commonly refer to the occasionally wobbly scholarly standards of Wikipedia as proof the public does not wish to pursue scholarship. Might it not instead prove that they do not let them?</p>\n<p>An immediately important debate, I think, is to be had over how academics fail to engage with their natural constituency (and former students): journalists, business leaders, lawyers, entrepreneurs, politicians, and civil servants. These people are the ruling classes, if you would like. They are the ones who house and feed professors. Is it really in academics’ long-term interest to not let these well-educated and well-intentioned people as much as glance at, say, the Index of Christian Art? Is it really in their interest not to show the public their scholarly articles and academic monographs? What does this tell the public about who academics think is clubbable? And how will that affect how the public thinks about, say, federal research grants, or top-up fees?</p></blockquote>\n<p>But, of course, the academic publishing cartel is not structured to advance humanity’s higher learning:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Three firms, it is said in academic circles, control 85 percent of the periodicals market. Karl Marx and Adam Smith, both experts on the natural evil of monopoly, would nod knowingly on learning that an annual subscription for a scholarly journal can cost up to $25,000, and that the price per page for commercial journals is up to twelve times more than for non-profit ones. And this is not because the for-profit journals are better…After all, there are no substitute goods, and the purchasers of the journals (university libraries, but ultimately university administrators) are not the consumers (the professors and students). Thus, publicly-funded institutions first give away and then buy back their own research, research that they paid for in the first place. To add insult to injury, these for-profit journals are produced by unpaid, volunteer editors and peer reviewers. Here, too, labor is donated for free, by those same scholars who also sign over their copyrights for free. It is, shall we say, an unusual business model.</p></blockquote>\n<p>A propos of that, I found <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.rorotoko.com/\">Rorotoko</a></span> while looking for something else, but was struck by its usefulness as a model: authors of scholarly monographs write relatively short pieces summarizing their work. Like a review, frankly, only written by the authors themselves. From Louis Perez’s <span style=\"text-decoration:underline\"><a href=\"http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/louis_perez_book_interview_cuba_american_imagination/\">book</a></span> on American views of Cuba, for example:</p>\n<blockquote><p>Cuba dawned upon the American imagination at a time of national formation, during years of territorial expansion, inscribing itself deeply into a deepening awareness of national interests. With the purchase of Louisiana (1803) and Florida (1821), as the United States expanded onto the Gulf of Mexico, the acquisition of Cuba assumed something of an inexorable logic. From the moment that the Americans began to imagine themselves as a nation, as a people with territory to defend, commerce to protect, and security to safeguard, possession of Cuba was perceived as a matter of strategic necessity. A sense of national completion seemed to depend upon the possession of Cuba, without which the North American Union seemed unfinished, perhaps incomplete, maybe even slightly vulnerable. Very early in the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth century, the destiny of Cuba could not be imagined in any way other than as an extension of American needs. Cuba developed fully into an American preoccupation, one that reached deeply into the ways that the Americans contemplated the defense of their interests and the definition of their well-being.</p></blockquote>\n<p>and</p>\n<blockquote><p>Americans understood themselves to have mobilized for war against Spain in 1898 in behalf of Cuban independence, to have succeeded where the Cubans had failed…The moral, sometimes stated explicitly, other times left to inference, but always central to the U.S. narrative on 1898, was unambiguous: Spain had been defeated and expelled, through the resolve and resources of the United States, as a result of the effort and exertion of Americans, through their sacrifices, at the expense of their lives and the expenditure of their treasure. Cubans were henceforth proclaimed beneficiaries of the generosity of the United States, to whom they owed their deliverance and for which they were expected to be properly grateful.</p>\n<p>[Yet] What was known in the United States as the “Spanish-American War” was understood in Cuba as the culmination of a three-year war of national liberation. Cubans defended their claim to independence as an achievement rightfully obtained through their own efforts. They recalled more than three years of relentless war, which effectively drove the Spanish army into beleaguered defensive concentrations in the cities, there to suffer further the debilitating effects of illness and hunger, circumstances that in no small fashion contributed to the ease with which Spain was defeated in 1898…The question of 1898 insinuated itself deeply into Cuban national sensibilities, which meant, too, that it loomed large in public forums and political debates. In the nationalist discourses that emerged in subsequent decades, the year 1898 was remembered as a usurpation, a point of preemption, whereupon Cubans were displaced as actors and transformed into audience. The proposition of 1898 as a wrong to redress emerged early as one of the central themes of a Cuban nationalist counter-narrative, and served as a source of political mobilization in the weeks and months following the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959.</p></blockquote>\n<br> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gocomments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/comments/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godelicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/delicious/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/gostumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/stumble/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/godigg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/digg/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"></a> <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/goreddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"><img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://feeds.wordpress.com/1.0/reddit/zunguzungu.wordpress.com/1957/\"></a> <img alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=zunguzungu.wordpress.com&blog=873814&post=1957&subd=zunguzungu&ref=&feed=1\">"
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"title" : "Google News hybrid recommendations",
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"content" : "Three Googlers published a paper, \"Personalized News Recommendation Based on Click Behavior\" (<a href=\"http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1719970.1719976\">ACM</a>